Gus Carter

The report into Russian interference in British politics was finally published on Tuesday morning following a nine-month delay. Here are the five most interesting takeaways from the report:  1. The government 'actively avoided' investigating Russian interference  During this morning's press conference, intelligence and security committee member Stuart Hosie made the extraordinary claim that 'no one in government knew if Russia interfered in or sought to influence the referendum because they did not want to know'. He explained that the British authorities 'actively avoided looking for evidence that Russia interfered' in UK elections.

Dominic Cummings may have committed a minor breach of lockdown restrictions during a trip to Barnard Castle, an investigation by Durham police has concluded. The force has said that the journey 'might have been a minor breach of the regulations that would have warranted police intervention'.  The statement released earlier today says that while his trip up from London to self-isolate in Durham was in line with the regulations, the journey on 12 April might have constituted a breach. The police have also said that if Cummings and his family had been stopped by officers, they would have been asked to return to his father's farm.

Every evening, at around 5 o'clock, a minister walks through the large panelled doors to Downing Street's state dining room and delivers the daily coronavirus briefing. The conference always begins in the same way – 'I'd like to update you on the latest daily figures'. The minister in question then proceeds to tell us just how many tests have been carried out over the last 24 hours and the number of positive cases discovered. We are left to conclude that the remaining tests must have come back as negative, that no infection was detected. However, there is a third category of result: void tests. These are tests that proved inconclusive, either because the sample wasn't taken correctly or because of some other issue involving the lab. Essentially, the test failed.

One of the great Cameron legacies has been an era of very low unemployment. In his biography, the former PM cited two defining moments of his teenage years; the first was getting caught smoking weed at Eton and the second was reading the 1982 IEA pamphlet ‘What cost unemployment?’. While Cameron avoided many of the radical policies that emanated from the free market think tank, he did adopt one of the central tenets of the paper: that those in work should be better off than the unemployed. By the time he left office in the wake of the 2016 referendum, UK unemployment sat at just 5 per cent. When Boris Johnson took over in July last year, the number of people out of work was half what it was at the height of the financial crisis.

A good barrister will always keep his options open. And the Attorney General, Sir Geoffrey Cox, has the letters Q and C at the end of his name, so he must be a good barrister. During an event this morning Cox laid out the case both for his continuation as Attorney General, while also hyping himself up as a potential chair of the government's upcoming constitutional review. He told the crowd: Have I had enough of the job [of AG]? let me make plain, absolutely not. This has been one of the greatest – in fact, thegreatest – honour of my political life… If you gave me the opportunity to continue, I would embrace it eagerly. But equally, if it is not to be, well then there are other doorways that will open for me.

Labour is heading for its worst election performance since 1983, according to YouGov's long-awaited MRP forecast. The poll also makes for miserable reading for parliament's independent candidates, most of whom look set to lose their seats. Given that YouGov was one of the few pollsters to correctly predict a hung parliament in 2017, it would seem foolish to dismiss their predictions. Here are the eight big names who could find themselves booted out of parliament come 13 December: Don Valley - Caroline Flint, Labour Prediction: Likely Conservative GAIN A former minister for Europe under Gordon Brown, Flint is one of the few Labour Remainers to have undergone a full Brexit conversion. She was one of just 19 Labour MPs to have voted for Boris Johnson's Brexit deal.

Labour launched its 'Race & Faith Manifesto' earlier today amid a storm of criticism over the party's anti-Semitism problem. The latest person to condemn Jeremy Corbyn is the chief rabbi, who questioned whether the Labour leader is fit to become prime minister. During today's event in north London, Corbyn hit back, insisting that under his government 'no community will be at risk because of their identity'. The party had hoped the mini-manifesto launch would focus attention on policy ideas such as a wholesale review of the Prevent strategy or the scrapping of random stop and searches. But it didn't go to plan. Outside the venue in Tottenham, activists had parked up trucks with phrases such as 'A vote for Labour is a vote for racism'.

If an MP’s researcher is accused of sexual assault, what should the MP do? Co-operate fully with the police, of course, which is what Chris Skidmore claims he did when his assistant ended up in court. The Tory MP and minister for universities strenuously denies that he refused to provide the police with evidence. But questions still remain after what an officer said during the trial at Southwark Crown Court. You might have heard about the case: 27-year-old Callum Warren, Skidmore's former staffer, was cleared last week of molesting a teenager. The court heard descriptions of a legislature that runs on an endless supply of cheap lager and eager young graduates. But the trial itself brought up interesting questions about how helpful the minister was.

The appointment of Dominic Cummings as one of Boris Johnson’s top No. 10 advisors caused a media storm last week, with the former Vote Leave strategist cast as some kind of shadowy Brexit Svengali. Cummings is seen by a certain section of Remain activists as the calculating mastermind behind the Leave vote – the man who turned a normal political campaign into a ruthless battle of data black-ops. Equally, his decision to freeze certain sections of what is now the ERG out of the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign infuriated several Tory Brexiteer backbenchers. There have already been endless column inches devoted to what Cummings thinks and how that will play out in the Boris government. Luckily, our readers don’t have to speculate.