A summary of today's developments
Former Conservative Party donor and voter John Caudwell has announced he is voting for the Labour Party. Caudwell, who founded Phones4U, was one of the biggest donors to the Tories ahead of the 2019 general election, donating £500,000 to Boris Johnson’s campaign.
Labour would “reset devolution” in Scotland, Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader said. Speaking at the launch of Scottish Labour’s election manifesto, he said Labour would take devolution back to its founding principles with a “turbo-charged Scotland Office”. Sarwar also pledged not to raise income tax if he becomes first minister.
Labour is heading for a landslide win in the election, according to a new projection, but more than 100 Conservative-held seats appear to be on a knife-edge with the results in the hands of millions of undecided or swing voters, according to the MRP poll by Ipsos.
Keir Starmer said he is “concerned” about the impact of the law introduced by the Conservatives requiring people to produce photo ID to be allowed to vote in general elections. Labour has not committed to repeal the law, but Starmer confirmed that his party will review how it operates if it wins the election.
The BBC will allow Reform UK to take part in an extra Question Time leaders’ special on Thursday after Nigel Farage complained about being excluded from the programme.
Rishi Sunak said that interventions by Boris Johnson in the election campaign could “make a difference” for the Tories. Asked about reports that the Conservatives plan to distribute tens of thousands of letters signed by the former PM, Sunak said: “It’s great that Boris is supporting the Conservative party, I very much welcome that.”
Former Conservative party donor and voter John Caudwell has announced he is voting for the Labour Party.
Caudwell, who founded Phones4U, was one of the biggest donors to the Conservative party ahead of the 2019 general election, donating £500,000 to Boris Johnson’s campaign.
He said: “For many years now I have been rather despairing about the performance of the party that I have supported for the last 51 years: the Tories.
“Only five years ago, I donated half a million to the Conservatives to help avert the disaster that would have been Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street.
“But I’ve been increasingly critical of Tory failures since then, particularly over Rishi’s mismanagement of the economy during Covid, Boris’ lowering of ethical standards – and, of course, associated with that the accusation that Tory cronies benefited improperly regarding Covid PPE – and then the Liz Truss debacle.
“Over the last two years especially, I have been amazed by how Keir Starmer has transformed the Labour party and brought it back from that Corbyn brink.”
Updated
The Economist has conducted a constituency poll in Gillingham and Rainham ahead of the general election.
The constituency poll by WeThink puts Labour on 55%, the Conservative Party on 23% and Reform UK on 15%.
And that concludes the Channel 4 debate.
Thomas-Symonds said the UK needs to set an example of following international law and using the international aid budget to help people return to their country of origin.
On mass migration, Philp said the key is peace and prosperity such as promoting free trade.
Iorwerth said the climate crsis is the main driver of migration. Tice responds it is about creating economic growth in developing nations to reduce pressure on migration.
Plaid Cymru’s Rhun ap Iorwerth has spoken about being attacked as a teenager.
"I was attacked when I was 14, no knives were involved but it didn't take away the fear in me." Plaid Cymru's Rhun ap Iorwerth #C4Debate pic.twitter.com/kSXVOpwNhx
— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) June 18, 2024
Tice said the Green Party’s policies would entice more asylum seeker applications. And the UK should return people trying to cross the Channel.
Denyer said the Greens would create safe and legal routes, allow asymlum sekers to work while waiting for a decision on their application, end indefinite detention, and scrap the Rwanda scheme.
Philp says the Rwanda scheme acts as a deterrent to tackling the small boats issue. Tice responds saying 800 people crossed the English Channel today.
Updated
Thomas-Symonds says Labour would redirect the Rwanda scheme money to a Border Security Command, bringing together all the agencies and security services.
Updated
Cooper says the Lib Dems would scrap the Rwanda migration scheme and the money instead spent on 6,000 Home Office immigration case workers.
Updated
Official figures show a much smaller rise in recorded knife crime offences overall since 2011.
Reform’s Richard Tice suggested in the #c4debate that since the Conservatives took office “knife crime has almost tripled”. It’s not clear exactly what he has in mind. But official stats show a much smaller rise in recorded knife crime offences overall since 2011. pic.twitter.com/sd1WVF6VJo
— C4 News FactCheck (@FactCheck) June 18, 2024
On processing asylum applications, Tice says 15 years ago it took a fortnight to be assessed and had the right to an appeal inside a week, and that the number accepted has gone up by 20% to 75%.
Updated
Thomas-Symonds said a 15-year waiting period for citizenship mentioned by an audience member is unacceptable. He adds the settlement routes need an overhaul.
Updated
We move onto the issue of refugees. Philp said where there are crises, the UK is generous and open hearted, citing Syria and Ukraine.
Cooper said the arbitrary slaty threshold should be removed and there should be more focus on retention of NHS workers from abroad and improving working conditions, as too many suffer from burnout.
Updated
Brown said Brexit has led to a lot of workers going back to their country of origin.
Updated
Thomas-Symonds said there should be fairer pay for carers to attract more people to the workforce.
Philp said the NHS is receiving a record amount of investment. He said the top priority number is encouraging UK citizens not in work to join the workforce. Philp added that people from abroad should be welcomed to cover skills shortages.
Updated
Iorwerth said borders need to be controlled but blaming migrants for housing and public sector cuts is wrong. Tice said migration is putting pressure on these services and the focus should be focusing on the domestic workforce.
Denyer said there are 100,000 vacancies in the NHS alone and you are more likely to be treated by a migrant doctor or nurse than be behind a migrant in the queue.
Cooper said the Lib Dems would have a higher minimum wage for carers. And she believes its possible to invest in the domestic workforce and bring in people from abroad, to avoid “resource driven rhetoric which fans the flames”.
Brown said the hostile rhetoric regarding immigration by the government in England, such as the Home Office ‘Go Home’ vans that targeted illegal immigrants, would not happen in Scotland. He added that the increase in small boat crossings is down to the government closing off many legal routes.
Updated
Thomas-Symonds said four Conservative governments have broken promises as a reason for the mistrust. He said Labour would upskill the UK workforce and a skills strategy in areas such has health and IT.
Philp cited the war in Ukraine and situation in Hong Kong as factors for net migration not reducing.
We move onto immigration.
On the Tories and Labour’s pledge to cut net migration, 43& of people polled said they don’t believe either of them, 28% said they only believe Labour, 15% said they only believe the Tories.
Thomas-Symonds said 20,000 additional prison places that were promised by the government in 2021 have not been built. He added Labour will change planning rules to enable this.
Philip responds 7,900 of those prison places will be available next year.
