this is bbc news, the headlines... less than 48 hours before the general election, borisjohnson makes his first apperance on the conservative campaign trail. none of us can sit back as a labour government prepares to use a sledgehammer majority to destroy so much of what we have achieved, what you have achieved.

the former nurse lucy letby has been found guilty of the attempted murder of a baby in 2016, following a retrial. a crush at a religious festival in northern india has left more than a hundred people dead. hurricane beryl advances toward jamaica, after becoming the atlantic's earliest ever category five storm. in a moment we'll bring you tonight's edition of newscast, but first... the new children's laureate has been revealed — as the award—winning author and screenwriter frank cottrell boyce. he wrote his first children's novel, millions, 20 years ago, and says he wants to use his two—year tenure to fight inequality through reading. jayne mccubbin has been to meet him. can you introduce yourself with your new title? i am frank cottrell—boyce, the 13th waterstones children's laureate. how does that feel? it feels amazing. yeah, amazing. it's an amazing

lineage to step into. frank is a multi—award winning authorfrom liverpool. but if you don't have children to read to... ..well, this may be the cottrell—boyce work you're most familiar with. good evening, mr bond. good evening, your majesty. the queen acted twice in her life. twice. and both times i was in the writing team. how the hell did that happen? that's so weird. how did it happen?! so weird. i always keep one for emergencies. so do i. and as joyful as that is... i keep mine in here. ..it�*s being with kids that is your number one? 100%, 100%. scripting a moment for the world's most famous monarch to seemingly skydive into the 2012 olympics with 007 is obviously pretty special, but frank says it's nowhere near as special as writing for and reading to children.

reading at a young age makes a real difference, helps to make you happy. and i know what i owe to children's books. so being put in a position to bring more children to that happiness is an amazing, amazing feeling. this is my dad. wasn't he handsome? this is my mum. that's their wedding photo. 0bviously that's their wedding, they didn't dress like that all the time. who read to you, frank? well, my mum, my dad, me and my brother lived in one room and my gran lived in the other. so my mum used to take me to the library a lot, i now realise to just get some space. and then the other people who read to me were bernard cribbins and kenneth williams, and john grant onjackanory. "is there nothing we can do?" asked the ladybird, appealing to james. "surely you can think of a way out of this?" why do you suppose his hands are all covered i with spaghetti in cheese sauce? well, perhaps he's a burn case. an emergency. amazing.

you know, the power of your voice. reading to people is huge. read to your children. do it. despite the cold of the ice age and the frequent lack of food i and the danger from wild animals, the neanderthal folk— are quite a merry lot. you can see a moment sometimes when you're reading to kids, that something clicks and that the whole world becomes different for them, you know, and that you have to imagine things before you do them. you know, we had to dream of going to the moon before we went to the moon. clinging high to the branches... for 25 years, the children's laureate has promoted the importance of children's literature. but the latest author to hold the title fears underprivileged children are left out. today he's calling for a national provision to guarantee every child has access to books. after 20 years of writing for children and visiting schools, how do you feel about what you see? um, first of all, it's always a joy, absolutejoy, everywhere you go, which is a wonderful thing, but also incredible inequality. you know, you go from one school

to another and there's just no level playing field at all. some kids are really struggling in terms of the buildings, in terms of the neighbourhoods. we know that if you are used to books and if you're read to at a young age that bestows, like, an enormous invisible privilege on you. so if i can help those kids who are missing out on that enormous invisible privilege to access that, i mean, what a thing to spend a couple of years doing. that's your mission? that's my mission. mission not impossible. then a broad grin broke out on his face. tomorrow i'll tell you what they saw, and you will be, _ as they, were amazed. because you believe in happy endings? i believe in happy endings. yes, absolutely. goodbye. this is bbc news.

we'll have the headlines for you at the top of the hour, which is straight after this programme. newscast from the bbc. chris mason is here. hello, chris. hello. hello from norton canes in the west midlands, sort of roughly between cannock and lichfield. norton canes. yeah. if you are aficionado of the m6, it might be a name that rings a bell because there is a service station on the m6 toll the bit that you have to pay extra for called norton canes, which i was familiar with, but i wasn't familiar with the place itself. i didn't even know there was a place itself beyond the service station. but there is. and that's where we're, and i am. i've actually got pins and needles in my backside. we've just got out of our little car where there were three of us sitting on the back seat, and i was sitting in the middle seat. and you know that the middle seats kind of slightly raised. yeah. and a long stint in that particular position is is not

