Boris johnson

There will be relief in Conservative Campaign Headquarters as the Nato summit draws to a close with no election gaffe in sight. With the UK hosting the summit of world leaders, there had been concern that the arrival of the US president with less than a fortnight until polling day could have thrown a spanner in the works. Instead, Donald Trump has said little to cause alarm in Tory high command. When asked about the prospect of NHS privatisation as part of a UK/US trade deal, Trump said the NHS would not be on the table – as the US had little interest in it. In Boris Johnson's press conference this afternoon, the UK Prime Minister attempted to play it safe. He spoke about the importance of Nato along with what had been a practical and constructive event.

With ten days to go until polling day, the election campaign has turned to national security. Following the London Bridge knife attack on Friday by a convicted terrorist which left two members of the public dead, the Conservatives have made a concerted effort to get on the front foot on the issue. Over the weekend, Boris Johnson announced plans for tougher sentencing for terrorists – including a minimum sentence of 14 years. There's more to come – with Johnson to announce a five-point plan to prevent serious criminals and terrorists from entering the country after Brexit. Given that this is the week the NATO summit comes to town, the Tories were always planning a security focus. However, the events of Friday mean that this has been amplified.

Where to start with the Conservatives’ “Buy British” promises to end EU state aid rules? The obvious point is that dumping rules that prevent governments subsidising domestic firms will make it much harder to strike a trade deal with the EU after Brexit. Limiting state aid is pretty much fundamental to the EU’s very existence and operations; arguably the story of the EU since the late 1980s is a story of trying to drag European politicians away from protecting favoured sectors and firms and opening their economies up to cross-border competition. Of course, that story isn’t much told in the UK where, thanks not least to the sort of journalism once practiced by Boris Johnson, most people believe the EU is an exercise in anti-competitive protectionism.

Boris Johnson is today launching the Welsh Conservatives' manifesto. For the Tories, this event comes with a trigger warning: it was where Theresa May defended her party's social care U-turn in 2017 after its disastrous manifesto launch. The clip of her insisting that 'nothing has changed' became one of the defining moments of the election campaign. So far, it seems that today's Welsh event won't be quite so dramatic, which is just what the Conservatives wanted. They have devoted an entire page of their 2019 manifesto to social care, but what it amounts to is little more than thin air. It even promises to search for a 'cross-party consensus', which is something politicians of all hues have spent the past two decades trying and failing to reach.

Boris Johnson just took a very big political risk, by not making any serious attempt to compete with Labour on bunging cash at public services and the fabric of the UK. Where Corbyn is pledging £83 billion a year of increased spending on students, the elderly, health, schools, public-sector pay and so on by 2023, the Tories offer £3 billion. For Labour’s £80 billion plus per year on new housing, pension compensation for women born in the 1950s, nationalisations, greening businesses and multiple other projects, Johnson is committing to £8 billion by the end of the next parliament.