A summary of today's developments
Keir Starmer said he plans to go further in bolstering Britain’s public services than he set out in Labour’s manifesto, calling the party’s election pledges merely a “first step”.Talking about his pledge to recruit 6,500 extra teaches - which would amount to one teacher for every three schools - Starmer told the BBC’s Nick Robinson: “That is set out in the manifesto very clearly as a first step, a down payment, one of the steps that I hope that we’ll be taking literally on day one in government starting down that recruitment… It’s a first step, it’s billed as a first step.” Asked separately about his pledge to create 2m more NHS appointments a year - less than a 2% increase - he said: “It’s a first step, it’s a down payment.”
Conservative leadership hopefuls are already lobbying for support to take over from Rishi Sunak amid widespread fears the party is heading for a disastrous defeat on 4 July, the Guardian has learned. Candidates and advisers had begun lining up behind their preferred contenders, sources said, with some Tory campaigners complaining they were being inundated with messages from potential leaders. One Tory adviser said: “There is quite a bit of manoeuvring going on already. Members of the cabinet are texting candidates regularly just to ‘check in’, while others are already lining up their leadership teams.”
Nigel Farage has declared himself the real “leader of the opposition” and predicted his Reform party will gain more than 6m votes, after polling ahead of the Conservatives for the first time in a single poll. At an impromptu press conference in Westminster, the Reform leader said there was a momentum behind his party, and he “absolutely” believes that he will gain more votes than the Tories. He went on to demand that the BBC allows him to take part in a leaders’ debate with the Tories, Labour, Liberal Democrats and the SNP next week, and challenged Keir Starmer to a head-to-head debate on immigration.
Labour would be handed a “blank cheque” if current polling were replicated at the election, Rishi Sunak has said. The prime minister said he was still fighting for every vote after a YouGov poll put the Tories in third place behind Labour and Reform UK, dealing a fresh blow to his struggling campaign.
Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, has said there is “nothing inevitable” about Labour winning the 4 July general election and forming the next government. He said “I’ve been knocking on doors right across the country in seats that Labour needs to win in order to win the next general election, and there are millions of undecided voters out there”. Streeting also said rising NHS waiting lists in England have “blown a hole in Rishi Sunak’s credibility”.
Conservative chief secretary to the Treasury Laura Trott gave a press conference to promote the publication of a booklet the Conservatives claim shows Labour have 18 tax rises planned.
At a Sinn Féin candidate launch event in Belfast, party president Mary Lou McDonald said a vote for the party was a vote for “hope and optimism, strong leadership and positive change”. Northern Ireland’s first minister Michelle O’Neill said she believed that Sinn Féin would defend the seven Westminster seats it holds – but doesn’t take up – and that they would increase their vote.
Rhun ap Iorwerth, Plaid Cymru leader, told the BBC “We’re not going to be forming the next UK government, so it’s about how we use influence and I think in this election, perhaps it’s clearer than in any election for a while what that specific role is. Keir Starmer will become prime minister regardless of what Wales says. We can try to mould the kind of change that’s going to happen in this election. Making sure that labour are kept honest if you like, kept in check”.
ITV said Thursday night’s seven-way debate had an average audience 2.1 million and a peak of 2.4 million across devices
John Swinney, along with other senior SNP figures, were in Munich ahead of Scotland’s match against Germany in the opening game of Euro 2024.
Prof Sir John Curtice, in an interview with the Guardian, has said the 4 July exit poll is in “uncharted waters” this year, telling Libby Brooks “The scale of the Conservative losses are unprecedented if the polls are at all right, so we will spend a lot of the day really worrying about how big is the number we should be putting up [for Labour], or in the case of the Tories, how small.”
Council staff across Scotland have rejected a new pay offer and Unison Scotland are to hold a ballot on potential strike action.
Keir Starmer has said he plans to go further in bolstering Britain’s public services than he set out in his party’s manifesto this week, calling the party’s election pledges merely a “first step”.
The Labour leader told the BBC he wanted to carry out bigger changes to areas such as health and education than suggested by his current pledges, which he said were focused on what he would do on “day one” of a Labour government.
In a half-hour interview with the journalist Nick Robinson, Starmer defended himself against accusations that Labour’s manifesto promises were too small to deal with the problems the country faces.
Talking about his pledge to recruit 6,500 extra teaches - which would amount to one teacher for every three schools - Starmer said: “That is set out in the manifesto very clearly as a first step, a down payment, one of the steps that I hope that we’ll be taking literally on day one in government starting down that recruitment… It’s a first step, it’s billed as a first step.”
Asked separately about his pledge to create 2m more NHS appointments a year - less than a 2% increase - he said: “It’s a first step, it’s a down payment.”
Unlike the Conservatives, who promised £17bn worth of tax cuts in their manifesto, Labour has kept its manifesto relatively modest, including only £7.4bn worth of tax rises and £4.8bn worth of spending increases.
Those promises have led to accusations his policies fail to get to grips with the huge funding deficit public services are likely to face in the next five years.
Robinson brings up the 2019 manifesto where it says about free movement in the EU and defending migrants rights.
He replies that was the terms of the UK’s then partnership in the EU.
Starmer is asked are you prepared to stand alongside a US president and say “no Mr President”.
He replied he will deal with each situation individually, adding the UK and US is a special relationship.
Starmer is asked are you ready to act like your precedessors to use UK military power abroad.
The Labour leader said he is ready to take action to defend ourselves, “its why we signed the Nato treaty”.
When asked are you hostile to people who go for private healthcare and are queue jumpers, Starmer said he isn’t.
He said he had a football injury, a torn miniscus, and waited for treatment on the NHS.
When asked if Labour is going to raise Capital Gains Tax, he said the manifesto plans do not mention tax increases for working people.
The ones he will focus on include a windfall tax on energy firms and non dom tax statuses.
Starmer reiterates he will not put up VAT, income tax and National Insurance.
Updated
On the differences in the party’s position on taxes compared to before, Starmer said the party had drifted too far away from working people and was “looking down on people” in 2019. He says he has changed his mind after reflecting on the four successive election defeats.
Starmer is shown a photograph of himself and Tony Blair wearing the same tie and shirt and pose.
And also one of himself with Jeremy Corbyn.
Starmer reiterates he said he did not think that Labour would win the last election.
On whether the UK needs to get closer to the EU to grow the economy, Starmer says “I do think we can do a better deal than the botched one under Boris Johnson and the barriers of trade.”
Starmer says the focus on growth is not a “wand”, as Robinson suggests, but a “plan” which he has been working on for four years.
He adds he will prepared to make enemies to make the economy grow such as on planning permission.
