With a week to go, what does the general election campaign tell us about the state of Britain?
The constituency of Shipley in West Yorkshire could be something of a bellwether for the election. A Conservative seat for 30 years, Labour then held it from 1997 to 2005, when it switched back to the Tories.
The Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has changed his mind and is now taking part in tonight’s televised debate. The Prime Minister won’t be turning up, saying she’s taking questions “up and round the country” instead.
Brexit Secretary David Davis dismisses claims that the Prime Minister is too scared to attend a live TV debate with Jeremy Corbyn and other party leaders
Comfortable in old age, or struggling, impoverished youth – millennials can only look on with envious eyes at their grandparents’ generation: homeowners, savings, pensions in the bank. There’s certainly an economic age gap. But is there a political one too, and are young people so turned off by the election that many are planning not…
The election is debated by an 80-strong audience in Wolverhampton, which is split down the middle between those who are over 60 and those under 30, and balanced in terms of those who support parties of the left and right, as well as those who voted leave and remain in the EU referendum. They are…
Waylaid again by a failure to grasp the detail. This time it was the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who stumbled his way through an interview, unable to say how much the party’s childcare proposals would cost. Meanwhile, Theresa May was depicting herself as the consummate leader, claiming Mr Corbyn was not prepared or ready to…
Gary Gibbon
Sources close to Mrs May have long said she thought David Cameron had a buccaneering approach to military involvement and was uncomfortable with some of his judgement calls in foreign affairs.
The Labour and Momentum activist, Beth Foster-Ogg, and the Conservative councillor, Oliver Cooper, on the youth vote.
Promising to scrap tuition fees, work towards a universal basic income and renationalise the railways, the Green Party in England and Wales has launched its manifesto ahead of the General Election. But Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party has now adopted some of the Greens’ long-standing policies. So what chance do they have of adding to their…
Lord Stewart Wood, who was a senior adviser to Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband, says Theresa May’s social care policy has “unravelled”, with it “unprecedented to have a U-turn of such magnitude in a campaign”.
It didn’t take long. With poll numbers slipping just four days after their controversial manifesto pledge to make elderly people pay for their social care at home, Theresa May has abandoned the policy, saying the Tories would now consider a cap on costs. Labour said her government was mired in “chaos and confusion”, while the…
Gary Gibbon
It’s hard to think of an occasion when a manifesto commitment has been overturned mid-campaign. In a stark formless landscape of rigid sloganeering, this striking policy stood out even more than it would normally and had a big negative impact on older voters who read their newspapers and listen to bulletins.
Now to a seat which hasn’t voted Conservative in its 125 year history, but where the Tories think they’re now in with a chance, thanks to the kind of shifting party loyalties and tactical voting we’re seeing across the country. Bishops Auckland has been solid Labour since the First World War, apart from one brief…
To a constituency that’s always been a petri dish of political passions. Bradford West was swayed away from George Galloway by Labour’s Naz Shah. Now she’s being challenged by former Respect leader, turned independent, Salma Yaqoob. With two left-wing women fighting it out, a young Tory male, among others, is hoping to benefit. And the…