The leader of the Liberal Democrats picks books that explore human experience and interpersonal relationships. He will be talking about his own book, “Why I Care: and why care matters”, at the Oxford Literary Festival on Friday 27 March.

Middlemarch

George Eliot, 1871

Reading “Middlemarch” shifted my perspective on what it means to be “good”. Eliot shows that being a kind person isn’t about grand gestures. Instead, she writes about the importance of small, simple, everyday actions to remind the reader that they have the greatest impact on others.

Enduring Love

Ian McEwan, 1997

This was a humdinger. By turning a freak ballooning accident into a nightmare stalking situation, McEwan left me reflecting on the fragility of relationships and the unpredictability of the human mind.

Waterland

Graham Swift, 1983

This novel tells the story of two East Anglian families divided by class but connected by a dark secret. As a history lover, this was right up my alley. Swift shows how we are shaped by our past and can never truly escape where we come from.

There Are Rivers in the Sky

Elif Shafak, 2024

I loved the concept of following a single drop of water across centuries and cultures. It’s a beautiful way to reflect on our shared humanity and personalise the vastness of history.

The Name of the Rose

Umberto Eco, 1980

Set in a 14th-century Italian monastery, this is a wonderfully complex murder mystery. Eco challenges the reader to become a kind of detective, and leaves you questioning the nature of truth itself. The suspense feels dangerous and exciting.

Wild Swans

Jung Chang, 1991

This one is a total emotional roller-coaster that stays with you long after the final page. Chang takes the reader through a heart-breaking story of survival, focusing on three women. The sheer grit and strength of human spirit in this book is incredibly moving and gave me a new perspective on everyday challenges.

If 2024 was the year of the Labour landslide, 2025 was the year that the smaller parties were on the rise with potentially huge ramifications for the next election.

Polls say that voters are “deserting Labour and the Tories” so talk of election deals is “becoming more urgent”, said The i Paper. The two main parties are losing supporters to smaller ones like Reform UK and the Green Party, fuelling predictions that tactical voting “may decide the next general election, due in 2029”.

Green Party leader Zack Polanski is among the few apparently willing to formalise a pact. Here are some of the possible options.

Tory-Reform

Nigel Farage has denied claims from unnamed Reform UK donors in the Financial Times that he expects an electoral pact or a merger between his party and the Conservatives before the next general election.

Such a move would represent a historic realignment on the right of British politics, but Farage said he is in fact aiming for a “reverse takeover” of the Conservatives. “A deal with them as they are would cost us votes,” he said.

Kemi Badenoch has also ruled out the idea. But “there are posh Southern seats where Reform can’t win, and working-class seats where the Tories can’t win”, said The Telegraph. While there is unlikely to be any “formal arrangement”, each party “quietly standing aside” in certain constituencies “makes sense”.

Green-Labour

The Greens are eyeing a “pact” with Labour to “shut out Farage”, two senior party officials told Politico. The arrangement, which would “stop short” of a “formal” deal, would be “tapping into tactical voting”. The Greens are “discussing the prospect of informal, local prioritisations of resources so the best-placed progressive challenger can win”.

But Labour is “keen to tamp down talk of working together”. A senior government adviser said Labour is “not even thinking about” working with Polanski. There’s “scepticism” that a “non-aggression deal” would work, because the Greens will be “vying for the kind of urban heartlands Labour can’t afford to back down from”.

Lib Dem-Labour

The Liberal Democrats and Labour have teamed up in the past, in 1903, 1924, 1929 and 1977. The question of them uniting again for a “common national project” has been “asked repeatedly, in various guises and circumstances, for more than 100 years”, said Martin Kettle in The Guardian.

But what about now? Would Lib Dem leader Ed Davey work with Labour? “Everyone knows he would,” said The Independent, but “everyone also knows he can’t say so”.

There are “very few” Commons seats where the two parties “compete directly these days”, said Emma Burnell on Labour List. A “judicious use of resources at the next general election (from both sides) will probably keep it that way".

“Ed Davey has lost none of his skill at the eye-catching but ultimately vacuous video-opportunity,” said The Independent.

He paraded into the Liberal Democrat annual conference in Bournemouth this weekend at the head of a drummer band, proudly twirling a baton. Yet even if the stunt was cringeworthy, it’s true that the Lib Dems are “on the march”. Having shrunk to a low point of just eight MPs after the 2015 election, the party won 72 seats in last year’s election, the best result by any third party in Britain in a century.

The Lib Dems now control more councils than the Tories do, said Oliver Wright in The Times, and, with polls suggesting that they’re trailing the Conservatives by only two points, the Lib Dems believe they could end up winning more seats than them at the next election. “It’s not a completely implausible scenario.”

‘The Gail’s strategy’

The Lib Dems owe their recent success partly to a more focused electoral strategy, said Ian Birrell in The i Paper. In the 1992 election, they won almost one in five votes, but only 20 seats. Last year, Davey’s tactic of targeting prosperous Tory constituencies – nicknamed the “Gail’s strategy” because of the popularity of the high-end bakery chain in such areas – won them 72 MPs with the support of only one in eight voters.

The party’s plan now seems to be “to sit tight, play it safe, and seek to pick up more seats” from the two stricken main parties. “But is this really sufficient?” One can’t help feeling that in this tumultuous era of populism, with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party dominating political debate, the Liberal Democrats are failing to meet the moment and offer a proper defence of “liberalism and democracy”.

‘Profile-raising stunts’

For all Davey’s much-mocked stunts, only 37% of people were able to identify him from a photo in a recent survey, said Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer. But he has had some success in raising his profile by speaking out on issues that other leaders prefer to avoid. For instance, he said he would not be attending the recent state banquet for Donald Trump, in protest at the treatment of the people of Gaza. Such statements go down well with Lib Dem activists, who “skew left”.

At the same time, though, Davey has attacked Labour for imposing VAT on private school fees and removing inheritance tax relief from farms, a stance that puts him to the right of the Government. This attempt to peel off centre-right voters is risky: it could exacerbate the existing “tension between the kind of party the Lib Dems are and the kind of seats they aspire to hold or already do”.

"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”.

Most Britons believe people who play loud music and videos on public transport should be fined as patience with "headphone dodgers" appears to be running increasingly thin.

A YouGov poll of 6,815 Britons found that 62% of us "strongly support" or "somewhat support" the proposal for stricter measures put forward by the Liberal Democrats. In a separate survey of more than 2,000 UK adults, conducted by Savanta, 38% of respondents had come across fellow travellers playing music out loud on their phones.

'Phenomenally rude'

Such headphone dodgers may not be the "biggest problem" with public transport, said James Hanson in The Spectator, but they're the "thin end of an increasingly large wedge". It's not the "noise itself" that's an irritation but rather the "lack of common courtesy". As a nation, we "used to pride ourselves" on politeness, but now we have to "suffer the daily indignity" of a "full-volume rendition" of some "muppet's" playlist.

As an annoyance, it has been going on a while. Playing anything without headphones is a way of acknowledging that your enjoyment is more important than "anyone else's feelings", said Rebecca Reid in The i Paper in 2023. It's "an act of aural aggression" and one of the "truly morally indefensible" things someone can do.

Worse, it is "not a few lone wolves", wrote George Chesterton in London's The Standard, it's a "cultural phenomenon" and "phenomenally rude", as well as the "surest sign yet" that we are heading for a "post-apocalyptic cursed earth".

'Pure cowardice'

This sort of behaviour used to be "rare", wrote Adrian Chiles in The Guardian. If anyone was "watching or listening to something", they'd use headphones and if a "bit of tinny noise" were to "leak out" occasionally that was really "as bad as things got".

So what's changed? Do the culprits think it's acceptable or do they know it's "unacceptable" and don't care? Is it a "giant two-fingered gesture" that wordlessly poses the question: "I know this is out of order, but what are you going to do to stop me"?

It's "hard to pinpoint a date" when it became "socially acceptable", wrote Stephen Bleach in The Times 12 months ago, but in the past couple of years, many of us have seen "this kind of heedless noise pollution" become more and more "normalised". In response, the majority go for the "classic British tactic" of the "passive-aggressive hard stare" that achieves nothing. We could put our "inaction" down to "innate reserve" but "I suspect that most of us know, deep down", it's "pure cowardice".

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."

This week's local elections could bring a historic shift in voting patterns, says one of Britain's leading pollsters.

Professor Sir John Curtice, of the University of Strathclyde, told The Independent that less than half of those polled planned to vote for Labour or the Conservatives, the two parties that have dominated British politics for a century.

The "big winner" from the shift in voter intentions is likely to be Reform UK. Nigel Farage's insurgent party is on course to pick up hundreds of council seats across England as it looks to establish itself as a genuine alternative to the Tories and Labour.

The last time these councils were contested was in 2021. That was the high point of Boris Johnson's premiership when the Conservatives won control of dozens of local authorities. Four years on and the picture could not look more different.

Where are elections and when?

Around a third of electors in England are eligible to vote in local elections to be held on Thursday 1 May.

In total, 23 councils will be contested, with more than 1,600 councillors up for election. These include:

14 county councils: Cambridgeshire, Derbyshire, Devon, Gloucestershire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire.

8 unitary authorities: Buckinghamshire, Cornwall, County Durham, North Northamptonshire, Northumberland, Shropshire, West Northamptonshire and Wiltshire.

1 metropolitan district: Doncaster.

Six mayoral elections are also taking place in the West of England, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, North Tyneside, Doncaster and – for the first time – in Greater Lincolnshire, and Hull and East Yorkshire.

In February, the government announced that local elections in East Sussex, West Sussex, Essex, Thurrock, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Norfolk, Suffolk and Surrey, due to also take place on 1 May, would be delayed for one year to allow for the reorganisation of local councils.

No routine elections are taking place in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.

Who is eligible to vote?

The BBC, in collaboration with the Electoral Commission, has produced a postcode tool for voters to check if elections are taking place in their area on 1 May.

British citizens, qualifying Commonwealth citizens and those with citizenship of an EU member state are all eligible to vote in local elections, although rules vary according to which country you are from.

If you have not already registered to vote, the deadline has unfortunately already passed.

After changes to the law brought in under the last Tory government, voters in England now need to show photo ID to confirm their identity at polling stations. You can see the list of accepted forms of identification here. The ID document does not need to be in date, as long as the photo is still clearly recognisable.

If you do not possess any of these, you need to apply for a free Voter Authority Certificate not later than Wednesday 23 April.

What ID do you need?

After changes to the law brought in under the last Tory government, voters in England now need to show photo ID to confirm their identity at polling stations. You can see the list of accepted forms of identification here. The ID document does not need to be in date, as long as the photo is still clearly recognisable.

If you do not possess any of these, you can apply for a free Voter Authority Certificate but not in time for this week's local elections as the deadline has also passed.

What are the polls saying?

"They might not span the whole UK," said Left Foot Forward, but the 1 May local elections still offer a "critical litmus test" and "all eyes are on whether Reform's bluster holds up in the ballot box".

Politico's latest poll of polls has the party leading nationally on 25%, ahead of Labour on 23% and the Conservatives on 21%.

The Conservatives, who are defending almost two-thirds of the seats that are up for grabs, are "braced for a hammering", said the Financial Times. Reform is "challenging the main rightwing party across many areas" and the Liberal Democrats are "targeting big gains in the south".

Farage's party "could take control of eight councils to gain their first real power-base in local government", said Martin Baxter, founder of Electoral Calculus.

At the same time, the Lib Dems, who are polling around 15% nationally, are looking to build on their success in last year's general election and replace the Conservatives as the natural "party of Middle England".

"The party believes it can become the second largest in local government by surpassing the Conservatives, as well as making gains in areas where voters have become disaffected with Labour since the general election", said London's The Standard.

As for Labour, this will be Keir Starmer's first major test at the ballot box since last year's general election landslide. With traditionally Labour local councils such as Doncaster and Durham forecast to swing to Reform, the narrative that the far-right populist party is simply a problem for the Conservatives will be "shattered", said Conservative Home.

Things could get even worse for Labour if Reform overturns a huge majority to win the Runcorn and Helsby by-election taking place on the same day. With Farage vowing to park his talks on Labour's Red Wall lawn, such a result, The Independent said, would be "disastrous for the government".

There were gasps when James Cleverly was eliminated from the Conservative leadership race yesterday. The shadow home secretary had been the favourite to replace Rishi Sunak, topping the ballot of MPs on Tuesday. But a day later he received only 37 votes, behind Kemi Badenoch on 42 and Robert Jenrick on 41.

"Team Cleverly" has been left with "an entire farmyard's-worth of egg on its face", said Paul Goodman in The Telegraph. There are several theories about what happened as party members are now left to choose between two right-wing candidates.

What did the commentators say?

One "conspiracy theory", said The Times, is that, "buoyed by their candidate's strong performance on Tuesday", Cleverly's team "thought they had enough votes to 'lend' some supporters to Jenrick", thinking a two-man race against him might be easier to win.

One former cabinet minister blamed former defence secretary Grant Shapps, who was "running the numbers" for the Cleverly campaign. "He'll have been a clever dick" but it "clearly backfired", they said. This is something the Cleverly camp has denied.

"Instead of a conspiracy-based effort to sway the contest, what seems more likely is a cock-up," said The Guardian. Although the "immediate suspicion was that something nefarious had been going on", a series of individual MPs were probably "trying to vote in ways they believed might help their candidate", with "unintended consequences". For example, one backer of Tom Tugendhat, who was knocked out of the contest on Tuesday, told reporters they were backing Badenoch in an effort to get Jenrick eliminated.

"This doesn’t need to be organised," another Conservative told The Times. "MPs are quite capable of being mercurial on their own."

All of this means that we have a ballot "that suits nobody, other than perhaps Keir Starmer", said Stephen Bush in the Financial Times. Conservative members will choose "between two flavours of 'we lost because we weren't rightwing enough'", which is "usually something an opposition party tells itself right before it loses another election".

By eliminating Cleverly, MPs have "denied members the chance to vote for someone focused on winning back voters from the Liberal Democrats", said Rachel Cunliffe in The New Statesman. This will "delight Ed Davey".

What next?

We will probably "never know what happened – at least not until Cleverly publishes his memoirs", said Cunliffe. But "what we do know is that the next Tory leader will come from the right of the party". 

The two remaining candidates "actually represent quite different strands of the party". Jenrick's pitch was "more populist in nature" and Badenoch is "offering something different and altogether more modern".

In the longer term, yesterday's result "may make the job of uniting even harder" because "both members and MPs may feel that the right candidate didn't get a proper chance", said Isabel Hardman in The Spectator. "That feeling may grow if life in opposition does not prove the tonic that some in the party thought it would." 

Cleverly could find "that he benefits in the long-term from being the one that got away". He could still prevail in one of the "several" leadership elections that might be required "before the party has a chance of winning again".

And "whoever the Tory members select as leader" this time, there's "still a secret challenger ahead", said Goodman. "Never forget that lurking figure in the shadows, pondering how the eventual winner may also come to grief." Boris Johnson's "hopes of a comeback are evergreen".

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."

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.

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.

The Liberal Democrats' 2024 election strategy so far could be neatly summed up by the famous Oscar Wilde quote: "There's only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."

As the Tories struggle to cut through with voters and Labour emerges from a week-long internal fight over MP selections, the Lib Dems have been on a "part election campaign, part circus" footing, said Sky News.

In the days since the election was announced, leader Ed Davey has been photographed falling off a paddleboard in the Lake District, going down a water slide in Somerset and cycling with his legs akimbo in Wales. While leaving the party and its leader open to ridicule and what The New Statesman called a "low point in the lofty history of British liberalism", the stunts are "very deliberate", said Sky News. They are "designed to force the Lib Dems onto the agenda where it would be easy for them to be overshadowed by Labour and the Tories".

What do the Liberal Democrats stand for?

For decades, the Lib Dems offered "old-fashioned liberalism to those who wanted it", said The Economist. They pioneered the "politics of local issues" and for everyone else "offered a protest vote: they were the 'none-of-the-above party', a superior alternative to spoiling your ballot paper".

In past elections, they have successfully grabbed attention by tapping into currents of dissatisfaction with one or both of the main parties – most notably opposing both the Iraq War and Brexit. 

Kicking off the Lib Dem campaign in the ultra-marginal constituency of Cheltenham, Davey laid out the core pledges to "repair our health and care system, restore the economy, end the sewage scandal and secure a fair deal for people" – the party's campaign slogan.

With no obvious hot-button issue putting them at odds with either Labour or the Tories this time round, the campaign stunts are a bid to draw attention to key party policies. For instance, the paddleboarding incident was tied to tackling England's sewage crisis, while the water slide was supposedly related to plans to put mental health experts in every school by increasing education funding per pupil above the rate of inflation every year.

What policies are they proposing?

The party has announced free personal care for older and disabled people in their homes in a bid to ease the pressure on hospital beds in England. Currently, only people with an income of less than £23,250 can get help with the costs of home care. Davey also wants to introduce a carer's minimum wage, £2 above the standard minimum wage, to attract more people to the sector.

To help with the cost of living, the Lib Dems are proposing a one-off windfall tax on the super-profits of oil and gas producers to help with energy bills. They have pledged to recruit 8,000 more GPs if elected, part of a five-year plan aimed at fulfilling their long-standing ambition to ensure patients can see a GP within seven days.

Like Labour, they plan to scrap the Tories' most controversial anti-immigration measures and use the money saved to tackle people-smuggling, trafficking and modern slavery. They also want to lower the voting age to 16, as well as advocating for proportional representation.

Fairness is also at the centre of the party's push to repair political and economic ties with Europe, said The House, though this does not as yet include calling for a referendum on rejoining the EU. 

Other policies include plans to freeze rail fares and to make 10 English Premier League football matches per season available on free-to-air channels.

This "vibes-based electoral strategy" may pay dividends, said The New Statesman, but it shows the Lib Dems "in their current form are unambitious lightweights".

Like many centre-left parties across the West, their "lack of imagination is cloaked in tweeness", as demonstrated by their plan to tackle Britain's polluted rivers by appointing local environmental experts on water companies' boards rather than the more radical approach of renationalising water companies altogether.

How will they fare in the election?

While the Lib Dems have at times polled over 20% at a general election, the UK's first-past-the-post system means their vote share is too thinly spread across the country to return a large number of MPs to Westminster.

While they are currently hovering just under 10% nationally, "this election – which for many voters is mainly about kicking the government – should see the Lib Dems benefit from tactical voting among Labour supporters in seats where they are the main challengers to the Tories", said The Economist.

A leaked document published by The Independent has revealed that the party is set to launch a massive tactical voting push in more than 50 Tory seats, including  Chancellor Jeremy Hunt's constituency in Godalming and Ash in Surrey.

The initiative, called "Operation 1997" after the 1997 election campaign when the party won 46 seats as a result of tactical voting, will target Labour voters in the so-called Blue Wall and could deliver 51 Lib Dem gains, according to the latest MRP poll by Electoral Calculus.

The Telegraph said the party is specifically "targeting older voters in seats where the number of pensioners being sucked into paying income tax is higher than the Tory majority" and is preparing to "flood these seats with targeted mailings and leaflets".

"There are plenty of votes to be had among traditional low-tax, small-c conservatives who dislike what has happened to the Tory party," said The Economist, "but after a few years in the wilderness" the Liberal Democrats must deal with the problem of voter recognition. "Hence, perhaps, all the clowning around."

The Conservatives could lose well over 1,000 council seats when voters head to the polls next month in the last major verdict on Rishi Sunak's government before the general election.

More than 2,500 council seats in 107 local authorities across England are up for grabs on 2 May. Tory party insiders "have already priced in heavy losses", says The Guardian, with some analyses predicting more than half of existing Conservative seats will change hands.

With MPs safe until the next general election, Conservative councillors are fighting on an electoral battleground that a senior Tory source compared to "the Somme without the generals".

Which elections are taking place?

As well as the local council polls, voters will choose the mayor of London, London Assembly members and 10 other mayors. Voters across England and Wales will also elect 37 police and crime commissioners.

Many local election results will be announced overnight, with more following through the day on Friday 3 May, and a few to be announced over the following weekend. Mayoral and London Assembly results will be declared on Friday and Saturday.

What are the police and crime commissioner elections?

Introduced in 2012, police and crime commissioners (PCCs) are officials elected in England and Wales to ensure that local police forces are efficient, effective and accountable to the public. They are responsible for appointing chief constables and overseeing spending.

PCCs are elected to a four-year term, with no limits on the number of terms they can serve.

Who can vote?

You can use the Electoral Commission's postcode tool to see what elections, if any, are taking place in your area on 2 May.

British citizens, qualifying Commonwealth citizens and those with citizenship of an EU member state are all eligible to vote in local elections, although most EU citizens cannot vote in the general election. You can find out more about these distinctions here.

The deadline for registering to vote in time for the 2024 local elections has passed, but if you want to vote in upcoming elections, you can register using the government's Gov.uk portal. You will need your National Insurance number.

In a major new change, voters in England now need to show photo ID to confirm their identity at polling stations. You can see the list of accepted forms of identification here. The ID document does not need to be in date, as long as the photo is still clearly recognisable.

If you do not possess any of them, you can apply for a free Voter Authority Certificate, although the deadline has now passed to apply for one in time for the 2 May elections.

Who is predicted to win?

Labour is widely expected to claim a "resounding victory" in the 107 council contests, said The Guardian. But the possibility of Starmer's party getting a "clean sweep" in the mayoral polls is "what is really causing jitters in Conservative Party headquarters".

The latest polling gives London's incumbent mayor, Sadiq Khan, a 13-point lead over his Tory rival, Susan Hall, according to a Savanta survey in the Daily Mail. Hall has has "stumbled through gaffe-filled interviews", said The Times, But Labour is reportedly worried that the race will be "tighter than the polls suggest", owing to changes to voter ID requirements and in the first-past-the-post voting system, as well as "resilient Conservative support in outer London".

The Conservatives went into the 2021 local elections six points ahead of Labour, boosted by "the speedy rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine", said polling expert John Curtice in The Telegraph. The then prime minister Boris Johnson saw his party make a net gain of 13 councils and more than 200 council seats, "a rare accomplishment for an incumbent government". 

The outlook now is "very, very different", as the Tories trail Labour by 20 points. However, "not everyone votes in local elections in the same way as they would in a general election", said Curtice, and parties such as the Liberal Democrats and Greens tend to "perform better".

More generally, public "anger" over council tax hikes and service cuts, as a growing number of local authorities face funding crises, "may be reflected at the ballot box", said the BBC.

What is the wider significance?

The results could influence the timing of the general election, which must take place by 28 January 2025, and the strategies adopted by each party.

A Tory wipeout could also leave Sunak battling to retain his premiership. "Qualms" about Sunak's leadership have already been voiced within the party, said The Guardian, and calls for his replacement may become "more public and louder", especially if the Tories lose the mayoral elections in Tees Valley and the West Midlands.

For Starmer, a strong result will put further wind in his sails as he steers a course towards 10 Downing Street. But if Labour fails to live up to expectations, the party's general election campaign might veer in new directions.

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.

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.

Donald Trump has been dominating global headlines yet again, in a week full of woes for politicians on both sides of the Atlantic. 

A New York State judge ruled that the former president fraudulently inflated the value of his properties and assets to banks and investors. The judgment is "essentially the equivalent of the corporate death penalty for the Trump Organization", conservative lawyer George Conway told CNN. 

