General election latest: Keir Starmer says UK will not rejoin EU

“And you know why? They actually want to get on, do well in life, and they can see that even getting a house, even renting anywhere, is now really hard for that generation.”

Keir Starmer has refused to rule out releasing high-risk prisoners less than halfway through their sentences. He admitted that Labour would inherit “a terrible state of affairs” with the prison overcrowding crisis if the party secures victory tomorrow, with jails days away from being full despite emergency measures being introduced by the government to ease the pressure.

Read in full: Starmer won’t rule out early release for high-risk prisoners

Sir Ed Davey has finished his action-packed election campaign by driving off in a pink Cadillac convertible as he urged voters to “get the Conservatives out”.

The Liberal Democrat leader was delivering a speech in Harpenden to party activists. He said: “Communities are angry. The water companies have been allowed to pour their filthy sewage into our rivers, lakes and on to our beaches. This has to change. The Conservatives have got to go. And in so many parts of our great United Kingdom the Liberal Democrats have shown that we are the party to get the Conservatives out.”

With Abba’s song Take a Chance on Me playing, Davey and Daisy Cooper, his deputy, sat in the back of the pink car as it left.

Labour is on track to win the largest majority of any party since 1832, a new poll has said.

In the final major poll before voters cast their ballots, YouGov said that Sir Keir Starmer’s party would win 431 seats — giving them a majority far surpassing Tony Blair’s in 1997. It said the Conservative Party would be the official opposition but left with just 102 seats — a loss of more than 250 seats compared to 2019.

If the YouGov poll is correct, Labour’s majority of 212 seats would only be eclipsed by the result achieved by the Whigs, led by The Earl Grey, who achieved a majority of 225 seats in 1832 — an election where women were barred from voting.

• Read in full: Labour set for biggest majority in modern history

Keir Starmer has said he can see “no circumstances” in which the UK will rejoin the EU’s single market, customs union or freedom of movement within his lifetime.

The Labour leader, who backed a second referendum as shadow Brexit secretary, said he believes he can negotiate better agreements. But asked whether he could see the UK rejoining the single market and customs union within his lifetime, Starmer told reporters: “No, I don’t think that that is going to happen. I’ve been really clear about not rejoining the EU, the single market or the customs union or returning to freedom of movement.

“I’ve been equally clear that I do think we can get a better deal than the botched deal we got under Boris Johnson on the trading front on research and development and on security. Now, obviously that’s subject to negotiation.”

Nigel Farage has defended his decision to appear alongside Derek Chisora, the boxer, at a campaign event in Clacton.

When the Reform leader was asked about Chisora’s conviction for assaulting a woman in 2010 and if he was a good role model for young men, he said: “You know what? You show me someone who’s lived a perfect life and never been in trouble. With these young kids here, he’s a fantastic role model.

“He’s got a huge following in the country and yeah, he is a good role model — imperfect as we all are.”

Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform, has blamed the party’s “structure” and “resources” for “letting some bad people in”.

Speaking in Clacton, Farage told PA: “It’s all gone wrong in the last few months because, frankly, Reform has not had the structure, the funding, the resources to field a sufficient number of candidates without letting some bad people in.”

Farage said it was a “regret” that he did not know “the extent of the problem” a month ago but he promised to sort it out. Pressed on whether he would stay on as Reform UK leader if he lost the seat in Clacton, he said: “If I lose the seat in Clacton I shall go out for a few pints and think about it but of course I will stay.”

Sir Keir Starmer said he was “delighted” to have received the backing of The Sun ahead of polls opening at 7am tomorrow.

Answering media questions after a stump speech in East Kilbride on the outskirts of Glasgow, the Labour leader said: “I’m delighted to have the support and the backing of The Sun. I think that shows just how much this is a changed Labour Party, back in the service of working people.”

He was speaking at the home of the Caledonia Gladiators, a basketball team in East Kilbride in South Lanarkshire.

The final poll released by Opinium has given the Labour Party a 20-point lead over the Conservatives.

Using a sample of 2,219 likely voters and with the fieldwork conducted from July 1 to July 3, Opinium has forecast the Conservative Party only to receive 21 per cent of the vote share.

Rishi Sunak has been making pretend pizzas with a reception class during a visit to Braishfield Primary School in Hampshire.

Sunak rolled balls of clay dough to add to the slice he and a young girl had made. He told the girl that pepperoni was his “favourite pizza”.

