This past weekend, some of the brightest stars in the conservative sky descended on Phoenix, Arizona, for Turning Point USA’s “Americafest 2025” conference. But the far-right revelry and MAGA backslapping quickly shed its veneer of camaraderie to expose deep fracture lines threatening the ultranationalist group’s mission. Across four days of dueling speeches and simmering behind-the-scenes feuds, TPUSA’s first major event since the shooting death of cofounder Charlie Kirk became a microcosm of the broader forces jockeying for MAGA power and influence nationwide.

‘Grifters,’ ‘charlatans’ and ‘hilarious’ attempts at deplatforming

Although its annual conferences have been “long billed as a show of unity for young conservatives,” this year’s TPUSA event was a “public airing of deepening fractures inside the MAGA movement,” Salon said. While “clashes over Israel, antisemitism and leadership” dominated the weekend, Kirk’s death and the “absence of a clear successor loomed large” as tributes “veered into ideological disputes, particularly over foreign policy and the influence of far-right figures within the movement.” After speakers “torched each other as pompous, cancerous cowards,” the group that had once been “so lockstep when President Trump was running” found itself “engulfed in an overt power struggle ahead of 2028,” said Axios.

Conservative broadcaster Ben Shapiro used his conference address to lash out at “grifters and charlatans” who he claimed were “guilty of misleading their audiences with falsehoods and conspiracy theories,” CNN said. He took particular aim at former Fox News host Tucker Carlson for interviewing avowed antisemite Nick Fuentes in what Shapiro said was an “act of moral imbecility.”

Carlson returned fire during his speech, calling Shapiro’s attempt at “deplatforming and denouncing people” at a TPUSA event “hilarious.” He then “downplayed the problem of anti-Jewish hate,” said the Times of Israel, in part by framing antisemitism as “less pervasive than bias against white men.”

Speaking Sunday evening, Vice President JD Vance conspicuously declined to condemn the “streak of antisemitism that has divided the Republican Party and roiled the opening days” of the event, The Associated Press said. That includes former TPUSA staff and now popular podcaster Candace Owens, who has “alleged without evidence that Israeli spies were involved in Kirk’s death.” Taken together, the “tension on display” over the weekend “foreshadowed the treacherous political waters” aspiring conservative hopefuls will face before the next election.

All eyes on 2028

The schisms exposed over the weekend “laid bare” the challenge for any conservative hoping to succeed President Donald Trump atop the MAGA movement, The New York Times said: how to address the “explosive debate” over whether conspiracy theorists and extremists should be “embraced or excluded from the conservative coalition.”

In Vance’s remarks, delivered after Kirk’s widow and current TPUSA CEO Erika endorsed him for 2028, the vice president signaled he was “more than willing to forgo imposing any moral red lines.” At the same time, some observers have claimed that the “narrative of tension” and a looming MAGA civil war is “ginned up by people who hope to prevent” Vance’s political ascension, said the AP. “This is a proxy on ’28,” former Trump advisor Steve Bannon said at the convention, per the National Review. “There are people who are mad at JD Vance,” Tucker Carlson said, per the same outlet, and “they’re stirring up a lot of this in order to make sure he doesn’t get the nomination.”

Nigel Farage reportedly expects an electoral pact or even a merger between Reform UK and the Conservatives before the next general election, a shift which would represent a historic realignment of the right.

A Reform donor said Farage told them that an agreement on cooperation between the two parties could help his party’s path to electoral success, according to the Financial Times. Another associate said that Farage described a pact or merger as “inevitable”, although the party leader said he “felt betrayed after the pact he made with the Tories at the 2019 election”.

“They will have to come together,” the donor said. “The Conservatives have been a successful political party forever because the left was always divided…If the right is divided, it can’t win.”

What did the commentators say?

I have long been sceptical of such a pact, said the newspaper’s Stephen Bush in his Inside Politics newsletter. Farage is a “polarising figure” who could unite the left and centre against him. Reform may be the “stronger party” in the polls, but the Tories have far more MPs – any deal would have to involve a lot of Tory losers, with many serving MPs “shunted out of plum seats”. But talk of a pact is “no longer far-fetched”. Kemi Badenoch’s lacklustre leadership has “made the Tory party such a marginal bit-part player that I am no longer so sure”.

Farage dismissed the accounts of his alleged remarks, telling the FT that “sometimes people hear what they want to”. After next May’s devolved elections and local polls, the Conservatives “will no longer be a national party”, he said. “I would never do a deal with a party that I don’t trust. No deals, just a reverse takeover. A deal with them as they are would cost us votes.”

But even if Reform does as well as current polls suggest, those numbers still wouldn’t give the party a Commons majority, said Sky News’ deputy political editor Sam Coates. Farage would need backing from Tory MPs to get into No. 10. While Badenoch has dismissed the idea, YouGov polling of members before conference season found that 64% supported an electoral pact, and 46% supported a full-blown merger. “The appetite’s there.”

Frankly, there is “already a slow merger going on”, said George Eaton in The New Statesman. Over the past year, 21 current or former Conservative MPs have “defected to Reform” – three this week. Reform’s ratings have also fallen in recent polls, and “waves of tactical voting” saw it lose the Hamilton and Caerphilly by-elections. Under a “more confident” Badenoch, the Tories’ standing is improving. “So is a deal inevitable?” One of Farage’s closest aides told the magazine: “Over my dead body.”

What next?

No pacts or deals will be considered while Badenoch is party leader, a Conservative spokesperson told Sky News. “Reform wants higher welfare spending and to cosy up to Putin.”

Anthony Wells, head of politics and elections at YouGov, told the FT that although Reform was “miles ahead in the polls”, tactical voting by left-leaning voters could block Farage from power. There are also a significant number of Conservative voters who wouldn’t back Farage even if the alternative was Keir Starmer’s Labour. “There are some Tories that really don’t like Reform,” said Wells, “so there will be some leakage from right to left.”

And therein lies “the key point to keep in mind: pact or no pact”, said Eaton. What really matters for the election is “whether the right is more divided than the left”. Labour and the Lib Dems have never needed a pact to “demolish” the Conservatives with progressive tactical voting, such as in 2024. Reform and the Tories don’t need a pact to “do the same to Starmer”.

Net migration in the UK has fallen to its lowest level since 2021 after the “single largest outflow of people in a century as a proportion of the UK population”.

In the year to June, 693,000 people – 1% of the UK’s population – left the country. This was “the highest proportion of the population to leave the UK since 1923”, said The Times.

Overall, net migration stood at 204,000, down by more than two-thirds on the previous year’s 649,000, according to the Office for National Statistics. The provisional figures show 70,000 more EU nationals left the UK than arrived, while 109,000 more British nationals left than arrived.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood spoke last week of the “unprecedented levels of migration in recent years”. “That will now change,” she said. “In fact, it already has,” said The New York Times, but not in the way Mahmood and the government may want, as the “number of people who claimed asylum in the year to September 2025 reached a record high of 110,051”, said the BBC. That figure is more than half of the net migration total.

What did the commentators say?

The Conservatives are “keen to claim credit” for the “sharp fall” in net migration, said Michael Simmons in The Spectator. They say that stronger visa rules and restrictions on dependents introduced under Rishi Sunak are only now “feeding through” into the data.

Labour, on the other hand, can “claim progress” as these official migration statistics cover almost all of its first year in government. But ministers should “tread carefully”, however. The “underlying picture is far less clear-cut” and there is no evidence yet that the fall in migration can be maintained.

The exodus of young people in particular should “trigger alarm bells about the UK’s demographic conundrum”, said City A.M. Around 91% of British nationals who left the country were of working age, “scuppering” the idea that it was mainly pensioners leaving for Europe. If anything, this suggests that younger people are “ditching the country to boost living standards”.

The numbers themselves aren’t at the forefront of most people’s minds, but the optics of the government’s “handling of illegal migration and related issues” are, said UnHerd. To date, ministers have made “little progress” on delivering tangible results, and “show no sign yet of making any more”.

A mere “promise” to end the use of migrant hotels – such as the Bell Hotel in Epping – will “pay no political dividends” and save no money, if the government resorts to social or privately rented housing. If the government wanted to make a difference, it could change the “state’s legal obligation to house asylum seekers”: no such move has been made.

What next?

We must look at these figures in a wider context, especially if the government is considering applying arbitrary migration targets, said Stephen Bush in the Financial Times.

The influx of people entering the UK is not a standalone issue, but an “outgrowth” based on other decisions. Instead of jumping to “targets” – “the kind of thing that states tend to do badly” – answering the questions over housebuilding, university funding, or economic advantages is the way forward. “Trying to work backwards” by reverse-engineering the problem and starting with migrant controls, “is a fool’s errand”.

Small boats will continue to be a thorn in Labour’s side, especially if the UK remains “incapable” of stringent deportation systems, or an Australian method of “offshore processing”, said UnHerd. That being said, if Mahmood avoids another “Boris-wave” of high net migration, or prevents migrants becoming a “permanent burden on the British taxpayer”, then “she will deserve real credit. But if Labour ministers hope that will be enough to neutralise immigration as an electoral issue, they are surely mistaken.”

The politician and former chancellor chooses five favourite books. He will be speaking about his book “Can We Be Great Again?” at the St Andrew’s Book Festival in London on 25 November.

Peak Human

Johan Norberg, 2025

If you’re worried that Western civilisation and democracy is in decline, this is for you – in fact, it’s the best book I have read this year. Johan Norberg looks at civilisations from Athens to the Anglosphere, and traces the reasons for their rise and fall. His conclusion: all is not lost.

Super Agers

Eric Topol, 2025

Eric Topol is my favourite American doctor, and has given me superb advice on many occasions. His latest book looks scientifically at all the diseases that cause ageing, from heart disease to cancer to dementia – and exactly what the latest clinical trials say works and does not work. For someone like me who is turning 60 next year, it was unputdownable!

Broken Threads

Mishal Husain, 2024

Not every broadcaster can write – but Mishal Husain certainly can. This is a beautiful account of the impact of partition in India on both branches of her family, setting their painstakingly researched stories against the backdrop of deep historical currents.

How Countries Go Broke

Ray Dalio, 2025

A book about something no one wants to talk about, but should: our looming debt crisis. In surprisingly readable prose, Ray Dalio explains why we should all be terrified of what is around the corner. As someone who has made his billions building up the world’s largest hedge fund, he knows his stuff.

The Optimist

Keach Hagey, 2025

Finally, a book on the forthcoming AI revolution. A biography of Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI, the company that gave us ChatGPT, which has become something of an addiction for me (try asking it your life expectancy). Worth reading for a window on where we are going, through the eyes of one of the most powerful people in the world.

Titles in print are available from The Week Bookshop

Plaid Cymru’s triumph in the Caerphilly Senedd by-election is a “reset for Welsh politics”, said the party’s leader, Rhun ap Iorwerth.

The Welsh nationalists got 47% of the vote in a record turnout of 50%. Reform UK came second on 36% and Labour a distant third with 11%. Here are five things we learned from a historic night in south Wales.

UK politics is evolving 

The result was terrible for the “two big beasts of Westminster politics”, said political editor Chris Mason on the BBC. Labour was “humbled, pummelled, crushed”, while the Tories got just 2%. “Yes, you read that right,” – they “managed just 13% of the vote between them”.

So the “key lesson” from Caerphilly for “every political leader” is that UK politics is “moving at speed, with voter loyalties shifting and atomising in unprecedented ways”, said The Guardian. “Those who cannot adapt will be crushed.”

Bad headlines ‘hampered’ Reform  

Reform UK “threw everything at the campaign”, said Sky News. Nigel Farage “visited three times” and his party was expected to win, but when the result was declared at 2.10am, the party leader was “nowhere to be seen”.

The outcome “represents a clear disappointment for Reform”, said The Guardian, and it’s “possible the party’s chances were hampered” by reports that its former leader in Wales, Nathan Gill, had admitted to taking bribes to make pro-Russia comments in the European Parliament.

In-fighting harmed Labour

Labour “had a horror of a start to this campaign”, said Wales Online. Its council leader “quit”, explaining that he “couldn’t support” either Keir Starmer or the "Johnny-come-lately" by-election candidate, Richard Tunnicliffe.

The Caerphilly “drubbing” could reinforce the “ongoing narrative” that Labour is going to do badly in the full Senedd elections next May. Canvassers “might now think twice” about "whether it is worth their effort” to go door-knocking over the winter.

Reform’s regional obstacles 

Reform coming second with 36% of the vote is a “solid performance for an upstart”, said Mason, but “insurgencies remain insurgent by winning – and they were easily beaten”. It’s “clearly not easy for them to be the first choice ‘none of the above’” alternative to Labour and the Tories when there’s “another party also claiming that mantle”.

So this could continue to be "a challenge for them in Wales, as it is in Scotland with the SNP, in a way that it isn’t in England”.

Labour faces threat from left

Much has been made of the threat to Labour from the right, but “the road to a Labour recovery does not simply lie in winning back voters from Reform”, said polling expert John Curtice in The Times. “The party is losing ground to its left as well as its right.” In Caerphilly it was Plaid who “were able to do most of the damage”.

Welsh Labour is clear where the blame lies for its poor performance. It “remains supportive of and loyal to first minister Eluned Morgan”, said Tom Harris in The Telegraph, but there is “simmering resentment towards Keir Starmer” for the “party’s unpopularity”.

Even before the invention of the printing press, books have been deemed subversive and threatening by authoritarian rulers. And maneuvers like book banning, confiscation and burning have been used repeatedly by tyrants fearful of a fully informed citizenry.

Book banning also has a long history in the U.S., from censors seeking to keep Harriet Beecher Stowe’s abolitionist novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” out of the hands of readers to the targeting of birth control advocacy under the 1873 Comstock Act. But the country has never seen anything quite like today’s national campaign to silence voices disfavored by many in the contemporary Republican Party.

When did the recent book purge begin?

After the Covid-19 pandemic, far-right activists created a series of ideological bogeymen to wage war against, including critical race theory and what President Donald Trump calls “gender insanity” — a catch-all term that he and his allies use to describe anything that involves LGBTQ+ identity. Activist organizations like Moms for Liberty sought to take over local school boards and police the content of books in school libraries, sifting through literature to identify and eliminate race and gender-related content, arguing they were targeting material that was too explicit for children or young adults.

“Never before in the life of any living American have so many books been systematically removed from school libraries across the country,” said PEN America, documenting what it claims has been nearly 23,000 book bans in the country since 2021. Most of these efforts are happening in public school districts nationwide, as conservative parents and activists identify an ever-growing number of ideas to which they do not want young people to have exposure. Many Republicans disagree. States and school districts are merely “providing students with a quality education free from sexualization and harmful materials that are not age-appropriate,” said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).

Increasingly, bans are being driven by elected officials rather than by parents raising concerns about a book. In November 2024, for example, the Florida Department of Education released a list of more than 700 books that had been banned in state public schools during the 2023-2024 school year, saying that “sexually explicit materials do not belong in schools.”

Which books have been targeted?

Some conservatives have challenged PEN America’s classification of book bans, arguing that many books the organization claims had been removed from schools in 2021 and 2022 were either under review or simply moved to a different age section of the library. In reality, there are “few actual book removals, and they are overwhelmingly based on parental objections to sexually explicit content,” said Jay P. Greene, Max Eden and Madison Marino in a 2023 report at The American Enterprise Institute. The organization’s definition of book bans focuses on “situations where objections or prohibitions result in previously available books being taken off limits,” said PEN America, replying to criticism of its methodology.

PEN America’s list of the most banned books of 2025 includes recent young adult novels and classics like Judy Blume’s “Forever.” The fourth-most-banned book is Malinda Lo’s “Last Night at the Telegraph Club,” about an immigrant teenager, Lily Hu, who goes to a lesbian bar with a friend. The book is “beautifully written historical fiction about giddy, queer first love,” said Kirkus Reviews. It wasn’t beautiful enough for the South Carolina Board of Education, which made it one of 22 titles forbidden from all public school libraries in the state in 2025.

Another frequent target of right-wing censors is Sarah J. Maas’ young adult book series “A Court of Thorns and Roses,” which is the “story of a poor, disenfranchised young woman who escapes an abusive, tyrannical boyfriend; finds an egalitarian wonderland; learns to read; takes contraceptives and has sex on her terms,” said Jezebel. Book-banners hate it because there's “nothing as dangerous to the dried up strictures of the status quo as a mind on fire.”

The Conservatives used their annual party conference to outline key policies they would implement if they were elected.

New economic ‘golden rule’

Kemi Badenoch’s keynote speech confirmed a new “golden rule” designed to cut government borrowing and taxes. Half of all savings in any future Tory government would go towards reducing the gap between spending and tax revenues, and the other half would fund economic policies such as tax cuts.

Stamp duty

The party will abolish the “unconservative” stamp duty tax that people pay when buying a property. The “surprise announcement” from Badenoch yesterday was “warmly welcomed” by conference attendees, said Sky News, and would be paid for by £47 billion of planned spending cuts.

Young buyers’ tax rebate

A £5,000 tax break would be offered to young people who get their first full-time job, to put the money towards a deposit on their first house. Funds would be “diverted” into a “long-term savings account”, said ITV News. But it isn’t yet clear what would happen for first-time workers “not looking to buy a home”.

Sentencing Council

Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said the Tories would scrap the Sentencing Council, described as “not fit for purpose”, in favour of offering ministers the power to issue guidelines to English and Welsh courts. Former Tory ministers “expressed disbelief” at the plan, said The Guardian. Ex-attorney general Dominic Grieve said it was “bonkers”.

Energy bills

A future Tory government would cut energy bills by 20% by axing the carbon tax and wind farms. The party has promised the measure would save the average family £165 a year, while there are also plans to scrap Great British Energy – a Labour initiative.

Pope Leo XIV enjoyed rapturous support from his fellow American Catholics when he was elevated last spring, but his latest comments on abortion and immigration are revealing a rift with conservatives in the church.

Leo alienated conservatives this week when asked about the backlash to an award planned for Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a pro-choice Catholic, said The Associated Press. (Durbin later declined the award.) A politician “who says I am against abortion but I am in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don’t know if that’s pro-life,” the pope told reporters. Similarly, he said that politicians who favor the death penalty are “not really pro-life.”

That apparent knock on President Donald Trump’s immigration policies — and seeming defense of a pro-choice politician — suggests Leo’s “honeymoon with conservatives” has come to an end, said Reuters. Leo is creating “confusion” about the “moral clarity of the Church’s teaching,” said former Bishop Joseph Strickland, a conservative Texan who was ousted from his post by the late Pope Francis. Catholic conservative influencers such as Matt Walsh and Jack Posobiec also joined the criticism. The controversy could “detract” from Leo’s mission to “work for unity” in an increasingly polarized Catholic Church, said Reuters.