The £18 billion worth of cuts estimated by some independent experts is brought up by Robinson.
Starmer replies they want to reform the NHS and move to a preventative model, intervening early, using the example of AI in radiology.
He adds “we will not go back to austerity”.
Robinson cites Labour’s pledge for two million extra NHS appointments a year, which he says “isnt very much” and is less than 1 per cent of the NHS budget.
Starmer says again its a downpayment and a first step.
Robinson gives an examples of what he calls “small changes”.
6,500 teachers to be recruited is mentioned in the manifesto which is one teacher per three school over 5 years.
Starmer says its a first step among other measures including addressing the shortage of maths teachers.
Robinson says there are “very small” changes mentioned in the manifesto, why so?
Starmer says “I dont accept they are very small.” He says the manifesto sets out a plan to grow the economy as over the last 14 years the economy has been flat and public services are crumbling, and standards of living falling.
Nick Robinson’s interview with Sir Keir Starmer starts with a question: is he ready to be PM?
Starmer replies: “Yes. But we have to earn every vote and I am not complacent about it.” He adds he has spent the last four years building Labour.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been asked when asked why Tory voters seemed to be turning to Reform UK after a poll showed Nigel Farage’s party were second to Labour.
During a press conference at the G7 in Italy, Sunak said: “I think we’re only halfway through this campaign and the Conservative Party and me are going to fight for every single vote until the last day.
“And you know, what you saw this week was actually an important moment in the campaign because the only poll that matters is the one on July 4.
“What you did see this week is the two leading parties put out their manifestos for the future of our country, and there’s a very clear choice.”
He added: “What I would say is if that poll and all these things were replicated on election day, what that would be is handing a blank cheque to Keir Starmer to increase people’s taxes on their home, their car, their job, their pension, their house, that’s what it will do.
“So I’m going to continue fighting very hard to make sure everyone understands the choice that’s ahead of them.”
Conservative leadership hopefuls are already lobbying for support to take over from Rishi Sunak amid widespread fears the party is heading for a disastrous defeat on 4 July, the Guardian has learned.
With three weeks to go before the general election, candidates and advisers had begun lining up behind their preferred contenders, sources said, with some Tory campaigners complaining they were being inundated with messages from potential leaders.
The maneuvering comes as one poll by YouGov put the Conservatives behind Reform UK for the first time, on 18%; a position that would lead to a historic wipeout for the Tories at next month’s election. The Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, claimed on Friday the poll showed he was now in effect the leader of the opposition, though that job is likely to fall to one of up to a dozen senior Conservatives after the election.
One Tory adviser said: “There is quite a bit of manoeuvring going on already. Members of the cabinet are texting candidates regularly just to ‘check in’, while others are already lining up their leadership teams.”
They added: “It can be quite annoying – sometimes you wish they would focus more on the general election campaign.”
A senior party member said: “There is a sense now that a Labour victory is inevitable. We went into the campaign hoping for a hung parliament, but now the central assumption is we are trying to minimise their majority.”
Hello, I’m Nadeem Badshah and we are restarting the blog to cover Keir Starmer’s interview on Panorama with Nick Robinson.
The BBC presenter grilled Rishi Sunak on Monday and tonight it’s the turn of the Labour leader. Here’s what we learned from the earlier show.
The interview goes out at 7.30pm BST so the scheduling has avoided a clash with the Euro 2024 opener between Germany and Scotland.
Updated
Summary of the day …
Nigel Farage has declared himself the real “leader of the opposition” and predicted his Reform party will gain more than 6m votes, after polling ahead of the Conservatives for the first time in a single poll. At an impromptu press conference in Westminster, the Reform leader said there was a momentum behind his party, and he “absolutely” believes that he will gain more votes than the Tories. He went on to demand that the BBC allows him to take part in a leaders’ debate with the Tories, Labour, Liberal Democrats and the SNP next week, and challenged Keir Starmer to a head-to-head debate on immigration
Labour would be handed a “blank cheque” if current polling were replicated at the election, Rishi Sunak has said. The prime minister said he was still fighting for every vote after a YouGov poll put the Tories in third place behind Labour and Reform UK, dealing a fresh blow to his struggling campaign
Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, has said there is “nothing inevitable” about Labour winning the 4 July general election and forming the next government. He said “I’ve been knocking on doors right across the country in seats that Labour needs to win in order to win the next general election, and there are millions of undecided voters out there”
Streeting also said rising NHS waiting lists in England have “blown a hole in Rishi Sunak’s credibility”. “He said he would cut waiting lists when he became prime minister. They are now higher than they were when he became prime minister. The only way we’re going to get waiting lists down [in England] is if we have a Labour government that can deliver 40,000 more appointments every week. That’s a fully funded pledge in our manifesto
Conservative chief secretary to the Treasury Laura Trott gave a press conference this morning to promote the publication of a booklet the Conservatives claim shows Labour have 18 tax rises planned
At a Sinn Féin candidate launch event in Belfast, party president Mary Lou McDonald said a vote for the party was a vote for “hope and optimism, strong leadership and positive change”. Northern Ireland’s first minister Michelle O’Neill said she believed that Sinn Féin would defend the seven Westminster seats it holds – but doesn’t take up – and that they would increase their vote
Rhun ap Iorwerth, Plaid Cymru leader, told the BBC “We’re not going to be forming the next UK government, so it’s about how we use influence and I think in this election, perhaps it’s clearer than in any election for a while what that specific role is. Keir Starmer will become prime minister regardless of what Wales says. We can try to mould the kind of change that’s going to happen in this election. Making sure that labour are kept honest if you like, kept in check”
ITV has said last night’s seven-way debate had an average audience 2.1 million and a peak of 2.4 million across devices
John Swinney, along with other senior SNP figures, are in Munich ahead of Scotland’s match against Germany in the opening game of Euro 2024
Prof Sir John Curtice, in an interview with the Guardian, has said the 4 July exit poll is in “uncharted waters” this year, telling Libby Brooks “The scale of the Conservative losses are unprecedented if the polls are at all right, so we will spend a lot of the day really worrying about how big is the number we should be putting up [for Labour], or in the case of the Tories, how small.”
Council staff across Scotland have rejected a new pay offer and Unison Scotland are to hold a ballot on potential strike action
You cannot accuse the SNP of not having fun today with the fact that Scotland are playing Germany at Euro 2024 this evening in the middle of a general election campaign …
"What, down one EVERY time Starmer agrees with the Tories?" pic.twitter.com/kmpmQS5oCz
— Stewart Hosie (@StewartHosieSNP) June 14, 2024
I mentioned earlier that council staff across Scotland have rejected a new pay offer and Unison Scotland are to hold a ballot on potential strike action. [See 12.27 BST]
PA media reports a spokesperson for the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities said: “We are disappointed that our pay offer has been rejected by Unison. Our workforce is highly valued by council leaders. In the context of a flat-cash budget settlement for local government, we made a strong offer. The offer of 2.2% from 1 April with a further 2% from 1 October is in line with current forecasts for inflation. We are concerned that the threatened strike action will harm communities and put service users at risk.
