UK general election live: Braverman tells Tories ‘it’s over’ as parties head out for final day of campaign | General election 2024

Pat McFadden, Labour’s National Campaign Coordinator, criticised the “show of unity” said to be displayed within the Conservative Party when former prime minister Boris Johnson appeared at a rally on Tuesday night –and commented on Suella Braverman’s article in the Telegraph.

McFadden told Times Radio: “The show of unity, I’ve had boiled eggs that have lasted longer than this show of unity.

“Almost before he (Mr Johnson) was finished speaking, we had Suella Braverman in The Telegraph saying that it had all been a terrible mess. I think maybe that is the Conservatives’ problem, is that it is all quite late for Boris to now be throwing his weight behind a prime minister, when, I think – to borrow a phrase from Northern Ireland – even the dogs in the street know there’s not a lot of love lost there.”

Asked if he would “fear” going up against Mr Johnson as a campaigner or prime minister more than Sunak, he told the programme:

“I think Boris destroyed his credibility through the whole ‘partygate’ and destruction of standards in public life.”

He claimed that “people saw through the act a little bit” and realised in elected government “they want to know what the sense of direction is going to be”.

Labour has slipped behind the SNP days before election day, a new poll suggests.

PA reports that a survey by Savanta for The Scotsman suggests 31% of Scots could vote Labour on Thursday, three points down on the last poll, while support for the SNP is unchanged at 34%.

According to analysis from Professor John Curtice, Labour, which won just one seat north of the border in the 2019 election, is on course for 22 Scottish MPs while the SNP would keep 24 seats.

The poll, carried out between 28 June and 2 July, suggests the Conservatives are on 15%, up one point, while the Liberal Democrats are at 9%, up two points on the last poll earlier in June.

The latest poll of 1,083 Scottish adults found 6% said they would back Reform UK, no change since the last poll, while the Greens were up one point at 3%, and 2% said they would vote for other parties.

Chris Hopkins, political research director at Savanta, said:

Our final Scottish voting intention before 4 July suggests the SNP is ahead of Labour, showing a modest improvement and potentially blunting their losses on election night.

If our results were reflected on polling day, John Swinney’s election as SNP leader looks like it will have come just in the nick of time.

That being said, Labour’s efficient vote, in particular around the central belt, will still mean it’s likely going to be a very good evening for Anas Sarwar and Keir Starmer.

Their majority is no longer dependent on Scotland, but they’ll want to squeeze the SNP as much as they can.”

Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride has just told Times Radio, “there will be plenty of time” for “post-mortems” of the Conservatives’ performance after polling day, as well as “where the party goes in the future”.

He suggested his party was the only one that could “hold this (Labour) government to account” as he repeated Tory warnings of a “supermajority”.

He said “we are right on the brink of a very perilous situation” with a “very weak and marginalised opposition”.

Asked if he thought there was anything the Conservatives could have done during the campaign to increase support, Mr Stride told Times Radio:

Tempted though I am to come up with all sorts of speculations on this, I think we need to get through and out the other side of the General Election tomorrow, and then there will be plenty of time for us to do post-mortems and dissect what should or shouldn’t have been done in the past, or importantly where the party goes in the future.

…

We’re on the brink, probably, of the largest landslide we’ve ever seen in this country … what we have to have is some balance within our parliament.

…

I think we’re right on the brink of a very perilous situation.

A forecast by polling company Survation shows Labour winning 484 of the 650 seats in parliament, far more than the 418 won by the party’s former leader Tony Blair in his famous 1997 landslide win and the most in its history.

The poll of 34,559 people predicts Conservatives will win just 64 seats, which would be the fewest since the party was founded in 1834.

Labour is on course to win around 484 seats, according to the poll, more than it did when Tony Blair took office in 1997.

The polling company says a Labour landslide is “99% certain”.

Former home secretary Suella Braverman has urged the Conservative Party to “read the writing on the wall” and “prepare for the reality and frustration of opposition”.

Writing in The Telegraph, Braverman says victory should no longer be the goal for the Tories.

“Thursday’s vote is now all about forming a strong enough opposition,” she writes.

“One needs to read the writing on the wall: it’s over, and we need to prepare for the reality and frustration of opposition.”

Braverman blames the situation on a fracture within the Conservative Party resulting from a rise in Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

It is notable that Labour’s vote share has not markedly increased in recent weeks, but our vote is evaporating from both Left and Right.

The critics will cite Boris [Johnson], Liz [Truss], Rwanda, and, I can immodestly predict, even me as all being fatal to our ‘centrist’ vote.

The reality is rather different: we are haemorrhaging votes largely to Reform. Why? Because we failed to cut immigration or tax or deal with the net zero and woke policies we have presided over for 14 years.

We may lose hundreds of excellent MPs because of our abject inability to have foreseen this inevitability months ago: that our failure to unite the Right would destroy us.”

Braverman says the Tories need “a searingly honest post-match analysis”, “because the fight for the soul of the Conservative Party will determine whether we allow Starmer a clear run at destroying our country for good or having a chance to redeem it in due course.

