It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, June 14, 2024
ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY
Interview: Idaho prisoner Thomas Creech ‘fully expected to die’ at failed execution
Kevin Fixler Wed, June 12, 2024 at 11:34 a.m. MDT·6 min read
Idaho’s failed effort earlier this year to execute a prisoner for the first time in 12 years, stunning top officials, has again paralyzed the state’s ability to carry out the death penalty and left Thomas Creech, death row’s longest-tenured member, bracing for what may come next.
Creech, 73, incarcerated for nearly 50 years for multiple murders, was strapped to a bed in the Idaho Department of Correction’s execution chamber at the maximum security prison in February. There, for about an hour, the prison system’s clandestine three-member execution team searched for a proper vein, poking him with needles attached to lethal chemicals ready to enter Creech’s body but to no avail, and state prison leadership called off his execution.
Creech still lives and breathes today.
In the 3 1/2 months since Idaho’s first-ever unsuccessful lethal injection, Creech, too, remains rattled by the unprecedented experience, which had him questioning reality, he said this week in a phone interview with the Idaho Statesman.
“I laid on that table and fully expected to die that day. And actually, to be honest with you, I still feel like I’m dead and this is just the afterlife,” Creech said from the prison south of Boise. “They laid me on the table, putting needles in my arm, and the worst of everything was I looked at my wife, I seen her sitting there, total devastation and fear in her beautiful face. And I never want to see that again.”
That uncertainty of what may follow has taken a toll on his psyche, he said, and also raised constitutional rights questions over whether the incident qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment. On the other side, Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador, who attended Creech’s scheduled execution, at the time called the situation a miscarriage of the state’s legal due process.
“Justice has now been delayed again,” he said in a statement. “Today is a sad day for the families of his victims and a continuation of the pain they have endured for almost five decades.”
But armed with fresh legal arguments off the latest and unexpected development in Creech’s lengthy history, his attorneys have filed new court cases and refiled appeals to prevent another attempt on their client’s life.
State officials have gone quiet since while the prison system works to review and develop updated execution procedures to prevent a repeat occurrence while retaining lethal injection as its preferred method. Meanwhile, they’ve also restocked with another batch of lethal injection drugs, having now spent $150,000 on six doses of the deadly chemicals — enough for two executions under current protocols.
No one has been willing to say yet whether the state still has Creech in their sights among Idaho’s nine-member death row.
Creech: ‘I’m not trying to get a free pass’
Creech, by definition a serial killer under FBI standards, has been convicted of killing five people, including three in Idaho. His most recent murder took place when he bludgeoned to death a partially disabled fellow prisoner with a makeshift weapon — a tube sock filled with batteries — in May 1981.
During a formal review in January to consider dropping Creech’s sentence to life in prison, county prosecutors presented images of his latest victim in the brutal prison beating, with his blood splattered on the walls and floor of his cell. But Creech’s case was buttressed by dozens of supporters, several of them former state corrections workers, including two who showed up to offer testimony. So did a current IDOC guard.
Creech has turned his life around in prison, his friends and advocates have said. In 1996, Creech met his wife, LeAnn Creech, after her son, a prison guard at at the time, introduced them. They wed two years later.
“I’ve been with him for nearly 28 years, and I can tell you that he’s not the same person he was when he was young,” LeAnn Creech told the Statesman by email. “He is kind and loving and caring. There are so many people that know him and know that he’s the person today that he was always meant to be.”
After the state’s parole board deadlocked in their vote on whether to grant Creech clemency, he was returned to death row and soon scheduled to die. Idaho’s death row at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution south of Boise houses the state’s eight male prisoners sentenced to death, including its longest-serving member, Thomas Creech.
But Creech also at points, including under oath, has claimed to have killed as many as 42 people, including through various murder admissions and signed confessions over the years. The state in its objections to him receiving a reduced sentence argued that he got away with multiple murders across the Western U.S.
Creech disputed the inflated tally and told the Statesman the actual number is in the single digits, though he was still vague on the real total. His mind is “kind of jumbled,” five decades later and off the recent execution attempt, Creech said.
He lied about the dozens of murders on the stand at his trial for a November 1974 double-homicide in Valley County, Creech said, at the urging of his then-attorney in an attempt at publicity. But he acknowledged by phone that he did shoot to death the two men, Edward T. Arnold, 34, and John W. Bradford, in that incident.
“I’m not trying to get a free pass or anything,” Creech said. “I’m not going to act like I’m a saint or angel of any kind. I’ve done some bad things, hurt people, hurt my family. I’m very remorseful, and not that person I was 30 years ago.” Idaho death row prisoner Thomas Creech, 73, center, seated with attorney Chris Sanchez, left, and investigator Christine Hanley from the Federal Defender Services of Idaho, at his commutation hearing in January.
Lethal injection drugs, which have become harder to come by and more expensive, have suddenly become more available to the state prison system, though the state refuses to say where they obtained them. IDOC has so far waited on overhauling its execution chamber to provide for the firing squad.
Creech told The New York Times last week that he would probably prefer the firing squad over lethal injection, if faced with a do-over to execute him. Whether another death warrant will be served to him for now is unknown, despite his and and his attorneys’ ongoing objections.
“If they execute me tomorrow,” Creech said, “they are executing somebody that doesn’t deserve it. Because I’m a completely different person.”
UK
Tory donations top £570,000 in first week of election campaign - down from £5.7m in 2019
Sky News Updated Fri, 14 June 2024
The Conservatives have raised just 10% of the donations they managed to collect in 2019 under Boris Johnson in the first week of the election campaign.
The figures show political parties reported £3.2m in donations in the first week of the election campaign.
Mr Sunak's party raised £574,918 through donations alone, on top of £22,453 that came from public funds.
Meanwhile, Labour generated £926,908 from donations alone and £652,411 from the public funds that are given to opposition parties with more than two MPs.
Mr Sunak batted away Mr Farage's assertion that his party now represents the opposition to Labour after the poll put Reform on 19% of the vote and the Conservatives on just 18%.
The Electoral Commission figures showed that Reform received £140,000 in donations, while the Liberal Democrats declared £454,999, the SNP £127,998 and the Co-operative Party £120,000.
Plaid Cymru did not declare any donations but it did receive £33,194 in public funds.
The Social Democrat Party and the Climate Party both also declared £25,000 each but did not receive any public funds.
Louise Edwards, director of regulation and digital transformation, said: "This is the first of the pre-poll weekly reports, which we publish in the lead up to the general election.
"We know that voters are interested in where parties get their money from, and these publications are an important part of delivering transparency for voters.
