that looks like a real blunder. and a cabinet minister said to me, "you've got a $100 million bill lying on the floor and you don't pick it up." so it's notjust the mistake, it's also the lost opportunity of the mistake. and laura, last night when we did newscast, you mentioned that text you'd had about somebody saying, "this is just the worst operation ever." and as i was going to bed last night, i was like, "i wish i'd asked laura more about that," because that's an amazing quote. not to get you to reveal your sources, but what sort of people are messaging you with that stuff now? is this, like, candidates? is this, like, former friends of rishi sunak? i think it's what... the sense i have, henry, and i don't know if you would agree with this, is that what is happening now, it seems to me almost every day, the group of people who are still really putting their shoulder to the wheel in this campaign is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. and there are more people, including people who would regard themselves as friends of rishi sunak — i was speaking to one of them this morning — saying, "this is awful. this is grim. this is going really, really badly." there are, of course, people who still are loyal to him and say, "look, our inheritance was terrible. things have been awful, things have gone wrong. it's not all his fault. we're trying to do our best, still four weeks to go in the campaign, remember that." but it does feel to me like this d—day blunder has become a real moment it's going to be very difficult for them to fight back from. and in times of political adversity, strengths instantly flip into weaknesses. yeah _ so for a couple of years, people — for more than that actually — people would have said in westminster, well, one of rishi sunak's strengths is he has a really tight—knit inner circle who are completely loyal to him. and, you know, he doesn't blow with the political wind and decide to do things for a quick and easy headline the next day. now you have people who were loyal to rishi sunak saying, "well, i'm not in his tight inner circle, so frankly, i'm just going to go and try and save my seat. and actually, i think his inner circle is too tight, and actually, they should be better at anticipating the next morning's headlines." so you often have that moment, especially if your loyalties in a political party are wide but shallow. and that's always been the case with rishi sunak. remember, he was backed in that first leadership election against liz truss by more conservative mps, but mostly because he wasn't her. he was seen as the quote unquote "sensible candidate." obviously other wings of the political spectrum would dispute that. then in october, it was him because they didn't want borisjohnson back. but that isn't the same as having an enthusiastic, genuinely personal, loyal group of conservative mps as they were then, and candidates, as they often are now, and so it means that in times of toughness, they flee the ship. and they're trying to fight for their own skins. and this d—day blunder really has had that elusive thing called cut—through. so one of our mewscasters, rosie, emailed in saying, so one of our newscasters, rosie, emailed in saying, "rishi sunak�*s decision not to attend the international d—day commemoration is the political equivalent of choosing the fa cup final over your daughter's wedding," and it has led to the spectacle in the debate on the bbc last night of a serving cabinet minister saying on stage, not once, not twice, but i think three orfour times, notjust that the prime minister made a mistake and he's sorry, but actually, look at his record, he's a jolly good chap and it's allok, but penny mordaunt saying this. what happened was completely wrong . and the prime minister has rightly. apologised for that, - apologised to veterans, but also to all of us - because he was representing all of us. i'm from portsmouth, _ i've also been defence secretary, and my wish at the end of this week is that all of our veterans feel- completely treasured. and i'm hoping tonight to convince you of some things that _ are important to them, . important to their legacy. and i couldn't do that if i wasn't straight with you on that issue. | i just want to... would you have left d—day early? i didn't go to d—day. i think what happened was very wrong. - i think the prime minister has apologised for that. - excellent question from our colleague, mishal husain, there. and of course the back story there is that penny mordaunt quite fancied herself as tory leader and prime minister instead of rishi sunak and lots of people say she still harbours those ambitions. oh, i think she certainly still harbours those ambitions. and i think people close to her are also quite frustrated that she has been not let out of the box very often. and it's a notable feature actually of this campaign that we've seen very little of quite a lot of prominent conservatives. we've seen a lot of some of rishi sunak�*s most loyal lieutenants, less well—known cabinet ministers like mel stride and mark harper, the transport secretary, relatively little of, you know, david cameron, michael gove, people who are more household names, who — including penny mordaunt — who of course is actually well known around the country, partly because she was on an itv reality programme, you know, like it or not, she's somebody with name recognition and somebody who downing street have not always been too fond of letting on the television. i'm just thinking back to rosie's email about the fa cup final. what if you were a player in the fa cup final? would you go to that even if it was your daughter's wedding? but then actually, if you're a football player and you're in the fa cup final, you probably don't have a daughter who's old enough to be getting married. and you probably also have the financial means to get her to rearrange the wedding at no expense to her. or a helicopter to get you between the two. but there you go. the prime minister is fond of using helicopters, to make a sort of cheap gag out of it. you know, staying in normandy for another couple of hours could have been an easy thing for them to sort out. and i think also other politicians in that situation — and i'm thinking of one bjohnson — would have loved that occasion probably so much, he might even have stayed for longer. it'd have been difficult to get him back! because it's a sort of politics—free zone. you know, joking apart, these diplomatic ceremonial... you're sort of, for that moment, you're just being seen as sort of a strong leader. you're not with