Sir Keir Starmer says election is ‘moment country has been waiting for’ as he declares ‘it is time for change’
Sir Keir Starmer has said the “opportunity for change” will define the general election on 4 July.
The Labour leader said Rishi Sunak’s announcement was the “moment the country needs and has been waiting for”.
Speaking in central London, Sir Keir reiterated the six “first steps” for government he outlined last week and added: “It will feel like a long campaign… but no matter what else is said and done, that opportunity for change is what this election is about.”
He told the watching nation that over the last four years “we have changed the Labour Party” and “returned it once more to the service of working people.”
General election latest: Sunak announces 4 July vote
“All we ask now – humbly – is to do exactly the same for our country and return Britain to the service of working people.
“It is time for change.”
Sir Keir’s words came moments after Mr Sunak ended months of speculation about the timing of the general election and confirmed it would take place on 4 July.
In a statement outside Downing Street in the pouring rain, the prime minister said he had met with the King to request the dissolution of parliament.
“The King has granted this request and we will have a general election on the 4th of July”, he said.
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PM announces election
The prime minister took aim at Sir Keir – who, according to polls, is on course to succeed him in Downing Street – saying he has shown “time and time again that he will take the easy way out and do anything to get power”.
Referring to the now-abandoned pledges Sir Keir made to Labour members in his bid to succeed Jeremy Corbyn as leader, Mr Sunak said: “If he was happy to abandon all the promises he made to become Labour leader once he got the job, how can you know that he won’t do exactly the same thing if he were to become prime minister?”
The election announcement came off the back off official figures showing that inflation has come down to 2.3% in April, with Mr Sunak’s decision to call and election for next month suggesting he hopes to capitalise on the improvement in the economic landscape.
Sir Keir Starmer is applauded by activists after the general election was called.
Pic: PA
Mr Sunak said the reduction in inflation was “proof that the plan and priorities I set out are working”.
However, he said “this hard earned economic stability was only ever meant to be the beginning”, and asked the public: “The question now is how and who do you trust to turn that foundation into a secure future for you, your family and our country?
“Now is the moment for Britain to choose its future and to decide whether we want to build on the progress we have made or risk going back to square one. With no plan and no certainty.”
Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, responded positively to the election announcement and urged voters to “kick this appalling Conservative government out of office”.
Pic: PA
“For years the Conservative Party has taken voters for granted and lurched from crisis to crisis while the problems facing the country are getting so much worse,” he said.
“All because this Conservative government is more interested in fighting between themselves than standing up for the needs of the country.”
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John Swinney, the newly appointed leader of the SNP, said: “I look forward to leading the SNP in this election.
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“This is the moment to remove the Tory government and put Scotland first by voting SNP. People in Scotland know we stand up for them and protect them from the damage done by Westminster.”
While the opposition parties welcomed news of an election, there were signs of jitters within Tory ranks – with one backbench MP calling Mr Sunak’s decision a “massive gamble”.
“It seems odd to jump the gun”, they said.
“It’s a massive gamble – but we’re now in play and need to go and win this.”
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Whitehall officials tried to convince Michael Gove to go to court to cover up the grooming scandal in 2011, Sky News can reveal.
Dominic Cummings, who was working for Lord Gove at the time, has told Sky News that officials in the Department for Education (DfE) wanted to help efforts by Rotherham Council to stop a national newspaper from exposing the scandal.
In an interview with Sky News, Mr Cummings said that officials wanted a “total cover-up”.
Politics latest: Grooming gangs findings unveiled
The revelation shines a light on the institutional reluctance of some key officials in central government to publicly highlight the grooming gang scandal.
In 2011, Rotherham Council approached the Department for Education asking for help following inquiries by The Times. The paper’s then chief reporter, the late Andrew Norfolk, was asking about sexual abuse and trafficking of children in Rotherham.
The council went to Lord Gove’s Department for Education for help. Officials considered the request and then recommended to Lord Gove’s office that the minister back a judicial review which might, if successful, stop The Times publishing the story.
Lord Gove rejected the request on the advice of Mr Cummings. Sources have independently confirmed Mr Cummings’ account.
Education Secretary Michael Gove in 2011. Pic: PA
Mr Cummings told Sky News: “Officials came to me in the Department of Education and said: ‘There’s this Times journalist who wants to write the story about these gangs. The local authority wants to judicially review it and stop The Times publishing the story’.
“So I went to Michael Gove and said: ‘This council is trying to actually stop this and they’re going to use judicial review. You should tell the council that far from siding with the council to stop The Times you will write to the judge and hand over a whole bunch of documents and actually blow up the council’s JR (judicial review).’
“Some officials wanted a total cover-up and were on the side of the council…
“They wanted to help the local council do the cover-up and stop The Times’ reporting, but other officials, including in the DfE private office, said this is completely outrageous and we should blow it up. Gove did, the judicial review got blown up, Norfolk stories ran.”
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Grooming gangs victim speaks out
The judicial review wanted by officials would have asked a judge to decide about the lawfulness of The Times’ publication plans and the consequences that would flow from this information entering the public domain.
A second source told Sky News that the advice from officials was to side with Rotherham Council and its attempts to stop publication of details it did not want in the public domain.
One of the motivations cited for stopping publication would be to prevent the identities of abused children entering the public domain.
There was also a fear that publication could set back the existing attempts to halt the scandal, although incidents of abuse continued for many years after these cases.
Sources suggested that there is also a natural risk aversion amongst officials to publicity of this sort.
Read more on grooming gangs:
What we do and don’t know from the data
A timeline of the scandal
Mr Cummings, who ran the Vote Leave Brexit campaign and was Boris Johnson’s right-hand man in Downing Street, has long pushed for a national inquiry into grooming gangs to expose failures at the heart of government.
He said the inquiry, announced today, “will be a total s**tshow for Whitehall because it will reveal how much Whitehall worked to try and cover up the whole thing.”
He also described Mr Johnson, with whom he has a long-standing animus, as a “moron’ for saying that money spent on inquiries into historic child sexual abuse had been “spaffed up the wall”.
Asked by Sky News political correspondent Liz Bates why he had not pushed for a public inquiry himself when he worked in Number 10 in 2019-20, Mr Cummings said Brexit and then COVID had taken precedence.
“There are a million things that I wanted to do but in 2019 we were dealing with the constitutional crisis,” he said.
The Department for Education and Rotherham Council have been approached for comment.
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