"While there is no limit to what parties can raise, there are spending limits in place ahead of elections to ensure a level playing field."
The figures published by the commission, which oversees elections and regulates political finance in the UK, do not represent all donations because only those over £11,500 have to be declared.
The donations received by Mr Sunak are a far cry from the vast donations Mr Johnson received from big business and wealthy donors in the run-up to the 2019 election, which he ran on the platform to "get Brexit done".
The single largest donation to the Conservatives in the first week of the 2019 election campaign was the £1m it received from theatre entrepreneur John Gore.
By contrast, the value of the single largest donation for the Tories over the same period this year was £75,000 and came from the entrepreneur Bassim Haidar.
Today a number of Conservative candidates reposted videos in which Mr Johnson appealed to local voters to support the party on polling day on 4 July.
The most recent YouGov poll put Labour out in front on 37% of the vote, followed by Reform UK on 19% and the Conservatives on 18%.
The Lib Dems polled 14% of the vote, followed by the Greens on 7% and the SNP on 3%.
Responding to the poll, Mr Sunak said a vote for Reform would "give a blank cheque to Labour".
Speaking to journalists at the G7 summit in Italy, the prime minister said: "We are only halfway through this election, so I'm still fighting very hard for every vote.
"And what that poll shows is - the only poll that matters is the one on 4 July - but if that poll was replicated on 4 July, it would be handing Labour a blank cheque to tax everyone, tax their home, their pension, their car, their family, and I'll be fighting very hard to make sure that doesn't happen."
Sky News has contacted the Conservatives for comment.
Love Actually producer helps Labour raise more than other parties in first week
Christopher McKeon, PA Political Correspondent Fri, 14 June 2024
A £500,000 donation from the producer of Love Actually and Notting Hill helped Labour raise almost £1 million in the first week of the General Election campaign.
Figures released by the Electoral Commission on Friday show Labour received £926,908 in donations between May 30 and June 5, compared to £574,918 received by the Tories.
The bulk of Labour’s money came in the form of a £500,000 donation from Toledo Productions Ltd, whose owner Duncan Kenworthy produced several romantic comedies starring Hugh Grant.
Love Actually producer Duncan Kenworthy gave Labour £500,000 in the first week of the campaign (Ian West/PA)
It appears to be Mr Kenworthy’s first donation to a political party, although the producer did donate £5,000 to David Miliband’s unsuccessful bid for the Labour leadership in 2010.
Other significant donations to Labour included £100,000 from entrepreneur Tony Bury and £70,000 each from businessman Clive Hollick, also a Labour peer, and hedge fund manager Stuart Rosen.
Labour also benefitted from £652,411 in public funds from the House of Commons following the dissolution of Parliament, bringing the total raised by the party during the week to £1.58 million.
Labour’s sister party, the Co-operative Party, received £120,000, largely in the form of a £90,000 donation from Autoglass boss Gary Lubner. (PA Graphics)
For the Conservatives, the largest donation was £75,000 from Lebanese businessman Bassim Haidar, who told the Guardian in May he was “urgently” looking to leave the UK after both main parties promised to scrap the non-dom tax status.
Mr Haidar also provided £13,085-worth of “travel” for the Conservative Party.
The party also received £75,000 from former oil services company chairman Alasdair Locke, and £50,000 each from former party treasurer Lord Michael Farmer and gas turbine company Centrax Industries, controlled by the Barr family.
The Lib Dems raised slightly less than the Conservatives, receiving £454,999 in the first week of the campaign, including £150,000 from businessman Safwan Adam. Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives raised £574,918 in donations in the first week of the campaign (Stefan Rousseau/PA)
The party also received £100,000 from food company GADF Holdings, owned by Neale Powell-Cook and David Mordecai.
Donations for Reform UK totalled £140,000 during the week that saw Nigel Farage declare that he would stand as a candidate in Clacton.
This included £50,000 from aerospace engineering company HR Smith Group and another £50,000 from Fitriani Hay.
Ms Hay, a racehorse owner, has donated more than £500,000 to the Conservatives since 2015 and gave £100,000 to Liz Truss’s leadership campaign in 2022.
The SNP raised £127,998, while the Climate Party and the Social Democratic Party received £25,000 each.
Friday’s figures are the first in a series of weekly reports that will be released by the Electoral Commission over the course of the campaign.
Political parties are required to provide weekly reports of donations of more than £11,180, after the Government increased the threshold from £7,500 in January.
Parties still have 30 days after receiving a donation to check that it is from a permissible source and decide whether to accept it.
Louise Edwards, director of regulation and digital transformation at the Electoral Commission, said: “We know that voters are interested in where parties get their money from, and these publications are an important part of delivering transparency for voters.
“While there is no limit to what parties can raise, there are spending limits ahead of elections to ensure a level playing field.”
For most parties, the spending limit for the General Election will be £54,010 multiplied by the number of seats they are contesting.
Love Actually producer puts Labour donations on top in first campaign week
Henry Dyer
THE GUARDIAN Fri, 14 June 2024 Keir Starmer’s party received a total of £926,908 in the first week, according to the Electoral Commission.Photograph: Anthony Devlin/Getty Images
Labour received more donations than the Conservatives in the first week of the campaign, including £500,000 from the producer of Love Actually and Notting Hill, figures show.
Donors gave Labour £926,908, but only £574,918 to the Tories in the week starting with the dissolution of parliament on 30 May, according to Electoral Commission records.
Labour’s biggest donation, drawing them ahead of the Conservatives, was £500,000 from Toledo Productions Ltd, a film production company controlled by the producer Duncan Kenworthy, who worked on several Richard Curtis films. It marks a return to political donations for Kenworthy, who gave David Miliband £5,000 towards his campaign for the Labour leadership in 2010.
Conservative fundraisers may also be alarmed by the identity of two donors to Reform on 5 June, two days after Nigel Farage announced he would stand in the general election and take over as leader of the party. Reform raised £140,000 in total, all coming after Farage’s announcement.
Fitriani Hay was Liz Truss’s biggest donor for her leadership campaign in 2022, giving £100,000. She had previously given more than £500,000 to the Conservatives. Now Hay, the wife of James Hay, a former BP executive who has a construction and luxury goods empire, has given Farage’s party £50,000.
Her donation was matched by HR Smith Group Ltd, a company owned by Richard Smith, who gave the then Brexit party £100,000 through a subsidiary of HR Smith, Techtest, during the 2019 European election campaign. HR Smith Group also gave £10,000 to Iain Duncan Smith’s constituency association in August 2021.