On the state of the prisons, Rhun ap Iorwerth said it wants a radical overhaul and devolved.
Philp said 1,000 independent experts have been recruited in such cases and the Tories have also banned upskirting and deepfaking. He added he wants to see 25 year sentences for domestic homicides.
Tice said trust in police is “woeful” and the time it takes to investigate crimes is a disgrace. He wants speedier justice.
Cooper said social media companies would be required to regularly publish what they are doing to address the issue of abuse against women. The Lib Dems would have a domestic abuse expert in every single police force.
Brown said Scotland is on the way to making misogyny a specific crime.
Thomas-Symonds said three in 100 reported rapes results in a charge and advocates specialist courts.
Rhun ap Iorwerth advocates a victims commissioner and more power for Wales over policing.
On the safety of women and girls, Denyer said the Greens would make it a priority and police would be properly trained to deal with domestic violence. They would also make misogyny a hate crime.
Cooper said there is a place for stop and search based on intelligence, not profiling.
Denyer said the Greens would stop the “routine use of stop and search”, only if there is suspicion.
She said research shows black people are more likely to be stopped and searched than other groups.
Tice said knife crime has almost trebled and there are less police officers across England and Wales. He also calls for more stop and searches.
SNP deputy leader Brown said police officers should be paid more in England, as they are in Scotland. He again brings up the £18 billion worth of cuts warnings from independent experts.
Thomas-Symonds said the Conservatives are failing on protecting communities. He accuses Philp of “boasting” about the violent crime reduction figures and being out of touch. He also calls for the restoration of neighborhood policing and Labour will put 13,000 officers on the streets.
On how to tackle crime, Philp said since 2010 violent crime has come down by 44% but “we need to go further”.
He said he believes in stop and search, early interventions and investing in “hotspot policing”.
The programme starts with some poll results.
On which parties have the policies for reducing crime, a Savanta poll found 35% said Labour followed by the Tories (20%) then Reform (12%).
Political figures to debate immigration, law and order on Channel 4 News special
The Channel 4 News special The UK Decides: Immigration, Law and Order, will kickoff at 6:30pm presented by Krishnan Guru-Murphy.
Chris Philp, the Home Office Minister, Nick Thomas-Symonds, a shadow Cabinet Minister, Lib Dem deputy leader Daisy Cooper, Carla Denyer the Green co-party leader, Reform UK chairman Richard Tice, SNP deputy leader Keith Brown and Rhun ap Iorwerth, lead of PLAID CYMRU will be grilled by a live studio audience.
The event in Colchester will last 90 minutes.
Updated
The NHS will be instructed to buy up social care beds in a bid to get medically-fit patients out of hospitals faster, Labour said.
The shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said patients currently stuck in NHS beds due to a lack of social care provision “could fill 26 hospitals”.
Streeting said the party will ensure that NHS and social care work together to “spend money more effectively than they currently do”.
According to NHS England figures, an average of 12,360 hospital beds per day last month were occupied by people ready to be discharged.
Ipsos has published full details of its MRP poll here.
And here is an extract.
This Ipsos MRP projection uses a large-scale online survey of nearly 20,000 participants on the Ipsos KnowledgePanel, and population data at a constituency level, to project which party will win individual seats at the upcoming general election. The estimated seat counts, with upper and lower range estimates, are as follows:
Labour 453 (with a range of 439 to 462 seats)
Conservatives 115 (with a range of 99 to 123 seats)
Liberal Democrats 38 (with a range of 35 to 48 seats)
SNP 15 (with a range of 13 to 23 seats)
Plaid Cymru 4 (with a range of 2 to 5 seats)
Reform UK 3 (with range of 3 to 10 seats)
Green Party 3 (with a range of 0 to 4 seats)
The implied vote shares from this model are Labour 43%, Conservative 25%, Reform UK 12%, Liberal Democrats 10%, Greens 6%, SNP 3%, Plaid Cymru 1% and Other 1%.
117 seats have a wining margin of less than 5 points, and are considered too close to call. The Conservatives are second in 50 of these, Labour in 43, and the Liberal Democrats 13, demonstrating that small changes in the parties’ performance could still lead to big changes in the final outcome.
Notable seat projections: Our model suggests Nigel Farage winning in Clacton but Jeremy Corbyn losing in Islington North. High profile Conservatives who are at risk of losing their seats include Grant Shapps, Penny Mordaunt, Gillian Keegan, Johnny Mercer, and Jacob Rees-Mogg. Jeremy Hunt faces a tight race, while James Cleverly and Kemi Badenoch hold on.
That is all from me for tonight. Nadeem Badshah is taking over now, and he will be covering the Channel 4 News election debate on immigration.
This is from Kelly Beaver, the Ipsos chief executive, on the Ipsos MRP poll written up by Pippa Crerar. Beaver says:
Ipsos’ new MRP, based on data collected from our online random probability KnowledgePanel, supports the trends that suggest Labour is on course to win the 2024 election with a very healthy majority, while the Conservatives are facing the potential for record losses. Labour is increasing its 2019 vote share across the country, especially in Scotland and the North East, while the Conservatives are losing votes in all regions – especially in the East and South of England, and across the Midlands. What is perhaps most concerning for them are signs in the data that they are particularly losing vote share in the areas where they were strongest in 2019.
There is also movement for the other parties, with the Conservatives facing challenges from both sides. The Liberal Democrats are estimated to pick up seats from them in South East and South West, and Reform are estimated to win their first parliamentary seats too - including Nigel Farage in Clacton and Lee Anderson in Ashfield. Meanwhile, the Greens are making headway in some of their key target seats, while in Scotland the SNP is likely to lose many of their seats to Labour – making Keir Starmer’s task to achieve a majority that much easier.
Polling experts say the methodology is robust. This is from Josh who writes the Beyond the Topline polling Substack blog,
Great to see from Ipsos.
— J (@Beyond_Topline) June 18, 2024
This MRP (7-12 June) used random probability sampling, which means this should be a very high quality sample.
The fact it puts Cons a bit higher (25%) and Reform a bit lower (12%) is significant and reinforces my suspicions about RefUK being overstated. https://t.co/xxIIRtY0C3
Great to see from Ipsos.
This MRP (7-12 June) used random probability sampling, which means this should be a very high quality sample.
The fact it puts Cons a bit higher (25%) and Reform a bit lower (12%) is significant and reinforces my suspicions about RefUK being overstated.
And this is from Matt Singh who runs the Number Cruncher Politics website.
