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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

Rishi Sunak rejects claim he plans to move to California if he loses election – as it happened

Sir Keir Starmer National Service ​​Rishi Sunak AnneMarie Trevelyan United Kingdom Allie HodgkinsBrown Conservatives JUSTIN WEBB SNP Foreign Office
Rishi Sunak kneeling and talking to children at football practice
Rishi Sunak at a Chesham United Youth training session on Monday. Photograph: Alastair Grant/AFP/Getty Images

Early evening summary

  • Rishi Sunak’s faltering election campaign suffered a fresh blow tonight when the outgoing MP Lucy Allan resigned from the party and backed the Reform UK candidate to replace her in Telford. Explaining her decision, Allan said:

I have resigned from the Conservative party to support Alan Adams to be Telford’s next MP.

I have known Alan for many years and he is genuinely the best person for the job. I want the best for Telford and I can’t just let the Labour candidate have a walkover. ”

As a Royal Navy veteran, Alan knows what it means to serve. He is the candidate who is most in touch with Telford people and best able to represent them. He will serve all residents, not just those who vote for him.

  • Keir Starmer has delivered his first proper campaign speech, insisting that voters can trust him on on security – “economic security, border security and national security”. (See 12.20pm.)

  • Sunak has rejected claims that he plans to leave the UK and move to California if he loses the election. (See 5.31pm.)

Updated

These are from my colleague Peter Walker, who was at the Rishi Sunak event in Amersham this afternoon.

Look who has just turned up at a rugby club in Amersham, the Home Counties seats nicked by the Lib Dems to begin the blue wall era. This is, frankly, the sort of seat that in most elections the Conservatives should win without breaking a sweat, let alone a PM visit.

Gareth Williams, the local Tory candidate, gave a flavour of the area with his own stump speech by naming as the first problematic Labour policy the imposition of VAT on private school fees.

Sunak mentions national service in his stump speech - but not first. Has a long go at Labour too. Says Labour is taking the electorate for granted.

We are promised some off-camera media questions after the speech. Let’s see if this largesse extends to the Guardian.

Questions from the PM were granted to Telegraph, Express, Mail, i, BBC, Politico, but *not* the Guardian.

Rishi Sunak has accused Keir Starmer of not offering a “single new idea” in his speech this morning.

In a speech in Buckinghamshire, Sunak described his announcement of a new form of national service as a “bold decision”. As PA Media reports, he went on:

In contrast, Keir Starmer has made yet another half hour speech today, but was there one single new idea in that speech?

“No,” Tory members replied.

Sunak added:

They have had 14 years to think about what they want to do and they have got nothing to say about the future of our country and that is what we are going to show. We are going to show that we have got a plan for the future.

Conservative MPs Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) and Rob Butler (Aylesbury) could be seen in the audience.

Sunak rejects claim he plans to move to California if he loses election

Rishi Sunak has given an interview to Robert Peston, ITV’s political editor.

Here are the main lines, according to ITV.

  • Sunak rejected claims he is planning to leave the UK to move to California if he loses the election.

  • He refused to say what sanctions 18-year-olds might face if they refuse to take part in his planned compulsory national service.

  • He claimed he had enjoyed the opening of the election campaign.

  • And he claimed not to be bothered about whether Keir Starmer was or wasn’t taking time off. Yesterday Richard Holden, the Tory chair, claimed Starmer was resting for a party – part of a concerted CCHQ briefing campaign alleging Starmer lacks energy. (See 10.36am.)

Theresa May criticises politicians who blame civil servants when they can't do what they want, in apparent dig at Liz Truss

Theresa May, the former PM, has said she is is concerned that it “has become almost the done thing if you’re not getting something through as a politician to blame the civil service, and I think that is wrong.”

Speaking at the Hay festival in Powys, the former prime minister described the existence of a politically neutral civil service as “a huge benefit here in the UK”, and that “if ministers aren’t getting what they want through”, as she experienced when her Brexit bill was blocked, then “it’s down to them and it’s not down to the civil service”.

May seemed to be referring in particular to Liz Truss, another former PM who recently published a book accusing the civil service, and other establishment forces, of obstructing radical things she wanted to achieve as a minister.

May also said that she hoped, if it had been raining when she called an election outside No 10 in 2017, that those around her “might have provided [her] with an umbrella”.

Lucy Allan MP suspended by Tories after backing Reform UK candidate

Lucy Allan has had her Tory membership suspended, and the whip withdrawn, James Heale from the Specator reports, because she endorses a Reform UK candidate. (See 4.40pm.) Although MPs won’t return to parliament before the election, she will remain an MP until Thursday, when parliament is dissolved.

New: Tory MP Lucy Allan has been suspended from the party with immediate effect. It follows her endorsement of a Reform candidate to succeed her in Telford.

Tory spox: “A vote for Reform is a vote for Keir Starmer.”

Confirmation that Allan has lost the whip as well as having her Tory membership suspended.

Think that’s the first time a Tory MP has lost the whip after an election was called since Charles Wardle in 2001.

George Gardiner lost the whip for backing the Referendum party in 1997 - but that was nine days before the election had actually been declared

Starmer says he 'couldn't care less' about CCHQ briefing he is tired

Keir Starmer has said he “couldn’t care less” about Tory HQ claiming he is finding campaigning too tiring. Asked about the briefings, which have come from anonymous party figures and from the Tory chair, Richard Holden (see 10.36am), and whether he found them annoying, Starmer told ITV’s Anushka Asthana

I couldn’t care less. I think they’re rummaging around in the toy box of ideas because they haven’t got a clue, they haven’t got any strategy.