Reform’s third donor, Peter Hall, gave £40,000 two days after giving £25,000 to the Social Democratic party. In October 2022, Reform and the SDP agreed a general election pact, standing aside for each other in six constituencies.
The Lebanese businessman Bassim Haidar gave the Conservatives £75,000 and paid for travel worth £13,000. Haidar, a non-dom, said at the beginning of May that he had decided to “urgently” leave the UK to avoid paying millions of pounds in tax after the Conservatives introduced policies to scrap non-dom tax status.
Political parties may have received other donations, but newly increased thresholds to the transparency regime mean that only the details of gifts of more than £11,180 sent straight to parties’ headquarters, made either one-off or cumulative, are published by the Electoral Commission.
Details of donations made in the general election campaign will be published twice more before polling day, covering the period up to 19 June.
Political parties standing across the UK can spend up to £35.1m in the year up to and including polling day.
Will Nigel Farage's Reform UK 'beat' the Tories in the election?
With some polling figures putting the Tories and Reform UK nearly neck and neck, could Farage's party really end up with nearly as many MPs as Sunak's?
James Cheng-Morris and Ellen Manning Updated Fri, 14 June 2024 at 4:33 am GMT-6·7-min read Nigel Farage's Reform UK has been steadily closing the gap on the Conservatives in the polls. (Alamy)
Leading pollster John Curtice has poured cold water on suggestions that Reform UK is now beating the Conservative Party in the general election polls.
As representatives from seven parties took prepared to take part in a TV debate on Thursday, a YouGov survey for The Times newspaper said Reform’s support had increased by two points to 19%, putting them ahead of the Tories for the first time.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage took the the opportunity to hail the poll results in the debate, declaring: “We are now the opposition to Labour.”
But Curtice urged caution, insisting that single polls should not be relied on. He told Radio 4's Today programme: "This is one poll - we’ve actually, I think, had four other polls published in the last 24 hours - none of which have had Reform ahead, not even all of which have had Reform gaining ground, but quite a couple of them certainly suggesting it’s also got very close."
He said it may not be the case that Reform are ahead - and could be on average four or five points behind. But he said: "This is still bad news for the Conservatives. The only way Rishi Sunak can hope to get even to base camp in narrowing the lead that Labour have started off with this campaign was to squeeze the Reform vote."
He added: "Rather than making progress, things are actually going backwards, not least of course because of Nigel Farage’s decision to fight this campaign."
With many speculating that Reform UK with Farage at the helm could "beat" the Tories, Yahoo News UK takes a look. What do the latest polls say?
With Labour well ahead on 38%, the Tories are trailing on 18% – compared to a high of 53% under Boris Johnson in 2020 – with Reform UK just behind on 17% and the Liberal Democrats on 15%.
However, there are multiple polls taking place at any one time by a number of different companies.
According to the PA news agency, an average of all polls that were carried out wholly or partly during the seven days to June 13 puts Labour on 43%, 21 points ahead of the Conservatives on 22%, followed by Reform on 14%, the Lib Dems on 10% and the Greens on 6%.
And while Reform’s average is up one percentage point on the figure for the previous week and the Tories are down one point, there is still an eight-point gap, on average, between the two. Could Reform UK get more MPs than the Tories?
Unless something remarkable happens, in short: 'No' - and that's because of the first past the post (FPTP) voting system in which the candidate with the largest number of votes in their constituency is elected.
According to the Electoral Reform Society, which is against FPTP, this system leads to a situation where “even if millions of voters support the same party, if they are thinly spread out across the UK they may only get the largest number of votes in a couple of these contests – so only win a few MPs".
“Tens of thousands of voters supporting a different party, but who live near each other, could end up with more MPs. This means the number of MPs a party has in parliament rarely matches their popularity with the public.” Rishi Sunak on the campaign trail on Wednesday. (AFP via Getty Images)
Farage knows this well. As the leader of UKIP in the 2015 election, he saw his party win 12.6% of the nationwide vote and one seat. The Liberal Democrats won 7.9% of the vote... and eight seats.
Indeed, YouGov last week released a poll – put together using the multi-level regression and post-stratification (MRP) surveying technique, from a sample size of nearly 60,000 respondents – which suggested the Tories would win just 140 seats, having won 365 in 2019. But this is still 140 more than the zero it projected Reform UK to win, in spite of its strong polling figures.
The model had Reform UK "performing strongly in a number of seats but still a long way off winning in any", with projected second-placed finishes in 27 constituencies.
YouGov's MRP projection. (YouGov)
Granted, this model was formed between 24 May and 1 June, before Farage's headline-grabbing intervention on Monday last week in which he announced he would be standing as an MP.
But, even as Reform UK polls closer than ever to the Tories, it's difficult to imagine the party winning more than a handful of seats.
Chris Hopkins, director at polling firm Savanta, told Yahoo News UK that in one respect, Reform UK is at an advantage compared to Ukip in 2015 because "Ukip took votes from both Labour and the Conservatives, and we are not seeing that with Reform UK – they are all coming from the Conservatives.
"That is the consequence of Rishi Sunak making immigration a centrepiece of the campaign and failing to deliver on it. Even if you have voters that are neutral on immigration, they would say the small boats policy has been a disaster."
But even so, Hopkins said, Reform UK is still "at a huge electoral disadvantage" in that its votes are not very concentrated, they are very evenly spread.
"There are going to be some races where Reform UK is strong - the Nigel Farage factor in Clacton is really interesting - but realistically its ceiling is five seats: and that’s a high ceiling." Could the Lib Dems be the official opposition party?
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey on a campaign visit in Henley-in-Arden, Warwickshire, on Wednesday. (PA)
Like Reform UK, Sir Ed Davey’s Liberal Democrats are performing well in the polls.
In a sign of how defensive the Tory campaign is becoming, one online party advert claims voting for Reform UK or the Lib Dems could give Labour 100 extra seats, resulting in the biggest majority in its history.
It depicts a scenario where the Conservatives are beaten into third place behind the Lib Dems, with just 57 seats, despite getting 19% of the vote and without Reform winning a single seat.
However, it remains unlikely the Lib Dems will finish second. YouGov’s MRP poll projected the party performing strongly, winning 48 seats. This would be up 37 from 2019, but still nowhere near the Tories’ projected 140.
However, amid all this talk about projections, it’s worth remembering they are still only polls and not a definite indicator of how people will vote on 4 July. The 1992 and 2015 elections are notable examples of how polling didn’t match the end results of Tory wins. What is proportional representation?
