appearance since announcing she is being treated for cancer. she joined the rest of the royal family at the annual trooping the colour parade to mark the king's official birthday. president zelensky has joined dozens of other world leaders in switzerland for discussions on ending the war in ukraine, but russia was not invited. mr zelensky is hoping to sustain the momentum of this week's g7 meeting — when leaders pledged $50 billion of loans on the back of seized russian assets. britain's home secretary has called for an urgent investigation after footage began circulating online of police in surrey ramming an escaped cow. the force issued a statement saying officers acted to ensure that members of the public were safe. we've chosen not to show the moment the cow was hit. now on bbc news, it's time for today's

episode of newscast, recorded earlier for bbc radio 4. newscast from the bbc. so today we're going to look back at the manifestos that were published this week. what was your name for it, laura, in the end? many—festos week. some people called it the manifestival. we're also going to just reflect on what's happening with the polls because there was a kind of quite symbolic moment in one poll that people were talking about earlier this week. and also, i just thought we're halfway through the election now, this is precisely the halfway point, what's everyone�*s kind of vibe at the moment? laura? my vibe? yes. goodness me. i'm not sure i've ever been asked that before. i think there's something topsy turvy about this whole election, because normally when you have a governing party putting forward a manifesto, they're the ones saying, "carry on as we are," in a sense, they're sort of going for the status quo, which the conservatives

are saying "don't risk a change, don't risk it," but they're the ones who've been putting out lots and lots and lots and lots of policy. whereas on the other hand, you've got the opposition parties, who more traditionally are offering everything — "milk and honey will flow out of the taps in every bathroom in the land" — they're the ones actually saying, "0h, we're doing everything to be credible. we're not promising too much. we're being safe, we're being reassuring. you can trust us and we're not going to do anything wild". so that in an era of when we've had so many elections in the last few years, that's quite interesting to me, and it's completely different to 2019. i suppose for me, i'm never comfortable with the phrase, "it's the economy, stupid," which came from the clintonian rise in the united states. and we all nodded as journalists sagely, "oh, yes, it's the economy." and for me, i want to say this — it's the politics. and by the way, don't call me stupid. so, you know, let's... and i'll tell you what i mean by "it's the politics". calling the general election in the rain, missing the d—day commemoration,

not all of it but some of it, an aide who bets on a possible date of the general election, then also the return of nigel farage, who had said he'd go to the united states to help the donald. he did, only a month ago. and then the very uncomfortable skewering of keir starmer by beth rigby of sky over the man who apparently loved jeremy corbyn. "oh, i love jeremy corbyn so long as he can't win!" so for me, that's abject politics. i understand that we're in a cost of living crisis, and i know we're going to talk about the manifestos, but i would like to say, adam, in answer to you — i know you want me to answer your question — halfway through, it's primary colours. you can smell what's happening here and you've got the british public in tardis time and they're looking in the whites of the eyes of these people, and it feels an absolutely seismic election. adam? yeah, every election, for me, i slightly worry that have

politicians and the political parties got so good at analysing data, so focused on micro—targeting people on facebook, so safe when it comes to doing debates, so coached when it comes to doing interviews with people like nick robinson that, actually, politicsjust sort of gets a bit dull. but, actually, every election, events happen and people's scripts, they can't stick to them. and also the other thing that's been really fun this year is the audience participation in lots of the tv debates, and, ok, that's a group of people who are in a tv studio, so not necessarily reflective of the whole country, but actually when people groan or laugh or cheer, thatjust gives you a real sense of maybe what the electorate is thinking. and so that's been a bit of a treat this year as well. i think that's right, and a reminder actually that the magic of elections and the importance of elections is normally politicians are in charge of us or they're trying to be, and in elections they're not. try as they might, they're not in charge, the public is.

