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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Politics
Andrew Sparrow ; Claire Phipps and Kevin Rawlinson

Question Time leaders' special: May under fire over NHS and education –as it happened

May and Corbyn face voters on BBC’s Question Time

Question Time - Summary

Here are the main points from the Question Time leaders’ special.

  • Jeremy Corbyn virtually confirmed that he would not be willing to use nuclear weapons - but declined to say so explicitly. This generated his most difficult moment of the debate, as some audience members reacted angrily to his stance. Asked how he would respond if Britain was under threat from nuclear weapons, he said:

I would do everything I can to ensure that any threat is actually dealt with earlier on by negotiations and by talks, so that we do adhere to our obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. I think the idea of anyone ever using a nuclear weapon anywhere in the world is utterly appalling and terrible.

Asked it he was saying he would “never ever, under any circumstances press the red button” to launch a nuclear strike, Corbyn replied:

I think we have discussed this at some length about the aspirations we all have. I do not want to be responsible for the destruction of millions of people, neither do you. Therefore we have to work for a world where they are not available and not used.

After the programme, Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, said:

I thought it was really spine-chilling to hear Jeremy Corbyn announce that all Labour’s support for our nuclear deterrent, all Labour’s support for our armed forces was completely meaningless because when it came to the business of defending this country he wouldn’t do it.

  • Theresa May said she called the election because she had “the balls” to do so. Asked if she regretted calling the election, she said:

In this job I do what I believe is the best for Britain. I could have stayed on doing that job for another couple of years and not called an election. I had the balls to call an election.

  • May defended the government’s decision to cap pay rises for public sector workers by saying there was no “magic money tree”. Nurse Victoria Davey told her:

My wage slips from 2009 reflect exactly what I’m earning today. How can that be fair, in the light of the job that we do?

And a male nurse said: “I’ve had a real-terms decrease of 14% since 2010, so don’t tell us we’re getting a pay rise.” May replied:

I recognise the job that you do, but we have had to take some hard choices across the public sector in relation to public sector pay restraint. We did that because of the decisions we had to take to bring public spending under control, because it wasn’t under control under the last Labour government. And I’m being honest with you in terms of saying that we will put more money into the NHS, but there isn’t a magic money tree that we can shake that suddenly provides for everything that people want.

  • May accused Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary of wanting to take the DNA of criminals off the DNA database. She said:

[Abbott] wants to wipe the records of criminals and terrorists from the DNA database. That would mean that we could catch fewer criminals and fewer terrorists.

Abbott used Twitter to say May was wrong.

And Abbott retweeted this.

  • May defended her decision not to sign the joint letter with the leaders of Germany, Italy and France protesting about President Trump’’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate change deal, saying she did not need to sign it because she spoke to him in person last night.

I haven’t [signed it] because I actually have spoken to Donald Trump and told him that the UK believes in the Paris agreement and that we didn’t want the United States to leave the Paris agreement.

  • May mocked the idea of a Corbyn government being dependent on the support of other parties. She said:

We have a situation at the moment where if Jeremy Corbyn was to get into No 10, he’d be being propped up by the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish nationalists. You would have Diane Abbott who can’t add up sitting around the cabinet table, John McDonnell who is a Marxist, Nicola Sturgeon who wants to break our country up and TIm Farron who wants to take us back into the EU - the direct opposite of what the British people want.

  • May said she wanted to improve work capability assessments, which are used to determine whether people qualify for disability benefits. One woman told her:

The NHS is an absolute shambles for mental health at the moment. I have suffered so much over that year in part because of the work capability assessment.

Let me tell you, I am partially sighted, I have mental health problems and other issues. I went into my assessment and I was asked in detail about suicide attempts and I came out crying because I was so upset because of the way I was treated by that nurse. And she came out after me because she had forgotten to measure my eyesight. She found time to insult me by asking for all these upsetting details.

May replied: “I’m not going to make any excuses for the experience you had. That’s why I think it’s so important that we do deal with mental health.” She also said she wanted to take action to improve work capability assessments.