This is an MRP where is the *polling* data (n~20k) is from a probability sample, which is a big deal. I believe this is the first time one has been published in the UK... https://t.co/1exgHbh0Py
— Matt Singh (@MattSingh_) June 18, 2024
This is an MRP where is the *polling* data (n~20k) is from a probability sample, which is a big deal. I believe this is the first time one has been published in the UK...
Labour would 'reset devolution' in Scotland, Sarwar says, taking it back to 'founding principles'
Labour would “reset devolution” in Scotland, Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader said today.
Speaking at the launch of Scottish Labour’s election manifesto, he said Labour would take devolution back to its founding principles with a “turbo-charged Scotland Office”.
Asked about Tony Blair’s recent remarks that devolution had been a success because independence was a more distant prospect than ever, Sarwar said:
We have to be honest and say that we haven’t maximised the opportunities of devolution and too many opportunities have been squandered, in particular over the last 14 years where you’ve had two governments that wanted to use devolution as a battering ram to pick fights with each other and ultimately failed Scotland.
Under the UK Labour government, we will reset devolution, take it back to its founding principles, where two governments are willing to work together when it’s in the national interest.
Labour landslide projected with dozens of Tory-held seats on knife-edge
Labour is heading for a landslide win in the election, according to a new projection, but more than 100 Conservative-held seats appear to be on a knife-edge with the results in the hands of millions of undecided or swing voters. Pippa Crerar has the story, which is based on results from an MRP poll by Ipsos.
Blair says trans debate should be not polarising because there's 'common sense' position acceptable to 'overwhelming majority'
One of the joys of an election campaign is that all sorts of utterances suddenly become news. In that spirit, I bring you think this from PA Media.
Keir Starmer has agreed with Tony Blair that a woman has a vagina and a man has a penis.
It marks a hardening of the Labour leader’s stance on biological sex, having previously said that “99.9% of women” do not have a penis.
Starmer today backed the former prime minister’s recent comments on the definition of a woman.
Blair had told Holyrood magazine: “I don’t know how politics got itself into this muddle. What is a woman? Well, it’s not a very hard thing for me to answer really. I’m definitely of the school that says, biologically, a woman is with a vagina and a man is with a penis. I think we can say that quite clearly.”
Starmer has repeatedly faced questions about his views on transgender issues and has faced criticism for some of his previous remarks on the topic.
On a general election campaign visit to Basingstoke, Starmer told reporters: “Yes, Tony is right about that, he put it very well. I saw it reported, I’m not quite sure when he said it, but I agree with him on that.”
Strictly, this does not really count as news. Starmer attracted ridicule last year when he said that 99.9% of women don’t have a penis, in an interview where he was trying to make the point that for a small number of people, trans women, their gender identity did not align with biology. More recently he has given up trying to talk in these terms, and has said that he accepts the argument that “only women have a cervix”. But the PA copy does give an insight into how Labour has got itself contorted on trans issues (even if using the word “hardening” to describe Starmer’s policy position on penises was perhaps unfortunate).
In his interview with Holyrood magazine, Blair expressed surprise that trans issues caused so much division. He said there was a “common sense” position that should be acceptable to the “overwhelming majority” of people. He explained:
The point is this: if people want to reassign their gender and say, ok I may be born biologically a male but I want to reassign as female, that’s absolutely fine and people should be entitled to do that. And there is no doubt at all there are people who genuinely feel that they are in the wrong body. I know this, I’ve dealt with it over the years. I was actually, I think, the first MP that ever had a full set of meetings with transgender people. So I completely get it. There are just three qualifications to it that I think are very important. Number one, it shouldn’t stop women talking about being biological women.
This idea that you can’t refer to pregnant women, I think most people think that’s completely ridiculous. Secondly, there may be situations, for example, where you have people who still have male genitalia but are in a changing room with women, and women will feel uncomfortable with that. They shouldn’t feel uncomfortable, so you’ve got to protect that, and the issues in relation to sport and so on.
And thirdly, you’ve got to be very careful with young people. Because if you’re talking about young people at an impressionable young age, you’ve got to handle this with immense care, because whereas there are people that may think that they’re gay and then decide later that they’re not, there’s no physical change that they’re engaged with, whereas in this, if you’re giving people treatment which involves physical changes to them, that’s such an enormously important, life-changing decision, you’ve got to exercise great care. So subject to those three qualifications, and I think that’s where the overwhelming majority of people are, and honestly, I don’t find it difficult, I’ve never thought that difficult, so it’s a weird thing to me that people have ended up in this extraordinarily polarised debate in which, you know, the most important thing is to apply common sense.
Updated
Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor and former health secretary, has said the goverment might have introduced a long-term workforce plan for the NHS earlier if it had not been for opposition from Rishi Sunak.
As Rachel Wearmouth says in a report for the i, Hunt made the comment at a meeting in Godalming and Ash, where he is facing a strong challenge from the Liberal Democrats. Hunt told the meeting:
When I was chairing the health and social care select committee I lobbied in parliament to have a long-term workforce plan for the NHS that was scientifically saying how many doctors we’ll need in 10 years, 15 years, 20 years and said let’s start training them now.
And I tried to persuade the chancellor, who was Rishi Sunak, and he said ‘no’ and then I became chancellor and he then said ‘yes’.
Hunt also said that his personal view was that the NHS had too many targets. He told the meeting:
The thing that I didn’t do [as health secretary] is scrap all the national targets that we have, which are a bureacratic nightmare. I should say this is not the policy of the government – this is what I happen to believe.
Stalin would frankly be proud of the number of the targets we have in the NHS and I think it is really holding us back.
Wearmouth argued that the fact that Hunt was making remarks like this to his constituents was evidence of the pressure he was under to win the seat.
Keir Starmer was speaking at a rally in Berkshire, and he has just told supporters he hoped it would be “a summer of change”.
He was backing Olivia Bailey, or “Liv” as he called her, who is Labour’s candidate in Reading West and Mid Berkshire. She used to work in his office.
He said people should imagine how they would feel if the election resulted in the Tories winning five more years in office, “after 14 years of chaos, of decline and failure, when nobody but nobody can answer the question, that ought to be a simple question in any election, what is actually better now than 14 years ago?”
Rishi Sunak and David Cameron struggled to feed sheep on a campaign visit to a farm in north Devon, PA Media reports. PA says:
“Come on,” the prime minister said as the flock ran to the other side of the pen.
“They don’t want to play ball,” a farmer accompanying Sunak said.
Christopher Hope from GB News has some video footage.
NEW
— Christopher Hope📝 (@christopherhope) June 18, 2024
Rishi Sunak has trouble attracting sheep on a campaign visit with David Cameron to meet farmers in north Devon.
