Keir Starmer launched his campaign bus on Saturday with his senior shadow cabinet members, but Tory ‘big beasts’ appeared to have deserted the PM in Redcar

We may be in an era when elections are fought with TikTok memes and Instagram reels, but one thing has stubbornly refused to give way in the digital age: the good old battle of the campaign buses. On Saturday, Rishi Sunak unveiled the Conservatives’ bus that will tour the country during the 2024 election, emblazoned with the slogan: “Clear plan. Bold action. Secure future.”

It is – arguably – a slightly snappier version of John Major’s bus in 1997, which bore the words: “You can only be sure with the Conservatives.”

Outdoor campaign events, so often fraught with peril, proved the undoing of Rishi Sunak and Ed Davey this week

It has been tough for Rishi Sunak, so it’s nice that he still has some cheerleaders. A visibly tricky encounter with some cones during a football training session may have resulted in him being mocked mercilessly on TikTok, but one loyal newspaper described his troubling manoeuvre as a Cruyff turn, a move named after the beguiling Dutch great. Not since Kim Jong-il scored 11 holes in one in his first ever round of golf has a leader’s sporting prowess had such an unlikely upgrade.

New poll gives Labour its biggest lead since Liz Truss meltdown as ‘Tory towns’ gain most from new funds

The Tory general election campaign hit more trouble on Saturday as Rishi Sunak faced accusations of using levelling up funds to win votes and Labour opened its biggest poll lead since the disastrous premiership of Liz Truss.

As Sunak tried to fire up his ­party’s campaign before the first crucial TV debate with Keir Starmer on Tuesday, it emerged that more than half of the 30 towns each promised £20m of regeneration funding on Saturday were in constituencies won by Tory MPs at the last election.

The Tories and Labour are forking out more than ever on social media ads, but going viral isn’t easy. We speak to influencers and strategists about the messages and memes

Why would you hold an election in November? The question came from digital marketing guru Mike Harris and was asked in a message to his friend, Labour’s campaign manager, Morgan McSweeney, earlier this year. Digital advertising is more expensive in October and November because the internet is swamped with ads for Christmas and Black Friday, said Harris, the founder of communications agency 89up. Why not pick a cheaper time of year?

McSweeney shot back: “How about June?”

The prime minister said if Starmer was elected then he would also pander to the left in power

SNP leader John Swinney has urged people to take part in a “Scottish national service” by using the general election to vote Tory MPs out of office, PA Media reports.

Scotland’s first minister said his party could “remove the remaining rump of Tory MPs”.

Student Henry Hassell, 16, confronts PM over policy which Labour says is ‘unfunded and desperate’

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Rishi Sunak was confronted by a student who asked him why he “hates young people so much”.

Henry Hassell, a 16-year-old singer-songwriter, who lives in west Devon, posed the question on Wednesday while the prime minister was on a campaign visit to a local pub.

Migrants seek redress for ‘immense distress’ from deportations now thrown into chaos by election announcement

Asylum seekers detained by the Home Office and threatened with deportation to Rwanda are set to take legal action against the government after Rishi Sunak admitted that no flights will take place before the general election.

The Home Office started raiding accommodation and detaining people who arrived at routine immigration-reporting appointments on 29 April in a nationwide push codenamed Operation Vector.

After week of campaign missteps, ‘reset’ is attempt to firm up base and beat back Reform UK, say observers

Rishi Sunak is heading to north-east England for a rare foray into the “red wall” after a campaign that has so far focused on shoring up the Conservatives’ older, more affluent southern base.

The prime minister has spent much of the first week of the general election campaign speaking to voters in the south of England who are considering Reform UK, targeting them with a range of policy announcements including the return of national service and tax breaks for pensioners.

With the Tories’ chances at near zero, Labour is concentrating on fighting an ideological ground war with itself

It’s just over a week since Rishi Sunak got soaked in the rain as he called the general election. Since then he has forgotten that Wales didn’t qualify for the Euros, paid a visit to Belfast’s Titanic quarter and been photographed under an exit sign. Richard Holden, the Tory party chair AKA Baldrick impersonator, has insisted that the campaign has been going exactly as planned. God knows what might have happened if it hadn’t. Then the Conservatives started pumping out policies as if there’s no tomorrow. National service, the pension triple lock, a ban on Mickey Mouse degrees, and driving penalty points for flytippers. If they’re all such good ideas, it makes you wonder why the Tories didn’t do any of them in the last 14 years.

