What’s happening?
Both prime ministerial contenders have given interviews to newspapers today: Theresa May to the Telegraph and Jeremy Corbyn to the Guardian. The latter is easily the more candid – and if that sounds partisan, the Telegraph’s political editor notes that the PM’s swipe at the Labour leader over his record of opposition to counter-terrorism legislation “is perhaps the most direct answer of a wide-ranging interview”.
May is coy on potential tax rises (“I’m a Conservative, the Conservative party’s instinct always is to lower tax”) and that awkward social care cap (“We are genuinely going to consult on the cap and I think that’s important because we want to hear from different people”), perhaps gambling that voters would prefer a surprise to unwrap some time after 8 June rather than be bothered with details now.
Corbyn’s eve of election eve chat was rather more forthright, accusing the PM of being “uttterly ridiculous” and “offensive” for claiming he “doesn’t believe in Britain”, and criticising her for leaping in with a “political speech in the middle of the day” after the London attack, instead of agreeing a campaign pause with rival parties.
If he were settling himself into a Downing Street swivel chair on Friday, he said, one of his first moves would be to call Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron to reset the tone on Brexit talks and to guarantee the rights of EU nationals living in the UK.
Another call would go to Donald Trump to urge him not to withdraw from the Paris agreement – a jolting reminder that we have barely heard the words “climate change” in this campaign – and to “ask him if he would kindly reconsider” his tweet-slamming of London mayor Sadiq Khan.
The US president, adhering to the trusty principle that if you’ve taken someone’s words out of context it’s far better to steamroller on and insist on your #alternativefacts, yesterday lambasted Khan for his “pathetic excuse”, which the “MSM [mainstream media] is working hard to sell”, by repeating the words the mayor actually said.
The London attack – and the resulting political melee over police cuts, internet monitoring and the reporting of extremism – of course still dominates. It was in the prime minister’s words yesterday, and in her lack of words when she declined five times to respond to questions about statistics showing the number of armed police is lower now than in 2010, when T May became home secretary. It was in the tussle over what Corbyn does or does not think about shoot-to-kill policies.
And it came up in Monday night’s postponed BBC Question Time special, in which Tim Farron accused the prime minister of being ready to sacrifice civil liberties to crack down on extremism:
It’s easy and tempting for politicians to come up with a knee-jerk response. People are seeking answers and want to see action.
Focus group work by the Guardian suggests people are indeed seeking answers and want to see action on terrorism. But it’s not clear which party they believe can deliver it.
On that same Question Time outing, Nicola Sturgeon leaned back from hints of a coalition with a minority Labour government, preferring an issue-by-issue palling-up, as long as “that would keep the Tories out of power”.
But the first minister faced pressure over the devolved government’s education scorecard, which she rebutted with the correct but not entirely compensatory retort that “on Thursday we’re not choosing a Scottish government”.
But the real watch-through-your-fingers moment was a tie between culture secretary Karen Bradley, who stumbled over police cuts numbers, and shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, who looked suspiciously as if she was winging it when quizzed on Sky News over last year’s Harris report on London policing.
At a glance:
- Tory winter fuel allowance cut puts 4,000 lives at risk, claims Labour.
- The Guardian view on the election in Scotland: a chance to puncture May’s complacency.
- Cancel Trump state visit, says Sadiq Khan – and the Guardian agrees.
- Police investigate Banksy offer of free print for voters who spurn Tories.
- Catch up with the Guardian’s Election Daily podcast.
Poll position
Monday’s Guardian/ICM poll was a flutter not a shift: Labour up one point to 34% since last week, but the Tories holding strong and stable (now they’ve awkwardly sidelined that slogan) on 45%. A Survation poll for ITV’s Good Morning Britain today has it at 42% v 40%, with the Tories down two points and Labour pepping up by three.
Another of those controversial YouGov modellings still has May short of the 326 seats she’d need for a majority: it pegs her on 305 MPs, with Corbyn garnering 268, the SNP 42 and Lib Dems 13.
So that’s clear.
Diary
- Theresa May is out on the big blue battle bus.
- At 9am the Radio 4 Woman’s Hour debate has Amber Rudd, Diane Abbott, Lib Dem Jo Swinson, the SNP’s Kirsty Blackman and Ukip’s Margot Parker.
- At 9.45 in London, Nick Clegg makes a speech on Brexit; Boris Johnson intervenes on the same issue in a speech at 11am.
- Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale and Scottish Lib Dem campaign chair Alex Cole-Hamilton are both in Edinburgh; Nicola Sturgeon takes the SNP campaign to north-east Scotland.
- At 11am there is a nationwide minute’s silence for victims of the London attack.
- At 6.30pm Lib Dem peer Lynne Featherstone launches the party’s youth manifesto in London.
- Jeremy Corbyn addresses a rally in Birmingham this evening.
- At 8.30pm the STV Scottish leaders’ debate pits Sturgeon and Dugdale against Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie and Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson. The Scottish Greens have not been invited.
- And at 9pm it’s the BBC Newsbeat youth election debate: we’re promised representatives from the Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems, SNP, Plaid Cymru, Greens and Ukip.
Read these
In the Financial Times, Sebastian Payne says a narrow win for May could see her in trouble:
The danger zone, however, is anything below a majority of 50. Any increased majority will be heralded publicly as a triumph, but Tories would see it as a waste of time and a missed opportunity. The Corbynista programme wouldn’t have been given the shellacking they think it deserves and brows would be furrowed over both the prime minister’s performance and judgment. She would face calls to change her management style and to leave the cabinet much as it is.
The Conservative party loves regicide but not even the craziest MPs would try to challenge her immediately after polling day. But when the first difficulties from the Brexit talks arise, who will be there to have her back? For all the talk of Mayism, Mayites are still a rare species. They will be even harder to find if she doesn’t win convincingly on Thursday.
Lyndsey Stonebridge, in Prospect magazine, says immigration targets are just one element of today’s “fantasy” politics:
Fantasy is precisely what we need to understand here. We’ve underestimated the strength of fantasy in our political culture over the past year. Throwing reason at blatant unreason has proved as effective as smashing rotten tomatoes at a blank wall. Reason is not sticking. This isn’t just about falsehoods and fake news. It is about a limen of unreason that has got into our democracy and is putting one of its core principles to the test: reasoned consent to government.
Memory jog of the day
Why is Donald Trump taking such personal aim at Sadiq Khan? Last year, the London mayor called his plans for a Muslim ban “ignorant”, comments that prickled the then presidential candidate, who challenged Khan to an IQ test and then warned him: “I will remember those statements.”
The IQ face-off has yet to materialise but the grudge has certainly been kept.
The day in a tweet
Because you’ll need to know the constituency names for your Thursday night checklist, start here. And if that were not enticement enough:
Since folk are asking. Longest: Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East.
— Philip Cowley (@philipjcowley) June 5, 2017
At other end, joint honours: Bath, Hove.
And another thing
Would you like to wake up to this briefing in your inbox every weekday? Sign up here. And once the election is (finally) over, why not sign up here for the Guardian morning briefing; you can read the latest edition here.
And one last thing
Unlike many news organisations, the Guardian hasn’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can. The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. Here’s how you can support it.
Comments are open on the politics live blog.