ultimately, of course, on polling day, but also all throughout a campaign. and however good parties get at doing politics, or if you look at the tory campaign at the moment, however bad parties get at doing politics, ultimately when it comes to a campaign, they're not in control. and as journalists that's actually quite glorious to watch. one of the big stories of the week has been the return with a capital r of nigel farage, and i wonder what you both make of it. computer chimes. i've alluded to the fact that... and a nice song! i hope every time i speak, i hope i get music. but basically, first, as i've alluded to, he wasn't meant to be in this campaign at all. and there's been senior tories on radio 4 talking to the world at one, saying, "why on earth didn't you just do a deal with the man?" and laura, i mean, you've been following this for much longer than me. are you surprised by this crossover, single crossover poll? no. so there had been a lot of anticipation of this idea that the reform party, which was built out of the brexit party, which was built out of ukip, which was built out

of the traditional eurosceptic movement in the conservative party, there was huge anticipation that things were going so badly for the tories for a long time now that actually a new outfit on the right, reform uk as they've called themselves this time round, would be able to scoop up lots of votes. we know there's a lot of anger out there in the country. every candidate who knocks at the door will tell you that. so the conservatives had been worried that reform might be able to edge ahead of them in a poll or two, giving us this crossover moment. and we knew that that was on their minds because of actually the kind of policies they put out in the first few weeks of the campaign. we saw they were designing their plans to appeal to just those kinds of voters, probably brexiteers, socially conservative people who'd been frustrated by the kind of, you know, mushy middle of the tory party, who want something more in tooth and claw and who like nigel farage. the question though is what do the tories do now about it? because a lot of them are certainly panicking because they think not that reform is going to win lots of seats, but by grabbing maybe

10% or so of the vote in many, many, many seats, they can basically cut the tories off at the knees and let labour in that way. this is a script that i've been reading in my newspaper for a decade. yeah _ adam, you were our brussels correspondent. if i have my chronology right, and i know you're both waiting to tell me when i'm wrong, didn't ukip win the 2014 european election? did that not make david cameron frit? did he not then give a 2016 referendum, in—out referendum, which could have been decided by one single vote? we're going to talk about a supermajority. he had "single voter with a pencil could have taken us out". and then here we are again, adam. it's all over again, this man. well, yeah, in the 2019 european parliament elections. was it that year? yeah, the brexit party won. yeah. yeah, 2019. brexit party, led by nigel farage, they came in first place. the tories were reduced to single digits when it came to the final vote share, and that was the moment that actually finally when theresa may had to had to resign, that was the trigger.

and i think what that reminds me of is that so often, as laura was hinting at, it's not the actual electoral performance of reform or brexit party or ukip or whatever they're called, it's the effect they have on everyone else. and then the other thing that makes me think of is just that opinion polls, 0k, they're sciencey, but there's a bit of art in there as well because the pollsters have to use theirjudgment when they kind of weight their samples to work out if they're speaking to enough people to represent the whole country. and also when there's something new, there's kind of less of a back... and reform is kind of new because it's not exactly the same as the brexit party or ukip. when there's not like a back catalogue of data to draw on, they have to use theirjudgment even more, which just reinforces this whole thing about the point of these opinion polls is they're snapshots that then can affect the behaviour of everyone else, which then can influence the outcome. well, that's right. and there are some tories who might hope actually that this crossover moment might panic some of their traditional voters to think, "0h, actually, actually,

i'm not really going to do it. actually, i don't really want to vote for anybody other than the conservatives. i am cross with them, but i'm not going to put a cross anywhere else in the ballot". but it is both a problem now for the conservatives in the number of votes that they appear to be leaching to reform. but it's also a return of the classic problem for the tories of how do they deal with the rightward flank of their movement? and nigel farage has been taunting them over that dilemma for decades. you know, he was a career politician. he's been taunting them for a long, long time. somebody who's, you know, worked in this kind of circle of the tory party, that sort of venn diagram of where the euroscepticism and tory party goes together, said to me yesterday, "nigel farage, he wants responsibility as much as he actually wants a vegan cigarette". i don't even know what a vegan cigarette is! does such a thing exist?! i really now want one! you want one? but he wants to make trouble. and this time he's notjust saying, "oh, i want to leave the european union". he's saying, "i want to dismantle the conservatives".

