UK general election live: If Tories broke gambling rules they ‘should face full force of the law’ says Sunak | General election 2024
If Tories broke gambling rules they ‘should face full force of the law’, says Sunak
Good morning and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the run-up to the UK general election with me, Helen Sullivan.
With less than two weeks to go until Britons vote on 4 July, Rishi Sunak is facing a growing scandal, with a second Conservative candidate being looked into by the Gambling Commission. Appearing on Thursday night’s BBC Question Time, Sunak said if Tory figures were found to have broken gambling rules they “should face the full force of the law”.
Sunak said he was “incredibly angry to learn” of the allegations that multiple people with links to the Conservative Party or No 10 bet on the timing of the 4 July vote before he announced it.
Concerns over political insiders allegedly profiting from the election date could overshadow his campaigning on Friday, when he is at the Welsh Conservative manifesto launch in Kinmel Bay.
More on Sunak and Keir Starmer’s performances on the Question Time special shortly.
Here is what is coming up this morning:
7am: Scottish Conservatives campaigning in the Scottish Borders. Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross to visit Peterhead Fish Market.
8am: Aberdeen business hustings. Business leaders from across the region the put their questions to candidates representing the SNP, Lib Dems, Conservative and Labour parties.
10am: Scottish Greens general election media call with co-leader Lorna Slater in East Linton. She will join the party’s Lothian East candidate, Shona McIntosh.
10.30am: Keir Starmer and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar visit Scottish business. They will campaign on Labour’s plans to boost jobs and growth across Scotland.
Rishi Sunak is expected in Wales.
11.50am: Deputy first minister Kate Forbes will join the SNP candidate for Glasgow South West Chris Stephens on the campaign trail.
And tonight, Nick Robinson will interview Nigel Farage for a BBC Panorama special.
You can find me on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
Key events
Analysis: election betting scandal will linger in public’s minds
Jim Waterson
When Rishi Sunak, Britain’s Conservative prime minister, called a snap election in the pouring rain last month, he would have hoped his party would have closed at least some of the 20-point deficit in the opinion polls.
Instead, it seems the only members of his party who have profited since are some of his Downing street aides – in a political betting scandal that has swiftly reinforced prevailing anti-Conservative stereotypes in the British public’s imagination.
Political scandals in Britain do not have to involve large sums of money, but they linger in the public imagination if they feel politicians have been acting with impunity. Fifteen years ago, dozens of MPs were forced out after an expenses scandal. One Conservative quit after asking taxpayers to pay £1,645 for an ornamental duck house.
More pertinently, Sunak’s predecessor as prime minister but one, Boris Johnson, was forced out of office two years ago over another scandal: the “Partygate” affair.
Johnson, aides and advisers, it emerged, had held a string of parties and drinks events in Downing Street during the coronavirus crisis, at times when the British public were forced to remain at home, unable even to visit sick or dying relatives.
Licenses that have already been approved for fossil fuel projects will be carried on, Rayner says, when asked about the Rosebank oilfield, and whether the Supreme Court ruling on Surrey Council will have any bearing on the controversial development.
Husain is pressing her on the ruling from the Supreme Court that Surrey Council should have considered the climate change impacts of new oil wells.
Rayner won’t be drawn on the implications of the ruling.
Here is some context:
Mishal Husain says that studies show delivering the needed extra staff would require billions of pounds a year.
Angela Rayner again says that money will be saved by delivering the right level of care in the right place. She is referring to Labour’s plan to use NHS money to buy beds in care homes:
Mishal Husain says that the topup to annual NHS spending in your manifesto was primarily not for staff. How will Labour deliver a workforce plan?
Angela Rayner responds by saying that what is needed is reform, rather than funding. The workforce doesn’t feel valued, she says, and that is what needs to change.
Husain presses her on the cost of delivering a workforce plan, and Rayner is evasive.
Husain asks if she is saying it is cost neutral.
Rayner: I actually think by having that workforce plan… we could save money. If staff are retained, and agency fees are avoided, money could be saved, she says.
The BBC’s Mishal Husain is about to interview deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner on the Today programme. We’ll bring you the highlights live.
