It’s just over a week since Rishi Sunak got soaked in the rain as he called the general election. Since then he has forgotten that Wales didn’t qualify for the Euros, paid a visit to Belfast’s Titanic quarter and been photographed under an exit sign. Richard Holden, the Tory party chair AKA Baldrick impersonator, has insisted that the campaign has been going exactly as planned. God knows what might have happened if it hadn’t. Then the Conservatives started pumping out policies as if there’s no tomorrow. National service, the pension triple lock, a ban on Mickey Mouse degrees, and driving penalty points for flytippers. If they’re all such good ideas, it makes you wonder why the Tories didn’t do any of them in the last 14 years.
Not that any of them are likely to happen, because the chances of the Conservatives winning the election are currently near zero. A sign of how bad Rish! thinks things are is that almost all his campaign visits have been to what used to be Tory strongholds, to try to shore up the vote. Meanwhile, Labour figures have been touring the country shouting “change” and not much more. They think it’s enough just not to be the Tories. So far that appears to be working. The polls have barely shifted in the last 10 days. It’s all been sound and fury, signifying nothing, and most people will end the week talking of little more than the Donald Trump verdicts. But here are the highlights you may have missed.
Row of the week
If there’s one thing Labour likes more than picking a fight with the Tories, it’s picking a fight with itself. Nothing beats an ideological ground war with its own team. Here’s how the Diane Abbott affair was meant to have worked out. Diane would have had the whip symbolically returned and then been allowed to stand down as a candidate in her own time. Presumably to find herself in the Lords within a matter of months. Only, Labour couldn’t bear to keep things simple and dignified, so a party apparatchik briefed the Times that Abbott was barred from standing again.
Cue three days of party infighting in which Labour talked about nothing but Keir Starmer’s purge of the party’s left. Not to mention confusion, as Starmer then insisted that Diane had never been banned but didn’t appear that keen to intervene to reselect her. By now even those on the right of the party were upset about the way Abbott had been treated, and Angela Rayner weighed in to say Abbott should be allowed to stand again. Hardly a united front. But maybe Starmer doesn’t care. He’s just pleased to show floating voters that he’s a hard man and has changed his party. In any case, he’s banking on the fact that most people will have forgotten about the selection battles in five weeks’ time.
Clown of the week
No contest. The Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey, appears to have been leading his best life. On Monday he dressed up in a wetsuit – wrong on so many levels – to go paddleboarding on Windermere, where he fell into the water five times. Let’s hope he avoided the cryptosporidium from all the untreated sewage that’s been pumped into the lake. On Tuesday he went bike riding down a hill in Wales. On Wednesday he went to a water park in Somerset. Truly a Forrest Gump de nos jours. Next week he will be on a trapeze, going go-karting and morris dancing. Still, at least it adds to the gaiety and gets him noticed. The downside is that still no one can remember a single Lib Dem policy.
Mickey Mouse degrees
Despite insisting he was going to close down degree courses that didn’t offer value for money, Sunak was unable to name one course that was destined for the chop. Well, allow me to make a suggestion. Let’s start with PPE at Oxford. David Cameron, Liz Truss and Sunak himself all did PPE and look at the chaos the three of them have caused. Between them they have cost the country billions of pounds through a mixture of Brexit, an emergency budget and general uselessness.
Fashion faux pas
Starmer got some flak for a £500 coat, but Sunak again comes out on top. Every clothes choice he makes reeks of try-hard tech bro. There are the trousers that are always way too short. Why can’t someone tell him he just looks weird? Then there are the hoodies. Everyone knows that a hoodie is meant to be worn loose, but Rish! insists on wearing his skintight. Creepy. But that was not even his worst offence. That came with the £750 rucksack. What’s wrong with something from North Face? To compound the sin, Sunak even has his rucksack personalised with a monogrammed “RS”. It makes him look like a spoilt child.
Strop of the week
Hats off to the Northern Ireland minister Steve Baker for not letting the election get in the way of his holiday in Greece. Despite now fighting a very marginal seat, Steve headed off with some harsh words for Sunak. All Tory MPs had been told not to cancel their travel plans in the days and weeks before the prime minister called his surprise election, so Steve was taking him at his word. Why change your plans when you’re probably going to win anyway? David Cameron also jetted off, for a long weekend in Italy with the family. Though Lord Big Dave doesn’t have to worry about anything grubby like an election. There again, he’s never appeared to worry about anything very much.
Career change
In addition to his day job of campaigning for Reform while fearlessly choosing not to stand for a seat – he has the perfect record of having fought seven, lost seven – Nigel Farage is also apparently an expert on American criminal law. Within minutes of Donald Trump being found guilty on all 34 counts, Nige tweeted that the verdict was a disgrace. How wonderful that despite not having sat through any of the hearings and not fully understanding the complexity of the charges, Our Nige knew better than any of the legal teams and the 12 men and women of the jury. We should put him in charge of our judicial system. He would be able to clear the entire backlog with a simple “not guilty”.
Where’s wallies?
So far Sunak has been left to do all the heavy lifting of the Tory campaign by himself. While Starmer has been out and about with Rachel Reeves and Wes Streeting, we haven’t been allowed a glimpse of Jeremy Hunt or Victoria Atkins. Either because even Rish! has now realised that his cabinet are liabilities or because his cabinet don’t want to damage their own chances of holding their seats by being seen with the prime minister.
Men of the people
Hats off to Rishi Sunak. For the first time in his life, Rish! took public transport when he caught the sleeper train to Penzance. He appears to have been traumatised for life, having had to share accommodation with all the little people in first class. He didn’t even have his own en suite bathroom. Imagine having to share a toilet. Somehow Sunak muddled his way through the rest of the day before insisting on returning to London by private helicopter. And now even Starmer is getting in on the act, chartering a private plane to take him to Scotland. Maybe BA was all booked up. Because they’re worth it.
