Finally, after six long weeks, the final 24 hours of campaigning is upon us. Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer will be dashing around the country as they make their final pitch to voters.

The prime minister, who may well be out of that job in less than 48 hours, will be sticking to Tory territory in Hampshire and the South East.

The man who is looking almost certain to replace him – Sir Keir – will be touring the three nations of the UK where he is fielding candidates, as he begins the journey to Number 10 via Wales, Scotland and England.

In the Labour camp, they are still intent on turning out the vote and assuming nothing.

One insider suggests to me there are still, as polling day arrives, 60-70 seats which are a “toss up and could go either way”. But there is a quiet admission too that, after four election defeats on the bounce, Labour’s time has finally come.

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But this likely victory – if/when it happens on the night – will require a double take, even if there has been a lack of jeopardy for Labour in this election campaign as the Conservatives failed to shift the polls.

That’s because the scale of the achievement is quite simply astonishing. Labour put in its worst performance since 1935 at the last election, returning just 202 MPs as Boris Johnson won the biggest Conservative landslide since the days of Margaret Thatcher.

Pretty much everyone in the party, bar Sir Keir and his campaign chief Morgan McSweeney, believed Labour would be locked out of power for a decade. The Labour leader told me repeatedly he could turn it around in one term. I thought he was wrong – it now looks like he’s about to be proved right.

And Sir Keir’s three-nation dash is designed not as a victory lap, but a signal of intent because it symbolises how he has repeatedly said he wants to govern, for the whole of the United Kingdom: “Country first, party second” is his common refrain.

He says he wants to be a prime minister that can bring the country back together after the Scottish referendum, Brexit wars, partygate and more latterly the Tory wars and hopes the contours of an election win on Thursday night will be the first step.

Labour’s internal polling points to the possibility that the party could become the largest party by vote share and even seats – although Scotland looks very touch and go – in all three nations for the first time in 24 years. Sir Tony Blair was the last Labour leader to pull that off, in his second landslide of 2001.

But his team are acutely aware that a victory on Thursday is just the end of the beginning and the hard work begins.

Mr Johnson is a shining example of a leader who appeared to have redrawn the political map only to find out that his landslide was built on very shaky ground.

The coalition of voters he amassed to “Get Brexit Done” and keep out Jeremy Corbyn melted away for a myriad of reasons, not least his own conduct in office and a failure to deliver on Brexit promises to level up the country and control immigration.

“If you go from having 200 seats to 360 or 370, you can travel that far again in the opposite direction,” says one Labour insider.

“It is in your hands, but you cannot assume that a possibly big majority means anything in the next election. We are going to have to work extremely hard to keep those votes and to try and get those who don’t vote for us to vote in the future.”

Because what Sir Keir’s team are also acutely aware of is that their victory is predicated, in a large part, not on what the Labour leader is offering but a collective sentiment in the country that voters want the Conservatives out.

Wherever I have travelled in this campaign, I cannot find a voter with a positive view of this Conservative government, with polling showing three out of four voters are dissatisfied with it.

It is difficult to reconcile the fatality of the blow that could be landed on the Conservatives by an opponent wielding the weapon. Sir Keir has nowhere near the favourability ratings of Sir Tony or even Lord Cameron, but could be heading for a big majority nevertheless.

But it also means that if Sir Keir manages to seal the deal with the voters in a meaningful way on Thursday night, he could find himself in the shortest of PM honeymoon periods.

He might be able to pick up a wide base of support, but, as his team acknowledge, it could be very shallow too.

“For some voters, all they want to do is get the Tories out. So we have to win them over again in office in order to try to win them over again at the next election,” says one senior Labour figure.

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It will, Labour insiders concede, take time. The scale of the victory – be it two figures or over 100 – won’t change the reality that Sir Keir has sold a cautious mandate to the country. “Whatever the upper number we could win, it doesn’t change how much money we have available to spend,” cautions a Labour operative.

“When Labour figures talk about being more radical, they mean tax more, perhaps spend more. But that is not the change we are driving at, we have to change people’s lives by growing the economy and it will be the same whether a majority came in at 50, or 80 or over 100.”

Another figure close to Sir Keir puts it like this: “A big Labour majority does not boost public finances, but it gives you a mandate for what you are elected on and it makes it important to stick to that agenda.”

