so with the conservatives, it's all about labour. it's all about not what a conservative term in office would mean, but what a labour term in office, especially with a supermajority — that phrase that has become part of the political lexicon in the last few weeks — would mean. that's what rishi sunak's been talking about today. that's what rishi sunak is going to be talking about until midnight wednesday slash thursday — labour. it's also about what labour would mean, but they have a much more direct way of talking about it. they use one word — change, but the slight shift between the start of the campaign when they were using that one word, change, and now is that they say if you want it, you've got to vote for it. and they keep repeating that and expect to hear that again and again and again until wednesday night, thursday morning. and the reason they do that is because there's just this slight twinge of concern in the labour campaign that the polling landscape means that some of their potential voters mightjust see the result as a foregone conclusion. and the get out the vote operation is then really what will happen on thursday. and that is in and of itself a massive logistical thing. so, as henry says, absolutely rightly, we're in thisjust message, message, message. remember a couple of weeks ago we were like, this mood at the beginning of the campaign. then there's manifesto when people talk about policy and then there's message and this is like the messages are getting louder and louder and louder and louder and louder. and the party's becoming, maybe not more desperate, but more fervent — wow, that's a good word — more fervent in how they're communicating those things. and also, you see the party leaders kind of trying to embody all of that, don't you? and doing just the things we've really come to expect of them. so guess what? keir starmer is at like a lower league football club. i think he was in hitchin town fc in hertfordshire today. you've got rishi sunak in the midlands going to businesses like a distillery because he likes to go to workplaces and take questions from the workers. and you've got ed davey of the lib dems. surprise, surprise, doing a bungee jump this time. imean... wasn't he volunteered to do that by daisy cooper, the deputy leader on your show? well, she said to her mistake in the campaign had been missing out on not going to thorpe park and getting a go on the roller coaster. i mean, yeah, i, we were sort of laughing the other day on wednesday night, actually, after the debate about what stunts that ed davey could do next. and i got a text from somebody senior in the lib dems saying, "don't worry, there's more to come." and then today, yes, actually doing a bungee jump to get voters to do a...leap of faith! get it? mhm. yeah. another metaphor. um, and then in terms of... oh sorry. sorry, henry, go ahead. ..to get bigger, i'm told that davey stunts are going to get bigger from here on in. i don't know how it gets bigger than dangling upside down from a rope. but, uh, i am quite excited to see what ed davey is going to be doing on wednesday. i'm going to make a prediction. yeah. go on. ed davey will be the only party leader in our lifetimes that does a bungee jump. well, in public. in public, yeah. i just can't really see anyone else doing that. this is a moment in time and a sort of vibe that is unique to them that i do not think will be repeated. so the 1st ofjuly, 2024 political history is being made. exactly, exactly. and then talking about nigel farage and reform, i was really struck by his big rally that he did at the weekend. that was all over social media — hundreds and hundreds of people turning up to a venue to see him do like an old fashioned, like, stamp your feet, do the stump speech that call and response thing. yeah, really interesting because we've seen very little of that in this campaign. keir starmer and rishi sunak, and actually ed davey in a slightly different way, and uh, the snp, their events have all been quite small. there was a big labour rally on saturday night, i think, in london, and they had a dj and various things but everything has been quite small. so in 2019 there were lots and lots of really quite big rallies, quite big events. jeremy corbyn loved big events, borisjohnson loved big events. i'm not saying it was a free for all, right? i mean, newscasters are smart people. political parties still try to turn up, to control who turns up to big events. but the farage rally was really the only kind of event i can think of in this campaign that has felt like a general sort of... a genuine kind of public meeting, if you like, in that way where people canjust turn up and go "rah!" without there being party organisation behind it. you definitely can't deny that what nigel farage and reform uk have, in a way that other parties don't have, is bags of enthusiasm from their hardest—core supporters. what we can't know until 10pm on thursday night and the hours afterwards is whether it's an ultra enthusiastic, very narrow group or whether actually, as nigel farage keeps claiming, that enthusiasm speaks to something broader that's happening out there among people who might have voted conservative at the last general election or might have been turned off politics post eu referendum. and that, for me, is one of the biggest unknowns of this general election. and it will be fascinating to see how it plays out, because unquestionably, that event that nigel farage hosted on sunday was mega. i mean, itjust looked — as you said, laura — like nothing else that has happened during this general election campaign. whether that means anything about what's happening in the country, though, i don't know, and i don't think we can know until after the votes have been counted. i think that's right. i think we've basically got no clue. so we know that nigel farage is very good at creating a lot of noise in the media. we know he's very good at creating real enthusiasm among a certain hardcore type of supporter — whether they were people who were involved in the brexit party, whether they were people who all those years ago were involved in ukip, we've got no way of knowing until we see the numbers, uh, whether or not that's going to translate into something that he says using words like, "oh, there's going to be an earthquake and it's a revolution, and we'll be the real opposition." let's be clear — as we said a couple of weeks ago on this podcast, reform is not going to be the real opposition. you know, even in their wildest dreams, they maybe think about, just about scraping into