Yet none of this – nor Trump's four criminal indictments – appear to have dented his decisive lead in the polls for the Republican nomination. He didn't even bother to show up to the second televised candidate debate, choosing instead to deliver a speech at a campaign event in Michigan. 

Meanwhile, the UK's home secretary gave a speech at a right-wing think tank in Washington D.C. in which she argued that the UN's 1951 Refugee Convention had created "incentives" for "absurd and unsustainable" illegal migration. Her comments were widely condemned by refugee charities.

The Liberal Democrats' former leader Tim Farron also came under fire at his party's conference in Bournemouth. Farron was "booed off stage" by disgruntled audience members and ultimately "had his microphone cut off" for going over the maximum time limit, according to the Daily Express.

 As the Tories and Labour prepared for their annual gatherings, some pundits questioned whether the annual party conference season really matters anymore. If presidential candidates don't show up to debates, and party members shun conferences, do politicians' words still matter? Or are the headlines all that count?

To find out how closely you’ve been paying attention to the latest news and global events, put your knowledge to the test with our Quiz of The Week.

1. Taylor Swift attended which NFL match amid rumours of a new romance? 

• Kansas City Chiefs vs. Chicago Bears
• New York Jets vs. New England Patriots
• Seattle Seahawks vs. Carolina Panthers
• Arizona Cardinals vs. Dallas Cowboys

2. Three astronauts returned to Earth this week after how many days in space? 

• 248 
• 302 
• 371 
• 426 

3. A zero-waste restaurant in east London is reportedly serving kebabs made of what? 

• Grasshoppers 
• Squirrel 
• Mouse 
• Pigeon

4. Which would-be Republican presidential nominee referred to the absent Donald Trump as "Donald Duck" during the second GOP debate? 

• Ron DeSantis
• Chris Christie 
• Nikki Haley 
• Vivek Ramaswamy

5. The UK's first consumption room for illegal drugs has been given the go-ahead to open in which city? 

• London 
• Bristol 
• Glasgow 
• Aberdeen

6. Which athlete shattered the women's marathon record last Sunday in Berlin while wearing new £400 "super shoes"? 

• Sheila Chepkirui 
• Brigid Kosgei 
• Magdalena Shauri 
• Tigst Assefa 

7. Which broadcaster suspended commentator Laurence Fox for making "totally inappropriate" comments about a female journalist? 

• The BBC 
• GB News 
• Sky News 
• Channel 4 

8. The 2025 World Exposition fair venue could cost nearly double the original estimate, thanks to high inflation and labour shortages in which country? 

• Argentina
• Germany 
• Japan 
• Estonia 

9. Liberal Democrat party members rejected leader Ed Davey's plans to scrap which pledge? 

• Build 380,000 new homes a year in England 
• Lower UK university tuition fees
• Cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2045 
• Fully electrify Britain's rail network 

10. Brazil's president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva warned fellow world leaders of the risk of another coup in which country? 

• Peru 
• Bolivia 
• Venezuela 
• Guatemala 

1. Kansas City Chiefs vs. Chicago Bears 
Swift watched the Chiefs crush the Bears on Sunday from the private box of Chiefs player Travis Kelce, whom she is rumoured to be dating. This coming-together of "two of the biggest cultural phenomena" in the US "possibly brought in a whole new group of fans" to the NFL, said Fox News.

2. 371 
The crew, an American and two Russians, had prepared to spend 180 days in space, but their original return capsule was hit by space junk while docked to the International Space Station. The resulting coolant leak was only discovered about three months after the crew had left Earth, in December 2022.  

3. Squirrel 
Silo has a menu which "might look like a list of roadkill", ITV News reported, but it is in fact is helping to tackle invasive species. Douglas McMaster, chef and owner of the restaurant, said squirrel was "delicious" and more sustainable than any supermarket fare. For more stories from the stranger side of life, subscribe to our Tall Tales newsletter.  

4. Chris Christie 
Trump, who continues to lead the 2024 polls, skipped Wednesday's debate in California and instead delivered a speech in Michigan. The remaining candidates battled it out at the Ronald Reagan presidential library in Simi Valley, California, with former New Jersey governor calling Trump "afraid" over his absence. 

5. Glasgow 
Proposals for a "safe" consumption room, where users can take drugs under medical supervision, had been discussed for years – but now Scotland's chief public prosecutor has said that users would not be prosecuted for possession while at the facility, allowing the trial to get under way. Glasgow has long had "the worst drug death rate in Europe", said Al Jazeera. 

6. Tigst Assefa 
Ethiopia's Assefa crossed the line in two hours, 11 minutes and 53 seconds, knocking more than two minutes off the previous record set by Kenya's Brigid Kosgei in 2019. Only 48 hours later, Adidas put the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 1 trainers on the market – only for the stock to sell out within hours.  

7. GB News 
In a live interview with host Dan Wootton, the actor and political activist said of political journalist Ava Evans: "Show me a self-respecting man who would like to climb into bed with that." Wootton has also been suspended, after Fox released a screenshot of a private conversation between the two seemingly making light of the incident. 

8. Japan 
Organisers said the price of constructing the venue, on a man-made island in Osaka Bay, has risen to ¥230 billion (£1.2 billion) – potentially putting the six-month showcase of exhibitions in jeopardy. To find out more, listen to The Week Unwrapped podcast. 

9. Build 380,000 new homes a year in England 
Davey had previously said he wanted to drop the pledge in favour of local targets focused on council or social homes, but his plan was "foiled by a group of young activists" at the party's national conference in Bournemouth, said Sky News, who argued the policy was not sufficiently ambitious. The vote has been a "blow to Davey's authority", said The Guardian. 

10. Guatemala 
Nearly 70 years after the Central American country's first democratically elected government was toppled, there are warnings that the son of its first democratically elected president – surprise presidential election winner Bernardo Arévalo – may be facing the same fate, with electoral officials suspending his centre-left Semilla party. For more stories from around the world, sign up to our weekly Global Digest newsletter. 

The authority of Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey's ship has been dented this week after party members rejected his plans to scrap its national housing target.

Davey had previously announced he wanted to drop a pledge to build 380,000 new homes a year in England in favour of local targets focused on new council or social homes. 

But his plan was "foiled by a group of young activists", Sky News reported, who put forward an amendment after arguing that Davey's policy was "not ambitious enough".

The Young Liberals ultimately gained the support of the majority of members at the party's national conference in Bournemouth.

The 'prehistory' of the conference 

The last time the Liberal Democrats gathered in Bournemouth for their conference the place was "giddy with excitement", said Stephen Bush in the Financial Times (FT), as "defectors" from both Labour and the Conservatives hoped to reignite the party in 2019.

But the attempt to woo back voters in that year's election proved disastrous, when the party lost seats, including that of their leader, Jo Swinson.

The December 2019 election "is a vital part of what you might call the prehistory of this year's conference", Bush added, as Davey has been determined to "shed and downplay" any policy that could turn off Conservative voters. 

To emphasise his point, the leader "wheeled out" his predecessor Tim Farron, said The Spectator's Steerpike, and he "decried" the housing proposal as "pure Thatcherism".

Farron told the conference the "vague and vacuous" housing targets would not work, as they achieve "naff all". He urged conference to reject the amendment proposed by the Young Liberals.

But he was "booed" by disgruntled members, said the Daily Express, and ultimately "had his microphone cut off having spoken for the maximum duration allowed".  

Bruising defeat

The vote has been a "blow to Davey's authority", said The Guardian, in the "first sign of internal pushback" against the leader's ideas.

For some, it has led to questions about the Lib Dem leader, while others are uncertain what the party stands for, if it cannot agree on key issues.

The party is "being coy about who they really are", said Suzanne Moore for The Telegraph, a tactic that "never plays well in the polls". 

While many are "sick of the two-party system", the notion that the "Lib Dems have nothing to offer" having been so "badly burnt" during their coalition government experience, could well put voters off supporting Davey at the next election.

What's the plan now?

Although the aim of the Liberal Democrats is to overtake the SNP and reclaim their position as the third largest party in Westminster, it is Davey's refusal to state the party's official position on key issues that has been perplexing for some.

This "hasn't gone unnoticed", said Sky News' Beth Rigby, particularly on Brexit and the question of rejoining the EU.

Davey's future relationship with the Labour Party is equally unclear. He has refused to be drawn on the prospect of a coalition, "trying to squirm out of a tricky answer" when pressed, Rigby added. Even so his "non answer speaks volumes".

Coalition has not been favourable for the party in the past, but the prospect of entering government once again has "whetted the appetites" of the party faithful and those businesses "who have sniffed out a scent of power", said the BBC.

Ultimately, the Liberal Democrats will need to "think about their relationship with Labour", especially as the pair's "non-aggression pact has broken down", The Observer's Andrew Rawnsley stated. If either hopes to be successful, they will need to "kiss, make up and refocus" on their common goal – "removing as many Conservative MPs as possible". 

Victory for Yimbys 

Although housing may not be a policy on which the next election is won or lost, it will continue to be a major talking point amid the cost-of-living crisis.

On this particular issue, "Yimbys beat Nimbys", said Politico. But the party may yet be able to unite around the housing goal and put its internal differences aside. When asked by the political website about the defeat on the conference floor, Farron said: "You always want to win, but I'm a Liberal Democrat so I'm kind of used to it." 

Another party conference season has kicked off amid the usual fanfare, but do these annual gatherings really matter anymore?  

Dubbed "the Glastonbury of the political calendar", autumn's conference season gives politicians and party members a chance to "discuss the state of the party and its future", said Anoosh Chakelian in The New Statesman in 2017. The Liberal Democrats' conference in Bournemouth is currently grabbing the spotlight, before the Tories take to the stage next week in Manchester, followed by Labour's gathering, in Liverpool. 

Each conference "works slightly differently", wrote Chakelian, but "all are covered by the media and result in policy announcements (and, with any luck, massive rows)".

'Glastonbury for weirdos'

A more cutting nickname for party conference season is "Glastonbury for weirdos", said the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg, writing from the SNP's event last year. Speaking as a "fully paid-up political nerd myself", she continued, "there is an element of truth in that comic description" of these conferences. 

But while they "are a display of our political tribes like no other", with quirky rituals and eccentric attendees, party conferences also act as "important way-markers for our politics". 

Kuenssberg argued that the political gatherings serve as "health checks on the parties that seek to govern us", and often "show us moments when flaws are horribly exposed or progress revealed". What happens can "shape the conversation that ultimately decides who runs the country", by giving "millions an insight into the parties who seek to govern us".

'Risks worth the rewards'?

Party conferences were once places where ordinary party members "could get closer to their political heroes and have more influence over their policies than they ever could in Westminster", said The Economist. But "no longer".

 Today, "relatively few" party members attend, and policymaking has taken a back seat to media spectacle. The focus has shifted "from the experience of party members to the impression left on voters scanning the news headlines". Indeed, the paper added, "the big parties now treat the party conference primarily as an opportunity to grab the media’s attention for a few days and sell themselves to the country".

In an era when both the Labour Party and the Conservatives are "overseen by highly centralised and controlling operations", said the Financial Times's Whitehall editor Lucy Fisher, annual party conferences have become a "curious anomaly".  

These gatherings can pose a genuine management challenge for party leaders, as rival factions seize the opportunity to ambush party leadership with "malicious briefings" and make "eye-catching, controversial" public remarks. And party activists complain about the increasing costs involved in attending and about being overlooked in favour of companies and the media.

Ultimately, wrote Fisher, "party conferences take place partly because they always have done". They may make "some cash" for our political parties, "but they also leave many members feeling resentful and soak up endless time and effort for little political gain". 

Which begs the question for party leaders of "whether the risks are worth the rewards".

'125,000 Hong Kongers have come to the UK. Where are they?'

Cindy Yu for The Spectator

"In Britain, East Asians are a nearly invisible demographic," writes Cindy Yu in The Spectator. "Very few are represented on screen, in politics or at the head of major companies," she adds. "Yet, since more people have arrived from Hong Kong in the past three years than came from the Caribbean in the first ten years of the Windrush, that will change," says Yu. "There is no collective name for them yet, but they’ll make their mark in the UK just as the Windrush generation did."

Read more

'Lib Dems are looking like kingmakers again'

Patrick Maguire for The Times

"Of the 91 seats in which Lib Dems finished second in 2019, 80 are Tory-held, almost all of them in the south," writes Patrick Maguire in The Times. That means Ed Davey will speak at the Lib Dems conference "with one person in mind: a middle-aged Conservative voter in rural England". But Labour should be wary too as "Davey will criticise Starmer for failing to commit to electoral reform", which Maguire says could be "the announcement of his party's price tag in a hung parliament".

Read more

'Since the Queen died, I've struggled to see what the point is of the Royal Family any more. Is that wrong?'

Jan Moir for the Daily Mail 

"Since the Queen died, I've struggled to see what the point is of the Royal Family any more. Is that wrong?" asks Jan Moir in the Daily Mail. "Look at the King and Queen in France this week," she adds. "If questions are raised about the value of their individual and collective roles within the UK, then the issue of their significance gets even more crucial when they venture abroad," Moir argues.

Read more

'Rupert Murdoch’s retirement marks the end of an era'

The Telegraph editorial board

"Although his media empire also includes TV channels, Rupert Murdoch has always been at heart a newspaper man," writes The Telegraph in its leader article. "People may balk at the brashness of some of Murdoch's papers or question the influence he exerted over politicians," the paper adds. "But like the newspaper barons of yore, he has been a towering figure in the British media and his decision to relinquish control of his firms after 70 years marks the end of an era."

Read more

The Tories, Labour and the Liberal Democrats are all claiming positives after each party achieved a dramatic victory in yesterday’s by-elections.

Labour overturned a 20,137 Conservative majority in Selby and Ainsty and the Liberal Democrats took the seat of Somerton and Frome, winning by 11,008 votes.

But despite those thumping Conservative defeats, “the blow is softened a bit by the surprise result in former PM Boris Johnson’s old seat”, said the BBC. The Tories just held on to Uxbridge and South Ruislip with a significantly reduced majority of 495 votes.

Both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer will “try to convince their parties that the results give cause for optimism”, said Sky News. But what are the main takeaways?

Tories still in trouble…

The Uxbridge result may “raise questions about the potential fragility of support for Labour more broadly”, polling expert John Curtice told the BBC, but Labour’s win in Selby shows “the tide is still a long way out for the Conservatives” and “they still have an awful long way to go” if they want to win the next general election.

Pollster James Johnson agreed, telling Politico’s London Playbook that “Selby is arguably the most informative result of the night when we think about how things might develop in a general election”.

Last night’s results confirm that the Tories are “heading for an almighty drubbing”, wrote Stephen Daisley for The Spectator. “It’s now a matter of shoring up as many seats as they can,” he added. “Going by their performance last night, they have a job of work on their hands.”

… but Sunak has ‘slim hope’

While “it would be wrong to say that it was anything but a terrible night” for Sunak, the PM will believe he still has a “path to victory” – or “at least to avoid humiliation”, said ITV’s Robert Peston.

The Uxbridge result “reinforces his conviction that if only he could persuade voters they would be financially better off sticking with the Tories, the gap with Labour would narrow”, added Peston.

Writing for The Spectator, the former UKIP MEP Patrick O’Flynn said that Sunak “may have spotted a shaft of sunlight breaking through the gun-metal grey that was previously threatening to engulf him”.

Ulez is a threat to Labour

Labour’s failure to win in Uxbridge is being blamed on the expansion of the ultra-low emissions zone (Ulez) in the capital under Labour mayor Sadiq Khan. The mayor “has lost Labour this election”, said the victorious Tory, Steve Tuckwell.

“Gleeful Tories” and “sweary Labour folk” are “dumping the blame” on the expansion of the zone and on Khan, agreed London Playbook. A Labour aide told the newsletter that “arrogant f*cking Sadiq cared more about his book launch than the party”, while an official Labour statement admitted that Ulez had been a “concern” for voters.

The expansion of Ulez, due to come into operation at the end of August, has “gone down badly with voters”, said Sky News, with the public regarding it as a “Labour-imposed tax on those suffering most from the cost of living crisis”. The issue is now expected to dominate at the London mayoral election next May.

Cost of living dominates

Concern about the economy loomed large in voters’ decisions, wrote Paul Waugh, chief political commentator for the i news site, suggesting it will be the key background at the next general election.

The Uxbridge result is “actually united with the Somerton and Selby results by a common factor”, wrote Waugh – “it’s the cost of living, stupid”. While in west London, the economic climate encouraged people to turn against the prospect of Ulez charges, in the West Country and Yorkshire seats, the “feedback on the doorsteps” was that “mortgage misery” and “soaring food and energy bills” were the dominant concerns.

Lib Dems are ‘cock-a-hoop’

Sarah Dyke, the victorious Lib Dem in Somerset, said the victory “shows once and for all the Liberal Democrats are back in the West Country”. Lib Dem “spinners” are “boasting” there are 15 seats in the region with smaller Tory majorities over Lib Dems than was the case in Somerton and Frome, said London Playbook.

The Lib Dems are “definitively and importantly back as the important third force in English politics”, agreed Peston, and are “rampant in the West Country again”.

However, the Green Party, which came third in all three by-elections, laid a claim to be the new third force in British politics. “We were the only party to increase our vote share in all three contests”, Adrian Ramsay, the Green co-leader, told The Guardian.

Westminster is abuzz with talk of coalition governments again after recent local election results suggested Labour could fall short of an overall majority at the general election next year.

Keir Starmer refused to rule out a coalition with the Lib Dems but has said he would not go into partnership with the SNP.

A survey by YouGov for Times Radio found that while a Labour majority was the preferred election outcome for most voters, many were also open to a coalition.

Here are some of the arguments for and against such a set-up.

1. Pro: tempers extreme views

Coalitions on the continent are often lauded for being “broad churches” that temper extreme views and deliver compromise. Analysing the “Grand Coalition” of left and right that governed Germany in the 2010s, DW said it was “a good instrument for turning political consensus into reality”.

In the UK, between 2010 and 2015 the Lib Dems repeatedly attempted to portray their role in the Coalition government as a mediating force on the Conservatives. The Lib Dems’ Danny Alexander, who was chief secretary to the Treasury during the coalition years, claimed his party “anchored economic policy in the centre ground and have constantly had to keep the Tories reined in”.

2. Con: waters down pledges

A party’s manifesto forms the cornerstone of its time in government, but a major problem with coalitions is that pledges presented in the run-up to election day are rendered unrealistic in the horse-trading that follows.

In a country like the UK, which is used to long periods of majority single-party rule, there is a perception that weak and indecisive coalition governments lead to the worst-of-both-worlds and put a block on big legislative progress. There is an argument to be made that neither the trade union reforms of Margaret Thatcher nor Tony Blair’s raft of improvements to public services could have been carried through as part of a coalition.

Things can also work the other way. In 2015, David Cameron pledged to hold an in-out referendum on the UK’s EU membership, reportedly believing he would fail to secure a majority and could ditch the manifesto commitment as part of a new coalition deal with the Lib Dems. Needless to say things turned out very differently.

3. Pro: better than minority

The closest the UK has got to a minority government in the last 50 years was from 2017-19 when Theresa May was forced into a confidence-and-supply arrangement with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) after her decision to call a snap election backfired disastrously. What followed was two years of political stasis and stagnation that came to be defined by the “Brexit forever wars”, dominated by endless parliamentary manoeuvring that saw legislation repeatedly fail to pass.

The experience appears to have resonated with the public, with 46% of respondents in the recent Times Radio YouGov poll saying hung parliaments were bad because they led to weak government, compared to just 27% who thought they were good because they forced parties to work together. In the event of a hung parliament, 42% of voters said that parties should form a coalition in order to provide stable government.

4. Con: dangers for smaller parties

“The Lib Dems’ demise will become a cautionary tale,” predicted FT Adviser after the party was all but wiped out in the 2015 election, slumping from over 20% of the vote share in 2010 to just 8% and losing all but 11 of its MPs. “The smaller party was ruthlessly punished for ‘propping up’ the Tories.”

As is often the case with smaller parties in coalitions, the Lib Dems were scapegoated for unpopular policies – such as the introduction of university tuition fees – while the Tories took credit for positives such as reviving the economy. It has taken nearly a decade for the party to begin to repair the damage to its reputation and it still remains way off its pre-coalition standing.

5. Pro: greater representation

“There are a lot of reasons to think coalitions are good,” said Professor Nic Cheeseman in South Africa’s Mail and Guardian in 2019. “They bring more parties into power which, in ethnically and racially divided societies, often means that they give a wider range of communities a taste of government. In a dominant-party system like South Africa, where the ANC has consistently won a large majority of the vote, this can bring into government parties that would otherwise be permanently locked out of power.”

In his book “Coalitional Presidentialism in Comparative Perspective”, Cheeseman conducted hundreds of interviews with MPs across nine countries with experience of coalition government. In every country bar one, a majority of MPs agreed that coalitions had “permitted the representation of diverse social interests” and “enhanced the quality of public policies”. Coalitions can also open up a wider talent pool of politicians and experts to serve in government.

In the UK, coalitions or other power-sharing arrangements already happen at a local level, where there are currently 91 district councils outside London with “no overall control” (almost one-third of local authorities), up from 75 before the most recent local elections. “This has not created instability,” said New Camden Journal. “The bins still get emptied and decisions are made, just usually with support from councillors outside of the largest political group”.

6. Con: held hostage by smaller parties

At the 2015 general election the Conservatives under Cameron successfully deployed fears of a “coalition of chaos” in which Labour would be beholden to the Lib Dems and the SNP. The campaign claimed then-Labour leader Ed Miliband would be forced to call another Scottish independence referendum in exchange for backing from the SNP. While this ultimately failed to happen after the Tories won a surprise majority, something similar happened during May’s time in office, when the DUP often wielded disproportionate influence on government policy by threatening to pull its support entirely to win concessions.

Ed Davey set hares running over a possible Liberal Democrat-Labour coalition by hinting recently that he might be prepared to do a post-election deal with Keir Starmer in the event of a hung parliament.

Asked by reporters if he would rule out doing a deal with Labour if no party wins an overall majority at the next general election, Davey "dodged the question", said the Daily Mail, replying simply: "I'm focused on the general election."

Former Tory minister Maria Caulfield warned that Davey was "keeping the door open to a grubby backroom deal with the Labour Party".

A new YouGov survey of 14,000 people has forecast a 120-seat majority for Labour if the election was held immediately, but there are still several months to go before any ballot takes place. If the opposition party falls short of a majority, could a Labour-Lib Dem coalition be on the cards? And would it look anything like the 2010-15 Conservative-Lib Dem coalition?

What would a Labour-Lib Dem coalition mean?

According to Maria Caulfield, the coming together of Labour and the Liberal Democrats would mean reneging "on the referendum result and Brexit".

"If voters vote for the Lib Dems they'll get Keir Starmer and we know he's been having negotiations on his trips to Europe, and that's what the Lib Dems would want on the table – another referendum or a much closer relationship with the EU," Caulfield said. 

A Labour-Lib Dem deal would usher in a "coalition of wokery", said former Labour MP Tom Harris in The Telegraph. In recent years, Davey's party has "transformed from a pragmatic vehicle for change into a dogmatic party of the Left", Harris said.

The problem for Davey is that he has already made it clear that there are no imaginable circumstances in which Lib Dem MPs would help the Tories return to power, nor would they ever vote to bring down a minority Labour government.

Speaking to the Sky News political editor Beth Rigby at the Liberal Democrats annual conference in September, Davey ruled out any agreement with the Conservatives, saying his party could "play a critical role" in removing them from power.