Starmer says he would call himself a socialist - but he defines it in terms of putting country first

Keir Starmer has said he would call himself as socialist – although when asked to define socialism, he just said it was about putting the country first.

In his interview with Chris Mason for the BBC, asked if he would call himself a socialist Starmer replied:

Yes, I would describe myself as a socialist. I describe myself as a progressive. I’d describe myself as somebody who always puts the country first and party second.

Asked how he would describe his socialism, he replied:

Let me just explain exactly what I mean by that. Because, for me, politics is about putting the country in the service of working people. Politics is about service for me, and that’s why I changed the Labour party in the service of working people.

What I’m doing now is humbly asking voters to trust us to change the country and put the country back in the service of working people.

Normally socialism is defined in terms of having some commitment to public ownership – or at the very least the collective provision of public services.

Updated

Starmer declines to rule out raising main rate of VAT - but claims Labour's plans don't require further tax rises

Keir Starmer has declined to rule out putting up the main rate of VAT.

In an interview on BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg yesterday, Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, said: “What I want and Keir wants is taxes on working people to be lower and we certainly won’t be increasing income tax or national insurance if we win at the election.”

In an interview today with the BBC’s political editor, Chris Mason, Starmer refused to give the same assurance about VAT. He said that “working people have been overburdened with increased taxes” and that none of Labour’s plan required them to raise taxes, beyond the small number of tax increases aready announced (like putting VAT on private school fees).

But he would not give a firm assurance.

Asked if he was saying the main rate of VAT would not change, he replied:

I think working people have been overburdened with tax increases in recent years. We have gone through all of our plans, and none of them require us to raise taxes.

Starmer gave the same answer in an interview with Anushka Asthana from ITV.

The main rate of VAT is currently 20%. It has been at that level, the highest it has been since VAT was introduced in the 1970s, since 2011.

In the 2019 manifesto the Conservative ruled out raising the rate of income tax, national insurance and VAT.

Outgoing Tory Lucy Allan backs Reform UK candidate to succeed her as Telford MP

Conservative MP Lucy Allan has said she will back Reform at the election in a further blow to Rishi Sunak and his faltering campaign.

The MP for Telford, who announced last year that she was standing down, said that she would support her local Reform candidate in the coming contest.

Richard Tice, the Reform leader, said he welcomed Allan’s support, as the Conservative MP tweeted a link to the party’s local candidate, Alan Adams, to allow people to help up and donate to his campaign.

The Conservatives have been approached for comment but MPs who support another party normally have the whip or their membership suspended.

Election campaigns are largely tedious photocalls interspersed with moments of high drama. This is what PA Media has filed on Rishi Sunak’s visit to a garden centre in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, this afternoon – which seems to be firmly in the first category of election event.

The prime minister met Nigel Gardner, the Conservative candidate for the new constituency of Harpenden and Berkhamsted.

The two stacked plant pots onto shelves together as Gardner remarked about the “huge new constituency” he was standing to represent.

Sunak exited the garden centre, passing by the cashiers and out onto the high street, with shoppers surprised to see the prime minister in their midst.

Some members of the public could be heard attempting to heckle him as he walked down the street outside.

Rishi Sunak has been campaigning in Chesham and Amersham, a former Tory seat that turned Lib Dem in a byelection in 2021, and he has attended a training event with Chesham United Youth.

Harvey Whitby, who was president of Birmingham Young Conservatives, has defected to the Liberal Democrats. He is particularly concerned about the national service policy, although in an open letter posted on X he cites other factors. Tory MPs should have made Penny Mordaunt leader, he suggests.

Momentum, the leftwing Labour group, has criticised Keir Starmer for not committing in his Q&A this morning to getting rid of the Tory rule requiring people to show photo ID when they vote. (See 12.20pm.)

Tory peer Zac Goldsmith says Sunak has damaged party 'almost beyond repair'

Zac Goldsmith, the Tory peer and former minister, has said that Rishi Sunak has damaged the party “almost beyond repair” and that a majority of Conservative MPs will lose their jobs next month.

But he does not have much sympathy for them. He said it was their fault for supporting Sunak’s leadership.

Goldsmith, who resigned from Sunak’s government last year accusing the PM of not being sufficiently committed to the natural environment, was a close ally of Boris Johnson when Johnson was PM. In a post on X, he implied the party was wrong to ditch Johnson, although did not say so explicitly.

I understand the anger towards Sunak who has damaged the Party almost beyond repair and all but guaranteed the majority of his MPs will lose their job next month.

But it’s hard to muster much sympathy given that none of this would have happened without the complicity of a majority of the Party & what is now unfolding was entirely predictable- indeed predicted.

The hope is that when Sunak disappears off to California in a few weeks there are at least some decent MPs left around which to rebuild

Alex Salmond’s Alba party is fielding 20 candidates in Scotland at the election. As the BBC reports, speaking at his campaign launch in Dundee, Salmond, the former SNP leader and former first minister said he was treating this election, and every election, as a vote on independence. He said:

That argument has to be introduced to the people of Scotland, because the strategy of waiting for a unionist party to grant us a referendum or going off to the supreme court in London - that’s a dead-end strategy.

Rishi Sunak has distanced himself from Tory attacks on Keir Starmer over his age, PA Media reports.

