A disrupted climate and diminished natural world are widening the dividing lines of ideological debate. Left unchecked, this will undermine democracy.

That may not be the first thing on the minds of British voters as they go to the polls on Thursday. It is probably also a minority view in the rest of Europe or the US, where people are too much in the thick of a polycrisis to consider anything outside politics and economics as usual. But from a distance, in my case from the Amazon rainforest, there is a very different explanation for the tremors being witnessed in the old world and the new.

How rising emissions distort our political ecosystems is not nearly as well understood as the scientific certainty that they are heating our world. Hundreds of academic papers detail the tipping point risks of an anthropologically altered climate, but very few look at the feedbacks on governance and ideology. One thing, however, is certain: all of the world’s systems – biological, physical, economic and political – are coming under more climate stress and the longer this is left unabated, the greater is the likelihood that something will break.

Democracy is starting to look almost as fragile as the rainforest. Politicians in the traditional parties will not face the fact that they are no longer living in the stable climate in which that political system was created. The right wants to go back to a past that no longer exists. The left wants to move towards a future that it will not dare to fund.

Meanwhile, market zealots and xenophobes, fuelled by fossil fuel money, are using the unfolding chaos to frighten voters and take the opportunity to replace social safety nets and environmental protections with higher walls and rapacious extraction.

Here in Brazil we saw, with the previous, far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, the extremes that the ancien regime is willing to go to hold on to what it has and to burn what remains of the forest. The return of the left in the guise of President Lula has brought a respite but only slowed the pace of destruction. This is a global story. The climate crisis has pushed the right towards zealotry, and made the left appear timid.

The latest tremor shook France, where the far right – once a reviled fringe – secured more votes than any other bloc in the first round of voting in a snap parliamentary election. This followed European elections in which mainstream political parties were shaken by the alarming gains of candidates with anti-immigrant, anti-science, pro-Russian agendas. Meanwhile, the threat of a second Donald Trump victory looms in the US and Britain’s Nigel Farage hopes to ride into parliament on the waves of fear, doubt and deception that have discombobulated the country since Brexit.

These ever more extreme politics are, not coincidentally, coming at a time of ever more extreme weather.

In the past month alone, more than a thousand hajj pilgrims died of heatstroke and related diseases as temperatures soared to 51.8C in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Record heat in Delhi and other Indian cities killed at least 176 people, followed soon after by record floods. Roads also turned into rivers in northern Italy, Switzerland, central China and eastern Malaysia. The wildfire season has already started in Greece. A category 5 hurricane has formed in the Atlantic in June for the first time in history, wreaking havoc across the Caribbean. Social and political norms are taking as much of a battering as infrastructure and livelihoods.

Alleviating this situation requires state intervention and mass redirection of capitaltowards renewables, heat pumps, electric vehicles, sustainable agriculture and the whole net zero shebang. Just as important is patience, international cooperation and belief in a better future – all of which seem to be in decline.

In the UK, until recently, there was strong cross-party support for action. When the Climate Change Act was passed in 2008, only five of the 646 MPs voted against it. The vote in favour of net zero in 2019 was also overwhelming. But in the last two or three years, that consensus has started to unravel as the stakes started to rise, patience thinned, and the right went on the offensive.

Since 2021, Britain’s rightwing press – the Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Sun – has mostly treated net zero as a wedge issue, with numerous politicians following suit. The Conservative politician and former Ukip deputy leader Craig Mackinlay recently told the US news site Politico he expected net zero and energy security to be the political battleground for the next 10 years: “It is an infinitely bigger issue than Brexit.”

This is gnawing into the roots of conservatism. The Tory party’s traditional instinct to conserve national and natural heritage is being eroded by a neoliberal urge to tear up regulations and exploit every resource to extinction. Rishi Sunak has backtracked on net zero and made North Sea gas and motoring central thrusts of his election campaign.

If the Tories lose this week, as the opinion polls predict, the party’s hard right will push harder still against climate action. Any success by the Reform party, which is partly funded by climate sceptics, will add to the pressure. If a Farage-isation of British conservatism seems outlandish, consider the fact that the US Republican party also used to consider itself a stout defender of the environment.