A spokesperson for the Scottish government said: “Local government pay negotiations are a matter for local authorities as employers and unions – the Scottish government has no formal role. The Scottish government urges all parties involved to work together constructively and reach an agreement which is fair for the workforce and affordable for employers.”
The new John Crace Election Diary has arrived …
Reform UK held their rushed press conference today to promote Nigel Farage’s claim that he is now “leader of the opposition” to Keir Starmer, who Farage said is certain to become the next prime minister.
It was on the basis of one YouGov poll which put Reform ahead of the Tories by one point, which is within the margin of error. Richard Tice described it as Reform UK “leapfrogging” the Tories.
PA Media notes that six nationwide opinion polls have been published in the past 24 hours, all of which show a range of figures for Reform, from being one point ahead of the Conservatives to 12 points behind.
PA say that an average of all polls that were carried out wholly or partly during the seven days up to 14 June puts Labour on 42%, 21 points ahead of the Conservatives on 21%, followed by Reform on 15%, the Lib Dems on 11% and the Greens on 6%. That figures suggests that Tories have lost 2% and Reform have gained 4% since the election was called.
The SNP, Plaid Cymru and parties in Northern Ireland do not tend to be included in UK national voting intention polls because of the effect of the geographical concentration of their candidates and votes.
John Swinney is not the only party leader in Scotland attempting to make political campaigning capital out of his country’s appearance at Euro 2024 tonight. Labour leader in Scotland Anas Sarwar has just posted some pictures of his visit today to a grassroots football team.
As the Scotland team eye-up a victory in Germany, we are playing to win here at home.
— Anas Sarwar (@AnasSarwar) June 14, 2024
Delighted to visit @ThornAthleticFC with @JohannaBaxter to talk about the change that Scotland needs. pic.twitter.com/aRPSgr3Qcl
Swinney, meanwhile, has spoken to journalists during his trip to Munich, and described the atmosphere there as “phenomenal”. SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn has also made the jaunt to Germany.
Scottish Conservative deputy leader Meghan Gallacher has also chipped in – see what I did there – with a statement saying: “The waiting is nearly over and, like the rest of the country, I have my fingers crossed for Steve Clarke and his players as they begin their Euros campaign.”
The SNP’s Angus Robertson is also in Munich, seemingly wearing the outfit equivalent of the cursed half-and-half scarf, by matching his Scotland shirt with some sort of Bavarian lederhosen effort.
[It has been pointed out to me in the comments that Robertson is half-German, which at least explains this to me a bit more, even if it doesn’t change my feelings that it is like wearing a half-and-half scarf]
Angus Robertson has arrived at Marienplatz Square in Munich ahead of Scotland's clash against Germany later this evening pic.twitter.com/cZkyilejQH
— The National (@ScotNational) June 14, 2024
Updated
You can imagine that over the next few days regardless of what Conservative campaigners are wanting to talk about, the media will be grilling them over their relative poll ratings with Reform UK.
One thing did catch my ear this morning when Bim Afolami was on the radio and was being asked about it by Nick Ferrari.
Ferrari, ignoring the obvious direct lineage with Nigel Farage having been a feature of Ukip and then the Brexit party before Reform, said “The party has only been around for half an hour and they’ve already overtaken you in a poll. You’ve been around for hundreds of years and you are staring, it would have seemed, declined in the face.”
Afolami introduced a blast from the past by replying:
I don’t believe that is true. And in fact, things go up and down in polls. I’m sure you remember, Nick, when Change UK were polling at 14%? What happened to them? So look, these things happen. Polls occasionally will show things. It’s a volatile period of time. It’s an election campaign.
Rowena Mason, the Guardian’s Whitehall editor, was at the Reform UK press conference earlier. She reports:
Nigel Farage is master of giving a flamboyant press conference to seize momentum in a campaign, even when he has little to say. After Reform passed the Tories in one poll, he managed to pack out a room at the Wellington hotel in Westminster with just a couple of hours notice.
From the Reform entourage, he had television star Holly Valance and her husband, property tycoon Nick Candy in the audience, plus Reform executive Paul Oakden and his aristocratic friend, George Cottrell, who was previously jailed in US for wire fraud.
Significantly, Farage also managed to draw big names from the media to cover the press conference, including Chris Mason, political editor for the BBC, while ITV and Sky also turned up – a sign that the broadcasters are taking Reform extremely seriously.
Reform told the room they had shaken up the campaign and turned it from one of the most dull elections to an exciting one. But Farage also performed some interesting expectation management – he refused to get drawn on how many seats would be a success, and highlighted the party’s lack of money and organisation.
Updated
There are plenty of candidates posting today to social media that they have been out and about enjoying campaigning.
Had a delightful time joining St Anne’s Church for their Summer Coffee Morning today. Good to catch up with residents from Corstorphine and across #EdinburghWest pic.twitter.com/Z1L9ghKQA1
— Christine Jardine 🔶 (@cajardineMP) June 14, 2024
It is fantastic to see so many @LibDems diamonds flying the flag for change across villages coming into the Bath constituency this #GE.
— Wera Hobhouse 🔶 🇺🇦 (@Wera_Hobhouse) June 14, 2024
For years, they have been represented by Jacob Rees Mogg.
Now, voters here have the chance to elect a hardworking local champion🔶👇 pic.twitter.com/hfUWTVa2eK
Great to be out and about again in Worthing yesterday, finding support for @BeccyCooper4Lab everywhere we go!
— Bell Ribeiro-Addy (@BellRibeiroAddy) June 14, 2024
This week’s manifestos offer Worthing West voters a clear choice between Labour’s long-term vision or five more years of broken public services and broken Tory promises. pic.twitter.com/lkyDNTfGRv
In the first video of a new series of Anywhere but Westminster, John Harris and John Domokos revisit Stoke-on-Trent, the once-loyal Labour city that went totally Tory in 2019. Has “levelling up” money made up for swingeing local cuts? Will Labour win again? And what do people working hard to turn the place around think about the future?
PA Media reports that ITV has said last night’s seven-way debate had an average audience 2.1 million and a peak of 2.4 million across devices, including those watching on streaming services.
