Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Politics
Chris Johnston (now), Andrew Sparrow and Claire Phipps (earlier)

Jeremy Corbyn interviewed on The One Show – as it happened

Manhole covers, jam and allotments: Jeremy Corbyn on The One Show

Closing summary

We are wrapping up today’s edition of Politics Live - here’s a brief summary of Tuesday’s highlights on the campaign trail:

  • Theresa May sought to relaunch her general election campaign with her strongest personal attack on Jeremy Corbyn, claiming the Labour leader’s performance in Monday night’s live television debate showed he would be “naked in the negotiating chamber” when Brexit talks start next month.
Steve Bell cartoon
  • Jeremy Corbyn appeared to forget the cost of a key Labour childcare pledge during a tense interview on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. He later apologised for not knowing the figure and defended presenter Emma Barnett’s right to ask him questions, saying it was “unacceptable” that she received antisemitic abuse on Twitter following the interview.
  • A second Scottish independence referendum should be held after the Brexit process is complete, Nicola Sturgeon has said, signalling a significant change in her party’s constitutional strategy.
  • The Conservative party is trying to use Monday’s TV leaders’ interviews as a chance to reboot its faltering election campaign with an online push focusing on Brexit and immigration.
  • Jeremy Corbyn ended the day with an interview on BBC1’s The One Show that focused on personality rather than policy, but was not joined by his wife in contrast with a similar appearance by Theresa May and her husband Philip earlier this month.

Scott D’Arcy of the Press Association has compiled this handy list of five things we learnt from Jeremy Corbyn’s interview on The One Show.

  • The Corbyn household’s chores are not split between “boy jobs and girl jobs”.

Asked if he and his wife Laura Alvarez divided housework along gender lines, in a similar way to Theresa May and her husband Philip, Corbyn simply shook his head.

  • The hedge outside his house used to be concrete.

“That’s an entrance to a garage and that was a lump of concrete. It was the devil’s own job to break up that concrete and turn it into a garden.”

  • He was a tearaway toddler.

After being shown a picture of himself as a toddler harnessed into his pram, Corbyn said: “I was a bit, sort of, free-spirited and I kept climbing out of the pram and running off.”

  • His parents were not pushy.

Naomi and David Corbyn may have met at a demonstration in support of the Spanish republican government, which at the time was under threat from Franco’s fascists, but he said their “strong views” were never imposed on him. “They never pushed the views down our throats at all. They were very much liberal thinkers - they believed people should think for themselves and discover themselves and a path for themselves.”

  • He was an academic failure.

Asked about having left Adams’ grammar school with two E grades at A-level, Corbyn said: “I was not an academically successful student. My mum was an ever-generous lady and I said, ‘well these are pretty poor, these results’, and she sort of looked at me and said, ‘they probably couldn’t read your writing’.”

He said he may have written “overlong answers to one question because I was quite interested in the subject and forgot the rest of it”.

Commons Speaker John Bercow.
Commons Speaker John Bercow. Photograph: PA

A touch of non-Corbyn news for a moment. John Bercow could face opposition if he seeks to remain Commons Speaker after rowing back on his pledge to step down next year.

Bercow, who originally said he would serve nine years in the Speaker’s chair, said the snap election had persuaded him to change his mind. But Tory MP James Duddridge, a prominent critic of the Speaker, called Bercow a “self-serving parasite” who should not be returned to the role.

Bercow is standing for re-election in Buckingham and told Sky News that if returned to the Speaker’s chair by MPs after 8 June, he would like to continue for the full term of the parliament.

His critics on the Tory benches were angered earlier this year by the revelation that he voted remain in the EU referendum and by his handling of the row over President Donald Trump’s state visit.

Some had held off the idea of opposing his return to the role because of the expectation he would stand down. But Bercow, who was elected Speaker in 2009, said: “I had originally indicated an intention to serve for approximately nine years. If I may legitimately say so, I made that commitment eight years ago, it was before the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, it was before the EU referendum.

“I’m looking to the people of Buckingham to re-elect me as their member of parliament and then I will, if I am successful in that quest, ask the House whether it is willing to allow me to continue as Speaker for the 2017 parliament, which can run up to five years.”

Updated

Daily Mirror political editor Jack Blanchard gives his take on Corbyn’s One Show appearance:

Here’s a clip of Jeremy Corbyn’s One Show interview:

And that’s it from Jeremy Corbyn on The One Show. The twitterati seem to be saying that Corbyn comes across as far warmer and nicer than Theresa May did.

The Mirror’s Kevin Maguire:

Jim Pickard of the Financial Times adds:

We are also treated to a picture of Corbyn’s allotment. What does he like about it? The open space, the chance to grow things, and unwind, he answers.

There is “something magic” about growing your own peas, potatoes and the like, he says, before presenting Alex and Ore with a pot of homemade jam.

Now we’re on to Corbyn’s love of manhole covers. Behind a picture of a Thomas Crapper cover is an image of the Labour leader with an Arsenal scarf. He sometimes referees under-10s matches and is asked whether they, or the parliamentary Labour party, are easier to control. No prizes for guessing his answer is the former.

Corbyn says his parents were liberal thinkers who brought up their children to think for themselves. “I try to carry on in that tradition.”

Despite going to grammar school, he only got two Es at A level. Realising he wasn’t going to get into university with those grades, he applied to VSO and went for a “weird interview” in which he was asked how he felt about chickens being slaughtered. Corbyn responded that he was a vegetarian but that if others wanted to eat meat that was fine by him.

Initially thinking he would be going to Malawi, he was sent to Jamaica instead.

Corbyn says his attitudes and principles haven’t really changed over the years. He enjoys meeting variety of people and learning from them: “You have to be prepared to listen to others.”

We learn that he was a Sunday paper boy in rural Shropshire and that his grandfather was a solicitor who became known as the “poor man’s lawyer” after moving to Ealing in west London.

Asked about media coverage of his family and personal affairs, Corbyn says that “intrusion in my life is not nice”, but adds “it goes with the territory”.

In case we needed reminding, co-host Ore Oduba reminds viewers that the interview, which continues after the show’s first film, will be about personality rather than policy.

Corbyn says he never set out in life to be prime minister but that he is “giving everything he can” to win this election.

We are then treated to a picture of Jeremy as an infant in a harness, shackled to a pram.

Jeremy Corbyn is on The One Show and Alex Jones kicks off by asking if there are boys and girls’ jobs in the Corbyn household.

The Labour leader shakes his head, but does say he demolished a concrete wall outside his north London home to replace it with a green hedge.

Laura Alvarez is Jeremy Corbyn’s third wife.
Laura Alvarez is Jeremy Corbyn’s third wife. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

Jeremy Corbyn will appear on The One Show without his wife, Laura Alvarez, after choosing not to follow the example of Theresa and Philip May’s joint interview with the BBC1 programme.

Labour rejected the offer of a similar format because Corbyn maintains that his family is completely out of bounds during the general election campaign.

Alvarez, a Mexican human rights lawyer who runs a fairtrade coffee company, became Corbyn’s third wife in 2013 after they met some years before at a Latin American group.

The 48-year-old has rarely spoken to the press but told Vice News in a documentary of her pride in Corbyn’s response to David Cameron being rude about his dress sense. Alvarez said: “Jeremy stood very strong. It was amazing.”

The Labour leader very rarely speaks about his family life, acknowledging last month in the speech he was “averse to talking about myself”.

Philip May also has a relatively low profile but revealed a few personal details in the One Show interview, including that his wife had wanted to be prime minister for at least seven years.

Speaking about their division of the domestic labour, the prime minister also said there were “boy jobs and girl jobs”, with her husband taking the bins out when he was asked to do so. He said he made the tea “from time to time”.

Updated

Ken Loach.
Ken Loach. Photograph: Stephane Mahe/Reuters

Ken Loach, the award-winning director of films including I, Daniel Blake and Cathy Come Home, has made another Labour election broadcast. While the first featured Jeremy Corbyn, this time it is shadow chancellor John McDonnell’s turn to shine.

Loach said his new film was about the insecure, low-paid work that was “blighting the lives” of millions of Britons.

“This is a film about insecure, low-paid work, which is blighting the lives of millions of working class people. This has soared under the Conservatives, especially in the large parts of Britain which they have neglected and left behind, without jobs or investment. Labour’s programme will restore security to people’s lives, enabling everyone, regardless of their background, and all communities across our country, to thrive.”

In the broadcast being aired on BBC One at 6.55pm, McDonnell said Labour will not accept “foodbank Britain”, adding: “Everybody, whatever their contract, will have equal rights at work - sick pay, holiday pay and a real living wage. We will end zero hours contracts. No-one will be forced into bogus self-employment.”

If you want more Jeremy Corbyn, though, stay tuned after the broadcast for his interview on The One Show with Alex Jones and Ore Oduba. Chances are he may have an easier ride than the grilling he got on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour this morning.

Jeremy Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn is yet to decide if he will take part in tomorrow’s BBC TV debate with other political leaders, at which the home secretary, Amber Rudd, will stand in for Theresa May.

Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, is believed to have been lined up to represent Labour in the BBC election debate in Cambridge, but it is understood no final decision has been made and the official decision will be announced on Wednesday morning. The Labour leader has previously said he would not attend unless he was debating the prime minister.

Rudd will attend the BBC debate along with the Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, Ukip’s Paul Nuttall, the Green party co-leader Caroline Lucas and Plaid Cymru’s Leanne Wood.

The SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon, has confirmed she will not attend and her party will be represented by her deputy, Angus Robertson.

More here.

Updated

Gary Gibbon has written an interesting post on Theresa May’s Brexit speech on his Channel 4 News blog. Here’s an extract.

To add to their queasiness, Theresa May conjured the image of Jeremy Corbyn going naked into the negotiating chamber. If you hadn’t got the image, she repeated it later in her address. She used the word “weak” to describe him three times in one sentence. That is the adjective that comes back particularly strongly in focus groups, rather then “leftwing” or “extreme”.

One Tory candidate from the region said he hadn’t seen anything of the wobble that the polls were talking about. He said: “I wouldn’t want to be anything other than a Tory in the West Midlands right now. She works better than Cameron here – the background, something about that I think. She’s a bit like Thatcher was in the West Midlands.”

That’s all from me for today.