‘Morally obtuse’

“Conservatives and traditionalists are going to wince” at Leo’s comments, Michael Brendan Dougherty said at National Review. Leo’s statement was a “weird slur” on Catholics who favor immigration control, “which can be executed humanely or inhumanely.” And where the death penalty is concerned, comparing “aborted children to hardened criminals is morally obtuse.”

Leo made the mistake of “emulating Christ,” Charlotte Clymer said on Substack. The conservative “pro-life” position has often seemed to embrace “only one aspect of the sanctity of life.” They are “laser-focused on abortion” while ignoring a pro-life sensibility when it comes to “immigration, homelessness, mental health” and other issues. The truth is that religious conservatives “cannot reconcile their chosen hierarchy of life with the teachings of Christ.”

The new pope has “shown little interest in wading into the culture wars” that consume American Catholicism, Molly Olmstead said at Slate. Conservatives hoped they had “found a new and powerful ally in Rome” following Francis’ papacy. Leo has instead made clear “he wasn’t interested in joining anyone’s team.”

‘Our teaching is very clear’

Leo’s comments were the “clearest, substantive evidence that his papacy will be in profound continuity with Pope Francis,” Michael Sean Winters said at National Catholic Reporter. The new pope has “obvious” differences with his predecessor where style and personality are concerned but “not so much” where the substance of Catholic teaching is concerned. That means there should be no worries about “confusion” on the church’s pro-life stance: Leo is pro-life but does not side with those who believe “abortion is really the only preeminent issue” that Catholics should weigh. “Is there anyone on the planet who does not know what the church teaches about abortion? Our teaching is very clear.”

What happened

Tens of thousands of people gathered at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, Sunday for a memorial service for slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The speakers included President Donald Trump and many of his administration’s top officials, plus Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, who has assumed leadership of his Turning Point USA organization.

Who said what

The five-hour service “had the feel of a religious revival mixed with a ‘Make America Great Again’ rally,” Reuters said. Many of the speakers “invoked religious warfare” and “extolled” Kirk as a “religious leader of almost biblical stature,” The Washington Post said, and “the crowd rose to its feet in applause” when his widow said she forgave his killer. “I forgive him because it is what Christ did,” Erika Kirk said. “The answer to hate is not hate.”

Trump, whose 45-minute speech closed the event, called the murder suspect a “radicalized, cold-blooded monster” and said that unlike Charlie Kirk, “I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them.” He honored Kirk as a “martyr for American freedom” but “pivoted swiftly to blunt politics,” The New York Times said. As his “speech veered increasingly” into political point-scoring, “hundreds of people started leaving the arena.”

What next?

Trump was “just one of several speakers to use the word ‘revival’” at Kirk’s memorial, The Wall Street Journal said. The who’s who of GOP leaders “appeared hopeful it might unify and fortify a conservative movement that had shown signs of cracking” before Kirk was assassinated.

"How do you excite people about moderate positions?"

“In the clamour of politics in 2025” that is the “quandary” facing the Liberal Democrats, said Laura Kuenssberg on the BBC.

Leader Ed Davey’s answer up to now has been to try to cut through with a series of attention-grabbing stunts. These have proved surprisingly successful electorally, winning his party 72 seats at the last general election, a record number.

That is all well and good, said Charlotte Henry in The Spectator, but “at a time at which there is a horrendous, and horrendously unpopular, Labour government”, as well as a Conservative Party “in seemingly terminal decline”, the Lib Dems “should be offering more”.

What did the commentators say?

Those hoping this weekend’s party conference would usher in a new, more serious Lib Dems were quickly disappointed after Davey entered the Bournemouth venue at the head of a marching band. It was undoubtedly “eye-catching”, said The Independent’s editorial, but ultimately another “vacuous video-opportunity”.

“This is the perfect time for the Lib Dems to take it to the next level, presenting themselves as a serious alternative to the rise of Reform,” said UnHerd. Unfortunately, the decision “to march into conference at the head of the world’s most embarrassing parade – while his party had a deeply stupid row over trans issues” showed that “these are not serious people”.

The public, it seems, is also growing weary of the endless stunts. Polling conducted by More in Common and presented to members gathered in Bournemouth showed more than 60% of voters think Davey’s campaign antics make the party look less serious. This also extends to nearly half of Lib Dem supporters. Perhaps more worrying is that many voters are still unsure what the party stands for.

Despite the criticism, Davey remains in a “strong position, with a largely happy party behind him”, said Kuenssberg. He will, however, “need to think through how to sell a set of moderate ideas to a voting public that appears to be eager for more drastic solutions”.

It is true they “need a harder edge to their policies, but they should focus on issues on which they could influence a government in a hung parliament, which ought to be the only point of people voting for them”, said The Independent. Social care and sewage “should not be the limit of Lib Dem ambition” when they could offer a “more forward policy on integration with the EU, a more compassionate approach to immigration and a more genuinely liberal attitude to the cause of equal rights”.

What next?

With two-thirds of constituencies where the Lib Dems are behind by less than 10,000 votes held by the Conservatives “winning over disillusioned Tories is the focus”, said The Telegraph.

This explains Davey’s decision to “lay out his pitch” in The Telegraph before the conference. In the article he denounced the “divisive politics being peddled by the likes of Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage” and promised to “provide a home to the millions of former Conservative voters repulsed by the extremes of both the right and left”.

The Lib Dems hope this strategy could result in them gaining more than 100 MPs at the next general election, according to The New Statesman, making them a serious force if, as the current polls suggest, no party emerges with an overall majority.

This still requires “hefty qualification”, especially given that “we are still a long way from knowing how willing people are to vote tactically around Reform”.

Tory woes, however, mean that “the Lib Dems need only stand still for the next three years to profit from the decline and fall of Britain’s oldest party”.

'Creating pleasure in the present is paramount'

Kofi Mframa at USA Today

For many in Generation Z, the "American dream has been recalibrated," says Kofi Mframa. "With a financially stable future out of reach," the generation has "adopted a sort of economic nihilism," which prioritizes "splurging on little luxuries now, instead of saving up for a future that may never come." With "financial stressors coming from all directions and a recession looming, one would think Gen Zers would lead lives of frugality," but the reality seems to be the "exact opposite."

Read more

'Outsourcing one's homework to AI has become routine'

Bloomberg editorial board

For "many college students these days," there is "no need to trudge through Dickens or Demosthenes; all the relevant material can be instantly summarized after a single chatbot prompt," says the Bloomberg editorial board. Too many schools have "hazy or ambiguous policies on AI," and "many seem to be hoping the problem will go away." Instead, they "must clearly articulate when enlisting such tools is acceptable" and "what the consequences will be for misuse."

Read more

'A country enamored with populist wealth elected a Rococo president'

Emily Keegin at The New York Times

President Trump has been "spending quite a bit of time redecorating the Oval Office," the results of which "can only be called a gilded rococo hellscape," says Emily Keegin. But "whatever Mr. Trump is doing to the walls of the Oval Office is not French; it is deeply American." American Rococo "hits when the 1% is thriving, when government leaders are overconfident." In Trump's America, "everything is gold," yet "time always reveals that Rococo is just gilded plaster."

Read more

'The era of DEI for conservatives has begun'

Rose Horowitch at The Atlantic

Conservatives "make up only one of every 10 professors in academia," and "some university leaders worry that this degree of ideological homogeneity is harmful both academically" and "in terms of higher education's long-term prospects," as being "hated by half the country is not sustainable," says Rose Horowitch. As a result, Johns Hopkins University's latest diversity initiative is aimed at attracting new members of this "minority group" — and it is "part of a growing trend" among "red-state public universities."

Read more

Will the Enhanced Games change the image of drugs in sport? How will autonomous weapons change warfare? And are Reform supporters more datable than Tories?

Olly Mann and The Week delve behind the headlines and debate what really matters from the past seven days.

A podcast for curious, open-minded people, The Week Unwrapped delivers fresh perspectives on politics, culture, technology and business. It makes for a lively, enlightening discussion, ranging from the serious to the offbeat. Previous topics have included whether solar engineering could refreeze the Arctic, why funerals are going out of fashion, and what kind of art you can use to pay your tax bill.

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As he unveiled his much-touted "reset" deal with the EU, Keir Starmer said it is time to move on from "political fights" and "stale old debates" about Brexit.

Nearly 10 years on from the Brexit referendum, and more than five since the UK formally left the EU, the new agreement strengthens ties over areas including fishing, trade, defence and energy.

Starmer's appeal to "common sense" and "practical solutions" may strike a chord with the public, but his "big bet" is that "nobody really cares" about Brexit any more, said the BBC's chief political correspondent Henry Zeffman.

What did the commentators say?

"This was the day the Brexit dream died," said the Daily Mail in an editorial, while The Express called it "a betrayal dressed up as a policy".

Staunch Brexiteers will "blast" Starmer "on fisheries, rule taking and youth migration", while diehard Remainers "will argue it's a meek deal that hasn't gone far enough to repair the economic scars of Brexit", said Politico. But "this fight down the middle is one the prime minister's quite happy to pick", while the Conservatives and Reform UK, both of whom have described the deal as a "surrender", "risk sounding like broken records on Brexit".

With this deal – coming in the same month that trade agreements were announced with the US and India – Starmer has managed the "impossible", said The Independent: "to have his cake and eat it".

When Labour under Starmer "pivoted" in 2020, from campaigning for a second referendum to a policy of "make Brexit work", "nobody really took it seriously". But he has "succeeded where others failed and managed to break the Brexit conundrum".

Despite the "upbeat rhetoric", some of the "most difficult issues to resolve have been pushed back into future negotiations" – including the shape of a youth mobility scheme, said The Times. The deal also "leaves a number of difficult questions unanswered", such as how much Britain will have to pay to access the new EU defence fund and to align with the EU food standards and energy trading system.

But the government hopes that voters will warm to the tangible effects of a "reset" in relations with the EU, including cheaper food and energy, and a reduction of red tape for small businesses.

What next?

What will "prove revealing over the coming days, weeks, and months" is how much Reform and the Conservatives decide to campaign around the idea of a Brexit "betrayal", said the BBC's Zeffman.

If opposition to the deal becomes a "significant part of these parties' platforms, it will tell us that they believe there is in fact plenty of controversy yet in the decades-long debate over the UK's relationship with the EU".

If that's right, it could thrust questions about Brexit "right back to the centre of political life.

"But if Sir Keir is right that the bulk of the public simply wants as little friction with the EU as possible, then he could prove to be our first truly post-Brexit prime minister."

In the 1951 general election Labour and the Conservatives between them secured 98% of the vote. By 2024 that had dropped to 59%, and polling suggests support for the two main parties has continued to fall over the past year, driven in large part by the rise of Reform UK.

What this reveals is that UK politics has been "slowly but steadily unwinding from a two-party to a multi-party system for decades", said Byline Times. But "just like going bankrupt, things in politics change gradually and then very quickly".

What did the commentators say?

With Reform, Labour and the Conservatives roughly tied nationally and the Lib Dems slowly gaining ground in the south, "British politics is heading towards a place it was never designed to go, with a fractured four-way split", said The Economist. "Call it 20-20-20-20 vision."

This is because "politics is no longer one-dimensional," polling expert Sir John Curtice told the Financial Times. The old left-right divide no longer explains British politics; cultural issues are now a key factor.

With both Labour and the Tories shedding votes, "the conditions are there for the biggest challenge to the political conventions of British politics since the 1920s".

Seizing this opportunity is Farage's insurgent party, which "is proving adept at adapting itself to the ideologically fluid political positions of its target voters, for whom the distinction between left and right in politics is not set in stone", said the FT.

The "story of polarisation" – when "working-class" and "middle-class" had clear meanings and strong party affiliations – "holds the key to understanding the threat to the Labour-Tory dominance", said pollster Peter Kellner in Prospect. He described the condition of Britain's two-party system as "chronic".

"We shall of course see fluctuations in party support" but with issues like "Ukraine, slow growth, weak public finances and Donald Trump's presidency" all presenting "tough challenges for years to come" there is "no obvious reason why today's mainstream total, Labour plus Tory, should return to sustained dominance of the electorate".

What next?

This "unprecedented fragmentation puts the electorate on a collision course with the electoral system", said Robert Ford, professor of political science at Manchester University, in The Guardian. "First past the post is an amplifier: the winner takes all, everyone else gets nothing. But when voters divide evenly between multiple choices, this is a recipe for chaos."

This means "once unviable strategies" – like putting up a celebrity candidate with little experience but huge name recognition – "can work", said The Economist. Tactical voting, "the grease that keeps British democracy turning, becomes close to impossible".

Many agree that a new electoral system is needed to better reflect this new multi-party political reality. But neither Labour (who won two-thirds of seats at the last election on a third of the vote) or the Conservatives, nor it seems Reform, appear interested in this – at least for now.

"That doesn't mean that events like another pandemic, war or a climate catastrophe won't squeeze voters back into the two-party fold," said Byline Times. "But it won't be willing and will therefore only ever be temporary."

To see how thoroughly warped the Republican Party has become, said Asawin Suebsaeng in Rolling Stone, witness the “apocalyptic form of group therapy” for “frantically aggrieved” Fox News viewers at last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference just outside Washington, D.C. In an atmosphere of triumphant malice, President Trump received standing ovations and shouts of “We love you” while bragging about pardoning the Jan. 6 “political prisoners,” calling MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow “a threat to democracy,” and promising that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would “find” the cause of autism.

A frenetic Elon Musk wearing sunglasses gleefully waved around a chainsaw to show what he plans to do to the federal government, while shouting such inanities as “I am become meme” and “Legalize comedy!” Rabid MAGA supporter Steve Bannon made a quick, straight-armed gesture that sure looked like a Nazi salute while calling for Trump to run again in 2028 and shouting “Fight, fight, fight!” All in all, this CPAC carnival was so comically dark that it felt like “a caricature of Trumpist depravity.”

Bannon’s salute “speaks volumes” about the MAGA movement’s flirtation with fascism, said Zeeshan Aleem in MSNBC.com. While some questioned whether Musk’s two straight-armed salutes at Trump’s inauguration were intentional Sieg heil!s, Bannon lacks “plausible deniability” for repeating the gesture weeks later. Even if Bannon was just trolling, his salute “carnivalizes Nazism” and makes “fascism and white supremacy look less ominous and less taboo.”

How far the “party of family values” has fallen, said Dace Potas in USA Today. Its cult leader is a “thrice-married adulterer” with a long history of abusing women, while his new henchman Musk is an admitted drug user who fathered “at least 12 children with three women” and now is accused of fathering a 13th that he’s ignoring. The GOP has jettisoned the conservative ideal of personal responsibility, leaving “young Republicans like me” feeling abandoned and disgusted. A backlash is coming, said River Page in The Free Press. “Normie villagers” didn’t like the Left’s censorious tyranny on race and gender, but “the monster the online right is building” is no less radical. It’s now common for widely followed X accounts to bash interracial relationships and promote Holocaust denial. As the normies realize where the Trump-Musk regime is headed, prepare for the political pendulum to swing back “at breakneck speed.”

Voting in the Conservative Party leadership contest closes this evening, with Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick vying to become leader of the opposition.

Badenoch, the former business secretary, is the favourite to replace Rishi Sunak. Both her and former immigration minister Jenrick are on the right of the party – and neither are strangers to controversy.

After the surprise exit of former home secretary James Cleverly, the lack of an obvious centrist candidate means the race is "harder to pigeonhole", said Politico. While a right-wing candidate may appeal to party members, the same can't necessarily be said when it comes to an electorate that just handed Labour a historic landslide.

What did the commentators say?

Both candidates' messages seem designed to win back support from Nigel Farage's Reform UK, but with "significant differences" in their approach and policies, said The Independent.

Jenrick's warning that Farage risks "becoming unstoppable" if Reform does well in the local elections in May "should give Tories pause for thought", said Sherelle Jacobs in The Telegraph. He is betting on immigration as the "flashpoint issue on which the Tories must win back trust", framed in a way that will not "totally estrange" younger voters. In his words, the Conservatives must talk about migration in a way that "persuades rather than provokes". Canada's Conservatives, for example, call for immigration numbers to be linked to housing targets rather than "apocalyptically bellowing about migrant 'invasions'".

But Badenoch's "vow to heal a fractious Right" with a period of "renewal" is seductive. She believes the rise of Reform is a symptom of how conservativism has "morphed into much vaguer centrism". Her supporters believe the party's task, as it was after its 1997 defeat, is to "craft a single unifying idea that can repair the rifts between warring factions". Tony Blair, who led the Labour Party to that victory, agrees. "The most important thing for any political party is you've got to have clarity of direction," he told Politico's Power Play podcast.

But is Badenoch the one to repair those rifts? "The more people see of her, the more there is to dislike," said The Guardian's John Crace. However, she is undeniably "the real deal". "There's a purity to her nastiness. A seam of contempt that will almost certainly win her the contest."

Perhaps, but it won't necessarily win the next election, said the BBC. Many Tories are warning against "tacking to the right" and pursuing divisive issues like Jenrick's plan to leave the European Convention on Human Rights or Badenoch's "culture wars" around gender and race.

After all, Conservatives lost seats and voters to Labour and the Lib Dems, as well as Reform. A rightward swing could "permanently alienate more centrist former Conservative supporters", which the leader will need if they are to "restore their party's battered fortunes".

The "overwhelming majority" of voters don't care about internal party politics, said Connor Donnithorne, the Conservative candidate in Camborne & Redruth, who lost the seat to Labour. "You need to be in the common ground of British politics if you want to win." The Conservatives need to focus on issues such as "controlled immigration, lower taxes for working people, and supporting small businesses to create jobs".

"It's about having credibility, it's about being in touch with what people want and it's about delivering what you say you're going to deliver," he said.

What next?

The results of the leadership contest will be announced at 11am on Saturday, at a Conservative Party event in London.

Neither candidate has won support from a majority of MPs, so the winner will only have about a third of the parliamentary party backing them.

Whoever wins is by no means guaranteed to lead the party into the next election either, said Politico. Many Tories suspect the next leader "may not stay the course". A good result in next year's local elections will be crucial, but some are "already speculating that it could be Cleverly or even Boris Johnson" at the helm by then. There is still "plenty of time for yet another dramatic twist in the Tories' chequered fortunes".

