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Key events

The Association of Electoral Administrators has confirmed that there is nothing that can be done to stop Craig Williams or Laura Saunders being listed as Conservative candidates on the ballot paper, even though the party no longer supports them. A spokesperson for the association said:

When a validly nominated political party candidate has their party’s support withdrawn after an election nomination deadline has passed, there is no legal mechanism to remove their name from the ballot paper.

If a candidate in these circumstances has opted to include a political party description and emblem on the ballot paper, by law this must also still be included.

The bottom line is the returning officer has no legal powers to amend the ballot paper or stop the election. Everything must continue as planned in line with electoral law.

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Rishi Sunak has been to a large extent disengaged from the election campaign today because he is having to attend events linked to the state visit by Naruhito, the emperor of Japan.

Sunak, David Cameron, the foreign secretary, and James Cleverly, the home secretary, were all at Horse Guards Parade this morning for the welcome ceremony.

Left to right: James Cleverly, Rishi Sunak and David Cameron. Photograph: Kin Cheung/AFP/Getty ImagesLeft to right: Cameron, Sunak and Cleverly. Photograph: Kevin Coombs/ReutersShare

Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, was not impressed by Labour’s Nick Thomas-Symonds saying this morning that when the party “opens the books” if it gets into government, it may find the economic situation worse than expected. (See 8.41am.)

Oh dear, oh dear. The old “we may open the books and discover the situation is even worse…”

The books are wide open, fully transparent. That really won’t wash…

Thomas-Symonds’s decision to employ this argument may be linked to his second career as a historian, and a biographer of Attlee, Bevan and Wilson. In the post-war period, governments did sometimes take office only to learn that the public finances were in a worse state than expected. But, as Johnson says, that is not the case now. The books are open; they get published twice a year by the Office for Budget Responsibility.

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A Reform UK candidate in Salisbury was booed at a hustings after he praised Vladimir Putin, the Wiltshire Times reports.

Arguing for a negotiated settlement in Ukraine, Julian Malins said it was wrong to compare Putin to Hitler. “I have actually met Putin and had a 10-minute chat with him and he seemed very good. He is not the Austrian gentleman with a moustache come alive again,” Malins said.

The Wiltshire Times says these comments angered people in the audience in the city, where two Russians were poisoned by novichok in an attack ordered by the Kremlin in 2018. A woman was later killed in a nearby town by novichok from a perfume bottle found in a bin, which is thought to have been linked to the original attack.

Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has also been criticised for his stance on Russia. He has argued that the expansion of the EU and Nato provoked Putin into invading Ukraine.

ShareStarmer pledges new law to ban dangerous knives

Keir Starmer said today Labour would pass “Ronan’s law”, legislation to ban the sale and possession of dangerous knives. It will be named after the 16-year-old Ronan Kanda, who was killed with a ninja sword in Wolverhampton in 2022.

According to Labour, the bill will involve “a comprehensive ban on possession of a wider range of lethal weapons which have been used to kill teenagers on Britain’s streets” and an “end-to-end review of online knife sales, from purchase through to delivery, with much tougher enforcement of ID checks”.

Speaking to reporters today as he met families affected by knife crime in London, Starmer said:

The government has announced 16 times that they’re going to ban the online sale of zombie knives. We as the opposition said we support this, bring the legislation, it will go through, they haven’t done it. Knife crime now is up 81% since 2015.

It’s a problem that we all have responsibilities for, so legislation on knives is a government issue and the government has failed on this issue. We will not fail on this issue.

There are other measures, one of the families here their son was murdered by a knife that was sent through the post by a shop, ordered online in ordinary packaging and picked up by a 15-year-old who didn’t need to show any identification.

It’s not rocket science. I will stop that straight away and I think it’s so outrageous that that can even happen.

Keir Starmer with the actor Idris Elba, who campaigns for action to tackle knife crime, with the families of children who have been lost to knife crime: George Kinsella (L), Brooke Kinsella (2nd L), Pastor Lorraine Jones (3rd L), Pooja Kanda (4th R), Nikita Kanda (5th R), Tanisha Dadar (6th R) and Yemi Hughes (7th R) at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith today. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty ImagesShare

Ben Quinn

Victoria Atkins, the health secretary, has said she is “not entertaining any questions about my leadership” amid speculation that she could become a contender for the support of the Conservatives’ centrist ‘One Nation’ wing if it comes to replacing Rishi Sunak.

Atkins, who was also a minister under Theresa May, was speaking at a press conference where she accused Labour of trying to introduce self ID for trans people “by the back door”. (See 12.10pm.)

Asked if taking up a prominent position on a highly polarising issue could damage potential leadership ambitions on her part, she replied:

I am not entertaining any questions about my leadership. Come on. I want to campaign at the moment.