pesky reporters following your every move. why not absolutely max it out? and someone was saying to me, "look, if he did come back," i mean, he and his team insist that he didn't come back specifically to do an itv interview which, in any case, isn't even being broadcast for several days, but that is what he did in the uk once he was back, and someone was saying to me, "well, hang on, why don't you do the interview in normandy?" that's the most prime ministerial backdrop possible. yeah. i mean, on that penny mordaunt line from last night's debate, by the way, i think people might think, listening to that or watching that, that she wasjust reciting what rishi sunak had said earlier in the day. she was not. that was an attack on her leader on prime time television in the middle of a general election campaign. just dwell on how extraordinary and perhaps unprecedented that is, because you had other cabinet ministers making a similar point earlier in the day. they'd say, "look, it's indefensible, he shouldn't have done it, he's apologised." but then they would go on to say, including johnny mercer, the veterans minister, he went on to say, "but rishi sunak's record on defence is unimpeachable. but rishi sunak has protected veterans." she didn't do any of that. she just stuck the boot in to the prime minister and then moved on. or even the sort of classic david cameron smoothie response. "actually, it's a tribute to him that he apologised so quickly," completely turning it around. but of course it was a gift for the other smaller parties who were on the stage with them last night, particularly also nigel farage. it was an absolute gift for him and it is a gift for the reform party to be able to claim, his allies would say absolutely unfairly, that somehow rishi sunak is not a patriot. you know, allies of his likejohnny mercer would emphasise what he's done for veterans, that actually, the conservatives, unlike the labour party, are committed to increasing defence spending to 2.5% of gdp by a particular date. labour hasn't put a date on that yet. but there has of course been a huge reaction to this and it does feel really, i think, like the biggest moment of the campaign and not a good one for rishi sunak. but they've had a tricky time though too this week about the accusations that i suppose more traditionally they've been chucking at the labour party, saying that they would tax us all, spend all our money, and that very kind of traditional campaigning moments we've had this week, henry, about this mythic £2,000 that the labour party wants to charge everybody extra in tax. well, it's in the nature of election campaigns, but that feels like a fortnight ago now that you mention it, but it was only on tuesday night in the first head—to—head debate of this campaign that rishi sunak really went for keir starmer over tax and spend — a traditional tory—labour dividing line. and it was amazing as a piece of sort of debate prep how he contorted almost any answer, whatever subject it began on, right back to tax. i think even a question about national service, he ended with talking about tax. and just while you're speaking, if adam and i just start shouting "£2,000" at you... that would give people who missed the debate a decent sense of what took place on tuesday, but it was very effective because £2,000, £2,000, £2,000, if you say that for 17 minutes, it's going to start to seep in. and crucially, sir keir starmer did not really challenge it for about 25 minutes. he left it completely unchallenged. then he started making quite a convoluted point about the treasury, and we'll come back to that. then later in the debate, he said, "oh, that was absolute garbage." but by that point, i mean, you could really sense the frustration — i was in the spin room for that as well — the frustration of labour operatives. well, the convoluted point that keir starmer was trying to make about the treasury was then made the next morning. i got hold of a letter that the chief civil servant at the treasury had sent actually the labour party a couple of days before, where he was saying, yes, this figure from which the conservatives are deriving their £2,000 claim should not be presented as coming from the treasury. now, why is that difficult for the conservative party? because they were presenting it as having come from the treasury. they are now scaling back their claim. they're saying, "well, it's overwhelmingly come from the treasury," but even then there's some sort of difficult points about whether the treasury calculations in some cases were based on assumptions that were given to them by conservative advisers. so it's all become a bit knottier for the conservatives, though i'm sure they'd rather talk about that than d—day still. and just to be clear about what this was about, so the conservatives, including some calculations done by the treasury, have totted up all of the plans that they say labour would have if they were in government. they've put a price tag on it and they say that would require every family to pay more than £2,000 extra in tax. so that is what this is about — the most traditional of attacks, really, in order to chuck a big number at the labour party during this campaign. we should also say though that labour has done this in a different way, not claiming to have impartial figures from civil servants, but they have gone after the conservatives' aspirations of getting rid of national insurance, that huge price tag, and said it means that there is a black hole i think they've totted up to more than £70 billion in the tories' plans. oh, i thought it was about 48. it's gone up even in the last few minutes. i think if you include... i think they've chucked inheritance tax in there for good measure becausejeremy hunt said... 46 is national insurance, and there's other... it's a large number. and parties do this, right? we shouldn't clutch our pearls and say, "my goodness, they've come up with these figures. it's all so dodgy and terrible. this never happens." the new thing this week was the conservatives claiming that impartial civil servants had basically rubber—stamped these figures. that was not true. but the claim is still the claim, and the claim, i'm sure, will be continued to be made. and also not to sound like a pound—shop tim harford or a 99p tim harford... never! the 2,000 number, evenjust arithmetically on its own is a bit weird because it's assuming every working family pays exactly the same amount of tax in their household and this is spread equally amongst everyone. and also it's four years' worth of imaginary tax