Inside Politics: Tories make more promises to cut immigration, as parties finally settle on candidates

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There are only 28 days to go until the general election

Here’s an idea. Maybe we should make Sir Rod Stewart prime minister and let him run the country? Sir Rod has revealed his secrets hobby is building model utopian cities – full of elegant skyscrapers, cool bridges and lush green spaces – to sit alongside his model train sets. “When I take on something creative I have to give it 110 per cent,” he says. The party leaders are asking us to imagine their own forms of Arcadia. Boris Johnson is promising us a paradise of green energy jobs and a points-based immigration system. Jeremy Corbyn, meanwhile, is offering up a Shangri-La where we only work four days a week and the gender pay gap is a thing of the past. But with the two party leaders getting yelled at everywhere they go, is our angry electorate too cynical to believe in a land of milk and honey? I’m Adam Forrest, and welcome to The Independent’s daily Inside Politics briefing.

Inside the bubble

Our political correspondent Ashley Cowburn on what to look out for on the campaign trail today:

Candidates wishing to run for parliament must submit their nomination forms by 4pm today – along with a £500 deposit. Expect a full list of contenders to be published on local authority websites shortly after. So we won’t have to wait long now to see exactly how many candidates Nigel Farage will be fielding at the December election, after all his bluff and bluster. Given today is Equal Pay Day, also expect a flurry of announcements from Westminster’s political parties addressing the issue. Labour’s big announcement is to eliminate the pay disparity in a decade, with proposals to fine companies that fail to report gaps.

Daily briefing

REHEATED LEFTOVERS: The Tories are pledging to cut overall immigration and bring in a “points-based” system. I know, I know. I can hear you groan in apathy – we’ve heard this one many, many times before, haven’t we? To state the bleeding obvious, Johnson’s pledges aren’t worth much. The PM has promised a clean energy revolution and lots of lovely high-tech investment – but electric car whizz Elon Musk dashed Johnson’s hopes of a new Tesla factory in the UK by announcing it’s going to Germany instead. Musk said Brexit had made Britain “too risky”. The lack of shiny new things left Johnson banging on about his old Brexit deal, still lying around somewhere. He compared it to both a Pot Noodle (“just add water and stir in the pot”) and hand-crafted Blue Peter tat (“here’s one I made earlier”). Can he raise his game on the road today? His belated trip to flood-hit Yorkshire didn’t go well. One woman scoffed “you took your time”, while a very, very angry man shouting “f*** the government”.

BODIED BY THE KIRK: The future is a wonderful place where all things are possible. But the Labour leadership seem to have difficulty agreeing on clear timetables to get there. The party is vowing to close the gender pay gap by 2030. Let’s see if that gets picked apart by the end of the day. Corbyn was mocked for initially promising there wouldn’t be a Scottish independence referendum in his “first term”, before a spokesperson said it could happen in 2021. Corbyn then talked about ruling it out in the “early years of a Labour government” instead. In a similar vein, shadow chancellor John McDonnell and shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth appeared unable to agree on when – if ever – a four-day, 32-hour week might apply to the NHS. File this one under “vague aspiration”. Like his nemesis, Corbyn was also heckled on the campaign trail – condemned as a “terrorist-sympathiser” by a Presbyterian minister in Glasgow. There was a twist in the tale: the Church of Scotland is now investigating Reverend Richard Cameron’s online activities after people spotted a slew of the homophobic tweets linked to Cameron. Crivens!

NO DICE: What of our wheeler dealer, right-wing heart stealer Nigel Farage? The Brexit Party leader says he has turned down a last-minute offer from the Tories. According to The Telegraph, Johnson offered to put up only “paper candidates” in around 40 Labour-held seats, promising those Tories would only do half-assed “minimal campaigning” – so long as the Brexit Party withdrew everywhere else. But Farage insisted the Tories withdraw completely in those Labour strongholds. “They refused to do it,” Nige revealed. Amusingly enough, Farage cannot vote for his own party in his Orpington constituency after his bold move to pull out of Tory seats. Asked whether he would vote Conservative, he said “let me see what is in the manifesto” – before clarifying he wouldn’t vote for Johnson’s party. Farage also admitted had “cheesed off” some of his own backers. Those poor, surplus-to-requirement Brexit Party candidates will be reimbursed their £100 application fees.

UNHOLY MESS: Tonight’s deadline for candidate declarations will come as welcome relief for Jo Swinson. Donning a pair of boxing gloves, the pro-EU pugilist was forced to deny she had “lost control” of the Lib Dems’ selection process after the party’s punchy Canterbury flagbearer Tim Walker quit to help Labour’s local Remainer candidate. As the party completely ruined the bold move by putting a local Lib Dem councillor in Walker’s place, Guy Kiddey, the party’s candidate for High Peak, threatened to quit in protest. Kiddey thinks he will get replaced today. The People’s Vote campaign group is urging Lib Dem and Labour candidates to step aside in 90 key seats to avoid splitting the pro-EU vote. The Green MEP Magid Magid, meanwhile, said his own party should stand aside in 44 marginals to help thwart the Tories, saying the opposition should unite against an “unholy hard-right pact”.

OVER THE BAR: Donald Tusk, the outgoing European Council president, appears to be demob happy. Or is it demob sad? At any rate he’s shooting his mouth off, telling pro-EU, anti-Brexit voters to keep fighting until the final whistle. “Don’t give up. In this match, we had added time, we are already in extra time, perhaps it will even go to penalties?” He suggested that Brexit would finally signal the “end of the British Empire”. Hillary Clinton also has a slightly over-the-top warning for us. Speaking at Kings College London, she said she was worried that so many British politicians had felt too intimidated to stand for office. “That is the path [to] authoritarianism, that is the path [to] fascism.” Thanks for cheering us up Hillary.

SAD BUT TRUE: I’m afraid we have to finish up this morning on the strange tale of a broken marriage. Kate Griffiths, the estranged wife of disgraced former Tory MP Andrew Griffiths, will be running in his place for the Conservative party. She was confirmed night as the new Tory candidate for Burton and Uttoxeter. Mr Griffiths – who did try to get selected but has now decided to stand down from politics – resigned as small business minister last year after it was revealed he had sent more than 2,000 sexual texts to a barmaid and a friend in just 21 days. “Our relationship ended … and the divorce is being finalised,” said Kate, who rejected her estranged husband’s endorsement. “I want to make it clear that I have not sought, nor do I accept, Andrew’s offer of political support.”

On the record

“One of my English friends is probably right when he says with melancholy that Brexit is the real end of the British Empire.”

Donald Tusk tells it like it is before standing down at European Council boss next month.

From the Twitterati

“Boris Johnson says a “stray early draft” of his speech referred to “onanism”, which he did not say in the final version. To be clear, this “stray early draft” was briefed out under embargo to journalists by the Tory press office yesterday, so he’s talking nonsense.”

Politics Home editor Kevin Schofield isn’t happy the PM didn’t actually make his masturbation reference as expected...

“Bad day for PM with floods. Everyone now talking about a non-existent reference to masturbation in a speech. Job done.”

...but Sky News’ Lewis Goodall says the PM will be happy enough.

Essential reading

Sean O’Grady, The Independent: Boris Johnson’s disastrous performance in Yorkshire proves it – his calculated ‘average Joe’ act is dead

Tom Peck, The Independent: Boris Johnson can’t even be trusted to insult Jeremy Corbyn properly

Tom McTague, The Atlantic: Boris Johnson is not Britain’s Donald Trump – Jeremy Corbyn is

Gail Collins, The New York Times: The only show in Trump town

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