Tom Tugendhat said he wanted ‘to make clear to people what it is that Reform really is’
The Conservative party deputy chair Angela Richardson called the sewage crisis a “political football” and claimed opposition parties and activists had put Tory MPs in physical danger by campaigning on the issue.
Richardson, who is standing for re-election in Guildford, where the River Wey was recently found to have 10 times the safe limit of E coli, also suggested the only reason people were talking about the problem was “because the Conservatives let everyone know it was happening”.
The comedian and candidate for Rishi Sunak’s Yorkshire seat on reintroducing Ceefax and beating the far right
Intergalactic space warrior Count Binface is the brainchild of comedy writer and performer Jon Harvey. In 2017, he made his political debut as Lord Buckethead, challenging Theresa May in her Maidenhead constituency in that year’s general election. As Count Binface he ran against Boris Johnson in Uxbridge and South Ruislip two years later. In 2021, he ran for London mayor and stood again for the post this year, winning 24,260 votes and beating Britain First. He is now fighting his third general election campaign in an incumbent prime minister’s seat, taking on Rishi Sunak in Richmond and Northallerton.
When were you happiest?
Friday 7 June 2024 at 5pm local time. That’s when I secured a place on the ballot for the Richmond and Northallerton seat. And I’m not just saying that as a cynical move to weaponise this article and garner support from local constituents.
Each government has been a challenge, each leader sillier and more ruinous than the last. But even cartoonists crave a bit of boring earnestness sometimes
For the past five weeks people have repeatedly said to me, “You must be really busy!” I’ve had to explain that elections aren’t like that; in fact, from the point of view of cartoonists, they’re boring. The only real fun comes when the wheels fall off the party machines and their careful choreography collapses into farce. But in this election even the Tories’ serial weapons-grade balls-ups are becoming a bore, serving merely to remind me of the universal truth that reality will always, always be weirder than anything satire could think up in a million years.
That said, in the empty hours of this interminable death watch while we’ve waited for the Tory tumbril finally to trundle to the guillotine, I’ve been reflecting on the past 14 years, and how the worst government of my lifetime has been succeeded five times by one that was even worse.
Outgoing Green MP calls for combined strategy to ensure net zero will not be done ‘on the backs of the poor’
Labour must combine tackling the climate crisis with pursuing social justice, if elected, to show that achieving net zero will not be done “on the backs of the poor”, the UK’s outgoing Green party MP has warned.
Caroline Lucas, who has held the seat of Brighton Pavilion since 2010, said: “The biggest priority is to demonstrate that is not the case. We have to make sure that this is a strategy and a policy that is the opposite of being done on the backs of the poor.”
Loss of income, curbs on benefits and soaring bills are piling pressure on people caring for family members
People who look after family members free of charge are taking a huge hit to their finances which could continue into their retirement as they find themselves unable to balance paid work with their caring commitments.
Recent analysis of official figures by the financial firm Just Retirement found seven in 10 people who were receiving carer’s allowance were not in paid work, and missing out on earnings and private pension contributions.
Investigation details industry campaign including legal threats and charm offensive aimed at Tory MPs
Rishi Sunak abandoned his “legacy” policy to ban smoking for future generations amid a backlash from the tobacco industry in the form of legal threats, lobbying and a charm offensive aimed at Conservative MPs, an investigation reveals.
The UK had been on course to become the first country to ban smoking for future generations, via the tobacco and vaping bill, which Downing Street hoped would help define Sunak’s place in British political history.
Likely contenders for party’s sixth leader in eight years could depend partly on who survives a big defeat
What, again? Most likely yes. If the pundits are right, then soon after a seemingly inevitable Conservative election defeat next week the party will be looking for its sixth leader in eight years to replace Rishi Sunak. Who could be in the frame? It depends in part on which MPs survive an electoral wipeout, but here are some likely contenders.
Want to catch a few results before bed, or see it through to the moment of reckoning? We’ve got you covered
After months of speculation on when the election might be held, six weeks of actual campaigning, D-day blunders, gambling scandals, smashing the gangs, stopping the boats, surrendering finances, triple-lock-pluses, national service, VAT on private schools, taxes up and taxes down, the election night will soon be upon us. Here’s how it may unfold:
First minister says voters being disfranchised because some ballots yet to arrive with school holidays due to begin
John Swinney, the Scottish first minister, has raised concerns that voters are being disfranchised because of delays in receiving postal votes.
