Last night Matt Hancock was unable to name Stoke Tory candidate Jack Brereton when asked by Andrew Neil. His excuse was that he had been up in Copeland…

This afternoon Hancock did the double, getting new Copeland Tory MP Trudy Harrison’s name wrong on Radio 2, repeatedly calling her Judy Harrison. When challenged and corrected by Jeremy Vine, Hancock shamelessly tried to bluff it. For goodness sake man, go to bed.

Douglas Carswell all but concedes Stoke:

“I think the most likely outcome is that Labour will win… Stoke is not even in our top 50 target seats.”

Kippers on the ground do not sound particularly confident. Result by 3am…

Paul Nuttall has taken on Labour’s main attack line in Stoke by vowing to oppose NHS privatisation and launching a stinging attack on Labour’s record. No cat out of the bag but a crowd-pleasing policy pitch nonetheless: anti-privatisation, anti-PFI, abolishing hospital car parking charges, migrants must pay in for 5 years before accessing non-urgent treatment and foreign aid cash diverted to the health budget. Some tasty lines from Suzanne Evans too: “If Nye Bevan were here today, he would be disgusted by what the Labour Party has done to the NHS” and “Labour is like an abusive parent spending their own children’s money”. The NHS is the key non-Brexit by-election issue in Stoke: the town is a 30 minute drive from Stafford hospital which is still recovering from a major care standards scandal. There is one problem with Labour’s claim that Nuttall would privatise the NHS: he wouldn’t…