Comments such as this put all the power in Labour's hands, noted Harris, and "why should Starmer concede anything to Ed Davey's party at all?"

What happened when the last coalition came together?

In 2010, a hung parliament meant that 57 Lib Dem MPs held the whip hand in negotiations. The Tories were the largest party with 306 MPs to Labour's 258 and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg had promised to talk first to the largest party.

Clegg and David Cameron held a now famous press conference in the Downing Street Rose Garden, marking the first coalition government in the country since 1945. "The bonhomie on display in the splendour of the Rose Garden ushered in a new era of coalition politics," said Sebastian Whale in Politics Home. But it was short-lived, eventually resulting in "increased partisanship and polarisation".

It also led to devastating poll results for the Lib Dems in 2015, with the loss of nearly 50 MPs, an event that left them "scarred", according to The Guardian.

What are the potential pitfalls?

"England does not love coalitions," said Benjamin Disraeli in 1852 – a statement with which some Lib Dems might well sympathise. While Cameron secured a surprise victory in 2015, the Lib Dems were "eviscerated", returning just eight MPs, said Politics Home. 

While there are many reasons for this – the Lib Dems' disastrous climbdown on tuition fees is widely cited as one – junior partners often tend to do less well in coalitions, a trend noted by The Washington Post. They can't enact much of what they promised before an election, nor can they sufficiently distinguish themselves from their more powerful partners once in government. 

The coalition proved problematic for the Tories too. "Party loyalty broke down because a great many Conservative MPs at one stage or another felt this isn't really a Conservative government," Bernard Jenkin, a Tory MP, told Politics Home.

What are the benefits?

But there are also benefits in a coalition – both large and small parties have a chance to participate in government and hold important ministerial positions, with the opportunity for new ideas to be floated around the table. 

"Coalitions may not be strong governments in the old sense," said Martin Kettle in The Guardian. "But they work. They get things done. They endure – especially when a prime minister or chancellor cannot dissolve parliament." And the alternative – a weak minority government fighting for survival – is not always preferable.

On the issue of the EU referendum, Tory MP David Gauke said the Lib Dems improved the government and helped "temper" the Tory right. "It meant the Conservative Party wasn't beholden to its right wing, which turned out to be a problem once there was a small Conservative majority," he added.

What do the Lib Dems want?

Labour and the Lib Dems agree on many issues, such as the environment, boosting public services and undoing some of the damage caused by Brexit. The Lib Dems, staunchly pro-EU, could attempt to force Labour into agreeing to another national vote on the UK's relationship with the 27-nation bloc in exchange for its support, reported the Daily Express.

There is also the matter of electoral reform. The party would hope to get rid of the existing first-past-the-post voting system and replace it with proportional representation, something that is "very important to the Liberal Democrats", its leader, Ed Davey, told the BBC last year.

So will it happen?

Labour appears to be hoping to take power at the next general election outright, said The Guardian. A Labour source told the paper that victory at last year’s Mid Bedfordshire by-election, where the party saw off a strong Lib Dem challenge to take a former Conservative seat, showed there were now "no no-go areas for us".

Still, Starmer and Davey have both been keen to leave the door open for a coalition. Meanwhile, the Tories will be hoping that talk of a Lib Dem-Labour pact will strengthen their hand by raising the spectre of "a coalition of chaos". A Starmer-Davey government would be more like a "coalition of tedium", one Westminster insider told Politico.

Westminster is abuzz with fresh talk of Conservative MPs jumping ship and defecting to Labour.

The Sunday Times reported that “at least half a dozen Tory MPs” are talking about crossing the floor, “according to insiders in Sir Keir Starmer’s party”. The Telegraph’s Whitehall correspondent Tony Diver said “three male Conservatives” from the so-called Red Wall intake of 2019 were in “formal discussions” about joining the opposition. And The Guardian’s Jessica Elgot said one was in “advanced discussions”, while another was in “close talks with a Labour MP”.

Politico London Playbook’s Eleni Courea cautioned that “Westminster has a tendency to get carried away by this kind of thing”. A report by The Mail on Sunday last October that three Labour MPs were considering defecting to the Tories “never came to anything”, and “generally the numbers that get bandied about are over-inflated”, Courea wrote.

But party switches do happen and can have significant repercussions, as well as offering lessons to would-be rebels. According to Reuters, a total of 167 MP defections occurred between 1979 and 2019, including 62 in the three years following the Brexit vote. Here are some of the most recent defections.

Christian Wakeford (Conservative to Labour)

Wakeford took the Bury South seat from Labour at the 2019 general election by just 402 votes. But he then crossed the floor to join the opposition in January in protest over Partygate – the first Tory defector to Labour since Quentin Davies in 2007. BBC political correspondent Iain Watson reported that Wakefield had been plotting his switch for “four months, during which his discontent with his own party had simmered”. And “it was he who had first approached Labour four months ago, and not vice versa. The party immediately saw his worth.”

However, in a sign of the contempt in which many MPs hold defectors, Wakeford is being blamed for the current briefings. According to Politico’s Courea, an unnamed MP told colleagues in a WhatsApp group that “these ‘defections’ only exist in the confines of the underpants of the member for Bury South, in a desperate bid to get a shred of credibility with his new whips”.

Phillip Lee (Conservative to Lib Dem)

Amid the political deadlock of Brexit, the pro-Remain Tory MP for Bracknell dramatically defected to the Lib Dems in September 2019. In what The Guardian called “a carefully stage-managed manoeuvre”, Lee walked across the floor of the Commons chamber as Boris Johnson addressed MPs.

Lee’s switch wiped out the prime minister’s majority in Parliament. But some Lib Dem members quit in protest after voicing concerns about Lee’s voting record and views on social issues including equal marriage and HIV-positive immigrants.

The former junior justice minister failed to win re-election as the Lib Dem candidate in Wokingham shortly after his defection. Pink News said his defeat, to incumbent Conservative MP Sir John Redwood, came “as a relief to many LGBT+ Lib Dems members”, after Lee’s “questionable views on LGBT+ rights threw the party into chaos when he was admitted”.

Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless (Conservative to UKIP)

Long-time Eurosceptic Carswell became UKIP’s first ever MP after defecting from the Conservatives in August 2014. He immediately called a by-election and won a new mandate from his Clacton constituency.

Carswell was quickly followed across the chamber by Reckless, who became UKIP’s second directly elected MP by winning a by-election in Rochester and Strood.

The New Statesman’s George Eaton said that “as well as being an obvious gift to Labour, as any defection is, Reckless’s move will also help its efforts to ‘Toryfy’ Ukip, which has begun to make advances in Labour territory”.

In an article for The Independent, then UKIP leader Nigel Farage hailed both former Tories as “heroes” and predicted more defections would follow. That prediction proved incorrect and Reckless lost his seat in the 2015 general election.

And both he and Carswell quit UKIP in 2017. Yet experts have argued that their defections to Farage’s then party significantly shifted the political narrative, legitimising UKIP and helping to trigger the Brexit vote.

Change UK

At the other end of the political (and success) spectrum was the doomed mass defection by pro-Remain MPs to what would become known as Change UK.

The Independent’s Jon Sharman reported that “shockwaves rippled through Westminster” when 11 MPs from Labour and the Conservatives quit en mass in February 2019 to form the centrist Independent Group For Change, which later changed its name. High-profile members of the new party included Tory MP Anna Soubry and former Labour leadership hopeful Chuka Umunna.

Yet the group was beset by policy and logistical difficulties as the members struggled to merge their widely different political views into a coherent policy platform.

After all 11 MPs lost their seats at the December 2019 general election, the party officially disbanded. In a letter to members, Soubry wrote: “Whilst there is clearly a need for massive change in British politics... a longer term realignment will have to take place in a different way.”

According to The Guardian’s Tim Adams, “the new ideals of consensual politics did not work in the heat of media scrutiny of a campaign”. In fact, amid the clash of egos, “far from modelling a new politics, the group started to look like they had brought with them the ingrained habits of rats in a sack”, he added.

Gang of Four (Labour to SDP)

Although not technically a defection, the 1981 breaking away from Labour of the so-called Gang of Four – Bill Rodgers, Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins and David Owen – triggered a political earthquake.

The group quit and formed the Social Democratic Party in protest against Labour’s anti-European stance. The move posed a very real threat to both Labour and the Conservatives, in part because of the high profiles of the defectors, all four of whom had served in the cabinet. Jenkins was a former home secretary, while Owen had been foreign secretary.

Yet despite a surge in public support for the SDP, the party won just 23 seats, in an alliance with the Lib Dems, in the 1983 general election. The splitting of the anti-Tory vote also allowed Margaret Thatcher to win 61% of seats on just 42% of the vote, “helping ensure 18 years of unbroken Conservative government”, said The Telegraph.

As pressure mounts on Boris Johnson in the wake of the Partygate scandal, No. 10 is reportedly targeting a specific demographic to keep the PM in office: “Waitrose woman”.

According to Politico’s London Playbook, Downing Street thinks “winning over” this type of voter “is fundamental to its strategy to keep Johnson afloat”.

It describes her as “the mythical middle-class female voter who may not have been a fan of Brexit or gone in for Johnson’s populist red wall appeal, definitely doesn’t look kindly upon Partygate, and might usually vote Tory but is now considering the Lib Dems”.

Following the likes of “Essex Man”, who personified the type of median voter used to help explain the electoral successes of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, or “Mondeo Man”, who was identified as the sort of voter Labour needed to win back power in the 1990s, “Waitrose woman” could similarly come to define Johnson’s tenure and whether he can win the next general election.

Risk to the ‘Blue Wall’

Amid a “lurch to the right” that has added to the anger of rebel Conservative MPs, The Guardian has reported “the dismay over Johnson’s premiership is worsening among Tories in so-called ‘Blue Wall’ seats at risk of losing them to the Lib Dems”, as well as “Red Wall” marginals where they have narrow majorities over Labour.

“Traditionally Conservative, prosperous, well-educated, generally Remain voting,” wrote former Tory MP David Gauke in The New Statesman, these are the areas in which the Tory majorities were often smaller in 2019 than they were in 2015.

Writing in the wake of May’s local election results which saw swathes of Tory councillors lose their seats to the Lib Dems, Gauke said: “If one accepts the view that our politics is realigning (and I do), Conservative losses here might signify not just evidence of mid-term blues but something more fundamental: the Tory retreat from its customary stronghold in south-east England.”

The re-emergence of the Lib Dems

Reaping the benefits of disillusionment with the Conservatives in their traditional heartland are the Liberal Democrats, who finally appear to be emerging from the electoral wilderness they have inhabited since their near wipeout in 2015 following their coalition years in government.

There is also a sense that traditional Tory areas and values have been abandoned by the current leadership. “Many voters who have always lent the Tories their trust feel that southern rural areas have suffered at the expense of ‘levelling up’,” reported The Telegraph, referring to Johnson’s much-touted plan to improve high streets and fortunes in neglected northern areas traditionally represented by Labour.

By-election High Noon

A key test of the threat posed to the “Blue Wall” comes next month, when voters head to the polls in the Tiverton and Honiton by-election.

“A sprawling, largely rural constituency in Devon may feel a million miles from the machinations of Westminster but next month this agricultural heartland will find itself at the centre of the UK’s political universe,” said The Independent.

Vacated by Neil Parish, who resigned as MP after admitting watching pornography in the House of Commons, the Devon constituency was won in 2019 with a Conservative majority of 24,000 votes.

The Parish scandal and a recent shift of Conservative voters towards the Liberal Democrats mean the seat is now considered marginal, reported The Telegraph. The Lib Dem campaign in the constituency is expected to focus on policy areas in which the Conservatives are weak in southern seats, including tax increases and protections for “the rural way of life”, added the paper.

Were the Tories to lose in Tiverton and Honiton as well as seeing the Wakefield by-election go to Labour on the same day, then it may well mark a tipping point for many Conservative MPs, and signal the beginning of the end for the prime minister.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats are in talks over an informal “non-aggression” pact where they will concentrate their resources at the next general election on ousting Conservative MPs rather than fighting each other, it has emerged.

The two parties have “rejected any talk of a formal general election pact”, The Times reported. But are considering striking a deal as there are “only a handful of three-way marginals where either the Tories, Lib Dems or Labour could realistically win”.

According to the Financial Times, Keir Starmer has told colleagues that his party must “ruthlessly focus” resources on its target seats in the election, meaning it will put up only a “minimal campaign” in most of the Lib Dems’ top 30 target seats.

The overwhelming priority

Senior Labour sources told The Times that due to its “limited resources”, the party has concluded that it should target campaign spending only on seats where it has a realistic chance of defeating the Tories.

Meanwhile, Lib Dem figures have said that “in 2019 it came second to the Tories in about 90 seats and its priority would be to target ‘dozens’ of these constituencies”, the paper added. A number of these “were considered safe Lib Dem seats before the losses they suffered after being in coalition with the Conservatives”.

A Starmer ally told the FT that “if both parties put resources into where they are most likely to win, you end up with more Labour seats and more Lib Dem seats”.

A Lib Dem strategist added that “if Labour and the Liberal Democrats spend all their time and money trying to beat each other it’s really not good for progressive politics”. Both “need to fight in the areas where we can win and that is the overwhelming priority”.

What impact could it have?

Reports of a pact will not come as a surprise to everyone. Writing on The Times’ Red Box, political reporter Patrick Maguire said the arrangement was Westminster’s “worst-kept secret” even though Labour are “still manfully denying it is anything but coincidence”.

Some would argue that this sort of agreement has been in place for recent by-elections.

In the Batley and Spen by-election, the Lib Dem campaign was “virtually invisible”, the FT said. And Labour gave the Lib Dems a “clear run” in the North Shropshire and Chesham and Amersham polls.

At the general election, expected in 2024, an “informal Lib-Lab non-aggression pact” would leave the Lib Dems to lead the anti-Tory fight in many southern seats, while Labour would focus on winning back “red wall” seats in the north and midlands.

Meanwhile, senior Tories are concerned that this arrangement will make the party even more vulnerable to the rising threat of the Lib Dems.

“Conservative voters and Lib Dem voters are not too dissimilar and the Tories have grown increasingly aware of that,” one senior Tory MP told the FT, adding that “there is a certain type of voter who will feel alienated by ‘partygate’ and the emphasis on red wall voters” and “might just switch to the Lib Dems”.

The paper crunched the numbers and found that if the Lib Dems were to win 15 of their target Tory seats, it would reduce the Tory’s 77-seat majority by 30, “considerably reducing the scale of the challenge facing Starmer in clawing his way to power”.

Another consequence of the pact could be an increased likelihood of a post-election “confidence and supply” deal in a hung parliament between the Labour and the Lib Dems, the paper added. This could see the Lib Dems agree to prop up a Labour government and support its Budget in exchange for specific policies.

The news could also have implications north of the border, according to one of the UK’s most prominent psephologists. Professor John Curtice told The National that Starmer’s “non-aggression” pact with the Liberal Democrats suggests that the party knows it may not win back its historic Scottish strongholds.

He predicted that Labour could therefore snub the Scottish National Party’s voters as it concedes defeat in Scotland and focuses on wooing English Brexiteers instead.

1. Are we witnessing the twilight of the woke?

Tim Stanley in The Telegraph

on an anti-woke culture secretary

“Political correctness is losing its grip,” cheered Tim Stanley in The Telegraph in the wake of Nadine Dorries’ appointment as culture secretary. An “advantage of having a columnist in No 10” is that Boris Johnson has “upset everyone under the sun, but has learnt the best way to handle an angry letter is to put it in the bin”. If the PM ignores Twitter it “becomes Angela Rayner in a broom cupboard screaming for people to resign”. There has been a “liberating realisation” that Tory ministers needn’t quit “because they’ve upset four people on Twitter” and that a government can “confront the Left via legislation”. Heralding what he feels may be the “twilight of the woke”, Stanley welcomes steps to “protect free speech in universities and put the brakes on decolonisation”, and the government’s order for broadcasters to produce “distinctly ‘British’ content”. Dorries’ promotion “is not a two fingers up to the culture industry”, he says, “but the direction of travel”.

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2. Nadine Dorries will monster the arts

Sarah Ditum on Unherd

on the perfect bogeyman

“For years now, people in the arts have been wishing for the culture brief to go to someone who is actually interested in culture,” wrote Sarah Ditum on Unherd. This comes after a range of recent office-holders, from “PR man” Jeremy Hunt to Matt Hancock, “whose passion for the arts reached the ecstatic heights of quite liking Galway Girl by Ed Sheeran (in 2018, that was the most intimate thing any of us knew about Hancock, and what a blessed time it was)”. So, for the arts world, Dorries “is the thing outside”. She writes books, she’s been a primetime star and “she was one of the first MPs to be active online, and started blogging in the noughties, around the time David Cameron was still making woeful ‘tweet’/twat’ puns”. Dorries “could hardly be better credentialed”, said Ditum, but at the same time she has an “undoubted capacity to turn every minor dispute into a flame war”, be it the licence fee or culture wars. “The arts world will be unable to resist responding with passion, fury and polarisation,” concluded Ditum. “Dorries is the perfect bogeyman, an irresistibly perfect enemy: she’s exactly the thing they wished for.”

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3. What’s the point of the Lib Dems? Judging by Ed Davey’s speech it’s a question he still can’t answer

Ian Dunt in The i

on an eerie silence

“What’s the point of the Liberal Democrats?” asked Ian Dunt. Having heard the speech by leader Sir Ed Davey at this year's party conference, the i news columnist feels that he still can’t answer the question. During the coalition years, Dunt reminded us, the party “embraced the right-wing laissez-faire model” but mainstream opinion is now “largely accepting the need for extensive state intervention in the economy”. Dunt wondered where the party stands on this spectrum now. “Liberalism is facing a battle for its life,” he declared, as a “global wave of nationalist politics” threatens liberal principles. Britain needs a “vibrant, proud liberal voice”, added Dunt, but “there is only an eerie and despairing silence – the product of a leadership which does not have the bravery to stand up for its values or the capacity to articulate them”.

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4. Australia is making a risky bet on the US

Sam Roggeveen in The New York Times

on the trilateral defence agreement

The Aukus submarine deal has “thrust Australia into a central role in America’s rivalry with China”, Sam Roggeveen wrote in The New York Times. For many US observers of China’s increasing aggression, Australia has become the “canary in the coal mine for great power competition with China”, subject to economic coercion from Beijing, hacking and reports of espionage, said Roggeveen, director of the International Security Program at the Lowy Institute, a research centre in Sydney. “For most of its history, Australia has relied on a friend or ally to help secure the Pacific Ocean,” he adds, so it makes sense that it would want to bring the US “into a closer embrace”. Yet, “the United States is in Asia by choice; Australia has no such luxury”. Roggeveen asked: “Why should the United States commit itself to a contest with China when the stakes are less than existential? Without a clear answer to that question, Australia must assume that it will ultimately need to ensure its security alone.”

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5. Boris Johnson aims to push for more climate action during trip

Laura Kuenssberg at BBC News

on a major excursion

“Boris Johnson bounced from behind the grey curtain on the plane, clearly delighted to be travelling out of the UK, press pack and uniformed RAF stewards in tow, not the pilot perhaps, but acting as the host of the government plane he has had repainted with the Union Jack on the tail, urging journalists to approve of the new paint job,” wrote the BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg, who travelled with the PM to the US this week. However much he enjoys being back in the air, this trip doesn’t come at an easy moment, as his government grapples with “rising fears about supply chains, a shortage of gas and its many potential consequences”, says Kuenssberg. Bill hikes could also be a “tricky consequence” of the actions ministers want to take to combat climate change, she added. “This is the start of a major trip for Mr Johnson – climate talks in New York when the issue has never mattered so much at home; a head-to-head in the White House, after the visible chaos as the two countries left Kabul; a world of shifting allegiances as the worst of Covid seems hopefully past at home.”

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The Liberal Democrats will kick off their annual party conference this weekend amid diminishing support for the party.

Membership has fallen by 27%, according to internal documents seen by the PA news agency. The London Evening Standard reported that “some members said the fall was due, in part, to the party vocally opposing now-ditched planning reforms during the by-election in Chesham and Amersham” back in June.

The Lib Dem leadership’s apparent opposition to urban development was causing young members to “become more and more dejected by the day”, said Freddie Poser, a former party organiser for the Westminster and City Liberal Democrats.

“On planning, specifically, the campaign was run entirely on this nimby basis,” Poser said, referencing the “not in my back yard” acronym used to characterise residents’ protests against proposed building projects.

He added: “If our next general election campaign were on this basis, how could I stand on the doorstep and fight for a party that I know is not doing the things they know have to be done to tackle the housing crisis? I’d certainly consider my future campaigning for the party.”

Despite such concerns, Lib Dem candidate Sarah Green won the by-election, overturned a 16,000-plus Conservative majority to win the Buckinghamshire seat by 8,028 votes.

At the time, Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey said the result had “sent a shockwave through British politics”.

But following the drop in party membership, Philip Collins argued in The New Statesman that Davey has failed to pull the Lib Dems out of “Labour’s shadow.”

Under Davey, the party’s fourth leader in six years, “the Liberal Democrats have all but disappeared”, said Collins. They “ought to be the repository of all those who vote ‘none of the above’”, he wrote, but “it is not obvious to what question the party is the answer”.

Former leader Paddy Ashdown “used to be very good at getting above the political fray, posing effectively as a neutral figure for whom anyone tired of politics as usual could vote”, Collins continued. Lately, however, “it’s hard to recall an intriguing position the party has taken on anything”.

But plans are being drawn up to try to regain the Lib Dems’ political clout, according to The Telegraph. Leaked “campaign literature” shows that the party has created a “promise-breaker hit list” of 20 Tory MPs backing Boris Johnson’s National Insurance rise, the paper said.

The Lib Dems will reportedly focus on “Blue wall” seats, amid hopes that voters who usually back the Conservatives will turn on Johnson for breaking his manifesto commitments.

Party strategists calculate that if they can convince one in ten of these voters to back the Lib Dems, “they could flip scores of Tory seats”, the paper said.

1. WhatsApp is where real political power lies in Britain

Sebastian Payne in the Financial Times

on a small green icon

“During the pandemic, all human life has been found on WhatsApp,” writes Sebastian Payne in the Financial Times. “A small green icon became our portal to the outside world.” But in particular “the social network’s prevalence has spread to those running the country,” he says. This was brought sharply to light when Dominic Cummings leaked private WhatsApps from Boris Johnson. In doing so, the prime minister’s former adviser “revealed the awesome power that WhatsApp holds in Whitehall” as “the political communication method of choice”. “Power flows through the thousands of one-to-one exchanges and informal groups that have replaced emails and formal meetings when it comes to decision-making.” Of course, “no one in Whitehall is certain of how official these discussions are, or whether they are secure”, and have rightly begun to worry “about backdoor access”. Although when it comes to political journalism, “WhatsApp is a godsend for transparency”, Payne adds. Westminister should ask itself, “when is too much WhatsApp?”, but as we struggle through the pandemic, it’ll remain as the platform “where the real power lies”.

