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A Tory social media campaign suggests the party fears a Labour landslide in the upcoming general election, as minister Grant Shapps says they are fighting to avoid a Labour “supermajority”.

The Conservatives’ latest advertising campaign appears to target potential Reform voters, warning them that the Tories could be reduced to just 57 seats in the next parliament, even if Reform picked up no seats.

It urges them not to risk handing Labour the keys to Number 10 with a majority that may surpass even the 1997 landslide under Tony Blair.

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The advert is an admission of Labour’s vast lead in the polls, currently 20 percentage points ahead of the Tories, according to the latest exclusive YouGov poll for Sky News.

Earlier on Sky News’ Breakfast with Kay Burley, Defence Secretary Grant Shapps sought to further downplay Reform’s rising popularity.

Asked about the fact Reform is now on 17%, just one point behind the Tories, Mr Shapps said: “As far as I’m aware, not a single person has cast a vote in this country yet, so let’s wait and see”.

He said the “only other option” for whoever gets into Downing Street “is Keir Starmer”.

Rishi Sunak today also warned against giving Labour a “blank cheque”, but has “absolutely not” given up hope of winning the election, he told reporters on the campaign bus.

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The leaders of both major parties are taking part in the Sky News Battle for Number 10 programme tonight.

Live from Grimsby, a key target town in the campaign, the two will face questions from political editor Beth Rigby and the studio audience.

Read more:
Conservatives and Reform ‘tantalisingly close to a crossover’ in the polls
The truth behind claims leaders will make in tonight’s debate

Mr Shapps also said that to ensure proper accountability, “you don’t want to have somebody receive a supermajority”.

He told Times Radio earlier: “In this case, of course, the concern would be that if Keir Starmer were to go into No 10… and that power was in some way unchecked, it would be very bad news for people in this country”.

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Mr Shapps added: “It’s perfectly legitimate to say the country doesn’t function well when you get majorities the size of Blair’s or even bigger, and we would say there are a lot of very good, hardworking MPs who can hold the government of the day to account, and we’d say those are Conservative MPs.”

The defence secretary is one of the high-profile Tories set to lose their seats in the election, along with Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and Commons leader Penny Mordaunt, according to Sky’s YouGov poll last week.

Preventing wipeout may be aim of Tories’ social media campaign


Tom Cheshire

Tom Cheshire

Online campaign correspondent

@chesh

From that social media post advertising just 57 Conservative seats – and the talk of a Labour “supermajority” – it may look like the Tories are already admitting defeat and seeking merely to limit its scale.

Not many parties seeking to govern highlight their own potential demise as a reason to vote for them after all.

And that’s the message in their online adverts too.

The most recent adverts on Facebook and Instagram warn voting for a particular party – the text changes between Reform, the Lib Dems and Labour – would be “handing Keir Starmer a massive majority”.

And they’re almost all attack ads: of the newest ads, you have to scroll past more than 40 before you get to the first that speaks about Tory policy, rather than talking about Labour.

Compare that to recent Labour adverts – their message is a lot more positive and members of the shadow cabinet are put front and centre.

The other sign the Conservatives may be anticipating a heavy defeat is the amount of money they’re spending on digital ads.

It’s far less than Labour, according to data from Sky News election partner Who Targets Me. If this were a tight race you’d expect them to be piling in.

But if victory is out of grasp, perhaps they only want to spend enough to prevent wipeout.

Sir Keir insisted Labour was not complacent about victory but urged voters to give him the mandate to deliver change.

He said: “We know that we have to earn every vote.

“Not a single vote has been cast and I know that every day we have to make a positive case for change.”

This morning official figures suggested the economy flatlined in April – an outcome long expected as the very wet weather had dampened retail sales and construction output.

Liberal Democrat Treasury spokeswoman Sarah Olney said: “The Conservatives have utterly failed to deliver the growth they repeatedly promised, instead presiding over stagnation and economic misery for hardworking families across the country.”

But the chancellor said the figures showed the economy “grew by 0.7% in the three months to April”.

“There is more to do, but the economy is turning a corner and inflation is back down to normal,” he said.

The Lib Dems have seen a four-point rise in their polling numbers to 15%, while the Green Party has crept up one point to 8%.

Launching their manifesto today, the Greens are setting out plans to tax “multimillionaires and billionaires” to fund improvements to health, housing, transport and the green economy.

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Heathrow bosses ‘warned about substation’ days before major power outage, MP committee hears

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Heathrow bosses 'warned about substation' days before major power outage, MP committee hears

Heathrow Airport bosses had been warned of a potential substation failures less than a week before a major power outage closed the airport for a day, a committee of MPs has heard.

The chief executive of Heathrow Airline Operators’ Committee Nigel Wicking told MPs of the Transport Committee he raised issues about resilience on 15 March after cable and wiring took out lights on a runway.

A fire at an electricity substation in west London meant the power supply was disrupted to Europe’s largest airport for a day – causing travel chaos for around 200,000 passengers.

“I’d actually warned Heathrow of concerns that we had with regard to the substations and my concern was resilience”, Mr Wicking said.

“So the first occasion was to team Heathrow director on the 15th of the month of March. And then I also spoke to the chief operating officer and chief customer officer two days before regarding this concern.

“And it was following a number of, a couple of incidents of, unfortunately, theft, of wire and cable around some of the power supply that on one of those occasions, took out the lights on the runway for a period of time. That obviously made me concerned.”

Mr Wicking also said he believed Heathrow’s Terminal 5 could have been ready to receive repatriation flights by “late morning” on the day of the closure, and that “there was opportunity also to get flights out”.

However, Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye said keeping the airport open during last month’s power outage would have been “disastrous”.

There was a risk of having “literally tens of thousands of people stranded in the airport, where we have nowhere to put them”, Mr Woldbye said.

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Zhenhao Zou: More than 20 new potential victims come forward after ‘prolific’ rapist jailed for assaulting 10 women

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Zhenhao Zou: More than 20 new potential victims come forward after 'prolific' rapist jailed for assaulting 10 women

Another 23 female potential victims have reported that they may have been raped by Zhenhao Zou – the Chinese PhD student detectives believe may be one of the country’s most prolific sex offenders.

The Metropolitan Police launched an international appeal after Zou, 28, was convicted of drugging and raping 10 women following a trial at the Inner London Crown Court last month.

Detectives have not confirmed whether the 23 people who have come forward add to their estimates that more than 50 other women worldwide may have been targeted by the University College London student.

Metropolitan Police commander Kevin Southworth said: “We have victims reaching out to us from different parts of the globe.

“At the moment, the primary places where we believe offending may have occurred at this time appears to be both in England, here in London, and over in China.”

Metropolitan Police commander Kevin Southworth
Image:
Metropolitan Police commander Kevin Southworth

Zou lived in a student flat in Woburn Place, near Russell Square in central London, and later in a flat in the Uncle building in Churchyard Row in Elephant and Castle, south London.

Read more: How a student described as ‘smart and charming’ was unmasked as a prolific sexual predator

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He had also been a student at Queen’s University Belfast, where he studied mechanical engineering from 2017 until 2019. Police say they have not had any reports from Belfast but added they were “open-minded about that”.

“Given how active and prolific Zou appears to have been with his awful offending, there is every prospect that he could have offended anywhere in the world,” Mr Southworth said.

“We wouldn’t want anyone to write off the fact they may have been a victim of his behaviour simply by virtue of the fact that you are from a certain place.

“The bottom line is, if you think you may have been affected by Zhenhao Zou or someone you know may have been, please don’t hold back. Please make contact with us.”

***ONLY USE IF HE IS CONVICTED OF AT LEAST TWO RAPES***It is feared Zou may have carried out dozens more sex crimes. Pic: Met Police
Image:
Pic: Met Police

Zou used hidden or handheld cameras to record his attacks, and kept the footage and often the women’s belongings as souvenirs.

He targeted young, Chinese women, inviting them to his flat for drinks or to study, before drugging and assaulting them.

Zou was convicted of 11 counts of rape, with two of the offences relating to one victim, as well as three counts of voyeurism, 10 counts of possession of an extreme pornographic image, one count of false imprisonment and three counts of possession of a controlled drug with intent to commit a sexual offence, namely butanediol.

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Moment police arrest rapist student

Mr Southworth said: “Of those 10 victims, several were not identified so as we could be sure exactly where in the world they were, but their cases, nevertheless, were sufficient to see convictions at court.

“There were also, at the time, 50 videos that were identified of further potential female victims of Zhenhao Zou’s awful crimes.

“We are still working to identify all of those women in those videos.

“We have now, thankfully, had 23 victim survivors come forward through the appeal that we’ve conducted, some of whom may be identical with some of the females that we saw in those videos, some of whom may even turn out to be from the original indicted cases.”

Mr Southworth added: “Ultimately, now it’s the investigation team’s job to professionally pick our way through those individual pieces of evidence, those individual victims’ stories, to see if we can identify who may have been a victim, when and where, so then we can bring Zou to justice for the full extent of his crimes.”

Mr Southworth said more resources will be put into the investigation, and that detectives are looking to understand “what may have happened without wishing to revisit the trauma, but in a way that enables [the potential victims] to give evidence in the best possible way.”

The Metropolitan Police is appealing to anyone who thinks they may have been targeted by Zou to contact the force either by emailing survivors@met.police.uk, or via the major incident public portal on the force’s website.

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Girl, 11, who went missing after entering River Thames named

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Girl, 11, who went missing after entering River Thames named

An 11-year-old girl who went missing after entering the River Thames has been named as Kaliyah Coa.

An “extensive search” has been carried out after the incident in east London at around 1.30pm on Monday.

Police said the child had been playing during a school inset day and entered the water near Barge House Causeway, North Woolwich.

A recovery mission is now said to be under way to find Kaliyah along the Thames, with the Metropolitan Police carrying out an extensive examination of the area.

Location of Barge House Causeway, North Woolwich, where 11-year-old girl Kaliyah Coa went into the River Thames on 31/03
Image:
Barge House Causeway is a concrete slope in North Woolwich leading into the Thames

Chief Superintendent Dan Card thanked members of the public and emergency teams who responded to “carry out a large-scale search during a highly pressurised and distressing time”.

He also confirmed drone technology and boats were being used to “conduct a thorough search over a wide area”.

He added: “Our specialist officers are supporting Kaliyah’s family through this deeply upsetting time and our thoughts go out to all those impacted by what has happened.”

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“Equally we appreciate this has affected the wider community who have been extremely supportive. You will see extra officers in the area during the coming days.”

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On Monday, Kerry Benadjaoud, a 62-year-old resident from the area, said she heard of the incident from her next-door neighbour, who “was outside doing her garden and there was two little kids running, and they said ‘my friend’s in the water'”.

When she arrived at the scene with a life ring, a man told her he had called the police, “but he said at the time he could see her hands going down”.

Barge House Causeway is a concrete slope that goes directly into the River Thames and is used to transport boats.

Residents pointed out that it appeared to be covered in moss and was slippery.

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