judging the politics. i mean, as henry says, this was a decision that was taken in advance. this is different to some of those other electoral gaffes that you see — you know, gordon brown being caught off mic, being terribly rude about gillian duffy, that voter in 2010. other things that happened by mistake — rishi sunak doing his opening election salvo in the chucking down rain. this was something that was the product of a deliberate decision taken some time ago in downing street that the imagery of him being missing from that ceremony would somehow be ok. and there's an added element to this as well, the kind of loss of opportunity. the conservatives are trying to run an election campaign with one of the themes being, "trust us on security, trust us on defence. keir starmer? oh, well, he's a bit risky, he's a bit of a danger." so to miss the opportunity of being pictured alongside president biden, alongside the royal family, alongside military types,

that looks like a real blunder. and a cabinet minister said to me, "you've got a $100 million bill lying on the floor and you don't pick it up." so it's notjust the mistake, it's also the lost opportunity of the mistake. and laura, last night when we did newscast, you mentioned that text you'd had about somebody saying, "this is just the worst operation ever." and as i was going to bed last night, i was like, "i wish i'd asked laura more about that," because that's an amazing quote. not to get you to reveal your sources, but what sort of people are messaging you with that stuff now? is this, like, candidates? is this, like, former friends of rishi sunak? i think it's what... the sense i have, henry, and i don't know if you would agree with this, is that what is happening now, it seems to me almost every day, the group of people who are still really putting their shoulder to the wheel in this campaign is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. and there are more people,

including people who would regard themselves as friends of rishi sunak — i was speaking to one of them this morning — saying, "this is awful. this is grim. this is going really, really badly." there are, of course, people who still are loyal to him and say, "look, our inheritance was terrible. things have been awful, things have gone wrong. it's not all his fault. we're trying to do our best, still four weeks to go in the campaign, remember that." but it does feel to me like this d—day blunder has become a real moment it's going to be very difficult for them to fight back from. and in times of political adversity, strengths instantly flip into weaknesses. yeah _ so for a couple of years, people — for more than that actually — people would have said in westminster, well, one of rishi sunak's strengths is he has a really tight—knit inner circle who are completely loyal to him. and, you know, he doesn't blow with the political wind and decide to do things for a quick and easy headline the next day. now you have people who were loyal to rishi sunak saying, "well, i'm not in his tight inner circle, so frankly, i'm just going to go and try and save my seat. and actually, i think his inner circle is too tight, and actually, they should be better at anticipating the next morning's headlines." so you often have that moment, especially if your loyalties

in a political party are wide but shallow. and that's always been the case with rishi sunak. remember, he was backed in that first leadership election against liz truss by more conservative mps, but mostly because he wasn't her. he was seen as the quote unquote "sensible candidate." obviously other wings of the political spectrum would dispute that. then in october, it was him because they didn't want borisjohnson back. but that isn't the same as having an enthusiastic, genuinely personal, loyal group of conservative mps as they were then, and candidates, as they often are now, and so it means that in times of toughness, they flee the ship. and they're trying to fight for their own skins. and this d—day blunder really has had that elusive thing called cut—through. so one of our mewscasters, rosie, emailed in saying, so one of our newscasters, rosie, emailed in saying, "rishi sunak�*s decision not to attend the international d—day commemoration is the political equivalent of choosing the fa cup final over your daughter's wedding," and it has led to the spectacle in the debate on the bbc last night of a serving cabinet minister saying on stage, not once,

not twice, but i think three orfour times, notjust that the prime minister made a mistake and he's sorry, but actually, look at his record, he's a jolly good chap and it's allok, but penny mordaunt saying this. what happened was completely wrong . and the prime minister has rightly. apologised for that, - apologised to veterans, but also to all of us - because he was representing all of us. i'm from portsmouth, _ i've also been defence secretary, and my wish at the end of this week is that all of our veterans feel- completely treasured. and i'm hoping tonight to convince you of some things that _ are important to them, . important to their legacy. and i couldn't do that if i wasn't straight with you on that issue. | i just want to... would you have left d—day early? i didn't go to d—day. i think what happened was very wrong. - i think the prime minister has apologised for that. - excellent question from our colleague, mishal husain, there. and of course the back story

