With a week to go, if I were a betting man – which, unlike the entire political establishment, it seems, I’m not – I’d go for something like this: Scottish Labour, 30 seats, up from two, the SNP, 20, down from 43. The traditional polls, as opposed to the wildly swinging, often baffling MRPs, suggest the election result will be in this region. A bad night for the Nats, and a transformative night for Labour. Still, it could be worse for the SNP (and, of course, perhaps it will be). The campaign has suggested that all is not yet lost for John Swinney and his team. The First Minister has so far failed to make his party popular again, or as ...

Though not much of a radical, if Keir Starmer wins this election he will break with recent British political tradition: he is a candidate for change who isn’t young. In fact by modern standards he’s quite old. Tony Blair and David Cameron were just 43 when they won. At the time, Cameron was the youngest prime minister since 1812, before he was undertaken by Rishi Sunak, a mere 42 years old. Starmer will be 61 on polling day. The last time a prime minister took office in their sixties was James Callaghan in 1976; only Harold Macmillan and Winston Churchill were older in the 20th century. Starmer was elected to parliament late, too: he was 52 before he made it ...

For much of the general election campaign, Rishi Sunak has resembled a broken man. He was humiliated over his early exit from the D-Day commemoration and has proved incapable of narrowing Labour’s 20-point poll lead.  But in tonight’s BBC election debate, Sunak delivered his most energetic performance of the campaign. With only a week until polling day, the Prime Minister has (correctly) resolved that attack is the best form of defence. Rather than even attempting to make a positive case for the Conservatives, he focused on sowing doubt over the opposition. Negative campaigning enjoys a deservedly bad reputation – but it does change minds. Tonight, Sunak relentlessly targeted Keir Starmer, imploring voters not to “surrender” their family finances, pensions and the nation’s borders ...

EU leaders will make their top appointments for the next institutional cycle in Brussels on 27 and 28 June. The process has been surprisingly straightforward, in vivid contrast to the sense of transformation and turmoil being felt across the continent following the European parliamentary election earlier this month. While Paris burns, Brussels chills. There will be no revolution and news of the advance of the hard right inside EU institutions seems distinctly exaggerated. Let’s start with the names. Ursula von der Leyen will be renominated as president of the European Commission, but will have to be confirmed by the parliament in July. António Costa, the former socialist Portuguese prime minister, who resigned amid a corruption scandal, will replace Charles Michel as ...

For much of the last week, Joe Biden has been holed up at Camp David, the secluded retreat in the wooded hills of northern Maryland that has served as a refuge for every president since Franklin Roosevelt. (Although apparently Donald Trump preferred the palm trees and gold wannabe dictator chic of his Mar-A-Lago clubhouse in Florida.)   At Camp David, the 81-year-old president is hunkered down with his top advisers, strategising and rehearsing, ahead of the most important debate of his political career as he prepares to take on Trump in a prime-time showdown on Thursday night. An aircraft hangar has been transformed into a replica debate stage, with Biden’s lawyer, Bob Bauer, playing Trump as they game out potential comebacks and ...

Sometimes politics has a crushing inevitability about it. It was inevitable, for example, that once it had been reported that Craig Williams (until recently Tory MP for Montgomeryshire and parliamentary private secretary to the prime minister) had placed a bet on the date of the election just before it was called, the Conservatives would be forced to disavow him as a candidate.  It was not inevitable, however, that it would take them almost two weeks to do so, needlessly prolonging the damage as the scandal grew and ensuring the second half of the election campaign would be utterly derailed. Nonetheless, it took Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Campaign Headquarters until nine days out from polling day to give in and announce that ...

At Kettering Buccleuch Academy yesterday, Keir Starmer fielded questions on whether Arsenal will win the league (yes), his favourite subject at school (music), and whether he owns a pet (he has a cat called Jojo). He made a gaggle of high school students laugh at his avuncular anecdotes and advice – which is no mean feat. His promise to hire more dentists even prompted spontaneous applause from one enthusiastic sixth former. Starmer is improving as a politician. That is not necessarily a compliment. But it is helpful for Labour during a general election. Ten minutes’ drive from the school, in the Northamptonshire village of Geddington, Rosie Wrighting, a 26-year-old former Asos buyer who wears Adidas Sambas and is standing for Labour, was knocking ...

Yorkshire is known for its rolling hills and smart village streets. All of this, of course, masks acute rural deprivation. Labour has seen its support increase in similar areas across the country. The party's by-election win in Mid Bedfordshire last October reminded us that it can campaign effectively in rural England when it tries; that door-knocking and public meetings are still an effective way of marshalling votes. This brings us to Richmond and Northallerton, Rishi Sunak's Yorkshire seat. Thanks to the Conservative free fall, a number of models suggest the race in this Norman town will be a close call. Will the Prime Minister lose his electoral refuge? It would be an understatement to say Labour has historically been weak here. Not ...