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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

Local election leaflets show Tory candidates are ‘ashamed’ to be associated with Boris Johnson, Labour says – as it happened

Sir Keir Starmer National Insurance Boris Johnson Insurance George Eustice Simon Clarke
Boris Johnson visits Southampton airport as part of his trip to the Eastleigh constituency ahead of the local elections.
Boris Johnson visits Southampton airport as part of his trip to the Eastleigh constituency ahead of the local elections. Photograph: WPA/Getty Images

Afternoon summary

The response by the Conservatives to the cost of living crisis has been nothing short of insulting. They are out of touch and out of ideas. People are worried about paying their bills and ministers are seriously suggesting the answer is dodgy loans [a reference to the £200 loans to help with energy bills that customers will have to repay over five years] and Tesco value. The Conservatives are living on another planet.

And for the SNP Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, said:

Every time a Tory minister opens their mouth just now, they just seem to show how deeply out of touch they are.

You’ve got Boris Johnson seeming to think it’s a good thing that there’s a bus pass to allow people to travel by bus so they don’t have to heat their homes - free bus travel is a good thing but really not for that reason. You had Rishi Sunak saying that it would be silly to help people. Then you’ve got George Eustice talking about buying cheaper brand food.

People are already at the edge here and there’s nothing, for many people, left to cut.

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, posing for a photograph with SNP candidates and supporters alongside the campaign bus at Holyrood, Edinburgh today.
Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, posing for a photograph with SNP candidates and supporters alongside the campaign bus at Holyrood, Edinburgh today.
 Photograph: Jane Barlow/PA

The new chair of the charities watchdog, Orlando Fraser, has promised to crack down on “fraudsters, extremists, aggressors and the grossly negligent” in charities, as a way of helping to maintain public trust and confidence in the sector.

Fraser, who was appointed to the Charity Commission in April, despite being rejected by an MPs’ scrutiny committee, said the commission would deal severely with wrongdoers who were “poisoning charitable status for everyone else”.

But he also promised that he would adopt a more benign approach with otherwise successful charities who had made “honest and reasonable mistakes” in good faith, and would offer support to charity trustees where things “don’t go exactly to plan”. He said:

After all, the commission is not regulating a for-profit sector, but a sector which is by and large a place where wonderful loving things are being done every day, and where honest mistakes can happen in the process.

The commercial barrister and one-time Tory party parliamentary candidate was rejected as an “slapdash and unimaginative choice” by MPs but was appointed to the £62,000-a-year role last month anyway by the culture secretary, Nadine Dorries.

Fraser said nothing directly in the speech about the so-called “culture wars” of the last two years, which a handful of charities such as National Trust and Barnardo’s were reported to the commission for supposedly being “woke” or “political.” All were subsequently exonerated by the watchdog.

He said he set great store by the independence of the commission:

By this I mean that we must act without fear or favour from any other entity, whether it be government, party politicians, beneficiaries or indeed the sector.

Updated

Durham police have issued a statement effectively saying that they have still has not decided whether or not they need to reopen its investigation into claims that the Labour gathering where Keir Starmer and colleagues had a meal with beer last April broke lockdown rules.

When the force last considered the matter, in February, it decided that the rules were not broken, but since then the Daily Mail and the Sun have published a little more detail about what happened, and some Conservatives have been forcefully demanding an inquiry.

A Durham police spokesperson said:

We have received a number of recent communications on this subject, which we are considering and will respond in due course.

Updated

Prof Sir John Curtice, the leading elections analyst, has told Byline Times that talk of the Conservatives losing a vast number of seats in the local elections is unrealistic and that the overall vote share figures will matter most. In an interview with Adam Bienkov, Curtice said:

The Tories are only defending 1,400 seats in England so it’s impossible for the number of losses to be very big ...

If you really want to know how I think you should measure these elections, the answer is to compare the vote shares in 2022 with 2021. That is by far and away the most useful indicator of what everybody is interested in, which is how much trouble are the Conservatives in now.

Calculating overall vote shares in local elections is complicated because in some parts of England elections are not taking place, and so if you just add up the votes, those results are skewed by the fact that some areas are not included. To get round this, psephologists take the actual results and, by taking into account how different demographic groups vote in different areas, calculate what the national result would have been had elections been held in every ward in Britain.

