the division bell, also twice a week during the election. subscribe and leave a review. and ben riley—smith from the telegraph. who does not have his own podcast, but i do occasionally appear- on the telegraph on that, i uh, camilla and kamal do. which is called the daily t. yes. you got to get the name of your podcast. i definitely remember that. that's the basic thing. i definitely remembered it. um, right. um, the last episode of newscast was me, chris and laura in the incredibly hot spin room in nottingham after the bbc one prime ministerial debate. um, now that you've had a chance to sleep on that moment of momentous television, um, what do you think? well, i thought it was sunak unleashed. you know, he found his mojo only five weeks too late, possibly more than a year too late. and, you know, i've spoken to so many tories who think, "why couldn't he have brought that passion, that energy to the campaign trail before now"? um, starmer a lot more cautious, as expected. for me, one thing that was interesting was i was live blogging it for the ft last night, so i had it on audio, but i wasn't watching it as i was typing. and it really felt to me like rishi sunak won that debate on the substance. and i was surprised when i saw the yougov snap poll that suggested it was absolutely neck and neck. and when i mentioned this to other journalists, other politicians who i was whatsapping afterwards, um, those who are critical of sunak said, "well, you know, it was partially his manner. "it was very arrogant, public schoolboy. "it was a little bit smarmy smirky. "he was interrupting. and his demeanour was also off putting". but i thought it was it was interesting that i hadn't picked that up just through listening to it rather than watching it. interesting. john? well, i think we we have goti to the point of the campaign. it's like the david - cameron, "i'm pumped up. "i'm bloody lively". which was the final week of the campaign in 2015. | i remember going to a random village hall in dorset in the last— sunday of the campaign, which is actually where l paddy ashdown lived, and we were in this i tiny village hall. there was about 12 activists, maybe slightly more. - and in the room, david cameron - was shouting like a madman about how he was so pumped up and excited... about small business. "and that's what gets me fired up". yes. and in the room you just felt, i mean, itjust feels - like he has lost the plot. and then you went on twitter and everyone watching on tv| was like, "this is the moment. "this is amazing. and then it was the next day, - he did the proper pumped up, bloody, lively speech that was clearly. the rehearsal that we got in... because the background to that was that people had said, "oh, this campaign's really dull. "david cameron looks too technocratic and boring". and then he like, in a very obvious way, then just rolled his sleeves up and tried to get not boring and not technocratic. i actually once interviewed cameron and asked him about that, and he said it was a kind ofjujitsu move on the media because he felt he was being energetic and there was this narrative running. so they thought, "well, why don't we just lean into it and i'll take off myjacket and roll my sleeves up and kind of do a jujitsu move on the media". and then you got all these headlines about... the thing that was really happening in that campaign was that the tories were ruthlessly attacking the lib dems in places like the south west of england, and none of us even really sort of noticed that that was what was happening. but it was massive. that's literally the weird thing. i can remember being on that battle bus and being like, - "why are we going somewhere - with a lib dem majority of 20,000"? and it should have probably put two and two together and be like, - "maybe they think they might - actually be doing quite well here", but they were clearly i getting polling, showing that they were going | to do incredibly well. and, exactly, in the media, i we just didn't really pick it up. i think one one thing that has developed in this election is the abilityjust to scrape data and look at where the battle buses are, where the cabinet are going, the shadow cabinet, frontbenchers of other smaller parties, and also something the ft has done and i thought has been really interesting is, you know, look at if you pretend to be an activist or sort of, you know, put in postcodes for all 650 seats into each party's website, see where it takes you, you know, it will show you where they are trying to divert activists from and to. and that's led to some quite interesting stories about where labour in particular, which famously has lots of activists to play with, is trying to kind of really make inroads against the conservatives. and when i said at the start of this conversation, "0h, you've had a chance to sleep on the debate". what i realised this morning was that last night, that guy robert, who asked the question about, "0h, what's wrong with our political system, that it's thrown up, you two as the best option", which got a huge big round of applause in the room. and we were all like, "oh, that's the moment that sums up the mood of the country", because it was based on the reaction in the room. actually, once more people got involved in that conversation this morning, actually, you saw the other side of it, and people were actually quite critical of