Proportional representation, as defined by the UK parliament, is an electoral system "in which the distribution of seats corresponds closely with the proportion of the total votes cast for each party. For example, if a party gained 40% of the total votes, a perfectly proportional system would allow them to gain 40% of the seats."
This differs from the first past the post system, as set out above, in that a relatively high vote share rarely corresponds with increased seats for the smaller parties. In 2019, for example, the Lib Dems won 11.5% of the vote but only 1.7% – 11 – of the 650 seats.
Unsurprisingly, both Reform UK and the Lib Dems support proportional representation.
The Lib Dems this week made it part of their manifesto, with the party saying it would introduce the single transferrable vote method, a form of proportional representation which allows electors to rank their preference of candidates on the ballot.
The party previously sought to change the UK’s voting system while in the coalition government under then-leader Nick Clegg, but voters rejected the plan in a 2011 referendum.
'You're lying, Nigel': Oldham street cleaner grills Farage over claim there are 'streets in town where nobody speaks English'
Charlotte Hall Thu, 13 June 2024 -Credit: (Image: PA)
A street cleaner from Oldham challenged Nigel Farage following comments he made about streets in Oldham where he claimed 'no one speaks English'. The man, named only as Mike, called Nick Ferrari's LBC show this morning (Thursday) and accused the Reform UK leader of lying.
It comes after Oldhamers defended their hometown and dubbed Mr Farage's comments 'stupid and inaccurate' following his appearance on BBC Radio 4's Today programme on June 4.
Mike said: "I think you're talking a pack of lies, Nigel. You made a statement, you [could] name a street that can't speak English. The last 10 years of my working life, I've worked for Oldham street cleaning. And the biggest Asian area is Glodwick.
"Now I don't know a street in Glodwick where the whole population couldn't speak English. Many people couldn't, but not the whole street."
Mr Farage claimed he was 'very clear' people in the healthcare industry had told him 'the numbers not even bothering to learn English were alarming'. Mr Ferrari challenged the politician, saying: "But this gentleman works in Oldham, surely he knows better than you."
Oldham streets (stock image) -Credit:Sean Hansford | Manchester Evening News
Mahbub Alom, 33, laughed at Mr Farage's comments and said: "It's a joke... a bad joke. As a local shopkeeper, I know better than anyone else. I serve the Pakistani, Bengali and even Jamaican. For anybody who believes Farage, tell them to come and visit, see for yourself."
Teacher Adila Rafa, 25, said MR Farage's comment was 'just bullsh**'. "There are schools on every corner, and surely we get educated and learn the language," she said. "We need people to stop believing stupidity."
Samir Reman, 47, felt the town said: "We're three to four generations in now, though. Everyone has been born, raised and educated in this country. If you spoke to me over the phone, you wouldn't even think I was Asian."
UK
Labour consider biggest Whitehall shake-up in decades as Keir Starmer strives to deliver key manifesto pledges
Kate Devlin Fri, 14 June 2024 at 7:10 am GMT-6·3-min read
The move could see the Labour leader heading up new groups designed to cut through civil service silos and delays.
Under the plans Labour could force departments to work together under ‘boards’ designed to pursue its “missions” for government, the Financial Times reports.
These missions include creating economic growth, rebuilding the NHS, investment in green energy and tackling crime.
Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer launches his party’s manifesto at Co-op HQ in Manchester (PA Wire)
The boards would make use of private sector expertise, in what could be seen as a controversial move, under plans reportedly being overseen by Sue Gray, the former senior Whitehall official who carried out the Partygate report into Boris Johnson.
Sir Keir has already signalled that his promises to change the country will not happen overnight. The Labour leader has consistently warned that the UK needs a decade of national renewal, as he argued his party would be the best to lead that.
And more than halfway through the campaign, Labour appears on course for a comfortable trek to Downing Street. The party remains more than 20 points ahead of the Tories in many opinion polls, after a disastrous few weeks for Rishi Sunak.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff was a top civil servant who wrote the Partygate report into Boris Johnson (Liam McBurney/PA) (PA Wire)
Tom Baldwin, a former Labour communications director and Starmer’s biographer, told the FT he expected a piecemeal approach to any changes, adding: “Keir Starmer and Sue Gray tend to feel their way towards solutions. If one thing doesn’t work, they try something else and become progressively more radical, but always for pragmatic reasons.”
Alex Thomas, programme director at the Institute for Government think-tank, said: “If they went for a full-fat version, which gave missions their own budgets with a named responsible official, that would be radical — the biggest change to how the civil service and government have been organised for several decades.”
Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow paymaster general, has been working for months to test the party’s policies and assess any potential pitfalls.
The Conservatives have vowed to axe 72,000 civil service jobs, but Labour has declined to match this. Rishi Sunak has had a disastrous election campaign (Christopher Furlong/PA Wire)
Mr Sunak has had a difficult start to the election campaign.
At the weekend he faced claims he had gone into hiding after he was forced to make a grovelling apology for leaving the D-Day commemorations early to take part in a TV interview.
The Tory leader was also ridiculed for claiming his family had had to go without Sky TV when he was a child.
Labour Party Manifesto Key Points: Keir Starmer Promises To 'Stop The Chaos' Of Tory Rule
Ned Simons Thu, 13 June 2024 OLI SCARFF via Getty Images
Keir Starmer launched Labour’s general election manifesto on Thursday as he pledge to “change” the country if he becomes prime minister.
In keeping with Labour’s cautious approach to the campaign, there are no big headline grabbing surprises in the 133-page document.
But Starmer defended the manifesto from suggestions it was too boring to capture the imagination of voters.
“I’m running as a candidate to be prime minister, not a candidate to run a circus,” he said. Here are some of the key points: Anthony Devlin via Getty Images
At the core of Labour’s plan sits its “fiscal rules”. These are (1) to move the current budget into balance so day-to-day costs are met by revenues and (2) that debt must be falling as a share of the economy by the fifth year of the forecast.
A promise to cut NHS waiting times with 40,000 more appointments each week, during evenings and weekends, paid for by cracking down on tax avoidance and non-dom loopholes.
There will be 8,500 additional mental health staff recruited.
A total of 6,500 new teachers will be recruited in “key subjects” to set children up for life, work and the future, paid for by ending tax breaks for private schools.
There will be 3,000 new primary school-based nurseries.
Free breakfast clubs in every primary school.
Planning reform to build 1.5 million new homes and no fault evictions will banned.
The minimum wage age bands will be scrapped so all adults are entitled to the same pay.
More neighbourhood police paid for by “ending wasteful contracts” will be hired to tackle antisocial behaviour.
