Good morning. Poor Oliver Dowden. There he was, gearing up to launch a cheery campaign advising people to stockpile tinned meat and invest in a wind-up radio to better endure any future “unforeseen entity upending our way of life” – and then the prime minister went ahead and announced one. Bulk buy the Spam while you can, folks: to everyone’s surprise, there’s an election coming, and it’s no time to be answering the door.
In six weeks’ time, it’ll all be over. Right now, the trickiest question for most people is why it’s even started. To answer that, today’s newsletter – put together with the help of Nimo Omer – will run you through what happened yesterday, beat by frenzied beat. Here are the headlines.