The story is similar in other countries, where democracy’s failure to deal with the causes of the climate crisis has opened the way for ultranationalists to score points by focusing on the consequences, particularly migration. The far right no longer denies climate change, it uses it as a bogeyman to frighten voters and argue for stronger barriers to keep out refugees.

The climate scientist Michael Mann has identified a “coalition of the unwilling” that knows international cooperation and regulation is the only way to deal with the climate crisis, and so sows dissent, doubt and distraction. As examples, he cites Russia’s use of bot armies, trolls and hackers to get climate activists to fight one another, to dig up private emails, which led to the “Climategate” scandal and damaged Hilary Clinton’s campaign against Trump in 2016, and to seed arguments on social media against carbon pricing in Canada or stir up yellow-vest protest in France.

Some far-right parties have received funding or support from Russian banks and businessmen, such as Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France and Trump in the US. It is alleged that more than a dozen MEPs from across five countries also took substantial sums of money from Russia’s Voice of Europe news agency, a matter that is still under investigation.

More brazenly, Trump has asked oil executives for $1bn for his campaign and promised, in an effective offer of a quid pro quo, that, if he wins, he will loosen drilling regulations, cut support for electric vehicles and withdraw the US once again from the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

The left finds itself on the back foot, not entirely sure of how to respond to these attacks, just as with the anti-immigration line. The Labour party in the UK, like the Democrats in the US and the New Popular Front in France, has rightly focused on environmental justice and the benefits of climate action: clean-tech jobs, energy security and healthier communities. But it is trapped within the constraints of neoliberal economic orthodoxy, which means it can only move as fast or as slow as the market allows it to go.

That could delay some of the worst climate impacts, but it almost certainly will not be enough to change the perception that the situation is deteriorating. So it will start to seem that action on the consequences produces more results than action on the causes, which will play into the hands of the right, the petrostates, the oil firms, the warmongers and nationalist media.

In that sense, the traditional left is almost as poorly equipped to deal with this challenge as the mainstream right. Both emerged in the industrial era, strapped into the straitjacket of national self-interest and capitalist economics. In every country for most of the last century, left and right happily colluded on the need to materially “develop” the nation and expand gross domestic product with infrastructure projects, increased trade and greater consumption. The argument between them was only about how much of the economic pie the government should distribute between rich and poor.

The dividing line is far more complex in today’s climate-disrupted, nature-depleted world. Just as important now is the quality of the pie, where the ingredients came from, and the extent to which overconsumption is leading to obesity, cancer, climate instability and global conflict. Put more simply, politics is now a battle between those who want to fix what is broken and those who want to keep breaking. Many on the old left may not be comfortable with this 21st-century dividing line, but this is the issue that will determine the habitability of our world.

Facing up to that is an essential step in envisaging a better future. It will not be easy while so many other countries are drifting towards hostility, insularity and short-termism. But in the long run, it is the only chance democracy – and, indeed, humanity – has got. Labour’s challenge, should it win, will be enormous.

On a bright spring day, the sun dances over the water of Havannah Bay on the island of Efate in Vanuatu. Below the surface, pockets of seagrass that can just about be seen from the shoreline, sway in the current. It’s here, if they are lucky, that onlookers may spot a dugong bobbing in the shallow water, orbiting the seagrass meadows they feed on.

“It’s wonderful seeing them swimming by and grazing off the seagrass in front of the resort,” says Greg Pechan, the owner of a local hotel, the Havannah, which sits at the tip of the bay. Pointing out beyond the jetty that stretches into the Pacific Ocean, he says Vanuatu’s sea life is a big attraction for visitors to the Melanesian country.

Light grey in colour, dugongs, sometimes known as “sea cows” and whose closest relatives are freshwater manatees, can grow up to four metres long and weigh up to 400kg (900lb). They are a “friendly species” and respected by islanders, says Heidi Joy, a marine science student from Efate.

A few years ago, it would not be unusual for Joy, who lives close to Havannah Bay, to spot a dugong in the morning and then again at sunset. That has since changed, she says. “We rarely see them now.”

Dugongs are considered vulnerable to extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The exact number roaming Vanuatu’s waters is, however, unknown and this uncertainty is hindering conservation efforts, experts say.