Launch a new Border Security Command with hundreds of new specialist investigators and use counter-terror powers.
A publicly-owned clean power company, Great British Energy, will be created with the aim of cutting bills and boosting energy security, paid for by a windfall tax on oil and gas giants.
Railways will be brought into public ownership when the existing private contracts expire.
The voting age will be lowered to 16.
Members of the House of Lords will be forced to retire at 80.
Efforts will be made to “rebuild” the UK’s relationship with the EU but there is no mention of any attempt to backtrack on Brexit.
Labour will “set out the path” to spending 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence.
A Labour government will recognise a Palestinian state as “a contribution to a renewed peace process”.
Nigel Farage demands spot on BBC's Question Time live election debate
Farage was speaking after a youGov poll put Reform ahead of the Tories for the first time.
Stuart Henderson Updated Fri, 14 June 2024 Reform UK leader Nigel Farage at The Wellington, in central London, on Friday. (PA)
Nigel Farage has demanded a slot on the BBC's Question Time election debate next week.
The Reform UK leader told a press conference on Friday that one recent poll - which put his party just ahead of the Conservatives for the first time - meant he should share a platform on the BBC's four-way leaders' special on 20 June.
“I think we can demand of right now that the BBC put us into that debate,” he said. "I would also very much like to do a debate head-to-head with Keir Starmer and the reason’s very simple – we think this should be the immigration election.”
Farage also labelled himself “leader of the opposition” during the press conference, held in central London. He also predicted his party would get six million votes. That total would be significantly more than the 3.9 million votes his former party, Ukip, received under his leadership in 2015 when it secured 12.6% of the vote.
The debate next week, hosted by Fiona Bruce, is currently scheduled to include representatives of the UK’s four largest parties: the Conservatives, Labour Party, SNP and Liberal Democrats.
The shock YouGov poll released on Thursday night showed support for Reform at 19%, just ahead of the Tories on 18%.
And while the results of the poll were certainly newsworthy, it is the only poll to date to have Reform ahead of Rishi Sunak's party.
According to the PA news agency, an average of all polls carried out wholly or partly during the seven days to 13 June puts Labour on 43%, 21 points ahead of the Conservatives on 22%, followed by Reform on 14%, the Lib Dems on 10% and the Greens on 6%. (PA)
That means Reform’s average is up one percentage point on the previous week while the Tories are down one point.
And while Reform may be polling higher numbers than the Lib Dems, the UK's first-past-the-post voting system means it is highly unlikely Farage's party will get anywhere near the number of seats being targetted by Ed Davey. The latest prediction based on opinion polls from 05 Jun 2024 to 13 Jun 2024, sampling 19,426 people. (Electoral Calculus)
According to polling experts Electoral Calculus, The Conservatives are projected to win between 42 and 236 seats, the Lib Dems between 34-77 seats, the SNP between 20-38 and Reform way back, with an expected one seat and a possible high of seven.
However, it is clear that Reform UK has continued the renewed momentum sparked when Farage announced he was taking over as leader and would stand for election in the Essex seat of Clacton on 4 June.
An 'utter disaster' for the Tories
The continued rise of the Reform UK is also marked it could potentially spell election disaster for the Conservatives, one of the UK's leading election experts warned in the wake of the YouGov poll.
Polling expert Professor Sir John Curtice said Reform's growing support was a "real, real problem for the Conservatives" because nearly all the voters shifting their support were switching from those who had previously backed the Tories in 2019.
“Any chance the Conservatives ever had when they fired the starting gun on May 22 that they might be able to narrow Labour’s lead was predicated on them being able to win back those Reform voters.
“Their failure already to squeeze the Reform vote before Farage entered was itself bad news, and then Farage has boosted it further and made things even worse.
Prof Curtice said the average of recent polls shows backing for Reform at about 15% or 16%, was an “utter disaster for the Conservatives”.
Sunak insisted that voting for Reform UK would be “handing Labour a blank cheque” as he played down the YouGov survey.
But in Friday's press conference, Farage claimed his party was "well ahead" of the Conservatives in several regions including the North East, the North West, the East Midlands, in the West Midlands, as well as in the so-called red wall. Adding to this he said: "The inflection point means that, actually, if you vote Conservative in the red wall, you will almost certainly get Labour. A Conservative vote in the red wall is now a wasted vote." Why Reform will struggle to win any seats – despite beating the Tories in the polls
Ollie Corfe
THE TELEGRAPH Fri, 14 June 2024
One week ago, Nigel Farage voiced his goal for Reform to overtake the Conservatives in the polls.
The poll has Reform on a national vote share of 19 points, with the Conservatives trailing on 18. Labour continues to be way ahead on 37 points.
It is important to note this is just one poll: across 12 pollsters’ latest polls, Reform are averaging on 14 per cent, compared to the Conservatives on 22 per cent.
Reform has seen a jump in support – around 3 to 4 per cent since the election was called.
Despite this, very few experts, including the party itself, predict it will secure more than a handful of seats.
This is because, unlike a party like the Liberal Democrats, support for Reform is spread evenly across the country rather than being concentrated in a small number of seats. So while it can score high in nationwide polls, it may not be able to secure enough support in individual seats to claim success – especially given the UK’s first past the post electoral system. Are Reform on course to win seats in Parliament?
Speaking to BBC Breakfast on Friday, Mr Farage said: “Whatever we do, we may not get the number of seats we deserve, but are we going to win seats in Parliament? Yes.”
The latest YouGov MRP – which polls voting intention in each constituency, surveying some 50,000 people in total – conducted just before Mr Farage took control of the party, had the party on no seats whatsoever.
However, Mr Farage is clearly optimistic that the recent surge in the polls since his return to the helm of Reform will result in the party sending MPs to Westminster.
Hypothetically, Reform will need a much larger percentage of the vote than has been seen so far for his party to secure more than a couple of seats. What constituency swing is needed?
This latest MRP, which uses modelling and constituency-level polling to predict individual seat outcomes, had Labour on 422 MPs to the Conservatives 140 MPs.
On average, across all the seats, Reform secured 10.2 per cent of the vote share in the survey. This left it in second place in 27 seats, but the winner in none.
In a situation where, uniformly across all seats, each vote gained by Reform was stolen solely from the Conservatives, the party would need to see its share increase by 12 points before it started picking up seats.
This is because in the seats where Reform comes second, it is Labour that stands in the way, not the Conservatives and, even where it is in second, it is substantially behind the projected winner.
