Category Archives: Labour

Labour to add dozens of peers to back its policies and improve gender balance

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Exclusive: Party has pledged to abolish House of Lords but plans initial appointments to bolster its benches

Labour is to appoint dozens of peers within weeks in an attempt to push through its policies and improve the representation of women in the House of Lords, the Guardian has learned.

Senior Labour figures have drawn up a list of peerages to bolster the party benches and help implement its legislative programme if it wins the election on 4 July. The Conservatives have 104 more peers than Labour, while fewer than a third of the 784 members of parliament’s second chamber are women.

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Labour watchdog will have ‘real teeth’ to prosecute rogue employers, says Angela Rayner

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Party’s deputy leader says Fair Work Agency will have the power to inspect workplaces and levy fines

Labour will create a watchdog with “real teeth” that has the power to prosecute and fine companies that breach the rights of their employees as part of its plans to strengthen workers’ rights.

Angela Rayner, the party’s deputy leader, told the Observer that she would create a new body, the Fair Work Agency, to oversee her proposals. She said that millions of workers could be losing out on basic rights as a result of underenforcement.

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‘Scunnered with the Tories, frustrated by the SNP’: Labour in bid to be Scotland’s biggest party

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Candidates in key central belt hope to scoop up voters who have become disillusioned with their election rivals

Not for the first time, Blair McDougall, Labour’s candidate in East Renfrewshire on the outskirts of Glasgow, is telling a wavering voter that the election here is “so, so close”.

If predictions of a knife-edge outcome weren’t enough to motivate him, many people – including some in Barrhead, which he is visiting today – have just received their postal ballots. Their votes will be cast in the next few days.

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Tory stumbles drive Labour to near-record 20-point poll lead

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Latest Opinium survey shows gap with Labour widening after another week of Conservative gaffes, while Reform rises two points to 16%

The Tories’ disastrous election campaign has propelled Labour to a near-record poll lead with just 11 days to go until election day.

The latest Opinium poll for the Observer puts Labour on 40% (unchanged compared with a week ago), with the Tories languishing on just 20% (down three on the week).

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Starmer’s growth plan ‘doomed’ without access to EU markets, warn economists

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Labour leader told if elected he will have to rejoin the customs union to meet party’s manifesto pledges, while 56% of voters say Brexit was bad for economy

A Labour government under Keir Starmer will fail to maximise the UK’s economic growth unless it takes the country back into the European Union’s single market and customs union, leading economists and diplomats have said.

The warnings come as an Opinium poll for the Observer finds that 56% of voters now believe Brexit has been bad for the UK economy as a whole, compared with just 12% who believe it has been economically beneficial.

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Farage doubles down on claim west provoked Ukraine invasion

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Reform UK leader refuses to apologise after his remarks attracted widespread condemnation

Nigel Farage has doubled down on his claims that the west provoked the Russian invasion of Ukraine, refusing to apologise and insisting he is not an “apologist or supporter of Putin”.

The Reform UK leader had appeared on the BBC’s Panorama programme on Thursday night, drawing a link between Nato and EU expansion in recent decades and the conflict in eastern Europe.

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Starmer says he would not let SNP hold new independence referendum or lift veto on gender recognition bill – as it happened

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Labour leader says he would refuse to participate in negotiations for another independence referendum if he is elected PM

Speaking of Nigel Farage: the Reform UK leader has praised the misogynist influencer Andrew Tate for being an “important voice” for the emasculated and giving boys “perhaps a bit of confidence at school” in online interviews that appear to be aimed at young men over the past year.

The Guardian’s Rowena Mason and Ben Quinn report:

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Labour candidates penalised for not campaigning enough in battleground seats

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Those standing in easy or unwinnable constituencies lose access to key party software if deemed not to be canvassing hard enough in twinned target areas

Dozens of Labour candidates have been blocked from accessing the party’s canvassing systems, which help them drum up support from voters, if they are deemed not to be campaigning enough in target seats.

