now on bbc news, it's time for today's episode of newscast with laura kuenssberg and paddy o'connell. paddy, you weren't here last week, abandoning me. well, it was much better last week, i thought. i missed you very much. henry and i talked about food, and we talked about what newscasters have on sunday morning breakfast because keir starmer had been cooking breakfast on a rival broadcast channel. so we were very happy to get newscasters suggestions of what they had for breakfast and brunch. but would you like to know now we are in an election campaign which also wasn't happening last week, what the leaders have to keep going on the trail? yes, i know. i somehow know that rishi sunak will have a sort of energy bar or a muesli thing. no, no. eats cake.

he drinks tea all day, apparently lots and lots of tea and leaves the bag in. oh, wow. so its industrial strength. keir starmer apparently drinks coffee and then maybe a bit of tea later on in the day. isn't a snacker, though. apparently no sweet tooth, just the occasional bag of crisps. so what did they eat in the height of it all? in the middle of the day? i mean, obviously, these people eat something, maybe anything they can get. i mean, keir starmer admitted recently, actually, even though he's a vegetarian, he'd had a box of chicken at some point at the end of a long day. well, whatever they're eating, we were wrong on this cast, this podcast, but the date i was told to go long, you had various dates, you had a close race. you were the closest. well, that's kind of you to say. i mean, about a month ago. that's right. i did think or we reported that there was a possibility that they would call and go this summer. but after the local election results, which were very bad for the tories, i had thought, as most people in westminster did, that why would they go, now,

because it looked like it would be so terrible. and i've got to say, lots of seats think it's absolutely crackers to go now given that the tories are 20 points behind. but here we are. there we go. this episode of newscast. hello. it's laura in the studio. paddy in the studio, too. and so this has been, i think, for rishi sunak, it is fair to say, a not good getting out of the tracks. and i think he's chucked away what should be a first mover advantage. he's the one who knew when it was coming and actually not just the rain and downing street, but there've been some sort of gaffes on the road, pictures going wrong, things like imposing at the titanic in belfast. do you do that if it looks like things are going badly? no, you really don't. it's really that takes me back to theresa may with the letters falling off at the conference. oh, dear. in the sense that it's events

and which we should all learn to love about election campaigns as events. here's another version if i'd been running it. strangely enough, they didn't ask. it's raining very hard. so you go inside, you go inside, you go into the room, which the public paid millions for, from which, as chancellor, i wrote cheques to keep your family and businesses going in this very room. i'd have done it in there. yeah. i mean, several people around and about the westminster village have suggested to me why on earth did they not use the £2 million media suite where rishi sunak has given many of announcements where he could have been nice and warm and dry? the number ten answer to that is, well, it's the done thing to go and stand in the streets. except there was the other alternative, which you could have done what liz truss did, which was drive around for 20 minutes while you're waiting for the rain to stop. but it definitely got things off to almost an unbelievable start. and there are people closely involved who looked at it and thought, oh dear, so you've really got timing still questionable

and style very questionable. i was expecting someone to start throwing fish heads at him. it looked like a monty python sketch at one point. and the other thing, i mean, i know this was your home for a long time standing in downing street, but it's a point of public protest. now, we've spoken about this before. if it's not the bbc with a helicopter drowning everything out, it's that man with the speaker playing the song from �*97. and you're right. so the rain was not the only thing. it was also that there was an extremely loud, a massively massively loud speaker playing the new labour anthem. things can only get better. things can only get wetter was the joke within about 30 seconds. so it was not a good launch. and that sort of power and authority that downing street is meant to confer upon you as the prime minister actually just didn't work at all. and you end up now on day three orfour or wherever we are with rishi sunak making jokes with veterans this morning about, oh, well, at least he didn't catch

pneumonia when he was there. what i think is actually more serious, despite the sort of gaffes campaigns are, long gaffes happen. there's no reason why they can't sort of shake out of that problem just by running events more tightly than they have been and not doing things like letting him pose in front of the exit sign. don't do that. what i think is more serious actually is the continuing level of departure from the conservative benches, including news that we broke last night of michael gove. huge political heavyweight. love or loathe him, very significant figure in the conservative party who announced that he's standing down. and would you confess, as someone who follows michael gove�*s career from the start, really when he was elected... i don't know what you're going to ask me. well, would you confess that you were surprised? because i was surprised. and i'm not a political boffin, but ijust thought he's going to do the election and then he's going to go. he was always on my maybe list

