Rishi Sunak hints he might not quit as Tory leader immediately if he loses election – as it happened

• Rishi Sunak has hinted that he might not quit as Tory leader immediately if he loses the election on Thursday. The prime minister did not give a direct answer when asked if he would stay on if he lost. But he told the BBC he would always put himself at the service of his party, implying that he might stay on for a period.

• Keir Starmer said that a government in France led by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) party would not hamper a Labour government’s intention to negotiate a better EU deal. The RN made historic gains in the first round of France’s snap elections on Sunday with 33% of the vote. Starmer also said that far-right gains in France proves the left must show “only progressives have answers” to problems people are facing.

• Labour has released a dossier claiming “166 hardcore Trussites” are among Tory election candidates.

• James Cleverly, the home secretary, claimed Keir Starmer, the Labour party leader, would want to establish “a permanent Labour government” if he won. Cleverly then accused him of indulging in a “dog whistle attack on the Bangladeshi community”, referring to Starmer telling the Sun TV Q&A last week that “at the moment people coming from countries like Bangladesh are not being removed because they’re not being processed”.

• Sunak defended his claim that Vladimir Putin would welcome a Labour victory in the election. Asked to justify the allegation, which he first made in comments to the Daily Telegraph, Sunak said: “[A Labour victory] sends a signal to our adversaries that we’re not going to take our security seriously.”

• Thousands of people fear they will be unable to vote in the general election with delays, human error and Brexit being blamed for missing postal ballot packs in the UK and abroad.

• Tactical voting and disaffection with mainstream parties make this 4 July a once-in-a-lifetime general election that could reshape the political landscape for decades, Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, argued. He said the Lib Dems seemed poised to entrench themselves in a swathe of formerly Conservative territory, particularly in the south.

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Thousands of people fear they will be unable to vote in the general election with delays, human error and Brexit being blamed for missing postal ballot packs in the UK and abroad.

Clarissa Killwick, a British citizen living in Italy, said she could not trust the post to deliver her vote in time.

“I decided to leave nothing to chance and will be going to the UK to vote in person,” said Killwick, who runs a Brexit campaign group for UK citizens in Italy.

Another said they had to courier their ballot back to the UK.

Vienna-based Michael Goldrei said Hackney council in London told him his pack had been posted on 17 June but he started to panic when it had not arrived a week later. It eventually arrived on 26 June. Goldrei said he was “determined that my vote was counted” so he sent it back via DHL at a cost of €45 (£38). “But will others do that?”

You can read the full story by my colleagues, Lisa O’Carroll, Caroline Bannock and Rachel Obordo, here:

Tory deputy chairman Jonathan Gullis has criticised Keir Starmer, the Labour party leader, by saying: “let’s hope Putin doesn’t choose 6.01pm” to further escalate the war in Ukraine.

Speaking at a Conservative campaign event, Gullis said:

The leader of the Labour party, who is literally boasting that he plans to clock off at 6pm on a daily basis today.

So let’s hope Putin doesn’t choose 6.01pm when he wishes to go any further with his illegal and immoral invasion of Ukraine.

Starmer told Virgin Radio this morning (see post at 11.20) that he intends to finish work at 6pm on Fridays to spend time with his family, adding that protecting time to spend with his son and daughter made him more relaxed and a better decision-maker.

Rishi Sunak is now addressing a rally in Hinckley, in Leicestershire.

The Guardian’s whitehall editor, Rowena Mason, says the prime minister has told the crowd he’s “not blind to people’s frustrations” with himself and the Conservatives.

Sunak said there are “three days to save Britain” and has urged voters not to “surrender” to Labour.

The Sun’s political correspondent, Noa Hoffman, who is also at the rally, wrote on X that “there’s quite a bit of empty space behind me and the room is not very big”.

The Liberal Democrats are increasingly confident they can beat the Conservatives in large parts of southern England, buoyed up by polls that show the party – currently in fourth place – picking up support across large parts of the south and south-east.

The party, led by Ed Davey, went into the election focused on 80 seats where it finished second in 2019 – almost all Tory held. A senior Lib Dems source has told Tom Symonds, a BBC home affairs correspondent, that the party could win more than 26 new seats, beating its previous record at the 1997 general election.

He has this report from the Liberal Democrat campaign bus:

Although the Lib Dems had 15 MPs in the last parliament, boundary changes at this election reduces that number to eight.