But Sir Keir will want to show he’s hitting the ground running.

The annual summer recess will be the shortest in memory, as the summer sitting is extended to the end of July and MPs are asked to return on 2 September. There will be a bumper King’s Speech on 17 July laying out Sir Keir’s legislative plan and a big house building announcement from deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner in the weeks after victory.

As for the Conservative Party, it will have to weigh up what comes next as contenders for the leadership line up to replace Mr Sunak.

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One former cabinet minister insists Mr Sunak should stay on until a new leader is elected in time for the Conservative Party conference at the end of September. Those who know the prime minister well say only he’ll do the right thing and is not a man to cut and run.

Mr Sunak took the gamble in May to call the summer election, and now it looks like Sir Keir will reap the rewards.

He is poised to be the first Labour leader in nearly three decades to win from opposition and lead the first Labour government in 14 years.

That makes the win historic, as any change of power between parties always is. Whether Sir Keir’s victory will prove as consequential for the United Kingdom as the landmark governments of Clement Attlee in 1945, Margaret Thatcher from 1979 or Tony Blair’s three terms remains to be seen.

He’s still got it. Boris Johnson may have left it late before coming to the party – the Conservative Party, that is – but his 11th-hour rallying cry to the Tory faithful was vintage Boris and just like the old days.

It was the kind of shambolic, chaotic but barnstorming box office performance that he used to give at packed Tory conference fringe meetings when he was the king over the water and greeted like a rock star by his adoring fans.

Back then he used to upstage and humiliate David Cameron and then Theresa May.

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This time his victim was Rishi Sunak, who Mr Johnson’s cheerleaders accuse of knifing him in the back and leading the charge to oust him.

Et tu, Brute? More like Et tu, Boris. As well as answering the call in the Tories’ hour of need, he’d clearly come to settle some old scores, defend his record and remind the Tory faithful he hasn’t gone away.

And he certainly did all of those.

But while Tory activists who turned out at nearly 10pm adore him, is he still a vote winner? Or for undecided voters, is he a reminder of partygate, sleaze and Tory chaos?

But he was there on his terms, as he made clear.

Mr Johnson made a point of beginning his speech, from scribbled notes on crumpled paper, by saying he’d been asked to speak at this rally.

In other words, Mr Sunak had begged him to come to his rescue at the end of a disastrous Tory election campaign. He wasn’t going to offer. He wanted Mr Sunak to grovel and beg.

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There wasn’t a word of praise for Mr Sunak in his speech. No handshake, either.

There may have been other speakers – first Michael Gove and later Mr Sunak – but this was the Boris show and a one-man show.

Although the PM made perhaps his most punchy speech of the campaign when he spoke after him – why leave it so late? It was Mr Johnson who was the star of the show, topping the bill, obviously, and had the Tory faithful screaming his name.

‘Past Starmer’s bedtime’

After a warm-up speech by Mr Gove and then a low-key announcement which seemed to take the audience by surprise, the star turn shuffled on to the stage in an ill-fitting suit, hair unkempt and uncut for weeks and considerably heavier than in his Number 10 days.

When did he last visit a barber?

He always messes up his unruly mop of blond hair before a speech. All part of the act. The late Ken Dodd used to do that. Fans would say Boris the comedian is just as funny as the man from Knotty Ash.

What a mess he looked, though. Not that the audience cared. They chanted “Boris! Boris!” just like they did when he was the darling of the conference fringe.

He began – predictably – with a gag at Sir Keir Starmer‘s expense, the man he used to call “Captain Crasheroonie Snoozefest” at prime minister’s questions.

He thanked the audience “for coming so late tonight to this venue, way past Sir Keir Starmer’s bedtime”. Boom, boom! The Labour leader will have to live with jokes about his 6pm Friday curfew for some time.

“I was glad when Rishi asked me to help,” he claimed. “Of course I couldn’t say no.”

Well, probably not. But those Red Wall Tories now facing defeat on Thursday will have wished he’d answered the call a lot earlier in the campaign.

Turning on Farage

We got the usual Johnson defence of his handling of the pandemic and the roll-out of the vaccines. And he boasted several times, not surprisingly: “We got Brexit done.” It was “a proper Brexit”, he said, a “Brexit government”.

Maybe. The audience loved all that, but why are so many Tories turning to Reform UK if it was such a triumph?

