Closing summary
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting urged voters not to give “matches back to the arsonist to finish the job”, as he suggested a Conservative election victory would be a “nightmare on Downing Street”. The Labour frontbencher warned against “breathtaking complacency” over opinion polls predicting a victory for Keir Starmer’s party at the general election. The transport secretary, Mark Harper, said Labour will have a “blank cheque” if they win the 4 July general election with a large majority.
Wes Streeting failed to rule out an overhaul of the council tax system if Labour win next month’s election and said his party wanted to do more in power than it had promised in its manifesto. The shadow health secretary told BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg none of his party’s manifesto pledges required a rise in council tax. But pushed by the presenter to rule out the country’s first revaluation since 1991, he refused to do so.
Polling expert Prof John Curtice said support for the Conservative party is now at its lowest ever in British polling history. “Every poll has reported a fall in Conservative support and nearly all the narrowing of the Conservative lead over Reform,” he told the BBC. “So, what last week was an average eight point Conservative lead over Reform has now halved to just four points – and standing at just 20%, Conservative support is now at its lowest ever in British polling history.” His comments came after the latest Opinium poll for the Observer showed a shift away from the main parties.
Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth accepted that the 4 July poll “isn’t an independence election”, while in Scotland, SNP leader John Swinney accused the Tories and Labour of threatening the NHS. Analysis by the Nuffield Trust thinktank suggested both Labour and Tory pledges on the NHS would leave the health service with lower annual funding increases – at 1.1% and 0.9% respectively – than during the austerity era.
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
Douglas Ross’s decision to stand to be an MP has left a “bad taste” in the north-east Scotland constituency where he is running, first minister John Swinney has said.
The Scottish Conservative leader put himself forward as candidate for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East after David Duguid was told by the party’s management board that he could not stand due to his ill-health.
Ross said he would step down as leader shortly afterwards, when his colleagues expressed unhappiness at the move.
Boundary changes mean that Aberdeenshire North and Moray East is being contested for the first time, but most of the constituency was in Banff and Buchan, previously represented by Duguid.
Duguid has been in rehab after a serious spinal injury but had believed he was sufficiently recovered to stand and had been adopted by his local party – before they were overruled by the Scottish Tory management board, of which Ross is a member.
While campaigning in Keith, Moray, alongside SNP candidate Seamus Logan on Sunday, Swinney told the PA news agency:
Aberdeenshire North and Moray East is a key seat for the Scottish National Party.
It’s obviously the seat where the sitting Conservative MP has been ousted by Douglas Ross and I think that leaves a really bad taste in the mouths of people in this constituency.
I’m keen to make sure that people elect Seamus Logan as a strong advocate of this community for the SNP- who will go to the House of Commons and put the interests of Scotland first.
Brexit, oil and bombs: The words that have defined UK elections since 1945
Climate change, Brexit, and Europe might have been key touchstones in previous election campaigns, but Guardian analysis shows they are given less prominence in the two main UK parties’ latest manifestos in 2024.
Looking into the text of every Conservative and Labour election manifesto dating back to 1945 shows that, while both parties still dedicate column inches to the climate emergency, these issues are less prominent than in the last election cycle.
While the Labour party mentions climate issues at a higher rate (1.7 climate related terms for every 1,000 words) than the Tory manifesto does (1 in 1,000), these issues are mentioned with much less frequency than in the 2019 documents (4.4 mentions in 1,000 words for Labour and 1.1 for the Conservatives).
Both the government and Labour have come in for criticism over their manifestos, both of which were published this week, from climate experts who say that neither party is going far enough to mitigate the climate crisis.
The comments on the blog – which will run until 4pm – will be turned off at 3pm today.
Updated
Tributes have been shared in memory of Jo Cox, a Labour MP who was murdered eight years ago today.
In 2016, Thomas Mair, an extreme rightwing terrorist, was sentenced to prison for the rest of his life for the murder of Cox, the former Batley and Spen MP. He repeatedly shot and stabbed Cox in an attack during the EU referendum campaign.
Paying tribute on Sunday, the Labour party leader, Keir Starmer, said:
I will always carry Jo’s words with me as we campaign for change: “We are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us.
The Jo Cox foundation said:
We also share Jo’s belief that, together, we can strengthen communities to become less lonely, better connected, and more united.