good for the posterior, i've discovered. i'm now sat on a wall outside a community centre and blood is returning to all necessary parts. chris, you're always doing the decent thing by other people, whether it's taking the middle seat, which no one likes doing, or i noticed on your piece on the 10:00 news, along with loads of users of social media carrying the tripod. well, you know, i think we've all got to do ourfair share of looking about, haven't we? you know, and i quite like the middle seats. i didn't regard that as a, uh, massive imposition, although about an hour. you like the middle? no one likes the middle seat. i quite like it. you get a good view straight out the straight out the front window. i quite like that. and, um. i just don't trust those seat belts. well, no, it was a proper seat belt. it was as opposed to one just round, round my lap. but also, you're sort of at the centre of all the conversations because the conversations are all happening around you. so i quite like that, although it probably didn't help with my progress with my piece forthe, uh, bbc website. but hey, i'll get to that later. whereas i like to have a snooze in the back seat, so that's why

i don't like the middle seat. also, i was going to say your tripod carrying technique, you know, it's much better to like, put it on your shoulder because then you don't sort of waggle it around in front of everyone. seeing as you're asking about the tripod that i was filmed carrying across stoke—on—trent railway station, that particular tripod... i'm conscious this is a rather niche conversation, but that particular tripod had neither a shoulder strap nor a plastic handle, so i had to grapple with it like some sort of caged animal that wasn't keen on being moved on. so not only are they quite heavy, they're quite cumbersome. and then the legs come flapping out. if you don't know how to put them and put them away properly and all that kind of stuff, anyway, it's all part of the glamour of television. and i should say, they are a very important part of television journalism, because much as people might like that kind of rough and tumble stuff, when you're seeing an interview with rishi sunak or keir starmer or any other person, you kind of want it to be straight rather than wobbly. and so it can be a faff putting the tripod up, but it's definitely a faff carrying it. but it pays dividends. yeah.

you don't notice when they're there. you do notice when they're not. anyway, what will we notice on today's episode of newscast? you'll find out very soon. newscast from the bbc. hello. it's adam in the studio. and it is chris sitting on a garden wall in a community centre in norton canes. and as the blood rapidly returns to chris mason's buttocks, the buttocks of some of our fellow bbc news colleagues will be being planted in the newscasts so far in a little bit, will be being planted in the newscasts sofa in a little bit, because we're going to talk about some policy areas, because we've been focusing quite a lot on politics and electioneering. now, chris, as we enter the final furlong, what is your strategy for the last few hours? charge around with the two people who want to be our prime minister by the weekend is basically it. so yesterday i was charging around with rishi sunak and we went

to the aforementioned stoke—on—trent, and then we ended up in nuneaton in warwickshire, where the prime minister was having a go at a bit of cricket. and then today we've been following keir starmer around. so here we're in norton canes in the west midlands. the day started in hucknall, in nottinghamshire, in the east midlands. and what we're getting to now are two things that we've seen in the kind of arc of this campaign, uh, from the beginning and then all the way through, which is that you've seen the two main leaders aspiring to be prime minister returned to their main theme. so keir starmer talking about change and rishi sunak talking about the dangers of a big labour win and the dangers, as he sees it, of the tax burden spiralling higher under labour. etc, etc. and then you've also seen rishi sunak campaigning in seats that were held by the conservatives in the last parliament and some seats, frankly, that have been held by the conservatives in pretty much every parliament that you can possibly think of very safe

possibly think of — very safe conservative seats like hinckley in leicestershire, like witney in 0xfordshire. david cameron's former seat and keir starmerfighting in seats that have been conservative held, as you'd expect, any leader of the opposition to do, but also ones that have been held, often pretty comfortably by the conservatives. so he was in sherwood forest, uh, this morning. he'll, he's coming to cannock chase this afternoon and all of the candidates later on the bbc website for all of these constituencies. it's interesting that rishi sunak�*s message about, "0h, do you want to wake up on the 5th ofjuly and there'd be a massive, massive labour majority? " and i'm just thinking back to a conversation we had with laura a few weeks ago when that concept was first raised by the defence secretary, grant shapps. and i can't remember if it was you or laura saying that. 0h, actually the plan was to deploy that message much later in the campaign to kind of scare