To make things even more complicated, there are two ways of doing this. Curtice and his team produce a version called the projected national share (PNS) which is used by the BBC. Two other academics, Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, produce a version called the national equivalent share (NEV) which is used by Sky News. The two systems do not always produce the same numbers, but their results tend to be very similar, and they always show the same trend. Mark Pack explained this in a bit more detail in a recent post on his blog.

Updated

Labour says election leaflets show Tory candidates 'ashamed' to be associated with Johnson

Here is the full statement from Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, on the news that some Tory candidates are standing as “local Conservatives” so that they are not associated with Boris Johnson. She said:

It speaks volumes that Boris Johnson’s own Conservative candidates are ashamed to be associated with him and trying to pull the wool over voters’ eyes.

With no answers to the cost of living crisis, Tory candidates are trying to hide from their own government’s record.

My colleague John Crace has filed his sketch on Keir Starmer’s performance on Good Morning Britain this morning. John thinks Starmer missed an opportunity. Here’s an extract.

At least this time the Labour leader was able to categorically deny that the Durham police had questioned him recently about the incident. The previous day he had – for reasons best known to himself – three times refused to answer the question. Something we normally expect of Johnson. And yet he managed to do so while still somehow looking and sounding uncomfortable. Borderline shifty. Releasing fragments of information under duress rather than just shooting down the whole story as a desperate attempt to undermine Labour’s integrity. As a sign that he was doing something right and that the Tory establishment was worried ...

What was needed was for Starmer to own the situation. To own the curry. To own the interview. To own the room. To be candid and yet rightfully dismissive of attempts by the Mail – aided and abetted by The Convict’s very own mouthpiece, the Sun – to stigmatise every politician as equally venal. As bad as each other. Reducing everyone to his own level is straight out of the Johnson playbook.

The full sketch is here.

Lewis Goodall from Newsnight has some more examples of Conservative candidates in the local elections distancing themselves from the national (Boris Johnson-led) party.

Conservative candidates are allowed to call themselves “Local Conservatives” because that name has been registered by CCHQ with the Electoral Commission as a name that can be used on ballot papers. The authorisation dates from February 2019, when Theresa May was prime minister and the party’s ratings in the polls was collapsing because of the Brexit deadlock. Boris Johnson is not the first Tory leader seen by local candidates as a liability, not an asset.

London mayor tells Grant Shapps to 'grow up' after he claims Crossrail announcement breaches election purdah

Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, announced today that the Elizabeth line - the long-awaited central section of the Crossrail project, linking the west of London to Canary Wharf and east London - will open on 24 May. My colleague Gwyn Topham has the story here.

Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, claimed that the announcement was a breach of the purdah rules, that supposedly stop major announcements that could affect voting being made during the election period. He said he would report reporting Khan to the Electoral Commission. He said:

This announcement is an act of breathtaking political cynicism by the mayor, breaking election rules on such announcements in an effort to garner votes the day before the local elections in London. I am therefore immediately referring this breach to the Electoral Commission for investigation.

Londoners reading this unscrupulous headline grab might like to know that the government has poured billions into Crossrail to solve delays clocked up on the mayor’s watch, while propping up a transport system hobbled financially by his chronic incompetence.

In response, Khan urged Shapps to “grow up”, and said the announcement was made today by Andy Byford, Transport for London’s commissioner, for practical reasons. Khan said:

The decision to announce the opening date was made by the commissioner today for a very simple reason. We’ve only got 20 days to make sure that the rotas are sorted out, that the trains are ready, that the stations are ready, so that it opens on May 24. The sourpuss secretary of state for transport, I’m afraid, is another example of the government’s anti-London stance.

Shapps subsequently posted his own tweet about the announcement, presenting it as a Tory achievement.

In truth, both main parties are entitled to a share of the credit for Crossrail. The project was originally approved when the last Labour government was in power, and work on it has continued under Labour, coalition and Conservative governments at Westminster, and under Tory and Labour mayors.

Updated

Keir Starmer has said Labour is opposed to the government’s plans to open an immigration processing centre at a former RAF base near Linton-on-Ouse in North Yorkshire. He told reporters:

The government is in complete chaos on this. To call it a plan is too grand: they don’t know what they are doing, they haven’t thought it through and they haven’t even had the decency to consult local people about it, which tells you just about everything you need to know about the state of chaos they are in ...

