many election—related questions that newscasters have sent in, so that is what we shall do on this episode of newscast. i said "shall". that seems like a very posh way of saying "will", doesn't it? newscast from the bbc. this is a sort of tradition we've started in the last few weeks of the election on the friday, when maybe there's a bit less like campaign activity... actually, scratch that. there's the same level of campaign activity, but we've just not quite got as much energy to run around after it. we thought this is a great opportunity to get people to send in their questions and we'll do our best to answer them. absolutely. so newscasters will set the running order and we'll do our best to ask questions. and i think, although there is still lots of campaign activity, actually, news stories aside — like the story about betting or the story about d—day — the campaign itself, actually on both sides, it's kind of in a rhythm. and we've had those big moments like the manifestos, we've had most of the debates — not all, but most of

the kind of set pieces — so actually it is a good time to do some questions that people want answers to. yeah, so you've sent in the questions. we're going to brainstorm the answers... crosstalk well, i don't know. some of these, i think, maybe are slightly more discursive rather than, like, right or wrong answers. right, question one is from phil, and he says... oh, this isjust basically what we've just been saying. "is there such a thing as election fatigue? and if so, how might campaigns track and consider this? do they work to time key announcements early to try and avoid policy commitments not landing with voters?" so i think there's two things that seem contradictory there. one, yes, there is such a thing as people going, "oh, my god, i want it over, just get on with it." there is also, however, the fact that there are lots and lots of voters who don't really tune in properly until the very last minute, because guess what — people have got better things to do than obsess about politics all day long. i mean, imagine that! i know — hard to understand. so the two things are sort of contradictory in a way,

and campaigns absolutely do obsess and think about who's paying attention, when they're paying attention. manifestos land, for example, around the time that postal votes start landing, so people who are thinking about voting early have had a chance to see the parties�* plans in full. but, yeah, there is definitely a thing about pace. interestingly, i was talking to somebody on... well, actually, both sides of the campaign in the last 2a hours say that their campaign hqs are actually a bit quieter now, partly because if there's anybody who hasn't got importantjobs to do in campaign hq, they're out on the road, they're banging on doors. so do you remember a couple of weeks ago we were saying you get kind of...manifestos and then just message, "just hammer it, hammer it, hammer, hammer on doors, hammer what's going on." hammer it, hammer on doors, hammer what's going on." so, yes, phil, there is such a thing as campaign fatigue, but... maybe i won't say campaign fatigue, but there's definitely such a thing as phases. but i suppose there's also the flip side of fatigue, which is politics intruding into places where it

doesn't normally exist... sure. ..because they want to reach every single voter. and to do that, you have to be where the voters are rather than where the politics is, which is why you see keir starmer popping up on football podcasts or you see rishi sunak popping up on loose women like he did a few weeks ago. that's right. it's interesting, though, because they did those kinds of things really early on. so, look, there may be more. maybe they'll both be kind of trying to get their butts on the this morning sofa for next week, i don't know, or the one show or whatever. it's possible that we'll see that, because you're right — at the moment, it'sjust, "magnify the message, try to get into people's faces as much as they can." right, question two comes in the form of a voice note from pip. hi, newscast. thanks for guiding me through the election. i wish i had you when i was an a—level politics student. my question is, why haven't the conservatives been more vocal about their plans to reduce immigration? it seemed to be one of their main topics pre—election, with the plan to cut small boats and sending people on flights to rwanda. is it because reform dominate the conversation in this area? also, where has suella braverman gone?

are some tories like her and kemi badenoch keeping a lower profile to distance themselves from the potential catastrophic tory performance ? keep up the great work. thank you, pip. i don't think you would need our help in a—level politics, judging by the amount of analysis you crammed into that actually quite short voice note. it was very impressive. i hope you got an a, whenever it was. 0k, right, where should we start? yeah, let's start off with the conservative message on immigration and whether it's as prominent as one might have expected, considering how much parliamentary time, say, went into the rwanda legislation being passed. i think it has been prominent, but not perhaps as prominent as you might have expected because no flights have taken off to rwanda, small numbers have gone up. —— have taken off to rwanda, small boat numbers have gone up. however, it's very prominent in the attack on the labour party. so if you think about, actually, parties have got sort of two sides on everything, they've got their defensive position saying, "oh, what we've done is marvellous, vote for us," and then they've got the attack position where they're pointing at the other side saying, "oh, you're the baddies and you're not going to do

