Summary
Here is a summary of the key events on Sunday.
Prime minister Rishi Sunak announced plans for mandatory national service for 18-year-olds. He said every 18-year-old will get the choice of how they do their National Services, deciding to either serve their country in the armed forces or serve their community by volunteering. “The Covid pandemic showed the value of civic service to individuals and our country as a whole. By building on this spirit of community, this bold action will enable young people to give back to the communities that raised them.” he said.
Home secretary James Cleverly said 18-year-olds would not be jailed if they refuse to carry out “mandatory” national service. He told Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips “No, there’s going to be no criminal sanction. There’s no one going to jail over this.”
Cleverly told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that no-one would be “compelled” to do the military national service, and they they could instead participate in the civil elements. These could include a range of things: uniform public service such as special constable, on call fire fighter, emergency health responder, environmental protection, he said.
Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves dismissed the national service plans as “just another desperate gimmick” with “no viable means of funding it.”
Reeves said the UK would not return to austerity measures under a Labour government and her “No 1 commitment is to bring stability back to the economy”, she said.
Reeves said on whether she would rule out putting up income tax: “What I want and what Keir wants is taxes on working people to be lower, and certainly won’t be increasing income tax or national insurance if we win the election.”
When asked when Labour would increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, Reeves told BBC One’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg: “We’re not going to put a timetable on that”.
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar dismissed the national service plans saying: “I think this policy is going to go the same way as this Tory government, in the bin”, describing it as “another gimmick…to distract from their disastrous election campaign so far”.
Sir Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats said of the Conservatives’ first policy pledge for mandatory National Service for 18-year-olds: “This is quite a pathetic attempt, desperate attempt, from Conservatives to grab a headline, the vast majority of people are going to say come on you’re completely out of touch.”
Green Party co-leader, Carla Denyer said of the national service plans:“This policy is removed from reality. It is not what our military needs and it certainly isn’t what our young people need
In a post on X, Reform UK party leader Richard Tice said: “Sunak is so desperate…. Putting out unconsidered impractical policy ideas that military do not want, not asked for.”
Nigel Farage described the national service plans “a joke” and “totally impractical”.
Shadow work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall confirmed Labour would seek to revive plans to ban young people from ever being able to smoke tobacco legally after the Tobacco and Vapes Bill failed to become law ahead of the General Election.
Asked if Labour would keep the triple-lock on pensions, Kendall replied: “Yes.”
Rachel Reeves has accused the Tories of making £64bn of unfunded spending commitments in a “desperate and reckless” effort to rescue their gaffe-strewn general election campaign. Speaking to the Observer, Reeves said that what appeared to be pledges to slash taxes – including national insurance, income tax and inheritance tax – were reminiscent of Liz Truss’s catastrophic mini-budget and showed the Conservatives had learned nothing from her disastrous time at No 10.
Nigel Farage has insisted he still has “one more big card to play” and confirmed plans to stand in the future as an MP candidate, despite feeling “extremely disappointed” by Rishi Sunak’s decision to call a general election on 4 July.
Former prime minister Boris Johnson will be out of the country for most of the election campaign but will help from afar, friends have told the Sunday Telegraph.
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting has pledged to tackle the “cultural rot that places protecting the reputation of the NHS above protecting the public” and says that patient care is not good enough. Writing for The Sunday Times, Streeting warned that the NHS is broken and promises “reformation of the national religion”.
Scotland First Minister John Swinney has said the SNP will stand against the “twin threats” of austerity and privatisation, as his party campaigns on public services. The SNP will seek to focus on investing in the NHS and other public services over the coming week of general election campaigning.
This blog will be closing shortly. Thank you for reading.
Rachel Reeves vowed there would be no “return to austerity” under a Labour government as she ruled out increases to income tax or national insurance.
On the first weekend of the general election campaign, the shadow chancellor said she and Keir Starmer wanted taxes on working people to be lower.
Pressed on how Labour would fund public services, Reeves ruled out raising income tax or national insurance and insisted that there would be no “unfunded proposals” in the party’s election manifesto.
Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg, Reeves said: “I don’t want to make any cuts to public spending, which is why we’ve announced the immediate injection of cash into public services.
Read more:
Sir Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, has launched his party’s general election campaign in Cambridgeshire by unveiling the party’s” battlebus”,Yellow Hammer 1, Sky News reports.
"Liberal Democrats are go!"