If the government had any decency they would have spoken to and consulted local people in the first place. This is not really a plan, it is a chaotic, behind-the-curve mess yet again from the government, which is characteristic of pretty well everything they do.

Keir Starmer speaks to the media while campaigning at Horbury working members club, Cluntergate, in Wakefield.
Keir Starmer speaks to the media while campaigning at Horbury working members club, Cluntergate, in Wakefield. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Boris Johnson loading bags on a conveyor belt during a visit to Southampton airport today.
Boris Johnson loading bags on a conveyor belt during a visit to Southampton airport today. Photograph: WPA/Getty Images

Neil Parish, the Conservative MP who admitted watching pornography on his phone in the chamber, has now had his resignation from the Commons confirmed.

Demands from politicians for police inquiries into their rivals 'quite dangerous', says former chief constable

Sir Peter Fahy, a former chief constable of Greater Manchester police, told Radio 4’s the World at One that attempts by politicians to get the police to investigate their rivals over lockdown breaches were “quite dangerous”.

Commenting on the calls for Durham police to reopen their investigation into the night when Keir Starmer had a meal and a drink with Labour colleagues in April last year, at the end of a day working on a campaign, Fahy said they probably should look at any new information, and review their original decision (which was that the lockdown rules were not broken).

But he said a lot of the legislation around this was “confused”. And he said that, at the time it was passed, parliament, and the government, said that a key factor in deciding whether the police should act was whether or not there had been a “repeated breach of regulations” – implying that Durham police were justified in not doing anything about the Starmer event. Fahy said that, in the case of Partygate, the Metropolitan police had to act because allegations of rule-breaking were so numerous.

Fahy also said it was “quite dangerous” for the police to be dragged into political feuds of this nature in the first place. He explained:

On the other hand, I also think this is really quite dangerous times when policing is being drawn into party politics. I think that’s starting to happen and it’s quite dangerous territory in my view ...

That’s never been part of British policing ... As a chief constable, the most difficult time was when you were drawn into politics. That is not where we’ve been. We’ve seen it in US policing, and overall it’s not good.

The Conservative MP Richard Holden, who represents North West Durham, has been leading calls for the police to reopen their investigation into Starmer. Some ministers have backed his campaign.

But it is not just the Conservatives who have been doing this. Over Partygate, Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, directly called for a police investigation in December when the Metropolitan police were resisting the idea. Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, also repeatedly demanded an investigation before the Met launched one. Other opposition politicians made similar calls.

Peter Fahy.
Peter Fahy. Photograph: Dave Thompson/PA

Updated

Election leaflets distance ‘local Conservatives’ from Boris Johnson

Tory candidates in Thursday’s local elections are styling themselves “local Conservatives”, and in some cases urging voters not to punish them for “mistakes made in Westminster”, as they prepare to count the cost of Partygate at the polls, my colleague Heather Stewart reports.

This is from Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, commenting on the trend.

Starmer says Tory focus on his lockdown meal with beer shows they have 'no answer to cost of living crisis'

Boris Johnson did not get asked about Partygate in the TV interview broadcast by Sky News earlier, but Keir Starmer has been fielding questions all day about so-called Beergate, and his frustration with this is apparent. In a clip earlier, he described this as “mudslinging”, and said it showed the Tories had no answer to the cost of living crisis. He said:

What this mudslinging tells me is that the Conservatives have no answer to the central issue, which is the cost-of-living crisis. If they had an answer to that question, they would give it.

If they spent as much time and energy and focus on that issue, they would be doing a service to millions of people across the country who can’t pay their bills.

The government doesn’t seem to get this, they are so out of touch and out of ideas, and, frankly, now out of excuses.

Keir Starmer
Keir Starmer Photograph: Sky News

Updated

Johnson restates claim windfall tax would discourage energy investment - despite BP saying, in its case, it wouldn't

And this is what Boris Johnson said when asked to respond to the BP chief executive, Bernard Looney, saying a windfall tax would not affect the company’s investment plans for the UK. Keir Starmer said Looney’s comment blew the PM’s argument against a windfall tax (Labour policy) “out of the water”. (See 9.59am.)