Voters in some parts of the UK, particularly Scotland, have not received their postal ballots ahead of the election on 4 July. Postal vote requests are particularly high in Scotland because schools are on holiday next week.
Essex police say they are ‘urgently assessing’ racist and homophobic remarks made by party’s volunteers
Rishi Sunak has said he was hurt and angry to hear a Reform UK canvasser using a racial slur against him, saying Nigel Farage “has some questions to answer”.
The prime minister responded after a Channel 4 undercover investigation found a Reform campaigner had called him a “fucking [P-word]”. Sunak repeated the slur and said he had done so because it was important to call it out for what it was.
Exclusive: Former Labour leader calls on party to ratchet up scrutiny of Reform in final week of campaign
Neil Kinnock has warned his party not to ignore the nationalist threat posed by Nigel Farage, as concern grows in Labour ranks that Reform UK could pose a long-term threat for them as well as for the Conservatives.
The former Labour leader told the Guardian he wanted Labour to turn its guns on Farage’s party in the final week of the election campaign, saying the populist right could gain a stronghold in the UK as it has across much of Europe.
Nigel Farage’s party is poaching angry Conservative voters, but damage control measures may limit the impact
The Labour lead in the opinion polls has been 20 percentage points throughout the campaign. But the polls haven’t been entirely static.
Over the past five weeks there has been one key change in polling that has the potential to turn a historic defeat for the Conservatives into an obliteration when the election is called.
In today’s newsletter: What a spate of offensive comments from volunteers and candidates reveal about the Reform UK agenda – and how they might affect its support
Good afternoon. You’re safe here: after this sentence, there will be absolutely no mention of what happened in American politics last night. We now go live to Britain, where everything is totally fine, and Nigel Farage is desperately trying to distance himself from some of the most flagrantly racist political campaigners you will find this side of a National Front rally.
More on what to make of Reform’s problem with its own people, and a truly horrifying general election diet, after the headlines.
Economy | The UK economy grew at a faster rate than previously thought in the first quarter of 2024, handing the next prime minister an improved economic backdrop. The data confirmed that the UK was the fastest-growing economy in the G7 during the first quarter after a short recession in 2023.
Labour | Stamp duty will rise for first-time buyers next year if Labour wins the election, the party has confirmed, as it plans to allow a temporary tax break enacted by the Conservatives to expire. A party spokesperson said on Friday it would allow the threshold for stamp duty to fall back to £300,000, after it was raised to £425,000 in 2022.
Conservatives | Rishi Sunak’s most senior adviser has been interviewed as a witness as part of the Gambling Commission’s investigation into widespread betting by Westminster figures on the date and outcome of the general election. Sources told the BBC that Liam Booth-Smith was not a suspect and had not placed a bet himself.
When the former Olympic rower James Cracknell, a Tory candidate, called his own party a “shower of shit” this week, he was not the first Tory to pour scorn on their electoral efforts.
A disastrous campaign, kicked off by Rishi Sunak in heavy rain and mired in repeated insider betting scandals, has led many Conservatives to vent their frustrations publicly. Here are some of their thoughts on their own party.
Exclusive: Boom Radio listeners share in election fatigue but demographic arguably has less to lose than younger voters
Sometimes only a song can sum up the national mood. When a soggy Rishi Sunak fired the starting gun on the general election in May, D:Ream’s Things Can Only Get Better blared across Downing Street. Five long weeks later and voters are cueing up rather more mordant tracks to capture their political fatigue.
Listeners to Boom Radio, asked to pick a classic song to sum up their feelings about the campaign, have selected Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb, Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody (“Is this the real life?/Is this just fantasy? / Caught in a landslide / No escape from reality”) and Bob Dylan’s All Along the Watchtower (“There must be some way out of here / Said the joker to the thief”).
Betting on election date merits serious investigation but it is not an offence for MPs to bet on themselves winning
Until the past few weeks, online casinos and bookmakers have made handy villains for an under-pressure government.
Ministers could legitimately claim to be cleaning up Labour’s mess with reforms that partially roll back the permissive regulatory regime ushered in under Tony Blair.
