Isabel Hardman

The election debate so far has included a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing over whether religion has a place in politics and whether religious politicians have to spend significant portions of interviews talking about their views on what other people get up to in bed. But one striking feature of all political debate is how many of its participants behave like religious zealots without even realising it.  Media vicar Reverend Richard Coles yesterday tweeted that he’d spoken to a friend who planned to switch from Labour to the Conservative, rather than the Lib Dems, as Coles might have expected. The replies to this message were rather instructive. A number of people thought this voter simply could not exist.

Jeremy Corbyn has given a speech today contrasting his more collegiate approach to leadership with that of the ‘bunker mentality’, as he describes it, of Theresa May’s leadership: 'Barely nine months into Theresa May’s premiership, there are clear warning signs that she and her closest advisers are slipping into that presidential bunker mentality.Whereas it is the job of leadership to hold open the space for dissent, new thinking and fit-for-purpose policy. So while it might not be the stuff of soundbites, I have always believed in standing firm and empowering others to make up their minds and come on board when they are ready.

Why is it so striking that Tony Blair has said that Theresa May will be Prime Minister ‘if the polls are right’? On the surface, this appears to be a statement of the bleeding obvious, given the Tory party national poll lead isn’t exactly within the margin of error. Of course, around election time, politicians do develop the amazing ability to argue that the earth can in fact be flat, and in a normal election Blair might be focusing on talking about how Jeremy Corbyn can in fact become Prime Minister. His refusal to do that may have mildly surprised people.

We are coming to the end of the first week of an election campaign that few were expecting when this week began. The parties are drawing their battle lines: the Tories are warning of a happy Vladimir Putin and a 'coalition of chaos' involving the SNP, Labour and the Lib Dems, while Labour is making this an anti-establishment election (though what precisely the Establishment is up to and which naughty coffee chains it involves remains vague, even for the party's MPs promoting that message on the airwaves). The Lib Dems, meanwhile, had long worked out their pitch as the anti-Brexit party. Of course, not all Labour MPs are talking about the way the Tories are 'rigging' the system or how Jeremy Corbyn proposes to solve that.

The opposition parties about whom Theresa May complained in her speech launching the snap election are grinding into action. Their size and resources seem to be inversely proportionate to how prepared they are: the Lib Dems say they have already selected around 400 candidates to contest seats, while Labour hasn't selected any candidates in seats it doesn't hold. The party is contacting its 2015 candidates to see if they might stand again so it might mount reasonably well-informed campaigns in key seats (or formerly key seats: a campaign with an ounce of wisdom would have to name seats it already holds as 'key seats' while accepting that many of its sitting MPs will just be washed away).

‘But you promised!’ Anyone who spends much time with children (whether in an Andrea Leadsom-esque capacity as a mother or otherwise) will recognise that phrase. They’re the words of someone disappointed that the grown ups, who are supposed to be sensible, haven’t followed through. Today Theresa May broke her own promise about there being no early general election. Will helpfully reminds you of five of those promises, repeated by both the Prime Minister and her henchmen, in this post. She had been so adamant that even those who thought they knew her best after years of working together in Opposition and government had taken her at her word and were insisting until recently that May believed in keeping her promises and that there would be no snap general election.

George Osborne was famous in Westminster when Chancellor for laying large 'elephant traps' for Labour using Treasury policy. He was also famous for telling everyone all about how the trap worked and where it was, before falling into it himself. When Philip Hammond came into the Treasury, it was largely accepted that the days of silly elephant traps were over. But this week the new Chancellor ended up locating one of the last of the Osborne elephant traps which had been lying dormant in the political jungle - and he located it by falling straight into it. The 'tax lock', which the Tories announced in the 2015 election campaign to put pressure on Labour over sneaky national insurance and other tax rises, ended up trapping the Tories themselves.

It's fair to say that Philip Hammond hasn't charmed Fleet Street with his Spring Budget.  There is little sympathy even from newspapers inclined to agree with a Conservative assessment of how to run the economy. Broken promises are potent in politics - just ask the Liberal Democrats. The Tories made their tax lock pledge in the 2015 election as they were hoovering up seats from the Lib Dems who were being punished for failing to keep a pledge on tuition fees they had made at the previous election. Westminster had almost forgotten the tuition fee row. Voters hadn't.

Theresa May might have won every Brexit vote in the House of Commons so far, but it’s getting trickier now. The House of Lords this week rejected the plan to trigger Article 50 without offering assurances to EU nationals, knowing that most MPs are sympathetic. I understand that the Tory whips are working hard to whittle down threatened rebellion at the 'ping-pong' stage. Given that everyone in Vote Leave pledged to protect EU nationals – as did four out of the five original Tory leadership contenders – it’s harder work. Quite a few rebels feel they need to make a point about the status of EU citizens. The whips will probably succeed, and it seems (this time) that the Lords will not send it back to the Commons again.

What is Labour’s priority at the moment? Normally the sensible answer for an Opposition party would be that it needs to focus on policy, and particularly on talking about next week’s Budget. But it is very difficult for a party polling so far behind the one in government and that is so divided to have much authority when it criticises ministers on policy. So when John McDonnell gave his pre-Budget speech today, his focus couldn’t just be on what he expects Philip Hammond to get up to and what Labour would want from the forthcoming economic statement.

In the past few minutes, the government has lost a vote in the House of Lords on a key aspect of Brexit: the status of EU nationals. Peers are at the Committee Stage of the bill that allows the government to trigger Article 50, and despite attempts by Home Secretary Amber Rudd to reassure them that this issue will be the priority once the negotiations for Britain to leave the European Union have begun, they backed Amendment 9b, which says the government should guarantee now that EU nationals living in the UK will have their rights protected. The House voted 358 to 256 for the cross-party amendment. Rudd was watching the debates this afternoon.