  • Corbyn acknowledged that some small firms would have difficulty paying the £10 minimum wage, but said a Labour government would “work with them, either to give them tax relief or support in order to make sure the real living wage was paid but they didn’t close down as a result”.
  • He said Ken Livingstone may face a further Labour investigation into alleged antisemitism after the election. Livingstone is currently suspended because of comments he made about Hitler and Zionism. A woman in the audience told Corbyn the fact Livingstone had not been expelled suggested Corbyn did not take antisemitism seriously. Corbyn said:

There is no place for antisemitism anywhere in our society and certainly not in our party. Members have been suspended if they have committed any remarks seen to be of an antisemitic nature. We have a process that is independent of me within the party which investigates these and makes a decision on it ...

[Livingstone] has been suspended and further investigations may or may not happen after the election. He is suspended from membership, but he is suspended so that investigation can take place.

  • Corbyn insisted he deplored “all acts of terrorism”. When asked why he never regarded the IRA as terrorists, he said:

I don’t approve of any terrorism of any sort, any terrorist act of any sort. It only divides communities and kills people.

  • He criticised May for not debating with him. In his opening remarks, he said:

I’m very sorry this is not a debate, this is a series of questions. I think it’s a shame the prime minister hasn’t taken part in a debate.

  • He rejected a claim from someone in the audience that the Labour manifesto was “just a letter to Santa Claus”. He said it was “a serious and realistic document that addresses the issues that many people in this country face”.

And here is our main story.

That’s all from me. Good night.

Updated

The audience member who challenged Theresa May over her record of “broken promises and backtracking” during the BBC Question Time leaders’ special is chairman of Ukip’s youth wing at York University, the Press Association reports.

In a fiery opening exchange, Abigail Eatock told May that she had U-turned on her decision not to call an election and on her social care plans.

And she accused her of ducking debates with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who was appearing separately on the programme after the PM refused to go head to head with her rival.

Soon after the back-and-forth, a Ukip source confirmed that Eatock was the chairman of Young Independence, the party’s youth wing, at York University, where the BBC1 event was being held.

Updated

The Times’ Matt Chorley has posted this excerpt from a Diane Abbott interview with Andrew Marr showing that, contrary to what Theresa May said, Abbott does not favour taking the DNA of criminals off the DNA database.

On Newsnight, Emily Maitlis has just said that Theresa May did not use the phrase “strong and stable” once tonight. Why not, she asked Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary.

Johnson said that May “emanated” both virtues.

Updated

And here is the official Conservative reaction to the Question Time leaders’ special. It is a statement from Patrick McLoughlin, the Conservative chairman.

Tonight was a clear demonstration of the choice at this election – the prime minister showed voters that she has a plan for Brexit, is in command of her brief, and was unafraid to take on the difficult issues.

Jeremy Corbyn wilted under pressure – he waffled on and on in meaningless soundbites without offering anything of substance. It’s obvious that Corbyn could not secure the good Brexit deal that is vital to protect our economy, meaning fewer jobs and more debt.

The only way to get a brighter future for our country is to vote for Theresa May on 8 June.

Here is the Labour party’s official reaction to the Question Time leaders’ special. It is from a Jeremy Corbyn spokesperson.

The Question Time leaders’ special showed there is a very clear choice at this election but again the British public were denied the opportunity to see a debate between the only two people who could be prime minister next week.

Jeremy outlined Labour’s plans to transform Britain for the many not the few. With a Labour government, students won’t be saddled with tuition fee debt, pensioners incomes will be guaranteed by the triple lock and winter fuel allowance, and 95% of taxpayers won’t pay any more tax.

Theresa May couldn’t defend her record and floundered on the lack of costings in her manifesto, what the cap on social care will be and where the money will come from to fund our NHS.

The prime minister won’t even debate in an election she called, how on earth can she be trusted to negotiate the best Brexit deal for the British people? She repeatedly said she wasn’t going to call an election but now she has, she doesn’t seem to want to take part in it.

Updated

Question Time - Who won?

The verdict from the Twitter commentariat panel is finished. It’s at 9.41pm, but you may need to refresh the page to get the whole thing to appear because I’ve been updating it.

Generally, the view seems to be that Jeremy Corbyn came over as warmer and more relaxed, apart from when he was challenged over whether or not he would be willing to press the nuclear button, when his implied unilateralism (he came closer than he has done recently to saying no, without being explicit) and his evasiveness clearly infuriated a section of the audience.

