More than 120 Conservative MPs, including Jeremy Hunt, Liz Truss, Sajid Javid and Gillian Keegan, paid £100,000 of taxpayers’ money to the Conservatives’ in-house web design services, it can be revealed.

Jessica Elgot www.theguardian.com 

The MPs used the Bluetree website service to design their websites. When billed by Bluetree, they would pay for the sites then claim back the costs from the public purse via expenses, prompting a complaint to parliament’s expenses watchdog about the practice.

Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) has denied Bluetree is wholly owned by the party and says it is a separate organisation, but repeatedly refused to deny the party receives income from the company, saying it has “commercial arrangements with CCHQ”.

Records show more than 330 invoices from Bluetree to Conservative MPs, including Hunt, Truss, Javid and Keegan, for web design services. Other high-profile Conservatives who have expensed services from Bluetree include Ben Wallace, Tobias Ellwood, Mark Francois and Helen Whately.

The company – which describes itself as the “Conservative party UK official website platform” and says it is run “inside the party” – has an address that is the same office as CCHQ and has been paid £100,695 in taxpayers’ money since 2019.

The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) has said it would not allow websites to be funded if it was clear they were being used for party political purposes – regardless of the services offered by the company. It said if any evidence was found that rules had been broken then it would work with the MP to make amendments or repay expenses.

Senior transparency campaigners said they were alarmed if MPs were using taxpayer funds that could end up with the Conservative party. Tom Brake, the director of Unlock Democracy, said the money should be repaid if any surveys from the website were used to give MPs information for campaigning.

“The rules are clear. Taxpayers’ money cannot be used by MPs for party political campaign purposes. Yet Bluetree’s promotional material about their websites makes it clear that that is their intended purpose,” Brake said.

“Running surveys on a website, paid for with public money, which elicit information about likely voting intention constitutes a breach of the expenses rules. Unless these activities have been separately funded by the MP, any MP using taxpayer’s funds in this way should be required to reimburse them immediately.”

Rose Whiffen, a senior research officer at Transparency International UK, said: “There are rightly strict rules governing what MPs can and cannot claim on expenses, including using public money for political purposes.

“Any allegations that MPs have used their taxpayer-backed expenses to fill the coffers of their respective political parties should be investigated. MPs should carefully avoid any expenditure that could be seen to be misusing public money to the benefit of their respective parties.”

The Labour councillor James Walsh made the complaint to Ipsa. He is running against Hunt in the Godalming and Ash constituency, though the Lib Dems are favourites to take the seat.

Walsh said the authority should investigate the expenses. “There would be nothing intrinsically wrong with any of the above if these website services were something the individual MPs or the Conservative party were paying for out of their own funds, but for those costs to be charged to the taxpayer in the form of Ipsa expense claims strikes me as an outrageous misuse of taxpayers’ money,” he wrote.

A Conservative party spokesperson said: “Bluetree is an independent organisation but is a preferred supplier of the Conservative party. MPs using Ipsa money for a website to promote constituency activity is compliant with Ipsa rules. Bluetree works closely with Ipsa to ensure guidelines are followed.

“Bluetree and the Conservative party have made it clear to candidates who were MPs that they should not be using any Ipsa-funded website during the election.”

The party said Bluetree was part of a registered company separate from the Conservative party but would not say what that company was. All contact details for Bluetree on its website are directed to CCHQ and Bluetree does not have a separate Companies House registration.

MPs have frozen their websites during the election campaign to avoid breaking rules on using the taxpayer-funded sites.

The website of Bluetree promotes features to be used by campaigners. It says it has “the only software designed to provide Conservative MPs with the features to campaign effectively online throughout the election cycle” and that “candidates who use Bluetree consistently receive a higher vote share than those who don’t”.

It says: “We have spent more than a decade working inside the party to provide tools that you simply cannot get elsewhere.” It also promises a site that is “compliant with Ipsa, the UK, Scottish and Welsh parliaments, the Electoral Commission and the information commissioner”.

The site directs any queries about sites designed by Bluetree to CCHQ and contains the Conservative imprint: “Promoted by Alan Mabbutt on behalf of the Conservative party.”

He is a worthy inheritor of Claire’s mantle

Paul Arnott, the Liberal Democrat candidate for Exmouth & Exeter East, is not only the tactical choice to beat the Tories, backed by the remarkable Claire Wright who came second last time, in an area where Labour have never been even second and the Lib Dems have far more votes in recent council elections. He’s also a formidable campaigner, skilled politician and generous human being, as I know from working with him in East Devon politics over the last decade.

Paul, who has lived in East Devon and Exeter most of his adult life, first got involved about 15 years ago, angered by the obvious corruption of the East Devon council after decades of Tory rule. Along with a few others, he set up the East Devon Alliance to challenge the abuse of planning powers, and turned this into one of the most successful Independent electoral challengers in English local government, which by 2020 had removed the Tories. Paul then took on the challenge of constructing an alternative coalition to reform and open up the council. At the same time, he actively backed Claire’s amazing campaigns.

Paul’s politics are driven by the need for justice and to challenge the dire effects of national Tory rule, especially on the NHS, to which he owes his own life – Paul was always there when we were fighting to save the community hospitals in 2017, and he was alongside me when they threatened to demolish part of Seaton Hospital late last year. 

Paul’s national politics always inclined towards the Lib Dems and mine towards Labour, but we agreed on what needed to be done and Paul, more than anyone, made things happen. His style is consensual and inclusive – on the council, he brought together Independents, the Lib Dems, the Greens, and at times Labour. As a passionate supporter of Proportional Representation – which would make Labour and Green votes count in our area, but which national Labour has blocked – he is backed by the cross-party East Devon Compass group which campaigns for this.

Paul will want to represent everyone in the constituency and especially all those who are looking for change after 14 years of Tory rule. He’s not a tribal Lib Dem – he only joined the party after Richard Foord’s by-election victory proved that they were once again the national challengers in East Devon. He will stand up for local people and for what is right, in the end – I am sure – despite the party line.

However unlike Labour MPs who will be whipped to support Keir Starmer right or wrong, Paul will be able to challenge his government – for example, over increasing cooperation with Europe and the odious two-child rule – as well as supporting them on many issues. The phrase ‘local champion’ has been discredited by Tory chancers, but Paul would be the real thing. He is a worthy inheritor of Claire’s mantle, and the best person to stop  Exmouth & Exeter East being saddled with an irrelevant Tory MP for five more years.

Martin Shaw is a former Independent county councillor and leading campaigner for community hospitals.

South West Water (SWW) has apologised for failing to lift boil water notices for additional groups of customers this week following a parasite outbreak in May.

Dan Wareing www.bbc.co.uk

The company said they “are seeing clear results” in Kingswear, but they had to lift the notice in line with advice from public health partners.

SWW has previously said it was still advising about 2,073 households in the wider Hillhead, upper Brixham and Kingswear areas to continue to boil their drinking water.

About 2,500 homes in the area were under notice after cryptosporidium, which can cause diarrhoea and sickness, was found in the water supply on 15 May.

Earlier this month 21 households had their notices lifted.

South West Water added it would continue to “carry out intensive work in the Hillhead network”, ice-pigging water pipes, where an ice solution is pushed along pipes using water pressure to help clean them.

The company thanked customers for their patience.

On Monday, the company will be holding a drop-in session in Kingswear Hall for residents of Hillhead who want to learn more abut the process of ice-pigging.

On Tuesday there will be a session for residents in the Brixham area who “are still concerned about the quality of their drinking water”, in Brixham Town Hall.

Both sessions will be held between 15:00 and 18:00 BST.

Simon Jupp has made these strong claims in his recent election flyer (see images below). Are they true or false? 

Owl sends in the ferrets.

What the ferrets say is that Simon Jupp couldn’t be bothered to turn up when the campaign was launched at a large public meeting on 3 November 2023. Nor did he turn up for any subsequent meetings. 

So it is not surprising that he wasn’t chosen to be on the 10 member local committee. Since there are only 2 Lib Dems on the committee they can’t be described as “controlling” it either, indeed it is genuinely cross-party and includes conservatives. He eventually contacted one of the committee members, and in the end three of them had a zoom meeting with him.

But why should he be part of the campaign? Until the election was called, Simon Jupp was MP for East Devon. Seaton’s MP was Richard Foord, MP for Tiverton and Honiton. So this local issue lay outside his “Parish” – so to speak. He should have been devoting all his energies on sorting out his constituents’ problems in Exmouth, Cranbrook and Sidmouth. 

The ferrets also question whether Simon (gofer in the Department of Transport) has any relevant experience in saving hospitals. It is Tory policies that are closing them and Simon is as loyal as they come.

“This government will have integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level.” – Rishi Sunak on being appointed PM

It looks like Partygate all over again – Owl

Harry Yorke, Caroline Wheeler, Gabriel Pogrund www.thetimes.com (Extract)

A senior Conservative official is being investigated by the Gambling Commission over allegations he placed dozens of bets on the timing of the election before it was announced publicly.