My colleague Chris Johnston is taking over now.

Updated

Jeremy Corbyn has condemned people who have made abusive comments about the BBC journalist Emma Barnett after she tripped him up in an interview by asking about the cost of his childcare plans. (See 11.15am.) Some of it has involved people calling her a Zionist.

Corbyn said:

It is totally and absolutely, completely unacceptable for anyone to throw abuse at anyone else. Journalists do ask difficult questions and journalists do do a job that does require asking difficult questions sometimes in difficult circumstances.

If you don’t like what a reporter says or asks me, or anybody else, understand the question they’re asking. We will all do our best to answer those questions, but under no circumstances whatsoever should anyone throw personal abuse at anyone else, because they are doing the job that they have been employed to do and I will not tolerate it under any circumstances.

He also claimed he did not mind people asking him difficult questions.

There isn’t such a thing as being unfair to politicians. If you put yourself up for elected office in public life you are subject to permanent scrutiny.

I never get upset by these things. Never be so high and mighty that you can’t listen to everybody else and make sure that you understand the motives of the majority of our people and the kind of society that we want to live in.

Updated

Josh Pope, who is standing for the Greens in the Plymouth Moor View seat, is notable for two reasons, firstly his age – he’s only 19. But he’s also possibly the only election candidate who is urging their supporters to back somebody else.

As with many Greens, the local party had been in talks with Labour over the idea of the so-called progressive alliance – the Greens standing down so as to increase the chances of a Labour win, in return for some reciprocal policy commitments.

This didn’t work out and the party stood Pope. Now, however, he’s posted a message on his official website saying people should back the Labour candidate, Sue Dann, anyway.

The seat is currently held by the Conservatives’ Johnny Mercer with a majority of 1,206, precisely three votes more than the Greens took in 2015.

While the Greens were very different from Labour, Pope wrote, “I have to be pragmatic and realise what is best for the country”. He continued:

The Green party is leading by example, taking steps to help ensure that there is a strong opposition after the election, one that will hold the government to account on important issues.

I would love to do that myself, but I recognise that in this election it is the Labour candidate, Sue Dann, who has the best chance of beating the Conservatives and helping to create a more balanced parliament.

Updated

Theresa May’s jibe that Jeremy Corbyn would be “alone and naked in the negotiating chamber” (see 12.54pm) if he was responsible for the UK’s Brexit talks was a deliberate echo of one of the bitterest and best remembered phrases in the Labour party’s internal history.

At the 1957 Labour party conference in Brighton, Labour’s shadow foreign secretary, Aneurin Bevan, who as health minister in the 1945 Labour government presided over the creation of the National Health Service, made a speech on the nuclear weapons issue containing the phrase that would haunt the Labour party for a generation.

More than 120 resolutions on nuclear weapons had been submitted to the conference. One, from Sunderland, demanded that a future Labour government “shall not under any circumstances produce or use any form of nuclear weapons”. Another, from Huddersfield proposed that “Britain should give a lead to the world by unilaterally renouncing the manufacture and use of the hydrogen bomb”.

The resolutions put Bevan, traditionally the darling of the constituency parties and the unchallenged leader of the postwar Labour left, in a quandary. In the weeks running up to the conference, Bevan gave a number of speeches which flirted with the idea of supporting the anti-nuclear cause in some way. But when he rose to speak he had already decided on a different course.

Making the argument that a unilateralist Britain would have no diplomatic leverage, Bevan retorted in his mellifluous Welsh voice that: “You will send a foreign secretary, whoever he may be, naked into the conference chamber.” A few minutes later, in a second devastating comment that made Bevan’s ally Michael Foot wince as if in pain, Bevan said of unilateralism: “You call it statesmanship. I call it an emotional spasm.”

It was, said the leftwing writer Mervyn Jones “the speech that put an end to Bevanism,” a movement on the left of the Labour party that had been dedicated to making Bevan party leader. After Brighton, Bevanism collapsed. Bevan himself was to die of stomach cancer at the age of 62, in 1960, the year in which Labour briefly adopted a policy of unilateral disarmament. But that devastating speech of 1957 has never been forgotten, not least by May’s speechwriters this week.

Aneurin Bevan.
Aneurin Bevan. Photograph: PA/Empics Sports Photo Agency

Updated

Matthew Goodwin, the academic and Ukip specialist, has been looking at our Guardian/ICM polling numbers. He says they show Ukip voters from 2015 seem to have stopped drifting to the Tories:

Updated

Corbyn the only party leader seen as running a good campaign overall, poll suggests

As promised, here are more results from today’s Guardian/ICM poll.

One way to assess who is winning a campaign is to look at the headline state of the parties’ numbers. But another way is to ask directly about the campaigns being run by parties and their leaders. We did this four weeks ago, and again this weekend, and the results are striking.

Four weeks ago Theresa May was the only leader judged overall to be running a good campaign, and the Conservatives were the only party that people said they were more likely to vote for based on what they had seen of the campaign. Now that has reversed, and Labour and Jeremy Corbyn are seen as winning the campaign.

  • Labour has been doing best at gaining voters in the campaign, the ICM poll suggests. Four week ago the Tories were the only party that seemed to be picking up new voters, but now it’s Labour.
  • Corbyn is the only party leader who is overall seen to be running a good campaign, the poll suggests. Four weeks ago it was May, but she has thrown away her lead on this measure.

Here are the figures:

We asked people, on the basis of what they have seen of the campaign in the six weeks since the election was called, whether their chances of voting for each main party had increased or decreased.

Conservatives

Increased: 14%

Decreased: 24%

Stayed the same: 52%

Don’t know: 10%

Net: -10 (down 13 points from the +3 net when ICM asked the same question four weeks ago, when the election campaign had been running for just two weeks)

Labour

Increased: 25%

Decreased: 18%

Stayed the same: 47%

Don’t know: 10%

Net: +7 (up 13)

Lib Dems

Increased: 9%

Decreased: 19%

Stayed the same: 60%

Don’t know: 12%

Net: -10 (down 3)

Ukip

Increased: 6%

Decreased: 22%

Stayed the same: 61%

Don’t know: 12%

Net: -16 (down 4)

Greens

Increased: 6%

Decreased: 15%

Stayed the same: 67%

Don’t know: 13%

Net: -9 (down 2)

We then asked about the party leaders, and whether they were running a good campaign or a bad campaign.

Theresa May

Running a good campaign: 34%

Running a bad campaign: 37%

Don’t know: 29%

Net: -3 (down 22 points from the net +19 when ICM asked the same question four weeks ago, when the election campaign had been running for just two weeks)

Jeremy Corbyn

Running a good campaign: 36%

Running a bad campaign: 34%

Don’t know: 30%

Net: +2 (up 21)

Tim Farron

Running a good campaign: 18%

Running a bad campaign: 31%

Don’t know: 51%

Net: -13 (down 2)

Paul Nuttall

Running a good campaign: 8%

Running a bad campaign: 37%

Don’t know: 54%

Net: -29 (down 6)

Caroline Lucas

Running a good campaign: 12%

Running a bad campaign: 18%

Don’t know: 70%

Net: -6

Jonathan Bartlett

Running a good campaign: 5%

Running a bad campaign: 16%

Don’t know: 80%

Net: -11

We also asked two questions about the Manchester attack.

Thinking about how Theresa May has responded to the Manchester attack, do you think she has handled it:

Well: 53%

Badly: 17%

Don’t know: 30%

And if Jeremy Corbyn were prime minister, how do you think he would have handled it:

Better than May: 17%

Worse than May: 32%

Much the same as May: 32%

Don’t know: 18%

  • A majority of people think May handled the Manchester attacks well, the poll suggests.
  • A third of people think Corbyn would have handled them worse, the poll suggests. The rest either think he would have handled them better or much the same, or don’t know. (That is a useful lead for May, but perhaps not as big for May as she might have hoped given that security and home affairs is supposed to be her strong point.)

ICM Unlimited interviewed a representative sample of 2,002 adults aged 18+ online on 26 to 29 May 2017. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults. ICM is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules.

UPDATE: Here is the ICM write-up of the poll. And here are the tables (pdf).

Updated

The Institute of Fiscal Studies has put out an analysis of the SNP’s plans for tax and spending and of Scotland’s fiscal position. The SNP has no chance of forming a government at Westminster, but it has set out the the kind of spending plans it thinks a government at Westminster should adopt. This is what the IFS says about those plans:

Like Labour, the SNP would like a target of balancing the current budget (the difference between tax receipts and day-to-day spending) by 2021–22, stating they would support borrowing only for investment purposes from that year onwards. Overall the SNP say their plans would allow £120bn of extra spending between 2017–18 and 2021–22. This increase in spending – and borrowing – would be consistent with falls in national debt as a share of GDP, but at a slower pace than under current plans.

The additional day-to-day spending on public services the SNP plans would allow is less than that set out in Labour’s manifesto. On welfare though, the SNP plan to go further than Labour in reversing planned benefit cuts – ending the cash-terms freeze to working-age benefits and revoking restrictions on tax credits and universal credit to the first two children in a family, for instance. Their plans imply a net increase in taxes relative to current plans – including an increase in the top rate of income tax, an increase in the bank levy, a bankers’ bonus tax and the cancellation of further cuts to corporation tax – although there would be tax cuts targeted at SMEs. However, unlike Labour whose plans mean increases in day-to-day spending will be largely funded from (much larger) tax increases, the SNP’s plans imply most of the increase in spending would be funded by additional borrowing.

The 2.3% of GDP target for overall borrowing set out by the SNP is consistent with investment spending increasing in line with the plans set out in March 2017 and implies lower investment than under Labour’s plans (an additional £250bn over 10 years).

Updated

Jeremy Corbyn was in Watford to launch Labour’s race and faith manifesto. Speaking at the launch, he said:

Labour is the party of equality. We were built on the values of social justice, internationalism and human rights. Our values are rooted in the fundamental truth that whatever your background, wherever you are from, you should have the means and opportunity to fulfil your potential.

People continue to be treated unfairly due to their ethnicity or faith. The recent rise in hate crimes, including antisemitic and Islamophobic attacks, underscores how far we still have to go. Labour will repair the damage done by the Conservative government, which has sown the seeds of division in our communities.

