UK in a Changing Europe concludes Labour has ruled out changes that would have made biggest boost to growth
Labour’s EU policy amounts to “tinkering around the edges of the current relationship” and will do little to “address the continuing economic impacts of Brexit”, a report has concluded.
An audit of UK-EU relations by the thinktank UK in a Changing Europe concluded that Labour had ruled out changes that would have made the biggest impact on economic growth.
Leader says election is first step ‘for our party and for me’ as Gove dismisses idea of Farage in No 10 as ‘ridiculous’
Nigel Farage has unveiled a raft of populist pledges, massive tax cuts and £140bn in spending commitments in a Reform UK manifesto that economists said did “not add up”.
The Conservative party, which has struggled to counter the growing Reform threat, accused Farage of being part of a “great entertainment machine” who was not somebody who could govern the country.
The UK can’t continue with policies that have produced a productivity slump and record amounts of insecure work
In the manifestos of both the Conservative and the Labour parties, there is a commitment to implementing the NHS long-term workforce plan to ensure that the country will be able to populate the health service with UK-trained doctors and nurses. However, neither of the parties are suggesting that they will fund the £30bn it would cost to employ the tens of thousands of staff they say they will train. Instead, voters are expected to believe that the confidence fairy will turn up when the next government arrives – and businesses will invest, leading to economic growth.
It is magical thinking to believe that, without actually doing anything, private spending in Britain will be stimulated to such an extent that it will more than compensate for the anticipated public sector cuts that depress it.
Exclusive: almost half of billionaire Tory donor’s last 100 reposts were in support of rightwing party
A Tory peer and former party donor has shared dozens of social media posts supportive of Nigel Farage and Reform UK.
During the course of the election campaign Peter Cruddas, the billionaire Tory donor who was controversially ennobled by Boris Johnson, has reposted a string of material calling on voters to back Farage and his party.
Good afternoon. Reform’s gimmick at the launch earlier of their manifesto – which they are calling a “contract”, because “when I say manifesto you think lie” – was for Nigel Farage and Richard Tice to sign it. But when it came to the big moment, Nigel didn’t have a working pen.
If that had been him, Rishi Sunak might bitterly reflect, it would have been viewed as the kind of symbolic unforced error that would justify further headlines about his campaign being in chaos. But nobody really noticed, because Farage has momentum, and a narrative, on his side.
Brexit | Labour would try to improve elements of the UK’s trade deal with the EU, Rachel Reeves has suggested. Areas where Labour could seek closer alignment with EU rules could include the chemicals sector and a revised deal for workers in the City of London.
Energy | The SNP has called for a social tariff to guarantee cheap energy bills for people who are poor, disabled or elderly. The party’s leader John Swinney said the same concept should be applied to broadband and mobile phone bills.
Welfare | Keir Starmer is facing renewed pressure to scrap the two-child benefit limit, as research reveals that 250,000 more children will be hit by the policy over the next year alone. Labour’s manifesto promised an “ambitious strategy to reduce child poverty”, but did not mention the two-child limit.
From economy to transport, health to housing, and immigration – how do the main pledges in party’s ‘contract’ with electorate stack up?
Reform UK insists its plans are “not just another party manifesto”, because it does not expect to win the election. But there are a lot of policy ideas in its 28-page “contract” with the electorate. Here are the main proposals from Nigel Farage’s party.
On a bright sunny June afternoon, sunlight bounces off Thomas J Price’s Warm Shores, a pair of 9ft bronze statues of a man and woman that stand proudly outside Hackney town hall as a celebration of the Windrush generation.
The statues had a great view when Diane Abbott, whose Hackney North and Stoke Newington constituency sits just to the north, made a speech confirming she was determined to stand again as an MP after a major row with Labour.
Shadow chancellor’s remarks mark shift in tone for party, which has preferred to not talk about Brexit so far
Labour would try to improve elements of the UK’s trade deal with the EU, Rachel Reeves has indicated, saying also that most financial services companies have “not regarded Brexit as being a great opportunity for their businesses”.
While Labour remains committed to not making any major changes to Brexit, the shadow chancellor’s comments show that the party could nonetheless make more policy moves on EU trade links than previously believed.
Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have been campaigning in Hampshire this morning. Stefan Rousseau from PA Media took this picture of them on the train.
