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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Politics
Yohannes Lowe (now); Andrew Sparrow and Helen Sullivan (earlier)

Oliver Dowden reportedly reveals preferred choice for next Tory leader – UK general election as it happened

Oliver Dowden Sir Keir Starmer Anas Sarwar Victoria Atkins United Kingdom Kevin Hollinrake SNP General Election Douglas Ross John Swinney
Oliver Dowden, deputy prime minister.
Oliver Dowden, deputy prime minister. Photograph: Mark Thomas/Alamy

Closing summary

  • The deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, told his constituents that the health secretary, Victoria Atkins, would be his preferred candidate to lead the Conservatives besides Rishi Sunak, the prime minister. In a leaked recording, obtained by the i, Dowden reportedly said Atkins was the only other “star of his generation” capable of leading the Tories.

  • Survation says it is 99% certain that Labour will win more seats than it did in 1997, with Keir Starmer’s party on course to win 484 seats in the general election. “The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are in a close race to form the official opposition,” the pollster said in a post on X.

  • Starmer confirmed that Labour is likely to continue the early release scheme for prisoners if it wins the election. The Labour party leader also said he will seek to avoid constant reshuffles if he becomes prime minister, saying he wants “stability” in ministerial appointments.

  • John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, called for a review into the timetable for UK general elections in light of concerns about people not getting postal votes on time. Starmer, meanwhile, urged the Post Office minister, Kevin Hollinrake, to meet the postal service over concerns that hundreds of people could miss out on casting their vote on polling day after their ballots failed to arrive. Health minister Maria Caulfield said Hollinrake was “urgently” investigating delays to postal ballots being delivered. Royal Mail hit back at criticism, insisting there is “no backlog” ahead of the election.

  • Richard Tice, the former Reform UK leader who became its chair when Nigel Farage replaced him, claimed the Tories infiltrated his party with “Trojan horse” candidates ahead of the election with the intention of discrediting Reform UK.

  • Sunak said Labour would be “unchecked and unaccountable” with a big majority. Starmer responded by saying he needs a big majority so that he has a “strong mandate” for change.

  • The Green party released a poll showing it has an eight-point lead in the newly formed constituency of Bristol Central where co-leader Carla Denyer is challenging Thangam Debbonaire. An independent survey for the party by the pollsters WeThink suggest the Greens are on course to take 40% of the vote, compared to 32% for Labour. However, the poll also shows 18% of respondents “don’t know” which way they will vote.

Thank you for reading and all your comments today. This blog is closing now but you can read all of our politics coverage here.

Updated

Keir Starmer has accused the Conservatives of desperate tactics amid claims that Tory criticism of his defence of family time was insensitive and had antisemitic undertones.

With Rishi Sunak embarking on a marathon day of campaigning, beginning with a pre-dawn visit to a distribution centre and closing with a late-night rally, Tory ministers and aides sought to contrast these efforts with what they termed Starmer’s “part-time” approach.

As an increasingly personal election campaign neared its end, the Conservatives pushed out “final warnings” about what they said a massive Labour majority would mean for taxes, migration and other policy areas.

Downing Street chiefs believe the criticism of Starmer for saying he would maintain his current habit of trying to spend time with his wife and children after 6pm on Fridays “pretty well come what may” has resonated with voters.

However, it has sparked an angry backlash, with senior Jewish figures saying the decision to target such a culturally significant time of the week – Starmer’s wife, Victoria, comes from a Jewish family – was ill-judged and deeply unfair.

You can read the full story by my colleagues, Ben Quinn, Peter Walker and Kiran Stacey, here:

Updated

Reform UK have accused the police of failing to protect their candidates from “attacks and threats” on the campaign trail.

The PA news agency reports:

The party claimed that one of their candidates was “robbed, punched and kicked”, while another was told to “go home” by police while leafleting.

In Falmouth, Reform have accused police of doing nothing in the two weeks since the party said a candidate was assaulted and robbed in a “hate crime” while out canvassing.

Steve Rubidge, Reform UK candidate for Truro and Falmouth, said Devon and Cornwall police had done “nothing” about reports of him being attacked and having his campaign material stolen and destroyed on 15 June.

Mr Rubridge claims he provided police with pictures and “massive clues to the likely identities” of those involved …

A spokesperson for the Devon and Cornwall force said “police are still investigating the incident and inquiries remain ongoing”.

Reform are also claiming that their candidate for Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend, Janice Richardson, was told by Northumbria police officers not to leaflet due to “potential danger” of a pro-Palestine protest.

The party claims police declined to protect Ms Richardson from “the extremists” and instead advised her not to leaflet, which they said would be “poking the bear”.

Keir Starmer has called on a government minister to meet the postal service over concerns that hundreds of people could miss out on casting their vote on polling day after their ballots failed to arrive.

The Labour leader said the Post Office minister, Kevin Hollinrake, should “get on with the job” of sorting out the problem that is believed to have hit Scotland, where the school holidays have already started, particularly badly.

Hollinrake was said to be “urgently” investigating a failure to get ballot packs to people in some constituencies in time for polling day. However, Royal Mail sources said on Tuesday that he had not yet raised his concerns.

Earlier, he had suggested Royal Mail should have anticipated extra demand for postal votes during the summer holidays amid fears that some could be left disfranchised because they are already overseas.

You can read the full story by my colleagues, Kiran Stacey and Pippa Crerar, here:

Key event

Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, would rather see Conservative MPs than SNP MPs elected, John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, has said after Labour rejected calls to back his party to beat Douglas Ross.

SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn has urged Labour to back his party in Aberdeenshire North and Moray East – where the Labour candidate was suspended and stripped of party support – to ensure Ross does not win the seat.

The outgoing Scottish Tory leader announced in June he would stand in the stead of former MP David Duguid – who was barred by party bosses over ill health.

But Sarwar rejected the call just hours after it was made, the PA news agency reports.
“I am the leader of the Scottish Labour party, I want people to vote Scottish Labour,” he said during a visit to Inverclyde on Tuesday.

“Scottish Labour is invested in every part of the country, so if you want to get rid of the Tories, if you want Scottish Labour representation, if you want Scotland to be at the heart of a Labour government, then you need to vote Scottish Labour – and that’s what I’m calling on people to do.”

He said the Aberdeenshire North and Moray East seat is a “specific issue” due to the suspension of Andy Brown (for reportedly sharing pro-Russian material online), and he said his “only regret” is that voters there do not have the chance to support Labour.
Swinney told the PA news agency later on:

I think Anas Sarwar has just betrayed what he’s all about – he’d rather have a Tory than the SNP.

Anas Sarwar has given a really important bit of clarity to the people of Scotland that the Labour party prefer the Tories, and we can see that from their policy programme because the Labour party are going to continue the Tory austerity that’s done such damage to our public services and our public finances.

Only SNP MPs will campaign against austerity and protect Scotland and Scotland’s interests from austerity.

Conservatives slump to historically low support in Wales - poll

The Conservatives have slumped to a “record low” in Wales, according to a Barn Cymru poll conducted by YouGov for ITV Cymru Wales and Cardiff University.

The poll put the Tories’ projected vote share at 16%, which would be lower than the amount they won in the 1997 general election (19.6%) when no Welsh Conservative MP was elected.

ITV Wales also reports that the result would be the Conservatives’ worst electoral performance in Wales since the 1918 general election. The poll shows support for Labour has fallen slightly – 40% (-5) – but the party is still on course for a landslide victory. After boundary changes, Wales will elect 32 MPs, down from the previous 40.

These changes are unlikely to undermine Labour’s dominant position in the southern valleys and cities, and no Labour seat is seriously threatened by the Boundary Commission alterations.

Updated

Rob Davies is a reporter for the Guardian, primarily covering business

Sajid Javid, the former Conservative chancellor of the exchequer, is to become a partner at a London investment firm founded by a trio of his former colleagues at Deutsche Bank.

The former banker, who held seven ministerial positions in a 15-year political career, confirmed on Tuesday that he was joining Centricus, a private equity and asset manager based in Mayfair. He will start the role on 8 July.

Javid has already earned about £450,000 as a consultant for the company, which has $42bn (£33bn) of assets under management and invests in everything from football to luxury hotels and 3D printing.

The company began paying him £25,000 for up to 10 hours of work a month in March 2023, rising to £50,000 a month after he doubled his hours in April this year, according to the register of members’ interests.

He will join Centricus as a partner after the general election, in a full-time role that will reunite him with the company’s two other partners and co-founders, Nizar Al-Bassam and Dalinc Ariburnu.

Javid worked alongside both men at Deutsche Bank in the years leading up to – and during – the global banking crash, before he left to enter politics in 2009.

You can read the full story here:

Pollster is 99% certain that Labour will win more seats than it did in 1997 general election landslide

Survation says it is 99% certain that Labour will win more seats than it did in 1997 (when Tony Blair cruised to victory in a landslide), with Keir Starmer’s party on course to win 484 seats in the general election. There are 199 seats which Blair would have won on current boundaries in 1997 and which Labour does not currently hold.

“The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are in a close race to form the official opposition,” the pollster said in a post on X.