Only Labour can be trusted to unlock the talent of black, Asian and minority ethnic people, who have been held back by the Conservatives. We will guarantee equality is at the heart of our programme for government.

Labour will implement a comprehensive strategy for racial equality, one that effectively challenges the disadvantage many black, Asian and minority ethnic communities suffer. We will work every day for a fairer society, where every person is enabled to get on in life, regardless of race, faith or ethnicity, to build a Britain that works for the many, not the few.

Speaking at a Labour campaign event in Watford, Jeremy Corbyn apologised for not being able to give the cost of his childcare policy in his Woman’s Hour interview earlier. He said:

I didn’t have the exact figure in front of me, so I was unable to answer that question, for which obviously I apologise. But I don’t apologise for what’s in the manifesto and I will explain exactly what the cost is.

It’s £4.8bn it will cost by the end of the parliament and it means that 1 million children will get childcare, free childcare: 30 hours per week between the years of two and four.

Jeremy Corbyn arrives to launch the party’s race and faith manifesto at an event in Watford.
Jeremy Corbyn arrives to launch the party’s race and faith manifesto at an event in Watford. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

Updated

SDLP calls for border poll as it launches its manifesto

The SDLP, the smaller nationalist party in Northern Ireland, wants a poll on a united Ireland after Brexit.

A demand for a “border poll” was the centre piece of the SDLP’s manifesto launch today.

Colum Eastwood, the SDLP leader, said Brexit had created a route for Irish nationalists “for actually winning a border poll”.

Eastwood denied that only nationalists would vote for a united Ireland, claiming non-nationalist pro-Europeans would also opt to stay in the EU by joining the Irish republic. All successive opinion polls in recent years however have shown a large majority within Northern Ireland in favour of remaining within the UK.

The region did vote to remain inside the EU at last year’s referendum, with 56% voting to stay.

Sinn Féin is also in favour of a border poll and this may be perceived as the SDLP’s move to defend its greener nationalist flank in response to the surge in support for Gerry Adams in last March’s elections to the Northern Ireland assembly.

However, key figures in the peace process, most notably former Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern, have said any border poll would be dangerous and divisive, and could stir up sectarian divisions inside Northern Ireland.

SDLP leader Colum Eastwood during the launch of the party’s election manifesto at the Crescent Arts Centre in Belfast.
SDLP leader Colum Eastwood during the launch of the party’s election manifesto at the Crescent Arts Centre in Belfast. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA

Updated

Here is today’s Guardian daily election podcast. It features Owen Jones, Jonathan Freedland and Sonia Sodha talking about last night’s “debate” and whether or not the election is a Brexit election.

Updated

Guardian/ICM poll shows Conservative lead over Labour down 2 to 12 points

The latest Guardian/ICM poll is out. And it suggests that the size of the Conservative lead continues to drop, although not to the extent that other polls are saying.

Here are the figures.

Conservatives: 45% (down 2 from Guardian/ICM last week)

Labour: 33% (no change)

Lib Dems: 8% (down 1)

Ukip: 5% (up 1)

Greens: 3% (up 1)

Conservative lead: 12 points (down 2)

Graph of poll results

And here is a commentary from Martin Boon, ICM’s director, which helps to explain why ICM are giving the Tories higher leads than other polling organisations.

Nerves are now certainly jangling in Conservative Central Office, with a YouGov poll last weekend showing a drop to only a 5-point lead, before easing to a 7-point lead yesterday. Survation, with a phone poll this morning split the difference with a 6-pointer for GMTV.

This, from an ICM 22-point Conservative lead just three weeks’ ago.

We too see a continuing Tory tumble with our latest Guardian poll showing a more comfortable, but still rapidly dwindled 12-point Conservative lead. The Tories have dropped two points since our last Guardian poll a week ago, and one point compared to our Sun on Sunday poll published yesterday. Labour remain stable or are up one, depending on your comparison preference.

This poll was completed before last night’s leaders’ grilling on Sky/Channel 4.

The dramatic shifts in polling numbers have been argued in many places to be a function of a sudden surge in young voters and/or 2015 non-voters, motivated by Jeremy Corbyn’s populist platform including the abolition of student tuition fees and return to state funded grants. The Survation poll this morning revealed that 82% of 18-24s would/already have voted, which compares favourably with the next two older age cohorts and is only a tick below that of the uniformly voting 55+ cohorts.

Either this a full re-writing of the psephological textbook or needs to be viewed with extreme caution. Our own poll, suggests that about half that number (44% saying 10/10 certainty) of 18-24s will actually vote (even when full unweighted, it was only 50%).

Clearly, this difference does bring to a head the new methodological battleground. Some pollsters, especially ICM, believe that the turnout scale no longer has value in disentangling voters from non-voters, because the fieldwork process (phone and telephone) predominately fails to reach the latter who are less interested in politics and by corollary, less interested in answering survey research. ICM stopped phone polling after the EU referendum, partly because we found it incredibly difficult to reach certain demographic groups – especially 18-24s.

We, along with other pollsters typically reached half or less of the 18-24 target (by phone). We note with interest that Survation did a brilliant job in reaching them though – a full 80% of the target number (up-weighting them takes care of the missing residual). Whether Survation achieved this through full random digit dialling or whether they utilised some targeted sample would be interesting to know, but either way, the great irony about being good at their job is that this success could easily introduce the very skew that kills the poll’s accuracy. If the 18-24s reached are in some way different to the 18-24s not reached, i.e in saying they will disproportionately vote and vote Labour at that - when their wider counterparts will not and do not - it’s likely that the same failings of 2015 will be very much embedded in this sample.

So how pollsters address the turnout issue is now central to what the poll says. We at ICM turnout weight using a matrix that assumes younger people will be less likely to vote than older, and less affluent people will be less likely to vote than the wealthy. This has been the general pattern of general election’s for an age, and whether you believe our poll findings or those of others will depend on whether or not you think Jeremy Corbyn can actually buck that trend.

The poll also included questions about Manchester and about how the parties have fared in the campaign. I will post those results soon.

ICM Unlimited interviewed a representative sample of 2,002 adults aged 18+ online on 26 to 29 May 2017. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults. ICM is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules.

UPDATE: Here is the ICM write-up of the poll. And here are the tables (pdf).

Updated

Theresa May's Brexit speech - summary and analysis

Theresa May delivered a substantial speech today, not just the standard stump one with a topical line thrown in. As I reported earlier, it included an audacious claim about wanting to “shift the balance of Britain in favour of ordinary working people”, which is not matched by May’s record so far on actual policy. (See 10.07am.)

But it also contained a sustained and highly personal attack on Corbyn. Here are the key elements of it.

  • May claimed that Corbyn demonstrated in last night’s Sky/Channel 4 election programme that he is not fit to lead the UK. She said:

He is not prepared to use the nuclear deterrent. He is not prepared to take action against terrorists. He is not prepared to give the police the powers they need to keep us safe. He is not prepared to take a single difficult decision for the good of our economy. He is not prepared to answer questions about his long track record of supporting people who want to harm and even attack our country.

  • She claimed Corbyn was particularly ill-prepared to lead the Brexit talks.

And with Brexit negotiations due to begin only 11 days after polling day, he is not prepared for those negotiations.

But I am prepared – prepared to take the difficult decisions that leadership demands. Prepared to do what is necessary to protect and defend our country. Prepared to go into the negotiating chamber with the EU just 11 days after polling day.

I am prepared. I am ready to go. Jeremy Corbyn is not.

Last night confirmed that. Only one of us has the determination to deliver the will of the people and make Brexit happen. And only one of us has the plan to make Brexit a success.

  • She claimed that Corbyn would be “alone and naked” in the Brexit negotiating chamber.

Last night showed that Jeremy Corbyn’s minders can put him in a smart blue suit for an interview with Jeremy Paxman but, with his position on Brexit, he will find himself alone and naked in the negotiating chamber of the European Union.

Now, I know that’s an image that doesn’t bear thinking about, but actually this is very serious.

  • She said that having Corbyn in charge of Brexit talks would lead to the UK paying more and having less independence. She said:

[Corbyn’s decision to rule out leaving the EU with no deal] means being willing to accept any deal, however bad, signing up to any bill, however vast, accepting any terms, however unreasonable.

It means signing up to Britain being governed by EU laws and EU courts for years to come, so that we have no control over our laws, to free movement continuing indefinitely, so we have no control over our borders, and paying what Europe wants us to pay, so we have no control over our money either.

As always with Jeremy Corbyn and Labour, the shambles and the responsibility would be theirs but the consequences and the bill would be ours.

The speech was opportunist because, in many respects, the Labour and Conservative Brexit negotiating aims are remarkably similar. Labour has set out six priorities for Brexit. All six overlap with what May wants.

It was also hypocritical of May to attack Corbyn for being “alone” in the Brexit negotiating chamber. It is May and her government who have alienated EU partners; Corbyn does have allies in the party of European Socialists.

But there is one big, key difference; May says she is willing to walk away from the EU with no deal, because “no deal is better than a bad deal”, while Corbyn is not willing to say that. He and Labour adopt the view that no deal would be a bad deal.

May is pushing hard on this point because the opinion polls suggest the people agree that no deal would be better than a bad deal.

She may also have been influenced by focus group research showing that people are uncomfortable about the idea of Corbyn representing the UK at Brexit talks. This has cropped up in published focus group research, and so presumably it is coming up in the Tories’ private focus groups too. For example, this is from a focus group convened by Lord Ashcroft, the former Tory deputy chairman who is now a polling specialist, in three Labour-held seats in the north of England.

Those with doubts – particularly those previous Labour supporters who had voted leave last year – kept coming back to one point: ‘I would have voted Labour as per usual but I’m not sure that gentleman is the right one to go into the negotiations on coming out.’ For some distressed remainers, it hardly mattered who was speaking for Britain (‘We’ll get what we’re given. We’re outnumbered, we’re in a parlous position. We’ll rue the day, whoever is leading the so-called negotiations’), but for many others, which team would represent the country was the single biggest point at stake: ‘That’s the main thing for me that may swing me from Labour to Conservative’; ‘Brexit plays a part because there’s been nothing mentioned that I’ve seen about if Labour do get in, what are their plans? At least Theresa May is putting a plan into place.’