“A lot of studies have been done where you’ve got large populations of dugongs in large seagrass meadows [such as] Australia or Abu Dhabi, but we’ve got a different dugong population. We’ve got small groups or individuals,” says Christina Shaw, the CEO of the Vanuatu Environmental Science Society.

She says that a national assessment of dugongs and seagrass in Vanuatu is urgently needed so it is clear just how many there are, where they are and if they are suffering in the same way as in other parts of the region.

In 2023, the status of neighbouring New Caledonia’s population was downgraded to “endangered” while east African dugongs have become “critically endangered”. “In those two areas, there is enough information to do a regional assessment,” says Shaw.

In Vanuatu, however, only one aerial survey – in 1987 – has been carried out to assess the national distribution, abundance, cultural importance and threats, according to Helene Marsh, an emeritus professor in environmental science at James Cook University.

Dugongs globally are threatened by gill-net fishing, boat traffic, coastal development and hunting.

In Vanuatu, dugong meat used to be considered a source of protein, their oil used for cooking and other parts whittled into handicrafts.

But since the 1980s, certain islands have introduced local prohibitions known as tabu, which mandates their protection. In 2010 the government also signed the Convention on Migratory Species’ dugong memorandum of understanding, committing it to protecting the sea cows and the seagrass they eat. This means hunting is now rare, says Shaw.

Instead, another predator threatens the dugong: the climate crisis. On a spring evening in Efate, rain hammers relentlessly until nightfall, rendering the ocean a murky green. It’s downpours such as this, becoming more common, alongside storms and cyclones, that damage the seagrass so vital to the dugongs.

Vanuatu sits in the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, a tectonic belt of volcanoes and earthquakes, and a tropical cyclone region, making it prone to disasters. When these batter the bays and beaches of Vanuatu, the seagrass is swept up by the heavy winds, while the rain and debris creates sediment on the water surface, smothering the seagrass from the sunlight it needs to thrive. It is estimated that 7% of the world’s seagrass is lost every year.

After twin cyclones Judy and Kevin hit in March 2023, the seagrass meadows in Havannah Bay were depleted.

Richard Leck, head of oceans at WWF Australia, says: “When that happens dugongs have no choice but to get on the move and sometimes they have to go into deeper water, expend much more effort to graze seagrass and when that happens they often get emaciated and lose condition really quickly.”

Since the cyclones, Joy says she rarely sees a dugong. On a boat across the bay to Moso Island, known to be frequented by dugongs, the waves give way to mangroves and none are spotted near the surface. They are seen on dive excursions, says Shaw, but “you do need to be lucky”.

As with dugongs, there is limited data on the prevalence and condition of seagrass in Vanuatu. This makes it hard, says Shaw, to advocate for investment in conservation. “Funders don’t like paying for studies,” she says. “But how do we do [conservation] if we don’t know what’s there?”

Emma Raducanu has said she did not realise voting for the general election was happening on Thursday, saying she would be having a lie-in instead.

The 21-year-old former US Open champion was asked about her plans after she thrashed Belgium’s Elise Mertens 6-1, 6-2 on Wednesday and moved into the third round of Wimbledon.

At a press conference, Raducanu was asked if she would vote before practising on Thursday, and if she would keep an eye on the general election in the evening. “No,” she replied, smiling. “I think I’ll have a lie-in, then I’ll come to practise.

“I didn’t even know it was tomorrow, to be honest! Thanks for letting me know.”

Raducanu, who faces the Greek ninth seed, Maria Sakkari, on Friday, was not the only British player who said they would be focusing on their tennis this week.

Katie Boulter, the British No 1, was asked if she would vote before her second-round match against fellow Briton Harriet Dart on Thursday. “For me, I’m going to stick to the tennis right now,” the 27-year-old told a press conference following her first-round triumph against Germany’s Tatjana Maria on Tuesday.

“I don’t see myself as someone who’s going to get involved in anything but tennis that day for the moment. I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.”

Dart, the 27-year-old British No 2, was also asked if she would get a chance to vote on Thursday. “I haven’t given it much thought,” she replied, smiling. “Albeit, my sister works for an MP. I’m sure she’ll be on at me to vote. But yeah, we’ll see.”

Meanwhile, Jack Draper, the British No 1, was asked on Wednesday if he took an interest in politics, to which he simply replied: “No.”