Nick Mason, the Tories’ chief data officer, has been informed by the watchdog that he is part of the inquiry. After being approached for comment, the Conservative Party confirmed he has taken a leave of absence.

He is the fourth Tory to be named since the controversy first erupted, with a police officer who was part of Rishi Sunak’s close protection team also under investigation.

[There is a moral in this image – never mess with an Owl]

Mason allegedly placed small bets each worth less than £100, but would have stood to win thousands of pounds based on the odds

In an interview with the Sunday Times, Michael Gove, the outgoing levelling up secretary, likens the controversy to the partygate scandal that dogged Boris Johnson’s premiership.

“It looks like one rule for them and one rule for us,” the Tory cabinet minister, who is not standing again at the election, told the Sunday Times.

Water company bosses have taken home more than £100m in salaries and bonuses over the last 10 years despite overseeing a major sewage crisis in the country’s waterways, new figures reveal.

Vote Tory to “Hold water companies to account”? – Owl doesn’t think so!

Richard Vaughan inews.co.uk 

Research into the annual accounts of each of the water utility firms since 2013 shows that nine of the chief executives have paid themselves £114m, including £61m in bonuses and benefits.

It comes as the issue of the dumping of raw sewage in the UK’s rivers, lakes and seas has become a national scandal and a key battleground in the election campaign.

According to figures shared with i, among the highest earners is Liv Garfield, chief executive of Severn Trent Water, who took home £3.9m in the 2021/22 financial year and £3.2m in the 2022/23 financial year.

The research by Labour analysed the annual accounts of each of the nine major water companies, showing the total remuneration of each of the chief executives, as well as breaking it down by salary, bonuses, benefits and incentives.

It comes as the party released separate NHS data that showed more than 10,000 people have been hospitalised since 2019 as a result of waterborne diseases as both Sir Keir Starmer’s party and the Liberal Democrats ramped up attacks on the “Conservative sewage scandal”.

Labour highlighted new analysis of NHS hospital admissions data showing the number of people diagnosed with diseases transmitted via waterborne infection nearly doubled during the past two years, rising to a record high of 3,261 cases last year.

The steepest increase was in the number of typhoid fever cases, which doubled to more than 603.

Typhoid fever is typically “uncommon” in the UK and more prevalent in parts of the world that have poor sanitation and limited access to clean water, according to the NHS.

Data from the Environment Agency for 2023 shows a 54 per cent increase in the number of sewage spills compared with 2022, and a 13 per cent increase compared with 2020.

There is growing anger over the polluted state of England’s rivers and coasts, with no single stretch of river classed as being in a good overall condition, and hundreds of pollution risk alerts issued for popular beaches around the country last year.

Labour shadow environment secretary Steve Reed said the NHS figures were “sickening”, adding the Tories just looked the other way while water companies pumped a tidal wave of raw sewage into our rivers, lakes and seas, putting the nation’s health at risk.

Meanwhile, the Lib Dems set out a plan to save chalk streams, which the party’s analysis suggested suffered nearly 49,000 hours worth of sewage dumping in 2023 – more than double the previous year.

The streams, which spring from underground chalk reservoirs, are one of the world’s rarest freshwater habitats and are found primarily in the south of England and Yorkshire.

Sir Ed Davey’s party repeated its proposal to launch a public consultation within the first 100 days of the next government, which could see rivers and lakes awarded a new Blue Flag status to protect them from sewage dumping.

Labour has pledged to ban water bosses bonuses if they fail to stop sewage spills in sufficient time, and will even bring in criminal charges for executives who persistently fail to meet environmental targets.

The Conservatives said in February that they too will block payouts for water chiefs if they commit criminal acts of water pollution, starting with bonuses from April 2024.

The party has also insisted it has quadrupled the number of water company inspections, meaning 4,000 inspections will take place a year by April 2025, rising to 10,000 a year from April 2026.

The Conservatives have been approached for comment.

Severn Trent water has also been approached for comment.

Four days ago the Telegraph reported a one-off Survation poll projecting a Reform win in the new Exmouth & Exeter East constituency with Labour and the Conservatives tying for second place.

By way of contrast, three weeks ago, Electoral Calculus predicted that this new seat would be a straight fight placing Paul Arnott, Lib Dem, just 3 points behind the Tories, with all other candidates trailing far behind. Since then successive polls have narrowed the gap, on 14 June to 1 point, and then, the latest a day ago, actually places Paul Arnott narrowly in the lead.

Are all these polls equally reliable?

Martin Shaw looks under the bonnet of MRP constituency by constituency polls.

Martin Shaw 

Polling company YouGov has set alarm bells ringing with its projection that Nigel Farage will win Clacton with over 40% of the vote, prompting Alastair Campbell to call for Labour and the Conservatives to combine to block him – while others called on the Lib Dems and Greens to back Labour in the seat.

A panic had already been triggered by a Survation projection that Reform UK could win seven seats. And then Farage’s collaborator Matthew Goodwin popped up with a ‘poll’ that showed Reform nationally nine points ahead of the Conservatives.

It’s right to take the projections from independent polling companies seriously, if not Goodwin’s. Clearly Farage could win his seat, he should be blocked and tactical voting for a real alternative (not the Conservatives who are largely indistinguishable from Reform) is urgently needed. Yet we need to be clear that these are not conventional polls: they are projections, which although they use polling data, are based on complex “MRP” (multi-level regression and post-stratification) statistical models, and it is very difficult to evaluate them sensibly.

As polling expert Matt Singh points out, there is an almost complete “lack of transparency”; none of the pollsters has “yet even listed their variables either for turnout or vote choice”, let alone explained fully how they combine the granular demographic data which is MRPs’ unique selling point with assumptions about political behaviour.

One of the more transparent pollsters, Ipsos Mori, specifically warns: “we would encourage readers to not place too much certainty into specific point estimates.” Yet this is what even widely publicised and reputable tactical voting sites are doing.

The Exmouth case

My own alarm bells were triggered by Survation’s call, since their ‘Reform’ seats included – of all places – the new constituency of Exmouth & Exeter East, which is mostly the old East Devon seat, next door to where I live. While Reform will undoubtedly garner some support, locals reported that it had hardly been seen in the constituency, and no one credited its projected first place.

Reform’s candidate Garry Sutherland appears even by its standards to be distinctly lacking in charm – he has a conviction for kicking a dog and has shared David Icke videos – and his behaviour at a recent hustings confirmed the impression this information gives.

Sceptics like British Future director, Sunder Katwala, were quick to suggest on X, formerly Twitter, that the source of Survation’s apparently rogue prediction for Exmouth was that its MRP model was finding it difficult to cope with the very unusual result in East Devon in 2019, when a left-leaning Independent, Claire Wright, was the main opposition to the Conservatives, winning 40% of the vote.

This difficulty had already caused one important tactical site, StoptheTories.vote, to pull a Labour recommendation for Exmouth based partly on MRP projections.

This might not have mattered too much – none of the other projections agree that Reform is ahead in Exmouth and some like Electoral Calculus suggest that the Lib Dems, not Labour, are the challenger.

However, Best for Britain’s Get Voting, the most heavily promoted tactical voting site, is using Survation’s projection and using it to urge Labour voting in Exmouth – which may have the effect of helping the Conservatives cling on. This case therefore brings to the fore some major concerns about how MRPs, which are widely publicised both by their producers and the TV sites, could perversely skew tactical voting.

MRPs and tactical voting advice

The problem with using MRPs for tactical voting is not only that they are routinely described as ‘polling’ on Get Voting and other tactical sites, when they are not polls but statistical projections. It is also that their primary purpose is not to guide tactical voting, but to provide more accurate overall projections of the overall arithmetic in the next parliament. 

MRPs have gained prominence because of the increasing fragmentation of the British political scene, with greater regional and local variation in how swings in public opinion affect constituency results and hence the parties’ national tallies.

The various MRPs use different models, and although their claims for greater precision than traditional polling might seem suspect – they currently offer a huge range of possible Labour majorities – they can claim modest successes in their first major outings, the 2017 and 2019 elections, and they are at least an attempt to deal with the reality that British elections are decided by 650 separate constituency contests.

The problem with MRPs is that while in the aggregate, they could improve predictions of the electoral outcome – although by how much is debatable – they may not be especially reliable in predicting individual constituencies, especially where something that doesn’t figure in their models has happened. They use impressively large national samples: Survation’s most recent had 42,000 respondents, but that works out at only 65 people per seat, and the raw local data is not published, but processed via the model.

A senior pollster at one of the major firms pointed out to me that their MRPs aren’t designed to provide constituency-level advice and are published with health warnings. Another quickly admitted that his MRP could produce “surprising” results in what he called “idiosyncratic” seats.