Dawn Butler, who was the Labour MP for Brent Central, and left the Commons on 30 May 2024, said:
Now more than ever we should remember Jo’s powerful message, that we have far more in common than that which divides us.
Updated
A Labour-run Scotland Office would work in partnership with the Scottish government when it uses its new spending powers, shadow Scottish secretary Ian Murray has said.
Labour has said levelling up money would be spent via the Scotland Office to tackle poverty and encourage growth if they won office, the PA news agency reports.
While campaigning on Sunday alongside Edinburgh East and Musselburgh candidate Chris Murray, Ian Murray said he was willing to work with the SNP on this but added “it takes two to tango”.
The shadow Scottish Secretary said Labour had had more than 120,000 doorstep conversations in Scotland since the election campaign began.
He told journalists:
I can assure you that any Scotland Office that I run will be solely focused on delivering for the Scottish people and that means we’ve got to work closely together.
Of course, it takes two to tango, they’ve got to also decide they want to dance. The Scotland Office will be turned into a spending department, we’ve got money to spend too.
And the best bang for your buck is to work together to spend that money in local communities to create jobs and eradicate poverty.
He mentioned the City Deals of recent years as a funding model, which involved partnerships with local councils, the Scottish government and the UK government.
Updated
Richard Adams is the Guardian’s education editor
More than 30 Conservative seats are at risk of changing hands because of students returning home for the summer holidays, according to analysis of how student voters could influence the outcome of the UK’s general election.
The cabinet minister Esther McVey’s Tatton constituency is one of the 35 suburban or rural seats where Tory hopes could be dashed by students registered to vote at their family home, rather than their university term-time address.
The warning comes before Tuesday’s deadline to register to vote in the election, with the National Union of Students (NUS) urging its members to sign up.
Voting analysis by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) suggests that deciding to hold the general election during summer was a strategic error that could hamper Conservative efforts to stem their losses, with polling showing very weak support for the party among those aged 18-24.
Wes Streeting also hit out at a Labour peer Lord Cashman during his media round today.
Cashman, a former EastEnders actor, called Labour’s Canterbury candidate Rosie Duffield “frit or lazy” after she called off local hustings over safety concerns. He has since apologised.
It came after Duffield, who has been a defender of women’s rights and female-only spaces, said her attendance at local hustings was “impossible” because of “constant trolling”.
Streeting told Times Radio on Sunday: “I strongly disagree with Michael.
“That is extremely unfair and I was very concerned Rosie’s not able to participate in hustings and is having to change the way she behaves because of abuse.
“That is wholly intolerable and unacceptable, as is the abuse Nigel Farage has had.
“I count Michael and Rosie as friends and this is exactly the kind of division I’ve been working really hard to try and work through and heal.”
Ms Duffield, who is running for the Canterbury seat on July 4, last week said the “extremely difficult decision” to cancel local hustings was made because the “actions of a few fixated individuals” had affected her “sense of security and wellbeing”.
Gabriel Pogrund, the Sunday Times’ Whitehall editor, has been told the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will be put at the centre of Labour’s election campaign next week, appearing in a black and white photo that will be put on billboards and social media adverts across the country.
The words next to her photo read: “The Tories brought us economic chaos. As chancellor, I’ll restore economic stability.”
NEW: Next week Labour will put Rachel Reeves front and centre of their campaign with this poster
— Gabriel Pogrund (@Gabriel_Pogrund) June 15, 2024
Who is the shadow chancellor? how did she go from twentysomething economist fighting Nigel Farage in doomed by-election to shadow chancellor?
Labour read up: https://t.co/l0pemk14Qi pic.twitter.com/XexlJ9EhHR
Updated
Young people feel more economically insecure, ignored and apathetic than the average voter before the election, amid evidence that they could be fuelling the growth of smaller parties.
A strong rejection of the Conservative party among the youngest voters continues to be evident: the latest Opinium poll for the Observer has a 52-point Labour lead among the under-35s.
But analysts pointed to economic pessimism and potential apathy that could also spell trouble for Labour in the years ahead. The European elections last week saw young voters help the rise of the far-right in countries including France and Germany.
While analysts said there is limited evidence Reform UK has picked up substantially more younger voters in the UK – some polls in the last week had it ahead of, or on a par with, the Tories among 18- to 24-year-olds – it is the Liberal Democrats and Greens who could stand to benefit if young people ultimately feel uninspired by Keir Starmer’s pitch.
