Look, it’s not unnatural if you’ve got people who served for 20, sometimes 30 or 35 years in parliament in their 50s or 60s coming to retirement or indeed retiring completely, that they choose to bring their political careers to a close. I think that’s fine.
Afolami said he thinks the party has a “good balance” of Tory big beasts, such as the chancellor Hunt, and newer MPs such as him. He denied it had crossed his mind to stand down or being worried about losing his seat, saying the party is “pretty confident here”. He has added:
The Lib Dems are strong but, you know, we’re confident that we’ll hold the seat and we’ll beat them.
Conservatives have said voters will punish Swinney for his “shameful defence” of his former ministerial colleague.Conservatives say it would be inaccurate to suggest Sunak has not been out on the trail; pointing to his meeting with veterans.potential contamination of London’s drinking water. He has said:
Our water industry is broken. Just days ago, a parasite outbreak was making people sick in Devon, now London’s drinking water may not be safe to drink.
The Conservatives just folded their arms and looked the other way while water companies pumped a tidal wave of raw sewage into our rivers, lakes, and seas – putting our nation’s health at risk.
It’s time for change. A Labour government will put the water companies under tough special measures to end this scandal. We will give the regulator new powers so law-breaking water bosses face criminal charges and see their huge bonuses being blocked until they clean up their toxic filth.
chancellor hinted at tax cuts for high earners, the shadow chancellor criticises the government’s plans for further “uncosted, unfunded tax cuts” and suggests they would cause a repeat of the mini-budget in 2022. Speaking on the campaign trail in west London, Rachel Reeves has said:
I want taxes on working people to be lower, but the Conservatives have now put forward a number of uncosted, unfunded tax cuts similar to what Liz Truss did just 18 months ago.
The Conservatives haven’t learned that lesson and putting forward unfunded commitments is something that I would never do, because when you play fast and loose with the public finances, it is ordinary working people that pay the price.
“We saw that with the Conservatives’ mini-budget, the risk of another five years of Conservatives is that they do exactly the same thing all over again.
Reeves adds that Labour’s manifesto is “ready” to be published.
London constituency.
Islington North is a bedrock of support that could yet make Corbyn unbeatable for the Labour party, not least when his track record on other fronts – such as Palestine – is also finding a particular local resonance.
The conflict in Gaza was among factors cited by a group of men gathered at Majid Akguche’s Tagine 2 Go stall, who spoke of Corbyn in heroic terms.
“He has come here many, many times and is a man who listens to the people, whether it’s housing or emigration,” said the stall owner, who identified, like the others, as a Labour supporter, but planned to put loyalty to Corbyn first.
“He comes to our mosque after prayers and makes speeches, makes himself known and just opens himself up to what the people need.”
had to admit recently that no deportation flight would land in the East African country before the election, as his government had said they would.
This has put Sunak in a difficult position: the Rwanda policy, and the broader campaign of crackdowns on migration, tend to be unpopular outside of conservative circles. And his failure to deliver on it is likely to also anger the Tory right.
disastrous first day of campaigning for Rishi Sunak: his audience of warehouse workers in Derbyshire was discovered to contain undercover Tory councillors, and his small talk in Barry, south Wales, was decried when he asked everyone whether they were looking forward to “all the football”: Wales did not qualify for the Euros.
Sunak is now probably in a helicopter somewhere, self-soothing with the truism that all prime ministers make football gaffes. It’s so common that it’s almost part of the office; that you be inauthentic in your love of the beautiful game. For sure, all prime ministers do mess something up, but every clanger tells its own story, about the man (or woman), the time, the expectation and the choice of team.
Here are some of the highest-profile football gaffes committed by politicians over the decades:
downpour and D:Ream, and the ostensible leader of the country standing drenched on his doorstep as if, Withnail-style, he’d called an election by mistake. For his launch, Starmer kept in the warm and looked prime ministerial. What a contrast.
Or is it? Elections bring out such binaries: incumbent v insurgent, chump v champ. But these two rivals are more alike, personally and politically, than is in either’s interest to let on.
Both non-London southerners, they come from well-paid jobs outside Westminster, Sunak in finance and Starmer in law. SW1 is stuffed with lifers, yet these two only became MPs in 2015, gifted ultra-safe seats and swift promotion to the frontbench.
Conservatives and Labour in an arms race to raise cash.
Tory candidates and their associations in some of the most closely contested seats have been bringing in £50,000–£100,000 from donors over the last year, as tight local spending limits kick in only during the last five weeks of the campaign.
A last-minute splurge by candidates is expected next week before the campaign deadline of 30 May. MPs and activists across the parties said they were rushing out mailshots before the regulated period for spending kicks in, and tens of thousands of pounds were being spent on targeted letters and surveys.
A briefing pack for Conservative candidates, shared with the Guardian, urges them:
Spend as much as possible between now and 30 May getting targeted social media adverts and campaign material out. This is important, as whatever you can deliver and post between now and 30 May will not count towards candidate election expenses.
Experts warned that the parties were increasingly getting their funds from a small number of big donors with the power to influence results in marginal seats – despite Labour’s commanding lead in the national polls.
The prime minister has made light of his disastrous general election announcement; during which he became increasingly drenched by rain as he was also drowned out by the strains of the anthem to Labour’s victorious 1997 general election campaign.
Sunak said he avoided catching pneumonia while speaking outside 10 Downing Street, but admitted he was not sure what state his suit was in. The prime minister was meeting local ex-servicemen at one of their regular Saturday breakfast meetings in Northallerton in North Yorkshire, in his Richmond constituency.
The prime minister met the group of eight veterans and sat in the Buck Inn, a Wetherspoons pub on the High Street, where the group were sipping tea and eating breakfast.
Vicky Rudd, sat next to her husband Doug, from Richmond British Legion, asked Sunak about his health, concerned he might have caught pneumonia “after seeing that picture” of the election announcement speech. The prime minister said:
It was wet. The number of people who have given me an umbrella over the last couple of days…
He reflected it was still right to make the announcement in the rain, saying:
When the moments happen, that’s what you do. That’s our tradition, the prime minister, in the big moments, they call the election and they go out there. I thought, come rain or shine, it’s the right thing to do. But no pneumonia yet, my suit on the other hand… I’m not quite sure what state it will be in when I get back down to London.
Source: theguardian.com
