This live blog is closing now but our rolling coverage of the London Bridge terror attack - and the political reaction to it - will continue on our London attacks live blog.
Theresa May has declared she is prepared to rip up human rights laws to impose new restrictions on terror suspects, as she sought to gain control over the security agenda just 36 hours to go before the polls open.
The prime minister said she was looking at how to make it easier to deport foreign terror suspects and how to increase controls on extremists where it is thought they present a threat but there is not enough evidence to prosecute them.
The last-ditch intervention comes after days of pressure on May over the policing cuts and questions over intelligence failures, following terror attacks on London Bridge, Manchester and Westminster.
May prepared to change human rights laws to tackle terrorism
The prime minister, Theresa May, says she will change the law so that she can place restrictions on people suspected of posing a terror threat, but against whom there is not enough evidence to bring a prosecution. Speaking to supporters on Tuesday, she said:
I mean longer prison sentences for people convicted of terrorist offences. I mean making it easier for the authorities to deport foreign terror suspects to their own countries.
And I am mean doing more to restrict the freedom and the movements of terrorist suspects when we have enough evidence to know they present a threat, but not enough evidence to prosecute them in full in court.
And if human rights laws stop us from doing it, we will change those laws so we can do it.
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May says she also wants to impose controls on terror suspects against whom it is not thought there is enough evidence to bring a prosecution.
She says that, if human rights laws disallow that, she will change those laws.
May has been attacking the Labour party and is now moving on to the terror threat. She calls for longer prison sentences, as well as making it easier to deport terrorists.
Theresa May is addressing supporters now. She says the election is the most critical the country has faced in our lifetimes.
In the same interview on Labour’s battle bus, Corbyn stressed the importance of running a positive election campaign. He told reporters:
Well, they (the Conservatives) don’t seem to like me very much, but I’m coping. In politics, you should really always be positive, if you’ve got something to say, something to offer, and a programme to put forward, say it and put it forward.
I don’t indulge in personal attacks and personal abuse, I don’t do undermining of people because I think you should really set it out for what you want for people.
Always be positive. I have never indulged in personal abuse and I never will.
Corbyn has also been defending his shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, who he said has done a “good job” and has been treated unfairly in the past. Abbott has pulled out of two major election events on Tuesday due to illness, amid criticism of her recent media appearances.
The Tories have relentlessly criticised the shadow home secretary, seeing her as a weak link in Labour’s team, particularly following a difficult radio interview in which she repeatedly failed to set out the cost of the party’s policy to hire thousands more police officers. Speaking to reporters on the Labour battle bus in Telford, Corbyn said:
Our shadow home secretary has done a good job, she’s not well today and is therefore not on the campaign today.
Asked if Abbott’s media appearances had damaged Labour’s campaign, Corbyn replied:
Diane has been a great advocate for the Labour party and a great advocate for young women trying to achieve in politics, and I think we should recognise she has received an awful lot of very unfair criticism and abuse in the past, she’s not well at the moment and she’s taking a break for the campaign.
The Labour leader refused to be drawn on the potential make up his cabinet, saying:
I will be appointing a cabinet on Friday if we are elected into government and that’s when you will find out who’s going to be in the cabinet, I’m not appointing it on television.
The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn has rejected Tory claims that Labour would not be ready for Brexit negotiations due to start on 19 June, saying: “We have a very good team, very well aware and across the issues on the EU.”
In a video interview with the Big Issue magazine, he said:
Keir Starmer, Emily Thornberry and Barry Gardiner will be at the heart of that negotiating team.
We will negotiate tariff-free access to the European market, we will protect those consumer rights and rights at work that we have got from the EU and we will work with the EU in the future.
We won’t threaten to turn this country into some sort of low tax haven on the shores of Europe.
He also ruled out a second referendum on the final Brexit deal, saying:
No, we will bring the issue back to Parliament. I think we have to accept the result of the referendum we had last year. It’s up to us to deal with that and to negotiate with the EU. That’s the hand that has been played.
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Afternoon summary
- Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, has accused Jeremy Corbyn of siding with Britain’s enemies. In a speech echoing attack lines used by other Tories, including Theresa May, Johnson, the foreign secretary, said Corbyn had “taken the side of just about every adversary this country has had in my lifetime.” (See 2.24pm.)
That’s all from me for today.
My colleague Kevin Rawlinson is taking over now.
Updated
The National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) has put out some research that suggests the young are unlikely to vote in larger numbers than they did in 2015. This could be significant because there is some evidence that Labour’s surge in the polls has been to a large extent driven by young people who were previously undecided now siding with Labour. But pollsters are divided as to whether or not these people will actually vote.
Here’s an extract from the NatCen news release.
Around five in ten young people (53% of 18-30s) tell us that they are definitely going to vote in this election compared with 79% of those aged 60+. Of this younger group, 62% told us they turned out to vote in the 2015 general election (compared to 85% of those aged 60+), meaning that we will need to see a significant change in their voting behaviour if they are to affect the outcome of the election.
NatCent also found that there is a group of people - many traditional Labour types - who feel that no party represents them. It says:
While people across British society don’t feel that a party represents them, they are more likely to look like traditional Labour voters. They are more likely to hold traditional working class or “blue collar” jobs and live in local authority or housing association properties. They are less likely to be on the right of the political spectrum, oppose redistribution of wealth or be over 60.
Commenting on the findings, Roger Harding, head of public attitudes at NatCen, said:
Despite caring deeply about the result, the majority of the working class and social renters feel politically homeless. The consistent Conservative lead over Labour is quite possibly explained by this group – traditionally Labour – being the most likely to describe themselves as unrepresented in this race.
A democracy in which a majority consider the choices on offer don’t speak to their lives is a very worrying thing and all parties would do well to consider how to reconnect with those who feel left out.
Bob Geldof backs the Lib Dems
The musician and Live Aid founder Bob Geldof is voting Lib Dem. He was a prominent remain campaigner and said that was why he was backing the Lib Dems for the first time. He said:
For the first time in my life I’m going to vote for those guys, the Lib Dems.
This election is about nothing else except Brexit.
The Liberal Democrats are the only party with the balls to do their job of opposing the government. They happen to be my voice in parliament.
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An umbrella group representing all the main Ulster loyalist paramilitary groups has urged unionist voters to shun the centrist Alliance party in Thursday’s general election poll.
The Loyalist Community Council which was launched in 2015 said that “any unionist who votes for the Alliance party is driving a nail into the coffin of the union.”
The LCC comprises former members of the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defence Association.
Working class loyalists, many of whom helped elected Alliance’s Naomi Long for East Belfast two general elections ago, are angry over the party’s backing for the reduction in days for flying the union flag at Belfast City Hall.
They also see Alliance’s demand for post Brexit special designated status for Northern Ireland that would keep the region with one foot inside the EU as the party re-aligning itself with Irish nationalism.
The Alliance party described the LCC’s stance as “absurd” and accused both the Ulster Unionist party and the Democratic Unionist party of sidling up to loyalist paramilitaries in a quest for votes.
The loyalists have endorsed four unionist candidates including the sitting East Belfast DUP MP Gavin Robinson who is fighting a stiff challenge from Naomi Long in the constituency.