In some cases, candidates who have been campaigning every day in battleground seats they are twinned with – as instructed to by Labour HQ – in parts of the home counties and Essex, have still lost their access to key software as their seats are considered either very safe or simply not winnable.

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Rishi Sunak says he is ‘incredibly angry’ about betting allegations in BBC Question Time election special – as it happened

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Prime minister says suspects must face ‘full force of law’ if found guilty; Labour, SNP and Lib Dem leaders speak during programme

The next question comes from Linda, who says Davey’s antics during the election campaigns (fun photo opportunities, often involving him getting wet) haven’t looked prime-ministerial.

Davey says he has been trying to grab attention.

It was very difficult governing with the Conservatives. We couldn’t get everything we wanted …

You either had to stay in and fight inside the government or leave. I think the easy choice for me would be to leave, vote against it, and tour the media studios and complain. The hard choice was to stay in, roll up my sleeves and really fight.

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Former Tory minister vows to vote Labour over party’s climate failures

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Exclusive: Chris Skidmore, ex-energy minister, says Rishi Sunak’s bid to turn net zero into culture war issue is ‘greatest tragedy of his premiership’

The Conservatives’ former net zero tsar has revealed that he intends to vote Labour for the first time because Rishi Sunak has been “siding with climate deniers” to politicise the energy transition.

Writing exclusively in the Guardian, Chris Skidmore, a former energy minister, said he could not back the Tories, who had argued that net zero was “a burden and not a benefit”, a decision that he said would cost it votes.

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Rishi Sunak floats sanctions on young people for refusing national service

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PM suggests curbs on finance or driving licences for 18-year-olds who refuse service during challenging Question Time leaders’ special

Rishi Sunak has indicated that young people might face restrictions on access to finance or driving licences if they refuse to do national service, as he faced a TV quizzing from voters.

Asked during a BBC Question Time special what sanctions people could face for declining to take part in the Conservative policy of compulsory national service for all 18-year-olds, the prime minister pointed to “driving licences, or the access to finance, all sorts of other things”.

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Gambling regulator looking into second Tory candidate over bet on general election timing – live

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BBC names candidate as Laura Saunders and says she is married to party’s director of campaigns

In case you missed this late yesterday: Conservatives are projected to slump to their “lowest seat tally in the party’s almost 200-year history” at the General Election, according to the latest YouGov poll.

YouGov said its latest study projects Labour to secure 425 seats, the Tories 108, the Liberal Democrats 67, SNP 20, Reform UK five, Plaid Cymru four and the Green Party two. It noted such a scenario would hand Keir Starmer a 200-seat majority while it added Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is “likely” to win in Clacton.

The findings are similar to those from the Guardian’s Ipsos MRP poll on Tuesday, which showed the Conservatives winning just 115 seats, with Labour on 453.

YouGov used a technique known as multi-level regression and post-stratification (MRP) to model the outcome of the election in every constituency across Britain, PA reports.

It said the estimated seat projections were based on modelled responses from 36,161 adults in England and Wales, and 3,818 in Scotland, between June 11 and 18. Several high-profile Conservatives, including Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, would lose out if the projection played out at the ballot box on 4 July.

YouGov wrote:

Our new MRP has the Conservatives on their lowest seat tally in the party’s almost 200-year history.

Our latest model has 109 seats as toss ups – meaning that the winning party’s lead is less than five points. Sixty five marginal seats are contests between the Conservatives and Labour.”

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Tory government ‘worst in postwar era’, claims expert study – as it happened

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Sir Anthony Seldon leads analysis that concludes that equality, growth and the UK’s standing in the world have all declined since 2010

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And here are some of the best pictures from yesterday’s campaigning. As more voting people than ever appear poised to turn away from the Tories, Sunak appeared in several photographs with sheep and lobsters as he visited North Devon, held by the Tories since 2015. The Guardian’s Archie bland named the sheep the “Dubious photo opportunity of the day”, after the sheep ran away:

Starmer, meanwhile, appeared on LBC where he clarified that Premier League Football Clubs would not be subject to a 10% transfer tax to fund clubs lower down the pyramid. “Let me just kill it dead, we’re not looking at that,” Starmer said. He also visited a tennis club and a pub in Reading West and mid Berkshire.

