Hello and welcome to the third episode in a special UK election series from the London Review of Books.

I am James Butler and I'm taking an in-depth look before Election Day at some of the big issues of the campaign or issues that should be big in the campaign at least.

The Conservatives have put foreign policy or some form of it or some allusion to it at the top of their manifesto.

The world is growing more dangerous and uncertain, it says, as it pledges security as its main promise to voters.

The Labour manifesto, on the other hand, is almost silent on the world at large.

The world beyond the UK doesn't feature at all in its five

missions. Are the Tories being honest about the threats facing the country, or are they simply

using global events as a distraction from their lamentable domestic record? Despite what their

manifesto says, issues of foreign policy have almost been entirely absent from the campaign so far. Are there, in fact, any

differences in the main party's policies on Ukraine, on Gaza, or Europe, or anywhere else? And what

will be the main challenges facing the next government in its relationship with the outside world?

To discuss all of this, I'm joined by Tom Stevenson, who is a contributing editor here at the LRB,

and whose most recent book is called Somebody at Someone Else's Empire, British Illusions and American Hegemony.

And Iona Craig, a freelance journalist who has won numerous awards, richly deserved, including the Martha Gellhorn Prize and the Orwell Prize for her reporting,

particularly on Yemen and the Arab Peninsula.

And I thought I'd just start by asking very briefly both of you about anything you've found

sort of unexpected about the campaign here or anything that's been striking about it in recent days.

Iona, why don't I start with you?

Perhaps it's not so much unexpected, but it has still been sort of striking to the

point of maybe being slightly amusing.

And that's all over the gambling shenanigans.

And I think that comes from my background.

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