Sky election debate – live: Sunak faces Starmer in TV debate amid Tory fears of Labour ‘supermajority’

The Sky News Battle for No10 will see Sir Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak face 20-minute interviews before being grilled by an audience of Grimsby locals for 25 minutes each, Archie Mitchell reports.

After an “FA cup-style” draw by Sky’s veteran political hack Jon Craig, Labour leader Sir Keir will be up first in the 7.30pm programme.

Mr Sunak will be watching from the sidelines before having the opportunity to respond to any of Sir Keir’s attack lines and set out his own vision for the country.

The audience has been selected by pollster Survation to represent the Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes constituency.

The seat is a key battleground, won by the Conservatives in 2019 for the first time since the Second World War but with Labour hoping to take it back on 4 July.

The interview takes place after Sunak was forced to deny that the election campaign is effectively over.

It came after Grant Schapps, the defence secretary, warned Labour was on course for a “supermajority”.

The PM said he was fighting for every vote.

• Today: Sky News will host an election leaders’ event in Grimsby called The Battle for Number 10 which will be broadcast live on the news channel at 7pm. Both Mr Sunak and Sir Keir will take part in the debate, which is being aired live in front of an audience.

• Thursday 13 June: ITV will host a second debate on 13 June. The broadcaster said that leaders or senior representatives from the following parties will participate; Conservative Party, Labour Party, Liberal Democrats, SNP, Reform UK, Green Party and Plaid Cymru.

• Thursday 20 June: The BBC will host a special, two-hour Question Time Leaders’ Special programme on 20 June. The corporation said the leaders of the Conservative Party, Labour Party, Liberal Democrats and Scottish National Party will answer questions from the studio audience for 30 minutes each.

• Friday 21 June: The BBC will host a debate between Wales’s main party leaders on 21 June. Vaughan Gething (Labour), Andrew RT Davies (Conservative) and Rhun ap Iorwerth (Plaid Cymru) are the main party leaders in Wales.

• Wednesday 26 June: The final head-to-head debate between Mr Sunak and Sir Keir will take place on 26 June. It will be presented by newsreader Sophie Raworth in Nottingham, airing on BBC One and BBC News. It will be broadcast from 9pm to 10pm.

• Thursday 27 June: The leaders of the main parties in Northern Ireland will take part in a BBC debate on 27 June. Michelle O’Neill (Sinn Fein), Gavin Robinson (DUP) Naomi Long (Alliance) Doug Beattie (UUP) and Column Eastwood (SDLP) are the main party leaders in Northern Ireland.

Polling experts have warned Rishi Sunak he is running out of time to woo voters with the first ballots set to be cast in the election within days, our Whitehall Editor Kate Devlin reports.

Postal votes will start landing on doorsteps early next week, the Electoral Commission has told The Independent.

With one in five now voting by post time is running out for the prime minister to turn around Labour’s 20-point lead in many polls.

One polling expert told Mr Sunak it was “now or not at all”.

Lord Hayward, who is also a Tory peer, said many people return their postal votes as soon as they arrive.

He added: “If the Conservatives are going to have an effect, for a fairly high proportion of voters the effect is now or not at all.”

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has warned he faces a battle to retain his Godalming and Ash parliamentary seat, Joe Middleton reports.

The seat is a key target for the Liberal Democrats who are aiming to demolish the Conservative “Blue Wall” in southern England.

A Survation poll has predicted that he could become the first chancellor to lose his seat at a general election.

Mr Hunt’s majority in the 2019 general election was 8,817, but he thinks this could now be a much closer race this time around.

He told Bloomberg: “There’s all to play for. This seat is probably going to be won or lost by the Conservatives by 1,500 votes or fewer.”

In order to boost his chances of retaining the seat, Mr Hunt has contributed £100k of his own money to the constituency party, official records show.

There are a total of 4,521 candidates in this election.This is a record for a general election in the UK and is up 36% on the number that stood in the last poll in 2019, which was 3,320.

The previous record was 4,150 candidates, which was set at the 2010 election.

“This last pledge is to be achieved by “better targeting” disability benefits and tightening up “how the benefits system assesses capability for work”. It is pie in the sky – precisely the type of nonsense that Sunak so rightly criticised Truss for peddling in the Tory leadership campaign two years ago.”

The Green Party said it would “accelerate clean energy investment and delivery” by cancelling recent oil and gas licences such as those for the Rosebank oil and gas field, removing all oil and gas subsidies and stopping all new fossil fuel extraction projects in the UK.

The party also said it wants to see “the phase-out of all nuclear energy” and will push for wind to provide 70% of UK energy by 2030.

On nature, the party has outlined extensive plans to protect and restore the UK’s environment by “giving rights to nature itself”.

The party will work to end the sewage scandal, extend people’s access to nature with a new English Right to Roam Act, and end the emergency authorisation of bee-killing pesticides.

On protecting animals and habitats, elected MPs will call for an end to all blood sports, badger culling, factory farming, routine use of antibiotics in farm animals and close confinement in cages.

For more on agriculture, the Greens have pledged to “work with farmers and other stakeholders to transform our food and farming system”.

Their manifesto includes measures such as almost tripling financial support for farmers to transition to nature-friendly farming, improving biodiversity and soil health, and linking farm payments to reduced use of pesticides.