Johnson did not accept that. He said:

[Energy companies] don’t want a windfall tax and there’s a good reason for that. And that is because it would stop investment in new technology and in new green power that we need.

The problem we’ve got is that, this is an incredible country, an incredible economy, the fifth biggest in the world, but we’re mainlining energy from France. It’s insane.

We haven’t invested enough in our own domestic energy. And we need these big energy companies to step up to the plate and put their money into sustainable solutions, more green energy to help keep costs down.

That is a much, much better solution than clobbering them and dissuading them, stopping them from making that investment.

But Looney said that, for his company, a windfall tax would not stop this investment.

Johnson declines invitation to defend minister's claim people can respond to cost of living crisis by buying value brand goods

This is what Boris Johnson said in his TV clip when asked about George Eustice’s suggestion that people should respond to the cost of living crisis by buying own brand goods. Asked if he could see why that seemed patronising, Johnson chose not to defend Eustice’s comment, and instead largely ignored the question. He said:

What we want to do is help people in any way that we can through the aftershocks of Covid. What you’ve got is inflationary spikes, mainly in energy, but that’s knocking on into all sorts of other costs for people, for families. So we’re helping him in the immediate term - £22bn pound package, £9.1bn going on fuel alone, all sorts of measures that people may know about, cutting your council tax, giving you support for for cold weather payments and so on.

But the most important thing is to have a strong economy with high wage, high skill jobs.

It is the energy bills support package that costs £9bn. The government did cut fuel duty too in the spring statement, but that is only costing £2.4bn in 2022-23.

Q: The boss of BP says a windfall tax would not stop them investing. Doesn’t that blow a hole in your case against one?

Johnson says the energy companies do not want a windfall tax.

He says they need to invest in green energy. It is better to encourage them to do that than to “clobber them”, he says.

Q: Why is the Rwanda policy being delayed?

Johnson says there are bound to be legal challenges. “Liberal/left lawyers” will try to make things difficult, he says.

But if people’s lives are being put at risk by people smugglers, the government needs to act.

He says the plan is humane and compassionate.

Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson Photograph: Sky News

Updated

Sky News is showing an interview with Boris Johnson.

He says tomorrow is a “very big day”. If people want to help with the family budget, they should vote Conservative, because Conservative councils are more efficient. Labour councils go bankrupt, he claims.

Q: Do you agree that people should buy own-brand stuff in supermarkets? Isn’t it patronising to say this?

Johnson says the government wants to help people. There are inflationary spikes. The government is spending £22bn on help, including through a council tax cut.

But the key thing is to have a successful economy with high-wage jobs.

He is in Southampton, and he says it is getting a freeport. That will create more jobs, he says.

The best future for the country involves getting through the “tough patch” now, he says.

Updated

Ed Davey says some Tory voters swiching to Lib Dems because Johnson 'not a decent man'

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, has said that while the cost of living, and the future of the NHS, have been bigger issues in the election, Boris Johnson’s leadership has been a factor too. Davey told Sky News:

Some people are really upset with a prime minister who is not a decent man. People expect the British prime minister to be someone of integrity, of honesty, who abides by the law. Regrettably we have in Boris Johnson someone who has broken the law and who lies to parliament, and they don’t think he’s decent.

And so that’s a group of lifelong Tories who are telling us they’ll never vote Tory again while Boris Johnson’s prime minister, and many of them are switching to us.

Ed Davey
Ed Davey Photograph: Sky News

Boris Johnson (C) listens to air crew members of the Eastern Airways, on the tarmac of Southampton airport, on a campaign visit this morning.
Boris Johnson listening to Eastern Airways air crew members, on the tarmac of Southampton airport, on a campaign visit this morning. Photograph: Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images

Updated

The SNP says George Eustice’s comment advising people having difficulty with the cost of living (see 9.14am) to buy own brand products is insulting. In a statement Kirsten Oswald, the party’s deputy leader at Westminster, said:

The remarks from a senior Tory government minister that families struggling with the Tory-made cost-of-living crisis should buy value-brand products are utterly patronising and insulting.

The Tories have once again shown how out of touch they are with the challenges facing households - with rising prices and bills piling on the pressure and pushing people over the brink.