Yet while tactical sites are ultimately responsible for how they use the data and voters for how they interpret it, pollsters can’t shrug off their responsibilities here – they produce projections in the knowledge of how tactical voting sites and voters, who will mostly understand little about them, could use them. Indeed some polls, like Survation’s for Best for Britain, are even commissioned with this in mind. 

When local knowledge is an ‘anomaly’

The irony is that while MRPs work by producing local projections, many don’t appear to use much local political knowledge apart from the result of the last general election. Indeed many MRPs are even allergic to local knowledge, since it complicates their models.

In the current campaign, many have failed to adequately incorporate – or at all – obviously relevant political data which is far more recent than the 2019 election, like the results of the by-elections which have upended politics in dozens of local areas, and of council elections. Rather, they seem bent on forcing tactical sites and voters alike to somehow compute the significance of such new information for themselves. 

I know this because the constituency I live in, Honiton & Sidmouth, is mostly the old Tiverton & Honiton seat where the Lib Dems famously overturned a huge Conservative majority in 2022’s ‘porngate’ by-election.

Labour had been a poor second in the 2019 election, but were squeezed to a tiny 3.7% in the by-election, while the winning Lib Dem came from third to get 53%. Yet many MRPs and TV sites, basing their projections on the 2019 result despite the startling more recent data from 2022, were still calling Honiton and Sidmouth for Labour at the start of the general election campaign. 

Indeed even on 15 June, Survation projected Labour to get more votes than the Lib Dems in Honiton & Sidmouth, which flies in the face of what everyone on the ground knows – even Labour themselves, who are not campaigning in the seat and have sent their activists off to Plymouth.

When I talked to a pollster about MRPs not taking account of by-election results, the response was that it would introduce an “anomaly” into the model because not all seats had by-elections. Yet this “anomaly” is a crucial political reality in so many seats – how can the data it has created not even be acknowledged?

Survation’s Honiton & Sidmouth projection obviously posed a problem for Best for Britain’s Get Voting, its tactical voting partner site, which they solved by manually overriding the projection and recommending a Lib Dem vote on the ground of the new MP’s ‘incumbency’.

Yet Get Voting still publishes the Survation projection with its frankly absurd figures, alongside this recommendation, potentially confusing any voter who looks at it.

The reductio ad absurdum of this approach is how many MRPs and tactical sites are treating Exmouth and Exeter East. In this case, they are not merely disregarding the fact that a party got a deposit-losing vote, as Labour did in the Tiverton and Honiton by-election.

Rather, since they have difficulty in factoring the Independent’s 40% vote in 2019 into their predictions, many have actually used the tiny Labour vote of 4.5% in 2019 to help project Labour as ahead of the Lib Dems (who had an even tinier 2.8%) in 2024.

Both parties had been almost completely squeezed, but these miserable results are still steering flawed MRP projections and tactical advice almost five years later.

Get Voting actually has a ‘local factors’ option for override Survation’s projection, but they haven’t used it for Exmouth & Exeter East despite its obvious idiosyncrasy.

What should be done?

Tactical voting is an essential way for voters to ensure, under Britain’s flawed electoral system, that they get the result they want – in this election, so many people in every seat want to take their once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to ensure that they no longer have a Conservative MP.

Tactical voting sites rightly put a lot of money and effort into producing advice, but they need to get it right, since if they don’t, they could help split the anti-Conservative vote and help some undeserving Conservatives cling on. 

In the end, it is difficult to know how far the problem of skewed advice extends, although it probably affects a large swathe of the South where, even without by-elections, the Lib Dems have re-emerged in the last three years, making weak Labour second places in 2019 doubtful guides to 2024 voting.

It will also be a particular concern in the seats in which significant Independents are standing, such as Jeremy Corbyn in Islington North, Faiza Shaheen in Chingford and Woodford Green – who is given a notional 0.06% by one polling site – and pro-Palestinian candidates.

At this late stage of the game, when postal votes are already being cast on the basis of inadequate information and advice, tactical voting sites should go into damage limitation mode – and the pollsters should help them to do this.

WRITTEN BY

Martin Shaw

The Labour party has been drawing up options for how it could raise money through extra wealth taxes to help rebuild Britain’s public services if it wins the general election, according to sources who have spoken to the Guardian.

Anna Isaac www.theguardian.com

The proposals under consideration include increases in capital gains tax (CGT), first revealed by the Guardian two weeks ago, that could raise £8bn.

Another option under discussion could lead to significant changes to inheritance tax. The measure would make it more difficult to “gift” money and assets, such as farmland, tax free. Together with CGT increases it could raise up to £10bn in revenue, according to one document seen by the Guardian.

A senior Labour source said: “We are starting from ground zero with our public services and infrastructure. We have to show we are serious about borrowing and raising revenue from taxes if investors are going to walk in step with us. These measures are part of unlocking wealth and putting it to work.”

A second senior party source said: “We have to show we are credible when it comes to transforming the country. Fiscal credibility means reforming tax as well as prudent borrowing.”

Before making any decisions, Labour intends to present a range of options to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) for analysis, after gathering costings on individual measures from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

Labour has been under pressure to explain how it will fund its plans for government, and sources admit there is frustration among some senior members of the party about the cautious approach it has taken during the election campaign.

So far, Labour has said it will not raise income tax, national insurance or VAT – and it has ruled out applying CGT to primary residences. It denied that it has arrived at any final decisions over any other measures.

A Labour spokesperson said: “Keir and Rachel have made clear that our priority is growing the economy, not increasing taxes. We have set out fully costed, fully funded plans, with very specific tax loopholes we would close. Nothing in our plans requires any additional tax to be increased.”

In an interview with the Guardian this week, the shadow chancellor denied there were any plans for new revenue-raising in a budget due this autumn. Rachel Reeves said she was focusing on efforts to drive growth rather than “tinkering around with taxes”.

However, sources have made clear that work is already under way to scope new ways of raising money if Keir Starmer becomes the prime minister.

They said a series of draft documents and expert analyses had been worked on throughout the election campaign and circulated among senior officials and shadow ministers.

One Labour memo, seen by the Guardian, was a briefing note that estimated increases to rates of CGT alone could generate £8bn for the Treasury in the long term.

There are also proposals to overhaul inheritance tax, with plans for a consultation that could launch in autumn. These could include radical changes, such as scrapping or updating the rules on agricultural land and business relief.

HMRC could be instructed to prepare figures on a range of options next month, sources said. They would then go to the OBR, which would need 10 weeks to crunch the numbers and share its findings with the Treasury.

The preparatory work suggests a budget could come in early October, as soon as party conferences are complete.

Under the current CGT regime, profits from the sales of second homes or shares in businesses are taxed at a much lower rate than wages.

Some senior figures believe that being more open about plans to raise wealth taxes to transform public services would improve turnout among traditional Labour voters.

The tax options under consideration come amid growing criticism from experts about a “conspiracy of silence” over how the two main parties will afford to fund public services.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said Labour and the Conservatives had not been clear about how they planned to address the “very tight fiscal situation” facing the next government.

The inheritance tax option being looked at involves changes in the rules for the tax on agricultural land and other family businesses, which industry experts regard as “very significant”.

At present, a person can claim up to 100% relief on the inheritance of agricultural land if it is being actively farmed. That has led to concerns that farmland is being snapped up by wealthy people keen to avoid inheritance taxes, and this is driving up prices and shutting out small businesses and farmers.

Some in Labour want to scrap this as well as business relief, which allows a person to pass on a company or shares if it is unlisted with 100% tax relief.

Plans being considered contain a sliding scale of options to weigh up the likely gain for the exchequer, including capping the benefit from agricultural and business relief at £500,000 for each person, rather than scrapping it. In some instances, both forms of relief could be claimed, allowing for a cap of £1m for each person in effect.

This would still raise about £2.3bn by 2029-30, which would be at the end of the OBR’s forecast period if it was introduced in March next year, according to a paper published by the IFS in 2023. The same figure appears in one of the internal Labour documents seen by the Guardian.

Sources said wider changes were also being considered on gifts and inheritance tax. Currently, no inheritance tax is due on gifts if they are made by a person who lives for more than seven years after the gifts are made.

Despite the evident pressures facing councils, the main parties’ manifestos were almost silent on English local government funding (local government funding is a devolved matter in the rest of the UK). This means there is significant uncertainty about exactly how funding for councils will change over the next parliament.

Institute for Fiscal Studies

But new analysis by IFS researchers shows that if demand and above-inflation cost pressures continue to grow in line with recent history, councils could be forced to cut back some areas of service provision. This would be true even if funding from central government was frozen in real terms (rather than being cut alongside other ‘unprotected’ areas) and council tax was increased at 5% per year – equivalent to over 3% a year above inflation, its fastest real-terms rate since the 2001–05 parliament. More deprived areas, which rely more on central government funding relative to council tax, will face the biggest squeeze unless there is a significant redistribution of central government grants towards them. A combination of statutory duties to vulnerable residents and big cuts to more discretionary services during the 2010s means some councils, at least, would struggle to cut back services further – putting them at risk of severe financial distress.