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2. Boris Johnson wants to jolt commuters back to work

James Forsyth in The Times

on cultural long Covid

“Boris Johnson wants to see busy, bustling cities again,” writes James Forsyth in The Times. “He has been talking about ‘Johnson’s law’: the more people see each other on Zoom during lockdown, the more they’ll want to meet up when life resumes”. But others are not so sure. “If months from now the streets are still almost deserted, the country will have developed a form of long Covid. How to prevent this is one of the big debates in Whitehall.” But “[e]ven once all the legal restrictions have gone, the government is braced for cultural changes brought about by the virus to linger”, Forsyth adds. “Bosses will be far less likely to thank coughing and spluttering staff for struggling in now than they were before. And, perhaps, less likely to pay for expensive city office space to accommodate them all.”

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3. It is Keir Starmer, not Boris Johnson, who should be more worried by the Buckinghamshire uprising

Tom Harris in The Telegraph

on a surprise victory

“There’s no denying it was a remarkable by-election victory for the Liberal Democrats – a swing of 25% against a government in power for more than a decade,” writes Tom Harris in The Telegraph. Although, in some ways, it “feels almost like a return to normality: in the 1980s and 90s the Lib Dems were renowned for their by-election campaigns, particularly against the Conservatives”. But the significance of this win is not that it raises a threat to the Conservatives, but rather to Labour. “If the Lib Dems can win in ‘safe’ Tory seats, then the prospect of Labour not even being able to hold on to one of its own secure seats is truly ominous for Keir Starmer,” Harris adds. “Who will lead the opposition to the government in such circumstances: the party that can beat the Tories in their heartlands, or the party that can’t even hang on to constituencies it managed to win in the dark days of December 2019?”

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4. Compulsory care-home staff jabs may sound sensible but would create a catastrophe

Polly Toynbee in The Guardian

on learning our lessons

“It’s a no-brainer, isn’t it? Of course every care and NHS worker should be vaccinated against Covid and anything else that puts them and their patients at risk,” writes Polly Toynbee in The Guardian on the news that Covid vaccinations are set to become mandatory for care home staff. “Facts, scientific facts, that’s the dose the vaccine-refusers need. Or so every good rationalist believes. But why do we never learn our lessons?” Toynbee asks. “Humans don’t live by reason alone – maybe scarcely at all,” and the fact is “if all unvaccinated care workers were sacked, in some parts of the country care homes would cease to function at all. They would be closed overnight as unsafe, leaving nowhere to send the frail but into hospital beds,” she adds. “There are already 112,000 care-worker vacancies, so compulsion, the ‘rational’ thing to do, risks turning a crisis into a catastrophe.”

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5. Juneteenth is a national holiday now. Can it still be Black?

Kevin Young in The New York Times

on commemorating freedom

“We might count Juneteenth among those things Black people have long enjoyed that white folks don’t know about – like Frankie Beverly and Maze,” writes Kevin Young in The New York Times. “What Juneteenth and other Emancipation days commemorate is both the promise of freedom and its delay,” he says. “For June 19, 1865, doesn’t mark the day enslaved African Americans were set free in the United States but the day the news of Emancipation reached them in Texas [the last rebel state], two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. It is a holiday ringed, like a good brisket, though not in smoke but irony. Out of such ironies Black people have made the blues, made lemonade, made good,” writes Young. President Biden has declared Juneteenth a federal holiday, but “will it still remain Black?” asks Young. “Can it be both serious and playful, and recognize, as the poet Toi Derricotte reminds us, that ‘joy is an act of resistance’? Can we cook and laugh while we remember, remaining rooted in tradition while telling the full story of America and Black life in it?”

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The Liberal Democrats have scored a massive victory in the Chesham and Amersham by-election, overturning a 16,000 majority in a seat that has always voted Conservative.

The party’s candidate Sarah Green won by 8,028 votes, with the Tories in second on 13,489, the Green Party in third place on 1,480 and Labour in fourth after their worst election performance in history saw them win just 622 votes.

Lib Dem leader Ed Davey celebrated the victory by “knocking over a wall of blue bricks”, the BBC reports, and claiming that his party is now the “main threat” to the Tories in many areas of the country. So are the Conservatives in danger of losing their blue heartlands?

‘Stunning success’

The Lib Dem win in Chesham and Amersham will go down as “a legendary victory to rank alongside famous by-election upsets of the past”, says BBC political correspondent Iain Watson.

Overturning such a large Tory majority was partly the result of classic “pavement politics”, he continues, with the Lib Dems “relentlessly campaigning on local issues such as HS2” and the Conservatives’ proposed planning laws.

But looking beyond this by-election to future electoral clashes, the “Lib Dems claim the political geography of the UK is changing”, he adds.

In the New Statesman, former Conservative MP David Gauke agrees that while the Lib Dems were able to “ruthlessly exploit local issues”, the “deeper problem” for Boris Johnson is that “there are a number of traditionally Conservative-voting constituencies” where “relatively liberal and educated” Tory voters “feel uncomfortable with the new direction of the party”.

Changing tide

Gauke says that “there is a political realignment underway in British politics” in which “most of the former Red Wall will stay Conservative” but where 30 or so “seemingly safe” Tory seats could be lost.

What the ex-cabinet minister calls the “first phase” of the realignment came when the red wall fell to Johnson, leaving his party “dominant”. But what may happen next is “the crumbling of the Blue Wall”, which “would make our politics much more competitive”.

The shift appears to have been missed by many journalists, with The Times’ Red Box editor Patrick Maguire saying that the media owe the Lib Dems “an apology”.

“For weeks the Liberal Democrats told anyone who would listen that their campaign in Chesham and Amersham was taking off,” Maguire continues, but they “were almost totally ignored, as was the contest itself”. And Johnson will now rightly be concerned about “the loyalty of his traditional core vote”, he adds, voters Gauke describes in the New Statesman as “the home counties’ middle classes”.

Lib Dem leader Davey this morning described the win as his party’s “best ever by-election victory”, telling the BBC that “if it was repeated across the south, literally dozens of Conservative seats would fall to the Liberal Democrats”.

“People talked about the Red Wall in the North, but forgot about the blue wall in the South, and that’s going to come tumbling down if this result is mimicked across this country”, he added.

The “warning signs were there in the local elections in May”, the Evening Standard says, when the Tories lost council seats in areas such as Tunbridge Wells, Surrey and Oxfordshire. But having made “further inroads” into former Labour strongholds, Tories were “tempted to look north”.

So far, Johnson has “been gaining more ground in the north than they have been losing in the south”, the BBC’s Watson says.

But the massive swing away from the Conservatives in Chesham and Amersham may suggest that Davey is right about there being “bigger conclusions to be drawn” about the direction of travel among the Tory base.

With constituents in Chesham and Amersham ready to cast their votes in tomorrow’s by-election, new polling figures suggest the race might be tighter than anticipated.

The latest Liberal Democrat figures put the party on 41% compared to the Conservatives’ 45%, City A.M. reports, after earlier internal polls had put the Tories on an 11% lead.

The Buckinghamshire constituency has been a Tory safe seat since 1974 and the former MP and Welsh secretary Dame Cheryl Gillan held her position for 29 years. The by-election was called following Gillan’s death in April this year.

Green Party candidate Carolyne Culver sees the election as “a referendum” on High Speed 2 (HS2), Buckinghamshire Live reports, while Tory backbenchers may have been right in their concerns that the government’s planning reforms would “alienate Conservative voters in the shires”, The Times adds. The new plans could see thousands of new homes built on the constituency’s green belt.

Meet the candidates

“I am treating this by-election like it’s the most marginal seat”, Tory candidate Peter Fleet told Buckinghamshire Live.

With the construction of HS2 already under way, Fleet is focusing “on continuing Dame Cheryl’s great work to minimise the disruption”, he told the BBC. If elected, the former Ford employee’s demands will include the creation of bridges for wildlife to safely cross the tracks.

A Chesham and Amersham local, Lib Dem candidate Sarah Green told the BBC that “HS2 is a big no”. “If elected I will be a thorn in the side of this Government and HS2 contractors.”

The businesswoman also sees the planning laws as a potentially “devastating blow to our area”, particularly in the wake of HS2’s impact.

While Labour “is not fighting this by-election vigorously”, according to The Independent’s chief political commentator John Rentoul, Labour candidate and former primary-school teacher Natasa Pantelic has received an endorsement from Tony Blair. One of her first plans, if elected, is to meet with HS2 and the transport secretary in a bid to improve communication on the project’s development.

Endorsed by StopHS2 campaign, Green Party candidate Carolyne Culver is prioritising protection of drinking water supplies that could be threatened by the project – although Reform UK’s Alex Wilson says his is the only party against HS2 in “principle and practice”, reports the BBC.

Reversing Brexit is “in the national interest and in the interests of Chesham and Amersham”, Rejoin EU’s Brendan Donnelly has told the BBC, while the Breakthrough Party’s candidate Carla Gregory plans to tackle inequality and Freedom Alliance’s Adrian Oliver promises to oppose vaccine passports and mask mandates as part of the pandemic recovery plans.

‘Upset’ in Tory safe seat?

The state of national politics “does not seem favourable to an anti-government protest vote”, says Rentoul.

And while the latest polling figures may seem promising for the Lib Dems, YouGov’s director of political research Anthony Wells told the Financial Times that winning will be “challenging” for the party.

The bookies still have the best odds on the Tories securing the seat, but The Times notes an “upset” isn’t impossible in an election that could be an early indication of whether Tory MPs were right to fear the impact of planning proposals for shire voters.

The Greens are claiming they are on their way to becoming “one of the big parties” after more than doubling their number of councillors in the local elections.

Co-leader Jonathan Bartley pointed to the party’s success in places such as Bristol, where it took 12 seats from Labour to become the joint biggest party in the city council. It also beat the Tories to come second in Bristol’s mayoral election.

Bartley notes that his party polled higher than the Liberal Democrats, long seen as England’s third party, in “virtually every mayoral election”, including in London where fellow co-leader Sian Berry came third, with 7.8% of the first-round vote, ahead of the Liberal Democrats’ Luisa Porritt on 4.4%,

Overall, in England’s local elections, the Green Party increased its number of councillors by 88 to 151.

But Chris Mason, political correspondent for BBC News, says: “We should be clear: that’s a rise from a very small number, to a slightly bigger small number.”

While the Greens have gained councillors, they have not gained any councils, whereas the Lib Dems came out of last week’s election with 586 councillors and seven councils. The Green Party also failed to win any seats in the Welsh Senedd, although the Scottish Greens, a separate organisation from its English and Welsh counterpart, won eight seats in Holyrood, double the Lib Dems’ total, helping the SNP secure a majority for Scottish independence in parliament.

Mason concedes that politics “is also about building momentum, and fighting for attention”, and that there is evidence that the Green Party is “growing in confidence”.

Bartley exhibited that as he told The Guardian: “We’re moving from being the biggest small party to being one of the big parties.”

Speaking to The Independent, he said the Greens were experiencing a “watershed moment” where voters are starting to see that the party can get elected.

In Westminster, the Lib Dems have 11 times as many MPs, with there being just one Green MP in the Commons: Caroline Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion. The Guardian says the Green Party is eyeing up Bristol West, currently held by Labour, for the next general election and predicts that other “breakthrough seats could include Bury St Edmunds and Sheffield Central”.

Meanwhile, Matthew Goodwin in The Sunday Times describes the party’s performance as “quietly impressive” and “a big hint that we may well be heading in the same direction as our European neighbours, such as Germany, where cosmopolitan parties are eclipsing the old centre-left”.

He adds: “Fast-forward ten years and I’d not be surprised to see the Greens or Lib Dems as a much bigger force, rallying zoomer graduates, middle-class professionals and city-dwellers in the face of a Labour Party that looks bewildered and lost.”

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Diana Hodali in DW

on Beirut

Lebanon's worst enemy is its own government

“... How ever one looks at it, the huge explosion on Tuesday is the result of the dire corruption within numerous Lebanese governments. For years, politicians from all parties and factions have looted the country and driven it to ruin. Even politicians on opposing sides have joined together in this corrupt system to enrich themselves — when it came to lining their own pockets, they were always in agreement. This catastrophe is just the most recent and most horrifying example of how one Lebanese government after the other has failed to fulfill its most basic tasks: looking after the citizens' welfare and well-being.”

2. Dr Masao Tomonaga in NBC News

on the legacy of nuclear devastation

Surviving the nuclear bomb at Nagasaki 75 years ago showed me nuclear weapons shouldn't exist

“... the idea of nuclear weapon-dependent international security is just a pandemic that has spread over many big and wealthy nations since the Cold War era; the imaginations of politicians are infested with this political illness for which they constantly refuse treatment. The danger that comes from this adherence to old ways of seeing the world could be catastrophic. Were a nuclear war to take place, there would be an immediate, huge loss of human life, an ensuing nuclear winter, a succeeding devastating agricultural crisis causing a global famine for billions and, ultimately, possible human extinction.”

3. Jane Shilling in The Telegraph

on how to keep food

The art of storage is the next hip food trend we badly need

“This lack of poetic sensibility is no doubt the reason why I got such terrible marks in all my English Lit exams. But it brings us to the current hot topic of food waste. When it comes to chucking out comestibles, the Covid lockdown concentrated our minds wonderfully. Long queues, empty shelves and a fear of shortages fostered a national outbreak of culinary prudence. But the easing of restrictions has seen a return to a throwaway food culture. WRAP, the Government’s food waste watchdog, reports a 30pc rise in ‘self-reported waste’ – a tendency that it is trying to reverse with its ‘Let’s Keep Crushing It’ campaign, which includes an alphabetical list of food storage advice.”

4. Katy Balls in The Spectator

on a floundering party

The Lib Dem paradox

“The new leader will be integral to setting the direction for targeting these seats – and the type of relationship the party can form with Starmer's Labour. Moran and Davey have different approaches to finding relevance again. They are going after different types of potential liberals. Moran is the outside bet. She has declared that, if picked, she would make the party ‘more radical’ than Labour and has promised to be ‘unapologetic’ about it. Her supporters argue that the fact that she wasn’t an MP in the five years of coalition government means her untainted brand can win over young voters – with a particular focus on soft Labour voters. Her allies say her approach will be similar to Charles Kennedy’s, taking the fight to Labour. However, Moran allies also argue she is in the best position to try to form non aggression pacts with Labour as she does not carry the coalition baggage that Davey does.”

5. Dean Obeidallah in CNN

on Biden’s quick wit

Joe Biden just destroyed one of Trump's biggest attack lines

“That exchange not only aired on Fox News, it went viral on social media. And then almost on cue Saturday afternoon, around the same time Biden was on his bicycle, Trump tweeted out from the posh confines of his country club one of his go-to attack lines against the former VP, calling him ‘Sleepy Joe Biden.’ The irony was delicious. There's Biden briskly riding a bicycle while Trump is at his private country club, where the only exercise he seems to get is getting in and out of his golf cart.”

Ed Davey and Layla Moran have been named as the candidates set to battle to succeed Jo Swinson as the next leader of the Liberal Democrats.

The two hopefuls have both secured backing from the required 200 party members and one other MP after nominations opened yesterday, the BBC reports.

The only other candidate in the contest, Bath MP Wera Hobhouse, dropped out of the race on Tuesday. So what do the two remaining would-be leaders stand for?

Ed Davey

Davey has been acting leader of the Lib Dems since Swinson resigned in the aftermath of last December’s general election.

He first entered Parliament as MP for Kingston and Surbiton in 1997, and served as energy secretary in the 2010-15 Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government.

Davey formally kicked off his campaign to make his position as party leader permanent in early June, putting forward his plans for a “caring revolution”, as The Independent reported at the time. He is calling for a citizen’s basic income and a “new deal” to support bereaved children and their families.

“From quality mental health care to more support for young carers, there is much to do. We must build a more caring society post-Covid, and improve the lives of millions,” Davey said.

Davey’s policy platform also includes a “green-based economic recovery” from Covid-19, with proposals to invest £150bn in environmentally friendly projects over the next three years, according to The Guardian.

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Layla Moran

Moran is still relatively new on the parliamentary scene, after being elected as the MP for Oxford West and Abingdon in the 2017 general election.

The former maths and physics teacher is the first MP to publicly identify as pansexual, and has previously criticised the House of Commons as a “weird, backwards place”.

Speaking to Sky News in March, she described her party’s Brexit policy as a “big mistake” and said it was “really important that we listen and understand where we’ve been going wrong”.

She has also called on the party to “learn from the mistakes” of the Lib Dems’ stint in government with the Tories.

In an interview with The Independent earlier this month, Moran said: “I would say to people, imagine what we can do with me as leader, without the yoke of coalition, moving forwards.”

The leadership hopeful is the editor of the recently published Lib Dem policy review Build Back Better, which advocates for a variety of centre-left policies including free broadband and universal basic income.

David Steel has quit the Liberal Democrats and will retire from the House of Lords “as soon as possible” following yesterday’s publication of a report into allegations of child sexual abuse linked to Westminster.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse accused Steel of an “abdication of responsibility” when he learned about allegations of child abuse against his fellow MP, Cyril Smith.

The 173-page report said: “Lord Steel should have provided leadership. Instead, he abdicated his responsibility. He looked at Cyril Smith not through the lens of child protection but through the lens of political expediency.”

The 81-year-old said: “I have received indications that some in the Liberal Democrat party wish me suspended and investigated again, despite a previous disciplinary process in Scotland which concluded that no further action was required.

“I am told that others are threatening to resign if a new investigation is started. I wish to avoid any such turmoil in my party and to prevent further distress to my family.”

The report described a culture in Westminster of “failing to recognise abuse, turning a blind eye to it, covering up allegations and actively protecting high-profile offenders including politicians”.

It found that politicians valued reputation “far higher than the fate of the children involved”. The Daily Mail says the inquiry has produced a “bombshell report”.

The Guardian adds that the long-awaited report found that political parties, police and prosecutors “turned a blind eye” to allegations of child sexual abuse connected to Westminster, ignored victims and showed excessive “deference” to MPs and ministers fighting to clear their reputations.

Senior Conservatives are also criticised over the case of former Cabinet member Sir Peter Morrison, who had a “penchant for small boys”.

The report said “Margaret Thatcher was aware of rumours about Morrison but did nothing” and neither did party chairman Norman Tebbit.

However, the report stressed that “there was no evidence of any kind of an organised ‘Westminster paedophile network’ in which persons of prominence conspired to pass children amongst themselves for the purpose of sexual abuse”.

The Times turns its attention to former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson, saying his “lurid claims of a Westminster paedophile conspiracy” were rejected by the “damning report”.

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The Liberal Democrats have cancelled their spring conference after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.

Party members had been due to meet from Friday to Sunday in York, where former leader Jo Swinson was due to deliver a farewell address.

However, Ed Davey, who is acting as interim co-leader with Mark Pack, said: “In these highly unusual circumstances, we have come to the right conclusion to cancel conference.”

It comes as the party is due to select a new leader this summer.

MP Layla Moran is the latest to confirm her candidacy, describing the party's Brexit policy in the December general election as a “big mistake”.

She told Sky News at the weekend: “I believe it’s time that we move on as a party and offer a positive vision for the country and I’m the right person to lead that vision.”

So who will take the job on full time? Here are the potential runners and riders, with the bookies’ latest best odds for each.

Layla Moran 11/10

Moran was first elected as an MP in 2017, when she claimed the Oxford West and Abingdon seat from the Tories, and was re-elected with an increased majority in the December general election. A former teacher, she currently serves as the Lib Dem’s spokesperson for digital, culture, media and sport.

Moran made headlines earlier this year when she revealed that she is pansexual, and in a relationship with former Lib Dem press officer Rosy Cobb.

She is the first MP of Palestinian heritage to be elected to parliament, as she told the i news site following her first election victory. “My Palestinian background has made me interested at a global level. Politics was always at the dinner table, it primed me to engage,” she said.

Moran has spoken out in favour of better funding for schools and against the closure of Sure Start centres.

Ed Davey 6/4

Davey ran against Swinson in the Lib Dem leadership election last July, when he narrowly missed out on first place, instead becoming deputy leader. A vocal pro-EU voice, Davey - who speaks French, German and Spanish - campaigned for a People’s Vote on the final outcome of Brexit.

He identifies as a classic liberal, telling Total Politics magazine: “I personally think liberalism is the strongest political philosophy in the modern world. Socialism has failed. I think even social democracy... is not very convincing, and I don’t really understand where the Conservatives are coming from.”

He has also said that he believes in a “free market and in competition”, arguing in defence of privatisation, deregulation and the private sector.

Davey has been an MP for the London constituency of Kingston and Surbiton since 2017, and previously between 1997 and 2015. During the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition government, he served as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.

Davey was knighted in 2016 for “political and public service”.

Daisy Cooper 11/1

When asked about the party’s leadership race following the December election, newly elected Lib Dem MP Cooper told The Telegraph “not to rule anything out” and that she had “big ambitions”.

Cooper had run Swinson’s leadership campaign before becoming the first Lib Dem MP for St Albans, where she beat incumbent Conservative MP Anne Main and increased her party’s vote share by almost 18%.

Outgoing leader Swinson highlighted Cooper, a diehard Remainer, as “one to watch” in her resignation speech.

Prior to becoming an MP, the possible leadership contender worked as an advisor for the Voluntary Service Overseas charity, for the Hacked Off campaign for victims of press abuse and for cross-party group More United.

Wera Hobhouse 25/1

Hobhouse launched her bid to become leader last month.

First elected in 2004 as a Conservative councillor on Rochdale Council, Hobhouse defected to the Lib Dems the following year over the Spodden Valley asbestos controversy - the proposed development of 650 homes on an asbestos-contaminated site.

She became an MP in 2017, winning the Bath constituency, and has fronted a successful campaign to outlaw “upskirting”.

Born in the German city of Hanover, Hobhouse has previously voiced concerns that the UK public would reject a non-British leader of a major political party.

Speaking on BBC One’s Sunday Politics West following the December election, she noted that the media often refer to her as “German-born”, adding: “I need to have that discussion of whether being a first-generation immigrant is standing in the way of the Liberal Democrats fighting prejudice and anti-foreigner sentiment.”

She has also spoken out about the “toxic” immigration debate in the UK, and cites former US president Barack Obama and 18th-century British politician William Wilberforce, a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade, as her political idols.

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Christine Jardine 33/1

The Scottish Lib Dem has held her Edinburgh West seat since 2017, claiming election victory despite the death of her husband from a heart attack during the campaign. She is now the party’s spokesperson on home affairs and women and equalities.

Prior to entering politics, Jardine was a journalist for BBC Scotland and a Press Association editor. In 2011, she was appointed Scotland media advisor to the coalition government.

Jardine ran to become Lib Dem Party president last year, but lost out to Mark Pack. Announcing her candidacy for that role in September, she said that Lib Dems should be an “open, diverse, forward-looking party”.

Jo Swinson entered the general election campaign claiming that she could credibly be the next prime minister.

But on Friday, she stepped down as the Liberal Democrat leader after losing her East Dunbartonshire seat in a general election that left her party with just 11 MPs.

The Lib Dems’ deputy leader Ed Davey and party president Sal Brinton are taking over until a leadership vote next year, as the party reels from its second-worst election performance in three decades. Only the 2015 result was more disastrous, with the Lib Dems slumping from 57 to eight seats.

So what went wrong this time round - and what lessons can be learned?

The revoke policy

Standing down after losing her seat to the Scottish National Party by a margin of just 149, Swinson said that she was “proud” to have been an “unapologetic voice of Remain in this election”. But her pledge to revoke Brexit without a second referendum if the Lib Dems won a majority prompted widespread criticism, including from within her party.