Rishi Sunak’s most senior adviser has been interviewed as a witness by officials at the Gambling Commission as part of its investigation into widespread betting by Westminster figures on the date and outcome of the general election.
Liam Booth-Smith, the prime minister’s chief of staff, spoke to the regulator last week after a series of revelations about betting by people close to the prime minister on the date of the election.
Sometimes Sunak only makes sense if you assume he is actively trying to lose this joyless election
Less than a week to go. For which everyone – most politicians included – will be breathing a huge sigh of relief. Rishi Sunak must be wondering why on earth he chose to go for a six-week campaign when he had so little to say and such a poor record to defend. It’s as if he’s already given up and is just going through the motions.
Nor have Labour appeared that energised by being clear favourites to win a large majority next Thursday. Their main aim has been to do as little as possible. To not rock the boat and to let the Tory party self-destruct. To be fair, it looks to have been a successful strategy so far but it has made the last few weeks feel particularly joyless. Keir Starmer, knowing he will inherit a mess, is so desperate not to raise expectations too high that his pitch has often sounded like: “Vote for me. Things will be a bit less rubbish.”
Owner of plants in south Wales says it could cease operations at blast furnaces in response to strike action
Labour politicians have been urged to step in to help avert a “costly mistake” by Tata Steel, which has told staff it could close operations at its steel plant in Port Talbot just days after the general election.
The Indian owner of the vast south Wales steelworks said on Thursday that it intended to cease operations at two blast furnaces on the site by 7 July – three days after the general election – in response to strike action announced by Unite members from 8 July. The company had planned to shut one furnace by the end of June and a second by September.
By conventional political logic, it is a long jump from the Conservatives to the Green party. But in Waveney Valley, voters are making that leap. Political history, party stereotypes and predictable voter behaviour are sailing away down the river that meanders through this new constituency, carved from five ultra-safe Tory seats on the Norfolk/Suffolk border.
Waveney Valley should be a win so comfortable for the Conservatives that they barely need to turn up. One of its former constituencies has been Tory since 1885; all five had Conservative majorities of more than 18,000 in 2019. “It’s been Tory since the Norman conquest,” says Robert Lindsay, a Green councillor who is part of an eager team of party activists descending on this rural heartland to boost co-leader Adrian Ramsay’s hopes of victory.
The UK economy grew at a faster rate than previously thought in the first quarter of 2024, handing the next prime minister an improved economic backdrop.
Gross domestic product (GDP) rose by 0.7% in the first three months of 2024, revised upwards by the Office for National Statistics from a first estimate of 0.6%.
Will the return to ‘boring’ politics make all Britain’s problems magically disappear? If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you
“We’re not pitching you a new Netflix series,” intoned Labour’s shadow business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, this week. “We’re not putting on politics as entertainment.” And certainly absolutely no one could accuse the extremely likely next government of that. The thing about a new Netflix series, of course, is that the streamer will want to have an absolutely nailed-down idea of how much it is going to cost and how it will be funded before it gets the green light. Weirdly, you have to do this if you are pitching Is It Cake?, but not if you are seeking to run the world’s sixth-largest economy. This means it’s possible that the thing the frontrunner party tells you is the manifesto is not actually a manifesto, but something else. Cake, maybe. Is it cake?
“We want to return to serious government,” Reynolds continued loftily, “to effective policy and to politics as public service, not as pantomime.” Right. One of the things we’ve heard for some time now is ordinary people saying they just want politics to be boring again – which is understandable, but always feels rather cargo-cultish. It is as though the fact that politics was boring back in the good times logically means that the good times can be restored by somehow making politics boring. I … don’t think it works like that. Without wishing to unleash any spoilers for the season ahead, the UK faces huge and deepening problems – and anyone who tells you they can be fixed by “boring politics” is selling something.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
Guardian Newsroom: Election results special
On Friday 5 July, 7.30pm-9pm BST, join Gaby Hinsliff, Hugh Muir, John Crace, Jonathan Freedland and Zoe Williams for unrivalled analysis of the general election results. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live
In the third episode of a new series of Anywhere but Westminster, John Harris and John Domokos travel around the West Midlands, and find a fascinating political mixture: hesitant Labour voters, a new crop of independents focused on Palestine and local cuts – and, amid deep social problems, lots of people who think the election hardly matters. Here, it seems, is the reality that all those opinion polls get nowhere near
The PM trumpeted ‘a recording … admitting that their plans will cost hundreds of billions’. Was it fair to do so?
Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer have faced off for the final time in a TV debate, trading familiar blows over immigration and tax. Sunak came armed with a new attack line over the cost of Labour’s net zero climate plans, but does it stack up?
The affluent constituency is home to Mayfair clubs, Soho theatres and City types – one of whom told me: ‘We need to pay more tax’
A red glow spreading across the land may be so bright you could see it from space, if polling predictions are right. In that Labour flare, let’s pinpoint one astonishing constituency the party looks likely to win for the first time in history. Conservative for ever, the City itself, part of the Cities of London and Westminster constituency, would be turning red. Look at the symbolism.
The king in Buckingham Palace would have a Labour MP for the first time. So would the Palace of Westminster, the supreme court, the Old Bailey, Scotland Yard, Westminster Abbey, St Paul’s Cathedral, Catholic Westminster Cathedral and Methodist Central Hall.
Labour appears poised to win a historic election victory on 4 July. In the series Life under Labour, we look at Keir Starmer’s five key political missions and ask what is at stake and whether he can deliver the change the country is crying out for.
“If they came into power, the Labour party would inherit a really terrible set of problems in the NHS that are both broader and deeper than the ones they faced in 1997. This feels a lot worse,” says Siva Anandaciva, the chief analyst at the King’s Fund thinktank.
Shadow minister, in demand for his campaigning ability, believes some on left ‘allow perfect to be the enemy of good’
In the beating sunshine deep in the heart of one of the Conservatives’ safest Midlands seats, Wes Streeting is slapping on factor 50 for another afternoon in pursuit of a historic Labour majority. It is in these safe seats where it will be seen whether the extinction-level predictions for the Tories are accurate.
But Streeting, who has been dispatched by Labour HQ to crisscross the country hundreds of miles, says his party is feeling the heat of undecided voters – and during a half hour of canvassing, there are plenty of them politely reluctant to commit to Labour.
If the polls are correct, an era is about to come to an end. What have 14 years of Conservative government done to the country? Jonathan Freedland reports
When a fresh-faced David Cameron made his pitch to the country in 2010, he promised to mend what he called “broken Britain”.
In this first episode in a two-part series, Jonathan Freedland and Helen Pidd discuss how Cameron introduced the idea of the “big society”, arguing that it would be communities, rather than government, that would improve the country. He promised a kinder, gentler Conservative party that would give real power to charities and neighbourhood groups to change the UK for the better.
Craig Williams could come under scope of criminal investigation as Met looks at possible misconduct in public office
The Metropolitan police have indicated that the dropped Conservative candidate Craig Williams could come under the scope of a criminal investigation into betting on the election that has overshadowed Rishi Sunak’s campaign.
Scotland Yard will investigate any suspicious bets that could represent a misconduct in public office offence, while the Gambling Commission will continue to look at whether betting rules were broken.
Andrew Parker, who is canvassing in Clacton, also described Islam as ‘a cult’ and suggested asylum seekers should be shot
A Reform UK activist in the constituency where Nigel Farage is standing has been secretly filmed making extremely racist comments about Rishi Sunak, as well as using Islamophobic and other offensive language.
Farage said he was “dismayed” by the views expressed by Andrew Parker, a Reform canvasser, who was filmed as part of an undercover investigation by Channel 4 News.
Labour leader says halting of asylum processing due to government’s Rwanda policy ‘absurd and reckless’
Keir Starmer has admitted for the first time that he would not return people to Afghanistan, after a bitter exchange in Wednesday night’s debate where Rishi Sunak mocked him for planning to “sit down with the ayatollahs” to negotiate return agreements.
Prime minister’s campaign has become the only spectacle less appealing than England at the Euros
“I will never stop fighting for this country,” ran Rishi Sunak’s morning message to a nation that, if the polls are to be believed, overwhelmingly just wants him to stop fighting for this country ASAP. In any case, since almost the start of this campaign, the prime minister has been pegged as a Normandy deserter. He totally wanted to fight on the beaches for this country – but unfortunately he wanted to do a telly interview more.
