General election latest: Reform will be the leading opposition, says Farage

A vote for the Greens is not a wasted one because it would show support for the party’s policies and principles even though they may only win a couple of seats, one of their candidates has said.

Siân Berry, who is standing to replace the long-time Green MP Caroline Lucas in Brighton Pavilion, said the party would make the case for policies such as a wealth tax to better fund the NHS. She said it was a certainty that Labour would have a commanding majority but that the health service would continue to falter unless it received more money. Labour has committed to no tax rises on working people.

Berry told Times Radio the Greens would receive a substantial share of the popular vote and that they would be in parliament to “represent majority opinions on things like the public ownership of our utilities — that’s not something Labour are promising”.

Anyone “motivated by hatred or loathing of others” should leave Reform UK, Nigel Farage said.

He claimed racist comments made by a Reform UK canvasser were part of a “smear campaign” against the party as he promised the “bad apples are gone” and “we’ll never have them back”.

He told the party’s rally in Birmingham: “Have we had a few bad apples? We have, although to my knowledge nobody involved in an organised betting ring is standing for us, which is something.”

Some people have called Reform “nasty names”, he said, but “none of those people with those tendencies are welcome in this party, none of them.

“And if anybody in this room is motivated by hatred or loathing of other because they’re different, I invite you to leave the room now. Let’s tell people who we are.”

In its leader column today, The Sunday Times wrote that after years of political chaos Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt “have ultimately been unable either to repair the damage done to the Tories’ electoral fortunes or to unite their fractious colleagues”. “The Conservatives have in effect forfeited the right to govern,” the article says. In opposition, they “must rediscover the principles that made them a natural party of government before the Brexit wars — fiscal responsibility, tolerance, free speech and respect for traditions and institutions”.

While Sir Keir Starmer has much to prove, “it is now the right time for Labour to be entrusted with restoring competence to government”.

Nigel Farage has suggested that Reform UK could pick up millions of votes over the next four days.

The Reform leader said “many, many millions have already said that they absolutely are going to vote for us, but there are many millions more who have simply not made up their minds”.

Farage said: “Everywhere I go, I sense that we’re the story.”

Reform would be “the leading voice of opposition”, he claimed. “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.”

Britain is in societal and cultural “decline”, Nigel Farage has said, as he claimed the country has “forgotten what it is”.

Addressing a crowd at the Reform UK rally in Birmingham, the party leader said that people were getting poorer, that there were “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”.

Britain is a “country that has forgotten what it is”, he added. “A country that’s forgotten where we come from, a country that doesn’t seem to value our culture, our inheritance of what we wish to pass on for our children — so I felt I couldn’t stand aside with all these things going on.”

Supporters at the Reform rally in Birmingham show their love of Nigel Farage

HOLLIE ADAMS/REUTERS

Reform UK is “powered by love” and built on courage, one of the party’s largest donors has claimed.

Zia Yusuf, an entrepreneur, claimed that political “elites” had “catastrophically failed” the country. He said: “To our young people, I say you are being betrayed, you are being robbed of a fair opportunity.

“We have been failed by our incompetent political leaders. It does not have to be this way.”

To loud applause, Yusuf, who co-founded Velocity Black, a luxury concierge service, added: “Thankfully we have an ace up our sleeve — in Nigel Farage we have a real leader.”

• The key policies in Reform’s ‘contract’ — our experts’ verdict

Ann Widdecombe said Reform could be the official opposition after the election

HOLLIE ADAMS/REUTERS

Ann Widdecombe has said Reform UK would would “bring common sense back to Britain” and “get rid of woke”.

She told thousands of Reform supporters at a rally in Birmingham: “We stand for two words above all — common sense.”

After accusing the Tories of putting all their “eggs in the Rwanda basket”, Widdecombe said there was no reason why Reform UK should not form the official opposition following the general election.

The number of senior Conservative MPs projected to lose their seats is “too many to get your head round”, said Scarlett Maguire of JL Partners.

The pollster told Times Radio: “If you take into account who will lose their seats along with who has already announced they will be stepping down, you really are left with, first, a small Conservative Party, with, you know, just 105 seats, but one that also doesn’t have that many familiar faces in it.”

The company’s latest poll suggests that several cabinet members are heading for defeat, including Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, Lucy Frazer, the culture secretary, Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, and Michelle Donelan, the science and technology secretary.

Labour could win a record majority with a smaller share of the popular vote than Jeremy Corbyn had in 2017, a polling expert said.

Scarlett Maguire, a director at the opinion research company JL Partners, said they were “confident” in their projection of a Labour majority of 250 despite the small margins involved in many constituencies.

