Good afternoon. I presume you read this newsletter for the paradigm-shifting political insights, so let me be the first to tell you: when defence secretary Grant Shapps tells Times Radio listeners that they should vote Conservative because “you don’t want to have somebody receive a supermajority” and it would be dangerous for Keir Starmer to have “power [that] was in some way unchecked”, it does not signal a Tory campaign in rude health.
Rishi Sunak got asked about Shapps’ remarks later on, and insisted he was not conceding defeat. But that doesn’t mean one of his most trusted media performers suddenly went rogue. More on the Tories’ defeatism strategy, and why Starmer is meanwhile getting hot and bothered over a Ford Cortina, after the headlines.