Not that any of them are likely to happen, because the chances of the Conservatives winning the election are currently near zero. A sign of how bad Rish! thinks things are is that almost all his campaign visits have been to what used to be Tory strongholds, to try to shore up the vote. Meanwhile, Labour figures have been touring the country shouting “change” and not much more. They think it’s enough just not to be the Tories. So far that appears to be working. The polls have barely shifted in the last 10 days. It’s all been sound and fury, signifying nothing, and most people will end the week talking of little more than the Donald Trump verdicts. But here are the highlights you may have missed.

Rishi Sunak is so convinced he can’t win he’s promising any old mad thing, while the Lib Dems are deliberately falling off paddleboards – Marina Hyde on the election. The couple on a mission to make it easier for everyone to have multiple children – Elon Musk (father of 11) is a supporter. Few of us have the money to take a long pause from work – but, as Anita Chaudhuri discovers, even a day can make a difference

Rishi Sunak says the money, paid over 10 years, would help regenerate areas such as Mansfield, Rotherham and Hartlepool

The Conservatives have promised to give another 30 towns in the UK £20m each in levelling up funding over the next decade if they win the election.

Rishi Sunak said the 30 would be added to the government’s long-term plan for towns, which is intended to pay for the regeneration of underfunded areas.

Latest from campaign trail sees leader of the opposition head to Scotland, after his visit to Wales

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The Conservative party has announced plans for fly-tippers to get points on their driving licences. The party also pledged to pass a law that would allow tenants to be kicked out of social housing after three proven instances of antisocial behaviour.

PA Media reports it said the moves are part of the party’s “plan to stamp out antisocial behaviour across the board to restore pride in place, improve people’s quality of life and boost community cohesion”.

The desire to see the back of the Tories seems to outweigh any considerations of policy – or whether Labour will actually deliver much positive change

“Nothing has changed”: those were the ill-fated words during Theresa May’s 2017 campaign. Things certainly did change, though – a large polling lead almost evaporated by polling day and a hung parliament was returned.

In 2024, Rishi Sunak desperately needs a similar shift. But so far the British public seem unmoved. Voting intention, as measured by the opinion polls, remains much as it was when the election was called. Those intentions would see Sunak falling to something ranging between a significant and a historic defeat.

The two Tory PMs both told voters the economy had turned a corner – but there is little comparison now with 27 years ago

With a Labour victory looking increasingly probable, John Major’s pitch to voters in 1997 was simple. Britain had come a long way, the then prime minister said in his foreword to his party’s manifesto. “We must be sure that we do not throw away what we have gained, or lose the opportunities we have earned.”

Sound familiar? It should, because it is exactly the same argument Rishi Sunak is deploying as he seeks to defy the opinion polls and win a fifth successive general election victory for the Conservatives.

Cutting degrees to pay for more apprenticeships is plain barmy – just look at the facts and ask yourself who this is aimed at

Once upon a time, elections used to be all about kissing babies. But for parents of teenagers, this one has felt more like a smack in the teeth. Last weekend, our children were threatened with compulsory national service, for no obvious reason beyond keeping nostalgic pensioners happy. Now, just in the middle of their GCSE revision, Rishi Sunak is threatening to scrap one in eight degree places.

“You don’t have to go to university to succeed in life,” tweeted the prime minister, who to be fair is currently proving that you can go to lots of universities – he has a degree from Oxford and a master’s from Stanford – and still see your career end in failure. The money saved by slashing 130,000 supposedly “Mickey Mouse” places would, he promised, fund 100,000 apprenticeships. Though given the enduring failure to get these off the ground over the past decade, it would be unwise to bin the Ucas form just yet. Meanwhile, the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, called the apprenticeship she did at 16 her “golden ticket” but failed to mention her subsequent degree in business studies, followed by a master’s.

Former Bolton North East MP says Tory party is ‘now unrecognisable’ and likens this general election to 1997

Rishi Sunak has been dealt a fresh blow from within his own ranks after another outgoing Conservative MP said he is now backing Labour.

Mark Logan, who represented Bolton North East until parliament was dissolved, said the Tory party was “now unrecognisable” from the one he joined a decade ago and that Labour could “bring back optimism into British life”.

Labour spent the day in a muddle of its own making over whether or not the north London MP would be standing again

Keir Starmer began his day by taunting Rishi Sunak for the faltering start to the Conservative’s election campaign.

On a visit to Wales the Labour leader said Sunak thought he was laying a trap by calling a snap summer election but a series of blunders since meant he had “caught himself in his own ambush”.