More at @GBNEWS. pic.twitter.com/phCQMmdQrA
The Liberal Democrats have said it is too late for Rishi Sunak to try to win over farmers. Tim Farron, the Lib Dem rural affairs spokesperson, said:
This Devon dash is too little too late for Rishi Sunak. Farmers and rural voters are deserting him in massive numbers.
Farmers have been utterly taken for granted by the Conservative party, left to cope with sky-high bills, bungled policies and botched overseas trade deals.
Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has responded to the news that the BBC is scheduling a Question Time event for his party and the Greens (see 1.43pm) by saying he should be included in the Rishi Sunak/Keir Starmer debate.
I am pleased that the BBC acknowledge that support for Reform UK has been growing in this election.
— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) June 18, 2024
We must now be included in the head-to-head debate with Sunak and Starmer on June 26th. https://t.co/c4icGbiomo
Updated
Earlier Rishi Sunak took a trip on a boat with Geoffrey Cox, the former attorney general and Tory candidate in Torridge and Tavistock to collect lobsters from lobster pots. Here are the pictures.
Rishi Sunak has been speaking at a Q&A with farmers in Devon.
He was introduced by David Cameron, the foreign secretary, who said that Sunak’s key task, when he became PM, was to “get the economy back on track” and that “that is absolutely what he has delivered”.
Updated
Anas Sarwar rules out Scottish Labour raising income tax for Scots if it wins next Holyrood election
Anas Sarwar has effectively fired the starting gun on the 2026 Holyrood election campaign as he pledged not to raise income tax if he becomes first minister.
Speaking at the launch of Scottish Labour’s Westminster manifesto in Edinburgh, Sarwar told an audience of candidates and activists “we know change for Scotland is a two-stage process” and that voters wanted to “turn the page … on 14 years of chaos under the Tories, and 17 years of failure under the SNP.”
Asked if he could specifically rule out any increase in any Scottish income tax band or rate – which are devolved to Holyrood – Sarwar responded definitively: “Yes. Next question.”
Both Labour and the Scottish Conservatives have attacked the SNP government at Holyrood over the fact that earners over £29,000 pay more in tax north of the border.
Launching the manifesto at Murrayfield Stadium on Tuesday morning, Sarwar said:
Thanks to the Tories, the average mortgage is now £2,000 higher per year. And thanks to the SNP, anyone earning £29,000 a year or more pays more income tax than people in the rest of the UK. Unbelievably, the SNP now think a nurse should pay more tax, but that oil and gas giants earning billions of pounds in profit should pay less tax.
At the last Scottish leaders’ debate, John Swinney justified his government’s “hard decision on increasing taxation for higher earners” as funding the Scottish child payment, which it estimates will keep 60,000 children out of poverty. Swinney’s immediate predecessor Humza Yousaf refused to back Labour’s plan to extend the windfall tax, arguing it would cost 100,000 jobs in the oil and gas sector.
The SNP leader has insisted his party will publish the only leftwing manifesto of the campaign tomorrow as he attempts to woo back independence supporters who polls indicate are turning to Labour.
The Scottish Labour manifesto largely mirrors UK Labour pledges on growing the economy, cutting NHS waiting lists and more support for young people set out by Keir Starmer last week, but with detail on how these will impact Scotland – VAT on private school fees, for example, could deliver over 1,800 new teachers while headquartering GB Energy in Scotland will make the country a “global leader” in the transition to clean energy.
Sarwar attacking “scaremongering” from the SNP that Labour’s plans would mean a return to austerity, stating:
It is now in black and white in the UK and Scottish Labour manifesto there will be no return to austerity under a Labour government.
Updated
This is from Bloomberg’s Alex Wickham, making the point that the Conservative party is putting resources into defending seats that in a normal election it would view as impregnable.
If you want an idea of how defensive the Tory campaign has become, Sunak has just been meeting fishermen in Geoffrey Cox’s constituency in West Devon, where he has a majority of 25,000 pic.twitter.com/Ur8vNV7LBT
— Alex Wickham (@alexwickham) June 18, 2024
Keir Starmer has hinted that Labour would continue to freeze beer duty.
In an interview with the Sun, Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, said the paper had been right to campaign to freeze beer duty.
Asked about Reeves’ comment, Starmer said:
I think it is important that we support hospitality and the beer duty is part of the package there. I am glad and obviously support what Rachel has already said.
Starmer says he is 'concerned' about impact of photo ID voting law as he confirms Labour will review it
Keir Starmer has said he is “concerned” about the impact of the law introduced by the Conservatives requiring people to produce photo ID to be allowed to vote in general elections.
Labour has not committed to repeal the law, but Starmer confirmed that his party will review how it operates if it wins the election.
In an interview with Sky News, asked why he was not going to scrap the law, Starmer replied:
The first thing I’d say is, remember, every person who’s watching this, you do need ID going into this election.
Obviously there’s been a review into the impact, and there will be a review into this general election on the impact of ID. So we’ll look at that in due course.
I think we need to review and look at the ID rules. I am concerned about the impact. I won’t shy away from that. But my message today is remember your ID when you go to vote this time around.
The photo ID law applies to all Westminster elections in Britain, local elections in England, and police and crime commissioner elections in England and Wales. Northern Ireland already had a photo ID requirement.
The government claimed the measures was needed to combat electoral fraud, and perceptions that cheating at elections was too easy. But there are very few reported cases of people voting under a false name in British elections, and critics alleged the law was introduced by Tories in the hope that it might reduce the number of leftwing people casting a vote.
At a Tory event last year Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former cabinet minister, seemed to confirm this when he said: “Parties that try and gerrymander end up finding their clever scheme comes back to bite them, as dare I say we found by insisting on voter ID for elections.”
There was fresh evidence of this recently when the Times published extracts from a memo written by Johnny Mercer, the veterans minister, saying that his bid to get No 10 to allow people to use the veteran’s card as ID when voting was blocked because they argued it would “open the floodgates” to students using their student ID too.
The Electoral Commission was in favour of some ID requirement for people voting, but was surprised when ministers insisted that only certain types of photo ID would be permitted. A review could lead to a wider variety of ID being deemed acceptable.
BBC to schedule Reform UK/Green party Question Time, after Farage complains about exclusion from main QT leaders special
The BBC will allow Reform UK to take part in an extra Question Time leaders’ special after Nigel Farage complained about being excluded from the programme, PA Media reports. PA says:
The broadcaster has added an additional Question Time to its election coverage to reflect “the fact that it is clear from across a broad range of opinion polls that the support for Reform UK has been growing”.