Theresa May was generally robust, and marginally more animated than when she appeared on the Sky News/Channel 4 programme on Monday, but she faced a barrage of hostile and pertinent questions and, with many of them, her answers were uninspiring or even sometime unsympathetic. (For example, by now she should have developed a better answer on why nurses haven’t had a proper pay rise and sometimes need to use food banks.)

Journalists are always on the look-out for the “killer blow” at events like this, but they are as rare as a unicorn and there certainly wasn’t one tonight. For my money, Corbyn had the better night (assuming people care more about public services than the nuclear deterrent), and if the programme attracted people who have not noticed how much he has improved in recent weeks, they will have been impressed. May was solid, and it is customary for PMs on programmes like this to face hostile questions about public services. May put up with this with good grace, but said little to enthuse wavering voters.

Updated

Question Time leaders' special - Verdict from the Twitter commentariat

This is what political journalists and commentators are saying about the Question Time leaders’s special on Twitter.

From the BBC’s Nick Robinson

From the Sunday Times’ Tim Shipman

From the Guardian’s Matthew d’Ancona

From the Daily Mirror’s Jason Beattie

From the BBC’s Laura Kuennsberg

From the Daily Mirror’s Jack Blanchard

From the New Statesman’s Stephen Bush

From ITV’s Carl Dinnen

From the Spectator’s James Forsyth

From the Guardian’s Paul Johnson

From Sky’s Beth Rigby

From the Guardian’s Dan Sabbagh

From HuffPost’s Paul Waugh

From the Guardian columnist Paul Mason

From the Daily Mirror’s Kevin Maguire

From Business Insider’s Adam Bienkov

From the Observer’s Sonia Sodha

Updated

Question 5 - Tuition fees

Q: Why will you spend so much on scrapping tuition fees when there are other things to spend money on?

Dimbleby says it will cost £11bn - a quarter of all Labour’s extra spending.

Corbyn says he had the offer of free tuition. He did not take it up. But he says in other parts of the world free tuition is normal.

And that’s it.

Verdicts, a summary and reaction coming up soon.

Q: A few months ago you said you would have a strategic defence review if you won the election. Why do we need one?

Corbyn says every government coming into power does one. There are key issues to look at, including cyber attacks.

Updated

Q: Why have you never recognised the IRA as terrorism?

Corbyn says he has deplored all types of terrorism, by the IRA or anyone else?

The man says they did kill a lot of people.

Corbyn says all deaths are wrong, and all killing is wrong.

The peace process was remarkable, he says.

Q: You say you didn’t support the IRA but you supported Hamas. How can we expect you go to into No 10 when you supported them?

Corbyn says he never supported them. You have to talk to people to have a peace process.

Q: You were talking to them when they were killing people?

Corbyn says the government was doing that at the same time. Ian Paisley was thrown out of parliament for saying so. In a peace process, you have to talk to people you do not agree with, he says.

Q: Are you saying you will never, ever, under any circumstances, press the nuclear button?

Corbyn says he has discussed this. I don’t want to be responsible for those deaths, he says. And neither do you.

Updated

Question 4 - Zero-hours contracts

Q: Many students like me use zero-hours contracts. We don’t want to lose them, because they suit us?

Corbyn says many people on zero-hours contracts have a huge amount of stress. They only find out if the will get work every day.

He says Labour wants firms to offer a minimum amount of hours. That works for students, he says.

He is not going to stop people working, he says.

The student says the gig economy, and its flexibility, suits people like him.

Q: How many jobs would be lost if the minimum wage goes up to £10 an hour? And how will you help the 3m micro-businesses that could be affected.

That’s a fair point, Corbyn says. He says when the Labour government introduced it, unemployment did not increase.

But that is because the Labour increases were small, the questioner says.

Corbyn says big firms could afford this. But he recognises small firms may have difficulties. He would find ways of helping, he says. There would be a pathway to it with help to achieve it.

Updated

Q: My husband was deported last year. He was too highly educated. Would you reduce the threshold for family union.

Corbyn says his manifesto does address this. The system is unfair. He would allow proper family reunion.

Updated

Jeremy Corbyn holds up his manifesto as he takes part in the BBC’s Question Time.
Jeremy Corbyn holds up his manifesto as he takes part in the BBC’s Question Time. Photograph: Getty Images

Dimbleby asks if he would use Trident in retaliation. He tells Corbyn he is speaking to the country about the most expensive weapon we have.