Sunak was told the price of the pizza was £5, to which he replied: “£5? This is a gourmet pizza.”

The Conservative Party are set for multiple Portillo moments, a More in Common MRP survey has forecasted.

The polling company has predicted that eight cabinet ministers will lose their seat, while the fate of Penny Mordaunt and Richard Holden is too close to call.

The poll was conducted from June 24 to July 1 and puts the Conservatives on 126 seats. It found that Labour will win a majority of 210 which would represent the largest in modern British history.

The cabinet ministers predicted to lose their seats include Jeremy Hunt, Grant Shapps, Alex Chalk, David TC Davies, Simon Hart, Victoria Prentis, Johnny Mercer and Michael Tomlinson.

Keir Starmer may be on course to win a historic landslide election tomorrow, but he has failed to win over the driver of the Labour campaign battle bus.

The driver said he would not be voting tomorrow as he will be away from home on a job and hadn’t arranged a proxy vote in time. But he said he wouldn’t have voted Labour anyway as he’s never liked their politics.

Keir Starmer has flown from Cardiff to Glasgow on the same private jet as the England football team used to fly to Germany for the European Championships last month.

The Labour leader sat in the same seat as Gareth Southgate in the front row. Starmer, a keen England and Arsenal fan, expressed delight when he was informed by The Times that he was on the same plane as the England players.

He is travelling to his penultimate campaign visit in Glasgow before holding a final rally in the West Midlands tonight.

Sir Keir Starmer has stepped up campaigning in what have previously been considered some of the safest Tory seats in the country during the course of the campaign, new analysis suggests.

The average Tory majority of seats Starmer visited in the first half of the campaign was around 8,500. But in the second three weeks, this has increased by more than 50 per cent to almost 13,000.

The Times has analysed more than 220 election campaign visits from the top four prominent politicians in both main parties — Rishi Sunak, Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, James Cleverly and Gillian Keegan for the Tories, and Starmer, Rachel Reeves, Yvette Cooper and Angela Rayner for Labour.

It shows that 92 per cent of seats visited by top Tories were won by the party in 2019 — compared with just 8 per cent for Labour. On average, the seats targeted are where there is a Tory majority of 10,000 votes.

If these become marginal seats tomorrow, the Tory to Labour swing would be around 20 per cent, far more than what is needed for the largest majority in modern history.

Britain’s most tattooed mum has backed Rishi Sunak’s favourite meal, according to the Telegraph.
Becky Holt, 36, was on ITV’s This Morning before the prime minister came on.

“I’m totally with him on sandwiches being the best,” she said. Holt said that her favourite sandwich is bacon, lettuce and tomato.

“Rishi Sunak was gorgeous, he had beautiful skin, lovely eyes and teeth — I’d love to give him a good sandwich,” she added.

Boris Johnson’s father has said he will not be voting for the Conservative Party, in footage posted by the Liberal Democrats’ candidate for Queen’s Park and Maida Vale.

Helen Baxter posted a video on Twitter/X which shows Stanley Johnson, a former MEP for the Conservative Party, saying he would be voting for her tomorrow.

Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign in Islington North has accused Labour’s candidate of being a “private healthcare profiteer” in election literature.

Praful Nargund, a Labour councillor who has made millions running a private IVF clinic, was accused by Corbyn’s team of not “showing up” to a council vote on a ceasefire in Gaza and supporting private healthcare within the NHS.

A document shows that Nargund did not attend a council meeting to vote on calling for a ceasefire on December 14 last year. The battle in north London is taking a more personal tone as Labour throws resources at the seat to oust the former party leader.

Rishi Sunak has taken part in events in 54 different constituencies since the first day of the election campaign, according to data compiled by PA media.

In nine of these seats, the Conservative Party has enormous majorities of more than 20,000 such as in Honiton & Sidmouth in Devon (26,227) and Thirsk & Malton in North Yorkshire (23,337).

By the end of today, Sir Keir Starmer is due to have visited 57 different seats and these include 43 being defended by the Conservatives.

Sir Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrats’ leader, has visited 49 different constituencies and 41 of these were previously held by the Conservatives.

If voters were entirely rational, then the release of parties’ manifestos would be the most important part of an election. In reality, how you vote is down to a whole range of factors, from party loyalty to whether we like our local MP. Sometimes the decision is made long before the manifestos are released.