Here is the “Labour tax trap” poster that the Conservatives have been pushing today, alongside a booklet which they claim lists 18 Labour tax rises.
Labour’s Tax Trap Manifesto confirmed they would raise taxes to their highest level in British history. pic.twitter.com/DUIYVTnea4
— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) June 14, 2024
The Conservatives, who after 14 years in government now preside over the highest tax burden for 80 years, in the introduction of the booklet quote Paul Johnson, head of the independent IFS, saying that “Labour’s manifesto offers no indication that there is a plan for where the money would come from.”
They don’t quote from his verdict on their own manifesto, which Johnson said contained “giveaways paid for by uncertain, unspecific and apparently victimless savings,” adding “forgive a degree of scepticism.”
You can download the Conservative booklet here.
Here are some of the pictures from the news wires of some of today’s campaign events.
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting has been trying to promote Labour’s policies on mental health provision today in his media and campaign appearances. He has just published a clipped up video of him explaining the policy on ITV. He tells viewers:
In our plans we’ve got things that will make a real difference to people. You mentioned mental health, we’ve got a million people on mental health waiting lists at the moment. If we can recruit an extra 8,500 mental health workers, we can cut those waiting lists. If we can put mental health support in every primary and secondary school in the country, we can support young people with mental health and wellbeing before they reach crisis point. And with hubs in every community, we can provide open access support.
That would make a real difference and that’s a fully costed, fully funded plan. That’s £680m pounds. And that’s funded through a combination of ending the tax breaks enjoyed by private schools and closing tax loopholes enjoyed by private equity.
So where we are investing in our manifesto, we are showing where the money comes from. And we are making fairer choices because we, as you mentioned, we don’t want to see working people clobbered with higher income tax, national insurance, or VAT in the way that Conservatives have.
There are more than a million people on mental health waiting lists.
— Wes Streeting (@wesstreeting) June 14, 2024
Labour will recruit 8,500 mental health staff, put support in every school, and hubs in every community.
Paid for by ending tax breaks for the wealthiest, so we can keep taxes down for working people. pic.twitter.com/YqLKSh7Pg5
There is a lot of laughter in the room at this Reform UK press conference when Nigel Farage is asked whether Andrea Jenkyns asked his permission to use his face on her leaflet for the Conservative party
He gives the serious answer “I think the fact that Andrea did that shows you the depth of division in the Conservative party. They are two separate parties.”
There are some technical difficulties with the sound on the video feed, so it is a bit difficult for me to pick up some of the questions and answers at the moment, apologies.
Farage: a vote for the Conservatives in the 'red wall' is a wasted vote
Nigel Farage has said that a vote for the Conservatives in the “red wall” is a wasted vote that will lead to the election of Labour MPs.
He told the media at a Reform UK press conference that his party was now “well ahead” of the Conservatives in “the northeast, in the northwest, in Yorkshire and the Humber, in the east Midlands, in the West Midlands, and in parts of [the] eastern region.”
He said that last night in the ITV debate Penny Mordaunt did not have a good night, and was “pumping out the same line, that if you vote for Reform you will get Labour.”
But, he continued, the “inflection point” of Reform passing the Tories in polling meant that “actually, if you vote Conservative in the ‘red wall’, you will almost certainly get Labour. A Conservative vote in the ‘red wall’ is now a wasted vote. We are the challenges to Labour. We are now the real opposition.”
Farage demands place in head-to-head leaders debate and one-to-one debate with Starmer
Nigel Farage has demanded a place in the BBC leaders’ television debate and a one-to-one debate with Labour leader Keir Starmer, who he said would be the next prime minister.
Self-styling himself the “leader of the opposition”, Farage claimed that Ofcom rules show that “everything about our politics is designed to stop new boys and girls coming in and to keep everything the same.”
The proportion of coverage is based on performance in the previous two elections, he says, in which Reform did not stand. He said:
The BBC will be having a leaders debate a four-way leaders debate with the leader of the Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives, Labour and the SNP and that takes place next week. But I think we can demand right now that the BBC put us into that debate.
He then said he wanted a one-to-one debate with Keir Starmer, so that he could ask the Labour leader why immigration wasn’t in his first six steps for government.
Having said that Reform did not stand in the previous couple of elections, Farage predicts the party will get six million votes, based on the level of votes Ukip got in 2015. He repeated that “the election is over” and that Labour will win.
Nigel Farage also aired a grievance about the way polling is conducted, claiming “some of the polling industry were acting entirely dishonestly” and has said that “I’m pleased to say, as a result of my letter to the chair of the British Polling Council, they have been told now they really ought to be prompting for Reform.”
Richard Tice claims that Reform UK has “leap-frogged” the Conservatives in polling.
He claims “we’re upsetting all the right people” and that “it’s just indicative of the enthusiasm for something else apart from the boring status quo of the main two parties.”
He said: “They both stand for higher taxes. They’re sort of competing in these debates who is going to raise taxes more than the other?”
Updated
I did not have it on my list of things earlier, apologies, but Nigel Farage and Richard Tice are giving a Reform UK press conference in London shortly. They appear to have seized upon the one YouGov poll from last night which put them ahead of the Conservatives by a point, within the margin for error. The press conference is on the theme “Reform UK is now the real opposition”, and you can watch it here …
PRESS CONFERENCE: Reform UK is now the real opposition. https://t.co/gM5yiTdK92
— Richard Tice 🇬🇧 (@TiceRichard) June 14, 2024
A few minutes ago we also published this lengthy read from Simon Evans, Mikaela Loach, James Murray and Rebecca Newsom looking at the environmental policies in the party manifestos published so far …
Read more here: How do the UK parties rate on their environmental manifesto pledges?
Libby Brooks, our Scotland correspondent, has been speaking to that stalwart of the election landscape, Prof Sir John Curtice:
Ask Prof Sir John Curtice, Britain’s most trusted elections guru, about his plans for polling day on 4 July, and the answer is visceral. “From about 11 o’clock in the morning, we’re poring over an exit poll and from about 12 hours later, we’re shitting bricks as to whether it’s right or not,” he said.
Since 2005, the model of exit poll Curtice created with “a very clever statistician called David Firth” has proved impressively accurate, and in the past five general elections the margin of error has ranged between 1.5 and 7.5 seats.
It sees voters in about 130 polling stations given a mock ballot paper. But the fieldwork on this election day will bring Curtice into “uncharted psephological waters”, he says with evident delight.
“The scale of the Conservative losses are unprecedented if the polls are at all right, so we will spend a lot of the day really worrying about how big is the number we should be putting up [for Labour], or in the case of the Tories, how small,” he adds.
