Reform UK leader rules out helping Tories at general election and says party will stand in every seat in Britain – as it happened

Reform Party leader Richard Tice. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

5.30pm GMT

Afternoon summary

• Conservative MPs are pleading with Reform UK not to stand against them in the general election, the leader of the rightwing populist party has claimed.

• Junior doctors’ leaders say they are prepared to stage yet more strike action after the longest stoppage in NHS history, unless ministers make them a new offer to end the bitter pay row.

• Students taking part in the government’s post-Brexit replacement for the EU’s Erasmus+ student exchange scheme were forced to drop out because places were confirmed too late, while others failed to receive funding until after their return, according to analysis.

• Neil O’Brien, a Conservative MP and former minister, has written to the home secretary expressing his concern over the sudden death of a Sikh activist in Birmingham earlier this year.

• Several of the world’s biggest carmakers lobbied the UK government to try to weaken or delay rules to accelerate electric car sales and cut Britain’s carbon emissions, the Guardian can reveal.

Junior doctors on a picket line outside St. Thomas’ hospital in London. Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian

4.13pm GMT

Richard Holden, the Conservative party chair, has been busy. As well as issuing a statement attacking Reform UK (see 2.19pm), he has also issued this in response to the Lib Dem poster launch this morning.

The Liberal Democrats’ short-term political game-playing does not address the priorities of the British people. Instead, the Liberal Democrats will let in Labour enabling their dangerous £28bn-a-year spending spree.

What is most interesting about both comments from Holden is the implication that the Tories believe that Labour is most vulnerable on its plan to spend £28bn a year on green investment. In the past polling evidence implied the pledge was popular. The activist and public opinion expert Leo Barasi posted some data on this in a thread on X starting here.

A straight test of the climate pledge finds it gets widespread support across Labour's voter coalition: pic.twitter.com/QbZ9sVmTSH

— Leo Barasi 🇺🇦 leobarasi.bsky.social (@leobarasi) May 22, 2023

But Holden clearly thinks that, if he can convert this into a borrowing/tax policy in public perception, he can make it a vote loser. Interestingly, there is some evidence that Labour fears he’s right.

Updated at 4.23pm GMT