Tom Tugendhat was eliminated from the Tory leadership contest yesterday in the third round of voting by Conservative MPs. James Cleverly, who was joint fourth with Tugendhat in the previous round, surged into first place with 39 of the 120 votes, overtaking Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch.

Previous front-runner Jenrick dropped to second place after an "underwhelming" party conference performance, said The Guardian. Cleverly gave a better speech, delivering an "upbeat message" while emphasising "his experience in office", said the Financial Times.

But Cleverly's rival campaigners are confident that Badenoch and Jenrick will be more popular with the party membership. "Dogs bark, cats meow, Tory members support the right-wing candidate," a source told the newspaper.

Another contender will be eliminated in a vote today, before the final two are put on a members' ballot. The result will be announced on 2 November.

Robert Jenrick

The former immigration minister began strongly, leading in the opening round of voting before slipping behind in the latest results. Jenrick is a "right-wing champion" who has put "migration, the economy and policing" at the forefront of his campaign to become Tory leader, said London's The Standard. 

The 42-year-old MP for Newark in Nottinghamshire has served in various secretary of state and ministerial roles since 2018, but resigned from his last post in December 2023 over disagreements around Rishi Sunak's immigration bill. 

Jenrick is now the outsider to become the next Tory leader, according to the bookies, sitting at 7/2.

James Cleverly

The last Conservative home secretary is now the frontrunner in the leadership contest with odds of 11/10. The most moderate of the remaining candidates, Cleverly is seen as a "unifying, Michael Howard-type figure" by some Tory quarters and the best chance of bringing a splintered party back together, said The Guardian. 

His critics argue he lacks the "political vision or serious solutions" to be leader, yet he is proving popular with his "well-pitched speeches". The 55-year-old does have a "propensity for gaffes", however, including having to apologise for making a joke about spiking his wife's drink with Rohypnol.

Cleverly says he will bring back the previous government's Rwanda immigration plan if he becomes leader, despite allegedly having described it in private as "batshit".

Kemi Badenoch

After becoming an MP in 2017, Badenoch was fairly quickly tipped as a future leadership candidate after attracting support through her "direct approach and dedication to 'anti-woke' principles", said the BBC.

Despite failing in her bid to replace Boris Johnson in 2022 (though she survived in the contest much longer than expected), the 44-year-old is now second favourite to assume leadership of the opposition at 6/4 odds. 

The former banker has gathered supporters by trying to appeal to people who “may have been tempted to vote for Reform UK", said The Standard. But she has also been caught in controversies, including accusations of bullying (which she denied), posting emails from a journalist on X, and getting caught in a row over maternity pay. 

David Cameron has resigned from Rishi Sunak's shadow cabinet, eight months after his return to frontline politics as foreign secretary.

Announcing the news on X, Cameron, who sits in the House of Lords after being made a life peer in 2023, said it was essential that the shadow foreign secretary should sit in the Commons opposite his government counterpart. His Foreign Office deputy Andrew Mitchell, the Conservative MP for Sutton Coldfield, will replace him. 

Cameron said he remained a "committed Conservative" who would endeavour to help the party "rebuild from the very disappointing election result".

Richard Holden struck a similar note in his resignation as Conservative Party chairman. The MP for Basildon and Billericay, who fended off his Labour rival by just 20 votes with the Reform candidate close behind, said in his resignation letter to Sunak that a "thorough review of the general election campaign" is needed.

Many of the key cabinet briefs remained unchanged, the BBC reported, with Jeremy Hunt continuing in his role as shadow chancellor and James Cleverly staying on as shadow home secretary. But new appointments were required after 12 senior ministers lost their seats in last week's election. James Cartlidge has taken up the role of shadow defence secretary and Ed Argar is shadow justice secretary after Grant Shapps and Alex Chalk were voted out.

Sunak himself said he will stay on as party leader until arrangements for selecting his successor are in place, and allies of the former PM say he has no plans to continue beyond the summer. 

A growing number of MPs are "urging the party's 1922 Committee to opt for a lengthy leadership contest to replace Mr Sunak in order to allow time for a thorough post-mortem and avoid fresh divisions over the summer", The Telegraph said.

However, some senior Tories fear a prolonged leadership contest could allow Reform's Nigel Farage to "position himself as de facto leader of the opposition", said The Guardian.

When Rishi Sunak entered No. 10 in October 2022, buoyed by a well-regarded stint as chancellor, "the hope was that he could pull the party's ratings up to his level".

But in fact, the BBC's former political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, wrote in May, "it is the opposite that has happened". After all Sunak "inherited a political party in a huge mess" and an increasingly unreceptive voting public. As one party insider told Kuenssberg, "after the Tory Party's many bouts of political madness in the past few years, 'the public just doesn't want to listen'".

Here are five key moments in the party's decline:

December 2019: the emperor's new coalition

An 80-seat majority may not seem an obvious harbinger of doom, but "Johnson's victory was much flimsier than it first appeared", wrote John Burn-Murdoch for the Financial Times.

Many of the "red wall" voters who switched their allegiance to the Tories did so out of pragmatism rather than passion. Their vote was a "short-term loan" – and one they were prepared to retract without compunction if the party failed to impress.

And failing to impress was almost inevitable. During the 2019 campaign, the Conservatives had excelled at "being all things to all people". But once actually in power, "that's a lot of different groups left disappointed".

January 2020: the Brexit bubble bursts

When the UK officially left the European Union, the Conservative government was polling at over 50% – and Leave voters were especially hopeful. Between 2015 and 2019, "the proportion of Leave voters who backed the Conservatives jumped from 45% to 74%", wrote Peter Kellner for Prospect. By 2024, only 27% of Leave voters still intend to vote Tory – and Remain voters have fallen away too, albeit at a less precipitous rate.

Why? To put it simply, the benefits of Brexit have failed to materialise. Instead of the promised prosperity, "taxes have gone up, living standards down". With oft-repeated notions that Brexit would lead to lower immigration and investment in the NHS also notable by their absence, it's no wonder that voters "have no real idea any longer what the party stands for".

November 2021: Partygate

On 30 November 2021, the Daily Mirror broke the first story in the lengthy saga that would quickly come to be known as Partygate. The allegations – that government staffers, including Johnson himself, enjoyed social gatherings while the nation was in Covid-19 lockdown – sent both the prime minister and his party "abseiling down the polls", said Politico.

Just before the revelations, the Conservatives were polling at 36% of the vote – by Christmas, that had fallen to 30%, and the Conservatives have not reached that 36% vote share in any YouGov poll since.

Before Partygate, Johnson specialised in shrugging off "career-ending revelations", said the website, but the revelations "ruptured" the notion that "everyone was in the same boat" during lockdown, and unleashed voter fury.

September 2022: the budget that broke Britain

Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng's deceptively named "mini-budget" managed to "trigger" a "domestic financial crisis", said The Guardian's economic correspondent, Richard Partington. The "ideologically driven" blueprint for radical tax cuts sparked a "run on sterling, gilt market freefall and spooked global investors", and ended the Liz Truss premiership just 45 days after it began.

The turmoil severely dented voter confidence. YouGov voting intention polls carried out five days after the budget gave the Labour Party a 33-point lead over the Tories – an increase of 25 points from polls carried out the week before.

June 2023: (re)enter Farage

Nigel Farage – who founded Reform UK as the Brexit Party – surprised even Whitehall insiders by announcing he was returning to frontline politics to lead the party into the election. Within days of the announcement, YouGov voter-intention polling put Reform just one point behind the Conservatives.

While Britain's first-past-the-post voting system means Reform's popularity will not be reflected in the Commons, the Tories "should, frankly, be terrified", wrote Andrew Marr for The New Statesman in June.

Farage, "whatever you think of him, remains one of the best political communicators in the country", and his rhetoric expertly positioned him as "raising the pirate flag" of revolt for the frustrated right-wing. In his sights? The "listing, drifting and battered galleon that is the Tory Party".

"The hurly-burly is almost done," said the Daily Mail: polling day is upon us. The parties spent the final week of the campaign making last-minute pitches to voters. Rishi Sunak urged them not to "surrender" to a Labour "supermajority", warning that it would lead to major tax hikes and pose a threat to national security. Keir Starmer asked voters for a strong mandate to get on with what he called "the change we need". 

At their second head-to-head debate last week, Sunak gave what was widely regarded as his punchiest performance to date, but few expect it to stave off a punishing election defeat for his party. When the PM stunned his colleagues by calling an early election six weeks ago, they "feared the worst", said Katy Balls in The Spectator. Yet what "they originally saw as the worst case scenario now looks like quite a good result". At the time, it seemed plausible that the Tories might hold on to 200 MPs; they now fear they may end up with as few as 50. 

The 2024 election campaign has certainly been eventful, said Jack Blanchard on Politico. Since Sunak launched it during a rainstorm, he's made numerous mistakes, not least his bizarre decision to leave the D-Day commemorations early. We've also had the surprise return of Nigel Farage to front-line politics, and the grimy revelations of the Westminster betting scandal. All of this against the backdrop of a Tory meltdown over their dire polls. "For political nerds, there have been few campaigns like it."

Yet for voters it has been a curiously unengaging exercise. Neither Sunak nor Starmer have meaningfully addressed the big issues facing Britain in 2024, such as the housing crisis, the university funding deficit, or the problem of runaway welfare payments. For the Tories, the campaign has served only to highlight their shortcomings, said The New Statesman. Sunak's D-Day decision betrayed his complete lack of political judgement; the Tories' manifesto, centred on £17bn of "implausible" tax cuts, confirmed the party's "intellectual exhaustion"; the betting scandal exposed its "moral torpor". 

The ousting of the Tories can't come soon enough, said The Guardian. "After 14 years in power, they are a shambles." Just imagine how depressing it would be to wake up and discover that, against the odds, they'd somehow won a fifth term in office. The Conservatives have to go, agreed the FT. Britain needs a fresh start. The Tories have had to deal with numerous external shocks during their stint in government, including the Covid pandemic and Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, but for the most part they've brought disaster on themselves, through their incompetence, infighting and contempt for the rules. "This generation of Tories has squandered its reputation as the party of business, and its claim to be the natural party of government." It needs a spell in opposition to regroup. 

That's the negative case for voting Labour, said The Economist, but there's a positive one, too. The party has changed a lot under Starmer, who has dragged it away from "radical socialism" to a more pragmatic, centrist position. While he may have run a "maddeningly cautious" campaign, he has rightly highlighted the restoration of economic growth as a key priority. Labour is best placed to deliver that growth because its "young, aspiring, urban supporters will give it permission to act in ways that the Conservatives have avoided" – building more houses and infrastructure, for instance, and forging closer links to the EU. 

But voters who seek "change" with Labour, despite the party's "refusal to reveal its full agenda", may come to regret their choice, said The Sunday Telegraph. The last Labour government introduced many reforms that have caused lasting damage: it "vandalised the constitution, began the devolution experiment, hugely increased the size of the state" and left the economy "reliant on mass migration". Who knows what a future Starmer government might do, armed with a massive majority? 

The thought of a Starmer government doesn't terrify me, said Matthew Parris in The Times. His agenda seems reasonable enough. I do fear, though, that his instinctive reaction to problems will always involve more government intervention, leading to an ever-larger state. That's why, although I don't believe the Tories deserve re-election, they'll still get my vote. I hope at least a few other people feel the same, said Robert Colvile in The Sunday Times. "The voters want to give the Tories a kicking. And, boy, are they going to get a kicking." But it would be unhealthy for politics if the party is reduced to a state where it can't even act as an effective opposition.

Thursday's "night of political drama" will begin when the exit poll is published at 10pm, said Tim Glanfield in The Sunday Times. 

This poll is only a sample of voters from 150 constituencies across the UK, but usually provides a pretty accurate picture of how each party has performed. 

The first of 650 constituencies to declare will be Sunderland, a safe Labour seat where a result is due by 11.30pm. By 2am, about 50 more will have been declared – many also safe Labour seats in northern urban areas.

The seats to keep an eye on

Watch the bellweather seat of Nuneaton: the party that wins here has gone on to govern after every election except one since 1983. In Rochdale, we'll see if George Galloway holds the seat he won in February's by-election.

"The excitement will really ramp up" from 3am, when several Tory "big beasts" will discover their fates, said Dominic Penna and Rachel Slater in The Daily Telegraph. They include Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who is at risk of losing to the Lib Dems – as are ministers Alex Chalk and Gillian Keegan. Others, such as Grant Shapps, Iain Duncan Smith, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and leadership hopeful Penny Mordaunt are at risk of losing to Labour.

The final election results

Sunak's constituency will be declared at about 4am – some polls suggest that even he could slump to a historic defeat.

There are pitfalls for Labour too, said Robert Ford in The Observer. Jeremy Corbyn is challenging his old party in Islington North, a seat he has held for 40 years; shadow culture secretary Thangam Debbonaire's Bristol Central seat is a target for the Greens. Both of those results will be in by 4am, when we'll also find out whether Reform UK's Nigel Farage has won in Clacton, to become an MP at his eighth attempt, said Jamie Grierson in The Guardian.

By 7am, any remaining seats will have been declared – and whoever is set to lead the next government will be preparing to address the nation.

If the polls are right, this general election could deliver the most "lopsided" results in modern history, said The Guardian. The Labour Party looks set to enter Downing Street with "a record number of seats and an immense majority", despite receiving slightly fewer votes than Jeremy Corbyn in 2019. 

The latest YouGov MRP poll projects Labour taking 39% of the vote, and winning 425 seats, its largest-ever number; the Tories, with 22%, would have only 108 seats. Our first-past-the-post (FPTP) system is notoriously unfair to third parties, but this time the outcome would be particularly "skewed". Nigel Farage's Reform UK, according to YouGov, would come third, with 15% of votes, but would win only five seats; by contrast the Lib Dems, with only 12% of the vote, would get 67. In short, this election "could make the case for proportional representation (PR)".

'PR for foreigners'

FPTP has long been defended on the grounds that it roots MPs in their local community and provides stable governments, said Tim Stanley in The Daily Telegraph. "PR was for foreigners, typically Italian, who like being governed by chaotic coalitions" collated from party lists. But that case now looks less convincing. "The two-party system is dying." 

Smaller parties have emerged to represent "the disenfranchised" and "the discontented": the SNP, Reform UK, the Greens. Yet elections are still delivering results as if we were living under two mass-membership parties, circa 1945. Curiously, this is one part of the political system Keir Starmer doesn't want to reform. "Votes for 16-year-olds, Lords reform, yes." But why would he "tinker with an electoral system that hands him Napoleonic powers"?

'Screwed by the system'

Still, the Lib Dems, long the victims of FPTP, have shown a way to adapt to it, said Andrew Adonis in Prospect. Experts in "tactical opposition", they have built up their support so that it is concentrated in a hundred or so seats, mainly in the southwest and the Home Counties.

FPTP has always had its "quirks", said John Burn-Murdoch in the FT. But the "mismatch between votes and seats" is becoming much harder to wave away. And it's not clear that it "ensures greater political stability" and moderates the influence of extreme parties, as its defenders claim.

Analysis by the group Make Votes Matter shows that governments actually stay in power longer under PR than under FPTP. And if next week it deprives smaller parties of seats, its effect will be to boost populists like Farage by leaving "millions of voters with a justifiable sense of having been screwed by the system". It's time for change. "The make-up of Britain's Parliament should reflect the views of Britain's voters, not the peculiarities of its electoral system."

Whoever wins the general election, taxes will rise. 

On the face of it, the Tories are touting a £17bn package of tax cuts, the biggest being a cut in the main rate of national insurance (NI) for employees. Labour promises to get by with limited tax increases, worth £8.6 billion, and has specifically ruled out hikes on "working people": income tax, national insurance and VAT. 

But the consensus among economists is that neither major party is being honest with voters. Current government plans imply large real-terms cuts over the next few years in spending to departments that aren't protected by specific commitments (i.e. Health, Education and Defence). Barring an implausible uptick in growth, both parties face shortfalls if they are to avoid real-terms cuts to "unprotected" services such as courts, prisons, policing, legal aid and further education by the end of next parliament in 2028/29, says the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). Tory plans imply a £10 billion to £20 billion shortfall forecast; Labour would need an extra £6 billion to £16 billion.

Why are public finances under pressure?

It is widely acknowledged that public services are crumbling after years of austerity, and that local councils face a funding crisis. Yet the UK's economic situation is still very tight. Extra borrowing to finance the fallout from the Covid pandemic and the Ukraine War energy shock, along with high interest rates and persistently low growth, have pushed up the ratio of debt to national income to an uncomfortable 97.9% of gross domestic product (GDP). Tax cuts are a tall order. But that's a difficult message for an electorate already labouring under a tax burden now at its highest level since the Second World War. Hence both parties' reliance on stealth taxes to fill the coffers, particularly the dark art of "fiscal drag".

What exactly is fiscal drag?

Freezing tax thresholds, rather than raising them with inflation, so that more people are drawn into paying higher taxes – even though tax rates ostensibly remain unchanged. In the aftermath of Liz Truss's disastrous mini-Budget in autumn 2022, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt froze both the tax-free "personal allowance" (currently at £12,570 for those earning under £100,000) and the higher-rate 40% tax threshold (£50,270) until 2028. Labour has confirmed that it will leave these thresholds untouched. The upshot, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility, is that some 7.5 million Britons will have moved bands by 2028, generating an increase in Treasury tax receipts of over £34 billion a year from 2028. It's a classic example of "the art of taxation", as Louis XIV's finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, described it: "plucking the goose so as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing".

What would Tory tax cuts do?

Most workers would be better off as a result of the manifesto plan to cut the main rate of NI by two further percentage points (from 8% to 6%) – worth around £450 for a worker on a typical salary of £35,400 (though they would lose £150 to fiscal drag). The Tories have also promised a "triple lock plus" on pensions, which will raise the tax-free allowance to keep it untaxed – a bung to older voters that could backfire if it draws attention to the fiscal drag dogging everyone else. The Conservatives also plan to boost the housing market by permanently abolishing stamp duty for first-time buyers on homes worth less than £425,000, though critics point out this would likely add to housing demand when the problem is lack of supply.

How would they pay for this?

They say that this £17 billion package of last-minute goodies will be paid for by a lightning-fast £12 billion reduction in the welfare bill, and a £6 billion clampdown on tax avoidance/evasion. Growing health-related benefits are likely to be the main target. But this would involve, say, getting roughly one million people (19% of the total) off health-related benefits, or applying big cuts to all claimants' payments, says the IFS. This seems implausible.

