Good afternoon. As promised, SNP leader John Swinney presented his party’s manifesto earlier today with an unambiguous first line: “Vote SNP for Scotland to become an independent country”. But that feels a pretty long way off today - and the party that has dominated Scottish politics for so long is in danger of an imminent electoral collapse, instead. More on how Swinney is trying to fend off that danger, and why Carrie Johnson’s summer suddenly looks a lot better, after the headlines. What happened today Economy | UK inflation fell to 2% in May, returning to the official target rate for the first time in nearly three years. Rishi Sunak said that the news was evidence that his “bold action” had worked, while Rachel Reeves said it was “welcome” but that “pressures on family finances are still acute”. Conservatives | Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak should not have their convictions removed for breaking Covid rules, Keir Starmer has said, amid calls from Conservative former cabinet ministers to nullify criminal convictions for Covid rule-breakers. Labour | Labour has suspended one of its candidates after reports that he shared pro-Russian material online. Andy Brown, the candidate for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East, shared an article from the Russian state media outlet RT claiming that the toxin used in the Salisbury poisonings, novichok, was “never produced in Russia, but was in service in the US, UK, and other Nato states”. Analysis: ‘It’s just like they’ve been there for so long’
For much of this campaign so far, the SNP has been accused of underplaying their foundational cause. The giant capital letters on the first page of the manifesto insisting that an SNP vote would mean independence for Scotland were an unsubtle rejoinder to that claim. But the manifesto is launching in the roughest circumstances the party has faced since their 2015 breakthrough, when they added 50 seats and annihilated Labour in Scotland. Today, Swinney’s SNP feels a bit like Rishi Sunak’s Conservative party: liable for a long and contested record in government, with an allegedly safe pair of hands given an unenviable task after a rapid and chaotic turnover of leaders. Voters in this focus group last week did not hold back: “They’re just fatigued,” said Asa. “It’s just like they’ve been there for so long.” And Laura captured how their record at Holyrood complicates the independence case in many voters’ minds: “If they can’t get the basics like the NHS right, then nobody’s going to put any trust in them to make the big steps.” The party’s own problems, coupled with a conviction that the Tories might finally be turfed out, have combined to give Labour a formidable lead in the polls - and yesterday’s Ipsos MRP projection suggested that the SNP is now on course to drop from 48 seats to 15. Against that unpromising backdrop, Swinney sought to present a vote for his party as the best way to hold Labour accountable – saying that his was the most leftwing manifesto on offer. He drew clear dividing lines with Keir Starmer and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar on independence, Brexit and the two-child benefit cap, and said that Labour would simply stick to Tory fiscal rules. Scots should “have their eyes wide open [that] voting Labour in Scotland will get you spending cuts,” he said. Instead, Swinney said, SNP MPs in Westminster would fight for more funding for the NHS (even though the NHS is a devolved matter). The manifesto says this should be paid for through income tax increases for higher earners across the UK to match the Scottish system. Here are Libby Brooks’ key takeaways from the package. You can see the logic to that strategy – and Swinney is probably a more effective vessel for it than his predecessor Humza Yousaf. But there is now a fin de siècle feel to the SNP that looks like it will be hard to shake off. Some voters seem to feel that a Labour MP will have more influence over the government than an SNP equivalent given the likely scale of Labour’s majority. Compounding the party’s problems are its severe financial difficulties, amid an ongoing police investigation into alleged embezzlement of party funds: whereas Labour have spent £2.2m on social media ads UK-wide since 22 May and the Tories £820,000, according to monitoring group Who Targets Me, the SNP has spent just £4,400. All of that led to a very difficult question to Swinney at the manifesto launch: since he argued that a majority of seats in Scotland for the SNP would empower the Scottish government to “embark on negotiations with the UK government to run the democratic wishes of people in Scotland into a reality”, what would a loss of that majority mean? Swinney declined to follow the logic to its obvious conclusion – but it is hard for anyone else to escape. What’s at stake
