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.
What happened today
Greens | The Green party launched their manifesto, promising a wealth tax, a £49bn investment programme to insulate homes and public buildings, and rent controls. Co-leader Carla Denyer said of proposed tax rises that the Greens were “the only party being honest that that’s the level of investment needed to get the kind of public services we need in this country”.
Economy | Growth in the UK flatlined in April, held back by wet weather, as the signs of a recovery from last year’s recession began to fade. The news is a blow to Rishi Sunak’s hopes of signalling a strong bounceback before the election.
Labour | Voters in the target constituency of Chingford and Woodford Green are divided on how to respond to the party’s deselection of longstanding candidate Faiza Shaheen, the latest in the Guardian’s Path to Power series finds. While some Labour loyalists fear that her candidacy will hand the seat to incumbent Iain Duncan Smith, her supporters believe her treatment by the party has “touched a nerve” and could lead to a groundswell of support.
Analysis: The Tory tactical retreat
One brief episode during the Liz Truss interregnum aside, Grant Shapps doesn’t really abandon the party line during interviews. And while Sunak didn’t endorse what he said about the risk of a Labour supermajority, there is a long tradition of prime ministers leaving the more controversial stuff to their outriders while they remain statesmanlike above the fray.
Normally that’s to get someone to say something really horrible about the opposition, though - not to agree that they’re quite likely to win. Some more points of evidence that this is a deliberate strategy:
• Starting with the national service pledge, the policy offer has largely been focused on the core Conservative vote. That aligns with recent briefing of a “Dunkirk strategy” aimed at going down with 200 MPs intact, instead of 100, by “lovebombing the pensioners”. You will remember that gobsmacking YouGov poll which found the Conservatives with only 8% support among the under-50s. But very little in the Tory offer seems designed to win over that constituency. And the word “constituency” is a pretty funny term to use to describe 57% of the country.
• Ministers are mostly campaigning in seats where the Tories have a large majority. Exactly 46 of 49 seats visited by leading ministers so far are Conservative-held, a Times analysis found yesterday. The average majority is more than 10,000. As Kiran Stacey told me of Sunak’s own visits for our First Edition newsletter last week: “It is essentially a defensive campaign. He’s touring the blue wall like nobody’s business. He even held a campaign event in his own constituency. It’s about loss minimisation.”
• They’re not just saying this through the medium of Grant Shapps. As Jim Waterson spotted last week, the Tories have started rolling out ads warning that “a vote for Reform or the Liberal Democrats means you’ll have no-one holding [Starmer] to account on your behalf.” The Financial Times identified another ad in which voters were warned of handing Starmer “a massive majority”.
That these ads have received only a limited spend so far suggests that they have been viewed as a way to test drive the message. If so, Shapps’ comments would be a rung up, and it wouldn’t be surprising to hear similar lines from others in the days ahead – not least because any other Tory MP on the radio or TV will be asked the same question. Already, rightwing backbencher Andrea Jenkyns has said (rather less supportively) that she put a picture of herself with Nigel Farage on her leaflet because she wants “to prevent a socialist supermajority”. It’s highly likely that Sunak will be asked it in the Sky leaders’ interviews tonight, too.
It’s also worth noting that all of this has the merit of being somewhat aligned with reality – and that even the Conservatives’ firmest supporters are making adjustments of their own. The Daily Telegraph, for instance, published a column ten days ago headlined “Whisper it, but Rishi Sunak is making an extraordinary comeback”. On the front today: “Nigel Farage is already the leader of the Conservatives“ and “Keir Starmer has unwittingly revealed his sinister plan for Britain”.
The explanation from one Tory candidate to the Financial Times was that “when people realise that Starmer may have an unassailable majority, they get quite nervous.” They might also hope that if they consider the result a foregone conclusion, some Labour supporters won’t bother to vote – which is why Keir Starmer unsurprisingly dismissed the idea that the result was in the bag earlier.
But there are limits to the efficacy of all this. In some very well-timed polling, policy research agency Public First found that there is a substantial appetite for a total Tory wipe-out – defined as the Conservatives winning no seats at all. Even a quarter of the Conservatives’ own 2019 supporters agreed with the statement that they “deserve to lose every seat they have”.