The new report, funded by the abrdn Financial Fairness Trust and the Nuffield Foundation, sets out scenarios for English councils’ funding and spending. Findings include:

• Existing overall spending plans imply that ‘unprotected’ services could be cut by 1.9–3.5% a year in real terms between now and 2028–29. Manifestos give no indication of whether the next government would prioritise council funding (as has been the case since 2019) or cut it by more than average (as was the case in the 2010s).
• The scale of increases in council tax will matter more for councils’ funding given that it makes up a much larger share of their funding (57%) than grants from central government (15%). If council tax increases by around 5% a year in the next parliament – in line with the maximum allowed over the last two years without a referendum – the average Band D rate would be around £600 higher per year in April 2029 than now. After accounting for household inflation, the real-terms increase in council tax bills (averaging just over 3% a year) would be the highest since the 2001–05 parliament (when they averaged 6% a year).
• If grant funding were cut by 2.7% a year in real terms (the mid-point of the range for unprotected services) and council tax increased by 5% per year, English councils’ overall funding would increase by an average of 2.1% a year in real terms, after adjusting for whole-economy inflation. Even under a relatively optimistic scenario where grant funding was frozen in real terms, English councils’ overall funding would increase by an average of 2.5% a year in real terms. The average real-terms increase in overall funding from 2019 to 2024 has been 2.9% a year.
• If demand and cost pressures continue to increase at the same rate as in recent years, analysis by the Local Government Association suggests that real-terms funding increases of around 4.5% a year would be needed to maintain service provision. This means growth in demand and cost pressures would need to almost halve for the change in overall funding to keep pace with these pressures across England as a whole, even with no real-terms cuts to central government grants and with council tax increasing by 5% a year. It is likely that recent high growth in demand and cost pressures will eventually slow down, but when and by how much is far from certain.
• Councils in the most deprived areas are likely to face the most difficult funding situation. For example, if all councils’ grant funding were cut by 2.7% a year in real terms and council tax increased by 5% a year, councils covering the most deprived tenth of areas would see their overall funding increase by just 1.3% a year in real terms, compared with 3.0% a year in the least deprived tenth of areas. To avoid this, there would need to be significant redistribution of grant funding from less deprived to more deprived areas, which may be difficult to implement, especially if overall grant funding is constrained.

Kate Ogden, a Senior Research Economist at IFS and an author of the report, said:

‘Many councils are under clear financial strain. They are struggling to meet the surging demand and cost for services such as children’s and adults’ social care residential placements, special educational needs support and temporary accommodation for the homeless. Unless these pressures slow down significantly and quickly, or the next government gives a big injection of funding to local government, councils will likely need to make cutbacks to some areas of provision. Given that more discretionary services have often seen cuts of 40% or more since 2010, councils may struggle to do this. More could be pushed to the financial brink, like Birmingham, Thurrock and Woking. It is remarkable that the main parties have been silent on how they would address these challenges.’

David Phillips, an Associate Director at IFS and another author of the report, said:

‘With many councils struggling to fund their existing responsibilities, the next government should be particularly careful in ensuring plans are in place for funding any additional responsibilities they are given. This is particularly true for adult social care services, where the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat manifestos made commitments to expand service provision. However, none has identified sufficient funding to fully cover the costs of their proposals. Without additional funding, these reforms would intensify the pressures on councils’ budgets – potentially seeing some existing social care recipients losing support to help pay for expansions of provision to other, typically wealthier individuals, as financial means-tests are relaxed or abolished.’

Anvar Sarygulov, a Research Grants and Programmes Manager at the Nuffield Foundation, said:

‘With increasing demand for social care and other services, the next government needs to think carefully about how it enables councils to meet this demand. Any future funding plans need to consider that councils in more deprived areas are more dependent on central government funding, and that there are already significant inequalities in provision of local services across the country.’

The UK faces the prospect of more polluting US-style “megafarms” under a Labour government, after the party failed to make any manifesto pledges to restrict their growth.

Lucie Heath, Andrew Wasley inews.co.uk

Environmental campaigners have voiced concerns that the main political parties have stayed largely silent on the topic of intensive farming ahead of the election on 4 July. Only the Green Party has a clear pledge to ban factory farming in its manifesto.

The lack of strong policies means the UK is likely to see the continued development of megafarms, which have increased 20 per cent in number since 2016 under successive Conservative governments. They have been associated with river pollution, poor animal welfare and public health problems.

Many are concentrated in a number of small areas, leading to calls for a moratorium on new intensive farms, including from former Tory environment minister Lord Goldsmith.

In April, i and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) revealed how emissions of ammonia – a potentially deadly pollutant – were surging across the UK’s megafarming hotspots, emanating from industrial-scale poultry production.

The silence from Labour – which is on course for a large majority according to the polls – is in contrast to 2018, when it made a pre-election pledge to consult on the expansion of megafarms.

Its manifesto also makes no mention of the farming budget: support for farmers that the industry says is vital if they are to increase sustainable production.

The Conservative Party manifesto vows to increase the farming budget by £1bn over the next parliament, a boost described as “modest” by wildlife charities. However, it makes no mention of restricting megafarms or farm animal welfare.

The Liberal Democrat manifesto does include a number of pledges to maintain animal welfare standards and reduce pollution in farming, but stops short of calling for an end to the expansion of factory farms.

Only the Green Party said it would introduce a ban on new factory farms. It also pledged to enforce regulations on how densely animals can be housed and to forbid the routine use of antibiotics on farm animals – which have both fuelled the spread of drug-resistant diseases.

Clare Oxborrow, food campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: “If we are to stop the worst climate change impacts and restore nature, we will need to shift to less meat-intensive, healthier diets and stop the expansion of these damaging mega-farms.

“Elections should be when we grapple with these big issues, not avoid them.”

Claire Palmer, director of Animal Justice Project, told i and TBIJ that the lack of political commitment to reducing the expansion of megafarms was “deeply disappointing”.

She added: “Politicians must use their authority to halt the spread of megafarms immediately and demonstrate their support for public concerns – many of which vehemently oppose factory farming.”

However, Richard Griffiths, chief executive of the British Poultry Council, said large-scale farming is needed to meet the UK’s demand for food: “The UK has 65 million people needing three meals every day, so all production has to be, by definition, large-scale.”

He said small-scale farming is not necessarily more sustainable than large-scale farming, which is permitted, controlled and regulated to feed a lot of people to good standards in a short space of time. “To unfairly label it as a bad thing overlooks the essential role it plays in our food security and economic stability,” he said.

In the UK, there is no legal classification of what constitutes a megafarm. In the US, a megafarm is defined as an operation that houses 125,000 broiler chickens, 82,000 laying hens, 2,500 pigs or 700 dairy or 1,000 beef cattle.

The Environment Agency and its devolved counterparts classify livestock farms as “intensive” if they hold at least 40,000 poultry, 2,000 pigs or 750 breeding sows.

Gareth Morgan, head of farming policy at the Soil Association, said: “The next UK government must act to curb the boom of livestock megafarms or we’ll see more dead zones in our rivers and more of them facing the same desperate fate as the River Wye.

“The millions of chickens being housed in factory farms in the UK produce a quantity of muck that is proving impossible to manage sustainably.”

He also highlighted the need for a level playing field for nature-friendly farmers, and a system that does not grant permits to huge intensive livestock farms.

“Farmers operating these units are often doing so out of financial necessity and need a viable alternative. Urgent government action is needed to solve this crisis and create a pathway for farmers to move to a more resilient and sustainable future,” Mr Morgan said.

A recent investigation by i and TBIJ found that intensive livestock farms in England had breached environmental regulations thousands of times in recent years.

Among more than 3,000 incidents were the “routine” discharge of slurry and dirty water, maggot-infested carcass bins, and the illegal incineration of pigs.

As part of its campaign to Save Britain’s Rivers, i has called on the next Government to boost agricultural funding to help farmers manage their land in a more sustainable manner.

Electoral Calculus was the only MRP poll to predicted that Claire Wright and Simon Jupp were neck and neck in 2019. We have had some pretty wild constituency by constituency predictions this time (including a Reform win).

Owl intends to post more cautionary analysis of these from Martin Shaw in due course. 

National trends

Nationally, as we near election day, there appears to be a consistent trend for both Labour and the Conservatives to be losing support with Reform and the Lib Dems gaining. Labour, however, maintains a massive lead over the Tories.

Two days ago the Telegraph was predicting Tories and Lib Dems neck and neck to form His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition 53 seats to 50.

Electoral Calculus latest predictions for Exmouth and Exeter East

Latest prediction is: Paul Arnott, Lib Dem on 30% and David Reed, Conservative, on 29.2%.

Labour trails on 17.8%

In Owl’s opinion this MRP poll is worth taking seriously. It continues a consistent trend from Electoral Calculus predicting the Lib Dems gaining ground in this new constituency.