double figures. if but we don't know that yet, right? we do not know. but the suggestion that they will be the real opposition in any kind of technical term is absolutely for the birds. other parties we haven't mentioned like plaid cymru, the snp — mentioning them again — and the greens, it's back to what henry said at the start. they're just trying to take lumps out of a potential future labour government. so for example, you've got the green co—leader adrian ramsay today so for example, you've got the green co—leader adrian ramsay today talking massively about the nhs. that's an attempt to swing the conversation in a more kind of left wing direction in case there is a labour government. yeah, that's absolutely right. and it's been an interesting feature of the smaller parties — all of them apart from reform, apart from the northern irish parties that we haven't talked about much because overall they're what happens because overall they're. .. what happens to them doesn't make a difference really to the makeup of the house of commons. but the other smaller parties, apart from reform, have all tried to style themselves as the people who would stand up to labour government from the left. they all say overtly, "oh, we think keir starmer is going to be prime minister, and it will be ourjob to try to make sure that he is true to left wing values," which is such a fascinating phenomenon of this election, actually, in all sorts of different ways, because the history of the lib dems is not necessarily like that. they used to face very much both ways to the left and the right. same with the snp. they are, in recent years, they've become very much styled as sort of sort of progressive left wing party. but they too have two traditions inside. there's a sort of rural farming countryside snp vote that absolutely didn't see itself as being left wing. so when i think when the history books are written about 2024, one of the interesting strands in this campaign has been that all the smaller parties — apart from nigel farage — have styled themselves as this sort of left wing pressure valve... mm. ..on the labour party. right, here's a technical question for... oh, sorry. go. um, but the thing that all of those more left wing parties have in common with nigel farage is they have all, in various ways, used the assumption that labour will win this election as a hook for their arguments. and one of the fascinating things, again, about thursday, will be whether they were right to do so. but equally, if it turns out that labour don't win as big as some of those party leaders from the snp and plaid and so on have claimed, that doesn't actually necessarily mean the polls were wrong. it might mean that the polls were right and that people adapted their behaviour accordingly. that's what the leaders of all of those smaller parties and actually also rishi sunak, want. they want the notion of a massive labour victory to be the thing that prevents a massive labour victory. it's a really intriguing dynamic. and it will definitely — i should never say definitely in politics... potentially? ..it�*s a very stupid thing to say. potentially definitely. potentially, as there already has been a bit about this — increase the volume of a conversation about whether or not polling is appropriate at this level and this scale. and i think there have been a hundred polls in the election. is that a helpful thing for a democracy to have during an election campaign? and there's been a bit of that conversation and, you know, whatever happens next week, the polls have definitely been an actor in this campaign. and as henry said, all the smaller parties have tried to use the polling landscape to their own political advantage. interesting — today, a little snippet i saw from one of our colleagues who's been spending time with the lib dems campaign. they were very positively briefing today about how ambitious they feel in their numbers, and suggesting off the record that they were going to do much better than they might have anticipated at the beginning of the campaign, and much better than they did the last time round when they gained a big chunk of seats. i don't mean last time round as in the last election, but the last time they made a big, significant advance. iwonder, though, is that the lib dems trying to do the opposite of the strategy that henry was talking about with labour, where they're slightly worried people might not turn up? maybe that's the lib dems trying to create some enthusiasm so that people turn up, rather than worrying people that they might not get what they want if they don't turn up. just a kind of philosophical question for you to on thursday question for you two on thursday night when you're doing your tv shows and your radio shows, how do you balance the big picture versus the fact that it's 650 individual constituency contests? and is it that you in your mind, you pick, like, i don't know, 35 really important constituencies? i'm just trying to get at how do you carry on seeing the wood and the trees at the same time? well, i've never done it before, so i don't know. but i'm going to try. well, what's your, what's your instinct then, henry? well, my instinct, my instinct is, is not to pre—select a group of constituencies that i think will be the interesting constituencies. i know some constituencies which may well be among the interesting constituencies, but if i narrow my headspace to a couple of dozen, then what i'm really doing is narrowing my mind to a narrower group of potential outcomes to the general election. because if you agglomerate all the interesting seats, that's what gives you the national picture. so the answer basically is to be a massive nerd and be across practically everywhere. um, other than the very safest seats, which showed no sign of changing hands. and, um, i think that's one of the things that makes an election night so amazing. and i think it's also one of the great things about our election night, rather than having some sort of wham bam instant moment where you get the results of every constituency in one go, is that you can do both. we will be discussing on telly in laura's case and radio in mine, we will be discussing in the aftermath of the exit poll what that if correct, means for the national picture. but then we will have individual seats, all of them with individual stories, individual careers being made or being ended. cabinet ministers, shadow cabinet ministers, people you've forgotten you knew about, people you're learning about for the first time, but going to be a massive part of british political