For Labour it’s a key central plank of the party’s programme. For the Conservatives it’s the main reason to “get Brexit done” – fixing the crisis in the NHS. Because there’s no doubt the NHS is in crisis: shortages of hospitals and hospital beds and a lack of doctors and nurses to tend to the patients, which has meant that those patients today face longer waiting times than at any time since the service was founded.

But what do people really think about the NHS and the various parties’ stance? Tamara Hervey was part of a team that interviewed more than 200 people in the north of England. And what they had to say should give politicians on all sides pause for thought. The disillusionment, anger and mistrust in all parties, especially when it comes to the health service, will take a great deal of hard work to overcome. And there’s not much time to do it.

West Yorkshire is one of the key electoral battlegrounds where all three major parties are hoping to overturn slim majorities to make gains. A great deal will hinge on how the Brexit Party and the Liberal Democrats perform in areas where the Leave vote was strong in 2016 but which returned Labour MPs in 2017. These are tough races to call, but results in this region may prove to be an indication as to how the rest of the country will go.

Meanwhile amid political unrest in Chile, artists and other activists are reviving the “mail art” protests that were a big part in the fight against authoritarian regimes in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s. And, while all the main parties in the UK are making promises to plant millions (and in Labour’s case, billions) of trees, a close look at other mass tree-planting programmes around the world shows that this is easier said than done.

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