But putting party and leader preferences aside, if the election were down to policies alone, how would you vote tomorrow?

We analysed the key pledges from the Labour, Tory, Lib Dem, Green and Reform manifestos, and built a quiz to sort Times readers between the five main national parties.

Read the full story here: Who should I vote for? 2024 election manifestos quiz

No criminal offences were committed by Reform UK activists campaigning for Nigel Farage who were filmed by an undercover journalist for Channel 4, Essex police said.

The force said in a statement: “Having assessed the comments made during a Channel 4 news programme, and all other information available to us, we have concluded that no criminal offences have taken place.”

The footage showed Andrew Parker using a racial slur about Rishi Sunak and suggesting that migrants arriving in the UK on small boats should be used as “target practice”.

Another activist described the Pride flag as “degenerate” and suggested that members of the LGBT community are paedophiles.

The Labour Party will launch a £15 billion tax raid on pensions, capital gains and inheritance in the autumn if the party wins a supermajority, Citi bank’s chief economist has warned.

Analysts at the investment bank Citi have said Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, was likely to bow to the demands for higher public spending, according to reports in The Telegraph.

Benjamin Nabarro, Citi’s chief UK economist, said the Labour Party would “ultimately tax and spend more than the current baseline”.

A combination of factors are causing problems. Holding a general election in the middle of the summer holiday season has led to an increase in demand for postal votes and logistical problems for councils that have to administer applications and print ballots.

Royal Mail is also struggling with poor performance. Only three quarters of first-class mail arrived on time over the past year. It says there have been delays specific to postal votes in a small number of areas.

Read the full story here: What to do if your postal vote ballot hasn’t arrived yet

Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer will discover the verdict of the voters in the hours after the polls close at 10pm on July 4, having spent six weeks trying to convince the electorate that they are best suited to leading the country.

Since Sunak called a snap general election — surprising even MPs in his own party — the Conservative Party’s campaign has faced a number of setbacks, including criticism of the prime minister leaving D-Day commemorations early and the revelations that those in Sunak’s inner circle were under investigation for alleged betting on the general election date.

The exit poll published at 10pm will provide a glimpse of what to expect nationally before the first results start to emerge.

Read the full story here: When will the election results be announced? Hour-by-hour timings

Boris Johnson still has “ambitions to return to No 10” and “lead the Conservative Party”, The Times’s political editor Steven Swinford has said.

Speaking to Times Radio, Swinford said “there was no love lost” between Sunak and Johnson, with the latter barely mentioning the prime minister.

Swinford said that Johnson has realised that if there is a “total wipeout” then the path of returning to No 10 is not possible.

• How Boris Johnson came to Rishi Sunak’s rescue — but no handshake

The Northern Ireland secretary said the Tories are “working to make sure the polls are wrong” after his colleague Mel Stride conceded a likely defeat.

Asked about the work and pensions secretary’s earlier comments, Chris Heaton-Harris told the BBC’s Politics Live: “What Mel said is that if the polls are right, then it will be a Labour supermajority. We are working to make sure the polls are wrong.”

Pushed on whether he agreed with Suella Braverman that the election is “over”, he said the polls “suggest we have lost” but “we need to win every vote to make sure Labour have an effective opposition”. There are “lots of votes at play”, he added.

The Lib Dems could become the third-largest party in parliament, Sir Ed Davey has said.

The Lib Dem leader told Times Radio that he believes there is “a chance of having a large number of Liberal Democrat MPs in the next parliament”.

He said: “We could become the third party and we can start winning those arguments because actually, in my experience in politics over a long time now, an effective opposition, a united party with a clear agenda on things like health and care, you can win the argument and change policy.”

Davey also said there were similarities between him and Sir Keir Starmer in that they had both turned their parties around.

“To get the Tories out” is one of the the main reasons that voters may back the Labour Party, a YouGov poll has shown.

In late June, the polling company asked 3,500 Britons who indicated that they intended to vote Labour what the one main or biggest reason for them doing so was. In response, 48 per cent — the highest percentage of respondents — said “to get the Tories out” was their main reason for backing the Labour Party.

A long way behind, 13 per cent said that “the country needs a change” was their main rationale for backing Labour.

Sir Keir Starmer has said his biggest fear on the final day of campaigning is that people will not feel the “necessity to go out and vote for change”.

After weeks of polling predicting a Labour landslide, he told Sky News: “This is not a done deal, we need to fight all the way through to 10pm tomorrow night.”