Updated

Elon Musk invited to give evidence to Commons culture committee about his purchase of Twitter

Elon Musk has been invited to appear before parliament’s digital, culture, media and sport (DCMS) committee to answer questions from MPs about his acquisition of Twitter.

The committee’s chair, Conservative MP Julian Knight, said:

At a time when social media companies face the prospect of tighter regulations around the world, we’re keen to learn more about how Mr Musk will balance his clear commitment to free speech with new obligations to protect Twitter’s users from online harms.

Appearing before the committee will give Mr Musk an ideal opportunity to set out his proposals for Twitter in more depth and we would look forward to welcoming him.

The committee published a letter which was sent last week to the Californian headquarters of Tesla, the company owned by Musk. The mogul does not appear to have responded publicly to the invitation, including on Twitter.

Musk - whose $44bn (£34.5bn) acquisition offer was accepted by Twitter’s board last month - has been outspoken about his desire to promote what he regarded as free speech on Twitter, saying that he is “against censorship that goes far beyond the law”.

“If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect,” Musk added. “Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.”

His statements have been interpreted as criticism of Twitter’s existing moderation policies, particularly those that have affected the US right.

Savanta ComRes has published some new polling on voting intention in Scottish parliaement elections. Here are the figures for the constituency section.

And here are the figures for the list section.

Chris Hopkins from Savanta ComRes says, in the constituency results, Labour has its biggest lead over the Conservatives since 2015. He says:

Labour’s large lead over the Conservatives in second place of both the constituency and list Holyrood VIs [voting intentions] are certainly eye-catching, but as with almost everything related to Labour at the moment, it feels like a lead more to do with the fortunes of the Conservatives than anything Labour are doing especially well.

The Conservative’s Westminster fortunes have taken a battering since Partygate, but it appears that the cost of living crisis has turned Scottish voters away from the party, and with there unlikely to be any remedy to many voters’ concerns about the affordability of basic items needed to live on the horizon, it’s possible things could get worse for the Conservatives before they get better – including on Thursday in the local elections.

Updated

The i’s Paul Waugh says there is speculation about Boris Johnson holding a possible reshuffle after the local elections.

These sorts of rumours often surface ahead of a moment of peril for the PM. Government whips find that, if an MP is considering writing a letter calling for a leadership contest, sometimes the prospect of promotion can lead to a rethink.

But these reshuffles often never happen. Reshuffles are dangerous too, because for every minister promoted, another has been sacked and demoted, giving them their own reason for turning against the PM.

Keir Starmer claimed this morning that BP’s admission that a windfall tax would not affect the company’s investment in the UK destroyed the government’s key argument against the proposal. (See 9.59am.)

But when George Eustice, the environment secretary, was asked about this on the Today programme, he argued that what BP is saying might not apply to the energy industry as a whole. He said:

Rishi Sunak has to design a tax system for the sector as a whole, not what one individual company might say when posed a particular question ...

That’s the judgment that actually Rishi Sunak has taken at the moment, that there’s a risk that you would not get the investment in the North Sea.

And, during the transition to net zero, having our own oil and gas reserves continuing to flow is going to be important. We’ve learned in recent months the perils of being over-dependent on other countries for your oil and gas. And so it’s important that we have that investment.

The Liberal Democrats have accused Boris Johnson of largely ignoring the south of England during the local elections campaign. In an open letter to the PM, Daisy Cooper, the deputy Lib Dem leader, claimed this was a snub to the “blue wall” (Tory constituencies vulnerable to the opposition, particularly the Lib Dems). She said:

If your attitude towards blue wall voters wasn’t clear enough, your local election campaign has made it plain for all to see: I understand you are not even bothering to visit towns, villages and cities in the south of England.

You are nowhere to be found in blue wall communities which are fed up of being ignored and taken for granted.

Actions speak louder than words, prime minister. Your no-show in this election is an insult to millions of people.

The letter may be badly timed. Today Johnson is due to be in Eastleigh, in Hampshire - classic “blue wall” territory.

Starmer says police have not approached him recently about lockdown meal with beer

And here are the main points from Keir Starmer’s Good Morning Britain interview on so-called Beergate.