A probabilistic seat count, based on 34,558 interviews conducted online and by phone, puts Labour on course to win 484 seats, the Conservatives on 64 and the Liberal Democrats on 61.

It expects the SNP to win about 10 seats, Reform UK seven, leaving Plaid Cymru and the Green party with three each.

Updated

Former prime minister Boris Johnson has posted a message of support for Priti Patel, who is running to be re-elected in the constituency of Witham, in Essex.

Patel, who was home secretary in Johnson’s cabinet and widely seen as a fierce ally of the former prime minister, won the seat in the 2019 general election with a majority of 24,082 for the Conservatives. She first was elected to the seat in 2010.

Johnson said in a video posted to X:

Priti has been a quite remarkable friend, colleague, but a brilliant minister as well, and of course, a great local MP.

Priti was one of the original Brexiteers, and she is the person who really drove that Rwanda scheme, which, believe me, is still our best hope of stopping illegal cross channel gangs from bringing people into our country and all that will be put at risk by Keir Starmer and the Labour party.

Unless you vote for Priti in Witham there is a risk that we will get an even bigger Labour majority, a really big Labour majority with more ‘wokery’, more illegal immigration, more pointless, limp kowtowing to Brussels and, of course, ever higher taxation for you and your family under Keir Starmer and the Labour party. Don’t let it happen. Stick with Prit.

Updated

Nigel Farage, the Reform UK party leader, has said the Conservative party is “not the sort of club” he would like to join.

Farage told Channel 5 News’ political editor, Andy Bell:

The problem with the Westminster journalistic pack is they think being elected only matters inside that chamber in Westminster.

As I rather proved I think back in 1999 – when three of us got elected to the European parliament and built a mass movement across the country on an issue that was unfashionable – however many of us get elected to that parliament, yes, we’ll be there, but more importantly, we’ll build a mass movement across the country.

Quizzed about a hypothetical invitation to join the Conservative party in the future, Farage replied: “Not the sort of club I want to join.”

Farage was also asked about Georgie David, the second Reform UK candidate who has quit the party, alleging that the vast majority of those standing for it in the general election are “racist, misogynistic and bigoted”.

David, who had been Reform’s candidate for West Ham and Beckton, issued a statement through the Conservatives, the party she is now backing.

“I just discovered earlier on today she was what the party called a ‘democracy candidate’ i.e. will anyone please stand?” Farage said. He said that Reform is a “start up” so it is suffering from “some start up problems” as fielding over 600 candidates was a “very, very difficult thing to do with a snap election”.

Despite allegations of prejudice in its ranks, Reform still appears to be in a strong polling position, which would indicate that the party could exacerbate a defeat looming over the Conservatives. Farage denies there is any widespread misogyny or racism in the party.

Updated

Deputy prime minister reveals his choice for next Tory leader in leaked recording - report

The deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, has told his constituents that the health secretary, Victoria Atkins, would be his preferred candidate to lead the Conservatives other than Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, the i reports.

In a leaked recording, Dowden – who is a close politically ally to Sunak – reportedly said Atkins was the only other “star of his generation” capable of leading the Tories.

Speaking at an “end of year social” constituency event in Hertsmere in December, where Atkins was a special guest, Dowden said:

This is honestly the truth, when people ask me when I entered parliament, ‘who are the two stars, who are the stars of your generation?’ I said there’s only two people from my generation that I could see leading the Conservative party: Rishi Sunak or Vicky Atkins.

Atkins last week did not deny speculation she may run for leader after the election. She has a safe seat, which is more than many cabinet colleagues could say, including even Sunak himself who, according to some polls, is at risk of losing his Richmond and Northallerton seat. Atkins’ 2019 majority was not far short of 29,000.

Suella Braverman, Priti Patel, Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Grant Shapps, Penny Mordaunt, Robert Jenrick and Tom Tugendhat are among the other potential leadership contenders (this is a useful explainer on the likely contenders here).

Yesterday, Sunak hinted that he might not quit as Tory leader immediately if he loses the election on Thursday. The prime minister may come under pressure to stay on for a period of time so the party can reflect on what went wrong (assuming they lose badly) and to stop a rushed leadership election.

Updated

Sky News’ city editor, Mark Kleinman, reports that the Tories will unveil a letter signed by “scores of small business-owners” tomorrow in an attempt to convince undecided voters that Labour cannot be trusted in charge of the economy (a typical campaign attack line used against Labour by the Conservatives). Just to put the “scores” into context: there are millions of small businesses across the UK.

Here is a snippet of the report:

Sky News understands that the Tories are planning to publish a letter signed by between 100 and 150 SME bosses that will argue that a Labour government would risk damaging their business.

Sources said the letter was expected to be released on Wednesday, the final day before Britain goes to the polls.

Neither the text of the letter nor the names of the signatories were clear on Tuesday.

A business-owner approached to sign it, but who declined, said he was surprised the Tories had not done more to exploit differences between the two main parties on potential capital gains tax changes during the campaign.

One insider described it as “a last-ditch bid” to reverse some of the momentum behind Labour, which has published a series of letters during the election campaign backed by businesspeople.

Labour has been borrowing from the Conservatives’ playbook in getting business leaders to endorse their economic plans ahead of the general election (as what happened in May when dozens of businesses leaders signed a letter backing the party’s economic plans). Facing the likelihood of heavy electoral losses on Thursday, the Conservatives appear to be targeting businesses and warning about Labour’s economic proposals in a last-ditch effort to reverse some of this momentum.

Updated

Key event

With two days to go before the 4 July general election, the Redfield and Wilton Strategies survey of 20,000 voters has put Labour on 41% (-1) and the Conservatives on 22% (+3), while Reform UK is on 16% (-2) and the Liberal Democrats on 10% (-1). The strategic consultancy firm said in its analysis of the results that Labour’s national lead is below 20% in its polling for the first time since 10 March. The latest poll was conducted from 28 June to 2 July.

Updated

As we reported earlier, Keir Starmer, the Labour party leader, has indicated that he may have to keep releasing prisoners early if he is elected prime minister amid fears jails could run out of space within days (see post at 17.08).

Labour insiders have said the party would force through planning permission for new prisons but have not said how it would deal with an immediate overcrowding crisis.

Starmer has made tackling serious crime a key pillar of his policy agenda and has vowed to introduce new penalties for offenders. This, along with more police officers on the streets, will likely lead to more people being charged and prosecuted, potentially making the overcrowding crisis in prisons more acute.

The Guardian’s home affairs editor, Rajeev Syal, has done some excellent analysis of the feasibility of Labour’s crime proposals here:

Updated

Rishi Sunak has indicated that he will not blame his predecessors if he loses the election. As Politico reports, speaking to reporters, he said:

You’ve got to just play the cards that you are dealt … There’s no point sitting there, going ‘well I wish someone had given me four aces’.

That is all from me for today. Yohannes Lowe is taking over now.

Forty-nine people have accrued a combined £10m in UK government-backed student debt, according to figures obtained through freedom of information (FOI) requests by the BBC.

The FOI showed that by the end of April this year, 49 people owed the Student Loans Company (SLC) over £200,000 each, with the highest recorded total of £252,000. Some 61,000 people each owed more than £100,000.

Nearly 1.8 million current or former students owed at least £50,000 in tuition and maintenance loans and interest, the FOI revealed. The government’s most recent figures show that the average outstanding balance for graduates in England was £48,000 in 2023-24.

The SLC said people with high balances “may be in receipt of several student loan products”, such as loans for further education courses, combined with funding for undergraduate, postgraduate master’s and PhD-level courses. Some students receive additional funding due to “compelling personal reasons,” the SLC said.

In some cases the high outstanding loan balances will be the result of high or penal interest rates compounded over several years. A starting balance of £60,000 with an annual average interest rate of 6% would rise above £100,000 in nine years, assuming no repayments.

Starmer confirms prisoner early release scheme likely to continue if Labour wins election

Keir Starmer has confirmed that Labour is likely to continue the early release scheme for prisoners if it wins the election. Speaking to reporters, he said “in all likelihood” the early release scheme would continue. He went on:

It simply wouldn’t be realistic for me to say, ‘the prisons are overcrowded on Thursday at 10 o’clock but somehow I’ve magicked up a new prison on Friday morning’ – that isn’t going to happen.

I have to say it’s shocking to have to inherit a problem like that, that our criminal justice system has gotten to a point where we’re releasing prisoners who should be in prison early and giving instructions to the police not to arrest in certain cases. That is how broken the system [is] – got to pick that up and start the fix, but also not just fix but renew and take forward.

Keir Starmer has said the government should be speaking to the Royal Mail to ensure that postal votes all get delivered.

Asked about concerns postal votes were not arriving on time, Starmer told reporters:

If you’re in government, and they are in government, at least for the time being, they need to sort it out and get on with sorting it out. Because what we can’t have these people who are entitled to a vote not being able to exercise it.

So get on with the job, I’d say, and if the Post Office minister hasn’t met them, do it now.