Asked about Tory briefings (see 10.36am) suggesting Starmer (who is 61) does not have has much energy as Sunak (who is 44), Sunak replied:

I’m interested in getting out and about across the country.

We’re a few days into this, we’ve been in the East Midlands, the West Midlands, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, here in the South East today, talking to people – parents – about the future.

The substance is what matters at this election, it’s a choice about the future.

Speaking to reporters, Sunak also defended his plan to make all 18-year-olds take part in a form of national service, claiming he was being “bold” in proposing the measure. He said:

This modern form of national service will mean that young people get the skills and the opportunities that they need which is going to serve them very well in life.

It’s going to foster a culture of service which is going to be incredibly powerful for making our society more cohesive and in a more uncertain and dangerous world it’s going to strengthen our country’s security and resilience.

For all these reasons I think this is absolutely the right thing to do. Yes, it is bold, but that’s the kind of leadership I offer.

This is from Sky’s Darren McCaffrey.

Updated

Rishi Sunak has said that 18-year-olds who sign up for the military section of his proposed national service plan would be paid a stipend to help with living costs.

Answering questions on the Conservative party’s TikTok account, Sunak said:

As is the case in other countries, we will provide a stipend to help with living costs for those doing the military element alongside their training.

Meanwhile, on the civic side, we will make sure organisations have funding for training and administration.

As PA Media reports, the Tories are using the social media site even though security concerns have seen its use banned from government devices.

Tory deputy chair James Daly rejects suggestion from leaked memo his constituency party short of money

Officials at Conservative HQ believe that some of their candidates are failing to get behind campaigning, according to leaked memo. In her story on the document for the Times, Geraldine Scott says:

Conservative staff accused MPs of focusing too much on ministerial business in a document accidentally emailed to party MPs by a senior campaigning figure at Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ).

The message had two attachments. One was a constituency breakdown with what appeared to be sanitised comments. The other had the unvarnished thoughts of Conservative staff. The email was later recalled.

The “key theme” identified in the document was that candidates had failed to “get behind” the campaign, with some on holiday or refusing to knock on doors.

The memo also suggests some local parties are short of funds. It refers to Bury North, where James Daly, the party’s deputy chair, is the MP, and sums up the situation there as: “low funds, circa £2k, met with donors but so far no donations”.

In an interview with Times Radio, asked about the leak, Daly claimed he was having no problem raising money. He explained:

Over the last twelve months I have paid for around 500,000 leaflets and surveys to go out to the people of Bury North. I’ve spent a huge amount of money. I will have enough money within my fighting fund to send out all the leaflets and campaigning material needed. There will be no issue with donations to my campaign.

Daly had a majority of just 105 over Labour at the last election. The recent YouGov MRP poll suggested Labour is on course to win by 53% to 23%.

Barbara Keeley, the Labour MP for Worsley and Eccles South, has announced she is standing down at the election. First elected to parliament in 2005, Keeley, a former minister, says she is meant to be in a six-week recovery period after hospital treatment and the prospect of having to fight an election campaign now persuaded her to step aside.

Labour’s candidate in East Worthing and Shoreham, Tom Rutland, introduced Keir Starmer ahead of his speech in Lancing this morning. Here they are drinking coffee together. To win, Rutland needs to overturn a Tory majority of 7,474. The YouGov MRP poll from April had Labour on course to beat the Tories by 45% to 28%.

Updated

A unionist unity candidate in Fermanagh and South Tyrone would be unable to deliver a unified message, UUP leader Doug Beattie has said. PA Media reports:

Outlining his rationale for opposing the strategy backed by the DUP and TUV, Beattie suggested it would be impossible for one candidate to represent parties with very different positions on such key issues as the return of Stormont devolution and the deal the DUP struck with the UK government on post-Brexit trade barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.

The UUP has already selected local councillor Diana Armstrong as its candidate in the constituency.

There was phone contact between unionist leaders on Friday scoping the potential for running a non-party candidate to take on Sinn Fein.

While the DUP and TUV support the strategy, Beattie has made clear his opposition. He said: “Would this proposed unity candidate support the DUP and UUP position of entering the executive? If they did, the TUV wouldn’t support. Would they promote the ‘Safeguarding the Union’ document as a good deal? If they did, the UUP wouldn’t support. Would they refer to the DUP as (Northern Ireland) protocol implementors? If they did, the DUP wouldn’t support.

“The reality being any ‘unity’ candidate would be undermined with just a basic level of scrutiny. They would not be able to deliver a unified message.”

John Swinney was in rainy Dumfries this morning, where umbrellas are compulsory and his campaign message about getting rid of every Tory MP in Scotland was again drowned out by questions about the ongoing row over former health secretary Michael Matheson’s ipad bill.

Dumfries and Galloway is of course Scottish secretary Alister Jack’s constituency – and the Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross is pointedly campaigning in Matheson’s own Falkirk constituency today.

Swinney angered opposition members at Holyrood last week when he claimed the sanctions process – which saw Holyrood’s standards committee recommend that Matheson lose his salary for 54 days and be suspended as an MSP after wrongly claiming £11,000 in expenses for streaming football matches on holiday – was “prejudiced”. He also angered some in his own party who can see the row trumping their general election messages.

Swinney stood by his criticism of the process this morning, saying: “It’s been prejudiced by the fact that a Conservative MSP [who sits on the standards committee] made comments about this case and has not recused themselves from deciding on it”.