that question, not necessarily of robert, the person himself, he can ask whatever he wants, butjust the kind of anti—politics plague on both your houses, why should i bother sort of theme. there is this really interesting thing happening in the campaign where you have both of the main parties actually dropping in support and smaller parties rising in support. so i think that does tap into this. you know, if you look at the big picture, labour were 20 points ahead at the beginning. they're still 20 points ahead. so nothing's changed. but actually both of the two parties are sinking and smaller parties are rising. about a third of the country, now, a third of the electorate, sound like they're not going to back any of the two. so i think that probably hits the nail on the head of what some voters are feeling. well, the best thing about that. story was afterwards he was on tv complaining they hadn't really answered his question. - and it was like, "i mean, - you did say you're both rubbish, like, why are you so awful"? what were they meant to say a week out from election? i "hands up. yeah, i am really rubbish. don't vote for me". but what got me about that was... sorry, go ahead, lisa. well, i was gonna say, you know, just to sound a little pious for a moment, you know, covering politics. i do have a huge degree of respect for people who put themselves forward for office, stand in front of the electorate, increasingly put themselves up for so much abuse on the doorstep, you know, now often being recorded by those ring door bells online. and i did think when he asked that question not to kind of counterattack robert in particular, that it was a bit of an easy, cheap shot to make. but maybe it does reflect the fact that both the two main party leaders in this contest are quite technocratic, quite staid in their manner. but what got me is i was thinking, think about how tony blair or david cameron or ed miliband, they would have had a joke to disarm robert and make the crowd laugh. and we saw a sort of little flicker of that with keir starmer when beth rigby said, "you're really boring, aren't you"? and he went, "0h, thanks". um, and i was quite surprised neither of them had something to, like, cheer everyone up or like, make light of that. we have seen starmer deploy that line, "well, look, we tried exciting with borisjohnson and look, like, look how that worked out. "you know, boring maybe isn't such a problem when we've been through such a tumultuous time", but i was surprised he didn't deploy that again last night. isn't the truth that neither of them is a particularly brilliant political campaigner? i mean, if you compare to tony blair or boris johnson, whatever his flaws, that was a great political strength as a communicator or even actually nigel farage, whatever you make of his message. i mean, today he was in a room full of a thousand people, and he was often getting them to laugh out loud. and i mean, rishi sunak and keir starmer are not brilliant campaigning politicians. that's not their strength. one of the things people have been talking about a lot on social media today is the latest tory attack ad, which is a family with their backs to the camera and their hands up, and it's repeating that line about that rishi sunak used a lot on wednesday night about don't surrender your life to the labour party. what do you think�*s going on there? well, it's stepping up the attack isn't it? you know, it really is project fear going into overdrive. it's this final week and they're going all out. clearly think they've got nothing to lose from using this kind of, you know, scary, uh, tactic. uh, i think some people think it's going to be too over the top. it will sort of spark a backlash. it doesn't chime with the sort of mood of fear throughout the country about keir starmer in the way that there was withjeremy corbyn. people did fear that, you know, what he'd do on the economy might lead to turmoil, that he wasn't necessarily sound on national security. i don't think there are the same concerns about labour. so to my mind, i'm not sure it's going to hit the markets aiming at. and that word surrender is so emotive. _ and obviously rishi sunak- was using it for a reason yesterday that they clearly told him just use this on everything, all surrender. on borders, surrender on money, surrender on whatever. _ don't worry, we've got a poster with it on tomorrow, _ like it was clearly planned. i think they're having the child there was a step too - far and it'sjust like, _ "0h, are we really saying that's what would happen under labour"? obviously campaigns, _ you want to kind of get a reaction, but there are some levels when you just think, - "hmm, is this really - the best thing you can be"? there have been a few of them been quite close to the bank. there was one on the borders that they had someone literally rolling out a red carpet on some beach to welcome migrants on small boats, and there was like a bizarre one last night about tax, where they had keir starmer pretending to dj. "you see this in the house of commons," and other people are shuffling in. and he was saying taxes are going to rise, taxes are going to rise. i thought it was quite cool. i thought, you know. yeah. that was less scary. i mean, it's politics it was a low bar. i mean, ithought, iwondered if that was like a sort of glastonbury thing because it's a sort of