Opinium has published its final poll of the election campaign. It suggests the Conservatives have a seven-point lead.
Here are their figures.
Conservatives: 43%
Labour: 36%
Lib Dems: 8%
Ukip: 5%
Greens: 2%
Here is an extract from the Opinium news release.
All polls point to a Conservative majority, despite recent gains by the Labour party, and the final poll from Opinium indicates that the Conservatives will capture 43% of the vote on Thursday, compared to 36% for Labour. This is in stark contrast to the 19 point lead held by the Conservatives at the beginning of the party’s campaign. However, the Labour poll ‘surge’ appears to have crested with the party slipping back by a point as the Conservatives remain steady.
The campaign has damaged the reputation of the prime minister, despite a likely Conservative win, with Theresa May’s approval ratings falling from +21% at the start of the campaign to just +5% on average across all voters. While Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has seen his popularity increase to -7%, it doesn’t seem to been enough to challenge the Conservatives.
On the basis of these figures, Electoral Calculus says the Conservatives would get a majority of 48.
UPDATE: Mike Smithson from Political Betting says Opinion was the most accurate of the online pollsters two years ago.
The first of the final polls from the most accurate online firm from GE2015 https://t.co/Y4YNukYqPk via @MSmithsonPB
— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) June 6, 2017
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The number of posts using Labour-related hashtags dwarfed those featuring content about other parties, according to a new study from the University of Oxford’s Internet Institute, ultimately making up 62% of all tweets mentioning a specific party. This was up from 40% at the start of the month. Labour support spiked highest during the debate programmes that occurred during that week, Alex Hern reports.
The researchers also looked at page views on Wikipedia for articles about the two party leaders, and found that the page about Jeremy Corbyn has been slowly gaining more readers than the page about Theresa May. They argue that the volume of search queries and the traffic to articles on Wikipedia are good predictors of voters’ behaviour, particularly swing voters.
Here is Alex’s article.
In an interview with the BBC, Amber Rudd, the home secretary, said it was impossible to stop all terror attacks. Asked if the government could “stop all suspects from getting through the net”, she told John Pienaar:
Unfortunately, it’s not, which is why we’ve always been at severe which means an attack is highly likely. The fact is that, until this past three months, we’ve had a lot of success at stopping a huge number of them. These past three months mean we’ve entered a different phase which is why we need to do something differently.
I’m afraid we have had to close comments again. I’m sorry about that. The London Bridge attack, and the news from Paris that has just broken, create particular problems for moderators, and at the moment they don’t have the capacity to keep up with comments here.
Clegg accuses May of failing to prepare public for inevitable Brext compromises
Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem Europe spokesman and former deputy prime minister, has accused Theresa May of failing to prepare the nation for the compromises that will be necessary during the Brexit talks. Speaking at an event in east London this morning, he said:
A proper leader of a country would use this election campaign not just to secure a mandate on Thursday, a majority, but also to explain and prepare the British public for the compromises, the huge, excruciatingly difficult, controversial, sometimes wholly unpopular compromises, that are inevitable if you want a deal.
And yet Theresa May has made no attempt whatsoever to prepare people for what’s to come.
It’s a spectacular failure of leadership.
She’s digesting close to four million Ukip voters in one sitting, she in effect only does what the editor of the Daily Mail tells her to do these days as far as I can make out, so she has no room for manoeuvre because she will preside over, in effect, a new party - a merged party between the Conservative Party and Ukip.
Clegg also said that he thought the chances of the UK leaving the EU without a deal were now “much, much higher” than he previously thought.
Labour will keep Barnett formula, says Dugdale
Kezia Dugdale, the Scottish Labour leader, has said the party “supports the Barnett formula”. She spoke after Carwyn Jones, the Welsh first minister, suggested otherwise.
The Barnett formula (named after the late Joel Barnett, a Labour Treasury minister in the 1970s), guarantees Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland set amounts of government spending in proportion to what is spent in England. There have been persistent complaints that it favours Scotland.
Jones told BBC Wales on Monday:
It says in the manifesto that there will be a new funding formula based on need. That means having a new formula to replace Barnett. Nobody can defend a situation where we have a funding formula that is over 38 years old by now, that was based on the way things were in the 70s. We need to have a funding formula that is fair to all the nations and regions of the UK.
But Dugdale said:
The UK Labour party manifesto is very clear - it supports the Barnett formula. It includes an additional £3bn billion coming to Scotland from UK-wide spending decisions.
I spoke to Carwyn Jones this morning and we’re both focused on fighting for a fair deal for Scotland and Wales.
You only get that with Labour - the Tories want to strip back investment and the SNP wants to break up the UK, which would mean the end of the Barnett Formula.
A spokesman for the UK Labour Party said: “Our manifesto costings are based on the Barnett formula and we will not scrap it.”
The Labour party has put out a press notice saying Jeremy Corbyn will “address six simultaneous rallies across the UK” tonight at 7pm.
They haven’t mastered cloning yet. Corbyn will be speaking at the Birmingham event, and he will be broadcast by satellite at the other five in Barry, Brighton, Glasgow, London and Warrington.
According to Labour, other people appearing at the events include “members of Labour’s shadow cabinet, big-name electronic acts Clean Bandit and DJ Floating Points, celebrity supporters Steve Coogan, Ben Elton and Maxine Peak, and chart-toppers Wolf Alice and Reverend and the Makers”.
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Priti Patel, the international development secretary, clearly does not believe that Diane Abbott is ill. (See 2.24pm.) CCHQ has issued this statement from Patel:
Jeremy Corbyn wants to make Diane Abbott home secretary in just two days but is hiding her away from voters.
The woman who would be in charge of our police and the intelligence services cannot even be trusted by Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell to go on the airwaves to explain their shocking record on national security.
Labour might be hiding her today but make no mistake – she will be in charge of our security and borders on Friday unless people vote for Theresa May and her Conservative team.
The sculptor Antony Gormley has become the latest celebrity to offer his backing to Jeremy Corbyn, after what he called a “late conversion” to the Labour leader. Labour released a statement from the creator of the Angel of the North, saying:
In the confused moment of Brexit mania in which the core values of a democratic Britain seem to be drowned by fears of immigrants taking our jobs, an economy dominated by the EU and fear that we are going to be swizzed, Jeremy Corbyn in a convincing unflappable way has laid out the ground plan for a fairer and more integrated Britain.
He added: “Jeremy Corbyn good luck to you and to the country!”
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Diane Abbott pulls out of Evening Standard hustings
Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, has also pulled out of an Evening Standard hustings tonight, the paper’s editor, George Osborne, has said.
Diane Abbott has pulled out of @EveningStandard hustings. It's not like someone who wants to be Home Sec has much to talk about these days..
— George Osborne (@George_Osborne) June 6, 2017
Thanks Shadow Foreign Sec @EmilyThornberry for stepping in to take Abbott's place @EveningStandard hustings. Much appreciated
— George Osborne (@George_Osborne) June 6, 2017
Abbott pulled out of Radio 4 Woman’s Hour debate this morning at short notice. The BBC was told that she was sick, although her last-minute illness followed reports that Jeremy Corbyn’s office has been trying to keep her off the airwaves. (See 9.05am.)
