moments when all the big world leaders were there, rishi sunak, chris, wasn't there. david cameron the foreign secretary was the sort of the pretend pm today. yeah. so rishi sunak has been involved in the various commemorations for much of the last couple of days, but wasn't there at that exact point when there were plenty of leaders sort of doing their thing and wandering about and saying saying a few things and meeting some of the veterans. and so, yeah, lord cameron, the foreign secretary, mingling with the french president and the german chancellor and the us president and all the rest of it. and yeah, rishi sunak at that point no longer there. i suppose, laura, with prime minister's duty calls all the time, and sometimes the duty isn't the kind of the world leader stuff. well, that's right. i mean, we should say he did make a speech today, so it's not like he sat there for 5 minutes and then disappeared. but you're right, at some of the crucial sort of maximum moments of potent choreography, it was david cameron who was actually there in his place. it's one of the things actually that paddy is completely

obsessed with this. we've talked about this a lot on the weekend newscast that david cameron, because of his former job, can sort of slip in and out of that role very, very easily. some people might raise an eyebrow and say, "oh, perhaps too easily." but, you know, as you say, actually for prime minister, you're trying to run the country as well as run an election campaign. that is a challenge that they've got that actually the leader of the opposition doesn't have, you know, before too long there's the g7 as well. i think the prime minister will be trying to cram in and you know, the small matter of still having to deal with red boxes and so on and so forth. but you're right, it does mean that this big moment of history, some of the snaps that we'll see in the papers tomorrow, will not have the british current prime minister. they'll have the former prime minister. and i suppose there is something slightly awkward about that. i have to say, i love the pictures on social media of david cameron out campaigning on the doorstep and literally on someone�*s doorstep. that's my favourite moment. oh, yes. they recorded through the doorbell camera. we're not in! but but it did make me wonder two

things is one, were they in but they didn't answer? they thought it was politician. yeah. but also, and it's something we've asked actually viewers and newsletter readers and i'd love to know from newscasters as well, have people spotted politicians in their area and where have they been? because the place is. so if you see david cameron turning up in hampshire where he was in this campaign and you see keir starmer turning up in gillingham in kent, as he did on the first day. that tells us that the campaigns are running in very different ways, that the tories are trying to shore up seats that might normally be completely safe and labour is trying to stretch their tentacles to plenty of areas that they haven't held for a long time. so do let us know. i'd love to know if anybody spotted a politician in somewhere really funny or really interesting. or what have they said to you on the doorstep? yeah, rishi sunak was in henley in oxfordshire, of all places,

the other day, which has been a conservative seat for about a trillion years. and that was another amazing moment, wasn't it, with the photo bomb of the lib dems down? yes. yes, it certainly was. yeah. no, quite. and you know, the fact that the lib dems were there and the prime minister was there, these places are picked carefully. the time of the senior figures is precious and yeah, it tells you something about where they conclude the battlegrounds are. so i love it. laura wants people to send in intellectually, editorially interesting sightings of politicians. i want people to send in funny videos from the door bell cameras, because actually, much of this campaign is quite retro and old fashioned, i've been complaining about it. but one of the innovations that we didn't really have five years ago was door bell cameras. i reckon one up from a door bell camera would be some dashcam footage, you know, of a politician crossing the zebra crossing or crossing the pelican in front of you. 0r being caught speeding like ed davey was this weekend. tut tut tut. yes. although a part of that was he said

that he hadn't even got the fine the first time round and so he would have paid it or he there was an administrative error. there was a bit of a paperwork cock up on top of going rather quicker than he should have been. anyway, talking about money and paperwork, there's been a story about that for the conservatives because the businessman frank hester, who was a tory donor, then he got into hot water for some comments he made about diane abbott that people thought were were quite violent and quite racist. he's now a tory donor again, chris. he is. so we knew that he'd given plenty of money, ten million quid in the past. what we've found out with this latest set of declarations is that there was an additional £5 million injanuary and then there was a further 150 grand in march, early march, march the eighth. and the reason that date matters and the donation was formally accepted by the conservatives about a week later on, on the 14th is that is when that whole row about that recording with those remarks that you referred to was all over the news and where rishi sunak and others