The Conservative and Labour leaders come from starkly different backgrounds but both are fighting for the political middle ground

Over the next five weeks the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and the leader of the opposition, Labour’s Keir Starmer, will be battling to persuade voters that they are the best person to helm the next government.

Sunak’s election announcement last week surprised many political commentators because his Conservative party is trailing Labour in the opinion polls by more than 20 percentage points.

Former Labour leader said the party had shown ‘blatant double-standards, hypocrisy and contempt for local democracy’

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Keir Starmer is in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, launching Labour’s general election campaign in Wales with beleagured first minister Vaughan Gething. Next week Gething faces a confidence motion in the Senedd. We’ll bring you any key lines that emerge. You can watch it here, the event has just started …

The Liberal Democrats have again criticised ITV’s decision to host a debate featuring just Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer and excluding themselves. The Liberal Democrats were the fourth largest party in the House of Commons after the 2019 election.

Well obviously, I’d love it if Ed Davey and the Liberal Democrats did have a voice in the TV debates, and we are setting out our stall every single day – our fair deal for the British people, our focus on the NHS and care system, the cost-of-living crisis and sewage in our rivers and seas.

The government’s safety of Rwanda bill finally passed into law in April. But, with the announcement last week of a general election, the Conservative ‘dream’ of deportation flights taking off might never happen. So what has the bill achieved? And what does it mean for those it has targeted? The Guardian’s John Harris hears what life is really like for migrants in the UK

Brexit campaigner suggested he and prime minister should ‘have a conversation’ after favours he had done Tories over the years

Rishi Sunak has ruled out a deal with Nigel Farage after the Reform politician suggested they should “have a conversation” before the election.

Farage has held back from running as a candidate for the Reform party, which is led and funded by Richard Tice, but on Wednesday he extended an olive branch to Sunak in an interview with the Sun, telling him: “Give me something back. We might have a conversation.”

After a stop in Devon, where his audience appeared uniformly bored, you had to wonder, where are the rest of the cabinet?

Much more of this and I might begin to feel sorry for Rishi Sunak. One week in and there’s no sign of anyone from the cabinet. While Keir Starmer has been touring the country with guest appearances from Rachel Reeves and Wes Streeting, poor Rish! has been forced to go it alone. Maybe he thinks it’s safer that way.

Jeremy Hunt has been left to post leaflets through letterboxes in an uphill struggle to save his own seat. He’s not trusted to do anything else. The health secretary, Victoria Atkins, doesn’t appear to have noticed the junior doctors have voted to go back on strike. Kemi Badenoch is blissfully unaware a Czech billionaire wants to buy Royal Mail. Lord Big Dave is far too grand to do anything that might involve meeting the little people.

Thinktank says proposal to pay for scheme by scrapping shared prosperity fund would downgrade efforts to level up country

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Rishi Sunak’s election pledge to introduce mandatory national service would leave the UK’s poorest regions millions of pounds worse off, a thinktank has warned.

The prime minister announced last weekend that if he was re-elected, every 18-year-old would have to spend time in a competitive, full-time military commission or spend one weekend a month volunteering in “civil resilience”.

What’s gone wrong for the prime minister? And why does everyone think his Conservative party will lose?

The UK is holding a general election on 4 July. Here’s what you need to know.

SNP’s Stephen Flynn hails MP as a ‘phenomenal individual’ and contrasts her treatment with the welcome given to Tories’ Natalie Elphicke

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The Conservatives have been pushing a plan today to expand the number of apprenticeships, pledging “100,000 more apprenticeships a year by the end of the next parliament.”

It is unclear whether this figure includes the “up to 20,000 more apprenticeships” that Sunak previously announced ten weeks ago.

Under the plans, there would be legislation granting greater powers to the Office for Students, the universities regulator, to close degree courses that are underperforming. These would be chosen based on drop-out rates, job progression and future earnings potential.

The Conservatives claim to have delivered 5.8m apprenticeships since 2010. But the number of people starting out on apprenticeships in England is in decline, falling from 500,000 in 2015 to 337,000 last year, according to Commons library statistics.

First of all, you cannot generalise about entire subject areas. In almost all subjects there will be some institutions delivering well, and some not doing well. So for example, you take computer science, you know, you get earnings outcomes from young people studying computer science degrees which will range from £18,000 pounds to £80,000 pounds so it’s not about an individual subjects but about specific courses.