But when asked if all these landslide predictions have any impact on voter behaviour, he says: “Other things being equal, it helps to reduce the turnout.
Read more of Libby Brooks talking with Prof Sir John Curtice here: ‘Uncharted waters’: elections guru Prof Sir John Curtice on 4 July predictions
Rishi Sunak is also on mainland Europe today, in Italy at the G7 summit, where he has held a bilateral meeting with newly re-elected prime minister of India, Narendra Modi.
A Downing Street spokesperson said: “They discussed their mutual commitment to the security and prosperity of both countries, and saluted the strength of their relationship.”
PA Media reports Sunak said to Modi “Always a pleasure to see you. Lots for us to discuss. Congratulations on the election and it was good to talk to you the next day.”
Sunak and Modi seemed to enjoy a warmer embrace than the awkward exchange the UK’s prime minister had with Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni yesterday.
India is not a member of the G7, but for the second day of the summit Italy has expanded the invite list to include Modi and the pope among others.
Scotland’s first minister John Swinney has arrived in Germany and held meetings ahead of attending Germany v Scotland in Euro 2024 tonight.
On his inaugural visit to Germany @JohnSwinney met Bavarian Minister of State for Europe and International Affairs @EricBeisswenger.
— First Minister (@ScotGovFM) June 14, 2024
They discussed Scotland’s partnership with Bavaria in areas such as renewable energy, space and student mobility.
ℹ️ https://t.co/lwG4NUX2me pic.twitter.com/RPTtNlz3Nh
Council staff across Scotland have rejected a new pay offer, with a vote now set to open on potential strike action, Unison Scotland has said.
PA Media reports Colette Hunter, chair of the local government committee at the union, said: “This result must be a wake-up call for the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities [Cosla] that council workers need to be rewarded fairly for the essential services they provide.
“Staff have experienced years of cuts to their pay levels and a reversal has to begin. The last thing anyone wants to do is go on strike, but local government workers deserve a fair increase to stop their pay lagging further behind inflation, and the wage increases being given in other sectors of the economy.
“Workers have seen the value of their pay fall over the past 10 years, often while being asked to do even more.
Streeting dismisses poll talk of large majority, saying 'nothing inevitable' about Labour winning
Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, has said there is “nothing inevitable” about Labour winning the 4 July general election and forming the next government.
Asked about the prospect of a large Labour majority in Westminster, with polling showing the party holding a commanding lead over the Tories, Streeting said “I don’t believe the opinion polls for a moment.”
He said “I’ve been knocking on doors right across the country in seats that Labour needs to win in order to win the next general election, and there are millions of undecided voters out there.”
“There is nothing inevitable about a Labour government after the next general election. We have to earn people’s trust. We know that. We’re not remotely complacent. We are fighting hard for every vote in every seat that we need to win in order to form the next government.”
Patrick Wintour, the Guardian’s diplomatic editor, is in Puglia at the G7 summit
Rishi Sunak is set to give his backing for the G7 for the first time to set out a broader global agenda to introduce progressive and fair taxation of individuals. The British endorsement of a programme to tax the super-rich may be seen as at odds with the Conservative election pledge to keep taxes as low as possible.
The programme being pushed by the Brazilian presidency of the G20 represents the first time the G7 has taken an interest in individual tax levels as opposed to taxation on corporations.
The passage welcoming action on progressive and fair taxation of individuals is currently in the draft communique, with can be subject to negotiation. The proposal – if it remains in the communique – means the agenda can be taken up by the next presidents of the G7.
The communique also suggests the UK is holding out against the signing of a key document on clamping down on corporate tax evasion this month, with the UK saying the proposal should only be signed off as soon as possible, rather than in June.
The communique suggests all of the G7 bar the UK want a key document on tax evasion in the digital era known as the multilateral convention on Pillar One to be signed in the next few days. The measure is intended to make it more difficult for corporations to shift profits to low tax jurisdictions.
The sourcing of this Conservative claim from Laura Trott about Labour have a “secret plan” to put capital gains tax on selling a primary residence appear to be based on an exchange between Penny Mordaunt and Angela Rayner during last night’s ITV debate.
That went:
Mordaunt: I’m going to ask my question to Angela. Rachel Reeves hasn’t ruled out increasing capital gains tax. This would mean higher costs for families when they’re selling their homes. Will you commit to ruling that out now?
Rayner: Rachel has set out, yes, we have set out that we will not raise income tax, national insurance and VAT. And we do not need to raise taxes on working people because our manifesto is fully costed, unlike the Conservatives’.
Mordaunt: So you are not going to raise capital gains tax?
Rayner: There is nothing in our manifesto that means we have to raise capital gains tax, no.
It doesn’t appear from that exchange that Mordaunt actually put changing the rules on capital gains tax around homes to Rayner, so Trott appears to be saying that Rayner refused to rule out something she wasn’t asked about.
Mikey Smith at the Mirror, who was at the Trott press conference, is very much less than impressed, saying Trott’s argument is akin to “asking someone to rule out a new tax on transport and then saying labour are secretly planning a pavement walking tax.”
It’s like asking someone to rule out a new tax on transport and then saying LABOUR ARE SECRETLY PLANNING A PAVEMENT WALKING TAX
— Mikey Smith (@mikeysmith) June 14, 2024
This is what Trott claimed in her press conference:
I think this is unprecedented. What they are putting forward and the fact that they explicitly failed to rule it out, which is really in stark contrast with what happened, you’ll remember with VAT, they couldn’t get out there quick enough to say no, no, we’re not raising VAT.
They’ve just not done that on capital gains tax for primary residences, and that is extremely telling. And I do think it would be disastrous. I think most people would accept that be disastrous for the housing market. And of course it will put any kind of [house building] target in peril.
[Labour] are pretending in a disingenuous way that they’ve got to wait to see the books. The books are there, right. They’re called OBR forecasts. They can look at them right now. What they are doing is secretly planning a number of tax rises which they have not got a mandate for and that is outrageous. And we are not going to let them get away with it.
They are planning by not ruling out capital gains tax on your primary home to levy that tax. That is outrageous. It will be disastrous for this country.
Labour’s manifesto only mentions capital gains tax once, on page 21, in this section:
We will abolish non-dom status once and for all, replacing it with a modern scheme for people genuinely in the country for a short period. We will end the use of offshore trusts to avoid inheritance tax so that everyone who makes their home here in the UK pays their taxes here. Private equity is the only industry where performance-related pay is treated as capital gains. Labour will close this loophole.