[ ‘MIN’ party here refers to Dan Wilson (ind). OTH refers to Peter Faithfull]

Rishi Sunak’s has a plan: “to resuscitate the still-warm corpse of help to buy, the single policy that the government’s housing strategy has relied on for the last decade. Like a B-movie sequel to Margaret Thatcher’s right to buy, it is a policy that has defined the contemporary Conservatives’ shameful housing record more than any other. It was billed as a silver bullet to boost home ownership, but it has only served to help the already well-off, increase house prices further, and pump public subsidies straight into the pockets of the party’s favourite donor house builders.”

Oliver Wainwright www.theguardian.com 

With a penthouse in Santa Monica, a rambling Georgian manor in North Yorkshire and a five-bedroom mews house in Kensington, Rishi Sunak knows a thing or two about the joys of home ownership. “I want everyone to feel what I felt when I got the keys to my first flat,” Sunak said in his recent televised debate with Keir Starmer, recalling the moment he stepped into his South Ken pied-à-terre for the first time.

Launching his election manifesto, Sunak reiterated the Tory party’s eternal commitment to estate agents, house builders and the transformational power of bricks and mortar. “From Macmillan to Thatcher to today,” he declared, “it is we Conservatives who are the party of the property-owning democracy in this country.”

It is a familiar tune. But after 14 years of Tory rule, the prospect of home ownership has never been more distant for so many people, as house-price inflation continues to rocket far beyond wages. Two decades ago, a household with the median income could afford to buy an average-priced house in England. Now, they can afford only the cheapest 10% of properties.

In the capital, the situation is even more absurd. An average first-time buyer in London now has to save for more than 30 years to afford a deposit on an average home. The result is ever more people trapped in the private rented sector, at the mercy of unregulated landlords and subject to rents that have reached a record high. The number of adults living with their parents has risen by 700,000 over the last decade, with about 30% of 25- to 29-year-olds now living back at home. Tory doctrine has created not a nation of homeowners, but a country of squeezed renters, overcrowded flat-sharers and rough sleepers, with the number of people sleeping on the streets more than double the figure when the Conservatives came to power in 2010.

So what is Sunak’s grand plan to fix this mess? His momentous proposal is to resuscitate the still-warm corpse of help to buy, the single policy that the government’s housing strategy has relied on for the last decade. Like a B-movie sequel to Margaret Thatcher’s right to buy, it is a policy that has defined the contemporary Conservatives’ shameful housing record more than any other. It was billed as a silver bullet to boost home ownership, but it has only served to help the already well-off, increase house prices further, and pump public subsidies straight into the pockets of the party’s favourite donor house builders. Sunak’s promise to reboot the failed policy reveals a party that has not just run out of ideas, but which is determined to continue the damage it has already done.

Help to buy was first introduced in 2013 by the then-chancellor George Osborne, and trumpeted as “the biggest government intervention in the housing market since the right to buy” of the 1980s. Over the last four decades, that disastrous policy has seen two-thirds of Britain’s council homes transferred from public to private hands, forcing local authorities to sell off more homes each year than they can build. Even the new generation of award-winning council homes is now being sold off, less than five years after they were completed. But help to buy was supposed to be different. “It’s a great deal for homebuyers,” said Osborne. “It’s a great support for home builders. And because it’s a financial transaction, with the taxpayer making an investment and getting a return, it won’t hit our deficit.” Win, win, win.

So how did it work? The policy provided first-time buyers with an equity loan of up to 20% of the value of a new-build property – or 40% in superheated London – capped at a total price of £600,000. The buyer was required to stump up a deposit of just 5%, with the remainder covered by a traditional mortgage. It was a reaction to sluggish rates of housebuilding, when developers were still licking their wounds from the financial crisis, and banks were reluctant to lend more than 75% of a new-build home’s value to purchasers, cutting many first-time buyers out of the market. The dubious logic behind help to buy was that by stimulating housing demand, housing supply would inevitably follow.

Economists balked. As Christian Hilber, professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics, wrote at the time: “Help to buy will likely have the effect of pushing up house prices (and rents) further with very little positive effect on new construction. Housing will likely become less – not more – affordable for young would-be-owners!”

Duncan Stott, of the campaign group PricedOut, was equally prescient: “Help to buy should really be called ‘help to sell’,” he wrote, “as the main winners will be developers and existing homeowners who will find it easier to sell at inflated prices. Pumping more money into a housing market with chronic undersupply has one surefire outcome: house prices will go up.”

One decade on, this is exactly what has happened.

A report published by the House of Lords built environment committee in 2022 concluded that the help-to-buy scheme “inflates prices by more than the subsidy value” and does “not provide good value for money, which would be better spent on increasing housing supply”. What began as a three-year programme worth £3.5bn ended up being extended for a full decade, and costing the taxpayer more than £29bn. The Lords rightly pointed out that the cash should have been used instead to replenish England’s falling stock of social housing.

Research conducted by Hilber and his team at the LSE found that help to buy increased house prices in London by 8%, and boosted developers’ revenues by 57% in the process. The researchers found the policy “led to higher new-build prices but had no discernible effect on construction volumes”, effects that are “arguably contrary to the policy’s objectives”. Worse still, they found that the policy actively stimulated construction “in the wrong areas”. It had the effect of catalysing out-of-town developments on greenfield sites, increasing commuting distances and car use, rather than helping to revive depressed town centres and stimulate development where employment and productivity is concentrated – where housing is needed most.

Meanwhile, the house builders reaped bigger rewards than ever. Persimmon posted pre-tax profits of more than £1bn in 2018 and 2019, a record matched by Barratt in 2022. Share prices across the industry rocketed, leading to huge bonuses for chief executives. Jeff Fairburn, the then boss of Persimmon, was notoriously awarded a bonus of £82m, one of the largest such bounties in British corporate history, and was forced out as a result. Defending his payout, Fairburn was frank about the cause of the vast sum: “It’s supply and demand, and the demand has been created through the help-to-buy scheme.”

So, who benefited at the other end? Did the policy really help to mint a new generation of homeowners, who wouldn’t have otherwise been able to get a foot on the housing ladder? In total, the government says the scheme helped about 330,000 first-time buyers purchase a home, before it was axed in October 2022. But it seems the majority of beneficiaries were not the most needy. According to the housing charity Shelter, the government’s own evaluation of the policy showed that only two in five help to buyers actually needed the programme to purchase a home. The majority used the subsidy to buy bigger and more expensive properties than they could otherwise have bought. Figures showed that the average salary of a first-time buyer using help to buy was £50,000, 85% more than the typical private renter household. Only 19% of privately renting households earned that much, according to Shelter.

Helping out the comfortably-off and lining the pockets of developers may have been a calculated part of the Tory policy. But help to buy has also had a major unintended consequence: leaving many buyers trapped in negative equity. When a home bought using the scheme is sold, the government gets 20% of the property’s value based on its sale price, rather than the cost when the owner first bought it. Market stagnation, or a fall in value, can therefore leave buyers unable to move.

A 2020 investigation by the consumer group Which? found that one in seven homes bought using help to buy had lost value, despite booming local property markets. Research by the estate agent Hamptons last year found that people who bought a new-build home were twice as likely to sell it on at a loss than second-hand homeowners. This is a consequence of help to buy having created massively inflated premiums on new-build homes – which quickly evaporated once the home had been lived in (and the shoddy reality of much new-build construction was discovered). The market distortion was particularly evident in flats, which are more likely to be bought by first-time buyers. Before help to buy was introduced, the premium on new-build flats was 5%, according to the property data company TwentyCi. By 2018, it had reached 37%, and by 2022, it had shot up to 65%. That’s a lot of new-build flat owners who, also thanks to cladding scandals and ballooning service charges, will be locked into their poorly built towers for years to come.

The Hospital steering committee has issued the following press release:

seatonmatters.org

“Following six months’ discussion with over 30 community organisations, the cross-party Seaton Hospital Steering Committee, elected at a large public meeting in November and representing Colyton and Beer as well as Seaton, has submitted a plan to NHS Devon and NHS Property Services, the owner of the Hospital, for community use of the vacant wing in the Hospital, to improve the health and wellbeing of the local area. 

“The plan has been developed after regular discussions with the two NHS bodies. It was presented to Sue Windley of Devon NHS by Jack Rowland, Chair of the Committee, Kirstine House, Chief Executive Officer of Seaton Hospital League of Friends, and Ben Tucker of Re:store, who was the lead committee member in long discussions with all our partners and in drafting the plan. (See photo.)

“We are now waiting for our partners’ responses, which they will not be able to give us until after the General Election. At that point we will share our plans with the whole local community who gave the Hospital such strong support when the wing was threatened with demolition. We are excited about the potential for restoring the whole Hospital to use on behalf of everyone locally, young and old.”