because the conservatives know the lib dems are breathing down their neck. can i ask it another way then? yes. it's the fact that it came out at seven on friday. that's like a kind of key weekend news agenda time. that's what took me most by surprise. well, it was it wasn't necessarily planned exactly like that. i got a tip about it at about 5.30 and then events unfolded. so he was pushed. no, that's not what i'm saying. these things don't necessarily always happen in precisely the way that somebody would have planned. but somebody as canny as michael gove, also, who has been a journalist for a long time, knows exactly what impact him announcing his departure would have on a friday night after a couple of very bumpy first days for rishi sunak. and what's also significant i think, is he only made the decision, as i understand it, in the last 36 hours before the announcement. in other words, he only made the decision after the not ideal launch of the general election.

and that, of course, makes you wonder, did he take a look at how this was unfolding and think, i don't want part of this and that and that sentence, i don't want part of this could apply to theresa may. andrea leadsom. kwasi kwarteng. matt hancock. sir charles walker, endless amounts of them, but government ministers who have to answer about what it means for all these people to leave at the same time, which is now a larger number than it was conservatives leaving in 1997, which of course, was an augur of what came next. they say, look, people in their 60s do retire. 15 years michael gove�*s had in government is a long time. that's very true. that is absolutely true. and michael gove though is still in his fifties, so i would have to point that out where else i'm sure friends

don't suggest that he's already a sexagenarian. well, i don't think that's the right word. let's leave the word in. but i think you're right. i mean, look, he was elected as an mp in 2005. he's been in front line politics for a very long time. many of the people who are standing down, likejohn redwood, for example, but greg clarke, there's another person who had lots of different cabinetjobs, theresa may, lots of differentjobs. there are people who've been around for a long time who are going this time and also quite a few on the labour benches as well. when i think about harriet harman or margaret hodge, however, whether it is fair or not, it absolutely adds to the impression that this election is hurtling towards a very big generational change, and that is the impression that all of these departures give out. and i don't think they're done yet because there will be a fight and i don't think they're done yet. because there will be a fight for the conservative party, even if they kept a large number of seats, which they are happy with. there's going to be a fight for which conservative party it is because a lot of these people who are leaving were instrumental

in leading the brexit charge and in leading the fight within the conservative party against theresa may, who's also leaving. so the conservative party is going to be changed by this election and by these departures more than in the last five. yeah, i think that's absolutely right. and whatever the end result and we should say, look, campaigns change things. who knows? what would now seem like an incredibly unlikely miracle could yet come to pass and they might somehow manage to hang on. even that is not what anybody who is in the conservative party at the moment believes will happen. but even if that were to happen and they end up with rishi sunak still in charge, the party that he runs is going to be a very, very different beast. the assumption, of course, at the moment is that even managing to hold labour orfor a majority and ending up in a hung parliament would be one. cabinet minister described that to me as the the most realistic thing they could achieve, like the best realistic case scenario, which even that they said

would be a heroic outcome. and the assumption we can say to all newscasters right now at the beginning of all of this is that rishi sunak is on his way out and there will be a fight for a new conservative leader on the other side of this election. but but, you know, i always say this politics is very unpredictable. on both sides of the political divide, there is an absolute knowledge and genuine belief that voters in this country are now a very volatile group of people. and just as there are millions of people who haven't yet made up their minds, there are millions of people who might have told pollsters in the last few months that they've made up their minds, but they may yet change them. so there's this constant churning around of voters, and both camps are very, very well aware of that. and of course, at the locals, more people voted for small parties than we'd been expecting. so that's how unpredictable it is.

strix tonight has put on discord, with all these mp standing down, how much will it affect the demographics of the parties? well, in the conservative case, a lot. in the snp case we don't know because only nine of them said they're going and in labour's sort of 20. but you've got a couple of key bellwethers, haven't you? well, in the conservative case, a lot. in the snp case we don't know because only nine of them said they're going and in labour's sort of 20. but you've got a couple of key bellwethers, haven't you? diane abbott is a question i think everyone will be asking about what happens in the inquiry and whether she keeps the whip and then stands down of her own accord. that's right. i mean, there have been suggestions as we record at 2:20 on saturday that this might be the long running dispute over whether or not she can be allowed back to sit as a labour mp. but she can't sit as a labour mp any more because parliament has been dissolved before the election. but would she get the whip back, as it's known, before it's likely that she says she was stand down. there was a suggestion this morning that could be resolved, perhaps even today, but we don't have any clarity on that yet. but as i understand it, and it's been reported