Do Labour's plans hold water?

Not as so far stated. Keir Starmer and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves have said that they have "no plans" for tax rises beyond a handful of announced measures – including VAT on private school fees, ending the use of offshore trusts to avoid inheritance tax, clampdowns on "non-doms" and private equity bonuses, and a bigger windfall tax on energy companies. Critics think that is disingenuous. Although Rishi Sunak's claim that Labour would raise taxes by £2,000 "for everyone" has largely been debunked, this manifesto is notable for what isn't included. Though some hikes have been ruled out, others have been left on the table. Labour's tax-raising plans are "trivial" considering its ambitious proposals, says Paul Johnson of the IFS – for instance, to spend £17.5 billion over five years on its "green prosperity plan", and the likely pressure it will face to increase spending on public services.

Where would the necessary cash come from?

Changes to wealth taxes, such as inheritance tax (IHT) and capital gains tax (CGT), and a revamp of pension rules look like the most fruitful sources. An easy win would be to remove the exemption of pension funds from IHT introduced in 2015, or targeting the £15 billion in annual tax relief currently handed back to higher-rate taxpayers who save into pensions. Attention has particularly centred on CGT (currently charged at 10-28%, compared with the current 45% top rate of income tax) on the sale of assets including shares, property and businesses – though Starmer made a rare clarification: that the party would not charge capital gains tax on the sale of primary residences. Labour has been outflanked on the Left by the Lib Dems, who have pledged an additional £27 billion in spending for health and public services, funded by a rise in CGT and various levies.

Balancing the government books

In 2023/24, UK government spending was estimated to be £1.2 trillion, some £17,000 per person, and around 45% of the total size of the economy, as measured by GDP. (By contrast, in 2022, the US spent 36% of GDP, Germany 49%, and France 58%.) Around two-thirds of the total is "day-to-day" spending on public services, such as health (the biggest, at just over £200bn), schools and prisons. Around a quarter is spent on social security, such as universal credit and the state pension (which costs £124 billion, the largest item in the welfare budget). The remainder can be split into interest on government debt (around 8% of the total in 2023/24, above the recent norm because of high interest rates) and government investment (around 5%).

By contrast, the government's total income in 2023/24 was nearly £1.1 trillion. About two-thirds of receipts came from three sources: income tax (£277 billion), national insurance contributions (£180 billion) and VAT (£170 billion). Corporation tax contributed £103 billion, and council tax £45 billion. About £95 billion was generated from "other sources", largely income from public corporations such as social housing. The deficit, the difference between public spending and receipts, was £121 billion.

Nigel Farage has made no bones about his desire for Reform UK to supplant the Conservatives as the main opposition to Labour following next week's general election.

Political commentators and many voters may scoff at the idea that a party with no current MPs could replace one of the most electorally successful political entities in the history of democracy, but "there is a playbook for this", said The Telegraph's Philip Johnston.

Just such a surprise victory in Canada in 1993 has "acquired a near mythical status on the populist right". And the parallels with the UK today – a Conservative administration in office for over a decade and led by a relatively new prime minister – are "uncanny".

What happened to Canada's Conservatives?

It is "difficult to overstate the magnitude" of what happened at the 1993 Canadian federal elections, said the UK in a Changing Europe think tank.

Just five years earlier, under then prime minister Brian Mulroney, the Progressive Conservatives (PC) had won a second consecutive majority with 43% of the vote. Following the 1993 election, they were reduced to two seats in Canada's 295-seat Parliament. "They had official party status removed, and were effectively supplanted by Canada's Reform Party, which became the broad home of right-wing voters" said City A.M.

The result "fundamentally altered the country's political landscape" said The Guardian, and "shattered the notion that only the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives were the rightful parties of government".

"The lessons of 1993 are that the worst-case scenario can happen," said political analyst Éric Grenier at the Writ. "Just because you've been around forever doesn't mean that you will be around forever. You can have the kind of election that requires you to restart a party and to come back from almost zero."

As UK Conservatives faces the prospect of a comparable defeat, political historians say Canada's recent past offers "lessons on the challenges of tempering populist rumbles – and the steep electoral losses that can follow", said The Guardian.

What happened to Canada's Reform Party?

"Huge, huge, huge," said Farage when he was asked about how important the former leader of Canada's Reform Party has been in shaping his campaign.

Founded and led by Preston Manning, initially as a protest movement, Reform won its first seat in Canada's parliament in a by-election in Alberta in 1989. Campaigning on a "populist agenda, which included creating an elected Senate, abolishing official bilingualism and broadly reducing the size of government" at the 1993 federal election, Reform "stormed to prominence, winning 52 seats and replacing the Progressive Conservatives as the voice of Western Canada" said the national broadcaster CBC News.

In less than a decade, rebranded as the Conservative Alliance, the party swept to power under Stephen Harper, who served as prime minister for nine years.

"In the end they sort of 'reverse took over' the old Conservative Party – they are the model," said Farage. "That's the plan." 

Will it happen in the UK?

There are some "almost exact parallels with the current political moment in the UK", said the London Evening Standard: the economy was failing, a conservative incumbent had recently replaced its leader, and it was up against a young, insurgent right-wing party named Reform. The "most significant similarity" between Westminster and Canada may be that both use first past the post (FPTP), "a system that has the potential to significantly skew how votes are converted into MPs".

If the polls are correct, the Conservatives are heading for a cataclysmic defeat on 4 July. 

Clearly, there are "several similarities between the difficulties they confront and the PC’s dire situation in 1993", said UK in a Changing Europe. But "as dim as the prospects are for the Tories, they are unlikely to suffer an electoral rout on the same scale due to the much more territorialised nature of the Canadian party system".

In the 1993 Canadian election, "regional issues were highly salient, and whereas the PC vote share was geographically diffuse and highly inefficient, two of their main competitors benefitted from having regionally concentrated support".

That Reform UK does not have the "geographical base in the same way that Reform in Canada had" poses Farage's real problem in Britain's FPTP system, as his party will struggle to translate votes into seats, Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, told CBC News.

If Labour returns to power next week, it is "likely that the Conservatives will be the biggest opposition party", said Prospect magazine. "What is remarkable is that the question is even worth asking."

Labour has reaffirmed its commitment to "modernise, simplify and reform" the process of legally changing gender.

The party has said its plans will "remove indignities for trans people who deserve recognition and acceptance" but also provide "protections so you can't legally change your gender overnight".

In response, Tory leadership hopeful Kemi Badenoch, the women and equalities minister, said this would "unravel all the protections in the current system designed to protect women and girls" and create "loopholes for predators and bad-faith actors to infiltrate women-only spaces and put us at risk".

What is Labour's position?

Under existing laws, transgender people wishing to have their new gender legally recognised must obtain a gender recognition certificate (GRC).

Labour plans to remove what it terms outdated elements of this process, including consent from a spouse if the person is married and the requirement to prove the applicant has lived as their preferred gender for two years. This will be replaced with a two-year "reflection" period after the application has been submitted. A panel of doctors and lawyers that currently approves GRCs will also be replaced by a single doctor specialising in gender issues, who will be able to provide a medical report supporting the gender change.

Plans to introduce a controversial self-ID law, which would remove the need for a medical diagnosis altogether, have been abandoned.

Has Labour's stance changed?

The proposals set out this week are "largely the same" as those outlined last year by Labour's national policy forum, said The Guardian. Nonetheless, said The Times, they are "likely to heighten concern among critics over Labour's approach to transgender issues".

Keir Starmer appeared to change his position on transgender rights during Thursday's BBC "Question Time" election special. Last year, the Labour leader said "99.9% of women" do not have a penis and in 2021 stated it was "not right" for Labour MP Rosie Duffield to say that "only women have a cervix". But on Thursday night he said he agreed with former Labour leader Tony Blair's position that "biologically, a woman is with a vagina and a man is with a penis".

In April, shadow cabinet member Louise Haigh suggested Labour should be a "safe space" for gender-critical but not transphobic opinions, amid fresh party tensions over gender in the wake of the Cass review.

Speaking on Times Radio this morning, the shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said: "I think at times in pursuit of inclusion, we've ended up in a position where women have felt excluded, biological women have felt excluded." He added that he was "very optimistic" that Labour could find a way to address both the rights of biological women and trans women in the debate.

How do Labour compare to the Conservatives?

As part of its manifesto, the Conservatives have promised to rewrite the Equality Act so that it only offers protections on the basis of a person's biological sex.

At present, sex, along with race, disability and sexual orientation, is a protected characteristic and the act makes it illegal to discriminate against someone on those grounds. The Conservatives do not want the term "sex" to apply to those who have changed their legal sex, said Context, in order to "protect female-only spaces and competitiveness in sport".

In contrast, Labour has said it supports the Equality Act as it is, "including its exemptions that allow for the provision of single-sex spaces in certain circumstances", said the news site.

The two parties also differ on how children are taught about sex and gender in schools. 

Shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson has suggested she would scrap planned Tory guidelines on "gender ideology" in schools. The guidance, which was set to come into effect in the coming months, says pupils should not be taught
"that people can be born the wrong sex and that they can change their identity to the opposite sex or other categories such as 'non-binary'", said The Telegraph.

Responding to accusations that the wording had "drifted far too much into partisan and unnecessary language", Education Secretary Gillian Keegan warned a Labour government "would play politics with the lives of our children by ripping up guidance on gender-questioning children".

Nigel Farage has set out a two-election strategy that he claims paves the way for him to be elected as prime minister after his Reform UK party becomes the main opposition to Labour.

Speaking yesterday before launching his party's manifesto, called "Our Contract With You", Farage said he hoped the upcoming 4 July election would result in Reform establishing a "bridgehead" in the House of Commons. He would then build a "big national campaigning movement around the country over the course of the next five years for genuine change".

The "real ambition", he said, was to clinch the top job at the next election, which must be held in 2029 at the latest.

What did the commentators say?

The most obvious route to No. 10 for Farage would involve staging a "reverse takeover of the Conservatives", said the i news site. He has "made no bones about his desire to see the Conservatives 'destroyed' and for him to pick up the pieces to shape the remnants of whatever is left in his own image".

But the choice of Merthyr Tydfil for Monday's manifesto launch was telling, said UnHerd. Far from the fabled Red Wall, the South Wales town has been solidly Labour for more than a century.

For Farage, "that seems to be the point". The former Ukip leader "barely bothered with the Tories in his remarks, but rather set out a two-election strategy to establish Reform as the true opposition to Labour" and then "storm to power in 2029".

That has a "fleetingly plausible ring to it", said The Independent's chief political commentator John Rentoul, "and sounds less like a snake-oil preacher predicting the Rapture" – unlike the two pages of "costings" at the end of the "contract" document, which "look like a ChatGPT version of something the Institute for Fiscal Studies might endorse".

For all the oxygen that Farage's return to front-line politics has taken up, debate continues about how popular his policies actually are with the wider public and if the manifesto is really a winning platform with the electorate.

"The mainstream elite in the media and in politics who claim to oppose Farage, and who pretend to stand as a bulwark against far-right politics, are again duly buying into the hype he has created for himself," said Aurelien Mondon, senior lecturer in politics at Bath University, on The Conversation.

What next?

Farage may be right when he said that UK politics was becoming more "presidential-style", with people voting for leaders rather than parties. But strong poll numbers do not necessarily translate into power in a first-past-the-post parliamentary system. Even in a best-case scenario, Reform will enter the next Parliament with just a handful of MPs.

Should the Tories suffer a near-extinction level event, Farage will still "not be the leader of the opposition, and he will not be the 'real' leader of the opposition", said Rentoul. "He will be a lonely figure at the back of the far end of the opposition benches." And while "the 'What to do about Nigel' question may continue to split the Tory party", the "prospect of a reverse takeover, of the larger entity by the smaller, will remain distant".

If Farage is "serious about spearheading a movement, is Reform really the right vehicle for it", asked Sky News's deputy political editor Sam Coates. Or "is a broken Conservative Party a better host for his ambition", given that "there is a chance the membership could well elect him leader if he ever got into the last two candidates in a contest to run the party"?

Farage has repeatedly side-stepped questions about whether he would rejoin the Tories to lead them, probably because he "genuinely has not ruled out the possibility, depending on the success or otherwise of Reform UK and the makeup of the Conservative Parliamentary party after 5 July".

"He is clearly enjoying himself – the TikTok videos, the TV interviews, the campaign events… It's all part of his love of publicity and the airtime which Reform's position in the polls gives him right now," said Laura Kuenssberg on the BBC.

But questions remain about whether he genuinely wants to be PM – or even become an MP, with all the limits that entails.

"He's just a reality TV star," said a source quoted by Kuenssberg. "Going to the jungle wasn't leaving the political arena, it was coming home."

More than 100 seats in the general election "could be ripe for tactical voting", said The Independent.

Analysis by the paper, using data from YouGov's latest MRP poll, found that almost half of the Tories' projected wins would have a margin of less than five points, making them vulnerable. The Conservatives might also be eyeing up some tactical voting wins if they can persuade Reform UK voters to back them.

How does it work?

Voters deliberately choose not to vote for their first-choice candidate, usually because their favourite has little chance of winning. They might opt for their second choice if they think it will stop another party from getting into power. For instance, if a Labour voter lives in a marginal seat that is closely contested by the Conservatives and the Lib Dems, they may vote Lib Dem to keep the Tories out.

Tactical voting websites claim to show the most likely contenders in each constituency, based on polls or previous elections, and some recommend which party to choose in order to keep another out of government.

Has it worked before?

When the Conservatives have suffered landslide defeats in the past – as they did in 1906, 1945 and 1997 – "these have been at the hands of co-ordinated anti-Tory coalitions", said The Economist. And "another such coalition may be forming now".

Widespread disillusionment with 14 years of Tory rule has combined with Keir Starmer's efforts to move Labour to the centre, making it easier for Liberal Democrat voters to countenance backing his party. By contrast, Reform UK appears much less likely to back the Conservatives in order to stop progressive candidates winning.

One of the "striking features of local elections and parliamentary by-elections in this parliament has been the incredible willingness of Labour voters to vote Liberal Democrat, and vice versa", said Stephen Bush in the Financial Times. But we don't know if this will translate to the general election, which has a lower proportion of engaged voters.

"Less politically engaged voters, who are more likely to vote in a general election than in by-elections, may not be as attuned to these possibilities", said The Economist.

A survey carried out by Deltapoll last year found that just 52% of voters could correctly identify the winning party in their local area, dropping to 19% when asked who came second.

Will it make a difference in 2024?

There is a "mixed mood" among party insiders on how big a role tactical voting tools will play, said Politico. "Skeptics say British voters just aren't clued up enough on the finer points of the country's system to get tactical voting really firing."

Constituency boundary changes, which represent a once-in-a-generation shake-up in the electoral map from the last general election in 2019, have made it even harder to work out which party has the best chance of winning.

Like in previous elections, said Joe Twyman, director of polling firm Deltapoll, it might turn out to be the "case of the dog that failed to bark".

Millions of voters are heading to polling stations around the country today to choose who will represent them in 650 constituencies.

The political parties have spent six weeks on a campaign trail filled with policy pledges, hustings and energetic photocalls from the Lib Dem leader Ed Davey.

The polls suggest Labour is on course for a huge majority, but nobody will know for sure until the final results are called. While the smaller parties are vying to be the "third party" in the House of Commons rather than leading the country, manifestos from parties such as the Greens and Reform UK offer a flavour of what they might push for in opposition.

Labour Party

Labour leader Keir Starmer acknowledged there were few surprises and "no rabbit out of the hat" policy announcements when he launched his party's manifesto.

The party has pledged to cut NHS waiting times by delivering 40,000 more appointments each week on evenings and weekends, paid for by "cracking down" on tax avoidance. It wants to launch what it calls a new Border Security Command, using specialist investigators and counter-terrorism powers to "smash criminal boat gangs". 

A centrepiece of Labour's manifesto is a promise to create a publicly owned company called Great British Energy to invest in new renewable energy projects, with £8.3 billion being committed over the next five years.

Other key pledges include a promise to recruit 6,500 teachers in key subjects where there are shortages, such as maths, physics and computer science. Labour says it will open an additional 3,000 nurseries "through upgrading space in primary schools", as well as providing a free breakfast club in every primary school. 

The party has committed to votes for 16- and 17-year-olds, a policy it says will "increase the engagement of young people in our vibrant democracy".

Labour has said it will not raise personal tax rates to fund its manifesto commitments, with the plans instead paid for by raising £8 billion through putting VAT on private school fees, clamping down on those who are underpaying tax and a windfall tax on oil and gas companies. 

But the BBC's chief economics correspondent, Dharshini David, said there remained "much uncertainty about the amount these sources can raise and the assumptions that underpin the numbers".

Indeed, the manifestos of the two main parties "leave voters guessing over policy on tax and spending", said Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). Whoever wins will face a "stark choice": raise taxes by more than they have promised, cut public spending or borrow more. "That is the trilemma."

Conservative Party

The abolition of National Insurance (NI) for the self-employed was one of the few policies that had not been briefed to the press ahead of the Conservatives' manifesto launch. Currently the self-employed – of which there are more than 4 million in the UK – pay 6% on profits between £12,570 and £50,270 and 2% above £50,270. 

The Conservatives also plan to cut NI for employees by a further 2p by 2027, which is in addition to the 4p already cut this year. The Tories say they will pay for these policies through welfare reforms, which they say will save £12 billion. However, the independent IFS has said that making such savings "looks difficult in the extreme".

The Tories have promised to introduce a "triple lock plus" for pensioners, by increasing the personal tax-free allowance for them. The allowance would rise by whichever is highest out of inflation, wage growth or 2.5%.

The manifesto includes a pledge to build 1.6 million new homes over the next parliament, although the party had a similar pledge in 2019, which it failed to deliver.  

For those looking to get on the property ladder for the first time, the Conservatives plan to launch a £1 billion scheme that would allow first-time buyers with government-backed mortgages to buy a home with just a 5% deposit. Modelled on the recently closed Help to Buy scheme, it can be used for home purchases under £400,000. 

The manifesto also commits to ensuring a "regular rhythm of flights every month" to Rwanda, starting in July.

Liberal Democrats

The Liberal Democrats were the first party to officially launch its manifesto, which centres on an £8.4 billion package to improve the NHS and social care. 

The party has pledged 8,000 more GPs in England to ensure everyone has the right to see a doctor within seven days, or 24 hours for urgent care. The Lib Dems also plan to introduce free personal care for the disabled and elderly in England, in a system similar to that already operating in Scotland. 