Starmer says security factors help to explain why he has accepted more freebie football tickets than most MPs

Yesterday the Financial Times reported that Keir Starmer has “accepted £76,000 worth of entertainment, clothes and similar freebies from UK donors since the 2019 general election, more than almost any other MP”. It said the gifts and hospitality, recorded in the register of MPs’ interests, included concerts, sports events, hotel stays, clothing and football matches.

Asked about the story today, Starmer said all hospitality of this kind had to be properly registered, and that was what had happened,

He also argued that, for security reasons, often it was easier for him to accept corporate hospitality. He said:

Quite a lot of that was Arsenal hospitality, and particularly away games where you can appreciate my desire to go in the stands is not always met with approval by the security teams around me, which means that I’m in corporate hospitality if I want to see the game.

Starmer pledges to avoid constant reshuffles if he becomes PM, saying he wants 'stability' in ministerial appointments

But Keir Starmer has implied that, when he appoints cabinet ministers, he will keep them in post for a reasonable period of time.

Speaking to reporters earlier, Starmer said;

We’ve had five prime ministers, I don’t know how many chancellors. Go to housing, I think you’ve had 10 or 11 [ministers], justice 10 or 11 [ministers].

It makes for great political cartoons, but it is really bad for running the country because it leads to lack of strategic thinking.

I’m not going to be lured through your question into naming cabinet if we get that far, but I’m absolutely clear that we will return to stability and ensure that we have the right people in the right place and they’re getting on with the job and not being chopped and changed every few months, because that has been so bad in terms of delivery for this country and it has put investors off putting their money into this country.

That has been very, very bad for our economy.

Britain has a poor record when it comes to cabinet ministers saying in post for long periods, and since 2016 turnover has been particularly high. A report by Make Votes Matter published earlier this year showed that on average, over the past 50 years, cabinet ministers have stayed in post for just over two years – which is less time than in most other European countries.

Keir Starmer has refused to confirm that David Lammy would be foreign secretary in a Labour government.

In the past he has said that Rachel Reeves would be chancellor, and that Angela Rayner would be deputy PM.

But, in an interview with the BBC’s Chris Mason, asked if Lammy was also guaranteed the job he has been shadowing, Starmer just said: “I’m not naming a cabinet two days before the election, which isn’t won.”

He also refused to discuss other cabinet appointments.

Starmer declines to join Biden in criticising US supreme court's ruling on presidential immunity

Keir Starmer has declined to join Joe Biden in criticising the supreme court ruling giving the US president some immunity from criminal prosecution for what they do in an official capacity.

Biden said it set a dangerous precedent because it undermined the principle that no one in the US was above the law.

But, asked if he agreed, Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, declined to express an opinion. He said:

That’s the constitutional arrangements in the US. The court’s made its ruling. And it’s clear where they’ve drawn the line.

I think it’s probably now sort of to be defined exactly how that is applied in each of the individual cases.

But that is how their system works. That’s the ruling of the court. And, you know, I respect the legal system in America.

Keir Starmer has confirmed that part of the reason why he normally avoids work on a Friday night, to spend time with his family, is because of his wife’s Jewish heritage. Speaking to reporters at a campaign event in Derbyshire:

I do carve out Friday nights, as best I can, for Vic and the kids and her dad as protected time.

Her dad’s side of the family is Jewish, as people will appreciate, and we use that for family prayers – not every Friday, but not infrequently.

That doesn’t mean I’ve never had to work on a Friday, of course it doesn’t, plenty of times I haven’t been able to do it [have time off].

But I’ve tried to protect that time. I’d like to try and protect it in the future but I know very well, it’s going to be really difficult to do it.

Report reveals how law intended to ban foreign donations to political parties easily bypassed

The Electoral Commission has long complained that the laws in place designed to stop political parties accepting donations from abroad are not strict enough. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) has published a report today showing why these concerns are justified. In their story Eleanor Rose, Simon Lock and Lucy Nash say:

TBIJ arranged a series of multiple small payments to each of the six major parties. The payments were individually less than £500 – the lower limit of the legal definition of a political donation – but passed that threshold once added together.

Labour was the only party to correctly identify and block the money. The Conservatives, Reform UK, Liberal Democrats, Green Party and Scottish National Party (SNP) all failed to bar or return the payments.

When approached with TBIJ’s findings, parties disagreed about whether they were required to spot the donations or report them to the Electoral Commission, highlighting the confusion around the rules.

Experts said the findings show “deeply concerning” flaws in party donations processes as well as the “Swiss cheese” nature of rules intended to ensure fair elections and prevent foreign influence.

Ed Davey’s attempt to get wet in every corner of England during the election continued today when he went surfing during a visit to Big Blue Surf School in Bude in Cornwall. The Lib Dem leader may the only member of the Westminster political class who is not looking forward to the campaign finally coming to an end.

Swinney calls for review into timetable for elections in light of problems with postal votes

John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, has called for a review into the timetable for UK general elections in the light of ongoing concerns about people not getting postal votes on time.

The issue is causing particular problems in Scotland, where the school holidays start earlier than in England and where many families have already left for a foreign holiday abroad. Some of them left before their postal votes arrived.

In an open letter to the prime minister, Swinney said he was concerned by reports that No 10 told journalists at the lobby briefing yesterday that Rishi Sunak was not concerned about problems with postal votes. Swinney said:

When so many people have confirmed that they did not receive their packs before leaving their home in the holiday season in Scotland, and with hundreds of voters applying to their local councils for emergency replacement postal votes, this is major cause for concern for many, including your postal affairs minister who is “urgently investigating” the delays across the UK.

This has led to people in Scotland who did everything they were meant to do in order to secure their right to vote in this general election not being able to exercise that right. These include people who had already-arranged holidays that they had to leave for before the delayed postal votes arrived, and people for whom the alternatives, including organising a replacement postal pack from their local authority, were unsuitable or unavailable.

Swinney told Sunak the problem was caused “by a combination of your selection of an unsuitable date for the general election, and the timetable for UK parliament elections, which has little room in it to address issues arising, such as the reported delays at the printers”.

Calling for an inquiry into when elections take place, and how much notice is given, he said:

As well as establishing the facts about what happened during this election, a review into both the timetable for UK parliament elections and how decisions are made about their timing needs to be held urgently after the general election. I expect the Electoral Management Board for Scotland to be involved in this review, as the body with the greatest expertise and experience in the conduct of elections in Scotland.

There may be little that can be done now for some voters to secure their ability to vote in this election, but it would give them some confidence in the UK electoral system and our democracy to know in advance of the election that such a review was planned.

Conscious that Sunak may not be PM for much longer, Swinney also said he was copying his letter to other opposition party leaders, including Keir Starmer.

Starmer dismisses fears of Labour getting 'supermajority', saying he wants 'strong mandate' for change

Keir Starmer has responded to Tory warnings about Labour getting a large majority by saying that is what he needs so that he has a “strong mandate” for change.

Speaking to reporters today, and asked why voters should not fear a “supermajority”, Starmer said:

Given that the country is pretty broken at the moment, a lot of things aren’t working, there’s a big job for us to do if we come in to serve and we need a strong mandate for that.

We need to know the country genuinely wants this change and that we’re all prepared to say this is the change that we want, and it gives a real strong mandate to a government to say ‘we’ve asked you to change things, you need to get on with it’.

The mandate is important to us, if I’m honest, because I want to know that people do want change. Our job then is to get on and do it.

There is no precise definition of a “supermajority”, but some MRP polls have suggested that Labour would win a majority of more than 200, or even more than 300. Calling that a supermajority would be reasonable.

In some countries, a supermajority (such as two-thirds) is required for some types of constitutional change. That is not the case in the UK, where bills can be passed with a majority of one. (But, as James Ball from the New European explains here, if Labour wanted to change the royal charter for press regulation, passed under the coalition but ignored by most big newspapers, it would need a two-thirds majority in the Commons.)

A Labour victory in Thursday’s general election will demonstrate to the world that the UK can turn the tide on the far right and be a “beacon of hope”, the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, has said. Lisa O’Carroll has the story.

Richard Tice claims Tories using 'Trojan horse candidates' to discredit Reform UK

Richard Tice, the former Reform UK leader who became its chair when Nigel Farage replaced him, has claimed that the Tories infiltrated his party with “Trojan horse” candidates ahead of the election with the intention of discrediting Reform UK.

Responding to Georgie David’s defection (see 10.35am), he posted these on X.

More desperate corruption by Tories

What jobs & safe seats have toxic Tories offered this candidate? As they have with many others.

Note same press release language… coordinated by dirty tricks central, CCHQ

Voters delighted to oust these Tories

Just some of our wonderful Reform candidates

Desperate toxic Tories sent us some Trojan horse candidates by offering jobs, safe council seats etc to spread lies.

Their corruption will rightly be punished by voters on July 4

Many millions will vote Reform for change

David says she can no longer support Reform UK because of its failure to tackle its racism problem.

Workers Party of Britain candidate suspends campaign after attack leaves son in hospital

The Workers Party of Britain candidate for Sutton Coldfield has suspended campaigning saying he “fears for his life” after his son was attacked while out canvassing for him.

Wajad Burkey, who is standing for election in the West Midlands town, said his son and two others were handing out leaflets at about 7.20pm Sunday when a “gang of eight men turned up with baseball bats and machetes” and attacked them.

