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ITV is set to broadcast its now-infamous interview with Rishi Sunak for which he controversially left the D-Day commemorations early – as the prime minister and Sir Keir Starmer prepare to face questioning in a live television debate.
The two main party leaders will be grilled in a Sky general election debate, starting at 7.30pm, after ITV airs its interview, now on.
Earlier, Mr Sunak insisted he had “absolutely not” lost hope of winning the 4 July general election despite Tory allies warning of the risk of Labour winning a “super-majority”.
Defence secretary Grant Shapps claimed the Tories were fighting hard to prevent Labour from securing a crushing win bigger than the 1997 landslide. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt warned he faces a battle to keep his Godalming and Ash seat, a key Lib Dem target.
The Conservative Party could make a surprising U-turn on its flagship pledge to bring National Service, after the defence secretary suggested the scheme would last less than a month.
Elsewhere, the Green Party launched its manifesto, which includes a pledge to raise taxes on the “super-rich” and nationalise water, railways and energy companies, as well as scrapping university tuition fees.
Key Points
- Sunak insists he is not giving up on winning
- Tories U-turn on National Service pledge
- Shapps says Tories fighting to prevent Labour ‘massive majority'
- PM criticised as ‘out of touch’ over Sky TV claims
- Green party manifesto key pledges
- Tory candidate defends posing with Farage in campaign leaflet
Interview underway
The interview is now underway and Sunak is taking questions from Brand.
The PM says he is sorry for keeping the journalist waiting.
He says the D-Day event ran over.
Matt Mathers12 June 2024 19:03 1718215224Sky’s Battle for No10: Who is up first and who is in the audience?
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.
Sunak: I’m fighting for every vote
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.
Matt Mathers12 June 2024 18:56 1718214915Rishi Sunak is about to be grilled by ITV.
The PM is being interviewed by journalist Paul Brand.
The interview was conducted after he left a D-Day commemoration early.
Matt Mathers12 June 2024 18:55 1718214024When are the next general election TV debates?
- 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.
Tory MP’s election leaflet includes picture of Reform leader Nigel Farage
Tory MP’s election leaflet includes picture of Reform leader Nigel Farage
Dame Andrea Jenkyns has previously described Nigel Farage as a ‘conservative to the core’ and ‘one of the most influential politicians of our generation’
Salma Ouaguira12 June 2024 18:30 1718211624Exclusive: ‘It is now or never’ experts warn Sunak as first votes to be cast
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.”
You can read The Independent exclusive story here
Salma Ouaguira12 June 2024 18:00 1718210424Hunt: I’m within 1,500 votes of losing my seat
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.
How many candidates are standing in the General Election?
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.
Opinion | With his ‘fairytale’ manifesto, Sunak has Trussed himself up
The Conservative Party’s blueprint for a fifth term in office relies heavily on unfunded tax cuts – exactly the sort of fiscal incoherence that got the prime minister’s predecessor into such trouble, says John Rentoul.
“It was sad to see Rishi Sunak, the responsible technocrat brought in to repair the damage done by Liz Truss’s “fairytale” economics, resort to her kind of policies,” he writes.
“Crucially, all the measures are paid for by the sort of imaginary funding sources that opposition parties turn to because they think they don’t have to make the numbers add up. A crackdown on tax avoidance and evasion, efficiencies in the civil service, and the big item: a £12bn-a-year cut in welfare spending.
“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.”
Read the full analysis here.
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