were being asked a, you know, will you condemn the remarks? and b. did i say..? i thought i said one and two then, yeah. b, will you give the money back? and they didn't give the money back. they never claimed that they would, by the way. but yeah, whilst that was swirling they were accepting additional money on top of the, i mean wads of the stuff that had been coming their way from mr hesterfor quite a while. politics needs money. politics during election campaigns needs lots and lots and lots of money. and while you might think, oh, well, a party, a big party like the tories is always got loads of cash and labour's always got loads of cash from the unions. that's actually not how it works. politicians and political parties have to work very hard to get their hands on the huge amounts of dosh that they spend in election campaigns. another thing that's been rumbling in the background and sort of making its way into the foreground occasionally for the conservatives is their selection of candidates, because we're approaching the deadline for when people actually have to sign their papers to be standing as a candidate in their constituency.

and newscastersuzanne has been all over this. hello. newscast, please, can you explain the selection process and deadline for new candidates at the election? has rishi's surprise date caused a problem, particularly for the conservatives? thank you. which caused a rush. it's definitely caused. and to a greater or lesser extent, this happens at every election because a lot of mps will leave it very late before announcing that they're going to retire or go and do something else and all the rest of it. and sometimes they are encouraged to do just that by their parties because that means that there is a narrow window into which you can find successes or potential successes and therefore potentially ensure that the people you want end up in those places, rather than being a more long winded process that might throw up people who you are less keen on. so we've been racing towards this deadline, which is on friday, for the closure of nominations when people have to, you know, sign on the dotted line and say they want to stand for party x or party y or as an

independent or whatever. and so what we've seen in the last couple of days, particularly with labour and the conservatives, is a rapid hurtle towards ensuring that they've got people in all the seats where they want to have people, and in particular folk in folk who they would like in seats that they hope they're going to win. and from the conservative perspective to really interesting examples in the last 2a hours, so richard holden, conservative party chairman, has been the mp in county durham for the last five years, but his seat was abolished in the shake up and redrawing of the constituencies. he's been all over the place on social media, popping up, supporting conservative campaigns left, right and centre, and until very recently did not actually have a, you know, a campaign of his own, a constituency of his own, and tell, hey, presto, with not very long to go, he ends up being the only conservative candidate to be the conservative candidate.

in basildon and billericay in essex, which, as luck would have it for mr holden, is one of the safest conservative seats around. so yeah, so that's that. and then we fast forward 2a hours to today as we record on thursday and zoom to the other end of the uk to aberdeenshire and another high profile conservative, douglas ross, who i think i'm right in saying was the first conservative, maybe even the first mp in the last parliament to say he would stand down at the election who are suddenly decided with hours to spare that no he won't, and that it actually stand in an aberdeenshire seat, which is was on the last minute lookout for a conservative candidate, because david jukes, who is a former minister and has been in a spinal injuries unit for quite a while, serious injury was not standing even though he wanted to, because he said the party he is his health was you know, was a was an issue. he did want to stand there, though. so it's one of those examples where you can see real often anger,

because there was real anger amongst local conservatives in basildon and billericay where the party structures, as far as it can be seen locally, are seen to be sort of imposing chosen voices on them. and we've seen similar in labour. and we talked a lot about it with labour last week. you know, the blue suits who worked for keir starmer, some of them turning into red princes who then end up in, you know, safe plum seats for the party and being imposed in the last minute. and it does really hack off local parties, no question. i mean, there was a local tory councillor said about richard holden, we don't know him, he's chairman of the party. but so what, what has he done for basildon and billericay? nothing. and i think, you know, it's fair to say it is not a good look for the chairman of a political party to end up on a shortlist of one in a plum safe seat in an election when it looks like there aren't very many safe seats. i mean, that is not how to keep your