For example, YouGov’s MRP has support for Reform at its strongest in Barnsley North, at 23 per cent to the Tories’ 7 per cent. If every Conservative voter abandoned the party and threw their weight behind Reform, its share would rise to 30 per cent. It would still lose to Labour, polling there at 48 per cent.
If there was a uniform 12-point swing to Reform in every seat from current polling levels, Reform would return three MPs: Mr Farage in Clacton, Richard Tice in Boston and Skegness and a third in New Forest East.
It would not be until a 15-point swing from the Tories to Reform that it would secure over 10 seats. And a massive 19-point swing would be needed to get them above the Lib Dems, in which case the Conservative party would be left without a single seat.
In a second scenario, where for every two votes Reform steals from the Conservatives, it takes one from Labour, Reform getting an MP elected is more within reach.
In this scenario, Reform gets its first and only seat with an 11-point swing. Interestingly, its first winner isn’t the party leader, but Garry Sutherland in Exmouth and Exeter East.
Lee Anderson would join the Reform victors with a 12-point swing, Mr Farage and Mr Tice after a 14-point swing, and a 17-point swing would see them become the second party on 81 seats. Why is it so difficult?
The bar for becoming a major political party is incredibly high.
This is almost entirely explained by the first-past-the-post system, where parties are punished if their support is distributed widely instead of focused in a small number of seats.
For Reform voters, one point of contention will likely be that the Liberal Democrats, currently trailing them nationwide on 10 per cent of voting intention, are predicted by the YouGov MRP to secure 48 seats.
Crucially, this Liberal Democrat vote share is extremely focused in some areas.
The Liberal Democrats are projected to gain less than 10 per cent of the total vote share in around three quarters of seats across the country. Reform on the other hand is predicted to experience vote share this low in fewer than half of seats.
However, the Lib Dems could see shares of over 30 per cent in around 11 per cent of all seats. Reform is not expected to see this anywhere.
Effectively, this means that while Reform has a more uniform level of middling vote share across seats, the Liberal Democrats experience very high support and very low support.
This feeling is not unique to Reform.
The Greens could have its vote share triple this year and even become the second party with younger parties, but are still only projected to pick up Brighton Pavillion and – maybe – Bristol Central.
Reform UK: Where did party come from and what are its policies?
Sophie Wingate and Ian Jones, PA Fri, 14 June 2024
With a major poll showing Reform UK edging past the Conservatives for the first time, Nigel Farage’s party has the potential to blow up the General Election.
Here the PA news agency answers some key questions on the party.
– Where did Reform UK come from?
It was formed in 2021 as a relaunch of Mr Farage’s previous project, the Brexit Party, which had in turn been founded from the remnants of Ukip.
Mr Farage helped found Ukip in the 1990s, which in later decades ate away at Tory support and proved instrumental in paving the way for the in-out referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU.
In the aftermath of Brexit, Mr Farage announced he was quitting for a third time as Ukip leader. As the party descended into infighting, amid claims of a sharp turn to the right, he dramatically announced he was returning to the political front line with the formation of the new Brexit Party.
Mr Farage and Richard Tice in 2020 announced the Brexit Party would be renamed Reform as they railed against Covid-19 lockdowns. Unusually, it was set up as an “entrepreneurial political start-up”, with Mr Farage the company’s majority shareholder and honorary president.
Reform remained relatively unknown until recently, despite a major boost with the defection of Tory party deputy chairman Lee Anderson earlier this year.
Lee Anderson defected to Reform while he was the MP for Ashfield (Dominic Lipinski/PA)
Mr Anderson became the party’s first MP following his suspension from the Conservative Party over comments he made about London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
– What happened when the General Election was called?
After Rishi Sunak called the General Election, Mr Farage at first announced he would not stand as a Reform UK candidate, saying he would support his party from the sidelines while focusing on getting Donald Trump re-elected as US president.
But less than two weeks later, he performed a screeching U-turn. Not only would he seek to become the MP for Clacton, but he would do so as leader of Reform UK, replacing former businessman and MEP Mr Tice in the role.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage holding a McDonald’s banana milkshake after one was thrown at him in Essex (James Manning/PA)
Mr Farage, who has failed in his previous seven attempts to be elected to the Commons, said his decision was motivated by a “terrible sense of guilt” towards his supporters as he vowed to lead a “political revolt”.
His takeover came as a huge blow to Mr Sunak’s already faltering campaign, heightening Tory fears that Reform could snatch voters from the right.
Following the veteran Eurosceptic’s decision to stand, celebrated with great fanfare by party backers in the Essex seat he is hoping to win, Reform began to climb in the polls.
– What are Reform’s policies?
The party will fight the election on immigration, pledging an “employer immigration tax” on companies that choose to employ overseas workers instead of British citizens.
This would see businesses paying a national insurance “premium” of 20% of an employee’s salary, as opposed to 13.8%, if the worker is from overseas.
The party has vowed to freeze lawful immigration with the exception of healthcare and leave the European Convention on Human Rights.
On the economy, Reform has set out an ambition to slash £91 billion off public spending by stopping the Bank of England paying interest on quantitative easing reserves and finding £50 billion of wasteful spending in Whitehall.
It has promised there would be no tax on earnings under £20,000 a year.
Reform has also said it would abolish the Government’s net zero targets and “stand up for British culture, identity and values”.
The party is set to unveil its full manifesto on Monday June 17.
– How have Reform’s poll ratings changed since the campaign began?
On the day Mr Sunak called the election, Reform was averaging 11% in the opinion polls.
The party remained around this level until the first week of June, when – a few days after Mr Farage announced he was standing as a candidate – its average poll rating began to climb and currently stands at 15%, six points behind the Conservatives’ average of 21%.
While most polls published in the past two weeks show a clear rise in support for Reform, there is no agreement among them over how the party is faring in relation to the Conservatives.
Only one poll so far has put Reform ahead of the Tories. The YouGov poll put Reform at 19% to the Tories’ 18% in voting intention, although pollsters caveated that Reform’s lead is within the margin of error.
Five other polls have been published in the past 24 hours, all of which show Reform trailing the Conservatives between one percentage point (Redfield & Wilton) and 12 points (More in Common).
– So what are Reform’s chances in the election?
Mr Farage has been bullish about Reform’s chances, expressing hope the party can “get through the electoral threshold” while declining to put a target on the number of seats he believes it could win.
But the first-past-the-post electoral system means the party could gain millions of votes without taking a single constituency. Nigel Farage and Richard Tice announcing their party’s economic policy (James Manning/PA)
Nonetheless, Reform could have a big impact on the result by taking votes away from the Conservatives and costing Tory candidates closely contested seats.
