Financial Preview 04/03/2015: UK General Election 2015, Thursday 7th May 2015

On a morning where George Osborne accused UKIP of ‘making it up as they go along’, Farage’s far-right party finally provided comments that resemble something like a policy.

After a quiet month from UKIP, they grabbed headlines this morning as they begun to outline their immigration policies, the party’s ripest ground for gains in the run up to the election. The news that the Conservatives missed their net immigration targets was music to Nigel Farage’s ears, giving him the perfect platform to launch the first significant policy of UKIP’s campaign. Farage said that UKIP would ban unskilled workers for 5 years in an aim to get net migration back to ‘normal’ levels of 20,000 to 50,000. He went on to argue for an Australian style points system, alongside the requirement that immigrants must have private health insurance and receive no benefits for 5 years.



However, the main discussion arising from this announcement was the fact that UKIP seem to be shying away from their formally hinted at 50,000 cap on net immigration. A more floating aim instead of a staunch target has been taken as either an attempt to detoxify the UKIP brand, or as admittance that in the modern world such strict targets would be completely unfeasible. A similar sticking point was the lack of UKIP manifesto thus far; Farage said that they will release it in April, claiming the public are ‘bored’ of the constant new promises each day, and that the electorate won’t start focusing on the election until ‘after Easter’. UKIP appear to be banking on a late-campaign upswing in popularity, and seem un-phased by their slowly waning presence in recent months.

Regardless, this conference positioned immigration as the key issue of the day, becoming the primary focus of the exchange between Miliband and Cameron at PMQs. Cameron struggled to justify the missed targets, and all in all lacked substance when answering questions from all sides. Yet despite landing some blows in PMQs, Miliband and Labour still seem disengaged with the issues that matter to the electorate. Instead of focusing their ire on the Tories’ missed targets and Farage’s implausible immigration policies, they instead focused on George Osborne’s avoidance of the HSBC scandal issue after his interview for ‘Today’. This comes after Labour’s attempts to garner support with younger voters landed with a thud, with many unconvinced that their pledge to reduce tuition fees to a £6000 cap is economically realistic. Considering this topic was a well-worn issue in 2010, and eventually came back to define the Lib Dems tenure in power for all the wrong reasons, Labour’s resurrection of this debate may be unwise.



The polls have seen little change, with the Tories in a minor lead according to an ISM Wisdom Index survey, a YouGov poll and the Guardian’s latest seat projection. However, in the world of spread betting the election remains an enigma; the most predominant trend has seen clients sell, regardless of what party it may be, as no clearer picture arises from this muddy electoral portrait. Tories made minor gains on our General Election seats spread, growing to 281-287, whilst Labour slipped back to 273-279. Surprisingly the other winner this week was the Lib Dems, the little spoken about junior coalition partner, which increased from 24.5-27.5 to 25.5-28.5, with the rare buy bet this week going their way. UKIP’s current price hasn’t changed, remaining at 4.5-6.5; however, with the campaign cogs appearing to finally whirr into gear, this could all change in the next few weeks.

Check out our regularly updated spreads and fixed odds on the election here: https://sports.spreadex.com/en-GB/spread-betting/Politics/m121