— Sky News (@SkyNews) May 26, 2024
Sir Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, is launching his party's general election campaign in Cambridgeshire.
He arrived at the location in the party's "battlebus" which is called "Yellow Hammer 1"https://t.co/z4d81IlXIT
📺 Sky 501 pic.twitter.com/nxdVt0Vg9s
Hundreds of people in the UK infected with contaminated blood and relatives of those infected are going ahead with plans to sue the health secretary for damages, having been left dissatisfied with the government’s announcement on compensation.
A group claim by about 500 people against the government alleging it breached a duty to take reasonable care to prevent personal injury or loss, amounting to misfeasance in public office, began in 2017 but was paused pending the inquiry into the scandal, which published its final report on Monday.
Explaining the reason for looking to reinstate the lawsuit despite the government’s announcement of a compensation framework, Des Collins, of Collins Solicitors, said: “The reason we’ve done that is we started the week off on a high with the [Sir Brian] Langstaff report saying pretty much everything we’ve said for seven years.
“Then we went on to Rishi [Sunak] and his abject apology in the House [of Commons] on Monday afternoon, the announcement of a compensation framework on Tuesday, but it wasn’t until we got the first draft of paperwork on that compensation recovery programme that we realised that there are holes and gaps in it.”
Read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/may/26/hundreds-of-victims-in-infected-blood-scandal-to-sue-uk-health-secretary
Sir Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats has said that the Conservatives’ first policy pledge of the election campaign of a new form of mandatory National Service for 18-year-olds is “pathetic”.
Speaking to Lewis Goodall on LBC on Sunday about the announcement, the MP for Kingston and Surbiton, said: “I was slightly amused but alarmed by it really, here’s a policy that on their figures, which I think underestimate the cost, costs £2.5bn a year and at the same time they’re cutting our army.
“Troop numbers if the Tories have their way will go down to make our British army smaller than at any time since the Napoleonic wars, how dreadful is that when we have a war on mainland Europe.
“This is quite a pathetic attempt, desperate attempt, from Conservatives to grab a headline, the vast majority of people are going to say come on you’re completely out of touch.”
Here is Sunak’s full thread on X on the national service plans.
Introducing National Service. Wondering how it will improve your or your child’s future?
— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) May 26, 2024
Here are the five things you need to know 👇
🧵 1/6
Every 18-year-old will get the choice of how they do their National Service.
— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) May 26, 2024
Deciding to either serve their country in the Armed Forces or serve their community by volunteering.
2/6
This bold new model will open up a world of opportunity.
— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) May 26, 2024
It will make sure young people in the UK get the same chance in life as their peers in allies like Sweden, Norway, Denmark and France - which have all recently introduced or announced new forms of national service.
3/6
Everyone will get the life-changing chance to learn from the best of the best - from the men and women of our Armed Forces, our inspirational NHS staff or the fire service.
— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) May 26, 2024
Gaining skills for life in everything from cyber to leadership.
4/6
The Covid pandemic showed the value of civic service to individuals and our country as a whole.
— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) May 26, 2024
By building on this spirit of community, this bold action will enable young people to give back to the communities that raised them.
5/6
This clear plan is costed in full through clamping down on tax avoidance and through funding previously used for the Shared Prosperity Fund.
— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) May 26, 2024
Meaning that we’ll deliver National Service without raising a single tax and on top of our commitment to spend 2.5% of GDP on Defence by…
Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said the UK would not return to austerity measures under a Labour government. Speaking to the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Reeves said Labour plans for an immediate injection of cash into frontline public services before a spending review.
Video here:
Green Party co-leader, Carla Denyer said of the national service plans:
“This policy is removed from reality. It is not what our military needs and it certainly isn’t what our young people need. What young people tell us they need is access to the housing market, to higher education that doesn’t plunge them into debt, and to meaningful jobs that pay well. Not military conscription. It is striking just how removed this Conservative government is from the priorities of young people today”.
And here’s his thread on what it means.
Introducing National Service. Wondering how it will improve your or your child’s future?
— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) May 26, 2024
Here are the five things you need to know 👇
🧵 1/6
Here’s Rishi Sunak announcing the mandatory national service plan in a post on X.
Opportunity. Community. Security.
— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) May 26, 2024
This is why I would introduce a bold new model of National Service 👇 pic.twitter.com/bNXTLwwBXV
Updated
In the build up to the 1992 election the Sun’s attacks on the Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, who had been expected to win, were relentless. On polling day, its front page featured a mock up of Kinnock as a lightbulb with the headline: “If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights.”
When he lost, its front-page headline declared: “It’s the Sun wot won it.” Later, the Sun’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, told the Leveson inquiry the headline was “tasteless and wrong”, and that he had given the editor at the time, Kelvin Mackenzie, “a hell of a bollocking”. He added: “We don’t have that sort of power.”
After Rishi Sunak blindsided most of his own cabinet by announcing a general election on 4 July last Wednesday, much of the UK’s press held back from early endorsements of either side. But messaging already appeared to be more nuanced than in previous elections, including in the Murdoch-owned Sun and the Times.
Read more:
Rishi Sunak has been campaigning in Stanmore, north London this morning.
James Cleverly says he is 'particularly sorry' to mother of Manchester Arena attack victim over Martyn's Law
James Cleverly has said he is “particularly sorry” to the mother of a victim of the Manchester Arena bombing attack for being unable to introduce Martyn’s Law before the general election.
Figen Murray, whose son Martyn Hett was among the 22 killed in the 2017 blast at the Ariana Grande concert and has been campaigning to get the law passed, said she felt “misled” by Rishi Sunak this week.
Murray said she felt “let down” after the prime minister told her on Wednesday, just hours before he called the election, that he would introduce the legislation before the parliamentary summer break.
Martyn’s Law would require venues and local authorities in the UK to have training requirements and preventive plans against terror attacks.
Asked whether the government would apologise to Murray, Cleverly told Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips programme: “Of course we’re sorry that not all the legislation has passed, and I’m particularly sorry that we weren’t able to get Martyn’s Law on the statute books before the general election.
“But when I discussed with the family and the campaign group that it might straddle a general election, that if we re-entered government we would prioritise this to get it on because it has taken longer than we would have wanted.
“And I said there is cross-party support, and I said I cannot envisage a world where this is not enacted, even if it is delayed because of a general election.”
Sunak said on Friday he had not deceived Murray because he could still honour the commitment, telling journalists accompanying him on his whistlestop two-day tour of the four nations: “I said by summer recess and that will still be possible. The election is in the first week of July. Parliament will reconvene immediately after that, so there will still be time to bring that law in before summer recess, and that’s what I remain committed to doing.”
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer avoided making a guarantee that his party would bring it to parliament before the summer recess, but said he would introduce the law “as a priority” should he replace Sunak in Number 10.
Updated
Meanwhile, Nigel Farage has insisted he still has “one more big card to play” and confirmed plans to stand in the future as an MP candidate, despite feeling “extremely disappointed” by Rishi Sunak’s decision to call a general election on 4 July.
The Reform UK honorary president announced on Thursday that he would not stand as a party candidate in the election, but would “do my bit to help” in the UK campaign.
He told GB News on Sunday:
I’ve always reasoned aged 60 that I’ve got one more big card to play, personally, in terms of putting myself forward as a candidate – the question is when to play it.
I had decided I’d do it this year, and I thought I’d have six months of it – I didn’t, I had six weeks.
Will I at some point in the future come back to try and reshape, to actually create a centre-right right of British politics, because there isn’t one? At some point in the future, the answer to your question is yes.”
Farage ran as an candidate for the UK Independence Party (Ukip) at five previous general elections and two byelections. His most recent campaign was in the South Thanet constituency in 2015, where he picked up more than 16,000 votes.
Updated
Reform UK has dismissed the Conservative’s national service plan as “desperate”.
In a post on X, party leader Richard Tice said: “Sunak is so desperate…. Putting out unconsidered impractical policy ideas that military do not want, not asked for.”
Sunak is so desperate…. Putting out unconsidered impractical policy ideas that military do not want, not asked for.
— Richard Tice 🇬🇧 (@TiceRichard) May 26, 2024
Just fund our professional force properly at 3% as per @reformparty_uk policy
We can be trusted to defend our borders https://t.co/XY3lIpNmZH
Here’s the Guardian’s write-up of home secretary James Cleverly’s promise no teenagers would face jail over the national service plans.
BBC Scotland’s Sunday Show spoke to a roundabout of parties on the first weekend since the election was called, but one topic dominated proceedings.
SNP deputy leader Keith Brown described the military service plans as “a sticking plaster to cover up the disinvestment in the armed forces since 2005.”