grassroots members happy. i think the weird thing about this to me is that the tories had first mover advantage in this election and they went with that first mover advantage but hadn't sort out sorted out all of their candidates. and i think that they... you know, you can see why labour have had a scramble. you could see why the tories shouldn't have had a scramble because they are the ones who had a heads up, but they've had a scramble too. but candidate selection can often be very messy, so it's not unusual that big political parties end up in a bit of a mess. but susanna it's a very, very good question and i hope we've managed to answer it at least partly. it's a bit of a mess. yeah, i should quickly say, given that i didn't name a seat specifically there, that there'll be a full list of all of the candidates in basildon and billericay and indeed in that corner of aberdeenshire one on the bbc website once the closure of nominations comes around. on that point about the surprise thing, laura, i was talking to a senior labour party the other day, he was saying and they were of course they were making a partisan point, but they were saying, how come the conservatives seemed more surprised about this surprise election than than they did?

because only ten people were involved. a decision there is that there is that but yeah, particularly in for the conservatives in seats that are likely to prove astonishingly difficult for them and have been stunningly difficult for them even in in better times for the conservative party. i think it's been a particular channel. what's interesting about this is you get political news stories that unfold over days and weeks and then you get political news stories that actually unfold over decades. and in this case, the one that's unfolding over decades is mps becoming local champions, people who solve your local problem and stand up for your local area in parliament. and actually, for centuries there's been an argument about whether that's what people are there to do or whether you're there to just be part of parliament and part of the government or part of the opposition, and that your interest is running the entire country rather than being like a lobbyist for... yeah, are you places actually a place is representative in westminster or representing or westminster�*s

representative in place acts, you know, that kind of dynamic. go back to a—level politics and read some edmund burke or we could talk about the green party of england and wales is big policy launch today, which is about the nhs in england. so they want to increase taxes on the very wealthy and corporations. they want to raise an extra £50 billion a year, £30 billion of that would go on, on the nhs, on hospitals and treatment and 20 billion would go on social care. chris, what do you make of that? big numbers, just to put that that 50 billion figure into proportion as far as england's health budget is concerned, it's about 180 billion a year and that's more than the nhs that takes it's to be beyond the nhs because as you were saying, with social care, but nonetheless it's a big number and a big proportion of a big number that the greens are advocating. they want a new wealth tax, 1% on assets of more than ten million, 2% on assets of more than a billion. and then also shifting capital gains tax so that it is in line with the current bans on income tax.

so again, i guess ultimately cranking up what is a well, i guess more of a wealth tax than a than an income based tax. and there are arguments when inevitably the question comes, blimey, that's quite a that's one heck of a thing, is that they make the argument that that would bring england in line with comparable european countries in terms of their in terms of their health funding. and they make the argument that other political parties, in their view, are not willing to do enough to address what they see as a crisis in the nhs. do you know what's interesting to me about all of this? and we had adrian ramsey, one of the co—leaders on the programme on sunday, is that the greens are really the only party who look at the economy in a completely different way to everybody else. and i think it's one of their appeals to a certain type of voter. you know, they essentially think that we have enough resources, there is enough to go round in society. we should not, as all the other political parties want to do, be pursuing the growth

of the economy as a relentless goal. they take a completely different view of the world, and that's the kind of bigger context into which all these policies sit, which is a really it's a really, really interesting thing. they also do, like the other parties have tripped up over some of their candidates and they confirmed today that they were booting out some of their candidates who had been discovered over the last few weeks, i should say, to be expressing some pretty unpleasant anti—semitic views online or liking tweets here and there. so they have had problems with candidates as well in the rush to be able to populate that big giant list of standing as many candidates as you can around the country. and it's the classic smaller party problem, isn't it? they don't have the resources to screen everyone. and equally there people aren't front line household name politicians. so if you if you do a bad tweet and you're in the shadow cabinet or whatever or you're a senior a senior spokesperson or you're in in the commons, it gets noticed if you're somebody just battling away as an activist for one of these parties and smaller