like techno track they've made, haven't they, where they've remixed keir starmer and other members of the shadow cabinet, basicallyjust saying the word tax over and over again. quite a sort of, it's quite obvious. it's what the tories think— 20—year—olds want to be watching. yeah, right. um, one person who wasn't on the debate stage last night was ed davey, the lib dem leader. but we'll make up for that now because chris mason has been pursuing him across the country today, and i caught up with him to find out how that went. hello, adam from a lay—by in stockport. we'rejust, uh, busy editing away there. picture journalist supremo jack doing his work. following ed davey is quite a thing. so i've been in a village called marple bridgejust up the road from here today. and as newscasters have probably noticed, the strategy at the heart of the lib dem campaign is ed davey sort of mucking about basically. creating these visual events is how they often call them, you know, which are very pictorial and very shareable and get clipped up and they're put on the telly and they're put on social media and all of that. today, he was painting porcelain on a picnic table at the top of a hill in a field, a very windy field. and actually, since then he's left here in greater manchester and gone to wem in shropshire, where he's been talking to an alpaca called pele. um, well, the other bit of the lib dem strategy, alongside doing colourful pictures and stunts, is to target tory seats in the south of england. so what's he doing in the north west of england? well, it's the same strategy with a splash of northern flavour, really. so yeah, almost every single lib dem target seat is conservative facing. in other words had a conservative mp in the last parliament. so here we are in hazel grove, that was the case, uh, in the last parliament, there's a nearby seat, cheadle. you can see a list of all of the candidates for all the seats that we're referring to on the bbc news website. on his trip to shropshire, it's the north shropshire constituency that you might remember the lib dems won in a by election from the conservatives. and so the blue wall, as the lib dems like to call it, is, yes, principally in the south east of england and in the west country, but it has pockets in the north of england, too. harrogate, for instance, in north yorkshire, another conservative seat in the last parliament previously held by the lib dems a while back that they are hoping to win this time. and so the strategy, if you like, and the broad demographics, if you like, of seats like this are not wildly different from the seats they're targeting in the south east and south west of england, they'rejust in a different part of england, i guess. chris, i think you're in the windy wall by the sounds of things on your microphone there. um, i'm just thinking about the recent history of the lib dems and they have yo—yo�*d from kind of like the low tens of seats to the high tens of seats. what, um, what does a comeback? and they talk about a comeback, kind of what are the options for a comeback for them in terms of what it looks like? it's a good question, isn't it? because, you know, the lib dems for so long, certainly in the late 90s and then the turn of the century, were the clear third party in westminster politics, having, you know, 40, 50, 60—ish seats. then they went into coalition. then they were sort of nuked, basically, and you could fit the entire lib dem parliamentary party in the back of a minibus. and they are just now showing signs, and have in the last couple of years, of kind of reincarnating themselves politically, coming back somewhat in terms of competitiveness, perhaps amongst those voters who felt that they tarnished themselves in coalition government, with the conservatives willing to give them another look, and perhaps others willing to give them a look as well. now, they have been very targeted, geographically targeted in their campaigning in the last couple of years, conscious that the first past the post electoral system doesn't necessarily do them any favours unless they can focus their efforts in places where they can actually win as opposed to, you know, stacking up a reasonable proportion of the vote, maybe 20% or whatever. but it counts for nothing because one of the bigger parties beats them. so, you know, they've been targeting roughly 40—ish seats, something like that. now that's still, what, three or four times more than they held in the last parliament — and not trying to spread themselves too thinly. the critique that ed davey makes ofjo swinson, his predecessor at the last election, who lost her own seat in 2019, is that they spread themselves too thinly. that said, ed davey�*s been sounding pretty buoyant and upbeat and positive in the last few weeks, and saying he's setting no ceiling on the lib dems ambitions. there's been one or two opinion polls suggesting the lib dems could end up with more seats than the conservatives, which seems extraordinary, to be quite frank. but there's a far greater spread of opinion polls that might suggest that the lib dems could become the third party at westminster again and overhaul the snp if the snp shrink, which opinion polls suggest they are likely to. and then there's a crossover, if you like, in the race for third place between the lib dems and the snp. and that — i know this is a bit nerdy — but that kind of thing matters in terms of prominence and money and all the rest of it. and prominence can often be a self—fulfilling prophecy in politics, so that really matters. in addition to the wind, now getting drowned out by a orange liveried plane flying into manchester airport. 