people, to motivate conservative voters to come out. it's interesting that, having said it every day, for, what, two and a half weeks now, itjust doesn't seem as scary. you can see it would have had maybe more attention grabbing shock value if it had been deployed in the last few days. yeah, perhaps. so, yeah. although, you know, with the growing proportion in recent elections of people voting by post if they're able to, i think there's been awareness for the last couple of weeks that, you know, perhaps up to a fifth of the electorate are voting or have been voting, all already. and i think actually coming into this morning, i was struck that you had this kind of narrative within the campaign of the conservatives talking about the dangers, as they see it, of a labour supermajority. and keir starmer, in an interview with the times, leaning into what he sees as the value of a big majority. to be able to do big stuff, potentially controversial stuff, not least making planning and development much easier, which obviously comes with those who will, uh, criticise it, making that easier if he gets, i think, what he called a sizeable mandate, which in anyone else�*s language is a big majority.

but it's always worth thinking, isn't it? i was struck listening to sir craig 0liver, the former bbc editor and former downing street adviser to david cameron, on newsnight last night, saying, you know, there can still be a difference between the big narratives of the campaign and where the conversation might be at 10:10 on thursday night when we get the exit poll. or maybe there won't be a difference, but the narrative right now shapes the conversation around which people are mulling over how they might how they might vote. so it matters irrespective of the way we end up. it's interesting that interview that keir starmer gave to the times newspaper, which was published on tuesday morning, and the bit that caught my eye seemed talking about his children and the concept of moving into number ten, something he's talked about before. but he was talking about it like much more of a done deal. he sort of allowed himself to be picturing himself and his family in number ten, which i thought was interesting, because that's that's not his natural caution that he's displayed in the previous weeks. so i've been talking to keir starmer today, and i was really struck by... and, you know, put

yourself in his shoes. it's really difficult to how you do this publicly a couple of days out from an election. 0n the one hand, you have to look like someone who has given obvious and clear thought to what you would do in government, both on a practical level as far as family is concerned. but then on a governing level, in terms of what you would seek to do without any time looking like you're sounding in any way that you formulate your sentences, like you assume that it's a racing certainty that it's definitely going to happen, because that just sounds a kind of, complacent and sort of indifferent to the views of millions who are yet to. .. they all it measuring the curtains. don't they vote in westminster? exactly. and i could see, i could see in, in, in keir starmer�*s answers to me that, that precise dilemma. you know, i was asking you about the shape of a cabinet were he to win, i wasn't assuming he would win. i was just asking what it would look like if he were to win. instantly pushed back to that idea of saying, no, no, we must not be complacent. even though it seemed to me it's perfectly reasonable that newscasters ought to have an idea as they weigh

up how to vote. what a labour government, notjust the top, you know, not just the leader, but what a labour government in its senior personnel might actually look like. it seems a perfectly reasonable question to ask, but he was aware of what he saw, of the danger of entertaining that question, because it might look complacent, even though sure as heck he must have a pretty good idea of what that top team is going to look like. and by the way, i suspect it had looked pretty similar to the current line—up of the shadow cabinet, but perhaps with a few, uh, kinks and tweaks here and there to reflect particular things he might have concluded, uh, and or, uh, the prospect of one or two maybe, you know, not getting back to parliament. well, yeah, because the rumour mill at westminster, well, there's nobody at westminster. but in the social media around of people who are normally at westminster is kind of going into overdrive about certain members of the shadow cabinet not making it into the actual cabinet if there is a labour

government come friday. and ijust suspect that's in the absence because because political journalists have got used to all the messages and this last few days is aboutjust ramming home the messages. so they're kind ofjust filling the airtime with something else. yeah. and to be clear, the, the two, the two sort of things that hover in the air, one is thangam debbonaire, who faces a real battle with the greens in a seat in bristol. in other words, does she, as a current member of the shadow cabinet, win or not? again, full list of candidates for bristol central on the bbc website. and then the other question that's hovered for a while is about david lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, and, whether or not, whether or not he will be kept on which keir starmer has not been explicitly clear in saying yes to. and he wasn't explicitly clear to me either, although he did frame the whole thing as being a much, much more vague. but he has said for months that rachel reeves would be the chancellor in a labour government. so there's a bit of inconsistency there. but as you say, adam, the point is, from their perspective at this stage, you just hammer the big messages and give the broad impression.