His son suffered a head injury and was taken to Heartlands hospital for treatment.

“I have suspended my campaign as I am fearful, frankly, for my life,” Burkey said.

West Midlands police confirmed it is investigating after a man was attacked by a group of people armed with weapons in Sutton Coldfield on Sunday. The force said:

Around eight people arrived on motorbikes and cars before attacking the man with a baseball bat. A knife was also produced during the attack.

The victim was left with an injury to the back of his head and went to hospital for treatment. We are examining CCTV and carrying out other enquiries.

George Galloway, leader of the WPB, posted on X to say:

I’m stunned to report that our candidate in Sutton Coldfield has had to suspend his campaigning after his canvassers were attacked by men with baseball bats and machetes leaving some, including his son, in hospital.

Andrew Mitchell, the incumbent Conservative standing for re-election in Sutton Coldfield, responded to say the incident was “truly shocking”.

Violence and intimidation has no place in our democratic process,” he said. “I contacted George Galloway last night to express my concerns. If anyone has any information please contact Sutton Coldfield police immediately.

Electoral Commission says there are 'local issues' with postal votes, but no major problem with people not getting them

The Electoral Commission has said it does not think there are major problems with people not being able to get postal votes before Thursday.

In an interview with Radio 4’s the World at One, Vijay Rangarajan, chief executive at the commission, said:

There’s an increased number of postal votes, and there are some local issues around the country but we’re not seeing major, systemic problems at the moment.

It’s always the case that votes are delivered over the period of the election and clearly is disappointing for some people if they haven’t received one in good time.

But at the moment the printers have been working flat out, Royal Mail has been working really flat out, as have electoral administrators, to try to get postal votes out so everyone can vote.

We think about 6.7m postal votes have already been sent and people have voted and have been returned back to electoral administrators. That’s better than previous elections. And we think, the AEA [the Association of Electoral Administrators] have estimated, that we’re having a record number of postal votes this time.

So there was a bit of the system creaking under both the volume of votes and the timescale for doing a snap election so soon after May.

Rangarajan said the AEA thought 10 million people may vote by post this year, which would be a 20% increase on 2019.

He said the Royal Mail claim the last batches of postal voters should have been delivered yesterday or today. People should return them immediately, he said. But he said the Royal Mail would be doing a sweep to ensure any postal votes in the system get returned to returning officers in time for the close of poll on Thursday.

Rangarajan accepted that if people went away on holiday before their postal vote arrived, there was nothing that could be done to help them. But people waiting for a postal vote who have not received one can ask for a replacement pack, he said.

Asked if he was worried about people not getting postal votes on time, Rishi Sunak told reporters:

It’s right that the Royal Mail have said that they will look at any concerns where they’re raised, because obviously we want to make sure everyone can vote because this is an important election.

In spite of what some people want others to believe, that it’s all a foregone conclusion, every vote matters.

Royal Mail says it has no backlog for delivering postal votes

Royal Mail has hit back at criticism from a government minister over reports of delays to postal vote delivery, insisting there is “no backlog” ahead of the election.

Kevin Hollinrake, the postal services minister, is said to be “urgently” investigating a failure to get ballot packs to people in some constituencies in time for polling day on Thursday. (See 7.54am.)

But in a statement issued this morning, a Royal Mail spokesperson said:

We have no backlog of postal votes and, whilst we are not complacent, we remain confident that postal votes handed to us on time will be delivered prior to polling day.

Where specific concerns have been raised, we have investigated and confirmed ballot packs are being delivered as soon as they arrive in our network.

We would welcome a review into the timetable for future elections with all stakeholders to ensure that the system for printing and administering postal votes before they are handed to Royal Mail works as smoothly as possible.

Reform UK rejects claim from candidate that most of its would-be MPs are racist

Reform UK has said that it strongly disagrees with the claim from its candidate, Georgie David, about most of its candidates being “racist, misogynistic, and bigoted”. (See 10.35am.)

Responding to her statement saying she is endorsing the Tories, a Reform UK spokesperson said:

We are very disappointed with Ms David’s course of action.

We strongly disagree with her sweeping comments about the ‘vast majority’ of our 600-plus candidates, the vast majority of whom she can never even have met.

And we find it sad and strange that she chose not to bring up any of her concerns with the party leadership before publicly trashing so many of her blameless colleagues who are giving their all to get Reform UK elected.

Ms David was a last minute addition to our candidate list and we apologise to the voters of West Ham and Beckton for any inconvenience.

David says she has suspended her campaign. But it is too late for her to withdraw as a candidate, and she will be on the ballot paper in West Ham and Beckton as the Reform UK candidate.

The Brexit party, Reform UK’s predecessor party, would have had 2.8% of the vote in West Ham and Beckton in 2019 if the new boundaries had been in place then, the Guardian’s constituency guide says.

Sunak refuses to disown Tory attacks on Starmer's work ethic

Rishi Sunak was repeatedly pressed today on whether it was right to the Tories to criticise Keir Starmer’s work ethic. (See 9.29am.)

Speaking to reporters on a tour of a warehouse in Banbury in Oxfordshire, he stood by his ministers’ attacks on Starmer – but without repeating their criticism in such strong terms. He said:

Everyone is going to approach this job in a different way. In my experience, there is always work to do.

There’s always decisions that need to be made. And, you know, that’s what the job requires.

And that is what the prime minister’s job means. That’s what public service is about and the sacrifice that entails.

Asked whether it was right for Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, to claim that Starmer might clock off when pressing military decisions needed to taken, Sunak said:

I do worry about our country’s security, as there are deep concerns about it. This is the most dangerous time that our country has lived in it for decades.

He declined to comment further on John Mann, the government’s antisemitism adviser, saying it was “dangerous” to undermine Starmer’s decision to spend time with his family for the Jewish tradition of Friday night dinner.

Starmer says Labour needs to implement some of its first steps 'very quickly' after election

And here is the full quote from Keir Starmer when he told Times Radio that he would want to start “very quickly” on delivering on his six first steps if he wins the election on Thursday. (See 12.14pm.) Starmer said:

We know that we have to do two things …

First is we have to show that we can do some of the first steps very quickly in terms of the waiting lists, the police etc.

But also fix the fundamentals. And that’s why I’ve said we can’t magic problems away. There’s been a failure to build prisons, for example. We can’t build a prison on Friday if we’re elected into government. That will take time. But we will make a start. The change we bring about will be a change worth having. It will be hard yards, that’s for sure. It will be tough.

But look, I picked up the Labour party after the 2019 election defeat. That was the worst defeat since 1935. People thought it would take at least 10 years or more to turn the Labour party around. We got up. We did it.

And what we’re asking for is the opportunity … to do the same for the country.

Starmer says being in No 10 won't stop him playing football and going to Arsenal, and family might get dog

Q: If you become PM, will you still play five-a-side football every Sunday?

Starmer says he intends to carry on playing football if he becomes PM. He says he is not sure if he will be able to play on Sundays, and he might not play as regularly as he does now, but he will keep playing. And he will still go to Arsenal matches. He says he has been playing football regularly since he was 10.

Q: And I hear you might be getting a dog?

Starmer says his children want the family to get a dog. They have been ramping up the pressure during the election. A German shepherd is currently the favourite option.

If Starmer does get a dog, he won’t be the first politician in Downing Street acquiring a pet under pressure from his children. When Rishi Sunak was chancellor, his daughters persuaded him to get a labrador puppy.

Chorley asks if he and Rachel Reeves will go into the Treasury, say the books are worse than they thought, and argue then for surprise, extra tax rises.

Starmer says there is nothing in Labour’s plans requiring taxes above those already announced.

He says he wants people to feel better off after Labour has been in power, and for public services to be working.

Q: Are you ready to be the most unpopular person in Britain as you try to tackle the country’s problems?

Starmer says it is the Tories who have left the country like this. He says Labour needs to show it can do some of the first steps “very quickly”. He refers to tackling waiting lists, and hiring more police officers.

But other problems cannot be tackled quickly, he says. He says you cannot build a new prison overnight.

Updated

Keir Starmer is being interviewed by Matt Chorley on Times Radio.

Chorley starts by joking about it being nice to be able to talk to him before he knocks off at 6pm.

Starmer says it is “laughably ridiculous that this is even being talked about”. (See 9.29am.)

He says he just said yesterday he tried to protect Friday evenings for his family.

The only serious point he can make is this shows the Tories have nothing else positive to say.

Green party on course to win in Bristol Central, poll suggests

The Green party has released a poll showing it has a eight-point lead in the newly formed constituency of Bristol Central where co-leader Carla Denyer is challenging Thangam Debbonaire, a potential cabinet member for Labour.

An independent survey for the party by the pollsters WeThink suggest the Greens are on course to take 40% of the vote, compared to 32% for Labour.

However, the poll also shows 18% of respondents “don’t know” which way they will vote.

The poll echoes recent surveys by the same pollster showing the Greens are ahead in two other major target seats, Waveney Valley and North Herefordshire.

Recent MRP polls have predicted a Green breakthrough in Bristol. However, this is the first time that voters in Bristol Central have been sampled directly.