in other places now, essentially she wants to be allowed back in, given the dignity of being restored to her place as a labour mp. but then with that she would be likely to stand down, which of course in labour circles opens up what is potentially a really plum labour seat. and there would be a stampede of activists trying to get their hands on this one. so we say there are some big names still to come. and do you expect more tories to go? i think there will be. i mean, i think there is another ten days or maybe even two weeks before nominations have to close. and there is still, this was also somebody said to me rather archly yesterday, which is one of the things i've written about this afternoon, one of the suggestions were campaign sunak is not yet running at full throttle, shall we say, and is perhaps misfiring, is that some of the staffers involved are said to be partly distracted by a hunt for their own seats in parliament. i think you'll see big names go at the ballot box. this is what we should love about politics. not that people go, but the public speak and the public are allowed to come to their mind and big names are humbled. that's what happens.

and the most likely candidate for that isjeremy hunt. wow. possibly also grant shapps, welwyn hatfield. likely alex chalk. less well known. but the justice secretary, it's a very senior big job. he's in the south west and cheltenham very, very much at risk from the lib dems. so yeah, butjeremy hunt, his i think we won't see him very much on the campaign trail because he's fighting so hard for his seat. but yeah, jeremy hunt, grant shapps is probably at risk as well. so there are some people who are very well known who are definitely at risk this time round. it's interesting because we must move on to talk about labour and what the candidates have been doing today. but i remember as well the speculation during the year being thatjeremy hunt would not stand if the election went long. so because it's important sometimes, i think for us to say what was said that was wrong, many bright political people said jeremy hunt won't stand, jeremy hunt won't be standing.

and he always said, i will stand. he always said i care about my constituency and i care about my seat. and he put lots of his own money into fighting his seat recently. and we'll see, because incumbency, as it's known, the sort of personal power, the personal connection that mps have with their constituents is also something that could be a very potent and very powerful. and of course, that's another problem for the tories, because, say, if incumbency gives you an extra kind of two or 3% at the ballot box, some number crunchers would suggest if all these swathes of mp are going, then that incumbency, that connection with the local mp also disappears and a new candidate turning up saying, hi, i'm your new conservative candidate. look at how great things have been going in this campaign. that's really, really tough. but there are things that are tough for labour as well. and i've got the document here because in a six week campaign, actually, what you're going to do for the country is the point of it. now, events are still fascinating. you know, the rain, the titanic, the exit signs on the plane. and keir starmer will have his moments like that as well. what will happen in the euros?

yes, exactly. and this is labour's plan to make work pay at the same time as keir starmer has said that he wants to lower the voting age to to include 16 and i7—year—olds. so those are the two big things that have happened in labour world today. so let's just take them in turn. so this labour's plan to make work pay point one that is a rebrand until very recently it was called the new dealfor working people. now if you are a newscaster or an ordinary voter wondering what things mean, new deal for working people, what does that sound like? well, it sounds like roosevelt. you really are going back. well, it sounds, i suppose in generically it sounds like working people are going to get more rights. it's going to be a kind of benefit factory thing that workers are going to benefit. then if you think what does labour's plan to make work pay, what does that sound like?

well, i thought that's boring conservative language. i thought that's what the conservatives were saying. voila, you got it. it's exactly that's the difference. so the name change in and of itself is a significant thing here. and behind the scenes, there's been a big, big argument going on while paddy's doing some origami with it. basically, this is it could have been the tory plan to make work. it could have been the tory plan. and the substance of it is very different. but yeah, the rebranding is, is really important. and there's been an almighty argument going on between the unions and labour over watering down or not watering down some of these plans. and that argument is not done. i know this in meetings going on today. i know there were some meetings yesterday and there's been a battle going backwards and forwards over whether or not labour can do the full fat version of its plans, which we understand that keir starmer is a bit nervous about. and there are some people in the business community who are nervous about the full fat version of the plans. and then some, particularly sharon graham, who's the prominent leader of the unite union,

hugely powerful affiliate of the labour party. while paddy goes through the sheaf of paper who said today that the plan is like swiss cheese and it's full of holes. so it's going to be really interesting to see where that ends up and if indeed. all of the unions are actually willing to agree to the plan as it stands and it would be difficult for keir starmer not to have the support of a couple of his big unions right at the beginning of this campaign. ifound it interesting reading it before coming to meet you, that it pins down some of the successes that the last labour government introduced. and when i say successes, i'm quoting from this document that said we introduced key measures on employment and fair working practices. we introduced the national minimum wage. they did. so it's intriguing for me to see that they're trying to give us bookends,