Winning 26 seats on Thursday would make 34 but some polls are currently predicting they’ll end up with 60 or 70 so they must surely be hoping for many more.

(If you Google it you’ll find they actually won 28 new seats in 1997, but we’re not counting two more which had previously been affected by boundary changes).

Despite us trying, Sir Ed Davey’s team won’t discuss the actual number of seats they hope to take on Thursday, so let’s have a look at what the party’s strategists are saying “off the record”.

While the Lib Dems are mainly targeting the Conservatives, senior officials claim the vote for Labour is “softer” than it was for Tony Blair’s landslide in 1997.

People who don’t love the idea of Keir Starmer as prime minister might be persuaded to change their allegiance for tactical reasons.

Another big source of Lib Dem votes used to be Remainers. But the party strategists believe they’re thinking less about Britain’s relationship with Europe and more about the state of public services. And sewage.

Which is why, in between the stunts, Davey talks endlessly to reporters about the NHS, social care, and clean water.

2d ago21.00 CEST

Aletha Adu

Aletha Adu is a political correspondent for the Guardian

Keir Starmer has said that a government in France led by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) party would not hamper a Labour government’s intention to negotiate a better EU deal.

The RN made historic gains in the first round of France’s snap elections on Sunday with 33% of the vote, bringing the possibility the party could emerge as the largest in the final round of voting next Sunday.

The Labour leader was asked if he was concerned that a victory for Le Pen would hamper his ability to gain closer economic ties with the EU if he becomes prime minister.

“I genuinely don’t want to get ahead of myself. Firstly, we haven’t seen the final outcome in France, we’ve also got a big outcome of our own on Thursday, so we need those two pieces to fall into place and to be clear, I don’t think it affects the overall intention that we have, which is to negotiate a better deal with the EU,” he said.

You can see our coverage of the French election results here and the rest of the above report in this story below:

Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, said she is “under no illusion” of the “mountain” her party has to climb.

She told the Citizens UK general election assembly:

For too long, the people running our country have not just had the wrong ideas but the wrong priorities too. They’ve lost sight of what’s important. The basic things in life that we all need.

Standing in front of you today I am under no illusion about the mountain we have to climb. But I take comfort in knowing I am one voice in a movement. A movement which is greater than any politician’s promise. We seek power so we can hand it back to you – the people.

Labour are widely expected to win the general election on 4 July with a healthy majority, and possibly even in a landslide bigger than Tony Blair’s in 1997.

Faiza Shaheen, the candidate blocked by Labour from standing in Chingford and Woodford Green, is standing as an independent in the north-east London seat.

Shaheen, who is seen to be on the left of the Labour party, stood in the seat in 2019, but was beaten by 1,262 votes by Iain Duncan Smith. She has been speaking with the Times Radio journalist John Pienaar. He asked her: If you were to be elected, would you hope to get the Labour whip and rejoin the Labour family?

Shaheen replied:

I don’t see that. To be honest, I think having an independent voice, given that there is going to be this huge majority Labour government and given how the Labour leadership is very strict about what they say and the treatment of anyone vaguely seen to be going against those lines, I think we will need an independent voice. And honestly the way I was treated and the lack of regard I have to have enough self-respect to say no.

Pienaar then put it to Shaheen, an academic who specialises in the study of inequality, that she could split the “anti-Tory vote” in her constituency, allowing Iain Duncan Smith, a former Conservative secretary of state for work and pensions, to cling on to the seat, which he has represented since its creation in 1997.

Shaheen said she had thought about the potential of splitting the vote a lot, which made her hesitant to run as an independent. But she was urged to run as an independent candidate by people in the local community, and believes, unlike many other independent candidates across the country, she could actually win in the Chingford and Woodford Green seat where she grew up.

“We are going to get a Labour government, we are going to get a majority government. This is about having a local voice that will stand up with Labour at times and at other times push them to be more progressive and be a different voice,” Shaheen said, stressing that an independent would not have to “toe the party line” in parliament.

Shaheen was deselected by Labour after liking a series of posts on X that allegedly downplayed antisemitism allegations. She has claimed Keir Starmer’s party had “a problem with black and brown people”.

“This campaign of prejudice, bullying and spiteful behaviour has finally been rewarded by Labour’s NEC [national executive committee] and my name has been added to the list of those not welcome in the candidate club. And it is no surprise that many of those excluded are people of colour,” Shaheen said in a statement.