The SNP has called for a social tariff that would guarantee cheap energy bills for people who are poor, disabled or elderly.
We believe that there are certain things that every citizen should have access to as a right. Healthcare free at the point of need, a social security safety net, pensions for older people, and free education including free university tuition.
But it is time that we recognised that these rights need to go further, to reflect the realities of the modern world.
Connectivity – fast broadband and good mobile phone connections – are critical to modern life. In fact, in rural Scotland and the Isles, it is critical to the whole future of the economy.
As more and more people work from home at least part of the week, often you literally cannot do your job without a decent internet connection. That’s why, to help people get jobs, keep jobs and keep more of their hard-earned cash, there should be a social tariff for broadband and mobile charges too.
The campaign group Best for Britain has launched its guide on how to vote to have the best chance of ousting the Tories. We look at what tactical voting involves and what the group is recommending
Since their debut just over a decade ago, smart doorbells have been a revelation for anyone interested in home security and, though most won’t admit it, being a bit nosey. They’ve also transformed door knocking for political canvassers.
While doorbell camera footage of passersby pilfering packages or behaving badly can be found all over the internet, spare a thought for those campaigning for the country’s future.
Party begins week of campaigning on economy under pressure to say if it will raise taxes to pay for £7.3bn plans
Labour will create more than 650,000 jobs with its green investment plans, Rachel Reeves has said, as the party kickstarts a week of campaigning on the economy.
The UK shadow chancellor has revealed new details about the £7.3bn green investment vehicle that Labour intends to create after the election, saying it will help create hundreds of thousands of new industrial jobs.
Ed Davey, the leader of the Lib Dems, has had a busy week. On Monday, he conducted an interview on a spinning teacup in a funfair; on Wednesday, he tumbled into a pool at a Warwickshire water park live on the BBC – then, on Thursday, he was dressed in a linen suit and panama hat in a makeover on ITV’s This Morning.
This gameshow approach to politics is hardly new for Davey or his small party, lying fourth in election polling. A fortnight earlier, Davey fell off a paddle board into Lake Windemere in Cumbria five times in 15 minutes at a campaign event with party colleague Tim Farron.
Voters keep being warned to temper expectations. But a Labour party finally taking power should embrace that sense of opportunity, and be transformed by it
With the result by all measures a foregone conclusion, this general election campaign is less a contest and more a long coronation for one party, and an extended wake for the other. Keir Starmer is already being treated like the next prime minister rather than a leader of an opposition striving to unseat the incumbent. The Tories’ fate is only uncertain in terms of the degree of defeat: will it be serious diminishment or oblivion? In this interregnum, the future heaves into view.
The upcoming political chapter already has clear contours. Labour’s tone and policy are set. There will be no rabbits out of the hat, no crowd-pleasers, no circus shenanigans. What there will be is the long view of the management consultant– sleeves rolled up, of course – who has identified inefficiencies in the struggling business and will need a few quarters for the dividends of their work to appear on the balance sheet. With Starmer’srejection of “tax and spend” comes a deferral to a concept of growth that relies on a lack of specificity about what can be freed up in the economy, on faith in the broad numbers you’ve been given, and on the chastened quiescence of the electorate after years of electing bad management. A way out has been identified – the tide will rise and all our boats will float up with it.
IFS research shows 670,000 more children will be hit by policy by end of next parliament if limit stays in place
Keir Starmer is facing renewed pressure to scrap the two-child benefit limit, as research reveals that 250,000 more children will be hit by the policy over the next year alone.
Labour’s manifesto for government, published last week, included the promise of an “ambitious strategy to reduce child poverty”, but no mention of the two-child limit.
The Reform UK candidate Grant StClair-Armstrong has resigned after it was discovered he had previously encouraged people to vote for the far-right British National party.
StClair-Armstrong, 71, is standing for election in North West Essex, challenging the business secretary, Kemi Badenoch.
Michael Cashman made the remark after the candidate for Canterbury said she was concerned about her safety
A Labour peer has apologised after accusing the party’s Canterbury candidate, Rosie Duffield, of being too “frit or lazy” to attend hustings.
Duffield, who is seeking re-election in Canterbury and has risen to prominence because of her views on sex and gender, said on Friday she would no longer attend hustings because of “constant trolling, spite and misinterpretation”.