0h, 0k. thank you for the traffic and travel. um, and before i let you go back and edit your piece, chris, we've got a week to go. do you want to give me a magisterial final thought to usher us into the final week? well, i'm a bit knackered. does that count as magisterial? it certainly pithy. and it's definitely the truth. and to be honest, it's the truth for all of the leading campaigners in the main political parties, and plenty of those that are not leading but are doing their democratic thing in 650 different constituencies all over the uk, because this kind of slog of electoral politics that happens every few years, it is exhausting. of course it is. you know, because that's that's the nature of what's at stake and how much it matters to the country as a whole, and indeed to individuals who are seeking to do that thing of getting themselves elected and representing their parties. what we're going to see in the next few days? well, we're into the sprint finish already. i think we're saying that on newscast last night after the debate in nottingham. i think we'll see all of the parties doing the big picture thing, their main campaigning messages, summarising where they've got to. there'll be a bit of masochistic dashing around every corner of the uk in a vanishingly small number of hours for people like me, and indeed, i guess for the political leaders too. and then we'll be there. but remember, i say this every day, but i'm going to carry on saying it every day — we are there already. there's been a ratcheting up in the proportion of the electorate voting by post for the best part of the last 20 years. it's probably around about a fifth of voters now voting by post. so this general election is under way already. people have voted, people are voting, and then plenty more will be voting, what, this time next week. right, chris, you've got loads of work to do. so i will see you soon. and i suspect actually next time i see you face to face, eyeball to eyeball might be on election night itself when we're going to both be staying up all night monitoring the results and doing an episode of newscast at the break of dawn. so see you soon. i will see you then, if not before. torah. so that was chris mason in a lay—by next to an airport on the main road. so that's why it sounded so nice. right. chris and i were getting a bit nostalgic for the last month there. um, what sort of moments will lodge in your memories forever from this election? like when you're in your 90s, you'll be like, "oh, i remember2024. that was when happened". for me, it's just the series of crises that the tory campaign has lurched between. starting from announcing it, rishi sunak in the rain, in that bizarre spectacle, thenjetting into belfast to the titanic quarter, and all those headlines that wrote themselves about him captaining a sinking ship, and then the row about the party chairman doing the so—called chicken run from the north west to a safer season in essex. and then he left d—day early, and then the gambling gate scandal erupted. i think for me it isjust the compound effect of those, uh, errors, gaffes and problems that have completely beset the party, that i think this will be a campaign i rememberfor a really long time. iwell, obviously, we had the rain, i which i think will be the image that everyone remembers forever- when you think back to the election. "oh yeah, that's the one he called it in the rain". i things can only get wetter. um, obviously, but then, i mean, we had titanic, l but then they did seem to stabilise |things for a bit that they did seem| like, "oh, we're going to come up with some policies. - they put out the national service thing". _ oh yeah. which captured the conversation for three or four days. totally. and then we went back to chaosl and um, we went back to d—day. we went back to the betting thing in recent weeks. - and people, once you've just got. that feeling about a campaign that everything's going wrong, - then anything small that feeds into that, itjust kind of. but yet the tory poll rating, and you could argue we've focussed on the polls too much, um, didn't really go down. so those things didn't make the situation worse for the conservatives, which. you could argue then that they didn't have an effect. but the but the inverse argument is that normally we would see a narrowing of the polls. it become more competitive. that extraordinary 20—point lead that labour began this campaign on shrink. and that hasn't happened. and i've been interested in the analysis of pollsters and people like luke tryl from the more in common uk consultancy, saying it wasn't always the case that we were going to see the polls set as they have been. normally, we would have still seen that narrowing, and it probably hasn't occurred because of those crises. yeah, i do think the most significant moment of the campaign was nigel farage coming back to lead reform and saying he'd stand in clacton, because that was the one thing. actually, if you look at the reform vote share in the six weeks before, from april, it was beginning to drop down. and then you had one