anything about that." so i think in their attack message against labour and the others, immigration is very prominent, but they're not battering it, really, in terms of their defence message, if you want to call it that. they are talking about it, though. they are talking about it, and they are talking about how illegal migration has started to come down. but i think they know it's one of the reasons why some voters, particularly the kind that are attracted to reform, are very unhappy with what they see — some people would describe, nigel farage would describe — as the conservatives�* betrayal post—brexit, when, of course, for lots of voters, it was about immigration going down and, of course, it's gone up. and we'll come on to the second half of pip�*s question in a second. but i was just going to make two observations there... oh, and this is the problem — when you can never remember the second one when you're in the middle of the first one. a, b...! anyway, my first impression is, yeah, there were changes to the visa system for legal migration — so, who could get work visas, who they could bring with them and changes to the social care visa for people coming in to help boost

the social care workforce. those changes have been made, but they were only starting to be felt in the numbers. and so you can see some of those people in the conservative party saying, "0h, did we really have to have this election so soon? "if we'd waited three more months, maybe there'd be some better news." actually, you can see, they would quote that in their argument... they would. ..that actually, in three months�* time, net migration will almost certainly be lower than it was a month ago. and suella braverman, the former home secretary, who we haven't seen that much of in this campaign, central office of the tory party wouldn't really want her to be out there because she's a prominent critic now of rishi sunak. but she and others like robertjenrick would also say, "i tried to get rishi sunak to do these things for more than a year and he wouldn't listen, and he only in the end was forced into doing it." and it's only recently, then, they've got evidence of what the prime minister would say is that, "my plan is working, so stick to the plan." but i think that it's kind of a reminder, it's a tricky issue. and it's interesting we haven't seen much of kemi badenoch either. we haven't seen much of anybody on the tory side apart

from the prime minister... and mel stride! and mel stride and mark harper, the transport secretary. now, if you are a wizened old hack or if you are a conservative who likes to chat about things privately, you might suggest that cabinet ministers just aren't willing to go out to stump for what some people believe has been a very disastrous campaign thus far. if you are less cynical than that, you might say, "well, the campaign has been designed very much around rishi sunak himself," and also lots of those erstwhile cabinet ministers are busy doing something called "trying to keep their own seats" rather than gallivanting around the country, being on the airwaves. also on the suella braverman point, do you remember an event a few days ago? i can't remember if it was a hustings or an interview — rishi sunak listed some previous home secretaries and he missed out suella braverman, even though she's had the job twice. was it a deliberate burn, do we think? i think it was. yes, i think it was. although he also missed out grant shapps, who actually only had the job for a week, so maybe that's more understandable.

was it even a week?! maybe six days, actually. oh, and the second observation i was going to make was a bit about... you've remembered — hurrah! thanks for buying that time for me, though. ..was about the tories�* political positioning at the start of the campaign. do you remember, there was a theory that lots of the announcements at the start were designed to appeal to people who were tory voters but were thinking of voting reform? that's true, yeah, absolutely... if you were trying to appeal to them, why would you do a sort of reform—lite message on immigration when, as you were suggesting, nigel farage is like... he's got a much tougher message, which he can do because he's not likely to have to deliver any policies to get there. ijust wonder if, actually, in the early stages, if you're trying to focus on those voters as the conservatives, you would be like, "oh, maybe there's other things we can appeal to those people with." pip was onto that, and so are you. pip, let us know what you got on your a—level politics! shall we have a question from susie and catrina in thurso? yes, please. hello, newscast. my wife and i, who live in the far north of scotland, in thurso,

