General Election 2015 weekly wrap: Casanova Miliband, Fallon goes nuclear and a non-dom ding dong

It's week two of the general election campaign. Only four more to go, probably followed by even more weeks of painful negotiations between the many parties after the result comes back with a hung parliament... If you're not sick of the campaign already, here's what happened in the week that was.

Tories go nuclear over Trident

Conservative defence secretary Michael Fallon launched a pre-emptive and deeply personal strike on the Labour leader Ed Miliband over the issue of renewing Trident, Britain's continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent.

Fallon, writing in The Times, said Miliband had "stabbed his own brother in the back" to win the Labour party leadership and was "willing to stab the UK in the back" by sacrificing the country's security to do a power-deal with the Scottish National Party (SNP).

The SNP looks set to sweep up most of Scotland's Westminster seats. In order for Labour to get into Downing Street, the party will likely have to do a deal with its rivals from north of the border.

But renewing the Trident programme, run by the Royal Navy and based in Scotland, is a "red line" for any SNP-Labour deal, according to SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon. Labour wants to maintain the deterrent, which will cost £100bn to renew, but the SNP wants to scrap it altogether.

Anyway, Fallon's shot may have misfired. Miliband said it was a "demeaning" smear from an otherwise decent man. The response from the press and public to Fallon's attack was broadly hostile, despite the rest of the Conservative front bench - including David Cameron and George Osborne - rallying to support what he wrote.

"If attacks are too personalised, or look too unreasonable, they can backfire," Anthony Wells, director of YouGov's political and social opinion polling, told IBTimes UK. "And it looks like that may well be what's happened this time. The story becomes more about you horrible people making this unreasonable attack than what the original thing was."

Non-dom ding dong

Labour is promising to abolish the non-domicile tax status for those non-Britons who live and work here but don't really want to pay tax to the Treasury because they'd, well, rather hang on to their money. But non-doms don't have to go and spend time in the country they claim to be domiciled in. Nor do they have to pay tax there, even if they don't live here. We've got an explainer on what exactly non-dom means.

Miliband reckons it'll bring in hundreds of millions more in tax revenues and on the surface, this all sounds pretty good. It's hard to see voters disagreeing, too. But the Tories were quick to point out comments by Labour's shadow chancellor Ed Balls in January, in which he suggested abolishing non-dom status would actually cost the UK economy money. Whoops.

Ed Milibangupforit

He may look and sound like a gawky wonk who'd spend dates lecturing prospective love interests about the merits of redistributive economics, but Ed 'Casanova' Miliband is, apparently, pretty fly for a bright guy. According to the Daily Mail, Miliband has had a "very tangled love life" and worked his way around a "clique" of women before ending up with his wife, the high-flying lawyer Justine. Among his girlfriends was the former economics editor of the BBC, Stephanie Flanders.

And, as it turns out, Miliband actually is the sort of person who'd use a date to talk about economics.

"I thought he was good-looking and clever and seemed to be unattached," Miliband's wife told the Daily Mirror about when they first met. "But we just went down a conversation cul-de-sac. Apparently we had nothing in common. He just wanted to talk about economics, one of my least favourite subjects. None of our conversations went anywhere."

Fare-minded Cameron

Red-blooded capitalist David Cameron is against price fixing. Except when he isn't. The Conservatives have in the past attacked Labour plans to meddle in the markets by capping energy and rent controls. But that didn't stop the Tory leader unveiling a manifesto commitment to freeze regulated rail fares for five years, a policy that will play well with hard-pressed London commuters who have to pay thousands of pounds a year to be compressed in the sweaty misery of over-packed and musky old carriages just to get to work.

Ukip talks tampons

Despite having a few high-profile women in senior roles, Ukip is still seen as the party of the crusty old git. The Hamlet-smoking, flat-cap wearing, real ale guzzling bounder, who hates the European Union and loves the Windsors.

So Ukip is trying to pitch itself to ordinary female voters. And how has it done that? Via the medium of tampons - Ukip is promising to cut the 5% VAT levied on women's sanitary products.

The Only Way is Farage

In what looked like scenes from a low-budget Perfect Storm remake, Ukip leader Nigel Farage met up with the reality TV star Joey Essex at Grimsby docks for a fishing boat trip as part of a youth-focused documentary about the 2015 general election.

Essex, fresh from interviewing the Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg for the same film, said Farage was "reem", which means good in Brentwood-speak. So it looks like Ukip has the Towie vote wrapped up, babes.

You only sing when you're whining

It could be the most memorable party election broadcast of the 2015 campaign. It'll definitely be the most cringe-worthy. But it's something different, which goes to the core of what the Green party's pitch to voters is all about - an alternative to a stale Westminster consensus. If you can bare it, watch.