Further health pledges for England include a guarantee that all cancer patients would start treatment within 62 days of urgent referral, as well as guaranteed access to an NHS dentist for anyone needing emergency care. 

On housing, the party has committed to building 380,000 new homes a year across the UK, including 150,000 social housing units. This would be done through the creation of 10 new "garden cities" as well as "community-led" development.

The party has said it would scrap the government's controversial Rwanda scheme entirely and "provide safe and legal routes" for asylum seekers. It would scrap the current salary threshold for migrant workers and replace it with a "merit-based" system. The party promises to end the recently introduced ban on foreign care workers bringing dependents to the UK as well as reversing the increase in income thresholds for family visas.

Reform UK

Reform UK's official manifesto – entitled "Our Contract With You" – is "short on details", said Politico, but pitches several "critical reforms" it says would be needed within 100 days of a new government taking office.

Chief among these is the party's flagship pledge to "stop the boats" as part of a four-point plan to curb illegal immigration. This would include taking the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights, setting up a new department for immigration and freezing "non-essential" legal migration.

It will aim to ease the tax burden by raising the income tax threshold to £20,000, while also scrapping inheritance tax on estates under £2 million. Plans to abolish VAT on energy bills, lift the VAT threshold on businesses to £150,000, and cut fuel duty and corporation tax would be paid for by a £50 billion a year reduction in government spending – working out at around £5 in every £100.

The manifesto proposes scrapping net zero plans and green levies to bring down energy bills while increasing drilling for gas and oil. The party would introduce a patriotic curriculum in primary and secondary schools that banned the teaching of "woke" and "transgender ideology".

Under its healthcare plans, Reform would exempt all front-line healthcare and social care workers from the basic rate of income tax for three years, and offer 20% tax relief on all private healthcare and insurance. It would also enforce a two-strike rule for job seekers on benefits and hold a referendum on changing the voting system.

Scottish National Party (SNP)

The Scottish National Party was the last major party to launch its election manifesto and unsurprisingly put independence front and centre.

It advances the independence policy agreed at the SNP's conference last year, whereby winning a majority of the 57 Westminster seats up for grabs in Scotland would be treated as licence to begin negotiations with the UK government "to give democratic effect to Scotland becoming an independent country".

Newly installed SNP leader John Swinney has "attempted to paper over some of the party's yawning divisions" in the manifesto, said the BBC. However, the document is "thin and amounted to only 32 pages, three of which are completely blank", said The Telegraph.

Among pledges that are included are a demand for the "full devolution" of tax powers to Holyrood so that more cash can be raised. It also endorsed a series of windfall taxes on Scottish businesses and backed Labour's plans to impose VAT on private schools.

The SNP has demanded that the UK government pump an extra £10 billion annually into the NHS, claiming this would "address rampant inflationary pressures and improve performance". But in stark contrast to Labour it has vowed to scrap the two-child benefit cap as well as the Trident nuclear deterrent. It also wants to "reverse the damage of Brexit and re-enter the single market restoring free movement for EU citizens", but acknowledges the UK will not be rejoining the EU. Instead, the manifesto emphasises a "vision for an independent Scotland in the EU".

Green Party

The Green Party, which is targeting four seats, is building on its "expansion beyond its environment and climate focus to become a left-wing foil to Labour", said the Financial Times.

Co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay are promising a "greener, fairer country" in which "we are all safer, happier and more fulfilled". To deliver it, they are promising a massive investment of an additional £8 billion of NHS annual expenditure within the first year of the next parliament, which will increase to £28 billion by 2030. Doing so, they say, will help to cut waiting lists, guarantee access to NHS dentists and urgent access to GPs, and give NHS staff an immediate pay rise. 

The Greens would push for a "green economic transformation", involving a carbon tax to reduce the economy's reliance on fossil fuels, nationalising railways and water companies, as well as the "big five retail energy companies", and investing £40 billion a year into shifting towards a green economy. The party would also aim for wind power to make up 70% of the UK's electricity by the end of the decade, and removing all oil and gas subsidies, as well as cancelling recently agreed fossil fuel licences. 

Improving home insulation is key to their environmental and energy missions, with £29 billion promised over the next five years to insulate UK homes to an EPC B rating or above. The party has pledged to provide 150,000 new social homes every year, and for local authorities to be able to exercise rent controls.

Rishi Sunak's closest parliamentary aide placed a £100 bet on a July election just three days before the date of the snap poll was announced.

The gamble is "likely to be highly embarrassing" for the PM, who has been "accused of presiding over a calamitous general election campaign", said The Guardian.

The Gambling Commission watchdog has opened an inquiry after Ladbrokes flagged Craig Williams's bet in May as potentially problematic. Had it not faced scrutiny, the bet could have led to a £500 payout on odds of 5/1. 

The story was "trumpeted" by Labour, said Politico. "These allegations are utterly extraordinary," said party spokesperson Jon Ashworth. "Rishi Sunak has sat on this information for more than a week but has lacked any backbone to take action."

Speaking to "BBC Breakfast" this morning, David Cameron described it as a "very foolish decision" by Williams. The Gambling Commission has "considerable powers in terms of what the consequences could be", said the foreign secretary, but added that the deadline had passed for the party to take him off the ballot.

Williams, who is standing for election in Montgomeryshire & Glyndwr in Wales, has admitted to placing the bet. In a statement posted on X yesterday, he said he didn't want to "be a distraction from the campaign" and "should have thought through how it looks". Today, he apologised for what he described as "a huge error of judgement".

"Are we honestly supposed to believe he didn't know the exact date?" said an unnamed Conservative MP to The Telegraph. "It just presents an image of the party as totally self-serving." 

The Lib Dem deputy leader Daisy Cooper said the prime minister should immediately suspend Williams as a candidate and Conservative member while inquiries take place. "Voters are being taken for granted by Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives," she said.

With poll after poll predicting a Labour landslide, inequality rising and trust in politics at a record low, commentators believe that long-term decline in voter turnout may peak at the general election.

With just a month to go, 20% of people have already decided not to vote, according to a survey of 1,645 voting-age Britons by Techne for Independent Media. Apathy is "particularly high among young voters", said The Independent. They believe their problems "have not been addressed by the major parties".

Only four in 10 of young people eligible to vote are planning to do so, according to a survey of 3,000 14- to 24-year-olds by the Duke of Edinburgh's Award (DofE) , published this week. Half (50%) said they disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement, "I trust politicians to make decisions in my interest".  

A record 45% told the British Social Attitudes survey that politicians can "almost never" be trusted to put country over party, up from 12% since the survey's inception, and an 11-point jump since 2019 alone.

What did the commentators say?

"It's hard to find a reason why the next election would buck the trend of long-term decline in democratic trust and turnout," said Dr Parth Patel, senior research fellow at The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). "If anything, you could see how this election might accelerate it," he told Big Issue. 

Only about half of those eligible to vote in Britain did so in the last election. "If democracy is collective self-rule, what about the other half?"

But can you blame them, asks pollster Robert Hayward (also a Tory peer). It is "clear that a lot of voters look politically homeless", he told The Independent. Many Conservative voters are "angry" after 14 years of Tory rule. Labour's Keir Starmer has "failed to seal the deal and convince people he is a prime minister in waiting".

The Conservatives have "shifted further right on policies such as migration to avoid losing voters over to the populist Reform", said The Huffington Post's Kate Nicholson. Labour has "jumped towards the centre to shake off the more left-wing policies of the Jeremy Corbyn era", and has lost voters over the Israel-Hamas war. There's also an "extra barrier": the new requirement for photographic voter ID. 

But low voter intent "doesn't mean today's youth are politically disengaged", said Joyce Yang in The Guardian. "Quite the opposite." 

People under 25 are the most likely to engage in political activity, according to the British Election Study. They care about the climate crisis and the war in Gaza. They "believe in democracy and social justice". But the average age of a UK MP is about 55 – "and they don't usually try to understand what the younger generation needs", said Yang.

Another "huge factor" is poverty, said Big Issue. The most deprived areas had the lowest turnout in last year's local elections, "with turnout decreasing the poorer the ward was". 

In the last two general elections, there were gaps in turnout between the top third and bottom third of earners, as well as between renters and homeowners. These gaps "were negligible in the 1960s". 

And this year's election is "set to be the most unequal in 60 years". The UK's income inequality has increased since the end of the pandemic, and will be exacerbated by the cost of living crisis and Brexit. "Destitution has increased by 148% since 2019." 

Apathy "may not be the correct way to think of low turnout among those in poverty", said Big Issue – "instead, it's a symptom of disgust at the system".

What next? 

One big factor that could drive low turnout is the idea of a "foregone conclusion", politics professor Paul Webb of the University of Sussex told Big Issue – particularly given the long-term polling that points to a Labour majority.

"A lower turnout is generally thought to help the Conservatives more than Labour," he said – but in this case, "I doubt it will save them."

But until young people "turn out in high enough numbers, politicians won't listen to us", said Yang in The Guardian. "Ultimately, democracy doesn't work properly if the participation is disproportionate."

Whoever wins will need "a style and manner of governing that persuades people that the government has their interests at heart after all", Professor Sir John Curtice, senior research fellow at the National Centre for Social Research, told The Times. 

"The next government will not simply face the challenge of reviving Britain's stuttering economy and its struggling public services; it will also need to address the concerns of a public that is as doubtful as it has ever been about the trustworthiness and efficacy of the country's system of government."

The Liberal Democrats are on course to overtake the SNP and become Westminster's third largest party at the upcoming general election, according to the latest modelling by pollsters.

YouGov's first MRP projection of the campaign suggested that Labour would win a "historic" majority of 194 seats, with the Conservatives reduced to 140 seats, while the Lib Dems could end up with 48 seats, up from 11 at the 2019 general election. The SNP would be left with 17.

Meanwhile, the Green Party is predicted to win its second ever Westminster seat, in Bristol Central, with Plaid Cymru also on course to win two seats. Reform UK – despite the party's meteoric rise in voter intention polls – would come away "empty handed", according to YouGov's poll.

What did the commentators say?

For the Liberal Democrats, supplanting the SNP as the third-largest party in the House of Commons isn't simply "vanity and Westminster one-upmanship," said Freddie Hayward in The New Statesman. It comes with some "serious benefits", including the "top prize" of a guaranteed two questions at Prime Minister's Questions. 

This would be a valuable opportunity to regain credibility. If the party can tell a story of relevance and success, "the broadcasters and the papers might start giving them more coverage", plucking them from the relative obscurity they have resided in for more than a decade. 

While current modelling predicts the Conservatives will be the second-largest party, Nigel Farage's decision to "enter the fray" as leader and a parliamentary candidate of Reform UK is "threatening to eat further into the Conservative vote with an attack from the populist right", said Politico's Esther Webber. 

Some recent polling, said Sky News, suggested that Reform UK is close to overtaking the Conservatives. But while some commentators have suggested that Farage's party could "take over or even replace the Conservatives by the 2029 general election", said Will Prescott on UnHerd, "sadly for Farage, that appears very unlikely". 

Even if, as the very worst opinion polls for the Tories suggest, the Conservatives are reduced to third place in the Commons behind the Liberal Democrats, "they will still be comfortably the largest right-of-centre force in Parliament". And by Farage's own admission too, even if the Reform UK leader were to become MP for Clacton, it would be "very difficult to see Reform capturing more than a tiny number of seats" as the party's vote is "too evenly spread across the country". Despite winning 12% of the vote at the May local elections, the party picked up just two council seats. 

Nevertheless, Farage's re-entry into British politics is "a sign that he thinks something is up" and that he could "enjoy real success if he plays his cards right", said Stephen Bush in the Financial Times. While Farage's decision to stand is a "symptom rather than a cause of how badly the Tory party is going to do at this election", it "could mean that this election isn't just a transfer of power from one of the UK's two big parties to another, but a wider reconfiguration of the British party system".

What next?

Ed Davey sought to maintain the Lib Dems' momentum today with the launch of the party manifesto, which includes a promise to "save the NHS". The manifesto, which Davey said is fully costed, pledges to recruit 8,000 more GPs, give unpaid carers a right to paid carers' leave from work, and introduce free personal care in England. 

Publicly, leading Conservatives have remained "bullish" about their election prospects. Andrew Bowie, an energy minister and Tory candidate, told Politico that he was "absolutely not" worried about Reform's impact on the Tories' electoral prospects, adding that Farage had "run, and lost, in a number of general elections gone by".

Others are not so optimistic. Former culture secretary Nadine Dorries told The News Agents podcast last week that the Tories will "probably disappear" at the next election if Reform continue their surge. "Given tactical voting, which is taking place already in many constituencies, and given the uprising in Reform's votes and support since Nigel Farage decided he would stand as leader, I think you could see the disappearance of the Conservative Party," she said.

Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer will go head to head in a general election debate hosted by ITV this evening.

Televised leaders' debates are a "relatively recent phenomenon" in UK politics, with the first taking place in 2010, but have since acquired "major significance", said the Financial Times (FT). That is partly thanks to the breakthrough moment the debates proved for then Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, winning him a "short-lived polling bounce" dubbed "Cleggmania".

Subsequent debates, however, have produced more heat than light and party leaders have "agonised" over the benefits and drawbacks of participating, said The Guardian. The front runner "tends to have the most to lose", but as Theresa May found in 2017, bowing out entirely can be just as damaging. 

Sunak, whose party is trailing in the polls, has challenged Starmer to debate him every week of this election campaign. But the Labour leader has so far agreed to take part in only two debates, telling the paper: "I can do one debate or 100, I know what Sunak is going to say."

The hour-long programme, titled "Sunak v Starmer: The ITV Debate", will be broadcast from 9pm and moderated by presenter and journalist Julie Etchingham, who also hosted debates in 2015, 2017 and 2019.

What did the commentators say?

Both leaders have devoted hours to preparing for this evening's debate to "avoid the kind of slip-ups that quickly proliferate to a wider audience on social media", said the FT. Sunak has been working with deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden – playing the role of Starmer – to "try to find a way of pinning down what he has claimed are the Labour leader's 'vague' promises". 

Starmer has been working with Labour official Tom Webb, who helps him to prepare for Prime Minister's Questions, to get him into the spirit of a "prosecutor interrogating Sunak for 14 years of failure", one aide told the paper. We don't see how the PM can answer those questions, they added, "because there is no good answer".

But if voters tune in tonight hoping to hear the party leaders respond "spontaneously and authentically to questions" they are "likely to be disappointed", said Jen Birks, associate professor in Media and Political Communication at the University of Nottingham, writing for The Conversation. Viewers don't expect to "learn anything new about the candidates or their policies" but are usually "intrigued by the spectacle of adversarial conflict". 

The political parties campaigning in the general election know this; Sunak's enthusiasm for having a debate every week of the campaign has "probably less to do with any benefit he expects to gain from putting his case to the public than a desire to maximise the opportunities for Starmer to make some kind of gaffe".

Yet it is Sunak, with his party languishing some 20 points behind in the polls, who will have the bigger hill to climb during the debates and the campaign as a whole. 

Sunak has just "two jobs" tonight, said Labour peer and former adviser Ayesha Hazarika, on Sky News's election podcast Electoral Dysfunction. "He's got to try and really land a blow on Starmer. And given that he hasn't really done that at PMQs, that is quite a high bar for him." His second job is to appeal to the old Tory voters who are "flirting" with the Reform Party, and convince them to "come back home" to the Conservatives.

Starmer, on the other hand, only has one job: "he's got to look like a prime minister". 

What next?

The truth is that "people take more about personality and character away from these debates than they do about policy", said Times Radio political editor Kate McCann writing for the i news site. "Few will pore over manifestos – only a handful of very dedicated journalists will read them cover to cover."

Many voters will instead make a judgement "based on gut instinct, experience and the cut-through moments through the campaign". Making a "good personal impression" tonight "might be the best either man can hope to achieve". 

But with Sunak lagging so far behind in the polls, Conservative insiders say he needs a "game-changing moment", said the BBC's chief political correspondent Henry Zeffman. If that moment fails to arrive, then some in the Tory party "will start to panic".

Labour and the Conservatives have opened a new general election battleground by launching accounts on the video-sharing app TikTok.

The social media landscape has radically changed since the last election in December 2019, when TikTok was the new kid on the block and a relative minnow compared to the likes of Facebook and Twitter (now X). Turbocharged during the pandemic, the platform has enjoyed remarkable global growth in recent years and now boasts around 9 million UK users, the vast majority of them under 30.

This makes it a potential electoral goldmine for political parties hoping to tap into a famously hard-to-reach and disengaged demographic. 

The Chinese app was banned from UK government devices in March 2023 due to data security concerns, and while these have not disappeared "the political reality appears to have trumped them", said James Titcomb in The Telegraph.

How are political parties using it?

"The first surprising thing about the TikTok accounts of the Conservatives and Labour is that neither are more than a week old," said Metro. Despite the "mammoth influence" that the social network holds over young people, both parties decided to wait until the general election was called last week before setting up on the platform.

Given TikTok's user demographic it is perhaps unsurprising that both parties have chosen to focus much of their early content on the Conservatives' controversial plans to reintroduce national service for 18-year-olds.

Unlike other social media platforms, paid-for political advertising is banned on TikTok, meaning the parties will be hoping to "create content that performs well organically", said The Times.

So far Labour has opted for a "President Biden-style blend of humorous content, which is often less slick than those graphics and videos found on other platforms, alongside more traditional promotional videos". Unlike the Conservatives' initial efforts, which included a staid Rishi Sunak talking directly to camera, Labour has released a series of tongue-in-cheek videos featuring Lord Farquaad from "Shrek" and the late Cilla Black mocking the national service policy.

"It's pretty clear that Labour have a savvier social media team," Chris Stokel-Walker, author of "TikTok Boom: The Inside Story of the World’s Favourite App", told The Independent. Meanwhile, "for someone meant to be tech-savvy, Sunak's TikTok presence has been pretty pathetic".

Can it actually make a difference?

Social media has been a "vital part of winning elections for almost two decades," said Titcomb. Barack Obama used Facebook to finance his 2008 path to the White House, while Donald Trump's activity on Twitter won him billions of dollars' worth of free publicity in 2016. But "hogging the online limelight is more crucial than ever" today.

As the percentage of voters who get their news from traditional sources – such as TV, radio and newspapers – has fallen, the importance of social media to deliver key campaign messages has exploded. In 2023, 10% of people said they got their news from TikTok. This is more than Radio 1, said Titcomb, and among 12- to 15-year-olds, "it is Britain's second-biggest source after the BBC".