are really interested to know what would happen if a similar electoral system to that used for holyrood were applied to the westminster parliament. isn't proportional representation actually fairer? and doesn't it better serve and represent citizens? thank you! well, it's a great question. so, in the scottish parliament, as there is in other parts of the world and in other parliamentary systems, there's a form of proportional representation. i'm not going to go on and on and on about how it works at the moment because we don't need to. but it's a form of pr where you vote for somebody on a list who's representing the party and also your local person. so it's a sort of half in, half out kind of system. i think it's almost impossible to work out what the impact would be on westminster if it was that kind of system, because it's not just that the numbers would stack up differently, but also the parties might behave differently and they might campaign differently — because everything about westminster, even the way that the parties are set up opposite each other, close to each other,

the distance of a sword, is designed for tough debate, scrutiny, arguing. now, the proponents of that system say that means that you get decisive government whose arguments get tested by oppositions rather than a situation where you're sitting around trying to find consensus and you end up sort of with a mushy middle. proponents of that system would say, it's much better to be consensual, you have a fairer representation of where most people are, whereas in the first past the post system, it may be that a party can get millions of votes but hardly any seats, if indeed any seats at all. but ijust think this is a stumper. i just think we can't say what the likely results would be, because i think even if you did put it through some kind of very complicated abacus, the behaviour of the politicians and the parties involved would be different or might be different. and also, there'd be a massive political constitutional process about introducing a new voting system for the westminster parliament, and who knows which system we'd end up? because that would be a product

of the political forces that led to that happening and the political forces in the discussion. it would. there's no guarantee it'll be the same system as scotland. correct. and it's also worth remembering that this question was put to people in 2013 in a referendum... sorry, that's my phone going. this was put to people, the public, in 2013, in a referendum that the lib dems wanted, because they've long been proponents of pr. a different kind of pr was put to the public and the public didn't want it and turn—out was really low. it doesn't mean that people might not want it 11 years later, but i think that this is a stumper. but also, not to get too technical, but that referendum was on the idea of the alternative vote... it was. ..which people called a form of proportional representation, but, strictly speaking, it wasn't, because that was to guarantee that every member of parliament had won at least 50% of the votes in their constituency. because there's so many members of parliament, more people didn't vote for them than voted for them, and so that's

not necessarily a system of pr. it may be more proportional... laura groans yeah, and this is what i mean — people say pr, it's like, "well, which version do you mean?" exactly. there's like a hundred different versions. and i'm very impressed that you remembered that from 2013. at the time, i remember absolutely nailing the simplest, most accurate 25—second explanation of it, that i used to be able to, like, press f7 and i could do it off pat — can't now. unfortunately, it was a decade ago! i remember doing a little trial run with some schoolkids about their favourite flavour of crisp, and using the alternative vote, cheese and onion came out favourite, which people were surprised by — "how can cheese and onion be anyone's favourite? " oh, that is so controversial. what would yours be? oh, i... salt and vinegar. yeah. well, hard to beat. i have a favourite shape of crisp, which i'll leave open for discussion. shape? quaver? a skip? much more traditional than that... disco? much more geometric than that! mccoy's ? square! salt and vinegar squares.

i'm not endorsing crisps. we digress. this is question number... 0h, we're only on question four... oh, my goodness! rachel — "if keir starmer became prime minister, is there any good reason why he couldn't or wouldn't bring ed davey" — lib dem leader — "into his cabinet as a minister or adviser for social care reform?" rachel continues, "having watched davey�*s piece about caring for his sonjohn, it strikes me that he would be the perfect person to go about reforming and improving the sector, given his lived experience of caring. can you have people in your cabinets that are not of the same party as you?" well, that's a very interesting question, rachel. so from time to time, prime ministers do sometimes put people in the house of lords, for example, in order that they can be... got so many sources calling you! it's just, it's a busy time. i thought i'd put my phone on silent... yeah. so, ministers in the lords? yeah, so you have a "government of all the talents", which was a terrible acronym that led to people being called goats, so people with particular expertise were sometimes put into the house of lords so that they could become a government minister. now, i think the main reason why