Mr Farage’s stated ambition is to engineer a reverse takeover of the Conservative Party to form a new centre-right grouping.
He has hinted at the possibility of striking an election deal with the Tories, although Mr Tice dismissed the comments as “banter”.
In 2019, the then-Brexit Party withdrew candidates in seats across the country in a bid to help then-Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson win.
What does Reform UK stand for? Their history and vision under Nigel Farage
Dominic Penna
THE TELEGRAPH Fri, 14 June 2024 Since rebranding itself in 2020, Reform UK has become a formidable force on the political scene
Founded in 2021 as a relaunch of the Brexit Party, Reform UK stands almost neck and neck with the Conservatives in the wake of Nigel Farage shock announcement that he will stand as an MP and the party’s leader.
They are on track to cost the Conservatives a significant proportion of voters from the political Right ahead of the looming general election on July 4, edging one point ahead of the Prime Minister’s party for the first time in the latest figures from YouGov.
Already, the party has faced pivotal change throughout their campaign with co-founder Mr Farage returning to front-line politics to lead a “political revolt” aimed at toppling the Conservative Party after replacing Richard Tice, a former businessman and MEP who has led the party since 2021.
His pledge came as a surprise to most given Mr Farage had previously ruled out standing in the general election in his first campaign speech on May 23, promising to support Mr Tice from the sidelines instead.
Reform gained its first MP in March after Lee Anderson, a former deputy chairman of the Tory Party, defected following his suspension over a row about Sadiq Khan.
Mr Tice and Mr Farage announced the Brexit Party would become Reform on Nov 1 2020 in an article for The Telegraph published at the start of the second Covid lockdown.
They used the joint article to declare “lockdowns don’t work” and instead advocated a policy of “focused protection” for the most vulnerable. They also called for sweeping reform of major institutions beyond the pandemic.
Reform stood candidates at the London Assembly, Scottish Parliament and Senedd elections in 2021. Though failing to pick up any seats, the party gathered just over 42,500 supporters across all three elections.
The party’s backing in the polls remained largely static throughout 2021, averaging around three percentage points, although it had risen to an average of 6 per cent by the end of 2022 amid growing public frustration with the Conservative Party in the wake of the deposition of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.
The party’s fortunes improved vastly during 2023 and the early months of 2024, with average support for Reform almost doubling from 6 per cent in January 2023 to 10.1 per cent at the start of March.
The rise of Reform can be attributed to a combination of the party’s policy offer and fortuitous circumstances. Reform UK policies
On the economic front, it has promised sweeping cuts to levies including corporation tax and inheritance tax at a time when Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt are overseeing the country’s highest tax burden since the Second World War, with a further peak projected later this decade.
Despite successive Conservative governments promising to cut immigration, net migration reached record levels in 2022 and previous Reform leader Mr Tice has cited this “betrayal” by the Tory government of its past manifesto pledges as a driving force behind his party’s success.
Research from the More in Common think tank in February 2022 found that immigration was the main reason 2019 Tory voters were defecting to Reform, with around one in five of those who backed Boris Johnson and his party at the last election expected to support Mr Farage.
Reform’s promises on border control include “net zero immigration”, leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) – a demand made by many Tory backbenchers, and a popular idea among the party’s grassroots – and declaring illegal immigration as a national security threat.
On May 30, the party announced plans to introduce a migrant tax that would force employers to pay a higher National Insurance (NI) rate on foreign workers.
Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Tice pledged a 20 per cent National Insurance rate for every foreign worker in comparison to the current 13.8 per cent for domestic British workers.
The party has also vowed to abolish the Government’s flagship net zero targets, claiming that the green push is doing more damage to the British economy than anything else.
There was a further bounce in support for Reform following Mr Sunak’s November reshuffle, in which Suella Braverman was sacked as Home Secretary over her criticism of pro-Palestinian protests, which she dubbed “hate marches”.
The same reshuffle took Westminster by surprise with the return of Lord Cameron as the new Foreign Secretary, a move that angered many on the Tory Right as the former prime minister is widely perceived to be on the liberal wing of the party.
Mr Tice told GB News at the time: “The truth is our server has almost exploded with fury at what’s happened today with the return of David Cameron. Let’s remember this is the gentleman who campaigned against Brexit, and almost everything he did on foreign policy was wrong.”
As a result of its outflanking of the Conservatives on the Right in many policy areas and channelling the disillusionment of traditional Tories with its rhetoric, the party may well have an even greater impact at the next general election than in 2019, when it stood aside from seats held by Mr Johnson’s Tory candidates.
Now commanding the support of around one in ten voters, the party could block Mr Sunak from winning in dozens of seats he may otherwise retain.
Hard-right Reform UK leapfrogs Tories for first time in poll
Peter HUTCHISON Fri, 14 June 2024 a Nigel Farage's Reform UK party leap-frogged Rishi Sunak's Conservatives in an opinion poll (Darren Staples)
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Friday played down a "seismic" poll suggesting that his Conservative party has fallen behind the hard-right anti-immigration Reform UK group for the first time.
But a senior Tory insisted that the YouGov survey was a "stark warning" that the main opposition Labour party was on track for a landslide win at next month's general election.
"The only poll that matters is the one on July 4," Sunak told British media in Italy, where he was attending the G7 leaders' meeting.
The new poll, conducted on Wednesday and Thursday, shows Brexiteer Nigel Farage's Reform with 19 percent support, compared to the Conservatives' 18 percent. Both are trailing far behind the centre-left Labour party.
"The fact that Nigel Farage's party are neck and neck with the governing Conservatives is a seismic shift in the voting landscape," YouGov said.
It cautioned, though, that the figures are "well within the margin of error of one another".
"We will not be able to tell for some time whether Reform can sustain or improve their position relative to the Conservatives," the pollsters added.
The survey indicated that Labour, led by Keir Starmer, still held a commanding lead at 37 percent, in line with other surveys that have put it some 20 points ahead for nearly two years.
That has made Starmer odds-on to become the next prime minister.
But he is still fighting to overcome persistent Conservative claims that his party will recklessly spend public finances and increase personal taxes -- a perennial jibe from right-wingers.
"The poll is a stark warning," said government minister Laura Trott.
"If a result like this is replicated on election day, Keir Starmer would have huge and unchecked power to tax your home, your job, your car, your pension however he wants."
She echoed Sunak who said the election campaign had only just passed the half-way stage and that a vote for Reform would be "handing Labour a blank cheque".
"The Conservative party are fighting for every single vote in this election," added Trott.