Undeterred, however, Sunak appended the above message to today’s exciting new Conservative attack ad. This shows an elderly man, a woman and a child from behind, holding up their hands. We know it’s a surrender because the caption is “DON’T SURRENDER YOUR FAMILY’S FUTURE TO LABOUR”. Probably the best thing you can say about it is that it’s good the actors could get paid the day rate without having to show their faces to the camera.
Finding a balance between privatisation and nationalisation has defied past governments – the party must make this its mission
To tax or not to tax? Labour’s plan to impose VAT on private schools seemed a good idea at the time. Its programme was bereft of leftist clout. The tax would hit privilege at its roots, and bring in a windfall £1.6bn to benefit deprived state schools. What was not to like?
The trouble is that every tax carries unintended consequences. Estimates were that most parents would simply pay up. Schools would cut costs, offset VAT-able expenses and boost bursaries. Fees should not rise by more than 15%, which is what they have recently done anyway. The shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has indicated that she will not target parents with children who are at a critical stage of their school careers. The new tax will be gradual.
Desmond Swayne is predicted to be re-elected yet again in a seat where most of the population are over 50 and some are ‘terrified of Labour’
Betty Granger refuses to give up hope for another Conservative government. Sipping tea in the New Milton Conservative Club in Hampshire, Granger, 97, says she has her “fingers crossed” for a Tory win.
She posted her 21st vote for them earlier this week. “I can’t think what anybody else would’ve done better,” she says of their record.
A Reform UK general election candidate has been dropped after it emerged that he had been on a list of members of the British National party (BNP).
Raymond Saint, a retired owner of a plumbing company, had been standing for the radical right populist party in Basingstoke. A Raymond Saint, at the same address, was recorded as a member of the BNP in a list that was published by WikiLeaks in 2009.
A landslide victory for Keir Starmer could lead to hubris and division. For Conservatives, however, it’s an existential question
Can a political party win too much power? In many ways, it’s a strange fear to raise about Labour, yet the Conservatives have been doing it for weeks now. For only two periods in Labour’s 124-year history has it had huge parliamentary majorities: from 1945 to 1950 and 1997 to 2005. And even those two governments still faced hostile newspapers, sceptical civil servants, suspicious big business, millions of instinctively rightwing voters in the most prosperous regions and the pro-Tory bias of much of the establishment.
For the Conservatives to warn about the dangerous monopoly power of a Labour “supermajority”, having sought and enjoyed such power much more often themselves, is shameless even by their standards. For many Labour politicians, activists and supporters, meanwhile, the possibility that the party could enter an era of rare dominance next week is – though they dare not say it yet – very exciting. If the polls are right, the 2024 election and the Starmer supremacy that may follow could become legends that Labour lives off for decades.
Jeremy Corbyn is making a final push to try to hold on to his parliamentary seat in one of the more unpredictable battles of the election, made more uncertain because many voters still seem to believe he is the Labour candidate.
With a week to go until polling day, the former Labour leader’s campaign team is trying to marshal crowds of volunteers to knock on doors in the Islington North seat he has represented since 1983, reminding them that this race is different.
Uncertainty caused by a global wave of elections, starting this weekend in France, risks destabilising the UK’s financial system, the Bank of England has warned.
Officials are concerned about the kind of policies that newly elected governments may enforce in large economies, including the US, where Donald Trump is vying for another term as president in the run-up to the election in November.
For some viewers it might have been the first time they noticed the Greens this general election, but it was quite the impression. Midway through the first seven-way TV debate there was a brief pause after Angela Rayner and Penny Mordaunt had bickered noisily on tax, and another participant stepped in.
“Well, that was dignified, wasn’t it?” began Carla Denyer, winning laughter and applause from the audience. Leading a smaller party in an election tends to be a balancing act between strategy and simply getting attention. Thus far, it appears, the Greens have done both fairly well.