He said the “prize” on Thursday is a “historic change in direction for our country, to take our country forward” which will only happen “if you vote for it”.

Boris Johnson’s eleventh hour general election campaign intervention “won’t have done them any good at all”, Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform, has said.

Reacting to Johnson’s speech in London last night, Farage said: “He is the man with the big majority. He is the man that opened the door to mass migration. He is the guy that brought in loopy net zero policies.

“He is the man that couldn’t tell the truth to the House of Commons. He won’t have done them any good at all.”

A new Survation poll has shown the Labour Party’s lead over the Conservative Party has fallen by three points.

The polling company conducted a survey between June 26-July 2 on behalf of ITV’s Good Morning Britain which put Labour on 38 per cent and the Conservatives on 18 per cent.

The Conservative Party’s polling ratings have remained the same since Survation’s last poll. Reform UK was up by three points to 17 per cent.

The general election result is “not” a foregone conclusion, Rishi Sunak has insisted.

Asked about Mel Stride’s comments that the polls show the Conservatives will not win, Sunak told This Morning: “He wasn’t quite saying that. Actually, you know, what Mel was doing was warning of what a very large Labour majority, unchecked, would mean for people.”

Sunak referred to analysis which showed that 130,000 people “can make the difference”. “So, everyone watching who thinks, ‘oh, this is all a foregone conclusion’, it’s not,” he added.

Every vote counts on Thursday, but in the last days of campaigning it has felt like some count more than others.

To avoid an election disaster Rishi Sunak has set his sights on a few hundred thousand voters in some of the most marginal seats in the country.

Labour is on track for 425 seats, according to YouGov polls, even more than Tony Blair won in 1997. But in theory, just 130,000 voters could be the difference between a 200-seat Sir Keir Starmer majority and a hung parliament.

Read the full story here: How 100 marginal seats could dash Labour’s hopes of a supermajority

Sir Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrats’ leader, has said that his party is coming for the “blue wall across rural Britain”.

During a campaign stop to Chippenham, Davey jumped inside a yellow JCB tractor which had the phrase “he who dares wins” emblazoned across its window. Davey was taking part in a race across fields but stopped to speak to reporters.

“We’ve talked about the blue wall in the home counties, we’ve talked about the blue wall in the west country. This is the blue wall across rural Britain, and the yellow tractor is coming for it”, he said.

Davey said he was “really proud” of the campaign his party had run and was glad it had “brought the issue of caring out of the shadows”. He said: “We have made the argument that if you look after family carers, if you look after professional carers, you can rescue our NHS as well.”

Rishi Sunak will stick with his usual election tradition and will eat a “special election pie” from a butchers in his Richmond & Northallerton constituency.

When asked on ITV’s This Morning if he was planning to have a special dinner for election night he said that generally his “favourite meal” is “sandwiches”, after sharing his love for McDonald’s breakfast wraps on social media yesterday.

He revealed today that he would be getting a “pork pie with special chutney and cheese on top” for dinner this evening — as he has done before past elections.

Rishi Sunak said that “everyone is going to do this job in a different way” when asked about Sir Keir Starmer’s intention to not work Friday evenings if he becomes prime minister.

Speaking to ITV’s This Morning, the prime minister insisted that there was “always work to do” and “there are always decisions that need to be made”. He said he was “working his socks off” as prime minister.

The Labour Party is “plotting” a “hidden tax raid” which is not in their manifesto, Bim Afolami, the economic secretary to the treasury, has claimed.

After Pat McFadden, Labour’s national campaign co-ordinator, was quizzed over changes to inheritance tax, Afolami argued that a supermajority would mean Labour is “free” to “impose” a tax raid.

“Labour want an inheritance tax raid to ‘redistribute wealth’ because they do not think you have the right to pass your savings and your home onto your children,” Afolami said.

“With unchecked power, Labour will hike up taxes on your home, your pension, your savings, your children’s education and your work. The only way to protect your family finances is to vote Conservative on July 4,” he added.

A boat has been parked close to Starmer’s home in Kentish Town, north London, with daubed slogans stating Labour will spread “Sadiq Khan’s Ulez cash grab across Britain” and calling for people to “vote Reform”.

Reform UK told The Times the boat is not part of its official campaign.

Sir Keir Starmer has accused the Conservatives of “voter suppression” after a cabinet minister predicted Labour will win a record majority.