My colleagues Michael Savage and Aneesa Ahmed have the full story here:
SNP leader John Swinney has said the main two parties are a threat to the NHS in Scotland.
Responding to research from the Nuffield Trust, which said that Labour and the Conservatives would both leave the NHS with lower spending increases than during the years of Tory austerity, Swinney said: “It’s increasingly clear the Labour party and the Tories are both a threat to Scotland’s NHS.”
Even though health is a devolved matter for ministers in Edinburgh, spending decisions at Westminster do affect the Scottish government’s budget.
With recent polling suggesting that Labour could make significant gains on 4 July, in particular in seats in Glasgow and across the central belt, Swinney has told Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar that his pledges for more spending on the NHS, schools and renewables projects contradicted the constraints laid out by Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor.
The UK’s tax authority has not fined a single “enabler” of offshore tax evasion or noncompliance in five years, despite landmark powers to impose huge fines.
Tory ministers claimed new laws introduced in 2017 allowed HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to pursue accountants, lawyers and bankers who facilitate offshore tax evasion would “create a level playing field”, with potential fines of several millions of pounds.
New figures disclosed under freedom of information laws to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reveal no one has been fined in the last five years under the powers.
“New HMRC powers are pointless if the powers aren’t then used,” said Dan Neidle, founder of the independent thinktank Tax Policy Associates and former head of tax at global law firm Clifford Chance.
You can read the full story by my colleagues Edward Siddons and Jon Ungoed-Thomas here:
A former subpostmaster who lost his livelihood in the Horizon scandal has accused Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey of “buffoonery” for his stunt-laden election campaign.
The PA news agency reports:
Lee Castleton compared Sir Ed’s actions to those of former Tory prime minister Boris Johnson, adding trust is “never going to be built” by “paddleboarding in Cumbria”.
Sir Ed has come under fire for not doing more to help wrongly convicted subpostmasters between 2010 and 2012 when he served as postal affairs minister in the coalition government.
He has previously apologised for failing to see through the Post Office’s “lies” and insisted he is taking voters’ concerns seriously during a campaign in which he has visited a theme park and also sped down the Ultimate Slip n Slide near Frome, Somerset.
More than 700 subpostmasters were prosecuted by the Post Office and handed criminal convictions between 1999 and 2015 as Fujitsu’s faulty Horizon IT system made it appear as though money was missing at their branches.
Mr Castleton, from Bridlington, East Yorkshire, was found to have a £25,000 shortfall at his branch in 2004 and was made bankrupt after he lost his legal battle with the Post Office.
He told the BBC’s Sunday Morning With Laura Kuenssberg: “I don’t particularly like the buffoonery, I find it very Boris-esque and I don’t think there’s any need for it.
“It’s really, really, really important that we trust him and trust is never going to be built by swinging around on ropes or paddleboarding in Cumbria.
“Trust is about engaging with the people that need that engagement.”
Sir Ed, asked by Ms Kuenssberg if he was taking things seriously, replied:“On the subpostmasters, my heart goes out to Lee and all the others so badly affected and I’m looking forward to giving evidence to the inquiry, which I campaigned for to hold people to account.
“But in terms of the things we’ve been doing, the stunts, actually the real issue is engaging people and they have done.”
He added: “We’re taking the voters’ concerns really seriously.
“That’s why we’ve put forward all these policy proposals and whenever we do one of those stunts to engage people – so I show that I’m not taking myself too seriously, I’m taking the voters seriously – we’ve had lots of policy ideas. “So when I was going down that slide, we were talking about mental health.”The Lib Dem manifesto proposes creating an “office of the whistle-blower” to provide new legal protections and promote greater public awareness of their rights.
Rishi Sunak surprised many in his own party by announcing an early election on 22 May, against widespread expectations that he would wait until later in the year to allow more time for living standards to recover after the highest inflation in 40 years.
So far, it seems like this gamble has backfired, with the Conservatives performing miserably in the polls, and are on course for heavy losses on 4 July, including senior cabinet ministers potentially losing their seats.
LBC presenter Lewis Goodall gives his analysis on why the Tories are doing so badly, arguing that “it’s a combination of the dishonesty of Boris Johnson, the fecklessness of Liz Truss, and the political lack of ability of Rishi Sunak”.