a politician wouldn't want to do this as prime minister is because, fundamentally, most of them are very, very tribal. if you gave a plum cabinetjob or a plum ministerialjob to anyone that wasn't in your party, you're going to hack off a lot of people... yeah. ..and part of being a good leader is being able to manage your own tribe. so i think it's very, very, very, very unlikely. but i don't think there's a technical reason why you couldn't do it. i just think that, in reality, they wouldn't because then you'd get into, "well, is it a coalition?" well, and think about it... and ed davey then is the leader of an opposition party. he couldn't be in the government, but then be able to vote against things. precisely. and i'm just thinking of the people that have been appointed to jobs from another party, and they tend to be kind of non—government, non—corejobs like advisers on a particular subject or heads of reviews... exactly. and also, the people that tend to get offered those jobs are people

who are not your average member of the other political party. they've got like a back—story that means they're not typical. exactly. so you might get somebody like admiral west, who was put in the lords to be a minister — former navy head honcho — was made a minister by gordon brown. or you might get somebody like andrew adonis, who was a sort of policy wonk expert, very well—respected by people who was sort of in the labour movement but wasn't seen as sort of being particularly... he was actually quite a lib dem... yeah. and he may... you know, without doing a potted history of andrew adonis, as you say, they often tend to be people who were slightly out of the thing. so i wouldn't be surprised this time, for example, if someone like louise casey, who is a crossbench peer, ends up with some kind ofjob in government. there are also lots of rumours about whether david miliband might be put in the house of lords and given some kind of important foreign job... perhaps as deputy foreign secretary (europe, leading renegotiating things with brussels)? or with special responsibilities for ukraine.

interesting. however, look, there's lots and lots of rumours about this, and at this stage, we just do not know, including a rumour that sue gray was going to be sent straight to the lords and given a peerage — which i was told was something unbroadcastable. as in a load of "beep"! because i was about to say, you just broadcast it, so... no, i was told it was something... all i mean is there's a real swirl at the moment about speculation of who might get whatjobs if labour wins, because as someone was saying to me today, labour's kind of started to shed some of its anxiety about being able to get to the end of the day and, clearly, some of their focus — not in the campaign team, i'm told, they're all completely so relentlessly focused on the campaign — but in the sort of wider labour movement and their government preparation team, more of their focus is switching to, "who might do what if the polls are even vaguely right?" i have to thank rachel, because i saw her question earlier today and i went back to tony blair's autobiography, which i was reading at home this afternoon, which is one of the reasons i was late for this... terrible — adam was late! it's not a busy time or anything —

adam had everybody waiting! i was reading tony blair's autobiography because i wanted to go back and remind myself what happened with him and paddy ashdown in 1997... ah, yes! and he's very explicit about he and paddy ashdown, who was then the leader of the liberal democrats, they and their wives would have dinner all the time. they'd be hanging out together all the time, they'd be trading ideas all the time, they were quite up for some kind of tie—up between labour and the lib democrats, to, as they would see, like, uniting the social democrat tradition in the uk. but it sort of foundered over this committee or convention on constitutional reform that blair wanted paddy ashdown tojoin and then implement. but paddy ashdown said, "no, i'lljoin it. "we'll have the discussions and then i'll decide if i'm going to properlyjoin." also, tony blair got a whopping majority and didn't need him. exactly. i mean, that kind of comes back to the core of the question. but, look, who knows? who knows what is going to happen? 0k, chris... in strathaven. well done, adam. that is a place in scotland that many english people mispronounce.

not that you would ever find too many scottish people on this podcast! exactly, not a problem here! chris wants to know, "i understand that some countries ban opinion polls during the election period. what's the rationale behind it? and do polls have an impact on voting trends?" so i also checked this out at lunchtime, and the figures around the world are really complicated. but basically, within the eu, say, where there's 27 members, more than half of them have some kind of restriction on opinion polls, which sounds like quite a big number, and you think, "oh, what? they ban opinion polls?" then you dig into the numbers. some of them have the same system that we do, which is that broadcasters and other media outlets don't publish opinion polls on the day of polling. but then some countries have quite long bans, up to a week before polling day. so you've got this thing called "electoral silence", they call it in france. shh! oh, that's quite nice, actually, isn't it? silence... that's quite exciting.