Her comments come after other leadership hopefuls – including business secretary Kemi Badenoch and home secretary James Cleverly – also left the door open to bids in the after the election. Badenoch said yesterday: “We will talk about leadership things after an election.”

ShareHealth secretary Victoria Atkins claims Labour ‘relaxed about eradicating women from national language’

Ben Quinn

Victoria Atkins, the health secretary, has accused Labour of planning “to eradicate women from our national language” as the Conservatives sought to ramp up attacks on Keir Starmer around gender identity issues.

Labour plans to ban conversion practices would risk stopping parents, teachers and therapists from “comforting and counselling” children and adults “in gender distress”, the minister claimed at a press conference in London.

In its manifesto, Labour states:

So-called conversion therapy is abuse – there is no other word for it – so Labour will finally deliver a full trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices, while protecting the freedom for people to explore their sexual orientation and gender identity.

The Times, which has been covering prominently criticism of Labour’s stance on trans policy, has this morning splashed on a story about the Labour manifesto pledge to ban conversion practices. It said that Hilary Cass, doctor behind a landmark review of the NHS’s gender identity services for children and young people, had said that a ban on trans-inclusive conversion therapy was likely to prompt concern among medical professionals that they might find themselves in a “test case”.

Atkins picked up on this, telling reporters:

Today it has seeped out that Labour not only wants to introduce self ID by stealth, but also wants to stop parents, teachers and therapists from comforting and counselling children and adults who are in gender distress.

We all agree that so-called conversion therapy in the context of sexuality is dreadful and must be stopped. However, we need a thoughtful conversation about whether additional legislation is necessary and possible without criminalizing those who are doing their best to support people with gender distress. This is ripe territory for the law of unintended consequences.

Referring to language, she said:

What is worrying about the Labour party’s approach to this is that they appear to be changing their script according to who is listening and we have seen in recent days, even the Labour leader himself struggling to define what a woman is. Rather than listening to women in his own party, chooses to quote his predecessor Tony Blair, a man, when it comes to understanding what a woman is …

We are half the population. I, as a woman, when I walked into that maternity unit and I saw that women had been eradicated from the language that midwives and clinicians wanted to use, I felt very upset actually.

And she claimed there was a stark choice at the election.

The choice at this election is clear. A Conservative party that believes everyone should be treated with dignity and respect that will stand up for women’s rights and protect our children, or a Labour party that is relaxed about eradicating women from our national language and sees little need to protect women and girls’ rights, that is refusing to change the law to protect single-sex spaces and will introduce self-ID by the back door.

In response to Atkins, Keir Starmer told reporters on the campaign:

I couldn’t be clearer about this. We are not introducing self identification. We are going to be and are protective of women’s spaces.

On banning conversion practices, the Labour leader said:

Conversion therapy is something which needs to be outlawed. And the government used to believe that it should be outlawed. And there’s many Tory politicians who think it should be outlawed. Conversion therapy is materially different to putting in the support which is needed for people, particularly young people.

Victoria Atkins speaking to reporters at the Tory manifesto launch. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty ImagesShare

Updated at 13.10 CEST

Starmer dismisses Sunak’s claim migrants queueing up in Calais waiting for Labour election victory as ‘utter nonsense’

Last night Rishi Sunak claimed asylum seekers in Calais were “queueing up” waiting for Labour to win the general election before crossing the channel, because they knew Keir Starmer would abandon the Rwanda policy. In a report this morning the Daily Telegraph says it has spoken to some migrants in northern France confirming that is their position.

In their story Charles Hymas and Connor Stringer say:

Most migrants in the Grand-Synth camp near Dunkirk who were contacted by The Telegraph knew about the Rwanda scheme and said they were worried about the threat of being deported.

While some said they would still attempt the crossing if they got the chance, others said they would prefer to wait until after the election, which takes place on July 4 ….

In northern France, a 43-year-old Peshmerga fighter from Iraq who was imprisoned by ISIS told The Telegraph that he was waiting until after the election to travel to Britain. He said he had spent three months and 17 days in captivity after being arrested and captured by the terror group.

“It’s better to wait for two weeks, I would like to wait for two weeks,” he added. “We need to wait until the new government has arrived. It’s [Rwanda] a really bad decision, it’s more politics and business. Have some mercy on the refugees.”

This morning Keir Starmer said claims that migrants were “queueing up” in France were “utter nonsense from the Tories”.

He went on:

They’re not queueing up in Calais, they’re getting in boats and coming over.

We’ve had record numbers this year. So, I mean, the prime minister really needs to answer for that. Under his watch, we have had record numbers, record numbers coming by boat, we’ve got record numbers of migrants coming to work in this country.