“Are these emerging questions surrounding the placing of election bets on the date of the election the absolute epitome of the lack of ethics we have had to tolerate from the Conservative party for years and years?”

Graham Donald

BBC Question Time 20 June

The NHS will need £38bn more a year than planned by the end of the next parliament in order to cut the care backlog and end long treatment delays, political parties have been warned.

Denis Campbell www.theguardian.com 

Labour and Conservative promises on NHS funding “fall well short” of what the beleaguered health service needs to recover from years of underinvestment, according to the Health Foundation.

Politicians are not being honest with the public about the money needed to revive an NHS that is grappling with record numbers awaiting care, inadequate access to GPs and a collapse in public satisfaction, it added.

The NHS will need such huge sums to cope with the rising demand for care that the next government will face “difficult trade-offs” in how it allocates scarce resources, the thinktank said. Failure to give the health service enough money in coming years would mean recent pledges to improve the NHS will not be fulfilled.

The Department of Health and Social Care’s budget will rise by £7.6bn to £196.9bn by 2029/30 under current spending plans. But it will have to increase by £38bn more than that to £235.4bn if whoever is in power after 4 July wants to see “sustained improvement” in its performance, Health Foundation modelling found.

“The health service is in crisis and the main political parties have said they want to fix it. Yet the funding they have so far promised falls well short of the level needed to make improvements,” said Anita Charlesworth, the director of the thinktank’s long-term economic analysis department.

The NHS will need to receive average annual budget rises of 3.8% over the next decade to keep up with the ageing, growing and increasingly sick population, the thinktank calculated.

That 3.8% is significantly above the projected rate of economic growth (1.9%) and planned rise in spending on public services (1.6%) over that time. It also goes well beyond the amount expected if ministers stuck to the Office for Budgetary Responsibility’s 0.8% projected rise in health spending, the thinktank added.

The analysis said: “Addressing the funding required to improve the NHS would mean facing up to difficult trade-offs with the funding needed by other public services and levels of taxation.

“Honesty about these trade-offs has so far been conspicuous by its absence from a general election debate that has been characterised by ‘a conspiracy of silence’ about the choices on public spending and taxation that will confront the next government.”

Whoever is prime minister on 5 July should “level with the public” about the true level of funding the NHS will need to once again deliver key waiting time targets, such as the 18-week wait for hospital care, as well as paying staff more and increasing capital investment.

NHS bosses endorsed the Health Foundation’s analysis. “Put simply, if a new government is going to fulfil campaign promises to tackle NHS backlogs and improve performance, then it will have to invest further,” said Dr Layla McCay, the NHS Confederation’s director of policy. The NHS will need “billions of extra funding”, she added.

Julian Hartley, the chief executive of hospitals group NHS Providers, said health trusts desperately need more capital funding to tackle the effects of “chronic underinvestment in buildings and facilities”, which has left some hospitals so decrepit that they “threaten patient and staff safety”.

As an instant vignette highlighting just how much trouble the Conservatives might face in their English heartlands, Calum Miller’s 10 minutes or so of chats in the neat cul-de-sacs of Langford would be hard to beat.

Peter Walker www.theguardian.com 

Knocking on doors in the community on the fringes of Bicester, just north of Oxford, the Liberal Democrat candidate spoke to locals with all manner of political backstories and motivations, some who had previously voted Tory, Labour or neither, as well as those who had either backed Brexit or wished to remain.

All, however, had arrived at a common conclusion: this time they would vote for him, to try to defeat the Conservatives.

The idea of the “blue wall”, traditionally Conservative seats whose affluent, remain-minded populations were left aghast at the antics of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, is not new. But on 4 July, a lot of Tory candidates could find out it is a bigger and politically broader phenomenon than anyone guessed.

Miller’s intended seat, Bicester and Woodstock, newly created under the boundary review, would have had a notional Conservative majority of about 15,000 in the 2019 election. However, according to constituency-extrapolated polling, Miller should win it.

If he does, the Oxfordshire councillor and public policy academic, who only entered politics three years ago, would not be lacking in local company. While the Lib Dems are cautious in their predictions and finite in their campaign resources, with a fair electoral wind a swathe of nearby ultra-true blue seats could also turn yellow.

These could include both Witney and Henley, formerly held by David Cameron and Boris Johnson, respectively. There are hopes for the new seat of South Cotswolds, part-formed of the previous Cotswolds constituency, which had a 20,000-plus Tory majority in 2019. There is similar talk that Stratford-on-Avon, the former seat of Nadhim Zahawi, could be in play.

One very clear sign of Bicester and Woodstock’s Tory pedigree is the Conservative candidate chosen to fight it – Rupert Harrison, a former chief of staff to George Osborne, who is now a fund manager and financial commentator. Such people are usually put into safe seats – but for the Tories, it is now a fast-changing landscape.

Striding around the comfortable 1970s and 80s homes of Langford, Miller stresses that his chances remain in flux, not least because he begins many doorstep conversations by telling locals they are no longer in the Banbury constituency, where Labour are the main challengers.

That hurdle cleared, he says, former Conservatives often express disillusionment with the government that is generally connected to the decline of public services.

“I‘ve got voters who have been waiting years for appointments, children whose health has deteriorated while they’ve been on waiting lists, just really awful stories,” he says. “That is sufficiently widespread that is really affecting the confidence and feel about the government.”

There is also anger over the records of Johnson and Truss – and in a slight departure from the blue wall-remainer cliche, this can also be the case for people who voted for Brexit.

June Parry, 74, backed Brexit and then voted Conservative in 2019 in the hope Johnson would finish the job. “I’ll never vote for them again,” she tells Miller. “During Covid, someone was living a nice life at No 10, weren’t they?”

Having previously believed she was still in the Banbury constituency, Parry had planned to spoil her ballot paper in protest. After a chat with Miller, she promises to support him.

A couple of streets away, Roberto Garcia, a 62-year-old retired former car industry worker, recounts being visited by the Conservatives and assured that Labour were the main challengers. He was not fooled. “I’ve got a tactical voting app on my phone,” he says. “I actually felt a bit sorry for him because I hammered him on Brexit.”

A former Labour and Tory voter, Garcia is also backing Miller, or as he puts it: “At the moment I’m a Lib Dem.”

The sheer extent of shifts in voter loyalties in the post-Brexit era means that whatever the polls and door-knocks say, seats like Miller’s are very hard to predict with certainty. It is, however, difficult to escape the sense of a probable political mauling for the Conservatives.

Robert Hayward, the elections expert who is also a Conservative peer, says that anyone who is surprised by this trend has perhaps not been paying attention to a gradual shift in loyalties from about 2015 onwards, as shown by both a cull of Tory councillors in many such places and stagnating parliamentary majorities.

“These areas might be perceived as archetypically Tory, and might have been in yesteryear, but in the last decade they have been anything but,” he says. “They have continued to return Tories, but not with the increased majorities of some other parts of the county.”

One potential risk for the Lib Dems, Hayward warns, could be sheer logistical over-stretch, as they try to fight ever more blue wall-type seats while also battling in the south-west, their more traditional heartland.

Thus far, however, the party’s campaign has been disciplined and seemingly effective, with its leader, Ed Davey, cavorting through a series of fun photo opportunities on paddleboards and waterslides, but also emphasising policy areas like care and sewage.

With postal votes starting to go out this week, a lot of contests will depend on how effectively the party has pushed the tactical voting message, one Lib Dem strategist says.

“The thing we need to do to get it across the line is we need to persuade people that they now live in a Lib Dem-Tory marginal, not a Tory-Labour one,” they say. “That could be the difference between winning or losing a seat.”

Overall, it is hard to find a comparable period in history of the Conservatives which achieved so little, or which left the country at its conclusion in a more troubling state.”

Tory government from 2010 to 2024 worse than any other in postwar history, says study by leading experts.

Andrew Sparrow www.theguardian.com 

As John Stevens reports in a story for the Daily Mirror today, Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, was complaining at a private Tory dinner earlier this year about the electorate’s “total failure to appreciate our superb record since 2010”.

But just how good is the Conservative party’s record in government over the past 14 years? Thankfully, we now have what is as close as we’re going to get to the authoritative, official verdict. Sir Anthony Seldon, arguably Britain’s leading contemporary political historian, is publishing a collection of essays written by prominent academics and other experts and they have analysed the record of the Conservative government from 2010 to 2024, looking at what it has achieved in every area of policy.

It is called The Conservative Effect 2010-2014: 14 Wasted Years? and it is published by Cambridge University Press.

And its conclusion is damning. It describes this as the worst government in postwar history.

Here is the conclusion of the final chapter, written by Seldon and his co-editor Tom Egerton, which sums up the overall verdict.

“In comparison to the earlier four periods of one-party dominance post-1945, it is hard to see the years since 2010 as anything but disappointing. By 2024, Britain’s standing in the world was lower, the union was less strong, the country less equal, the population less well protected, growth more sluggish with the outlook poor, public services underperforming and largely unreformed, while respect for the institutions of the British state, including the civil service, judiciary and the police, was lower, as it was for external bodies, including the universities and the BBC, repeatedly attacked not least by government, ministers and right-wing commentators.

