Streeting says ‘lies and hypocrisy’ from Tories ‘overwhelming’ after party spreads false claims about Starmer’s work ethic
As parties get increasingly desperate and fearful of losing in election campaigns, they often ramp up the negative campaigning, and there has been a very good example of that from the Conservative party over the last 24 hours.
Yesterday Keir Starmer gave an interview to Chris Evans on Virgin Radio in which he said, if he becomes PM, he will try to carry on with the habit he has had for some years of making sure that he does not work on Friday nights so he can spend time with his wife and children. It was an unexceptional thing to say, and Virgin Radio did not even highlight it in their press release.
But yesterday afternoon some news websites started running headlines saying that Starmer had said that he would not work beyond 6pm. And the Conservatives picked this up as an attack line, despite knowing it was not what Starmer had said at all. This is from the Conservative party’s official X account.
Keir Starmer has said he’d clock off work at 6pm if he became Prime Minister.
You deserve better than a part-time Prime Minister.
The only way to prevent this is to vote Conservative on Thursday. pic.twitter.com/yF0ZBAttRh
— Conservatives (@Conservatives) July 1, 2024
Keir Starmer has said he’d clock off work at 6pm if he became Prime Minister.
You deserve better than a part-time Prime Minister.
The only way to prevent this is to vote Conservative on Thursday.
This is from Grant Shapps, the defence secretary.
Virtually every military intervention we’ve carried out has happened at night, partly to keep our servicemen & women safe.
The British people will wonder who would be standing in for Starmer between 6pm & 9am – Angela Rayner, David Lammy, Ed Miliband?
Defending Britain’s…
— Rt Hon Grant Shapps (@grantshapps) July 1, 2024
Virtually every military intervention we’ve carried out has happened at night, partly to keep our servicemen & women safe.
The British people will wonder who would be standing in for Starmer between 6pm & 9am – Angela Rayner, David Lammy, Ed Miliband?
Defending Britain’s security isn’t a daylight hours only job.
This morning Maria Caulfield, the health minister, was still trying to run the same attack line – although on Sky News the presenter, Matt Barbet, told her bluntly she what she was saying was untrue.
Conservative Health Minister Maria Caulfield pushes the outright lie that Keir Starmer has “said he is going to be doing a four day week”.
After being corrected, Caulfield immediately doubles down with another false claim that Starmer has committed to working a “flexible” week. pic.twitter.com/c2psE3Lrhf
— Adam Bienkov (@AdamBienkov) July 2, 2024
This has been one of the biggest lies of the campaign – although arguably so transparently absurd as to be relatively harmless. In an LBC interview earlier in the campaign Rishi Sunak himself praised Starmer for having a good work/life balance, and not neglecting the need to spend time with his family.
This morning Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, was doing a media round for Labour, and he said the “lies and hypocrisy” coming from the Tories were now overwhelming. He told Sky News.
What we’ve seen this morning is just the latest, desperate attack from the Conservative party – the party that brought you the biggest lockdown party in Downing Street now talking about [Keir Starmer’s] work ethic.
The stench of their lies and hypocrisy is even more overwhelming than the vomit they left for Downing Street cleaners to clean up.
And, like the Downing Street cleaners, if we’re given the chance on Thursday, Labour will clean up the Tories’ mess too.
And, as far as I’m concerned, this is just the latest example of why this circus needs to be brought to an end and why people like Maria Caulfield, out this morning debasing herself on national television, should also be removed at the general election.
Key events
Guide to how constituency boundaries have changed, with notional results for 2019 for new constituencies
There has been a major boundary review since 2019 and on Thursday most people will be voting in a constituency that has either changed its boundaries, or that has been replaced with a new seat, with quite different boundaries and a new name. We have got a guide to the new constituencies (below) and, using your postcode, you can check how the boundary changes affect you.
On election night it is important to know, not just how many seats parties are winning, but how the share of the vote has changed since 2019. Given that most boundaries have changed, comparisons with the results from 2019 would be misleading. But the academics Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher have produced notional results for 2019 based on the new boundaries (what the share of the vote would have been for each party, in each constituency, if the 2024 boundaries had been in place then). It is impossible to know for sure, because general election results are only counted on a constituency-wide basis. But, using ward-by-ward data from local election results, Rallings and Thrasher have been able to produce a reliable guide. The Guardian and other news organisations will be using these figures on election night as the benchmark to assess how the performance of parties has changed since 2019, and these figures are included in our interactive graphic too.
Streeting says ‘lies and hypocrisy’ from Tories ‘overwhelming’ after party spreads false claims about Starmer’s work ethic
As parties get increasingly desperate and fearful of losing in election campaigns, they often ramp up the negative campaigning, and there has been a very good example of that from the Conservative party over the last 24 hours.
Yesterday Keir Starmer gave an interview to Chris Evans on Virgin Radio in which he said, if he becomes PM, he will try to carry on with the habit he has had for some years of making sure that he does not work on Friday nights so he can spend time with his wife and children. It was an unexceptional thing to say, and Virgin Radio did not even highlight it in their press release.
