James Butler

The gambling scandal seems likely to poison the last days of the election campaign and the end of Rishi Sunak’s tenure. It is an appropriate scandal for the last rites of this government: tawdry, sloppy and – most characteristic – small-time. 

The intractable sense of exhaustion which attends British politics – not only in this election – is a signal of crisis in its institutions and ideologies. 

Labour’s manifesto at least looks like a real programme, though it is in places evasive, unclear or underpowered. Starmer promised ‘no surprises’ between its covers: it is a conservative document, cleared of any potential traps on the way to Downing Street. Its cover promises, simply, ‘change’, but raises the question: how much?

If the ITV debate between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer was exceptional, it was only for its inanity. Two men, neither of them with much stage presence or prone to thinking on their feet, traded prepared barbs and crowbarred in their key messages. Each made sure to name audience members, Janet – or was it Paula? – as an empathetic consolation prize for dodging their actual questions. Be honest about when – or if, or how – we’ll fix the NHS? Not on your life.

It is difficult to explain Sunak’s decision to call an election now. The Conservatives’ chief electoral strategist has stressed the ‘enthusiasm gap’ for Labour. But it takes some elaborate self-deception to read that voters despise you more than they like the other guy and take it as good news. Sunak must know he is going to lose. Perhaps he just wants it all to be over.