'It's a combination of the dishonesty of Boris Johnson, the fecklessness of Liz Truss, and the political lack of ability of Rishi Sunak.'
— LBC (@LBC) June 16, 2024
@Lewis_Goodall gives his analysis on why the Conservatives are getting a 'paltry' 21% in the polls. pic.twitter.com/1mo79oupzA
Updated
Plaid Cymru’s Rhun ap Iorwerth has accused Labour of showing a “complete disregard” for Wales in its general election manifesto.
The Plaid leader said the document failed to back policies championed by Labour’s first minister Vaughan Gething.
Ap Iorwerth said it demonstrated a “lack of influence” from Welsh Labour on the party’s UK-wide policy platform.
He said:
Labour’s manifesto proves that the party in Wales is powerless under Keir Starmer.
The complete disregard towards Wales shown in Labour’s programme for government exposes both Welsh Labour’s lack of influence and the UK leader’s lack of ambition.
There is nothing on devolving the crown estate, nothing on HS2 consequentials for Wales, and nothing on the devolution of justice and policing – all policies supported by Labour in Wales.
To add insult to injury, Keir Starmer’s representative in Wales has confirmed that Wales’ post-Brexit cash will still be controlled by Westminster.
Here are some of the main policy proposals in Plaid Cymru’s manifesto:
Securing for Wales what the party argues is a fairer distribution of central government funds.
Promising to recruit more teachers, and would like universal free school meals.
Promising an increase in GPs by restoring funding for them to 8.7% of the devolved health budget.
Wanting to introduce more safe routes for asylum seekers to come to Britain.
Promising a “right to adequate housing”.
Calling for the full devolution of policing power to Wales.
You can read what is in the other party’s manifestos here.
Updated
Prof John Curtice: Support for Tories at lowest level in British polling history
Polling expert Prof John Curtice has said support for the Conservative party is now at its lowest ever in British polling history.
He mentioned the YouGov poll last week that put Reform one point ahead of the Conservatives as a sign of the Tories’ dwindling support, though he noted that no other poll reported the same findings.
Every poll has reported a fall in Conservative support and nearly all the narrowing of the Conservative lead over Reform.
So, what last week was an average eight point Conservative lead over Reform has now halved to just four points – and standing at just 20%, Conservative support is now at its lowest ever in British polling history.
Mr Sunak, whose own personal ratings have clearly fallen, must be beginning to doubt his decision to call the election early.
Curtice points to Labour’s support being down by two points as Keir Starmer’s party is being challenged by the Greens (on 6%) and the Lib Dems (on 12%).
Updated
Fewer than 200,000 of the estimated 3.5 million British people living abroad for more than 15 years have applied to vote in the UK general election despite the change in law in January returning their right to participate in the ballot.
But those who have already registered are determined to make their mark.
More than 230,000 overseas voters were registered to vote in the last election in December 2019 when Boris Johnson was swept to power on the back of promises he would get “Brexit done”, and this year record numbers were expected after the end of the 15-year rule.
The latest Electoral Commission figures show that just over 137,000 overseas voters had applied this year, most of them since 16 January when the law changed. With an estimated 61,000 still on the register last year, and assuming all are still valid for the 4 July election, this means a possible total of 199,000 Britons abroad have applied for the vote.
You can read the full story here:
Updated
Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth has said the 4 July poll is not an independence election.
He said his firm belief is that Wales won’t reach its potential until it gains independence, but says the timescale for this is down to the Welsh people.
The Plaid Cymru leader told the BBC:
I believe in independence but I am not an isolationist in any way. I am an internationalist. I see Welsh independence as part of the redesigning of the UK where us independent nations then would work very, very closely together. But this is not an independence election. This is about getting fair play for Wales in the here and now.
He said there is clearly a demand implicit for a referendum on Welsh independence when pressed by Laura Kuenssberg on why the party is not explicitly calling for one.
Plaid Cymru held four seats in Westminster in the last parliament and polling suggests it will take two or three seats on 4 July amid troubles for Welsh Labour in the Senedd after a vote of no confidence in the first minister, Vaughan Gething.
Plaid Cymru is pushing for “fair funding for Wales” with its manifesto pledging to overhaul the Barnett formula that determines levels of public spending for devolved nations.