increases added up into one number. and i don't really think of my taxes in four—yearly chunks. so just even as a number, it sort of doesn't quite add up. and the debate kind of above the debate about this figure is about strategy, and whether it is worth it for the conservatives that we've just had this discussion and people like us are having this discussion. even if part of that discussion concerns, frankly, rishi sunak's honesty — frankly, the conservative party's honesty. and i don't know the answer to that. a lot of people are comparing it to £350 million a week for the nhs during the 2016 eu referendum campaign, but one thing i would say, at the risk of sounding pompous and grand, is thatjust over 4 million people watched the debate in which rishi sunak made that claim on tuesday. more than double that number, 9 million have viewed the post on x, formerly known as twitter, where i posted, revealed that letter from the treasury chief civil servant. so i do wonder whether changing media consumption trends actually make some of the calculations about this a bit less straightforward than they used to be. and just also the changing electorate, right? you know, in 2016, and we all remember this and we could see then exactly what they were doing, the leave campaign used the 350 million figure, which was a true figure, but used misleadingly because they didn't include the money that the uk got back from the eu, they did it deliberately as a trap to get the remain side to froth about it. and my goodness, froth they did. that froth created more noise, more headlines about the 350 million, creating the impression for people who, funnily enough, weren't looking at the spreadsheets, that we gave a lot of money to the eu. the electorate is not the same electorate that it was in 2016. voters are more fatigued, more exhausted. political parties' own research tells us that they are more cynical and labour has tried to turn this into an attack on rishi sunak, and all over their social media feeds the day after that debate, "lie," "liar," "lie," "liar." that's a word that doesn't get used in politics. exactly. it's uncommon in british politics for that word to be used by politicians at the top level, not by people on the fringes. i just want to say to people, if you're wondering what on earth is going on at 10.50 on radio 4... don't worry, there will be some more kafka versus orwell soon! ..on a saturday morning, you are listening to newscast, which normally is a programme that is available on bbc sounds as a podcast and on the bbc news channel on tv and on thursday night on bbc one. but for the next four weeks during the election campaign, we have the honour and privilege of being broadcast live on radio 4. so welcome along. if you are new to newscast, it's very good to have you with us. and you can follow henry on twitter along with 9 million others. what i was going to say, though, back to the whole numbers thing, one of the most interesting bits for me of the bbc seven—way debate on friday was when stephen flynn, who is the snp�*s westminster leader, and he got quite good reviews for his performance, he said, "hang on, labour and the tories are trading these pretend numbers about imaginary tax rises, but they're not telling you about their plans for spending cuts, which are kind of baked in to all those numbers after the next election." and what's interesting for me is, the last few days, the conservatives, with their, like, classic daily policy announcement, they've been spending quite a lot of money. so yesterday on friday, it was saying, "oh, do you remember when george osborne said if you earn over £50,000, you're going to start losing your child benefit?" which was a huge news story back in the 2010s. "oh, we're going to lift that limit so that loads more people can get child benefit." ok, that's going to cost money. the thing the tories are talking about today, about making permanent that stamp duty holiday for first time buyers when they buy a property, that's going to cost money as well. labour say, well, when they announce things like that, "we can fund this from cracking down on tax avoidance." but listening to more or less on radio 4 a couple of days ago, the real tim harford did a great little thing about whether that six is actually £6 billion of readily available pounds. and actually it's not. and the conservatives are saying that they can fund these things by cracking down on tax avoidance, which begs two questions. one, is that realistic, as you've just said, and history would tell us that it is not necessarily, but two, if they think they can get £6 billion from cracking down on tax avoidance, why haven't they found those 6 billion of your finest british pounds over the last 11; years? but it is interesting, and i think from a political point of view, it tells us you can see the conservatives are just chucking everything they can out there to try to shore up their base vote. and labour are very happy to watch them do that. you know, their schtick is credibility, care, economic prudence. rachel reeves saying everything has to be paid for. that is their mantra. they're very happy for the tories to be giving the impression that they're chucking everything over the side. also, somebody very senior in the labour camp yesterday was drawing a parallel to me, basically saying the tories are writing a manifesto in the way that labour wrote a manifesto in 2019, that they cram it full of things that sound like they might be popular, back then, it was free broadband and railway nationalisation, but it didn't work because people didn't trust the message carriers. you know, a sort of pompous way of saying people didn't believe that jeremy corbyn and john mcdonnell were the right people to lead the country. obviously lots of people did, but the overall public impression was they didn't want to lend them their trust in the same way. at the top of labour, they believe that's what's also happened now to the conservatives. so almost whatever they promise, turn on the taps, milk and honey will flood out, at this stage in the political cycle, people are not going to take that on as a credible message. and i've got to say, some people inside the conservative party believe that, too. one former minister, who's not a big critic of rishi sunak, said to me this morning, "the risk is the messages now sound inauthentic, because it's late in the day for rishi sunak to be sort of standing up and talking about these kinds of things." and also, remember, in the distant past of three weeks ago, people were saying, "oh, the conservative campaig