if you're in keir starmer�*s position or you hope to give the broad impression of being ready to, you know, seize the reins of power if they come your way. key thing at this stage is to just get them, the leaders, off the script that everyone could recite themselves by heart. i know you did that in a very clever way by referring to the football. let's hear what the two men said. this is you asking rishi sunak aboutjude bellingham's last minute "save your kick" on sunday. is there a rishi sunak equivalent of thejude bellingham overhead kick that we're going to see in the next 48 to 72 hours to to radically change what looks like the scoreline could be? mine is probably more a kind of flashy, you know, i don't know, cover drive or off drive or something instead. but, there we go. look, it is not over till it's over. literally no idea what that means, but i'm sure it will mean something to the football fans he's trying to appeal to there. and here is what keir starmer said when you asked him about comparisons

with gareth southgate. you must share a sort of sense of solidarity with gareth southgate that you doing a job where 1,000,001 other people think they could do a betterjob than you? yeah, everybody in the stands and watching the television has got a better idea of how gareth southgate should do hisjob. and there are some similarities. i've got no end of advice. i've had it for four and a half years and no doubt i'll be getting a lot more. what's your take on how they answered those questions? i thought, you know what? just a tiny, tiny bit of revealing, revealing ness at the very end of that answer from keir starmer. revealingness at the very end of that answer from keir starmer. "no doubt i'll be" getting a lot more. would he get a lot more if he didn't win? i mean, maybe he would, i suppose, because loads of people would say, oh, you would have won if you'd done a, b, c, and d, but it kind of nodded to the prospect that he might soon be, prime minister. i'd also asked, um, uh, keir starmer about bukayo saka, the england player who had a little stint at left back as opposed to playing on the right wing, kind of the opposite end of the opposite end of the pitch.

and keir starmer is a properfootball fan. he sort of eyes light up when you ask him about football because he knows his stuff and he's interested and passionate about it, whereas as you heard with rishi sunak, yes, he is a football fan, supports southampton, but he's crickets his real thing. so he ended up turning that line about about the football into a line about a shot that a batsman would play at cricket. it's one of those things that you either know a lot about or absolutely nothing about. as i discovered when i sort of used that line in our reporting of it last night. but yeah, you're right, adam, it's trying to find let's be honest, if you were either of those two men in these last couple of days, all you want to do is get your vote out and hammer home your main messages. and to heck with what people like me ask you just sort of give the same answers come what may. and, you know, that's kind of rational from their perspective. so i'm constantly trying to find a bit easier with keir starmer when you can sort of tease away potentially at a few things that, you know, a labour government would confront. whereas you kind of know what the answer from rishi sunak would be because they've been

confronting those issues in, office themselves. but yeah, i'm always constantly trying to find is there something that can bring out a bit more of a human answer or something where they're just, as you say, off script a bit, and actually the football this week, it's one of those things that what was it, 17 point something million people at peak were watching that football the other night? even folk who most of the time don't give football much attention will probably be aware ofjude bellingham and an overhead kick. and so it's one of those things where you can just hope that they're up for just sort of talking off script, off piste a bit. there's another sporting reference. in, you know, rather than talking about change and talking about tax and all the usual gubbins. 0ff piste, at least a sport i finally recognise. also, i noticed rishi sunak�*s um, famous work ethic is slightly getting the better of him because he is obviously a bit tired because, he said in his interview with you yesterday misspeaking, we haven't achieved anything as a government, which i saw a few people making light of. and you know what? yes, yes, i saw david mitchell on social media picked up on,

uh, picked up on that. i have to be honest, you know, and maybe this is also the exhaustion of us lot as a reporter pack. so none of us in that room recording that interview either. the team i work with, nor the prime minister's team noticed that, and neither did we notice it when we watched the interview back. some colleagues did. and then plenty of other people did on social media. so you kind of knew what he intended to say. and i'd heard it so many times, um, i kind of heard it as it meant to come out rather than as it did come out. um, so, uh, yeah. so that was a little bit teased away out, uh, wasn't it? but, yeah, i mean, ithink, uh, yeah, the exhaustion thing. you know, anyone who denies the exhaustion thing at this stage of the election campaign is just not being truthful. it's great fun to be involved in. it's an incredible thing to report on, but, there's a there's an odd splash of tiredness around. let's be frank.