Updated
Ed Davey was questioned about his time as part of the coalition government, led by former prime minister David Cameron, from 2010 to 2015, which drove a programme of austerity and saw real-term spending on adult social care fall.
The Liberal Democrat leader said there were difficult decisions that had to be made at that time.
The Lib Dems have committed to a £1.5bn overhaul of carer’s allowance, including a £20-a-week boost for more than 1 million people who devote their lives to looking after frail, ill and disabled loved ones, in their general election manifesto.
Proposed reforms include a write-off of £250m of carer’s allowance overpayment debts run up by more than 100,000 carers, and measures to help carers earn more through part-time paid work.
'I was lied to' by the Post Office, Ed Davey says
Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, has been asked how he can be trusted to do the right thing by whistleblowers when he was post office minister when concerns were already being raised in connection with the Horizon IT scandal.
He told the BBC:
I was listening, actually I was the first minister to meet Alan Bates (who led the campaign into the unjust targeting of post office operators) and I took his issues really seriously …
I put his concerns to the post office and I think I was probably the only minister who did that in that level of detail and I was lied to just like the subpostmasters were lied to, just like the judges and the courts were lied to and that is why the whistleblower is so important.
Davey, who was postal affairs minister between 2010 and 2012 when the software issues started coming to light, said he regretted not doing more to help victims who were wrongly accused of stealing but claimed that executives had blocked him from meeting campaigners.
A public inquiry is examining how hundreds of individuals were pursued and prosecuted for more than a decade by the Post Office over alleged financial shortfalls in their branch accounts. It has since emerged the issues were caused by bugs in the state-owned body’s Horizon IT system.
Labour will have a 'blank cheque' if they win election with large majority, transport secretary says
The transport secretary, Mark Harper, has said Labour will have a “blank cheque” if they win the 4 July general election with a large majority, echoing comments by the prime minister, Rishi Sunak.
A YouGov survey for the Times last week had Reform at 19% and the Conservatives on 18% in voting intention – which was called the “inflection” moment by Nigel Farage. The pollsters gave the caveat that Reform’s lead was within the margin of error.
Harper told Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips on Sky News:
I am still very much up for this fight and we’re fighting, the Conservative party, across the country led by the prime minister, is fighting for every vote.
I’ve seen the polls just like everyone else but it’s worth saying that, apart from a relatively small number of early postal voters, no one has voted in this election yet, not a single seat has been decided, and one thing I’ve learnt over the years is taking the British people for granted and telling everybody the election is over I don’t think is wise.
The polls do tell us one thing, they do show people that if people don’t vote Conservative and some of the smaller people vote for the smaller parties and Labour does end up with a very large majority, they’re going to have a blank cheque, they’re trying very hard in this campaign not to spell out how they’re going to pay for any of their promises.
We know there is a blackhole – we can have a debate about how big it is, we’ve said it’s going to be £2,000 for every family over the parliament – but there’s definitely a blackhole. We’ve set out the taxes that they might have to raise and they haven’t ruled them out.
"Do you genuinely believe you can win this election?" - @TrevorPTweets
— Sky News (@SkyNews) June 16, 2024
Transport Secretary @Mark_J_Harper says - three times - that the Conservatives are "fighting for every vote".#TrevorPhillips 🔗 https://t.co/fhIHlpTGAF
📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/Gqi0TeO8uE
A Conservative source told the Sunday Times that the Tories are targeting voters with warnings of a potential Labour landslide in a last-ditch attempt to turn the opinion polls in their favour.
They said: “We’re turning up the volume of the risk from Labour. People think a super-majority is bad. We need to make it terrifying. We now have a very simple message and Labour has a complicated one.” Using this argument, Tory chiefs claim, is not conceding the election but attempting to leverage the polls in their direction instead.
The transport secretary also repeated the much-disputed Tory claim that a Labour government would increase taxes by £2,000.
The Conservatives have produced a list of 17 potential tax increases Labour could make, but Labour has said it would refuse to be drawn into the Tory trap of responding to each claim.
Updated
Wes Streeting has declined to rule out council tax hikes or re-evaluations.
Pressed on whether this could happen under a Labour government on Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg, the shadow health secretary repeated the party’s line: “We don’t want to see the tax burden on working people increase …
“None of those pledges in our manifesto requires increases in council tax or increases in fuel duty or any of the other number of taxes the Tories are claiming we want to increase.”
