Speculation PM could call election to forestall possible leadership challenge has its own momentum despite No 10 dismissals

In a sign of how febrile the atmosphere in Westminster is just now, there were wild rumours flying around on Friday that Rishi Sunak was planning to finally call an election straight after the weekend.

The fact this particular theory appears to have begun with Labour party speculation that the prime minister could announce a date to put an end to questions over his own leadership doesn’t appear to have slowed down its spread.

The late elder statesman understood the need for a progressive realignment of British politics. That prize shouldn’t be lost

David Marquand and Frank Field , both of whom died this week, never sat on the Labour benches together. The professor of politics and the long-serving backbench MP had very different temperaments too, one searchingly academic, the other a bold moraliser. They also disagreed about many of the big issues in British politics, the European Union above all.

But they also had some hugely important things in common. Both started as free-thinking Labour MPs – Marquand in 1966 and Field in 1979. Both possessed a rare degree of intellectual and spiritual hinterland. Both then went on lifetime political journeys. These took them increasingly away from Labour, though they always remained in Labour’s orbit.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

Campaign draws on performers and artists to encourage 300,000 more young people to register ahead of this week’s deadline

A last-minute drive to alert young British people to therisk of losing their say in how the country is run launches this weekend, spearheaded by many famous faces, including some not normally associated with politics or campaigning.

YouTubers such as Amelia Dimoldenberg, host of Chicken Shop Date, are lining up alongside singers and comedians, to join established names, such as Michael Sheen, Sir Stephen Frears, Es Devlin, Meera Syal, Billy Bragg, Paapa Essiedu, Emily Berrington and Ralf Little.

People will blame Brexit, Boris and austerity, but this country’s demise goes back decades – and shows no signs of stopping

In 1951, the county of Durham condemned 114 villages to a slow death . The older, smaller coalmines were approaching exhaustion, which meant, officials said, “many of the rows of houses which grew up around the pitheads have outlived their usefulness”. These “rows of houses” were homes to 100,000 adults and children. Now they were designated Category D.

D for de-industrial. D for demolish. D for decline.

Families living there would receive no more investment: neither electric lights nor doctors’ surgeries. Before their homes were torn down, they were expected to move out or die out.

Many refused to do either. This weekend, I visited some hamlets just outside the town of Shildon, in south-west Durham. About seven decades after the order for their execution, rows of small houses were still standing. Some were boarded up; others had cars parked neatly outside. On this afternoon of bright sun and biting wind, men stood like sentinels outside their front doors and kids growled by on dirt bikes. Eldon, Coundon Grange, Coronation: these former pit communities were half-populated, half alive. It was eerie and melancholy, but it was not death.

If Durham’s category-D villages are remembered today, it is as historical curiosities, summoned up by black and white footage and oral testimony. Yet these settlements without a future offered a foretaste of perhaps the central political issue of our time: how do people live when money has discarded them?

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

Party hopes to take mayoralty from Tories but incumbent Ben Houchen is still popular with voters, defying national mood

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Politicians have been known to warn each other against parking tanks on their lawns . For the Labour candidate in one of the most keenly anticipated May mayoral elections, the phrase has added bite: Chris McEwan has hundreds of them.

He shows photos of a room at his house in Darlington with an astonishing collection of small model tanks, all neatly laid out. His grandchildren think it’s a toyshop. “It’s a throwback to when I was a child, really,” he said. “I believe in peace.”

Polls are the last chance for voters to make their choices before the general election

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Voters in England will go to the polls on 2 May to elect more than 2,600 councillors and 10 metro mayors, in the last set of local elections before the general one.

Labour and the Conservatives are defending just under 1,000 seats each, the Liberal Democrats about 400 and the Greens just over 100. Police and crime commissioners in England and Wales are also up for election.

Party says it hopes to cooperate with others at general election, at campaign launch in Bristol

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The Green party has said it is confident that its candidates will hold a record number of seats after next month’s local elections in England but also opened up the possibility of cooperating with other parties during the general election and with Labour if it wins power in Westminster.

Launching its local election campaign in Bristol on Thursday, the party said it believed it would add to the 760 councillors it had in place in England and Wales.

As the largest group on the council the party’s hopes of victory are high and candidates are relishing the battle to win power

The start of the council election campaign in Bristol has not been without challenges for Green party activists. They have endured cold, pounding rain while out canvassing, the shock of a dog bite that cost a candidate part of a finger and some pretty fierce swipes from Labour rivals.

But Emma Edwards, the leader of the group on Bristol city council, said they were relishing the battle to win power in May. “It’s a really exciting time for us here. It feels like we’re ready to make another leap. We’re enjoying being out, speaking to voters, telling them about our policies.”

Two historians argued in the 1990s that nine conditions defined the likelihood of Tory defeat. Almost all of them hold today

Incredible though it may seem, it is increasingly likely that Rishi Sunak’s Conservative leadership will be challenged in June. To many, the idea that choosing a fifth Tory prime minister in as many years might be the solution to internal party turmoil, or that ditching Sunak a few months before a general election would reanimate the electorate, will feel utterly delusional. To a significant group of Conservative MPs and activists, however, it is a primrose path that beckons irresistibly.

These critics never supported Sunak in the first place. They can’t forgive him for not having Boris Johnson’s post-Brexit appeal. They despise his caution about their obsessions. They treat his failure to dent Labour’s poll lead with contempt. They believe, probably rightly, that in the 2 May local elections Sunak may lead the Tories to a humiliating defeat. But they hope this will panic the party into yet another change of leader and a lurch to their land of lost content on the populist right.