Sir Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak are set to begin a frantic final few days of campaigning as polling day rapidly approaches.
Both men will today reiterate their core messages as they try to motivate their backers to get out to the polling booths on Thursday.
The Labour leader will impress on the nation that if they want change they “have to vote for it” – while the Conservative leader will warn there are “four days to save Britain from a Labour government”.
Mr Sunak has suggested that Labour are on track for a “supermajority”, with the opposition having managed to maintain a roughly 20-point lead in the opinion polls, according to the Sky News Poll Tracker – something Sir Keir will do everything to ensure does not change.
The Liberal Democrats are set to continue their push to replace the Tories in seats that have traditionally been considered their heartlands – while the SNP will try to convince Scots to back them as polls show Labour could become the largest Scottish parliamentary contingent once again.
Mr Sunak is set to campaign in the Midlands today, where he will warn against giving “Keir Starmer and Labour a blank cheque”.
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Speaking at a rally later, the prime minister will say of Labour: “If they get the kind of majority, the supermajority that the polls suggest, they will set about entrenching themselves in power.
“They will rewrite the rules to make it easier for them to stay in office and harder for anyone to replace them. So, don’t surrender your voice to Labour on Thursday.”
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Seemingly in a bid to limit the scale of the defeat, rather than emerge victorious, the Tory leader will say that “an unchecked Labour government would be a disaster from which it would take decades to recover”.
“We Conservatives will stand up for you and make sure your voice is heard, your values represented.”
The Conservative Party is also claiming today that Labour’s immigration plans will result in a “deluge” of asylum seekers, leading to tax hikes of £635 per family each year – something a Labour spokesperson has branded a “ludicrous lie from an increasingly desperate Tory party”.
The opposition claimed the Tories have “completely lost control of the asylum system or border security” and if they are re-elected “the chaos will continue and costs will soar further”.
Labour win ‘not inevitable’ – Starmer
Labour will also vow to ensure petty theft is punished by scrapping a rule allowing people stealing goods worth under £200 to escape punishment, it is understood.
More broadly, the party will continue to make the wider case for change, with national campaign coordinator Pat McFadden saying: “If people don’t want to wake up on 5 July to five more years of economic chaos, to wake up knowing that all the future offers is the same as the recent Tory past, then they have to vote Labour and vote for change on Thursday.”
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12:24
Leader interviews: Labour Party
Sir Keir Starmer also hammered home that message in an interview with The Guardian, saying: “People talk about the inevitable outcome. It isn’t inevitable. I think there’s a yearning for change. But, you know, what we always say, if you want change, you have to vote for it.”
He also told the paper “hope has been kicked out of many people” because of the Tories’ failure to deliver, adding: “There’s a near universal view that almost everything is broken, and we’re going backwards as a country. That’s very demoralising.
“They’ve also had to witness the politics of self-entitlement and self-enhancement from Westminster… I’m not surprised that people feel disaffected by politics. But we do have to restore it.”
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Sir Keir expressed concern about the rise in support for the populist right across Europe, and for Reform in the UK.
“You have to understand why that’s happening,” he said. “It’s based in this disaffection, this sense that politics cannot be a force for good, and you can’t trust politicians.”
He argued that progressive parties and governments could restore faith, however, saying: “That goes back to credible hope, deliverable hope, making the change that will be material for people’s lives.”
Lib Dems on bereavement payment cuts
First minister John Swinney will also be out on the campaign trail today, reiterating his core message that Scots need an “alternative” to Labour in Westminster to “represent Scotland’s values”.
The SNP leader said in a statement that the general election in England is a “foregone conclusion”, with a Labour win on the cards, and claimed Sir Keir Starmer would “carry on with the same broken politics and right-wing policies as the Tories”.
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1:30
Swinney pledges to continue push for indyref
He is arguing that the result in Scotland is on a “knife edge” – despite polls showing Labour in the lead – and that Sir Keir “simply represents more of the same broken Brexit Britain that does not reflect Scotland’s values”.
“The SNP is offering an alternative – a vision of hope with an end to austerity, rejoining the EU, eradicating child poverty and a future made in Scotland, for Scotland where Scotland’s interests are always put first,” said Mr Swinney.
“The only way to deliver that and put an end to the failure of Brexit which has caused so much damage to Scotland is to vote SNP on Thursday.
“Only the SNP offers Scotland the hope of a better future back in the EU – but we have to vote for it.”
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18:32
Leader interviews: Liberal Democrats
Sir Ed Davey and the Liberal Democrats will be continuing their bid to take seats off the Tories – and are promoting a pledge they launched yesterday to reverse “heartless Tory cuts” to bereavement payments.
On the latter as it stands, a bereaved family where a spouse or partner has died receives a lump sum of up to £3,500, followed by a monthly payment of up to £350 for 18 months.
The party is calling for this period to be extended, and is pledging to inject an additional £440m a year into the system by 2028-29 to fund it.
‘Labour could take Wales for granted’
Plaid Cymru will be making their case to voters in Wales, arguing that the Welsh people will be “voiceless” if they do not have a “strong cohort” of MPs in Westminster.
The party’s leader, Rhun ap Iorwerth, said Wales “simply doesn’t feature” in Tory and Labour electoral plans, while his party would push for “fair funding deal for Wales”.
“When people vote on Thursday, they expect their MP to speak up for them and their community, not to follow the Westminster whip at any cost,” a statement said.
“We know that the Tories are finished and the contempt they show Wales is nothing new – but with Labour set to enter Downing Street on Friday, there is a real danger that they will simply take Wales for granted.”