but then what you hear is the hilarious stories about how people and newspapers and pundits get round it, like by posting things on social media like recipes that have suspicious names of the ingredients that correlate to political parties. 0r, "what's your favourite colour — red or blue?" yeah, and numbers of grams that look suspiciously like what the latest opinion poll says. it's a serious point, though, because there are actually quite a lot of senior figures in uk politics... in fact, somebody said to me last week, "these things should be banned during campaigns" because, partly, it's a business. i mean, i think polling is instructive, it's useful, of course we look at it. but as we've told you before, newscasters, at the bbc, we emphasise that polls don't prove anything. they can inform the picture. but a lot of people who work in politics do also believe that they can influence the picture and that that is wrong. and that's. .. you know, someone senior was saying to me last week, "they should be banned during campaign periods," because polls can become actors in themselves, because they can influence people's behaviour. so there is quite a clear rationale

for it, but i don't think there's any sign of it at all happening in this country. it's just worth saying, though, and i wrote about this in the newsletter yesterday, somebody�*s going to end up being very, very wrong. the range of polling outcomes is absolutely enormous. you know, some of them are saying, "0oh, keir starmer�*s going to get a majority of well over 300." i think 362 is one i saw the other day. and the other end, somebody says, "oh, he's only going to have a majority of 162." now, we've got no idea. both of those results would be absolutely historic, but the point i want to make is there's a 200—seat variation in there. that's a massive spectrum, and it points to a really wide range of outcomes. so, newscasters, we know you're smart people — don't forget that. right, we've got five minutes left and five questions, so let's pick up the pace and do these quite quickfire. 0k. right, this is from jenny — "the labour leadership has emphasised the phrase, �*i've changed the labour party'. 0nce elected and in power, is there the possibility that those on the left of the party might try to derail sir keir

starmer�*s policies?" i don't think they'll try immediately to derail anything. i think, again, the size of the majority will have a very big impact on this, but it's clear that people on the left and also union leaders are not going to just let keir starmer do whatever he wants. now, if he has an enormous majority and he's won — and we still don't know what's going to happen, i'll emphasise that again — then clearly he's going to have power in a way that the prime minister has an enormous amount of power, and theoretically — hypothetically — it looks like he's going to have a big majority. so is he going to have to worry about very small groups of mps or small groups of union leaders? quite possibly not. but political pressure still matters. and someone was joking with me today, the parliamentary labour party, you know, it'll take them a while to find the loos, but once they find the loos, after a while, they'll start working things out and it might not all be plain sailing. but there's still going to be tension in the party. and there are also different versions of "the left".

yeah, of course. there's different groups. and also what i think will be intriguing is the mayors... mmm! ..because they've been built up as big media figures and they've been built up by the system to have more resources and more powers, and they're there to represent their patch, and their political allegiances sometimes matter a bit less than what happens in their patch. right, question from phil in derbyshire. "hi, newscast. love the show." love you too, phil. "i've been listening since brexitcast days." brexit was back a bit this week. "with reform climbing in the polls, is it possible that tory candidates could defect to reform before the election? and if they did, what would happen with the ballot papers?" well, the candidates�* selection is now done, finished, finito. so technically, formally, things can�*t change. i think an individual politician could say, "hey, yeah, i�*m actually now going to stand for a different party," but they can�*t change, like, the black—and—white, i think is the short answer. and if someone is no longer available to be... what will happen with the candidates..? exactly. they are still there. anyway, never mind. question eight from richard — "what influence, if any, do newspapers still have on general elections?" still big, much less than it was.

i agree. elle says, "do the parties stick to the same subject as each other on the same day?" because she�*s noticed that...a lot of the media coverage, it sounds like it�*s the same subject every day, or each day, it�*s the same subject. it�*s not deliberate by the parties at all. sometimes they end up talking about the same thing because there�*s been a news story. sometimes it�*s because one party manages to basically have the most interesting thing to talk about that day, so everyone else then sort of piles in on it. so, it�*s not deliberate by the parties, but it does tend to happen quite a lot. and our last question is a voice note from a dear, dearfriend. hello, it's paddy here — first—time caller, recent newscast host — and my question is about undecided voters. i've heard a lot of the polls. the polls are almost as if they're standing in the election, we hear so much about them. but i'm really interested to know the number of undecided voters,