Newly relaxed election spending limits mean millions more are set to be spent on digital campaigning than in any previous poll, but given young people's traditionally low turnout at elections, the impact of TikTok on the overall outcome is debatable.

The platform is deemed so valuable for Democrats in the US that Gina Raimondo, the US commerce secretary, speculated last year that any ban could "literally lose every voter under 35, for ever".

So will Labour win the TikTok battle?

While Labour's message will likely resonate more with the younger TikTok demographic, Keir Starmer and Sunak "face a similar challenge", said The Spectator's political editor Katy Balls.

Some of the politicians who do best on the platform are "strident, dynamic and straight-talking". The right-wing populist Javier Milei used TikTok for his successful campaign for the Argentinian presidency last year, while closer to home Nigel Farage, a two-year veteran of the app, has racked up almost 600,000 followers, more than 10 times the number Labour had reached as of early this week.

It may not be either Sunak or Starmer's most natural environment, said Balls, but "there is a clear electoral prize for whichever leader can make the platform work to their advantage".

Keir Starmer has said he will take part in TV election debates but won't commit to the idea of weekly head-to-heads suggested by Rishi Sunak.

Starmer told BBC Breakfast that he could debate with the PM "once or a hundred times", but "I know what he is going to say. He will say everything is fine… we hear that every week at PMQs".

Sunak last week challenged Starmer to take part in six TV debates, tackling issues like tax, the cost of living and security. But Labour said Starmer would not agree to "tearing up" the format established in previous elections "just to suit this week's whims of the Tory party".

The Labour leader also told Sky News that "of course there are going to be TV debates". They are "part and parcel of the election cycle now".

How long have we had TV debates?

Although a staple of US politics since the 1950s, the first TV debates in the UK didn't take place until the 2010 general election. Before then "the UK was considered unusual in developed democracies in not holding televised debates", said UK parliamentary historian Neil Johnston for the House of Commons Library. In 2010 there were three debates, featuring the Labour prime minister Gordon Brown, Conservative leader David Cameron and Nick Clegg from the Liberal Democrats.

Although there were complaints that the debates in 2010 dominated the campaign and overshadowed local campaigning, "there was a perception that they were useful and an expectation that they might become a permanent feature of the election process", said Johnston.

Debates have happened in each election since but no one format has ever been repeated. Dealignment in politics in the UK has seen more voters "willing to consider alternatives to the Conservatives, Labour, and even the Liberal Democrats", said political communication expert Nick Anstead in a blog for the LSE. It was "these dynamics which framed the 7-way debate format chosen in 2015", which featured all the parties standing in Great Britain.

Theresa May was the first prime minister since 2010 to refuse to take part in televised debates, with her home secretary Amber Rudd representing the Conservative Party in 2017. It was a decision that "went over poorly in the focus groups and was part of why [May's] election campaign went badly", said Stephen Bush in the Financial Times. May later expressed regret to Sky News over this decision: "I should have done the TV debates. I didn't because I had seen them suck the life blood out of David Cameron's campaign."

In 2019, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn went head-to-head in the first TV debates to feature just the Labour and Conservative leaders. The first clash drew an average audience of 6.7 million – "a third of the British TV audience", said HuffPost.

Do they make a difference?

Research is scarce but surveys of voters have indicated that the leaders' debates "engaged voters that would not normally pay as much attention to the election campaign, in particular younger voters", said Johnston.

However, a recent study by Harvard Business School found that "presidential or prime ministerial TV debates, campaigns' most salient events, do not play any significant role in shaping voters' choice of candidate".

The televised debates are essentially "private events conducted by political parties, who do deals with individual broadcasters", said Sky News's Adam Boulton. This means the TV channels "compete to be first and splashiest" while the parties "work to minimise risk by making the debates as unlikely to change opinions as possible".

Canada, "a comparable Westminster-style parliamentary democracy", said Anstead, "offers one possibility" to fix the system. In the run-up to the 2019 election, the country established an independent debate commission and while it is too late to instigate such a system for this year's general election, "we can at least hope it is the last British election where debate organisation occurs in such a haphazard manner".

What might this year's format be?

The Lib Dems, Greens and SNP "face being cut out of televised leadership debates, as broadcasters plan to focus on two head-to-head contests between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer", said The Guardian's political media editor Jim Waterson.

So far the format for this election hasn't been decided but televised debates "are a moment in this campaign when things could change, and therefore if Starmer could find a way to avoid doing them, he should take it", said Bush in the FT.

But if the Labour leader doesn't want to attract the negative attention received by May, the 2019-style "two head-to-head debates with Rishi Sunak, and a third appearance in front of a Question Time-style audience" would be best. That allows him to avoid a proper debate with those parties to the left of Labour who would attack him "over his policy programme and the Israel-Hamas war in particular", said Bush.

Both the Conservatives and Labour are putting an unusual emphasis on foreign policy ahead of this summer's general election.

Rishi Sunak said this week that only the Tories could be trusted with the nation's security in the face of growing danger from an "axis of authoritarian states". He has promised to boost defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030, a pledge matched by Keir Starmer, who said defence was the "number one issue" in the face of "growing Russian aggression".

Whoever wins in July will take office in an "immensely challenging environment for foreign policy", said Chatham House. From the Middle East crisis to "China's assertive global agenda" and doubts over US commitment to European security, the new government will face "pressing international problems" – with "limited resources" to tackle them.

Where do the two parties agree?

Under Starmer, Labour has maintained a "near-united front" with the Conservative government on foreign policy, said Politico, including an "unwavering commitment to Nato and the war in Ukraine". 

If Labour wins power, there will be no change in "Britain's resolve to stand with Ukraine", shadow defence secretary John Healey said during a recent visit to Kyiv. Starmer said on Sunday that "the last thing anyone in Ukraine wants is to see political parties back in the UK squabbling about something that is life or death for them".

The next government will also have to balance vital trade and cooperation with China alongside protecting the UK from the growing threat of Chinese cyberattacks. The "friction" between Beijing and Washington also complicates the UK's relations with both, said Chatham House.

David Cameron, the now foreign secretary, is remembered for promoting the UK's relationship with China when he was prime minister, during the "golden era" of Sino-UK relations. But critics argue that his approach overlooked China's human rights abuses and military aggression in favour of the economic benefits, and left the UK vulnerable to security threats.  

Labour has previously been "less gung-ho" on a tilt towards Asia than the Conservatives, who have "sought to realise their Global Britain agenda following Brexit", said Gray Sergeant in a blog for Soas's China Institute. But now, Labour is "broadly in the same place as the Conservatives". 

Where do they differ?

Israel's bombardment of Gaza has emerged as a clear dividing line for voters. Shadow foreign secretary David Lammy's keynote speech in London this week was "dominated by the Israel-Hamas war", as protesters "popped up" from the audience to "attack Labour's position on the conflict", said Sky News.

About 56% of the UK public – and 66% of those who intend to vote Labour – support halting arms sales to Israel, according to a YouGov poll this month. And "all polling" shows that the majority of the public want the war to end, said Othman Moqbel, British-Palestinian leader of the charity Action For Humanity, at Al Jazeera. 

It is "reasonable" to assume that voters will continue to move away from politicians who appear to support Israel. But Labour, more so than the Conservatives, is battling "widespread public perception that they are supportive of Israel's war".

Labour might have "won big" at the recent local and mayoral elections, but voting trends revealed a decrease in their vote in crucial areas containing a "high number of students and Muslims". These two traditionally loyal demographics "have been clear as to why"; the party's approach to the Gaza war "has been found wanting". 

Meanwhile, independents and Green Party candidates who made their anti-war stance on Gaza "a focal point" defeated and took votes from Labour. For Labour, the war will become "an even bigger problem" in the coming months.

Will the election impact UK-US relations?

A possible second Trump presidency also sets the two UK parties apart. Labour has "historic links with the Democratic Party", said Olly Duff on the i news site, and Trump would not be Starmer's "first choice" for US president. 

But Lammy has been meeting senior figures from the Republican Party in preparation, saying Labour would look for a "common cause" with Trump. The former president's team have become "more receptive" to Starmer, "after taking umbrage" at the way Cameron "pressured" Congress to pass the £49 billion aid package for Ukraine.

Republicans also accuse Cameron of "hypocrisy" for leading "the 'panda hug' of China in the early 2010s". The "clash" between Cameron and the Republicans has "opened the door to Labour", said Duff.

Margaret Thatcher "had the Falklands", Tony Blair "had Iraq", and David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson "will be remembered for Brexit". 

Liz Truss will be known as "the shortest serving prime minister long after the facts of her mini-Budget are forgotten", wrote John Rentoul in The Independent. But with the Conservatives almost certainly heading for defeat at the next general election, what legacy will Rishi Sunak leave behind?

The first British Asian PM

Britain's first non-white and first Hindu prime minister arrived at No. 10 with "little fanfare", stepping in after Truss's short tenure, said Sunny Hundal in the Financial Times in October 2022. That Sunak was tasked with leading the country is a sign that Britain "is increasingly comfortable with being a multicultural democracy".

Global perception lagged behind "the quietly transformed British reality", said Fraser Nelson in The Telegraph. In the US, "The Daily Show" released a video sketch suggesting there would be a "racist backlash". But in reality there was "no fuss" at all – a silence that spoke volumes.

Rwanda Bill

Sunak's plan to send asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda has become his showpiece policy. Passing the bill in April, he called it a piece of "landmark legislation", promising that the first deportations would start in July, despite the first flights being initially planned for the spring.

Sunak "has single-mindedly driven this policy through despite a torrent of personal abuse and the wrecking tactics of opposition parties, unelected peers and human rights lawyers", said the Daily Mail. While the plans still face legal hurdles, "the PM clearly means business".

Wrecking over fixing

The prime minister has been "too keen on wrecking" in his final year of power, said The Economist, with his decision to scrap the northern leg of HS2 "the most obvious example". Cutting the link between Birmingham and Manchester supposedly freed up £40 billion to be "splashed elsewhere", yet "in reality, this funding will probably evaporate".

He has also watered down the country's net zero plans, although he claimed that UK emissions can still reach net zero by 2050.

A smoke-free generation

In a "landmark public health intervention", Sunak could become the prime minister who was able to "create the UK's first smoke-free generation", said The Guardian. 

Should the Tobacco and Vapes Bill pass, anyone who becomes 15 in 2024, or who is younger, will be banned from buying cigarettes. It will also aim to make vapes less appealing to children.

Some Tory MPs have expressed concern, including former PM Boris Johnson, who called the proposed legislation "nuts". But MPs voted to back the government plans by 383 votes to 67 in April. The proposed legislation will still need to pass through the Lords before it becomes law. 

The 'out of touch' leader

With his Silicon Valley background and billionaire in-laws, Sunak has frequently contended with accusations of being woefully disconnected with ordinary voters. A YouGov poll earlier this year revealed that 78% of the public – including 70% of 2019 Conservative voters – think that Sunak is out of touch.

When interacting with the public, he has "a toe-curling ability to say the wrong thing", said deputy political editor Jessica Elgot in The Guardian. He once asked a homeless man: "Do you work in business?" He has also been widely mocked online for appearing to be unable to use a debit card, and for borrowing a Kia from a Sainsbury's worker in a petrol PR photoshoot instead of using his government Jaguar.

'Doomed to fail'

After their drubbing at the local elections, the Tories still lag far behind Labour in the opinion polls. Sunak seems certain to be remembered for leading the Conservative Party to a historic defeat after 14 years in power. 

To be fair, he "started with the weakest hand of any prime minister in the modern era", said James Ball in The New European. "He had been roundly defeated in a leadership contest just seven weeks earlier, and was selected as leader, extremely grudgingly, by a party desperate to avoid the indignity of another contest."

The positioning of this "accidental prime minister" has since "ricocheted around like a pinball in a malfunctioning table", often valuing the "novel or the surprising over the sane". Yet each trick has been "doomed to fail".

The Conservative Party has withdrawn the whip from MP Mark Menzies while it investigates claims he misused donations from supporters.

He is said to have called his 78-year-old former campaign manager, who has not been named, at 3am one night in December saying he had been locked in a flat by "bad people" and asking for £5,000 from a bank account that contained supporter donations.

When she was unable to transfer the money due to the late hour, he "became angry, allegedly telling her it was 'a matter of life and death'", said The Times . Menzies's constituency office manager, Shirley Green, is said to have "stumped up" an eventual sum of £6,500 a few hours later and was repaid from the campaign fund.

Menzies "strongly" disputes the claims, said the BBC.

The MP for Fylde in Lancashire also used £14,000 from donations to pay for private medical expenses, claimed The Times. A source close to Menzies "argued that paying the medical bills helped to keep Menzies functioning as an MP and were a legitimate use of the funds", said the paper.

However, one donor said he had been "told by Menzies that the money would be used for campaigning" and called for a police investigation.

The claims against Menzies were reported to the party in January, "but the wheels of party justice have turned slowly", said The Times.

Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper said it was "frankly appalling" that the Conservatives had been aware of the allegations for more than three months.

The Conservative Party has confirmed that it is investigating the allegations, while Menzies is "continuing with plans to stand at the next election", The Times said. 

Menzies becomes the 18th MP currently sitting in Parliament as an independent, following a "series of scandals and disciplinary problems", said The Independent.

Rishi Sunak faces a dilemma about how to deploy Foreign Secretary David Cameron as the former PM grabs the spotlight abroad and increasingly at home.

As if to stress his renewed world standing, Cameron made a detour on his US trip to meet with Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida on Monday.

As Ukraine allies seek to convince the presumptive Republican presidential nominee of the need for continued US aid, Cameron, "and allies awaiting a debrief, will hope his involvement elevated the argument above the attrition of US politics and offered clarity on a crisis", said Sky News.

'Weight and heft'

This week's US trip comes after what the Financial Times described as the "extraordinary rehabilitation" of Cameron's reputation, from a former prime minister blamed for calling the Brexit referendum to a "high-profile figure on the international stage" once again.

Senior British diplomats told the paper that since accepting Sunak's cabinet role offer last November,  Cameron had brought "weight and heft" to the Foreign Office, and injected fresh confidence and ideas into British foreign policy.

"Being a former prime minister lends him stature and opens doors," said The Guardian. And as a member of the House of Lords rather than an MP, Cameron "has no constituency to worry about, nor does he have to hurry back from abroad for tricky Commons votes".

A series of short, slick promotional videos posted on X highlighting his first 100 days in office, and his recent trip to Brussels to mark the 75th anniversary of Nato showcased his understanding of what is required of a foreign secretary.

Cameron's communication skills were a "key factor" in his appointment, said Rachel Cunliffe in The New Statesman. "The trouble is it's all working out better than expected." The "contrast" between the former and the current PM is "impossible to miss" and "it's not doing Sunak any favours".

'Won an election for us'

Unusually, said The Guardian, Cameron "seems to have been given licence to set British foreign policy" while Sunak "focuses on domestic issues ahead of the general election".

Downing Street has denied any suggestion of a split with Cameron on high-profile stances such as his suggestion that the UK was prepared to diverge from the US and recognise a Palestinian state.

"Frankly, I don't think Rishi Sunak is very interested in foreign affairs and I think he's happy to leave that to Cameron," said Peter Ricketts, who served as national security adviser and ambassador to Paris.

But there are now "genuine worries in No. 10 that Cameron is overshadowing him", said Cunliffe. "The ease with which Cameron has slipped back into the role of representing Britain on the world stage and the effortless authority he is able to convey highlights the weakness and chaos of the Sunak regime."

Team Sunak also faces the challenge of what to do with three other former Tory PMs – Boris Johnson, Theresa May and Liz Truss – let "off the leash", said i news. But the "arguably thornier dilemma" is what to do with Cameron.

Cameron is “enjoying being back at the frontline of politics", a Conservative insider told the news site. "There's a risk he could steal the limelight from Sunak, but he did win an election for us." And he could also prove pivotal in swaying wavering Tory moderates in the so-called Blue Wall.

Westminster continues to reel from the so-called honeytrap scandal amid speculation about whether it was the work of a hostile foreign state or a political insider.

Tory MP William Wragg went public last week to confirm he had been blackmailed into giving out numbers of colleagues after sending explicit pictures to someone called "Charlie" on the dating app Grindr. Wragg stood down last night from his roles as head of the Commons' Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee and vice-chair of the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers.

At least 15 people – all of them male – are now believed to have been targeted by the "spear phishing" account, including journalists, researchers and MPs from across the political spectrum.

Calling Wragg's actions "exceptionally inappropriate and ill-advised", cabinet minister Mel Stride told GB News that "the overarching lesson for all of us in public life here is to proceed with great caution in the circumstances". 

What did the commentators say?

While some senior politicians – most notably Chancellor Jeremy Hunt – have backed Wragg, others have been less forgiving. "To give out the telephone numbers of other MPs is not only a serious breach of trust towards his colleagues, it also raises some quite serious security questions, too" said Nigel Farage in The Telegraph. "What he did was unforgivable in every way."

The "embarrassment of a few Westminster insiders" "provides endless opportunities for tabloid amusement", said The Observer in its editorial. But there is "a more serious problem: the way the pathological addiction to WhatsApp of Britain's ruling elite has undermined democratic institutions and conventions".

The Covid crisis had already exposed Westminster's over-reliance on private messaging apps that "might suit gossip and informal exchanges but is inappropriate for important decision-making", said David Omand, a former head of GCHQ and one-time permanent secretary at the Home Office.

If the pandemic raised questions about transparency and accountability then the honeytrap scandal has shone a light on security procedures within the Westminster bubble in the era of instant communications.

The popularity of direct messaging and social networks makes targeted attacks "easier to carry out," said Politico, "with malign actors able to create virtual numbers and buy cheap SIM cards on the high street".

What next?

The nature of this scandal and the fact that it involves the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats mean it is "unlikely to become a party-political issue", said James Heale in The Spectator.

The long-term consequences for the intimate circle of MPs and journalists are likely to depend on who is identified as being behind the blackmailing operation. There is "considerable debate" in Westminster as to whether a hostile state actor was involved, said Heale. The scandal has "alarmed security hawks" within the Conservative Party, "who believe state-sponsored cyberattacks are on the rise", said Politico.

However, said The Sun's political editor Harry Cole on X, "it continues to be stressed this is a police matter not one for the security services".

The so-called Westminster honeytrapper is believed to have been at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool last year, said The Times, "fuelling speculation that the perpetrator is a political insider".

