Election campaigns are fraught with risk for campaigners and candidates. Hot mics, internal party squabbles, photo ops gone wrong: all can divert attention from the matter at hand and lead to days of unwanted headlines.
But they are also risky for political reporters following the action in real time, who can find themselves just as distracted by the chaos of events. As we’ve already seen during the first full week of campaigning, the Conservatives look set to try to attract attention with bold policies to get people talking. National service is a good example of this, a tax cut for pensioners is another.
Labour, for its part, intends to fight from the position it feels most comfortable: steady as she goes messaging on the NHS, jobs and the economy designed not to scare voters.
Both parties want to keep their teams on message and will fight hard to avoid being thrown off track, but this makes it even more important to look for the gaps that cut through each party’s narrative over the next six weeks.
One good example of this is social care – currently the biggest........