Asked for more detail, a Labour spokeswoman said:
Ms Abbott will not be talking about her health at this time. There can be no more distractions from the real issues of this general election. Ms Abbott will be joining Labour party colleagues to get the vote out on Thursday June 8th.
Ukip have held their last major national event of the campaign, a speech by the party leader Paul Nuttall in Westminster which, again, focused on its plans to tackle Islamist extremism and terrorism.
The party launched its campaign with what it called an “integration agenda”, with measures including a ban on wearing full-face veils in public and mandatory medical checks for girls deemed at risk of female genital mutilation.
Nuttall argued the recent series of terror attacks highlighted a “profoundly complacent British political establishment” which avoided difficult issues on Islamism and called Ukip’s measures racist.
He said other parties would follow its lead: “I predict that history will prove that Ukip was ahead of its time in highlighting these issues.”
Nuttall had little to announce beyond measures in Ukip’s manifesto for more police and prison officers and border guards, though he did call for “a debate in this country about whether we routinely arm our police force, particularly in major cities”. He added:
We must expect more from the Muslim community itself when it comes to reporting extremism.
Nuttall was adamant that his ideas were not “in any way Islamophobic or divisive”. However, Nuttall declined again to condemn comments by his Brexit spokesman, the Ukip MEP Gerard Batten, who has written a series of blog posts condemning all Islam as complicit in terrorism. The latest example, published on Monday, called Islam a “barbaric death cult”.
I asked Nuttall whether his continued refusal to condemn or discipline Batten meant either wasn’t serious about Ukip not being Islamophobic, or if he simply didn’t have the authority to challenge the MEP. It’s not the first time I’ve asked Nuttall about this. He answered:
This is a bit like Groundhog Day, isn’t it? What I will say is: they aren’t my views. My view is that Islamist extremism is a cancer within our country. I think Gerard has got his terminology wrong. They don’t represent the views of the party as a whole. But we do have a problem in this country. It’s something that that needs to be cut out.
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Boris Johnson's anti-Corbyn speech - Summary and analysis
It has been clear for some time that the Tories were itching to attack Jeremy Corbyn over security and defence and issues like the IRA and it was reported a few weeks ago that they were saving up their best ammunition for the final stage of the campaign. Boris Johnson’s speech felt as it was intended to be the knock-out blow on this theme.
Though short, it was certainly a very striking speech, with one of the most imaginative metaphors of the campaign (the Zaphod Beeblebrox one - see below). It was also classically propagandist, conflating charges that are exaggerated, or untrue, with those that are well founded, to create a pungent mix.
But it probably is not having quite the effect intended. On another day it would be leading the news. Instead it has been overshadowed by the ongoing London Bridge attacks story.
Here are the key points.
- Johnson claimed that Jeremy Corbyn sided with Britain’s enemies. He said:
For 30 years he has been soft and muddle-headed on terror, he has been soft and muddle-headed on defence, he has taken the side of just about every adversary this country has had in my lifetime. From the IRA to Hamas, from soviet communism to General Galtieri, for heaven’s sake.
This was the main claim in a speech that focused on Corbyn’s record on security, but in the speech and Q&A Johnson also brought up other issues. He attacked Corbyn’s unilataralism.
A guy who pre-emptively informs any power that would threaten to engage in nuclear blackmail that as our prime minister he, Corbyn, would not under any circumstances deploy Trident, so making a making a nonsense of our nuclear deterrent ...
He is all over the place on our nuclear deterrent. We are spending £31bn on Trident. What’s the point of this thing if he wants to send it to sea with no nukes aboard, so the whole country is literally firing blanks. It would be a disaster.
And he attacked Corbyn’s domestic record on security too.
This is a guy who actually voted against the formal establishment of MI5 in 1999, who boasts he voted against every piece of counter-terrorism legislation that has been brought before parliament. You have a putative future home secretary in Diane Abbott who does not think that al-Qaeda should be a prescribed organisation, and who voted against that. It beggars belief that these people should be running our country from Friday.
Jeremy Corbyn [is] at the very best weak and vacillating on terror. He says he’s now in favour of shoot-to-kill. He wasn’t until the events of the weekend. I do not see how we can trust him with the safety of our country.
Some of Johnson’s charges were unfair to the point of being untrue. He claimed that Corbyn did not support police shooting marauding terrorists, as happened on Saturday night, but this is based on a wilful misinterpretation of the (admittedly, badly phrased) interview Corbyn gave to the BBC in November, which produced a report judged inaccurate by the BBC Trust. (Corbyn did say that he was “not happy with a shoot-to-kill policy in general”, but he seemed to have in mind Northern Ireland-style state assassination and was not saying he disapproved of armed intervention to save lives.)
Johnson’s point about Corbyn voting against the 1989 Security Services Act, that put MI5 on a statutory footing, is correct - you can read the Hansard here - but the entire Labour party voted against the bill, and not because they wanted to abolish MI5, but because the party had technical objections to the way the legislation was drafted. And Corbyn and Abbott did vote against banning al-Qaeda, but it was an order banning 20 other organisations too, and leftwingers thought that some of those groups were unfairly included.
But Johnson is right to say that Corbyn has opposed military interventions like the Falklands and has sympathised with the IRA and with Hamas, and he is right to say that Corbyn is opposed to using nuclear weapons. Corbyn said so on the Today programme in September 2015 and he faced a very difficult 10 minutes on the Question Time leaders’s special on Friday when he refused to say explicitly whether or not he would be willing to authorise a retaliatory nuclear strike if Britain were attacked. (That did not stop a subsequent poll suggesting that Corbyn won the debate overall.)
- Johnson said Corbyn’s unilateralism would be bad not just for Britain, but for allies that rely on Britain too. He said:
It’s not just the safety and security of our country. I don’t think people in this room or around Britain realise quite how much other countries look to us and depend on us. We are one of the great nuclear powers of the world. We are the second biggest Nato contributor. We have a huge military presence around the world ... They would be appalled if Britain was suddenly abstracted, taken away, from the defence of Europe and of the world. And that would be the real tragedy, in my view, of a Jeremy Corbyn premiership.
- Johnson said that a Corbyn government would never deliver Brexit because it would be reliant on the SNP and the Lib Dems.
But it’s worse than that. A Corbyn-led negotiating team would not just consist of the Labour party, or rather that group of ex London loony left, Corbyn, McDonnell, Abbott and so forth, that have piratically capture the Labour party. We know that Corbyn could not possibly govern by himself. He would be forced to govern by himself. He would be forced to go into coalition with the Scots Nats and the Liberals, and he would appear in Brussels as a sort of Tricephalous monster, Zaphod Beeblebrox, if you can remember him, with an extra head, with Nicola Sturgeon jabbering in one ear, Tim Farron in the other, both of them telling him to do exactly what Brussels wants because both of those parties are 100% committed to reversing that decision of June 23 and staying in the EU. How on earth would Corbyn be able to construct a logical negotiating position with that pair on his back? How could he get it done? The answer is that he couldn’t, and he wouldn’t. His position on Brexit would dissolve into a puddle of incoherence, and Brexit would flounder on Thursday. There is only one potential prime minister who has a plan for Brexit.