Although SNP MSPs also sat on the same committee and supported the financial element of the sanction, but not the exclusion period, Swinney denied he was directing them to change their minds when the whole parliament votes on the sanction later this week. He said:

I’m not directing members to do anything. I’m simply saying there’s a flaw in the process that parliament’s got to address.

With the Scottish Tories bringing a separate vote calling for Matheson to resign this Wednesday, this row will continue to offer SNP opponents easy attack lines.

And it’s bigger than a bubble row, cutting through with voters months ago; last November, before this latest iteration of the saga, we had polling showing a majority of voters and a majority of SNP voters thought Matheson should resign.

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, has said his party intends to take seats from the SNP at the election.

As PA Media reports, launching the Scottish campaign, Davey said seats such as Mid Dunbartonshire and Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire would be target seats for the party.

Mid Dunbartonshire, which was previously East Dunbartonshire before it was amended under boundary changes, was won by the SNP with just 149 votes, with former Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson in second place.

Davey said:

We have got great MPs but I think we also have a great number of candidates who can beat the SNP in places like Dunbartonshire with Susan Murray, in places like Inverness, Skye and West Rossshire with Angus MacDonald.

I believe we can make gains here in Scotland just as we’re going to make gains against the Conservatives in England …

The SNP are going to lose a lot of seats in Scotland, we’re going to win seats here.

Tory minister Steve Baker implies he can't support national service plan because of reaction in Northern Ireland

Steve Baker, the Northern Ireland minister, has in effect disowned the Conservative party proposal for compulsory military service.

In a message on X, responding to a tweet from the Mail on Sunday columnist Dan Hodges, who pointed out that a defence minister highlighted problems with a national service policy in a Commons statement last week, Baker said national service was Tory policy but not government policy.

It’s a Conservative Party policy.

The Government’s policy was set out on Thursday

And he complained that he had not been consulted.

I don’t like to be pedantic but a Government policy would have been developed by ministers on the advice of officials and collectively agreed. I would have had a say on behalf of NI.

But this proposal was developed by a political adviser or advisers and sprung on candidates, some of whom are relevant ministers.

National service would be problematic in Northern Ireland because it would imply people being forced to serve in the military (even though, under the Tory plan, serving in the military is only one option, available for a minority). Nationalists and republicans do not feel allegiance to the Crown and during the second world war Northern Ireland was the one part of the UK exempt from conscription.

As RTÉ News reports, Colum Eastwood, leader of the SDLP, the nationalist party in Northern Ireland, has said implementing national service in Northern Ireland would cause chaos.

SDLP leader Colum Eastwood has described plans by the Conservative Party to introduce mandatory national service or volunteering in the community across the UK as “utterly bonkers”, adding it would be “chaos” to try and implement in Northern Ireland

Bridget Phillipson says it's wrong to claim Labour policy to blame for private schools facing budget problems

There have been a lot of reports, particularly in the Telegraph and the Times recently, suggesting that Labour’s plan to put VAT on private school fees will lead to some of them having to close. Yesterday the Sunday Telegraph ran a story on its front page saying parents with children at the Alton school in Hampshire were blaming the Labour policy for the fact it is closing this summer (although the school itself does not seem to be saying that, at least not that bluntly, the report implied).

This morning Keir Starmer adopted a conciliatory tone when talking about private schools. (See 10.52am.)

But on Times Radio this morning Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, was more combative. She said it was “a bit desperate” for private schools to blame Labour for their own budget troubles. She said:

Private schools have whacked up their fees way beyond inflation year after year. And I do think it’s a bit desperate that there’s any suggestion that the fact that some schools haven’t managed their budgets particularly well up until now, under 14 years of the Conservatives, is frankly anything to do with a Labour government.

Private schools need to consider how they can manage their budgets, how they ought to cut their cloth. Our state schools have been under enormous pressure in recent years and have had to make some really tough choices. Yet, despite that, [they] are working day in, day out to deliver a brilliant education.

Starmer's speech and Q&A - summary and analysis

Anyone who has followed what Keir Starmer has been saying even half closely since he became Labour leader will have heard most of what he said in the speech this morning before. But elections are decided people who don’t follow politics closely, who can tune out of Westminster politics quite happily for 4/5 years at a time, and campaigns are when leaders have to make their pitch to this audience. That was what Starmer was doing today, and although policy-lite (at least in terms of new policy), it was message-rich.

The full text of the speech is here.

Starmer also took a lot of questions from journalists, and answered them confidently, if not always candidly. It remains to be seen whether Rishi Sunak will subject himself to the same scrutiny, and if so whether he will emerge as unscathed.

Here are the main points.

  • Starmer insisted that voters could trust him on security – “economic security, border security and national security”. (See 9.54am.) Two weeks ago Rishi Sunak gave a major speech arguing that Labour could not be trusted on defence. This was a solid response.

  • Starmer in effect cited his policy U-turns as evidence that he would put the interests of voters first. The Conservatives argue Starmer cannot be trusted because he has abandoned some of the leftwing policies he backed when running for Labour leader in 2020. One argument that Starmer has deployed in response to this is to say that most of his pledges still apply. But the other argument is to say that he deserves credit for aligning with public opinion, and this is what he claimed today. He said in his speech:

I took this Labour party four and a half years ago and I changed it into the party you see today. I was criticised for some of the changes I’ve made - change is always like that, there are always people who say don’t do that, don’t go so fast - but whenever I face a fork in the road, at the Crown Prosecution Service, in my work in Northern Ireland, and especially here in the Labour party … it always comes back to this, the golden thread: country first, party second.

