Category Archives: General elections

Make this the last inaccessible election for blind people in UK, campaigners demand

Posted on by

RNIB calls on all parties to commit to remove barriers that prevent people with sight loss voting on their own

Tens of thousand of people with sight loss will be denied their right to a secret ballot at next week’s general election, campaigners have warned, prompting calls to make it the last inaccessible election.

The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) is calling on all political parties to commit to remove barriers that prevent blind people voting on their own and without help in future elections.

Continue reading...

UK general election live: Labour suspends candidate Kevin Craig over Gambling Commission probe

Posted on by

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...

Sunak says Truss’s budget was mistaken as Starmer defends backing of Corbyn

Posted on by

Prime minister says he fought against predecessor’s plans and warns of migration surge if Labour scraps Rwanda plan

Keir Starmer has defended serving in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, saying he wanted to help preserve the Labour party and that he “always knew there was going to be a day after”.

Speaking in separate interviews hosted by the Sun newspaper that included questions from a watching audience, Rishi Sunak and Starmer underwent at times difficult interrogations, including over migration and the NHS.

Continue reading...

JK Rowling agrees to meeting with Labour about gender transition policy

Posted on by

Author responds after shadow chancellor says party would be ‘really happy’ to ‘give her assurances’

JK Rowling has agreed to a meeting with Labour after Rachel Reeves said the party would be “really happy” to “give her assurances” over its plans to change the process through which people can legally change gender.

Speaking in Scotland, Reeves said protection for women-only spaces would “absolutely stay”, adding: “We’re not going to be changing anything around biological sex … We’re really happy to talk to JK Rowling to give her assurances about that.”

Continue reading...

Nigel Farage attacks Mail newspapers over ‘Putin ally’ reports

Posted on by

Reform UK leader accuses group of trying to stop his party breaking through into parliament

Nigel Farage has launched a stinging attack on the Daily Mail group, accusing the newspapers of trying to stop Reform UK “breaking through into parliament” by publishing reports that suggest he is an ally of Vladmir Putin’s administration.

Farage said the newspaper, which has often been supportive of him in the past, was “collaborating with the Kremlin to protect the dying Conservative party”, also lashing out at Boris Johnson for joining condemnation of his comments about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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).

Continue reading...

Betting scandal as bad for Tories as Partygate, says Michael Gove

Posted on by

‘It looks like one rule for them and one rule for us,’ the levelling up, housing and communities secretary suggests

The election betting row is as damaging to the Conservatives as the Partygate scandal, Michael Gove has said.

The levelling up, housing and communities secretary was speaking after revelations in the Guardian about a wagers allegedly placed on the date of the general election just before it was announced by the prime minister, Rishi Sunak.

Continue reading...

Farage doubles down on claim west provoked Ukraine invasion

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

Nigel Farage interviewed by Nick Robinson on Panorama election special – live

Posted on by

Reform leader speaks on BBC as part of special election interviews; Welsh TV election debate to take place on BBC One Cymru

If you want to get a bit of revision in before Nigel Farage’s interview tonight, you can find the Reform UK manifesto, which it is branding its “contract with you”, here.

The five opening key pledges are:

All non-essential immigration frozen to boost wages, protect public services, end the housing crisis and cut crime.

Illegal migrants who come to the UK will be detained and deported. And if needed, migrants in small boats will be picked up and taken back to France.

Still free at the point of delivery, healthcare needs reform to improve outcomes and enjoy zero NHS waiting lists.

Lift the income tax starting threshold to £20k to save the lowest paid £1,500 per year. This takes 7 million of the least well-off out of income tax to make work pay and get people off benefits.

Scrap energy levies and net zero to slash energy bills and save each household £500 per year. Unlock Britain’s vast oil and gas reserves to beat the cost of living crisis and unleash real economic growth.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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...

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

Posted on by

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...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

Whatever the sums involved, the election betting scandal will linger in public’s minds

Posted on by

The suggestion that Tories and their associates used insider knowledge to enrich themselves is unlikely to help Sunak narrow the gap in the polls

When Rishi Sunak, Britain’s Conservative prime minister, called a snap election in the pouring rain last month, he would have hoped his party would have closed at least some of the 20-point deficit in the opinion polls.

Instead, it seems the only members of his party who have profited since are some of his Downing street aides – in a political betting scandal that has swiftly reinforced prevailing anti-Conservative stereotypes in the British public’s imagination.

Continue reading...

Rishi Sunak floats sanctions on young people for refusing national service

Posted on by

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”.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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...

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

Posted on by

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

• Sign up to our Election Edition daily newsletter

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...

Birmingham general election hopeful joked about domestic violence on podcast

Posted on by

Independent Akhmed Yakoob, who polls suggest is closing gap on Labour, also said ‘70% of hell will be women’

An independent candidate standing in Birmingham said “70% of hell will be women” and joked about domestic violence on a podcast earlier this year, it has emerged, as polling suggests he is closing the gap with Labour.

Akhmed Yakoob, who came third in the West Midlands mayoral election in May with just over 10% of the vote, is standing against Labour’s Shabana Mahmood in Ladywood, one of the most deprived constituencies in the country.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...