Crucially, Public First found very little shift in public attitudes when they were asked their view of increasing Labour majorities up to very unlikely levels. All of which underlines the obvious fact that this is not only a deeply pessimistic play, but one which by definition can only have an impact at the margins. The best argument in favour: at this point, what else have the Conservatives got?
Winner of the day
Abu Dhabi, which is fielding “a rush of inquiries” from UK non-doms expecting to see preferential tax treatment changed after the election, Bloomberg reports. This may depend on your definition of “winner”.
Losers of the day
Wordle enthusiasts, who have learned that Rishi Sunak is one of their number. Might be a good day to give Wordiply a go.
Man who really wants you to know that he absolutely loves driving of the day
It’s Keir Starmer, who used an interview with the Sun to pitch himself for casting in any sequel to French auto-erotic horror spectacular Titane (and also announce plans to fill in a million potholes). Honestly, read these quotes and tell me you wouldn’t have your guard up if you had four wheels and a gearbox:
I do still drive because I love driving, I’ve always loved driving, and that is something that has been throughout.
The first car we ever got as a family was a Ford Cortina. My dad loved driving, I loved this car. You can imagine the scene when I was about four or five years old, I was outside cleaning the car the whole time.
He loved driving, I love driving, I still do drive because I love it, a little bit, not as much as I like to, and I’m as irritated by the potholes as everyone else, by the way. Yeah, I still like driving. I love driving.
What’s at stake
The Tories aren’t the only ones seeking to turn Labour’s polling lead to their advantage. At the Green party manifesto launch today, Peter Walker writes:
Much of the message … was aimed at voters who realised Labour were likely to win the election and would want a Green presence to push Keir Starmer’s party on areas including poverty and the environment.
“Now we’re not expecting to form the next government, we’re realistic about that,” [co-leader Adrian Ramsay] said. “We will be there to drive them [Labour] to be braver, to be more ambitious, not to take baby steps towards change, but to actually do what’s necessary to fix our country and get us back on track.”
That might appeal to enough 2019 Labour voters to allow the Greens to win in Brighton Pavilion and Bristol Central. Peter also has a rundown of the key policies the Greens set out, from meaningful tax increases for the wealthy to a major housing programme – but notes an interesting and zeitgeisty determination to avoid sounding too radical in style, if not in substance:
While the Greens’ policies are certainly more radical than those of the bigger parties, the manifesto launch was notably short on controversy or eye-opening ideas, as exemplified by the deeply sensible figures of Denyer and Ramsay.
A question about abandoning nuclear weapons was answered less in terms of a moral choice than of cost and practicality; asked if the Greens believed jailed climate protesters should be freed, Denyer said it was not up to politicians to get involved in individual court cases.
Quote of the day
There’ll be all sorts of things that I would’ve wanted as a kid that I couldn’t have. Famously, Sky TV, so that was something that we never had growing up actually.”
Rishi Sunak on what he missed out on as a child
Number of the day
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58%
The proportion of UK voters who say they would almost never trust politicians to tell the truth, according to the National Centre for Social Research. 45% say they would almost never trust the government to put country before party – the highest proportion on record. Sign up to First Edition to read Rupert Neate’s conversation with polling guru John Curtice about why that might be, first thing tomorrow.
Dubious photo opportunity of the day
I’m not picking the one of Ed Davey doing an Aqua Jungle floating assault course at a water park! I’m not going to allow myself to be used! … Is what I wrote this morning before a long and fruitless search for an alternative. So here’s Ed Davey doing an Aqua Jungle floating assault course at a water park.
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What’s on the grid
Today, 7pm | Rishi Sunak’s ITV interview airs. Pre-released clips have already shown him apologising for being late because of D-Day commemorations and explaining that he went without things as a child, including Sky TV.
Today, 7.30pm | Sunak and Keir Starmer each face questions from Sky News’s Beth Rigby, and then from a live studio audience, in Grimsby.
Tomorrow | Labour launches its manifesto.
Tomorrow, 10.30am | Plaid Cymru launches its manifesto.