But yesterday afternoon some news websites started running headlines saying that Starmer had said that he would not work beyond 6pm. And the Conservatives picked this up as an attack line, despite knowing it was not what Starmer had said at all. This is from the Conservative party’s official X account.
Keir Starmer has said he’d clock off work at 6pm if he became Prime Minister.
You deserve better than a part-time Prime Minister.
The only way to prevent this is to vote Conservative on Thursday. pic.twitter.com/yF0ZBAttRh
— Conservatives (@Conservatives) July 1, 2024
Keir Starmer has said he’d clock off work at 6pm if he became Prime Minister.
You deserve better than a part-time Prime Minister.
The only way to prevent this is to vote Conservative on Thursday.
This is from Grant Shapps, the defence secretary.
Virtually every military intervention we’ve carried out has happened at night, partly to keep our servicemen & women safe.
The British people will wonder who would be standing in for Starmer between 6pm & 9am – Angela Rayner, David Lammy, Ed Miliband?
Defending Britain’s…
— Rt Hon Grant Shapps (@grantshapps) July 1, 2024
Virtually every military intervention we’ve carried out has happened at night, partly to keep our servicemen & women safe.
The British people will wonder who would be standing in for Starmer between 6pm & 9am – Angela Rayner, David Lammy, Ed Miliband?
Defending Britain’s security isn’t a daylight hours only job.
This morning Maria Caulfield, the health minister, was still trying to run the same attack line – although on Sky News the presenter, Matt Barbet, told her bluntly she what she was saying was untrue.
Conservative Health Minister Maria Caulfield pushes the outright lie that Keir Starmer has “said he is going to be doing a four day week”.
After being corrected, Caulfield immediately doubles down with another false claim that Starmer has committed to working a “flexible” week. pic.twitter.com/c2psE3Lrhf
— Adam Bienkov (@AdamBienkov) July 2, 2024
This has been one of the biggest lies of the campaign – although arguably so transparently absurd as to be relatively harmless. In an LBC interview earlier in the campaign Rishi Sunak himself praised Starmer for having a good work/life balance, and not neglecting the need to spend time with his family.
This morning Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, was doing a media round for Labour, and he said the “lies and hypocrisy” coming from the Tories were now overwhelming. He told Sky News.
What we’ve seen this morning is just the latest, desperate attack from the Conservative party – the party that brought you the biggest lockdown party in Downing Street now talking about [Keir Starmer’s] work ethic.
The stench of their lies and hypocrisy is even more overwhelming than the vomit they left for Downing Street cleaners to clean up.
And, like the Downing Street cleaners, if we’re given the chance on Thursday, Labour will clean up the Tories’ mess too.
And, as far as I’m concerned, this is just the latest example of why this circus needs to be brought to an end and why people like Maria Caulfield, out this morning debasing herself on national television, should also be removed at the general election.
Sunak is doing the interview from a supermarket. Thompson asks him if he knows the prices of a loaf of bread. Sunak says at Morrisons a tiger bloomer loaf is £1.35.
Thompson asks if he knows how much it has gone up in price over the last five years.
Sunak says he does not have that figure to hand. Thompson tells him it is 28%.
And that’s the end of the interview.
(It was not a phone-in, as I said earlier. Sorry; I was misinformed.)
Asked about the best moments in the job, Sunak says it has been meeting people who have come through some tragedy but than campaigned for change.
Asked about the worst moments, he says it is a difficult job, and sometimes you do not achieve what you want. He says he would like to make more progress on waiting lists.
Ben Thomspon says Sunak laid out five priorities, but has only met one of them.
Sunak says he is glad Thompson made that point. He claims Keir Starmer has not got give priorities.
On inflation, he says he has met that. It is more than halved.
On economic growth, he says in the first quarter of this year “our economy grew faster than every other major economy including France, Germany, Italy and America”.
Thomspon says, if you take other timeframes, the record is less impressive.
Sunak says the government is complying with debt rules.
Sunak says he has not made as much progress as he wants on waiting lists.
And, on small boats, he says Starmer would abandon the Rwanda plan.
(In fact, Starmer has set out his priorities. He has said he will be guided by five missions, and he has set out six first steps for government.)
Prof John Curtice says ‘more chance of lightning striking twice, in same place’, than of Sunak winning election
Sally Nugent says the BBC asked Prof Sir John Curtice, the polling expert, about the chances of the Tories winning. He said there was “more chance of lightning striking twice, in the same place, and a bit more” than of Rishi Sunak remaining PM. Do you agree?
Sunak says that is Curtice’s view. He says he is working as hard as he can to win people over.
Sunak says Labour would be ‘unaccountable’ with big majority – but ducks question about whether big Tory majorities also bad
Ben Thompson and Sally Nugent are presenting on BBC Breakfast. They are interviewing Rishi Sunak now.
