Campaign catchup: The SNP’s strained strategy, Johnson’s jaunt, and a dodgy dossier | General election 2024
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Zgood afternoon. As promised, SNP leader John Sweeney presented his party’s manifesto earlier today with the unequivocal first line: “Vote SNP for Scotland to become an independent country”. But today that seems a long way off – and instead the party that has dominated Scottish politics for so long is in danger of imminent electoral collapse.
More on how Sweeney is trying to fend off that danger and why Carrie Johnson’s summer is suddenly looking a lot better after the headlines.
What happened today
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Economy | UK inflation fell to 2% in May, returning to the official interest rate target for the first time in almost three years. Rishi Sunak said the news was proof his “brave actions” had worked, while Rachel Reeves said it was “welcome” but that “the pressure on family finances is still intense”.
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Conservatives | Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak didn’t have to their convictions have been suspended for breaking the Covid rulesKeir Starmer said amid calls from Conservative former cabinet ministers to overturn criminal convictions for breaking Covid rules.
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Labor | Labor has dropped one of its candidates after reports he shared pro-Russian material online. Andy Brown, the candidate for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East, shared an article from Russian state media RT which claimed that the toxin used in the Salisbury poisonings, novichok, “was never produced in Russia but was in use in The United States, the United Kingdom, and other NATO countries’.
Analysis: “It’s like they’ve been there so long”
For most of this campaign so far, the SNP has been accused of underestimating its core cause. The huge block letters on the front page of the manifesto insisting that an SNP vote would mean independence for Scotland was an unconvincing response to this claim.
But the manifesto was launched in the worst circumstances the party has faced since their breakthrough in 2015, when they added 50 seats and destroyed Labor in Scotland. Today, Swinney’s SNP feels a bit like Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party: responsible for a long and contested record in government, with a pair of supposedly safe hands given an unenviable task after a rapid and chaotic change of leaders.
Voters in this focus group last week didn’t hold back, “They’re just tired,” Asa said. “It’s as if they’ve been there for so long.” And Laura captured how their record at Holyrood complicated the case for independence in the minds of many voters: “If they can’t get the basics right like the NHS, then nobody’s going to trust them to do the big steps.”
The party’s own problems, coupled with the belief that the Tories could finally be unseated, combined to give Labor a huge lead in the polls – and yesterday’s Ipsos MRP projection suggested the SNP were now on course to fall from 48 seats to 15.
To this unpromising Von Sweeney tried to present voting for his party as the best way to hold Labor to account – saying his was the most left-wing manifesto on offer. He drew clear lines of demarcation with Keir Starmer and Scottish Labor leader Annas Sarwar on independence, Brexit and the cap on child benefit and said Labor would simply stick to the Tories’ fiscal rules. Scots should “open their eyes wide [that] voting Labor in Scotland will get you spending cuts,” he said.
Instead, Sweeney said, SNP MPs at Westminster will fight for more funding for the NHS (even though the NHS is a devolved matter). The manifesto says this should be paid for by increasing income tax on higher earners in the UK to match the Scottish system. Here are Libby Brooks’ key takeaways from the pack.
You can see the logic behind this strategy – and Swinney is probably a more effective vessel for it than his predecessor, Humza Yousaf. But there is now a sense of the fin de siècle in the SNP which looks set to be hard to shake. Some voters appear to believe that a Labor MP would have more influence over the government than an SNP equivalent, given the likely size of Labour’s majority.
The party’s problems are compounded by its serious financial difficulties amid an ongoing police investigation into the alleged misuse of party funds: while Labor has spent £2.2m on social media ads in the UK since May 22, the Tories £820,000 , according to the monitoring group Who Targets Me, the SNP spent just £4,400.
All of this led to a very difficult question for Swinney when launching the manifesto: as he claimed a majority of seats in Scotland for the SNP would enable the Scottish Government to “enter into negotiations with the UK Government to manage the democratic wishes of the people in Scotland in reality’, what would a loss of this majority mean? Sweeney refused to follow the logic to its obvious conclusion – but it’s hard for anyone else to escape.