“Indeed, it will decide whether our party continues to exist at all.”

Heather Stewart

Thursday’s general election looks likely to be a historic pivot: one of those long-remembered moments when the established order at Westminster is swept away by what Jim Callaghan, the victim of one such shift in 1979, called a “sea change in politics”.

Yet as Guardian reporters fanned out across the UK during the campaign to spend time talking to voters and non-voters in 15 varied constituencies for the Path to power series, they found precious little hope that things will be different come 5 July.

Every constituency had its own particular concerns that bubbled up repeatedly in conversation: in Waveney Valley it was unwanted pylons, in Burnley it was the Gaza conflict and in Clacton it was immigration.

But several common threads run through much of the reporting, forming a dark narrative about the state of Britain and its people as Labour prepares to take power.

Everywhere reporters went, the infrastructure that makes up everyday life, from GP surgeries to libraries to roads, has been eroded by more than a decade of underinvestment:

Victoria Starmer joined Starmer on stage at the launch of Labour’s campaign, but has otherwise rarely been seen on the trail. Keir Starmer has said that if he’s elected, “she’s absolutely going to carry on working, she wants to and she loves it. It’s also good for me because it gives me an insight into the NHS.”

The Guardian’s Gaby Hinsliff, interviewed by Rupert Neate in today’s First Edition, says:

It’s 2024, I do not care who the PM is married to it shouldn’t matter,” she says. “We shouldn’t be talking about it; it only matters if there is a conflict of interest. I don’t take my husband to work, and I can’t think why anyone else should have to.”

“Grazia readers have moved on…They expect to see female politicians interviewed in their own right and in their professional capacity. If a leader can’t find a way to make themselves relatable without a spouse, perhaps they shouldn’t be a leader. It was also sad that Theresa May felt she had to explain why she didn’t have children, and disappointing that Andrea Leadsom [who challenged May for the leadership in 2016] suggested that having children made her a better choice to be prime minister. We should have moved beyond all this.”

The Starmers are fiercely protective of their children’s privacy.

“The degree to which they have kept their children out of [the spotlight] so far is impressive, and not something a PM has tried before,” Hinsliff says. “I really respect them for it, and wish them the best of luck trying to preserve it. But it is going to be difficult.”

Rishi Sunak has mostly kept his children out of the public eye, but they have been seen at some events including a street party on Downing Street to celebrate the King’s coronation, and he posted a photo of them on Instagram during his bid for the Tory party leadership in 2022. He also described them as “the experts of [the climate crisis] in my household”.

Welsh government commits to making lying in politics illegal

Steven Morris

The Labour-led Welsh government has committed to introduce “globally pioneering” legislation that would in effect make lying in politics there illegal.

Members of the Senedd described it as a historic moment that would combat the “existential threat” that lying in politics poses to democracy.

After a passionate and dramatic debate in the Welsh parliament on Tuesday evening, the government’s counsel general, Mick Antoniw, said the legislation would be introduced before the next Welsh elections in two years’ time.

He said: “The Welsh government will bring forward legislation before 2026 for the disqualification of members and candidates found guilty of deliberate deception through an independent judicial process.”

Antoniw said the practical details of how a law to tackle lying would work would need to be worked out and he called for cross-party cooperation.

With just one sleep to go, here is how party leaders are spending their last day before voting day – and the messages they’ll be trying to drive home:

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will end his campaign trail in the South East. He has used th the word ‘supermajority’ in three tweets in the last hour. As in stop the Labour / tax-raising supermajority.

He has shared his fears of a Labour “supermajority” and said in an overnight statement: “If you are worried about an unchecked, unaccountable Labour government you can stop that by offering us your support so we can stand up for you and be your voice in the next Parliament.”

In a marathon final leg of his tour, Labour leader Keir Starmer will speak to voters in England, Scotland and Wales.

“We’re out in constituencies where we haven’t necessarily won before, because we think that many people are disillusioned with what they’ve seen in the last 14 years,” he told reporters on Tuesday.

“We’re a changed Labour Party and we’re constantly putting our case forward, still smiling, still with a spring in our step that we’re probably the only positive campaign left now.”

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey will hit the road again to round off his stunt-packed campaign.

There is no time to slip into a Dryrobe and warm up after surf lessons on the Cornish coast, because party chiefs have several stops lined up on Sir Ed’s final pre-vote tour of southern England.

Wrapping up his party’s thread on care, which he has spoken about several times on the campaign trail, Davey said: “Throughout this campaign, I’ve been so moved by all the people I’ve spoken to or who have got in touch to discuss their experiences caring for loved ones.”

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage will take another trip to the Essex seaside constituency which he is contesting. Survation pollsters have said Clacton is the only constituency where Reform UK has a confident lead, but they could take 16 seats at an “upper end” estimate.

Scottish First Minister John Swinney has told voters some seats will be won or lost “by only a handful of votes”.

In his final pitch, he said: “Be certain about one thing – your vote will matter. It could make all the difference.”