In a long profile of Starmer published in the Telegraph on Saturday, Pat McFadden, Labour’s national campaign coordinator, made the same argument, only rather better than Starmer himself did this morning. McFadden said:

I think one of the things he’s been somewhat unfairly attacked for is lots of U-turns. There have been changes in position, but I don’t think they’ve been random. There has been a thread of direction that unites them, which is that, every time he’s met a fork in the road or a point of inflection, he has chosen the path that brings Labour closer to the public.

  • Starmer said he was brought up in a rural town, Oxted, which is “about as English as it gets”. Coming over all Thomas Hardy at one point, he told his audience this morning:

Like everyone, I imagine my character is shaped by where I started in life. I grew up in a small town, not a million miles away from here, a place called Oxted on the Surrey-Kent border.

Similar to Lancing, minus the sea. And should you go to Oxted, some of you could stop off if you’re travelling back to London, you will see a place that, in my opinion, is about as English as it gets.

A mix of Victorian red bricks and pebble-dashed semis while all around you have rolling pastures and the beautiful chalk hills of the North Downs.

I loved growing up there. You could make easy pocket money clearing stones for the local farmers, that was actually my first job. And you could play football until the cows came home – literally. At my first football club, Boulthurst Athletic, we shared our home pitch with the local cows.

It’s part of why I love our country. Not just the beauty – or the football - also the sort of quiet, uncomplaining resilience. The togetherness of the countryside. That is the best of British.

Starmer has spoken about his upbringing many times before, but never in quite such pastoral terms. This sounded like a response to the Tory charge that he’s a posh, north London lawyer.

  • He said that Sunak’s claim the UK had “turned the corner” was “a form of disrespect”. He explained:

I am fed up of listening to the prime minister tell you we have turned the corner. That is a form of disrespect in itself.

Taxes - higher than at any time since the war. Chaos – hitting every working family to the tune of £5000, and a prime minister prepared to do it all over again. He says he wants to get rid of National Insurance. £46bn – that is currently used on your pension and the NHS and he’s not prepared to say how he will fund it.

  • He ridiculed Sunak’s plan for national service, describing it as a “teenage Dad’s Army” and a sign of desperation. He said:

The desperation of this national service policy - a teenage Dad’s Army - paid for by cancelling levelling-up funding and money from tax avoidance that we would use to invest in our NHS.

As Matthew Holehouse from the Economist points out, Sunak also attacked the fact that Sunak wants to raid levelling up funding to pay for the plan. In doing so, he was projecting himself as the person most likely to implement the Boris Johnson levelling up agenda.

Starmer says choice at the election is National Service or “levelling up and the NHS with Labour”. Another case of Lab seeking to fill the Boris Johnson-shaped vacuum…

  • Starmer rejected Tory claims that he did not have the energy to campaign effectively, saying they were only claming that because they were desperate. (See 10.36am.) He said:

I’ve had a smile on my face since January 1 2024 because I knew this was going to be an election year.

I’ve wasted nine years of my life in opposition. I’ve worked four-and-a-half years to change this Labour party, and now I’ve got the chance to take that to the country.

So we’re doing that not only with energy, but with a smile, with positivity across all of our candidates as we go into this election.

  • He said that as PM he would tell the Israeli prime minister to stop the Rafah offensive. (See 10.42am.)

  • He refused to rule out raising tuition fees. (See 11.25am.)

  • He refused to commit to abolishing the photo ID voting rule. (See 10.53am.)

  • He ruled out allowing EU nationals to vote in general elections. (See 10.46am.)

  • He said respected the decision some parents make to send their children to private schools. This is currently the top news line on the Telegraph’s website.

Updated

Matthew Holehouse from the Economist has posted some pictures on X that help to explain the context for Keir Starmer’s speech this morning.

Lancing Parish hall for Keir Starmer’s first campaign speech. East Worthing and Shoreham constituency; Tory majority 7,474; 54% Leave. Backdrop: Brighton airport and beyond, Lancing College.

Not so different to Oxsted, says Starmer. “About as English as it gets. Red bricks and semis, rolling hills and pastures. You can make easy money clearing stones for the local farmers. A quiet uncomplaining resilience. The best of British, which is just as well, as you need it.”

This speech feels like the culmination of four years of Starmer speeches: a dissolute and disrespectful Westminster; small-c conservative working-class values; stability; a modest, muted politics. Government in a minor key.

Stephen Bush from the FT is also unimpressed by the CCHQ attack operation against Keir Starmer.

Starmer refuses to rule out raising tuition fees

During his Q&A Keir Starmer was asked by my colleague Aletha Adu if he would rule out raising tuition fees. He said he wanted to change the system, but would not rule out putting them up. He replied:

I think the current arrangements don’t work for students, and I don’t think they work for universities. So there’s a powerful case for change. And we are looking at options to change the approach.

Abolishing tuition fees is one option. And I said five years ago that I would want to do that.

But now there’s been huge damage to the economy done by Liz Truss and the Tories over the last five years and difficult choices have to be made. Abolishing tuition fees would cost a huge amount of money.

And we can’t both abolish tuition fees and have 40,000 extra appointments every week in the NHS. We’ve done the sums. We can’t have both. So I’ve taken a political choice, which is to say at the moment,we have got to prioritise the NHS.