The Conservatives are defending a majority of 16,000 in North Cornwall – but the Liberal Democrats are now favourites to win there. In this dispatch for the Path to Power series, Damian Carrington reports on an area where experiences of the cost of living crisis – especially when it comes to food – are sharply at odds with “the dreamy impression … taken away by summer tourists”. “From farm to fork,” he writes, “the constituents of North Cornwall are suffering the consequences of a food system that does not work for them”. One interviewee, dairy farmer Ian Harvey (above), explains the pressures his business is facing: Harvey’s cows send about 3,500 litres of milk a day to the UK’s biggest cheese factory nearby to produce Cathedral City and Davidstow cheddar. “The cost of living crisis has put pressure on the value of our end products. We’ve seen people trade out of brands into supermarket-owned brands meaning that slight premium is not delivered back to farmers,” he says. In addition, Harvey says, high interest rates coupled with rising fuel prices and increased costs of inputs such as fertiliser “are creating extraordinary financial pressure” on farmers. The post-Brexit switch from EU subsidies for simply owning land to a regime where farmers are paid for environmental improvement is a good idea, he says, but delays have left farmers struggling. “The delivery has been poor and farming incomes have been challenged in the intervening period.” Winner of the day Carrie Johnson, who gets to go on her second summer holiday after all: the Times reports (£) that Boris Johnson will not be sent out to join the Conservative campaign in “red wall” seats as originally planned, because they are already thought to be lost – while Johnson is unpopular in the seats in the south where the Tories still think they have a chance. Loser of the day Kemi Badenoch, who gets the vexed honour of being the subject of Lord Ashcroft’s next speedily assembled biography. On the one hand, as the likely Tory leadership candidates jostle for position, it’s an index of rising status, as Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer might attest; on the other hand, as Angela Rayner and David Cameron both know, the result is quite likely to be a scandalous titbit that dogs you even if it turns out to be unfounded. Most overcooked use of the term ‘dossier’ of the day That goes to the Daily Mail, for its front page story about “Labour’s secret tax rise dossier” – which turns out to be a description of a (rejected) submission to the party’s National Policy Forum. Dossier does sound better, though. Dubious photo opportunity of the day
Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, emitting huge someone-call-security energy after being approached by a voter in a Swindon Morrisons. Quote of the day It is hard to find a comparable period in the history of the Conservatives which achieved so little, or which left the country at its conclusion in a more troubling state. Sir Anthony Seldon 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, taking the total number for this year 18% above 2023. As thinktank director Sunder Katwala pointed out, 882 is more than the entire annual capacity of the Rwanda scheme. Andrew Sparrow explains it all The pick of the posts from the king of the live blogs
10.08 BST | Sunak’s LBC phone-in - snap verdict: When the election is over, and analysts have to explain the likely Labour landslide, there will be a lot of talk about living standards, real-terms wage growth, political dealignment, the efficiency of the Labour vote, the volatility of the electorate, tactical voting, populism and the like, but the real story is very simple. People are just absolutely fed up, and there is nothing that Rishi Sunak can say or do to change that because he is the leader of the party that has been in charge for 14 years. That is what the LBC phone-in illustrated very effectively. The callers were brutal … this was unrelenting for Sunak. As Iain Dale, an LBC presenter who knows a thing or two about phone-ins points out, there was no sense that he was getting a hearing, or that anyone is willing to be persuaded anymore. The best that can be said about it, from Sunak’s point of view, is that as the campaign goes on, he seems to be getting more thick-skinned, and that this morning he stuck his head in the stocks for a full hour of punishment without losing his composure. Follow Andrew Sparrow’s politics live blog every day here Read more Peter Walker reports on Lib Dem efforts to win in the so-called blue wall, where Tory seats are under threat – but the party is facing dilemmas over how to use its limited resources Charlotte Higgins reports from her home town of Stoke-on-Trent on how cultural projects are filling the void where levelling up was supposed to be John Crace on Channel 4’s immigration and policing debate: “You can’t help wondering who these debates are actually for. Other than to make the TV execs and anchors feel important” What’s on the grid Right now | YouGov releases its latest MRP poll. You can find it here. Tomorrow | Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee’s interest rate decision due. Tomorrow, 8pm | Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer, Ed Davey and John Swinney take part in a BBC Question Time special, taking questions from the audience for 30 minutes each.