of the most famous names in british politics return to the limelight kind of skilfully and aggressively take the attack to the tories. and it's gone up and up and up, and there've been a couple of polls that they're ahead. i was actually looking on my way here. i think on average they're at 15 points, the tories at 22 points. they were hovering around 11 or 12 points when farage came back. and that has hurt the tories in so many of their seats. it has stalled in recent days for reform. - they were going up and up and up- until we had nigel farage's comments about how putin and ukraine and how the west was to blame. _ and i felt if that row, _ if he just said it on the programme |with nick robinson, the panorama, j you would have got some headlines for a few days and then it would have moved away. | but they really he seemed so annoyed by it. - he really kind of made it big thing was on the, uh, - the double decker bus with a big . kind of front page of borisjohnson saying something about ukraine. and he seemed so angry, - he was doing all these videos about how he was angry with newspapers about i it and everyone else. they seem to really whip it up - into a thing to make sure everyone knew that he had some problem over ukraine _ and we think about one thing that people are quite united on. - of course, many different political parties and less on the fringe - i is that they're quite pleased that| we've been supportive of ukraine. and ijust think those sort of voters who might crossj between the tories and reform, it wasjust completely— the wrong message for them. um, john, you used to work at the mail, and the mail really went for nigel farage over that comment. and also nigel farage has now really gone for the mail. and i'm not expecting you to be like a spokesperson for your old employer or anything like that. but just what's your take on that phenomenon? i think if you look in 2019, they had a similar thing i where the mail put a lot of pressure| on reform to stand down and cease, and nigel farage completely lost the plot and said, - "you know, this is a complete kind of sham democracy. - this is totally wrong". so they do have this history where the mail sometimesl quite like nigel farage. but then at the end of the day, - they are a tory sporting newspaper, so i wasn't totally surprised to seal them kind of at loggerheads again. um, ben, are you almost doing as much work on what might happen to the tories after the election as what's going to happen to the tories in the election? well, it's a combination... not to reveal your sources or your secret plans. well, the truth is what might happen to the tories after the election if they lose, if they become quite irrelevant. because if you have labour in power with this huge majority, then you know, alljournalists, politicaljournalists are drawn to power and what affects our readers and the country's voters. and every single decision in their lives for the next five years plus will be affected by keir starmer and his cabinet. so a lot of the focus will naturally go on there. but yes, whenever you talk to any tories, you can already see them angling, uh, on the race that could start literally in a week's time should rishi sunak lose and... or that it's already started. it's already started. yeah. i mean, one of the big things is who survives? how low does it go? because when you look at all the poll predictions in the analysis, you very quickly find people who would be leading candidates losing their seats, like penny morden being an obvious one. john, just explain how they have started. so this is the incredible thing. steve baker, remember him? the self—styled brexit hard man. he has, um, indicated that- if he does keep his seat where he's got a 4,000 majority, so it's a big if. - and the other candidates standing there are available on the bbc news website. of course, then that he would be | interested in signing for leader, | and you're going to get to the point where we get all the sunday- newspapers saying that various people are taking soundings i on whether they should be out. i can already imagine different spads for different ministers i ringing around journalists to just be like, "h, if you just— want to put it out there that they're thinking about it, i you know, they're getting loads of people approaching them, i i think you should think about it". so actually, when somebody, uh, if i go to the pub over the weekend, which i probably will, and somebody has been listening to this episode of newscast and they say, "why did you guys start talking about a future tory leadership that the tory party's won the election that hasn't even happened yet? "you're kind ofjumping the gun". it's justifiable because it is happening. it is happening. there are candidates who have got staffers lined up. they are already canvassing. some more explicitly, some less. fellow mps in safer seats that they expect to win. there are donors being approached. i mean, this is really happening in earnest. and in recent days, you've heard people like kemi badenoch, victoria atkins and, you know, respectfully, the business secretary and health secretary asked about kind of leadership. and, you know, obviously they're not going to lean into it in a very obvious way, but certainly not ruling it out. and by my count, there are as many as 11 people who are interested, including potentially, uh, farage, maybe