he is saying, and also for me... he's saying that out and out. but it's a classic dilemma of how they manage the right. and the other sort of image that comes into my head in the conversations i've had about this in the last few days is whether it wasjohn major or margaret thatcher or david cameron or theresa may or now rishi sunak, it's never enough. it's the hungry toddler who screams for a piece of toast, gets a piece of toast, and they've won that battle so they scream for another piece of toast, and then another and then another. and then they start screaming for toast and jam, right? so it's more, it's never enough. so there's people in the middle of the conservative party who sort of feel you can't ever accommodate this flank of politics because it will never be enough. so what you have to do is dig into the centre and hold firm. but there are other politicians, suella braverman, robertjenrick, who say, "no, look, rishi sunak�*s mistake was not to be much more radical on the right". accommodating. and that's the dilemma. and whatever happens onjuly the fourth, they're going to be

stuck with that dilemma next time around. because michael howard told the world at one, "the thing is, don't embrace farage. he's not a conservative". right. — but actually listening to you, i'm going to stumble for something that might be interesting to say. let's hope. well, it's the fact that it's not so much psephology as psychology, because as i understand it, all the people who understand how a first—past—the—post system works, the importance of the poll is not that they're going to get more seats, the importance of the poll is it spooks people. and actually keir starmer himself, who is so out in front, does not always look at ease. and it was widely said by many observers of the debate on sky that rishi sunak had fear in his eyes, and adams already hinted, when voters heckle you and laugh at you, he did not look comfortable. nigel farage is living his best life. 0h, loves it. playing eminem! i mean, you were singing

it in the office. i don't advise it. they laugh. if radio 4 listeners are not familiar with eminem, the rapper, his song when there's a lyric saying "guess who's back?" and nigel farage has put out a video on social media, which he's also loving. i mean, could you get any more 2024 — nigel farage on tiktok? this is where the campaign is at right now. but loving it, taunting the tories with the notion of "guess who's back?" but you make a point that one of our emailers... you can email us always — newscast@bbc.co.uk. dorinda — splendid name! dorinda in swindon emailed to say, "the polls look good on paper for the reform party, but do we know what the spread of the vote is throughout the uk? is it concentrated in certain areas which would give them a fair chance of winning a few seats? or is it more evenly spread across the country so that voters will influence the results for conservative and labour, but not be enough for reform to pick up many seats themselves?" dorinda, i actually don't know the specific answer to that because i don't think we've actually got enough data to tell us yet.

but you have hit the nail on the head. well, you've actually hit a few nails on the head because it's like, yeah, the effect that reform has in contests maybe where it's quite close between the conservatives and labourand by standing in that seat, does reform take votes from the conservatives, which then lets labour in? and that's why the brexit party did not stand in lots of conservative seats in the last general election in 2019, to prevent that happening. and then you've hit the nail on the head ofjust the general political theory, which is called vote efficiency. and actually, laura, you and i have talked about this a few times in terms of the labour party, because in the olden days people would say, "0h, labour pile up votes in the cities, but that's where they were going to win anyway. what labour needs to do to win a majority is to spread their electoraljam and butter more evenly across the country". and there's lots of theories that actually behind the scenes, that's what the labour strategists have been doing. and just one other thing. i don't know what you guys have been doing to relax during this election campaign.

i've been reading a book about canadian politics in the �*90s because lots of people are saying, "oh, the reform party is explicitly based on the reform party in canada, which demolished the canadian conservatives in 1993". but what's interesting there is the reform party in canada had a big regional base, which was the west of canada, who were quite antagonistic towards the east coast of canada, and so therefore they had a massive electoral stronghold, the canadian reform party, which helped them. and also they managed to take 55% of the conservatives' votes at the election in 1993. now, that's two things it doesn't look like it's happening here — that huge, huge bite taking out of the conservatives, and also the fact that they don't have a huge kind of...their version of the red wall or a reform wall that's kind of baked into their support. but if, dorinda, you're thinking of the types of seats where they think they could do really well are places like grimsby, maybe scarborough, clacton where nigel farage is standing, boston, skegness, lincolnshire tending to be areas where there