The Labour leader said that the Conservatives were “trying to dissuade people from voting” by pitching the election result is a foregone conclusion.

He was responding to comments made by Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, who told broadcasters this morning that Labour is likely to win “the largest majority any party has ever achieved”.

Starmer said: “You can see what the Tories are up to. They’re trying to invite people not to exercise their democratic right to go out and vote, trying to dissuade people from voting. That is a terrible place for the Tory party to have got to.

“A once respected party is now saying with 24 hours to go nothing that is positive, everything is negative, effectively, to run a campaign to suppress the vote.”

Sir Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrats leader, has been pictured riding a vintage car during a visit to Owl Lodge in Lacock, Wiltshire, on the last day of campaigning before the general election.

The Lib Dems have leaned into the more jovial nature of their leader’s campaign — posting a clip of him falling off a surfboard into the sea with “one day left to make a splash” as the caption.

Sir Keir Starmer said he is “not worried in the slightest” about Boris Johnson’s last-minute return to the Conservative campaign.

He mocked the Conservatives for wheeling out the former prime minister with just 24 hours to go after being absent from the rest of the campaign.

The Labour leader pointed out that Rishi Sunak had David Cameron at his side at a campaign rally on the day he announced the election in May and joked that the prime minister would unveil Liz Truss this afternoon to book-end his campaign.

Starmer said: “I’m only assuming that sometime about lunchtime today there’ll be a joint press conference with Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak on economic stability.”

Asked whether he was worried that Johnson’s return would dent Labour’s chances at tomorrow’s election given his appeal to voters, Sunak said: “I’m not worried in the slightest.”

Gordon Brown, the former prime minister, has called on voters to “reject the Farage version of Britain” and to “get our real country back”.

Writing in the Guardian, Brown accused the Conservative Party of “pandering to Farage” and he argued that a “new and wholly inaccurate history of Britain is being written by Farage and his friends”.

Setting out the case for a Labour government, Brown said: “A Labour government can heighten co-operation across borders to resolve international crises from pollution to pandemics, from poverty to migration, from financial instability to international terrorism.”

Sir Keir Starmer has started his final day of campaigning in Carmarthen in South Wales where he promised to work in close partnership with the Welsh government.

He was appearing in a converted barn on a farm alongside Vaughan Gething, the Welsh first minister, who lost a no confidence vote in the Welsh parliament last month.

Starmer said that a Labour victory would ensure the two governments work better together “to deliver for Wales and that is an incredible opportunity”.

However, in a bid to maximise his voteshare tomorrow, Starmer said: “There are a lot of undecided voters right now … people need convincing that change is possible.”

Starmer repeated his well-oiled campaign message, urging voters to “turn a page and start to rebuild with Labour.”

Kemi Badenoch may be unable to stand in a future Conservative leadership contest because of delays in sending out postal votes in her constituency.

Dozens of councils have implemented emergency measures such as delivering postal votes by hand after complaints that ballot papers have failed to arrive on time and that some people will be left unable to vote.

Both Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer have raised concerns about the delays.

Read the full story here: Postal vote delays could bar Badenoch from Tory leadership race

Labour Party activists and Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, waited patiently for the imminent arrival of Sir Keir Starmer ahead of his first campaign event today.

People stood holding red signs which have the Welsh flag and the slogan “change” emblazoned on them.

Pat McFadden, Labour’s campaign co-ordinator, said a leaked recording of a Labour frontbencher did not suggest he wanted to make changes to inheritance tax.

The shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was responding to reports in The Telegraph that Darren Jones, the shadow chief secretary of the Treasury, had said he expected the “political consensus” to be that inheritance tax should be used to address “inter-generational inequality”.

McFadden told LBC: “There’s nothing in the story to suggest he wants to change it. Our emphasis all along throughout this long six-week campaign has been on economic growth, not increasing taxes, and I’ve answered lots of questions on this and the answer remains today as it was at the beginning.”

Sir Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrats’ leader, has “really taken himself not very seriously” to “shine a spotlight on serious issues”, Munira Wilson, the party’s education spokeswoman, has said.

Speaking to Nick Ferrari on LBC, Wilson was asked whether Davey’s “boogie boarding to bungee jumping” campaign had worked.

“Well, we’re all talking about it and we are talking about the issues”, she said. These issues include health, social care, sewage in rivers and seas, and the “challenge with the cost of living that people are facing right across the country”.