Dominik Wojtczak, head of the Cybersecurity Institute at the University of Liverpool, told Politico that the messages were probably part of a "spear phishing attack" and that "the purpose is most likely to simply obtain indecent images of the victims and then blackmail them".

But this misses the point entirely, said Farage. "It is totally irrelevant whether 'Charlie' or any other dark actors linked to the Wragg scandal are working for the Russians, the Chinese, or a scurrilous website," he wrote. "Those who are in public office have to be held to a higher standard than everybody else. If not, breakdown will follow."

Calling for an investigation to "help to establish whether there are any other Wraggs in Parliament who have been similarly compromised", Farage said: "We ought to think about the security implications of MPs giving out to blackmailers confidential telephone numbers."

The former Ukip leader concluded: "The security of the nation and the safety of the public could depend on it."

Even when Theresa May was in office, she seemed of the past, said Robert Colvile in The Sunday Times: the cricket-loving vicar's daughter who'd met her husband at a Tory disco. And after leaving No. 10, there were no "moneygrubbing entanglements" for this former PM. It was typical of May, that when she revealed last week that she will stand down as an MP at the next election (along with at least 60 other Tories), it was to her local paper in Maidenhead; and the tributes that followed made much of her dedication to public service. Yet to recall May as "a Malory Towers head girl" who somehow ended up in No. 10 is to miss "so much about" this most "inscrutable" of politicians.

A changed party

That May is now being lauded for her virtue and moderation merely reflects how far her party has moved since then, said John Oxley on UnHerd – because in office, she was "no centrist darling". As home secretary, she launched the "hostile environment" policy, with its "Go Home" vans. On arrival in Downing Street she promised to tackle "burning injustices", as part of her efforts to set herself apart from her predecessors, but she bungled her goals. She threw away the Tories' majority with her failed 2017 election gambit, setting the stage for years of Brexit deadlock; and she exacerbated post-Brexit divisions, with her talk about "citizens of nowhere".

A clear sense of duty

May set a good example by serving her constituents for five years after being forced from office, said Charles Moore in The Daily Telegraph – unlike David Cameron and Boris Johnson, who resigned, making it look as if they'd only been MPs for what they could get from it. But she was a bad PM: mistrustful, closed, controlling, uninspiring. It is regrettable that she was ever elected leader, in the political chaos that followed the Brexit result. Although she was a Remainer, she had "astutely sat out the referendum dance", and was thus able to scoop up votes from both sides; but instead of pushing for a real Brexit, she then sought an unsustainable compromise.

Actually, her soft Brexit reflected the will of the people "as expressed in the narrow vote to leave the EU", said The Independent. But she found herself trapped between hard Brexiteers and Remainers seeking to force a second referendum. Consumed by Brexit, she left office with few achievements, save for the work she did to tackle modern slavery, and the setting of Britain's net-zero target. But she will be remembered as a hard-working MP, with a clear sense of duty. With cynicism about politicians growing, we need more like her – in office, and perhaps even, in "less tumultuous times", in Downing Street.

The Conservative Party is facing growing calls to hand back £10 million donated by a businessman accused of making racist remarks about former shadow home secretary Diane Abbott.

The Guardian claims that Frank Hester, the chief executive of The Phoenix Partnership, told colleagues at a business meeting in 2019 that the Labour MP made him "want to hate all black women" and "should be shot".

The alleged remarks "raise questions" about the "workplace behaviour and professionalism of a man whose money will be helping to bankroll the Conservative Party's general election campaign", said the paper. Rishi Sunak said the reported comments were "racist and wrong".

It has shone a light on the, at times, opaque world of political donations in Britain. With the 2024 general election on course to be the highest-spending contest ever, here are some of the big donors of 2023.

Frank Hester – Conservatives

The West Yorkshire businessman runs healthcare technology firm The Phoenix Partnership, which has received more than £400 million from the NHS and other government bodies since 2016, "primarily to look after 60 million UK medical records", according to The Guardian.

Hester was made an OBE under David Cameron and has praised Sunak's leadership on artificial intelligence (AI), saying in a recent interview that "the future is AI and we've got a prime minister who gets it".

He donated £5 million to the Conservatives last May, followed by a similar amount from his company in November shortly after he attended the PM's landmark international AI summit. A Tory party spokesperson said this made Hester its "biggest ever donor". However, he has now come under fire for racist comments about Abbott, which she has described as "frightening".

Gary Lubner – Labour

The South African car-glass repair tycoon Gary Lubner was the highest single donor to the Labour Party last year, giving £4,577,500 according to the Electoral Commission.

The son of Jewish refugees, Lubner told the Financial Times (FT) at the time that he was been impressed by Keir Starmer's mission to rid Labour of anti-Semitism and that the "long list of Tory failures in the last 13 years" had made him committed to bankrolling the opposition, with Brexit being "top of the list".

He stepped down from his role as chief executive of Belron, the world's largest auto glass company, in March 2023, with South Africa's News 24 saying the size of his donation means the "largely unknown" Lubner is now emerging as a "key player" in British politics. It is not thought, however, that he will have an official role in either the campaign or in government if Labour wins, The Times reported. Nor is he interested in a peerage, having previously suggested the House of Lords should be abolished.

Sainsbury family – Conservatives, Labour and Lib Dems

Members of the supermarket dynasty have long been among the largest and most active political donors in Britain. Last year, according to the Electoral Commission, the biggest personal donation came from a bequest from Lord John Sainsbury, a Tory peer, who left more than £10.2 million to the Conservatives after his death.

His cousin, Lord David Sainsbury of Turville, who served as science minister under Tony Blair, was consistently one of the largest donors under New Labour. An "ardent Europhile", reported the Financial Times (FT), in 2016 he gave money to Labour and the Liberal Democrats, "ringfencing the sums for the Remain side in the EU referendum as well as £4m to Britain Stronger in Europe, an anti-Brexit campaign". His donations to Labour dried up after the party moved to the left under Jeremy Corbyn but he has stepped up his funding to the party since the arrival of Keir Starmer, donating over £3 million last year. His daughter Francesca Perrin became the highest-donating woman in the party's history last year, giving over £1 million.

Mohamed Mansour – Conservatives

The Egyptian-born Mohamed Mansour gave more than £5 million to the Conservatives last year, making him one of the party's biggest-ever individual donors. A naturalised UK citizen, the self-made billionaire served as transport minister under Egypt's late President Hosni Mubarak and now heads the Mansour Group, a huge conglomerate that covers real estate and banking as well as holding Egypt's McDonald's franchise and a large supermarket chain.

An early investor in Facebook, Uber and Airbnb and co-founder of 1984 Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, Mansour – like Hester – has backed Sunak's stance on AI. "I believe this country has a very capable prime minister," he wrote in The Telegraph, one who "understands how growth is generated". He also "gets the importance of technology and innovation. He can make the modern economy work for all UK citizens."

Graham Edwards – Conservatives

Tory coffers were also boosted by Graham Edwards, co-founder of Britain's biggest private property firm Telereal Trillium, who donated more than £4 million last year, said The Telegraph. "He said that he had decided to hand over the cash to help keep a hard-Left Labour government out of power," reported the paper.

Amit Lohia – Conservatives

Another Tory donor who donated large sums last year was Amit Lohia of the manufacturer Indorama Corporation. The tycoon is "nicknamed the 'Prince of Polyester'", said the Daily Mirror. He gave the party £2 million in March 2023.

Dale Vince – Labour

Labour received over £1 million from green energy supplier Ecotricity, founded by Dale Vince, last year. A controversial figure, Vince has been "condemned in the rightwing press as a hippy turned eco-tycoon who donates thousands of pounds to Just Stop Oil – and even more to the Labour Party", said The Guardian.

Boris Johnson could be drafted in to help save the Conservatives from annihilation at the general election – and prepare for a possible return to politics should the party be wiped out.

Johnson has largely stayed out of the political limelight since he was ousted from power in the summer of 2022. Since then, however, his party's fortunes have nosedived, and a feeling is growing that the man who won the Tories a huge majority in 2019 is the only person who can save them this time.

Tory fears of a mass exodus of voters across the so-called "red wall" in the north of England has been heightened by the defection of former party deputy chair Lee Anderson to a surging Reform UK party. 

"There are many in the party who don't think we have a hope in hell of winning unless Boris comes back," one backbencher told The Telegraph. "Of course there are some who can't forgive him for Partygate but we're running out of better ideas."

What did the commentators say?

In the wake of the Partygate scandal, the notion of "bringing back Boris" appeared "complete folly", said Camilla Tominey in The Telegraph. "Yet the resurgence of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for US president, combined with the Tories this week falling to their lowest level of poll support in almost 50 years, have increased the likelihood of a Cincinnatus-style comeback." Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus was the Roman statesman recalled as dictator referenced by Johnson in his outgoing speech as PM.

A comeback has been made more likely by a significant "thawing" of relations between Johnson and Rishi Sunak over the past six months, said The Times's political editor Steven Swinford. Tominey also reported that "sources familiar with the former prime minister's thinking" had revealed last month the former PM would welcome a personal telephone call from Sunak to ask for his help campaigning in the general election.

While undoubtedly a divisive figure nationally, Johnson still retains widespread support among the Tory grassroots and those who voted for the party for the first time in 2019. In a focus group reported by The Telegraph in the red wall seat of Wellingborough ahead of February's by-election, four out of seven participants pinpointed Johnson's departure and subsequent Tory infighting as the reason why they had given up on the party.

A look at the latest polls and the distribution of target seats shows that "the difference between losing the next election and annihilation lies in great measure in getting former Conservative voters to show up on election day", said Anne McElvoy on the i news site. In this Johnson could be decisive and would "probably make a difference", agreed one veteran Tory backbencher.

With Sunak failing to move the dial, some in the party are even "muttering about some sort of complex putsch" in which Johnson is reinstalled as leader before the election, said the Mail on Sunday in an editorial. This would most likely backfire, said the paper, but a "more sensible course of action which would tend to unite rather than split the Tories" would be for Sunak to "make full use of this powerful asset in the developing campaign".

Johnson has a "unique power to charm and captivate a national audience, and there is no point in Sunak or any other leading Conservative being envious of this", the Mail on Sunday added. But "given the many egos and fractured bromances in this story, the only way Johnson is likely to resurface is if he sees personal gain in doing so", said McElvoy.

What next?

While any involvement in the campaign is likely to start off informally – he could "visit marginal constituencies, make speeches and appear on leaflets", said The Times – there have been suggestions that Johnson could make a comeback as an MP before the election or be parachuted into a safe seat after.

HuffPost said that Johnson's hopes of a political comeback have been "dealt a major blow" by the Tory candidate in his former seat of Henley insisting in an LBC interview that she would not make way for him. 

But the "real field of play for Johnson", said McElvoy, "is the immediate period after the likely election rout". Then, a "rump party, with a bunch of ambitious contenders on the right, will assess the Reform Party's performance – and the possible appeal of a Farage-Johnson dream team", she said. 

In practice, this would most likely be a "fissile combination", but "something profound is likely to shift in the Conservative Party – and Johnson has always seen moments of instability as an opportunity".

As the Conservatives face a likely general election defeat following 14 years in power, some are already wondering who might be tasked with reversing the party's fortunes after polling day.

With Rishi Sunak's Tories lagging far behind Labour in the polls, more than 50 Conservative MPs have already said they will step down at the next election. But across the numerous remaining Tory factions, the battle for control of the party's future is stepping up. 

What did the commentators say?

In the public mind, the Sunak family are "already booked on a one-way first-class flight to California early next year," wrote Adam Boulton for Reaction. Opinion polling for the Conservatives is now "so dire" that being "only" 5% behind in some rural areas is being hailed as "good news" among the party faithful. 

In the event of a big election defeat, "big changes in the party are a certainty". And even if the Conservatives did miraculously manage to retain power, the in-fighting is unlikely to stop. "The Tories have developed such a taste for their own blood – five leaders in eight years – that the factional wars will wage on, win or lose," said Boulton.

The party's next leadership election will almost certainly take place after the general election, agreed Stephen Bush in the Financial Times. Those looking to run will need to be a plausible candidate to the Tory right, but also someone "who doesn't prompt people in the Conservative, middle and left of the party to make a face like you've just kicked their dog when you raise the idea of them as leader". 

Even the supporters of one slated contender, former home secretary Suella Braverman, privately concede that it may be a "tall order for her to overcome the depth and breadth of opposition to her among Conservative MPs", according to Bush.

Amid fears that the right will hijack the party after the election, Tory centrists are searching for a leader who can stop the party "going full Trump", said Politico. But these so-called "One Nation" liberal Conservatives lack "an obvious leader". 

Commons leader Penny Mordaunt is thought to be "good and well-liked", but "mad on the woke stuff" – a reference to her support of trans rights – a source told Politico. James Cleverly is said to be "the obvious unity candidate", but too gaffe-prone. Tom Tugendhat would want to throw his hat in the ring only if he "felt he had a really good shot". 

The party's "perceived drift to the right" means that Kemi Badenoch is also getting a second look by moderates, who say that next to Braverman – who suggested this week that the British way of life was under assault from "Islamists" and "extremists" – Badenoch now appears to be the more liberal choice. But with just seven years as an MP under her belt, one former minister reportedly likened her to a "young Beaujolais nouveau". 

What next?

A catastrophic election defeat would tilt the party to the populist right, an analysis by The Guardian found. Seat projections suggest that if there were a further 2% swing to Labour before the election, about 40% of remaining Tory MPs would come from the right of the party. So odds are that a post-Sunak contest would  "end up as a bitterly fought battle between the party's right and centre", said the paper.

One overlooked candidate who could prove an asset to the Tory right is Priti Patel, said former MP and justice secretary David Gauke in an article for The New Statesman. If the Conservatives are defeated in the next election, the solution will be "obvious" to this wing of the party: bring back Boris Johnson and bring in Nigel Farage. 

Patel would be by far the best candidate to deliver on this strategy, said Gauke. She stuck with Johnson until the end, and is on friendly terms with Farage. And after what is likely to be an "emphatic" election loss, a "breezy message that it would be possible to bring together the big beasts of populism might be just what the modern Tory party membership wants to hear". It could be as simple as "Vote Patel, get Patel, Johnson and Farage".

Voters discovered the UK had entered a technical recession just hours before the Conservatives lost two by-elections, in what pundits described as a "perfect storm of shittery" for Rishi Sunak.

The Office for National Statistics announced yesterday that the UK's gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.3% in the three months to December, marking a second consecutive quarter of falling national output – "the technical definition of a recession", said The Guardian. 

The prime minister promised last year to grow the economy, but growth over the whole of 2023 was estimated at 0.1%. That makes it the weakest year since the financial crisis of 2009, excluding 2020 and the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Conservatives promises are "in tatters", said shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves. "This is Rishi Sunak's recession," she told a press conference on Thursday, adding that the growth data shows that "something has gone profoundly wrong".

Hours later, Labour overturned a substantial Conservative majority to win the by-election in Kingswood, and secured a 28.5% swing to take Wellingborough, a safe Tory seat since 2010. "Losing both those seats a day after a recession is announced would just be a perfect storm of shittery for the Conservatives," Joe Twyman, director of public opinion firm Deltapoll, had told the i news site.

What did the commentators say?

Britain's recession was variously described by economists as "technical" and "shallow". But "in the brutal political arena ahead of a general election it was given a different name: 'Rishi's recession'," said the Financial Times. 

According to the Resolution Foundation think tank, GDP per head is 4.2% lower than before the cost-of-living crisis. This is the metric that "ultimately boosts living standards", said the FT, and the drop equates to a loss of almost £1,500 per household.

Although "wages are growing in real terms and the job market is strong", Sunak is "saddled with a record that saw a contracting economy", despite the fact that the GDP was "given a boost by a growing population". 

The "harsh truth is that our economic situation is dire", said financial columnist Matthew Lynn in The Telegraph. And that is "almost entirely the fault of the prime minister". He "raised taxes too much", which has hammered household spending; froze tax thresholds, which has destroyed incentives to work; and enacted a "huge hike in corporation tax", hitting businesses hard. And there has been "virtually no attempt at bold reform". 

There is "nothing inevitable about the UK's persistently stagnant growth", Lynn said. 

Yet the worst is "probably over", said The Guardian's economics editor Larry Elliott. Governments want to "generate a feelgood factor before polling day", but "Britain, in the last three months of 2023, had the opposite: a feel-bad factor".

How will voters feel? A Savanta poll suggested on Wednesday that Labour's lead – consistent at more than 20 points for over a year – had been "dented" by the party's "recent U-turn on its promise to invest £28 billion on green projects", said the i news site. The poll puts Labour just 12 points ahead of the Conservatives, a seven-point drop compared with last month. The suspension of two parliamentary candidates over anti-Israel remarks this week "could narrow the lead further". 

But voters are unlikely to remember these rows, Twyman said. "What matters to voters in most cases is the economy, the cost of living, sometimes things like the NHS and immigration, but it's still 'the economy, stupid'."

What next?

The "heat now returns" to Sunak, said Nick Tyrone, former director of the CentreForum think tank, in The Spectator. Although "no one expected the results of these by-elections to be any different", Labour's wins suggest that polls putting Tories in "wipe-out territory" after the general election are "largely correct", and may even be underestimations. 

The "toppling" of Wellingborough "really does feel like the end of an electoral era for the Tories", said Tyrone.

The economic outlook is brighter across 2024, and Sunak still apparently believes his party can convince voters that Britain is "on the right track" in the upcoming Spring Budget, said the FT. But with an election expected in autumn, "time is running out". 

Having deposed four prime ministers in less than eight years, the Conservative Party is no stranger to friendly fire. 

But former cabinet minister Simon Clarke's op-ed this week in The Telegraph, which declared that the party "will be massacred" at the next general election if Rishi Sunak remains in charge, was notable not just for its content but also for its placement.

The Telegraph has long been known as the Conservatives' "de facto house journal", said Peter Walker in The Guardian. But earlier this month, the paper published YouGov polling that projected the number of Tory MPs would fall from 350 to just 169. 

Clarke's op-ed takes the newspaper's role in "manoeuvrings to undermine" Sunak one step further, said Walker. The Telegraph is now hoping to "reshape the party in its ideological image".

'The Telegraph assault' 

Tory peer David Frost also put pen to paper to write about the "stunningly awful" YouGov polling numbers in The Telegraph, and noted that he had played a role in shaping and analysing the survey. Frost is a "trenchant critic of Sunak", said Andrew Marr in The New Statesman, and is "fronting" the Conservative Britain Alliance, which "appears to be a paper fig leaf" for a group of donors campaigning on a tougher stance on immigration, in a bid to "avoid a potential 'extinction event'" at the hands of Reform UK. 