there is that penny mordaunt quite fancied herself as tory leader and prime minister instead of rishi sunak and lots of people say she still harbours those ambitions. oh, i think she certainly still harbours those ambitions. and i think people close to her are also quite frustrated that she has been not let out of the box very often. and it's a notable feature actually of this campaign that we've seen very little of quite a lot of prominent conservatives. we've seen a lot of some of rishi sunak�*s most loyal lieutenants, less well—known cabinet ministers like mel stride and mark harper, the transport secretary, relatively little of, you know, david cameron, michael gove, people who are more household names, who — including penny mordaunt — who of course is actually well known around the country, partly because she was on an itv reality programme, you know, like it or not, she's somebody with name recognition and somebody who downing street have not always been too fond of letting on the television. i'm just thinking back to rosie's email about the fa cup final. what if you were a player in the fa cup final? would you go to that even if it

was your daughter's wedding? but then actually, if you're a football player and you're in the fa cup final, you probably don't have a daughter who's old enough to be getting married. and you probably also have the financial means to get her to rearrange the wedding at no expense to her. or a helicopter to get you between the two. but there you go. the prime minister is fond of using helicopters, to make a sort of cheap gag out of it. you know, staying in normandy for another couple of hours could have been an easy thing for them to sort out. and i think also other politicians in that situation — and i'm thinking of one bjohnson — would have loved that occasion probably so much, he might even have stayed for longer. it'd have been difficult to get him back! because it's a sort of politics—free zone. you know, joking apart, these diplomatic ceremonial... you're sort of, for that moment, you're just being seen as sort of a strong leader. you're not with pesky reporters following your every move. why not absolutely max it out? and someone was saying to me, "look, if he did come back," i mean,

he and his team insist that he didn't come back specifically to do an itv interview which, in any case, isn't even being broadcast for several days, but that is what he did in the uk once he was back, and someone was saying to me, "well, hang on, why don't you do the interview in normandy?" that's the most prime ministerial backdrop possible. yeah. i mean, on that penny mordaunt line from last night's debate, by the way, i think people might think, listening to that or watching that, that she wasjust reciting what rishi sunak had said earlier in the day. she was not. that was an attack on her leader on prime time television in the middle of a general election campaign. just dwell on how extraordinary and perhaps unprecedented that is, because you had other cabinet ministers making a similar point earlier in the day. they'd say, "look, it's indefensible, he shouldn't have done it, he's apologised." but then they would go on to say, including johnny mercer, the veterans minister, he went on to say, "but rishi sunak's record on defence is unimpeachable. but rishi sunak has protected veterans." she didn't do any of that. she just stuck the boot

in to the prime minister and then moved on. or even the sort of classic david cameron smoothie response. "actually, it's a tribute to him that he apologised so quickly," completely turning it around. but of course it was a gift for the other smaller parties who were on the stage with them last night, particularly also nigel farage. it was an absolute gift for him and it is a gift for the reform party to be able to claim, his allies would say absolutely unfairly, that somehow rishi sunak is not a patriot. you know, allies of his likejohnny mercer would emphasise what he's done for veterans, that actually, the conservatives, unlike the labour party, are committed to increasing defence spending to 2.5% of gdp by a particular date. labour hasn't put a date on that yet. but there has of course been a huge reaction to this and it does feel really, i think, like the biggest moment of the campaign and not a good one for rishi sunak. but they've had a tricky time though too this week about the accusations that i suppose more traditionally they've been chucking at the labour party, saying that they would tax us all,

spend all our money, and that very kind of traditional campaigning moments we've had this week, henry, about this mythic £2,000 that the labour party wants to charge everybody extra in tax. well, it's in the nature of election campaigns, but that feels like a fortnight ago now that you mention it, but it was only on tuesday night in the first head—to—head debate of this campaign that rishi sunak really went for keir starmer over tax and spend — a traditional tory—labour dividing line. and it was amazing as a piece of sort of debate prep how he contorted almost any answer, whatever subject it began on, right back to tax. i think even a question about national service, he ended with talking about tax. and just while you're speaking, if adam and i just start shouting "£2,000" at you... that would give people who missed the debate a decent sense of what took place on tuesday, but it was very effective because £2,000, £2,000, £2,000, if you say that for 17 minutes, it's going to start to seep in. and crucially, sir keir starmer did not really challenge it for about 25 minutes.