On page 39 it sets out a Labour policy to make buying first homes easier to afford, saying:
Labour will work with local authorities to give first-time buyers the first chance to buy homes and end the farce of entire developments being sold off to international investors before houses are even built. And we will introduce a permanent, comprehensive mortgage guarantee scheme, to support first-time buyers who struggle to save for a large deposit, with lower mortgage costs.
Of course, if the Conservative attack line for the next three weeks is that anything not explicitly ruled out in the Labour manifesto is possibly on the cards, there is a chance there is a similar “secret plan” that we might all still get that free owl.
Talking of football, which regular readers of my stints on this blog will know I always enjoy shoehorning in somehow, Rishi Sunak said he and Olaf Scholz were talking to Giorgia Meloni about setting up a TV so they could watch the Scotland v Germany match at the informal G7 leaders’ dinner tonight.
“I was talking to Olaf about it yesterday actually, so we were trying to figure out – Giorgia was trying to figure out where we can put a TV somewhere around this thing this evening,” the prime minister told journalists travelling with him in Puglia.
Sunak, who famously supports Southampton and is sometimes seen at their matches, made a gaffe early in the election campaign when he asked people in Wales if they were looking forward to all the football in the summer, apparently forgetting that in March a defeat on penalties in the playoff final in Cardiff to Poland meant that Wales did not qualify.
John Swinney will be attending the Scotland game in Munich tonight in person.
Laura Trott: Reform UK overtaking Tories in YouGov poll is 'stark warning'
Chief secretary to the Treasury Laura Trott has said that a YouGov poll that puts Reform ahead of the Conservatives is a “stark warning”, but ruled out the party doing any deals with Nigel Farage.
She said:
The Conservative party are fighting every single day in this election. Look we are only halfway through, right, things can change. We’ve all seen things change in elections, but the poll is a stark warning.
If a result like this is replicated on election day it would hand Keir Starmer huge and unchecked power to tax your home, your job, your car, your pension, however he wants.
And we’re fighting for every vote. And I know from my own conversations with voters, that the choice is very clear. A vote for anyone other than Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives is a vote for Keir Starmer as prime minister.
This poll today is a stark warning. I’m not going to underplay it.
The YouGov poll in question, issued last night, put Reform UK one point ahead of the Tories, which was, it noted, “still within the margin of error”.
Trott said that she did not think the Reform UK plan to raise the threshold for paying the basic rate of income tax to £20,000 was “affordable.”
Chris Hope from GB News offered an extended football analogy by way of his question, saying to Trott “the Euros start this weekend. If the Tories are a football team, you’re 4-0 down and the crowd is booing you. Isn’t it time to do a deal with a striker on a rival team and get Nigel Farage to do a deal with the Tory party and see off Labour?”
Trott, laughing, said “Just on football, I’m afraid I’m not the right person to ask. But no.”
Chief secretary to the Treasury Laura Trott has said there is a clear difference between Labour and Conservatives that amounts to “a £58bn difference in the offer that’s being put forward at this election.”
She told the media at a press conference in Westminster:
The Conservative party will cut your taxes. We will cut your taxes in numerous ways and what we saw from the Labour party is that their only plan is to put taxes up. And that is I think what is going to concentrate the minds of everybody in this general election.
Trott has doubled down on a claim that Labour are planning to impose capital gains tax on people’s first home:
The idea that Labour issecretly planning to put capital gains tax on your primary residence for the first time is a disastrous policy for families, up and down the country. It is something that the Labour party should not do in secret, they must be honest about their plans and the impact that this would have on family homes, up and down the country.
Trott says the fact that Labour hasn’t ruled this out contrasts with their approach on VAT where Labour “couldn’t get out there quick enough to say no, no, we’re not raising VAT.”
Taking questions after giving a talk that warned of 18 specific Labour tax rises, and asked about the higher tax levels the Conservatives have planned due to income tax thresholds, she said:
We’ve been very open and honest about the fact we’ve had to make some really difficult decisions because of Covid. And because of Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine, pushing up energy prices. But we’ve had to do things that we wouldn’t have wanted to do otherwise. But now there’s a clear choice in this election about who going forward is going to be cutting your taxes and who’s going to put them up.
Shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds has been on the defensive in an interview on Sky News about whether the Labour manifesto lacks new ideas.
He told viewers:
We’re offering, when it comes to things like industrial strategy, like ambition on the energy transition – the most ambitious programme that actually has ever been offered by a potential incoming government on things like fuel poverty.
We’re offering on people’s employment rights and security in the workplace a comprehensive package that would make a difference to them, and we’re offering on public services, in health, in education, immediate improvements, immediate investment of resources that would make a difference.
Saying that “Labour had to respond to that big defeat in 2019”, he added Labour’s recent byelection victories had not been achieved “just because the Conservative party’s record in Government is dire.”
He said “If you are putting forward things that can’t be delivered, that will only increase cynicism in British politics
“What you see in the Labour manifesto is a set of proposals for genuine change that would make a real difference to people’s lives.”
Chief secretary to the Treasury Laura Trott will respond to Labour’s Manifesto launch at a press conference in Westminster shortly. I will bring you any key lines that emerge. But before that I note that my colleague Libby Brooks has been suggesting her dog might be getting into the election podcast business.
It’s now the right time in the campaign for the dog to announce she’s starting her own election podcast. She’s doing it with another blonde Labrador three doors down because everybody else was too busy making their own election podcasts pic.twitter.com/rSDkNpmTMV
— Libby Brooks (@libby_brooks) June 14, 2024
Libby Brooks is the Guardian’s Scotland correspondent, based in Glasgow
At a point in the election campaign when Keir Starmer says he reminds himself daily that “not a single vote has been cast”, here’s a boost for Labour that goes further than another landslide opinion poll.
A council byelection in the Clydebank Central ward of West Dunbartonshire Council showed a 12 per cent swing to Labour last night, electing Scottish Labour candidate Fiona Hennebry to what had been a safe SNP ward for over a decade.
Scottish Labour Deputy Leader Jackie Baillie described it as “an extraordinary result for Scottish Labour in one of the safest SNP wards in the country. The people of Clydebank Central have voted for change and on 4 July voters across Scotland will have the opportunity to do the same.”
It is perhaps also worth noting that turnout was significantly down on the 2022 council election, from 41 per to 24.3 per cent. Of course turnout tends to dip in a byelection, especially a local council one, but it does seem that voter disengagement and distrust is going to be one of the lasting themes of this campaign, as the British Social Attitudes Survey told us on Wednesday.
At the Sinn Féin launch event in Belfast, party president Mary Lou McDonald has said a vote for the party was a vote for “hope and optimism, strong leadership and positive change.”
She told activists at the event:
It’s about an inclusive, modern, forward looking society. That is our vision and our mission in Sinn Féin. That is the vision of our amazing hard working candidates.