there have been 14 years of conservative governments, conservative led governments, and this, which is a key announcement, albeit one that needs to needs further news analysis in which they're trying to remind voters this is the party that also did this. and so they are harking back and you hear that also when labour and you hear that also when labour politicians like where streeting, the shadow health secretary, when they talk about the nhs or other issues too, they say, look at what happened the last time we were in charge. the nhs got better. look at the last time we were in charge. look at what happened with anti—social behaviour. what the tories say of course is look at the last time they were in charge. what happened with the economy? well, there was a global financial meltdown and gordon brown sold the gold and there was no money left to quote that famous note left by liam byrne. but you're absolutely right, there is this parallel battle going on where labour saying, think back to what it was like, look, it was great. the tories are saying don't risk it, don't go back to what is ever the 1970s. borisjohnson is trying to make that case today, trying to suggest in his first intervention in the campaign, in his column in the daily mail,

that going back to keir starmer and going back to labour would be like going back in time. but which time are you going back to? are you going back to cool britannia, where labour would want you to think that you turn the taps on and milk and honey came out, or are you going back to what borisjohnson would want you to believe is sort of the winter of discontent version of the 1970s? and here's another go back. rishi sunak�*s only been the prime minister since october 2022. and i wonder i wonder why. i wonder what happened, what happened? what could have happened? i mean, if i'm going back, i can stop just two years ago. and keir starmer is also trying to say and the chaos his word is for what the tories have been doing with changing their leader as much as they changed their socks is tory chaos. so that's one of the themes that's emerged within just a day. absolutely. and i'm a bit worried that somebody in labour hq watched our documentary from about 18 months ago called state of chaos. and they've got look, chaos, chaos. i'm thinking, well, it's nothing to do with me. if it's possible to blame you,

i think it will happen. but i think in general terms, what we've you know, that's absolutely but absolutely right. that's absolutely but absolutely right. we're a few days in. and we've seen beware events. don't go out in the rain, have a fish thrown at you and pose under an exit sign in the titanic. everyone should watch for events, including local parties. including journalists. then also some themes. labour says we're going to do this and we're the party that also did that before. remember tony blair and gordon brown? they're going to link to that. and also they're going to change some names and they're going to lower the voting age, those labour. and we still don't know, though, if this will actually be in the manifesto. so as this happened in scotland, labour has previously said that in general elections they'd like to see 16 and 17 year olds given the vote. if you're at school, if you're doing your gcses or you're do you really want to have the vote?

i don't know. newscasters, if you're under 18, let us know if you'd actually like to put across in the box. don't you think that's just us saying get in touch if you're 16 in 17. 0h, we mean it. fill this episode. get in touch. you must get in touch. you're just getting bossy. but so what we don't know is if it's in the manifesto or not. so keir starmer was asked today, do you want it to happen? he said, yes, i want to see 16 and 17 year olds voting. not the same as saying yes, it will be in the manifesto, but interesting nonetheless. and obviously by saying yes today, it's harderfor him not to put it in the manifesto, but i don't think we're going to get the manifestos until maybe around the 10th ofjune. so we're in this sort of this is the opening phase where both parties are trying to do what's nauseating known as framing, right? where they're saying, this is our big theme. labour says change. the tories say don't risk the other lots and the detail will be filled in as we go along. so just a bit of detail on what the parties were doing today.

so as you've already mentioned, rishi sunak who is whilst prime minister, a candidate now isn't there. we will be as soon as soon as the official moments come. and he was out with veterans at a breakfast in his constituency. he was. and there was some kind of suggestion and shock horror moment. in some of the media and online this morning saying, is he taking the day off? this is outrageous. this is a campaign. but then as we record at 2.30, i hear that he's actuallyjust arrived back at tory hq in london. i don't know if he was planning to do that or they thought, oh eek, we can't have the story running that he's somehow taking a day off at the beginning of the campaign. so he was joking about the rain there. he's trying to own the rain. and also, well, he's a very rich man and also he's joking about it, the suit and everything else. ed davis for the lib democrats was campaigning in the south of england talking about sewage. everybody loves talking about a load of bleep. and also saying