Starmer’s closest aide is credited with putting the party in a position to win but his popularity is not universal
For a man at the heart of the Labour party, Morgan McSweeney lives a long way from Westminster. He spends much of his time doing a six-hour commute from home in Lanark, the town south of Glasgow where he lives with his family, to Labour’s HQ in Southwark. Despite the distance he travels, he is in many ways the ultimate Labour insider – one who has made it his mission to transform the way the party appeals to the country.
As Labour’s elections guru and Keir Starmer’s closest aide, McSweeney has near-unrivalled influence. He is credited by many for steering Labour to all-but-certain victory in the election next month. Adored by many staffers and key shadow cabinet ministers alike, some party figures retain more affection for him than they do the leader. The highest form of praise in Labour HQ is: “Morgan loves it.”
Higher Education Policy Institute research suggests that holding ballot in summer break may be strategic error
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.
Nigel Farage knows the BBC will not allow him to join its televised Sunak vs Starmer leaders’ debate later this month. But the he also knows that a battle with the BBC can be an effective political tactic.
“If the BBC want a fight with me on this, they can have one,” Farage has said.
Everywhere I go in Britain, people are exhausted. But there’s good reason to believe a Labour government would bring unseen possibilities
In the midst of dizzying opinion polls and a seemingly unprecedented Tory collapse, it is worth remembering a basic political fact: Labour governments do not get elected very often, and it is a feat that is chronically difficult to pull off.
Some of this is down to the UK’s creaking electoral system, and the awkward coalition of voters Labour must build to surmount it, from pensioners in post-industrial towns to urban twentysomethings. But some of the party’s eternal challenge is also down to a set of deeply sceptical attitudes, in England in particular. Younger voters seem to be largely free of such ideas, but in other parts of the electorate, Labour is for ever suspected of being profligate and wasteful, while the wider political left – not entirely unreasonably – is seen as pious, privileged and unbearably bossy. On top of all that, there is a deep national queasiness about change that becomes even clearer at times of national crisis. Two centuries ago, it was summed up by that great English agitator William Cobbett: “We want great alteration, but we want nothing new.”
John Harris is a Guardian columnist
• Guardian Newsroom: Election results special. Join Gaby Hinsliff, John Crace, Hugh Muir, Jonathan Freedland and Zoe Williams on 5 July
Meet Harold, Denise, Alison and Mark: the four key target audiences identified by Conservative strategists as the right people to win them seats in the general election.
The four theoretical voters are defined as the “persuasion audience”, very likely to head to the polls and open to considering backing the Tories.
Apathy, economic insecurity and feeling ignored is driving the under-35s away from Labour and the Tories
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.
A year after Boris Johnson’s old seat united against Labour in anger over Sadiq Khan’s emissions policy, voters are split
Six weeks may be a long time in politics, but for pedestrians trying to cross the dual carriageway to get to the shops and library on Yiewsley High Street, it feels even longer.
The traffic lights here haven’t been working since 3 May, when they were vandalised by anti-Ulez protesters. It’s a side-effect of the self-styled blade runners’ attacks on the cameras on top of the traffic lights put there to monitor cars as they come in and out of London’s ultra-low emission zone in Uxbridge.
Shadow health secretary says ‘we will not make promises we cannot keep or that the country cannot afford’
Wes Streeting has failed to rule out an overhaul of the council tax system if Labour win next month’s election, as the shadow health secretary said the party wanted to do more in power than it had promised in its manifesto.
Streeting 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.
Rishi Sunak and his cronies have helped spread an epidemic of disinformation in this campaign – it’s a political way of life for the right
“It’s the lying I can’t stand.” That’s the close of the affair cliche isn’t it? We can forgive so much – incompetence, petulance, flatulence – but in the end dishonesty derails things. I suppose that’s why the nation’s 14-year abusive relationship with the Conservative party is finally finished. That’s all folks, bar an argument about who gets Natalie Elphicke, the political equivalent of a smelly pet dog with dangly yellowing genitals and incontinence that the most compassionate partner will, ultimately, come to regret taking.
