Election catch-up: ‘When working people succeed, Britain succeeds’ is ‘not just a slogan’

And other unconvincing claims from the campaign trail

1. The Paul Greengrass video, Ed Miliband: A Portrait (still, above), is not bad. A Kinnock The Movie 2, although, like most sequels, not as good as the original. “When working people succeed, Britain succeeds. That is not just a slogan. That is a powerful idea about how this country needs to change.” That was a parody “hand of history” moment for me. At least Tony Blair really was making history when he said it.

2. Miliband was also interviewed by Russell Brand yesterday, although so far we have seen only a trailer in which the Labour leader adopts a fake Estuary accent. I am sure that when we see the whole thing Miliband will have challenged Brand on his view that 9/11 might have been an inside job.

3. Still, I thought Miliband had grown in stature during this campaign. It occurred to me yesterday that people had stopped calling him David by mistake. Moments later, one of the guests on BBC Radio 4 World At One (at 57 mins 30 secs), Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall or Richard Stilgoe, called him David. (Thanks to Adrian England for drawing this to my attention.)

It just goes to show that you see and hear what you want to. A point I made against Miliband on Sunday, and one that Steve Richards made in Miliband’s favour yesterday. Richards said Miliband had always been more “robust” than the media herd consensus, only now we can see it. Not convinced: there is a reason the word robust is on the Banned List.

4. One subject of which surprisingly little has been heard in this election is David Cameron’s promise of an EU referendum. Which is odd not least because it is one of the biggest differences between the two main parties.

5. Philip Cowley makes an essential point about the role of the Scottish National Party after the election in The Spectator:

“However large the SNP contingent at Westminster and however large the ructions within Labour’s ranks, the parliamentary arithmetic is such that the SNP will only be able to defeat a Labour government – whether it is a minority or majority government – if SNP MPs are willing to vote with the Conservatives. I have no doubt they will be willing to do so – that’s political life – but for some reason this is never mentioned by the SNP when discussing how much leverage they might exert.”

6. And finally, thanks to Ollie for this, via Moose Allain:

We DID NOT walk 500 mile.

And we WOULD NOT walk 500 more.

– The Disclaimers.