Farage had demanded a spot on the BBC’s four-way leaders’ debate panel, which Fiona Bruce will host this Thursday.
The two-hour programme is set to feature the leaders of Great Britain’s four largest political parties – the Tories, Labour, SNP and Liberal Democrats.
The Reform UK leader last week said the broadcaster should feature him in the lineup after an opinion poll put his party ahead of the Conservatives.
Today the BBC announced it will add a Question Time leaders’ special featuring representatives from Reform UK and the Green party, to be broadcast on the evening of 28 June with Bruce as host.
Meanwhile, a high-profile Panorama interview with Farage has been rescheduled for 7pm on Friday, 21 June.
The grilling by journalist Nick Robinson was originally planned for last week, but the BBC said it had been “postponed for logistical reasons”.
It came after Reform was embroiled in a row following a claim by one of its candidates that Britain should have “taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality”.
Rishi Sunak has urged people to register to vote ahead of tonight’s deadline if they haven’t already. Asked if it was important to register, he told journalists:
This election there is a very clear choice. The future of our country is at stake, we are living in uncertain times, people need to decide who’s got the clearest plan and the boldest ideas to deliver a more secure future.
There are details of how to register here.
Sunak claims intervention by Boris Johnson could 'make difference' for Tories
Rishi Sunak has said that interventions by Boris Johnson in the election campaign could “make a difference” for the Tories.
Asked about reports that the Conservatives plan to distribute tens of thousands of letters signed by the former PM, Sunak said:
It’s great that Boris is supporting the Conservative party, I very much welcome that.
He is endorsing many candidates in videos and letters which have been coordinated by the campaign.
I know that will make a difference and, of course, every week he is making the case in his column and making sure that everyone understands what the Labour government would do to this country and why it’s important that everyone votes Conservative and I’m glad he’s doing that.
In truth, Sunak may not feel as posititive about Johnson getting involved in the campaign as these comments imply. The two men have a frosty relationship, with Johnson blaming Sunak for helping to force him out of office, and according to a report by Ben Riley-Smith in the Telegraph today, they have not spoken during the campaign. Johnson has already been recording video messages backing some Tory candidates – but predominantly they are his supporters, and they include Simon Clarke, the former levelling up secretary, who called for Sunak’s resignation earlier this year.
🇬🇧 Boris Backs Simon for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland! 💥
— Simon Clarke (@SimonClarkeMP) June 14, 2024
I’m delighted to have the support of @BorisJohnson - the man who saw off Keir Starmer’s attempt to overturn Brexit and to install Jeremy Corbyn as our Prime Minister - twice.
(1/n) pic.twitter.com/PPwJSYLPz0
A reader asks:
Something not mentioned enough, and certainly not highlighted as it deserves to be, is that Starmer is about to overturn a massive Tory majority, and not just by a whisker but by a country mile.
Andrew: Is there a precedent in this country’s history for such an electoral reversal?
Given that we don’t know what the result it yet, we can’t say, but if the opinion polls and MRP surveys are even broadly right, you will have to reach quite far back into the history books to find any precedent.
For example, Electoral Calculus currently has Labour on course for a majority of 272. Its MRP with Find Out Now had Labour on course for a majority of 302. The YouGov MRP had Labour heading for a majority of 194. More in Common’s MRP was much more pessimistic – pointing to a Labour majority of just 114. But the Survation MRP for Best for Britain, published in the Sunday Times this weekend, had Labour looking at a majority of 262.
The More in Common projection (the worst for Labour from these five) has Labour winning 382 seats. The Find Out Now one (the best of the five for the party) has Labour getting 476 seats.
In a fascinating post on the Comment is Freed Substack yesterday, the elections expert Dylan Difford examined in detail all the various electoral records the result next week might break. His article is well worth reading in full, but this is what he says about milestones that Labour might pass.
Getting into the 390s [number of seats] puts Starmer on a par with the landslides of Clement Attlee in 1945 and Margaret Thatcher in 1983.
420 seats are needed to top Blair’s seat haul, but owing to there being fewer seats than in 1997, 415 will be enough to secure the largest majority in post-war Britain.
Climbing to 430 seats would see Starmer in charge of the largest single-party majority since the introduction of majority male suffrage, overtaking the Conservatives’ landslide from a century ago, while 447 would create a majority larger than that attained by the National Government parties in 1935.
Surpassing the 493-seat majority of the National Government in 1931, however, seems fanciful, requiring Labour to take 540 seats. However, some models do suggest that overtaking the 470 seats won by the Conservatives in that election is not wholly implausible, which would be the most seats ever won by one party in a western democratic election.
And this is what Difford says about precedents for how few seats the Conservatives might be left with.
Falling below a third of seats (217) would be fairly universally regarded as a severe defeat, but it is collapsing beneath the 165 seats won in 1997 that would indicate the worst result for the party in living memory. Returning fewer than 156 MPs, or 151 if you wish to be proportional to the size of the Commons, would replace 1906 as the party’s worst result since it was founded in 1834; this should be the expectation according to most prediction models. Surpassing the 106 seats (proportionally 123) won by the Tory faction in the 1754 election would truly be hitting rock bottom, while not being able to top the 52 seats clung on to by the remnants of Labour in the 1931 election would signify a wipeout.
The More in Common projection has the Tories winning 180 seats this time. Find Out Now has them down to 66.
Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, has been on paddleboards, rollercoasters and assault courses during the election campaign, but today he’s in Hampshire, where he has been engaged in gentler pursuits. He has been playing quoits at a farm, where he has been campaigning with the Lib Dem candidate for Eastleigh.
Kwasi Kwarteng, the Tory former chancellor, has said that his party should fight a “more aggressive” campaign against Labour.
As the Telegraph reports, Kwarteng told GB News:
I think we need to fight a more aggressive campaign. I think Keir Starmer is a man of the left, very much so, and he’s obviously trying to pretend or portray himself as something more akin to a centrist politician.
And I think it’s the job of the Conservative party, and particularly the prime minister, who is going head-to-head with Sir Keir, to point that out.
And I’m not sure we’re being forensic enough in terms of saying, this man is odds-on likely, given the polls, to be prime minister, have we given him enough scrutiny, have we looked hard enough at his record to make sure that we’re happy with him? And I think people would be very surprised to hear some of the positions.
This argument is identical to the one being made by senior Tories quoted anonymously in a Times story published yesterday saying Sunak was being urged to “go for the jugular”.
Ruth Davidson urges Scots to use election to end SNP demands for independence 'once and for all'
Here’s another reminder of how different the election campaign is north and south of the border. As Boris Johnson is drafted in to write to “red wall” voters in England, in Scotland the former Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson has stepped in.