Do the unusually high number of external shocks to some extent let the governments off the hook? One above all – Brexit – was entirely of its own making and will be seen in history as the defining decision of these years. In 2024, the verdict on Brexit is almost entirely negative, with those who are suffering the most from it, as sceptics at the time predicted, the most vulnerable. The nation was certainly difficult to rule in these fourteen years, the Conservative party still more so. Longstanding problems certainly contributed to the difficulties the prime minister faced in providing clear strategic policy, including the 24-hour news cycle, the rise of social media and AI, and the frequency of scandals and crises. But it was the decision of the prime minister to choose to be distracted by the short term, rather than focusing on the strategic and the long term. The prime minister has agency: the incumbents often overlooked it.

Overall, it is hard to find a comparable period in history of the Conservatives which achieved so little, or which left the country at its conclusion in a more troubling state.”

In their concluding essay, Seldon and Egerton argue that poor leadership was one of the main problems with the 14-year administration. They say that Boris Johnson and Liz Truss were “not up to the job” of being prime minister, and they have a low opinion of most of the other leading figures who have been in government. They say:

“Very few cabinet ministers from 2010 to 2024 could hold a candle to the team who served under Clement Attlee – which included Ernest Bevin, Nye Bevan, Stafford Cripps, Hugh Gaitskell and Herbert Morrison. Or the teams who served under Wilson, Thatcher or Blair. Michael Gove, Jeremy Hunt and Philip Hammond were rare examples of ministers of quality after 2010 …

A strong and capable prime minister is essential to governmental success in the British system. The earlier four periods saw two historic and landmark prime ministers, ie Churchill and Thatcher, with a succession of others who were capable if not agenda-changing PMs, including Macmillan, Wilson, Major and Blair. Since 2010, only Cameron came close to that level, with Sunak the best of the rest. Policy virtually stopped under May as Brexit consumed almost all the machine’s time, while serious policymaking ground to a halt under Johnson’s inept leadership, the worst in modern premiership, and the hapless Truss. Continuity of policy was not helped by each incoming prime minister despising their predecessor, with Truss’s admiration for Johnson the only exception. Thus they took next no time to understand what it was their predecessors were trying to do, and how to build on it rather than destroy it.”

Seldon’s first book, published 40 years ago, was about Churchill’s postwar administration, and he has been editing similar collections of essays studying the record of administrations since Margaret Thatcher’s. He is a fair judge, and not given to making criticisms like this lightly.

The book is officially being published next week, and I’m quoting from a proof copy. In this version, the subtitle still has a question mark after 14 Wasted Years? Judging by the conclusion, that does not seem necessary.

Rishi Sunak had a rare nugget of good news as he arrived at the LBC studios for what was likely to be a tricky phone-in with listeners — inflation has fallen to 2 percent. But now for the hard part: Sunak had to spend a full hour fielding questions from callers, shepherded by veteran hack — and brutally effectively interviewer — Nick Ferrari. ……..(London playbook)

The verdict is now in:

A top politician needs two things to do a successful phone-in. One, convincing sympathy for voter9s who feel their lives are not going well. “I feel your pain,” Bill Clinton once said in a televised town hall meeting, showing other leaders how it is done. The other is a convincing plan for making people’s lives better. Rishi Sunak failed on both counts.

John Rentoul www.independent.co.uk

After four bruising weeks of a six-week election campaign, it seemed to be dawning on the prime minister during this morning’s hour-long radio phone-in that a lot of people dislike him. He tried to sound upbeat and sympathetic to the complaints about how hard life is in Tory Britain – but there was an air of resignation about several of his answers.

“I’m sorry you feel like that,” he said more than once to callers who were cross about his record. “I don’t suppose I will persuade you otherwise.”

Towards the end of the phone-in – presented by Nick Ferrari on LBC – Rishi Sunak said: “We are almost done with this interview and we haven’t talked about migration or security.” Ferrari immediately put Rachel from Bexley through, who wanted to complain that the Rwanda deportation scheme was a waste of money. Sunak wasn’t able to convince her, either.

With time running out the prime minister took a call from Sophie, who was furious about the growth in the number of food banks. His answer was that he wanted to encourage the creation of good jobs. Ferrari made a sceptical noise. Sunak demanded: “You’re sighing – but what do you expect me to say?”

He had, by then, tried several different ways of sounding sympathetic, some of which were less successful than others. His attempt to identify with the joy of home ownership, remembering when he got his first flat, went down badly with callers such as Sophie who told him twice that he was “richer than the King”.

Sunak describes ‘special feeling’ of buying his first home in phone-in grilling

Sunak chafed at questions from callers about “polls and process”, usually with Ferrari following up to press him. He was asked by one caller whether he would stay on as an MP if he was kicked out of No 10. “Of course I’ll do that.”

He was asked by another why he thought he could win a general election “when you couldn’t even win in your own party”. To which his answer was that he was proved right. “I was right in that Liz Truss election and I am right about the economy now.”

But the most revealing exchange was with Theresa from Ladbroke Grove, who said that the NHS had “gone from five stars to one star in 10 to 12 years”, and that she was afraid to go into hospital for her treatment for breast cancer. “If I had known how bad it was going to be, I would have gone private,” she said.

Sunak expressed sympathy, and even on this occasion managed to sound sincere when he said to her: “Stick on the line and we can get your details”, and promised to follow up her case.

But when Ferrari followed up by asking about the front-page story in The Daily Telegraph this morning – about cancer care in Britain being 20 years behind the rest of Europe – the prime minister simply played dumb: “I haven’t seen that.”

Ferrari didn’t let go. Surely someone had brought such an important study, from Macmillan Cancer Support, to his attention? “I haven’t seen the details,” Sunak clarified, and started to recite his standard briefing on cancer care.

Still Ferrari persisted, wanting to know how he responded to this specific report. “It makes me want to work harder to fix it,” Sunak said, reinforcing the impression of him as a bright, well-meaning technocrat whose response to something going wrong is to work harder rather than to solve the underlying problem.

There is the prime minister’s tragedy. Nothing to do with “polls and process”. It is a matter of a public service that was working well 14 years ago and now is not. Sunak had promised at the start of last year to get NHS waiting lists down, and they have continued to go up. He keeps trying to blame NHS staff for going on strike, but most voters think it is his job to settle the strikes and turn the NHS around.

A later caller was Olivia, a striking junior doctor in Newcastle, who pointed out that he hadn’t even definitively settled the dispute with the nurses. It was at this point that Sunak complained that he hadn’t been allowed to talk about migration – another subject on which the overwhelming majority of the voters think he has failed.

A top politician needs two things to do a successful phone-in. One, convincing sympathy for voters who feel their lives are not going well. “I feel your pain,” Bill Clinton once said in a televised town hall meeting, showing other leaders how it is done. The other is a convincing plan for making people’s lives better. Rishi Sunak failed on both counts.

