General election live: Party leaders battle for votes on eve of election as Tory minister predicts Labour landslide | General election 2024

It is assumed that Boris Johnson might appeal to former Tory voters who are inclined to vote for Reform UK. But, as the Telegraph reports, Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has claimed that Johnson’s appearance at a campaign event last night (see 10.48am) won’t help the Tories. Farage told TalkTV:

[Johnson] 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.

One of the Sun’s leading articles today says, if Labour does win, the first crisis it will face could be caused by jail overcrowding. Labour should start building new prisons immediately, it says.

The Institute for Goverment has published a report on just this topic today. Like the Sun, it says the crisis will hit Labour immediately, because jails in England and Wales are just days away from being full. But, unlike the Sun, it says the new government will have to create space by ensuring fewer people get locked up. Here are some of the options it recommends.

-Lowering the point of automatic release for most offenders (not serious violent or sexual offenders) from 50% through their sentence to 40-45% – this option is likely to be necessary to deliver the sufficient space in the available time even if other options are also used.

-Introducing a queuing system for immediate custodial sentences, so that lower-risk offenders do not go to prison straightaway but begin their sentence under house arrest until a prison space becomes available.

-Allowing sentences up to three years – up from two – to be suspended, meaning the offender does not have to go to prison as long as they do not commit any further offences and abide by any conditions attached.

-Reducing or removing supervision post-release for offenders serving sentences under 12 months would substantially cut the number of recalls.

The Evening Standard has endorsed Labour.

But two other London-based newspapers have conspicuously failed to endorse any party (yet?). There has been considerable interest in what the Sun and the Times, which are both owned by Rupert Murdoch, might do. In the past the Sun in particular sought to make its endorsement a big political story, and under Murdoch it has always backed the winner.

But it has not come down on one side or the other during the campaign, and today its leader articles barely mention the election. The Times has published a long leader which does not endorse the Tories, but which does largely praise Rishi Sunak. It says Labour will win because “the Herculean task of restoring [the Conservative party’s] reputation for competence and probity was beyond him.”

Ben Quinn

Laurence Fox, the former actor and leader of the Reclaim party, has urged its supporters to vote for Reform UK in order the maximise the loss suffered by the Conservative party.

While Reclaim’s support is negligible, it has been the recipient of a large amount of funding by the former Tory donor Jeremy Hosking, who gave to £1,153,300 in donations to the party in 2021. For a period, the former Tory Andrew Bridgen was a Reclaim MP.

Fox, who joined the far-right activist Tommy Robinson on stage during a St George’s Day event in central London in April, used an email to supporters to praise Nigel Farage for “energising” the campaign and showing up the other political leaders as “dull or cringeworthy”. He went on:

I was keen to write to you and say that I believe Reclaim’s interests are being unequivocally furthered by Nigel in this election. As a result, I am delighted to tell you I am an enthusiastic voter for Reform on Thursday.

Rishi Sunak has dismissed claims that the election is all over, arguing that the votes of just 130,000 people could be enough to deprive Labour of a majority.

Speaking on ITV’s This Morning, where it was put to him that Mel Stride has already, in effect, conceded the election is over (see 8.43am), Sunak replied:

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.”

I’m fighting hard for every vote. Here’s what I’d say … We just saw some analysis which showed that just 130,000 people can make the difference in this election. So, everyone watching who thinks, ‘oh, this is all a foregone conclusion’, it’s not.

The Tories have repeatedly claimed that just 130,000 votes could change the results in more than 100 constituencies. They say this would mark the “difference between a supermajority and no majority.”.

They justify this claim by citing an analysis published by the Times last month. Using figures from a YouGov MRP poll, the Times said:

Sir Keir Starmer is on course for a landslide victory, but Labour’s vote is so narrowly distributed that even a small swing could have dramatic consequences in terms of the number of seats the party wins, with one shadow cabinet minister warning that the election was “not a done deal”.

Just 34,000 swing voters in key seats could halve Labour’s projected 200 majority, according to analysis of polling data. Labour would lose its notional majority entirely if only 132,000 voters in the tightest races opted for the next-placed party.

But the problem with analysis like this is that you cannot shift votes in key seats without also shifting votes nationally, and so in practice far more people need to change their minds. After the 2017 election Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters argued that he was just 2,227 votes away from being able to form a government. Experts dismissed the claim; nationally, the Tories were ahead of Labour by around 700,000 votes.