My colleague Gaby Hinsliff thinks Starmer won’t be able to duck this question for the whole of the election campaign.

On tuition fees: Starmer once again ducks the question of whether he’s considering raising them before explaining yet again why he no longer believes in abolishing them. This question is going to have to be answered at sone point in the campaign

The Conservative party is very active in terms of rebuttal at the moment and clever rebuttal – pointing out flaws in what your opponents have said – can make a big difference in a campaign.

But 90% of CCHQ rebuttal at the moment just consists of the same empty slogans. Frankly, they sound like the pub bore.

For the record, this is what they have sent out to journalists in response to the Keir Starmer speech. It’s a statement from Richard Holden, the Tory chair.

Once again Keir Starmer stood up to tell the country absolutely nothing. In this wearisome and rambling speech there was no policy, no substance, and no plan.

The question remains: will Starmer ever find the courage and conviction to tell us what he would do, or does he simply not know?

The choice is clear: stick with the plan that is working and take bold action for a safer, more secure future with Rishi Sunak or go back to square one with Labour.

The Conservatives know full well that Labour do have plans; they published a detailed document less then two weeks ago costing them.

Theresa May says she accepts some responsibility for Windrush scandal

Theresa May has told a new documentary that she takes responsibility for the Windrush scandal as home secretary at the time the problem was identified.

The former prime minister also said she “recognises” that she should have met Grenfell victims immediately after the devastating fire.

She made the comments in a new programme, Theresa May: The Accidental Prime Minister for ITV saying of the 2017 tower disaster that cost 72 lives: “I should have gone and met victims. I recognise that.”

Her chief of staff Gavin Barwell said:

We got that call badly wrong. We served her very badly because it played on the perceptions that people already have from the election campaign, that she wasn’t comfortable with that kind of face to face contact.

May did go and meet victims the next day in a nearby church but was criticised at the time for not going sooner.

On the Windrush scandal, which followed May’s “hostile environment”policy when she was in the Home Office, May said:

Should we in the Home Office have had a greater sense of trying to identify whether there were other people, people who were going to get caught up in this way? I don’t believe that question was ever asked. And that’s what lay behind the problems.

Asked if she was home secretary when this was the case, she says: “I was. And as home secretary, you take responsibility.”

Q: Are you ready to face policy challenges from Labour mayors like Andy Burnham and Sadiq Khan? And would you be willing to say no to them if necessary?

Yes, and yes, Starmer says.

He says he expects mayors to push central government, and to push for what is best for their areas.

He says he wants mayors and central government to work together.

But on some occasions he will have to say no, he says.

And that’s the end of the Q&A.

I will post a summary and analysis shortly.

Starmer refuses to commit to getting rid of photo ID voting rules

Q: Will you get rid of the vote ID rules introduced by the government?

Starmer says there are no “great plans” in that areas. He says he thinks the policy is being reviewed. But his priorities are the economy and the NHS, he says.

Q: Do you understand the concerns of people who send their children to private schools about your plans to put VAT on school fees?

Starmer says he understands why people send their children to private schools, and respects their decision. But he says he needs to prioritise. He says he wants to put 6,500 more teachers in state schools. The VAT money will fund that, he says. He says he wants to make schools better for all pupils.

Q: Are the 15 EU countries who are considering some Rwanda-type scheme wrong?

Starmer says they are not proposing the Rwanda scheme (which just involves deporting people coming to the UK to apply for asylum).

He says they are considering offshoring asylum applications (sending applications to a third country while their applications are considered). That is different, he says. He says he is not against that in principle.

Updated

Starmer rules out giving vote to EU citizens in general elections

Q: [From the Sun] What do you say to people who claim giving the vote to 16 and 17-year-old is just the thin end of the wedge? Can you rule out giving the vote to EU citizens?

Yes, says Starmer.

But he says he has long believed that, if people can work and pay taxes at 16, they should be allowed to vote then.

In 2020 Starmer did propose giving EU nationals the right to vote in general elections.

Updated

Q: Can you win East Worthing and Shoreham for the first time since 1997?

Yes, says Starmer.

That prompts a large round of applause from Labour activists in the audience.

He says he is determined to make progress in the south east of London. He knows from his background what people in Sussex want, he says.

'Stop' - Starmer says that would be his message to Israel PM about Rafah offensive after bombing of refugee camp

Q: If you were PM, what would you be saying to Benjamin Netanyhu in the light of the attack on the refugee camp in Gaza?

Starmer replies: “Stop.”

He goes on:

Those reports are horrifying. And what makes it worse is that this was a safe space with women or children in it and families that already fled a number of times. It is horrifying to see that.

I’ve been saying for some time that the Rafah offensive should not take place and what you saw there was the consequences, the inevitable consequences, of that offensive.

Updated

Q: Some form of national service is quite popular with voters. And, as the father of a teenage son, how do you think he and his friends would feel about this?

Starmer says the UK needs strong defences. But this policy is desperate, he says. And it has not been thought through.

He says his priority would be levelling up and the NHS.

'Just so desperate' - Starmer dismisses Tory claims he is finding campaign tiring

Stamer is now taking questions.

Q: [From Anushka Asthana] The Tories says you are getting tired. What do you think they are getting at, and how would you respond?

Starmer says the Tories are “just so desperate”.

He says he has a plan he is sticking to. Maybe the Tories don’t appreciate that, because they don’t stick to their plans, he suggests.

