OpEd: Election 08-04-15

The commentators 08-04-15

...on the general election campaign

What the blithering flip was he thinking? How did Tony Blair imagine that it would help Ed Miliband if he were to pop up mid-election and remind us that Labour is too disdainful of ordinary voters to ask their opinion on EU membership?
- Daniel Hannan, Daily Mail

The characteristics needed to win the leadership of your party are very different from those needed to win the leadership of your country. Extreme candidates are selected who lose races that mainstream candidates might have won. Parties revert, after years in opposition, to leaders such as the UK’s former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair and Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron who are more popular with voters than with their parties.
- John Kay, Financial Times

Ed Miliband is never going to be another Tony Blair, and his party should be grateful for it. Far from floundering, the Labour leader is acquitting himself well, performing far better than expected in the Jeremy Paxman encounter featuring David Cameron and in the subsequent seven-way debate.
- Mary Riddell, Daily Telegraph

This election seems to revolve around four things: 1) The remorseless parroting of focus-grouped mantras; 2) Street-by-street guerilla warfare in a few dozen marginals; 3) Ceaseless speculation about which of various possible governments will eventually emerge; 4) Political hypernerds like myself checking the internet for a poll offering some sign that the stalemate might be broken.
- Matthew Norman, The Independent

The idea that the left is kind and the right unkind is a pervasive one but one that history doesn’t support. Some of the most grotesque mass murdering dictatorships in the world have come from the left. Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot. Leftism isn’t a certificate of goodness.
- Daniel Finkelstein, The Times

Most papers had made up their minds long before MPs packed up their pencil cases for the end of term, and five weeks of hustings are unlikely to change any of their opinions. The Telegraph, Mail, Mirror and Sun seem to think their role is not to tell their readers what the politicians are saying, but to tell them what is wrong (or, occasionally, right) with what the politicians are saying.
- What happened to news on the front, comment on the OpEd?

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