Starmer claims Sunak holding election now because he knows Rwanda policy won’t work
Echoing the line from Yvette Cooper (see 10.37am), Keir Starmer claimed this morning that Rishi Sunak is holding the election now because he knows the Rwanda policy will fail. He said:
Rishi Sunak clearly does not believe in his Rwanda plan. I think that’s been clear from this morning, because he’s not going to get any flights off.
I think that tells its own story. I don’t think he’s ever believed that plan is going to work, and so he has called an election early enough to have it not tested before the election.
Sunak rejected a version of this suggestion when it was put to him in an interview this morning. (See 9.36am.)
There is some evidence suggesting Sunak did not support the Rwanda policy when it was announced during Boris Johnson’s premiership in 2022. In January the BBC said it had been leaked government papers from that period showing Sunak, then chancellor, did not think it would have a deterrent effect.
Key events
Tom Larkin from Sky says that Rishi Sunak made a bit of a gaffe on his visit to Wales when he asked workers at a brewery if they were looking forward to the Euros. Wales did not qualify, Larkin points out.
Rishi Sunak taking a brave approach to small talk at a brewery in Wales.
He asked workers if they’re looking forward to ‘all the football’. One quickly pointed out that Wales haven’t qualified for the Euros 😬 pic.twitter.com/kiHRxNVipe
— Tom Larkin (@TomLarkinSky) May 23, 2024
Libby Brooks
FMQs at Holyrood was fiery this lunchtime, with John Swinney coming out fighting for his “friend and colleague” Michael Matheson, who is facing losing his salary for 54 days and suspension as an MSP after wrongly claiming £11,000 in expenses for streaming football matches on holiday.
Swinney was accused of “demeaning himself and the office of first minister” by Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar after the SNP leader accused the process that decided the sanction as “prejudiced”.
Swinney claimed that Tory members of the standards committee had “pre-judged” the issue and that this was bringing the parliament into disrepute. He said that therefore he would not support the sanction.
Tory leader Douglas Ross said Swinney’s response was shocking and “defending the indefensible”. He went on:
In the real world [Matheson] would have lost his job for what he did and what he claimed.
Swinney insisted:
Michael Matheson has made mistakes, he resigned from the cabinet, he lost his job as a member of the cabinet and he paid the roaming costs in question.
There was no cost to the public purse and as a consequence of the issues that have been raised here about the conduct of this process I do not believe that this is a sanction that can be applied.
Sunak’s flagship anti-smoking bill ‘set to be dropped in pre-election wash-up’
In his speech outside No 10 yesterday Rishi Sunak included his bill to plan to stop anyone 15 or younger ever being able to buy cigarettes legally in his list of government achievements. “We will ensure that the next generation grows up smoke free,” he said.
But the bill – which, arguably, was set to be Sunak’s most significant legislative achievement – won’t become law before the election, Jason Groves from the Mail reports. He says it won’t be passed in the “wash-up” – the process that involves non-contentious legislation being rushed through parliament ahead of the election.
Rishi Sunak’s flagship anti-smoking legislation will be lost as a result of the snap election. Govt sources confirming there is no mechanism for pushing through a free vote bill in the pre-election wash-up
— Jason Groves (@JasonGroves1) May 23, 2024
Rishi Sunak’s flagship anti-smoking legislation will be lost as a result of the snap election. Govt sources confirming there is no mechanism for pushing through a free vote bill in the pre-election wash-up
Labour is in favour of the bill. But it has not committed to passing it after the election, and a new Labour government may decide that it has other priorities.
Rishi Sunak has arrived in Wales, PA Media reports. PA says he is on a “whirlwind tour of the UK’s four nations”.
Sunak is visiting a brewery, the BBC reports.
Former Scottish deputy first minister Lord Wallace is to act as campaign chairman for the Scottish Liberal Democrats in the election, the party has announced. As PA Media reports, Scottish Lib Dem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said he has asked Lord Wallace – who twice served as acting first minister – to take charge of the campaign because “he is a proven election winner”.
More than 4,000 people have signed up to volunteer on Labour’s election campaign over the past 24 hours, Daniel Green reports at LabourList. He says the party now has almost 65,000 volunteers lined up to help.
Jo Churchill, the employment minister, has announced that she is standing down at the election for family reasons. She has been MP for Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk since 2015. She had a majority of almost 25,000 at the last election, making this a rare example of a Tory safe, or safeish, seat. (The YouGov MRP poll suggests the Conservatives are on course to hold it, beating Labour by 38% to 28%. The boundaries have changed a bit, and it is being renamed Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket.)
