House of Comments

21: The Election Begins

This week Jessica Asato, Editor of Progress Online and Duncan Stott of Split Horizons joined regulars Mark Thompson and Stuart Sharpe to talk about the events of the week in politics.

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Some of the topics we talked about:

• Last Tuesday Gordon Brown called a general election for May 6th. We discuss how the campaign has gone so far, whether there have been any surprises and what we all think of the performance of the parties.
• The Labour and Tory manifestos had been launched just prior to recording. We discuss some of the content and also ask whether there is any point to manifestos anyway and debate how many occasions there are when the promises within are not implemented.
• One of the Tory proposals is to allow local referenda to for example determine if a council tax rise should be allowed. Is this a positive step forward for local democracy, or could it just lead to confusion and muddle?
• Labour blogger Ellie Gellard was splashed across the front cover of two national newspapers this week because of comments she made two years ago about wanting Gordon Brown to quit. Is this really news?
• Labour’s manifesto includes a section title “Immigration and Crime”, a conflation which Duncan was not impressed about. Is this ‘dog-whistle politics’, or just a consequence of “departmental compartmentalisation” after 13 years in office?
• Finally, both Stuart and Mark have things coming up they’d like to plug: Stuart has written an iPhone app called Election 2010 which provides information about all the constituencies and candidates for the election, which on election night will give live results and updates. Mark is running live chats on his blog during the leaders debates over the next three weeks, which are open for anyone to join in while watching.

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