he left it completely unchallenged. then he started making quite a convoluted point about the treasury, and we'll come back to that. then later in the debate, he said, "oh, that was absolute garbage." but by that point, i mean, you could really sense the frustration — i was in the spin room for that as well — the frustration of labour operatives. well, the convoluted point that keir starmer was trying to make about the treasury was then made the next morning. i got hold of a letter that the chief civil servant at the treasury had sent actually the labour party a couple of days before, where he was saying, yes, this figure from which the conservatives are deriving their £2,000 claim should not be presented as coming from the treasury. now, why is that difficult for the conservative party? because they were presenting it as having come from the treasury. they are now scaling back their claim. they're saying, "well, it's overwhelmingly come from the treasury," but even then there's some sort of difficult points about whether the treasury calculations in some cases were based on assumptions that were given to them by conservative advisers. so it's all become a bit knottier for the conservatives, though i'm sure they'd rather talk about that than d—day still. and just to be clear

about what this was about, so the conservatives, including some calculations done by the treasury, have totted up all of the plans that they say labour would have if they were in government. they've put a price tag on it and they say that would require every family to pay more than £2,000 extra in tax. so that is what this is about — the most traditional of attacks, really, in order to chuck a big number at the labour party during this campaign. we should also say though that labour has done this in a different way, not claiming to have impartial figures from civil servants, but they have gone after the conservatives' aspirations of getting rid of national insurance, that huge price tag, and said it means that there is a black hole i think they've totted up to more than £70 billion in the tories' plans. oh, i thought it was about 48. it's gone up even in the last few minutes. i think if you include... i think they've chucked inheritance tax in there for good measure becausejeremy hunt said... 46 is national insurance, and there's other... it's a large number. and parties do this, right? we shouldn't clutch our pearls

and say, "my goodness, they've come up with these figures. it's all so dodgy and terrible. this never happens." the new thing this week was the conservatives claiming that impartial civil servants had basically rubber—stamped these figures. that was not true. but the claim is still the claim, and the claim, i'm sure, will be continued to be made. and also not to sound like a pound—shop tim harford or a 99p tim harford... never! the 2,000 number, evenjust arithmetically on its own is a bit weird because it's assuming every working family pays exactly the same amount of tax in their household and this is spread equally amongst everyone. and also it's four years' worth of imaginary tax increases added up into one number. and i don't really think of my taxes in four—yearly chunks. so just even as a number, it sort of doesn't quite add up. and the debate kind of above the debate about this figure is about strategy, and whether it is worth it for the conservatives that we've just had this discussion and people

like us are having this discussion. even if part of that discussion concerns, frankly, rishi sunak's honesty — frankly, the conservative party's honesty. and i don't know the answer to that. a lot of people are comparing it to £350 million a week for the nhs during the 2016 eu referendum campaign, but one thing i would say, at the risk of sounding pompous and grand, is thatjust over 4 million people watched the debate in which rishi sunak made that claim on tuesday. more than double that number, 9 million have viewed the post on x, formerly known as twitter, where i posted, revealed that letter from the treasury chief civil servant. so i do wonder whether changing media consumption trends actually make some of the calculations about this a bit less straightforward than they used to be. and just also the changing electorate, right? you know, in 2016, and we all remember this and we could see then exactly what they were doing, the leave campaign used the 350 million figure, which was a true figure, but used misleadingly

