UK general election live: Rishi Sunak says he believes he will win despite poll projections

Rishi Sunak said he believes he will win the general election.

Asked whether he thought he would still be prime minister on Friday, the prime minister said: “Yes. I’m fighting very hard and I think people are waking up to the real danger of what a Labour government means.”

The Labour lead in the opinion polls has been 20 percentage points throughout the campaign.

The final Opinium poll for the Observer on Saturday showed Labour retained this lead over the Conservatives – the same as a week ago and enough to deliver a large House of Commons majority if replicated on Thursday.

Labour is on 40% (unchanged compared with a week ago), while the Conservatives are on 20% (also unchanged). Reform UK is up 1 point on 17%, the Liberal Democrats up 1 point on 13% and the Greens down 3 points on 6%.

The UK is better off than it was 14 years ago, Rishi Sunak told the BBC this morning, as the prime minister launched a combative defence of his party’s record in power with just four days to go until the election. Sunak later told Laura Kuenssberg that Brexit was the “right thing” to do because of the economic opportunities he said it had created.

Asked whether he thought he would still be prime minister on Friday, the prime minister said: “Yes. I’m fighting very hard and I think people are waking up to the real danger of what a Labour government means.”

The Sunday Times newspaper endorsed the Labour party for the election, saying in an editorial that the country needs a “radical reset” after 14 years of Conservative rule. The newspaper, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News UK, has backed the Conservatives at every election since 2005. Labour’s national campaign coordinator, Pat McFadden, told LBC that the party wants the Sun’s endorsement next. On the BBC, McFadden categorically ruled out any return to freedom of movement in his party’s pursuit of a new trade agreement with the EU if elected.

Nigel Farage, the Reform party leader, repeated his claim that a Reform UK canvasser who called for Channel migrants to be used as “target practice” was an actor. Channel 4 News has stood by its undercover investigation in which the canvasser was filmed, saying its journalists met him for the first time at Reform UK’s offices in Clacton. Farage addressed a crowd at a Reform rally in Birmingham on Sunday.

The final Opinium poll for the Observer showed Labour retained a 20-point lead over the Conservatives – the same as a week ago and enough to deliver a large House of Commons majority if replicated on Thursday. Labour is on 40% (unchanged compared with a week ago), while the Conservatives are on 20% (also unchanged). Reform UK is up 1 point on 17%, the Liberal Democrats up 1 point on 13% and the Greens down 3 points on 6%.

The number of seats being targeted by Ed Davey’s party has expanded over the campaign, as a combination of the Tories losing ground to Reform UK and a stunt-filled Lib Dem campaign have opened up more constituencies.

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Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said he believes the election of Keir Starmer would be the first time in 14 years that a prime minister has been invested in Scotland, the PA news agency reports.

Sarwar met stallholders at Loch Lomond Shores in Balloch, West Dunbartonshire, on Sunday and admired Scotch pies and regional cheese.

The Scottish Labour leader said:

I don’t do celebrations: I’m one of those people that, when they have good moments, enjoys them for about 10 minutes and then moves on to the next challenge.

We’ve still got four days in which to make sure we get rid of the Tories and elect a Labour government and I’m taking nothing for granted, and that’s not decided yet.

So we’ve got work to do. We’ve got to get to work straight away to deliver for people because there’s far too many people facing far too many challenges. We’ve got no time to waste to change people’s lives.

Describing his relationship with Starmer, Sarwar added:

He knows that he will always have in me someone that wants to see a Labour party succeed, someone who wants a UK Labour government, and someone who will always fight Scotland’s corner.

I know that we will have a prime minister for the first time in 14 years that understands Scotland and cares about Scotland.

It’s one of the reasons why so many people have been driven towards the SNP and independence as they’ve looked at Tory governments and thought ‘these people don’t care about us – they’re not delivering for us’. Of course, there’ll be moments that we have difficult conversations, moments where we’ll be challenging each other, that’s the right thing to do.

The Scottish Labour manifesto largely mirrors UK Labour pledges on growing the economy, cutting NHS waiting lists and more support for young people.

Labour, which held two Scottish MPs before Rishi Sunak called the general election last month, have been ahead in the opinion polls overall and could stand to win as much as 35 seats in Scotland.

Firefighters are urging the next government to prepare the country for the impact of rising temperatures after this week’s heatwave.

The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) said there had been wildfires across much of the country, warning that the fire and rescue service was “fragmented, overstretched and chronically underfunded”.

The union called for urgent investment to prevent a repeat of fires in the summer of 2022, when it claimed fire and rescue services were pushed to breaking point.

Matt Wrack, the FBU general secretary, said:

An incoming Labour government will need to wake up to the harsh reality of the climate emergency.

We need urgent decarbonisation to avert the worst dangers of climate collapse, but we also need to adapt.

Firefighters are battling the effects of soaring temperatures, but a decade of brutal cuts has left the UK unprepared. The fire and rescue service is fragmented, overstretched and chronically underfunded.

