Good afternoon. If you’ve felt bereft of opportunities to watch Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer bothering members of the public over the last few days, that’s probably because they’ve been spending most of their time squirrelled away in preparation for tonight’s debate on ITV.
This is already being billed as Sunak’s last chance to save his campaign – which is both depressing for the Conservatives, and touchingly optimistic: as the joke goes, so you’re telling me there’s a chance?!
More on that and everything else you need to know today, including Nigel Farage’s eventful trip to Clacton, after the headlines.
What happened today
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Migration | The Tories said they plan to cap the number of visas issued each year to reduce migration. Nigel Farage said he believed net migration should be zero. Experts cast doubt on the plausibility of these commitments.
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Social care | The Liberal Democrats promised free social care for older or disabled people at home, and said they would raise care workers’ pay. More below.
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Labour | Faiza Shaheen resigned from the Labour party after being blocked as a candidate in Chingford and Woodford Green. In Barking, Darren Rodwell was removed from the party’s approved list after being accused of sexual harassment last month. He has denied the allegations.
Analysis: Hoping to be forgotten
If there’s one thing people who obsess over politics like about debates, it’s finding out who played the opponent in the candidates’ prep sessions. (For the Tories, deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden is impersonating Starmer, and Labour policy director Tom Webb is doing his best Sunak, Jessica Elgot reports.) The impact of the actual broadcast is much less clear, even when it’s filmed on a set (see above) that looks like it’s been borrowed from The Cube.
As this piece for the Conversation by political media academic Jen Birks sets out, debates don’t usually have much impact on how people vote. Only one in three people say they are interested in watching them this year, YouGov says. And 2019 Labour voters are twice as likely as their Conservative counterparts to be interested this time around, which might suggest a factional appetite for gloating in victory rather than any sense that they will probably provide much new information. In truth, anyone watching is more likely than the average voter to have made their minds up already.
But tonight’s debate does have some potential to reach voters – less through new insight into either party’s policy positions than in serving up clips for social media and the main news bulletins that might direct the wider news cycle for a bit. (Eleni Courea has a summary of some areas where both sides might try to land a blow.)
With that in mind, former Conservative director of communications Giles Kenningham writes here, both leaders will be aiming “to be memorable where they have the advantage and boring where they want to be forgotten”. The danger of that received wisdom, he rightly notes, is that “If they merely debate using soundbites it will be car-crash TV. They have to answer properly in the moment and choose three or four lines to punch up for viral clip purposes.”
Neither man has shown much ability, as Lib Dem leader Ed Davey demonstrated when talking about his own family’s experience of the need for care (see below), to leave their hypercautious comfort zones and say something that actually seems heartfelt. Instead we get manufactured authenticity: case studies learned from cue cards, Personal Experiences that have been through so the mill so many times that they sound like Instagram captions, and not even a substantial policy conversation to make up for it.
If the debate is still leading the headlines by teatime tomorrow, it will probably be because these systems were somehow disrupted – by a horrible mistake, or a surprising moment of genuine humanity. That’s fairly unlikely, and that’s fine. It’s not that the leaders’ debates fail us by not producing a different kind of politics, exactly: it’s that imagining they can do so forgets just how much we want them to make up for.
What’s at stake
For the latest in the Guardian’s Path to Power series, Robyn Vinter heads to North Yorkshire, where Whitby Woman – who owns her own home, is in her sixties, doesn’t have a degree, voted for Brexit, and backed the Tories last time – has been granted the near-mythical status of Mondeo Man in 1997: a shorthand for the kind of voter whose decision might prove crucial. Robyn finds a much more interesting and complicated picture than the epithet might imply:
Efforts by the Tories to capture these voters do not seem to be working. Hairdresser Lisa Fox, who is also undecided, said she was completely turned off by Sunak’s pledge to bring back national service, saying she would “break my boys’ legs before I let them join the army”.
And, though immigration is often spoken about as a key issue for voters, it did not register as a major concern in Whitby. In fact, members of Whitby Women’s Institute (WI) were “disgusted” when a leaflet came through their door from the young, ambitious Conservative candidate Roberto Weeden-Sanz, who has been parachuted in by the party and is promising to be tough on immigration.
Some WI members said they felt insulted by what they saw as lazy, “lowest common denominator” characterisations of their demographic being old-fashioned and xenophobic. Lynn Walker, a retired PA who voted Conservative last election, said: “We took in a lot of Ukrainians here … I’ll never vote Tory again.”
Winner of the day
The Great British Sewing Bee, which may see a spike in audience numbers in its 9pm slot up against the leaders’ debate on ITV. Last week, the opposition was Britain’s Got Talent.
Loser of the day
Foie gras enthusiasts, after Labour sought to tap into the wider popularity of defending animal rights by saying they would ban force-fed duck imports. One of their number is retiring Conservative MP Graham Brady, who previously said: “I don’t much like the idea of having to go abroad to eat my favourite foods.”
Man with a changing relationship to Clacton of the day
It’s Nigel Farage, who previously asked doubtfully if he “wanted to spend every Friday for the next five years in Clacton” but said on his visit today that it is “the most patriotic town in the whole of our country”. Then he had a McDonald’s banana milkshake thrown at him. A 25-year-old woman, from Clacton, was later arrested on suspicion of assault.
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Quote of the day
One of my biggest fears in life is what happens to him when I’m gone.
Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, talking to ITV news about his 16-year-old son John, whose disabilities mean he will likely need care for the rest of his life. The party are promising free personal care to older or disabled people at home and a raise in care workers’ pay.
Number of the day
1993
The last year in which net migration to the UK was zero. Sky News’ economics editor Ed Conway notes that “large numbers of people left the UK in the face of a toxic cocktail of deep recession and double digit interest rates. So that’s one way of doing it …”
Dubious photo opportunity of the day
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton, “sharing the party’s commitment to boosting productivity” by getting a haircut, apparently.
Read more
Listen to this
Today in Focus: Has there been a purge of the leftwing of the Labour party?
Keir Starmer once promised to lead a “broad church” Labour party. After a week in which Diane Abbott and Faiza Shaheen have complained about their treatment, does that still hold true? Aletha Adu and Aditya Chakrabortty report
What’s on the grid
9pm | The first leaders’ debate on ITV
Wednesday | Welsh parliament considers motion of no confidence against first minister Vaughan Gething
Wednesday | Party leaders to join in 80th anniversary D-Day commemorations
