During Labour’s troubled 1983 general election campaign, the party’s general secretary Jim Mortimer announced without warning at a daily press conference: “The unanimous view of the campaign committee is that Michael Foot is the leader of the Labour Party and speaks for the party.” This farcical scene – unrivalled for 41 years – has now been matched. History will record last weekend as the moment that cabinet ministers were forced to deny that Rishi Sunak would resign ahead of an election that he called. “Absolutely, there should be no question of anything other than that,” replied Mel Stride, the Work and Pensions Secretary, when asked whether Sunak would still be leading the Conservative Party on 4 July. Journalists only got the chance ...

Emmanuel Macron, the man who likes to talk about Europe, left no time for talking about Europe. His political stunt yesterday to call snap parliamentary elections in France has deflected all attention from the weekend's European Parliament vote back to national politics. French political parties now have three weeks to prepare. In the European parliamentary election in France, Macron’s list was led by Valérie Hayer – and it suffered a proper defeat, in line with what the polls predicted. The leader of the hard-right National Rally (RN) Jordan Bardella’s list got 30 seats with 31.5 per cent of the votes. Macron’s alliance got less than half of that: 13 seats with 14.6 per cent. This is the same number of seats ...

Last week, just as Nigel Farage was announcing his full entry into the general election campaign, the Conservatives released their first full-length campaign video. It was a dour and doom-mongering affair, and made headlines chiefly for showing the Union Jack upside down, a mis-step widely judged as some unconscious signal of surrender from inside Conservative headquarters. As if in reply, later that day Farage’s social media punched out its own video offering. There’s Nigel in the silhouettes we know, brandishing an umbrella in his tweed coat and gold-buttoned blazer. But he’s also been chopped up into a staccato collage and set to Eminem’s “Without Me”. “Cause we need a little controversy…” The song will reportedly be serving as his electoral anthem, ...

How important will tactical voting be in this election? General estimates suggest a few dozen seats can change hands purely as a consequence of tactical voting. In by-elections we’ve seen it work for Labour. Take Mid Bedfordshire in 2023: after the resignation of Nadine Dorries, Labour overturned a Tory majority of 24,664 to win with 34 per cent of the vote, aided by tactical votes from would-be Liberal Democrat and Green voters. But Scotland is its own political micro-climate. It experienced some of Labour’s polling surge in 2022 – but the effects were much less pronounced there than in England. The Scottish National Party is still, mostly, in first place. And the Scottish Tories are down. But unlike in England, they are ...

In the 1985 movie Brewster’s Millions, Brewster (Richard Pryor) has to blow a $30m fortune in 30 days without anyone realising he’s trying. I use this example – rather than the vastly more famous The Producers – because it’s not very good (Rotten Tomatoes: 38 per cent). It feels a more apt reference when trying to answer the following question: how is Rishi Sunak so bad at this? Is it possible he’s doing it deliberately? A quick recap, for anyone who’s been sealed in a vault. Thursday was the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings, better known as D-Day – the largest seaborne invasion in history and the moment that began the liberation of France from the Nazis. The ceremony, attended ...

Rishi Sunak was the big loser from tonight’s seven-way BBC election debate – and he wasn’t even on the stage. Penny Mordaunt wasted no time in ruthlessly distancing herself from her former leadership rival, declaring that he was “completely wrong” to leave the D-Day ceremony early. Asked whether she would have left early, the former naval reservist replied: “I didn’t go to D-Day, I think what happened was very wrong.” For good measure, Nigel Farage assailed Sunak as a “complete and utter disgrace” and “unpatriotic”.  But after a dismal week, the Conservatives will be relieved that the Reform leader failed to dominate proceedings. His attacks on the Labour-Tory duopoly and on high immigration were met with only tepid applause. Instead, it ...

Labour, under the watchful eye of campaign director Morgan McSweeney, is at pains to tell anyone who will listen that it is taking nothing for granted. But a Starmer-led government appears by far the most likely outcome (veteran pollster John Curtice has given Keir Starmer a 99 per cent chance of becoming prime minister). It is unsurprising, therefore, that behind the scenes, a new debate has begun within Labour. How should the party deliver on its promises and ensure it wins more than one term in office if it is elected on 4 July? This may seem premature. But Labour has seen the fortunes of its centre-left sister parties in the US, Australia, New Zealand and Germany fade fast after their election. ...

Ever since the Hamas attack of October last year, Israel has been waiting for the second front to open. For the past eight months, the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah has exchanged fire with Israeli forces over their shared border. Thus far, tens of thousands of civilians have been displaced from the north of Israel and southern Lebanon, with ten Israeli citizens, 15 soldiers and at least 400 Lebanese killed so far. But given the carnage in Gaza, these relatively low levels of casualties have not attracted much attention. The violence over the past few days, however, suggests that this is about to change. On Monday, Hezbollah missiles and drones sparked large fires in the tinder-dry fields of Galilee, and on Wednesday, ...