I read them all so you don’t have to. None in isolation would set the world alight, but look closely and there are some good ideas

It is true that election manifestos can’t be compared like with like – and in recent years, the variation of detail, trustworthiness and meaning has become more pronounced than ever. But it is also true that there are things to be gleaned from their recurring themes. Moreover, there are objectively good ideas which may emanate from a party that will never be able to enact them, but nevertheless deserve exposure.

Looked at that way, it’s a great year to be a dentist, or in construction. Every party (bar Reform and the SNP) talks a great game on dental provision – even, ironically, the Conservatives, who have a £200m “recovery plan”. Toothache doesn’t feel very metaphorical when you have it, but the issue speaks to a broader truth that Keir Starmer made explicit in his manifesto launch speech: that the real-life impacts of degraded public services are too stark to ignore – which is precisely why everyone is pledging that the nothing-works years are over.

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© Composite: Guardian Design – Getty images/Alamy

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© Composite: Guardian Design – Getty images/Alamy

Tory MP Alister Jack says he ‘had no knowledge of the date of the election until the day it was called’ and is not under investigation

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Here is a what we can expect on the campaign trail today:

Labour will talk up its pledge to end the 8am scramble for GP appointments by training more doctors and updating the NHS app so slots are easy to book and rearrange.

Home Secretary James Cleverly, shadow health secretary Wes Streeting and Keir Starmer will all be out campaigning in the East Midlands during the day.

Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting will be promoting the message, saying his party is also committed to bringing back the family doctor, to give patients continuity.

While Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey continues campaigning across traditionally Tory heartlands in southern England, his Scottish counterpart will be in the south-east of Scotland.

Alex Cole-Hamilton says his party is focusing its aim on getting the SNP out of power and targeting the Uparty in some key seats ahead of the 4 July ballot.

Reform UK chairman Richard Tice will be in Scotland giving a speech on net zero and “saving the oil and gas industry”.

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© Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

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© Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

Exclusive: Videos on Reform leader’s account show more engagement and average views than any other candidate

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Nigel Farage is outperforming all other parties and candidates on TikTok throughout the general election campaign, analysis shows, eclipsing politicians considered most popular among young people.

Since the election was called, videos posted to the Reform leader’s personal account had more engagement and views on average than any other candidate – as well as the main channels of other parties.

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© Photograph: Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images

The anti-Tory tide sweeping the country has much to tell us about the volatility of voting since Brexit

There are various ways to map the spectrum of public opinion and model voter journeys from one pole to another, but none applies to Sheila. White-haired and frail, she takes a few minutes to come to the door of her small redbrick terrace house on an estate in Eastbourne’s Hampden Park suburb. She looks tired and explains that medication for a serious illness makes her sleepy. But a glint of something like mischief flickers in her eyes when she’s asked who has her support at the coming election.

It’s a close call. Reform or Liberal Democrat. Sheila likes what Nigel Farage has to say and has backed Ukip before (never the Tories). Pressed to choose, she declares her decision by pointing emphatically at the young man standing on her doorstep holding a stack of orange-fringed flyers. Josh Babarinde’s reputation has preceded him.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

Guardian Newsroom: election results special. On Friday 5 July, 7.30pm-9pm BST, join Hugh Muir, Gaby Hinsliff, John Crace, Jonathan Freedland and Zoe Williams for unrivalled analysis of the general election results.

Book tickets here or at theguardian.live

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© Photograph: Aaron Chown/PA

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© Photograph: Aaron Chown/PA

Men aged between 20 and 52 escorted from grounds of PM’s constituency home after lunchtime entry to estate

Four men have been arrested on suspicion of aggravated trespass at the prime minister’s constituency home in Yorkshire, police have said.

The suspects were arrested on Tuesday in the grounds of Rishi Sunak’s home in Kirby Sigston, near Northallerton at about 12.40pm before being escorted off the property, North Yorkshire police said.