and how late do we think the undecided voters will take it to be decided voters? because i don't think enough attention's been given to this and i'd be interested to know what laura and adam think. thank you. great podcast. bye! he had to say that last bit. so i think in this campaign, from conversations i�*ve had, there is still a very significant number of undecided voters. that�*s what people in the campaigns have been telling me up until now. i think there is a greater number of undecided voters than there have been in some previous campaigns. it�*s likely there�*s going to be a big, big share of people going to the other parties. and what i would say, and i�*ve said this to paddy — he�*s pretended that we�*ve not talked about this... we�*ll be popping up on the bbc news livestream at various newsworthy points throughout the last 13 days of the election campaign. and, as always, you can listen to us every single day as a podcast on bbc sounds. bye for now. bye! newscast from the bbc.

hello. the next few days are set to bring some summer warmth, but there is still some uncertainty aboutjust how long it might last. the weekend will bring some warm sunshine, but it�*s not all plain sailing. a little bit of cloud and rain in the forecast as well. in fact, some rain through saturday morning thanks to this frontal system, a weak weather front that�*ll be moving its way eastwards, but it will bring more in the way of cloud across some central and southern parts of scotland, northern england, into the midlands, eastern england as well, and parts of east anglia and the south—east could see the odd sharp shower breaking out through the afternoon. then, a slice of sunshine, but more cloud rolling into northern ireland and western scotland with the odd spot of rain. temperature—wise, well, 15 degrees for stornoway, 23 there in london. and — no surprise for hay fever sufferers, i�*m sure — very high pollen levels across most parts of the uk, away

from the northern half of scotland. now, as we head through saturday night, we will see clouds and a few spots of rain and drizzle for northern ireland and scotland. more cloud and some quite misty, murky conditions developing around coasts and hills in the west of england and wales. a mild start to sunday morning, double digits for the vast majority. and then for sunday, well, we will see some areas of cloud, particularly across parts of england and wales, perhaps even the odd rogue shower and some misty, murky conditions for coasts and hills. northern ireland and scotland seeing some sunshine, east anglia and the south—east probably holding on to sunny skies, and the air turning warmer and more humid as well. so, temperatures — 19 degrees for aberdeen, for example, 25 degrees there in london. and that surge of warm and humid air just continues to work northwards across the uk as we head into monday. monday could be a very warm day indeed, a fair amount of sunshine, but some cloud too. and it might be a bit misty and murky again for some western coasts and hills. but those temperatures widely up into the 20s — 2a, 25 degrees in parts of northern

scotland, 27 or 28 in south—east england. now, the big uncertainty is aboutjust how long that warmth might last, either because of a frontal system from the west or an area of low pressure spinning up from the south. it does look set to turn more unsettled later in the week, but a lot of doubt about exactly when that might happen and some warm weather between now and then.

live from washington. this is bbc news as fighting continues in gaza, the un warns more than a million people there will face catastrophic levels of starvation byjuly. the number of heat—related deaths at the hajj pilgrimage in mecca rises , as investigations begin. and: the us supreme court upholds a law that restricts domestic abusers from owning guns.

iam assuming i am assuming so is —— sumi somaskanda. an israeli military strike in southern gaza has killed at least 25 civilians and injured 50 others , that�*s according to the palestinian red cresent. on friday, israeli forces fired at tents for displaced people in the designated humanitarian zone of al—mawasi, near the city of rafah. and the international committee of the red cross says its office in gaza — which is surrounded by hundreds of displaced people in tents — was damaged when heavy—calibre missiles landed nearby. the statement said that firing so close to humanitarian structures endangers the lives of civilians and aid agency staff. it added that stray bullets have reached red cross facilities in recent weeks. israel says their troops were conducting �*precise, intelligence—based actions�* in the area, where an estimated half a million displaced palestinians are sheltering. the raid comes as a simmering conflict between israel and the lebanese armed group hezbollah risks turning into a wider regional war. the two sides have exchanged

fire across the lebanon—israel border in recent weeks.