Farage -- who at the last general election in 2019 did a deal with the Conservatives to avoid splitting the right-wing vote -- claimed on Thursday that Reform now represents the main opposition party to Labour, not the Conservatives.
- Tory future? -
How the opinion poll will play out if it is replicated on election day is unclear, with Britain's winner-takes-all first-past-the-post system favouring the bigger parties.
Some commentators have suggested the Conservatives, firmly on the back foot after a torrid 14 years in power marked by Brexit, Covid and a cost-of-living crisis, have tacitly conceded the election is unwinnable.
Senior Conservatives have taken to the airwaves in recent days to warn voters about handing Labour a "supermajority" in parliament for the next five years.
There are increasing questions, too, about what will happen to the Tories after the election, which would likely see Sunak stand down if Labour wins by a landslide.
Any Tory leadership contest would likely be an ideological fight between the centre-right and vocal right-wingers who have been increasingly critical of the party's immigration stance.
That has prompted talk of Farage, who on Friday reiterated his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin as a "political operator" and described Adolf Hitler as "hypnotic in a very dangerous way", joining the Conservatives.
But the former member of the European Parliament, who is standing to be a British MP for the eighth time after seven failed attempts, has said instead that he wants to take over the party.
The Conservatives have gone through five prime ministers since 2016, including three in just four months in 2022.
Much of that was the result of Brexit.
But there were also other self-inflicted wounds, such as the chaos of Boris Johnson's time as leader and Liz Truss's short-lived tenure, when her unfunded tax cuts spooked the markets and crashed the pound.
Labour's Starmer, who is campaigning on promises to spur growth and restore economic "stability", is keen not to squander the party's huge poll lead, running a cautious campaign to end Tory "chaos".
Sunak ‘still fighting’ after Reform overtakes Tories in polls for first time
Daniel Martin
THE TELEGRAPH Fri, 14 June 2024
Rishi Sunak was asked about the latest poll results while at the G7 summit in Puglia, southern Italy - Massimiliano De Giorgi/UPI/Shutterstock
The Prime Minister went on: “We are only halfway through this election, so I’m still fighting very hard for every vote.
“And what that poll shows is – the only poll that matters is the one on July 4 – but if that poll was replicated on July 4, it would be handing labour a blank cheque to tax everyone, tax their home their pension their car, their family, and I’ll be fighting very hard to make sure that doesn’t happen.
“And actually, when I’ve been out and about talking to people, they do understand that a vote for anyone who is not a Conservative candidate is just a vote to put Keir Starmer in No 10.
“So if you want action on lower taxes, lower migration, protected pensions or a sensible approach to net zero you’re only going to get that by voting Conservative.”
Mr Sunak rejected Mr Farage’s claim that the poll shows that a vote for the Tories is now a vote for Labour.
“Ultimately, if you’re not going to vote for a Conservative candidate that makes it more likely that Keir Starmer is in No 10.
“And when people are thinking about the substance of what they want to see from a future government, if you’re someone who wants to see control over borders, you’re going to get that from us.
“You’re not going to get that from Labour, they’re going to cancel the Rwanda scheme, they’re not going to put in place a legal migration cap, if you want a sensible approach to net zero.
“I’ve already announced that, Labour would reverse those reforms and put everyone’s builds up with net zero costs.
“And if you want your pension protected, we’re the only ones offering it triple lock plus, so actually, you know when people sit down especially now this week when everyone can see very clearly the difference in approach from the two parties … will crystallise people’s minds on polling day.” Nigel Farage claims the latest poll shows that a vote for the Tories is now a vote for Labour - Jonathan Hordle/ITV/via Getty Images Europe
Asked whether the poll represented an existential threat to the Conservatives, Mr Sunak said: “I think at the end of the day on July 5, one of two people’s going to be Prime Minister – Keir Starmer or me – and this week the most important thing that happened was you saw both major parties manifestos that’s their programme for government if they were elected.
“So now everyone has a very clear sense of what each of us would do and as you saw from our manifesto, as we were discussing yesterday, say what you want about it, but it’s a very clear plan, a detailed set of bold actions.
“That’s how you deliver a more secure future for people and crucially, there’s a massive difference on tax.
“We want to cut your taxes at every stage of your life in work, setting up a business, buying your first home, when you’re retired, you’re a pensioner or if you have a family cutting taxes for everybody.
“The Labour Party consistently can’t tell you which taxes they’re going to put up but they are going to put them up and as we saw yesterday, they’re gonna raise the tax burden to the highest level in this country’s history. And that’s the choice for everyone at the election.” Reform UK overtakes PM Sunak's Conservatives in opinion poll Reuters Updated Thu, 13 June 2024 at 9:56 pm GMT-6·2-min read
Reform UK general election campaign event, in London
LONDON (Reuters) - Nigel Farage's Reform UK Party overtook Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's Conservatives in an opinion poll for the first time on Thursday ahead of Britain's election on July 4.
The poll by YouGov for the Times newspaper put Reform UK on 19%, up from 17% previously, and the Conservative Party unchanged on 18%. The opposition Labour Party topped the poll with 37%.
The survey of 2,211 people was carried out June 12-13, after Sunak pledged to cut 17 billion pounds ($21.70 billion) of taxes for working people in his party's election manifesto.
Reform's poll rating has risen since Farage, best known for his successful campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, said he was returning to frontline politics, taking over leadership of the party and standing for election to parliament.
"This is the inflection point. The only wasted vote now is a Conservative vote, we are the challengers to Labour and we are on our way," Farage said in a video posted on X.
A small right-wing party, founded in 2018 as the Brexit Party, Reform backs populist causes such as tougher immigration laws.
Asked if the trend would stick, a Conservative lawmaker who declined to be named said: "Yes. I think people are fed up with the Tories (Conservatives), but not with Conservatism. So they are moving to another Conservative party."
Sunak's campaign has also been hit by sharp criticism after he left D-Day memorial events in France earlier than other world leaders.
Other opinion polls show the Conservatives much further ahead of Reform.
Despite overtaking Sunak's Conservatives in Thursday's poll - which reflected the share of a nationwide vote - Reform is not forecast to win many, if any, parliamentary seats.
Its support is spread comparatively evenly across the country, whereas backing for the larger and more established parties is more concentrated by geographic areas.
Britain has a first-past-the-post electoral system, meaning Reform could pick up millions of votes across the country without winning any of parliament's 650 individual constituencies.
($1 = 0.7835 pounds)
(Reporting by Kylie MacLellan and William James; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Daniel Wallis)