- Johnson said suggested that some people were voting for Corbyn because they were too young to remember communism or socialism.
The trouble is young people these days - I’m 52 - do not remember nationalisation. They don’t remember soviet communism. They don’t even remember socialism. We don’t want it back in this country. It would be an absolute disaster.
- He cast doubt on the existence of a secret Home Office report about Saudi Arabia funding extremism. When asked why it had not been published, at first he said it was confidential (even though Tim Farron promised David Cameron it would be published). Then he suggested it might not even exist.
As far as I know we do not have a confidential report of the kind that you describe.
Updated
Q: The authorities were alerted to all three London Bridge attackers. Do you think there were intelligence failures? Or will some plots always be impossible to thwart?
May says the intelligence agencies have done a good job of foiling plots.
They will want to look into what happened in this case, she says.
And that’s it.
Updated
Q: Was Boris Johnson right to say this morning that MI5 had questions to answer?
May says Johnson was making the point that MI5 will need to look into what happened.
Q: Sadiq Khan says London’s police are in the middle of cuts worth £1bn. How will that make London safer?
May says Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, has said the Met is well resourced and has powerful counter-terrorism capabilities.
Q: Are you nervous about the election?
May says you cannot be a politician if you don’t enjoy elections.
Updated
Q: Do you still think that getting no Brexit deal would weaken our ability to fight terrorism?
May says she does think no deal is better than a bad deal. Some of the other parties want to punish us.
She says she does want a deal on security cooperation. She has already negotiated with Europe on this and has come back with good results.
Q: How concerned are you about security failings contributing to the London Bridge attack?
May says the police and security services will investigate what happened. But the new government will have to take action to respond to the new terror threat.
Q: If you win the election, will you bring forward the counter-extremism bill?
May says she published a counter-extremism strategy as home secretary, and some of those measures have been taken forward.
She says she will do more to tackle extremism.
Q: You visited Saudi Arabia recently. Did you speak about their funding for terrorism?
May says she spoke about many issues. Saudi Arabia itself has suffered from terrorism, she says. She says its cooperation has been very useful to the UK.
Q: The third London Bridge attacker was stopped in 2016 when he was suspected of going to Syria. What action was taken when he returned to the UK? Was he subject to a temporary exclusion order?
May says this is a continuing investigation and she won’t comment further.
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Q: Should people be worried about their safety when they vote on Thursday?
No, says May. She says the police have been planning for this. She says the threat level is at severe and has not been raised.
UPDATE: I’ve corrected the last sentence. Earlier it wrong said that May said the threat level was at critical. She said (correctly) it is at severe.
Updated
May's Q&A
Theresa May has just given a stump speech in Stoke-on-Trent. She is now taking questions.
Q: What do you say to your activists who have seen the Tory campaign falter because of your decisions?
May says there is only one poll that counts – the one on Thursday.
Q: Will you apologise to people for the security failures that led to Saturday’s attack?
May says these were terrible attacks. We will not allow our way of life to be undermined, she says.
She says what is important is to have a government committed to security. She says she supports shoot-to-kill, but Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t.
(That is not what Corbyn says. On Sunday, he said he approved of the police using “whatever force is necessary” to protect life. More details here.)
Q: Sayeeda Warsi says President Trump’s visit should be postponed. Many Londoners will agree. Do you?
May says what Trump said about Sadiq Khan was wrong. Party politics has been put aside as the government and London mayor have dealt with the London Bridge attack.
Q: You have been running a very negative campaign. As a vicar’s daughter, do you feel guilty being so negative? And could you say one thing you like and respect about Jeremy Corbyn?
May says we are in a general election. People have a choices. She is setting out the choice. She has set out a positive vision, she says.
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May says 'tough conversations' are required with Saudi Arabia over funding of extremists
In an interview with Sky News, Theresa May was asked whether she would be willing to be a “difficult woman” in terms of challenging Saudi Arabia over its funding for extremists. She replied:
Tough conversations are required over this whole issue of financing of the terrorists and the financing of extremism ... We need to have tough conversations with whoever we need to have those conversations with.
She also said police and security services would review how the London Bridge attack was able to happen:
MI5 and the police have already said they would be reviewing how they dealt with Manchester and I would expect them to do exactly the same in relation to London Bridge.
What government needs to do, and what the government that comes in after Thursday’s election needs to be willing to do, is to give more powers to the police and security service when they need them, deal with this issue of terrorism and extremism online, and to be able to call out extremism here in the United Kingdom.
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Theresa May has given her most direct criticism yet of Donald Trump for hitting out at the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, over his response to the terror attack.
She repeated that Trump’s state visit would go ahead, but said his criticism had been wrong – a day after she did not directly address the comments when asked about them at a press conference. She told the Sun:
The relationship with America is our deepest and most important defence and security relationship.
Having said that, I think Donald Trump is wrong in what he said about Sadiq Khan, in relation to the attack on London Bridge.
We’ve been working with Sadiq Khan. When you’re working in the aftermath of an attack like that, party politics is put to one side.
He’s been at the Cobras and we’ve been working with him to ensure the response was right, and to get London moving again.
Updated
Here is the quote where Boris Johnson accused Jeremy Corbyn of siding with Britain’s enemies.
For 30 years [Corbyn] has been soft and muddle-headed on terror, he has been soft and muddle-headed on defence, he has taken the side of just about every adversary this country has had in my lifetime. From the IRA to Hamas, from soviet communism to General Galtieri, for heaven’s sake.
I will post a full summary of the speech and Q&A soon.
Q: Why is your government suppressing this report about how the Saudis have funded extremism?
Johnson says the questioner, Channel 4 News’ Michael Crick, is making a valid point about how the government needs to cut the source of terrorist funding.
But that does not “exculpate” the “scumbags” who have done this, he says.
You have to work with countries around the world.
Q: What about the report?
Johnson says he is not going to comment on confidential material.
There are lots of things the government does not publish, he says.
He says you need a strong and dynamic security response. But that cannot be led by someone who is viscerally opposed to shoot-to-kill, he says.
And that’s it.
I will post a summary soon.
Q: [From Newsnight’s Nick Watt] We were told at the start of the campaign you would have a minor role. But the campaign has faltered, and now you have been given a major role. Jeremy Corbyn, the man you described as a mugwump ...
Wholly accurately, by the way, says Johnson.
Q: So have you been brought in to rescue thing?
Johnson says it is a straight choice between Theresa May and Corbyn.
Corbyn has only just come out in favour of shoot-to-kill, he says.
And Britain would spend £30bn on Trident. What is the point if Corbyn wants to send it to sea with no missiles. We would be quite literally firing banks.
Johnson says Corbyn would also cause massive damage to the economy.
He says young people do not remember communism, or even socialism. But he does. If Corbyn were to get into power, it would be a disaster.
He says Corbyn would also fail to implement Brexit.
Johnson's Q&A
Boris Johnson is now taking questions.
Q: Sadiq Khan says London is in the middle of cuts worth £1bn. How does that keep people safe?