The Daily Mirror has been sent a survey – of more than 1,000 NHS employees – showing that as many as 22% would think about leaving if the Conservatives remain in power after the general election, while 15% of respondents said they would definitely quit.

Find Out Now, which conducted the survey, interviewed 1,025 NHS employees on 25 June and 26.

Labour has promised to clear the NHS waiting list backlog in England within five years.

The shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, told the Guardian that in another Conservative term the total waiting list in England could grow to 10m cases, with healthcare becoming as degraded as NHS dental services.

There are over 110,000 vacancies in the NHS England workforce, which creates huge pressure on staff and affects the quality of care patients receive.

Twice as many Britons support tax increases to pay for public services as those who believe they should be reduced even if it means further public service cuts, according to new a report.

A study released by abrdn Financial Fairness Trust, a research body set up by the fund manager, said the public are willing to support policies that they don’t think will benefit their own finances, despite almost two in five (39%) of households now classed as having serious financial difficulties. The number of households with finances in distress has increased by 2.9 million since the last election in 2019, when 28% were in that situation.

About a third of the 5,572 people surveyed said they supported raising their taxes if it benefited other people with more hours of free childcare, cheaper energy tariffs for lower-income households and an increase in child benefit.

The Conservative candidate challenging Nigel Farage, the Reform UK party leader, in Clacton on 4 July has described the atmosphere at Reform UK rallies in an interview with PoliticsHome.

Giles Watling, who has been the MP for the Essex seat since 2017 (and was re-elected in the December 2019 general election with an increased majority), reportedly said that recent rallies were “chilling”.

He told PoliticsHome:

I’m not ascribing any of these sort of things to Nigel Farage himself but the method, the process is just sort of reminiscent of the big rallies at Nuremberg with people standing to one side. It’s a personality cult that’s been created. There may be no evil intent, but it feels wrong and bad.

Watling said there was “beautiful irony” that there has been “defacement” of his campaign posters by people “painting over my face and turning me into Adolf Hitler”.

His comments come after a Channel 4 undercover investigation found a Reform campaigner called Rishi Sunak, the UK’s first prime minister of colour and the first Hindu prime minister, a “fucking [P-word]”.

Separately, Reform last week withdrew support from Raymond Saint, who was its candidate in Basingstoke, after the Guardian informed the party he had been on a list of members of the BNP.

In another incident, earlier last month, Grant StClair-Armstrong, who was Reform’s candidate in North West Essex, resigned after it was discovered he had previously encouraged people to vote for the BNP.

2d ago18.57 CEST

Rory Stewart says he's 'very worried' Starmer government will use 'class warfare as cover for inaction'

Andrew Sparrow

Rory Stewart was a cabinet minister for about three months, made an unsuccessful bid for the Conservative party leader and now has new, second career (or third or fourth or fifth – he is also a writer, academic and former diplomat) as co-host of the enormously successful podcast, the Rest is Politics. The other host is Alastair Campbell.

The podcast is regarded as gospel in centrist dad circles and Stewart and Campbell broadly agree on quite a lot. But Campbell has failed to persuade Stewart to get excited about the prospect of a Labour government. In an interview with Times Radio, Stewart said he was “very, very worried” about what a Starmer government would do. He explained:

They [Labour] think that the problem is that the Tories screwed up the country because they were nasty people who were out of touch. The fantasy seems to be that if they bring in nice, good-willed people from difficult backgrounds, everything’s going to be fine.

I don’t feel that they have yet taken on board just how difficult government is … So I’m very, very worried that this is going to be a very stale, inactive government that’s going to be using class warfare as a cover for inaction.

That is all from me for tonight. My colleague Yohannes Lowe is taking over.

There are some headlines around claiming Keir Starmer has said he won’t work beyond 6pm if he becomes prime minister. This seems to be a misunderstanding based on Starmer telling Virgin Radio earlier (see 11.20am) that if he became PM, he would protect family time.

Asked to respond, Rishi Sunak said he never finishes work at 6pm, the Telegraph reports.

In his BBC interview, Rishi Sunak was asked by Chris Mason if he had an equivalent of the Jude Bellingham kick that might rescue the match for the Tories. Sunak replied with a reference to his favourite game, cricket. He said:

Mine is probably more a kind of flashy, cover drive or off drive, or something instead, but there we go.

Look, it is not over till it’s over.