Senior Lib Dem figures admitted during the campaign that the party might have committed a “tactical error” with the hard-line stance, as the Financial Times reported. Even Swinson began downgrading her ambitions, instead focusing more on depriving the Tories of a majority and backing a second referendum.

Defeat of defectors

The number of Lib Dem MPs swelled from 12 after the 2017 general election to 21 before the 12 December vote, following defections to the party by a number of Tory and Labour MPs. However, none of the defectors retained their seats.

Former Labour MP Chuka Umunna and ex-Tory Sarah Wollaston were among the big names to go.

Tactical voting failures

There were some silver linings for Swinson on election night: the Lib Dems’ Sarah Olney beat Tory minister Zac Goldsmith to claim the Richmond Park seat. And the Lib Dems actually saw a significant gain in vote share, up to 11.5% from 7.4% in 2017.

The “punishing first-past-the-post electoral system” hamstrings the small parties, writes Layla Moran, Lib Dem MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, in an article for The Independent. Moran argues that the parties on the centre and left “need to stop this squabbling and come together in a cooperative force to defeat the now-united right” next time the nation heads to the polls.

Echoing that message, The Guardian blames the Lib Dem defeats in part on a “lack of effective tactical voting, not least as in some seats it was not clear whether they or Labour were the better option for anti-Conservative locals”.

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Lacking in leadership?

“Up against two well established and often divisive opponents, the Lib Dems had hoped Ms Swinson’s relative obscurity would prove an advantage with voters who hold deeply entrenched views about her rivals,” according to the FT.

But YouGov polling during the campaign suggested that Swinson was becoming less popular as her visibility increased. Nevertheless, her predecessor Vince Cable does not lay the blame for the election result at her feet.

In an article for The Independent, Cable says that Swinson is “being made a scapegoat” in the same way that Premier League managers are “blamed for defeat even when they are not responsible”.

Build on local government base

Cable says that the Lib Dems retain a strong local government base and suggests that this should be the “new foundation to build from”. Writing in The Independent, he notes that the party has “re-established a large number of strong second places, lost in 2015 and 2017, which are a precondition for future gains”.

The Remain and progressive causes have been “badly damaged”, says Cable - “but only for now, until we get off the floor and give the electorate a plausible alternative to this government’s precarious mandate”.

12:59pm Corbyn breaks silence, SNP confirms calls for indy referendum

Jeremy Corbyn has broken his post-election silence saying that he is very sad at the result and for “many of the poorest communities” who would suffer.

He added that he is still proud of the Labour manifesto but said the election was “taken over by Brexit”.

Asked when he would quit as Labour leader, Corbyn said: “The National Executive will have to meet, of course, in the very near future and it is up to them. It will be in the early part of next year.”

Meanwhile, SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon has confirmed that the Scottish government will next week published “detailed democratic case” for a transfer of power to enable a second referendum on Scottish independence.

Speaking in Edinburgh, she said: “This is not about asking Boris Johnson or any other Westminster politician for permission. It is an assertion of the democratic right of the people of Scotland to determine their own future.

“In an independent Scotland we will always get the governments we vote for. We will have full control of the powers and levers needed to build a truly fair and more prosperous country. We can take our place as an equal partner with our closest friends in the rest of the UK and across Europe.”

The SNP won 48 seats after securing 45% of the vote - 8.1% more than in the last general election in 2017, when it won 35 seats.

The proposal is likely to receive a cold response from Johnson’s majority government - which has positioned itself against a second vote.

11:06am - Jewish Labour Movement calls for Corbyn to resign now

The Jewish Labour Movement has this morning called on Corbyn to resign immediately after the Labour leader said he would only step down after a “period of reflection”.

In an open letter, the group said: “Labour’s failure in this election lies squarely with the Party’s leadership. The public’s rejection of Corbyn as Prime Minister, the confused position on Brexit and its total failure to tackle anti-Jewish racism, mean that the party must truely listen.

“After this historic election defeat, Jeremy Corbyn must stand down immediately. His team and his supporters who are responsible for Labour’s moral and political failures must take responsibility themselves for allowing five more years of Tory rule.”

Margret Hodge, who resigned the Labour party over anti-Semisitism, tweeted:

Elsewhere, Boris Johnson has arrived at Buckingham Palace for his meeting with the Queen.

And, according to analysis of the incoming parliament, 34% of MPs are now women, while Labour and the Lib Dems both have more female MPs than male.

08:43am - Dominic Cummings not surprised by election success

Boris Johnson’s controversial special adviser Dominic Cummings has accused MPs and the media of being out of touch with people outside London.

Cummings - who led the campaign to leave the EU during the referendum - told PA Media that he cannot take credit for the landslide victory because “after the shock of the referendum MPs and journalists should have taken a deep breath and had a lot of self-reflection”.

Instead of trying to understand what is going on in the country, he added that “a lot of people just doubled down on their own ideas and fucked it up even more”.

“Hopefully now they’ll learn because it’s not good for the country, the whole dynamic to carry on. MPs need to reflect, the media needs to reflect and they need to realise that the conversations they have in London are a million miles away from reality.”

There is one seat left to declare, with the Tories set to win a 79-80 majority.

As the Labour party begins to analyse is electoral devastation, Gideon Falter, chief executive of Campaign Against Antisemitism, said: “The British public has watched the once proudly anti-racist Labour Party become infested with Jew-hatred and it has resoundingly decided to stand with its Jewish community and give the antisemites a crushing rebuke.”

By contrast, Harun Khan, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain said: “Mr Johnson commands a majority, but there is a palpable sense of fear amongst Muslim communities around the country… Now we worry that Islamophobia is “oven-ready” for government.”

#CORBYNRESIGN is currently trending on Twitter, as the full gravity of Labour’s losses begins to sink in.

07.37 Boris Johnson pledges to ‘get Brexit done’ in victory speech

As the results continue to trickle in, Boris Johnson has delivered his victory speech at a rally in central London.

Standing against a backdrop featuring the word’s “the people’s government” Johnson pledged to follow through on his promise to “get Brexit done”.

It is now the “irrefutable, inarguable” decision of the British people, the prime minister said.

Johnson added that he was humbled so many people switched to vote Conservative, adding that he “will never take your support for granted”.

The scale of that swing to the Tories is enormous. The Times’s Matt Chorley posted a graphic to Twitter this morning showing how the vote changed between 2017 and 2019.

Johnson ended his speech saying “Let’s get Brexit done. But first let’s get breakfast done.”

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06.43 Jo Swinson steps down

Having lost her seat in a disappointing night for her party, the leader of the Liberal Democrats Jo Swinson has stepped down.

Baroness Sal Brinton and Ed Davey MP will take over as joint interim leaders of the Lib Dems. A fresh leadership election is now planned for the new year.

As she annoucned her departure, Swinson said: “Tonight’s result is obviously hugely disappointing, in East Dunbartonshire, and across the whole country with Boris Johnson winning a majority.

“I am proud that in this campaign, the Liberal Democrats have stood up for openness, generosity and hope. We were honest about what we believe in and what we were trying to achieve.

“This is clearly a setback for liberal values. But there are millions of people across the country who believe in them. By coming together to fight for them, we can create a positive future.”

Rounding up the results, polling expert Ian Warren has two charts that show how the country voted.

Warren describes the result as “the worst election campaign I've seen. On every level.”

05.55 Johnson’s political ‘earthquake’

In a private speech to his aides, Buzzfeed reports that Boris Johnson has described his election win as an “earthquake”.

“We must understand now what an earthquake we have created,” the prime minister said. “The way in which we have changed the political map in this country. We have to grapple with the consequences of that. We have to change our own party. We have to rise to the level of events. We have to rise to the challenge that the British people have given us.”

The results bear out Johnson’s claim. Veteran Conservative campaigner Graham Robb has pointed out that Labour’s red wall - the block of traditional Labour seats in the Midlands and the North which have been Labour for generations - has now been replaced by a blue route running from Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland on the north-east coast, through Redcar, Stockton South, Sedgefield, Bishop Auckland, Penrith and the Border, and Workington. All of those but two were Labour held before the election.

As Johnson listed his party’s gains to aides this morning, he joked: “We made Redcar Bluecar.”

The BBC has also released its estimate for the eventual GB vote share.

Conservatives: 45%Labour: 33%Lib Dems: 12%Greens: 3%Brexit party: 2%

As The Guardian says, if Johnson does end up with a 45% vote share, “that would be higher than Tony Blair’s in 1997 (he was on 44.3%), higher than Margaret Thatcher’s in any of her three victories (44.9%, 43.5% and 43.2%) and the highest since Edward Heath’s in 1970 (46.2%).”

05:13am - Conservatives win overall majority

The Conservatives have formally won the general election, winning their 326th seat.

The Tories held Worthing West to confirm their victory, following an impressive performance in which they decimated the Labour Party in its former “red wall” heartland.

Boris Johnson is now predicted to be on course for a majority of 70.

Downing Street has already been plotting its post-election plans, and is looking to organise a small cabinet reshuffle on Monday followed by a second reading of Johnson‘s withdrawal agreement bill next Friday (20 December).

In February 2020, after the deadline for leaving the EU on the 31st January has passed, Johnson will do a major reshuffle of his cabinet before tabelling a budget in March.

Elsewhere, Luciana Berger has not won for the Lib Dems in Finchley and Golders Green. The former Labour MP fell short by over 6,500 votes, with the Tories’ Mike Freer winning out.

In another mark of the Conservatives’ success in Labour’s traditional strongholds, Dennis Skinner - who was set to become the father of the house - has lost his seat. Skinner saw his vote share fall by 16.0%, as he was squeezed by the Brexit Party and the Tories.

Farage’s party took 9% of the vote, while the Conservatives saw their vote share rise by 6.9%.

Labour has thus far lost 57 seats - 51 to the Tories and 6 to the SNP.

04:31am - Trump tweets about Johnson majority

It was always going to happen eventually. President Donald Trump has tweeted his thoughts on the election and he seems pretty happy with the projected outcome:

Meanwhile, the Conservatives have continued their obliteration of the Labour’s “red wall”, taking Leave-voting Warrington South. The Tories have also won in Kensington, a Labour victory that was seen as a mark of Corbyn’s success in 2017.

Former Tory MP Sam Gymiah ran for the Lib Dem’s in the marginal seat and appears to have split the Remain vote, netting 9,312 votes that would have comfortably seen Labour over the line.

The Green Party has failed to win its target seat, Bristol West, but has retained Brighton Pavilion, which is held by former party leader Caroline Lucas. Speaking on Sky News, John Bercow described Lucas as “a model MP”.

Across the Irish Sea, the DUP has lost two seats, meaning that the party is set to see its representation at Westminster fall from 10 to eight. The SDLP are on course to win two seats and Sinn Fein seven.

This will mean that unionist parties will only have eight MPs at Westminster, giving nationalist MPs a numerical advantage. With that in mind, Scotland might not be the only place where the union comes under threat.

Luciana Berger is soon to find out whether she has won for the Lib Dems in Finchley and Golders Green. After the Lib Dem leader Swinson lost her seat in Scotland, a Lib Dem gain could see Berger touted as her successor.

03:59 - Johnson retains his seat as Jo Swinson falls short

Johnson has retained his seat, after reports had suggested that Labour could cause an upset in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency.

The prime minister won 25,351 votes, comfortably beating the Labour candidate on 18,141.

In a far closer race, Lib Dem leader Swinson lost her seat to the SNP. Swinson lost by just 149 votes to the SNP’s Amy Callaghan. She made no comment about her future as Lib Dem leader in her resignation speech.

The result compounds a successful evening for the SNP, with party leader Nicola Sturgeon telling Sky News that the evening’s results shows that it is “not Boris Johnson’s place to decide Scotland’s future.”

Meanwhile, the Conservatives have continued to pick up seats across former Labour heartlands, including Rother Valley, Bury South, Lincoln, Penistone and Great Grimsby.

The SNP has also won Glasgow North East from Labour, with Sturgeon saying that “Labour has lost touch with people in Scotland” and “found itself floundering on independence and on Brexit”.

Former Labour leader Ed Miliband has hung on in Doncaster, despite a huge 13.5% swing against him. He has, however, seen his majority slashed from around 14,000 last time around, to 2,370.

Miliband’s is another seat that Labour have held onto this time, but with a massively reduced majority that will mean it is in play for the Tories at the next election.

Laura Pidcock - tipped as a future Labour leader from the Corbyn-wing of the party - has not been so lucky, losing her seat in North West Durham to the Conservatives.

03:24 - Jeremy Corbyn to resign as leader of the Labour Party

Corbyn has effectively announced his intention to resign as leader of the Labour Party, but said that he will stay on in the top job for a “period of reflection”.

He did not confirm a timescale for his resignation, but did say that he will not lead the Labour into the next general election.

Corbyn, who described the election result as “very disappointing”, said: “I want to make it clear that I will not lead the party in any future election campaign. I will discuss with my party to ensure that there is a process of reflection this result.”

Corbyn and McDonnell will make an announcement tomorrow setting out a timescale for the resignation.

The Labour leader retained his Islington North seat, winning 34,603 votes but seeing his share of the vote fall by 8.7%.

Corbyn said: “The fundamental Labour message about justice and equality in our society… is the very core of what my party believes in.

“In the election campaign we put forward a manifesto of hope, a manifesto of unity and a manifesto that would help to right the wrongs and injustices that exist in this country.”

He also blamed his party’s performance on the vote to leave the EU, adding: “Brexit has so polarised and divided the vote in this country, it has overridden so much of a normal political debate. That has contributed to the result the labour party has received all across the country.”

In a barbed attack on the media, he also said: “Media intrusion on people’s lives is very high indeed.” He also thanked his wife for “all that she puts up with because of the way the media behave towards me, towards her and towards my party”.

Next Labour leader odds: who will replace Jeremy Corbyn? Read more here.

02:42am - Tory continue to rack up gains as “red wall” crumbles

Tory heavyweights Dominic Raab and Iain Duncan Smith have held their seats following reports that suggested the Lib Dems and Labour were just two points behind them in the polls.

Duncan Smith’s success is an example of the pro-Remain parties failing to coordinate their electoral strategy. The Lib Dems won 2,744 votes, enough to have delivered the constituency for Labour.

Elsewhere, the Conservatives have gained seats from Labour in Wolverhampton South West, Ipswich, Redcar, Burnley, Ynes Môn, Stockton South, Blackpool South, West Bromwich West and Bishop Auckland.

Ruth Smeeth, the Labour candidate in Leave-voting Stoke-on-Trent North, declared that she believes that she has lost her seat before the count was complete and called for Jeremy Corbyn to “announce that he is resigning at his count today”.

Smeeth added: “He should have gone many, many, many months ago… His personal actions have delivered this result.”

Ian Murray, who again may end up the only Labour MP in Scotland, also said that Corbyn must resign, saying: “The buck always stops with the leadership. I knocked on 11,000 doors [in Edinburgh South] and he has been the problem.”

Rosie Duffield has hung on for Labour in Canterbury. The seat was also contentious among Remain supporters, after the Lib Dems refused to stand down their candidate in the marginal constituency.

In Northern Ireland, the DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds has lost his seat to Sinn Fein. In Cities of London and Westminster, Chuka Umunna has failed in his bid to unseat the Conservatives.

02:14am - Brexit Party fail to take Hartlepool as Labour leadership questions swirl

Brexit Party chairman and MEP Richard Tice has failed to win Hartlepool in the party’s best chance of winning a seat in their debut general election.

Tice came in third place, with 10,603 votes, but was beaten to the post by Labour candidate Mike Hill (15,464 votes) and Conservative candidate Stefan Houghton (11,869 votes).

Earlier in the evening, Tice tweeted: “The BXP has clearly played a massive role in reducing Labour votes and seats, thus changing the course of political history. Sky already recognise this.”

While Farage’s newly fledged party has inflicted damage on Labour so far this evening, in Hartlepool the Brexit Party split the Leave vote, winning 25% of the vote share.

Labour has made a gain in Putney, South London, a remain-voting Conservative seat since 2001. Stella Creasy has also retained her seat in remain-supporting Walthamstow.

Creasy said: “I am sure there will be questions asked about all sorts of things, including leadership, including policy and campaigning.”

Asked if would resign by journalists in his North London constituency, Jeremy Corbyn said: “Thank you very much for coming, lovely to see you.”

In a candid Sky News interview, Labour candidate Jess Philips said that she was not there to write headlines about Corbyn’s future. She added: “I don’t think there is much for the Labour Party to be glad about tonight - clapping and cheering. But you know what it is like, it is for the cameras isn’t it.”

The Lib Dems have so far lost deposits in 12 seats, while the Brexit Party have lost 10 deposits. The two parties are not fighting in all of the same seats.

01:50am - Corbyn loyalists double down on Labour manifesto as loses continue

Despite the bleak national outlook, Corbyn supporters are doubling down in their support for the party’s manifesto. Corbyn supporters have instead cited Brexit as the reason behind the party’s poor performance.

Shadow justice secretary, Richard Burgeon, told Sky News: “Some people did say things about Jeremy that they had read in the Daily Mail… or read in The Sun newspaper. If these things didn’t have traction, the Murdoch press would not push them.”

“But people on the doorstep were not complaining about the policy. The only difference it seems to me at this stage is that it was a Brexit election. The next election will not be a Brexit election.”

Meanwhile, national coordinator for pro-Corbyn activism group Momentum, Laura Parker, added: “It’s unquestionable that Labour’s policies are popular. Every poll shows it, and there is absolutely no appetite to go back to the centrist policies of old.”

In the latest Labour loss, Peterborough has fallen to the Conservatives, with Labour’s Lisa Forbes winning 19,744 votes and the Tories Paul Bristow taking home 22,343. Leigh, Manchester - the former seat of Mayor of Manchester Andy Burnham - has also swung to the Tories, with Labour losing 15% of its vote share.

Elsewhere, Home Secretary Priti Patel has said that the government will act swiftly to “get Brexit done”, while in Chorley - the uncontested seat held by the speaker of the House of Commons Lindsay Hoyle - an independent called Mark Brexit-Smith has won 9,439 votes.

Read more: Will a Conservative majority government ‘get Brexit done’?

01:24am - Workington turns blue as Tories slash Labour majorities

Workington - a constituency which has been Labour for 98 out of the last 100 years - has turned blue, as the Tories have continued to batter Labour majorities in their former heartlands.

Tory candidate Mark Jenkinson was the UKIP candidate in 2015 and won 20,488 votes. Labour won 16,312 votes, a 11.9% fall in its vote share. The Labour party did have a majority of around 4,000.

The “Workington Man” became a symbol of the older, white, non-graduate men who voted Leave demographic that the Conservatives were looking to attract.

Darlington has also fallen to the Tories, with Peter Gibson overturning a majority of around 3,000 in the first Tory victory there since 1992.

Elsewhere, Ian Lavery, the Labour party chairman, has held onto his seat in Wansbeck, Northumberland by a slim majority. His majority fell from 10,000 to 814.

Deputy chairman of the Conservative Party Paul Scully told Sky News: “Testament to the simple message… that getting brexit done means we will have a parliament that better represents the people.”

“The process is complex but the message was that we need to get on with it. Now hopefully… we can come down to a narrower focus about getting that negotiation right with the EU.”

The SNP also made its first gain of the evening, taking Rutherglen and Hamilton from Labour.

00:48am - Conservatives already plotting post-election manoeuvres

According to Downing Street sources, the Tories are already plotting their post-election manoeuvres.

ITV political reporter, Shehab Khan, reports that an emboldened Boris Johnson is planning a minor cabinet reshuffle on Monday followed by a second reading of his withdrawal agreement bill next Friday (20 December).

In February 2020, after the deadline for leaving the EU on the 31st January has passed, Johnson will do a major reshuffle of his cabinet before tabelling a budget in March.

Read more: Five reasons why the Conservatives will (probably) win the election

Read more: Will Jeremy Corbyn resign following election defeat?

Meanwhile, at Labour HQ, bottles of “Corbynista Victory Ale” have been left unopened and staffers sent home. One said: “People are being sent home so that we don’t take notes or leak anything.”

News of Labour’s devastating exit poll and calls for Corbyn to step down as leader do not appear to have perturbed close ally of the Labour leader and founder of the activist group Momentum, Jon Lansman.

Lansman told ITV:

Picking up on the trouble brewing for Johnson north of the border, the Financial Time’s Jim Pickard has highlighted that “the exit poll is sending out a big message that Scotland is heading away from the rest of the UK”.

“We have a constitutional crisis on the horizon”, Pickard added.

00:17am - Brexit Party seems to be inflicting damage in Labour heartlands

The Brexit Party’s decision to stand candidates in Labour seats, rather than standing aside to not split the leave vote, seems to have paid off so far.

In Sunderland Central, Labour held the seat but saw its vote share fall by 12%. At the same time, the Brexit Party took 13% of the vote in its debut election.

Likewise, in leave-voting Blyth Valley, a seat which the Tories have won from Labour for the first time, the Brexit Party took 8.3% of the vote. At the same time, Labour saw its vote share fall by 15%.

On the BBC, Gareth Snell, the Labour candidate for Stoke-on-Trent, called for Corbyn and McDonnell to resign while admitting that he thinks he has lost his seat before the vote count is complete.

Elsewhere, the BBC exit poll suggests that there is a 95% chance that Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson is set to lose her seat in a disastrous end to her campaign. The SNP have thrown the kitchen sink at taking her East Dunbartonshire constituency.

There is also a 52% chance of Laura Pidcock - viewed by many as a potential future Labour leader - losing her seat in North West Durham.

In a blow to the party’s early hopes, the exit poll also suggests that Brexit big beasts Dominic Raab, Iain Duncan Smith and Theresa Villiers will all hold their seats.

23:30pm - Blame game underway as Labour loses Blyth Valley

Labour has held Newcastle-upon-Tyne Central, with Chi Onwurch winning a majority of 12,278 in the first seat to declare.

However, the party has lost Blyth Valley, a seat it has held since 1974, which has elected its first ever Conservative MP. The Labour vote share fell by 15% in a result described as “unimaginable” by BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg.

In a small consolation, the party also held Sunderland South - which declared shortly after Newcastle - with Bridget Phillipson winning 16,210 votes to the Tories 13,095. Philipson’s majority fell by almost 19%, with the Brexit Party taking 15.5% of the vote.

The blame game is underway, with Labour's “red wall” looking set to crumble tonight. Based on the first three seats, the Brexit Party looks to have stolen voters from Labour in a shift that could explain the exit poll result.

Alan Johnson, former Labour home secretary, said: “It’s Corbyn… We knew he was incapable of leading. We knew he was worse than useless and lacked all the qualities to lead a party.”

Labour candidate for Don Valley, Caroline Flint, tweeted: “We’re going to hear the Corbynistas blame it on Brexit and the Labour Uber Remainers blaming Corbyn. Both are to blame for what looks like a terrible night for Labour.”

Read more: Next Labour leader odds: who will replace Jeremy Corbyn?

Will a Conservative majority government ‘get Brexit done’?

23:07pm - who could replace Corbyn? And the battle for the union.

We are yet to hear the results of even a single seat, but Corbyn is under intense pressure to resign as leader of the Labour party.

The bookmakers have him on 2/1 to resign before the end of the year, with the Evening Standard’s political editor Joe Murphy describing the exit poll result as “the end of Corbyn”. Daily Mirror associate editor, Kevin Maguire, tweeted that Corbyn is “finished”.

According to Andrew Neil, Labour is briefing the shadow cabinet to blame the defeat “entirely on Brexit”. PoliticsHome editor, Kevin Schofield, said: “Battle lines already being drawn for the coming leadership campaign.”