Theresa May giving her Brexit speech at the Grand Station in Wolverhampton.
Theresa May giving her Brexit speech at the Grand Station in Wolverhampton. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Updated

Caroline Lucas and a small gaggle of Green party activists have spent the morning carrying a large, cutout question mark around central London. Why, you might well ask? To highlight what her party argues is the lack of debate about the environment in the election campaign.

The group stopped off at the Labour HQ and then Downing Sreet, before a photo opportunity with the slightly homemade-looking question mark and a brief speech by the Greens’ co-leader in Parliament Square.

Afterwards Lucas told me the reasons for the stunt:

The complete absence of this issue from the election campaign has been shocking. It remains the greatest threat that we face – we had the hottest year on record last year, and the 2016 State of Nature report which said our country was one of the most nature-depleted in the whole world.

It’s meaningful to people when it then translates into things like air pollution. In a place like London, where kids can’t play in playgrounds because their parents are too afraid about what that’s going to do to their lungs and their health, this is a public health emergency. And even that hasn’t captured the imaginations of the other parties.

Even as a supposedly radical party, Labour had a “blind spot” over continued support for fossil fuel subsidies and nuclear power, Lucas said:

Until they loosen their grip on those old policies from a previous century, then they’re not going to be able to do the work that’s necessary and urgent when it comes to protecting our environment.

Updated

Osborne's Evening Standard launches damning attack on Tory election campaign

George Osborne is getting the hang of this editing lark. His latest editorial in the Evening Standard is a corker. Here’s an excerpt.

At home we face profound choices about everything from who we let into the country to how we sustain support for the free market and the free trade it depends on. Yet hardly any of this has featured in what was supposed to be the Brexit election. Labour knows the public shudders at the thought of Jeremy Corbyn representing the country abroad, so what passes for its campaign strategy has been a focus on softer domestic issues, from childcare to haircuts. The Conservative campaign has meandered from an abortive attempt to launch a personality cult around Mrs May to the self-inflicted wound of the most disastrous manifesto in recent history and, after the atrocity in Manchester, shrill attacks on Mr Corbyn’s appeasement of terrorism.

Their campaign seems to have gone out of its way to avoid the very issue – Brexit – that was supposed to be the very reason we were having an election in the first place. The result can be summed up by what we imagine to be the conversation around the breakfast table in Downing Street: “Honey, I shrunk the poll lead.”

The Standard editorial, which we can safely assume was approved by Osborne in his new capacity as editor, even if he did not actually write it himself, goes on to address the questions the Tory campaign should answer.

It’s not too late to get back to the issues that count. Let’s be told how immigration is going to be reduced – not the blank responses this paper got from Cabinet ministers today. Let’s hear how we are going to try to keep tariff-free access to our largest export markets. Let’s debate how we are going to change the global view that thinks Britain is turning its back on the world. We have had no answers from Labour or the Conservatives. In other words, treat the public like grown ups, and allow them a chance to give the mandate the government claims to seek.

Just in case anyone has missed it, Osborne has tweeted a link.

Prime ministers give interviews to newspapers and often editors chose to conduct those interviews themselves, alongside their political editors. An Osborne/May interview would be a gripping read. But, sadly, there’s probably more chance of May doing a sit-down with the Morning Star.

Updated

Q: Aren’t you telling voters they can have incompatible things on Brexit: frictionless trade, but withdrawal from the single market too?

May says Labour would be happy to give control straight back to Brussels.

A vote for her will be a vote for strong and stable leadership, she says.

And that’s it.

I will post a summary soon.

Q: How much time have you been able to spend on the Brexit planning? And wasn’t it irresponsible to call an election so close to such important talks?

May says she called the election because it was important to to get a mandate for Brexit.

Q: Aren’t your increasingly personal attacks on Jeremy Corbyn a sign of desperation? And aren’t you demeaning the office of PM?

May says her message has been the same through the campaign. There are only two people who could be PM: her or Corbyn. People have a choice. This is a choice between her “strong and stable leadership” and a “coalition of chaos”.

Q: You said you want partnerships with the EU. Angela Merkel says she can no longer rely on the UK. What is your reaction? And what is your reaction to Labour’s Angela Rayner calling you an “ogre” in Brexit talks? (See 8.06am.)

May says she wants a strong and deep partnership with the EU. She was working with Merkel at the Nato and G7 meetings last week.

May ignores the Rayner question.

Q: Isn’t it the truth that you are resorting to scaring people about Brexit negotiations to get their vote?

May says she is setting out the position. The prime minister elected on 8 June will have to be ready to go into negotiations. She has the plan, the will and the determination to do that, she says.

The prime minister has to be prepared. Nobody else is.

Q: Last night you said no Brexit deal was better than a bad deal. But experts say whole sectors of the economy could be affected. Airplanes might not be able to fly to the EU. There could be a recession. What could be more catastrophic than that?

May says other parties are willing to give anything away.

Corbyn wants to do the worst deal for Britain at the highest possible price, she says.

May's Q&A

Q: [From the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg] Don’t elections test leaders? Don’t people expect more from you than attacks on Jeremy Corbyn and the same speech you gave when you became prime minister?

May says she has strong and stable leadership. She is being open about the tough choices ahead. She repeats the line “strong and stable” several times.

Q: You have had a difficult election over social care. The polls suggest women voters are turning away from you. Are you a female prime minister with a women problem?

May laughs this off (not entirely convincingly, it seems to me).

She says the Tory plans on social care will take away risk. People will be able to keep their homes, and there will be a cap on what they pay. It is a policy that is fair, she says.

Updated

May says Jeremy Corbyn has a “chaotic” approach to Brexit.

She says that he called for article 50 to be triggered straight away. That would have been a mistake, because it would have meant the government not having time to prepare its negotiating strategy.

And she claims that Labour has adopted seven different policies on Brexit.

Here is Theresa May on why Brexit is so important.

Our place in the world, our economic security, the vital public services upon which we all rely, our future prosperity – everything depends on, and will be defined by, the outcome of these next five years.

If we don’t get them right, everything else we want to do in this country will be that much harder to achieve.

If we don’t make a success of the next five years, our economic prosperity will suffer, jobs and livelihoods will be put at risk, and with them the security and peace of mind of working families.

If we don’t make a success of Brexit, we won’t have the financial means to fund the public services upon which we all rely.

Our National Health Service – the institution which is there for us at the most difficult times – needs us to make a success of Brexit to ensure we can afford to provide it with the resources it needs for the future.

Every school in every village, town and city needs us to make a success of Brexit.

If we want to continue to provide a sustainable welfare system, with help targeted at those who need it most – we need to make a success of Brexit.

If we want to go on investing in transport infrastructure – our roads and bridges and railways – we need to make a success of Brexit.

If we want to continue to play our part on the world stage, standing up for our liberal values, with strong defences to protect us – we need to make a success of Brexit.

Everything depends on getting Brexit right.

May claims Corbyn would be 'alone and naked' in the Brexit negotiating chamber

Here is the Theresa May quote about Jeremy Corbyn going “naked” into the Brexit negotiating chamber.

Last night showed that Jeremy Corbyn’s minders can put him in a smart blue suit for an interview with Jeremy Paxman but, with his position on Brexit, he will find himself alone and naked in the negotiating chamber of the European Union.

Now, I know that’s an image that doesn’t bear thinking about, but actually this is very serious.

May is now talking about how the EU referendum vote reflected the fact that many people think life is not fair. These extracts were released in advance. See 10.07am.

That is why, since the first day I stepped through the door of No 10 as prime minister, I have been clear that the mission of the government I lead is not just to get the best possible deal for Britain in Europe, but to take this opportunity to shift the balance of Britain in favour of ordinary working people.

To fight for all those for whom life is more difficult than many seem to think or realise. Those who are just about managing to get by. People who are working around the clock and giving of their best, but for whom life is still too often a struggle.

They do not ask for much. They just want to get on with their lives and to be able to do their best for their children. Above all, they just want to be given a fair chance.

Because for too long – for too many people – life has not seemed fair.

Updated

May says she only has to lose six seats for Jeremy Corbyn to become prime minister.

(As Channel 4 News’ FactCheck pointed out recently, this claim is not credible.)

Updated

Theresa May's speech

Theresa May is speaking in Wolverhampton now.

She says last night she saw that Jeremy Corbyn was not prepared to govern. He is not prepared to take difficult decisions.

But she is.

I am prepared. I’m ready to go. Jeremy Corbyn is not.

She says Corbyn’s minders can put him in a suit. But he would go naked into the negotiating chamber, she says (channelling Nye Bevan.)

That is not an image that bears thinking about, she goes on.

“May v Corbyn Live: The Battle for Number 10” got a combined audience of 3.28m last night. It was averaging 2.9m on Channel 4, and 415k on Sky.

In 2015 the equivalent Channel 4/Sky programme, featuring David Cameron and Ed Miliband, attracted a combined audience of 2.9m in a slightly later slot (9pm to 10.30pm, not 8.30pm to 10pm.)

The programme did better last night than the BBC1, BBC2 and Channel 5 competition, my colleague Mark Sweney points out.

German papers damning about May's performance in TV 'debate'

The verdict of German commentators on Theresa May’s performance in the TV duel, which was livestreamed on many media sites last night and watched closely by political observers, might be summed up as rather damning. Interestingly, they pay far less attention to Corbyn in their analysis this morning.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) noted that May avoided answering several important questions, most notably over Brexit. “Asked if she thought Brexit a good idea (having voted against it) she dodged the question,” the paper said. “Theresa May is a worse election campaigner than expected,” it went on, adding that she was on the wrong foot from the start, having called an election after saying she wouldn’t.

May, who was always presented as someone who was straight down the line and reliable, broke a promise because it suited her to do so in that moment.

To watch May as an election campaigner, it continued, “is to see a speech robot who always comes out with the same slogans”. Seeing the Tories’ sinking poll ratings, the SZ concluded:

Probably it was a mistake to have focused the campaign so much on May, a woman who the British are only now getting to know better … May promised a strong and stable government, but now the Tories appear nervous, even aggressive, resorting to personal attacks against Corbyn.

Die Welt said May was “unashamedly laughed at by the public in the TV duel”. It continued:

She was laughed at, she didn’t have her facial expressions under control, she swallowed too often, and shrugged her shoulders apparently for no reason. A few times she opened her mouth and no sound came out. She gave the impression of being distracted and nervous.

