Good afternoon. Who won the debate, then? Who won it? Stop stalling and speak up! Who won it! Somebody must have won it, who was it! I have £2,000 riding on this!
More on this, local housing allowance and a voter who surely didn’t expect to be cornered by Rishi Sunak after the headlines.
What happened today
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Labour | After being barred as the party’s candidate for Chingford and Woodford Green, Faiza Shaheen announced she will run as an independent.
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Public sector pay | The president of the Trades Union Congress told Labour that enforcing tight public sector pay settlements will mean a new round of strikes.
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Reform UK | A woman has been charged with assault after Nigel Farage had a banana milkshake thrown at him in Clacton.
Analysis: ‘Kapow! It’s the narrative wars’
I don’t know who won the debate, I’m afraid. But as the dust settles, it’s feeling like a risky moment for the reality-based community: Rishi Sunak’s claim of a £2,000 Labour tax rise for every working household has created a genuine possibility that this will be the day that the narrative wars spin out of control, and overwhelm what is actually happening, and what this election is actually about.
Sunak used that £2,000 figure repeatedly; Keir Starmer mystifyingly didn’t challenge him on it for ages. But any fair-minded analysis – like this one by Larry Elliott – suggests that it’s based on some extremely dubious assumptions, presented in a spirit of what looks like wilful and cynical dishonesty. (For example: it’s £2,000 over four years, not one.) The Treasury permanent secretary said it was wrong to present it as having been produced by the civil service, as Sunak did. The Spectator’s Fraser Nelson, not renowned as a huge Starmer guy, applied a similar methodology to the Tories’ spending plans and came up with a figure of £3,000 per working household – also nonsense, but no more so.
That is probably all you need to know about that, but it is certainly not all you’re going to hear about it. Starmer’s failure to challenge the figure became a central plank of the post-match analysis. This was widely put together with a snap YouGov poll that found Sunak beating Starmer on who viewers thought had won by 51% to 49%. Traditionally Conservative newspapers said Starmer was “on the ropes over tax”, or greeted “Feisty” Sunak’s performance with the word “Kapow!”
From here, useful explanations of why the figure was fake found themselves competing with the kind of meta-analysis that is fun to do, but doesn’t shed any light on anything important. People who consider the phrase “if you’re explaining, you’re losing” the most dumbfounding political insight of our times argued that it was brilliant, actually, that Sunak made something up and cornered Labour into talking about their tax plans all day. Or had Starmer played a blinder by not debunking it live, thereby creating the conditions to spend a full day calling Sunak a liar? Two more polls came out, and both showed Starmer as the winner … but they weren’t the first to be published, so they don’t count.
I don’t want to write myself out of a job, but that kind of analysis is a waste of time for anyone who isn’t actually running a campaign themselves: it’s all essentially based on vibes. Also, it’s fine to not have an opinion on whether this was smart politics or not. It’s possible just to wait and see. The main things to remember are that the figure was dubious, that debates don’t usually radically change the dynamics of election campaigns, and that it looks like the Tories are miles behind.
The other thing worth keeping in mind: many of those coming down on the side of “Sunak was telling the truth and/or is being clever” are incentivised to construct a Conservative comeback in the days ahead – either because that’s who they like, or because it makes things more interesting than a procession to a large Starmer majority.
Meanwhile, the larger and probably more consequential dishonesty remains on the edges of the conversation: the fact that both parties know that public services are in desperate need of investment, that growth alone won’t cover the bill, and that they’ve amputated most of the ways they might have paid for it. Instead, they come up with spurious figures for the other side’s commitments, and try to talk about those instead. The FT puts the figure for the two sides’ allegations about the other’s “financial black holes” at over a trillion pounds.
What’s at stake
For a new series examining underexplored aspects of the Conservatives’ legacy, the excellent housing journalist Peter Apps has written about one of the less familiar aspects of the welfare cuts landscape: changes to local housing allowance (LHA). The rate used to be set to the “50th percentile” of local rents – meaning that you could claim enough to rent the cheapest half of properties in an area. In 2014, it was reduced to the 30th percentile, and has been largely frozen since 2016. As Apps explains:
The result was a predictable disaster: rents in inner city areas were increasing exponentially, but the benefits people could claim to pay them were not … The effect was obvious: tenants who were either out of work, or employed in one of the many critical sectors where wages are too low to cover the rent, could no longer pay the bills. They started to lose their homes.
That means rising homelessness, huge new pressure on council budgets through the need for temporary accommodation – and fundamental changes to the composition of cities.
We are seeing poorer families shipped out of higher-rent areas. London boroughs have looked to the Medway towns in Kent, the north-west, Stoke and Blackpool to make housing offers to those in need. The latest research estimates 40,000 households per year are being moved outside of their area: ripped away from schools, GPs, family and support networks. The result is a dearth of key workers and schools closing due to a lack of children.
The whole piece – including Apps’s prescription for an incoming Labour government – is well worth your time.
Winner of the day
Richard Holden, the Conservative chair, who was imposed as the candidate in Basildon and Billericay, bringing his long and painful search for a safe seat to an end. But Essex Tories are furious about not getting a local choice, with councillor Andrew Baggot calling it “absolutely shameful.”
Loser of the day
Ed Davey, surely the most surprisingly newsworthy candidate of the campaign so far, who has now been fined for breaking the speed limit on the M1 and failing to send in his driving licence details. “The only mitigation … was just being super-busy,” he said. The growing band of Lib Dem truthers will presumably be wondering if he staged the whole thing.
Voter wondering if there’s literally anywhere they can get away from this stuff of the day
It’s D-day veteran Eric Bateman, pictured with Rishi Sunak, who is presumably telling him about the £2,000 tax bombshell.
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Quote of the day
Do you know what? We’re going to win this.
Jeremy Corbyn, submitting his nomination papers to officially become an independent candidate in Islington North
Number of the day
£11bn
The approximate amount that will be raised annually by the “stealth” tax rise of freezing personal allowances and thresholds for the next three years, as both Conservatives and Labour appear to be intending, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Dubious photo opportunity of the day
The SNP’s Kate Forbes attempts a tactful answer to the classic campaign trail question: do you take me for a mug?
Read more
Listen to this
Politics Weekly Westminster: The first TV debate
The Guardian’s Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey discuss the first TV head to head between Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak
What’s on the grid
Thursday | D-day commemorations continue with prime minister in Normandy.
Thursday 9.30am | Economic activity indicators to be published.
Thursday 8.30pm | ITV interview with Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey.