Read more: Next Labour leader odds: who will replace Jeremy Corbyn?

While the exit poll is undoubtedly a boost for Johnson’s Brexit plan, the SNP’s performance could now trigger a battle for the union. The exit poll indicates that the SNP has increased its number of seats by 20, suggesting that the Tories may have struggled north of the border.

While the prime minister may have freed up his hand on leaving the EU, he could face a battle over Scottish independence sooner rather than later.

The SNP’s Humza Yousaf suggested to the BBC that the party will now push a second referendum, saying: “The SNP and Scotland absolutely have that mandate.”

Read more: GE 2019: Where do the main parties stand on a second Scottish referendum vote?

10:32pm - exit poll reaction

Labour is heading for its worst election performance since 1935 according to the exit poll, with the Tories projected to win 368 seats and a majority of 86. The Conservatives have not won a majority this big since Margaret Thatcher’s 100+ wins in 1983 and 1987.

The majority will bolster prime minister Boris Johnson’s Brexit plans and could prompt a scramble of activity before Christmas as he seeks to hit his deadline to “get Brexit done” before 31 January.

Calls are already being made for the resignation of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn after his second general election defeat in four years. Speaking to the BBC’s Andrew Neil, shadow chancellor John McDonnell said: “We will see the results in the morning and decisions will be made then. We will make the appropriate decisions.”

Shadow minister for international trade, Barry Gardiner, described the result as “devastating”, adding that the result is damaging for “all the people who were needing a Labour victory to improve their lives”.

What are the pros and cons of Brexit? Follow this link to find out more.

Will Corbyn resign if he loses the general election? Read more here.

10pm - exit poll predicts big Conservative majority

The exit poll has just been released and is predicting a Conservative majority of 86, with Boris Johnson’s Tories set to win 368 seats.

Labour is second on 191 seats, while the Liberal Democrats are on 13. The Scottish National Party are on 55, while the Green Party looks to have retained its 1 seat.

Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party is not on course to win any seats.

The figures are based on tens of thousands of interviews, conducted by polling company Ipsos MORI at 144 polling stations across Britain. The results are then analysed by a team of experts at a secret location in London, according to the BBC.

Remember, the exit poll is not 100% accurate, but have called the results of three out of the last four elections correctly.

The exit poll predicted the result of the election correctly in 2017 and 2010. However, the poll predicted a hung parliament in 2015 - when in fact David Cameron had won the first Conservative majority since 1992.

According to the University of Warwick’s Department of Statistics, a “House of Commons majority prediction that is within 20 seats of the actual outcome is a reasonable aspiration from a well-conducted exit poll”.

Stay with us for more news and analysis as the night unfolds.

Read more about the exit poll result and how exit polls work here.

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9:30pm

This is it. In half an hour’s time, polling stations up and down the country will close their doors and vote counting will begin in one of the most important general elections of a generation.

Will Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party have secured a majority, or has a last-minute surge in support for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party punctured the prime minister’s plans to “get Brexit done” as soon as possible?

Both parties have said that today’s vote offers a stark choice, but what will the electorate decide?

The Week will be covering all of the night’s drama as it happens, with results and analysis from across the British media here on our election live blog.

Join us at 10pm, for up-to-the-minute coverage of the exit poll - our best indication to date of what the future holds for Britain and Brexit.

In the meantime, give our hour-by-hour election guide a read for an insight into all the details of what is happening on this momentous night. Alternatively, you can read our election news and analysis from the past few weeks, as well as all the latest polling results and betting odds here, on our general election 2019 hub.

For a refresher on what you may have voted for today, here are The Week’s guides to the main parties’ policies:

The Labour manifestoThe Liberal Democrat manifestoThe Brexit Party manifestoThe Green Party manifestoThe general election manifestos at a glance

Opposition politicians have a launched a cross-party plea for tactical voting, in an eleventh-hour attempt to deprive Boris Johnson of a majority in Thursday’s general election.

With just days to go until voters cast their ballot, polls out this weekend have the Conservatives leading by anywhere between 15% (Opinium/Observer) to just 8% (Savanta/ComRes).

The latest polls indicate that the Conservatives could be on track for a majority, having managed to consolidate large sections of voters who supported leaving the European Union in 2016.

But “tactical voting is set to be one of the decisive factors in the election” says the Financial Times, and the final result “could depend on whether Remain supporters, armed with opinion poll data, will vote tactically for the party most likely to beat the Tories”.

Analysis of almost 30,000 voters for the pro-EU campaign group Best for Britain found that tactical votes by as few as 40,700 people in 36 key marginal seats could prevent Johnson from forming a majority government and pushing through his Brexit deal.

In a sign that all is still to play for, a separate survey for the Vote for a Final Say campaign published by The Independent found that “around a tenth of the electorate could be prepared to switch allegiances and vote tactically on Thursday”.

Urging voters to put aside tribal loyalties in order to boost the chances of securing a second referendum, two former prime ministers, Tony Blair and John Major, have joined Labour Party, Green Party, Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru and Liberal Democrat MPs in calling on voters to think tactically when casting their ballot.

Having faced criticism from anti-Brexit campaigners for refusing to stand down candidates in Labour-Tory marginals, Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson appeared to soften her stance over the weekend, telling The Observer that voters in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency should vote tactically to oust the Prime Minister Boris Johnson from his seat.

“Voting tactically in Uxbridge means voting for Labour” notes the newspaper.

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While memories of Theresa May’s disastrous 2017 election are still raw, and despite a tightening of polls in recent days, Tory party insiders nevertheless remain bullish about their prospects.

“The main danger now has been dubbed ‘T’n’T’, which stands for turnout and tactical voting, which could tip the balance in more than 30 seats” says The Sunday Times.

With bad weather, election fatigue and over-confidence threatening to keep some would-be-Tory voters away on Thursday, The Sun political correspondent Ryan Sabey says “turnout will be crucial”. “Just 10,000 voters in battleground seats hold the destiny of Brexit in their hands” Sabey adds, citing analysis from Tory election guru Lord Hayward.

Warning that up to 100,000 Labour activists are flooding critical marginals across the country, the Daily Mail says that “Tory strategists fear support for the Brexit Party could split the Leave vote in tight races and let in Labour MPs through the back door”.

Jo Swinson has apologised for backing austerity policies during her years in the coalition government.

During a testing interview with the BBC’s Andrew Neil, the Liberal Democrat leader was repeatedly challenged over her voting record.

Neil began the interview with a cutting opener, asking: “Can we agree to conduct this interview on the basis you will not be the next prime minister?”

After Swinson replied that she was “very glad to be standing up for millions of people who want to stop Brexit”, Neil twisted the knife further, saying: “It’s not going well, is it? Why is it that the more voters get to know you, the less they like you? Your approval rating is even lower than Nigel Farage.”

He then confronted her over why the Liberal Democrats are vowing to roll back several austerity measures she voted for in the 2010-15 administration. Asked specifically about the bedroom tax, which she voted for nine times, Swinson said: “I am sorry that I did that. It was not the right policy. And we should have stopped it.”

She also admitted that while in the coalition government she backed the benefits cap, which limits the maximum benefits income a family can receive, and voted to allow private tendering in the NHS.

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“Clearly we didn’t win every battle against the Conservatives,” she said. “We fought many battles and we did win battles for more money for schools, for more money for the poorest pupils, for managing to cut tax for the lowest paid.

“But of course, of course there were things where we didn’t win those battles, and I’m sorry about that. It was not a Liberal Democrat government, it was a coalition government.”

The Daily Express called it a “car crash” interview, while The Times’s Patrick Kidd says Swinson’s “skirmish with Mr Neil” will not have drawn many viewers. Comparing it to the BBC’s sports output, he said: “Ms Swinson is the political equivalent of show jumping from Hickstead.”

Kidd adds: “She did not ride a flawless round, clipping a few of Mr Neil’s obstacles, but at least she showed up, which is more than the gelatinous prime minister deigns to do.”

The Independent’s John Rentoul praised the Lib Dem, saying: “Jo Swinson knows she will lose – but at least someone is being honest during this election.”

Despite the difficult questions, Swinson “showed that it is possible for a leader who believes what they are saying to survive a very tough grilling with their dignity intact”, says Isabel Hardman in The Spectator - but she is “clearly already preparing her defence in the election post-mortem”.

The Lib Dem leader said she would stay on as leader even if the party ended up with fewer than the 21 MPs with which they began the election campaign.

“I’m continuing as Liberal Democrat leader,” she said. “I’ve got a job to do and I’ve just been elected to do it.”

But Hardman concludes that “others in her party might not be so confident of that assertion”.

The Conseratives and Labour are promising to put more money in voters’ pockets as they battle to woo the public ahead of next week’s general election.

The Tories have unveiled plans for a “tax-cutting” budget if elected, while the opposition party is promising to save ordinary households a total of £6,700 a year.

And that poses a key question for voters: what does this mean for my taxes?

Conservatives

The Conservatives have promised to present a “tax-cutting” budget within their first 100 days of government if re-elected.

The income threshold at which workers start paying national insurance (NI) would rise from the current £8,632 to £9,500 - which would save workers about £85 per year, according to the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). And the Tories have an “ultimate ambition” of increasing the minimum threshold to £12,500.

The proposed cuts to NI contribution would cost the government around £2bn a year, and would mostly benefit middle and higher-income households, says the IFS.

Boris Johnson’s party has also pledged a “triple lock” on personal taxation, meaning that there will be no increase in rates of income tax, national insurance or VAT.

However, Johnson has ditched his Tory leadership campaign pledge to raise the threshold at which people pay 40% income tax from £50,000 to £80,000.

The prime minister has also shelved his plan to cut corporation tax, which at 19% is already lower than many European partners like France and Germany.

When it comes to council taxes, the IFS has said that the party’s lack of additional local funding means authorities will have to charge households more. The Conservative manifesto “would not be sufficient to meet rising costs and demands over the next parliament even if council tax were increased by 4% a year”, the institute's website explains.

The Conservatives are also under pressure to explain how they can fund the significant new spending pledges put forward in their manifesto and simultaneously announce tax cuts.

Read a summary of the party’s manifesto here

Labour

Labour says its policies would save families an average total of £6,700 a year. Shadow chancellor John McDonnell claims households would save cash as a result of the nationalisation of public services; reductions in the cost of rail season tickets; free childcare and school meals; and the axing of prescription charges.

But critics have said that total saving figure doesn’t apply to all families. For instance, the calculations are based on two people in a household saving £1,097 on train fares following the nationalisation of the railways, but not all people regularly use trains.

Labour would fund part of its new spending pledges by implementing a new “super” income tax rate of 50% on people earning over £125,000, while the threshold for the additional income tax rate of 45% would be lowered from £150,000 to £80,000. According to the Daily Mirror, this would raise “£5.4bn a year by 2023-24”.

Labour would also hike capital gains tax from the current 20% or 28% to the rates of income tax – bringing it to 40% or higher for the richest. The party says this would raise “£14bn a year by 2023/24”.

An additional £5.2bn a year would be raised by reversing inheritance tax and bank levy cuts, forcing private school fees to be subject to VAT and introducing a second homes tax, the party says. It has not made any specific pledges on council tax.

Labour has pledged not to increase VAT, national insurance or income tax for anyone earning less than £80,000 a year – 95% of earners.

However, it will scrap a tax break for married couples in a move that will impact those earning less. Jeremy Corbyn conceded that while removing the tax break would impact people’s income by around £250 per year, they would nonetheless benefit from a living wage and “free nursery provision for two to four-year-olds”, the BBC reports.

Read a summary of the party’s manifesto here

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Liberal Democrats

The Lib Dems are promising to raise £7bn a year over five years – a total of £35bn – by adding one penny in the pound on income tax and ring-fencing the proceeds for the NHS and social care.

The party is also pledging to introduce a tax rise for those who take the most international flights, while costs would come down for people who take one or two international return flights a year. The air passenger duty rise would help pay for the fight against climate change, the party says.

The Lib Dems have said that the proceeds from any tax increases will be spent fufilling specific manifesto commitments. This is called hypothecation and, according to the BBC, is very out of fashion in the Treasury, “which prefers everything to go into a central pot”.

The party has said that it will allow local authorities to increase council tax by up to 500% when homes are being bought as second homes. It will also abolish the separate capital gains tax-free allowance of £12,000 and tax gains at income tax rates - 20%, 40% and 45%. The latter will particularly affect higher earners. The party would also keep the state pension triple lock.

The IFS said that the Lib Dems were the only party whose pledges “would appear to put debt on a decisively downward path”.

Read a summary of the party’s manifesto here.

The conventional wisdom holds that politicians can’t be trusted to keep their promises, yet decades of research across numerous advanced democracies shows the opposite. In truth, political parties reliably carry out the bulk of their campaign pledges, especially in majoritarian systems like Westminster.

At a time of such political cynicism, the average voter could be forgiven for doubting this claim. The idea that politicians are insincere about their campaign pledges is reflected in public beliefs about election pledge fulfilment. When Chris Carman and I ran a survey earlier in 2019, the findings of which will be published in an upcoming John Smith Centre report, we asked respondents whether they agreed that “the people we elect as MPs try to keep the promises they made during the election campaign”.

Citizens’ Beliefs about Pledge Fulfilment.Fraser McMillan/John Smith Centre

Of the 1,435 respondents who offered an opinion, fewer than one in three agreed, while more than half disagreed. Citizens seem to have little faith that the policies they endorse at the ballot box will ever come to fruition. But the truth is actually rather different.

Promises made, promises kept

The finding that political parties carry out their pledges has stood up to repeated, cross-national study. A rapidly growing field of scholarship is dedicated to investigating the connection between manifesto promises and subsequent government policy, known among experts as the “programme-to-policy linkage”. Researchers search party manifestos for measurable policy pledges and check government actions, legislation and news media sources for evidence of their progress.

The most comprehensive study of the programme-to-policy linkage was published in 2017. It brought together 20,000 specific campaign promises from 57 elections in 12 countries. The strongest linkage is found in the United Kingdom, with over 85% of promises by governing parties at least partly enacted in the years studied.

There are also patterns in campaign pledge fulfilment, with a substantial difference observed between consensus and majoritarian democracies.

We also know that promises are more often fulfilled when a party does not have to share power with others, such as in a coalition government. In political systems like Austria and Italy, where coalition governments are the norm, fewer election promises become government policy. The politics of compromise is built into these democracies but it does mean that governing parties typically fulfil only half of their manifesto pledges.

Pledge fulfilment is also affected by factors like economic growth, coalition negotiations and the previous governing experience of parties.

The pledge paradox

The take home message from this area of study is that politicians do seem to try to keep their promises. The central mechanism by which vote choices are supposed to translate into policy works more smoothly than voters assume. This disconnect between public beliefs and the academic consensus even has a name, the pledge paradox.

Why are public beliefs out of sync with the evidence? A recent study shows that negativity bias – the tendency for people to react more strongly to negative information – is the reason that voters remember broken pledges better than fulfilled ones. Meanwhile, a new paper of mine, suggests that voters only react to the fulfilment or breakage of promises on issues they care about. Perhaps parties are damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

Hedging about pledging

Both political parties and researchers, however, must confront questions about the importance of pledges enacted by parties. A recently completed study of pledges from the 2017 Conservative manifesto shows that the promises considered more important by voters were less likely to be kept. For example a pledge to make maps of school buildings available to parents was kept, while the commitment to reduce net migration to below 100,000 was again broken. An impressive fulfilment rate of 69% declined to 48% when they were weighted by voter priority.

Separately, the volunteer-run Policy Tracker project also recently completed its analysis of the same manifesto. The group categorised pledges differently from past researchers, including more subjective statements in the analysis. Using this method, it reports that just 29% of the previous government’s pledges were fulfilled, with a further 55% “in progress” by the time the 2019 election was called.

Although these newer approaches add nuance to our understanding of the linkage, it remains the case that governments make a sincere effort to carry out most promises. It is uncommon for British parties to outright break promises – this happens most often when they are forced to compromise with others or get defeated in parliament. Famous recent examples include the Liberal Democrats’ pledge to abolish tuition fees in 2010 before entering a coalition government with a party that opposed the idea. Then, of course, there was the Conservatives’ failure to pass a Brexit deal after the 2017 election.

Although fulfilling election pledges is not the be-all and end-all of democratic processes, it’s fair to say that the research rebukes the conventional wisdom that campaign promises are worthless. On the contrary, political parties take them very seriously.

Fraser McMillan, Research Associate (Politics), University of Glasgow

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Iain Martin in The Times

on history repeating itself

Conservatives face a backlash if they win

“Veteran party observers have cited similarities between this general election and 1983, when voters concluded that they simply could not countenance a far-left leader like Michael Foot. The more striking parallel I see is with 1992. Then the Conservatives won with a relatively new leader, John Major, and promises of a brighter future. Six months later they were ruined by the collapse of their European policy and the ERM debacle. In the years that followed they were buried under an avalanche of sleaze allegations. This time the Tories have been in power for nearly a decade and, in policy area after policy area, they are overdue a kicking from a country increasingly concerned about the condition of public services. If that kicking does not come next month, because voters sensibly realise that Jeremy Corbyn is unfit to be prime minister, then it’s likely the dam will break next year.”

2. Joel Golby in The Guardian

on the mystical allure of the PM

Look at Boris Johnson eating a scone. This? This is your shagger god?

“With eyes open and hearts brave, we must watch this video of Boris Johnson eating a scone. This is what we’ve come to: Boris Johnson eating a mediocre baked good is somehow a sort of galactic-brained version of everyman campaigning, a highpoint of election conversation, and a stunning and remarkable example of strategic nous. When really, it looks like grainy VHS footage of a toddler eating a cracker for the first time re-enacted by a man who, on every other version of Earth, is the village weirdo famed for acting erratically near urinals, and not, as we have it here on Earth-Prime, the most politically important man in the United Kingdom. But there we are.”

3. Stephen Bush in The i Newspaper

on the battle for the opposition

The Liberal Democrats' dismal polling is down to Jeremy Corbyn - he is the party's real leader

“Lib Dems understandably resent Labour’s attitude that they are, in reality, little more than a strange adjunct onto the United Kingdom’s main opposition party. Labour partisans, too, find it incomprehensible that voters still view the Liberal Democrats, who spent five years sharing power with the Conservatives at Westminster, as a legitimate home for anti-Tory sentiment. But in 2019, as in every election in the modern history of the Liberal Democrats, most voters believe that, given a choice, the Liberal Democrats’ first preference is a deal with Labour – and if the Conservative voters that the party needs to flip to win seats are turned off by the Labour leader, they won’t back the Liberal Democrats.”

4. Judith Woods in The Telegraph

on the beauty of aging

It’s time we woke up to the allure of the older woman

“Young people flinch at our crow’s feet while we see laughter lines. We’ve been round the block often enough not to sweat the small stuff. It’s a curious paradox that young women wear far more make-up than my age group, even though they need it less. Could it be that each of us already grasps the strength and depth of our foundation so we don’t need to keep slathering on more? Just a thought. I have no inclination to stir up an inter-generational catfight, as it only fuels the cliches about women being their own worst enemies. Besides, would any of us swap wisdom for youth? There are good reasons why Freaky Friday is one of the most palm-sweatingly frightening films my demographic will ever watch.”

5. Carlos Eduardo Pina in Al Jazeera

on the overestimation of power

Is Venezuela really a threat to Latin America and the Caribbean?

“On closer inspection, the accusation that the Venezuelan government is a threat to the survival, stability and democratic integrity of the countries in the LAC region appears to be an exaggeration. Caracas currently has neither the intention nor the military, economic or political power to take on any major political actor or alter the dynamics within the region. Caracas' petrol income has reached record lows and its economy is in a shambles. The Maduro government is incapable of providing for its own citizens let alone spending money abroad to hurt its political rivals. Moreover, Venezuela does not currently have the capacity to embark on a military intervention in another country.”

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Sharelle Jacobs in The Daily Telegraph

on the Conservatives

A shock, 1997-style landslide is suddenly within Boris Johnson's grasp

“The Tories can’t hide their confused fascination with the lack of opposition. They have the flat, adrenaline-pumped feeling of rugby players who have psyched themselves up for the most brutal game of their lives, only for the opposition not to show. In this sense, the parallels with New Labour are glaring. Just as the Conservatives were mired by sleaze then, Labour is soiled by anti-Semitism today. Just as the ’97 Tories couldn’t decide whether to go after Tony Blair for being a diet Marxist or a diet Tory, the Corbynistas have no line of attack. With wages rising again, and the job market defying gravity, the public has no desire to bite on Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-austerity carrot. Aware that class hatred no longer resonates in betrayed blue-collar towns, Labour has been reduced to calling a vegetable a mineral – accusing soggy, herbivorous neo-Cameroonians of being iron-hearted Thatcherites.”

2. David Aaronovitch in The Times

on Labour

The left’s self-righteousness is repellent

“The characteristic flaw of the political right tends to be callous smugness. That of the left is a repellent self-righteousness. The right tends to think everyone is as venal as they are and the left tends to think no one is as virtuous as them. We are on the side of the poor and the downtrodden and we are innately anti-racist and unless you are exactly like us then you must be on the side of the billionaires, the arms manufacturers and the apartheid Israeli state, whoops where did that come from? Under Corbyn, that self-righteousness has intoxicated the troops. From what I can see from their publications and demeanour they genuinely believe that anyone with a contrary view is irredeemably morally deficient.”

3. Stephen Bush in the New Statesman

on the Lib Dems

Jo Swinson began the campaign boasting she would be the next PM, so why did it all go wrong for her?

“The worry that a vote for the Lib Dems is perceived as wasted haunts the party, but it is particularly damaging when voters believe that the outcome of the election as a whole is uncertain. While there are plenty of voters – particularly in the affluent, largely Conservative and pro-Remain constituencies where the party hopes to gain seats – who dislike both Brexit and Corbyn, there are very few who dislike both equally. Most voters are willing either to put aside their doubts about Brexit to prevent a Corbyn-led government, or to sacrifice their concerns about Corbyn to stop Brexit. Swinson’s attempt to cast herself as a potential prime minister was a way to square the circle, and her support for a maximal Remain position was intended to facilitate the realignment to make that possible. But it hasn’t worked. Instead, it has emphasised that the choice in the election is Johnson or Corbyn.”

4. Peter Franklin in Unherd

on the European Union

Should we have just waited for the EU to die?

“If the EU is doomed, we shouldn’t assume that its demise will be gradual and therefore manageable. In the modern world, multi-national political entities have a habit of going out with a bang not a whimper — Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, various European colonial empires, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire. Of course, the EU is neither an empire nor riven by war; but arguably it’s more easily collapsable, because national governments are already in place to (re)absorb the EU’s functions.”

5. Piers Morgan in the Daily Mail

on giving thanks

Reasons to be thankful: To ten well-known whiners - from Teigen to Trump – on why they really should count their blessings this Thanksgiving

“The rise of social media has made ingratitude almost a badge of honor, something to be aggressively pursued and celebrated. It’s no longer acceptable to be thankful for small mercies. Now, we must stamp our manicured feet like whiny little brats until we get exactly what we want, when we want it – and destroy, cancel and shame anyone who dares to challenge us. This shockingly selfish philosophy is fueled by ego-mad celebrities from all walks of life, whose sense of entitlement knows no bounds and whose tolerance of the word ‘no’ knows no start. These self-aggrandizing malcontents are seemingly oblivious to the fact that they lead some of the most privileged lives in the history of Planet Earth.”