Lib Dems announce £750m a year for NHS dentistry
The Liberal Democrats have announced a dental rescue plan for the NHS, worth £750 million each year, which aims to give more patients access to care, ensure free check-ups for children and to prevent the “exodus” of NHS dentists.
It said that this would increase NHS dentistry funding in England by around a quarter.
The plan also aims to ensure access to an NHS dentist for everyone needing urgent and emergency care.
And the Liberal Democrats said that the money would be used to help to reform the NHS dental contract, which has been a subject of contention among dentists.
Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey:
Across the country, millions of people are going without basic dental care, with many even turning to pulling their own teeth out due to the lack of services. It is an utterly appalling situation that has to be brought to an end.
The Conservative government has pushed dentistry to the brink and it is children and parents who are paying the price of their neglect.
“Years of this Conservative government kicking the can down the road is creating an exodus of dentists from the NHS.The Liberal Democrats have an ambitious plan to fix the dental contract and tackle the crisis in dental care. Every vote for the Liberal Democrats is a vote to get rid of this appalling Conservative government and fix the NHS and care.
Starmer will be campaigning in Scotland today, where he will be talking about research and development and the party’s industrial strategy in Scotland.
The gist:
New ten-year budgets for British research and development institutions
Creating jobs in sectors like engineering, research, AI, and life sciences.
Supporting clean energy projects such as the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult.
Creating 69,000 jobs across Scotland, including 53,000 new clean energy jobs in sectors like carbon capture, hydrogen onshore and offshore wind.
The Warm Homes Plan, which will create 16,000 jobs and cut energy bills for thousands of Scots. Currently, almost half of Scottish homes fall below the recommended energy efficiency standard, meaning colder homes and higher bills, according to Labour.
Here is what Starmer will tell voters today:
At this election, Scotland can turn the page on an era of economic turmoil under the Tories and the SNP.
Our changed Labour Party can deliver economic stability, unlock wealth creation and create high quality jobs in the industries of the future.
Our plans will give businesses the certainty to invest and grow, helping turbocharge Scotland’s economy. Scotland deserves leadership that matches the ambition of the Scottish people. A party that won’t just send a message but will send a government to Westminster. That party is Labour.
Labour will put Scotland at the heart of government and deliver the change that Scotland needs.”
Anas Sarwar, Leader of the Scottish Labour Party, will say:
After 17 years of Tory economic turmoil and 14 years of SNP economic failure, Scotland is ready for change.
Labour’s groundbreaking industrial strategy will unlock wealth creation, drive forward growth and bring the jobs of the future to Scotland.
These plans will grasp the vast potential and talent we have here in Scotland and make us home to the jobs of the future – from clean energy to technology to research.
The Tories’ reckless economic mismanagement caused misery for millions of Scots and the SNP’s manifesto costings look like they were cooked up by Liz Truss – but Labour will deliver economic stability our country desperately needs.
Every vote for Scottish Labour is a vote to end Tory economic chaos and deliver a Labour government with Scotland’s voice at its heart.”
Polls mask many ‘undecideds’ and fuel Labour worry about mobilising voters
Jessica Elgot
In three weeks’ time, Ed Davey could be standing at the dispatch box as the leader of the opposition, Rishi Sunak could be on a plane to California having lost his seat and three-quarters of the cabinet out on the job hunt while more than 500 Labour MPs take their seats. There are no leadership chances for the seatless James Cleverly, Penny Mordaunt or Priti Patel.
Are these predictions real, or as outlandish as they sound? Not all the polls are as apocalyptic for the Conservatives as the scenario above describes, but if Keir Starmer enters parliament with a majority of 150, it would now feel almost disappointing.
Inside Labour HQ, there is a policy not to discuss the polls at all and to make decisions based purely on the party’s own data and precision-targeted strategy.
But for Labour campaigners trying to mobilise voters, the polls are becoming positively unhelpful. It is the Tories who stand to gain the most from the argument that it is important to have a bulwark of Tory MPs as a counter to an unprecedented Labour majority, in order to motivate their disillusioned base and activists.
It is also a key argument for Starmer’s critics on the left. A Labour landslide is nailed on, they argue, so vote with your conscience for Greens or independents if you want to put pressure on the party about the climate crisis or war in Gaza.
