Henry Hill, William Atkinson, and Andrew Gimson (in Taylor Swift’s absence) return to debate Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss’s battle for Downing Street.
The two candidates took it in turns to be questioned by Kay Burley and then an undecided audience.
If Sunak and Truss are remotely serious about either improving Britain’s long-term growth rate or competing with China, they must make our country a science superpower.
These results are in effect identical to a YouGov poll published earlier today. If both we and they are right, Sunak needs a massive game-changer to turn this contest round – and he’s running out of time.
Sunak and Truss are indicative of an educational world divided between private schools and state comprehensives. Grammars can play a role alongside Gove’s reforms in ending that dichotomy.
He will have believed he had no need to define himself more clearly when his poll ratings were high. So now other people are doing it for him.
Levelling-up can only work if the Prime Minister takes it so seriously they’re prepared to see most policy areas – or at least a good number of them – through the prism of it.
A structural weakness in her campaign is that she is telling party members what they want to hear – rather than preparing them for the hard times that Britain faces.
It has real democratic authority including with the Lords which might not be so inhibited from voting down new measures which didn’t feature in that manifesto.
Though while both candidates have been successful in putting on support since the last round, Truss is marginally ahead – gaining 24 votes to Sunak’s 21.
Sunak has failed to learn from 2020. Gone is his boldness, replaced by dull platitudes and a weak response to national emergencies like soaring energy bills and the housing crisis.
These are substantial minorities and confirm that the Prime Minister remains a brooding presence in this contest.
The contrast between those blithe campaigns and this appalling landscape is unnerving, and raises profound questions about politicians and truth.