Rishi Sunak chose the Royal Army Museum in Chelsea to make his last stand. In a campaign finale, opposite an 1878 painting of Gurkhas using trees for cover and beneath a suspended helicopter that, cartoonist Morten Morland observed, made the Tories look as if they were fleeing Saigon, his lieutenants gathered for one final push. From the balcony, Greg Hands got a sympathetic applause. James Cleverly grinned at activists. “David” – presumably Cameron, not Davis – loitered unseen at the back. Tory HQ, I’m told, decided to host the event one night early in order to give broadcasters, who are banned from talking politics on election day, time to cover what was to unfold.
Michael Gove, an indefatigable campaigner throughout these six weeks, kicked off proceedings. He channelled his inner Gordon Brown by reeling off the unsung achievements from the past 14 years: the best schools in Europe, the 2012 Olympics, the vaccine roll-out, etc, etc. The Prime Minister, Gove told this throng of party members, had a “moral core that is unbreakable”. In a presumably inadvertent reference to Monty Python, Gove went on to ask: “What has Keir Starmer ever done for us?”
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