‘Are you two the best we’ve got?’ It was a harsh question, but it summed up last night’s final leaders debate pretty well
Two cliches hovered over Wednesday night’s TV debate between Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak – the first that the stakes were high, the second that Sunak had nothing to lose and Starmer had everything to lose, since he was on course for a victory so resounding that its foundations must be fragile. It’s simply not possible for nearly 50% of the country to agree on one leader, the logic goes, so Sunak’s job was to camp on Starmer’s contradictions, and scare away the undecideds with talk of Labour’s tax burden.
It makes sense on paper, but only in a world in which positive change is so unimaginable that the status quo represents safety and prosperity: all the audience questions suggested that it does not. Whatever their prescription, from closing the borders to making a better contract with young people, whether they were battling benefits sanctions or bankrupt local councils, the audience questioners were pretty unanimous on one point: everything’s broken. So Starmer’s job was to stick that broad-spectrum malaise on his Conservative opponent, and try to make sure none of it seeped out into a more generalised, will-sapping pessimism.
Both parties deny accusations of secret deal, but move to only target winnable seats is deliberate tactic
According to MRP models, the Conservatives will win about 50 seats at next week’s election. Then again, some pollsters using the same method believe they are heading for closer to 200 seats. The same models show Labour heading for somewhere between 375 and more than 500 seats.
One reason for the huge variation in seat predictions is that people are preparing to vote tactically in historic numbers, encouraged by two opposition parties that have all but abandoned campaigning in each other’s target constituencies.
If we want the kind of fair, functioning state Britain saw post-1945, we need to take on the economic powers that wrecked it
We are about to return to normal politics. After 14 years of Tory corruption and misrule, a Labour government will put this country back on track. Justice and decency will resume, public services will be rebuilt, our global standing will be restored, we will revert to a familiar state. Or so the story goes.
What is the “normal” envisaged by pundits and politicians of the left and centre? It is the most anomalous politics in the history of the world. Consciously or otherwise, they hark back to a remarkable period, roughly 1945 to 1975, in which, in certain rich nations, wealth and power were distributed, almost everyone could aspire to decent housing, wages and conditions, public services were ambitious and well-funded and a robust economic safety net prevented destitution. There had never been a period like it in the prior history of the world, and there has not been one since. Even during that period, general prosperity in the rich nations was supported by extreme exploitation, coups and violence imposed on the poor nations. We lived in a bubble, limited in time and space, in which extraordinary things happened. Yet somehow we think of it as normal.
Rishi Sunak is returning to the campaign trail on Thursday, PA reports, after a two-day hiatus for the Emperor and Empress of Japan’s state visit and preparations for the final head-to-head debate with Sir Keir Starmer.
With one week to go until polling day, the deepening gambling scandal is still likely to feature heavily when he faces the media during a tour of the East Midlands and Yorkshire.
He is expected to visit a factory in Derbyshire and hold an evening campaign event in Leeds.
Keir Starmer accused Rishi Sunak of using transgender issues “as a political football to divide people” during their head-to-head debate on Wednesday.
In Hull East, less than half of the electorate went to the ballot box in 2019 – and, here and elsewhere, the party fears being caught out by political apathy
Even during a general election campaign with projections of historic – even unprecedented – results, people cannot always be relied upon to give their full attention.
“We met a guy who said he was going to vote Labour but wouldn’t now because he had just heard that we were taxing condoms,” said Labour’s Karl Turner, who was first voted in as the MP for Hull East in 2010 and is standing for re-election this time.
Since Thatcher was deposed, there has been an absurd yearning to magic her back into existence. Their rightwing obsession stems from that
What an absolute shambles the once formidable Conservative party has now become. Whatever happened to political probity, discipline and even mere professionalism? And what an important development this Tory collapse may prove to be for British politics, not just next week, but in the future too. Even now, it is hard to believe it is happening. But it is.
At least the Tories would run an effective campaign, one still assumed, perhaps naively, when the election was called a month ago. Winning elections is one of the things the Conservatives have always been very good at. Sure, they were on the defensive and the polls were against them. And Rishi Sunak isn’t the greatest leader. But this party is nothing if not focused. Even in defeat, it would surely go down fighting.
Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist
Guardian Newsroom: election results special. On Friday 5 July, 7.30pm-9pm BST, join Hugh Muir, Gaby Hinsliff, John Crace, Jonathan Freedland and Zoe Williams for unrivalled analysis of the general election results. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live.
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