Leading article

As soon as Rishi Sunak told the House of Commons that ‘there is going to be a general election in the second half of this year’, nervous Tory MPs spotted a problem: that could mean 4 July, which the Prime Minister has now announced will be the election date. Calling an early election is an admission of defeat – and that, on everything from public finances to public services, the worst is yet to come With every opinion poll pointing to a Labour landslide, it’s unclear what Sunak is trying to gain – unless he has given up hope of victory altogether. Calling an early election is an admission of defeat and signals that, on everything from public finances to public services, the worst is yet to come.  Of course, holding the line until November would have been tricky.

Rishi Sunak’s big speech this week was easily lampooned. Having accused Keir Starmer of ‘doomsterism’, the Prime Minister warned that Britain’s most dangerous years lay ahead, and talked of the threat from ‘colluding authoritarian states’. Less attention was paid to the part of his speech about artificial intelligence, which was in fact genuinely optimistic. As well as bringing greater freedom, choice and opportunity, AI could double productivity ‘in the next decade’, he said.

Nick Boles was once at the heart of a mission to renew Conservatism. He was one of a small number of modernisers, central to the Cameron project, who ended up serving as Tory ministers. He quit over Brexit and this week made his public debut in a new job as an adviser to Rachel Reeves. He was chosen to introduce the shadow chancellor’s speech about how Keir Starmer’s government plans to revive the economy. The lack of any serious clash of ideals between the main parties has allowed a lazy consensus to thrive This is part of a new movement in British politics: Tories for Starmer. It’s something we will see a lot more of as Labour approaches power.

In the end, the Tories did just as badly as predicted in the local elections. They lost about half of the council seats they were defending as well as ten out of the 11 mayoralties up for election and did not even come close in London. It's a disaster, but one consistent with the opinion poll picture painted with such devastating regularity over the last year or so. Any Conservative now tempted to depose Rishi Sunak should study the pantomime playing out in Holyrood. The Tory motto, now, is to remember that there is always someone worse off than you are – and that person is usually in the Scottish Parliament. The SNP is reminding the world that changing leader does not help a party running from its record.

Why is Britain poised to ban cigarette smoking, when the habit is already dying out anyway? Smoking is seen by the young as disgusting and outdated. A generation ago, 50 per cent of school pupils said they had smoked at some point. By the time David Cameron came to power, this was down to 25 per cent. It has since halved again, to 12 per cent – of whom just 1 per cent smoke regularly. Vaping among the young presents its own challenges, but smoking cigarettes (at £15 a packet) is in terminal decline. So naturally the state has decided to intervene. Smoking is dying out among the young because they are choosing not to smoke, not because it is banned Politicians of all parties united this week to usher in the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, which will create two categories of consumers.

During Easter weekend four years ago, the country felt on the verge of catastrophe. The prime minister was in hospital having just come out of intensive care, the Covid-19 death toll was at more than 1,000 deaths a day, and hospitals were trying to cope with a flood of patients. It had been estimated that 90,000 ventilator beds would be needed; we had only 10,000. That weekend, no one went to church and no one visited family: instead we sat inside, preparing ourselves for the horror to come. Science is always evolving, never settled. Our understanding changes as we gain new information No one knew, then, that the virus was already in reverse. No one knew that 10,000 ventilators would prove enough or that the emergency Nightingale hospitals that had been set up would not be needed.

As the world discovered when she was caught lifting other people’s work for her book on women in economics, Rachel Reeves is not the most original of thinkers. But she has political talents. She has cultivated her image as an uninspiring technocrat in order to present herself as someone who will not spring surprises or take risks as chancellor. She thinks the state is inefficient and taxes are too high. She believes in ‘securonomics’, which sounds like a pleasing contrast to years of Tory policies. It is easy to preach fiscal discipline, but in office Labour would find it very difficult to contain spending Polls show that voters now think Labour are more likely to lower taxes than the Conservatives, so Reeves has already achieved something significant.

Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party is a government-in-waiting desperately searching for ideas. It says much about the leader of the opposition that arguably the biggest proposal he’s put forward comes not from him but from his chief of staff, Sue Gray. She, it seems, is enthused about the idea of citizens’ assemblies, and wants more of them to look into issues such as constitutional reform, devolution and housing. That is one step on from Tony Blair’s focus groups, with randomly selected members of the public placed one step closer to power and adopting the role of government advisers.

The polls suggest that Labour is in line for a general election victory later this year which could match or even exceed Tony Blair’s landslide of 1997. Yet the party exudes none of the confidence and maintains none of the self-discipline which it did 27 years ago. On the contrary, were the Conservatives not in an even worse state themselves, Keir Starmer’s party could well be in deep trouble. For Labour to contrive to lose a safe seat in the current circumstances is remarkable. But that is exactly what the party has done with its failure to vet properly Azhar Ali, the candidate chosen to fight the Rochdale by-election following the death of the sitting MP Tony Lloyd. Comments made by Ali shortly after the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israel last year were indefensible.