Q: Why have you stopped talking about what a Tory government would do, and started talking about the dangers of Labour?
Sunak claims he is still talking about what he would do. But with a big majority Labour would be “unchecked and unaccountable”.
Q: When Margaret Thatcher and Boris Johnson won big majorities, was that dangerous for the country?
Sunak ignores the question, and says Labour would put up taxes, and make the UK the “soft touch of Europe” for migration.
Rishi Sunak is about to do a phone-in on BBC Breakfast.
Starmer says big Labour majority ‘better for the country’
Andrew Sparrow
Good morning. I’m Andrew Sparrow, taking over from Helen Sullivan.
As reported earlier, while the Conservatives are trying to depress the Labour vote by warning about the dangers of a Labour “supermajority”, Keir Starmer has said a big Labour majority would be good for Britain.
Here is the full extract from the Times interview where he made that point. Steven Swinford reports:
For all his instinctive caution, Starmer makes a virtue of the Tory attack by appealing to voters to hand the party a “strong mandate”.
“The most important thing is growing the economy and wealth creation,” he says. “I do think that’s been the Achilles’ heel for 13 years now.
“You can talk about public services but if you haven’t got your economy working then you can’t do that. If you haven’t settled the planning, the infrastructure challenges, then you can’t get your economy going.
“It’s the mindset change we’ve talked about. Do we need a strong mandate for that? Yes, we do. Because these changes are difficult and the sense of the whole country wanting those changes is important in terms of the platform on which we stand to take the country forward.”
The bigger the majority, the better? “Better for the country. Because it means we can roll up our sleeves and get on with the change we need.”
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line (BTL) or message me on X (Twitter). I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word. If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use X; I’ll see something addressed to @AndrewSparrow very quickly. I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos (no error is too small to correct). And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho has echoed Rishi Sunak’s claim that just 130,000 voters could prevent a Labour landslide.
She told LBC Radio:
It’s never over ‘till it’s over. What I would say is that lots of people, if they look at the press, they might think the election is a foregone conclusion.
Actually, it’s a relatively small amount of voters across the country – about 130,000 people have been estimated – who can make the difference in this election.
Asked by presenter Nick Ferrari whether those voters could bring about a Tory victory, she said: “There’s quite a lot of seats that are very, very marginal, Nick. So, actually, just a handful of voters in those seats can change the outcome in those seats.”
With that, and with Lenny Kravitz now in my head, this is Helen Sullivan leaving you in the capable hands of Andrew Sparrow.
Stephen Flynn also said voters in Scotland will need to choose whether they want members of parliament who will “go and sit quietly behind Keir Starmer and nod along”, or those who will stand up to him.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast, SNP’s Westminster leader said:
Do they want members of parliament who will sit opposite Keir Starmer, will stand up to him on the biggest issues, who will argue against austerity, argue for better relations with the European Union, argue for investment in our NHS, action on the cost-of-living crisis, for Scotland’s right to choose and recognition of the state of Palestine?
If they believe in that, then vote for the SNP, and that over the course of the next 48 hours I believe will come through to the general public and ensure that right across Scotland we can win the seats where it’s a very close battle between ourselves and the Labour Party.”
Meanwhile the SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn has just been on BBC Breakfast, where he said he was “massively concerned” voters across Scotland reporting they have not received their postal votes.
He told BBC Breakfast:
I’m massively concerned about that, like almost every candidate across Scotland that I believe to be the case. I’ve had numerous emails from people who have not received their postal ballot, that’s simply not good enough.
You know, we warned the Prime Minister of this when it became apparent that he was going to choose the election date because, of course, for a huge majority of the people of Scotland, it’s now the school holidays, people are away on holiday.
If their postal vote didn’t land in time, then they’re now disenfranchised from this election, they’re not able to vote for who they want to represent them at Westminster, whether that’s the SNP, or otherwise, that’s simply not good enough.
I see some individuals are blaming the Royal Mail but the reality is the system is not fit for purpose, and we need to see huge reform. We also need to see a big reflection on how we’ve managed to get into a situation where a prime minister can at his own whim declare an election, the Tories decided this was the way that they want the elections to operate in the UK.”
Postal affairs minister ‘urgently’ investigating ballot delays
The postal affairs minister is “urgently” investigating delays to postal ballots being delivered, Health Minister Maria Caulfield has said.
Postal affairs minister Kevin Hollinrake has criticised Royal Mail for failing to deliver votes in time for the General Election.
Caulfield told Sky News:
Kevin is taking this very seriously. He’s in direct contact with the Royal Mail.
It doesn’t seem to be an issue in my constituency, but I know a number of colleagues where people haven’t received their postal votes and are worried about that.
Kevin is investigating this urgently. I know there’s extra resources going into this to try and do a sweep of all the sorting offices and make sure they’re out there.
If people have only just received their postal vote, they can take it to their polling station on election day and it will still be counted.”