The question referred to briefing from CCHQ over the weekend. Stefan Boscia has a good summary in his London Playbook briefing. He says:

Snoozin’ Starmer: The Tories are clearly trying to make Starmer’s age a thing early in the campaign (he’s 61), with aides repeatedly calling him “weary” on Sunday afternoon. CCHQ is doubling down on this message today, with a statement from Tory Party Chair Richard Holden saying it was “bizarre that Sir Keir Starmer … spent the day at home resting ahead of a speech which doesn’t say anything.” One Conservative aide went further by telling the Sun’s Harry Cole that Starmer should be known as “Sir Sleepy,” while another calls him “Sleepy Keir” in a story by the FT’s George Parker.

Trump playbook: The new nicknames are (obvs) inspired by Donald Trump’s childish nickname for Joe Biden, “Sleepy Joe,” and an attempt to contrast Starmer’s steady managerialism with the 44-year-old Sunak’s famously high-energy approach. In reality the Labour leader is a full 20 years younger than President Biden, and it is obviously a bit of a stretch to pretend he’s an old man pining for slippers and an open fire over the campaign trail, but hey — this is modern politics. Labour are rubbishing the claims as an example of “desperation” and point out Starmer was out campaigning the very day the election was called.

Updated

Starmer says he has been criticised for changes he has made. (He is referring in particular to his decision to drop some of the leftwing policies he championed when he was standing for Labour leader.)

He says, in taking these decisions, he always put the country first.

And he contrasts this with Rishi Sunak’s approach. Sunak always gives in when confronted with factions of his party.

Starmer ends by saying, just as he changed the Labour party, he can change the country.

Starmer says Tory plan for 'teenage Dad's Army' is sign of desperation

Starmer is now mocking Sunak over his approach to the election.

He says there has been a new plan every week, a new strategy every month, a new election campaign every day.

And he describes the national sevice plan, for a “teenage Dad’s Army”, as a sign of desparation.

And he is particularly crititical about the proposal to fund it “by cancelling levelling up and with money from tax avoidance that we would use to invest in our NHS”.

Updated

Starmer is now running through his six first step promises.

Starmer says Sunak's claim UK has 'turned the corner' is 'form of disrespect' because that's not what people feel

Starmer says he is fed up with hearing Rishi Sunak says the UK has “turned the corner”.

That is “a form of disrespect in itself”, he says.

Taxes are higher than at any time since the war, he says. And he claims Sunak’s commitment to abolishing national insurance means he is prepared to repeat the mistakes of Liz Truss all over again.

Updated

Starmer says in the 1970s people like his parents were able to think that, whatever disadvantages they had, they could be confident that their children would have a better future.

He says, after 14 years of the Conservatives, people cannot look forward to the future like this.

And he is now talking about security, using the passage briefed in advance about how he can be trusted on this. (See 9.54am.)

Starmer describes his upbringing in Oxted, a rural town 'about as English as it gets'

Starmer says character is shaped by where you grow up.

He says he grew up in Oxted, which is not far from Lancing.

He urges people in the audience to go. He says it is “about as English as it gets”.

He says it was a mix of Victorian red brick and pebbledash homes, with “rolling hills” and pastures all around.

He says he loved growing up there.

You could make easy money clearing stones for the local farmers. That was actually my first ever job.

You could play football until the cows came home. Literally.

His football team shared a pitch with the cows, he says.

He recalls his parents. And he says, in the 1970s, they experienced the impact of inflation. They knew what it was like not being able to pay the bills. They had to decide what bill they would not pay, and chose to have the phone cut off.

Updated

Starmer delivers election speech

Keir Starmer is in Lancing, in the constituency of East Worthing and Shoreham. It is seat where Tim Loughton has been the Tory MP. At the last election he had a majority of 7,474, but Labour now hopes to take the seat.

Tom Rutland, the Labour candidate, introduced Starmer.

And Starmer is speaking now.

'I make this promise: I will fight for you' - Starmer tells voters they can trust him on security

As Eleni Courea and Aletha Adu report in their preview of the speech Keir Starmer is giving tomorrow, he will try to use it to reassure voters who may have concerns about Labour.

In the speech Starmer will say:

Whatever the polls say, I know there are countless people who haven’t decided how they’ll vote in this election.

They’re fed up with the failure, chaos and division of the Tories, but they still have questions about us. Has Labour changed enough? Do I trust them with my money, our borders, and our security?

My answer is yes you can – because I have changed this party. Permanently. This has been my driving mission since day one. I was determined to change Labour so that it could serve the British people …

The very foundation of any good government is economic security, border security, and national security.

Make no mistake, if the British people give us the opportunity to serve, then this is their core test. It is always their core test.

I haven’t worked for four years on this, just to stop now. This is the foundation, the bedrock that our manifesto and our first steps will be built upon …

I know those people are looking at this election, looking at me personally. So, I make this promise: I will fight for you.

I took this Labour party four years ago, and I changed it into the party you see today. I was criticised for some of the changes I’ve made, change is always like that.

There are always people who say, don’t do that, don’t go so fast. But whenever I face a fork in the road, it always comes back to this: the golden thread: country first, party second.

Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, was giving interviews this morning. She told Times Radio that Starmer would “do everything within his power to keep our country safe”.