  • Starmer said that Durham police have not been in touch with him recently about the incident where he drank beer and ate food with Labour colleagues at the end of a day campaigning on 30 April last year. Yesterday Starmer refused to answer this question in an interview, generating some dire headlines today. Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, posted the Daily Mail’s front page on Twitter last night.

Today, when asked if the police had been in touch recently, Starmer replied:

No. I think they put out a statement last week saying they’re not reinvestigating and they haven’t spoken to me.

Starmer’s refusal to answer the question yesterday was odd, because his aides were willing to confirm that Durham police had not contacted him recently. Durham police looked at this earlier this year and said the gathering was within the rules.

  • Starmer did not deny a report in the Sun today saying that enough takeaway food to feed up to 30 people was ordered for the late-night gathering.
  • He defended what happened, saying that the gathering was within the rules because it was just people eating at the end of a working day. He said:

We’re on the road. At the end of the day we’re in the office preparing. Now that evening, from memory we were doing an online event for members …

At some point, this was in the evening, everybody’s hungry and a takeaway was ordered. It was then delivered to the kitchen of the offices …

In Durham, all restaurants and pubs were closed, so takeaways really were the only way you could eat. So this was brought in and at various points people went through to the kitchen and had something to eat, and got on with their work.

The Tories have been trying to argue that “Beergate” is equivalent to Partygate. This is from Dorries, one of Boris Johnson’s staunchest supporters on this (and almost everything else).

In one respect there is an equivalence. In Downing Street there were occasions during lockdown when people did eat food and drink alcohol as part of their working routine. One good example was the wine and cheese event in the Downing Street garden on 15 May 2020, a photo of which was published by the Guardian.

Sue Gray considered this event in her investigation. But, as she explained in her update, this event (and three others) were not referred to the police because there was not sufficient evidence to show that they were against the rules.

As my colleague Peter Walker explains, the police have already come to the same conclusion about the Labour meal in Durham.

Updated

Starmer says he does not think £12bn from national insurance hike will ever go to social care

Here are some more policy lines from Keir Starmer’s interview with Good Morning Britain this morning.

  • Starmer said that the oil company BP had blown Boris Johnson’s arguments against a windfall tax “out of the water”. Starmer was referring to Bernard Looney, BP’s chief executive. The government claims that a windfall tax on energy companies, as proposed by Labour, would discourage investment by energy companies. But Looney told the Times that his company would continue with plans to invest up to £18bn in the UK even if a windfall tax were introduced. Asked what investments BP would cancel, he said: “There are none that we wouldn’t do.” Commenting on this statement, Starmer said:

He basically blew the prime minister’s defence out of the water with that.

Defending Labour’s plans for the windfall tax, Starmer said:

What we have seen is oil and gas companies in the North Sea make record profits because the global price is so high. So, over and above what they expect it to make, they’ve made much more money – in their own words, more money than they know what to do with.

What we’ve said is you should have a windfall tax on that excess profit and use that to help people with their energy bills by up to £600 for those that need it most.

  • Starmer said he did not think the £12bn a year raised by the national insurance increase would ever go towards social care. The government plans to use the money eventually to improve the social care system, but first it will spend it on cutting the waiting list backlog in the NHS. Starmer said:

I don’t think, by the way, it will ever get to social care.

He also claimed the money would be used to compensate for the money lost to fraud during the pandemic. He said:

The interesting and the really important thing, and the thing that makes me pretty angry, is during the pandemic the fraud and the contracts that didn’t deliver amounted to £11.8bn cost. The truth is that will be used to backfill that black hole.

  • He rejected claims from the Conservatives that Labour had entered an informal electoral pact with the Liberal Democrats ahead of the local elections, with each side not putting up full slates of candidates in places where the other has the best chance of beating the Tories. He also criticised Oliver Dowden, the Conservative party co-chair, for making the allegation in the first place. Asked if there was a pact, Starmer replied:

No, we haven’t and we are actually standing more candidates in this election than any other party. and more than we’ve stood for many years. We haven’t got a pact with the Lib Dems.

Firstly, I’m afraid I don’t take what Oliver Dowden says very seriously these days, but the fact that a few days before the local elections the only thing he wants to talk about is a Lib Dem/Labour pact rather than the issue which is the cost of living tells you everything about a government that’s absolutely out of ideas and is completely out of touch.