After defeating Sweden’s Elias Ymer in a five-set battle, the 22-year-old from Sutton was also asked if he would be watching any of the news leading up to Thursday’s election.

“No,” Draper replied. “No. It’s a crazy busy time for us tennis players. There’s not much TV-watching. There’s not much time to be thinking about that.”

The California governor and top Democrats in the state have abandoned a last-minute plan to ask voters whether a landmark criminal justice bill should be reformed.

California Democrats over the weekend had outlined plans to put a measure on the November ballot that would ask voters to approve major reforms to Proposition 47, a 2014 ballot measure that changed some theft and drug possession felonies to misdemeanors.

But on Tuesday, they abruptly changed course and said they would not be able make Wednesday’s cutoff to finalize the measure’s inclusion on the ballot.

Gavin Newsom, the governor, blamed a tight schedule for withdrawing the proposal.

“We are unable to meet the ballot deadline to secure necessary amendments to ensure this measure’s success, and we will be withdrawing it from consideration,” Newsom said in a statement.

The Democrats’ proposal was a last-minute response to a competing ballot measure, called “the homelessness, drug addiction and theft reduction act”, that was proposed in September and officially made it to the ballot on 28 June. The coalition’s proposal would technically not repeal Prop 47, but would undo key components of it by increasing penalties for a third theft offense and create a new class of offense, called “treatment-mandated felony”, to charge those in possession of hard drugs like cocaine, meth and fentanyl.

The proposal has the backing of district attorneys, business leaders and law enforcement, who have argued that Prop 47 has left officers and prosecutors hamstrung and unable to deal with lower-level theft and drug offenses.

Other proponents, which include the San Francisco mayor London Breed and many district attorneys, say it would help fight retail theft, as well as a growing homelessness and addiction crisis.

Detractors of the measure say it would do little to address the complex problems the state is facing, and instead drive up the number of incarcerated people costing the state millions of dollars that through Prop 47 were saved and passed along to local re-entry, mental health and drug treatment programs.

“It’s one of those monumental pieces of legislation, and it got us over the hill for something we’ve been fighting for for so long,” Kent Mendoza, associate director of advocacy and community organizing the anti-recidivism coalition, said of Prop 47. “It gives counties an opportunity to be bold and approach these things differently. This is what allows us to maybe save 10 people who wouldn’t have this support.”

Newsom and many Democrats have fiercely opposed the coalition’s proposal, arguing that undoing Proposition 47 was a misguided and ineffective approach to tackling retail theft, and instead proposed a set of legislative reforms.

“I don’t think there’s a need to have it on the ballot. Why have something on the ballot that doesn’t actually achieve the goals that are intended?” Newsom said in June. “Why do something that can’t be done legislatively with more flexibility? I think it’s a better approach to governing.”

The governor and the lawmakers tried to negotiate with the coalition to drop the initiative. But as those negotiations failed, they announced their own ballot initiative over the weekend.

Their measure, which they intended to call Prop 2, proposed to punish repeat thieves more harshly if their convictions occurred within a spate of three years.

Greg Totten, the co-chair of Californians for safer communities, the primary group backing the ballot measure that would gut Prop 47, said that he was “pleased” to see Newsom back away from his counter legislation and hoped that both sides could find a path forward.

“We are pleased The Governor and Legislature have dropped their countermeasure and welcome them to join our campaign to responsibly amend Prop 47 to deal with retail theft, the fentanyl crisis and homelessness,” Totten said in a statement.

And as November nears and the fate of Prop 47 rests in the hands of voters, Mendoza with ARC said that his group will likely begin education campaigns for voters to shift perceptions about what causes people to commit crimes and the best ways to keep them out of the cycle.

“It’s probably gonna be a communications strategy: sharing success stories,” Mendoza said. “Uplifting the success of people who have been in prison to show that people can do good. We might do town halls in communities that need more education, in communities who may not see these things the way we tend to say we see it.”

Forget stuffy traditions, Wimbledon’s women tennis players have been pushing the boundaries this year with their imaginative on-court outfits.

Coco Gauff, the world No 2, has worn a custom-made, cut-out dress that fans have said is reminiscent of Serena Williams’ 2019 Wimbledon outfit. The 20-year-old US Open champion said she asked New Balance for a design featuring cut-outs, which gave her dress the appearance of being a two-piece.