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Next, Sir Keir was ridiculed as “Jeremy Corbyn’s disciple” and accused of “taking EU law by dictation” and “poor old Starmer” was “reluctant to explain the difference between a man and a woman”, he claimed.

Then he turned on Nigel Farage, something Mr Sunak and his senior ministers should have done weeks ago.

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Reform UK was “full of Kremlin crawlers” and Putin’s “pet parrots”, he said. “Shame on them!” he declared, to wild applause.

And then a typical Johnson gag: “Don’t let the Putinistas deliver the Corbynistas!”

Vintage, yes. Funny, naturally. A great showman, definitely.

But is he still an asset, when so many voters appear to want to punish the Conservatives for his time in Downing Street rather than blame Mr Sunak for Tory failures?

Whatever voters think of Boris Johnson, his last-minute cameo has almost certainly come too late to save the Conservatives from the heavy defeat the polls are predicting.

This is the story of how an obscure company based in an office block on a quiet street in Glasgow became an accessory in Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine. It is the story of how Europe and Russia remain locked in a tense relationship of economic dependence, even as they supposedly cut their ties. It is the story of the uncomfortable truth behind why the cost of living crisis came to an end.

But before all of that, it is the story of a ship – a very unusual ship indeed.

If you ever spot the Yakov Gakkel as it sails through the English Channel or the Irish Sea (I first set eyes on it in the Channel but at the time of writing it was sailing northwards, about 20 miles off the coast of Anglesey) you might not find it all that remarkable.

At first glance it looks like many of the other large, nondescript tankers and cargo vessels passing these shores. Its profile is dominated by an enormous blue prow which reaches high out of the water and ends, 50 metres further back, at its unexpectedly angular stern.

Yet the ship’s slightly odd shape – all hull and barely any deck – is the first clue about what makes the Yakov Gakkel so special. Because this is one of the world’s most advanced liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers, with an unusual trick up its sleeve.

LNG tankers are extraordinary ships, with insides so cleverly engineered they are capable of holding vast amounts of natural gas at temperatures of approximately −163C.

For all that the world is embracing renewable energy, natural gas remains one of the most important energy sources, essential for much of Europe’s heating and power, not to mention its industries. For the time being, there is no cheap way of making many industrial products, from glass and paper to critical chemicals and fertilisers, without gas.

Once upon a time, moving natural gas from one part of the world to another necessitated sending it down long, expensive, vulnerable pipelines, meaning only countries with a physical connection to gas producers could receive this vital fuel. But LNG tankers like the Yakov Gakkel are part of the answer to this problem, since they allow gas producers to send it by sea to anywhere with a terminal capable of turning their supercooled methane back into the gas we use to heat our homes and power our grids.

But the Yakov Gakkel can also do something most other LNG tankers cannot, for that enormous blue double hull allows it to carve through ice, enabling it to travel up into the Arctic Circle and back even in the depths of winter.

And that is precisely what this ship does, more or less constantly: travelling back and forth between Siberia and Europe, through winter and summer, bringing copious volumes of gas from Russia to Europe. It is part of the explanation for how Europe never ran out of gas, even after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

This is not, it’s worth saying, the conventional wisdom. Back when Russia invaded Ukraine, European policymakers declared they planned to eliminate the continent’s reliance on Russian gas – which accounted for roughly a third of their supplies before 2022.

And many assumed that had already happened – especially after the Nord Stream pipeline, the single biggest source of European gas imports, was sabotaged in late 2022. But while volumes of Russian pipeline gas into Europe have dropped dramatically, the amount of Russian LNG coming into Europe has risen to record levels.

Russia helps Europe replenish gas stores

Today, Europe still depends on Russia for around 15% of its gas, an ever-growing proportion of which now comes in via the sealanes, on tankers like the Yakov Gakkel. And while the US has stepped in to make up some of the volumes lost when those pipelines stopped, only last month Russia overtook the US to become the second biggest provider of gas to the continent. It’s further evidence that those LNG volumes carried on ships through the North Sea, the Irish Sea and the English Channel, are increasing, rather than falling.

This Russian gas has helped Europe replenish its gas stores, it has helped keep the continent’s heavy industry going throughout the Ukraine war. And this dependence has not come cheap: the total amount Europe has paid Russia for LNG since 2022 comes to around €10bn.