The poll was conducted by WeThink between 25 June and 1 July and the sample was relatively small – 400 with an equal gender split.

But the finding does add further credence to suggestions the Greens are set for a breakthrough in the urban seat. In May, every council ward in the constituency elected a Green councillor, giving Bristol city council its first Green leader.

A loss for Debbonaire would be a bitter blow. She served as MP in the constituency’s predecessor, Bristol West, since 2015, and has been shadow culture secretary since 2023, a role she is widely expected to take in government if Labour were to secure a majority on 4 July.

Tory candidate Miriam Cates trustee at church that promoted conversion practices, report says

Conservative candidate Miriam Cates has been linked to a conversion practices scandal as a trustee of a Sheffield church that taught that “evil spirits” were the cause of homosexuality.

The Penistone and Stocksbridge incumbent is also accused of attending what was described as an “exorcism training weekend” by a whistleblower, who claims to have been left traumatised by gay conversion practices at St Thomas Philadelphia church in 2014.

Cates, who was a member of the church between 2003 and 2018, and a trustee from 2016 to 2018, denies knowing about conversion practices at the church.

In the last parliament Cates was an influential Tory backbencher as co-chair of the New Conservatives, a group of rightwing, socially conservative MPs calling for lower taxes and stricter controls on immigration.

A report commissioned by the Diocese of Sheffield and published on Monday after the BBC got hold of a leaked copy, said “the culture of the church [in 2014] was one in which the presence of evil spirits and ‘ungodly soul ties’ were believed to be the cause of homosexual thoughts, feelings and behaviour, and prayers of ‘deliverance’ for homosexuals were not uncommon.”

The investigation, carried out by Barnardo’s and completed in February, found that gay exorcisms being carried out “were often spoken about by church members” and that on one occasion “there were celebrations in the congregation because a parent stood up and spoke of an adult in their family, who had been ‘delivered from the sin of homosexuality’.”

Cates, who is separately subject to a parliamentary standards watchdog investigation about an unknown matter, said she remembered attending the conference but denied it was an “exorcism training weekend”.

However, the BBC acquired unverified audio from the conference which suggests it involved practising a prayer of repentance “for giving place to any demons … including demons of … homosexuality … lesbianism”.

Matthew Drapper, who complained about the trauma he suffered from alleged conversion practices at the church, was told prayer would rid him of the “demons of homosexuality”.

He told the BBC he was left “cramping up and struggling to breathe” during a session in which he was told to repeatedly shout a prayer. He said:

They told me to speak to the gay part of myself as if speaking to a wild dog coming up to me - and for me to say to ‘leave my body’.

The people I was with told me they could see demons leave me and go out of the window.

The investigation upheld all aspects of his complaint.

Updated

How Sunak is focusing on seats with large Tory majorities in final 48 hours before polling day

Rishi Sunak has been on a whistle-stop tour across the Midlands, Oxfordshire and Bedfordshire seats over the last two days – getting just 3-4 hours sleep last night before an early hours of the morning visit to a supermarket warehouse.

What’s remarkable is the size of the majorities in the places he is visiting – showing there is no area of safety for Tory MPs.

He started in Stoke South (maj 11,000), followed by a gin distillery in Stratford Upon Avon (20,000), Nuneaton (13,000), Hinckley and Bosworth (26,000), Witney (16,000) and Banbury (almost 17,000).

The exception was an Ocado distribution centre in Mid Bedfordshire which previously had a 26,000 majority in 2019 but was lost by the Tories in a byelection to Labour.

Sunak’s visits have also been conducted in spaces where he has little contact with the public outside of their workplaces. Workers have been visited in full view of their bosses – at least two of which were Tory donors.

A visit to a Morrisons supermarket in the Witney constituency was conducted when it was almost empty at opening time. The Tories are under pressure from the Lib Dems in the seat but one early customer in the aisles said he had been a lifelong Tory voter and was now backing Reform. Asked if he wanted to see Rishi Sunak, he said: “I’ll go the other way, thanks.”

Updated

Starmer says Labour government should 'take on populism and nationalism' by showing progressive politics work

The final question to Keir Starmer came from Gary Gibbon from Channel 4 News.

Q: Looking at what is happening in Europe and America, maybe Brexit was Britain’s populist right moment, and we are now through that. Would a Labour win be proof of that? Or is there still a populist right threat here?

Starmer said he thought there were many challenges, in the UK and across the world, that were “more volatile now than they have been for a number of years”. That went alongside with a “loss of confidence in politics itself”, he said. He went on:

I believe that progressive parties, our party and other parties and governments across the world, are the answer to the challenges that the world faces.

But we do have to understand why people have lost faith in politics. And I think if you look at the last 14 years in this country, you can see why because Partygate, breaking the rules that were imposed on the rest of the country, was a real moment of trust with the electorate, as were the PPE contracts handed out at great expense to the taxpayer, as was the first instinct of so many of the Conservatives when there was to be an election which was not how do I take my message to the country, but how quickly can I get to the bookies.

This goes really deep into the psyche. And that’s why the change that we hope to bring about in this election, to return politics to service, is so important for the future of our country, but also so important for the point you put to me, which is how do we take on the populism and nationalism that is taking hold in some places.

So there’s a really serious, political challenge here that we have to rise to.

And that’s why the first answer I gave (see 10.48am), in relation to the first change, will be to return politics to service and ensuring that we have progressive answers to the challenges we face.

Q: Would you clamp down on British companies faciliting trade with Russia?

This was prompted by a story by Ed Conway, Sky’s economics editor.

Starmer said the government should have clear rules in place for trade. But he then launched into a general point about energy, claiming Labour’s plan to set up the Great British Energy firm would lead to lower energy bills.

Starmer dismisses Tory false claims about his work ethic as 'increasingly desperate stuff' and 'bordering on hysterical'

Q: Are you worried about people not getting postal ballots?

Starmer says he is worried about these reports. He says everything should be done to make sure people get their ballot papers.

Q: What do you make of Tories claims that you won’t work in the evenings? (See 9.29am.)

Starmer says this is “increasingly desperate stuff”.

He says he can hardly believe that, 48 hours before an election, the Tories have not got anything to say.

He says he has been saying that the Tories have nothing positive to say. And now the Tories are proving that. They are in a “negative, desperate loop”. It is a sign of “increasing desperation, bordering on hysterical now”.

UPDATE: Starmer said:

This is just increasingly desperate stuff.

I actually can hardly believe that, 48 hours before the election, the Conservative party has got nothing positive to say as they go into this.

I’ve been arguing throughout this campaign, you’ll have heard me many times saying they haven’t changed, they’re just the same, nothing’s going to change, and they’re proving it. They are not saying look, if you vote Tory and vote Conservative on Thursday, these things will happen. They’re just in this negative, desperate loop.

And it is really desperate. My family is really important to me, as they will be to every single person watching this.

And I just think it’s increasing desperation, bordering on hysterical now.

Updated

Starmer is now taking media questions.

Q: [From Jess Parker from the BBC] What will be the first thing you do if you become PM on Friday?

Starmer says the first thing he will do is change the mindset of politics. He wants to “return politics to service”. It should always be “country first, party second”, he says.

Keir Starmer is speaking in Nottinghamshire now. He is also delivering the same stump speech from yesterday, saying he wants to deliver “a summer of change”.

But change will only happen if people vote for it, he says. He says Labour will keep campaigning until 10pm on Thursday.

Back at the Q&A a woman tells Rishi Sunak says he had to wait three years for an autism diagnosis for her son. She says they had to get a private diagnosis, costing £2,000. What will the government do to improve this situation?

Sunak says there is a challenge here. He says the government is going to make it easier for people to get treatement from the NHS provided by a private healthcare provider.

(He is talking generally. He does not say that this is something available to people needing an autism diagnosis for a child.)

Sunak also says the government is giving new powers to pharmacies.

(Pharmacists don’t deal with autism.)

And Sunak’s final point is about the waiting lists that built up during Covid.

(He ignored the question, which was about autism provision entirely, and instead just defaulted to his stock ‘what to say about the NHS’ answer.)

Reform UK candidate says she is backing Tories because of Farage's failure to tackle racism in party

A Reform UK candidate has defected to the Conservative, hitting out at the “racist, misogynistic and bigoted” views of some of her former colleagues, PA Media reports.

Georgie David said in a statement issued by the Tories that, even though she did not think the Reform UK leadership (ie, Nigel Farage and Richard Tice) were racist, they had failed to tackle the problem in the party. She said:

I am hereby announcing my decision to leave the Reform Party and stand down as their candidate for West Ham and Beckton, with immediate effect.

I am in no doubt that the party and its senior leadership are not racist.

However, as the vast majority of candidates are indeed racist, misogynistic, and bigoted, I do not wish to be directly associated with people who hold such views that are so vastly opposing to my own and what I stand for.

I also have been significantly frustrated and dismayed by the failure of the Reform party’s leadership to tackle this issue in any meaningful way, and their attempts to instead try to brush it under the carpet or cry foul play.