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10:03
Leader interviews: Plaid Cymru
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He added: “For a member of parliament who will always give Wales a voice in Westminster, who will always champion fairness and stand up against more cuts which have already devastated our public services, vote Plaid Cymru on 4 July.”
Reform UK will also be on the campaign trail as the party tries to stabilise its campaign following racism allegations.
Image: Farage’s Reform party will be trying to steady the ship after racism claims. Pic: Reuters
Yesterday, one of the party’s candidates disowned them and backed the Tories, saying he had become “increasingly disillusioned” with the behaviour of the party and accused leader Nigel Farage of not taking it seriously.
It followed the controversy over a Reform canvasser who was caught making a racial slur about the prime minister in an undercover investigation.
Homelessness minister Rushanara Ali has resigned after reportedly hiking the rent on a property she owns by hundreds of pounds – something described by one of her tenants as “extortion”.
That was just weeks after the previous tenants’ contract ended, The i Paper said.
Four tenants who rented a house in east London from Ms Ali were sent an email last November saying their lease would not be renewed, and which also gave them four months’ notice to leave, the newspaper reported.
The property was then re-listed with a £700 rent increase within weeks, the publication added.
In a letter to the prime minister, Ms Ali said that remaining in her role would be a “distraction from the ambitious work of this government”.
She added: “Further to recent reporting, I wanted to make it clear that at all times I have followed all relevant legal requirements.
“I believe I took my responsibilities and duties seriously, and the facts demonstrate this.”
Laura Jackson, one of Ms Ali’s former tenants, said she and three others collectively paid £3,300 in rent.
Weeks after she and her fellow tenants had left, the self-employed restaurant owner said she saw the house re-listed with a rent of around £4,000.
“It’s an absolute joke,” she said. “Trying to get that much money from renters is extortion.”
Image: Sir Keir Starmer said Ms Ali’s work in government would leave a ‘lasting legacy’. Pic: PA
Ms Ali’s house, rented on a fixed-term contract, was put up for sale while the tenants were living there, and was only relisted as a rental because it had not sold, according to The i Paper.
The government’s Renters’ Rights Bill includes measures to ban landlords who end a tenancy to sell a property from re-listing it for six months.
The Bill, which is nearing its end stages of scrutiny in Parliament, will also abolish fixed-term tenancies and ensure landlords give four months’ notice if they want to sell their property.
Something Sir Keir’s increasingly unpopular government could have done without
Rushanara Ali’s swift and humiliating demise is a classic example of paying the price for the politician’s crime of “Do as I say, not as I do”.
She was Labour’s minister for homelessness, for goodness’ sake, yet she ejected tenants from her near-£1m town house then hiked the rent.
A more egregious case of ministerial double standards it would be difficult to imagine. She had to go and was no doubt told by 10 Downing Street to go quickly.
MP for the East End constituency of Bethnal Green and Stepney, Ms Ali was the very model of a modern Labour minister: a degree in PPE from Oxford University.
In her resignation letter to Sir Keir Starmer, she said she is quitting “with a heavy heart”. Really? She presumably didn’t have a heavy heart when she ejected her four tenants.
She’d previously spoken out against “private renters being exploited” and said the government would “empower people to challenge unreasonable rent increases”.
She was charging her four former tenants £3,300 a month. Yet after they moved out, she charged her new tenants £4,000, a rent increase of more than 20%.
In an area represented by the left-wing firebrand George Galloway from 2005 to 2010, Ms Ali had a majority of under 1,700 at the election last year.
Ominously for Labour, an independent candidate was second and the Greens third. No doubt Jeremy Corbyn’s new party will also stand next time.
In her resignation letter to the PM, Ms Ali said continuing in her ministerial role would be a distraction. Too right.
A distraction Sir Keir and his increasingly unpopular government could have done without.
Responding to her resignation, shadow housing secretary Sir James Cleverly said: “I said that her actions were total hypocrisy and that she should go if the accusations were shown to be true.”
A Liberal Democrat spokesperson said: “Rushanara Ali fundamentally misunderstood her role. Her job was to tackle homelessness, not to increase it.”
Previously, a spokesperson for Ms Ali said the tenants “stayed for the entirety of their fixed term contract, and were informed they could stay beyond the expiration of the fixed term, while the property remained on the market, but this was not taken up, and they decided to leave the property”.
The prime minister thanked Ms Ali for her “diligent work” and for helping to “deliver this government’s ambitious agenda”.
Sir Keir Starmer said her work in putting in measures to repeal the Vagrancy Act would have a “significant impact”.
And he said she had been trying to encourage “more people to engage and participate in our democracy”, something that would leave a “lasting legacy”.
A more egregious case of ministerial double standards it would be difficult to imagine. She had to go and was no doubt told by 10 Downing Street to go quickly.
Image: Rushanara Ali reportedly hiked the rent on a property she owns. Pic: PA
‘A heavy heart’ – really?
MP for the East End constituency of Bethnal Green and Stepney, Ms Ali was the very model of a modern Labour minister: A degree in PPE from Oxford University.
In her resignation letter to Sir Keir Starmer, she said she is quitting “with a heavy heart”. Really? She presumably didn’t have a heavy heart when she ejected her four tenants.
She’d previously spoken out against “private renters being exploited” and said her government would “empower people to challenge unreasonable rent increases”.
The now former minister was charging her four former tenants £3,300 a month. Yet after they moved out, she charged her new tenants £4,000 – a rent increase of more than 20%.
Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Adriana Kugler announced her resignation on Aug. 1, paving the way for a Trump nominee at the US central bank.