borisjohnson. there's a lot of noise about whether he could stage a comeback through lots of obstacles. but, you know, it does feel like that this is where the conversation in the party has moved to. and it's worth saying a lot of unknowns in that entire race. we don't know if rishi loses whether he will want to stay on for any period. we don't know how long the contest will go. it was interesting. back in 2005, michael howard lost and he's later said he deliberately had a very long campaign. they lost in may. the successor wasn't picked until november or december, and he had a long campaign to try and encourage the next young blood to get momentum going. david cameron, osborne—cameron eventually won that race and got them back into government, so a lot of those decisions are to be seen. also, there's always this endless debate about whether tory members should have the say, so the tory mps knock it down to two candidates and the members have a say. graham brady has previously, the 1922 chairman, who was a very influential backbencher, has previously said members shouldn't have a say when they're in government. i think lord howard as well has criticised that. so whether you see any movement on that front will be quite interesting. newscast from the bbc. hello. it was a slightly cooler day across the board on thursday, but still warm enough with 25 degrees across the southeast. friday will be a little bit cooler still, but quite a lot of sunshine around generally. most of the showers and strongest of the winds will be across the northern half of the uk, courtesy of this area of low pressure, which will continue to pull northwards and take the strong winds and showers with it as we go through the day. but it's a blustery start to many areas, certainly across the northern half of the country for friday. the showers, the strongest of the winds, pushing northwards across scotland, some of these heavy and thundery across north eastern parts of scotland. but england and wales, certainly for wales, the midlands southwards should stay mostly dry, with a top temperature of 22—23 degrees, mid—teens further north. now, as we head through friday night, the showers begin to fade away, the winds turn lighter and skies will clear. so it will turn quite chilly under those clear skies by the end of the night, with temperatures out of town dipping into single digits for some of us. but in town around 9—12 degrees. so it's a cool start to the weekend, but however, the weekend isn't looking too bad. there will be quite a bit of dry and sunny weather around. just a bit of rain at times through central areas of the uk, particularly on saturday. and that's courtesy of these weather fronts, which will wriggle in from the west at times. now, as we look to the north of the uk, that area of low pressure will be pulling away, taking the strong winds and the showers away from the northern isles as we go through saturday. a lot of sunshine for scotland, northern ireland, patchy cloud and rain for northern england, the midlands and wales. but southern and south—east england will be warm and increasingly humid through the day. plenty of sunshine, top temperatures 25 degrees here, again, mid—teens further north. now as we move into part two of the weekend, this ridge of high pressure will topple in. that will kill off any showers. lighter winds as well with fewer isobars. so it should be a fine day on sunday. cool start, but plenty of sunshine around. bit of cloud building into the afternoon. thickest of the cloud, northwest scotland, where it will be breeziest, but lighter winds elsewhere. top temperatures on the cooler side, we're looking at 16—21 degrees. then as we head into next week, i think low pressure will be close by, certainly to the north and the west of the country. this is where we're likely to see most of the showers. better chance of staying dry and warmer towards the south and the east. take care. welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore, i'm steve lai. the headlines... it's presidential debate night in the us. joe biden and donald trump will go head—to—head in their battle for the white house. the bbc tracks down a people smuggler behind a channel crossing — in which a 7 year old girldied. pakistan's former prime minister, imran khan, loses the appeal against his detention. and — the world's smallest elephant is in danger of dying out — but there's hope it can be saved. it's seven in the morning here in singapore, and seven in the evening in atlanta, georgia where joe biden and donald trump are preparing to go head to head in a televised presidential debate. it comes just two weeks before mr trump is sentenced for his conviction of 3a counts of falsifying business records. 0ur chief presenter caitriona perry is in the cnn spin room in atlanta. tonight, this is the cnn spin room. 0rdinarily commits a basketball arena here at georgia tech university known locally as the thriller done. will it be a thriller tonight? we will have to wait and see. we will have to wait and see. we do know it is a idea first. the first time ever in the era of television debates that there is a sitting president taking on a former president. that means it's going to be a dramatic day. they both have a body of work that can be defended and criticised. voters knowjust defended and criticised. voters know just what to
Related Keywords