because they didn't include the money that the uk got back from the eu, they did it deliberately as a trap to get the remain side to froth about it. and my goodness, froth they did. that froth created more noise, more headlines about the 350 million, creating the impression for people who, funnily enough, weren't looking at the spreadsheets, that we gave a lot of money to the eu. the electorate is not the same electorate that it was in 2016. voters are more fatigued, more exhausted. political parties' own research tells us that they are more cynical and labour has tried to turn this into an attack on rishi sunak, and all over their social media feeds the day after that debate, "lie," "liar," "lie," "liar." that's a word that doesn't get used in politics. exactly. it's uncommon in british politics for that word to be used by politicians at the top level, not by people on the fringes. i just want to say to people, if you're wondering what on earth is going on at 10.50 on radio 4... don't worry, there will be some more

kafka versus orwell soon! ..on a saturday morning, you are listening to newscast, which normally is a programme that is available on bbc sounds as a podcast and on the bbc news channel on tv and on thursday night on bbc one. but for the next four weeks during the election campaign, we have the honour and privilege of being broadcast live on radio 4. so welcome along. if you are new to newscast, it's very good to have you with us. and you can follow henry on twitter along with 9 million others. what i was going to say, though, back to the whole numbers thing, one of the most interesting bits for me of the bbc seven—way debate on friday was when stephen flynn, who is the snp�*s westminster leader, and he got quite good reviews for his performance, he said, "hang on, labour and the tories are trading these pretend numbers about imaginary tax rises, but they're not telling you about their plans for spending cuts, which are kind of baked in to all those numbers after the next election." and what's interesting for me is, the last few days, the conservatives, with their, like, classic daily policy announcement,

they've been spending quite a lot of money. so yesterday on friday, it was saying, "oh, do you remember when george osborne said if you earn over £50,000, you're going to start losing your child benefit?" which was a huge news story back in the 2010s. "oh, we're going to lift that limit so that loads more people can get child benefit." ok, that's going to cost money. the thing the tories are talking about today, about making permanent that stamp duty holiday for first time buyers when they buy a property, that's going to cost money as well. labour say, well, when they announce things like that, "we can fund this from cracking down on tax avoidance." but listening to more or less on radio 4 a couple of days ago, the real tim harford did a great little thing about whether that six is actually £6 billion of readily available pounds. and actually it's not. and the conservatives are saying that they can fund these things by cracking down on tax avoidance, which begs two questions. one, is that realistic, as you've just said, and history would tell us that it is not necessarily, but two, if they think they can get £6 billion from cracking down on tax

avoidance, why haven't they found those 6 billion of your finest british pounds over the last 11; years? but it is interesting, and i think from a political point of view, it tells us you can see the conservatives are just chucking everything they can out there to try to shore up their base vote. and labour are very happy to watch them do that. you know, their schtick is credibility, care, economic prudence. rachel reeves saying everything has to be paid for. that is their mantra. they're very happy for the tories to be giving the impression that they're chucking everything over the side. also, somebody very senior in the labour camp yesterday was drawing a parallel to me, basically saying the tories are writing a manifesto in the way that labour wrote a manifesto in 2019, that they cram it full of things that sound like they might be popular, back then, it was free broadband and railway nationalisation, but it didn't work because people didn't trust the message carriers. you know, a sort of pompous way of saying people didn't believe that jeremy corbyn and john mcdonnell were the right people to lead the country.

obviously lots of people did, but the overall public impression was they didn't want to lend them their trust in the same way. at the top of labour, they believe that's what's also happened now to the conservatives. so almost whatever they promise, turn on the taps, milk and honey will flood out, at this stage in the political cycle, people are not going to take that on as a credible message. and i've got to say, some people inside the conservative party believe that, too. one former minister, who's not a big critic of rishi sunak, said to me this morning, "the risk is the messages now sound inauthentic, because it's late in the day for rishi sunak to be sort of standing up and talking about these kinds of things." and also, remember, in the distant past of three weeks ago, people were saying, "oh, the conservative campaign is going to be very presidential and built around rishi sunak." last night in the debate, penny mordaunt only mentioned rishi sunak to basically tell him off about d—day. he never really got mentioned again. henry, i got a real insight into the life of the chief political correspondent

