General election live: minister predicts Labour landslide as Braverman tells Tories ‘it’s over’ | General election 2024

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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