Campaign catchup: Sunak’s successor, Farage’s bad banner, and liquid Davey

Good afternoon. It is, as Labour shadow minister Jonathan Ashworth told several interviewers this morning, squeaky bum time – but for the Conservatives, there’s still a lot of digesting to do. While Labour are scrupulously leaving their chickens uncounted, the Tories appear to have largely concluded that defeat is now inevitable. It follows that the identity of Rishi Sunak’s successor is the next big question facing the party, as the candidates eye up the leader of the opposition (Loto).

While nobody’s going public yet, with the dynamic of Thursday’s race apparently now set, there are plenty of signs that the leading contenders are thinking ahead. But there are still a lot of unknowns about the process to select the person who will define the Conservatives’ approach to opposition.

More on that, and a pillow that will give you nightmares, after the headlines.

What happened today

1. Campaign | With three days left, Labour and the Conservatives are pushing their final messages to voters who could decide the election. Keir Starmer repeated his message that “change will only happen if you vote for it,” while Rishi Sunak urged wavering supporters to “stop a supermajority” and said: “If you hand Labour a blank cheque, you will not be able to get that back.”

2. Health | Labour is poised to axe the chair of NHS England if it wins the election and replace him with a party loyalist . The party is considering replacing Richard Meddings with former health secretary Alan Milburn, ex-home secretary Jacqui Smith or Sally Morgan, who served as Tony Blair’s political secretary.

3. Scotland | The election is “over and done with” in England, but in Scotland the contest between Labour and the SNP is still on, SNP leader John Swinney has said . Swinney insisted that a recent narrowing of the gap between Labour and SNP indicated that his argument that “Labour is going to pick up where the Tories are leaving off” was landing with voters.

Analysis: Five questions that could decide the next Tory leader

Last night, the Times reported some mysterious online activity: websites linked to possible leadership bids from Kemi Badenoch and Suella Braverman have both been updated in the last month. Both deny that they have anything to do with it, but everyone knows the firing gun has already gone off nonetheless.

The most obvious evidence of this is in the answers to inevitable questions about prospective candidates’ leadership ambitions: not a flat observation that they expect Rishi Sunak to be prime minister for years to come, but more cryptic musings on what the future might hold. “My time-horizon is next Thursday,” Grant Shapps said over the weekend . “And then let’s see what’s happened.” And Badenoch left the door firmly open when she said that “we will talk about leadership things after an election”.

But that conversation will not be straightforward, and it probably won’t be on the candidates’ own terms. Here are some leadership things to keep in mind as the sun appears to set on the Sunak era.

What will the state of the parliamentary party be?

While all of the polls show the Tories on track for defeat, they vary widely as to how many seats might be retained – with a range running from the chastening to the catastrophic. And because there are many seats viewed as too close to call with very different dynamics in play, the factional composition of the first round electorate of Conservative MPs is very unclear.

Because the Tories are doing so badly, there’s an even more fundamental question in play: whether prospective candidates will be MPs in the first place. Shapps may very well be gone, while the Portsmouth seat held by Penny Mordaunt – who would be one of the favourites – is understood to be on a knife edge despite her 15,780 majority. Robert Jenrick is at risk, and perhaps, if the night is truly apocalyptic, home secretary James Cleverly, whose 24,673 majority might appear invulnerable in more normal times.

How will the leader be chosen?

Quite a lot of Tory members are still annoyed about the removal of Liz Truss – and in the end, while the contenders will be whittled down to two by MPs, they will make the final decision as the rules stand. That leaves open the possibility of a Corbyn-style process where a candidate who commands minimal support among MPs can squeak through to the wider ballot, and ultimately prevail.

It seems fairly unlikely that someone as frothingly to the right as Suella Braverman will get past MPs – but it’s perfectly possible that a moderate candidate with a comfortable majority among MPs will ultimately be taken down by the members. The Sunday Telegraph reports rumours that the party leadership will seek to change the rules to reduce the members’ power – and that if so, activists could rebel and are “getting ready to scream blue murder”.

When will the race happen?

At the weekend, the Sunday Telegraph reported that Badenoch supporters were hoping to delay the leadership contest until later in the year so that they might strengthen her bid by allowing her to build her public profile, gather intelligence on what the membership wants and install her allies in key party positions. There may be more principled reasons for a longer process: Tory grandee Jesse Norman wrote today that he favoured “a leadership election process which is not precipitate but steady, deliberate and wide-ranging, allowing scope for the party to take stock”.

But there are others who fear that the party will appear rudderless if an interim leader is opposite Starmer at PMQs for so long. And not having a leader in place by party conference would rob them of a significant chance to introduce themselves to voters (and raise money).

One practical reason for delay is that the backbench 1922 committee, which dictates the timing, will need to elect a new chairman because incumbent Sir Graham Brady is standing down. Meanwhile, the precedent with the strongest parallel to the current situation is not helpful for those who’d like to get on with it. William Hague was Tory leader in 1997 within 50 days of John Major’s resignation, and the party repented at leisure.

Why do the Tories think they lost?

Perhaps the most fundamental question in all of this, and one with widely varying answers on offer. Most MPs’ answers will fit their priors: moderates think that the centre ground has been ceded to Labour, while those on the right point to the damage being done by Nigel Farage and Reform.

