Gareth Roberts

And now the end is near. Barring a polling error of galactic proportions, we are hours away from the final nemesis of the Tory government. It is 14 years since Cameron and Clegg invited the press into the Downing Street garden to reveal that the coalition would ‘give our country the strong, stable and decisive leadership we need’.  As Rishi Sunak prepares to vacate the Downing Street premises on Friday, he will probably be looking about and having one of those moments so simply but so accurately captured by ABBA in ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’. ‘We just have to face it, this time we’re through.’ All of that groping, sacking and stabbing. What was it all for? There’ll surely be another consideration weighing on him. Fourteen years.

We’re going to be lumbered with them for at least five years, so I think it’s time to have a good look at the incoming Labour cabinet. Not the ones we know and love of old – Thornberry, Lammy or Miliband – or Starmer and Rayner, who may still be fresh-ish, but are very well established in our minds. No, I’m talking about the assortment of front bench faces that haven’t yet stuck in our cerebellums. This lot are presently fairly anonymous and unexamined, but pretty soon they’ll be smoothly taking up the reins of their Tory predecessors with a broadly similar plan to drive the country into the ground, only a bit quicker, so we should get ourselves acquainted.   Here are my pick of the crop.  Jonathan Ashworth – My favourite. A likely lad.

How would you define ‘working people’? You’d think that ‘people who work’ would be a pretty safe bet. But Keir Starmer seems to have a different definition, telling LBC earlier this week that working people are ‘people who earn their living, rely on our services and don’t really have the ability to write a cheque when they get into trouble’. Is this a tacit admission that those who have managed to save could be a target for Labour when it wins power? ‘Working people’ is one of Starmer’s most repeated phrases; he’s made it his own. It is usually said in an appropriately reverent way, with the same head-slightly-bowed tone that vicars use while mentioning the Holy Ghost, or that people on television employ when referring to the Lionesses.

The ghost of 1997 haunts the 2024 election. The defining image of this year’s contest, barring any major upsets over the next fortnight, is already clear: Rishi Sunak drenched like a drowned chipmunk outside 10 Downing Street as he called the snap election. ‘Things Can Only Get Better’, Labour’s '97 campaign anthem, was blasted out in the background. It was a pitiable sight: Sunak looked hapless, luckless and friendless. A John Major for the 21st century. The first term of Blair – pre-9/11, pre-Iraq, the time of Gordon Brown being prudent and restrained (or so we thought) – exists as a nostalgic golden age Like many people of a conservative temperament, I am often accused of living in the past. Maybe you get that thrown at you, too.

We’re now about halfway through the election campaign. I don’t know how we’re going to keep our excitement from bubbling over if this level of stimulation keeps up in the second half. The staggering mediocrity and dullness of Sunak and Starmer has lent this contest – despite its inevitably very different final outcome – the air of a no-score draw played between non-league Tier 11 teams. What terrible cosmic sin did the British public commit that we are lumbered with this pair of tailors’ dummies? This was made even more apparent by last night’s Sky interviews. Sunak and Starmer shied from confronting one another head-on – perhaps mindful of anaesthetising the population – but if they thought they were in for an easy ride, Beth Rigby was having none of it.

‘Elections are won from the centre ground,’ the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has said. Perhaps he should have a word with his own party. The Conservatives have been in power for 14 years and, while they are nominally centre-right, many of the party's policies and positions will hardly strike the average voter as sensible and centrist. Maybe if the Tories really had stuck to the centre ground they wouldn't be 21 points behind in the polls and heading for electoral wipeout on 4 July. Nowhere is the Tories' refusal to adopt a sensible centrist position clearer than in the gender debate. The middle ground on this issue is surely that the safety of women and girls must be prioritised over the feelings of those who wish to change gender.

Unlike Brenda from Bristol, I usually love elections – but not this one. Theresa May’s self-destruction in 2017 was one of the most fascinating events I’ve ever seen. The high-stakes tension of Boris vs. Corbyn in 2019 had me gripped to the TV. Even as a child, I couldn't get enough of the high drama of politics: on Friday June 10 1983, I threw a sickie from school just so I could sit at home and read all the newspapers about Thatcher's triumph: it was my pitiful idea of fun at fifteen years old. Yet Sunak vs. Starmer feels like even more of a foregone conclusion than 1997, when Tony Blair's New Labour crushed the Tories. It's hard to get excited about the 4 July election.