Ross Clark

Britain’s creaking infrastructure and frequent paralysis of public services deserved to be a bigger factor in the election campaign than it has been. But could it now actually affect the result by disenfranchising some voters? A growing number of voters have complained about failing to receive their ballot papers in the post. Given that many people requested postal votes because they knew they were going to be away from home this week, it will now be too late for them to vote, even if delays are sorted out at the last moment. Come Friday, and the late arrival of postal ballots threatens to become a major scandal It is not just ballot papers, either, which have been delayed.

Members and supporters of the Conservative party do not generally speak in favour of proportional representation (PR) – which is hardly surprising given that the current system has given them 49 out of the past 79 years in power. There are exceptions: Ferdinand Mount, head of the No. 10 Policy Unit under Mrs Thatcher, briefly advocated it during the Conservatives’ long period out of office in the 2010s before changing his mind after the Conservatives returned to power. In a debate in 2019, Conservative MPs Dan Poulter (who defected to Labour earlier this year) and Derek Thomas spoke in favour. Whatever the iniquities of this week’s result, Conservatives should plot a path back to power within the current system, not seek to change it.

Never mind net zero – let’s spend the money on the NHS instead. That, in an echo of the infamous promise on the side of the Vote Leave battle bus, is what Reform chairman Richard Tice announced this morning at the party’s latest press conference. Achieving net zero, he said, would cost £30 billion a year. Drop that and the party would be able to spend more money on the NHS. Reform’s plans, he said, would involve spending an extra £5 billion a year on extra NHS staff, £7 billion a year on commissioning independent treatment for NHS patients and £3 billion on tax relief for people using private healthcare. With a contingency, he said, that would come to £17 billion a year.

‘I’m literally in the process of getting quotes’ may well make it into the pantheon of feeble political excuses alongside ‘I did not inhale’ or ‘I was just watching badgers’. They were the words uttered by Green party co-leader Carla Denyer to explain why her home is still heated with a gas boiler rather than a heat pump – something her party advocates for others. She went on to say that she has some quotes for heat pumps in her email inbox but that she has had to put the project ‘on pause’ during the general election campaign. When Denyer does get around to opening those emails – which I suspect won’t be in the flat above No. 10 – she may gain insight into why most homeowners have been resistant to politicians trying to persuade them to install a heat pump.

Nigel Farage enjoyed a combative exchange with Nick Robinson in his BBC Panorama interview this evening, and acquitted himself well on many issues. True, the tax cuts and spending rises in his manifesto don’t add up – they rely on a rather over-hopeful expectation of the economy, as indeed do Labour’s. But then Farage is honest that he is not really selling us a programme for government, only giving an indication of the issues on which Reform UK will be pressing if succeeds in gaining a Commons presence. Therefore, his party can get away with some loose budgeting. But at the same time Farage made his first big error – and one that could cost him dearly among many of his potential voters.

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.