Ross Clark

Should it really be a surprise that Zia Yusuf, a Muslim entrepreneur who made his fortune setting up a company that runs an app providing concierge services for posh blocks of flats, has chosen to support Reform? It is clear that Mr Yusuf has not thrown his lot in with Reform in spite of its policies on migration, but because of them. Britain, he says, has ‘lost control of its borders’, adding, ‘my parents came here legally. When I talk to my friends they are as affronted by illegal Channel crossings, which are an affront to all hard-working British people but not least the migrants who played by the rules and came legally.

On the face of it, there could hardly be a better example of a turkey voting for Christmas than the news that Jim Ratcliffe has come out and backed the Labour party. Yes, a Brexiteer who owns one of Britain’s six oil refineries really is throwing his weight behind Keir Starmer, a man who wanted to frustrate Brexit through a second referendum and whose party is committed to speeding up net zero by refusing to issue new licenses for oil and gas extraction in the North Sea and by decarbonising all power by 2030. Clearly, Ratcliffe is not stupid, so is he suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, or is there some expedience in his political declaration? Ratcliffe has no doubt worked out that there will be plenty of public dosh on offer I suspect the latter.

Who on earth at Tory campaign HQ thought it was a good idea to send Lord Cameron into battle to attack Nigel Farage and try to head off the gathering threat from Reform UK? In an interview with the Times today, the Foreign Secretary accused Farage of dog-whistling. He may well be right: it doesn’t take too much imagination to see how Farage's assertion that Rishi Sunak 'doesn’t understand our culture' will have gone down with some voters. The trouble is, though, that Lord Cameron reminds many Reform-leaning voters of everything they dislike about the Tories. He represents the privileged, patrician wing of the Conservative party – the toffs and landowners, the green welly, ‘get orf my land’ brigade.

Keir Starmer, it turns out, was a secret Liz Truss fan all along. Launching his party’s manifesto this morning he is going to tell us that growth will be the overriding preoccupation of his government. That, if you remember, is what the Truss premiership was going to be all about: ‘growth, growth, growth.’ How is he going to generate growth, and in a way that doesn’t have him landing flat on his face like Truss herself? Starmer has decided that he is going to take the levellers and the greens head-on. ‘Some people say that how you grow the economy is not a central question – that it’s not about how you create wealth but how you tax it, how you spend it, how you slice the cake, that’s all that matters. This manifesto is a total rejection of that argument.

Two years ago, as Chancellor, Rishi Sunak chose to jack up National Insurance contributions. It is a mark of how all over the place this government has been that cutting NI has now emerged as Sunak’s big idea.  Fairness to the Conservatives seems to mean the self-employed being excused from a 6 per cent tax which is paid by employees Abolishing the main rate of NI for the self-employed by the end of next parliament is the one eye-catching initiative which was not trailed before the launch of the Conservative manifesto – the now customary ‘rabbit out of the hat’. Employees will get an NI cut, too – their rate will fall to 6 per cent by 2027. But there is a clear risk with Sunak’s strategy. Employees might feel a little hard done-by by comparison.

Ed Davey has finally taken a break from fooling around to launch some policies. But one of them, in particular, is not going to please a great number of Lib Dem voters. The Lib Dem manifesto is to propose giving local councils the power to put a 500 per cent council tax surcharge on second homes. Obviously, there is minimal danger of the Lib Dems actually getting into power to impose such a policy, so those nice Lib Dem voters in Richmond and Kingston who have boltholes in Salcombe, Southwold, and so on can still afford the luxury of voting for the party without actually having to face the cost of its policies.

No wonder that Nigel Farage has decided that he would rather be leader of Reform UK than merely honorary president, and that he would like another shot at standing as an MP in Clacton. He looks as if he is the only politician – with the possible exception of Ed Davey – who is actually enjoying this campaign. Indeed, he seems to have engaged what used to be Boris Johnson’s secret political weapon: optimism. That could prove to be deadly for the Conservatives. Farage's thin skin seems to have thickened markedly Farage hasn’t always been all smiles on the campaign trail.

In spite of his conviction for falsifying business records, Donald Trump is still expected by many to make a remarkable political comeback in November’s US election. Could we see an equally remarkable comeback this side of the Atlantic, too, with Liz Truss returning to the stand for the leadership of the Conservative party? It’s possible to see a scenario where Truss is one of the few hopefuls remaining Today’s Electoral Calculus poll predicting that the Conservatives could be reduced to just 66 seats on 4 July raises the question: who would still be around to lead the party after the almost certain resignation of Rishi Sunak?