Johnson says he was able to keep police numbers high. They were higher in London than under virtually every year of the Labour government.
He says the Lord Harris report (the one Diane Abbott had difficulty with - see 9.05am) said that having extra armed police would not make people safer.
He claims Jeremy Corbyn did not support shoot-to-kill, which was essential to keeping people safe on Saurday.
Q: The third attacker has just been named. It has been reported that the Italian authorities warned the British about him.
Johnson says he does not know the details.
He returns to his attacks on Corbyn. Corbyn voted against the formal establishment of MI5, he claims.
Boris Johnson accuses Corbyn of siding with Britain’s enemies.
Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, is speaking now.
He says for 30 years Jeremy Corbyn has been “soft and muddled-headed on terror”.
And he has taken the side of just about every enemy the UK has had, he says.
- Boris Johnson accuses Corbyn of siding with Britain’s enemies.
And he says Corbyn and his colleagues would arrive at Brussels like a team of herbivores.
Paul Nuttall, the Ukip leader, was interviewed on LBC this morning. He insisted that he would not come under pressure to resign if he failed to win a seat on Thursday. He is contesting Boston and Skegness.
He told the programme:
There will be no pressure for me to stand down as leader of Ukip. I’ve only been in the job for six months. Nigel Farage wasn’t in parliament and was still the leader of Ukip. When Ukip was at its most influential we didn’t have an MP, when we forced David Cameron to have that referendum.
He was forced into that because Ukip was going up in the polls, Ukip was winning local elections, and they panicked, and we did that without having an MP.
Nuttall also said he had “absolutely no idea” why he kept calling the Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood Natalie during the ITV leaders’ debate.
Even during prep that day, I kept calling her ‘Natalie’. Everyone was saying to me: ‘Her name is Leanne’ and I went on to the platform saying: ‘Leanne, Leanne, Leanne’, and it just came out wrong.
Updated
Labour activists are out in County Durham before Boris Johnson’s speech on Brexit later. There are several neighbouring seats here the Tories are hoping to snatch from Labour, even as the cab driver drove us to the venue from Darlington, he said it was “a Labour town”.
But Jenny Chapman’s majority is slim in these circumstances, about 3,000. Helen Goodman, whose constituency of Bishop Auckland is where this speech is taking place, has a similar majority.
Still, the local Labour party are out in full voice here, with placards for Goodman. “This is one of the most deprived wards in the United Kingdom,” shouts one activist. “That’s thanks to Tory austerity. There are two food banks in this town.”
How do you know where there's a Tory event? Look for the Labour placards pic.twitter.com/o7toaODnyk
— Jessica Elgot (@jessicaelgot) June 6, 2017
Updated
It is the day for offbeat Theresa May interview questions. She has been on Radio 1’s Newsbeat too, and she was asked about Captain Ska’s Liar Liar song, which labels her a “liar”. She was not happy about it, she said:
Well, I’ve heard bits of it and to be perfectly honest I’m not very happy about it. I don’t much like it, I don’t think anybody would when they heard a song about themselves like that.
The Times has has got a new YouGov Scottish voting intention poll out today, showing Labour close to overtaking the Conservatives for second place, in terms of share of the vote.
YouGov/Times (Scotland):
— NumbrCrunchrPolitics (@NCPoliticsUK) June 6, 2017
SNP 41 (-1)
CON 26 (-3)
LAB 25 (+6)
LD 6 (=)https://t.co/WCYljwUreW#GE2017
Here is an extract from Hamish Macdonell’s story about the poll (paywall).
With two days to go before the election, figures from YouGov have Scottish Labour on 25 per cent, up six points in three weeks. There has also been a surge in popularity for Mr Corbyn. His approval rating north of the border is still in the red at minus 5, but that is a significant improvement on the rating of minus 36 he scored in the last poll.
If the findings carry through to votes, Labour will hang on to the Edinburgh South seat that it won in 2015, as well as taking Edinburgh North and Leith & East Renfrewshire from the SNP. At the beginning of the campaign Scottish Labour was languishing at 18 per cent of the popular vote and on track to lose its only MP.
The comeback has also been at the expense of the Conservatives, who surged into second place behind the SNP at the start of the campaign and were on 29 per cent of the vote three weeks ago. Ruth Davidson’s party has dropped to 26 per cent, enough to win seven seats in Scotland, but not quite the breakthrough party managers had hoped for.
Theresa May on 'the naughtiest thing she's ever done'
Diane Abbott’s interview with Sky last night was fairly excruciating, but it has nothing on this clip from Julie Etchingham’s interview with Theresa May that is going out on ITV tonight.
What's the naughtiest thing @theresa_may has ever done?https://t.co/Y8Ys4T2fAT pic.twitter.com/5QvIXVNEl8
— ITV News (@itvnews) June 6, 2017
Memo to CCHQ: The correct answer to this question is, “Mind your own business, Julie.”
Updated
Theresa May is embarking on the final push of her election campaign today, starting last night at a football stadium in Bradford South and this morning in a bakery in the marginal seat of Lancaster and Fleetwood.
The rest of the day will also be spent mostly in target constituencies rather than places where the Tories are defending their majorities (I can’t say where yet for the usual security reasons).
This is interesting because it suggests the Tories are still going after new seats rather than panicking about keeping the ones they have got. Aides around the prime minister still seem very relaxed about the current volatile polling situation, with little sign that they are getting nervous about any potential loss of their majority.
But then, it’s also fair to say that David Cameron and his inner circle on the remain campaign had no idea what was coming for them a few days before the Brexit vote.
Updated
Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, was on ITV’s Good Morning Britain this morning. He reaffirmed his commitment to fighting further police cuts for London.
One of the things I’ve also been saying for the last 13 months is we need far more support for our Met Police Service, because when you speak to experts they say one of the reasons we’ve been successful in thwarting attacks is because the public has confidence in community policing to report things, the police can then keep an eye on people. For the past 13 months I’ve been campaigning for more support for the Met Police Service. We’ve lost, over the last seven years, £600 million from the Met police budget, this government’s got plans to cut a further £400 million. And, by the way, as important as counter-terror funding is, you can’t disaggregate that from mainstream policing.
Khan also restated his opposition to President Trump’s state visit going ahead. But he said he did not want to retaliate to what had Trump said about him on Twitter yesterday. Khan said:
We’re not kids in a playground, he’s the president of the US, I’m too busy to respond to his tweets, isn’t he busy?
On Newsnight last night Sebastian Gorka, a Trump adviser, said that the president had criticised Khan because he had shown a “Pollyannaish attitude” to the terrorist threat. Gorka said:
The president was making a very valid point that we have to jettison political correctness. We have to apply honesty to the threat and saying it’s just business as usual, don’t worry about a thing, [is] a Pollyannaish attitude to a threat that has killed 170 people in the last two years in Europe alone and maimed more than 700.
Gorka was referring to comments such as the one Khan made in an interview last year about how the threats of terror attacks are “part and parcel of living in a big city”. Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr, singled this out for criticism in a tweet earlier this year.