were very strong brexit votes, not exclusively so, but tending to be those kinds of place. but i think, adam, you're absolutely right. that's the thing to understand here. there are probably a few hundred seats where reform might take 10% or more of the vote, if things carry on as they are, and that could have a very significant impact on the number of seats the tories are taking. a full list of candidates in clacton is available on the bbc news website. well done. just a word to you listening, if you still are. many listeners to radio 4 complain that this cause, the nigel farage cause is trampolined by the media — a man who has not won seven times, tried and failed to win a seat seven times. so with respect to everyone, this very political time, we are going to move on. and if you're a listener who writes saying, "why does nigel farage get airtime?" i hope what this crossover poll and the discussion we've had demonstrates that we're trying to understand the psychological as well as the real impact,

and people are writing to us about and we're responding to emails as much as we can. yes, absolutely. people are asking us questions. and at the moment, also reform in this particular poll actually was second just ahead of the tories. but in many polls they've been in third or very near the lib dems, so it is relevant to talk to them. but we know that nigel farage is a marmite figure, but he is somebody who's leading a party who is set, at the moment, to have potentially a very significant impact on this election and the eventual results and the potential scale of what, at this stage, looks like a very likely labour majority, which the tories this week have started to call a supermajority, which isn't really a thing in this country. adam? no. so the idea of a supermajority, it comes from countries that tend to have written constitutions where if you want to change the constitution, you need to get two thirds of your legislature, of your parliament or your assembly to vote for it. so that's where the word supermajority comes from, and we don't really have it. but grant shapps, that

great political innovator from the conservative party, he introduced it to our national conversation this week as a sort of warning, saying, "0h, maybe you don't want to let labour have a majority of 200 plus because it would be bad for our democracy," which, yeah, is an interesting political strategy, isn't it? well, with respect to grant shapps, we don't have the phrase in this system because it's meaningless. and you know, that's not a political opinion. a majority in our parliament — it can be very effective at 40. is that super? absolutely. i mean, historically, a majority of a0 is a perfectly kind of reasonable majority where governments can get their business through perfectly easily. so you've just used the word historically because you deliberately were trying to entice me. i was. because you may know i've come armed, you two, with a clip from 1983. i d0~ _ francis pym was foreign secretary appearing on question time. he was one of the well— known wets who was seen as not loyal to margaret thatcher. and he said this on question time... first of all, i think- a landslide is unlikely.

i think landslides, - on the whole, don't produce successful governments. 1945 was the obvious one, - this massive landslide to labour. i think that was extremely . unfortunate, so i don't think that's likely to happen. well, a marvellous clip from 1983, and it's sad that we don't have politicians who speak in such fabulously clipped tones as that any more. just if you're happening upon us at 11:20 on radio 4, it is laura kuenssberg, paddy o'connell and adam fleming with newscast, which is normally a podcast on bbc sounds, but for the duration of the general election, we are fortunate to be with you on radio 4 every saturday morning. i hope you feel that you are fortunate to be with us, but that of course, is down to you, dear listener. and just let me pick up on francis pym. remember when you say, talking about how he spoke, he won the military cross in the second world war, he was not afraid to speak his mind. but after the 1983 election, what happened to him? he was immediately sacked because it's a totally different dynamic. he was speaking from the ruling party about the same question that grant shapps has been. grant shapps is also speaking from the ruling

party warning of the risk of a landslide, basically. and this tells us two things. it tells us, as we were saying earlier in the week, adam, that the conservative cupboard is quite bare in terms of what they have left to say. so they've chucked a lot of policy and new ideas at people. it isn't shifting the polls in their favour. the polls continually point to labour doing extremely well. so at some point in the conservative headquarters, there was always, as i understand it, going to be a kind of pull the emergency cord and start saying, "don't give labour everything, don't give labour everything". it has surprised some people how early it has come in this campaign. i know there were discussions about when they were going to sort of push that button, but it has surprised some people that it came at this moment, still three weeks out. and when you hear grant shapps say things like that, jeremy hunt, the chancellor, said as much too, that is deliberate everybody, dear listeners. it's not accidental. no, it is deliberate. and you can see it also from some of the conservatives paid—for content online, some of their adverts, you know,