life for decades to come. all of that can happen, and we can point it out, while also always being mindful of the overarching question of who's going to be prime minister of this country at the end of it. i think there are two different parallel tracks. so there's one is just the practicalities of what time the results come in. so you can end up focusing on two or three constituencies when the results come in early. and actually you don't necessarily have very much else that there is to talk about. there's always a huge amount to talk about, but in terms of new information... yeah, you don't want to overinterpret early ones. ..and that's a real, that's a real, real danger. say, "ah, look at the 1% swing change in blyth and ashington. that must mean this." no, nothing must mean anything at an early stage of the night. but there is a sort of practicality of when results drop. and i've, you know, certainly sometimes you think, "0h, we're going to definitely talk loads about that," but then a candidate pops up and gives a speech and another count in another event and launches a massive attack on their party leader. and you end up actually not even using all the boring homework you've done about that seat where you thought it was going to be a huge story because genuinely, just something else happens at the same time. and that's the live excitement of elections that you can't predict, notjust you can't predict what's going to happen, but you can't predict when. the second bit of it, though, is that, of course, all of us, i suppose, kind of, you know, you can have, have in your dna in a sense, it's important to understand instinctively where is there going to be somewhere where something interesting and significant is going to happen, because it might be a test or a symbol of the other kind of things. so in 2019, for example, blythe valley goes red to blue, blythe valley, if you've done your homework and if you're a newscaster — i know they'll all have done your homework — you know that that was a potentially very important moment because it was labour. labour red in tooth and claw. the tories turned it early, blue early in the night. and you went, wow, that's a moment. and that merited talking about for, you know, quite a long time. and there's other ways of looking out for interesting things. where are famous people standing? where is likely to be an interesting contest? bristol central, those of us are going to be looking at because that's where the greens hope to knock out thangam debbonaire — it's a full list of all the candidates on the website — but so it's a blend and it can be also quite... or you've got to guard against getting carried away one way or the other or over interpreting. and also there's just great moments. and the great thing about the news is that we're there to capture those moments and bring them to everyone else. and i'm thinking, being in the car, driving between places on the night of 2015 and hearing nick clegg had lost his seat in sheffield, and that was just being like a real... because people had, people knew it was theoretically possible. but i don't think people had really kind of internalised the fact that the lib dems were going to get destroyed, including even vip lib dems like the deputy prime minister. that's right. and there's nothing like seeing an event for reals, right? they'rejust, therejust isn't anything like it. um, and all these hypothetical scenarios, all of these imagined realities — i've been talking to labour and tory people a lot about this in the last few days and asking, how do you think you will feel when the results come in, and particularly when that exit poll comes in, which is not 100% accurate forecast, but it's got a very good track record. and it feels like everybody who's sort of involved in politics in any way, and probably lots of newscasters as well, anybody who's interested in politics has this kind of sense of almost starting to hold their breath already, you know, on monday, tea time until 10:00 on thursday. that's quite a long time to hold your breath. metaphorically. metaphorically, like a samoan pearl diver. well, that would be quite good. i'm sure we've got a remoter voter who's doing that. well, that would be good. ora pearl... or a, or the people whojump off cliffs in acapulco in mexico. i always thought that's very impressive as well. but that kind of how do they think they will feel? and the reason i was making that long and laborious point and making lots of silly metaphors, is because itjust made me think — somebody in the shadow cabinet said to me, "i will not believe it until i see it, and even if i see it, i don't think i'll still believe it." you know, just that...sense of anticipation. oh, well, i hope they won't press it on the set with you at 10:01 having to respond to it. watch when he says "well, i don't believe it." yeah, that clip will get played back until they're out of...life. um, right. 0k. um, we've got a question from a mystery newscaster who hasn't given their name, but let's hear what they're asking us. hello. i was hoping for some newscast party planning advice, please. _ um, so obviously, next thursday is a big day for all of us. - but it's particularly- big for me because it's also my birthday. so i'm trying to work out how to combine celebrations - with a watch party. so i was wondering, when do . you think the biggest moments of the night are likely to come? when should we be really watching out for any kind of unmissable - portillo moments, for instance? any advice very gratefully received by this very loyal newscaster. - thank you. thank you, mystery newscaster. i think we sort of partly answered some of your question already. um, obviously the exit poll. so that, and the music, the music and look at the big set and we've got people everywhere, all that. so, so 9:55 to like, probably like 10:30. um, and then if you really need to go to sleep, go to sleep then. and then i always think sort of two, two till five is a very good time. henry's nodding as well. i was looking at, i was looking at the sort of list of expected — and they change — but expected declaration times in, uh, clock ascending order. that's not quite what i mean, but, you know... chronological order. chronological, there you go. i knew that word at the start of this campaign when i was well—rested. but now we're in a different place. and, uh, 2:00 is when it starts, you know, you stop going, "oh, that will be an interesting result to talk about for 25 minutes" at midnight. and you go, oh, wow — they start to come thick and fast. so if you just want