How significant a role will Reform UK play in this election? That question has been haunting the Conservatives ever since October, when their party lost two by-elections – in Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire – where the Reform vote was higher than the Labour majority. That panic was renewed in January, when a YouGov poll showed the impact the insurgent right-wing party could have on the Tories, making the difference in nearly a hundred marginals. It warned of a “1997-style wipeout”, with the Tories winning just 169 seats. So the news this morning that Nigel Farage, who founded Reform as the Brexit Party and led it to victory in the 2019 European elections, will not be standing as a candidate on 4 July ...

Bafflement. That is the mood among many Conservative MPs and campaigners at the news Rishi Sunak has called an election for 4 July. To say Westminster did not see this coming was an understatement – and not just because the day began with a warning from the Deputy Prime Minister that Brits should start stockpiling food (hardly a strong message with which to kick off a campaign). Up until this morning, No 10 had sent very strong signals that an election would not be called until the autumn. While Labour’s campaign team has hammered home the message that the party needed to be ready for an election at any time, Tory MPs were repeatedly told that the PM would “stick to ...

Game on. The speculation is over. Labour has what it wants. Rishi Sunak has called a general election for 4 July. The Prime Minister made the announcement in Downing Street earlier as rain splattered over his suit, creating puddles in the creases. It was not the scene he would have chosen. As the rain fell, his words were drowned out by D:Ream’s “Things Can Only Get Better”, New Labour’s theme tune during the 1997 election campaign. But Labour strategists today will hope to replicate another July election, that of 1945. Rumours ricocheted around Westminster all day that an election announcement was due after No 10 refused to rule it out. Speculation mounted; Sunak gave a small laugh at PMQs when he ...

The Apprentice, a new fictional biopic based on Donald Trump, features scenes of "rape, erectile dysfunction, baldness and betrayal”. On Monday it received an eight-minute standing ovation from celebrities and movie moguls at Cannes, a glittery film festival in the south of France that awards the coveted Palm D’Or award for the best film showing there each year. The movie’s Iranian-Danish director, Ali Abbasi, was so pleased with the reaction that he jumped up and down, dishevelling his tuxedo. “There is no nice metaphorical way to deal with fascism,” the director said. “It’s time to make movies relevant. It’s time to make movies political again.” Forget the strange idea that movies were, somehow, ever not political. This statement reveals Abbasi's questionable ...

There was only one question Westminster wanted to know the answer to today: is Rishi Sunak about to call an election? For reasons best known to himself, Keir Starmer chose not to ask about it at Prime Minister's Questions, opting instead to devote all six of his questions to the contaminated blood inquiry. So with the frenzied speculation getting more intense by the minute, it fell to the SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn to do the honours: “Does the PM intend to call a summer general election, or is he feart?” Sunak’s answer was nothing we haven’t heard many times before: “There is going to be a general election in the second half of this year.” Calendar nerds will be well aware ...

The rate of inflation has fallen to 2.3 per cent, largely due to lower electricity and gas prices, while the rate of core inflation – which strips out volatile prices like energy – fell to 4.4 per cent. UK inflation is now lower than in the US (3.4 per cent) and the eurozone (2.4 per cent). Among the many strategies No 10 has devised over the past year to win the next election (pro-motorism, pro-meat-eating, anti-vaping, chess boards for all, maths until 18, bashing Keir Starmer for advising Hizb ut-Tahrir) the most convincing has always been to sit and wait for the economic storm to pass. Tory strategists knew last year that inflation was due to fall and that growth might ...

The shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, has announced a series of measures with which a Labour government would combat corruption and kleptocracy around the world. Lammy described this as a deeply personal mission, driven both by his career as a lawyer and by his family background. “Fighting kleptocracy will be a focus of the next Labour Foreign Office”, Lammy told the New Statesman, “because money laundering and corruption fuels dictators while driving crime on British streets. It is an issue that demonstrates how the lines between foreign and domestic policy have broken down.” “You can’t be both a London MP, and someone with ties like mine to the Caribbean and Africa, and not see how this laundromat worsens lives in the Global North and ...

Are relations between Rishi Sunak and his Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, starting to get a little tense? That’s certainly the impression this week. The pair seem decidedly unaligned on the topic of immigration, in particular on student visas. Sunak is again under pressure to get the numbers down, with the latest net migration figures due on Thursday. These are expected to still be high – far above the “tens of thousands” target the Tories have been promising for 14 years. Conscious of the strength of feeling within his party – with potential leadership hopefuls like Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman poised to make as much hay as they can from this contentious issue – the PM is once again looking for ...