Ed Davey uses bungee jump to urge voters to ‘do something you’ve never done before and vote Lib Dem’ – UK general election live

Keir Starmer said a victory for the far-right National Rally in the French parliamentary elections would not damage Labour’s goal of negotiating a “better deal” with the European Union.

Speaking to reporters, and asked if a Labour government would work with Marine Le Pen’s party, which won the first round of voting in France yesterday (the final round of voting is on Sunday), Starmer said:

I will work with any government in Europe and across the world if we are elected in to serve the country. For me, that’s what serious government is about.

When it was put to him that Le Pen favoured bilateral deals over EU-wide ones, he said:

I’ve always supported bilaterals as well as EU-wide agreements. They’re not mutually exclusive.

And some of the agreements we’ve got with France are bilateral in any event. I think they need to be stronger and better and deeper, particularly in relation to smashing the gangs that are running the vile trade of putting people into boats.

But there are also EU measures. The security agreement we want with the EU when it comes to dealing with smuggling gangs is really important.

Asked whether he was concerned having a Eurosceptic government in France could make it harder for Labour to achieve close economic ties with the EU, Starmer replied:

I genuinely don’t want to get ahead of myself. Firstly, we haven’t seen the final outcome in France. We’ve also got a big outcome of our own on Thursday.

I don’t think it affects the overall intention we have, which is to negotiate a better deal with the EU. I think the deal we’ve got is botched. I think that anybody who’s trading with the EU feels that it’s botched, and we can do better than that across not just trade, but actually research and development, also on the security front.

Starmer defends changing Labour with ‘ruthlessness’ – but rejects Corbyn’s claim he’s imposed ‘straitjacket of conformity’

Aletha Adu

Keir Starmer has rejected Jeremy Corbyn’s claim that he has imposed “a straitjacket of conformity” on the Labour party.

Corbyn, the former leader who is now standing for re-election as an independent having been thrown out of the party under Starmer, told the i in an interview that marginalising the left would turn out to be a mistake.

Corbyn said:

I don’t see any appetite for political diversity by the Labour leadership at all. I just see a straitjacket of conformity.

You’ve got to keep the trust of people. If they crush dissent in the Labour Party, which they’ve been very good at doing then they actually give themselves a fool’s paradise of agreement and they have driven the other people out, who are actually very constructive.

Corbyn said Starmer should be listening to the left because “the shimmer of winning an election having a big majority will disappear pretty quickly, unless they start delivering on people’s worries and concerns”. The left had answers to problems like student debt and the shortage of affordable housing, he suggested.

Asked about Corbyn’s comment, Starmer told reporters today:

I changed the Labour party to put us in a position to win an election … Yes, we did it with a steely determination, some say ruthlessness, and I’m not going apologise for that.

But he said there was a “diversity of views” in Labour, and that that was “a good thing”. He said he was going to remain focused on changing the country for the better.

Lisa O’Carroll

Craig Hoy, the chair of the Scottish Conservative says they “are not running scared of anybody” as he unveiled a new campaign in unseat SNP’s Kirsten Oswald, in the affluent constituency of East Renfrewshire in Glasgow.

“Vote Scottish Conservative. Beat the SNP,” was the slogan unveiled on a damp day by Hoy and the candidate Sandesh Gulhane.

Hoy said:

We’re not running scared of anybody. We’re going out into the country to point out that in key seats from the north-east, the south-west, and including here in East Renfrewshire, it’s the street fight between the Scottish Conservatives and the SNP and a vote for any other party, including Reform or staying at home, or simply mean that the SNP within those seats.

Gulhane, who is a GP, says it is going to be “a very tight race” in the constituency that has see sawed between SNP and Conservative since 2015 with the number one priority the NHS.

“This isn’t just rich people, you know, we are in a very affluent area, but there’s not everyone is rich, and they’re spending their life savings on on getting operations,” he said.

Nine candidates are running for the seat. One estimate says the SNP’s vote share will be slashed from 44.9% to 26.8% but with the party remaining ahead of Tories in second place.

Speaking to reporters this morning, Rishi Sunak accused Nigel Farage of not doing enough to tackle racism in Reform UK. Farage had “questions to answer”, Sunak said.

Referring to the Reform UK activist who was secretly recorded using a racist slur to describe Sunak, the PM said:

I think [Farage] described the comments as inappropriate last time I heard. They weren’t inappropriate. They were racist and appalling.

And the person who made them has apologised to Reform for the impact it’s had on them.

And as I said, you’ve got now multiple Reform candidates and campaigners openly espousing racist and misogynistic views, seemingly without challenge, tells you something about the culture within the Reform party.

In an interview with Times Radio this morning, Farage said that he wanted to impose “much stricter” control on Reform UK candidate selection. Many of its candidates have been exposed as having said racist or extreme comments in the past. Farage said that he only took full control as leader a month ago. He went on:

There were some people there that should never, ever have been there. And I’m sorry for that. And nobody is angrier than I am, particularly as we’re doing so well with black and ethnic minority voters.

Yes, some bad apples in a start-up. They’re gone. And I won’t have anyone like it in the future in the party. I’m going to put this thing under a much, much stricter control.

