The two main parties have been equally hopeless in week one of the campaign. Everything is still to play for. | thearticle

It all feels score draw so far. Neither the Tories nor Labour have touched down. The ball has gone into the back of the net, but put there by the defending side. Jacob Rees-Mogg and Andrew

Bridgen on Grenfell, the hapless Welsh Secretary whose name we’ve already forgotten were own goals for the Tories. But then up popped ex Labour MPs Ian Austin and John Woodcock to remind

voters that Jeremy Corbyn was not universally popular. His deputy leader, meanwhile, did not believe sufficiently in the Corbyn Project to stay in the Commons to see if it would work. Is it

a Brexit election? A Trump buys the NHS election? It is certainly a watch your tongue election. A Tory candidate in Norfolk had to step down because he said women “should keep their knickers

on” if they didn’t want to be raped. A Labour candidate for Clacton pulled out after calling a Jewish councillor “Shylock.” He later said he had no idea Shakespeare’s character was Jewish.

The stupidity of anti-semitism never fails to surprise. Laura Kuennsberg asked Corbyn at his Battersea Arts Centre launch of Labour’s campaign why there was no difference between his 2017

election launch and the 2019 version. Corbyn was polite, as always, but looked puzzled – as well he might, given the eagle eyed Ms K failed to spot Corbyn quoting Disraeli’s maxim “Trust the

People” as he extolled the virtues of a second referendum to let the people, not the elite politicians, make a final choice on Brexit. The word of the week belongs to Boris Johnson, the

wordsmith supreme of all MPs. He managed to get the word “kulak” into a half page headline in the Daily Telegraph, as he denounced Corbyn as a new Stalin who would do to the middle classes

what Stalin did to the Kulaks. In Andrew Roberts’ perfectly written account of World War 2, “The Storm of War”, Stalin is the giant hero whose leadership and ruthlessness did far more to

defeat Hitler, even after a bad start 1939-41, than Churchill or Roosevelt. But how many voters, let alone Telegraph readers, know what a “kulak” was or is? The usual definition is a rich

peasant, but does Boris really mean Jezza will do something nasty to the better-off peasants who buy the Daily Telegaph? The big guns of economic promises were fired, but sounded identical.

Lots of borrowing, lots of spending, an end to austerity, new schools, new hospitals, new uniforms on the streets. No-one can tell the difference between Sajid Javid and John McDonnell on

economic policy. In both cases, their number 2’s, Rishi Sunak and Rebecca Long-Bailey, were impressive on Marr, and deserve promotion whoever wins the election. The loser of the week is poor

Jo Swinson. Her leaflet saying “When I am prime minister” arrived in letter-boxes like a missing line from Shelley’s Ozymandias. The vanity added spice to a a first week of campaigning

which gave no pointers as to the final result. When no-one knows the outcome of an election there is only thing to do. Call for Professor Sir John Curtice. But even he has to shake his head

and offer his usual generous helping of expert words to say “I haven’t the faintest idea.” Does anyone?