What’s at stake
The Conservatives are defending a majority of 16,000 in North Cornwall, but the Lib Dems are now favorites to win there. in this submission for the Road to Power series., Damien Carrington reports on an area where experiences of the cost-of-living crisis – especially when it comes to food – are in stark contrast to the “dreamy impression … carried away by summer tourists”. “From farm to fork,” he wrote, “component parts of North Cornwall are suffering the consequences of a food system that doesn’t work for them.”
One interviewee, dairy farmer Ian Harvey (above), explains the pressures his business faces:
Harvey’s cows send around 3,500 liters of milk a day to the UK’s largest cheese factory nearby to make Cathedral City and Davidstow cheddar. “The cost of living crisis is putting pressure on the value of our end products. We’ve seen people trade up from brands to supermarket-owned brands, which means the small premium isn’t going back to the farmers,” he says.
In addition, says Harvey, high interest rates, combined with rising fuel prices and increased costs of inputs such as fertilizers, are “putting extreme financial pressure” on farmers. The post-Brexit shift from EU subsidies for simply owning land to a regime where farmers are paid to improve the environment is a good idea, he says, but delays are leaving farmers struggling. “Supplies have been poor and farm incomes have been questioned in the intervening period.”
Winner of the day
Carrie Johnsonwho will still be going on her second summer vacation: The Times reports. (£) that Boris Johnson will not be sent to join the Conservative campaign in the “red wall” seats as originally planned because they are already considered lost – while Johnson is unpopular in seats in the south where the Tories still think they have a chance.
Loser of the day
Kemi Badenoch, who has the unpleasant honor of being the subject of the next hastily assembled biography of Lord Ashcroft. On the one hand, as likely Tory leadership contenders jostle for position, it is an index of rising status, as Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer can attest; on the other hand, as Angela Rayner and David Cameron both know that the result is quite likely to be a scandalous bite that distracts you even if it turns out to be unfounded.
The most overused use of the term “dossier” of the day
This goes to Daily Mailfor his story on the front page on Labour’s “secret tax hike dossier” – which turns out to be a description of a (rejected) presentation to the party’s National Policy Forum. Dossier sounds better though.
after the promotion of the newsletter
Questionable photo of the day opportunity
Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves radiating huge security energy after being approached by a voter in Swindon Morrisons.
Quote of the day
It is hard to find a comparable period in Conservative history which has achieved so little or which has left the country at its end in a more troubling state.
Sir Anthony Selden and Tom Egerton, co-editors of a major new collection of essays assessing the state of the UK since 2010, The Conservative Effect 2010-2024: 14 Wasted Years?
Number of the day
882
The number of people who crossed the Channel in small boats yesterday, with this year’s total up 18% on 2023. As director of the think tank Sunder Katwala pointed out882 is more than the entire annual capacity of the scheme in Rwanda.
Andrew Sparrow explains it all
The selection of posts from the king of live blogging
10.08 BST | of Sunak LBC Phone In – Instant Verdict: When the election is over and pundits have to explain the likely landslide to Labour, there will be a lot of talk about living standards, real wage growth, political alignment, the effectiveness of the Labor vote, electorate volatility, tactical voting, populism and the like, but the real story is very simple. People are just fed up and there is nothing Rishi Sunak can say or do to change that because he is the leader of the party he has been leading for 14 years.
This is what the LBC phone-in illustrates very effectively. The callers were brutal… it was merciless for Sunak. Like LBC presenter Ian Dale, who knows a thing or two about phone-ins points outit didn’t make sense that he was getting a hearing or that anyone was willing to be persuaded anymore.
The best that can be said about it, from Sunak’s point of view, is that he seems to be getting fatter as the campaign progresses, and that this morning he stuck his head in the deck for a full hour of punishment without losing his temper.
Follow Andrew Sparrow’s political blog live every day here
Read more
What’s in the grid
Right now | YouGov releases its latest version MRP survey. You can find it here.
Tomorrow | Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee interest rate decision due.
Tomorrow, 20:00 | Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer, Ed Davey and John Swinney star in a BBC Question Time Specialanswering questions from the audience for 30 minutes.
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