Farage said, despite all the controversy about racism in his party, recent YouGov polling suggests Reform UK has higher support among black and minority ethnic voters than the Liberal Democrats.

Farage only became Reform UK leader at the start of the election campaign. But before that he was, in effect, owner of the party. It is set up as a company, and he is the majority shareholder.

Rishi Sunak has revived his claim that British support for Ukraine would be at risk under a Labour government.

Speaking to journalists this morning, when it was put to him that Labour backs the government’s stance on Ukraine, Sunak said:

You have to back up words with actions, that’s what we are doing, we’re investing more in defence.

You have to have strength to signal to your adversaries that we’re not going anywhere,. That’s why under the Conservatives we’re increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP. If Keir Starmer is in charge those plans are going to be cut. That’s going to send a signal of weakness to our adversaries and to our allies and crucially will mean that we won’t have the funding to continue providing multi-year support to Ukraine.

Sunak went further in comments given to the Daily Telegraph for a story published this morning in which he claimed that Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, wanted Labour to win. Sunak told the paper:

The Conservatives have stood up to our adversaries to protect British interests and British values time and time again. We have stood shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine against Russian aggression, and we will keep doing so if re-elected.

It is clear from the evidence Russia does not want us to be re-elected. Putin would like nothing more than for Britain to step back, to appease his aggression rather than face it down, and that is what will happen with another party in power.

Nigel Farage has talked of appeasing Russia, which will only play into Putin’s hands, and Labour will cut UK defence spending on day one. This will embolden our enemies and send a signal to our allies that Britain is not with them any more. We cannot allow that to happen.

Labour says it does want to raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, but it has not matched the Tory plan to achieve this by 2030. The Conservatives say they would fund this by cuts to the civil service, but Labour argues that those savings are not realistic.

This morning, asked about Sunak’s Putin comment, Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, dismissed this as a desperate claim. He said:

If Rishi Sunak wants to play this type of politics, maybe he should tell us about all the money that has flowed into the Tory party, which people suspect is connected with Russian business people.

He’s making a desperate, desperate intervention, because he knows that his authority is crumbling, and that Mr Nigel Farage is eating into a lot of his traditional support.

It was not entirely clear, from reports this morning saying that he was about to do a bungee jump, why Ed Davey had chosen this particular stunt. In the BBC Question Times leaders’ special, when a woman complained that his daredevil election photocalls were a bit silly and did not look very prime ministerial, Davey argued that they were all intended to make a serious point.

You can imagine various political messages from a Lib Dem bungee jump: that you can go down a long way without hitting rock bottom; that if you go down a lot, you tend to bounce back; that principles can be elastic, but also strong enough to function.

Davey, though, had a simpler message. He wants to encourage people to “do something you’ve never done before” and vote Lib Dem. Peter Walker has the video of Davey shouting his message as he was dangling mid-air.

Voting Lib Dem is also safer, and not as scary, Davey might have added.

Lisa O’Carroll

Scotland’s first minister John Swinney has said there is “nothing that can be done” about delayed delivery of postal votes across Scotland.

When Rishi Sunak called the elections at the start of the Scottish school holidays, Swinney said the decision showed lack of respect for Scotland.

Over the weekend councils, including those in Edinburgh, Glasgow and East Renfrewshire, set up units for those going on holidays to pick up alternate documents or vote ahead of polling day.

Swinney said there had been “significant reports” of people not receiving their vote. The Electoral Management Board for Scotland said there had been “many difficulties experienced with the delivery of postal votes” across the country. In an interview this morning he went on:

Unfortunately, there is nothing that can be done.

There are no other proxy arrangements that can be put in place, but I think it’s illustrative of the fact that there was no thought given to summer school holidays.

Twice as many Britons support tax increases to pay for public services as those who believe they should be reduced even if it means further public service cuts, according to a new report. Hazel Sheffield has the story.

John Swinney, the SNP leader and Scottish first minister, said this morning that he would remain party leader regardless of how well his party does in the general election. He told the Today programme:

I became leader of the SNP eight weeks ago today and I came into leadership in the SNP to bring my party together and to bring my country together.

I committed to do that for the long term, I committed to that task, to take my party well beyond the 2026 Scottish parliament elections, and that’s exactly what I intend to do.

Back at the Q&A, a man called Jordan says the far right have done well in the French election because of their stance on immigration. Does that affect Sunak’s thinking?

Sunak says he is starting to bring down legal migration. The net migration levels are forecast to halve. And, if he wins the election, he will let parliament vote every year on a cap on legal migration.

On illegal migration, he says he thinks it is unfair. He says that as someone coming from a family of immigrants, he says – jumping the queue is unfair. That is why he wants to stop people arriving illegally from applying for asylum.

He claims that 15 other European countries are now in favour of Rwanda-type policies.

If Labour wins, the numbers will go up, and the problem will not stop, he says.

He says Keir Starmer backed “free movement” when he was standing for Labour leader.

He avoids the the main thrust of the question, which was about the far right’s success in yesterday’s French election.