The Times analysis said “it would have taken 206,000 voters to have changed their ballot in 2019 for Boris Johnson to have lost 100 seats”. But nationally, in that election, Johnson was ahead of Labour by about 3.7m votes.

Rishi Sunak was on ITV’s This Morning earlier, where he was talking about reports that the Conservative party has offended some Jewish figures by attacking Keir Starmer for saying that, if he becomes PM, he will trying to continue his habit of keeping Friday evenings free for family meals.

Starmer has suggested this is primarily about ensuring that he is able to spend time with his children. But his wife is of Jewish heritage and he has also said that part of the reason Fridays are special for the family is because it is a time they often set aside for family prayer, in accordance with Shabbat.

Sunak dismissed the notion Tory criticism of this was disrespectful to people of Jewish faith. Asked about the row, he said:

I think what Keir was saying he was with his kids on a Friday night out watching cheerleading or kickboxing rather than doing that. But the point is this, everyone’s going to do this job in a different way …

One of the things I’ve spoken about a lot is that doing this job means I’m not as good as dad, I’m not as good a husband, as I would love to be, and that comes with the territory of being in public service and having the responsibility to be prime minister, to do a great job for everyone who’s watching.

John Swinney, the Scottish first minister and SNP leader, has said that a Labour victory at the election is inevitable and that Keir Starmer won’t need any extra MPs from Scotland to win. Speaking to the BBC, he said that was why Scottish people should vote SNP.

Labour doesn’t need any Scottish MPs to win this election. For Scotland, do we want to have Labour MPs going from Scotland who will just do what they’re told by Keir Starmer? Or do they want SNP MPs who will stand up for Scotland, protect the Scottish interest and campaign against the austerity that the Labour party is going to impose on Scotland?

Keir Starmer has also said he was not worried by Boris Johnson’s surprise appearance at a Tory campaign event last night, saying the former PM just illustrated how “chaotic and divided” his party had been.

Speaking to reporters in Wales, and asked if he was worried that Johnson might encourage a late surge in Tory votes, Starmer replied:

No, I’m not worried in the slightest, having argued for six weeks that they’re chaotic and divided, to bring out exhibit A, with 24 hours to go, just vindicated the argument I’ve been making.

I think Rishi [Sunak] started campaigning with [David] Cameron at his side, I don’t think that worked so very well. Then he borrowed Liz Truss’ playbook and put unfunded commitments in his manifesto, and then he wheeled out Boris Johnson last night, it makes my case for me.

I’m only assuming that some time about lunchtime today there’ll be a joint press conference with Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak on economic stability for the country going forward, I suspect that’s what’s coming next.

This is what John Crace wrote about Johnson’’s speech in his Guardian sketch.

There was a helicopter hanging from the ceiling above where a crowd of 400 people were gathered. Half of them security guards. The Saigon jokes wrote themselves. Sometimes I think the Tories are running the campaign for my benefit …

Eventually the Govester fell over, to be replaced by … Johnson. It’s almost as if the Tories want to lose this election by even more than predicted. Who to bring out but the man the Tories themselves had concluded was unfit to govern? The man most of the country are happy to forget. The audience went wild. “Boris, Boris”, they cheered. Louder than for Rish!. Natch.

What followed was classic Boris. He really doesn’t care. He appears to hate Rish! and so the only reason he would bother to appear was because he wanted to dance on Sunak’s grave.

He said he had been working tirelessly throughout the election. By going on holiday. He looked terrible. Wherever he’s been, it’s done him the world of harm. He rambled on about his own achievements for about 10 minutes. Not a word of praise for Rish!. The two did not appear to even return a glance with one another. Let alone shake hands. He ended by saying that Starmer would not stand up to Putin. It would have been laughable if it hadn’t been so tragic.

Keir Starmer has accused the Tories of talking up the chances of a Labour majority as a “voter suppression” tactic.

Asked to respond to what Mel Stride said this morning about Labour being on course for a record majority (see 8.43am), Starmer replied:

It is more of the same. It’s really voter suppression. It’s trying to get people to stay at home rather than go out and vote.

I say, if you want change, you have to vote for it. I want people to be part of the change.

I know there are very close constituencies across the country. I don’t take anything for granted. I respect the voters and I know that we have to earn every vote until 10 o’clock tomorrow night and we will do that.