Wilson said politicians were guilty “too often” of taking themselves too seriously and she insisted that Davey had struck the right balance.

Calling the result of the election the day before polling opens is “disrespectful to the electorate,” Pat McFadden said.

Labour’s national campaign co-ordinator told LBC that the Conservatives effectively conceding the election was premature.

He said: “I think all of it is disrespectful to the electorate, it’s the voters who get to decide, the Tories don’t get to call the outcome, and you’re tempted to ask what is the precise number of Labour MPs that the Tory party thinks we’re allowed to have?

“I want the campaign that I’ve been working on to keep going until 10 o’clock tomorrow night to show respect for the voters by going out there and knocking on doors and making phone calls and all the things that we do in the British electoral tradition to try to get a the vote out. The voters get to decide, that’s the whole point of this.”

Boris Johnson’s appearance at a Conservative Party campaign rally last night is an “insult”, Daisy Cooper, the Liberal Democrats’ deputy leader, has said.

Johnson joined the election campaign at the eleventh hour to warn that a Labour Party landslide is “pregnant with horrors” and he called Nigel Farage a “Kremlin crawler”.

Cooper said Johnson’s intervention in the campaign was an “insult to everyone who made heartbreaking sacrifices during the pandemic”.

“Rishi Sunak has reached a desperate new low, turning to a man who discredited the office of prime minister and lied to the country time after time”, she added, saying it was time to “boot out this tired and sleaze ridden Conservative Party”.

Labour’s national campaign co-ordinator was asked on ITV’s Good Morning Britain if the party would rule out “any changes to inheritance tax, including any changes to the threshold at which it comes in”.

Pat McFadden told the programme: “We’ve said that nothing in our manifesto requires us to raise any taxes beyond the very specific things that we’ve set out in the manifesto, and that remains our position on this and everything else.”

McFadden was asked if the party would consider revising its position on inheritance tax if it does not get the growth needed to “pay for all the measures”. He replied: “Well, you’re asking me to admit defeat on the growth front before the election has even taken place, so you might not be surprised to know that’s not something I want to do.”

The Labour Party is considering an inheritance tax raid in order to “redistribute” wealth, a leaked recording of a shadow frontbencher has revealed.

Darren Jones, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said in a recording obtained by The Telegraph: “We’ve had a bit of a debate [on inheritance tax] in Westminster because there were some plans to abolish it.

“We do think the inheritance tax regime — even though some people say it’s unfair because they say it’s a double taxation — for the inter-generational inequality point we think it’s important that inheritance tax remains because it does allow you to get some of that value back in, to be able to redistribute across generations.”

The Labour Party has refused to rule out increases in inheritance tax throughout the election campaign.

Rishi Sunak’s accusation of racism against Reform candidates looks “less powerful” after the Conservatives were “perfectly happy” to take millions of pounds from Frank Hester, Suella Braverman has said.

Writing in The Telegraph, Braverman said that it had been right to “call out” racist campaigning by Reform candidates, but Sunak’s words looked hypocritical when the party was happy for Hester’s remarks about Diane Abbott to be “glossed over in the name of filling our party coffers”.

“Whatever the ‘smartest men in the room’ may privately think, the public are not in fact mugs”, she writes.

Labour’s Pat McFadden has said he is “proud” of his party’s campaign, despite being accused of using potentially misleading figures.

Labour said that the Conservative’s manifesto would cost British homeowners £4,800 on their mortgages — a figure based on Labour assumptions for how much the Tories would borrow and how that would affect Bank of England interest rates.

The number is a cumulative figure, not an annual one, which the statistics regulator advises against parties using. Labour promised in its manifesto to “ensure the highest standards of integrity and honesty” at all times.

McFadden, the campaign director, a key member of Starmer’s inner circle, said on the BBC’s Today programme that the figure “does correspond” to his party’s message of change and said he was happy with the shadow chancellor using the figure.

Voters will “regret” handing Labour a majority which allows the party to be “untrammelled” in government, the work and pensions secretary warned.

He said that if about 130,000 people in about 100 seats who might be considering voting Reform or Liberal Democrat instead gave their vote to the Tories, it would help to give parliament a more robust opposition.

“I’m really worried about an untrammelled Labour Party in power and that really needs to be checked, and people will regret it if we don’t have that, I think,” Mel Stride told LBC.