So that’s the situation – we intend to stop that by taking down the gangs that are running this bar trade in the first place. And if the government had done that, we wouldn’t be having this discussion at all.

Small boat arrivals for the first six months of the year are at an all-time record, up 17% on last year.

Keir Starmer in Hammersmith, London, this morning. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty ImagesShare

Updated at 12.52 CEST

Sunak ‘dithered and delayed’ over candidates subject to betting allegations, say Lib Dems

Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dem deputy leader, has also accused Rishi Sunak of waiting too long to drop the two candidates accused of suspect betting.

This should have happened immediately when these scandalous revelations emerged, but instead Rishi Sunak has dithered and delayed.

Sunak must confirm immediately that these candidates will not have the Conservative whip if elected.

Share’Why didn’t that happen a week ago?’ – Starmer says Sunak’s decision to drop suspect bet candidates too late

Keir Starmer has asked why the Tories did not suspend Craig Williams and Laura Saunders earlier. In response to the CCHQ announcement, he said: “Why didn’t that happen a week ago?”

The Guardian first reported that Williams was being investigated by the Gambling Commisson almost two weeks ago, on Wednesday 12 June.

The following day Rishi Sunak said the news was “very disappointing”, but that he could not act while the investigation was ongoing.

He used a similar line after it was revealed last week that Saunders was also being investigated, and even last night, despite some Tories publicly calling for the two candidates to be suspended, Sunak was saying that he was constrained by what he could do by the need not to compromise the Gambling Commission’s inquiry.

But last night a letter from the commission was released in which it made it clear that it was not blocking CCHQ action. (See 9.26am.)

ShareWho are two candidates disowned by Tories over election date betting allegations?

Craig Williams is the Conservative candidate in Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr. A former MP for Cardiff North, he was elected MP for Montgomeryshire in 2019 with a majority of 12,138. Some MRP polls have implied that Williams could win, but others say that Labour will take the seat, and the betting scandal must make that more likely.

Williams was the first person accused of using inside information to bet on an election happening in July. He was Rishi Sunak’s parliamentary private secretary in the last parliament. As Sunak’s PPS, he was not a key decision maker, but he would have had regular access to the PM and his inner circle.

Williams has not confirmed that he knew about Sunak’s decision when he placed a bet on a July election three days before it was announced, but he has told the BBC he made a “massive error of judgment”.

Laura Saunders is the Conservative candidate in Bristol North West. This is a Labour seat held by Darren Jones, shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, and Saunders was never expected to win. She is married to Tony Lee, who is on leave of absence from his job as the Tories’ campaign director because he has also been accused of being involved in suspect bets. In her only comment on the allegations, Saunders has issued a statement through lawyers threatening to sue the BBC for its report saying she was under investigation.

Williams and Saunders will remain on the ballot paper in their respective constituencies, as Conservative candidates, but the decision announced by CCHQ today means that they will not get any campaign support.

In the unlikely event of their winning, they would not be allowed to take the Tory whip and would sit as independents.

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Updated at 12.09 CEST

What Tory party said about why it is no longer backing two candidates accused of suspect bets

Here is the statement from the Conservative party about the two candidates accused of suspect election bets. A spokesperson for the party said:

As a result of ongoing internal inquiries, we have concluded that we can no longer support Craig Williams or Laura Saunders as parliamentary candidates at the forthcoming general election.

We have checked with the Gambling Commision that this decision does not compromise the investigation that they are conducting which is righly independent and ongoing.

ShareTory party withdraws support from two candidates accused of suspect election date bets

The Conservative party is no longer backing Craig Williams and Laura Saunders, the two candidates who have been accused of making suspect bets on the timing of the election, the BBC is reporting.

The party has taken the decision on the basis of what it has uncovered during its inquiries into the allegations, the BBC says.

More on this soon …

ShareKwarteng admits he is ‘partially responsible’ for Tories’ electoral plight – but argues Sunak to blame too

Kwasi Kwarteng was the chancellor who delivered Liz Truss’s mini-budget, which triggered turmoil in the markets and ultimately brought down her premiership. Labour says it led to mortgage rates soaring and it is the single event that enabled Labour to convert what was roughly a 10-point lead over the Conservatives in September 2022 into a 20-point lead by the end of that year. It has remained that high every since.

As the Telegraph reports, in an interview with GB News, Kwarteng said he felt “partially responsible” for the Tories’ plight. But only partially. He made it clear he was blaming Rishi Sunak too. He told the broadcaster:

I feel partially responsible but I don’t feel responsible for leaving D-day early, I don’t feel responsible for the Reform party which was on 4% in October 2022 being on nearly 20% now.

