Sometimes Sunak only makes sense if you assume he is actively trying to lose this joyless election

Less than a week to go. For which everyone – most politicians included – will be breathing a huge sigh of relief. Rishi Sunak must be wondering why on earth he chose to go for a six-week campaign when he had so little to say and such a poor record to defend. It’s as if he’s already given up and is just going through the motions.

Nor have Labour appeared that energised by being clear favourites to win a large majority next Thursday. Their main aim has been to do as little as possible. To not rock the boat and to let the Tory party self-destruct. To be fair, it looks to have been a successful strategy so far but it has made the last few weeks feel particularly joyless. Keir Starmer, knowing he will inherit a mess, is so desperate not to raise expectations too high that his pitch has often sounded like: “Vote for me. Things will be a bit less rubbish.”

The Reform UK candidate brought the air of a televangelist to a rally in Sunderland that was all show and no substance

Call it confirmation bias. The media were the ones who wanted endless debates – the public would have been happy with one or two at most – and so it was inevitable that the media would declare them to be important waypoints on the campaign trail. But were they?

Sure, the debates were picked over forensically, but strip out the sound and fury and you’re left with very little we didn’t already know. Rishi Sunak might have been even more thin-skinned and tetchy and Keir Starmer rather more wooden than we might have imagined but this is all surface trivia. Nothing new in concrete policy terms was revealed. Just the familiar half-truths and evasions with which we are all too familiar. Manifesto pledges that almost certainly won’t stand contact with reality.

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PM and his expected successor repeat same evasions to leave us none the wiser about our future government

• Five things we learned from the final Sunak-Starmer debate before polling

Ring the Bells that Still can Ring. Forget your Perfect Offering. There is a Crack in Everything. That’s how the Light Gets in.

Look on the bright side. It’s nearly over. Finally. For the last four weeks the broadcasters have been testing the axiom that insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result to destruction.