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The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Martin Fletcher in the New Statesman

on political egotism

How People’s Vote destroyed itself

“When the history of the 2019 general election is written, of how Boris Johnson managed to win a mandate for a catastrophic hard Brexit, a whole chapter should be reserved for the shameful story of the People’s Vote campaign. It will record how the country’s leading pro-European force collapsed on the eve of that momentous vote, betraying the millions of ordinary citizens who had supported, financed and placed great hope in it over the past three years. It will tell a tawdry tale of political shenanigans and clashing egos; of leaks, smears, charges and countercharges; of startlingly vicious infighting that spiralled so hopelessly out of control that 40 energetic, experienced and deeply committed young campaign staffers found themselves sitting in a Thames-side pub in Pimlico as the general election gathered pace, trading legal threats with the multi-millionaire head of one of Britain’s top public relations companies, instead of battling for the nation’s votes.”

2. Sherelle Jacobs in The Telegraph

on Britain’s third party

Unable to stem their Remainer exodus, the Lib Dems are on the verge of crashing and burning

“Here is the thing about the Liberal Democrats: their claim to represent a peppy new political alternative is a conceit. They are a clapped-out old rocker of a political movement. The Liberals have not come up with a genuinely new domestic policy since Beveridge’s trail-blazing social reformism. Their vision of the future – which mixes bureaucratic despotism and moth-eaten retro-socialism – is Fleetwood Mac riffing off North Korea. On paper, as a third party, they make no sense, given that the most compelling gap in the political market exists across the country’s rust belt – the Midlands, North and Wales. But, imprisoned by their own snobbery, the Lib Dems have opted to scrap for airtime in the most overcrowded space – Remainia – where centrist Tories and Labour’s dominant wing vie for favour.”

3. Robert Hardman in the Daily Mail

on Prince Andrew

This isn’t a short-term solution. It’s early retirement

“On the basis that everyone is innocent until proved guilty, some will simply leave things as they are and see how events unfold. What is clear, however, is that this is not a short-term solution while things ‘die down’. Until there is some sort of legal resolution, this is early retirement. Palace officials understand the importance of getting a grip – and of being seen to get a grip – on the helm after the most turbulent royal year in more than two decades.”

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4. Bret Stephens in The New York Times

on a two-state solution in the Middle East

One thing Trump gets right

“The core problem with the past half-century of failed peacemaking efforts has been the facile assumption that meeting the need for two states would ultimately fulfill the requirement for security. The lesson of experience has been the opposite. The failure of Palestinians and their international enablers to satisfy that requirement — or even feign concern for it — has only made the need seem like little more than a remote abstraction to most Israelis.”

5. Jenni Russell in The Times

on digital dystopia

Our addiction to tech is tearing us apart

“The price of living online is not just isolation, as many of us retreat from vulnerability, real trust and the possibility of being understood and known; it is also that, in the cause of the efficiency technology delivers we are being mastered by the machines and the corporations we believe are serving us. We’re becoming disconnected from the real people around us, with the result that both we and they are losing the power to make critical decisions. We’re helpless on the occasions when computer-driven systems suddenly turn against us, morphing from smooth enablers to impenetrable, indifferent granite walls.”

Parliament’s inability to agree on Brexit was undoubtedly the trigger for the UK’s first December election in almost a century - but will Brexit be the deciding factor when voters head to the polls?

The Conservative Party’s slogan “Get Brexit Done” and the Liberal Democrats’ “Stop Brexit” puts Britain’s future relationship with the EU at the forefront of their campaigns. But Labour has argued that the election is about far more than this single issue.

The polls

A YouGov poll published last week found that “the public are far more likely to identify with Leave or Remain than a political party”. Of those surveyed, 86% identified as a Brexiteer or Remainer, but only 68% chose a party.

Another YouGov poll from earlier this month looked at the key issues that will decide the election result. Brexit was top of the list, with 68% of respondents listing it as one of the three most important issues facing the country. Health was in second place at 40%, followed by crime at 28%. The economy and the environment rounded out the top five, tying on 25%.

By contrast to a similar survey conducted in the run-up to the 2017 general election, immigration and asylum are low on the public’s list of priorities, dropping from third place two years ago to sixth place now, while the environment and crime have risen by five places.

However, in another survey from Ipsos Mori, out today, the NHS overtook Brexit as the most important election issue for voters, with 60% prioritising the health service and 56% prioritising Brexit.

“The shift will be seen as a boon for the main opposition party, which has put the NHS at the heart of its campaign, while the Conservatives have sought to keep the campaign narrative focused on Brexit,” says the Financial Times.

Sticky identities

The various political parties are firing out new policy announcements daily as more poll findings land, but Daniel Finkelstein in The Times argues that “there is a big gap between the election that politicians think they are fighting and the election that’s actually happening”.

He points to a survey by Lord Ashcroft Polls that asked the public which news stories and announcements they had noticed from the election campaign over the previous few days. Just 12% cited Labour’s promise for free broadband, 10% said the floods, and 9% said NHS funding. But Finkelstein notes that “by far the most common response to the question (42%) was: ‘None’”.

He suggests that voters’ “membership of social groups and their partisan alignment” will still determine the ultimate choices of many. Although this election could see a vast switch, “traditional identities can be quite sticky”, Finkelstein adds.

Meanwhile The Economist warns that while it is being billed as the Brexit election, “more is at stake” than Britain’s relationship with Europe.

“The far-left Mr Corbyn promises to put the state at the heart of the economy, whereas Mr Johnson’s Tories seem to be moving towards a more freewheeling form of capitalism. At the same time, both potential prime ministers would pick at the ties between the nations of the United Kingdom,” says the news site.

“Britain’s Christmas contest is its most important in living memory.”

Jeremy Corbyn, Boris Johnson and Jo Swinson will try to win over sceptical business leaders in speeches at the Confederation of British Industry’s annual conference today.

The three party leaders will each make their case to the business lobby as the CBI’s director general, Carolyn Fairbairn, warns that UK business “simply cannot afford another wasted year of political paralysis, indecision and distraction while productivity and investment suffer”.

So what will each of the parties promise?

Labour

Corbyn will vow to create 320,000 apprenticeships in England during Labour’s first term in office if the party gains power following the 12 December election.

Labour plans to train 80,000 people a year as part of a “climate apprenticeship” programme that would see apprentices learning skills for construction, manufacturing and design jobs within renewable energy, transport, sustainable agriculture and forestry, the BBC reports.

“Labour’s Green Industrial Revolution will be a central motor of the party’s plans to transform our country and economy, using public investment to create good, clean jobs, tackle the climate emergency and rebuild held back towns, cities and communities,” Corbyn will tell the conference, in London.

The scheme would be funded by money that employers already set aside through the Apprenticeship Levy, and would be topped up by dividends paid into Inclusive Ownership Funds - to be set up under plans to give workers at larger companies a 10% stake in their firm.

Labour also wants to negotiate a new Brexit deal that would include a customs union and a closer relationship with the EU single market. Voters would then be able to have their say in a referendum offering a choice between the Labour withdrawal deal or remaining in the EU.

Tej Parikh, chief economist at the Institute of Directors (IoD), said: “The fact that Labour has combined its proposal with the promise of wider reform suggests it is aware of the challenges and willing to work with businesses to iron out the creases.”

Conservatives

Johnson will pledge to end Brexit “uncertainty”, while admitting to the conference that “big business didn’t want Brexit. You made that clear in 2016 and this body said it louder than any other.”

“But what is also clear is that what you want now - and have wanted for some time - is certainty,” the prime minister will continue.

The Tory leader will present plans to help businesses “make the most of Brexit”, including a review of business rates in England, with the aim of reducing the overall burden of the tax.

He will also promise to cut four taxes on companies including the National Insurance contributions paid by employers, who already benefit from a reduction known as the employment allowance.

The IoD’s Parikh said that tax breaks to spur growth were “a sensible move” but added that “though a thorough review into business rates would be welcome, further reliefs are also needed for the here and now”.

Johnson will conclude: “With a Conservative majority government, you can be sure we will get Brexit done and leave with the new deal that is already agreed - ending the uncertainty and confusion that has paralysed our economy.”

Liberal Democrats

Swinson will tell delegates that the Liberal Democrats are the “natural party of business” because of their opposition to Brexit. The Lib Dem leader will also use her speech to criticise planned infrastructure projects put forward by Labour and the Tories.

“Both the Conservatives and Labour will have to scramble around for projects to pour money into just to keep their word - regardless of whether they’re good projects and good use of public funds,” she is expected to say.

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Rachel Sylvester in The Times

on the Brexit Party chucking a spanner in the works

Nigel Farage’s move is a mixed blessing for Tories

“The prime minister’s electoral strategy is not based on surfing a ‘blue wave’ to victory - it depends on breaking through the ‘red wall’, winning over a swathe of Leave-voting seats in the north and the Midlands to make up for the losses he expects to suffer in Remain-supporting areas in the south. These are precisely the constituencies that the Brexit Party is now going to throw all its energy into targeting, meaning the Leave vote will be divided in the very places Mr Johnson needs to capture from Labour.”

2. John Rentoul in The Independent

on the reliability of opinion polling

Opinion polls are important, but letting them dictate election coverage is a dangerous game

“In the 1992 election... Labour policies were scrutinised closely not just for themselves but for their acceptability to the Liberal Democrats; there were endless discussions of the mechanics and possible horse-trading of a hung parliament, and in the final week, a huge fuss about electoral reform. Similar things happened in the 2015 election, the 2016 referendum and the 2017 election. In no case were the opinion polls very wrong, but in each case the assumptions built on them coloured the reporting of the campaign, and the result came as a surprise.”

3. Frida Ghitis on CNN

on politicians sleepwalking their way towards removal

Bolivia’s blunt message to leaders drunk on power

“In a perfect situation, Bolivia would have a fuller investigation and a new election with credible results. Instead, Morales has been forced from power by the actions of the military. He and his backers are emphatic that this was a coup. His critics claim his removal saves Bolivian democracy. The coming days will show whether the country can return to peace and a democratic path, or if darker days lie ahead.”

4. Michael Tomasky in The New York Times

on billionaires burying their heads in the sand

Bill Gates, I implore you to connect some dots

“The 400 richest Americans - the top .00025 percent of the population - now own more of the country’s riches than the 150 million adults in the bottom 60 percent of wealth distribution. The 400’s share has tripled since the 1980s. This is carnage, plain and simple. No democratic society can let that keep happening and expect to stay a democracy. It will produce middle and working classes with no sense of security, and when people have no sense that the system is providing them with basic security, they’ll make some odd and desperate choices.”

5. Borisa Falatar in The Guardian

on Europe’s troubling Balkan bluster

Bosnia’s politics are in crisis. But that is reason for the EU to help, not shut us out

“Business as usual will lead to Bosnia’s leadership pivoting to the Gulf states, China and Russia, which will further jeopardise the country’s cohesiveness and its EU future, especially now, when the only national consensus that existed – the hope of EU integration – appears to be indefinitely postponed. It will become ever harder for Bosnia to avoid becoming a testing ground in a new cold war. The European council and the new commission should be braver and more ambitious. Our common values and stability are at stake. Otherwise, all we may be left with is a failed state on the EU’s doorstep and EU flags on humanitarian relief items – sad reminders of a never-realised dream.”

And we’re off! The polls are open and voters are choosing the next government in the UK’s third general election in less than five years.

Both Labour and the Conservatives have called today’s vote the “most important in a generation”, as the two sides to put their wildly different versions of the future to the people.

Polls will close at 10pm, with the results of a joint exit poll by the BBC, ITV and Sky News due to be released immediately after.

Jeremy Corbyn has teased voters this morning with a tweet saying: “I have been informed that personal images from my past have been sent to some media outlets and are set to be released today. Here's the truth.” He then shares a link that, when clicked, actually takes voters to a polling station finder.

The Labour leader has called on voters to “shock the establishment” and back “real change” by voting for his party. “We stand at a fork in the road. The choice facing you, the people of this country, tomorrow is truly historic,” he said yesterday in his final speech of the campaign.

Boris Johnson cast his vote at Westminster’s Methodist Central Hall this morning, after warning at a Tory rally last night that there was a “very real risk of another hung parliament”.

Meanwhile, police have carried out a controlled explosion near a polling station in North Lanarkshire after a suspicious device was reported. The device was found on the ground floor of Glen Tower flats in Motherwell, where a community room in the building was due to be used as a polling station.

The local council has asked all those registered to vote there to do so at a local primary school instead.

Wednesday 12 December: parties make final pitch to voters

Britain's political parties are making their final pitches in a last-ditch bid to win over voters before the polls open in less than 24 hours.

The last day of campaigning will see Jeremy Corbyn claim that a vote for Labour is a “vote for hope”, while Boris Johnson will say - once again - that the Conservatives are the only party who will “get Brexit done”.

Jo Swinson will reiterate the Lib Dems’ anti-Brexit stance, and call on voters to back her party to stop the UK from leaving the EU.

And the Scottish National Party’s Nicola Sturgeon has gone on the attack, publishing an open letter to Johnson claiming that he is “greatest danger to Scotland of any Tory prime minister in modern times”.

The most recent polls keep the Tories in first place, but show the gap between the Conservatives and Labour shrinking. A YouGov survey puts the Tories on 43% to Labour’s 34% - which would give the Tories an overall majority of 28.

YouGov’s constituency model suggests Labour are set to make gains in the London seats of Putney and Chipping Barnet, with the Conservatives winning seats in the Midlands and north of England. The poll also predicts Tony Blair’s former constituency of Sedgefield, in County Durham, going to the Tories.

Elsewhere, Johnson has come in for criticism from the father of Jack Merritt, the 25-year-old man murdered in the London Bridge terrorist attack last month. Speaking to Sky News, Dave Merritt said that “instead of seeing a tragedy, Boris Johnson saw an opportunity”.

The prime minister wrote a Mail on Sunday article in the wake of the attack in which he promised to change sentencing laws for terrorists if voters “send me back to No. 10”.

Meanwhile, Labour’s shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth was forced to apologise after a recording was leaked by a “friend” in which Ashworth criticised Corbyn and said he didn’t believe Labour would win the election. “It makes me look a right plonker,” he told the BBC.

Polls open at 7am tomorrow and close at 10pm.

Wednesday 11 December: parties battle over Brexit and NHS

With less than 48 hours to go until the polls open, the main parties are vying to put their central messages top of the news agenda.

Boris Johnson is attempting to keep the focus on Brexit while warning of the “danger” of another hung parliament if voters do not turn out to support the Tories on Thursday.

The Tories have leaked an internal memo to The Sun saying that Jeremy Corbyn could still become prime minister and that the chances of Johnson losing the keys to No. 10 have been “seriously underestimated”.

Meanwhile, Labour is warning that NHS underfunding is putting patients at risk, and is pledging a “relentless focus” on the health service if it wins power.

Corbyn tweeted yesterday that Johnson “just doesn’t care” about patients, after the PM repeatedly refused during a TV interview to look at a photograph of a four-year-old boy sleeping on the floor at an overcrowded hospital.

Johnson also took journalist Joe Pike’s phone after being asked to look at the image on the handset, and put it into his own coat pocket. Pike responded: “You’ve refused to look at the photo, you’ve taken my phone and put it in your pocket, prime minister. His mother says the NHS is in crisis. What’s your response to that?”

Johnson eventually looked at the photo and called it “terrible”. Justice Secretary Robert Buckland told BBC Breakfast this morning that the Conservative leader’s reaction was “clear and unforced and natural, and the apology was forthcoming and fulsome”, but Johnson is facing widespread criticism over the incident.

In other campaign news, Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson will make a speech today focusing on the cost of Brexit, and accusing the PM of putting EU citizens “at greater risk of hate crimes and abuse” through a “dog whistle” approach to immigration.

Monday 9 December: Boris Johnson attempts to ‘crack the red wall’

With just three days to go until the general election, the parties are giving their campaigns a final push with headline-grabbing promises - and political attacks.

In a speech this morning, shadow chancellor John McDonnell will announce Labour’s plans for its first 100 days in government, pledging to deliver a budget that would “end austerity” and to get “money moving out of Whitehall and the City”.

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson will be “trying to crack the so-called ‘red wall’ of Labour seats across the north of England” in order to deliver a Tory majority, Sky News reports.

The prime minister will tell voters that they face a “great betrayal” under Corbyn because Labour MPs would win their seats on a “false prospectus” of securing Brexit before sticking “two fingers up to the public”.

Yesterday, Johnson talked immigration with Sophy Ridge on Sky, saying that he can “make sure that numbers come down”.

But not everyone was convinced by his performance. The Guardian’s John Crace described the interview as a “20-minute audio-visual barrage of near constant mansplaining and manspreading”.

Over in the Lib Dem camp, leader Jo Swinson has told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme it “doesn’t look likely” her party will win a majority.

She said: “The most likely way we can stop Brexit is through a People’s Vote, and the Liberal Democrats have led the campaign for a People’s Vote for three-and-a-half years.”

Friday 6 December: BBC’s Andrew Neil challenges ‘untrustworthy’ Johnson

It’s less than a week until the 12 December general election, and the two main parties are desperate to avoid any blunders that could see them lose crucial votes.

Boris Johnson has so far managed to dodge a grilling by the BBC’s toughest interviewer Andrew Neil, likely conscious that it would be fertile ground for gaffes. But last night Neil threw down the gauntlet, challenging the prime minister to agree to an interview and defend his reputation for being “untrustworthy”.

“It is not too late. We have an interview prepared. Oven-ready, as Mr Johnson likes to say,” said Neil. “The theme running through our questions is trust - and why at so many times in his career, in politics and journalism, critics and sometimes even those close to him have deemed him to be untrustworthy.”

The other main party leaders have all been interviewed by Neil, with Nigel Farage the latest in the hot-seat last night. He defended his decision to stand-down Brexit Party candidates in Tory-held seats, saying he was putting “country before party” and was “tearing chunks out of the Labour vote” in other seats.

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Johnson and Corbyn are set to go head-to-head in a BBC TV debate tonight, hosted by the BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson. Writing in the New Statesman, Robinson said: “I don’t see my job as giving the man who’s currently got the job, or the man who wants it, a ‘grilling’…I want to limit the time they spend delivering ‘oven ready’ soundbites”.

Elsewhere, experts have said that British South Asians could hold the balance of power in key marginal seats. For years, the Labour Party has won South Asian votes, but “modern politics and the fall-out from the EU referendum are dividing these communities and their families”, says Sky News.

Thursday 5 December: Labour announces cap on school class sizes

The general election is a week today, but the new plans and promises from the main contenders are still coming thick and fast.

Labour is pledging to cap school class sizes in England at 30 pupils and to hire 20,000 extra teachers over five years to meet demand. Shadow education secretary Angela Rayner told BBC Breakfast that while the changes couldn’t be made “overnight”, a Labour government would immediately start “reversing the trend” of increasing class sizes and lack of spending seen under the Tories.

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson has outlined his plans for the Conservatives’ first 100 days of new government, promising tax cuts, a funding boost for schools and changes to laws relating to the release of serious offenders from prison. The party would also launch a review of defence, security and foreign policy, change the law to increase the amount that migrants pay to use the NHS, and begin cross-party talks on social care.

A new Deltapoll study has put the Conservatives on course for a “small but workable” majority, City A.M. reports. The poll, commissioned by ToscaFund Asset Management, found that the Tories are set for a Commons majority of between five and 30 seats.

Over in the Liberal Democrats camp, Jo Swinson was grilled last night by the BBC’s Andrew Neil over her support for harsh cuts during her party’s five years in coalition government with the Conservatives up until 2015. The Lib Dem leader apologised for her record on austerity and said she would be continuing as leader even if her party lost seats at the general election.

But, as Isabel Hardman writes in The Spectator, “others in her party might not be so confident of that assertion”.

Wednesday 4 December: Labour government ‘would save families £6,700 a year’

With just over a week to go until the general election, Labour is making a last-ditch bid to win votes by claiming that the party’s policies would save families an average total of £6,700 a year.

In a speech today, shadow chancellor John McDonnell will say that households would save cash as a result of the nationalisation of public services; reductions in the cost of rail season tickets; free childcare and school meals; and the axing of prescription charges.

The renewed focus on the cost of living and the total touted saving for families reportedly comes in response to concerns that the key messages in the party’s manifesto are getting lost.

“The manifesto is good – it’s just long and confusing. You need a few targeted, short messages and keep repeating them,” an unnamed Labour candidate in a Leave-voting seat told The Guardian.

In other news, Boris Johnson met with Donald Trump at No. 10 last night, where the two “discussed the future of Nato, what is going on in Syria and various other matters”, according to the prime minister.

Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn has apologised for alleged anti-Semitism within Labour, telling ITV’s This Morning that “our party and me do not accept anti-Semitism in any form” and that he is “sorry for everything that’s happened”.

The latest polls show the Tories on top but with Labour gaining. A Sky News/YouGov poll puts the Tories on 42% and Labour on 33%.

As campaigning reaches its peak, all of the parties have been warned over sending out election leaflets that mimic local newspapers. Industry group the Society of Editors said that doing so could undermine the public’s trust in local press and that voters wouldn’t forgive politicians who “attempt to take them for mugs”.

The Liberal Democrats have suffered a further image blow as leader Jo Swinson suspends a party member for faking an email that was sent as part of a legal battle with the openDemocracy political website. The row relates to a story about the Lib Dems selling personal data - something the party denies.

Swinson’s party has also come in for criticism over a leaflet with advice from a “polling expert” urging locals to vote tactically for the Lib Dems, with just a small disclaimer that the correspondence was from the party.

Tuesday 3 December: Tories aiming to swerve Trump endorsement

Cold weather has arrived in the UK alongside Donald Trump, as the US president jets in for a three-day visit.

Leaders from countries worldwide are here for a Nato meeting and talks, but Boris Johnson’s team are reluctant to confirm a one-to-one meeting with Trump because of his unpopularity among voters.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is calling on Johnson to demand that the NHS is taken “off the table” in post-Brexit trade talks with the US. The prime minister has maintained that the health service would not be part of trade negotiations.

In an other election campaign clash, Labour’s shadow housing secretary John Healey has criticised the Tories over a new report from Shelter that warns that at least 135,000 UK children will be homeless or living in temporary accommodation on Christmas Day.

Healey claims the crisis is “a direct result of decisions made by the Tories”. A government spokesperson said council were being given a total of £1.2bn in funding “to tackle all types of homelessness”.

Elsewhere, Nigel Farage has urged Leave supporters of all political persuasions to vote for Brexit Party candidates when polling day rolls around in less than two weeks’ time, the BBC reports.

“We’re saying to people, Labour or Conservative, if you think the candidate in your seat that can actually go to Westminster and fight for Leave is the Brexit Party, then tactically that’s who you have to vote for,” Farage said.

As the battle for votes continues, new analysis from Loughborough University has found that negative coverage of Labour’s election campaign has intensified, while coverage of the Conservatives remains positive overall.

Researchers assigned a value of +1 to stories that benefited a party and -1 to pieces that criticised it. Coverage of Labour reached below -75, while coverage of the Tories was +15 - and has been as high as +30 in recent weeks.

Monday 2 December: Boris battling ‘to prevent PR setback’ over London Bridge

The London Bridge terrorist attack on Friday afternoon has sparked a political blame game between the major parties.