during an election campaign just as we were walking in to the newscast studio, and we were talking about the return of nigel farage, and we were trying to remember what day that was when he announced he was taking over as reform leader. and it was monday, but it feels like it was about 17 weeks ago. it really does. and laura wasjust saying rightly that the conservatives are trying with this sort of blizzard of policies to shore up their core vote. but they have decided on a particular part of their core vote that they are at risk of losing to shore up — and that is the sort of right—wing element of their core. yes. voters who perhaps feel uneasy that the conservatives haven't done enough to bring down immigration or things like that. and they had made that strategic decision before nigel farage's announcement that he was returning as the leader of reform uk. but that is now even more complex for them because of course nigel farage is a big personality, a well—honed communicator. he was in last night's seven—way debate, but of course he was in a seven—way debate way back in 2015. his longevity is quite something.

i was very struck in last night's debate and actually, generally, since he came back on monday to lead reform uk, the conservatives have kind of been trying to pretend he doesn't exist. they haven't been taking the fight to reform. penny mordaunt didn't do that at all yesterday. she just tried to... sort of ignored him. yeah, exactly. she just tried to focus on labour. whether that is sustainable if opinion polls continue to show the distance between reform and the conservatives is slim to zero, i'm not so sure because i think conservative candidates who fear that reform, not necessarily will beat them, but will get enough votes that they certainly lose to labour, will want a more direct message. and we will see, because in the next couple of days there are intense fears across tory ranks that we might reach the crossover moment. yeah, this great new phrase ofjargon. so this is the big fear, as we hurtle towards the end of our time together, that reform might actually tip over the conservatives in one or two polls in the coming days. we will see. of course, polls only suggest a snapshot. they don't tell you exactly

what's going to happen at the end of an election. but somebody said to me yesterday, if that happens, there will be complete panic. but you do get a sense at the moment that behind the scenes the conservatives may well be trying to add more and more and more things into the manifesto. we're expecting the conservative manifesto on tuesday. labour, ithink, is pencilled in for thursday. so in that sense, we are about to enter another big week in this election campaign. remember also, perhaps not so much with the wonderful radio 4 listener, but there are going to be plenty of people also who are onlyjust really beginning to tune into this. in the big picture, we're still very far away from polling day. voters have shown time and time again in this country in the last few years, you are a volatile bunch and people change their mind all the time. my learnings, from looking at manifestos being launched — that's a terrible word, learnings, it sounds like i'm on like a training course — is that you don't get new policies in manifestos because most of the stuff has been trailed in advance or already been decided on.

manifesto launches are just a big shop window kind of launch event for each party, really, aren't they? apart from the tory manifesto in 2017. yeah, i'vejust disproved my own lesson. don't take any lessons from me. i think you'll be right in this case on labour. yes. i think they are going to continue to use another awful phrase, to carry that ming vase across... we banned that last weekend. yes, sorry. carriers of ming vases don't like that phrase. yes, yes, we decided to ban that. i'm still not completely sure what a ming vase is. not that i should admit that. you don't have any? it's a really, really expensive old chinese antique. anyway, i think labour will have something new, but i don't think it's going to shake up what we think of what they might do in government should they win the general election. but i think the conservatives, as laura says, i think there'll be more, notjust because they want to try to find ways to change the electorate's minds, but also they want to change the conversation, because we spent the first 15 minutes of this programme talking about d—day, and they need to try to find a way to move that conversation on. i'm going tojust give you one