The second thing I genuinely don’t think it will be right or fair to young people who are currently on an undergraduate course to have a politician come on the radio and namecheck that particular course that they are on.

These debates are rarely useful, let alone enlightening. Let’s have a head-to-head of progressive parties instead

For the 2008 televised vice-presidential debate in the United States, Sarah Palin was opposite Joe Biden. Reportedly, she’d so frustrated the efforts of her team to get her on point with her arguments that they’d simply taught her 40 minutes’ worth of script. She says at one point, “I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear”, which is to say, I can’t answer the question unless it corresponds directly to a gobbet I prepared earlier.

The transcript is extremely revealing of the chemistry of political debate. When you put one agile politician, summoning his powers to answer the question, against one who has learned some patriotic lines by rote and has no intention of engaging with the questions, the whole thing is inert, its elements don’t connect. So nobody can win in the classic sense, which means the less impressive party has scored a victory by definition. You can commentate the life out of it, ask a sample of the audience for verdicts in real time, but you’ll never get to the heart of what happened because there was no button for “I got bored and stopped listening”.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

I’m often asked whether the party will move to the right or centre after the election. That’s the wrong binary to focus on

• Henry Hill is deputy editor of ConservativeHome

Populism is one of those political words that conceals as much as it illuminates. While I’m sure there are academics who could give me some rigorous definition of it, like most political insults it is thrown about with relative abandon, and often signifies nothing more than dislike of this or that policy.

But one version of it I’ve found useful when writing about the Conservative party is its current habit – on issue after issue – of speaking loudly while carrying a very small stick.

Big beasts have stepped down, a sitting MP has endorsed a Reform UK candidate and the prime minister has already had to have a campaign reset. Peter Walker reports

It started with more a whimper than a bang. Rishi Sunak’s surprise election announcement was marred by pouring rain and a protester blasting out the Labour 1997 campaign classic Things Can Only Get Better. But since then things have not exactly got any better for Sunak.

From Steve Baker going on holiday to Lucy Allan endorsing a Reform candidate, his MPs have not all fallen into line, while Michael Gove surprised many by joining the large number of Tory MPs saying they will not stand. The Guardian’s senior political correspondent Peter Walker says that while not disastrous, it is certainly far from the smooth, slick start Sunak would have wanted to his campaign.

Tory policy would be funded by scrapping courses with high drop-out rates and low job progression

Rishi Sunak has promised to create 100,000 high-skilled apprenticeships a year by scrapping “rip-off degrees” if he wins the general election.

In the latest of a flurry of announcements as the Conservatives try to narrow Labour’s 20-point poll lead, the party pledged to replace “low-quality” university degrees with apprenticeships.

Rishi Sunak is so palpably convinced he can’t win he’s promising any old mad thing. Meanwhile, the Lib Dems are falling off kayaks

People say manufacturing has declined under the Conservatives, but the sheer volume of outrage manufactured by Rishi Sunak’s national service wingnuttery at the weekend was last night compounded by his decision to unveil a quadruple lock to the state pension. Truly the seven-blade razor of advanced pensions technology. It’s so innovative it might even spin off and manufacture another deranged Loose Women segment. I am still howling at the moment on the show a couple of weeks ago when Janet Street-Porter demanded of Sunak: “Why do you hate pensioners? WHY DO YOU HATE PENSIONERS? That is the only conclusion I can come to.” State of the art lunacy, made end-to-end in the UK. Let’s face it: this is what you call a joined-up manufacturing industry.

But look, for whatever reason, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves preferred to spend their afternoon at a facility where they manufacture something other than abstract nouns: Airbus Defence and Space in Stevenage. A lot of election campaign visits are to places connected with jobs the politician probably wanted to do when they were little. Digger driver. Train driver. Biscuit factory worker. Today’s broadly fell into the category “spaceman”. Airbus are serious manufacturers in aerospace and defence, and recently won a new contract to maintain the Skynet military satellite system (although, I obviously massively misunderstood the movies because I hadn’t realised we were supposed to think calling things Skynet was cool?).

A report by cross-party MPs offers a damning verdict, six years after a ‘root and branch’ review called for wide-ranging reform

The vertiginous pace of events since Boris Johnson’s 2019 election victory has been such that pledges made only a few years ago seem almost to belong to another era. “I am a great believer in rail,” said Mr Johnson in 2021, announcing a major programme of reforms to the country’s network, “but for too long passengers have not had the level of service they deserve.”