The government raises more than £1tn in tax every year, and more than half of that money comes from three sources: income tax, national insurance and VAT. Both the Tories and Labour have both promised not to raise the rates of any of those taxes.
Wes Streeting has also been interviewed on the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme. He admitted that he would have liked Labour’s manifesto to be “more ambitious” on social care.
Labour has promised to undertake a “programme of reform to create a National Care Service”, to create a “fair pay agreement” in adult social care and set up “local partnership working” between health and social care providers to improve hospital discharge times.
Streeting told the BBC:
But to get policies in the manifesto, you had to run the gauntlet of answering two fundamental questions. Can we keep this promise? Can the country afford this promise? And if the answer to either of those questions was no, it’s not in the manifesto …
Once we get the economy growing, which is the central starting point of a Labour government if we win the next general election, we will have more available to either invest in our public services or put back into people’s pockets.
Labour’s fair pay agreement for social care workers would be “transformational”, he argued, continuing: “What I’m absolutely committed to is building a national care service over the course of a decade.”
Streeting urges voters against giving the 'matches back to the arsonist to finish the job'
Wes Streeting urged voters against giving the “matches back to the arsonist to finish the job”, as he suggested a Tory election victory would be a “nightmare on Downing Street”.
Pressed on whether there could be greater spending increases for the NHS than is committed in the Labour manifesto, Streeting said: “If the conditions allow but only if the conditions allow because we’re not going to make promises we can’t keep, we’re not going to make promises the country can’t afford.
“That’s the challenge at this election. What we can’t do now is what the last Labour government did which is to say we’re going to put a penny on national insurance, because we know viscerally that families can’t afford it because they’re already paying a very heavy price – the highest tax burden in 70 years thanks to the Conservatives.”
Streeting said Labour “would like to go further on so many fronts”, adding on Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips on Sky News: “But we are dealing with a fundamentally weak economy and public finances that are an absolute state.
“I just warn people, against this backdrop of breathtaking complacency in the media about the opinion polls, do not give the matches back to the arsonist to finish the job.”
He added:
Do people want to see Liz Truss’s mini budget on steroids, which is the Conservative manifesto, being delivered if there’s a nightmare on Downing Street on 5 July or do they want to see a stable economy with economic growth, shared prosperity, enable us to invest in our public services without clobbering working people with taxes, that’s the choice at this election.
"Do not give the matches back to the arsonist to finish the job."
— Sky News (@SkyNews) June 16, 2024
Shadow Health Sec @wesstreeting accuses @TrevorPTweets of a "wall of cynicism" over claims Labour's manifesto isn't offering the promised 'Change' from the Conservatives.#TrevorPhillips 🔗https://t.co/fhIHlpTGAF pic.twitter.com/OSZ15U1vyB
With all the parties having now unveiled their election manifestos, Labour has maintained a dominant 17-point lead over the Tories with less than three weeks to go until polling day. However, Reform and the Lib Dems are up two points each, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer.
Wes Streeting says he is 'beyond furious' pay dispute involving junior doctors has not been resolved
The shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, has been speaking to Sky News. In an interview with Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, he urged junior doctors to call off their strike and said he is “beyond furious” the dispute is not yet resolved.
The British Medical Association (BMA) said junior doctors would strike from 7am on 27 June until 7am on 2 July. Voters go to the polls on 4 July. The BMA has asked for a 35% pay rise, but ministers have described the demands as unreasonable.
Streeting said:
I don’t think there’s anything to be achieved by having strikes in the election campaign. The only thing we will see is more untold misery inflicted on patients who see their appointments and procedures delayed and also junior doctors out of pocket.
If there is a Labour government on 5 July, I will be phoning them on day one and asking the department to get talks up and running urgently …
I’m beyond furious that this is still happening.
But he said “the money isn’t there” to give junior doctors a 35% pay rise. “We didn’t have national strikes in the NHS under the last Labour government because we treated … staff with respect, we negotiated fairly and we had an economic record that meant that we could invest in staff pay in the NHS in a way that the Conservatives can’t dream of because of their spectacular mismanagement of the economy,” Streeting said last month.
Rishi Sunak has revealed that his Hindu faith has been helping him through the bruising election campaign.