Voter suppression is a term used to describe tactics designed to stop supporters of rival parties turning out to vote. It can cover legal and relatively normal activities, like claiming the result is a foregone conclusion, although in some countries, like the US, far more sinister versions of this approach have been used.

A reader asks:

In UK election (sorry I’m from Australia) what is meant by a supermajority and why does it matter?

When Conservative politicians talk about a “supermajority”, they are just using the word to mean a very big majority (anything over 150 would reasonably count). In the British political system, a supermajority is not a real constitutional benchmark.

But in some countries a supermajority (such as two-thirds) is required for some types of constitutional change and the Tories (and the pro-Tory papers, which have adopted the phrase with enthusiasm) seem to be using the phrase repeatedly because, in the minds of some voters, it conveys the impression that a Keir Starmer government would have some special power to rig the system in its favour.

It wouldn’t, but it would not need such a power anyway; in the UK, a government with a decent majority can introduce sweeping changes relatively easily.

There are some minor exceptions. Under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, a government needed two thirds of MPs to vote for an early election. But that law has now been abolished. And, as James Ball from the New European explains here, if Labour wanted to change the royal charter for press regulation, passed under the coalition but ignored by most big newspapers, it would need a two-thirds majority in the Commons.

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, has condemned the harassment of Labour candidates and canvassers, amid reports of intimidation in pro-Palestinian areas across the country, Kiran Stacey reports.

There is more evidence of the fact that the Tories have, in practice, conceded the general election in the Daily Telegraph, where Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, has kicked off the inquest into what went wrong. As Helen reported in an earlier post (see 7.48am), Braverman’s main argument is voters have abandoned the Tories because they failed to “to cut immigration or tax or deal with the net zero and woke policies we have presided over for 14 years”.

But, in a passage that slightly undermines her “woke” argument, Braverman also criticises the Conservatives for continuing to accept money from Frank Hester after the Guardian revealed that he had made comments about Diane Abbott, at a private meeting with staff, that were widely condemned as racist.

Braverman says:

Reform demonstrably failed to vet its candidates properly and these people should be nowhere near public life. I’ve been on the receiving end of racism myself and it’s right that the PM called it out. But cries of hurt and anger look less powerful when the Conservative Party was perfectly happy to take the money from Frank Hester. Remarks about hating black women were glossed over in the name of filling our party coffers. I don’t follow the logic. Nor do the voters. Whatever “the smartest men in the room” might privately think, the public are not in fact mugs.

Most Tories condemned what Hester said, but hardly any of them said the party should stop taking money from him. (They justified accepting his donations on the grounds that Hester apologised, even though he just apologised for being offensive, not accepting that his words were racist.) Braverman is probably the first senior figure in the party to make this point. It is intended as a direct criticism of Sunak, whose allies regularly describe him as “the smartest man in the room”.

Labour likely to win with ‘largest majority this country has ever seen’, Tory cabinet minister Mel Stride claims

Andrew Sparrow

Good morning. I’m Andrew Sparrow, taking over from Helen Sullivan.

Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, has been the lead voice for the Conservative party on the morning broadast round during the election, but no one would claim that he is the most exciting politician in Britain. Today, though, he said something very striking. Election concessions normally come at around 4am on Friday morning, but on the Today programme Stride delivered what sounded very much like a formal concession of defeat. He told the programme:

I totally accept that, where the polls are at the moment, means that tomorrow is likely to see the largest Labour landslide majority, the largest majority that this country has ever seen. Much bigger than 1997, bigger even than the National government in 1931.

What, therefore, matters now is what kind of opposition do we have, what kind of ability to scrutinise government is there within parliament.

This is a huge claim. And it is an exaggerated one; the National government in 1931 had a majority of 492, which not even the wildest MRP poll is predicting this time round. But the mainstream expectation from pollsters is that Labour will have a bigger majority on Friday than Tony Blair did in 1997 (179). Last night the polling firm Survation said Labour was “99% certain to win more seat than in 1997”.

Of course, Stride is not saying this because he wants to provide Today listeners with impartial analysis. It is an escalated version of the Tory plan to talk up the prospect of a Labour “supermajority” and it has two aims: first, to encourage people worried about the prospect of a Labour majority to vote Tory; and, second (and perhaps more importantly – there are more people in this group), to encourage people who are not passionately anti-Labour to think they can safely stay at home tomorrow.

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