Travellers habituated to late-running, overcrowded and over-expensive trains knew how right he was. But to reprise the famous assertion of Mr Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, three years on “nothing has changed”. This week, the last word on successive Conservative governments’ incompetent handling of the railways was delivered by the House of Commons public accounts committee. The MPs’ damning report concluded that since the “root and branch” Williams review was commissioned in 2018, following timetabling mayhem in the north of England, “very little” has been achieved, and that “no one is putting the needs of passengers and taxpayers first”.

Readers respond to Jonathan Freedland’s call for voters to make this a ‘punishment election’ for the Conservative party

Yes, Jonathan Freedland, the Tories’ cruelty, neglect and lies are appalling, but they didn’t start 14 years ago (Make this the punishment election – damning the Tories for 14 years of cruelty and lies, 24 May). It was between 1979 and 1997, when they last held power, that the Tories began to degrade everything they touched.

Two items Freedland mentions – rivers and seas polluted with sewage, and the lack of affordable housing – can be traced directly to the privatisation of public assets. We should see that as theft. No matter how hard we punish the Tories, even if they never have power again, it’s hard to see how we can regain even the assets given away in the last century, let alone those we are still losing. The long list only starts with libraries, swimming pools and playgrounds. It includes family centres, youth clubs, theatre, art, music, health, heritage, trust, decency – life’s essential services, assets and resources shrivelled, as Freedland says, by deliberate neglect.

Exclusive: Johnston Busingye formally appointed days after UK agreed Rwanda asylum deal with Paul Kagame in 2022

Rwanda’s top diplomat in the UK oversaw the use of the international justice system to target opponents of the country’s rulers around the world, the Guardian can reveal.

New details of the Rwandan government’s suppression of opposition beyond its borders add to concerns about the regime at the heart of Rishi Sunak’s asylum policy.

Find out who’s up and who’s down in the latest polls – and how many seats each party is likely to win in the next general election

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Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has called the next UK general election for 4 July 2024.

After 14 years of Conservative rule, Keir Starmer’s Labour has been consistently ahead in the polls since the start of 2022.

Asylum seekers from Sudan, Eritrea and Afghanistan detained in government’s Operation Vector share their stories

When Helen arrived at Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre, she was taken to her cell and handed some cleaning spray and wipes and told to use them before making up her bed. She had no idea why she had been arrested when she went to report.

“They told me I had been detained for Rwanda and tried to convince us to go voluntarily saying it is now the law and we have already been selected. But they didn’t explain to me why I had been chosen.”

Labour reiterates claims that pensions will have to be cut to fund Tory idea to scrap national insurance

Labour has opened applications for a string of new safe seats after half a dozen MPs announced last-minute retirements, with key allies of Keir Starmer expected to be lined up to take their place.

Those standing down include the former shadow minister Barbara Keeley, the chair of the parliamentary Labour party Jon Cryer, as well as John Spellar, Virendra Sharma and Kevin Brennan.

Pensioners used to have a bigger personal allowance than people of working age – it was the Conservatives who got rid of it.

So this is one of many examples actually of tax policy that has been reversed by the same Government. George Osborne got rid of it in the 2010s when the personal allowance of people under pension age continued to rise.

Forget the military, but working under supervision in the NHS, care sector or for a charity could be hugely beneficial for many

Rishi Sunak’s reinvention of national service is a desperate, last-minute election gimmick. But that does not make it a bad idea. If there is one phase in education across Britain that is way off course, it is the higher teens. Sixth-form, higher and further education are deeply reactionary, more plagued than ever by introverted academic syllabuses and obsessive testing. For decades it has eluded progressive reform.

Sunak’s idea of a year’s military training would be a costly waste. The army has said it does not want amateur conscripts. The defence of Britain against improbable attack requires highly skilled operatives, not trench-war cannon fodder. By all means recruit more of them, but polls show that barely 10% of young people would volunteer for war service and a third would resist formal conscription. Under Sunak’s plan, an overwhelming majority would choose the civilian alternative of spending one weekend a month for a year in a public or charitable service. Germany’s non-military alternative to national service – both it and military conscription were abolished in 2011 – was hugely popular.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

Prime minister campaigns in Buckinghamshire as his military service plan is criticised and MP defects to Reform

Rishi Sunak struggled to keep control of his fractured party on a chaotic fifth day of the Tory election campaign, as one MP defected to Reform and a minister criticised the prime minister’s pledge to bring back national service.