tiny little shred of... are we allowed to use gossip on radio 4? i don't know. it's high class gossip. there is a possibility during the rounds that if labour wins the election, they might say to mps, "you're going to have to work all the way through the summer." i did wonder about that as well. i picked it up as well. double source. there we go. double source. so i think it's not confirmed and i don't think they'll put it in the manifesto, but it's definitely something that has been discussed. well, i was told, i'm sure that keir starmer would like to consider it. and because the classic parliamentary timetable is that mps have like six or seven weeks holiday in the summer, they don't call it a holiday, it's recess and they're going to constituencies. yeah, yeah. but actually, yeah, i mean the whole thing of the first 100 days is a big deal for politicians. and you just think if you wanted to achieve things in your first 100 days, you wouldn't have six weeks off, would you? well, that's true. the first 100 days is important. and the remaining, i think, 27 days now of this election campaign is very important, as is the final 20 seconds of this programme. yes, well, it's been lovely hanging out with you two. i hope you've enjoyed your first slice of a live episode of newscast here on radio 4.

if you like what you heard, you can get daily episodes of newscast every day, and paddy o'connell pops up on them at weekends. so there's some classic radio 4 stuff in there as well. and we'll be back on weekend newscast tomorrow afternoon after the sunday morning political rounds. but for now, goodbye. bye. goodbye. newscast from the bbc. hello there. it's been a pretty decent start to the weekend. there was a good deal of sunshine around across most of the country. a bit of cloud here and there, a few showers mostly in the north. part two of the weekend doesn't look quite as good. it will start certainly quite chilly. but we've got a couple of weather fronts pushing down from the north—west that will increase cloud through the day with some splashes of rain. and we've got this weather front approaching the north—west of the country to move through this evening. showers merging together to produce longer spells of rain for the north and west of scotland. so unsettled, breezy, showery in the north, turning cloudier for northern ireland, but clearer skies for large parts of england and wales with lighter winds here. so it will turn chilly for most, single digits, i think,

for the majority of the country. but with more cloud across northern ireland, we will fall to around ten degrees in belfast. so sunday, then, we've got low pressure still towards the norwegian sea there, bringing northern—westerly winds into the country. we start to have quite a bit of sunshine. scotland, england and wales, cloudy skies for northern ireland, south—west scotland in towards north—west england, north wales. and that cloud with splashes of rain will spill south—eastwards through the day. so it will turn cloudy across much of england and wales, probably the best of the sunshine across the far south—west, and the northern half of scotland doing pretty well with sunny spells. but there will be blustery showers here and a cooler day to come, i think, because of more cloud around, temperatures of about 12 to 17 degrees. as we move through sunday night, that area of rain splashes across the irish sea into much of england and wales, becomes confined to southern and eastern areas by the end of the night. so where we have the cloud and the rain, then, a less cold night here, 10 to 12 degrees under clearer skies. further north, it will turn chilly. we start to pick up a northerly wind as we move into monday. that rain slowly clears away from the south and east.

it may take a while to clear the east of england. eventually it will do that. it's a bright day for most, sunshine and showers. most of these across the northern half of scotland, where they will be quite blustery and a chilly northerly wind at that. temperatures, 10 to 11; degrees in the north, 15 to 17 further south, giving some sunny spells. and we hold on to this chilly northerly wind through tuesday, even into wednesday as well. and before low pressure starts to move in from the south—west, that'll cut off the chilly northerly and temperatures will slowly recover towards the end of the week. but it's going to be a fairly unsettled and a cool week to come with a little bit of sunshine here and there.

live from washington. this is bbc news. emotional family reunions for the four israeli hostages rescued from nuseirat in central gaza. hamas reports more than 200 palestinians were killed. hospitals say they have counted scores of bodies. we'll have the latest from the general election campaign — as the conservatives

are pledging stamp duty cuts — and labour promises to reform business rates. hello, i'm helena humphrey. glad you could join me. four israeli hostages taken by hamas during the october 7th attacks, have now been reunited with their families. but israeli forces in gaza killed scores of palestinians in the military operation to free them. israeli special forces raided two locations in nuseirat, in central gaza in broad daylight, with a spokesman saying they came under heavy fire. one israeli soldier was killed. hamas says more than 200 palestinians were killed in the operation. an israeli military spokesman said there were "under100" palestinian casualties. the eu's top diplomat condemned the israeli raid. he is the us president has also

spoken out at a press conference during his state