Cathy Newman’s pick of the election FactChecks:
Well, it’s the beginning of the end of the general election. If you haven’t made up
your mind about where you stand, FactCheck’s on hand to help. We’ve pored over
the leaders’ debates, and prised apart the party manifestos.

But if you’re still undecided, here’s my pick of the best of the rest from Vote 2010 FactCheck.

Labour
Brown started the campaign under a statistical cloud – the statistics watchdog ticked him off for inaccurate use of immigration statistics, a use that didn’t escape FactCheck’s notice.

He wasn’t the only one being selective about asylum and immigration statistics though. Home secretary Alan Johnson used the harshest measures to bump up the numbers of asylum claims that were rejected.

And immigration came back to bite the prime minister last week, in the form
of Rochdale pensioner Gillian Duffy who Brown had to apologise to for calling a bigot. But, before now infamous gaffe, FactCheck found his claim to Mrs Duffy on the numbers of migrants moving in and out of Europe was not as equal as he made out.

The prime minister’s been most comfortable when talking about the economy. Gordon “no time for a novice” Brown has campaigned on his economic record at
this election, promising to lead a steady ship through the recovery. But how much credit can he take? Difficult to tell, FactCheck found.

He’s also been busy attacking the opposition on tax credits, inheritance tax, and their plans for deeper cuts in public spending this year – back of an envelope stuff, he said.

The lack of details on where the Conservatives would cut also allowed Labour to deduce that thousands of teachers, teaching assistants and support staff would lose their jobs under the plans, not to mention police. There’s a lot of assumptions in that, FactCheck found.

It opened the party up to criticism of “scaremongering”, particularly in the much publicised Labour leaflets attacking the Conservatives, first on scrapping the cancer guarantee (although we think he had a point), and exploited political innuendo to attack Tory plans on free eye tests and prescriptions for pensioners.

It wouldn’t seem right to finish without a mention of Paddington Brown, the marmalade lover. It may not solve the problems of the economy, but Mr Brown is clearly hoping that he will be more palatable to the electorate as a marmalade man than the love-him-or-hate-him marmite alternative.

Conservatives
Proving their economic prowess has been a central plank of the Conservative tactic, and consequently telling us just how bad the situation under Labour is. What better way to do it than by pointing to the Greeks?

Cameron’s been leading the way, starting out by saying out deficit is bigger
than Greece – not yet, we say. It didn’t escape our notice that his wording changed later in the campaign. And, we should point out, there is a lot more in the UK economy’s favour.

As for the idea that the IMF would have to step in to sort out the British economy should there be a hung parliament, our survey of economists said…the party’s aren’t that different to create that kind of uncertainty.

So how to deal with the economy? Cut, and cut now to save the economy has been one of the Conservative mantras of the election. That’s £6bn on top of Labour’s plans. But it brought its fair share of controversy.

Cut without affecting frontline services is the holy grail of this campaign, brought about through those magical efficiency savings. Particularly when you also want to stop a National Insurance rise. But, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies pointed out at the time, efficiency savings are truly difficult to measure.

The National Insurance rise may also not be the economic saver that they hope
for either. There’s no evidence it will cost the “hundreds of thousands” of jobs that Jeremy Hunt claimed, and there’s no evidence that their plans will save all those jobs either.

Schools has also been a flagship policy of the Tories. Let parents who are unhappy with their local school set up their own, akin to the Swedish model. This should drive up standards, Michael Gove claims, but the evidence is not so concrete.

Perhaps one of the most memorable things about Cameron’s leaders’ debates appearances were his personal anecdotes. Except that when he used them to show
just how wasteful Britain’s public services are, his plan backfired. One police force spent £73,000 on a Lexus, he said. Not quite, found FactCheck.

And some members of the public can ruffle Cameron’s feathers. Jonathan
Bartley’s challenge to the Conservative leader exposed a flaw in the party’s manifesto on educating disabled children in mainstream schools.

Liberal Democrats
Aside from the tv debates, the big story of the campaign was Cleggmania. The Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, who before the election was often confused with Cameron, hit our screens in a big way after the first leaders’ debate.

But how much do we really know about the man of the moment? His lobbying background in Europe, as well as his time as an MEP make him less of a fresh-faced
politician than he might make out.

And speaking of his Euro credentials, he wasn’t quite so straightforward about his views on the continental currency either – he has advocated joining the Euro repeatedly, despite his Brown-esque assertion that the “economic conditions” had to be right.

But it has been his immigration policies that have attracted much attention in the last week or so of the campaign. Does he want an amnesty for illegal immigrants in the UK? It all depends how you define amnesty.

And as for their defence policy, the Lib Dems push for a more affordable alternative
to a Trident replacement. But the jury’s still out on whether that is achievable.

Yet before his television jamboree, it was not the leader of the Lib Dems that attracted all the attention, it was the man who deputises for him, Vince Cable. Cable’s the economic guru of the party, but he is, FactCheck found, only human.

FactCheck checks in for the new Parliament
If you thought FactCheck was checking out now the election campaign’s over, think again.

With the help of the FactCheck team, I’ll be redoubling my attempts to hold the political parties to account – whether they’re well hung, in coalition or in power.

So keep an eye on the blog, and we’ll keep an eye on the political classes. And don’t forget – if you spot something that needs the FactCheck treatment, email us on factcheck@channel4.com.