With parliament wrapping up this week, the election campaign is still not running at full pelt, but it’s getting there. Here are 10 takeaways from the week.
1) Theresa May has discovered her inner Ed Miliband
The Conservatives have announced plans for a cap on energy bills, shamelessly plundering a policy that they derided as Marxist when Labour proposed it in the last parliament. As yet, there is no evidence Miliband has discovered his inner Theresa May.
2) May seems intent on trying to use Jeremy Corbyn’s unpopularity, as measured by the polls, to realign British politics
Her visits this week have included Leeds, where she appealed to traditional Labour voters with the line “it may say Labour on the ballot, but it’s Corbyn that gets the vote”, and Wales, where a poll suggests the Conservatives are on course to get a majority of seats for the first time since the 1850s.
3) But persuading voters the polls cannot be trusted is now a priority for the Tories
Polls were wrong in 2015, and about Brexit and about Trump, May told her cabinet, and then everyone else. She is worried that some people may feel it is safe to vote Labour if there is no prospect of Corbyn becoming prime minister – a tactic some Labour candidates are actively embracing.
4) There is some evidence of parties collaborating, in the spirit of a progressive alliance, to keep out Tory candidates
Gina Miller has raised £300,000 for her pro-EU tactical voting campaign, and in Brighton the Lib Dems are stepping aside in one seat to help a Green, Caroline Lucas, while the Greens are sitting it out in another to help Labour.
5) There will be a leaders’ debate – in Scotland
STV is going to host a debate on 24 May with Nicola Sturgeon (SNP), Ruth Davidson (Scottish Conservatives), Kezia Dugdale (Scottish Labour) and Willie Rennie (Scottish Lib Dems). But down south, the prospect of any leaders’ debate all but vanished after Corbyn said that with May refusing to take part, he wouldn’t participate either.
6) Tim Farron does not think gay sex is a sin
After prevaricating when asked whether it was, with the result that the theological status of gay sex became an unlikely election issue, the Lib Dem leader, an evangelical Christian, finally gave an answer. As for what May thinks of the morality of gay sex, so far no one has dared ask.
7) A mugwump is someone who defected from the Republican party in the US in the 1880s
Or a character from Roald Dahl’s The Twits. Or a title given to a Harry Potter character. Whatever, it’s derogatory, and when Boris Johnson described Corbyn as one, with a single word he successfully overshadowed a Labour policy announcement about building 1m new homes.
8) The main parties’ tax plans have yet to be disclosed
We may know a lot more about the etymology of Johnsonian insults this week, but how the next government intends to raise revenue is not something either party has shed much light on. Voters have to wait for the manifestos, with the Tories’ due a week on Monday and Labour’s a week later.
9) Ukip seems to have embraced Islamophobia as its core strategy
As well as provisionally selecting a candidate who has described Islam as evil, the party has published an “integration agenda” that proposes banning the burqa, new Muslim schools and sharia law. The party’s foreign affairs spokesman resigned in protest and even Arron Banks, a former donor and Trump-style immigration hardliner, condemned the approach.
10) David Cameron thinks the lack of a referendum on the EU before 2016 was ‘poisoning British politics’
He was speaking at a tourism conference in Bangkok where, no doubt, he was well placed to observe how the nation has come together in harmony and tranquility after the poll he engineered.