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© Photograph: Richard Saker/The Observer

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© Photograph: Richard Saker/The Observer

The gambling saga might have been a three-day scandal. Instead he’d let it rumble on until he was almost on his knees

Election? What election? It’s hard to overstate just how weird this campaign has become. Normally with nine days to go, every party is desperate for every bit of attention they can get. Sending out a couple of operational notes every day detailing opportunities for the media. Anything to get their message out.

It’s very different this time around. As though the Tories and Labour are terrified of the voters and have gone into hiding. Coming out only to do the barest of bare minimums. Burble a few bland platitudes and then go scurrying back into the darkness. You can see why. The Tories don’t have a track record to defend and Labour don’t want to do anything to rock the boat. Let the opinion polls do the talking. But God it’s been dispiriting. Hope appears to be in short supply. The country wants change but the options don’t seem thrilling.

Guardian Newsroom: Election results special On Friday 5 July, 7.30pm-9pm BST, join Hugh Muir, Gaby Hinsliff, John Crace, Jonathan Freedland and Zoe Williams for unrivalled analysis of the general election results. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live.

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© Photograph: Chris Jackson/PA

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© Photograph: Chris Jackson/PA

UK government deal struck at height of pandemic described as ‘colossal misuse of public funds’

An estimated £1.4bn-worth of personal protective equipment (PPE) bought by the government in a single deal has been destroyed or written off, according to figures described as the worst example of waste in the Covid pandemic.

The figures obtained by the BBC under freedom of information laws showed that 1.57bn items from the NHS supplier Full Support Healthcare will never be used.

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© Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Rishi Sunak was meant to clean up the Tory party. Instead he will leave it morally and ideologically exhausted

In the dying days of Donald Trump’s presidency, the log fire in his chief of staff’s office was lit daily.

The outgoing team were frantically burning documents, or so the White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson writes in her memoir, to the point that her own boss’s wife reportedly complained that his suits smelled of smoke. Many alarming things happened in those final days, but the fall-of-Rome atmosphere is somehow captured in that whiff of bonfire. The paranoia; the panic; the queasy feeling of something very wrong at the heart of public life.

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© Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

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© Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

Rishi Sunak has heavily criticised comments from Nigel Farage that the west provoked Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Archie Bland reports

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© Photograph: Jordan Pettitt/PA

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© Photograph: Jordan Pettitt/PA

Military contractor Erik Prince started a private WhatsApp group for his close associates that includes a menagerie of right-wing government officials, intelligence operatives, arms traffickers, and journalists. We got their messages. from Off Leash: Inside the Secret, Global, Far-Right Group Chat [The New Republic; ungated] [CW: the quiet part, out loud]

Among the group's hottest topics: • The "Biden Regime," which a consensus of Off Leash participants who weighed in view as an ally of Islamic terrorists and other anti-American forces that needs to be crushed along with them and its partners in the deep state, such as former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley, who "deserves to burn in hell," Lara Logan shared with the group chat. • The shortcomings of democracy that invariably resulted from extending the franchise to ordinary citizens, who are easily manipulated by Marxists and populists. "The West is at best a beautiful cemetery," lamented Sven von Storch, whose aristocratic German family fled the country after World War II to Chile, where their son was raised before returning to the land of his ancestors, where he married the granddaughter of the Third Reich's last de facto head of state, who was convicted at Nuremberg. • Israel-Palestine, a problem that Michael Yudelson, Prince's business partner at Unplugged, which markets an allegedly supersecure smartphone, said should be handled by napalming Hamas's tunnel network. "I would burn all those bastards, and have everything above ground, everything left of Gaza, collapse into this fiery hell pit and burn!" he wrote. • The Houthi rebels in Yemen, whom Yoav Goldhorn, who was an Israeli intelligence officer until last year and now works for a Tel Aviv–based security contractor headed by former senior national security veterans, thinks should be "dealt with" as soon as possible to ensure they don't grow from "an inconvenience to a festering mess [that] will eventually require an entire limb to be amputated." • And most of all, Iran, which participants agreed, with a few exceptions, also needed to be wiped out. Saghar Erica Kasraie, a former staffer for Republican Representative Trent Franks when he served on the House Armed Services Committee and whom, according to her LinkedIn profile, she advised on Middle East issues, urged that the Islamic Republic's clerical leaders be targeted by weaponized drones that "take them out like flys ."