You have to be kidding me?!: Terror attacks are part of living in big city, says London Mayor Sadiq Khan https://t.co/uSm2pwRTjO
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) March 22, 2017
Updated
Welsh Labour was full of gloom at the start of the campaign, worried that the Tories could win a majority in Wales for the first time since the 1850s.
The party is much more upbeat now with strategists claiming it has run a bold and innovative “proudly Welsh Labour” campaign,
Some of it has been old-fashioned – more than half a million doors have been knocked (that’s getting on for half of all households in Wales).
But it has also pleased with its use of the Promote system, which is linked to the party’s voter database, and allows it to target specific messages to particular people; like this woman’s story.
But making sure people understand this is a Welsh Labour campaign has also been key. Jeremy Corbyn remains a mixed blessing in Wales.
All printed material has been conceived, written and strongly branded as Welsh Labour with bespoke Welsh themes, content and messaging.
Wayne David, Welsh Labour’s general election campaign chair, said:
This has been a campaign unlike any other I’ve been involved with.
Our operation has built on our traditions of door-to-door community campaigning, but boosted by a national campaign using the most cutting-edge technology, platforms and techniques.
Caroline Lucas, the Green party co-leader, took to Twitter this morning to complain that she was not invited to take part in the Woman’s Hour debate.
Would have loved to be there & represent @TheGreenParty, but sadly not invited. @bbc why won't you #InviteTheGreens? https://t.co/nMXRypmQ2W
— Caroline Lucas (@CarolineLucas) June 6, 2017
Jane Garvey, the presenter, has just addressed this by saying that Lucas and Leanne Wood, the Plaid Cymru leader (who was also not invited), have both been on the programme recently.
Rudd claims Home Office report into Saudi funding of extremism was never intended for publication
A questioner asks why the UK is selling arms to Saudi Arabia.
Amber Rudd, the home secretary, says the UK has the toughest conditions on arms sales abroad.
Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, says the UK is being taken to court over arms sales to Saudi Arabia. And she says people in Yemen are starving because of Saudia Arabia bombing using British bombs.
Jane Garvey, the presenter, says Woman’s Hour listeners are baffled by the UK’s support for Saudi Arabia.
Rudd says there were concerns about Saudi Arabia funding extremism. But that has been addressed.
How do we know, says Thornberry. You will not publish the report into it.
Rudd says this was an internal review. It was never intended for publication, she says.
- Rudd claims Home Office report into Saudi funding of extremism was never intended for publication.
As the Guardian reports today, that is not what David Cameron told Tim Farron.
BBC Woman's Hour debate
The Woman’s Hour debate has just started.
Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, is standing in for Diane Abbott.
The first question is about police cuts. Thornberry claims that in 2015 Theresa May favoured further police cuts, but was over-ruled by George Osborne, the then chancellor, who ruled them out in his budget.
Some people may suspect that Diane Abbott’s illness this morning is convenient. I have seen no evidence that she is not ill, and if she is we wish her well, but her media appearances during the election have not always been a great success and it was noticeable that, after the Manchester Arena attack, despite being shadow home secretary, she was not being put up by the party for interviews.
She did do an interview with Sky last night, but her performance was very poor, because she gave the impression of not knowing anything about the Harris report into London’s resilience despite saying that she had read it.
A story in the Times (paywall) on Saturday claimed that Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell were trying to keep her off the airwaves. Here’s an excerpt.
Tensions came to a head last weekend when Jeremy Corbyn’s office discovered that she was to appear on BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show last Sunday.
The shadow home secretary is thought to have made arrangements directly with the programme’s producer to appear without the consent of the campaign.
Ms Abbott’s previous media appearances have caused difficulty with Labour candidates. They have reported back to the party’s central command that her “brain fade” moment – when she said that her police recruitment policy would cost £300,000 rather than £300 million on LBC – has come up regularly on the doorstep. The interview was also exploited by the Tories.
Labour sources said John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, and Karie Murphy, Mr Corbyn’s chief of staff, both phoned Ms Abbott to persuade her to pull out of the show but when they failed, the Labour leader phoned her himself, to no avail.
A source said: “John McDonnell was furious at the prospect of Diane going on again. In the end they got Jeremy to phone her himself – but she … went ahead and did the interview, which was predictably awful.”
Abbott was asked about this story in her Sky interview last night, and insisted that it was not true, and that Corbyn and McDonnell were not trying to stop her speaking to the media.
Earlier this year Abbott missed the Commons second reading vote on the article 50 bill. She said that she was ill, but some Labour colleagues thought her sickness was feigned because Abbott represents a strongly pro-remain constituency and, like other Labour MPs, was known to be privately unhappy about the whip ordering Labour MPs to vote for the bill.
Updated
Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, was due to take part in a Woman’s Hour election debate at 9am with Amber Rudd, the home secretary, and others.
#WHdebate: Tune in at 9am - the line up of leading politicians @AmberRuddHR @HackneyAbbott @joswinson @KirstySNP @MargotLJParker #GE2017
— BBC Woman's Hour (@BBCWomansHour) June 5, 2017
But she has just pulled out on the grounds that she’s unwell.
A change in the #WHdebate line-up this morning: @HackneyAbbott taken ill. @UKLabour say finding a replacement. Tune in at 9am.
— BBC Woman's Hour (@BBCWomansHour) June 6, 2017
Former Tory party chair joins calls for Trump's state visit to be cancelled
On Newsnight last night Sayeeda Warsi, the former Conservative party chair, joined those calling for President Trump’s state visit to be cancelled in the light of his attacks on the London mayor. She said:
I feel that a state visit is an honour of the highest order … And I just think for a man who long before he started insulting London’s mayor was a man who showed disdain for women, he had little respect for minorities, black people, Mexicans, Latinos, little regard for the LGBT community, mocked the disabled and when London came under attack he thought the best way of helping us was to attack the mayor of London … I think we should just keep kicking this visit into the long grass.
Yesterday Khan himself said the visit should not go ahead. He told Channel 4 News:
I don’t think we should roll out the red carpet to the president of the USA in the circumstances where his policies go against everything we stand for.
When you have a special relationship it is no different from when you have got a close mate. You stand with them in times of adversity but you call them out when they are wrong. There are many things about which Donald Trump is wrong.
And here is the Guardian story about Khan’s comment.
Updated
Johnson says the prospect of being able to make free trade deal with the rest of the deal is genuinely exciting.
Q: Should we pay an exit bill to the EU?
Johnson says there are “huge sums of money” we can take back. Jeremy Corbyn would not have a “cat’s chance in Hades” of negotiating a good Brexit deal.
Q: Will you be back as foreign secretary if the Conservatives win?
Johnson says he is campaigning for a Conservative government. He thinks it would be a “catastrophe” for the UK if Corbyn won.
Q: Would you be happy to see Michael Gove given a cabinet job?
Johnson repeats the point about campaigning for a Conservative victory.
And that’s it.
Boris Johnson backs Trump’s state visit going ahead
Q: Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, says planned police cuts for the Met should not go ahead.
Johnson says when he was London mayor police numbers were kept high, even though crime was falling.
He praises what the police did on Saturday, including “dispatching those scumbags in eight minutes”.
He says Theresa May has set out a programme of work for the future.
Q: You seem to be saying you will not reconsider future cuts.