things that would have been billboards ten years ago that are now paid—for content on social media that are all about essentially how badly the tories might do. which tells us the big thing here of all is that the tories, they're not conceding defeat, they're not doing anything of the sort officially, but they are saying, "hey, natural conservative party supporters, smell the coffee, this looks really awful, so don't do something crazy like think about voting for anyone else!" it's a classic "get out the vote" thing, isn't it? yeah. mobilise the people that you know could vote for you just making sure they actually do vote for you. although, interestingly, just as sort of an intra—conservative party thing there, there's an interview in the times this morning with lord cameron, the foreign secretary, who i notice has been doing a lot of things in lieu of the prime minister in the last few weeksm, and he actually is pouring cold water on this strategy. and he says even the phrase supermajority is a bit ridiculous and meaningless because we don't have it in our system. and so i don't think he'sjust criticising the word there.

i think he's maybe criticising that whole strategy as well. and just on the other side, on the labour side, i was speaking to somebody this week who knows keir starmer really well and they said, "well, look, ok, don't pop the champagne corks about there being like a labour majority of 200 because 200 people might kind of take being in government for granted and start fighting amongst themselves quite easily, and actually a big majority can become a big party discipline and party management problem for sir keir starmer if that's what he achieves". i wonder, is thatjust somebody trying to like look not smug? but actually interestingly, though, there is always in politics, isn't it... all our listeners know in politics, there's never quite a consensus about exactly what is going on. and actually, just as we've been discussing, a former cabinet minister hasjust been messaging me saying, "atually this is also always going to be decided in part by people who stay at home. there's no love for labour as there was in �*97. there's anger with the conservatives but unease with keir starmer". ad that's the sofa vote, paddy, isn't it? is that person listening to us live?

are they listening to us live orjust messaging you? yes. 0h, right. hi, whoever you are! they chuckle. i think i want to hear from sir keir. so here he is at the unveiling of his manifesto. and it's interesting, bearing in mind he appeared on radio 4 a few months ago on broadcasting house appealing to conservative voters directly, he praised the status of margaret thatcher on radio 4. and this was the labour leader who had written her off as a student, incidentally. but anyway, here's what he said about wealth creation. wealth creation is our number one priority. i growth is our core business — the only route to improving l the prosperity of our country and the living standards - of working people. and that's why we made it our first national mission in government. i well, what did i say about a topsy turvy election? keir starmer standing up and saying, "my number one priority is creating wealth".

now, for ages, the labour party has been saying, "we have to get the economy growing. that is at the root of everything". only then will they have the money to spend as they'd like to on schools and hospitals and potholes and all sorts of other things to boot. but how interesting that keir starmer — one might say that his team are almost trying to troll people on the labour left, the idea that a labour leader would put wealth creation at the top of the list is quite something. so let's hear from rishi sunak, and he is trying to have his cake and eat it in the sense that the tax burden is rising under the conservatives, but he's warning of the risk of a tax burden rising under labour. your conservative mp will deliver lower taxes, lower immigration, i protected pensions and a sensible approach to net zero. _ now, our country wants a clear plan and bold action. _ our country needs a secure future. and it is this conservative . manifesto that will deliver it. butjust rewinding back to that keir starmer clip and the wealth he's talking about, , it isn't kind of like