“We face some serious threats in the Western world, but the way to address this is to properly fund the armed forces. Give them the tanks, the helicopters, the equipment that they need, give them a salary to make sure that they can live a normal life in terms of their standard of living”.
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar was brutally frank: “I think this policy is going to go the same way as this Tory government, in the bin”, dismissing it as “another gimmick…to distract from their disastrous election campaign so far”.
Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross was supportive, saying he welcomed “any opportunity to give young people the chance to perhaps get involved in the military service or the police or the NHS… young people were one of the biggest cohort people affected by the pandemic.” More broadly, Ross said the prime minister is “honest enough to say there’s still more to do”.
Asked about Sunak’s wash out election announcement, Ross said that the prime minister “came up to Scotland [on Thursday] to get some good weather. We’re having a very positive start to our campaign, they know if they unite behind the Scottish Conservatives that they can defeat the SNP and end their obsession with independence”.
Nigel Farage described Tory plans to re-introduce mandatory national service for 18-year-olds as “a joke” and “totally impractical”.
Asked by Trevor Phillips if he supported the policy on Sky News, Farage, Reform UK’s honorary president, said: “They (the Conservatives) don’t support it either – it’s a joke, isn’t it?
“You get a focus group of half a dozen Reform voters in a room, the chairman says ‘Now, what about national service?’
“When you’re a weak leader – and Sunak is not a leader in any way at all – you’re a follower, so you follow what the focus groups say, and you say ‘by doing this I can attack the Reform vote’. That’s what it’s all about.”
Updated
Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves was asked when Labour would increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP. She told BBC One’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg: “We’re not going to put a timetable on that”.
“We’ve committed to do in government a strategic defence review to make sure that we’re getting value for money for all of our spending, including on defence where some of the procurement costs of purchasing new equipment have, frankly, got out of control under this Government.”
She also insisted Labour “will end fire and rehire” after a union criticised the party for excluding an outright ban on the practice in the final version of its workers’ rights package.
Referring to Unite general secretary Sharon Graham’s criticism that the plans now have “more holes than Swiss cheese”, Reeves said: I’m sorry that Sharon feels like that but we do have the support of our trade union colleagues and I believe that this is the biggest-ever extension of workplace rights that’s ever been introduced if we have that opportunity to do so.”
She said: “We will end fire and rehire which has seen companies... sack all their staff and then try and bring them back on worse contracts.
“That is deplorable and we will not allow that to happen.”
'There will be no return to austerity under a Labour government,' says Rachel Reeves
Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said there will be “no return to austerity under a Labour government”.
Speaking to the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Reeves said Labour plans for an immediate injection of cash into frontline public services would see an extra 40,000 NHS appointments a week, and an additional 6,500 teachers in state schools and 13,000 police and community support officers.
The funding would come from plans including tightening up rules on non doms, cracking down on tax avoidance and windfall tax on energy companies.
Reeves was challenged by Kuenssberg that that the measures were “tiny” compared to the overall budget, and asked if Labour would stick with the Conservatives spending plans which implied a big squeeze on public services.
Reeves said: “There is not going to be a return to austerity under a Labour government”.
She added: “But we have got that immediate injection of cash into our frontline public services. That’s a down payment on the changes we want to make, but in the end we have to grow the economy.”
A Labour government would have to make “difficult decisions” and “we will not be able to put everything right straight away”.
On whether she would rule out putting up income tax, she said: “What I want and what Keir wants is taxes on working people to be lower, and certainly won’t be increasing income tax or national insurance if we win the election.”
On whether the two child benefit cap would go she said child poverty would reduce under Labour. “We are not going to be able to put everything right that the conservatives have done straight away”. The priority was to reduce NHS waitin lists and put extra teachers in state schools.
Reeves dismissed the Conservatives national service plans as “just another desperate gimmick” with “no viable means of funding it.”
Her “No 1 commitment is to bring stability back to the economy”, she said.
Updated
Shadow work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall said the Conservatives’ national service announcement was a “gimmick”.
She told Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips show: “This is an unfunded commitment, a headline-grabbing gimmick, it is not a proper plan to deliver it, it doesn’t deal with the big challenges facing young people who are desperate to get the skills and qualifications they need to get good jobs, to have a home they can call their own.”