Deutschland Funk, the main news radio station, said May was “visibly under pressure,” suggesting that she had deliberately avoided a direct duel with Corbyn because she knew she wouldn’t perform well. “Theresa May was evasive, particularly on why, in her six years as home secretary, she had not succeeded in restricting immigration,” the broadcaster noted, and over the Brexiters’ promise of £350m per week that would go towards the NHS. Confronted on these issues by Jeremy Paxman, it added, she looked “far from strong and stable, as is her her motto”.

Theresa May walking out to take part in “May v Corbyn Live: The Battle for Number 10” on Sky and Channel 4 last night.
Theresa May walking out to take part in “May v Corbyn Live: The Battle for Number 10” on Sky and Channel 4 last night. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/AFP/Getty Images

Updated

A second Scottish independence referendum should be held after the Brexit process is complete, Nicola Sturgeon has said, signalling a significant change in her party’s constitutional strategy.

The first minister launched the Scottish National party’s general election manifesto in Perth, a key Conservative target, on Tuesday and sidelined her quest for a second independence vote in favour of an attack on Tory austerity.

But in a key passage of the SNP manifesto, she appeared to drop her demands made in March for a second independence referendum to be held between autumn 2018 and spring 2019. She said then that she wanted the vote to be held after the terms of Brexit were clear but, if possible, before a final deal was signed.

The document launched on Tuesday states: “At the end of the Brexit process, when the final terms of the deal are known, it is right that Scotland should have a choice about our future.”

That implies the vote may not take place until later in 2019 or afterwards. Sturgeon had already signalled she would allow her previously rigid timetable to slip to late 2019, but Theresa May has said it could take several years after the UK signs article 50 in 2019 for the Brexit process to be complete.

The manifesto repeats Sturgeon’s position that her government, having won the 2016 Holyrood elections, has a mandate to stage the referendum, but the failure to specify any date signals a softening stance.

Nicola Sturgeon at the launch of the SNP manifesto.
Nicola Sturgeon at the launch of the SNP manifesto. Photograph: Russell Cheyne/Reuters

Sturgeon has finished taking questions.

Q: Jeremy Corbyn said yesterday he would open discussions with you on a second referendum? And have you been too quick to write him off? Polls suggest he is winning the debate.

Sturgeon says she watched some of the Sky “debate” last night. It would not be hard to come off better than Theresa May, she says. She says it is “outrageous” that the Tories are not answering questions about how their policies will impact on pensioners.

Anyone watching that debate will have seen why May has dodged a debate, she says.

She says only the SNP can stand up to the Tories.

Q: You were on the front of previous SNP manifestos. But your picture is not on the cover of this one. Does this mean you are becoming less popular?

Activists boo. Sturgeon jokes that she may allow that.

She says you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t. She says when her picture was on the cover, people claimed it was a personality cult. She says there is a reason she is not on the cover: the baby on the cover is cuter.

SNP manifesto cover.
SNP manifesto cover. Photograph: SNP

Updated

You can read the SNP manifesto here (pdf).

Q: Have you got detailed costings for your plans?

Sturgeon says the SNP’s borrowing plans would free up £118bn over the lifetime of a parliament.

And the SNP’s tax plans would raise an extra £10bn.

The SNP’s spending plans would cost £80bn. So they would be affordable under the SNP’s plans, she says.

Q: The Conservatives are running their campaign on the basis that people do not want another referendum. There is some evidence that it is working. Do you worry that calling a second referendum could cost some SNP MPs their seats?

Sturgeon says Ruth Davidson goes around Scotland saying Sturgeon talks about nothing but independence. But Davidson talks about it so much that she, Sturgeon, does not get a chance.

She says Davidson’s support for the “rape clause” shames her.

Q: Do you support Labour’s plans for a higher income tax rate for people earning more than £80,000 and lowering the threshold for the 50p rate?

Sturgeon says she has set out the SNP’s plans here: a 50p rate for those earning more than £150,000.

Updated

Q: If you lose seats, does that weaken your case for a second referendum.

SNP activists start to boo. Sturgeon silences them. The media are here to do a job, and it’s an important job, she says.

She says her view is that the party that wins the most votes wins.

Q: Do you see the end of the Brexit process [the moment when she wants Scotland to have a say] as spring 2019?

Sturgeon says Scotland must have a choice.

Even today, May is talking about the damage Brexit could do if it goes wrong.

She says has has spoken about Scotland having a choice “at the end of the process”.

She says that is between autumn 2018 and spring 2019. That is May’s timetable, she says. If that changes, Sturgeon says she will change her position.

Sturgeon's Q&A

Nicola Sturgeon is now taking questions.

Sturgeon starts by saying the media do an important job of holding politicians to account.

Q: What evidence is there that even a vast SNP presence at Westminster can constrain the Tories?

Sturgeon says people have seen the SNP, not Labour, and Angus Robertson at PMQs, not Jeremy Corbyn, and that has been challenging Labour.

She says Theresa May is “not so much the iron lady as the queen of the U-turn”.

Updated

Sturgeon says, if the SNP wins a majority of seats, that will reinforce its mandate for a second independence referendum.

Our future must be decided by us, not for us.

Last year’s Holyrood election delivered the democratic mandate for Scotland having such a choice, and the recent vote of the Scottish parliament underlined it.

If the SNP wins a majority of Scottish seats in this election, that will further reinforce our mandate.

And in these circumstances, any continued Tory attempts to block Scotland having a choice - when the time is right and the options are clear - would be democratically unsustainable.

However, that will be a choice for the end of the Brexit process.

Updated

Sturgeon turns to Brexit.

She says the single market offers a huge opportunity to Scotland.

The European single market, already the world’s biggest, represents a massive opportunity for these areas of Scottish strength: in the digital economy, the services sector, energy, retail, the green and knowledge economy; the single market is still a work in progress, with huge potential still to be unlocked.

That means a huge, potential economic prize for Scotland.

It means a world of opportunity for our young people.

But Brexit will put all of this at risk, she says.

That is why I believe so strongly that at the end of the Brexit process – not now, but when the terms of the deal are known – Scotland must have a choice about our future; a choice between following the UK down the Brexit path or becoming an independent country.

There is just too much at stake for Brexit simply to be imposed on Scotland, no matter how damaging it turns out to be.

Updated

Sturgeon says the SNP will not support further reductions in the headline rate of corporation tax.

And it will back targeted reductions in national insurance, she says.

Sturgeon says the SNP’s plans for Westminster would allow health spending to be increased by more than the SNP government in Edinburgh already plans.

We already have a pledge to increase the NHS budget by £2bn by the end of this Scottish parliament.

But our alternative plan for the public finances would allow a further increase in frontline health spending across the UK.

SNP MPs will call on the new UK government to increase health spending per head of population in England to the current Scottish level, which is 7% higher.

That would increase the health budget in England by £11bn more than inflation by 2022 and it would deliver consequential funding to support additional investment in Scotland’s NHS of up to £1bn over and above our current commitment.

Updated

Sturgeon says the SNP will protect the winter fuel allowance in Scotland (a matter for the Scottish parliament) and oppose the removal of the triple lock (a matter for Westminster).

Sturgeon says the SNP remains committed to free personal and nursing care.

The utter chaos that engulfs Theresa May’s plans for a so-called dementia tax makes me prouder than ever that the Scottish parliament introduced free personal and nursing care for the elderly.

Those assessed as needing personal and nursing care in Scotland receive £249 a week – just under £13,000 a year – towards the cost of their care.

That significantly reduces the burden on the personal assets of someone who has to fund their own care.

So let me make clear today that the SNP will always protect free personal and nursing care.

Updated

Sturgeon says SNP will abandon 1% cap on public sector pay increases

Sturgeon confirms that the SNP would back the top rate of income tax going up to 50p in the pound across the UK.

And she sets out a three-point plan to tackle poverty.

First, the SNP will back increasing the national minimum wage to “slightly more than £10 an hour” by the end of the next parliament.

Second, the SNP will take a different approach to public sector pay.

The 1% pay cap was designed to protect jobs at a time of spending cuts imposed by Westminster.

While the SNP government has taken action to soften its impact on the lowest paid – ensuring, for example, that many nurses in Scotland are paid more than their counterparts elsewhere in the UK – there is no doubt that it has been hard for public sector workers.

And at a time of rising inflation, it is increasingly unsustainable.

Of course, pay rises must be affordable, but they must also reflect the real life circumstances people face and enable us to attract and retain staff in our public services.

So for next year and in future years, we will not assume a 1% cap.

Instead, we will set a remit for discussions with trade unions, and for our evidence to pay review bodies, that is based on a proper consideration of the impact of inflation – with a view to reaching fair outcomes that strike the right balance between affordability and the cost of living.

And, third, the SNP will oppose further planned benefit cuts, Sturgeon says.

So let me be clear, SNP MPs will stand against all of the further planned cuts to social security, because they will punish the disabled and those who work hard to make ends meet.

We will also support the reversal of the two-child cap on tax credits.

And we will campaign tirelessly against the immoral “rape clause” that goes with it, a policy that shames every Tory candidate who supports it.

We will demand reversal of the cut to employment and support allowance that is removing £30 per week in vital support from disabled people.

And we will oppose the freeze on working age benefits, a policy that is set to reduce the incomes of the poorest in our society by 6%.

The reason we stand against the Tory assault on social security – on the poor, the disabled and the vulnerable – is this:

These cuts strike at the very heart of how we see ourselves as a nation and our shared ambition for the future.

Updated

Nicola Sturgeon launches SNP's manifesto

Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader and Scottish first minister, is speaking at the launch of the SNP manifesto.

She says Labour is not strong enough to take on the Tories.

With Labour in disarray the Tories saw a chance to tighten their grip on the whole of the UK for many years to come.

But with their true colours being exposed in this campaign, we have a real chance to keep them in check.

And let’s be clear: Labour isn’t strong enough to do that.

Voting Labour simply risks letting in Tory MPs.

She says Tory policies will drive 1 million more children into poverty by 2021.

That is a result of austerity, she argues.

She says the SNP would adopt a different economic approach.