In this election. People can vote for decisions about their lives and their futures to be made here at home. They can vote to support better funding for services and to reject years of Tory cuts that have targeted and hurt ordinary people.
Positive change can only be delivered by working together in the executive and the assembly. And this election provides the opportunity to send a clear message about the type of future that we want.
The fantastic team of candidates that we have provides strong leadership will work hard for everyone in their communities.
Northern Ireland’s first minister Michelle O’Neill then introduced a series of candidates for the Westminster election, raising a laugh by pointing out that she had forgotten her glasses, and indeed appeared to get one candidate’s name wrong.
O’Neill said she believed that Sinn Féin would defend the seven Westminster seats it holds – but doesn’t take up – and that they would increase their vote.
O’Neill finished her intro by saying:
Our message in this election is one of hope. It is absolutely one of optimism. It is one of looking towards the future, and all of our MPs will work really hard for their constituencies, and working together, we can achieve so much more.
Our priority is to make politics work for people, because real change is about making people’s lives better. So I am asking people to journey forward with us to a better future, to endorse our vision, to seize this opportunity to return the strongest Sinn Féin team ever in this election.
Here is a picture of the campaign event shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves and shadow secretary of state for business and trade Jonathan Reynolds were at in London this morning.
Introducing a cap on adult social care costs by October next year is part of Labour’s plan if they win the election, Wes Streeting has insisted, although the pledge did not appear in the party’s manifesto.
Asked whether he could make a firm commitment to bringing in the cap in October 2025, PA Media reports he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “That’s the plan, as things stand. We don’t have any plans to change that situation and that’s the certainty and stability I want to give the system at this stage.”
Questioned on Labour’s national care service plan, Streeting said it will take a decade to put in place and that he wants it to last “the best part of the next century”.
He told listeners:
It’s going to take 10 years to build the kind of national care service that I think will last this country the best part of the next century. And that’s the scale of ambition that I have, that a Labour government would have. Change takes time, especially when the public finances are in the state they are and the catastrophic damage the Conservatives have done.
It’s been put to me repeatedly and to other Labour colleagues in recent days about the importance of honesty. And as we have said repeatedly, you know, our manifesto is a manifesto that’s fully costed and fully funded.
Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald, vice-president and first minister of Northern Ireland Michelle O’Neill and candidate and former MP for Belfast North John Finucane are expected to talk at their election launch event. We will bring you any key lines that emerge.
Treasury minister Bim Afolami: Conservatives 'have not accepted we're going to lose this election'
Bim Afolami, economic secretary to the Treasury, was on the media round for the Conservatives this morning. The message he was keen to push was Tory claims that Labour would raise taxes to fund their manifesto policies, however he was repeatedly sidetracked by questions about Reform UK closing the gap on the Conservatives in some polling.
On Times Radio, asked if warnings that Labour might earn what had been described as a “super majority*” showed the party was resigned to defeat, Afolami said “No, we have not accepted we’re going to lose this election, of course not, we’re fighting for every vote.”
On the topic of polling for Reform UK, he said:
Polls are polls, there’s pretty much a poll every single day in this campaign, there’ll be more, it’s one poll out of literally hundreds.
But what it does show is that there is significant difficulty of Keir Starmer having unchecked power to do all the things like tax your home, your job, your car and your pension if people vote Reform. A vote for Reform is a vote for Keir Starmer.
I completely understand if there are Conservative voters who feel frustrated or angry or they don’t feel at the moment that they want to support the Conservatives – and that’s what we’re fighting for, every single vote in this campaign.
On LBC he also faced questions about the relative performances of Reform UK and the Conservatives. Nick Ferrari put it to him “Just a few short years ago, your party enjoyed an extraordinary majority of some 80 seats in a general election. You’re now, it would appear, behind Reform. What makes your party so unpopular?”
Afolami said:
This parliament has seen unprecedented things. Covid, a once in a 100 year pandemic, the war on Ukraine quadrupling energy prices, leading to very high levels of inflation, and that’s had a huge impact on people’s lives. And it’s been very, very difficult for so many people in this country. But as I say, despite that difficulty we’ve come through it and the prime minister since coming in to stabilise the situation and now the economy is turning the corner.
Last month’s GDP figures flatlined after showing a meagre 0.4% growth the month before.
[*There is no such thing as a “super majority” in the UK parliament.]
Here is some of what I am expecting today. The Conservatives are due to hold a press conference this morning with chief secretary to the Treasury Laura Trott giving a response to the Labour manifesto.
For Labour, Rachel Reeves and Jonathan Reynolds are at the moment discussing the Labour manifesto with business leaders in London, and Wes Streeting will be out campaigning on mental health policies later.
Sinn Féin will be launching their election candidates at 10am. Deputy SNP leader Keith Brown has a media event this afternoon, as does Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper.
Away from the general election the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry starts at 9.45am, and I will be keeping half-an-ear on that in the background. There will be a silent memorial march to remember the victims of the Grenfell fire at 6pm.
Updated
Rhun ap Iorwerth, Plaid Cymru leader, has been on BBC Breakfast this morning, where Naga Munchetty rather awkwardly stumbled over pronouncing his name, despite, she said, getting it right when they were practising it earlier.
He was asked whether the Labour leadership have engaged at all with Plaid Cymru’s policy aim of renegotiating the funding formula for Wales. Ap Iorwerth said:
The problem we have is that Labour doesn’t seem to want to engage with it. But Labour colleagues of Keir Starmer in Wales agree with us that there needs to be a review of the way Wales is funded. But what we have is a situation where Labour won’t make the case at Westminster for change.
In its manifesto, Plaid Cymru says it believes “Wales should be funded according to our needs, not the out-dated Barnett Formula which instead provides funding proportionate to spending on England’s needs. We want to see a new needs-based funding formula introduced in place of the Barnett Formula.”
Ap Iorwerth also said it was important to elect Plaid MPs in order to put pressure on what he expected to be an incoming Labour government. He told viewers:
We’re not going to be forming the next UK government, so it’s about how we use influence and I think in this election, perhaps it’s clearer than in any election for a while what that specific role is. I think we can be fairly sure that Keir Starmer will become prime minister in three weeks’ time. Conservatives at long last will be kicked out of power but Labour will need to be kept very, very firmly to account.
Keir Starmer will become prime minister regardless of what Wales says – I think that’s true for the rest of the UK – I’ll look at it from a Welsh perspective. We can try to mould the kind of change that’s going to happen in this election. Mmaking sure that labour are kept honest if you like, kept in check.