Johnson says the number of armed officers is increasing. It is up to the mayor of London to decide if he wants to spend more on police officers, he says.
He says it is extraordinary to have Diane Abbott attacking the Tories over policing.
Q: Should Donald Trump’s planned state visit still go ahead?
Johnson says he does not want to get involved in this row. But he thinks Khan was right to say what he said to the people of London about how they should not be alarmed about officers on the streets.
Q: Should the state visit go ahead?
Johnson says the invitation has been offered and accepted.
- Johnson backs Trump’s state visit going ahead.
But he repeats the point about Khan being right to reasssure Londoners. (This is a reference to the tweet President Trump posted on Sunday criticising Khan, and taking out of context a comment Khan made about how Londoners should not be alarmed.)
At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is "no reason to be alarmed!"
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 4, 2017
Updated
Boris Johnson's Today interview
Good morning. I’m taking over from Claire.
Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, is being interviewed on the Today programme.
Q: Was the London Bridge attack an intelligence failure?
Johnson starts by paying tribute to the police.
He says, yes, of course, we should look at what was known about “this guy” who is in the papers.
But currently there is still a live investigation under way, he says.
Q: But should he have been under more surveillance.
Johnson says those questions have to be asked. But it is not for him to say. He says it is extraordinary to be attacked on this by Jeremy Corbyn ...
Q: Do we need an independent investigation into this?
No, says Johnson.
- Johnson opposes independent inquiry into London Bridge attacks.
Johnson renews his attack on Corbyn.
Q: How did you vote on extending pre-trial detention to 90 days?
Johnson says he has opposed some measures. But he has supported most anti-terror legislation. He says Corbyn has opposed all of them.
And Corbyn opposed the shoot-to-kill tactics used on Saturday night.
Q: Corbyn says he does support those measures?
Johnson asks Mishal Husain, the presenter if she accepts that Corbyn has said in the past that he does oppose shoot-to-kill.
Andrew Sparrow is picking up the live blog now.
If you’d like to receive the Snap campaign briefing in your inbox tomorrow and each morning until the election is settled, do sign up here.
You can read today’s Snap here:
Tim Farron, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, is on the Today programme and is repeating a theme of his BBC Question Time appearance last night on countering terrorism:
There is always a desire for people to reach for the ‘sound good’ rather than the ‘do good’.
Control orders, he says, fall into the first category; Farron calls them a “knee-jerk response that sounds good but achieves little”, adding that they were counterproductive … so few ever actually stuck”.
He says their replacement, TPims, are “a far more effective way of doing what we need to do”. But he says they are underused.
In the last two years they’ve been used once …
The idea that we need extra powers doesn’t stand up to scrutiny … We don’t need additional surveillance measures: police already have powers to track, to tap, to remove people from an area.
Farron says instead that investment in police and security services is what “makes us safer” and that a suggested crackdown on online extremism, such as banning end-to-end encryption “would make the whole of security less secure … banking transactions depend upon it”.
Pressed on whether London attacker Khuram Butt – who was known to police and appeared in a Channel 4 documentary about Islamist extremists – should have been dealt with in some way before Saturday, despite apparently having committed no crime ahead of the London Bridge attack, Farron says:
The short answer is yes …
The real issue with the murderers from Saturday night is they made a disgusting, wicked and cowardly choice … It is without a doubt not that there aren’t enough powers but that there aren’t enough police.
These people were known to police, reported by their communities.
Those controls exist already … you can be tracked and traced, hacked and followed, if a person is under suspicion.
Police are investigating after the secretive street artist Banksy appeared to offer free limited edition prints of his work to people who vote against the Conservatives in the general election.
Banksy said prints of a new work would be mailed to voters in seats in and around his home city of Bristol if they sent in a voting slip showing they had voted against the Tory candidate.
His website said the piece, a version of his famous “girl with balloon” but with the red heart replaced by the union flag, would be sent to non-Tory voters on 9 June, the day after the election.
The statement on Banksy’s website said:
Simply send in a photo of your ballot paper from polling day showing you voted against the Conservative candidate and this complimentary gift will be mailed to you.
A spokesman for Avon and Somerset police said:
We’ve received a number of complaints about an offer of a free Banksy print to people living in six Bristol constituencies in exchange for them voting in a certain way in the forthcoming election and we can confirm we’re investigating the offer.
It is a criminal offence under the Representation of People Act 1983 for any voter to accept or agree to accept a gift or similar in return for voting or refraining from voting. Any person participating in an offer to receive a gift is at risk of being prosecuted.
Khan: Met set to lose frontline officers under cuts
Sadiq Khan has warned that the Met faces losing frontline officers, Press Association reports:
The Metropolitan police is facing the loss of thousands of frontline officers under Conservative spending plans, London mayor Sadiq Khan has warned.
Khan, who is Labour, said the force stood to lose between 3,400 and 12,800 constables – a reduction in its strength of between 10% and 40% – making it harder to foil future terror attacks such as the weekend attack on London Bridge.
He said the Met, which had had to make savings of £600m since 2010, was not only facing new cuts of £400m but could face the further loss of between £184m and £700m a year under Conservative plans to change the police funding formula.
Khan said:
Our city has suffered two awful terrorist attacks since I was elected as mayor and we must do everything possible to stop there being any more.
Police officers in our communities act as the eyes and ears of the security services, providing the intelligence and information that allows us to disrupt attempted terrorist attacks.
Cuts on this scale would make it harder to foil future terrorist attacks on our city – and as the mayor of London I’m simply not willing to stand by and let that happen.
Richard Burgon, the shadow justice secretary, has been on the Today programme. Inevitably the interview was focused on responses to the London and Manchester terror attacks.
Burgon repeated the Labour line on police cuts on Theresa May’s watch, but admits the “chain of causation” is not simple. Pressed on comments by Lord Carlile, the former independent reviewer of terrorism, that police numbers were not the key issue in preventing terrorist attacks, Burgon said:
Members of the Police Federation and police officers [have] stressed the value of community policing in picking up the signs of extremism … I think there us a great value in community policing.
Does it make communities safe to cut 20,000 police? No.
But Burgon would not be drawn into criticism of security services who acknowledged yesterday that one of the London attackers, Khuram Butt, had been known to them:
No matter who is in government, it’s always the case that sometimes an extremist may get through.
He says it is important to “pay tribute to security services for foiling so many plots” and echoes comments by Lib Dem leader Tim Farron who warned last night against “knee-jerk” responses.
Lessons can’t be drawn within hours or days.
One of the really worrying factors in the recent terrorist atrocities [is that] it appears members of a Didsbury mosque had reported extremist behaviour [of Manchester bomber Salman Abedi].
It now emerges that one of the terrorist murderers from London Bridge had even been on the television, revealing his extremist views.
We need to properly fund our police services … give the police the resources they need.
The Snap: your election briefing
With two days – and nights, who needs sleep? – of campaigning left, welcome back to the politics live blog. I’m Claire Phipps with your morning catchup and the early election news; Andrew Sparrow will be along later. Catch us in the comments below or find me on Twitter @Claire_Phipps.
What’s happening?