Sunak was in Buckinghamshire as he sought to get back on the front foot after a bruising start to the snap election, with Tory insiders increasingly worried about his strategy and performance.

All the mishaps, unforced errors, pratfalls – they only make sense if we assume the prime minister has a secret and unspoken plan up his sleeve

For a man who wants to win an election, Rishi Sunak’s first week of campaigning has been bizarre, a little bit frightening, like getting trapped in someone else’s anxiety dream. He went to the king for signoff before he told the cabinet, and presented 4 July to them as a fait accompli. Even if they had agreed with the decision, they wouldn’t have liked that, but they didn’t and they hated it. Only Oliver Dowden thought it was a good idea, which is a category of disaster all its own: “things only Oliver Dowden thinks are a good idea”.

So Sunak enters the fray alone. I’ve genuinely never seen a prime minister so isolated, so undefended. I can almost hear David Attenborough narrating over each appearance: “Separated from his herd, the antelope has just days to escape the plain before the hyenas catch his scent.”

After 14 years of youth bashing, the Tories’ plan to ‘toughen up’ British teenagers might be just what it takes to bring them all out to vote

When the Tories reach the very bottom of their bad ideas barrel, they come up with a dead rat plan for conscription. The notion is so decrepit that those old Sir Bufton Tuftons who used to rise in the Commons to declare national service had made them the fine men they were today are long retired and mostly dead, six decades after conscription ended in the UK. It’s that never-ending Tory cry of youth hate: cut their hair, square-bash some discipline into them, bring back the lash! “Toughen up teenagers,” declared the unlikely defence secretary, Grant Shapps. If Tory campaign managers still need to secure their over-80s core vote, they really are in trouble.

This dying gasp is the exemplar of their 14 years of governing. Everything has been performative – all about announcements, not reality, and moving on before anyone queries outcomes or value for money. National service swept all the Tory front pages: job done. Marching 18-year-olds into a compulsory year of service marks Tory high command’s final abandonment of younger voters. They and their media inhabit the oldie planet of the ancients, every year limping further away from modern life on earth. David Cameron’s legacy project, the National Citizen Service, had its funding cut by two-thirds after attracting a fraction of its expected participants despite devouring 95% of all the youth service funding.

Steve Baker says advisers came up with policy to bring back mandatory national service without agreeing it with ministers

The Conservative campaign pledge to introduce mandatory national service was dreamed up by advisers and sprung on candidates, a government minister has said.

Criticism of the headline-grabbing policy has centred on claims it was not fully thought through before being announced, while ministers said just two days before the announcement that a return of national service was not on the cards.

Labour leader says prime minister’s claims about UK are ‘form of disrespect’ due to high taxes and commitment to abolishing national insurance

Starmer is now running through his six first step promises.

Starmer says he is fed up with hearing Rishi Sunak says the UK has “turned the corner”.

Tories hope to make voters – particularly Reform supporters – nervous about prospect of major change under a Labour government

On the first weekend of the general election campaign, Rishi Sunak unveiled his first headline-grabbing policy promise: introducing mandatory national service for teenagers.

The proposal – wherby 18-year-olds would either join the military for 12 months or volunteer at weekends – sparked incredulity and ridicule. But Tory strategists introduced it for a very specific reason – one that goes to the heart of their election strategy.

Criticism of proposed scheme comes as another blow to the party’s struggling election campaign

Britain’s armed forces need more money not untrained teenage volunteers, former military leaders and Tory figures have said in a new blow to the Conservatives’ faltering election campaign.

Within hours of being announced, Rishi Sunak’s election pledge to bring back military service for 18-year-olds was rubbished by army chiefs and a former Conservative defence secretary.

Home secretary sent out to explain why national service is a great idea that has nothing to do with luring Reform voters

When the BBC announced its line-up for the Laura Kuenssberg Sunday politics show, there was a large blank beside the Tory part. To be confirmed, it said ominously. Hardly a surprise these days. At the current acceleration rate of attrition, it must be increasingly hard to find a cabinet minister or Conservative backbencher who has definitely decided to stand for election again.

On Wednesday, Michael Gove had declared his wholehearted support for Rishi Sunak’s surprise election announcement: two days later he had decided to spend more time with his crack den. That’s our Mikey. On brand to the very last. Saying one thing, doing another. Treachery runs in his veins. Even the prime minister looks as if he isn’t sure whether to fight this election. His body language during the first three days of the campaign has suggested a man yearning for Santa Monica. He only gets out of bed through a misplaced sense of duty.