Category Archives: General election 2024

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

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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.

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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 refuses to say if more Tories face election bet inquiries

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PM says he is ‘angry’ about allegations while Keir Starmer accuses him of ‘total lack of leadership’

Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives are refusing to say how many Tories are under investigation for betting on the date of the election, as the row continues to dog their campaign.

The prime minister said on Friday he was “angry at the thought that someone might have done the things that are alleged” after three people linked to the Conservatives were made subject to Gambling Commission inquiries, including one from his inner circle.

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

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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.

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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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Hip-hop mimes and breast jokes win Farage a valuable gen Z following

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Reform leader’s strategy to engage with young voters online pays off as he hits 776,000 TikTok followers

While Nigel Farage has written off many in generation X for being hopelessly woke and leftwing, he is much more interested in gen Z.

“Support is exploding among young gen Z 18-25 voters,” he told an audience in Runcorn in Cheshire on Thursday. “Something remarkable is happening out there. There’s an awakening in a younger generation who have had enough of being dictated to, have had enough of being lectured to, and they’re seeing through the BS they’re getting in schools and universities.”

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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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UK universities valued more than institutions like parliament and BBC, finds survey

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King’s College London poll finds people rank universities behind only the NHS, armed forces and royal family

The British public values the UK’s universities more highly than the legal system or the BBC, according to a survey of attitudes towards higher education by King’s College London.

Prof Bobby Duffy, the director of King’s College London’s policy institute, said universities came behind only the NHS, the armed forces and the royal family in a league table of UK institutions considered to be among the best in the world by the public.

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Prisons in England and Wales will be at ‘breaking point’ in July, governors told

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Exclusive: heads of prisons say they will no longer be able to accept new inmates ‘very soon’ after 4 July election

Prison governors have been warned that jails will be so overcrowded by the second week of July that they will struggle to accept any more inmates, plunging an incoming government into an immediate crisis.

The heads of jails in England and Wales were informed by HM Prison and Probation Service officials earlier this month that data pointed to an “operational capacity breaking point” only days after the 4 July general election.

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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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Birmingham general election hopeful joked about domestic violence on podcast

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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.

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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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Tories expected to target voters with letters signed by Boris Johnson

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Tens of thousands of letters signed by former prime minister expected to be delivered this week

The Conservatives will turn to Boris Johnson in an attempt to boost their faltering election campaign, according to reports.

Tens of thousands of letters signed by the former prime minister are expected to be delivered later this week in the closest campaign engagement yet by Johnson, whose involvement so far has been limited to endorsing individual Tory MPs.

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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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Jeremy Hunt: Liz Truss economic plans were ‘good thing to aim for’

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Exclusive: Leaked recordings reveal chancellor ‘trying to achieve some of the same things’ as former prime minister

Jeremy Hunt said Liz Truss’s economic ambitions were a “good thing to aim for” and her disastrous mini-budget hadn’t left an impact on the economy, according to two leaked recordings obtained by the Guardian.

The chancellor was recorded at a meeting of students when he said he was “trying to basically achieve some of the same things” as the former prime minister, but that he was doing it “more gradually”.

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