parties, then it doesn't get noticed until the spotlight swings around to you election time. and also the other point i was going to make about that is... and i can't remember my second point you're like me last night. you know, it's like me every day. what was my second point? and i can't remember what it was. oh, no, it's that things on lurking on your website that no one noticed because people weren't looking at it in huge numbers, like a quite controversial comment about caesarean sections for childbirth, then suddenly thrust into the limelight as well. and you have to take it off your website because people go, hang on. scrutiny. so it's gold or rationing of meat and dairy. so last weekend, before the manifesto emerged, we found in their policy document that they planned rationing of meat and dairy. but as soon as we asked aaron ramsey about that on the programme on sunday, he rather rapidly said, oh, i don't

think that will be in the manifesto. he suddenly realised people around the nation were thinking, what do i have to put down my bacon sarnie? what is this anyway? there may be a case for that, right? if you're talking about sharing resources more fairly around the country, i'm not saying that is a bad idea, but is this clearly not the kind of idea that you would imagine british voters in enormous number would want to plump for, would want to plump for. although they are for the greens being very explicit about what what taxes they would raise. and actually everyone else, everyone else seems to be in like a like an auction to bid down how, how few taxes they could increase or generally. yeah. which, sort of brings us to that wider point that we've talked about on newscasts before. but i've become conscious of as we as we're now, what a fortnight into into this sort of parade of promises. and that's before we even get to the manifestos which will start tumbling our way next week. is that bigger picture kind of fiscal backdrop to sound sort of momentarily pompous. in other words, you know, whatever whoever wins the election inherits a situation that is going to involved some really, really tricky

trade offs, particularly when you look at the conservatives and labour and what they are saying around taxes and the conservatives constantly trying to tease and tantalize labour into accepting particular tax changes or tax freezes or whatever it might be that the conservatives themselves are advocating. you know, whoever is prime minister after the election, looking at how they are going to firstly, attempt to deliver what whatever it is they promise in these manifestos coming in the coming days, but then also translate whatever sense of if not optimism, then certainly goodwill or whatever it might amount to after an election to after an election. might not be much of that either. how do you sort of move from that and move from all of this sort of swirl of noise of these weeks to the kind of crunching reality of what we know was the backdrop just a couple of months ago and sure as heck will be the backdrop in a couple of months' time? one thing, though, that i'm a bit surprised that both of them have chosen to go at it quite in this way, because both of them also know from their private polling

that lots of members of the public aren't really in the mood to believe anything that any politician says to them about tax promises. and you just wonder, actually, is this the kind of stuff that is really going to shift anybody's view? anyway, we digress. we could talk about this all night and we're ramping up the time. yeah, but then you get to the situation where people put something in their manifesto about tax that voters don't believe at the time. but then when the person breaks the promise in parliament, when they're in power a few months later they get criticised because they've broken their promise on tax, which was a promise no one believed anyway. anyway, right. let's hearfrom mark in cumbria, who's got a very good political science question. hello, newscast and election cast jan markey from workington in cumbria. do you remember that ahead of the 2019 election, the phrase workington man was used to describe the stereotypical swing voter? should we be focused on a different seat this time? also, thanks to him for helping us ooze election news. ooh, i love that.