cliched 1980s, "yeah, go and work in the city and buy a porsche, everyone!" kind of wealth. he's talking about national wealth and the reason he's talking about boosting that is because labour really, really needs economic growth to pick up because if it doesn't, they will have to either put up taxes or cut public spending by potentially quite a lot to things they say they don't want to do. so actually he's talking about the national wealth there rather than like "loadsa money," harry enfield—style. yeah, that's true. but you mentioned tax there and i think for the next couple of weeks of what remains of this campaign tax is going to stay absolutely at the heart of it because labour said they wouldn't put up some taxes, but they haven't ruled out putting lots up lots of other taxes and they have left that target open to for the tories to hammer them on it in the most kind of traditional way you can possibly imagine. the conservatives saying, "labour will put up your taxes!" labour are saying we won't put up some taxes, but they know that they are leaving that open. but we are also duty bound to talk

about the other manifestos. can i go first on that? you can _ so i was fortunate enough to be sitting in for evan on pm, which meant i met the co—leader of the green party, carla dana, on the launch of the greens manifesto. now the greens are saying if we want better public services, we are going to have to put up taxes. so this is a message for green voters that "we're not playing the game of the other parties and going, oh, whenever, ooh, we don't spend anything". they're saying, "we are going to have to spend". there's a wealth tax here, there's a windfall tax there. and most interestingly, a rise in national insurance for people earning £50,000 a year more. now, some train drivers earn £50,000 a year more and so to headteachers, so i had a conversation with carla dana in which you can listen to on bbc sound on the pm section about what that represents philosophically to say those people must pay more. and explicitly and significantly, the greens are promising a very different economic model and they hope that this time in the election

that they might do rather well, the targeting forces and maybe they'll go increase their representation. the lib dems finally also had their manifesto this week and they are very hopeful of restoring some of their tally in parliament, of course, which was smashed to bits after their experience of being in the coalition, aren't they, adam? and alsojust on the greens, i mean, one of the big revenue raisers they proposed was a carbon tax which would raise something, on their calculations, about £80 billion a year. and ok, that's not going to happen because there's probably not going to be a green government, but actually we will have to start thinking about new ways of raising revenue. for example, when people stop driving petrol cars and pay fuel duty and stuff like that and actually how do you charge people and raise revenue for the government from electric cars? so actually the greens are starting to make people think about that conversation. i think with the lib dems as well, like actually if people care so much about the nhs, but actually the lib dems are the ones talking about the nhs the most, i think. everyone else is kind of quite vague about it. yeah, i wasjust going to say,

bore you both to death with the information that i also like the nitty gritty of manifestos. i'm old—fashioned in that respect. i like to see, you know, "we're going to encourage bird keeping" or whatever it is. and just on the thing that you've mentioned there, labour are going to restore the 2030 target for the end of petrol and diesel cars. because obviously rishi sunak pushed it back to 2035 and we were told that was all down to uxbridge fritness, but now labour put it back in. so there's so much exciting stuff you can read and i find it, to remind me that we, the public are the kingmakers. the detail isjust as important as all the sort of primary colours. although, interestingly, i've just done a control... what's search? control f on the labour manifesto on my laptop for the word "review", right. and it comes up 19 times. one of those times is a reference to the cas review into gender in the nhs. but the others are like reviews about oh, pension investment, the planning system, industrial strategy, lots of labour

are going to review lots of things. they are. which is not the same as doing lots of things. and we have been doing our best to review the party manifestos that have come this week in the third week of this general election campaign of 2024. we're here on newscast every day of the week doing similar kind of thing, talking about what's gone on. but. thank you for listening. and see you on bbc sounds soon. bye— bye. newscast from the bbc.

live from london, this is bbc news.

royal return — the princess of wales makes her first official appearance since being diagnosed with cancer. israel says eight of its soldiers were killed during "operational activity" in rafah. the hamas—run health ministry says 30 palestinians were killed across gaza in the past 24 hours. president zelenskyjoins almost 100 nations' leaders gathered in switzerland — to discuss how to end the war in ukraine. and muslim pilgrims in mecca struggle with extreme temperatures at the climax of the annual hajj. hello, i'm tanya beckett. the princess of wales has made her first official public appearance since announcing she was being treated for cancer. she joined the rest of the royal family at the annual trooping the colour parade to mark the king's official birthday.

it's the first royal engagement she has carried out this year.