Interesting moment at the start of media questions where BBC’s James Cook is booed by audience members – Swinney immediately reprimands them and says that media question will be heard without heckling.
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also declined to rule out offshore processing or sending asylum seekers to have their claims processed abroad. Keir Starmer’s migration plan will include passing laws to ban law-breaking employers from hiring foreign workers and to train more Britons. Last year’s net migration figure of 685,000 has “got to come down”, he told The Sun on Sunday, as he tried to encroach on traditional Conservative electoral territory.
The health secretary, Victoria Atkins, said the Tories’ pledge to build 100 new GP surgeries would bring “healthcare closer to communities” – and defended the party’s record on NHS waiting times in government. The Conservatives have also said they wanted to expand the Pharmacy First scheme, under which patients could seek help from a pharmacist instead of a GP for certain common conditions including earache, sinusitis, a sore throat, infected insect bites and shingles.
Labour saw its lead over the Tories widen to 20 points in an Opinium poll.
It showed Sir Keir’s party on 45% – up four points since last weekend – while the Conservatives were down two percentage points on 25%.
Speaking at the SNP’s Westminster campaign launch, party leader and Scottish first minister John Swinney said that this general election will be “the biggest challenge for years”. Swinney pushed for independence, celebrated his party’s record in government and accused the Labour party of giving “an awfully good impression” of the Tories.
Faiza Shaheen, the candidate blocked by Labour from standing in Chingford and Woodford Green, told LBC that she is considering standing in Chingford as an independent. She had already announced she would challenge the decision in the courts, claiming she has faced “a systematic campaign of racism, Islamophobia and bullying”.
A Conservative candidate seeking re-election has been criticised for using social media campaign adverts that appear to make it look as if he is standing for other parties. Robert Largan, the Conservative candidate for High Peak in Derbyshire, posted a picture of his face on X superimposed on to a red background along with the slogan “Labour for Largan”. Largan also posted a similar advert in the colours of Reform UK, with the slogan “Reform for Robert”. Derbyshire police said they were reviewing claims of “election fraud” they received relating to “concerns around marketing material”.
Thank you for reading and all your comments today. Martin Belam will be running the blog tomorrow. You can read all of our politics coverage here in the meantime.
Labour of supporting creeping privatisation.
Interesting moment at the start of media questions where BBC’s James Cook is booed by audience members – Swinney immediately reprimands them and says that media question will be heard without heckling.
Labour to its green energy commitments.
Flynn was quoted as saying:
What we have in Westminster is a status quo, it’s a desire as Sir Keir Starmer says for stability. But I’ll tell you what stability means.
It means £18bn worth of cuts to our public services, it means no access to the European single market. It means watering down our net zero potential.
It means denying the people of Scotland their right to democratically decide their future. Friends, we deserve so much more.
John Swinney, who is due to speak at the event, is a political veteran and former leader of his party. He took the helm again a couple of weeks ago after Humza Yousaf resigned following the collapse of the SNP’s power-sharing deal with the Greens.
Conservatives removed an arbitrary 15-year limit imposed by the last Labour government.
British people overseas can register at gov.uk/registertovote with their national insurance number and last UK postcode. Votes will be counted at the last UK address they were registered to vote at or lived at.
Cameron said: “With threats rising across the world, Britain needs a clear plan and bold action. We are living in a world more dangerous, more volatile, more confrontational than most of us have ever known.”
Michael Matheson’s astronomical iPad expenses.
Early speakers are pushing the message that independence supporters must not desert the party – polling suggests many are minded to support Labour this election because getting the Tories out of Downing Street is more important than independence right now.
Campaign director Stewart Hosie told activists that independence supporters who think they can “sit this election out or lend their vote to another party” needed to know they were jeopardising progress on independence.
And with same voters peeling off to the Scottish Greens or Alba, he emphasised that “there is no credible alternative independence vote in this election”.
Starmer, the Labour party leader,admitted he used a private jet to travel to a campaign rally in Scotland where he promised to create “tens of thousands” of clean energy jobs with a new publicly owned energy company in the country.
Hosie then said the SNP is the only “credible” pro independence vote, in what was seen as a dig at the breakaway nationalist Alba party, set up by the SNP’s former leader and the former first minister Alex Salmond, and the Greens.
who took over a party in turmoil last month, will reportedly stress his belief in independence as a way to ensure decisions about Scotland are made in Scotland and not Westminster.
Swinney, who was the deputy first minister to Sturgeon during the Covid crisis, is highly respected across the party and previously served as SNP leader from 2000 to 2004.
He faces the ongoing challenge of passing bills and budgets as a minority government, while polling suggests support for the SNP is slumping and heavy losses are likely at the coming general election at the hands of a resurgent Labour party.
James Mitchell, professor of public policy at Edinburgh University’s School of Social and Political Science, said the general election comes at a time when the SNP is in “damage limitation” mode.
“The SNP cannot even fall back on a competent record in government. They are not improving outcomes for people. All the great rhetoric, such as closing the attainment gap in education, just has not happened,” Mitchell said.
News that the police are examining campaign material used by Tory candidate Robert Largan comes as the Electoral Commission said it would encourage all candidates to consider how voters will understand their campaign materials.
The Electoral Commission said that it is responsible for ensuring that campaign material by parties and campaigners includes imprints to identify the person or organisation which has caused it to be published.
“Our remit does not extend to the content or style of campaign material. This is not subject to regulation by any UK body.”
It added: “We encourage all candidates to consider how voters will understand their campaign materials.”
A Conservative party spokesperson said: “The materials clearly carry imprints, as required by electoral law.”
Keir Starmer already knows the first foreign policy challenge of his expected premiership.
Even if the peace proposal announced by Joe Biden on Friday is accepted by both Israel and Hamas, something a Labour-run Foreign Office would encourage, vast issues remain concerning the future role of Hamas and Iran in Middle Eastern politics, as well as Israel’s conduct in the conflict, and restoration of faith in the universality of international law.
Internal party pressure, Starmer’s background as a human rights lawyer and the way in which the international law has unexpectedly been thrust centre stage in the conflict have led Labour to slowly distance itself from its previous broad support for the government approach. How much this will translate into hard policy inside the Foreign Office is contested.
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Source: theguardian.com