Speaking after defeating Romania’s Anca Todoni in straight sets on Wednesday, Gauff said she tried to be creative with her on-court style while sticking to Wimbledon’s strict all-white dress code.

“I mean, honestly, Wimbledon there’s not too much you can do in the colour department. We just tried to do something different with the cut of the dress. I like to wear crop tops a lot. That cut is kind of supposed to be like a crop top, [in] an elegant Wimbledon-type way,” she said.

She added: “I just think of Wimbledon as a tradition. Even with my nails, I always usually get like French or white here just to match that elegance of it, so I think that was the inspiration from it. The only thing you can really do here is play with the texture.”

Gauff, who has previously said that she planned her grand slam outfits a year or two in advance, said her dress was not inspired by Williams. “Serena has just done every iconic dress fit in the game that unintentionally you can have something inspired by her,” she added.

Naomi Osaka, the four-time grand slam champion who returned to the tour in 2024 after the birth of her first child, also wore a distinctive custom-made set as she battled the American Emma Navarro, 23, on Centre Court on Wednesday. Osaka was defeated 6-4 6-1 in the second round match.

The 26-year-old former world No 1’s Nike two-piece, featuring asymmetric ruffles and a pleated skirt, divided fans. But Wimbledon described it as “an elaborate outfit that wouldn’t have looked out of place at the Met Gala”.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk wore a white V-neck outfit which was inspired by her own wedding dress during her first-round triumph against Slovakia’s Rebecca Šramková on Monday.

The 22-year-old 18th seed’s sleeveless, open-backed Wimbledon dress was designed by Wilson, the Chicago-based sports equipment and apparel brand that designed her wedding dress.

Kostyuk’s wedding dress featured a short underdress under a long silk organza gown with hand-appliquéd flowers. In an interview published by Vogue on Monday, Joelle Michaeloff, Wilson’s head of design, said Kostyuk’s SW19 dress was “basically the original [under]dress, but with a built-in ball short in this one”.

She added: “We added an underlayer component and then raised the neckline a little bit – we don’t want any mistakes in Wimbledon.”

Wimbledon’s all-white dress code dates back to the late 19th century, but the fashion has evolved over the years. In 1965, Italy’s Lea Pericoli wore a mini dress with a floral detail, while the American Anne White wore a Lycra unitard 20 years later. In more recent years, tennis stars have continued to push the boundaries with Maria Sharapova wearing a tuxedo inspired two-piece and Serena Williams donning a trenchcoat-style dress in 2008.

Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos has delayed the launch of its Fusilier electric SUV, blaming weak consumer demand and uncertainty about government policies.

Ratcliffe only unveiled plans to produce the low-emission vehicles in February, with production expected to begin in 2027.

However, it emerged on Wednesday that the project to build the Fusilier, to be marketed as a plug-in hybrid and electric vehicle (EV), had been delayed indefinitely.

Ratcliffe is the founder and chief executive of Ineos, the fracking to chemicals group. The company is also a minority investor in Premier League football club Manchester United and has been pushing into new sectors, including electric car-making.

Ratcliffe had said the Fusilier vehicle, smaller than the company’s existing Grenadier 4×4, would be equipped with an electric motor powered by a battery, as well as a range-extender option using a small gas engine to keep the battery charged up.

However, the company said regulatory changes could hurt the viability of its gas-engine range-extender.

The company said: “We are delaying the launch of the Ineos Fusilier for two reasons: reluctant consumer uptake of EVs, and industry uncertainty around tariffs, timings, and taxation.” It added that there needs to be long-term clarity from policymakers to meet net zero targets.

An Ineos Automotive spokesperson said that the gas-powered range-extender would be banned in Europe and the UK in 2035, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the delay.

If the Labour party are successful in Thursday’s general election, it has pledged to bring forward the ban on the sale of new petrol cars by five years to 2030.

The EU’s move to impose new tariffs on imports of Chinese-made EVs into the trading bloc has prompted fears of a global trade war, centred on EVs.

The tariffs of up to 38% on imports of Chinese EVs come into effect on Thursday barring a last minute U-turn. They will be imposed on top of the existing 10% levy on cars imported into the EU, meaning Chinese-made EVs face total tariffs of up to 48%.

