Inside Politics: Farage’s retreat rocks election, as Clinton condemns Russia report delay

There are now only 30 days until the general election

“Boris and Nigel up a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G...” Donald Trump will be as giddy as a school girl, drawing love hearts all over his notebook. His two favourite Brits are finally in league with one another, just like he wanted. When the US president called up the Brexit Party leader’s radio show last month, Trump told Farage that Johnson “respects you a lot – I don’t know if you know that or not. He has a lot of respect and like for you. I wish you two guys could get together”. Now that Farage has unilaterally assembled a Leave alliance and withdrawn from all Tory seats, it’s over to Jeremy Corbyn and Jo Swinson. Can the Labour and Lib Dem leaders find an unlikely chemistry and forge a pact of some kind? I’m Adam Forrest, and welcome to The Independent’s daily Inside Politics briefing.

Our chief political commentator John Rentoul on what to look out for on the campaign trail today:

Another day in what feels like the phoney war of the election campaign. Labour continues its energetic campaign on issues of substance: John McDonnell, shadow chancellor, joins McDonald’s workers campaigning for a £10 an hour minimum wage, while Angela Rayner, shadow education secretary, will be in Blackpool “throwing open the door for adults to study” in what feels like a response to yesterday’s “skills wallet” policy from the Lib Dems. Nigel Farage, meanwhile, holds another rally this morning in a left-behind part of Britain – Church House in Westminster. Perhaps he’ll be collecting his peerage after pulling his party’s candidates in 317 Tory seats.

FLIGHT BRIGADE: So Farage won’t be leading a Charge of the Light Brigade after all. Instead of sending out 600 noble soldiers of Brexit, less than 300 will be riding into the valley of death – fighting exclusively in the Labour and “other Remainer” strongholds. But his retreat still isn’t enough for some senior Tories. They’re pushing Nigel to go further. One cabinet minister said: “If we end up with a hung parliament again because of the Brexit Party all eyes will be on him. People will say, ‘You did this.’” Some are hoping Farage might make more climb downs in the coming days, perhaps by narrowing in on the Labour seats the Conservatives have little chance of winning and putting his party’s resources there. But a Brexit Party source told The Guardian: “The Tories can take a running jump. We’ve just saved them 40 or 50 seats and they are still moaning.”

WHISTLE WHILE YOU WORK: The pundits and psephologists are divided on what it all means. Chris Curtis at YouGov thinks Farage’s big move “will likely make very little difference” because the Tories have to take Labour-held seats where the Leave vote will still be split. But former Downing St pollster James Johnson said it could “seriously harm the general attractiveness of the Brexit party” since voters everywhere will see Farage’s manoeuvre as an admission Johnson’s deal isn’t so bad. The PM certainly thinks it’s good news – breaking his self-imposed ban on booze with a cheeky pint in Wolverhampton. “I’ll wet my whistle,” he said. Some of Labour’s Remainer MPs are very worried, calling on Corbyn to cooperate with other parties. Labour MP Peter Kyle told The Independent it was time for the party to “apply common sense” in areas where it had no hope of winning.

HILL HATH SOME FURY: Trump isn’t the only American taking an interest in our little election. His old nemesis Hillary Clinton has arrived in London town with a message about Moscow. She told the BBC it was “inexplicable and shameful” for the government not to release the Intelligence and Security Committee report into alleged Russian meddling in the UK. Claiming to be “dumbfounded” that Downing Street was sitting on it, Clinton added: “Every person who votes in this country deserves to see that report before your election happens.” Will it change anything? Nope. But it makes everything seem a bit more interesting, doesn’t it? What’s a good election without a juicy Russia scandal?

AFTER THE FLOOD: Everything from sandbags to Latin American socialism is getting dragged into the election campaign. Johnson is holding a Cobra meeting over the floods in Yorkshire and the East Midlands after Corbyn claimed the PM was not taking the damage seriously enough. Had it happened on Surrey, the Labour leader suggested, Johnson would have pulled his finger out. The Tories, meanwhile, are trying to take advantage of Corbyn’s support for the ousted Bolivian leader Evo Morales after Corbs said it was “appalling” the socialist had been forced out by the military. Foreign secretary Dominic Raab said it was “unbelievable” to put “Marxist solidarity ahead of democracy”. Wouldn’t it have been smart of Jezza to keep his love of Latin revolutionaries to himself for the next four weeks? Or is there simply no hiding his ardour?

YELLOW FEVER: The Lib Dems haven’t managed to get through the chaotic selection stage of the election entirely squeaky clean. The party’s prospective candidate in Thurrock Kevin McNamara has quit after a series of old tweets containing racist and homophobic slurs emerged. According to The Mirror, McNamara used the n-word on more than one occasion. Elsewhere, the Lib Dem candidate for Kensington Sam Gyimah has become embroiled in a row over Grenfell after he suggested to The Independent that Labour’s Emma Dent Coad, who won the constituency in 2017, could have stopped some of the decisions that led to the tragedy in her previous role as a Labour councillor. Dent Coad called the comments “absolutely sickening”.

LIBEL, LIES AND THE LUFTWAFFE: Let’s have a quick jaunt through some of the other weird and wonderful goings-on in the campaign, shall we? The Brexit Party has been urged to drop Graham Cushway, the co-founder of a heavy-metal band whose members dress like Luftwaffe pilots and evoke other Nazi-era symbolism, standing in the Labour-held set of Brighton Kemptown. Labour candidate Anna Turley, contesting the seat for Redcar, has been accused of being “dishonest” and “not fit to be an MP” during a High Court libel battle. She claims the Unite union libelled her in an article published on the Corbynista Skwawkbox site. Meanwhile, former Tory MP Nick Boles has urged people to vote Lib Dem – calling Johnson a “compulsive liar” and Corbyn a “totalitarian”. Don’t hold back there, Nick.

“The Conservative Party are the Brexit Party now.”

Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson made the point more succinctly than anyone else.

“You bottled it. @nigelfarage and you. Brexit bottlers the pair of you. One day it is not Brexit, worse than May’s deal, the next day you’re backing it. What did it take? A peerage down the track? Or an order from Vlad?”

An upset Alastair Campbell attacks Brexit Party chairman Richard Tice...

“@brexitparty_uk chairman @TiceRichard tells me rumours his party will stand down more candidates to help out @BorisJohnson are “utter rubbish”. He says @Nigel_Farage and he made a magnanimous gesture in not contesting Tory seats. But they will fight every Labour seat.”

...while Robert Peston says Tice insists that’s all the help the Tories are getting.

Tom Peck, The Independent: Nigel Farage is a quitter not a fighter – his latest political sideshow makes that clear

Harriet Marsden, The Independent: Corbyn’s response to Bolivia shows how the left continues to fetishise socialism in Latin America

Patrick Maguire, New Statesman: Why the Liberal Democrats believe Nigel Farage’s retreat will help them

Molly Jong-Fast, The Daily Beast: Donald Trump Jr.’s series of unfortunate book tour events