General Election 2024's most weird, wonderful and wince-inducing moments

Can you believe it? Six weeks of general election campaigning are over and the results are now rolling in.

It feels like a lifetime ago now we learned we were getting a July election foisted on us.

All we wanted to do was enjoy the Euros, go see Taylor Swift, maybe catch a bit of Wimbledon, maybe go on holiday.

The politicians had other ideas, and here we are, on Judgment Day.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane to recap the weird, wonderful and wince-inducing moments that have made this election campaign unique.

SUNAK’S DISASTERCLASS

THEY say you should start as you mean to go on. One man who may disagree is Rishi Sunak.

On May 22, the PM stood outside No 10 to announce the election. What happened next will go down in the annals of history as, well… really, really funny.

As buckets of rain fell down on his brolly-less head and turned his suit into sodden latex, his words were drowned out by protesters blasting 1997 Labour anthem ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ by D:REAM over a boombox.

Sadly for Sunak, this was probably the high watermark of his campaign. What followed was an incredible disasterclasss.

Next up, the PM went to Wales to ask voters if they were looking forward to the Euros - a tournament Wales hadn’t qualified for. The clanger was so loud it could be heard from the vacuum of space.

The day after that, someone had the bright idea for Sunak to campaign in Belfast’s Titanic Quarter.

Cue the utterly predictable questions by broadcasters of whether he was now “captaining a sinking ship”.

The same day, poor Rishi was snapped on his plane with journalists standing right in front of the ‘exit’ sign.

The next week at a factory, he stood in front of a machine perfectly positioned to give him Mickey Mouse ears. The captions wrote themselves.

In and around this roadshow of ridicule, Sunak was launching bonkers policies like national service for 18-year-olds.

But in hindsight, these minor gaffes were small fry: they pale in comparison to the utterly unfathomable decision to leave the D-Day commemorations in Normandy early on June 6.

This, remember, was the 80th anniversary of those historic D-Day landings. For a PM to be daft enough to leave before the event was done, with the world’s media watching, was unthinkable.

Instead, bemused Foreign Secretary David Cameron posed with world leaders, while Sunak’s rival Keir Starmer worked the room with dignitaries and diplomats, looking prime ministerial. This wasn’t just a political own goal, it was a worldie.

The reaction was brutal - particularly among one of the few remaining loyal demographics the Tories, pensioners - and the PM had to make a grovelling apology.

From that moment, his campaign was permanently holed below the waterline with no chance of escape.

Anyone who watched Sunak’s BBC Question Time leader’s interview special on June 20 will remember the astonishing hostility from the studio audience to the Tory leader, who was literally heckled and jeered off his stage like a bad stand-up.

For his part, the PM became increasingly tetchy in debates, shouting over everyone from Starmer, to TV hosts to audience members.

Finally, his party fell into the ignominy of #BetGate, as it emerged senior Tory figures and candidates had enjoyed a flutter, prior to Sunak’s election announcement, on the date of the poll.

Rather than disown his allies immediately over their dodgy bets, Sunak let the scandal drag on for days before acting, only worsening his dire situation.

Sunak surely wins the wooden spoon of worst election campaign in modern political history.

ED’S ANTICS

As for Ed Davey of the Lib Dems, what can you say?

Apparently, you should live every day like it’s your last and he’s certainly done that.

From the very start of the campaign, it’s not been entirely clear if the Lib Dem leader is standing in an election or auditioning for a reboot of ‘Mr Bean’.

We’ve done a mock-up of Davey’s campaign diary just to give you a flavour of his antics.

May 28: Go paddleboarding, fall in lake

May 30: Go down massive slip ‘n slide

June 10: Go on rollercoaster; launch manifesto

June 29: Hula-hoop with Alex Cole-Hamilton

July 1: Bungee jump while yelling ‘vote Lib Dem’

July 2: Go surfing, fall in sea

But whatever he’s doing, it appears to be working. Some polls suggested he was about one good skydive away from becoming Leader of the Opposition.

And all of Davey’s stunts, the Lib Dems say, have been designed to raise awareness of the party’s key issues.

For example, when he went paddleboarding on Lake Windermere in Cumbria, he was highlighting how it’s been routinely pumped with raw sewage.

Davey later admitted he’d deliberately fallen into the pooey lake for the cameras. Rather you than us, Ed!

SWIFTIE SWINNEY

The campaign didn’t exactly start brilliantly for new SNP leader John Swinney.

On an attempted visit to Shetland, his plane was unable to land due to bad weather, circling haplessly in the skies around Lerwick before turning back to Edinburgh.

But slowly, the Nationalists got into a better campaigning rhythm - with the excitement of Scotland playing in the Euros coming at the right time.

The excitement was, of course, short-lived. But it was nice to have something to briefly distract us from the politics, even if it was similarly depressing.

Tartan Army devout Stephen Flynn of the SNP didn’t hesitate to get over to Munich, posing with Swinney in Scotland tops and kilts and looking curiously like father and son.

Flynn has had a good election campaign. When he wasn't taking part in TV debates, he waswinding up England fans on Twitter.

But Swinney appears to have suffered a midlife crisis as the campaign has gone on.

First, he tried to reinvent himself as a diehard Swiftie.

Then, he popped up at one campaign stop in Glasgow’s west end wearing a tight T-shirt, a pink cowboy hat and most fetchingly, yellow sunglasses.

Swinney was gutted to hear Fresher’s Week wasn’t until September.

KEIR AND ANGE SHOW

AFTER a comparatively smooth start to the campaign, Labour did manage to make a dog’s breakfast of the candidacy of party stalwart Diane Abbott.

Reports surfaced that the Labour leadership under Keir Starmer was trying to block the UK’s first black female MP from running in her seat of Hackney North and Stoke Newington.

Starmer was later forced to say she was free to stand after the row went on for days. A needless unforced error.

But it has been mostly plain sailing for Labour, despite a few odd moments.

One of those was Starmer telling an ITV debate on June 4: “My DNA runs through my DNA.” That’s right, Keir, it does.

In another televised showpiece on Sky News on June 12, he was startled and then cross when audience members groaned and laughed as he repeated his oft-heard “my dad was a toolmaker” soundbite.

And Angela Rayner alarmed cyclists the world over with a pledge in Hamilton in the last week of the campaign to “crush the bikes”.

Even Anas Sarwar looked concerned. It turned out she meant illegal off-road dirt bikes.

But mostly, Labour’s strategy has been to sit back, stay on message - and let their rivals implode.

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