On Wednesday, the BMW chief executive, Oliver Zipse, criticised the move. “The introduction of additional import duties leads to a dead end,” he said. “It does not strengthen the competitiveness of European manufacturers.”

Name: XL gullies.

Age: First identified in March.

Appearance: Winged and dangerous.

Not more irresponsible dog breeding … wait, did you say “winged”? That’s right. XL gullies are “Britain’s HARDEST seagulls”.

“Britain’s hardest seagulls” should be a Ross Kemp show. Indeed; there is genuine drama to this story. A new breed of seagull is terrorising the country.

There’s no such thing as a seagull. OK, smartypants. We’re mainly talking about herring gulls. Britons believe they are getting bolder, fiercer and more successful at stealing our snacks. See, for instance, reports of a “jacked-up gargantuan”, “top-level boss” gull operating out of Liverpool city centre.

Yikes. How exactly is it operating? Carrying out laser-focused smash-and-grab attacks on people’s snacks (Greggs is reportedly its favourite).

Give me more incidents of gull crime. With pleasure. For a deep-dive report, the Daily Mail sent journalists to Margate in Kent and St Ives in Cornwall to walk around with chips and see what happened.

And what happened? Gulls ate their chips.

Astonishing. Are those towns chip-theft hotspots? No, XL gullies are everywhere. Reddit users have been comparing notes on no-go zones. Aberdeen gulls are “psychotic” and “absolutely ruthless”; mid-Wales ones are “pure evil”; Tenby gulls are “as big as turkeys”; Rhyl gulls “need Asbos”; and Cornish gulls are “pterodactyls”.

This is like a sinister avian version of the Beach Boys’ California Girls. Especially the “They knock me out when I’m down there” bit. (Southern gulls are “more willing to approach people”, according to preliminary results from a recent study by the universities of Glasgow and Plymouth.)

Are gulls actually violent? Not unless they’re defending their chicks. There are occasionally reports of minor injuries when they swoop to steal food – but it’s definitely chips they want, not blood.

It may not be a balanced diet, but isn’t this expected gull behaviour? Absolutely – and it’s our own fault. Gulls are “very intelligent … opportunistic and extremely adaptable”, according to the naturalist Dominic Couzens. Since people discard so much food, the gulls have altered their foraging strategies, including by helping themselves. It’s not crime, but rather “kleptoparasitism”.

Can anything be done? You can grass up gulls to various councils, or report interactions to researchers via Glasgow and Plymouth’s Gull’s Eye app. Liverpool has recently deployed a Harris hawk to try to deter the top-level boss and his capos. But like all wild birds, herring gulls are protected – their number is declining – so any retaliation against them is illegal. The best thing to do is stay out of their way (especially when eating chips).

Do say: “Increasing overlap between anthropogenic landscapes and wildlife habitats has given rise to more human-wildlife conflicts.”

Don’t say: “I wish they all could be California gulls.”

Rishi Sunak has confided to members of his inner circle that he is fearful of losing his Yorkshire constituency at the general election, the Guardian has been told.

The prime minister, who would be the first sitting leader of the country to lose his seat, told confidants before a Conservative rally on Tuesday that he thought the vote in Richmond and Northallerton was too close to call.

In 2019, he won the seat with a majority of more than 27,000 and 63% of the vote.

One source said: “He is genuinely fearful of a defeat in Richmond: the risk that it could be tight has hit him hard. He’s rattled – he can’t quite believe it’s coming so close.” Another source added: “He’s taken so much friendly fire from his own side I’m amazed he’s had the strength to keep going.”

A Conservative source flatly denied Sunak feared losing in his constituency, saying: “The PM is confident he will hold his seat.”

Mel Stride, a close ally of the prime minister, said on Wednesday that Labour was likely to win “the largest majority any party has ever achieved”.

Sunak is weighing a return to the financial services industry, whether or not he stays on as an MP, the Guardian understands. A former colleague has offered him office space in Mayfair in London – a hotspot for hedge funds. He has also discussed spending a greater share of his time in California, where he has a home, although he had no immediate plans to relocate there full time, sources said.

A Conservative source said Sunak had “no interest” in going back into financial services and planned to stay in Yorkshire “come what may”.