So on the public finances, we are setting out a different approach. Our plan has three key aims:

- firstly, to balance the UK budget for day-to-day spending by the end of the parliament, and after that borrowing only to invest;

- secondly, to return the deficit to its pre-crash, long-term average;

- thirdly, to set debt on a downward path.

These responsible fiscal targets will return the UK’s finances to a stable and sustainable position.

And, crucially, they will also free up an additional £118bn of public investment over the next parliament to grow the economy, safeguard public services and protect household incomes.

Updated

Here is an audioBoom of Jeremy Corbyn not being able to say how much Labour’s childcare policy would cost.

Jeremy Corbyn being interviewed on Woman’s Hour

Emma Barnett asked Jeremy Corbyn about the online abuse women have received from some of his supporters. (Corbyn said he strongly opposed abuse of this kind, and that it did not happen in his name.) Barnett now seems to be getting a taste of it herself.

Here is the transcript of the key exchange in the Woman’s Hour interview.

Corbyn's Woman's Hour interview - verdict

Being a charitable sort, and having been up late last night myself because of the Sky/Channel 4 News debate, I have some sympathy with Jeremy Corbyn for not being able to say how much his childcare policy would cost. Channelling LBC’s Nick Ferrari (who has turned costings questions into a trademark), Radio 4’s Emma Barnett completely skewered Corbyn on this point. She even added a telling detail about Corbyn looking for the answer on his iPad.

Alex Nunns, who wrote a sympathetic and rather good book about Corbyn’s election as leader (apart from all the bits slagging off the Guardian), thinks it doesn’t matter too much if a leader does not have instant recall of numbers. Many readers may agree.

But election campaigns are unforgiving, and the general verdict is that it was a bit of a disaster for the Labour leader. (If you are a Labour supporter and you think otherwise, you also have to ask yourself what you would think if Theresa May had gone on Woman’s Hour and been unable to put a cost on the policy her party was promoting that day.)

This is what political journalists and commentators are saying.

From the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg

From the Daily Mirror’s Jack Blanchard

From the BBC’s Chris Mason

From Nyta Mann, the former BBC and New Statesman journalist

From the Sun’s Steve Hawkes

From ITV’s Carl Dinnen

From the former Observer journalist Martin Bright

UPDATE: I was trying to make the point earlier that, if you are trying to make a judgment about the seriousness of a gaffe by a politician you support, it is important to ask what you would think if someone on the other side made the same error. But Jack Seale is right to say that the example I used to make this case was a bit daft. One of the important facts about the election is that May and her party are not providing any costings for their plans at all.

Updated

Q: If you lose, will you resign?

Corbyn says he is looking forward to winning.

Q: But if you lose …

Corbyn says he is looking forward to winning.

Q: At the weekend Ian Lavery, your election coordinator, said the Corbyn project was only just beginning. (This was taken as meaning Corbyn would stay on regardless.)

Corbyn says Lavery was talking in terms of policy.

Q: Do you really want this?

Corbyn says he does.

And that’s it. The interview is over.

I will post a summary soon.

Updated

Q: Labour has never elected a woman as leader. What single policy would you pick as best for women?

Corbyn says educational investment.

Q: So you are linking women to children?

Corbyn says he is talking about improving opportunities for girls. He says he believes in telling girls they can do anything.

Q: Only 10 months ago 45 Labour women MPs wrote to you saying you had to do more about the abuse of women MPs online.

Corbyn says he is doing all he can on this. Abuse of women like this is totally unacceptable. People did not do this in your name.

Q: They did. They were your supporters.

Corbyn says he told people this was totally wrong.

Q: On Trident, who should voters believe? The Labour manifesto, which is in favour? Or you, who are against?

Corbyn says the Labour party has committed to Trident.

But they are agreed a nuclear war would be disastrous.

Q; CND says you are still its vice-president.

Corbyn says he resigned as vice-president when he became Labour leader.

Q: Can people trust you on this?

Corbyn says people will accept this manifesto comes from Labour. He is proud to accept Labour democracy.

Updated

Q: How much would you be willing to give to the EU? £100bn?

Corbyn says he wants to negotiate a trade agreement.

Q: Do you have a cash outpoint?

Corbyn says he will not give one.

Q: Would you be willing to leave the Brexit talks with no deal?

Corbyn says this is a strange way to start a negotiation.

Q: But would you be willing to negotiate to get a deal?

Corbyn says he will get a deal.

Q: If you say you will accept a deal on any terms, you go in on the back foot.

Corbyn says he does not accept that.

He says he is not threatening to turn the UK into a low-cost tax haven.

Q: You have said you would give pension credit to help some of the Waspi women (the women who lose out from the increase in the state pension age). And you say you will look at other ways of compensating them.

Corbyn says the principle is that they will not lose out. He says Labour has not had time to develop more detailed policies.

Q: You have not said how you would fund for your social care plan?

Corbyn says Labour would put in £2bn straight away.

It would then come to an agreement on the long-term funding of social care.

The money would go in to deal with the crisis, he says.

The current system is very patchy.

Q: So it is not costed.

Corbyn says £2bn would go in now.

Q: But the rest of it is not costed.

Corbyn says it needs £2bn now.

Barnett say says she has the figure. She quotes £2.7bn.

Corbyn says that sounds about right.

Q: But you are asking us to trust us with your money. And you have questionable links with the IRA and Hamas. You have never run anything. Harry Fletcher, who used to work for you, said your office was chaotic.

Corbyn says Fletcher was briefly a volunteer in the campaign.

Q: I didn’t expect you not to know how much your manifesto would cost.

Corbyn says we have underfunded public services. Labour would raise corporation tax in order to pay for better health and social care.

Corbyn unable to say how much Labour’s free childcare policy will cost in radio interview

Q: You may want to start about childcare. You are promoting your childcare plans today. But this is not just a women’s issue, is it?

Corbyn agrees.

He says at the moment there is a patchwork of provision. Labour wants a universal offer of 30 hours a week.

Q: How much will it cost to provide unmeans-tested childcare for 1.3m children?

Corbyn says it will cost a lot.

Labour is making it universal so every child will get it.

Q: How much will it cost?

Corbyn says he will give Barnett the figure in a moment.

Q: You are logging into your iPad. Isn’t this the issue? You don’t know how much it will cost.

Can we come back to this, Corbyn asks.

Q: This is troubling. It hardly inspires the voters.

Corbyn says people understand that if we don’t invest in children, they will do less well in school.

  • Corbyn unable to say how much Labour’s free childcare policy will cost in radio interview.

Updated

Jeremy Corbyn interviewed on Woman's Hour

Emma Barnett is interviewing Jeremy Corbyn on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.

The BBC’s Norman Smith says Tory protesters have turned up outside the SNP manifesto launch.

May says she wants to 'shift balance of Britain in favour of working people'

Last night the Conservative campaign headquarters released large chunks of the Brexit speech Theresa May is giving later today in advance. It got overshadowed by the “debate”, but it contains some interesting lines. Here are the key points.

  • May will claim that she wants to “shift the balance of Britain in favour of ordinary working people”. Firming up an argument that she has been making since the EU referendum result last summer, she will say:

Because since the very moment the British people took that momentous decision, it was clear to me that it was not just a vote to leave the European Union. It was also a vote to change the way the country works – and the people for whom it works – forever.

It was a quiet revolution driven by all those who felt let down and left behind for too long. A revolution in which millions of our fellow citizens stood up and said they were not prepared to be ignored anymore.

That is why since the first day I stepped through the door of No 10 as prime minister, I have been clear that the mission of the government I lead is not just to get the best possible deal for Britain in Europe, but to take this opportunity to shift the balance of Britain in favour of ordinary working people.

This is quite an audacious claim. Jeremy Corbyn is often accused of wanting to take Britain back to the 1970s, but, if this is anything to go by, it is Theresa May who is seeking inspiration from the Labour party of Harold Wilson and Tony Benn. The final sentence quoted above contains an echo of Labour’s 1974 manifesto promise to deliver “a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people and their families”, a commitment that resurfaced in the 1983 Labour manifesto (aka, the “longest suicide note”).

The “if” in the paragraph above is important. May’s rhetoric is one thing, but whether she can see it through in policy terms is another, as the social care U-turn illustrated. May, under the influence of her working class, leftish adviser Nick Timothy, originally proposed a “floor” on costs. “Floors” protect the poor, because they guarantee people can always keep a certain amount of their assets. The policy was supposed to be progressive. But, after Tory supporters protested, May proposed a “cap” too. “Caps” protect the rich, because they ensure that no one will have to pay more than a certain amount. This attempt to shift policy in the direction of ordinary working people failed.

  • She will argue that Brexit is the most important issue facing the UK because in every other area of policy - such as health, welfare and infrastructure - the government will only succeed if Brexit works. For example, on health she will say:

Our National Health Service – the institution which is there for us at the most difficult times – needs us to make a success of Brexit to ensure we can afford to provide it with the resources it needs for the future.

  • She will accuse the EU of adopting an “aggressive” negotiating position in the Brexit talks.

The European commission has shown the importance of the choice faced by the British public next week. They are adopting an aggressive negotiating position, which can only be met by strong leadership on behalf of Britain.

  • She will suggest that immigration causes unemployment.

Because for too long – for too many people – life has not seemed fair.

If you can’t afford to get on to the property ladder, or your child is stuck in a bad school …

If you are one of the ordinary working people who made huge sacrifices after the financial crash, but see no evidence that the people who are better off than you did the same …

If you’re one of those people who lost their job, who stayed in work but on reduced hours, took a pay cut as household bills rocketed, or – and I know a lot of people don’t like to admit this – someone who finds themselves out of work or on lower wages because of low-skilled immigration …

In the past May has argued (on the basis of fairly limited evidence) that immigration depresses wages. Saying it causes unemployment goes further. (Again, the evidence for this is limited.)

Updated

Only 13% of British Jews plan to vote for Labour, according to a poll for the Jewish Chronicle. Here’s an extract from its story.

Labour’s overall 13 per cent voting intention figure represents an increase of 4.5 per cent since the question was last asked, in May 2016, by Survation, the polling company which questions Jewish voters on behalf of the JC.

Asked the same question then, just 8.5 per cent of British Jews said they would vote for the party if an election took place. That result however immediately followed months of suspensions of party members for alleged antisemitism, and with no prospect of an imminent election.