Writing in the Scottish Daily Mail this morning, Davidson took the Scottish Tory campaign back to its happy place, appealing to its pro-union base. She said:
This election is a huge opportunity for pro-UK voters. It is the chance we have been waiting for over the past decade. We can finally get rid of the SNP in seats up and down Scotland. We can end their demands for independence – for good.
We can finally move Scotland forward and get away from the divisive independence debate, once and for all.
The SNP are adamant July 4 will be their ‘independence day’. But you can make it the day Scotland is free of the SNP.
With the Tory’s campaign in Scotland rocked by Douglas Ross announcing last week that he would step down as leader after the election, this can be seen as an attempt to steady the course by one of the party’s most trusted senior figures and to return to winning territory. In the north, east and south of Scotland, the party enjoyed sustained success in offering a voice to Scotland’s centre-right unionists.
Labour announces plan for 350 banking hubs in towns and villages in Britain
Labour is today promoting its plans to set up 350 banking hubs in towns and villages in Britain. In a news release describing the plan, it said:
Banking hubs are bricks and mortar, face-to-face banking services that provide access to cash withdrawals, cash deposits and banking advice and support.
Funded by the major banks, they are run by Cash Access UK and the Post Office. They allow customers from more than a dozen different banks and building societies to access face-to-face banking services on the high street.
Labour announces today that it will give new powers to the regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and strengthen regulation to support LINK, the UK’s largest cash machine network, to proactively source locations for new banking hubs.
Speaking about the plan on ITV’s Good Morning Britain this morning, Jonathan Reynolds, the shadow business secretary, said:
What we are doing here is making sure we’re not in a situation that we do have, I’m afraid, in lots of towns where there is simply no high street access to cash. If you’re a smaller business that is still important, being able to deposit cash takings that you have got.
I think it’s a fair offer to the banks. I think it’s part of our wider plan to grow the economy in every part of the country to show we can do things differently to the last 14 years.
The Conservative party has sent out this response to the Keir Starmer LBC phone-in, from Laura Trott, the chief secretary to the Treasury. She claimed:
After repeated questioning, Keir Starmer has confirmed higher council tax and other tax rises are on the cards for pensioners and families if Labour win.
It’s worrying that Keir Starmer won’t come clean about how much money a Labour government will raid from families – especially as Labour will be unaccountable after it locks itself into government for a generation by rigging the system through bringing in votes at 16.
The Conservative party is now routinely claiming that, if Labour does not explicity rule out a tax rise, that amounts to confirmation it will happen. These assertions are not true.
Tories expected to target voters with letters signed by Boris Johnson
The Conservatives will turn to Boris Johnson in an attempt to boost their faltering election campaign, according to reports. Ben Quinn has the story.
Philip Cowley, a politics professor, says that if the Tories think Labour will entrench itself in power (see 8.53am) by giving the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds (who are normally more leftwing than older voters), they are wrong.
There are few people less keen on votes at 16 than me.
— Philip Cowley (@philipjcowley) June 18, 2024
While it may be true that one of the attractions of it for non-Conservative politicians is that they think they will gain votes, the electoral impact will be extremely marginal.
The numbers involved are just tiny. https://t.co/N6kqBWSPi8
There are few people less keen on votes at 16 than me.
While it may be true that one of the attractions of it for non-Conservative politicians is that they think they will gain votes, the electoral impact will be extremely marginal.
The numbers involved are just tiny
It’s a tiny cohort, many of whom won’t vote.
I’d add that while *right now*, those extra votes may well be pro-Labour, I am less sure they will be quite so keen on Labour after one (let alone two) terms in office.
If, by 2028,say, Labour finds itself on the wrong end of lots of disillusioned 16 and 17 year olds, you would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh.
I’d add that a Facebook group of A level politics teachers I am a member of recently had a discussion about how well Reform were doing in their mock elections...
Starmer's LBC phone-in - snap verdict
Nick Ferrari was responsible for perhaps the most damaging interview Keir Starmer has ever given as Labour leader, the one soon after the Israel-Hamas war started where Starmer seemed to say Israel was entitled to cut water and power supplies to Gaza. (Starmer says that is not what he meant to say, and that his message was not clear because he and Ferrari were talking over each other at one point.) Phone-ins can be perilous during an election campaign, but there was nothing Ferrari, or any of his callers, said this time that sunk the Labour leader. Overall, Starmer came out pretty well.
On two issues, he was particulary evasive. Starmer is determined not to admit publicly that anything he said about Jeremy Corbyn when he served in his shadow cabinet was a lie, and he wriggled repeatedly when asked if he would have served in a Corbyn cabinet. (See 9.34am.) It was not very dignified, and it served as a reminder of how other politicians can bat away questions like this more easily. Last week, faced with a similar hypothetical question, David Cameron brushed it off quoting Gino D’Acampo. “If my mother had wheels she’d be a bicycle, I don’t answer questions beginning with the word if,” he said. Starmer might have been better using a line like this. But does the Corbyn issue really matter that much? Voters know that when MPs praise their leaders during election campaigns, they are not always being 100% sincere, and no one following politics at the time ever believed that Starmer was a arch-Corbynista.
Second, Starmer refused to rule out council tax going up, in such a way as to suggest that he was not being candid. (See 9.23am.) This was odd, partly because council tax goes up in cash terms every year anyway for most people, but mainly because Labour seemed to deliberately shift its position on this yesterday, when Jonathan Ashworth said “we are not going to do council tax rebanding”. Was Starmer just not sure what the new line was? It is not clear.
The Telegraph website is currently leading on “Starmer suggests he would have served in Corbyn government”, but neither of his evasions felt like big campaign stories and what was perhaps most striking was just how confident he sounded. He admitted for the first time that he performance in the first debate had not been great (see 10.02am), he was quite withering about the Tories’ latest scaremongering (see 9.55am) and he seemed to be making a negotiating pitch to the BMA junior doctors’ committee, urging them to call off strike action pending talks with a Labour government next month (see 9.19am). In other words, he sounded like he knows he will be the next prime minister. All the evidence suggests he’s right.
Updated
Starmer rules out Labour imposing levy on Premier League transfers, after shadow minister floats idea
Just before the LBC phone-in ended, Keir Starmer was asked about comments from Thangam Debbonaire, the shadow culture minister, who said yesterday Labour was considering reviving plans for a levy on Premier League football transfers, to raise funds for less wealth clubs. Aletha Adu has the story here.