No incumbent prime minister has ever lost their seat, and only 12 serving cabinet ministers have lost their seats since 1974, according to the Institute for Government.

Polls have varied, with most suggesting Sunak should retain his seat even amid a landslide victory for Labour across the country. Savanta and Electoral Calculus analysis for the Telegraph suggested he could lose it, however.

Conservative activists working in Sunak’s constituency had been particularly alarmed by a drop-off in support among the farming community, some of whom had cited challenges arising from Brexit to their businesses and a failure to control illegal immigration, sources said.

Sunak was a supporter of Britain’s exit from the EU, and his government has struggled in its efforts to discourage small-boat crossings in the Channel.

Activists fear that low turnout for the Tories, rather than just a swing to Labour or a groundswell for Reform, may prove to be the greatest risk for the prime minister.

Last month, the Guardian reported four sources’ claims that activists in Yorkshire had been diverted to campaign in Sunak’s seat. At that time, Conservative sources denied they had redeployed resources to try to bolster support in the prime minister’s constituency.

Broader efforts to support cabinet members’ campaigns are also under way, with activists diverted to the home secretary James Cleverly’s seat of Braintree, the deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden’s Hertsmere constituency, and the environment secretary Steve Barclay’s seat in North East Cambridgeshire. All were won, like Sunak’s, with majorities of more than 20,000 at the last general election.

Sunak has denied suggestions he would move to California after an election defeat. In June, speaking on the fringes of the G7 Summit in Italy, he said he would stay on as an MP for the full five years of a new parliament, even if the Tories lost the election.

UK fruit and vegetable production has plummeted as farms have been hit by extreme weather.

The country suffered the wettest 18 months since records began across the 2023-24 growing year, leaving soil waterlogged and some farms totally underwater. The impact on harvests has been disastrous. Data from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs shows that year-on-year vegetable yields decreased by 4.9% to 2.2m tonnes in 2023, and the production volumes of fruit decreased by 12% to 585,000 tonnes.

Scientists say that climate breakdown caused by the burning of fossil fuels is likely to bring more extreme weather to the UK, including more frequent floods and droughts.

Farmers said they were not able to plant due to the wet weather, and this is borne out in the statistics. The growing area of vegetables was down, falling by 6.5% to 101,000 hectares. A dry early summer in 2023 also did not help, as those who could not irrigate found it hard to plant.

Wet weather in the autumn and winter meant that the planted area of brassicas decreased by 3.1% to 23,000 hectares, leading to a 0.4% fall in broccoli yields and a 9.2% year-on-year fall in cauliflower volumes. Onions fared similarly, with volumes down by 13% and a fall in production area of 3.6%. So did carrots; their yields fell by 7.2%.

Farmers said the next government needed a proper plan for food security as the UK’s climate becomes less predictable, with more extreme weather hitting farms.

Guy Singh-Watson, the founder of Riverford fruit and vegetable boxes, said the data was a “wake-up call, showing the dire state of British horticulture”.

He said the next government must plan to safeguard food security. “We urgently need a long-term and legally defined plan from government – not just on the environment, but to tackle the exploitative practices of supermarkets and their suppliers.” he said. “It’s high time we reinstated honesty and decency in our supply chains.”

The chair of the National Farmers’ Union horticulture and potatoes board, Martin Emmett, said: “These stark statistics are sadly not a surprise. Recent shortages of some of the nation’s favourite fruit and vegetables shows we cannot afford to let our production decline and that we must value our food security.

“The UK horticulture sector has the ambition to produce more and is an area ripe for growth, but it needs investment from the next government to match our ambition by backing our horticulture strategy.”

Julian Marks, group chief executive of Barfoots Farms, told the Grocer: “The latest set of Defra stats highlight the challenges growers have faced in the last 12 to 18 months with weather-related risk and extraordinary levels of input cost inflation.”

He added: “Though inflation has eased somewhat recently, it hasn’t gone away and weather risks have intensified over the winter, with heavy rain affecting soils and the ability of growers to plant for the coming season.”

The UK government recently published its first official food security index, which described food security as “broadly stable”, and facing “longer-term risks” from climate change.

The issue is briefly mentioned in the manifestos for this week’s general election. The Conservatives pledged a UK where the “national, border, energy and food security are put first” and said they would introduce a legally binding target to enhance the UK’s food security.