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The continued presence of Russian gas running through European grids is at least part of the explanation for why European energy prices have fallen so sharply since those post-invasion highs. Back then, many in the market were pricing in a complete end of Russian gas supply to Europe – something that would have had disastrous consequences. But it never actually happened.

Perhaps this explains why the continent’s politicians have, so far, stopped short of banning imports of Russian gas: they are aware that their economy would struggle to withstand another sharp spike in inflation – which would almost certainly eventuate if it stopped taking Russian gas altogether.

This week, European leaders agreed to stop allowing Russia to use its ports to “trans-ship” its LNG – essentially acting as a stop-off point towards other destinations. However, those transshipments account for only a fraction – at most a quarter – of the Russian gas coming in on tankers to Europe. The vast majority ends up in Belgium, France and Spain, heating European homes, fuelling power stations and powering machinery in factories.

While European leaders have imposed wide-ranging sanctions and price caps on shipments of oil, no such controls exist for liquefied natural gas. So the Yakov Gakkel and a fleet of LNG tankers carry on sailing between Siberia and various ports in Europe – Zeebrugge, Dunkirk, Montoir and Bilbao – keeping the continent supplied with the Russian hydrocarbons it still cannot live without.

British firm’s role in lucrative trade

But there is another reason why this ship is particularly unique, for the Yakov Gakkel – this critical cog in the financial machine that helps finance the Russian regime – is actually part-owned and operated by a British company.

That brings us back to a street overlooking the Clyde in Glasgow, where, in a glass-fronted office block, you will find the operational headquarters of a company called Seapeak. The chances are you haven’t heard of Seapeak before, but this business owns and operates a fleet of LNG tankers all across the world.

That fleet includes the Yakov Gakkel and four other LNG icebreakers that ply this Siberian trade. That a British company might be facilitating this lucrative trade for Russia might come as a surprise, but there is nothing illegal about this: the sanctions regime on Russia just turns out to be significantly more porous than you might have thought.

We tried repeatedly to speak to Seapeak – to ask them about the Yakov Gakkel and whether they felt it was appropriate – given the UK has forsworn LNG imports – that a British company and British workers are helping administer this Russian trade. We sent emails with questions. However, they did not respond to our calls or our emails.

When, after weeks of efforts to get a response, I visited their offices in Glasgow, I was met by a security guard who told me Seapeak would not see me without an appointment (which they were refusing to give me). Eventually I was told that if I would not leave they would call the police.

Seapeak is not the only British company helping keep Russian gas flowing. While British insurers are banned from protecting oil tankers carrying Russian crude, there’s no equivalent sanction on Russian LNG ships, with the upshot that many of these tankers are insured by British companies operating out of the Square Mile.

We spent some time tracking another icebreaking tanker, the Vladimir Rusanov, as it approached Zeebrugge. It is insured by the UK P&I Club, which also insures a number of other LNG carriers.

In a statement, it said: “The UK Club takes great care to observe all applicable sanctions regulations in relation to Russian energy cargoes, but the direct carriage of LNG from Yamal to Zeebrugge, and provision of insurance services for such carriage, is not presently sanctioned. If the EU and G7 nations were to change their policy… the Club would of course comply by adjusting or withdrawing its services, as necessary.”

The transport of Russian gas into Europe – its dependence on British operators and insurers – is only one small example of the loopholes and omissions in the UK sanctions regime. But while government ministers have expressed concern about the effectiveness of the broader sanctions regime, there is still scant evidence they intend to tighten up this corner of it.

Before the election was called the Treasury Select Committee was in the middle of collecting evidence for its own inquiry into the regime, which was expected to focus on insurers of vessels taking Russian goods. However, the inquiry was wound up prematurely when the election was called in May.

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In the meantime, ships like the Yakov Gakkel carry on taking billions of cubic metres of gas from the gas fields of Yamal in Siberia down to Europe, in exchange for billions of euros. And those and other hydrocarbon revenues are one of the main explanations for how Russia is able to produce more missiles and weapons than the Ukrainians.

So Europe carries on fuelling its industry and its power and heating grids with molecules of gas coming from Siberian gasfields, while assuring itself it’s doing everything it can to fight Vladimir Putin.

It is, in short, a discomforting situation. But given the alternative is to induce another cost of living crisis, there is little appetite in Europe to change things.