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Expert economists back Labour’s plan to end economic stagnation in UK

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Nobel prize winners and former Bank of England officials believe Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer can bring about ‘desperately needed’ change

Labour’s plans for ending Britain’s long-term economic stagnation have been backed by a group of leading economists, including three Nobel prize winners and a former Bank of England deputy governor.

In a boost to the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, the 16 UK and internationally based economists said change was “desperately needed” after the policy mistakes and failures of the past 14 years since the Conservatives took power.

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Tory donor who gave Boris Johnson £500,000 urges public to vote Labour

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John Caudwell, the Phones4U founder, says he is ‘rather despairing’ about Conservatives after 51 years of support

A Conservative party donor who donated £500,000 to Boris Johnson’s compaign in 2019 has announced he will vote for Labour in next month’s general election.

John Caudwell, who founded the mobile phone retailer Phones4U, made the announcement on Tuesday evening, in comments first reported by the Times and the BBC.

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Starmer grilled on council tax and Corbyn in LBC general election phone-in – live

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Labour leader asked if he would have served in a Corbyn cabinet and declines to say council tax won’t rise if his party wins

Q: [From Emma in Greenwich] How will you protect single-sex spaces for girls, while making it easier to get a gender recognition certificate?

Starmer says he is passionate about protecting single-sex spaces. As director of public prosecutions, he dealt with a lot of cases involving violence against women and girls.

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Former head of GCHQ praises Labour’s defence and security plans

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David Omand says pledges on nuclear deterrent shows party can be trusted ‘to stick to serious defence policy’

Labour’s position on national security has been endorsed by a former head of the UK intelligence agency, GCHQ, who said the party can be trusted to “stick to serious defence policy.”

The backing by Sir David Omand is a boost in a key area for Keir Starmer, who has sought to promote Labour’s security as a way of emphasising how the party has changed since Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

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Nigel Farage claims young people have had their minds ‘poisoned’ with negative views about Britain – UK general election live

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Farage launches party manifesto in traditional Labour stronghold of Merthyr Tydfil

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have been campaigning in Hampshire this morning. Stefan Rousseau from PA Media took this picture of them on the train.

The SNP has called for a social tariff that would guarantee cheap energy bills for people who are poor, disabled or elderly.

We believe that there are certain things that every citizen should have access to as a right. Healthcare free at the point of need, a social security safety net, pensions for older people, and free education including free university tuition.

But it is time that we recognised that these rights need to go further, to reflect the realities of the modern world.

Connectivity – fast broadband and good mobile phone connections – are critical to modern life. In fact, in rural Scotland and the Isles, it is critical to the whole future of the economy.
As more and more people work from home at least part of the week, often you literally cannot do your job without a decent internet connection. That’s why, to help people get jobs, keep jobs and keep more of their hard-earned cash, there should be a social tariff for broadband and mobile charges too.

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UK elections: what is tactical voting and how does it work?

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The campaign group Best for Britain has launched its guide on how to vote to have the best chance of ousting the Tories. We look at what tactical voting involves and what the group is recommending

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Tactical voting could defeat Tories in once safe seats, campaigners say

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Senior Tories such as Liz Truss and Jeremy Hunt could be for chop as well as once safe seats such as Maidenhead

The Conservatives could lose once safe constituencies such as Theresa May’s former seat in the coming general election, with nearly 40% of people willing to vote tactically to oust the Tories, a campaign group has said.

Setting out its recommendations for how people could maximise their chances of not electing a Conservative, Best for Britain said particularly efficient tactical voting could even unseat Liz Truss and Suella Braverman.

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