Mel Stride has warned that a large Labour majority would mean “a government that is not being held to account”.

The work and pensions secretary told Times Radio: “Unless those polls are very extraordinarily wrong, we’re not only going to get a Labour government, we’re going to get a kind of supermajority, which is going to be this country with effectively a government that is not being held to account because the opposition is too small, too marginalised, too weak.

“And what we have to have is some balance within our parliament And I think that is genuinely what is in play now. This is going to matter for five, maybe ten years. You’re going to currently be looking at a huge supermajority for Labour, the likes of which we’ve never seen.”

Mel Stride has said he thinks “many” public services in the UK have improved after 14 years of Tory rule.

Asked whether he thinks public services are better than they were in 2010, the work and pensions secretary told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Yes, I think many of them absolutely are, despite Covid and the pressures that we faced with inflation, because of the war in Ukraine, etc.”

He cited education, saying “we have the best readers now in the western world”, and said that there were 200,000 fewer pensioners in poverty than under the last Labour government.

He also told Sky News: “We’ve found the resources to put pensions up by about 10 per cent … I’m proud of the fact that 200,000 fewer pensioners are in poverty now since the last Labour government when we had the fourth highest level of pensioner poverty in Europe.”

Mel Stride has conceded a likely defeat for the Conservatives the day before polling opens. The work and pensions secretary insisted that he was still “fighting for every vote” but he said Labour was likely to win “the largest landslide that any political party has achieved”.

Stride said: “We are where we are.” He told LBC people wanted change and added: “You can have that change because boy that change is coming, okay? We’re talking about a very significant landslide for the Labour Party, and you’re going to get change.”

However, he said voters could also have a “hardworking” MP by backing their local Conservative candidate.

Sir Keir Starmer is visiting seats currently held by the Conservatives, SNP and Plaid Cymru today as he attempts to make a final pitch as a leader who can appeal to a broad church of voters.

Over the last two days he has focused on Tory seats, predominantly strongholds with majorities ranging from 10,000-18,000.

Yesterday he visited Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire, the North East Derbyshire seat and Cannock Chase in Staffordshire.

Starmer has notably tended to avoid Liberal Democrat target seats in an unspoken pact that is aimed at ousting as many Conservative MPs as possible.

Labour’s national campaign co-ordinator said he had “had boiled eggs that have lasted longer” than Boris Johnson’s appearance for the Tories last night.

Pat McFadden told Times Radio it was “all quite late for Boris to be throwing his weight” behind the campaign when “even the dogs in the street know there’s not a lot of love lost there”.

Asked if he would have feared Johnson on the campaign trail, McFadden said the former prime minister had “destroyed his credibility”.

He said: “I’ve had boiled eggs that have lasted longer than this show of unity. And almost before he was finished speaking we had Suella Braverman in the Telegraph saying that it had all been a terrible mess and so on. And I think maybe that is the Conservatives’ problem.”

Sunak will be visiting a school in Hampshire today in a once staunchly Tory constituency where Conservative leaders have rarely bothered to visit.

A look at where Sunak has been choosing to go in the last week of the election reveals the extent to which the prime minister is on the defensive.

Sir Keir Starmer is starting his whistle-stop tour of the UK in South Wales as the final day of campaigning gets under way.

He will then dash on a private jet with the travelling press pack to Glasgow before travelling to the West Midlands for a final rally this evening as he completes his three-nation tour of the UK.

Starmer will be hoping his cautious Ming vase strategy will survive a final day to complete a campaign without the kind of unforced errors suffered by the Conservative party.

His carefully stage-managed campaign is a far cry from the two previous Labour election campaigns, with Jeremy Corbyn preferring to travel by train and holding mass rallies and spontaneous walkabouts across the UK.

A former Conservative minister has said the Tories could not have organised Reform “sleeper cells” pointing to reports that the party “couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery”.

Reform has accused the Tories of planting candidates in Nigel Farage’s party with the plan they would defect at a late stage in the election, after two of Reform’s picks quit to back the Conservatives.

However, James Heappey, the former defence minister, told GB News: “By all accounts in the media, five weeks ago, the political operation in No 10 couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery. But somehow they were able to place sleeper cells into Reform months ago that were going to self destruct at a moment of Rishi Sunak saying? Come on. What nonsense.”