• Discharge of Condition for 23/1643/RES: Condition 3 (Construction Method Statement) 9 Meadow Avenue Seaton Devon EX12 2AURef. No: 24/1169/DOC | Validated: Fri 07 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Discharge of Condition for 24/0830/FUL: Condition 3 (Drainage) 12 Manstone Mead Sidmouth Devon EX10 9RXRef. No: 24/1170/DOC | Validated: Fri 07 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Discharge of Condition for 20/0782/LBC: Condition 5 (Details), Condition 6 (Lime Mortar) & Condition 7 (Cladding) Rapshayes Farm Gittisham Devon EX14 3ABRef. No: 24/1162/DOC | Validated: Thu 06 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Replacement windows. The Old School Sandhill Street Ottery St Mary Devon EX11 1EFRef. No: 24/1158/FUL | Validated: Wed 05 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Construction of single storey extension to replace existing conservatory 100A Salterton Road Exmouth EX8 2PDRef. No: 24/1159/FUL | Validated: Wed 05 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Two storey rear extension with terrace above Sunnyhayes Broadclyst Station Devon EX5 3AXRef. No: 24/1156/FUL | Validated: Wed 05 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• T1, Oak: reduce southern aspect by ~2.5m away from neighbouring property, back to northern edge of garden path; maximum diameter of cut (MDC) 25mm. Crown lift to 3m above ground level, MDC 25mm. Reduce height by 2m and reshape slightly to leave a balanced canopy, MDC 40-50mm. T4, Maple: crown lift by removing 1 tertiary limb on southern aspect back to source on parent branch, MDC 50mm. Tip prune remaining overhanging branches to achieve the desired finished of 2.5m clearance from ground level, MDC 20mm. Reduce southern aspect and height by 1.5m, MDC 25mm. The White House 3 Northview Road Budleigh Salterton EX9 6BYRef. No: 24/1147/TRE | Validated: Wed 05 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Removal of carport to be replaced with garage extension. 91 St Johns Road Exmouth Devon EX8 4EFRef. No: 24/1144/FUL | Validated: Tue 04 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Replacement of roof using a combination of existing, reclaimed and Tolosa slate; replace guttering on north and south elevations with galavanised Lindab and rebuild 1no. chimney Rawridge Mill Farm Rawridge Devon EX14 9QSRef. No: 24/1141/LBC | Validated: Tue 04 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Works to existing garage to provide studio work space 20 The Beacon Exmouth Devon EX8 2AFRef. No: 24/1142/FUL | Validated: Tue 04 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Works to existing garage to provide studio work space 20 The Beacon Exmouth Devon EX8 2AF
  Ref. No: 24/1143/LBC | Validated: Tue 04 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• 
  T1 – Monterey Pine: fell. Reason: tree causing damage to listed structure (wall). The Croft Rockbeare Devon EX5 2EG
  Ref. No: 24/1136/TRE | Validated: Tue 04 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• 
  Proposed demolition of an existing conservatory structure to the side of the dwelling and the construction of a replacement single storey side extension. The proposals occupy the same footprint as the approved two storey extension as permitted in July 2022, ref. 22/1170/FUL Tir Na Nog Lanehead Beer Devon EX12 3BY
  Ref. No: 24/1134/FUL | Validated: Mon 03 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• 
  Discharge of condition for 23/0653/RES: Condition 2 (materials) 29 Winters Lane Ottery St Mary EX11 1AR
  Ref. No: 24/1130/DOC | Validated: Mon 03 Jun 2024 | Status: Unknown
• 
  Discharge of condition for 20/2185/FUL: Condition 4 (walled garden) Wellsprings Farm Pound Lane Upottery Honiton EX14 9QB
  Ref. No: 24/1129/DOC | Validated: Mon 03 Jun 2024 | Status: Unknown
• 
  Certificate of proposed lawful use to change from a dwelling to a children’s home.34 Simcoe Way Dunkeswell EX14 4UR
  Ref. No: 24/1137/CPL | Validated: Mon 03 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• 
  1, Sycamore – remove (its branches are a source of damage to the barn which is adjacent to it). 2, Ash – removal of branch that overhangs the barn. 6 The Stables Shute EX13 7NY
  Ref. No: 24/1127/TRE | Validated: Mon 03 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• 
  Group of x7 Ash – pollard to previous cut points, due to ill effects of Ash die-back. 21 Walcott Way Dunkeswell Honiton EX14 4XP
  Ref. No: 24/1128/TRE | Validated: Wed 05 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• 
  Weight reduction by 20% by pruning back to the next suitable growth points maintaining maximum cuts of up to 70-120mm whilst also maintaining a natural shape on the tree. 18 Ridgeway Honiton EX14 2GF
  Ref. No: 24/1131/TRE | Validated: Wed 05 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• 
  T1 – Sweet Chestnut – coppice back to cliff face (cyclical works) – reduce weight on sandstone cliff face. T2 – Sycamore – fell (poor placement of self-seed). T3 – Copper Beech – crown-lift to 6m (feathered fringe – skirt to not be cut straight edged). G1 – Goat Willow – coppice selected stems along the bank of the River Exe – reduce overloading along River bank (works to be carried out in a cyclical manner to reduce visual impact). Barnhill Brampford Speke EX5 5HG
  Ref. No: 24/1135/TCA | Validated: Tue 04 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Discharge of Conditions for 24/0341/FUL: Condition 3 (Landscaping) Drakes Farm Seaton Road Musbury Devon EX13 8AJ
  Ref. No: 24/1133/DOC | Validated: Tue 04 Jun 2024 | Status: Unknown
• 
  Discharge of Condition for 23/2317/FUL: Condition 4 (Materials) 90 Winslade Road Sidmouth Devon EX10 9EZ
  Ref. No: 24/1132/DOC | Validated: Tue 04 Jun 2024 | Status: Unknown
• 
  Cyprus – fell (damaging wall). The Limes Brampford Speke EX5 5DW
  Ref. No: 24/1124/TCA | Validated: Mon 03 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• 
  Discharge of Condition for 24/0313/FUL: Condition 4 (Constructions and Environment Management Plan) The Octagon Esplanade Exmouth Devon EX8 2AZ
  Ref. No: 24/1119/DOC | Validated: Mon 03 Jun 2024 | Status: Unknown
• 
  T1 Birch – fell. Reason, Kretzschmaria deusta decay fungi at base. T2, Douglas fir – shorten low branch over drive by 2m to allow high vehicle access. T3 Oak – cut back long branch at 12m on west side extending towards the garage, by 1m to suitable side branch. T4 Holly – reduce upright growth by approximately 1.5m and re-shape to improve form. T5 Spindle – fell, to improve access. Group of eight Holly beneath pines – remove. Reason suppressed and poor form. 10 Heather Grange West Hill EX11 1XZ
  Ref. No: 24/1123/TRE | Validated: Wed 05 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• 
  Proposed alterations to the existing conservatory 1 Palmer Close Exeter EX1 3GP
  Ref. No: 24/1087/FUL | Validated: Wed 05 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• 
  Changes to fenestration and new air source heat pump Rockerhayne House Northleigh Colyton EX24 6DA
  Ref. No: 24/1067/LBC | Validated: Mon 03 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• 
  Changes to fenestration and new air source heat pump Rockerhayne House Northleigh Colyton EX24 6DA
  Ref. No: 24/1066/FUL | Validated: Mon 03 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• 
  Erection of a single storey 3-bed detached bungalow and associated drainage works Land Adjacent To Woodthorpe Kilmington
  Ref. No: 24/1045/FUL | Validated: Wed 05 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• 
  Removal of the first floor balcony conservatory structures and structural repair and alterations to the the first floor balconies to flats 1 and 2. Execliff 1 Trefusis Terrace Exmouth EX8 2AX
  Ref. No: 24/1046/FUL | Validated: Tue 04 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Demolition of warehouse/general industrial building (use classes B2 and B8) and erection of 3no. work/live units and 1no. dwelling (use class C3) Warehouse (Store Rear Of Belvedere House) Danby Lane Exmouth
  Ref. No: 24/1028/FUL | Validated: Wed 05 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• 
  Oak – crown reduction of less than 5m. Bowermead House Clyst St George EX3 0RE
  Ref. No: 24/1024/TRE | Validated: Fri 07 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• 
  Notification for prior approval of change of use of agricultural building to 3 no. dwelling houses and associated operational development under Schedule 2, Part 3, Class Q(a) and (b) of the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015 Barns West Of Gooselands Payhembury EX14 3HJ
  Ref. No: 24/0980/PDQ | Validated: Wed 05 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• 
  Replacement of air conditioning unit (Retrospective) Joules Market Place Sidmouth EX10 8AR
  Ref. No: 24/0965/FUL | Validated: Thu 06 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• 
  1no. non illuminated fascia sign and 1no. non illuminated hanging sign on front west elevation 15 Fore Street Sidmouth EX10 8AH
  Ref. No: 24/0974/LBC | Validated: Thu 06 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• 
  Addition of glazed entrance porch. Ridgeway Cottage Ridgeway Lane Colyton EX24 6RP
  Ref. No: 24/0972/FUL | Validated: Tue 04 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• 
  Prior approval for a steel portal frame building to roof over an open yard area. Stopgate Farm Yarcombe Honiton EX14 9NB
  Ref. No: 24/0936/AGR | Validated: Mon 03 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• 
  A steel portal framed agricultural building Mohuns Ottery Luppitt Honiton EX14 4TS
  Ref. No: 24/0938/AGR | Validated: Tue 04 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• 
  Proposed demolition of existing derelict stable block and erection of new Garage Collyforches House Yarcombe EX14 9EB
  Ref. No: 24/0869/FUL | Validated: Fri 07 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision

Boris Johnson is set to go on holiday rather than join the Conservative campaign trail ahead of the general election, according to Tory sources.

[On Tuesday he spent the day in two Devon seats with majorities of almost 15,000 and 23,000 at the last election]

www.independent.co.uk

The former prime minister, who turned 60 on Wednesday, is expected to go on his second summer holiday this year within the next few days and return on 3 July,The Times reported.

Despite endorsing 50 Tory candidates across the country, Johnson is no longer expected to join the Tories on the doorstep due to the party facing decimation in red wall seats he won in 2019.

It comes as a new poll found more than half of the UK public thinks Reform UK leader Nigel Farage would make a bad or terrible prime minister.

A YouGov survey found 55 per cent of Britons thought Mr Farage would make a bad (12 per cent) or terrible prime minister (43 per cent) a day after he unveiled his party’s manifesto.

Only 27 per cent thought he would make a great (nine per cent) or good (18 per cent) leader, with 65 per cent saying they did not believe Mr Farage would become prime minister in the next ten years.