What's "really revealing", said the Financial Times's Stephen Bush, is that The Telegraph is not only "not on side with the prime minister in an election year", but has also "run a no-holds-barred attack". 

"The Telegraph assault", as Marr called it, centred on the "unusually large and detailed polling sample" broken down by constituency. That makes it "particularly corrosive" when so many MPs and cabinet ministers are "speculating on the likelihood of their personal defeats". 

It's clear that the paper is "willing to make trouble" for Sunak and to "undermine him", said the FT's Bush. "That is going to be a running sore for Sunak all the way until the election."

'Hacking off a protective arm'

This blue-on-blue attack may be connected to the "murky business" of The Telegraph and its sister title The Spectator "being in the middle of a tortuous sale process" to a United Arab Emirates (UAE) consortium, according to Reaction.

With the publications stuck in "ownership limbo", said Marr in The New Statesman, the Tories are "splitting in both directions". Some Thatcher-era ministers are coming out against the sale, but others, including former cabinet minister and party chair Nadhim Zahawi, are "working with the Emiratis" to recruit other key figures to an advisory board. 

That The Telegraph is going "out of its way to whack" Sunak is "less biting the hand that feeds it, more hacking off a protective arm", said Marr. 

Whitehall is "awash with rumours" that the government wants the UAE deal to go ahead because "the country needs foreign investment too much", said Reaction. 

The Telegraph's recent coverage of Sunak has also been accompanied by an in-depth account of Foreign Secretary David Cameron's "closeness to the UAE leadership". It's almost, Reaction suggested, as if the newspaper is saying it "won't go quietly this year" if the UAE ultimately wins the takeover battle.

Rishi Sunak appears to have all but ruled out a May general election but the Liberal Democrats could attempt to force the prime minister's hand. 

Speaking at a rally in the Surrey town of Guildford, Lib Dem leader Ed Davey said his party would put forward legislation to reinstate the Fixed-term Parliaments Act – introduced by the coalition government in 2011 but repealed by Boris Johnson in 2022 – which would force a general election on 2 May.

"Britain can't wait for the change we need. People are fed up of waiting," he told supporters on Wednesday. But Davey also conceded the plan was a "long shot given it was unlikely to receive the backing of the ruling Conservatives", said the Financial Times (FT). 

And Rishi Sunak later appeared to rule out a snap spring poll, telling journalists that his "working assumption" was that the next election would be in "the second half of this year". 

Davey's party grows 'more ambitious' 

Whenever the election comes – and it appears now to be at least 10 months away – the Liberal Democrats will be hoping to overtake the Scottish National Party (SNP) to regain their position as the third largest party in the House of Commons. 

The party has "long been confident" of its ability to oust the Conservative Party from its traditional strongholds in the southeast of England. But Davey is becoming "more ambitious", said the FT, as polling shows growing support for the party in western England, with the party further buoyed by four recent by-election wins.

Although it is not yet clear exactly how many seats the Lib Dems will be targeting in the next election, Davey told the paper that there was a "real movement against the Conservatives like we haven't seen for quite some time" in large parts of the southeast, southwest and London, as well as the suburbs of Manchester, Sheffield and Harrogate. 

A YouGov pollster reportedly predicted the party "could win between 30 and 40 seats at the next election". 

'Life-long Tories' and 'Surrey shufflers' key targets

The party is still "trying to rebuild momentum" after its opposition to Brexit "delivered a sugar hit to its finances and membership" that quickly fizzled out, said Freddie Hayward in The New Statesman. In the 2019 general election, the Lib Dems lost one seat, leaving them with just 11 MPs in the Commons. The party's election strategy has now firmly shifted from "opposing Brexit to "opposing the Tories". 

Lib Dem strategists are targeting two key demographics. First, "lifelong Tories" who are now so disillusioned with the government they are willing to switch allegiance. Second, the so-called "Surrey shufflers": young Londoners who have moved out of the city to the home counties, but refuse to vote for the Tories. 

Its strategy is proving successful, with the party winning by-elections in Chesham and Amersham, North Shropshire and Tiverton and Honiton. But the party's prospects "shouldn't be overstated", said Hayward. Its electoral fortunes are "inevitably bound up with the performance of the other parties" and "ultimately, as the party leadership recognises, their chances may depend less on Lib Dem success than on continual Tory failure". 

With Reform UK now polling at close to 10%, some Tory MPs fear that the pro-Brexit party could prove to be a disruptor at the next election. But it is Davey's party that "could inflict even more Tory damage", said Paul Waugh writing for the i news site.

The "biggest threat" to the Conservatives, the factor that risks turning a small Labour majority into a Labour landslide, "is tactical voting", said Waugh.

Evidence from recent by-elections "suggests an electorate seeking out the best possible route to routing the Tories from office – and voting accordingly", he continued. Labour supporters are "ready to back Lib Dems where necessary, and Lib Dem supporters [will] return the favour in key Tory-Labour battlegrounds".  

And Reform UK's decision to stand in every Conservative constituency could deliver "an extra dozen" seats to the Lib Dems and to the Labour Party.

The Irish government has launched legal action against the UK in a bid to reverse a law that provides immunity for Troubles-related offences.

The controversial act, formally known as the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023, was introduced by the British government in September despite opposition from politicians in Dublin and Belfast and from the families of victims. 

Ireland has initiated an "interstate" lawsuit against the UK government in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar saying his country had been left with "no option".

The act "effectively prevents prosecutions for serious crimes of soldiers as well as paramilitaries on both sides", said The Telegraph, with the British government giving amnesty for those who cooperate and provide information to an independent commission. It also ends any new inquests or civil actions related to the Troubles.

Ireland's subsequent legal action – which had received "the blessing" of US President Joe Biden – to challenge the bill has "plunged" the two nations into a "bitter diplomatic row", the paper added.

What the papers said

The UK government's position is that any prosecutions over the Troubles are "unlikely to succeed", said the Daily Mail, and an "independent body should be set up instead". 

But Ireland is to argue that the new act is "incompatible with the UK's obligations" under the European Convention on Human Rights, and there is "consensus from both governments and parties in Northern Ireland" to push ahead with legal action.

Critics claim the act "removed access to justice" for victims' families, some of whom have "already taken action against the UK government at Belfast's High Court", said the BBC. But despite victims' groups and the Irish government opposing it "right from its conception", the move to instigate interstate legal action is a "big step", said the BBC's Julian O'Neill, and it "will not have been taken without evaluating political implications". 

The UK government has persistently defended its decision to "legislate unilaterally", said the Financial Times, and has argued that it is "time to be realistic" about pursuing prosecutions. However, some human rights groups have said the law is a "barely concealed attempt to shield soldiers from prosecution". 

The Northern Ireland secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris, said the lawsuit was "misguided" and the government would "continue robustly to defend the legislation". He added that the Irish government had not made a "concerted or sustained attempt" to pursue prosecutions and it had been "inconsistent" – something "Dublin disputes", said the FT.

The legal action has also sparked "renewed calls by the Right of the Conservative Party" for the UK to "reconsider its membership" of the European Convention on Human Rights, said The Telegraph. That is a response that Rishi Sunak has "tried to stave off while he tries to force through his Rwanda Bill". 

European Research Group chair Mark Francois told the paper the bill had been "exhaustively debated" before being passed and should not be "overturned by an appeal to an activist foreign court".

What next?

A tense legal battle could have significant implications for relations between the UK and Ireland, and the prospect of "consequences for UK-Irish relations cannot be ruled out", said The Independent. 

DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson told the BBC that it was difficult to see how the legal case would improve relations between the nations and accused the Irish government of double standards, saying it had "no proposals to deal with the legacy issues".

The UK government is adamant that it will successfully defend the legislation in court, but doubts have been cast over whether the ECHR will agree with its legitimacy. Law professor Kieran McEvoy of Queen's University Belfast told the FT that he could see "no way" and "no chance" that the European court would "find that amnesty to be lawful".

The lawsuit may end up not being necessary, the paper added, as Labour leader Keir Starmer has "vowed to repeal" the law "if the party wins the UK general election expected next year".

Although Rishi Sunak narrowly avoided defeat over his Rwanda bill, Westminster is awash with speculation that it might not be such a happy new year for the prime minister.

Dozens of MPs abstained on the vote over the emergency legislation, which passed at second reading by 313 votes to 269 and was introduced after the Supreme Court ruled that the Rwanda deportation policy was unlawful. Despite days of turmoil and alleged scheming, no Conservative MP voted against the bill. 

Yet it was "a day of high drama in Westminster that laid bare the scale of division in the Conservative Party", said the Financial Times. The vote is "a portent of the trouble looming for Downing Street". 

What the papers said

Sunak said the victory would allow him to deliver his pledge of "stopping the boats", but leaders of five right-wing factions within the Tory party, dubbed the "five families", warned that they would try to vote down the bill "unless it was significantly hardened up in the coming weeks", said The Telegraph. The number of Tory abstentions – 29, according to Telegraph analysis – could be "enough rebels to force a future defeat". 

The embattled prime minister may have avoided a leadership challenge for now, but he is more unpopular than ever, according to YouGov polling carried out just before the Rwanda vote. About 70% of people said they had an unfavourable opinion of Sunak, with his net favourability dropping 10 points since November. It makes him "as unpopular as Boris Johnson was when he resigned as prime minister", noted The Times. 

Sunak's victory "came at no little cost to his authority", said the FT. And he "faces another showdown in the new year", added The Times's senior political correspondent Geraldine Scott. Right-wing MPs said they would vote down the plan "if it was not toughened up", while moderates said they would "pull their support if Sunak went any further towards breaching international law".

There are also threats outside of the Westminster jungle. After arriving back in Britain following his appearance on "I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!", Nigel Farage claimed the government was heading for "catastrophic defeat". The former UKIP leader said the Tories "had no idea what was coming down the track towards them". 

He previously told GB News that the next election would be "utterly and completely dominated by the immigration issue". Support for the right-wing and anti-immigration Reform UK party, which Farage led in its previous iteration as the Brexit Party, is climbing in the polls. Farage could be "plotting a comeback" to front-line politics in January, reported The Sun. 

But the main obstacle for the prime minister might well be himself. Some fear Sunak "might not have the temperament to charm the electorate", said Politico, particularly over "a gruelling six-week general election campaign". 

His decision to "abruptly" cancel a meeting with his Greek counterpart over the disputed Elgin Marbles "reignited Tory fears about a petulant streak which surfaces in the heat of political battle", the news site continued. For a British prime minister to do so to a visiting European ally was "almost unheard of".

When he was chancellor, the public found Sunak "authoritative and reassuring", Luke Tryl, director of the consultancy More in Common, told Politico. Now, "they tend to find him lecturing and sometimes snappy". 

This became clear during last year's Conservative leadership debates, said Tryl. The public found his attitude to Liz Truss "rude and condescending" – perhaps explaining her victory.

What next?

More high drama is likely to be in store when MPs return from their Christmas break. 

The Rwanda bill still has to get through the Commons, where MPs will debate amendments, and then the House of Lords. 

A member of the One Nation group told The Times that its members were "already looking at ways to bring forward a wrecking amendment that could get Labour's support and kill off the bill". 

However, Home Secretary James Cleverly told LBC that there was "very little wiggle room" to change the bill. He insisted that he would "see off" attempts to kill off the legislation. "We will always defend ourselves against attempts to break this bill," Cleverly told The Times.

As for Sunak, senior Tory MPs are warning that it could kill off any hopes he had of avoiding a Labour landslide at the next election. "If this circus continues, with my unimportant colleagues fronting up to the cameras, taking lumps out of colleagues, we will go down the tubes together," MP Gary Streeter told the FT's George Parker, warning that the party faced a "1997-scale defeat".

Rishi Sunak met his new-look cabinet this morning as he seeks a reversal of fortunes for his Conservative Party.

Few in Westminster were shocked by the sacking of Suella Braverman, Sunak's increasingly controversial home secretary, who, in the opening salvo of a major cabinet reshuffle, was replaced by former foreign secretary James Cleverly.

But the return of David Cameron to frontline politics as foreign secretary was "a genuine 'marmalade dropper' moment", said Sky News's political editor Beth Rigby. "No one was expecting that."

Other key appointments include rising star Victoria Atkins as health secretary, replacing Steve Barclay, who is now environment secretary. Richard Holden is the new Conservative Party chairman, while 2019 newbie Laura Trott is now chief secretary to the Treasury. 

This was a "government merry-go-round" likely to have "profound implications for the course of British politics for the next 12 months", said Politico's London Playbook.

What did the papers say?

The prime minister has promoted some of his key supporters in an effort to get his cabinet "on an election footing" as his party continues to trail dismally in the polls, said Rigby for Sky News. 

But the right wing of the Conservative Party will be looking on "in alarm" as Sunak, a socially conservative prime minister who "looked to be tacking to the right" on key issues such as immigration, appears to be "placing his flag very much on the centre ground" by appointing Cameron as his "new right-hand man".

Sunak has always struggled with a perception that he is a liberal or centrist-leaning Tory, despite his often right-wing views. Now, Cameron's return "risks playing into the long-held fears of conservative-minded colleagues" that the prime minister "is less right-wing than they had hoped", said Politico.

Equally, if part of Sunak's calculation in appointing Cameron is to "shore up the Blue Wall vote", it may be a move that has come "too late". One former cabinet minister told Politico: "That horse hasn't so much bolted, as died." 

The risk for Sunak is that "neither wing of his divided party – nor either half of his fragile voter coalition" will be particularly "convinced".

Cameron's return is "peculiar" given his record both in and out of office, said The Economist. Now the highest-ranking diplomat in the land, his foreign policy errors as prime minister were "numerous", chief among them his role in the UK's exit from the European Union. "For half a millennium Britain aimed to ensure Europe did not unite against it," but by calling for a Brexit referendum in 2013, Cameron "managed it in three short years".

He also "embarrassed himself" through his involvement in the Greensill scandal, one of the biggest lobbying rows in recent British political history, continued the paper. 

Cameron has returned to frontline politics "largely because Sunak is desperate". The former PM may reassure "some wavering southern Conservative voters", but if Sunak is looking for a steady pair of hands as foreign secretary, Cameron's political record is both controversial and thin.

What next?

Sunak has attempted to stamp his authority on the cabinet with Monday's reshuffle, but he now risks "an almighty confrontation with the Tory right over Rwanda", said The Times.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will rule if the government policy of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda is legal. If the court rules against the government, the right-wing of his party will push for Britain to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

But Sunak's appointment of both Cleverly – a known opponent of the UK leaving the ECHR – and Cameron, who supported the Remain vote, suggests this is "not on the agenda".

"Sunak's calculation as he reshapes his government is that he has the political strength to quash any rebellion from the right," continued the paper. But if the Rwanda decision goes against the government this week, "his mettle is likely to be tested".

The reshuffle means he now runs the risk that the Tory right will go into "total opposition" to a leader they see as "there on sufferance" and not a "true Conservative", said Robert Shrimsley in the Financial Times.

"If he is lucky he will have significantly improved his government, albeit very late in the day. If not he will have unleashed the malevolent forces which destroyed most of his predecessors," continued Shrimsley. "And so far Sunak has not been lucky."

Colourful claims about a dead rabbit, a shadowy man called Dr No and a tampered-with CCTV camera are among the highlights of former Tory minister Nadine Dorries's new book, "The Plot".

Reviewing it for The Times, Patrick Maguire described "The Plot" as "the single weirdest book I have ever read"; The Telegraph wondered whether Dorries had "lost the plot"; and The Independent said the book is simply "bizarre".

Here are five of the most eye-catching claims made by the former culture secretary in her "tell-all" memoir.

No way…

Dorries wrote that a "secretive" and "very frightening" figure called "Dr No" has been  pulling the strings in the Tory party for decades. According to the book, he has a pass to Downing Street and "Rishi Sunak doesn't move without first seeking his advice", said the BBC.

In a particularly headline-grabbling claim, she said that when a girlfriend ended a relationship with him, he is rumoured to have had her little brother's pet rabbit chopped into four and nailed to the front door of the family home. It is also claimed that he tried to set fire to a house when people were sleeping inside.

The Times noted that Dorries "faced significant legal hurdles in publishing", not least around this allegation. The fact that she was "unable to name the individual" points to her "difficulty in proving" it.

Michael's 'Movement'

But Dr No isn't the only person who secretly pulls the Tory strings, said Dorries. She claimed that a "shadowy cabal" known as "the Movement" has dominated Conservative politics for two decades. 

Michael Gove is alleged to be a pivotal figure in the group, which is said to have been behind the ousting of Iain Duncan Smith as Tory leader in 2003.

Gove is also said to have been central to ousting Boris Johnson last year because the Movement regretted putting him in No.10. A source told Dorries that, after the 2019 election, the Movement was "furious" because "Boris had won too big" and this would make him "difficult to control".

Dark Dom

Throughout the book, former colleagues of Dorries emerge in a less than flattering light, said The Independent. Liz Truss is dismissed as "socially inept, awkward, scared, never a leader"; Sajid Javid was "monotone" and "startlingly unimaginative".

The "overly voluble" Grant Shapps "always created an eye roll from colleagues", she wrote, while Cabinet Secretary Simon Case was "underqualified" and Oliver Dowden a "man of little talent".

She goes in even harder on Dominic Cummings, saying the former adviser's personality has been described to her as "dark triad coupled with everyday sadism". His "physical anger towards others" had led some to say he's a "psychopath", she added.

Matt's life 

Matt Hancock resigned as health secretary after he was caught on camera breaching social distancing guidance by kissing a colleague. 

Dorries, who served as a health minister under Hancock, claimed that the security cameras outside Hancock's office were tampered with before CCTV footage emerged of him kissing Gina Coladangelo.

She wrote that when Hancock was "caught kissing Gina" the security camera was "facing Matt's inner office and inner door" when "other cameras were turned away from the offices and out to the roof balconies". She concluded that "the camera had been tampered with".

Cover-up

Rishi Sunak is under pressure to investigate the book's "bombshell" claim that his party covered up alleged rapes by a Tory MP, said the Daily Mail. Senior figures have called for an inquiry into Dorries's allegation that the Conservatives "sat on the sexual assault claims for years", said the paper.

Former Tory party chair Oliver Dowden did not deny that his party may have secretly funded medical treatment for a woman who told officials she had been raped by a Tory MP. But he rejected suggestions that the party had covered up the actions of an alleged rapist.