Most of the evidence on what the voters think seems to suggest that, rather than particularly wanting the party to tack left or right, they crave stability and competence. But the party members who chose Liz Truss and will ultimately decide on Sunak’s successor don’t seem likely to find that argument terribly persuasive – although there are some claims that their composition has changed considerably since Sunak took over.

How badly do they want to win?

Not exactly the same question as why they lost – but closely related, obviously. In 2005, the Conservatives chose David Cameron over David Davis precisely because they were sick of opposition, and he appeared more likely to win over the median voter than appeal to their own core instincts. It took them eight years to reach that point after Tony Blair came to power, and three false starts. The kinds of psychodramas currently convulsing the party offer little evidence to suggest that they are anywhere near ready to make that kind of decision this time.

What’s at stake

By election day, John Harris will have visited about 15 constituencies across the country – and, he writes, heard a “sceptical, distanced view of politics” that reveals a picture that is “more complicated than all those predictions about a thoroughgoing Labour landslide.” He goes on:

At its heart, what I have been reminded of is simple enough. Long after the Tories retook power back in 2010, countless places have yet to even begin to move on from a reality of neglect and deprivation – and plenty of more comfortably-off areas are now sprouting no end of social cracks.

He identifies a key change since undertaking similar reporting at the last election – that people have started to blame the Conservatives, rather than local councils, for the consequences of austerity locally. A conversation with a voter in Stoke-on-Trent, where Labour looks likely to win all three seats back from the Conservatives, is emblematic of the mood he identifies:

One woman I met said she worried about antisocial behaviour, “druggies”, and how few police she saw in her neighbourhood; she was also finding it hard to cope with a recent rise in her rent.

What did she think of the election so far? The previous evening, she had seen one of the seemingly endless TV debates. “What I saw of it last night, I was dead disappointed,” she said. “I don’t trust any of ’em.”

Who had she supported in 2019? “I voted for Boris,” she said. “Conservative. First time. Because he promised all the things he promised. And he didn’t fulfil any of them.”

Winners of the day

Work-life balance advocates , after Keir Starmer said that he tries not to work after 6pm on Fridays so that he can spend a bit of time with his family. Despite this being much the most human thing ever to come out of Starmer’s mouth, Sunak decided to leap on it to assert himself as King Robot and say “I haven’t finished at six ever”. Now the Tories have tried to claim that Starmer “has said he’d clock off work at 6pm”, conveniently missing the Friday bit, and would be a “part-time prime minister”. So that’s the state of the discourse, folks!

Loser of the day

An unnamed member of staff at the Columbine Centre in Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex , after a banner featuring an image of Vladimir Putin and the caption “I ❤️ NIGEL” was lowered behind the Reform leader as he spoke at a rally there. Farage, famously the voice of the working person, looked quite cross as he said: “Someone at the Columbine Centre needs to get the sack! We will hound them to make sure that is the case!” Maybe they weren’t vetted properly?

Horrifying campaign memento of the day

Has to be this pillow , handed out to journalists following the Labour campaign, featuring a mocked-up image of Rishi Sunak in bed and the line: “Don’t wake up to five more years of the Tories”. Although, in fairness, if this campaign has revealed anything about Sunak, it’s his propensity for slipping off quietly and hoping to get away with it .

Quote of the day

As long as I don’t watch the news, it is going really well.

Summary of the campaign from former Conservative cabinet minister to the Spectator’s Katy Balls

Number of the day

***

9%

The mysterious group of Reform voters who say they want a Conservative majority, according to the Times . Only 70% of those voting Tory actually want the party to win, suggesting that warnings of a so-called “supermajority” for Labour are persuading some to back Rishi Sunak.

Dubious photo opportunity of the day

Pure Davey. Liquid Davey. Davey beats his chest and roars WHO ELSE at the crowd . (You could have got 5-1 on him bungee jumping at Ladbrokes , so let’s hope he didn’t tip off any unscrupulous aides in advance.) With three days to go, how does he top this? BASE jumping from Big Ben?

Andrew Sparrow explains it all

The pick of the posts from the king of the live blogs

08.47 BST | Rishi Sunak has always sounded unconvincing when he tells interviewers that he genuinely thinks the Conservative party could win the general election but last night, after England’s victory in the Euros, he was able to post this message on X giving Tories a crumb of hope. “It’s not over until its over,” he said.

Of course, the analogy is not exact. England were rescued by a player capable of brilliance.

With only three full days of campaigning left to go, the parties are reverting to their core messages and, for the Conservative party, it is not in fact ‘we could still win’, but ‘don’t let Labour win with a massive majority’.

Follow Andrew Sparrow’s politics live blog every day here

Read more

• Amelia Gentleman explains how the Tory war on immigration backfired – and left public dissatisfaction on the issue at a record high

• Heather Stewart and Larry Elliott profile Rachel Reeves - the “U-boat” who “stays submerged and torpedoes everyone else’s ideas”

• Pamela Duncan, Hilary Osborne and colleagues show the impact of Conservative rule on housing in charts

Listen to this

Today in Focus | The 14 years that broke Britain, part 2

In part two of a miniseries on how 14 years of Tory rule have impacted the UK, Jonathan Freedland explores how chaos from Brexit to Partygate destroyed trust in politics

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