Justice Alito Caught on Tape Discussing How Battle for America 'Can't Be Compromised' [ungated] - "In a new, secret recording, the Supreme Court justice says he 'agrees' that the U.S. should return to a place of godliness."

The recording, which was provided exclusively to Rolling Stone, captures Windsor approaching Alito at the event and reminding him that they spoke at the same function the year before, when she asked him a question about political polarization. In the intervening year, she tells the justice, her views on the matter had changed. "I don't know that we can negotiate with the left in the way that needs to happen for the polarization to end," Windsor says. "I think that it's a matter of, like, winning." "I think you're probably right," Alito replies. "On one side or the other — one side or the other is going to win. I don't know. I mean, there can be a way of working — a way of living together peacefully, but it's difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can't be compromised. They really can't be compromised. So it's not like you are going to split the difference." Windsor goes on to tell Alito: "People in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that — to return our country to a place of godliness." "I agree with you. I agree with you," replies Alito, who authored the Supreme Court's 2022 Dobbs decision, which reversed five decades of settled law and ended a constitutional right to abortion.

Justice Alito questions possibility of political compromise in secret recording - "Martha-Ann Alito spoke to Windsor about her flags on another recording made at the dinner, according to an additional edited recording the filmmaker posted online. She said she wanted to fly a religious flag because 'I have to look across the lagoon at the Pride flag for the next month', an apparent reference to celebratory LGBTQ+ displays during Pride month in June." Supreme Court's Alito appears to back US return to 'godliness' in secret recording - "The 'Appeal to Heaven' flag has come to symbolize hopes by some conservative activists for a more Christian-centered U.S. government." Secret recording puts spotlight on Alito's strong conservative views on religious issues - "The justice has consistently backed religious Christian groups in Supreme Court cases and has often spoke about freedom of religion being under attack." Alito's 'Godliness' Comment Echoes a Broader Christian Movement - "Justice Samuel Alito's secretly recorded remarks come as many conservatives have openly embraced the view that American democracy must be grounded in a Christian worldview."

The unguarded moment added to calls for greater scrutiny by Democrats, many of whom are eager to open official investigations into outside influence at the Supreme Court. But the core of the idea expressed to Mr. Alito, that the country must fight the decline of Christianity in public life, goes beyond the questions of bias and influence at the nation's highest court. An array of conservatives, including antiabortion activists, church leaders and conservative state legislators, has openly embraced the idea that American democracy needs to be grounded in Christian values and guarded against the rise of secular culture. They are right-wing Catholics and evangelicals who oppose abortion, same-sex marriage, transgender rights and what they see as the dominance of liberal views in school curriculums. And they've become a crucial segment of former President Donald J. Trump's political coalition, intermingled with the MAGA movement that boosted him to the White House and that hopes to do so once again in November. The movement's rise has been evident across the country since Mr. Trump lost re-election in 2020. The National Association of Christian Lawmakers formed to advance Christian values and legislation among elected officials. This week in Indianapolis, delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in America, are voting on issues like restricting in vitro fertilization and further limiting women from pastoral positions. [US Southern Baptists effort to enshrine ban on women pastors falls short (earlier: Southern Baptists finalize expulsion of two churches with female pastors), US Southern Baptists condemn IVF procedure] And in Congress, Mike Johnson, a man with deep roots in this movement and the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal advocacy group, is now speaker of the House. Now, Supreme Court justices have become caught up in the debate over whether America is a Christian nation. While Justice Alito is hardly openly championing these views, he is embracing language and symbolism that line up with a much broader movement pushing back against the declining power of Christianity as a majority religion in America. The country has grown more ethnically diverse and the share of American adults who describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated has risen steadily over the past decade. Still, a 2022 report from the Pew Research Center found that more than four in 10 adults believed America should be a "Christian nation." Justice Alito's agreement isn't the first time he has embraced Christian ways of talking about the law and his vision for the nation. Shortly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago, a ruling for which Justice Alito wrote the majority opinion, the justice flew to Rome and addressed a private summit on religious liberty hosted by the University of Notre Dame. His overarching concern was the decline of Christianity in public life, and he warned of what he saw as a "growing hostility to religion, or at least the traditional religious beliefs that are contrary to the new moral code that is ascendant." "We can't lightly assume that the religious liberty enjoyed today in the United States, in Europe and in many other places will always endure," he said, referencing Christians "torn apart by wild beasts" at the Colosseum before the fall of the Roman Empire... [T]he resonance of the Sacred Heart goes beyond simply an abstract religious concept, just as the Pride flag does. Each is notable for the vision of America that they symbolize, and the different visions of marriage, family and morality that they represent. For one slice of America that celebrates L.G.B.T.Q. rights, June is Pride Month. For another devout, traditional Catholic slice, June is a time to remember the Sacred Heart.