Asked if that meant Labour would impose a 10% transfer levy, which would affect clubs like Arsenal (which Starmer supports), Starmer replied:
No, no, let me just kill that one. We’re not looking at that.
He said Debbonaire was right to say Labour would look at the proposals from the Tracey Crouch review of football governance, but this idea would not be considered. “That isn’t part of it,” he said.
Q: Is there anything you admire about Rishi Sunak?
Yes, Starmer says. He says he appreciated the way Sunak called him on the day he became PM so that they could discuss the need for cooperation on matters of national interest, like security. Sunak did not need to make the time for a call that day, he says.
And that’s it. The Q&A is over.
Starmer says he was 'frustrated' after first leaders' debate because he thought he could have done better
Q: Will your children move into No 10 with you?
Starmer says he is not getting ahead of himself.
Ferrari says he has met Starmer’s wife, Victoria. He says he prefers her company to Starmer’s; he would rather be sitting next to her at a charity do. Why don’t we see more of her.
Starmer says his wife has been working. And their son has been doing his GCSEs, and she has been supporting him.
He says she is supportive to him too. He goes on:
After the first debate I was slightly frustrated because I didn’t think the 45 seconds to answer a question really worked for me. I know why the programme set it up in that way.
So I was pretty sort of – ‘argh!’ – frustrated. I am not good company when I am in that place. But Vic cheered me up on that one.
Starmer says he thinks the second “debate” (the Sky News leaders special) went better for him.
Updated
Q: Do you have a car?
Starmer says a car was one of the first things he bought. He still has one.
Q: How much is a litre of unleaded?
About £1.50, £1.47, Starmer says. He says he fills it up. And he knows how to pay for it, he says, in a reference to Rishi Sunak’s petrol station gaffe.
Starmer mocks Tories for repeatedly changing their election strategy
Q: The Tories say they will deploy Boris Johnson as a secret weapon.
The Daily Telegraph: Tories turn to Johnson to counter
— George Mann (@sgfmann) June 17, 2024
Reform #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/ZJqWD30sWT
Starmer replies:
Is this the third or fourth relaunch of this strategy in six weeks? They started saying vote Tory because we’re going to win. Then they said vote Tory because Labour is going to win now … Honestly, if you can’t even have a strategy that holds for six weeks, you really don’t deserve to win.
Q: HSBC is saying that your plans could lead to higher mortgage and higher unemployment.
Daily Express: BANKING GIANT’S DIRE WARNING ON
— George Mann (@sgfmann) June 17, 2024
LABOUR PLEDGES #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/46rxnj9ueP
Starmer says he does not agree.
Starmer confirms he is in favour of a judge-led inquiry into the failings that led to the Nottingham knife attacks.
Starmer refuses to say if Israel is or isn't committing genocide in Gaza, saying as lawyer he knows it's highly complex matter
Q: Israel has been put on a blacklist of countries that harm children. Would you stop arms sales to Israel?
Starmer says he would have to look at the legal advice. There would be a review.
Q: Why do you need legal advice?
Starmer says some arms are sold for purely defensive purposes.
Ferrari expresses scepticism about a review. Starmer says this process is taken very seriously in government.
Q: Do you agree what is happening in Gaza is genocide?
Starmer says he won’t sit in a studio and declare whether something is genocide or not?
Q: Why not?
Starmer says, after the fall of Yugoslavia, he represented Croatia in court for three months arguing about whether genocide was taking place. The court had to take a decision.
He was arguing about the meaning of genocide. He is very aware that you need the evidence in front of you to make a decision.
Updated
Starmer says he wants the UK to play a part in ensuring two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.
Q: Who would give up land?
Starmer says he is not going to negotiate that on air now.
Israel needs to be safe and secure. And it is not at the moment, he says.
But if Labour wins the election, resolving this will be part of the government’s duty.
Q: Why do you think you have lost the trust of Muslim voters on this?
Because feelings run very, very deep, Starmer says.
But he says he thinks the “vast majority” of people are now in the same place on this.
Q: What would you say to Benjamin Netanyahu if he calls you if you win the election?
What I have just said, Starmer says. But he stresses he is not getting ahead of himself.
Starmer says 'common sense is big part of my politics', as he defends U-turn on energy nationalisation pledge
Ferrari goes back to the Corbyn answer. He says issues like this have led to Starmer being described as Captain Flip-Flop.
Q: Was the nationalisation pledge you made in 2020 made in bad faith?
No, says Starmer.
Q: So, if there had been no war in Ukraine, you would still be committed to nationalising energy companies?
Starmer says, when bills went up, he asked his team to explain how much it would cost to reduce bill, and how much it would cost to nationalise energy companies.
Nationalising energy companies would not have cut bills, he says.
He says:
Common sense is a big part of my politics. I wasn’t going to say, because three years earlier I said something about nationalisation, I’m afraid we’re going to pay off the shareholders, not reduce bills on people who can’t afford their bills.
Starmer repeatedly refuses to say whether he would have served in Corbyn cabinet if Labour had won in 2017 or 2019
Q: If Labour had won the election in 2017 or 2019, would you have been happy to serve in a Jeremy Corbyn cabinet?
Starmer says he did not think Labour would win.
Q: But would you have served if they had won.
Starmer says that is a hypothetical question.
Ferrari tries again. Again, Starmer says that is hypothetical.
Ferrari asks again, and Starmer again refuses to answer.
Ferrari says Starmer described the Tory manifesto as Corbyn-like. But you were in the meeting that approved it.
Starmer says he was just responsible for the Brexit section. “It was Jeremy Corbyn’s manifesto”.
He says, after the 2019 defeat, Labour commissioned a review. Voters said they did not find the manifesto credible, even though they liked some of the policies in it.
Q: Why won’t you commit to getting rid of the two-child benefit cap?
Starmer says he is only promising policies that he can afford. He claims he does not have the money to fund this.
Q: Why are you behind Nigel Farage on this? He would get rid of it.
Starmer says Farage has accepted his manifesto is not fully funded.
He says this issue is “a tough one”. He accepts people like Gordon Brown feel strongly about this.
Q: [From Emma in Greenwich] How will you protect single-sex spaces for girls, while making it easier to get a gender recognition certificate?
Starmer says he is passionate about protecting single-sex spaces. As director of public prosecutions, he dealt with a lot of cases involving violence against women and girls.
He says Labour’s gender recognition certificate plans won’t cut across that.
Emma says she thinks the two policies don’t match.
Starmer does not accept that. He says you can protect single-sex spaces for women.
In hospitals there should be single-sex wards. That does not happen because hospitals are in chaos.