“I think we’re going to wake up [on the morning after election day] with an odd picture of results,” she told Times Radio. “Reform will get millions and millions of votes if we believe the polls at the moment and might end up with just a couple of MPs. Labour might well get less of the popular vote than Jeremy Corbyn did in 2017, but end up with a record majority.”

Other polling experts, such as Sir John Curtice and Peter Kellner, the founder of YouGov, have predicted a smaller Labour majority of 150.

• John Curtice: Tories under threat from tactical voters and unpopular leaders
• Peter Kellener’s election predictions: Reform falls away and a 150 Labour majority

Sir Ed Davey makes a splash in Cheltenham

DINENDRA HARIA/LNP

Sir Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, started his day in Cheltenham. The party has made sewage and river pollution a large part of its campaign, but Davey was in the clean waters of Sandford Parks Lido, where he took part in some aqua aerobics.

The party has also been highlighting its proposal for a patients’ charter, granting legal rights to appointments and treatments in specified timeframes.

Labour is “committed to building all over the green belt”, Oliver Dowden claimed as he appealed to voters who are worried about the impact of housebuilding on the British countryside.

The deputy prime minister pointed to today’s Sunday Times story about Sir Keir Starmer’s plans to turbocharge housebuilding “from day one” of a Labour government, which would include include a council-led review of green belt land.

Dowden suggested that this meant Labour would “destroy” the green belt by “redesignating large chunks of it as grey belt”. He told Times Radio that the Conservatives would also build more houses but added: “We are not going to start destroying the green belt because it’s essential to the character of our towns and villages.”

The boat filled with dummies was launched during Idles’ set

Oliver Dowden has said he was “saddened” by a boat full of dummy migrants being passed around the crowd at Glastonbury.

Banksy, the street and performance artist, was behind the stunt during Idles’ set at the festival last night.

The deputy prime minister told Times Radio: “I was really saddened by it actually … I don’t think that is the sort of thing to joke around with at Glastonbury, and I think its pretty disappointing.”

What fun does Sir Ed Davey have planned for today? In recent photo opportunities he has had a go at archery and a spot of painting as he continues his tour of target seats across England.

Today he is due to visit Cheltenham in Gloucestershire, Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, and Bicester in Oxfordshire.

Nigel Farage suggested his success in marginalising the British National Party meant some of its supporters had moved towards Reform.

Farage, the Reform UK leader, told Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips: “You know that I’ve fought harder than anyone to drive the BNP out as an electoral force and I did so … with considerable success.

“Ironically, destroying the BNP means people who are minded that way don’t any longer have a home to go to, and so some will gravitate in our direction and [when] we find out who they are they’ll be gone.”

Rishi Sunak has said he “hated” calling out the Reform UK canvasser who referred to him as a “f***ing P***” but it was important to do so on behalf of “everyone who’s experienced racism like that”.

The prime minister said that “anyone who comes into politics is ready to accept a degree of criticism, that comes with the territory and that’s fine, but in this instance what was said was deeply inappropriate and racist”.

He said he “deliberately” called out the remarks and had been hurt by them. “I hated doing it, but I thought it was important to say it, to call out what it was,” he said.

He added that the activist had “only apologised to the Reform Party for the impact it’s had on them”. He said: “Nigel Farage has just described these comments as inappropriate. They’re not inappropriate, they were vile and racist and wrong.”

Rishi Sunak has said he believes he will still be prime minister on Friday.

Sunak told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg programme he was proud of the Conservatives’ campaign, which has been damaged by multiple gaffes. He said: “This campaign has shone a spotlight on the fact that a Labour government is going to raise everyone’s taxes and they’re not being straight with everyone about it.”

Asked if he would be prime minister on Friday, he said: “Yes, I’m fighting very hard.”

Nigel Farage was speaking when a banner descended from the ceiling

Nigel Farage was interrupted by the appearance of President Putin as he addressed a party rally in Essex last night.

The Reform leader was speaking to supporters at the Columbine Centre, a function room in Walton-on-the-Naze, when a banner showing the Russian leader above the caption “I heart Nigel” slowly descended from the ceiling behind him. Farage has said he admired Putin as a “political operator”, and that the West provoked Russia to invade Ukraine.

Farage demanded “Who put that up there?” He added: “Someone at the Columbine Centre needs to get the sack.” Staff attempted to remove the banner as the audience chanted “Rip it down”.

• Letters to the Editor: Farage damned by praise for Putin

Nigel Farage has repeated his claim that a Reform UK canvasser who called for migrants crossing the Channel to be used as “target practice” was an actor.

When challenged that “all sorts of people are actors”, on Sky’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips, the Reform UK leader said of the canvasser who was filmed by an undercover reporter: “He’s an actor — a rather well-spoken actor — but he has an alter ego. He does what he calls ‘rough speaking’.

“I was there working in the office in Essex when he turned up and he was, from the moment he walked through the room, like a version of Alf Garnett [a character from the 1960s sitcom Till Death Us Do Part who used racist slurs].