She also confirmed the Times splash saying that, if Labour is elected, it will carry out a 100-day “sprint review” of all the security threats facing the UK, in addition to the full security and defence review already planned. The Times says it will cover threats including “those from Russia, Iran and other hostile states, ­extremism and generative artificial ­intelligence that has been used to create chatbot terrorists online to ­recruit radicals”.

Updated

Teenagers who dodge Tories' proposed national service could be harming their job prospects, ministers suggest

The Conservatives have said they want to make participation in their proposed national service compuslory for 18-year-olds, but they have not said how they would do this. Yesterday James Cleverly, the home secretary, ruled out imposing criminal sanctions on people who did not join in.

This morning Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the Foreign Office minister, told ITV that teenagers who did dodge national service might be harming their job prospects.

She said she wanted participation to be seen as “part of the norms”. She went on:

Importantly, of course, when you then as a young person apply for a job, there will be a question that employers will want to know how you got involved – either because were able to achieve one of the 30,000 places (in the armed forces) or because you were volunteering in one or other part of your community.

As the Financial Times reports, yesterday Rishi Sunak said that people who have done national service could get preference when applying for university or for an apprenticeship, or in interviews for the civil service’s fast-track programme. He said:

We want to make sure Britain’s future generations can get the most out of national service. That’s why we’re looking into ways it can open doors they wouldn’t otherwise get in work or education.

This morning, asked if the parents of teenagers who refused to sign up for national service could face prosectution, Trevelyan said she could not give details now, and that this was the sort of issue the proposed royal commission would look at.

A sleepy bank holiday listener to BBC Radio Scotland would be forgiven for getting their party leaders mixed up this morning.

Lib Dem leader Ed Davey was speaking to Good Morning Scotland ahead of launching the party’s Scotland campaign later today - but it was curious to hear him borrowing from both Labour - “we are part of the change” - and the SNP - “vote Lib Dem to send a message to Westminster”.

With four seats on Scotland, the Lib Dems are eyeing up the weakness of the SNP and targeting others, in particular the seats of former leaders Jo Swinson and Charles Kennedy.

It was clear from the interview just how desperate the Lib Dems are to return to third place in the Commons behind Labour and the Tories - not surprising given the profile it has brought the SNP since 2015 - and this will be one of the key battles in this election campaign.

We don’t have comments open yet, but we plan to open them at 10am. Because it’s a bank holiday, we don’t have as many moderators working as usual.

Starmer and Sunak on campaign trail as Labour says Tory national service pledge ‘unravelling by the minute’

Good morning. We had the first big policy surprise of the election campaign at the weekend, and the Conservative plan to bring back a form of compulsory national service has had a mixed reception, to put it politely. As Eleni Courea and Aletha Adu report, a former head of the navy has described it as bonkers.

The propoal gets an enthusiastic write-up on the front page of the Tory loyalist Daily Express.

But the Daily Mail is notably more equivocal in its coverage.

Last night, in a sign they think the Conservatives are vulnerable on this issue, Labour issued a lengthy briefing note highlighting 22 “unanswered questions” about the policy. Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the Foreign Office minister, was doing a media round this morning, and when some of these were put to her on the Today programme, her answers were not particularly compelling.

Labour says:

The MoD could have to supply a 50% increase in Army accommodation, which based on the cost for new bed spaces could cost £4.8bn just on accommodation. Does the Conservatives’ costs take this into account?

When Justin Webb asked the minister a version of this question, saying she must have “some idea” where the new recruits would live, Trevelyan just said that a royal commission would consider the details, and that the Tories were not planning to implement this in full until the end of the next parliament.

And Labour says:

The National Citizen Service had its funding slashed by two-thirds by the government in 2022, when Rishi Sunak was chancellor. What were the flaws in that model of youth service which made it a bad use of money, that have been corrected in the new plan proposed this week?

Webb suggested that proposing to spend £2.5bn a year on national service, having just slashed the budget for the National Citizen Service programme (the voluntary programme launched by David Cameron when he was PM), implied “incoherence”. Asked to explain why the budget for the National Citizen Service had been cut so much, Trevelyan blamed Covid and other shocks to the economy that had led to spending being cut back in some areas.

In addition to highlighting criticisms of the plan from Michael Portillo, a former Tory defence secretary, Labour pointed out that Thin Pinstriped Line, a defence policy blog, has published a withering assessment of the plan. It said: “It’s hard to see how this policy could be delivered for the stated cost of £2.5bn per year given that even rough calculations are showing that it would cost billions more to deliver both short and long term.” Ben Wallace, another former Tory defence secretary, recently said this blog was “the voice of reason” which could not be bettered for defence analysis.

Labour said the policy was clearly unravelling. A party spokesperson said:

The Tories’ National Service promise is unravelling by the minute, with the full scale of the scheme’s unfunded costs growing ever larger, and the list of unanswered questions about how it will work growing ever longer.

Here are some of the main campaign events of the day.

9.30am: Keir Starmer gives a speech, and takes questions from journalists.

Morning: Rishi Sunak is doing a campaign event, and he is also due to record an interview with the BBC’s political editor, Chris Mason. But his main campaign event will be in Chesham and Amersham at 5pm.

The Liberal Democrats are launching their battlebus, which they are calling Yellow Hammer 1.

And the SNP leader and Scottish first minister John Swinney is campaigning in Dumfries.

If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line (BTL) or message me on X (Twitter). I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word. If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use X; I’ll see something addressed to @AndrewSparrow very quickly. I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos (no error is too small to correct). And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.

Updated

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