Inside Politics: Boris Johnson dreams up desperate tax cut vow

Shocking, positively shocking. The trailer for the new James Bond film has revealed bad guy Rami Malek – who may or may not be Dr. No – wearing a sinister, mysterious cracked mask. After bad guy Donald Trump – more Dr. Evil than Dr. No – departed the Nato summit in a huff, Boris Johnson was left to pour himself a few shaken-not-stirred martinis and wonder how the hell to get his election campaign on track. Tax cuts appear to be the answer the PM came up with. Jeremy Corbyn, meanwhile, thinks the cracked mask has finally slipped on the Tories’ sinister plan to open up the NHS to the spectre of US corporations. Can he uncover any more fiendish plots before the end credits roll a week from now? I’m Adam Forrest, and welcome to The Independent’s daily Inside Politics briefing.

Our political editor Andrew Woodcock on what to look out for on the campaign trail today:

Boris Johnson is pledging to hold a tax-cutting “Brexit” budget within weeks of our planned exit from the EU at the end of January. The prime minister is in the Midlands today and will set out the plan in more detail today, so we’ll see if it amounts to anything other than the party’s commitment to increase the national insurance threshold to £9,500. Jeremy Corbyn, also heading to the Midlands, will promise to cap class sizes at 30 across schools in England by recruiting nearly 20,000 extra teachers over five years. Nicola Sturgeon starts a campaign bus tour of Scotland in Edinburgh, where Jo Swinson is also making a speech today.

TWO-FACE AND THE JOKERS: Well that was a wild ride. As predicted, Donald Trump stomped all over our election campaign for a couple of days. But it’s all over. The US president chucked his toys out the pram and headed home early after attacking “two-faced” Canadian PM Justin Trudeau for leading a gossip session at Buckingham Palace. Johnson insisted he hadn’t been giggling along with the rest of the bad boys and girls in the playground, dismissing the idea as “complete nonsense”. Will Trump bear a grudge about the whole thing? Of course he will. Perhaps it was still playing on the PM’s mind when he headed off to a racing car factory in Milton Keynes – where he was interviewed by a speedy and agile Robert Peston. An agitated Johnson claimed everyone would be able to stop talking about Brexit after 31 January, prompting Peston to shout: “That’s not true!”

DOWN AND OUT IN BUCKINGHAMSHIRE: Jeremy Corbyn was also on ITV on Wednesday night – revealing he would allow a homeless family to live at Chequers, the prime minister’s official country retreat in rural Buckinghamshire. A brilliant idea? A bit mawkish? Or just totally unworkable? Let’s just say it’s a controversial Channel 4 documentary series waiting to happen. Speaking of TV formats, Corbyn accidentally revealed he’s not really a fan of the Queen’s Christmas speech. Which makes him utterly normal, even if the right-wing tabloids seem to think he was caught out making some terrible admission. Asked by Julie Etchingham about “the most romantic, wild and reckless thing you’ve ever done”, Corbyn replied: “You can't ask that question on television.”

SONGIFY THIS: Does anyone remember that autotuned remix of Nick Clegg grovelling over student fees? “We’re sorry, we’re sorry – we’re so, so sorry. On behalf of the Liberal Democrats we’re so, so sorry.” Well, Jo Swinson’s big BBC interview with Andrew Neil was a bit like that. When Neil quizzed her of austerity an said she had voted for the bedroom tax nine times, the Lib Dem leader said: “Yes, I am sorry I did that … [it] was wrong. I am sorry about that and it is one of the things we did get wrong.” Despite grumblings about her future, Swinson insisted she was “absolutely here to stay”. She denied her Revoke Article 50 pledge had backfired but admitted the idea of her becoming PM was now “not the most likely scenario”. Actually, it wasn’t nearly as bad as Corbyn’s grilling. Swinson was given almost as hard a time over coalition cuts by a fearsome youth worker at a charity in south London.

UNBEELIEVABLE TRUTH: It’s been a stinging 24 hours for Swinson. A group of Extinction Rebellion protesters dressed as bees swarmed around her Lib Dem battle bus, with one of the hive gluing himself to the windscreen. Swinson possibly thought she was on safe ground approaching the environmentalists to talk about her wonderful climate change policies. But the bee leader (I know XR don’t do leaders, but this guy was very forceful) told the Lib Dem leader she was being “a little bit patronising”. He should be in a Lord Ashcroft focus group with cutting comments like that. A group of XR bees later swarmed a Brexit Party Office in Grimsby and lay on the floor. A group of pale, male and stale Brexiteers just sat there and stared at them.

CLIFF EDGY: Brexiteers will be given a warning of different kind if Johnson wins the election next week. EU leaders are set to sound the alarm on 13 December, telling the PM he has only “limited” time to avoid a no-deal Brexit, documents leaked to The Independent have revealed. Johnson has refused to rule out the possibility of crashing out without a free trade agreement (FTA) at the end of 2020, abruptly halting Wednesday’s press conference when he was challenged on the issue by our very own correspondent Benjamin Kentish. “I think I might just wind up … because I think we have started to scrape the barrel,” the Tory leader fumed.

MARMITEY HAVE FALLEN: You’d think Corbyn could rely on his party’s flag-bearer in the heartland of Wales, wouldn’t you? Well, the Welsh Labour leader Mark Drakeford admitted that “there is no doubt Jeremy Corbyn is a marmite figure on the doorstep” during his BBC interview last night. Corbyn might also be disappointed to learn he has fallen short of getting the left-wing mag New Statesman’s endorsement. The editorial states: “His reluctance to apologise for the antisemitism in Labour and to take a stance on Brexit ... make him unfit to be prime minister.” Ouch. It has also emerged that 70 serving and ex-Labour officials have given evidence to the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s investigation in the party’s handling of antisemitism.

“We’re a country with 150 billionaires, and we've still got people sleeping on the streets.”

Jeremy Corbyn explains his willingness to give Chequers to the needy.

“Painful for Lib Dems as @afneil performs a political autopsy without anaesthetic on Jo Swinson.”

The Mirror’s Kevin Maguire thinks Neil dissected Swinson’s record on coalition cuts...

“Viewers might not like what she was saying, but you've got to admire Jo Swinson for a confident performance in her interview tonight with @afneil.”

...but The Spectator’s Isabel Hardman thinks Swinson survived intact.

Holly Baxter, The Independent: Poor, lonely Donald Trump – the mean girls of NATO have shown you up for how useless you really are

John Rentoul, The Independent: Where have all the Labour Remainers gone?

Trevor Phillips, The Times: Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t sound keen on his country

Tom McTague, The Atlantic: The spiritual disunity of the west