As such, I have now suspended my campaign with Reform, and I an endorsing the Conservative party – I would encourage all of my fellow patriots to do the same.

Updated

Asked what he would do to improve growth, Sunak says he will cut tax. But Labour will introduced 70 new French-style employment laws, he claims. He says this will lead to more strikes.

Sunak is now taking questions. The first is about how he will restore integrity.

Sunak says he stands up for what he believes in. And he says that he set out his priorities, allowing people to judge whether he was achieving what he wanted to. He claims this is unusual for a politician.

Rishi Sunak is currently giving a stump speech in Oxfordshire. It is broadly the same as the one he was giving yesterday, where he starts by saying he understands why people are frustrated with the government, argues that it would be wrong to give Labour a “blank cheque” and says that, if the Tories win, he will continue to cut taxes.

Although he is emphasising what he describes as the dangers of “a Labour supermajority”, interestingly he is not using the line about not “surrendering” to Labour that he used repeatedly in last week’s TV debate.

Guide to how constituency boundaries have changed, with notional results for 2019 for new constituencies

There has been a major boundary review since 2019 and on Thursday most people will be voting in a constituency that has either changed its boundaries, or that has been replaced with a new seat, with quite different boundaries and a new name. We have got a guide to the new constituencies (below) and, using your postcode, you can check how the boundary changes affect you.

On election night it is important to know, not just how many seats parties are winning, but how the share of the vote has changed since 2019. Given that most boundaries have changed, comparisons with the results from 2019 would be misleading. But the academics Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher have produced notional results for 2019 based on the new boundaries (what the share of the vote would have been for each party, in each constituency, if the 2024 boundaries had been in place then). It is impossible to know for sure, because general election results are only counted on a constituency-wide basis. But, using ward-by-ward data from local election results, Rallings and Thrasher have been able to produce a reliable guide. The Guardian and other news organisations will be using these figures on election night as the benchmark to assess how the performance of parties has changed since 2019, and these figures are included in our interactive graphic too.

Streeting says 'lies and hypocrisy' from Tories 'overwhelming' after party spreads false claims about Starmer's work ethic

As parties get increasingly desperate and fearful of losing in election campaigns, they often ramp up the negative campaigning, and there has been a very good example of that from the Conservative party over the last 24 hours.

Yesterday Keir Starmer gave an interview to Chris Evans on Virgin Radio in which he said, if he becomes PM, he will try to carry on with the habit he has had for some years of making sure that he does not work on Friday nights so he can spend time with his wife and children. It was an unexceptional thing to say, and Virgin Radio did not even highlight it in their press release.

But yesterday afternoon some news websites started running headlines saying that Starmer had said that he would not work beyond 6pm. And the Conservatives picked this up as an attack line, despite knowing it was not what Starmer had said at all. This is from the Conservative party’s official X account.

Keir Starmer has said he’d clock off work at 6pm if he became Prime Minister.

You deserve better than a part-time Prime Minister.

The only way to prevent this is to vote Conservative on Thursday.

This is from Grant Shapps, the defence secretary.

Virtually every military intervention we’ve carried out has happened at night, partly to keep our servicemen & women safe.

The British people will wonder who would be standing in for Starmer between 6pm & 9am – Angela Rayner, David Lammy, Ed Miliband?

Defending Britain’s security isn’t a daylight hours only job.

This morning Maria Caulfield, the health minister, was still trying to run the same attack line – although on Sky News the presenter, Matt Barbet, told her bluntly she what she was saying was untrue.

This has been one of the biggest lies of the campaign – although arguably so transparently absurd as to be relatively harmless. In an LBC interview earlier in the campaign Rishi Sunak himself praised Starmer for having a good work/life balance, and not neglecting the need to spend time with his family.

This morning Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, was doing a media round for Labour, and he said the “lies and hypocrisy” coming from the Tories were now overwhelming. He told Sky News.

What we’ve seen this morning is just the latest, desperate attack from the Conservative party – the party that brought you the biggest lockdown party in Downing Street now talking about [Keir Starmer’s] work ethic.

The stench of their lies and hypocrisy is even more overwhelming than the vomit they left for Downing Street cleaners to clean up.

And, like the Downing Street cleaners, if we’re given the chance on Thursday, Labour will clean up the Tories’ mess too.

And, as far as I’m concerned, this is just the latest example of why this circus needs to be brought to an end and why people like Maria Caulfield, out this morning debasing herself on national television, should also be removed at the general election.

Updated

Sunak is doing the interview from a supermarket. Thompson asks him if he knows the prices of a loaf of bread. Sunak says at Morrisons a tiger bloomer loaf is £1.35.

Thompson asks if he knows how much it has gone up in price over the last five years.

Sunak says he does not have that figure to hand. Thompson tells him it is 28%.

And that’s the end of the interview.

(It was not a phone-in, as I said earlier. Sorry; I was misinformed.)

Asked about the best moments in the job, Sunak says it has been meeting people who have come through some tragedy but than campaigned for change.

Asked about the worst moments, he says it is a difficult job, and sometimes you do not achieve what you want. He says he would like to make more progress on waiting lists.

Ben Thomspon says Sunak laid out five priorities, but has only met one of them.

Sunak says he is glad Thompson made that point. He claims Keir Starmer has not got give priorities.

On inflation, he says he has met that. It is more than halved.

On economic growth, he says in the first quarter of this year “our economy grew faster than every other major economy including France, Germany, Italy and America”.

Thomspon says, if you take other timeframes, the record is less impressive.

Sunak says the government is complying with debt rules.

Sunak says he has not made as much progress as he wants on waiting lists.

And, on small boats, he says Starmer would abandon the Rwanda plan.

(In fact, Starmer has set out his priorities. He has said he will be guided by five missions, and he has set out six first steps for government.)

Prof John Curtice says 'more chance of lightning striking twice, in same place', than of Sunak winning election

Sally Nugent says the BBC asked Prof Sir John Curtice, the polling expert, about the chances of the Tories winning. He said there was “more chance of lightning striking twice, in the same place, and a bit more” than of Rishi Sunak remaining PM. Do you agree?

Sunak says that is Curtice’s view. He says he is working as hard as he can to win people over.

Updated

Sunak says Labour would be 'unaccountable' with big majority - but ducks question about whether big Tory majorities also bad

Ben Thompson and Sally Nugent are presenting on BBC Breakfast. They are interviewing Rishi Sunak now.

Q: Why have you stopped talking about what a Tory government would do, and started talking about the dangers of Labour?

Sunak claims he is still talking about what he would do. But with a big majority Labour would be “unchecked and unaccountable”.

Q: When Margaret Thatcher and Boris Johnson won big majorities, was that dangerous for the country?

Sunak ignores the question, and says Labour would put up taxes, and make the UK the “soft touch of Europe” for migration.

Updated

Rishi Sunak is about to do a phone-in on BBC Breakfast.

Starmer says big Labour majority 'better for the country'

Good morning. I’m Andrew Sparrow, taking over from Helen Sullivan.

As reported earlier, while the Conservatives are trying to depress the Labour vote by warning about the dangers of a Labour “supermajority”, Keir Starmer has said a big Labour majority would be good for Britain.

Here is the full extract from the Times interview where he made that point. Steven Swinford reports:

For all his instinctive caution, Starmer makes a virtue of the Tory attack by appealing to voters to hand the party a “strong mandate”.

“The most important thing is growing the economy and wealth creation,” he says. “I do think that’s been the Achilles’ heel for 13 years now.

“You can talk about public services but if you haven’t got your economy working then you can’t do that. If you haven’t settled the planning, the infrastructure challenges, then you can’t get your economy going.

“It’s the mindset change we’ve talked about. Do we need a strong mandate for that? Yes, we do. Because these changes are difficult and the sense of the whole country wanting those changes is important in terms of the platform on which we stand to take the country forward.”

The bigger the majority, the better? “Better for the country. Because it means we can roll up our sleeves and get on with the change we need.”

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.

Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho has echoed Rishi Sunak’s claim that just 130,000 voters could prevent a Labour landslide.

She told LBC Radio:

It’s never over ‘till it’s over. What I would say is that lots of people, if they look at the press, they might think the election is a foregone conclusion.

Actually, it’s a relatively small amount of voters across the country - about 130,000 people have been estimated - who can make the difference in this election.

Asked by presenter Nick Ferrari whether those voters could bring about a Tory victory, she said: “There’s quite a lot of seats that are very, very marginal, Nick. So, actually, just a handful of voters in those seats can change the outcome in those seats.”

With that, and with Lenny Kravitz now in my head, this is Helen Sullivan leaving you in the capable hands of Andrew Sparrow.

Updated

Stephen Flynn also said voters in Scotland will need to choose whether they want members of parliament who will “go and sit quietly behind Keir Starmer and nod along”, or those who will stand up to him.

Speaking on BBC Breakfast, SNP’s Westminster leader said:

Do they want members of parliament who will sit opposite Keir Starmer, will stand up to him on the biggest issues, who will argue against austerity, argue for better relations with the European Union, argue for investment in our NHS, action on the cost-of-living crisis, for Scotland’s right to choose and recognition of the state of Palestine?

