Conservative party

Michael Gove will get all the headlines, and there is something darkly ironic about his appointment. Theresa May may be fighting for her political life, but even her 11th hour manoeuvres have a sharp edge. She’s been forced to bring back a man she sacked, but her choice of job is lovely: Michael Gove of the Leave campaign now gets to tell British farmers how life will be better when farm subsidies end. Meanwhile, Gove replaces Andrea Leadsom, another Leaver, who as Commons leader now gets to oversee the speeding legislative freight train that is the Great Repeal Bill, not to mention seven or eight other bits of Brexit legislation

Only one Cabinet member – Chris Grayling – had a good word to say about Theresa May and even he waited hours to say it. The silence of the others underlines the scale of trouble that the Prime Minister is in with her own party after blowing its majority in pursuit of a personal mandate. If she had won a landslide (which seemed to be there for the taking), she wanted to make it a very personal landslide, asking people to ‘vote for me’ rather than her party. As I say in my Daily Telegraph column today, the defeat must now be owned by her personally. And the silence of

So now we know: Jeremy Corbyn is a counterrevolutionary. The man who fancies himself as the secret Red of British politics, surrounding himself with trustafarian Trotskyists and the kind of public-school radical who gets a hammer-and-sickle tattoo just to irritate his parents, is now being talked up as a potential saviour of the establishment from Brexit. From Guardian scribes to actual EU commissioners, the great and good want Corbyn to save their hides from that raucous revolt of last June. You couldn’t make it up: Jez the tamer of the agitating masses. No sooner had those exit polls revealed that May was struggling and Corbyn was rising than the EU-pining

Today, for the first time in my life, I voted Tory. And somewhat disappointingly I haven’t sprouted horns yet. I haven’t been overcome by an urge to pour champagne on homeless people’s heads or to close down my local library and guffaw at any rosy-cheeked child who pleads: ‘But I want books, mister.’ I don’t feel evil. Maybe that stuff comes later. Maybe it takes a few days before you turn into a living, breathing Momentum meme, screaming ‘Screw the poor!’ as you ping your red braces. In fact I feel good. It always feels good to vote, of course, to hold the fate of the political class in your

Friday morning. A humbled looking Theresa May is muttering about how ‘defeat means defeat’, while Boris Johnson readies his leadership bid. Nicola Sturgeon is flying down to London with a list of demands for supporting a Labour-led coalition. And Jeremy Corbyn is finishing off some work on his allotment before hopping on a bus to the Palace. It might sound far-fetched. But the polls are so all over the place, it is no longer impossible that the Tories will lose their majority. If it happens, one point has been overlooked. Over in the City, stocks will be getting trashed, and the pound will be in free-fall. The markets have only just begun

In this slow-motion car crash of a General Election campaign, there have been few sights more tragic than that of grizzled, greying Labour people pleading with the young to vote for them. Even Diane Abbott’s dumbfounded face on every political show on the box and Tim Farron’s wobbly expression every time a member of the public asks him why he hates Brexit have been no match for these political versions of sad old uncles in skinny jeans creepily cosying up to yoof. How I’ve winced. They’ve all been at it. There was Armando Iannucci, funnyman turned another boring Tory-fearer, who got a gazillion retweets when he said he was getting

Theresa May’s ‘strong and stable’ strapline has apparently been withdrawn after the electorate started to sway with nausea. Yet the words remain emblazoned on the ‘battle bus’, still crop up in interviews, and continue to litter campaign material across the country. To little effect. The phrase was soon found to be a blunt weapon, not cutting through to voters but bludgeoning them into a stupor. To be ‘strong and stable’ is so self-evidently desirable that to say so is vacuous and empty. In fact, as we have seen, this limp phrase has recently rebounded with some force: ‘strong and stable’ has become the benchmark against which to judge a Prime Minister stymied by handbrake

Only a few weeks ago, the polls brought nothing but joy for the Tories. With just six days to go until election day, that’s no longer the case. An Ipsos MORI survey out today cuts the Conservative lead down to just five points. Labour’s support has burst through the 40 per cent mark – rising by six points since Ipsos MORI’s last poll on May 18th. The poll comes off the back of this week’s shock YouGov estimate, which suggested we could be heading for a hung Parliament. And YouGov’s updated election model for today doesn’t bring any better news for the Tories: it suggests that Theresa May will now fall

This is the first general election since 1997 where I have not primarily been employed as a journalist, covering the story of the campaign and its participants. Of course, I’ve still been writing about it, but from a certain distance. I miss some of the peculiar entertainments of the political circus, and some of the freaks and wild animals that provide those entertainments. But by and large, it’s rather nice to be watching things from a little way off. Especially because that distance allows me to say things like this: a lot of journalists, and a lot of politicians (especially Conservative ones) have gone stark raving mad and are talking