Portrait of the Week: Sunak’s D-Day misstep, Michael Mosley’s death and Macron’s snap election

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The Conservatives promised to reduce National Insurance from 8 per cent to 6 per cent (and abolish it for most of the self-employed by 2029) in their 76-page election manifesto. Despite other tax cuts already announced, the tax burden would continue to rise steadily. The Tories also promised to halve migration. In its manifesto, Labour decided after all not to reinstate the lifetime limit on tax-free pension savings, but it was tempted by capital gains tax. Labour promised 100,000 extra childcare places, with nurseries set up in classrooms expected to be empty because of falling numbers of primary school children; the costs would be met by VAT on private schools. Douglas Ross announced that he would resign as leader of the Scottish Conservatives after the election. In the week up to 9 June, 799 migrants crossed the Channel in small boats.

The nation was moved by the ceremonies for the 80th anniversary of D-Day, but Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, returned from Normandy early, leaving Lord Cameron, the Foreign Secretary, to be photographed with President Joe Biden, President Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Mr Sunak apologised, but Penny Mordaunt took a few seconds off from shouting in unison with Angela Rayner on a seven-way TV election debate to say: ‘The Prime Minister has rightly apologised for that… What happened was very wrong.’

A ransom cyber-attack on King’s College hospital and Guy’s and St Thomas’, which also badly affected blood transfusions, was said to be the work of the Russian group Qilin. GDP remained unchanged in April. Unemployment rose a touch, from 4.3 to 4.4 per cent; but the inactivity rate rose too, with more than a fifth of working-age people deemed not to be actively looking for work. Two 12-year-old boys were convicted of the murder, by stabbing with a machete, of 19-year-old Shawn Seesahai in Wolverhampton last November.