Kendall confirmed Labour would seek to revive plans to ban young people from ever being able to smoke tobacco legally after the Tobacco and Vapes Bill failed to become law ahead of the General Election.
Asked if Labour would keep the triple-lock on pensions, Kendall replied: “Yes.”
Cleverly told Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that no-one would be “compelled” to do the military national services, and they they could instead participate in the civil elements.
These could include a range of things: uniform public service such as special constable, on call fire fighter, emergency health responder, environmental protection, he said.
He insisted it was fully funded, and the military elements had been discussed with senior military leaders.
It was “a modern approach” to National Service, he said.
Asked by Trevor Phillips why the election had been called when not all Tory candidates had been selected, home secretary James Cleverly said the selection process will be going on.
Of the timing, he said “economic indicators” were “moving in right direction”.
Tory candidate selection ahead of the general election will happen “very, very quickly,” he insisted, as parties rush to stand candidates in seats across the country.
“There will be lots of places where the selections were just on the verge of happening. I can name a whole load of them... That will happen very very quickly.”
The home secretary said parties “always” have to carry out selections “up until the last minute” and insisted there was “nothing particularly unusual about that”.
18-year-old would not be jailed for refusing 'mandatory' national service, says minister
Home secretary James Cleverly said 18-year-olds would not be jailed if they refuse to carry out “mandatory” national service under Tory plans.
Asked on Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips programme whether the consequences of resisting the compulsory scheme could involve a prison term, he said: “No, there’s going to be no criminal sanction. There’s no one going to jail over this.”
He said in other countries with similar schemes there is a “very, very wide scope, take-up, acceptance and enthusiasm for this”.
The Conservatives would want to make sure the programme “fits with different people’s attitudes and aspirations.”
He added: “The broader point about this national service is that we want to build a society where people mix with people outside their own communities, mix with people from different backgrounds, different religions, different income levels.
“And some of it is about utility to the armed service. That’s part of it, but the bulk of this is about helping build a cohesive society where people mix outside their bubble, whether it’s through military service, other uniformed service or non-uniformed.”
He added: “This is about dealing with social fragmentation, too many young people live in a bubble within their own communities.”
Asked if this was a move to attract potential Reform voters, he said: “What we are motivated by is making sure we have a cohesive society.”
Updated
Good morning and welcome to our daily politics liveblog.
The headline this morning is that Rishi Sunak has announced that a future Conservative government would bring back mandatory national service.
Under the plan the prime minister said that every 18-year-old would have to spend time in a competitive, full-time military commission or spend one weekend a month volunteering in “civil resilience”.
The Tories said the scheme would be part-funded through a £1bn tax avoidance clampdown and £1.5bn currently spent on the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.
Labour has criticised the idea as another uncosted policy from the Tories, who have already raised the prospect of tax cuts they have yet to fund. “This is another desperate, £2.5bn unfunded commitment from a Tory party which already crashed the economy, sending mortgages rocketing, and now they’re spoiling for more,” said a spokesperson.
In other headlines:
Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves accuses the Tories of making £64bn of unfunded spending commitments in a “desperate and reckless” effort to rescue their gaffe-strewn general election campaign. Speaking to the Observer, Reeves said that what appeared to be pledges to slash taxes – including national insurance, income tax and inheritance tax – were reminiscent of Liz Truss’s catastrophic mini-budget and showed the Conservatives had learned nothing from her disastrous time at No 10.
Former prime minister Boris Johnson will be out of the country for most of the election campaign but will help from afar, friends have told the Sunday Telegraph. Johnson, who has ruled out standing as an MP this election, has a series of pre-arranged trips over the coming weeks which he will not be cancelling.
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting has pledged to tackle the “cultural rot that places protecting the reputation of the NHS above protecting the public” and says that patient care is not good enough. Writing for The Sunday Times, Streeting warns that the NHS is broken and promises “reformation of the national religion”.
The deputy leader of Scottish Labour said she was taking “nothing for granted” after a poll suggested the party is poised for huge gains north of the border at the general election. Jackie Baillie said: “We are moving in the right direction but I always approach elections with respect … We have our candidates out there, knocking on as many doors as they can. We started last year with maybe six target seats and now we have considerably more than that.
John Swinney has said the SNP will stand against the “twin threats” of austerity and privatisation, as his party campaigns on public services. The SNP will seek to focus on investing in the NHS and other public services over the coming week of general election campaigning.