If they believe in that, then vote for the SNP, and that over the course of the next 48 hours I believe will come through to the general public and ensure that right across Scotland we can win the seats where it’s a very close battle between ourselves and the Labour Party.”

Meanwhile the SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn has just been on BBC Breakfast, where he said he was “massively concerned” voters across Scotland reporting they have not received their postal votes.

He told BBC Breakfast:

I’m massively concerned about that, like almost every candidate across Scotland that I believe to be the case. I’ve had numerous emails from people who have not received their postal ballot, that’s simply not good enough.

You know, we warned the Prime Minister of this when it became apparent that he was going to choose the election date because, of course, for a huge majority of the people of Scotland, it’s now the school holidays, people are away on holiday.

If their postal vote didn’t land in time, then they’re now disenfranchised from this election, they’re not able to vote for who they want to represent them at Westminster, whether that’s the SNP, or otherwise, that’s simply not good enough.

I see some individuals are blaming the Royal Mail but the reality is the system is not fit for purpose, and we need to see huge reform. We also need to see a big reflection on how we’ve managed to get into a situation where a prime minister can at his own whim declare an election, the Tories decided this was the way that they want the elections to operate in the UK.”

Postal affairs minister 'urgently' investigating ballot delays

The postal affairs minister is “urgently” investigating delays to postal ballots being delivered, Health Minister Maria Caulfield has said.

Postal affairs minister Kevin Hollinrake has criticised Royal Mail for failing to deliver votes in time for the General Election.

Caulfield told Sky News:

Kevin is taking this very seriously. He’s in direct contact with the Royal Mail.

It doesn’t seem to be an issue in my constituency, but I know a number of colleagues where people haven’t received their postal votes and are worried about that.

Kevin is investigating this urgently. I know there’s extra resources going into this to try and do a sweep of all the sorting offices and make sure they’re out there.

If people have only just received their postal vote, they can take it to their polling station on election day and it will still be counted.”

British female politicians have become the victims of fake pornography, with some of their faces used in nude images created using artificial intelligence.

Political candidates targeted on one prominent fake pornography website include: the Labour deputy leader, Angela Rayner; the education secretary, Gillian Keegan; the Commons leader, Penny Mordaunt; the former home secretary, Priti Patel; and the Labour backbencher Stella Creasy, according to Channel 4 News.

Many of the images have been online for several years and attracted hundreds of thousands of views.

While some are crude Photoshops featuring the politician’s head imposed on to another person’s naked body, other images appear to be more complicated deepfakes that have been created using AI technology. Some of the politicians targeted have now contacted police.

Dehenna Davison, a Conservative MP until the recent dissolution of parliament, is one of those featured on the site. She told Channel 4 News it was “really strange” that people would target women like her and she found it “quite violating”.

She said that unless governments around the world put in place a proper regulatory framework for AI, there would be “major problems”.

Creasy told the broadcaster that she felt “sick” to learn about the images and that “none of this is about sexual pleasure, it’s all about power and control”.

Thursday’s general election is an opportunity to “draw a permanent line” under the Scottish independence debate, a senior Scottish Conservative has said.

With his party’s election campaign entering its final days, party chairman Craig Hoy said voting for the Conservatives in “key seats” where the party is going toe-to-toe with the SNP could “finish off any hope the SNP have of seeking independence”.

He said this would enable the country to focus on “the things that really matter”, such as healthcare and roads.

This General Election in Scotland is a huge opportunity to beat the SNP, so that all of the focus can finally be on the things that really matter, such as faster GP appointments and fixing the roads.

If voters back the Scottish Conservatives in the key seats where we are going toe-to-toe with the nationalists, it could be the season finale of the SNP’s bid for independence.

We could finish off any hope the SNP have of seeking independence and draw a permanent line under the debate that has divided Scotland for more than a decade.

Here is a roundup of LibDem leader Ed Davey’s stunts throughout this campaign. But can he pull off the greatest stunt of them all (becoming the third biggest party in the Commons)?

Health leaders have warned that strikes “must not become the status quo” for the NHS as junior doctors in England return to work after a five-day walkout, PA reports.

It is expected that tens of thousands of appointments, procedures and operations were postponed as a result of the industrial action by members of the British Medical Association (BMA).

NHS leaders said that hospitals have been left to “pick up the pieces” as staff work to reschedule all of the appointments lost during strike days.

Officials are expected to confirm the number of appointments that were postponed on Friday – the day after voters take to the polls in the General Election.

Both the Conservatives and Labour have pledged to resume talks with the BMA’s Junior Doctors Committee if they are voted to power.

Health Secretary Victoria Atkins pledged to “get back into the negotiating room immediately after the election” while Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said that he will call the BMA on 5 July.

Health leaders have called for the long-running dispute to be brought to a close swiftly.

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said the impact of the strike will be felt “for some time to come” adding:

We know that tens of thousands of operations and appointments are likely to have been cancelled.

Now health leaders and their teams will need to begin picking up the pieces by rescheduling all these so that patients can get the treatments they so desperately need.

It is important to remember that it is patients who are bearing the brunt of this ongoing dispute, patients who are often waiting in pain or discomfort for care.

While we recognise that junior doctors have genuine issues over pay, conditions and training, it is questionable that these strikes in the midst of a General Election campaign could have moved the dial. We are concerned that so many patients should have their care disrupted when no government was in a position to negotiate.

We hope that the next government can re-start negotiations and bring this dispute to an end so the NHS can focus on improving performance and cutting waiting lists rather than filling rota gaps and rescheduling appointments.”

Will Thatcher’s home town vote for first Labour MP?

Projections show there is a real chance on Thursday of what would be the first ever Labour victory in Margaret Thatcher’s home town.

The true blue constituency has never voted Labour, not even during the New Labour landslide of 1997, when huge swathes of the country left the Tories behind.

Grantham continued to resist the pull, with the Conservative vote share only increasing every election. By 2019, Gareth Davies, the incumbent Tory MP, had a whopping 66% of the vote.

But such is the disastrous polling for Rishi Sunak’s party that on Friday morning, voters in the seat of Grantham and Bourne, renamed from Grantham and Stamford to take into account a boundary change, could be waking up to their first elected Labour MP. There was one period in 2007, when their MP Quentin Davies defected to Labour, but as soon as voters had the chance in 2010 Labour was relegated to third place with a solid Conservative win.

Though a boundary change is a factor in the town’s potential new switch of allegiance, projections from the consultancy Electoral Calculus using the old boundary show Labour would still steal the seat from the Tories. In other words, people in Grantham are likely to vote for change.

Large financial backers are returning to Labour

Labour HQ was shocked and delighted to discover the party had raised £4m during the first two weeks of the election campaign, while the beleaguered Tories managed just £290,000.

But according to a Labour donor who used to raise funds for the party, the adage “when power shifts, so too does the money” rings true.

Donations of more than £11,180 – a sum that recently increased from £7,500 – must be reported to and published by the Electoral Commission and the turnaround in Labour’s fortunes with large financial backers could not be more stark. Over the decade until Starmer became leader, Labour had lost more than 95% of its big private donors, according to party sources involved in raising cash.

Some business figures had lost interest when the party was no longer in power, others faded away during the Ed Miliband era, and then a real exodus occurred during the Jeremy Corbyn years.

The real blow came in 2019 when the longstanding Labour funder David Sainsbury, of the supermarket dynasty, gave £8m to Jo Swinson’s Liberal Democrats. “That was a low point,” recalls one person involved in raising cash for the party.

But in the last four years, not only have private donations come trickling back, but Starmer’s party has had an influx of “mega-donors” – people giving hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of pounds each time.

The cash has been flowing so readily that private donations now outstrip funding from the trade unions:

The Guardian’s Whitehall editor, Rowena Mason, is on the campaign bus with Rishi Sunak today.

She writes:

Sunak had an early start this morning as he toured an Ocado warehouse at 5am - watching the robots pack bags and talking to workers about their 10 hour shifts in fridge-like temperatures.

The prime minister has appeared to be more chirpy and less tetchy this week, now the end of the campaign is in sight and the rows over D-Day and gambling have subsided a bit.

After boarding the bus, he stopped for a McDonalds wrap for breakfast and revealed that his regime of fasting all day on Monday has gone out the window during the campaign.

That avocado never stood a chance:

Updated

48 hours to go

It is 7am, and you know what that means: exactly 48 hours from now, polling stations will open across the UK.

With that in mind, the Guardian’s Rupert Neate has spoken to YouGov about how undecided voters could shape the results:

Pollsters from YouGov reckon about 12% of the electorate are still undecided. They tracked down 641 of them, and discovered that, while they are evenly spread across age groups, they are much more likely to be female (67%), to have voted leave in the EU referendum (43%, against 30% for remain), and to have voted Conservative at the last general election (43% compared to 15% who voted Labour).

When questioned (which can be hard as uncertain voters are less likely to respond to pollsters) some are more undecided than others. They found that 9% are likely to end up voting Conservative, 9% for Labour, 5% for the Lib Dems, 4% Green and 3% Reform. A quarter of the undecided voters are “unlikely to actually vote”.

