Sunak refuses to rule out summer election

The Tories are expected to lose around half their councillors in the upcoming local elections on 4 May. Trevor Phillips interviewed the prime minister on Sky News, asking him whether a general election could take place as early as July. A frustrated and bullish Sunak claimed he did not get distracted by his diminished approval ratings, and repeatedly refused to confirm or deny the possibility of a July general election, telling Phillips: ‘you’re going to try and draw whatever conclusion you want from what I say’.

Conservative defector Dan Poulter: Tories now resemble a ‘nationalist party’

The Conservatives suffered another humiliation this week after MP Dr Dan Poulter quit his party to join Labour. In an interview with Laura Kuenssberg, Poulter, who continues to work in the NHS, explained that he had been finding it ‘difficult to look (his) patients in the eye’. Poulter claimed that the Conservative government is to blame for making the NHS ‘unrecognisable’ from what it was before he became an MP, and that Labour could be trusted to ‘do better for patients’.