it's just... quite funny seeing that the blatant things that people are doing in the last few days, like steve reed, the shadow environment secretary on the labour battle bus, handing out these, these pillows with pictures of rishi sunak on them, saying don't wake up to rishi sunak on the 5th ofjuly. and then rishi sunak blatantly trying to bribe all the travelling journalists with free mcdonald's breakfasts. just a bit obvious. yes. yes, there is all of that. i've noticed that the last couple of days, both labour and the conservatives have been sort of leaning into this sort of imagery about who you wake up next to. it's been quite a lot of stuff about pillows and alarm clocks going off and and all that kind of stuff, which is kind of quite, i don't know, evocative imagery. but then, you know, for those who decide that sleeping between midnight and 6am is a sensible thing to do, then there is that sense, isn't there, that you wake up on friday morning, even if you've caught the exit poll on thursday night, you wake up on friday morning and the political landscape is remoulded, either significantly or otherwise, for the best part of the next five years. and that's that's kind

of quite a thing. what are your plans for wedensday, last day? so tomorrow we're not quite sure yet. is the honest truth. here we're in sort of norton canes, wondering where the which compass bearing might next. attract us. uh, so, um. so, yeah. it depends. can we get to, uh, some of the main leaders tomorrow? uh, because if we get to any of them, we've kind of got to get to quite a few of them. gets quite tricky because they all start zipping around at an even greater pace. basically, tomorrow, myjob is to pull the whole thing together to make sure that newscasters and other sort of bbc news viewers, listeners and readers get a full sense of what all of the parties are kind of up to. and then i guess, kind of take stock really on where the last six weeks have left us, what's changed and what hasn't. so what hasn't changed? well, the opinion polls haven't really changed for labour and the conservatives? what has changed? will nigel farage enter the stage?

my sort of two top line kind of kind of thoughts. and we kind of, it would seem, don't we, stand on the brink of a kind of landmark election, but where actually, whether it is or not will be determined by millions of individual decisions that even if they've been made, haven't been committed to yet. and that's the that's the jeopardy of the next couple of days. newscast from the bbc. and that's all for this episode of newscast. but we recorded some bonus material that you can hear in the podcast version, which is available on bbc sounds. and we will be back here on bbc news live at 630 on wednesday evening to cover all the thrills and spills of the final day of campaigning in the uk general election 202a. join us then live! what could possibly go wrong? buy. hello there. well, we're not expecting summer to make a big return any time soon. in fact, it will stay unsettled across the whole of the uk.

as we head through the rest of this week, it will be unseasonably windy. there'll be rain, more showers to come in the forecast, but it won't be raining all the time. lots of dry weather, too, some bright and some sunny spells, but all the while feeling cool for this point injuly. temperatures a good few degrees below the seasonal average. and there's more rain to come as we head through tonight and into wednesday morning from these weather fronts out towards the west. the heavy downpours reaching eastern england by the time we get to tomorrow morning. of course, it will be mild underneath the cloud, the rain with more of a south—westerly wind, temperatures in double figures. the rain clearing away from eastern england through the morning. always cloudy, perhaps a few showers across england and wales, but some brighter skies to the lee of high ground. more showers pushing into northwest scotland, sunshine and showers here through the afternoon, and brightening up for northern ireland and perhaps western wales and southwest england by the time we get to the end of the day. temperatures disappointing for this time of year, just the high teens in celsius. so those fronts clear away,

yhen you can see a tight squeeze on the isobars into thursday as the wind turns more westerly and then north westerly again, this little feature likely to bring some heavy, thundery showers across northwestern areas of scotland, perhaps through northwest england as well. further south, then, we are expecting some sunshine, although still very windy conditions, particularly up through the dover straits. and in the best of the sunshine, well, it's stilljuly, so it will feel quite pleasantly warm, but temperatures won't get much past 18—20 celsius. now, if you're a tennis fan over the next couple of days, mostly dry on wednesday, chance of one or two showers, probably dry on thursday with some sunny spells but windy for the time of year. and of course, those temperatures still below the seasonal average. we'd normally expect to see 22 or 23 celsius. as we head into friday, then, we're likely to see more rain across the south, and that could certainly interrupt play at wimbledon. these little features just running in from the west here. on saturday, most of the rain will be further north, probably leaving southern areas with a largely dry day, perhaps a few showers around to start. and then it's mostly fine and probably dry on sunday. bye—bye for now.

welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore, i'm steve lai. the headlines.. a crush at a religious festival in northern india — has left more than 100 people dead. the un says a quarter of a million people in southern gaza are trying to flee from khan younis — after the israeli military issued evacuation orders the former british nurse lucy letby has been found guilty of the attempted murder of another baby after multiple convictions last year hurricane beryl advances toward jamaica after becoming the atlantic's earliest ever category five storm. less than 48 hours before the uk general election — former prime minister boris johnson makes a surprise apperance to help boost rishi sunak�*s campaign