In Pictures: Babies and brewery mark first day on campaign trail
PA
·2-min read
A day after the General Election was announced, party leaders of all stripes were out on the campaign trail for what is expected to be a tense and busy six weeks until polling day on July 4.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had arranged to visit all four UK countries while Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer was in Kent with his deputy Angela Rayner, and Sir Ed Davey was pushing the Liberal Democrats’ plans in Gloucestershire.
Former Tory minister Ann Widdecombe was a familiar face at the Reform UK launch while in Scotland new SNP leader John Swinney was making the case for continued support.
This is how the Conservative world ends, not with a bang but a flutter. The Tories in office were gamblers, shaggers, nutters and clowns, but at least they were funny – and their wrist too limp to grasp power entirely. Now the cavaliers are leaving the stage; here come the roundheads. Brace yourselves for a war on joy.
Dear readers, to those who have quite rightly concluded in this silliest of silly seasons that the country is going to the dogs, apologies. It is time for a new metaphor of decline; Britain is for the birds. And I’m not even referring to Swiftmania; if only our ills really could be cured with friendship bracelets and a loud chorus of Shake It Off. Somehow, amid all the other crises that beset us, seagull-psychos have us in their claws.
On Sunday evening, the North Caucasus region of Dagestan was rocked by a series of brutal terrorist attacks. Gunmen opened fire in a synagogue in Derbent, graphically slit the throat of Russian Orthodox priest Father Nikolay, and attacked Jewish and Christian houses of worship in Dagestan’s largest city Makhachkala. These brutal crimes claimed the lives of at least 15 people, including police officers.
When the history of this election campaign comes to be written, one question will perplex the compilers more than any other: why now? The Tory officials and police officers being investigated for alleged gambling law infractions by betting on a snap contest in July will have secured very good odds for the simple reason that no one was expecting it.
The outcome of the general election is now considered such a foregone conclusion that the post-mortem examination is being conducted while the corpse is still twitching. Many pundits and politicians seem to think that the Government’s imminent demise can be explained by its failure to listen to one faction or another.
Much heartened by the onslaught of criticism I’ve been receiving from Telegraph readers, I am returning to the subject of one of Clacton’s parliamentary candidates. Two weeks ago I got myself into a vat of boiling oil for saying we should turn our heads to the wall from Mr Farage’s sort of bitter and divisive populism. My column was greeted with such outrage and affront that I knew I was onto something.
There’s little more than a week to go before the almost inevitable handover of power from the Conservatives to Labour, and still it’s hard to make out precisely what to expect from the new government.
“Working people want success more than state support” is a phrase that could have been uttered by any Conservative Party leader since Ted Heath. That Keir Starmer said it last weekend suggests one of two things. Either he is truly going to address the question of growing dependency on the state, or that he is making a cynical appeal to wavering Tory voters.
From a blockbuster Second Amendment decision to a more technical case about retaliatory arrests, sharp disagreements have emerged on the Supreme Court over the reasoning of recent rulings – divisions that could signal an especially fiery end to the current term.
The European Union will use a “legal procedure” to get around Hungary’s veto of a plan to buy weapons for Ukraine using seized Russian cash, the bloc’s top foreign diplomat said on Monday.