Final polls predict unprecedented Labour victory, with Starmer declaring Britain a ‘great nation, with boundless potential’
Keir Starmer has hailed a “new age of hope and opportunity” as millions of people prepare to vote in a general election that could deliver the biggest shake-up of British politics in a generation.
The Labour leader said he was “ready for government” and that his intended cabinet would “hit the ground running” if it wins Thursday’s election.
Continue reading...Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer out campaigning after Mel Stride says Labour likely to win a large majority
It has just gone 7am: let’s look at today’s stop stories. With 24 hours to go until polls open, the Guardian leads with Keir Starmer accusing the Conservatives of desperate tactics amid claims that Tory criticism of his defence of family time was insensitive and had antisemitic undertones.
The Times has Boris Johnson saying a Labour landslide would be “pregnant with horrors”:
Continue reading...As the election nears, we scrutinise how each of the main contenders would deal with problems around the world
Conflicts and environmental disasters are stretching humanitarian resources, and a new UK government will have to decide what role it will play on the world stage in dealing with global problems, especially after budget cuts and closure of the Department for International Development by the Conservatives, and with priorities so focused on Ukraine. We’ve talked to the main parties and looked at their manifestos to see what their plans are.
Continue reading...PM responds to comments by Reform activists, who were filmed by Channel 4 reporter while canvassing in Clacton
Here’s the latest in the Guardian’s series on The broken years: Tory Britain 2010-24:
Unless the polls are wildly inaccurate, the Conservative party is heading towards a catastrophic defeat in the coming election.
Continue reading...PM again declines to say whether he told Craig Williams in advance about his decision to hold the election in July
Rishi Sunak is returning to the campaign trail on Thursday, PA reports, after a two-day hiatus for the Emperor and Empress of Japan’s state visit and preparations for the final head-to-head debate with Sir Keir Starmer.
With one week to go until polling day, the deepening gambling scandal is still likely to feature heavily when he faces the media during a tour of the East Midlands and Yorkshire.
He is expected to visit a factory in Derbyshire and hold an evening campaign event in Leeds.
Keir Starmer accused Rishi Sunak of using transgender issues “as a political football to divide people” during their head-to-head debate on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Party says it acted after being contacted by the regulator about the candidate for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich
All along the course of the Thames, turning north, meandering south, passing through locks, historic landmarks, Richmond and Kew, swelling beneath the House of Commons with the turning tide, and on to Docklands and beyond – concern for the health of the Thames has led many other ordinary people, who live, work or play on the water, to take up the fight for the health of the river.
The last 15 years of decline in rivers suggests they have much to do. In 2009, a year before the Conservatives first took power in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, a quarter of English rivers were judged as being of good ecological standard, a marker which examines the flow, habitat and biological quality; by 2022 not one river was in a healthy state.
Continue reading...Prime minister faces claim Tories are ‘stealing the candlesticks’ on the way out of government
After a passage in his speech attack Labour on familiar grounds, Rishi Sunak also hit out at Reform UK.
[Reform UK] are not on the side of who you think they are.
Reform are standing candidates here in Scotland that are pro independence and anti monarchy.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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:
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.”
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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
Continue reading...Leaders of Scotland’s five main political parties clash during live TV debate
Momentum, the leftwing Labour group set up when Jeremy Corbyn was leader, is not happy about Keir Starmer’s jibe about Corbyn’s manifesto.
Labour’s 2019 manifesto was fully costed.
Keir should know, he stood on it as a member of the shadow cabinet.
How about stopping attacking your own side during an election @Keir_Starmer?
PM acknowledges in BBC Panorama interview to air tonight that it is a challenge for people to buy their first home
Davey sums up the Lib Dems’ plans on health and social care
And he says he wants to mention one other policy he is particularly proud of – the proposal to give proper bereavement support to parents whose partners have died.
Continue reading...Surprise announcement comes amid internal party pressure and fresh allegations over expenses claims
Douglas Ross has announced he will stand down as leader of the Scottish Conservatives on 4 July amid growing internal pressure over his multiple roles in the party and fresh allegations about improper expenses claims.
In the surprise statement on Monday morning, Ross also said he would quit as an MSP at Holyrood should he win the Aberdeenshire North and Moray East constituency at the Westminster election.
Continue reading...John Swinney claims Anas Sarwar not keeping to Rachel Reeves’s constraints on NHS, schools and renewables funding as leaders clash
The SNP has accused Scottish Labour of “completely rewriting” Rachel Reeves’s spending plans, as the party leaders took part in the first televised debate of the election campaign.
The clash between the the SNP, Scottish Labour, Scottish Conservatives and Scottish Liberal Democrats was screened by STV, without a studio audience, and involved intensive cross-examination of each leader by his political rivals.
Continue reading...Leader launches party’s election campaign as polling suggests it will pay high price for recent woes
John Swinney has described July’s general election as “the biggest challenge the SNP has had for years” as he used his party’s official campaign launch to repeatedly attack Labour, which is threatening the nationalists in dozens of seats across Scotland.
Swinney, who told the rally of more than 200 activists and former MPs in Glasgow that it was a “surprise” to be leading the SNP into an election campaign, added that “voters are right to remind us never to take anything for granted”.
Continue reading...Bills, including smoking ban for people born after 2009, unlikely to become law before 4 July vote
Rishi Sunak is now speaking at an event in Ilkeston in Derbyshire. It is in the Erewash constituency, where the Tory MP Maggie Throup had a majority of 10,606 at the last election.
He repeats the claim that a Labour government would cost every family £2,000.
Labour’s spending promises cost £16 billion per year in 2028-29, or £58.9 billion over the next four years.
But their revenue raisers would only collect £6.2 billion per year in 2028-29, or £20.4 billion over the next four years.
I don’t really think the arrangements in Scotland for the school holidays have really been anywhere near the calculations made by the prime minister …
I think it would be respectful if that was the case but it’s pretty typical of the lack of respect shown to Scotland that we’re an afterthought from the Westminster establishment and particularly the Conservative establishment.
Continue reading...‘Common sense minister’ denies plan to Channel 4 News despite saying earlier this week that lanyards should be a ‘standard design’
Labour says the Ministry of Justice’s decision to delay court hearings because of prison overcrowing (see 10.39am) shows that people are “less safe” under the Tories. That’s a very convenient retort to Rishi Sunak, because only two days ago he gave a major speech arguing that security was a key reason why his party deserved to win the election.
In a statement, Shabana Mahmood, the shadow justice secretary, said:
The Tories continue to make major and unprecedented changes to the justice system without so much as a word to the public. It’s completely unacceptable and the public will be alarmed at this latest panic measures.
The government is stalling justice and leaving victims in limbo because of the mess they have created. This comes days after they hid from the public that they’re now letting criminals out of jail earlier than ever before.
The government is completely failing [on knife crime]. We’ve had an 80% increase since 2015 and rises all around the country. That’s the first point.
On stop and search, that is intelligence lead and evidence-based and is a really important tool. We’ve had, for example, the Inspectorate of Constabulary, an independent organisation, looking at this saying that what’s essential is that it is done in that targeted way.
Continue reading...