General Election 2024 latest: New poll blow for Sunak over manifesto pledges as Farage says Reform ‘stitched up’

Labour will review what arms are being exported to Israel and what the legal advice is about them before deciding whether to suspend sales, Archie Mitchell reports.

Sir Keir Starmer said if elected he would have access to the government’s legal advice and promised a review.

He indicated that explicitly defensive weapons being exported for defensive purposes should not be barred, promising a review of others.

Sir Keir was also pressed about whether Israel’s war in Gaza amounted to genocide, but refused to say.

Sir Keir Starmer has been grilled over his past support for Jeremy Corbyn, refusing to answer whether he would have served in the cabinet if Mr Corbyn was prime minister, Archie Mitchell reports.

The Labour leader has been unable to explain his enthusiastic support for the left-winger, saying only that he “did not think we would win” in 2019.

Quizzed by a caller about whether he would have joined Mr Corbyn’s government had he won, Sir Keir claimed it “didn’t cross my mind”.

He told LBC: “I didn’t think we would win. I did take a post. I served for three years in the shadow Brexit role because I thought that was a very important issue for our country.”

He has accused Rishi Sunak of presenting a “Jeremy Corbyn-style manifesto” at this election that will “load everything into the wheelbarrow” without explaining how to pay for it.

Sir Keir Starmer has said Labour will not scrap the two-child benefit cap if it wins the general election, Archie Mitchell reports.

The Labour leader promised a strategy to reduce child poverty if he becomes prime minister.

But he said he would not get rid of the policy, which experts say would be one of the most effective tools to reduce child poverty.

He had previously promised to scrap it, and on Monday Sir Keir said he was “not immune” to the arguments to scrapping the measure, which limits benefits to low-income parents for their third and any subsequent children born from April 2017.

But asked about it on LBC, Sir Keir said: “We won’t [scrap the policy]… it has been a difficult decision.”

Nearly two thirds of voters said they felt confident that the Conservatives could not afford the policies set out in their manifesto, according to a poll.

An Ipsos survey found that some 62 per cent of respondents were not convinced that all the pledges outlined in the document were fully costed.

Voters were not fully convinced by Labour and the Liberal Democrat pledges either.

Some 50 per cent said they were not confident Labour could afford its policies, with 37 per cent saying they were confident.

And for the Lib Dems, 57 per cent said they were not confident their policies were affordable.

Labour is leaving council tax rises on the table in his LBC interview, Archie Mitchell reports.

Sir Keir Starmer has repeated his assertion that “none of our plans” require tax increases set out beyond those in the Labour manifesto.

The party leader said VAT, income tax and national insurance will not go up under a Labour government.

But pressed on whether council tax will increase under a Labour government, he refused to rule it out.

Sir Keir said: “I am not going to sit here two and a bit weeks before the election and write the Budgets for the next five years.”

Presenter Nick Ferrari pointed out Sir Keir’s happiness to rule out income tax and other tax hikes but not council tax.

Nigel Farage has claimed Reform UK paid a well-known company to vet its general election candidates but it “did not do the work”, Archie Mitchell reports.

In what the Reform leader described as a “stitch-up”, he said the firm was paid “a large sum of money” but did not run adequate background checks on its prospective MPs.

Asked about the latest controversy involving a Reform candidate’s past comments about Hitler, Mr Farage told LBC: “This is utter nonsense… It is rather like asking me whether Hitler was a good public speaker. I say yes, and suddenly I am a supporter.

“Have we had trouble, yes we have. We paid a large sum of money to a well-known vetting company and they did not do the work.

“We have been stitched up politically, it has given us problems, I accept that and I am sorry for that.”

Mr Farage refused to name the company live on air but promised the information would come to light “later today”.

The Liberal Democrats have said Jeremy Hunt is cut from the same cloth as Liz Truss after a leaked recording showed he praised the former PM’s economic ambitions as a “good thing to aim for”, Archie Mitchell reports.

The chancellor was recorded at a meeting of students when he said he was “trying to basically achieve some of the same things” as the former prime minister, but that he was doing it “more gradually”, The Guardian reported.

Lib Dem Treasury spokesman Sarah Olney said: “The Conservatives trashed our economy and they’ll do it again, this just shows they’re all cut from the same cloth.

“From spiralling mortgages to stealth taxes on pensioners Jeremy Hunt, Liz Truss and all of these Ministers have desperately let people down.”

Shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds said Labour does not plan to redraw council tax bands if the party wins the general election.

Asked on ITV’s Good Morning Britain if Labour would revalue council tax bands, Mr Reynolds said: “No, we have this week said that’s not part of our plans. We’ve laid out all of our revenue raising measures in the manifesto, there are things that would produce an immediate cash injection into public services.”

Pushed on whether the party has completely ruled it out, he said “yes we’ve made that statement this week”.

Put to him that shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves and Labour’s shadow Treasury chief secretary Darren Jones refused to rule out such a move, but that he is saying council tax bands will not be redrawn, he said: “I’m saying all you need to do to look at where the revenue will come from, Labour’s manifesto, is look in the manifesto. There are specific ways we would raise money that would go into public services.”

Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-Budget was a “good thing to aim for”, Jeremy Hunt said in a leaked recording.

In a recording leaked to The Guardian, the chancellor said he was “trying to basically achieve some of the same things” but on a more gradual basis.

Mr Hunt was speaking at a meeting of the Oxford University Conservatives on 9 May.