“In Hinduism there’s a concept of duty called dharma, which is roughly translated as being about doing your duty and not having a focus on the outcomes of it,” the prime minister told the Sunday Times.
“And you do [your duty] because it’s the right thing to do, and you have to detach yourself from the outcome of it.”
Sunak – who is said to have a shrine in No 10 for family worship and works with a Lord Ganesh statue on his desk – made the comments as he denied he was frustrated at the public for not rewarding him for his work ethic.
He was also questioned about his decision to leave the D-day commemorations in France early, a gaffe that is reported to have had cut through on the doorsteps and one that dominated the news agenda for days.
The Reform party leader, Nigel Farage, was among those to attack the prime minister over the decision. He said it showed Sunak, the UK’s first prime minister of colour, was not “patriotic” and did not understand “our culture”.
Sunak told the Sunday Times:
My grandparents emigrated to the UK and then two generations later I’m sitting here talking to you as prime minister.
I actually don’t think my story is possible in pretty much any other country in the world and what it shows is, in our country, if you work hard, if you integrate, if you subscribe and adhere to British values, then you can achieve anything.
So that’s what patriotism means to me: it’s having pride in our incredible country for everything that it’s done for me and my family.
Farage has declared himself the real “leader of the opposition” and predicted his Reform UK party will gain more than 6m votes at the general election, after polling ahead of the Conservatives for the first time.
Updated
Labour and the Conservatives would both leave the NHS with lower spending increases than during the years of Tory austerity, according to an independent analysis of their manifestos by a leading health thinktank.
The assessment by the respected Nuffield Trust of the costed NHS policies of both parties, announced in their manifestos last week, says the level of funding increases would leave them struggling to pay existing staff costs, let alone the bill for massive planned increases in doctors, nurses and other staff in the long-term workforce plan agreed last year.
The Nuffield Trust said that “the manifestos imply increases [in annual funding for the NHS] between 2024-25 and 2028-29 of 1.5% each year for the Liberal Democrats, 0.9% for the Conservatives and 1.1% for Labour.
“Both Conservative and Labour proposals would represent a lower level of funding increase than the period of ‘austerity’ between 2010-11 and 2014-15.
“This would be an unprecedented slowdown in NHS finances and it is inconceivable that it would accompany the dramatic recovery all are promising. This slowdown follows three years of particularly constrained finances.”
The trust added that the planned funding increases “would make the next few years the tightest period of funding in NHS history”.
You can read the full story by my colleagues Toby Helm, Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Michael Savage here:
Opening summary
Good morning, and welcome to our continued coverage of the 2024 general election campaign.
Labour and the Conservatives are set to continue clashing over tax on the campaign trail today, with the Tories appearing to put most of their efforts into trying to make this a key dividing issue in an election they are looking extremely likely to lose, according to the polls.
After the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, yesterday said he would not impose capital gains tax (a tax you pay when you sell an asset which has gone up in value) on the sale of family homes, the Tories challenged him to rule out changes to council tax bands and rates.
Treasury chief secretary Laura Trott said that if Labour refused to rule out those changes “then they are planning to do it”, prompting a Labour spokesperson to say: “We are not going to spend the next two weeks responding to whatever fantasy plans the Tories are making up.”
Speaking to the Sun on Sunday, the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, claimed Labour would turn Britain into a so-called “taxtopia” – an attack Labour described as desperate.
Hunt said:
On tax, yes we put it up. But we started putting it down with four pence off national insurance.
That’s a tax cut for working people and we want to go further in the next parliament. Compare that to taxtopia. Taxtopia is what we will get under a Labour government.
The transport secretary, Mark Harper, and shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, are being interviewed by broadcasters this morning. Expect them both to be pressed on their tax policies then.
Health also features heavily on today’s agenda, with Labour and the Liberal Democrats both trailing their plans to cut cancer waiting times.
The shadow health secretary has said his party would deliver an extra 40,000 appointments, tests and scans each week at evenings and weekends and double the number of CT and MRI scanners.
The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, say they plan a cash injection of £1bn for radiotherapy machines, increasing their number by 200 throughout the NHS system.
It comes as analysis indicates that the election points to historically low support for the two major parties. Elections researcher Dylan Difford found that according to current polling, the main parties were on course for their lowest share of the vote since 1945. He said that the elections that took place in the wake of Brexit could actually be the exception, masking a longer-term fall in backing for the big two.
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