The prime minister told us his government would be a world apart from Rishi Sunak’s, yet the similarities are mounting

During the last election campaign it was hard to escape the impression that, whatever other faults he had, Rishi Sunak just wasn’t very good at politics. The charge sheet included getting drenched announcing the election, leaving D-day veterans on the beaches and insisting that black was white. That he was stopping the boats. That the economy was in good shape. That the Tories were on course for victory.

Just a couple of months later, it very much feels like Keir Starmer and Labour are saying: “Hold my beer.” Keen to prove that they too are amateurs at the political PR game. It’s almost as if there is something about being in government that makes fools of everyone. Though few would have imagined that Labour could manage it quite so quickly. A period of grace would have been more fitting.

Voting on Thursday proved a harrowing experience for Wayne Osborne and his wife. Plus letters on the election outcome from Mike Pender , Dr Stephen Riley , John Bailey , Michael J Walsh , Ruth Pickles , Cyril Duff and Ian Grieve

We often talked politics with our young daughter after the Tory win in 2010. She was five years old but we talked to her about it, just as my great-grandfather talked to me about the Labour party, which he had been part of in 1915 and onwards ( Keir Starmer hails ‘sunlight of hope’ as Britain wakes up to Labour landslide, 5 July ). His words stayed with me. I hoped our words would stay with our daughter, just as his words shaped my political views and my worldview. Words hold power and meaning.

When my wife and I approached the polling station on Thursday afternoon, she said quietly: “This would have been Abi’s first time to vote in a general election.” Those words hurt her as she spoke. I welled up, but the resolve to vote the correct way was strong; it would be in Abi’s memory. Because she died with leukaemia in September 2020 just after her 15th birthday, in a children’s hospital wing that had been built in the 1940s. It had only recently obtained some decent beds and observation machines, and it was a place desperate for funding, but with fantastic, hardworking, deeply committed staff.

Inherent flaws and political churn doomed Boris Johnson’s signature policy – and it was hobbled through bureaucracy and high inflation

• No progress made on half of levelling-up targets
• Report card: how the Tories’ pledges stack up today
• ‘We’re forgotten about here’: the broken promises

Last February, the Treasury lost patience with Michael Gove.

The levelling up secretary had just given a speech in Manchester during which he announced £30m to pay for improvements to substandard housing . Officials had already blocked him from using that speech to announce a larger pot of money for local authorities, and then they decided to stop him allocating any capital spending of £30m or more without Treasury approval.

Five years after the Tories won over the ‘red wall’ with a pledge to restore deprived areas, voters in the north-east say they’ve given up waiting for change

• No progress made on half of levelling-up targets
• Report card: how the Tories’ pledges stack up today
• Britain’s levelling up agenda stymied from the start

Two days after his landslide election victory in 2019, Boris Johnson practically crowdsurfed into Sedgefield cricket club. Jubilant fans at the venue in Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, craned for a photo, one thrust upon him their family pet, and another begged him to sign a copy of the Northern Echo, headlined: “Tory tsunami from the Wear to the Tees”.

“There was an absolutely huge buzz in the place,” said Jean Gillespie, 69, in the same function room this week, whipping out her phone to show a picture with the former prime minister: “I got a snog and a selfie.”

Former PM’s meeting with President Maduro, in capacity as hedge fund consultant, is under further scrutiny

Labour is demanding answers over what the party said was “potentially serious impropriety” by Boris Johnson after it emerged that the former prime minister met the Venezuelan president in his role as a consultant for a hedge fund.

Nick Thomas-Symonds, the shadow Cabinet Office minister said there were concerns that Johnson may have breached the ministerial code in a letter to Oliver Dowden, the deputy prime minister and Cabinet Office minister.

Hearts and minds must be won in the run-up to the renegotiation of a charter that will determine the next decade of public broadcasting

With just three years to go until the renewal of its charter, after 14 years of political assaults and in a time of convulsive change, the BBC has to prove its fitness for the next 10 years of public broadcasting. Hence a wide-ranging speech this week by its director general, Tim Davie, outlining the way forward. Opinions vary as to whether this was a timely show of mettle or a once great institution gasping its last. What was clear was that the path ahead will involve yet more swingeing cuts on top of the £500m annual reduction already forced on the corporation by a two-year licence fee freeze – which ends next month – compounded by inflation.

The breadth of the challenge facing the corporation was underscored by a trio of core objectives designed to sprinkle reassurance in all political directions: the pursuit of truth with no agenda; an emphasis on British storytelling; and a mission to bring people together. All three may be admirable, but the latter two were somewhat undermined by a podcast interview with the showrunner of Doctor Who, for decades a standout example of British storytelling that brings people together. Talking about the value of a production partnership struck with Disney two years ago, Russell T Davies said that it was crucial to the show’s survival, because the end of the BBC was “undoubtedly on its way in some shape or form”.

Labour leader and deputy Angela Rayner hail parts of former prime minister’s flagship domestic policy priority and say Sunak ‘killed it at birth’ while chancellor

Official figures have confirmed that the UK economy went into recession at the end of last year, after the latest estimate found it contracted in the last two quarters of 2023, Phillip Inman reports.

Good morning. Keir Starmer is launching Labour’s local elections campaign this morning, and to mark the event he has discovered his inner Boris Johnson. He has written a joint article with Angela Rayner , Labour’s deputy leader, praising the ambition behind levelling up, Johnson’s flagship domestic policy priority.

Where you are born often dictates where you end up. That people from Blackpool have a life expectancy of ten years fewer than those in Westminster is a travesty. Instead of pitting areas against one another and relying on the square mile of the City of London to keep the UK economy afloat, we’ll tackle Britain’s regional divide and match the ambition people have for their community. It will be at the heart of our mission-led government.

It’s understandable that working people might have become disillusioned or cynical, because one of the biggest tragedies of the past 14 years is the sense that things can’t change. But they can and they will.

Whitehall under the Tories has become too passive and overly centralised. We will turn that on its head, delivering a far more active central government willing to give local leaders the levers needed to turbocharge their areas. We will change the relationship. Partnership in pursuit of common national missions, not buck-passing and division.

Our Take Back Control Act will entrust power to local leaders, who know their area best and have skin in the game. We will widen English devolution so that every community is taking advantage of the opportunities it brings. We will deepen devolution so combined authorities have a path to gaining powers over transport, skills, housing and planning, employment support, energy and can get a long-term integrated funding settlement in return for exemplary frameworks for managing public money. This will enable local leaders to develop powerful local growth plans that attract specialist industries and enhance their local strengths.