Yes. It’s the lying we can’t stand. Some of Rishi Sunak’s faults are excusable. It is understandable that he would not consider the sacrifice of the soldiers of D-day especially significant when his own parents had so nobly sacrificed his family’s Sky TV subscription to pay his Winchester College school fees. But it was on Tuesday of the week before last that, unforgivably, lying Sunak vomited out his instantly discredited lie about Labour’s £2,000 tax plans, live in an ITV debate against the lightning-reflexed Keir Starmer. Luckily Starmer shut Sunak’s false claims down with all the speed of an arthritic slug lurching towards a distant cabbage (though to compare lying Sunak to a vegetable at this stage in the Conservatives’ election campaign is perhaps to exaggerate his gifts as a communicator and electoral asset and is, moreover, unfair to cabbages).
Stewart Lee introduces the garage punk greats at the Lexington, London N1, performing a 45-minute standup set before the Primevals (1 July), The Shadracks (2 July) and the Fallen Leaves (3 July)
Guardian analysis of messaging in post-war Tory and Labour manifestos reveals shifting political focus
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.
Complaints that the Labour campaign is dull are a tribute to its steely professionalism
From the off, this election has been Labour’s to lose – and boy does it know it. Every indicator signposts victory, but Labour is fighting it as if there’s a real risk of defeat. “Change”, the simple one-word slogan inscribed on the front cover of the manifesto, emblazoned on every podium and never absent from a Starmer speech, is a clinically utilitarian compression of the core theme. The messaging is rigidly repetitive. “Stop the chaos, turn the page and start to rebuild Britain.” Rinse and repeat, members of the shadow cabinet, until your mouth is cracked dry and you’ve given your audience tinnitus. One of the campaign’s architects recently purred to me: “I do love message discipline”, as if he was talking about his children. Stick to the script. Never drop the ball. Ignore the opinion polls. Take nothing for granted. Leave nothing to chance. Get over the line.
Don’t think I’m being a critic. I say all this as a compliment to the professionalism of the Labour campaign, not least because I’ve witnessed so many past contests in which the party lacked the ferocious focus and the steely will to prevail in the brutal contact sport of electoral politics.
Concern continues after local elections and George Galloway win that party’s position on Israel-Gaza war still eroding support
Labour is directing activists to campaign in seats with substantial Muslim populations, over fears that some voters have been alienated by the party’s stance on Gaza.
Its campaigning efforts are mostly being concentrated on Conservative and SNP seats in an attempt to secure a potentially record-breaking majority. However, there are 13 Labour-held seats where Muslims make up at least a fifth of the electorate which the party is telling its activists to target.
The Conservatives have no new vision for the next five years and the Liberal Democrats project a qualified optimism, but Labour could eventually prove transformative
The Britain that the next government will inherit on 5 July has been profoundly misgoverned for 14 years. Productivity, the heart of prosperity, has stagnated, as has business investment; the already weak trends were ruptured in 2016, the year of the Brexit referendum, and have stubbornly refused to budge since. Low growth and frozen living standards are thus guaranteed until those trends are reversed. Even though taxation has climbed, there cannot be one citizen unaware of the intolerable stress on underfunded public services set to intensify in the years ahead on current spending plans.
The news anchor, who will present the programme with Laura Kuenssberg, has spoken on Desert Island Discs about the insults and threats he has experienced as a broadcaster
Clive Myrie has detailed the racism he has experienced during his broadcasting career, as he prepares to present the BBC’s general election night programme.
Speaking to Lauren Laverne on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, broadcast on Sunday, the 59-year-old listed some of the insults and threats he has endured, including being sent faeces and pictures of gorillas in the post.
Analysis by leading experts the Nuffield Trust reveals that main parties’ manifestos would squeeze health spending
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.
Keir Starmer has ruled out imposing capital gains tax on the sale of people’s homes and said it was “desperate” tactics from the Tories to suggest that he would.
The Labour leader said he could “absolutely” guarantee that would not happen.
Poll reveals historically low support for the big two, with smaller parties up by five points
Labour and the Tories are on course for their lowest combined vote share since the second world war, as the latest Opinium poll for the Observer shows a shift away from the main parties.
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.
Labour’s manifesto launch was as risk-averse as its whole campaign, but what will happen under the impact of bankrupt councils, crumbling schools and an NHS in crisis?
There was no razzmattazz, no fanfare and no arty backdrop as Keir Starmer – way ahead in the polls with three weeks until election day – launched his party’s bombproof manifesto for government. The unflashy venue – the HQ of the Co-Operative Group in Manchester – was the same as when the Labour leader announced his five missions in February last year. The same posters announcing the same missions hung from the same walls. Surprise means risk and there was none of either.