Rishi Sunak’s campaign however suffered a blow after he was attacked by his former home secretary in a newspaper article.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Suella Braverman, who sacked by Sunak in 2023, said that a Labour government is now almost inevitable and the Conservative Party is losing votes to Reform UK. “Why? Because we failed to cut immigration or tax, or deal with the net zero and woke policies we have presided over for 14 years.

“In house after house, lifelong Conservatives are furious with our party. At worst, they feel betrayed and politically homeless. At best, they are torn about how to vote — hence the large number of undecided voters at this stage in the campaign. They feel as if we haven’t delivered for them on things they voted for time and time again.

“Thursday’s vote is now all about forming a strong enough opposition,” she wrote. “One needs to read the writing on the wall: it’s over, and we need to prepare for the reality and frustration of opposition.”

Handing Labour a supermajority would put the country in a “very perilous situation”, Mel Stride has warned.

The work and pensions secretary told Times Radio that Labour was looking at “having the largest landslide in democratic history with a very, very weak and marginalised opposition”. He suggested his party was the only one that could “hold this (Labour) government to account”.

He added that “there will be plenty of time” for “post-mortems” of the Conservatives’ performance after polling day, as well as “where the party goes in the future”.

Asked if he thought there was anything the Conservatives could have done to increase support, Stride said: “Tempted though I am to come up with all sorts of speculations on this, I think we need to get through and out the other side of the general election tomorrow, and then there will be plenty of time for us to do post-mortems and dissect what should or shouldn’t have been done in the past, or importantly where the party goes in the future.”

Rishi Sunak’s decision to hold an election in July is the reason why the Conservative party is facing an electoral wipeout, George Osbourne has said.

Speaking on his Political Currency podcast, the former chancellor said that if the Tories had changed leader that person would have almost certainly waited till the latest possible moment to call an election — which Osbourne sees as the main reason the Conservatives are doing so badly in the polls.

He said he had not met a cabinet minister who did not think an early election was a “really daft idea”, and that there will be discussion about the decision if the Tories lose the election on Thursday.

It had to be a wind-up, didn’t it? Come on. It’s been consistently speculated since the moment Rishi Sunak wandered out of No 10 and into the middle of his own private thunderstorm that the whole campaign has been one long wind-up. A political Brewster’s Millions; a giant bet to see by how much they can possibly lose. That line was doing the rounds, by the way, long before the campaign really did turn into a giant betting scandal.

But this was the big moment. News of what was about to happen was circulating the room for 20 minutes or so beforehand. There were only about 100 people there, and each time the bombshell made its whispered way into a fresh set of earholes, the reaction was the same: a B-bomb followed by an f-bomb, followed by “off”. “Boris?!” You now know the rest.

Read the full story here: Could Boris Bellingham turn it around at the last minute?

The appearance of Boris Johnson is an attempt by the Conservative Party to win back their 2019 voters who may be tempted to switch to Reform UK.

An analysis of YouGov’s MRP poll finds that there are about 810,000 people in the 100 tightest seats planning to vote Reform.

To deprive Labour of a majority, Sunak would need about 337,000 of them to switch to the Tories, about 0.7 per cent of the electorate.

This is higher than the number of Labour voters that Sunak would need for the same result — as those moving from Starmer’s party effectively count double by reducing Labour votes.

The prime minister’s speech today comes after a surprise appearance by Boris Johnson at a general election campaign event.

The 2019 election winner did not appear on stage with Sunak but said he was invited by his former chancellor. “When Rishi asked me to come and help of course I couldn’t say no. We’re all here because we love our country,” he said.

He also urged against traditional Conservative voters from backing Reform, adding: “Don’t let the Putinistas deliver the Corbynistas.”

The prime minister will visit Hampshire today as he makes a final plea for voters not to hand Sir Keir Starmer a “supermajority” to govern.

Rishi Sunak said a vote for any party other than his own could secure Labour a bigger majority.

“Only we Conservatives can stand up to Labour,” he is expected to say. “So, if you are one of those 130,000 voters who could stop a Labour supermajority, lend us your support. For we are the only party that can stop a supermajority and stand up to Labour.”

Sir Keir Starmer will visit three of the four home nations today as he aims to secure his party’s return to power.

The Labour leader will begin in southwest Wales, where he will give a speech to party activists calling for change.

By lunchtime he will go to Lanarkshire in Scotland and his day concludes with a trip to the West Midlands. He is expected to sell Labour’s first six steps for government and will warn of the risk of another period of Conservative rule.