I don’t feel responsible for the election betting scandal, nor do I feel responsible for the fact that this election has happened way before anyone was expecting it.

Kwasi Kwarteng. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty ImagesShare

Updated at 11.54 CEST

Daily Record urges readers to vote Labour, in its first general election endorsement in 14 years

Libby Brooks

Labour has received a significant boost in Scotland this morning with an endorsement from the Daily Record.

The Record, which estimates that it reaches 1.5 million readers every weekday along with its portfolio of local titles, has not backed one party at a general election in 14 years, but now splashes “kicking the vile and corrupt Tories out of office”.

It’s not a great surprise – Scottish Labour has developed an increasingly strong relationship with the tabloid under leader Anas Sarwar.

With a front page that appears to be a pastiche of the Tony Blair “demon eyes” attack ad from 1997, it says that “change is coming and Scotland can be a part of it”. Pointedly, it leads with the statement that “this election is not about independence”, chiming with polls which show independence supporters and former SNP voters are now attracted to Labour’s promise of change and the message from Sarwar that how people voted in the 2014 referendum is irrelevant to this election.

But the question remains: how much do newspaper endorsements like this one matter to voters? Jim Waterson, the Guardian’s political media editor, suggests that voters are still intrigued by who well known titles, like the Record in Scotland, or Mail across the UK, are backing even though this is potentially, as he wrote earlier this week, the first post-mainstream media election.

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Updated at 10.34 CEST

Gambling Commission rejects call to name election bet suspects – but implies it is not stopping Tories acting

At the weekend Pat McFadden, Labour’s national campaign coordinator, wrote a letter to the Gambling Commission asking it to name people under investigating in relation to the election date betting allegations. He said it was in the public interest for the names to be released.

Andrew Rhodes, chief executive of the commission, has replied to McFadden saying that “to protect the integrity of the investigation, and to ensure a fair and just outcome” it will not be naming the suspects.

He says the commission has asked the people it has been in contact with to treat the matter confidentially – which is cited by Rishi Sunak as the reason why he cannot say more about what happened, and about whether the candidates and officials accused of making suspect bets had advance knowledge about his decision to announce the election.

But Rhodes also says this confidentiality requirement “does not preclude other activity relating to the fact of an investigation taking place” – which implies that, if the Conservative party were to suspend the membership of people under suspicion, the commission would not object.

Two of the suspects are party candidates and, because nominations have closed, the party cannot do anything to stop them being listed on the ballot paper as official Conservative party candidates.

But some in the party have said that Rishi Sunak should disown them as candidates – as Labour did with its byelection candidate in Rochdale who, after nominations closed, was revealed to have suggested at a meeting that Israel allowed the 7 October Hamas massacre to happen. Yesterday Sunak argued that it would be wrong to do this while the investigation into what happened was still going on.

Letter from Gambling Commission to Pat McFadden Photograph: Gambling CommissionShare

Updated at 10.54 CEST

Labour may ‘open the books’ and discover public finances in worse state than expected, shadow cabinet minister says

Andrew Sparrow

Good morning. I’m Andrew Sparrow, taking over from Helen Sullivan.

Nick Thomas-Symonds, a shadow Cabinet Office minister, has been giving interviews for Labour this morning and on Times Radio he said that if the party got into government, it might discover the public finances to be in an “even worse” situation than anticipated.

Asked about the Institute for Fiscal Studies report yesterday saying both main parties were not being honest about the choices they would face after the election, he replied:

Obviously the government is in a very different position from us, because, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies set out, there are no specific departmental spending plans beyond March of 2025 that’s because the government hasn’t conducted a spending review.

We obviously can’t do that from opposition, and we’ve also been open, always that we may open the books and discover the situation is even worse than it is at the moment. We’ve never hidden from that.

Opposition parties sometimes suggest that, when they get into office and have a chance to “look at the books”, they will discover hidden horrors that will require tax measures not previously planned. In a recent Guardian story, Anna Isaac and Kiran Stacey reported on Labour sources who think that might happen this year. They said:

Labour is planning a major package of measures this autumn, according to party sources, and [Rachel] Reeves is looking for a “doctor’s mandate”: the state of the public finances is so bad, she will argue, that they will need major surgery to correct.

But in reality, particularly since the creation of the Office for Budget Responsibility, which publishes an independent and extremely detailed analysis of the public finances twice a year, most of the key information about the state of the public finances is already in the public domain.

In his Times Radio interview, when asked about the IFS claim that the next government would either have to put up taxes or cut public services, Thomas-Symonds claimed Labour’s focus on growth would make a difference. He said:

We will put that plan on the table, of stability, of investment and of reform. The Office of Budget Responsibility will then look at it so it will be robust, and the snapshot in the autumn will be different. It will then be about growth.

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