Labour similarly said in its manifesto that “food security is national security” and that the party would “champion British farming whilst protecting the environment”. The Liberal Democrats have promised to put an extra £1bn a year into the farming payments schemes and pledged to introduce a “holistic and comprehensive national food strategy to ensure food security”.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was contacted for comment.

When she went viral in a video clip showing her coining the onomatopoeia “hawk tuah” to describe what intimate act reliably drives men wild in her experience, Hailey Welch thought about keeping herself hidden from the masses.

Then the rumor circulated that the photogenic blonde in the video with the thick southern drawl was actually the daughter of a humiliated religious leader. The attention had caused the woman to be fired from her education job, another rumor claimed. And social media users started creating fake accounts with photos of her.

Welch changed her mind about keeping a low profile and came forward for the first time Monday on the Plan Bri Uncut podcast, dispelled everything said about her before as falsehoods – and detailed how the clip has upended her life, ranging from cameos alongside celebrities to offers from strangers to buy a sample of her spit.

“It’s a hit or miss what comes out of my mouth – I just talk out of my ass,” Welch told podcast host Brianna LaPaglia. “The one time I say something like that, of course there’s a camera in my face.”

The 21-year-old had just quit social media and was working in a bed spring factory in her Tennessee home town when she learned she had achieved a level of internet virality that provided a relatively pleasant distraction for a country grappling with climate change-fueled extreme weather as well as another contentious presidential election cycle.

It stemmed from an 11 June Instagram video posted by YouTubers Tim & Dee TV that showed a street interview in Nashville, Tennessee, with two women whose names were not revealed. As KnowYourMeme.com noted, Welch was asked, “What’s one move in bed that makes a man go crazy everytime?”

She replied with a giggly, obvious oral sex allusion, saying: “Aw, you gotta give him that hawk tuah and spit on that thang – you get me?”

In short order, the clip reverberated across the digital world, well beyond the pun-driven memes that are the lifeblood of social media. One of the countless notable instances involved a country song about the exchange that was purportedly created with artificial intelligence – and turned out to be quite the ear-worm, in the opinion of many.

Readers treated New Orleans’ Times-Picayune newspaper to its own moment of virality by headlining an article about the city’s NBA team acquiring a former Atlanta Hawks player with the words, From a Hawk to a Pelican.

Eventually, amid an obsession among some to learn who the girl in the infamous video was, clues about Welch’s identity began to trickle out. And by late June, she had penned a merchandise deal with the company Fathead Threads for hats emblazoned with the wet-sounding phrase she immortalized.

The company had reportedly hawked more than $65,000 worth of merchandise almost immediately – though on Tuesday owner Jason Poteete told the Guardian that Fathead Threads was so busy trying to meet demand for its wares that there had not been time for him to calculate a precise tally of the sales, which are being split with Welch.

On Monday, Welch said “the guy [who] makes my hats” received an offer to pay $600 for her to spit in a jar and send it to the interested party.

“That’s just disgusting, is it not?” Welch told Plan Bri Uncut, likening the overture to those interested in buying the used underwear of social media influencers whom they find attractive. “And I was like, ‘Should I do it?’ Then I was like, ‘Naw, don’t do that.’”

By Saturday night, Welch was singing on stage with country star Zach Bryan. Four-time NBA champion and television commentator Shaquille O’Neal was on X two days later bragging about having taken pictures with her. She now has a publicity team.

Yet, perhaps inevitably, the disinformation trolls came out of the woodwork. Posts claimed that Welch’s father was a preacher who had been mortified by her scandalous behavior. Others said she was a school teacher whose naughty language cost her her post.

All of that was as false as the “kind of creepy”, fake social media accounts containing stolen photos of Welch that prompted her to take off her veil of anonymity once and for all, she explained on Plan Bri Uncut.

Welch said her parents think “it’s so funny” that a video of her has had the internet in shambles for much of the summer. “They know how I am,” Welch remarked.

Nonetheless, she also suggested that she looked forward to a time when her 15 minutes of fame had run out.

“I don’t really want that to be, like, my image,” Welch told LaPaglia regarding the hawk tuah craze. “I just – I don’t see that being, like, my thang, you know?

“I don’t want to be known as that.”