I informed the Prime Minister recently of my decision to stand down at the next election. It has been a privilege & honour to serve the people of Bury St Edmunds & Stowmarket.
I wish my successor all the best in representing this most wonderful part of our United Kingdom. pic.twitter.com/sQQ4dFnscb
— Jo Churchill MP (@Jochurchill_MP) May 23, 2024
The Institute for Government is keeping a tally of MPs standing down. Philip Nye, a data specialist at the IfG, had the total at 108 before Churchill’s announcement.
🗳️ We’ll be continuing to track MPs’ announcements of their intention to stand down until the deadline for submitting nomination papers (7 June)
Overnight we had two announcements from Labour MPs – Holly Lynch and Yvonne Fovargue – taking to total who’ve announced so far to 108 pic.twitter.com/xgOTV8OTdO
— Philip Nye (@philipnye) May 23, 2024
UPDATE: A reader points out that Churchill dated her letter a month ago, suggesting that she was asked to delay news of her decision to stand down. It has been reported that Tory whips did not want MPs all saying they were standing down at the same time because that would make it look as if they had all lost faith.
Plans for an independent regulator for English football will not proceed further through parliament, it is to be announced, with the football governance bill paused as a result of the general election. Paul MacInnes has the story.
James Cleverly claims ONS figures suggesting net migration falling shows Tory plan is working
The Office for National Statistics published figures this morning suggesting net migration is now on a downward trend. It says:
Long-term net migration (the number of people immigrating minus the number emigrating) was provisionally estimated to be 685,000 in the year ending (YE) December 2023, compared with our updated estimate of 764,000 for the YE December 2022; while it is too early to say if this is the start of a new downward trend, emigration increased in 2023, while new Home Office data show visa applications have fallen in recent months.
James Cleverly, the home secretary, said the figures showed the government’s plan was working. He explained:
The latest migration statistics show a 10% fall in net migration last year, with visa applications down 25% so far in 2024.
This shows the plan under Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives is working but there is more to do. That is why we must stick to the plan, not go back to square one.
But Yvette Cooper, his Labour shadow, said net migration had more than trebled since the Conservatives promised to bring it down at the 2019 election. She added:
14 years of Conservative failure on both the economy and immigration has led to around a 50% increase in work migration in the last year alone because they have disastrously failed to tackle skills shortages. The Tories can’t even manage to clean up their own chaos.
Simon Case tells Covid inquiry his scathing WhatsApp messages about Boris Johnson’s team ‘not the whole story’
Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, is giving evidence to the Covid inquiry today. He was meant to appear last year, but he was ill. The inquiry has already seen plenty of evidence from his private WhatsApp messages showing that he did not have a high opinion of the team running No 10 under Boris Johnson’s premiership. “I’ve never seen a bunch of people less well-equipped to run a country,” one of his messages said.
You can watch the hearing on the Covid inquiry’s YouTube channel.
Case started this morning by saying, in response to a question about his critical WhatsApp messages, that they did not tell the whole story.
They are very raw, in-the-moment human expressions – they’re not the whole story but I recognise they’re part of the story. Many of them now require apologies for things that I said and the way I expressed myself.
Case was also asked about a message where described colleagues as pygmies. This is from the BBC’s Jim Reed.
Now being asked about this WhatsApp exchange with other senior civil servant, Helen McNamara, in which Case describes the situation in Downing Street as “crisis + pygmies = toxic behaviour”. pic.twitter.com/JoQOvfByiV
— Jim Reed (@jim_reed) May 23, 2024
Asked if he was referring to people in the Cabinet Office and No 10 when he talked about pygmies, Case said that he could not remember, but that that would be “a fair conclusion to draw”
The Liberal Democrats have ruled out any pact that would keep the Tories in power, Daisy Cooper, their deputy leader, confirmed on Sky News this morning. She said:
We have ruled out doing any deal whatsoever with this Conservative Government because it is really quite clear that there are lifelong Conservative voters who can no longer stomach voting for this Conservative Party, they simply don’t recognise it anymore.
When it was put to her that Nick Clegg said the same thing before going into coalition with the Tories in 2010, Cooper replied: “A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then.”
Cooper did not rule out some sort of post-election arrangement with Labour.