we love that. isn't that terrific, laura? workington man was your era as political editor. so what's your take on that? that phenomenon? workington man came from a think tank called onward sidebar. people from onward are now in powerful places, and one of them is has been the prime minister's deputy chief of staff, i think, who's now standing as a candidate. but anyway, i digress. so onward, a london based research group think tank came up with the phrase workington man, the sort of poster boy for, i suppose, the kind of northern end of middle england who, you know, is terrible cliches used to like the labour party, voted for brexit is probably into rugby league, i mean total cliche territory, but as a voting group was seen as completely critical, people who had been labour for most of their life, they lived in a kind of labour part of the world and they might be tempted to vote for boris johnson's

party, partly because they'd been brexiteers, but they were interested in borisjohnson's political offer to use a terrible piece of politicaljargon. so this time, this campaign, i would say the equivalent that's been put forward by a different political research group is whitby woman, that wonderful seaside town on the north coast, because what we've seen in some of the research suggests that it is conservative tending women who are the ones who have potentially swung away. there may be older in age, there may be interested in the kind of socially conservative policies that we see in the tories already come outwith. so whitby women i think has already become this year's workington man. but to be honest, as everybody knows, because i'm always banging on about i don't like cliches and i don't like any of these kinds of terms, whether it's red wall, blue wall. worcester woman was the new labour one. but what it talks to is a particular group manner thing back in the nineties. is that right? basildon man in 92 i think

basildon man was meant to win it for the tories in 92 and then in 97 labour got worcester women. but now i'm sounding very old. but my question, the one wasn't it at one point ijust think they always sound like those skeletons, glaciers going, oh, we found such and such man who reveals that humans lived on berries. that's right. and this sort of both useful and unusable, these kinds of cliches. but they but they are cliches. but, mark, it's fantastic to hear from a real, an actual workington man rather than a cliched workington man. but mark, you didn't tell us what your politics are. i'd like to know that. were you misrepresented by that terrible cliche or not? yeah. mark, get back in touch. email us — newscast at bbc.co. uk. although he already knows our email address because you already emailed us. i mean, it's for other people who don't know it now. laura, i thought we could end where we where we started, go full circle and talk about d—day. and i know that you have been delving into your own family archive. well, it's funny, i don't like to talk about my family. i think it's bad enough for people i'm related to that. i'm on tv at all. however, d—day really made me think

about one of my grandpas who landed on the 13th ofjune on the normandy coast. he was one of the people in the 44th lowland brigade of the 15th scottish division. and i don't ever remember him talking about what happened, but he did write down what happened to him and his comrades. and i went and read some of it today as i saw some of those images. and like everybody else watching, i found them so moving. and i went back to some of the things that he had written down and he wrote about the wait and they were waiting off the coast. and then they landed on the 13th ofjune, and he wrote that his brigade were all volunteers. and this really stood with me. he said, "the men who became soldiers, they'd all been living ordinary lives before the war. and they were farm hands, bank clerks, bus drivers, professional footballers, shop assistants, mill workers and men of a hundred other trades." and then he wrote notjust about the landing, which he actually didn't write very much about, but about what happened next. because, of course, d—day was the beginning then of that massive push across europe with all those allied

troops fighting on then for weeks and weeks and weeks. and he said these were his lasting memories, which i'm just going to quote from his words, because i can't say it better. he said, "the lasting memories of those desperate days in normandy are little things picked out of the vast collection of memory pictures, the ghastly smell of dead cows and dead men on the shore rose the eternal dust, the frenchman who lived in the little house by the oden bridge and refused to leave even when the mortar bombs were falling all around the schoolhouse at granville, where the dinner was spoilt by a direct hit from a shell. and above all, the bliss of a long, long sleep. of a long, long sleep when the battle was over." and ijust was so moved by seeing that today. and it made me think of my family. and ijust think it's incredible that all of these huge scenes that we see, these massive ceremonials, the huge thousands

and thousands of thousands of people who were involved, but actually at the core of it, probably for everyone's family somewhere, somehow there's someone with a connection to that extraordinary summer of 1944. and ijust found it very moving. and also the fact that that letter will exist forever in a world where so many things like come and go. i don't remember him ever speaking about it, but it's very precious to me that he wrote it down. and today, you know, 80 years later, i could dig it out and have a look. oh, laura, thank you very much for sharing that with us. i know i feel very self—indulgent because i don't normally ever talk about things like that, but i thought today was for many families a very special occasion. that's what makes it more special because. yeah, that's that's you delving into your own family past. we really appreciate it. you and i reconvene on friday night as an episode of newscasts