Asked whether he was enjoying the campaign, ap Iorwerth said he was, “very”, adding “I’ve got enough energy, thankfully and you need energy for an election campaign.”
Paula Surridge is a professor of political sociology at the University of Bristol, and offers this analysis:
With Nigel Farage’s surprise takeover of Reform’s leadership at the start of the campaign, Reform poses an even greater challenge to the Conservatives in 2024. Its presence changes the dynamic of party competition in all types of seats, and as 2019 showed it does not need to win seats to damage the Tories.
Those on the left of British politics are well versed in this phenomenon: the left-leaning vote splitting over different parties and allowing the Conservatives to win seats they might not have won had the other parties worked together.
Electoral pacts and tactical voting advice have sought to reduce the impact of these splits on the left, and local election results suggest voters have become adept at working out how best to remove an incumbent Conservative.
This time, the right face these issues writ large. Even if parts of the right may be willing to countenance some kind of deal, voters choosing Reform UK are angry and disillusioned with the government and unlikely to vote tactically for Tories.
The combined impact of Reform increasing its vote share and standing candidates everywhere could be devastating for the Conservatives. As many as one in three voters who backed the Conservatives in 2019 are switching to Reform, according to some polling.
Read more of Paula Surridge’s analysis here: Reform’s split of right-leaning vote could prove devastating for Tories
Sunak at G7: votes for Reform UK hand Labour 'blank cheque'
Rishi Sunak has insisted that voting for Reform UK would be “handing Labour a blank cheque”, after he was asked about a YouGov poll that placed Nigel Farage’s party above his own.
Speaking to reporters from the G7 summit in Puglia, PA Media the prime minister said: “We are only halfway through this election, So I’m still fighting very hard for every vote.
“And what that poll shows is – the only poll that matters is the one on 4 July – but if that poll was replicated on 4 July, it would be handing Labour a blank cheque to tax everyone, tax their home, their pension, their car, their family, and I’ll be fighting very hard to make sure that doesn’t happen.
“And actually, when I’ve been out and about talking to people, they do understand that a vote for anyone who is not a Conservative candidate is just a vote to put Keir Starmer in No 10.”
Last night YouGov issued a poll that put Reform UK one point ahead of the Tories, which was, it noted, “still within the margin of error”. YouGov’s most recent seat projection suggested Reform UK was not on course to win any seats at the election.
The Guardian poll tracker, which is an average of polls over a moving 10-day period, has Sunak’s Conservatives on 23%, with Reform UK on 13%.
Appearing on BBC Breakfast this morning, Reform UK leader Farage said he hoped the party can “get through the electoral threshold” but declined to put a target on the number of seats he believes they can win.
Streeting: rising NHS waiting lists in England 'blow a hole in Rishi Sunak's credibility'
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting says rising NHS waiting lists in England have “blown a hole in Rishi Sunak’s credibility.
Asked on Sky News for his reaction to the latest figures, which show that NHS waiting lists in England have risen again slightly after falling for seven consecutive months from a record high, Streeting said:
I think they’ve blown a hole in Rishi Sunak credibility. You know, he said he would cut waiting lists when he became prime minister. They are now higher than they were when he became prime minister. And as we saw yesterday, they are rising.
The only way we’re going to get waiting lists down is if we have a Labour government that can deliver 40,000 more appointments every week. That’s a fully funded pledge in our manifesto. Double the number of scanners so that we can get the7.5 million on the waiting list down.
And also as we’re talking about today, an extra 8,500 mental health workers to get the more than a million people who are on mental health waiting lists for the treatment that they need and deserve as well.
He cited Labour’s track record when it was last in government, 14 years ago. He said “The last Labour government delivered the shortest waiting times and the highest patient satisfaction in the history of the NHS. We did it before, and with the support of the voters on 4 July, we can do it again.”
Health is a devolved matter, and the government in Westminster is only responsible for the NHS in England.
Streeting: recklessness of Conservative economic policies have left Labour with hard choices
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting has been pushed during the media round on the funding of Labour’s manifesto pledges. Labour have argued that the promises are fully costed and that there will be no tax rises for “working people”. The Conservatives have described the manifesto as a “tax trap”. Both parties are committed to the freezing of income tax thresholds over the next few years.
Streeting told viewers of Sky News that the party had made hard choices because if it got into power it would inherit public finances in a parlous state because of “the recklessness of the Conservative’s economic policies”. He continued:
We’ve spelled out fairer ways of funding those choices than the Conservatives, who’ve always sought to pick the pockets of working people as their first and last resort. And sothings like clamping down on tax avoidance, making sure that we close the remaining non-dom loopholes, a real windfall tax on the big oil and gas companies. When it comes to the burden of taxation on working people. We’ve been very clear we’re not going up top income tax, national insurance or VAT.
Streeting described Conservative manifesto promises as a “Liz Truss mini-budget on steroids”.
He said:
Rachel Reeves has been clear now as shadow chancellor. She wants to bring down the burden of taxation on working people. We’ve had to be careful about the promises we make in our manifesto. I want people to know that these are promises we can keep, and that the country can afford.
Of course we’d like to go further. But we’ve been very disciplined in terms of what goes into this manifesto so that people know it’s real change. It’s change they can believe in.
He continued:
I know there are millions of people out there at the moment who are undecided about how to vote at this general election, who are deeply cynical about politics and politicians.
And so what we’re trying to do as well as rebuilding our economy and rebuilding our public services, we are going to have to work very hard to rebuild trust in politics itself.
Welcome to our live. UK politics coverage for Friday. We are now less than three weeks away from Polling day. Here are your headlines …
Keir Starmer has faced questions over the cost of the Labour manifesto
Angela Rayner and Penny Mordaunt clashed again in a heated seven-way TV debate
Grenfell and other bereaved families demand next PM act on public inquiries
Female UK election candidates report increased abuse
The UK has seen an “explosion” in insecure work since 2011, says TUC report
There is no business in the Scottish parliament, Senedd or Northern Ireland assembly today. The Post Office Horizon IT inquiry continues today. Andrew Parsons, a partner at Post Office lawyers’ Womble Bond Dickinson, faces a second tricky day of questioning.
Rishi Sunak is not campaigning today, he is in Italy for the G7 summit still. John Swinney is abroad as well. Scotland’s first minister will attend the opening match of Euro 2024, where his nation take on the hosts Germany at 8pm. Half hour before that kicks off on ITV One, BBC One will be showing a Panorama special with Nick Robinson interviewing Starmer. That starts at 7.30pm. So you can watch both.
It is Martin Belam with you on the blog today. Do drop me a line at martin.belam@theguardian.com if you spot typos, errors or omissions.