Two years ago, UK firefighters were pushed to breaking point responding to raging wildfires without enough resources. We must not see a repeat of this chaos.

The number of extreme weather events will only continue to rise, placing even more pressure on our overstretched fire service. Failing to invest in the fire service means failing to protect homes and lives from climate disasters.

Nigel Farage has been speaking at a Reform UK rally in Birmingham. The party said it had sold 4,500 tickets for today’s event and hundreds more paid on the door.

Farage, the Reform party leader, reiterated his criticism of the electoral system and described postal voting as “potentially corrupt”.

Addressing the crowd, he said:

I know that under the electoral system things are tough – we’re likely to get fewer seats for the number of votes should deserve – but get seats next Thursday we will, believe it, it is going to happen. We’ll likely to see a Labour party with, you know, not a particularly high share of the vote but a massive number of seats.

Part of what we’re about is reforming the potentially corrupt postal voting system, reforming the voting system, getting rid of the unelected House of Lords in their current form.

If Labour wins power next week, here is what the party’s first 100 days may look like, according to the Sunday Times’ Whitehall editor, Gabriel Pogrund:

The Resolution Foundation has analysed the labour market since 2010, when the Conservatives, then led by David Cameron, came into power and drove through a programme of austerity. Here are some key takeaways from the report:

Real average earnings today are only £16 a week higher than they were at the time of the 2010 election.

Other countries also saw slower wage growth after the 2008 financial crisis, but the UK’s slowdown has been greater.

The “rapid employment growth” of the 2010s has been partially reversed since the Covid pandemic.

The UK is one of only six countries of 38 in the Organisation for Economic cooperation and Development (OECD) whose employment rate has fallen since 2019.

Successive Conservative governments have boosted pay for the lowest earners.

You can find out the state of the latest opinion polls in the Guardian’s tracker here:

My colleague Kiran Stacey has reported on Rishi Sunak’s interview this morning with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg. The prime minister claimed the Britain was better off that it was 14 years ago and launched a defence of his party’s record with just days to go before the election.

You can read in full here:

Nigel Farage said his party Reform UK would campaign as the “leading voice of opposition” to abolish the BBC licence fee, claiming the broadcaster has “abused its position of power”.

It comes after the Reform UK leader was questioned about the state of his party, and the views expressed by some of its candidates and campaigners, by a live audience during an appearance on BBC Question Time on Friday night.

He told a rally in Birmingham: “As we’re going to be the leading voice of opposition, and I say that because the Conservative Party will be in opposition but they won’t be the opposition because they disagree with each other on virtually everything – think about it, the last four years all we’ve had are internal Tory wars.

“They stand for nothing. I was told they were a broad church. Well they’re a broad church without any religion.

“It simply doesn’t work. So we will again renew our campaign with added vigour to say that the state broadcaster has abused its position of power and we will campaign for the abolition of the BBC licence fee.”

Nigel Farage has told the audience of a Reform UK rally in Birmingham that Britain is in societal and cultural “decline”.

He said people “are getting poorer”, that there are “people fearful of going out at night, people scared to even go out to their local pub, knives being carried wholesale by young people in this country – so I am in no doubt we are societal decline.”

The Reform UK leader told the rally he had launched his electoral to offer an alternative to ‘slippery Sunak’ and Sir Keir Starmer who he said has “the charisma of a damp rag’.

Richard Tice said net zero policies are “making us poorer” and “the greatest act of financial self-harm ever imposed on a nation by the wallies in Westminster”.

Addressing a rally in Birmingham, the Reform UK chairman said: “Net zero is making us poorer. It’s killing our jobs. It’s killing our industries. It’s killing our economy. It’s an absolute piece of madness developed in Westminster.

“I actually believe it’s the greatest act of financial self-harm ever imposed on a nation by the wallies in Westminster.”

A frantic tactical voting effort is being waged this weekend by the Lib Dems, with party officials believing that an online targeting drive could unlock up to 25 seats in the final days of campaigning.

The number of seats being targeted by Ed Davey’s party has expanded over the campaign, as a combination of the Tories losing ground to Reform UK and a stunt-filled Lib Dem campaign have opened up more constituencies. Some of the most optimistic polls even have the Lib Dems becoming the official opposition, should a Tory meltdown materialise – an issue that some senior Conservatives complain has not been scrutinised enough.

However, the Lib Dems are spending the final days of the campaign targeting about 250,000 mainly Labour-inclined voters who they believe are key in a swathe of seats across the south of England. Theresa May’s former seat of Maidenhead is among them, along with the likes of Didcot and Wantage, Mid Sussex, Eastleigh, Bicester and Woodstock, Frome and East Somerset and Torbay.

Senior Lib Dem figures have been surprised by the lack of attention the Tories have paid to Davey’s party, given they believe that some polls have them winning over 50 seats on a good night. “They are fighting on three fronts – Reform UK, Labour and us,” said one party source. “They don’t have the bandwidth to do everything.” They are expecting a Tory ad spending blitz in the 48 hours before polling day.

 

Updated: Juni 30, 2024 — 12:44 pm

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