Uk politics

As the election campaign enters its third week, the Conservatives are enjoying a 17-point lead, according to a YouGov poll. However cautious Tory MPs are quick to point out nothing should be taken for granted, as this is broadly speaking where the Tory party was at this point in the 2017 campaign. But for Labour to have a chance of forming a government come 12 December, Jeremy Corbyn needs to change the political weather. He has two set piece opportunities this week to do just that: Tuesday's leader's debate and Labour's manifesto launch. ITV’s planned television debate has the potential to move the dial. The first head-to-head debate of the campaign has led to cries of foul play from smaller opposition parties who have been excluded from the meet.

It will be the biggest moment of the campaign so far. On Tuesday night, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn will go head to head in an ITV debate. I say in The Sun this morning that this debate is the biggest risk that Boris Johnson has taken in this election. There’s a reason why none of his predecessors as PM agreed to such an encounter. But Boris Johnson’s team calculated that this debate was worth it as it enables them to frame this election as a choice as to whether you want Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn as PM. He has a 22 point lead on this question and asking it brings 2017 Tories who have gone over to both the Liberal Democrats and the Brexit Party back into the fold. Tuesday night’s format should favour Boris Johnson.

In this election, the Tories hope to persuade voters who have never backed the Conservative party before to turn blue. Key target seats lie in parts of the Midlands and North that are historically Labour. As I say in this week's magazine, to help candidates and activists take on this new terrain, the party has sent them a handbook setting out who they need to win over. It lays out the importance of communicating 'with voters who in the past may not have considered a vote for the Conservatives, but who want to GET BREXIT DONE and would now prefer a majority Conservative government to a coalition led by Jeremy Corbyn.

Oh dear. It's been a difficult week for Nigel Farage. The Brexit party leader announced on Monday that he would not be standing candidates in Tory-held seats. He had hoped that in return the Conservatives would consider standing down candidates in a number of Labour heartlands where he believed the Brexit party would fare better. The Tories, however, were having none of it. To make matters worse a number of Brexit party candidates have got cold feet about Farage's strategy. All election candidates had to submit their documents by 4pm to stand. Dudley North was seen as a key target seat of the Brexit party. However, the candidate for that seat announced at 3.59pm they would not be seeking election. https://twitter.com/RupertLowe10/status/1195008427778596867?

I’m sending someone down to the supermarket later to do a bit of shopping on my behalf. I have given them a rough idea of what I want but my main instruction is that they must spend the entire £150 that I am giving them.       If that was really how I did my shopping it isn’t hard to imagine the result. I would end up with bagfuls of stuff I didn’t really want and didn’t need. Some of the food might be good value but an awful lot of it wouldn’t be. Whoever did my shopping would simply pile up the trolley as quickly as they could, until they had spent my £150. It sounds stupid, so why, then, are the main parties promising to do a very similar exercise with the NHS?

Every election campaign has a wobble. But the Tories broke new ground in managing to wobble before they’d even launched their campaign. However, the formal start of the Tory campaign on Wednesday night does appear to have stabilised things, I say in The Sun this morning. I understand that the Tories own polling still shows them on course to win the election and return with a working majority. But, in the assessment of one of Boris Johnson’s Cabinet allies, this contest is ‘the most complicated election we have had. Two minor parties that can take from both major parties’. This dynamic means that this election will be more unpredictable than usual. There won’t be a straightforward national swing, rather a series of regional contests.

Will former Labour MPs help the Tories break the red wall? A key plank of the Tory path to a majority consists of winning seats in the Midlands and the North which have been Labour for generations. Many of these areas voted to leave in the EU referendum. The Tory hope is that a well-executed campaign in which they reinforce their Brexit message with increased public spending promises for domestic policies will lead to them winning Labour Leave voters over. However, as crucial to the strategy is how the vote splits between the various candidates standing in each constituency. Ian Austin – the independent MP for the key Tory target seat of Dudley North – has announced today that he will not seek re-election.

In the past few minutes, Tom Watson has announced that he is stepping down at this election. In a surprise letter, the Labour deputy leader says his decision is 'personal, not political' and that he is 'not leaving politics altogether'. In the meantime, he wants to spend more time campaigning on public health. https://twitter.com/tom_watson/status/1192169894479122433?s=21 There are some curious lines in this letter, and Jeremy Corbyn's response. The Labour leader picks up Watson's comment about not leaving politics, and writes: 'I am proud and glad to have worked with you over these four years and I know this is not the end of our work together.

The Liberal Democrat election campaign launch was beset by technical difficulties which meant that Jo Swinson was at times hard to make out. However, the anti-Brexit message was loud and clear. The enthusiastic Liberal Democrat leader said she was 'excited' to stand as the Liberal Democrat candidate for Prime Minister. Swinson said there was a very real chance she could be the next inhabitant of 10 Downing Street as it was not about 'the red team or the blue team anymore'. Swinson was clear that only her party could be trusted to stop Brexit. She pitched the Liberal Democrats as the party of the centre ground – stuck between two extremes in Labour and the Tories. But she had a harder time when it came to the Q and A.

The era of John Bercow as Speaker is no more. This evening MPs voted for Sir Lindsay Hoyle to succeed Bercow as Speaker of the House of Commons. Elected by secret ballot through a series of knockout rounds, Hoyle was triumphant with 325 votes, following four rounds of voting. Chris Bryant came second with 213 votes. Although it was a crowded field, going into the contest Hoyle was the frontrunner. As deputy speaker under Bercow, the Labour MP for Chorley had impressed colleagues with his no frills approach to the role. Compared with Bercow's style, Hoyle earned a reputation as a fair and neutral speaker. During the hustings, Hoyle continued to show that he was a very different candidate to Bercow – refusing to say whether he voted leave or remain in the EU referendum.

Normally wrangles about TV debates go on for weeks before one is agreed. Yet, before the election campaign has even formally started, ITV have announced a TV debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson on November 19th. This’ll be the first election head to heard this country has had. Agreement on this debate has been reached so fast, as I say in The Sun this morning, because  both Labour and the Tories think they benefit from this one on one format. On the Labour side, they hope that it helps them unite the anti-Tory vote behind Corbyn. While the Tories want a one on one debate because they think the question of who do you want to be Prime Minister—Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn—favours them. During the 2017 campaign, Theresa May lost her lead on this question.