UR TV CAST

To her it was baby business as usual, but to the entourage of Referendum Party stage managers, it was an interruption for which they were ill-prepared.
While yesterday’s stroll on the edge of Putney Heath may not have been quite what Sulaiman had had in mind when his mother tucked him up in his baby Gap gear, he has little choice.Jemima explained: “I can’t really leave him behind. I haven’t got anyone to leave him with,” no doubt striking a chord with many a single mother. Mother and son were out campaigning with Sir James, who is fighting Putney, and David Mellor on his referendum crusade.Sulaiman has been on the political beat since “day one.”He is, according to Jemima, “remarkably unfazed” about being hauled around the houses “I think he enjoys it,” she said. “I think he gets bored now sitting in a nursery.”The electioneering in Pakistan was certainly good practise for Sulaiman, who even knew how to handle the men with long lenses. “Can you look to your right, please,” yelled a snapper as the family posed for the press. The youngest subject was first to obey his orders.Jemima continued: “This is a bit public for me I’d prefer to go on my own, door to door with a pram …

actually, its difficult to talk to people when there are press around.”Whether or not it was down to the presence of the press, Jemima spoke far more passionately about her son than the Referendum Party yesterday.”He goes everywhere with me,” she said, adjusting her veil and his hood simultaneously “He’s attached to me He’s a good boy, really He’s so easy. He’s portable.”And when asked whether having Sulaiman on board helped to break the ice on doorsteps, she admitted: “It helps me, I don’t know whether it helps other people.”Jemima was determined, however, to appear more than a mere puppet on daddy’s string.Challenged on whether she, herself, held strong views on Europe, she replied: “Of course I do. Why do you think I’m here? It’s not just because I am my father’s daughter that I’m doing this. I’ve got more convictions than that.”Unlike some other people she could name. “The biggest crime is the politicians changing their views minutes before the election.”While her canvassing practise in Pakistan seemed to come in handy, Jemima refused to be drawn into making parallels between canvassing with her husband and her father.”It’s a separate campaign,” she insisted.But the Mellor camp was quick to proffer a parallel. A spokeswoman at the campaign office said there was no point in panicking about Jemima’s presence in Putney. “We don’t see it as a threat,” she said.”She (Jemima) did it for her husband – and it didn’t do him much good.”.

Paddy Ashdown was stumped yesterday by the contrast between his call for a fair deal for women and his own decision to nominate three men for life peerages in last week’s honours list. Opening an election press conference on the party’s policies to help women at work and home, the Liberal Democrat leader said: “There could be no greater symbol of the need to change the male-dominated House of Commons in that in the Commons we have a shooting gallery but we don’t have a creche.”
But when The Independent asked him why he had chosen not to elevate Emma Nicholson to the House of Lords last week, picking three men instead, Mr Ashdown said: “Because she’s an MP.”As Parliament has been dissolved, there are no MPs, and because Emma Nicholson defected to the Liberal Democrats from the Conservative benches, as MP for Devon West and Torridge, she has been left with no seat to contest in the current election campaign.Pressed again to explain why he had picked three men for life peerages – Sir David Steel, Sir Russell Johnston and David Alton – Mr Ashdown said they were all people who had given long and distinguished service to the party.The press conference theme was designed to coincide with National Take Our Daughters to Work Day – a scheme to provide young girls with an idea of the world of work.Diana Maddock, the party spokeswoman on women and family policy, said: “Over 11 million women will go to work today.”They will be joined at work by thousands of teenage girls observing their mums and dads at work.”Sadly, too often, they will see women being held back by lack of access to child-care, inflexible hours, low pay and poor maternity rights. These ‘glass ceilings’ must be shattered.”She said that the party policy for women at home would offer an acceleration of the equitable splitting of pensions on divorce, the introduction of a carer’s benefit, and improvement in the availability of refuge places for women fleeing from violent partners.For women at work, the party promised free pre-school places for all three- and four-year-olds, encouragement of more child-care provision by extending tax relief, and an extension of employment and pension rights for part-time workers.. Ian Lang, President of the Board of Trade, was accused of “juvenile scaremongering” yesterday after he contradicted the boss of Scotland’s second largest insurance company on the firm’s attitude to devolution.

The Conservatives are rattled by an apparent change of heart by both Scottish Widows and Standard Life, from coded warnings of job losses north of the border at the time of the 1992 election to one of business as usual under home rule.
Mike Ross, the chief executive of Scottish Widows which manages funds worth pounds 24bn, has at least twice this year expressed a relaxed attitude to a Scottish parliament.In March he said in a radio broadcast: “I don’t see any particular threats in the winds, for example, from devolution.” And on Wednesday the Scotsman newspaper reported Mr Ross as being “happy” with what he knew of Labour’s proposals.But Mr Lang insisted Scottish Widows were “against” devolution. A senior executive at the insurance company, who he repeatedly refused to identify, had told him the company “did not feel comfortable with the proposition”.”I have spoken to a senior executive at the Scottish Widows Fund and it is quite clear that the fund is extremely unhappy about the prospect of constitutional change and the other proposals of the Labour Party,” Mr Lang said.In a deftly-worded response, Mr Ross reiterated Scottish Widows’ neutral stance. The company’s overriding concern was to protect the interests of policy holders and it was “vital” that under any constitutional arrangements there should be fiscal and regulatory cohesion across the UK for insurance, he said.In common with any other business, Scottish Widows preferred to have as few changes to contend with as possible, but, Mr Ross concluded: “On the issue of devolution, we neither back it nor oppose it.”In 1992 Standard Life, Scotland’s largest insurance company managing funds of totalling some pounds 50bn, and Scottish Widows were accused of trying to influence employees’ after indicating that some operations might be moved to England if there was home rule.George Robertson, the shadow Scottish secretary, said Mr Lang should “put up or shut up. If he cannot name his sources he should not indulge in this rather juvenile scaremongering”.It was clear that the more companies learnt about Labour’s devolution proposals the more comfortable they were with them, Mr Robertson said. “If one compares what Standard Life and Scottish Widows were saying at the last election on the record to what they are saying now, it is nothing less than a sea change in opinion.”Widening the charge to industry in general, Mr Lang said Labour’s policies would destroy Scotland’s reputation as an investment centre.

In 1995-96 Scotland had attracted a record pounds 1bn worth of investment and over 1,000 jobs a month had been created or safeguarded. “Within weeks” of a Labour victory, this flow would dry up, he said. But when pressed to name a single company that had told him it would leave Scotland or not invest if Labour devolved power to Edinburgh, he was unable or unwilling to do so.. A perceived failure of the Labour Party to set the election campaign alight is influencing some disillusioned Conservatives to vote Tory again, according to The Independent’s group of voters in a key marginal seat. Some of the Redditch group – all former Conservative voters – regard John Major as conducting a more effective campaign and there are indications that the recent party election broadcast depicting new Labour as a “rootless tree” has struck a chord.
Promisingly for Tony Blair, his party’s pledge to raise pounds 1bn for the health services from the midweek lottery has been favourably received. But more ominously for him, there are signs that the state of the economy, and its prospects under a change of government, are playing more and more in the minds of so-called Mondeo Man across middle England.The common ground between local Tory and Labour campaigners that the result in the Hereford and Worcester seat – where Labour needs a swing of just over 3 per cent to win – may be closer than indicated by national polls is also born out by the group’s views. Among the undecided there is admiration for the Liberal Democrat policies, but a stronger slide towards staying with the Tories rather than trusting the uncertainty of a Labour government.Steven Marriott, 28, had wanted to vote Labour for the first time but will now support the Tories.