Justice Alito, in secretly recorded audio, apparently agrees nation needs to return to place of 'godliness' - "In the edited clips that were posted to X, Windsor approached Martha-Ann Alito at the event and seemingly expressed sympathy for 'everything that you're going through' and that it 'was not okay.' 'It's okay because if they come back to me, I'll get them,' Martha-Ann Alito said, referring to the news media. 'I'm gonna be liberated, and I'm gonna get them.' ... Windsor then turned the conversation to the stir caused by the 'Appeal to Heaven' flag, to which Martha-Ann Alito said the 'feminazis believe that [Justice Alito] should control me. So, they'll go to hell, he never controls me,' she added." In Secret Recordings, Alito Endorses Nation of 'Godliness.' Roberts Talks of Pluralism. - "The two justices were surreptitiously recorded at a Supreme Court gala last week by a woman posing as a Catholic conservative."

The justice's comments appeared to be in marked contrast to those of Chief Justice Roberts, who was also secretly recorded at the same event but who pushed back against Ms. Windsor's assertion that the court had an obligation to lead the country on a more "moral path." "Would you want me to be in charge of putting the nation on a more moral path?" the chief justice said. "That's for people we elect. That's not for lawyers." Ms. Windsor pressed the chief justice about religion, saying, "I believe that the founders were godly, like were Christians, and I think that we live in a Christian nation and that our Supreme Court should be guiding us in that path." Chief Justice Roberts quickly answered, "I don't know if that's true." He added: "I don't know that we live in a Christian nation. I know a lot of Jewish and Muslim friends who would say maybe not, and it's not our job to do that." The chief justice also said he did not think polarization in the country was irreparable, pointing out that the United States had managed crises as severe as the Civil War and the Vietnam War. When Ms. Windsor pressed him on whether he thought that there was "a role for the court" in "guiding us toward a more moral path," the chief justice's answer was immediate. "No, I think the role for the court is deciding the cases," he said.

In the run-up to July's general election, the Guardian video team is touring the UK looking at the issues that matter to voters. After swimmers and rowers fell sick from sewage discharges into the River Thames we went to the seat of Henley and Thame to see how environmental concerns rank for voters in a seat that has been Conservative for more than 100 years

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© Photograph: The Guardian

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© Photograph: The Guardian

In the run-up to July's election, the Guardian video team will be touring the UK looking at the issues that matter to voters. In a week when an attack on a refugee camp in Rafah and the Labour party's treatment of Diane Abbott and Faiza Shaheen dominated the headlines, we spoke to voters in Ilford – North and South – who were protesting locally about Gaza. We asked whether these issues would make a difference to how they vote in the election, met canvassers getting behind independent candidates, and spoke to business owners about their political priorities

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© Photograph: The Guardian

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© Photograph: The Guardian