Even if Labour HQ believes the polls, the party lacks the capacity to work all of the potential targets. “Tory vote is collapsing to Reform in the long shot seats,” one MP said. “But many I don’t think are realistic. We aren’t re-directing resources.”
“It feels more volatile than ever with a lot of undecideds and uncertains,” said another MP.
Some Labour candidates are so anxious about their own, safe seats they are annoyed at being harangued by Labour HQ to campaign elsewhere – and some of the Labour WhatsApp groups are near mutinous about the degree of control being placed on their movements.
The most recent MRP polls – for Savanta and Ipsos – put between 100 and 150 seats on a knife-edge. The polls use a method taking about 10 times the usual number of survey respondents and extrapolate that data on to constituencies.
But very different methods are used by all the different pollsters now using this new method of MRP polling in order to drill down into the different constituencies:
Consumer spending picks up
Graeme Wearden
The latest retail sales figures show that consumer spending picked up last month, while new borrowing statistics are casting a light on the public finances.
May’s retail sales stats show that sales volumes rebounded in May, after a slump in April when bad weather drove shoppers from the high street. That’s rather stronger than the 1.5% rise forecast by City economists.
Retail sales volumes jumped by 2.9% in May 2024, following a fall of 1.8% in April, the Office for National Statistics reports.
These increases suggest people feel more confident about economic conditions – as shown by the latest poll of consumer confidence from GfK. But while that may bolster Rishi Sunak’s claim that the economy is turning the corner, this isn’t providing the PM with a poll boost.
And one more: deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner will be on the Today programme at 8.10, we’ll bring you the key moments from that interview live.
Coming up today
Here is a more detailed schedule of the day ahead:
11.30am: Rishi Sunak campaigning in north Wales and launching the Welsh Conservative manifesto. David TC Davies is on the morning media round.
10.30am: Keir Starmer and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar visit Scottish business. Deputy Labour Leader Angela Rayner is on the morning round for Labour.
10.15am: Ed Davey visiting a college in Harrogate, Yorkshire and a railway station in north Norfolk.
13.45: Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner to visit an advanced manufacturing centre in the West Midlands.
7pm: Farage to be interviewed by Nick Robinson for BBC Panorama special. Farage will be campaigning in Clacton during the day.
How a disastrous Tory policy blew up the housing market
Oliver Wainwright
Two decades ago, a household with the median income could afford to buy an average-priced house in England. Now, they can afford only the cheapest 10% of properties.
In the capital, the situation is even more absurd. An average first-time buyer in London now has to save for more than 30 years to afford a deposit on an average home. The result is ever more people trapped in the private rented sector, at the mercy of unregulated landlords and subject to rents that have reached a record high. The number of adults living with their parents has risen by 700,000 over the last decade, with about 30% of 25- to 29-year-olds now living back at home.
Tory doctrine has created not a nation of homeowners, but a country of squeezed renters, overcrowded flat-sharers and rough sleepers, with the number of people sleeping on the streets more than double the figure when the Conservatives came to power in 2010.
So what is Sunak’s grand plan to fix this mess? His momentous proposal is to resuscitate the still-warm corpse of help to buy, the single policy that the government’s housing strategy has relied on for the last decade.
Help to buy was first introduced in 2013 by the then-chancellor George Osborne, and trumpeted as “the biggest government intervention in the housing market since the right to buy” of the 1980s. Over the last four decades, that disastrous policy has seen two-thirds of Britain’s council homes transferred from public to private hands, forcing local authorities to sell off more homes each year than they can build.
The policy provided first-time buyers with an equity loan of up to 20% of the value of a new-build property – or 40% in superheated London – capped at a total price of £600,000. The buyer was required to stump up a deposit of just 5%, with the remainder covered by a traditional mortgage. It was a reaction to sluggish rates of housebuilding, when developers were still licking their wounds from the financial crisis, and banks were reluctant to lend more than 75% of a new-build home’s value to purchasers, cutting many first-time buyers out of the market. The dubious logic behind help to buy was that by stimulating housing demand, housing supply would inevitably follow.
Economists balked. Christian Hilber, professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics, wrote at the time: “Help to buy will likely have the effect of pushing up house prices (and rents) further with very little positive effect on new construction. Housing will likely become less – not more – affordable for young would-be-owners!”