Both prime ministerial contenders have given interviews to newspapers today: Theresa May to the Telegraph and Jeremy Corbyn to the Guardian. The latter is easily the more candid – and if that sounds partisan, the Telegraph’s political editor notes that the PM’s swipe at the Labour leader over his record of opposition to counter-terrorism legislation “is perhaps the most direct answer of a wide-ranging interview”.
May is coy on potential tax rises (“I’m a Conservative, the Conservative party’s instinct always is to lower tax”) and that awkward social care cap (“We are genuinely going to consult on the cap and I think that’s important because we want to hear from different people”), perhaps gambling that voters would prefer a surprise to unwrap some time after 8 June rather than be bothered with details now.
Corbyn’s eve of election eve chat was rather more forthright, accusing the PM of being “uttterly ridiculous” and “offensive” for claiming he “doesn’t believe in Britain”, and criticising her for leaping in with a “political speech in the middle of the day” after the London attack, instead of agreeing a campaign pause with rival parties.
If he were settling himself into a Downing Street swivel chair on Friday, he said, one of his first moves would be to call Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron to reset the tone on Brexit talks and to guarantee the rights of EU nationals living in the UK.
Another call would go to Donald Trump to urge him not to withdraw from the Paris agreement – a jolting reminder that we have barely heard the words “climate change” in this campaign – and to “ask him if he would kindly reconsider” his tweet-slamming of London mayor Sadiq Khan.
The US president, adhering to the trusty principle that if you’ve taken someone’s words out of context it’s far better to steamroller on and insist on your #alternativefacts, yesterday lambasted Khan for his “pathetic excuse”, which the “MSM [mainstream media] is working hard to sell”, by repeating the words the mayor actually said.
The London attack – and the resulting political melee over police cuts, internet monitoring and the reporting of extremism – of course still dominates. It was in the prime minister’s words yesterday, and in her lack of words when she declined five times to respond to questions about statistics showing the number of armed police is lower now than in 2010, when T May became home secretary. It was in the tussle over what Corbyn does or does not think about shoot-to-kill policies.
And it came up in Monday night’s postponed BBC Question Time special, in which Tim Farron accused the prime minister of being ready to sacrifice civil liberties to crack down on extremism:
It’s easy and tempting for politicians to come up with a knee-jerk response. People are seeking answers and want to see action.
Focus group work by the Guardian suggests people are indeed seeking answers and want to see action on terrorism. But it’s not clear which party they believe can deliver it.
On that same Question Time outing, Nicola Sturgeon leaned back from hints of a coalition with a minority Labour government, preferring an issue-by-issue palling-up, as long as “that would keep the Tories out of power”.
But the first minister faced pressure over the devolved government’s education scorecard, which she rebutted with the correct but not entirely compensatory retort that “on Thursday we’re not choosing a Scottish government”.
But the real watch-through-your-fingers moment was a tie between culture secretary Karen Bradley, who stumbled over police cuts numbers, and shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, who looked suspiciously as if she was winging it when quizzed on Sky News over last year’s Harris report on London policing.
At a glance:
- Tory winter fuel allowance cut puts 4,000 lives at risk, claims Labour.
- The Guardian view on the election in Scotland: a chance to puncture May’s complacency.
- Cancel Trump state visit, says Sadiq Khan – and the Guardian agrees.
- Police investigate Banksy offer of free print for voters who spurn Tories.
- Catch up with the Guardian’s Election Daily podcast.
Poll position
Monday’s Guardian/ICM poll was a flutter not a shift: Labour up one point to 34% since last week, but the Tories holding strong and stable (now they’ve awkwardly sidelined that slogan) on 45%. A Survation poll for ITV’s Good Morning Britain today has it at 42% v 40%, with the Tories down two points and Labour pepping up by three.
Another of those controversial YouGov modellings still has May short of the 326 seats she’d need for a majority: it pegs her on 305 MPs, with Corbyn garnering 268, the SNP 42 and Lib Dems 13.
So that’s clear.
Diary
- Theresa May is out on the big blue battle bus.
- At 9am the Radio 4 Woman’s Hour debate has Amber Rudd, Diane Abbott, Lib Dem Jo Swinson, the SNP’s Kirsty Blackman and Ukip’s Margot Parker.
- At 9.45 in London, Nick Clegg makes a speech on Brexit; Boris Johnson intervenes on the same issue in a speech at 11am.
- Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale and Scottish Lib Dem campaign chair Alex Cole-Hamilton are both in Edinburgh; Nicola Sturgeon takes the SNP campaign to north-east Scotland.
- At 11am there is a nationwide minute’s silence for victims of the London attack.
- At 6.30pm Lib Dem peer Lynne Featherstone launches the party’s youth manifesto in London.
- Jeremy Corbyn addresses a rally in Birmingham this evening.
- At 8.30pm the STV Scottish leaders’ debate pits Sturgeon and Dugdale against Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie and Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson. The Scottish Greens have not been invited.
- And at 9pm it’s the BBC Newsbeat youth election debate: we’re promised representatives from the Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems, SNP, Plaid Cymru, Greens and Ukip.
Read these
In the Financial Times, Sebastian Payne says a narrow win for May could see her in trouble:
The danger zone, however, is anything below a majority of 50. Any increased majority will be heralded publicly as a triumph, but Tories would see it as a waste of time and a missed opportunity. The Corbynista programme wouldn’t have been given the shellacking they think it deserves and brows would be furrowed over both the prime minister’s performance and judgment. She would face calls to change her management style and to leave the cabinet much as it is.
The Conservative party loves regicide but not even the craziest MPs would try to challenge her immediately after polling day. But when the first difficulties from the Brexit talks arise, who will be there to have her back? For all the talk of Mayism, Mayites are still a rare species. They will be even harder to find if she doesn’t win convincingly on Thursday.
Lyndsey Stonebridge, in Prospect magazine, says immigration targets are just one element of today’s “fantasy” politics:
Fantasy is precisely what we need to understand here. We’ve underestimated the strength of fantasy in our political culture over the past year. Throwing reason at blatant unreason has proved as effective as smashing rotten tomatoes at a blank wall. Reason is not sticking. This isn’t just about falsehoods and fake news. It is about a limen of unreason that has got into our democracy and is putting one of its core principles to the test: reasoned consent to government.
Memory jog of the day
Why is Donald Trump taking such personal aim at Sadiq Khan? Last year, the London mayor called his plans for a Muslim ban “ignorant”, comments that prickled the then presidential candidate, who challenged Khan to an IQ test and then warned him: “I will remember those statements.”
The IQ face-off has yet to materialise but the grudge has certainly been kept.
The day in a tweet
Because you’ll need to know the constituency names for your Thursday night checklist, start here. And if that were not enticement enough:
Since folk are asking. Longest: Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East.
— Philip Cowley (@philipjcowley) June 5, 2017
At other end, joint honours: Bath, Hove.
And another thing
Would you like to wake up to this briefing in your inbox every weekday? Sign up here. And once the election is (finally) over, why not sign up here for the Guardian morning briefing; you can read the latest edition here.
And one last thing
Unlike many news organisations, the Guardian hasn’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can. The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. Here’s how you can support it.