If I identified as a woman, would I be allowed on a single-sex ward, Ferrari asks.
No, says Starmer.
What if I had a gender recognition certificate, Ferrari asks.
Starmer suggests Ferrari could be accommodated in a side ward.
Starmer declines to commit to council tax not going up under Labour
Starmer refuses to say council tax will not go up under Labour.
But he says none of Labour’s plans require tax rises, above those announced.
Ferrari says he has ruled out putting up taxes like income tax and VAT. So, if he is not ruling out council tax going up, people will assume it is.
He asks what Starmer means by a working person, when he says he does not want to put up taxes for working people. Is Simon Cowell a working person?
Starmer says he is thinking of people who cannot afford just to write a cheque when they have an unexpected cost, and who rely on public services.
The person I have in my mind when I say working people is people who earn their living, rely on our services, and don’t really have the ability to write a cheque when they get into trouble.
Updated
Starmer urges junior doctors to call off election strike, saying they are 'very close' to different approach from Labour
Q: [Matthew from Keele] I am a medical student. The health workforce feels devalued, and everyone wants to go to Australia. How will you address this?
Starmer says he wants to see better respect for doctors.
What does that mean, Ferrari asks.
Starmer says Sunak said he would cut waiting lists. They were at 7.2m. Now they are 7.5m. And he blames NHS staff. Labour won’t operate like that, he says.
On the junior doctors’ dispute, he says the government has not opened talks. He would urge the doctors not to strike during the election campaign. He says:
We would say to the doctors, don’t strike during the election campaign because we’re very close now to the opportunity for a different approach with a Labour government if we get over the line. So don’t strike because that causes all sorts of issues.
Junior doctors in England are planning a five-day strike, starting at 7am on Thursday 27 June.
Updated
The next caller asks about Brexit.
Q: If you don’t want to reverse Brexit, what do you see as the benefits of it?
Starmer says the choice on 4 July is carry on as now, with Tory chaos, or change.
On Brexit, he says he voted to remain.
Ferrari says Labour wants to improve the relationship with the EU. What does that mean?
Starmer says the trade deal with the EU is a botched one.
Labour would seek a better agreement, making it easier to trade. He would like it to be better for research and development. And he would like it to be better for security.
Ferrari reads more quotes from people criticising the policy.
Q: How come you know better than all these teachers?
Starmer says he has nothing against private schools. He understands that parents sending their pupils to these schools have aspirations for their children. But so do parents using state schools, and their schools need teachers.
Another caller asks a question. A woman says she thinks it is “blind ignorance” by Labour to push on with this plan. She says his answer implies Labour does not care abou SEN (special educational needs) children.
Starmer says he really does care.
He wants SEN children at state and private schools to have the same opportunities.
Ferrari repeats the claim that 103,000 pupils at private schools with special educational needs will lose out.
Q: [From Michelle from Reigate] I’m head of a specialist school for pupils with special needs. Parents will be affected by your VAT policy.
Starmer says the VAT plan will include an exemption for parents with a child who needs to be a special school, for example a private school.
Ferrari asks if he is referring to pupils with an EHC (education, health and care) plan.
Starmer confirms that.
But he accepts that some pupils at schools like Michelle’s won’t be affected.
Ferrari says 7,600 pupils at private schools have an EHC plan. There are 103,000 who don’t.
He says the VAT money will fund new teachers. But 6,5000 extra teachers will only amount to one third of a teacher per school in England.
Starmer says that is misleading, because the extra teachers will cover the areas where there are shortages.
Some pupils don’t have proper maths teachers, he says.
Starmer says, when he did start meeting voters during Covid, he had to wear a mask.
And he took the view at that point the country did not want too much party politics.
Nick Ferrari starts by saying that, when Keir Starmer became Labour leader, he could not meet voters due to the pandemic.
He says he has rarely seen Starmer “in such exuberant form”.
Starmer says he has waited for the chance to make his case.
Keir Starmer takes part in LBC phone-in
Keir Starmer is about to start his LBC phone-in.
Nick Ferrari is presenting.
Minister claims Labour could be in power for 20 years if Starmer wins due to plan to extend franchise
Good morning. Keir Starmer is taking part in a phone-in on LBC shortly. Political leaders talk to members of the public every day, but if broadcasters select their callers carefully, and choose articulate, informed, persistent people with serious concerns (and LBC are very good at doing this), then a phone-in can be perilous, as Margaret Thatcher discovered when Diana Gould asked her about the Belgrano in the 1983 election campaign. Starmer is up at 9am.
But he will arrive at the studio knowing the Tories are getting increasingly desperate. Last week they started deploying the argument that Labour were going to win anyway, but that people should vote to ensure they don’t get a supermajority. Now, perhaps worried that the prospect of a Labour supermajority isn’t scaring the electorate, they are claiming that, if Starmer wins, Labour will be in power for a generation.
Rishi Sunak has given an interview to the Daily Mail and he told them that the Labour plan to give 16 and 17-year-olds the vote was about allowing him to “entrench his power”. Sunak said:
It would be one thing if you believed that we just need to change the age that we generally consider people to become adults in this country [and] all the things that go along with that, all the rights and responsibilities …
But that’s not his argument... he’s only wanting to change the voting age, nothing else. So then you have to ask, well why is it that one thing that you’re happy to change, and nothing else?
I think that tells you he thinks that it is electorally helpful to him. We talked about the risks of Labour in power and what they would do. This is an example of it ... just kind of entrenching his power.
Echoing an argument made by CCHQ yesterday (for which there is no real evidence), Sunak also claimed that Starmer would end up extending the franchise even further.
So if he had a blank cheque, I think you could reasonably assume it wouldn’t just be votes at 16 – it’d be votes for immigrants and the rest.
Daily Mail: RISHI - KEIR ONLY WANTS VOTES AT 16
— George Mann (@sgfmann) June 17, 2024
TO ‘ENTRENCH HIS POWER’ #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/o0IE3CARYE
Mark Spencer, the farmer minister, has been doing an interview round this morning and he has extended the claim even further. He told Times Radio that, if Labour wins, it could be in power for 20 years. He said:
Of course, [Labour] will change the voting system, they will make sure that they give votes to 16 year-olds, they have talked about giving votes to foreign nationals, to EU nationals … we could end up with a Labour government for 20 years if we get this wrong at this general election.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9am: Keir Starmer takes part in a phone-in Q&A on LBC.
Morning: Starmer is on a visit on the south east of England.
Morning: Rishi Sunak is in Devon, where he is holding a Q&A with farmers.
Morning: Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, is campaigning in Hampshire.
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