“This leaves 45% of the overall sample of people who are ‘truly undecided’, having told us they are at least 6/10 likely to vote at the election, but even with one week to go won’t commit to a party,” says YouGov’s director of political research, Adam McDonnell. “This group accounts for 6% of the entire public.”

It’s a far larger group of people than at the 2019 election, and is unusually concentrated among one party. “For months and months we have noticed that people who voted Conservative in 2019 are more likely to be undecided,” says Surridge. “By this point in the campaign we would have expected the proportion of “don’t knows” to have come down below 10%.”

Updated

This morning's front pages

It is almost 7am: let’s take a look at the day’s top stories.

The Guardian leads with an interview with shadow energy security secretary Ed Miliband, who promises that Labour will take the lead on global efforts to tackle the climate crisis:

The I Paper: Labour faces up to prospect of far-right neighbour in France with early talks

Metro: Naver mind the ballots

The Daily Telegraph: Royal Mail blamed for postal vote chaos

The Daily Mail: Britain’s forces not ready for ‘conflict of any scale’

The Times: Starmer: a big majority will be best for Britain

The Daily Express: Voting reform ‘risks losing hundreds of Tory MPs for a generation’

Scotland’s Daily Record: Sacre Bleu!

The Daily Mirror: Give our children hope

And the Liberal Democrats will call on voters to “end the sewage scandal” and vote for “historic change”.

Ahead of his visits to the South West of England, LibDem leader Ed Davey said: “In just 48 hours’ time, the British public can vote to end the sewage scandal and kick the Conservatives out of power,” PA reports.

“Filthy sewage dumping has caused untold damage to our precious environment and left people feeling unable to swim in their local rivers and beaches because they’re worried about getting sick.”

Meanwhile Rishi Sunak is expected to tell voters today that “If just 130,000 people switch their vote and lend us their support, we can deny Starmer that supermajority,” PA reports.

Updated

Keir Starmer has said a big majority would be “better for the country”, as the Tories continue to urge voters to proceed with caution and not hand Labour a “blank cheque”.

In an interview with The Times, Starmer said he needed a “strong mandate” to reform the planning system and improve the economy.

Asked if he was saying the bigger a majority, the better, he told the newspaper: “Better for the country. Because it means we can roll up our sleeves and get on with the change we need.”

Updated

Coming up today

Here is more detail on candidates’ movements today:

  • Tory leader and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will visit businesses at 7.50am and 9.35am in Oxfordshire, with a Q&A with staff at 10.05am. He will appear on BBC Breakfast at 8.30am. There will be an agricultural visit in Oxfordshire at 12.55pm. He will return to London to speak at a Conservative campaign event at 10pm.

  • Labour leader Keir Starmer will campaign in Nottinghamshire at 10.30am, Derbyshire at 1pm and Staffordshire at 3.20pm.

  • Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey will campaign in the South West of England.

  • Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar will join the party’s candidate for Inverclyde and Renfrewshire West Martin McCluskey at 10am.

  • SNP leader and First Minister John Swinney will join SNP candidate for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey.

Updated

Senior Tory criticises ‘worst campaign in my lifetime’ as frustration grows

Recriminations have begun to fly around the Conservatives as a senior figure called the last few weeks the “worst campaign in my lifetime” and criticised the party for failing to tackle the threat from Reform.

The Guardian’s Rowena Mason and Kiran Stacey spoke t a number of senior Tory figures for this story, and found that candidates, advisers and officials are deeply frustrated with how Sunak has run the campaign after calling a July election against the advice of his key strategist Isaac Levido.

One senior Tory party figure said on Monday it had been the “worst campaign in my lifetime”, saying that while Sunak was wholly to blame for the early election, there was a feeling that Levido could have pushed back more against the July date and that Conservative HQ should have “taken the fight to Reform” earlier.

They said Levido had made it clear from the start that 2019 Tory switchers from Labour were “gone and never coming back”, telling candidates that all their efforts should be made to target potential Reform voters instead:

Updated

Rishi Sunak has started today with an early visit to an Ocado packing plant in Bedfordshire.

The Prime Minister witnessed hundreds of washing machine-sized robots topped with blinking green lights scuttling along a grid of rails, picking up and sorting boxes of food items from above, PA reports.

As he toured the warehouse, he also met with members of staff in their canteen for an early morning cup of tea.

He seemed to find this avocado quite amazing:

How the Tories pushed universities to the brink of disaster

Given Britain’s stagnant economy, dilapidated public services and near-bankrupt local authorities, there isn’t much public concern left over for its universities. But 14 years of Tory rule have damaged them just as grievously as the rest of the public realm, and in some ways more recklessly.

William Davies reports:

As many academics have warned, the funding system of higher education is heading towards disaster. One reason why this story has struggled to gain traction is that, as with so many areas of Britain’s highly unequal society, the elite end of the spectrum continues to thrive: according to the recent QS world university rankings, four of the world’s top 10 universities are in Britain.

But the news from the rest of the sector is increasingly grim. Revenue has struggled to keep up with spiralling costs, even while academic salaries have been falling in real terms. A sense of emergency took hold last autumn, when it became clear that there had been a sharp drop in international students, whose higher fees have become pivotal to the funding model of higher education in the UK. Cue panic, as universities scrambled to bring in whatever students they could, slashing entry tariffs for postgraduates and even poaching them from one another, sometimes midterm.

Then there is the debt. The average undergraduate now leaves university owing £45,000, with a commercial rate of interest accruing. For postgraduates, you can add another £24,000 on top. The government’s repayment scheme raises a graduate’s marginal rate of income tax by a further 9%, resulting in the highest marginal tax rates for any workers in Britain.

In an economy as regionally unequal as the UK’s, higher education is one of the few countervailing forces, spreading revenue and jobs to parts of the country that otherwise have little to fall back on. Despite whatever schadenfreude might be enjoyed by Daily Telegraph columnists and Tory backbenchers, a financial crisis in this sector does not only impact on lecturers:

Updated

And here is just a bit more of Ed Davey’s Zumba class to start your morning:

Updated

Monday's best photos

Is the glass more than half empty or less than half full? Rishi Sunak visited the Cotswolds Distillery in Whichford, central England on Monday.

10/10 walking in a relaxed and confident way – one hand in pocket – while chatting to strangers for Sunak:

See: Not boring at all! Fun! Loves a laugh!

Today’s winner of the Dogs-are-so-Lucky-to-Have-No-Idea-What-is-Happening Award goes to:

As we contemplate Liberal Democrats leader Ed Davey’s campaign of antics this election, tidying up expert Marie Kondo would have us ask one simple question: Does it spark joy?

It does:

Rees-Mogg tells young Tories he wants to ‘build a wall in the English Channel’

Jacob Rees-Mogg has said he wants to “build a wall in the English Channel” in a leaked recording, in which he heaped praise on Donald Trump and the hardline Republican response to immigration.

Speaking to young Conservative activists, Rees-Mogg doubled down on his backing for the former US president, saying he took the right approach by building a border wall.

“If I were American I’d want the border closed, I’d be all in favour of building a wall. I’d want to build a wall in the middle of the English Channel,” the former cabinet minister said.

Rees-Mogg is fighting a strong Labour challenge in his North East Somerset and Hanham constituency against Dan Norris, the mayor of the West of England, who was previously MP in the seat until he was defeated by Rees-Mogg in 2010.

Rees-Mogg, a popular figure among Tory party members, is likely to be influential in the Conservative leadership race if he retains his seat. Support for Trump’s White House bid is a sharp divider within the party between the right and the centrist One Nation group.

Speaking before a pub crawl in March organised by a Young Conservative group, Rees-Mogg said: “Every so often, I slightly peek over the parapet, like that image from the second world war of the man looking over the wall, and say if I were an American, I would vote for Donald Trump and it’s always the most unpopular thing I ever say in British politics, but I’m afraid it’s true. I would definitely vote for Donald Trump against Joe Biden.”

Jacob Rees-Mogg praises Trump as he suggests English channel border wall

Good morning and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the – almost 48 hours until! –the UK general election on Thursday with me, Helen Sullivan.

As Labour and the Conservatives drive home their messages, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg has told young Tories that if he were American, he would vote for Trump in the US elections. He praised the former US president’s border wall, saying “If I were American I’d want the border closed, I’d be all in favour of building a wall. I’d want to build a wall in the middle of the English Channel”.

Rees-Mogg is fighting a strong Labour challenge in his constituency of North East Somerset and Hanham against Dan Norris, the mayor of the West of England, who was previously MP in the seat. Rees-Mogg defeated Norris in 2010.

More shortly on that story from the Guardian’s Jessica Elgot. In the meantime, here is some of what we can expect today:

The Scottish Conservatives’ Meghan Gallacher will be on the campaign trail in the seat of Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock, which is expected to be a straight fight between the Scottish Conservatives and the SNP.

10:00 Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar is in Inverclyde and Renfrewshire West with candidate Martin McCluskey.

10:30 Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton visits a falconry in Fife.

14:00 SNP Leader and First Minister John Swinney will join SNP candidate for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey Graham Leadbitter on the campaign trail on Tuesday in Aviemore.

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