The Times reports that Boris Johnson is seeking “to prevent a public relations setback” over the release of Usman Khan, the convicted terrorist who killed two people and wounded a further three on Friday before being shot dead by police.

Appearing on the BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, the prime minister “repeatedly sought to make political capital over the attack”, says The Guardian. Johnson blamed laws introduced under a Labour “leftie government” for Khan’s release, despite Marr pointing out the Conservatives had been in power for ten years.

Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn branded Khan’s release a “complete disaster” and called for a “very full investigation”.

Elsewhere, the main parties clashed over Brexit during an ITV debate last night. Labour’s shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon refused to say which way he would vote in a second referendum, while the Tories’ Chief Secretary to the Treasury Rishi Sunak did not rule out a no-deal Brexit if the Conservatives were re-elected.

Yesterday also saw Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson stating that she would not support Labour’s nationalisation plans in the event of a hung parliament. “Nobody is expecting, on the current scenario, that Jeremy Corbyn is getting anywhere near Downing Street,” Swinson BBC Radio 5’s Pienaar’s Politics.

But four polls published on Sunday showed Labour narrowing the gap with the Conservatives. Surveys by YouGov, Savanta Comres, BMG and Opinium show gaps of between six and 15 points. A spokesperson for BMG - which put the Conservatives on 39% support and Labour on 33% - said the election was in “hung parliament territory”.

In other news, Labour has announced plans to cut rail fares by a third if it wins power in the 12 December election. “Taking back control of our railways is the only way to bring down fares and create a railway network that is fit for the future,” said Corbyn.

Friday 29 November: Labour hatches new plan to target Leave voters

The general election is a fortnight away and the biggest opinion poll to date suggests voters are only going one way.

The YouGov MRP poll for The Times says that the Conservatives would win 359 seats if the election were held today, giving Boris Johnson a Commons majority of 68.

Labour would win 211 seats, losing more than 50 MPs and falling well short of the 262 they won in 2017.

But Jeremy Corbyn has a plan to reinvigorate his election campaign in Leave-voting areas, with a new tactic aimed at winning over traditionally Labour-voting Brexiteers.

Labour plans to boost the profile of those former shadow cabinet members who back Leave, and more activists will be moved to Leave areas. Brexit-supporting Labour chairman Ian Lavery will tour Brexit-backing areas, as will lifelong eurosceptic Corbyn.

Labour’s plan to nationalise key services will be sold as “taking back control of key businesses from foreign ownership”, reports the BBC.

It is clear then that this is indeed the Brexit election and not “the climate election” as it was branded by the Green Party. But a new survey by Sky News suggests that combating climate change is set to split the country in a similar way to Brexit.

Of voters who backed Labour in 2017, 58% said climate matters “a great deal”, while only 30% of Conservative voters said the same. And 54% of Remainers said it mattered a great deal, compared to just 28% of Leavers.

Thursday 28 November: Johnson gives climate debate the cold shoulder

Voters were last night treated to another televised face-off between politicians battling to secure No. 10, as the clock ticks down towards the general election.

Channel 4 invited all the main parties’ leaders to take part in the climate debate. But Boris Johnson and the Brexit Party’s Nigel Farage were conspicuously absent - and were represented instead by slowly melting ice sculptures.

The Tories have made a formal complaint to Ofcom, saying that they had offered Michael Gove as a last-minute stand-in for the prime minister but had been rebuffed in an alleged show of bias by the broadcaster.

All of the leaders who did show up for the debate - Jo Swinson, Nicola Sturgeon, Adam Price, Jeremy Corbyn and Sian Berry - agreed that tackling the climate crisis was a priority, leaving them battling to prove they were the most committed.

Meanwhile, the BBC has complained to the Conservatives about a Facebook advert by the party that uses footage of its news presenters referring to a “pointless delay to Brexit” and “another Brexit delay”. The broadcaster say the clips are taken out of context and “could damage perceptions of impartiality”.

In other election news, the Labour Party is launching its regional manifestos across England today, promising an “investment blitz” to bring “wealth, power and prosperity” to communities through transport projects, green jobs and housing.

In the opposite corner, Tory election candidates have been given a detailed manual on how to attack Labour and Liberal Democrat rivals, by criticising Labour’s spending pledges and the Lib Dems’ “pro-pimp policies on prostitution”. But The Guardian says the leaked dossier is full of “discredited claims” and statements that have been taken out of context and are “potentially misleading”.

Wednesday 27 November: Young voter surge gives hope to Labour

The window to register to vote in the 12 December general election has shut, leaving the UK’s main political parties scrambling to determine exactly who they need to woo.

Of the 3.2 million new registrations since the election was called, two-thirds were by people aged under 35 - good news for Labour, which is closing the gap with the Conservatives in the polls. However, latest surveys by ICM and Kantar give the Tories leads of seven and 11 points respectively - still some way ahead.

The i news site notes that many of those “signing up in a last-minute flurry” were already on the system, with some simply changing their address details or seeking to change the way they vote to proxy or postal ballots. “The figures still indicate a record number of the people on the electoral register, though,” says the site.

Out on the campaign trail, Jeremy Corbyn has conceded that his party’s plan to scrap a tax break for married couples would mean some people earning below £80,000 would be taxed more under a Labour government. The tax relief was introduced by David Cameron in 2015 to promote marriage, and saves couples up to £250 a year.

Speaking to the BBC’s Andrew Neil, Corbyn also struggled to outline how he would fund Labour’s £58bn plan to restore pensions to women born in the 1950s.

And the Labour leader declined to apologise to the Jewish community following yesterday’s criticism of the Labour Party by the UK’s chief rabbi.

Meanwhile, Nicola Sturgeon will today launch the Scottish National Party’s manifesto, and will warn that Boris Johnson is “dangerous and unfit for office”. The SNP’s plans will be of especial interest to Labour, who will be keen to know the possible price of Sturgeon’s support in the event of a hung parliament.

Johnson is also the target of the Liberal Democrat’s latest campaigning attack. The party has printed election posters that say: “Johnson has shown time and again that he can’t be trusted. He’s lied to the Queen, he’s lied to Parliament and he’s lied to the British people.”

Tuesday 26 November: Rabbi and rappers intervene on deadline day

The UK’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has warned voters that “the overwhelming majority of British Jews are gripped by anxiety” at the prospect of a majority Labour government.

In an article for The Times, Mirvis claims the Labour leadership’s response to anti-Semitism accusations has been “utterly inadequate”.

The Jewish leader has been a persistent critic of Labour, reports the BBC, and celebrated Boris Johnson’s election as Tory leader in July this year in a Facebook post that said: “I am delighted to congratulate Boris Johnson, a longstanding friend and champion of the Jewish community, on becoming the next leader of the Conservative Party and our next prime minister.”

But not everyone is convinced. British rappers Stormzy, Kano and Professor Green have all thrown their support behind Jeremy Corbyn, and have urged more people to join the million who have registered to vote in the past week, ahead of the 11.59pm deadline tonight.

In an Instagram post, Stormzy said Johnson was “a sinister man with a long record of lying and policies that have absolutely no regard for the people”.

An independent think-tank have predicted that child poverty could rise to a record 60-year high if the Conservatives gain another term in power, largely as a result of the Tories’ two-child limit on support for families.

Monday 25 November: Boris Johnson ‘on course’ for victory

With just two-and-a-half weeks to go until the 12 December general election, the opposing political parties are going all out to convince voters that they offer the best hope of preventing Brexit chaos and the disintegration of public services.

The Labour Party has vowed to “put bad landlords out of business” with a series of renting reforms and controls. A Labour government would introduce a German-style leasing model, with open-ended leases and capped rent increases.

In the opposite corner, Boris Johnson yet again promised to “get Brexit done” as he launched the Tory manifesto on Sunday. The prime minister also pledged to “forge a new society” and to hire 50,000 more nurses if his government is re-elected. But according to BBC, 18,500 of these nurses would be existing staff who would be encouraged to stay in the profession, while 12,500 would be hired from abroad.

Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson has admitted that the Tories are “on course” to win the election, and has apologised for her own party’s record in coalition government. Swinson said she was “really sorry we did not win more battles” in Whitehall during the Lib Dem’s five years in power from 2010.

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The first poll projection predicts a 48-seat Tory majority, giving Johnson a boost on current numbers to 349 MPs. Analysis by public opinion firm Datapraxis indicates that Labour will lose 30 seats and end up with just 213 MPs.

The deadline to register to vote is tomorrow, 26 November, at 11.59pm, or 5pm if seeking a postal vote.

Friday 22 November: Manifestos and ‘contracts with the people’

It’s less than three weeks to go until the 12 December general election, and voters are being spoiled rotten by parties publishing manifestos.

Labour’s manifesto launch managed to knock the Andrew formerly known as Prince off the front pages, with promises of higher NHS spending, a second Brexit referendum and the biggest house-building programme since the Second World War.

The Brexit Party will unveil its policies later today, with Nigel Farage saying he will not publish a manifesto but will instead make a “contract with the British people”.

Plaid Cymru aren’t a party for such stunts, and will publish their manifesto later today. Leader Adam Price will call for a £20bn “green jobs revolution” in Wales and back a second EU referendum.

The Tories are yet to publish their manifesto, but that hasn’t lost them the backing of donors. The party has raised £5.7m in the first week of the official election campaign, well ahead of Labour’s £218,500, the Lib Dems’ £275,000 and the Brexit Party’s £250,000. The figures only include donations over £7,500.

The Conservative government ran the highest October budget deficit in five years, borrowing far more than was expected. Spending jumped to £11.2 billion last month, £2.3 billion higher than October 2018, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The former SNP leader Alex Salmond has appeared in court charged with 14 sexual offences, including an attempted rape and 10 sexual assaults.

Google has banned highly targeted political advertising from all of its platforms, limiting targeting to age, gender and general location.

Thursday 21 November: Labour’s radical ‘manifesto of hope’

The general election is three weeks’ today, and Prince Andrew is doing his upmost to keep it off the front pages. The Duke of York fell on his ceremonial sword last night, retiring from public life over his links to Jeffrey Epstein.

Elsewhere, the Lib Dems released their manifesto yesterday, in what leader Jo Swinson hopes will be the second most important launch of her life.

The party promised to stop Brexit, legalise cannabis and invest in the NHS and education, but Swinson admitted to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg that it would be a “big step” for her to become prime minister.

The Labour Party will launch their “manifesto of hope” today, calling it the “most radical and ambitious plan to transform our country in decades”. Jeremy Corbyn will pledge higher NHS spending, a second Brexit referendum, a £10 minimum wage, and free broadband for all.

And the Labour leader will promise the biggest affordable house building programme since the 1960s, with plans to build 100,000 new council homes and 50,000 social homes a year by 2024.

Boris Johnson let slip plans to cut the threshold for paying National Insurance to £12,500 - only to row back later and tell the BBC that the threshold would be £9,500 for the first budget of a Tory government, with no schedule for the further £3,000 rise.

Meanwhile a long-running tracker by pollsters Ipsos MORI has seen 60% of voters put the NHS as their number one priority in the election, ahead of Brexit/the EU on 56%.

Wednesday 20 November: are you having a laugh?

After three-and-a-half years of Brexit battling that has culminated in yet another general election, the British public is in need of a good laugh.

Thankfully, last night’s leaders’ debate between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn on ITV provided plenty of amusement.

Johnson’s claim to believe that “truth matters” provoked laughter from the studio audience, who were clearly well aware of the prime minister’s reputation for telling fibs. One mistruth that he repeated last night was that the Tories have plans in place to build 40 new hospitals - a claim that has been proven to be false by fact checkers.

Corbyn also generated titters, by claiming that his position on Brexit was clear. Although the Labour Party’s plans have been outlined - negotiate a new deal within three months and then hold a referendum on it within six - Corbyn has never said which side he would back in a People’s Vote.

But the biggest joke of the night wasn’t all that funny - the Conservative Campaign Headquarters rebranded its Twitter account as “factcheckUK” before firing off a series of anti-Labour posts during the debate. Twitter said the move was “an attempt to mislead people” and warned that “decisive corrective action” would be taken if CCHQ reoffended.

Elsewhere, the Lib Dems have promised to recruit 20,000 new teachers and reverse school cuts with an “emergency cash injection” of £4.6bn next year. During the party’s last term in office, in coalition with the Tories from 2010 to 2015, the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that public spending on education in the UK was falling at the fastest rate since the 1950s.

Tuesday 19 November: TV debate and ‘whole life’ sentences for child killers

With just over three weeks to go until the 12 December general election, today marks the first big treat of the campaign: a live televised debate.

Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn will go head to head on ITV at 8pm, but won’t be joined by Jo Swinson or Nicola Sturgeon after they lost a legal challenge against the exclusion of the Lib Dems and SNP leaders.

The Green Party will launch its election manifesto later today, saying it wants to invest £100bn a year by 2030 as part of a “green new deal” in response to the climate crisis.

The Greens are also in favour of increasing NHS spending, holding a second Brexit referendum and lowering the national voting age to 16.

The Conservative Party has said that, if it wins the election, some adults who murder children will face life in prison without the prospect of parole. The Tories would bring in “whole life orders” for over 21-year-olds who commit the premeditated murder of a child.

The proposed measures are “largely symbolic – designed to boost confidence in the criminal justice system”, says Danny Shaw, the BBC’s home affairs correspondent.

The general election has caused UK house prices and the number of properties coming on to the market to fall.

The Guardian says the “big drop” in the number of houses coming on to the market is down to people waiting to see who wins the December vote.

Monday 18 November: ‘electoral fraud’, extramarital affairs and legal challenges

The general election campaign continues to dominate headlines, despite Prince Andrew seemingly doing his best to claim the top spot in the news agenda.

The Guardian reports that police are assessing two allegations of electoral fraud following allegations that the Conservatives offered senior Brexit Party candidates peerages to stand down.

Meanwhile, Labour have said they will not investigate a Welsh general election candidate’s alleged links to a Facebook group advising party members on how to defend themselves from accusations of anti-Semitism, reports the BBC.

Back at Tory HQ, Security Minister Brandon Lewis has said that a long-awaited report into alleged Russian meddling in British politics will not be published until after the election - triggering claims that “it might contain embarrassing revelations about Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his party”, says Reuters.

On the pledges front, Labour is promising to make dental check-ups free for everyone in England. “This is the first step towards making all dentistry services free of charge – part of our ambition to deliver free dentistry as part of a truly universally free health service,” said Jeremy Corbyn.

In other big news today, High Court judges will hear a legal challenge to ITV by the Lib Dems and SNP over their exclusion from a planned head-to-head debate between Johnson and Corbyn, says the London Evening Standard.

And the PM is facing renewed pressure over his conduct during his reign as London mayor, as the London Assembly investigates his relationship with Jennifer Arcuri. The US businesswoman has accused Johnson of casting her aside “like a one-night stand” since allegations about his conduct emerged, but has still not confirmed whether they had a physical relationship.

The investigation will also focus on an affair that Johnson had with an unpaid City Hall adviser, Helen Macintyre, who went on to give birth to one of his children.

Finally, the leaders of all the three main parties are to make speeches to business leaders at the Confederation of British Industry’s annual conference later today.

Friday 15 November: Labour promises free nationwide broadband

The UK’s main parties are doing everything they can to win over undecideds voters as the clock ticks down towards polling day.

Labour has announced that every household in the UK will be offered free full-fibre broadband internet access by 2030 if they win the 12 December election.

Jeremy Corbyn will say in a speech today: “A new public service delivering the fastest broadband free to everyone is at the heart of Labours plans to transform the future of our economy and society.”

The party would renationalise part of BT to deliver the policy, and introduce a tax on tech giants to help meet the total £20bn cost.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives are pledging to reduce business rates for small firms in a bid to help “left-behind” towns.

The Tories say they would increase the business rate discount on offer to smaller firms from 33% to 50% in 2020-21.

Announcing the plan, Boris Johnson promised to help people “put the heart back into the places they call home”.

Elsewhere, Nigel Farage is claiming that the Conservatives offered Brexit Party candidates jobs and titles in a bid to persude them not to contest seats in marginal constituencies.

The Brexit Party leader said his candidates received “thousands of phone calls and emails” trying to get them to withdraw.

And Farage is also battling a more unexpected challenger - an “anti-Brexit cat” is standing in the general election. The cat's handler says the moggy wants “a Brexit deal which is kinder on pets and which sticks two paws up to Boris Johnson and the likes of Jacob Rees-Moggy”.

General election 2019 latest: Conservatives drag immigration into campaign

There are only 28 sleeps to go until the country takes to the polls for the 12 December general election.

The Conservatives have deployed the much-used election tactic of blaming immigration for the country’s woes - and pledging to slash it.

Home Secretary Priti Patel has released a statement saying that the Tories will cut “immigration overall” after Brexit if they win power, but has not given any figures or details on how that might be achieved.

As commentators have noted, the Conservatives have dropped their pledge to cut net migration to below 100,000 after failing to meet the target during their last nine-and-a-half years in power.

Labour’s shadow business minister, Laura Pidcock, said the Tories had “broken every single commitment they’ve ever given” on immigration.

Elsewhere, Nigel Farage has confirmed that Brexit Party candidates will stand in Labour and Liberal Democrat seats, despite pleas from Leave supporters to withdraw.

Farage told the BBC Today programme: “We’re going to fight 300 seats and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.

“Your best chance of getting Brexit is to get us in there and hold Boris Johnson to account.”

Meanwhile, Labour has pledged to close the gender pay gap by 2030. The party claimed that the difference between men's and women's average pay would take another 60 years to close under a Conservative government.

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Wednesday 13 November: the battle for the NHS heats up

With less than a month to go until the 12 December general election, the rival political parties are attempting to outdo each on the key issues - and the NHS is in the spotlight today.

Labour has unveiled a rescue plan that would see the health service being given £5.5bn more a year by 2023-24 than the £20.5bn promised by the Conservatives.

The NHS Confederation, which represents managers, said the pledge represented a “significant extra investment”, adding that “if used wisely, it would help to transform services and retain front-line staff”.

Elsewhere, Boris Johnson has come under fire for his “utterly outrageous” response to widespread flooding in the Midlands and North of England.

The Labour leader of the district council in flood-hit Bassetlaw said the prime minister was “preoccupied with electioneering” instead of coordinating a national response to the crisis. The Government had a “fantastic opportunity to step up to the plate and take emergency action” but were “concentrating more on the general election campaign than they were on people’s lives”, Councillor Simon Greaves claimed.

Johnson suffered another blow to his image when former Tory justice secretary David Gauke tweeted that a Conservative majority would be a “bad outcome for the country”.

In a post last night, Gauke said: “A Conservative majority at the next General Election will pursue a very hard Brexit... It’s a thoroughly irresponsible policy.”

The PM will make a speech today warning that the UK cannot afford to “squander” more time deciding how to leave the EU, and will pledge to end the “groundhoggery” of Brexit.

Tuesday 12 November: Hillary Clinton says UK should publish Russia report

Another day, another round of campaign news to mull over ahead of the 12 December general election.

Nigel Farage’s decision to stand down Brexit Party candidates in Tory-held constituencies dominated the front pages this morning, but following an initial scramble to proclaim the move a major boon for the Tories, some pollsters suggested it might not have that much of an impact.

“Farage’s decision to stand aside... will likely make very little difference,” say experts from polling company YouGov, who conclude that despite the drama, “this is unlikely to be a game-changing moment”.

Elsewhere, Hillary Clinton has criticised the UK government for delaying the publication of a report on alleged Russian interference in British politics until after the election.

Branding the decision “inexplicable and shameful”, the former US presidential candidate told the BBC: “Every person who votes in this country deserves to see that report before your election happens.”

The report - which was handed to No. 10 last month - contains evidence from intelligence agencies GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 about secret Russian attempts to manipulate the outcome of the 2016 EU referendum and 2017 general election.

Clinton isn’t the only foreign politician voicing concerns about UK intelligence issues. The Guardian reports that Australia’s former top diplomat in the UK, Alexander Downer, has said the Aussies should “substantially reduce” intelligence-sharing with UK agencies in the event that Jeremy Corbyn wins the general election.

Monday 11 November: Brexit Party won’t fight the Tories

Holidays are coming and – even more excitingly – so is a general election. Voters will go to the polls on 12 December to choose the government that will be in charge of the country and its money.

If the Conservatives are to be believed, that could be an awful lot of money. Analysis drawn up by the Tories says Labour’s policies would cost £1.2trn over the course of the next five years, if the opposition party wins next month’s general election. Labour has branded the claim “ludicrous fake news”.

Both parties are making Armistice Day pledges to do better by members of the British military. Boris Johnson has said he will change the law to protect veterans from legal action, while Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn says he will offer more support for forces children and better wages for those in the military.

The Brexit Party has given the Tories a huge boost by announcing it will not stand candidates against the Conservatives in the 317 seats the party won in the 2017 general election. The party will stand against Labour in the hope it will win Leave voters over to its cause.

Meanwhile, the Brexit paralysis has led to the UK’s credit rating possibly being downgraded after ratings agency Moody’s lowered its outlook for the economy. The threat could play into Johnson’s hands, as he battles a general election campaign based on breaking the Brexit deadlock.

The UK’s main political parties are setting out their wares ahead of the launch of the official general election campaign period following the dissolution of Parliament on Wednesday.

Jo Swinson is expected to deliver a speech in London later today in which the Liberal Democrats leader will claim that cancelling Brexit would give a £50bn “Remain bonus” for public services over the next five years.

Meanwhile, Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn will tell an audience in the Leave-supporting Tory-held seat of Harlow, in Essex, that he would “get Brexit sorted” within six months if elected prime minister.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson last night published a letter to Corbyn calling on the Labour leader to “come clean” about his Brexit strategy and admit he wants “to go back to square one”.

As UK voters gear up to head to the polls on 12 December - the first December election since 1923 - here is what you need to know about the process.

Who can vote?

To vote in a general election, you must:

• be 18 or over on polling day
• be a British, Irish or qualifying Commonwealth citizen (i.e. a Commonwealth citizen who has leave to enter or remain in the UK, or who doesn’t require that leave)
• be resident at an address in the UK, or a British citizen living abroad who has been registered to vote in the UK in the last 15 years
• not be legally excluded from voting.

You must also be registered to vote.

What will voters see on their ballot paper?

Voters attending a polling station will be given a ballot paper before going into a voting booth to make their choice.

The ballot paper will have the name of each candidate standing in the constituency, along with the candidate’s party logo (if they have one) and a box where the voter can put a cross to indicate who they are voting for. For example:

The top of the ballot paper will provide a reminder of which election is being contested and give instructions to the voter on the maximum number of candidates for whom they may vote. In a general election, it’s one.

How does first-past-the-post work?

General elections in the UK run on a “first-past-the-post” system, which simply means that whoever gets the most votes in each constituency is elected to the House of Commons.

The winning candidate could get fewer than half the votes in their constituency, so long as they have more than the person in second place.

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First-past-the-post has come in for criticism from those who say the system is unfairly stacked against smaller parties.

Even if millions of people vote for a party, if those votes are spread out across the UK rather than concentrated in particular constituencies, that party could end up with few or no seats, as the Electoral Reform Society points out.

When are the results announced?

The polls are open from 7am until 10pm on 12 December.

If a voter is in a queue at the polling station at 10pm, they should still be able to vote, even if they are still queuing when that deadline is reached.

Results typically roll in overnight, with the first result usually coming in between midnight at 2am.

The outcome of the election should be clear by around 5am, although if there is a hung Parliament then prepare for days of inter-party bartering.