Ahead of the 2015 general election, 18 per cent of the community pledged support for Labour under Ed Miliband’s leadership. Asked this week, 14 per cent of British Jews said they had gone ahead and voted for the party two years ago, with the Tories receiving 67 per cent of the community’s votes.

Updated

Claire posted an excellent summary of last night’s “debate” earlier. (See 6.34am.) The Times’s Matt Chorley also has a good round-up in his morning Red Box email briefing. Here is his conclusion.

Did we learn very much? Not really. Both exceeded low expectations, and both camps could declare their candidate the winner with a straight face. Labour’s line that the audience laughed with Corbyn but at May had the ring of truth to it.

What is clear though is we have a prime minister who cannot deal with mounting questions on domestic policy and wants to move the conversation abroad, and a Labour leader who prefers home territory rather than trying to explain his foreign policy outlook from Damascus to Dublin via Buenos Aires.

If the big issue of the day remains Brexit, that favours May, who will use a speech today to try to win over working-class Labour and Ukip voters who wanted to leave the EU.

But even if there are boys’ jobs and girls’ jobs, at some point she will also need to deal with the rubbish at home.

Updated

Plaid Cymru is today publishing a “positive post-Brexit plan” for Wales. It includes five main points.

1 - A foreign trade shield to protect Welsh jobs and wages.

2 - New financial levers to give Wales a competitive advantage.

3 - A “Buy Welsh” procurement initiative to support Welsh firms.

4 - A Welsh “New Deal” incorporating continued regional development funding and agriculture support for a decade after Brexit, and securing Wales’ fair share of UK investment on infrastructure, research and innovation.

5 - A Welsh migration service to ensure a migration system that works for Wales.

Adam Price, Plaid’s finance spokesman, said:

Plaid Cymru wanted Wales to stay in the European Union but we respect the result of the referendum. The debate has to now move on to the task of making it work for Wales and not just the City of London and the south-east of England. It is about creating the kind of Wales we want beyond Brexit.

Whilst our preferred option would be to maintain our membership of the single market and the customs union, both the Labour party and the Conservatives have committed to leaving both. It is our responsibility therefore to outline a contingency plan - to show how we can mitigate the risks and capitalise on the opportunities of Brexit. It is time to move on and face the political realities of the situation.

Updated

Good morning. I’m taking over from Claire.

Jeremy Corbyn breezed through his interview with Jeremy Paxman last night, but today he’s got a session with Mumsnet, which can be almost as tricky for a politician.

Mumsnet has sent out some examples of the questions that have been submitted in advance.

Would you be where you are today if you hadn’t gone to private school yourself?

What kind of food do you have on board your battle bus? Is it healthy stuff, or are you living on crisps and Haribo Tangfastics?

I’ve heard you have no sense of humour. Can you tell us a joke?

What did you think of Theresa May holding hands with Donald Trump?

Why didn’t you show up for the leaders’ debate? I felt like you didn’t bother to argue for my vote.

How will you fund your spending plans if many of the banks currently based in London relocate?

If Labour loses seats overall in the election, will you step down straight away?

Was the manifesto leaked accidentally-on-purpose?

You can read the thread here.

Updated

Andrew Sparrow is now picking up the live blog.

Your daily reminder: if you’d like the Snap election briefing email sent to you every weekday, do sign up here.

David Davis: PM won't negotiate on air

The Brexit secretary is up next and he’s dismissing the polls that show a narrowing of the Tory lead:

I always go into election campaigns assuming nothing.

He wants to go back to talking about Brexit, as per the Tory campaign reboot. He says the Labour attitude is “naive”, claiming Rayner believes that “if we’re nice to them” – remaining EU members – the UK will get a good deal.

Davis claims Jean-Claude Juncker and others have had to “back off” and admit Theresa May “is a good negotiator”.

She doesn’t want to do the negotiations on air and that’s quite reasonable.

The simple truth is that you [the media] want to get as much of the information as possible …

We have over 100 pages of detail, two white papers … a five-page-plus letter to the European Union, all laying out what we’re after.

What we’re after is a tariff-free arrangement … If we can’t have one, we’ll have to design our strategy as appropriate.

Davis signs off with the “no deal is better than a bad deal” line that is now seemingly a contractual obligation with every Conservative appearance.

Updated

On Labour’s childcare plans, Rayner says that by allowing parents to work more hours, the rise in GDP means the pledge “will pay for itself”.

She says it will also “transform the life chances” of young children who would benefit from early years education.

Updated

Angela Rayner: 'no deal is a bad deal'

Next up on Today are Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary, and the Brexit secretary, David Davis.

Rayner is leading Labour’s announcement on childcare today. She says voters want to focus on domestic issues, not the Tory repetitiveness of “Brexit means Brexit”.

We don’t believe the general election was required for Brexit.

Rather, Rayner says, the election would give May cover to carry out domestic policy changes.

She says May’s tactics so far have made the UK look “like ogres” and “a laughing stock” in Europe:

The negotiation is part of a dialogue between two parties and at the moment, unfortunately, Theresa May and the way that she’s handled it has made us look like ogres across Europe.

If you see the pictures now, Theresa May is at the back of the queue whenever she’s talking to the leaders of Europe.

We’re a laughing stock across Europe and we don’t need to be ...

I believe it’s the way Theresa May has handled it so far. She says no deal is better than a bad deal. No deal is a bad deal, actually.

Rayner says Labour’s “managed migration” would involve preventing employers from bringing in overseas workers to undercut local pay.

We won’t put arbitrary numbers on it.

Updated

In a speech later today, Theresa May will try to angle the campaign back towards the issue of Brexit, on which she and her strategists think she has the edge.

For Westminster leaders, the issue of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic has been rather a side issue, but the question of what would happen in the event of a “hard Brexit” remains unresolved.

Dan Mulhall, Ireland’s ambassador to London, has just been speaking to the Today programme. The Brexit negotiating guidelines make it clear that the member states want to avoid a hard border, he says.

We are very strongly of the view that any hardening of that border would be a very negative thing … People have become accustomed to moving back and forth across the border … It’s also an important element of the wider political process that supports the peace process.

“Special, creative and flexible arrangements” will be needed, he says, adding that for border and trade reasons:

We would prefer it if Britain were to remain in the European Union.

Mulhall confirms that the numbers of British people applying for Irish passports has seen “significant percentage increases”.

He says the number is typically around 50,000 a year; last year that rose to 70,000.

Nicola Sturgeon will promise that Scottish National party MPs at Westminster will vote against any plans to privatise the NHS or cut health spending in England.

The pledge will be one of the main offers in the SNP’s general election manifesto as Sturgeon seeks to bolster her party’s claim that its MPs will protect Scottish interests at Westminster.

Sturgeon is expected to reject charges that this would contradict the SNP’s promise not to interfere in English spending decisions and will argue that any NHS spending cuts decided in Westminster will automatically reduce Treasury funding for Holyrood.

In a further effort to shore up support among urban centre-left voters, Sturgeon is expected to endorse calls for a new 50p top tax rate but only if introduced across the UK. She will call for a £118bn economic stimulus package for the UK economy, protection of the universal winter fuel payments for older people and the end of a long-standing cap of 1% on public sector pay rises.

The Tories are pledging to increase health spending in England by £8bn over the next parliament, which would increase Scotland’s grant through its complex funding formula for devolved parliaments.

That means the SNP is unlikely to be called upon to vote down English spending cuts, but the pledge to do so is a signal that the party is willing to join an unofficial “progressive alliance” at Westminster with Labour, Plaid Cymru and the Greens.

Nicola Sturgeon campaigning in Edinburgh on Friday.
Nicola Sturgeon campaigning in Edinburgh on Friday. Photograph: Jane Barlow/PA

Updated

The prime minister, despite repeating her ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ mantra last night, will today insist that a good Brexit deal is essential for UK prosperity, writes the Guardian’s political editor:

Theresa May will claim that “economic prosperity will suffer, jobs and livelihoods will be put at risk, and with them the security and peace of mind of working families” if the government fails to secure a successful Brexit negotiation with the European Union.

The prime minister will make the comments in a speech in the West Midlands designed to relaunch her election campaign after the Manchester terrorist attack and division within her party following her U-turn on social care plans.

Ramping up the language in her warnings about the high-stakes nature of the talks with the EU27, May will say:

If we don’t make a success of Brexit, we won’t have the financial means to fund the public services upon which we all rely. Our National Health Service – the institution which is there for us at the most difficult times – needs us to make a success of Brexit to ensure we can afford to provide it with the resources it needs for the future. Every school in every village, town and city needs us to make a success of Brexit.

She will claim that success is vital to ensure a “sustainable welfare system” and to “go on investing in transport infrastructure – our roads and bridges and railways”, adding: “Everything depends on getting Brexit.”

Updated

Robertson says immigration should become a devolved issue.

We need all those people to remain in Scotland … we want people who are currently here to be able to remain. What we certainly don’t want is a restrictive immigration policy imposed on us by Westminster … We don’t want to lose these people.

He says SNP rejects the stated Tory policy of reducing net migration to the tens of thousands, saying it would be detrimental to Scotland.

Updated

Angus Robertson Today interview

Angus Robertson, depute* leader of the SNP and the party’s leader in Westminster, is speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme ahead of the manifesto launch today.

He says the key flavour of the manifesto is to take a different course to the Conservative austerity agenda. “Additional tax revenues”, including a UK-wide 50p tax rate, would be one means of changing that course, Robertson says.

So why not raise taxes at Holyrood, he is asked. The main economic levers are exercised at Westminster, Robertson says, and this manifesto is about what the SNP wants to do there.

He won’t be drawn on why the Scottish government has not gone ahead with such a tax rise under its devolved powers.

(* yes, that’s correct)

Updated

The Labour leader also won support from a less likely backer:

Unsurprisingly, both teams thought their own was the star player.

Here’s Brexit secretary David Davis, who thought Theresa May was the winner:

The prime minister brought it back to the fundamentals – who is going to get the best Brexit deal, and in doing so who will be able to secure our economy, our public services and our national security.

Tonight she showed the strength and quiet determination to confront the challenges the country faces and set out the way through them. It was a strong, mature, considered performance.

