Little Horwood in Buckinghamshire is the kind of village that Americans believe are everywhere in England and that English people believe exist only in Hollywood films. Amid rolling hayfields, there is an ancient church and a pub with ceilings so low that only a Conservative prime minister would be able to stand upright. The place features in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The first word I wrote in my notebook on arrival was “bucolic”. What I’m trying to tell you is that this is Tory country. And on Monday afternoon, the Keir  Starmer battlebus rolled in. 

He was, officially, meeting local Labour activists. But there was a second, unsubtle message: nowhere is off-limits to his party on Thursday. Although the official line remains “no complacency”, there was an air of happy confidence in the crowd waiting for the leader to descend. As they stood in the delightful back garden of the Shoulder of Mutton pub, they had the air of people attending a wedding on a pleasant summer’s day. 

Buzzing around them were party aides, preparing, checking, double-checking. Was the leader going to be doing a TV interview? Just sit there please, where he’ll be sitting, and let me take a photograph to check how he’ll look. Where will he be standing? Where will they be standing? Where will you be standing? It is a slick operation, but a slick operation is what winning teams tend to have. When the press bus arrived, its occupants complained that following Starmer is a gaffe-free experience. Reporters have more fun on the Tory bus. 

Will the pub’s thatched roof be in shot? Let’s make sure it’s in shot, please. Genuine question: how many Labour MPs currently have a thatched roof in their constituency? That number is likely to be higher on Friday.

All of this was slightly disingenuous: Little Horwood is in the new constituency of Buckingham and Bletchley. Labour’s base is the urban bit, Bletchley. But Team Starmer are happy to leave the impression that the party might be taking seats with large rural areas, like this one, or Liz Truss’s South West Norfolk, as part of a national uprising against the Conservatives. The party’s slogan this week has been extended to convey this idea. The activists carried signs reading: “Change: be part of it”.

Starmer arrived dressed in a dark navy suit and dark navy shirt, top button undone. He looked like a First Division football manager, or your new stepfather, if either of them were accompanied by half a dozen discreet security men. 

“It feels like summer,” he told the crowd. “This has to be a summer of change.” That’s about as in-depth as the message got. It was a jolly occasion. It would have been a shame to spoil it with a lot of talk about politics.

Elsewhere on the campaign trail, things were rather more serious, not to say desperate. On the morning broadcast round, Home Secretary James Cleverly had claimed that Labour would secure its place in power for eternity by giving votes to 16-year-olds, and criminals, and Europeans, and quite possibly the dead. A year ago I listened to Jacob Rees-Mogg explain that the introduction of Voter ID had been a Tory attempt to rig the system that had backfired, which confirms that there are political parties who when they hear the word “majority” really do think “how can we abuse this?”

This was as nothing, though, to the line being put out by the actual prime minister. “You said that Labour in government would appease President Putin,” Kate McCann of Times Radio asked Rishi Sunak that morning. “Do you really believe that?”

“Yes,” the prime minister replied. There is a point in an election when the losing side has to decide whether it will lose with dignity, or just humiliate itself. Patiently, carefully, McCann helped Sunak to make his choice clear: “So a vote for Keir Starmer would strengthen President Putin?”

“I think it sends a signal to our adversaries that we’re not going to take our security seriously,” Sunak replied. And if anyone knows about sending that signal, it’s the man who decided his defence secretary would be Grant Shapps. 

Back in Buckingham, Starmer was dismissive. He had spoken to Volodymyr Zelensky on D-Day, he pointed out to the press, not needing to mention why this had been an option for him but not Sunak, and assured him that “there is a united front in this country”. If your opponent hands you a chance to look dignified and prime ministerial, you should take it. Especially if you can do it in front of a thatched roof.