that the departing tory mps so shows that they're running away. that's what he says. and in that part of the world, chichester in west sussex, we're going to hear the lib dems out in those parts of the country. so much so winchester, chichester, what they call nauseatingly that's not targeted at the lib dems. any talk of walls, i think is not the blue wall, as they call it, but essentially relatively affluent conservative seats where they believe they've got a really good shape. there's about 80 of them, the lib dem say, according to their numbers. john sweeney, the snp first minister, has been tracking up a lot of miles also in the last couple of days, although i think he was trying to fly to shetland, but the plane could not take off because of the fog. but the plane could not take off i mean, it is worth saying before we leave this episode that you can get the number of mps in scotland onto a number of labour members in scotland onto a tandem. so that one of the, you know, one of the big issues in our country of the last 15 years has been the snp eating the labour vote in scotland. yes.

and if we are talking about themes and framing that battle ground which we can usefully call scotland, we don't have to call it a wall. we can call it scotland. somebody tried to call it a tartan wall, didn't they? but yeah, i mean, its huge. so keir starmer was in glasgow on day two of the campaign, which was very telling, and he was at the scottish labour launch or the labour launch in scotland, depending which way around you want to put it literally on day two. so that was very, very telling. and yes, if you ask the number crunchers looking at the scale of the possible labour majority, technically at this point you don't have to say labour has to win in scotland, except from a political point of view, from a psychological point of view and from a kind of opportunity point of view, clearly the better they do in scotland, the more healthy the overall numbers are, and also the kind of sentiment and the emotion around labour being able to say that they're the biggest party in scotland, in westminster seats at least, is something that they would dearly like to achieve. well, i think we have done what we can to say

what's happening today, what's happened in our inbox. yes. and it's only a saturday. it's only a saturday. and who have you got tomorrow on the wireless? well, we are going to do a little bit of a psychological dig. to say that the swings, the thing, we need a big swing to win. whoever you are, if you want if your opposition need a swing. and actually, we're going to break it down into five battle grounds, which will include scotland, will include conservative heartland, will include those areas where the greens are fighting labour and those areas where reform are fighting conservatives. so we're trying to just look a bit under the bonnet. oh, so you're doing the under the bonnet? yes. we have got michael morpurgo on the programme talking about children in shakespeare. 0h, fantastic. so we've got the home secretary, james cleverly. and i just wonder if tomorrow will be the day where we see a first big policy announcement from the tories that's meant to kind of actually now get into the meat and drink of this rather than, oh, look this kissing babies and people having

embarrassing photographs taken. and the shadow chancellor, rachel reeves, who wants to be the next chancellor and the first female chancellor, will also bejoining us live. and we're going to be doing lots of fact checking, as we will be throughout the campaign. and we will have our first 60 seconds on sunday withjohn curtice. say that after you've had a martini. i've never had a martini, so i don't at that hour. i'm going to check my facts that hour of the morning. no, no, no. look, i'm going to be very aggressively fact checking. right. there we go. i want a big red button. somebody suggested that one of our viewers, bridget, said that we should if we think somebody is not telling the truth or is telling porkies, that we should have a big red button and it should just like flash on the screen. 0r like on graham norton where they have the chair that goes backwards anyway. all ideas gratefully received. thank you very much for making it to the end of this one. bye bye.

live from london. this is bbc news ukraine says russia bombed a superstore in kharkiv where two—hundred people are thought to have been shopping, killing at least two people and injuring others. this, quite frankly at the moment, is, for the ukrainian's, one of the most anxious periods since those first months after the full—scale invasion more than two years ago. here in the uk — party leaders hit the campaign trail — for the general election — amidst a growing exodus of conservative mps. campaigning out in west midlands — sir keir starmer says labour will lower the voting age to sixteen if it wins. manchester city sees red as man united wins the fa cup — meanwhile in scotland — rangers, beat celtic in the scottish cup.

as south africa's political parties hold final rallies ahead of wednesday's general election — will nelson mandela's legacy be enough to secure another anc win? hello, i'm lauren taylor. we start in ukraine — president zelensky has denounced a deadly air strike on a crowded superstore in the country's second largest city, kharkiv, as an act of �*russian madness�*. officials said at least two people were killed and more than 30 others injured, when two glide bombs struck the diy store on saturday afternoon. the shop is in a residential area — and ukrainian officials reported that russia also hit a school and other buildings in the city. the mayor of kharkiv says there are a large number of people missing following the strike. earlier this month, russian forces began a renewed offensive in the kharkiv region, in an attempt to break through a weakened ukrainian front line.

here's one of the shop workers explaining what happened.