As dramatic campaign closes, has it actually grappled with UK’s massive problems? – BBC News

That’s been part of the ammunition some of the smaller parties have used to chuck at Sunak and Starmer.

The SNP, the Greens, and the Lib Dems – when their leader Ed Davey has not been on a water slide/paddleboard/waltzer or goodness knows what’s next (I’m assured there are more stunts to come) – have been the ones that have claimed all the way that Labour is heading to Number 10 and that they are the ones who can keep them honest, and prevent them just working from a Tory script.

The Greens are hopeful of bagging more seats after a couple of years of local election gains; the Lib Dems are sure they are going to make up a decent amount of ground too and hope to become the third biggest party in Parliament again. That would be at the expense of the SNP who, after huge turmoil, are trying to stop a slide.

My colleague Gareth Lewis explains here how Plaid Cymru might find winning their two target seats at this election tough; and in Northern Ireland, my colleague Jayne McCormack points out in our Election Essential newsletter that the tussle between unionist DUP and nationalist Sinn Féin to secure the most seats at Westminster shows no signs of abating.

She says that this year it is a contest being watched particularly closely because, for the first time since 2005, Sinn Féin looks as though it could outperform its rival. This would be a symbolic moment for Irish nationalism and Northern Ireland more generally.

But the small party that has made the most noise is Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. For weeks they’ve grabbed headlines for the wrong reasons: from a candidate who suggested the UK shouldn’t have fought World War Two, to misogynistic comments by eight candidates we revealed last week, to the horribly offensive racial slurs used by some activists, which exploded into a race row.

The Tories ran their campaign with the intent of defending their vote share from leaching to Reform. In the closing days, Reform UK is the party that’s been having to defend its values. It is likely they’ll still get a decent chunk of support that will slice away at the Conservatives’ vote. As at so many points in the party’s history, a Tory leader has had to grapple with how to manage pressure from the right of the conservative (with a small c) movement.

Even during the campaign we’ve seen Conservatives clash over whether Mr Farage himself could ever have a place in their party. He is set on causing disruption, as ever.

How much upset he actually causes, we’ll see.

Before the campaign started there was a common expectation in Westminster circles that a campaign, where the principle actors were Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer might be, well, not exactly a thriller.

In fact, from Sunak’s D-day disaster, Farage’s stormy entrance into the campaign, ‘gamblegate’ and in the closing moments, Rishi Sunak perhaps more personal than he’s ever been, it has been anything but dull.

But I can’t help wondering if it’s really a campaign where we have seen our politicians grapple with the massive issues that affect us.

In the first part of the year, politicians were fond of talking about the dangers the world faces, but they haven’t chosen to make much of foreign affairs. The challenges and opportunities of technology they often love to talk about have been more or less absent too. What about how we care for our vulnerable and elderly with social care?

What about what seems to be a crisis taking place behind closed doors in our prisons? Climate change? The true scale of the country’s debts and what that really might mean in the years to come?

Of course, politicians match their campaigns to what is top of voters’ lists.

Campaign in poetry, govern in prose?

Perhaps more like: campaign on a few core issues that appeal to focus groups, and worry about some of the massive issues of governing a bit later on.

It is nearly over. Our political parties have been doing their best, or what passes for it, for more than a month to get you to back them. We’re nearly at that magic moment where it’s all of us in charge, not the politicians.

It’s not likely that any of the 2024 campaigns will go down as the most inspiring, dynamic, memorable political operations. I’m not so sure that the public would have been in the mood to be romanced and dazzled by any of them anyway after all the stresses and strains of the last few years.

But that doesn’t make our decisions in the next week any less important. The choice will affect us all.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Pat McFadden, Labour campaign co-ordinator, Daisy Cooper, Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats, and Stephen Flynn, SNP Westminster Leader, will be appearing on this weekend’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme.

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