Keir Starmer
Keir Starmer Photograph: GMB

Updated

Johnson says people are 'feeling the pinch' as cost of living rises

Yesterday, after his Good Morning Britain interview, Boris Johnson was accused of not fully appreciating how bad the cost of living crisis is for many people.

He has written about the subject in an article today for the Daily Express. But this may also lead to claims that he is minimising the seriousness of the problem because he talks about people “feeling the pinch”. He says:

I know that families across the country are feeling the pinch as the cost of living rises.

That’s why we’re focused on growing the economy to address the cost of living, and it’s why keeping bills down and cutting council waste is more important than ever.

This seems an understatement. In March the Resolution Foundation thinktank said the cost of living crisis could push an extra 1.3 million people into absolute poverty next year.

Labour has been damning about Johnson, but perhaps not as damning as the unnamed Tory former cabinet minister quoted in a Guardian story today by Heather Stewart, Rowena Mason and Jessica Elgot. The former cabinet minister said:

[The PM’s Good Morning Britain interview yesterday] won’t have won us many votes. Boris doesn’t actually care about these people. He basically despises most of the human race, so that makes it quite difficult for him to sympathise.

The full story is here.

Updated

Labour says Eustice's value brands advice shows government has no solution to cost of living crisis

Labour says George Eustice’s comments about how people can help to cope with rising prices by buying value brands (own brands), instead of branded products, in supermarkets (see 9.14am) shows the government is “woefully out of touch” and has no solution to the cost of living crisis. This is from Pat McFadden, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury.

This is woefully out of touch from a government with no solution to the cost of living crisis facing working people.

People are seeing their wages fall, fuel and food costs rise, and families are worried about how to make ends meet.

It’s time for the government to get real help to people rather than comments that simply expose how little they understand about the real struggles people are facing to pay their bills.

Britons should buy value brands to cope with living cost crisis, says George Eustice

Shoppers can deal with soaring food prices and cope with the cost of living crisis by choosing value brands in the supermarket, George Eustice, the environment secretary, has suggested. My colleague Rowena Mason has the story here.

And here is the clip.

Updated

Starmer refuses to say Labour will reverse national insurance hike at general election

Good morning. Boris Johnson received the Good Morning Britain treatment yesterday, and today it was Keir Starmer’s turn. Predictably he was asked about so-called Beergate (a Tory press obsession to establish equivalence with Partygate - so far unconvincincly, as my colleague Peter Walker explains here), but there was some proper policy in the interview too.

Labour decided to oppose the £12bn annual national insurance increase when the government announced it last year. That was a slightly risky decision, given that the revenue is earmarked for health and social care (rare examples of popular public spending priorities), but the decision has allowed Labour to outflank the Conservatives in recent months as a low-tax party. Labour now has its biggest lead over the Tories as the party that is best on taxation for 10 years.

But this approach does create a fresh problem because it means Labour will have to go into the next election either explaining where else it will find the £12bn to cover this spending, or performing a U-turn and accepting the increase after all. Starmer was asked in the interview if Labour would still be committed to reversing the increase at the time of the election. He refused to give that commitment, explaining it was too soon to say. He said:

In terms of what we will do going into the next election, obviously, I don’t know what the state of the economy will then be. Nobody knows what the state of the economy will then be. We will set out our plans when we get to the election in full.

We’ve set out the principles that we will apply. It will be a fair taxation system, particularly for working people.

Asked if he would raise the top rate of income tax (one method of recouping some or all of the £12bn), Starmer said again Labour would set this out before the next election.

You’re absolutely right to push me. But the leader of the opposition, two years away from an election, not knowing what’s going to happen to the economy, can’t possibly set out in detail what we will do.

The Conservatives are claiming that it is “extraordinary” that Starmer won’t commit to definitely reversing the national insurance hike up to the general election. This is from Simon Clarke, chief secretary to the Treasury.

I will post more from the interview shortly.

Today is the last day of campaigning before the local elections. All the main party leaders are out doing media events. Boris Johnson is visiting Eastleigh, and Starmer is in Wakefield.

I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.

If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

Alternatively, you can email me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com.

Updated

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