One older Labour party member recalled the Sheffield rally of 1992 when Neil Kinnock’s pre-election over-confidence was thought by some to have contributed to eventual defeat. The vibe was the reverse. “We are certainly not repeating that. It still pains me,” he said.
A-listers queued up to add showbiz pizzaz before elections. Today, it’s seen as more effective for a member of the public speak out
David Tennant, Colin Firth, Jim Davidson and the late Kenny Everett all signed up to officially support a political party during past British general election campaigns, giving a touch of showbiz pizazz to the daily round of rainy hustings and churlish TV debates. After Tony Blair’s victory in 1997, the pavement in Downing Street was infamously lined with VIPs, from a Gallagher brother to a Mitchell brother (EastEnders’ Ross Kemp), all calling at his celebratory Cool Britannia event.
But the era of the high-profile celebrity political endorsement appears to be behind us as individual social media declarations, together with the complexities that surround divisive issues such as gender politics, climate change and the Middle East conflict, make these relationships more difficult to cement.
In an interview, the Lib Dem leader says even Labour voters want party to win seats so they can hold Starmer to account
The Lib Dems will push a Labour government to adopt more radical policies on tax, welfare and bringing Britain closer to the EU, Ed Davey has said, amid growing expectations that his party is on course for a far bigger role in the next parliament.
In an interview with the Observer, the Lib Dem leader said that his party’s focus remained squarely on ousting Tory MPs via a tactical voting drive that he claimed could be the most successful ever seen.
SNP and Labour are battling it out over the area, which has a rich mining heritage and aspirational new housing estates
Beneath the red brick chimney at Lady Victoria Colliery in Newtongrange, Midlothian, the Tuesday morning tour is under way. Now home to the National Mining Museum Scotland, this was one of seven pits that employed thousands of men until the industry’s bitter demise.
Miners and their families voted one way, the tour guide explains. “Everybody voted Labour back then. A ham sandwich could get voted in as a Labour MP.”
Of the big parties contesting the election outside Northern Ireland, all but the Scottish National party and Reform UK have now released their manifestos. So what is on offer thus far to voters on 4 July?
Prime minister says he intends to continue in parliament for next five years regardless of overall result on 4 July
Rishi Sunak has committed to staying on as an MP for the full five-year term if the Conservative party loses the general election.
Speaking to journalists in Puglia, Italy, where he is attending the G7 summit, the prime minister said he intended to serve a full parliamentary term regardless of the overall result on 4 July.
Conservative leadership hopefuls are already lobbying for support to take over from Rishi Sunak amid widespread fears the party is heading for a disastrous defeat on 4 July, the Guardian has learned.
With three weeks to go before the general election, candidates and advisers had begun lining up behind their preferred contenders, sources said, with some Tory campaigners complaining they were being inundated with messages from potential leaders.
In office, something very different will be required, but steady caution has brought Labour to the brink of power
No drama Starmer. No surprises at Thursday’s manifesto launch, no rabbits, no hats. Some in the audience are getting restless. Reporters yawn, or laugh, when the Labour leader says, for the millionth time, that his father was a toolmaker who worked in a factory. A voter at Wednesday’s Sky News debate told him to his face that he was a “political robot”. The complaint is not only about style, but substance too. Opponents on the right lambast the lack of plans and policy detail; on the left they condemn the timidity, the dearth of radical ambition.
Those complaints all miss the same point. Starmer’s boringness is not a bug: it’s a feature. Those puzzled by Labour’s giant poll lead – thinking it odd that Starmer is ahead despite being so unexciting – fail to realise that Starmer is ahead because he is unexciting. There is method to his lack of madness. To be sure, the caution, the silences on whole areas of policy, may exact a price further down the road – we’ll come to that – but for now, it’s working.
The pace picked up in week three with most of the main parties launching their election manifestos. First up on Monday were the Lib Dems, as Ed Davey took time off from his theme park adventures for the morning to take centre stage in a rather glitzy office space in north London.
Next up were the Tories who, for reasons best known to themselves, had decamped to an anonymous hall in the middle of Silverstone. No one even got near a car. Cue endless gags about driving round and round in circles, going nowhere. The cabinet looked less than thrilled to have been dragged away from trying to defend their seats for the day to act as a support act for a prime minister in whom they have lost confidence.
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