And it couldn’t have been more different to Jeremy Corbyn, who flannelled under pressure and couldn’t get past 30 years of words and deeds that put him on the wrong side of the British people.

Au contraire, said a Labour spokesman:

Theresa May floundered on her record on police cuts, on funding for our NHS and schools and on her manifesto policy on social care that didn’t last more than a few days before it was amended with an unspecified cap. It’s no surprise she had no answers because the Tories plan to continue the tax giveaways to the wealthy and big business while offering no new funding for public services.

There is a clear choice in this election about the kind of country we want Britain to be: between Labour’s plan to transform Britain for the many not the few, and a Conservative party that has held people back and put its wealthy backers first.

The Snap: your election briefing

Welcome back to the morning after the #BattleForNumber10 played out by two people keen not to acknowledge the other’s existence. I’m Claire Phipps to whizz you through what happened last night and set you up for the day ahead. Andrew Sparrow will be along later. Join us in the comments below or find me on Twitter @Claire_Phipps.

What we learned

Was the Sky News/Channel 4 grilling a game-changer? Was Theresa May “destroyed”? Did Jeremy Corbyn shock us all with this one weird trick? Nah. Check here for Andrew Sparrow’s verdict, but in short: Corbyn seemed relaxed and did better than many expected; May seemed evasive, but left with a round of applause for her EU-thumping final answer. It might have been only a repeat of her “no deal is better than a bad deal” incantation, but it meant she rounded off her appearance with clapping rather than the derisive laughter that met her responses on school funding.

So, what did we find out?

It’s not about the money … except when it is

Quizzed by an audience member on cuts to school funding, May said that wasn’t the issue:

People are focusing on funding but we need to ensure that we see more good or outstanding schools.

And “people” were getting it wrong again on police cuts, the PM insisted:

It’s not about the numbers of police; people often focus on the numbers of police.

Even though numbers don’t matter, May wanted the audience to know that Labour’s manifesto “figures don’t add up”. “It’s costed!” was the shouted reply from one audience member.

Prime Minister Theresa May appears on a joint Channel 4 and Sky News general election programme recorded at Sky studios in Osterley, west London, May 29, 2017. REUTERS/Stefan Rousseau/Pool
The Theresa Mays. Photograph: Reuters

Would-be PMs can’t be expected to know everything, for Pete’s sake

Pressed on Labour’s immigration target – which doesn’t exist – Corbyn said he would not put a number on it (so far, so pragmatic). Being accountable does come with the job, however:

It would probably – but I don’t want to be held to this – come down. That’s a probability.

May had her own “how am I supposed to know this stuff, I’m only the leader of the government” moments. Asked how many pensioners (Labour suggests 10 million) would lose their winter fuel allowance:

We need not just pull out a figure in an election campaign.

And on whether she knows what that cap on social care costs will be:

It’s not about not knowing … it’s about thinking what the right approach is.

In the event of nuclear war, Corbyn would write a letter

Renewing Trident is in the Labour manifesto, despite the Labour leader’s personal misgivings. Having established that he is “not a dictator”, forcing party underlings to scrawl out a manifesto endorsing mandatory vegetarianism, Corbyn told Jeremy Paxman that he’d really rather not use nuclear weapons (apparently a wildly controversial view), but would, if necessary, “write the appropriate letters to our commanders”.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (centre) adjusts the tie of Jeremy Paxman as they stand alongside Sky News political editor Faisal Islam during a joint Channel 4 and Sky News general election programme recorded at Sky studios in Osterley, west London. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Monday May 29, 2017. See PA story ELECTION Main. Photo credit should read: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire
The Jeremies with Faisal Islam. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

The Queen can rest easy if it’s Corbyn on the way to the palace on 9 June

Why, Paxman thundered at the republican Labour leader, is abolishing the monarchy not in the manifesto? Corbyn let us in on the secret:

Look, there is nothing in there because we are not going to do it!

No Brexit deal is better than a bad deal, but also no deal is a bad deal

May’s favourite ultimatum got another airing, but in a speech today she will warn that an unsuccessful Brexit spells doom for the NHS, public services, welfare, jobs and prosperity. Paxman asked the former remainer: “You still believe it’s a duff idea, don’t you?” May said nothing much in reply (this is an evergreen statement).

Jeremy Paxman isn’t what he was …

He did a decent job of a Jeremy Paxman impression, but the general verdict was that the badgering interruptions and “but most of all, you’ve let me down” mournful face-crumples weren’t cutting it any more.

But he did deliver the zinger of the evening, to May:

If I was sitting in Brussels and I was looking at you as the person I had to negotiate with, I’d think ‘she’s a blowhard who collapses at the first sign of gunfire’.

… and the audience were the winners

Twitter, of course, exists for these events. But after this audience member’s response to May defending government spending on the NHS, the media today will be in search of “bollocks man” (although only the Guardian will be able to do so without employing asterisks. Just part of our unique journalistic offering).

What else is happening?

Today we see the SNP manifesto, delayed for a week after the Manchester attack. The party is lounging comfortably atop the polls in Scotland, but defending 56 of 59 Westminster seats (and under pressure from a perkier Scottish Conservative party) means that even a win on 8 June is likely to come with a few losses. Nicola Sturgeon will today stress the party’s commitment to counter austerity measures, promising her MPs would vote against cuts to health spending in England – a nod to that notional progressive alliance – as well as pledging to scrap the 1% public sector pay cap, keep winter fuel payments as a universal pensioner benefit, and add a 50p top tax rate (as long as the rest of the UK joined in). Read a full rundown here.

At a glance:

Poll position

Yesterday’s Survation poll for ITV’s Good Morning Britain joined the ranks of those slicing the Tory lead over Labour: this time, to six points. The Conservatives were stuck on 43%, Labour hopped up three points to 37%, and the Lib Dems and Ukip stayed right where they were, on 8% and 4% respectively.

And in a sign that Corbyn’s comments on security might not have been the misstep painted by his opponents (including Boris Johnson, who, of course, had said the very same thing), the Survation poll found 46% thought UK military interventions overseas did increase the risk of terror attacks at home; 14% thought the opposite.

Diary

  • At 10am, Jeremy Corbyn is interviewed on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour; at midday he does a Mumsnet webchat.
  • At 10.30, Caroline Lucas targets the Tories and Labour over their lack of green policies in a series of events in London.
  • At 2.30pm, disability minister Penny Mordaunt joins other party candidates for a hustings on disability issues in Westminster.
  • Theresa May will switch the Tory campaign off and on again with a reboot speech focusing on Brexit.
  • And the SNP manifesto is unveiled by Nicola Sturgeon in Perth.

Read these

First, John Crace, in the Guardian. Of course:

When Jeremy Paxman interviewed Jeremy Corbyn earlier in the evening, he had looked and behaved like a man hellbent on acting as a parody of himself. He had interrupted the Labour leader at every opportunity and turned what should have been forensic questioning into a TV turnoff. Someone had clearly had a word with him in the break and he did at least make an effort to let the Supreme Leader get a word in edgeways. Not necessarily to the viewers’ advantage as she continued to do her level best to say nothing at all.

‘You’ve basically changed your mind about everything,’ he concluded after listing all the U-turns the Maybot had made in the last few years. ‘An EU negotiator would conclude that you are a blowhard who collapses at the first sign of gunfire.’ It was Paxman’s one telling intervention of the entire evening. The Supreme Leader narrowed her eyes into a death stare at the sound of more laughter. She then just went back to saying nothing at length until she could hear the studio manager call time.

Rachel Sylvester, in the Times, says the Tory over-reliance on scare tactics is not working:

Wavering former Labour supporters, who were flirting with voting Tory for the first time, are being pushed back into the Labour fold. Voters – who actually rather like the populist policies in Mr Corbyn’s manifesto – feel insulted. The Tories are starting to look like bullies. By attempting to highlight Labour’s failings they are simply reinforcing their own flaws …

For all his left-wing views, the jam-making, courgette-growing, bearded Labour leader looks like a herbivore while the Tory one increasingly appears red in tooth and claw, not only carnivorous but cannibalistic in her mauling of her rival. There is, as she herself might say, something distinctly ‘nasty’ about the Conservative strategy.

Revelation of the day

Paul Nuttall denied he and Ukip were becoming extreme, as he told the BBC’s Andrew Neil he’d consider internment without trial for those suspected of involvement in terrorism, and would be willing personally to “pull the lever” to execute child murderers if the death penalty were reintroduced. “We’re saying things that people are thinking,” Nuttall insisted, “people” presumably including those old school friends you’ve had to mute on Facebook.

The day in a tweet

And another thing

Would you like to wake up to this briefing in your inbox every weekday? Sign up here!

And one last thing

Unlike many news organisations, the Guardian hasn’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can. The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. Here’s how you can support it.

Updated

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Nicole Kidman, Keith Urban Divorce: Babygirl Star Breaks Silence On Split, Vows To Keep Family Together
Nicole Kidman has addressed her divorce from Keith Urban for the first time, using a new Variety interview to stress privacy, family and forward motion. Her comments arrive months after reports of the September 2025 split and January settlement details that set out how the former couple would parent their…
International Business Times UK
International Business Times UK
People Have Been Following Around Tom Holland Hoping To See If He's Wearing A Wedding Band Like Zendaya
Did Zendaya put a ring on it, too?
Cinemablend
Cinemablend
A New Live-Action Scooby-Doo Has Fans Asking One Important Question: Who Owns Scooby?
Shaggy, right? RIGHT?
The Mary Sue
The Mary Sue
Ethan Hawke Reminds Us the Kind of King He Is: “But I Don’t Eat Food”
Finger sandwiches? Spinach dip? What does he mean?
The Mary Sue
The Mary Sue
Sir Paul McCartney: Yoko Ono questioned if John Lennon was gay
Sir Paul McCartney has claimed Yoko Ono told him she thought John Lennon "might have been gay" in a phone call after the death of her husband.
BANG Premier
BANG Premier
Woman realizes she’s pregnant—but only after boyfriend displays strange symptoms: ‘The way I would be annoyed at him’
Given how common pregnancy is, it’s surprising that many are unaware of its many side effects and potential dangers.
The Mary Sue
The Mary Sue
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.
Download on the AppStore Get it on Google Play