“Now, I didn’t know this was an act. It was an act from the start to the end.”

The prime minister has said a “declinist narrative” about Britain is “total nonsense”.

Rishi Sunak insisted the UK was a better place to live than it was in 2010 when the Conservatives came to power, and told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg there had been improvements in the country under his leadership, citing investment in electric vehicles and attracting big businesses. “People are queuing up to work with us,” he said.

Sunak was shown a series of comments from member of the public claiming nothing in the country was working. In response he pledged that the Conservatives would cut taxes.

Sir Keir Starmer, with his wife, Victoria, begins his final week of campaigning

TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JACK HILL

Labour’s campaign chief has said he is “assuming nothing” about the outcome of the election.

Pat McFadden told Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips on Sky News that Labour had a “good possibility” of winning but “change will only come if people vote for it”. He said: “I don’t want anyone to think that the outcome of the election is predetermined.”

Asked if Labour would owe thanks to Nigel Farage for splitting the Tory vote, McFadden said: “I don’t think we will owe anything to anyone other than the voters themselves.”

The Conservative party’s worst general election performance came in 1906 when they lost 246 seats and ended up with 156 (Tim Shipman writes). In the Blair landslide of 1997, the Tories were left with 165 seats.

The only performance that was as comparably catastrophic came in the 1931 general election, where Labour, under Arthur Henderson, lost 235 seats, finishing on 52.

MRP super-polls, several of which in recent weeks have suggested big majorities for Labour, map the state of the parties onto the specific demographics of individual constituencies to get a more accurate idea of who will win each seat (Tim Shipman writes).

James Johnson, Theresa May’s former pollster in Downing Street and founder of JL Partners, has gone further, creating an “SRP”, a “stratified” version of an MRP, which uses multiple models, rather than just one. Using AI the models can learn from each other to improve their accuracy and that of the final result.

Johnson said the situation was still volatile, with a higher than usual number of undecided voters. But his models give the range of Tory seats from 81 to 139. There were 77 marginal seats where the Conservatives were second, less than five points behind.

The poll by JL Partners suggests that Nigel Farage’s Reform UK will have only two MPs — Farage himself in Clacton and Lee Anderson, who defected from the Tories and is expected to hold his seat in Ashfield (Tim Shipman writes).

Reform’s performance is a large factor in the Tory decline. The party is predicted to secure 17 per cent of the vote, four points more than the Lib Dems, collapsing the Conservative vote in dozens of seats and allowing Labour in.

Several senior Tories are predicted to lose their seats including Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, the leadership contenders Penny Mordaunt and Grant Shapps, and other cabinet ministers including Lucy Frazer, Mel Stride, Alex Chalk, Michelle Donelan, Mark Harper, Andrew Mitchell, Esther McVey and Victoria Prentis.

The Conservatives are on course for the worst general election performance in their history, according to a new poll predicting a Labour majority of 250 after Thursday’s general election (Tim Shipman writes).

Sir Keir Starmer’s party would win 450 seats, 32 more than Tony Blair in his 1997 landslide, pitching the Tories to the brink of political irrelevance. The poll by JL Partners suggests Rishi Sunak is leading his party to the loss of 260 seats, the greatest electoral loss of modern times.

The SNP would also haemorrhage seats, from 48 in 2019 to a projected 15 on 4 July with Labour regaining much of the central belt of Scotland. The Liberal Democrats would increase their MPs from 11 to 55, making them the third largest force in British politics again.

Oliver Dowden has warned that voters must be careful when viewing political content on social media as he warned of the threat of Russian interference.

The deputy prime minister told Sky News there was a “threat of Russian state interference in our elections”. He said: “It should just be a salutary reminder for all of us, when you engage on social media are these people that you think are posting, are they real? Or are they bots generated by hostile state actors?”

• Deputy PM’s ‘grave concerns’ that Russians are boosting Nigel Farage’s Reform

Dowden also said he was “deeply saddened” by the language used by some Reform canvassers about the prime minister — one called Rishi Sunak a “f***ing P***”. He said: “I grew up in the 1980s and I thought the use of the P word was long behind us.” He said he had been “quite heartened” by the condemnation across the political spectrum.

Rishi Sunak warned voters they had just four days left to “save the country” as pollsters predicted Labour were on course to win a landslide victory on July 4 (Peter Stubley writes).

The prime minister claimed Sir Keir Starmer would cause “irreversible damage” to the UK in his first 100 days in power. He said Starmer would raise taxes across the board and “bankrupt every generation” if elected. Sunak told The Sunday Telegraph: “I’d say to everyone we’ve got four days to save the country from the danger of what a Labour government would mean. I say to people: Don’t surrender to it.”