after the the seven way debate on bbc one. and we need snacks. yes, don't worry. i'm going to just already working out what takeaway we're going to get that's away. you're going to get takeaway? the margarita because it's a friday night. i've had pizza so many times this week already. i hate to confess, but. so i'll get you a pizza. i might get some of that different cuisine. and before that, i'll be speaking to michelle hussein for a bonus episode of newscast, which will be on bbc sounds on friday mid—morning, where she won't reveal the questions she's going to put to them all. but she will hopefully revealjust actually what it's like standing in the spotlight, trying to wrangle all those big egos. and chris, i'll speak to you soon. who knows where? who knows why? indeed. as if michelle hasn't got enough on tomorrow, she's going to going to do newscasts as well. it's a casual chat amongst friends. i suppose so. bye everyone. problem by newscast. newscast.

newscast from the bbc. hello there. all week the weather story has been stuck in repeat. it's been cool and showery to the far north—west — further south we've seen some sunshine and we had that on thursday, a maximum of 20 degrees with some sunny spells and lighter winds in london. but further north and shetland, a brisk west to north—westerly wind at times, sharp showers, just a maximum of ten celsius, 50 fahrenheit. now we're going to see more widespread rain to start the day on friday with this weather front sinking its way south and east. it'll be clearing scotland during the morning rush hour, leaving a trail of sharp showers following on behind. there's our weather front moving out of aberdeenshire, across the scottish borders, leaving northern ireland as well. so there will be a little more in the way of drier, brighter weather for northern ireland as we go through the day. starting off fine and sunny once again across england and wales. the cloud will develop as we go into the afternoon.

there'll be a few isolated showers ahead of that front, but the front will think its way steadily south and weaken as it moves into northern england and north wales. sunny spells, blustery showers accompanied by that brisk west wind in scotland, making it feel once again disappointingly cool forjune — 11 to 1a degrees at the very best. highest values in the south and east once again, 19 or 20 degrees. so as this where the front continues to sink its way steadily south, the cooler air will always sit in place across scotland and perhaps northern fringes of northern ireland. with clouds sinking south to begin with on saturday morning we might just start off with double digits, but that means it is going to be a cloudy start across the midlands, stretching down into south wales with outbreaks of light showery rain. that will push its way into the south and east during the afternoon. sunny spells blustery showers, particularly across north and west facing coasts. so we were stuck in a rut. and again, those temperatures, similar values to what we've seen

all week, 11 to 1a degrees in the north, perhaps 17 or 18 in the south and east. don't expect that much in the way of significant change as we move into sunday. again, the wind direction, in fact, strengthening more showers to come. high pressure is desperately trying to build, but it is going to keep us waiting. so no significant change for the second half of the weekend either. best of the sunshine likely for england and wales.

welcome to newsday. the headlines. world leaders and veterans mark the 80th anniversary of d—day — a day that changed history. translation: we are all today children of— translation: we are all today children of the _ translation: we are all today children of the d-day _ translation: we are all today children of the d-day landings. | president zelensky was given a standing ovation — and a promise of continued support from president biden.

it tells us freedom is not free. you want to know the price of freedom? come to normandy and look. go to the other cemeteries and europe where our fallen heroes rest. we'll have full coverage of the events in northern france. also in the programme: dozens reportedly killed in an israeli strike on a school in gaza. plus, with atrocities continuing in myanmar, the bbc gets rare access to a region affected by the violence. and a successful test flight for spacex with a bumpy journey back to earth. hello and welcome to the programme. world leaders — and some of the last surviving veterans — have taken part in ceremonies in france to commemorate the 80th anniversary of d—day.

onjune 6th, 19114 — along sword, juno, gold,