Corbyn says people says the most effective use of it is not to use it.

Dimbleby says Corbyn is dodging the question. What about the reality?

Corbyn says we have to try to protect ourselves. He would not use it in first use. If he did use it, millions could die.

Some in the audience jeer.

A man in the audience asks if he would allow North Korea or Iran to bomb the UK.

Of course I wouldn’t, says Corbyn.

Getting disarmament could be difficult, says Corbyn.

“Impossible,” says the man.

A young woman in the audience says she does not understand why so many people in the room are keen on killing millions of people.

Updated

Question 3 - Nuclear weapons

Q: What would you do if Britain was under nuclear threat?

Corbyn says he would do everything possible to avoid that situation.

He says the prospect of anyone anywhere using a nuclear weapons is absolutely horrible.

We have to deal with those issues here and globally.

Q: Are you saying there are no circumstances in which you would use Trident?

Corbyn says his party has decided to renew Trident. He would view it as a failure if he was in the situation where he had to consider using it. He would have a no first use policy.

Q: What about in retaliation?

Corbyn says he would have a no first use policy.

The questioner says Trident is not just for the next government; it is for the future.

Corbyn says that is a good point. But he says you have to work for peace around the world.

Updated

Q: What will you do to help black and minority ethnic people?

Corbyn says he wants everyone to have opportunities. One idea he is considering is for name-blind job applications.

Q: It’s a matter of how you fund this. We could be left with you saying there is no money left.

Corbyn says austerity has hit our public services and left people worse off. The rich have not been affected. He says Labour’s manifesto is a serious document.

Q: How can I take you seriously when you have not expelled Ken Livingstone for antisemitism?

Corbyn says Labour does not tolerate antisemitism. Livingstone was investigated by an independent process. He deplores racism in any form.

Q: So why has Livingstone not been expelled?

Corbyn says he has been suspended. He says a further investigation may take place after the election.

Updated

Dimbleby asks how much the tax burden will go up.

Corbyn says the tax take will go up by £48bn.

Dimbleby says that is almost 10%.

Q: Is Labour’s manifesto just a letter to Santa Claus?

Corbyn says the questioner should read it. It is a brave and realistic document, he says.

Question 2 - Business

Q: I run a small business. Will your plans create problems for me?

Corbyn asks the man how small is micro-business is. The man says he employs five people, but hopes to grow. Let’s hope it does, Corbyn says.

Corbyn says all his plans are costed. Labour will put up corporation tax. But he thinks it’s worth it, so young people can go to university without debt, and so teachers don’t have to collect money from parents at the school gate.

Q: Will you rule out a deal with [SNP leader] Nicola Sturgeon?

Corbyn says he is not doing deals. He wants a majority government.

Updated

Q: What does leaving the EU mean to you?

Corbyn says it means leaving the treaties, and the EU no longer having an independent authority over the UK.

Threatening the UK will not work.

Q: Do you want to remain in the single market?

Corbyn says his aim is tariff-free access.

Question 1 to Jeremy Corbyn - Brexit

Jeremy Corbyn on BBC1’s Question Time Leaders Special.
Jeremy Corbyn on BBC1’s Question Time Leaders Special. Photograph: BBC/PA

Jeremy Corbyn is here.

Q: Why should the British public trust you and your team to negotiate Brexit?

Corbyn starts by saying it is a shame that the PM won’t debate him.

He says Labour would negotiate market access. We have a great team, he says. He says Keir Starmer [the shadow Brexit secretary] is one of the best lawyers in the country. He can trust Starmer more than some others doing the negotiating.

Q: Barry Gardiner said on Question Time last night we would be poorer when we left.

Corbyn says he does not think that.

Updated

Question 6 - Trump and climate change

Q: Why haven’t you signed the letter protesting about his decision to pull out of the Paris climate change agreement?

Because I told him so myself, May, says. She says she spoke to him last night.

Q: Wouldn’t it have been a good decision to join with France, Germany and Italy?

May says she takes independent decisions.

And that is the end of that part of the programme.

Question 5 - Education

Q: State schools are underfunded, and teachers are overworked. So why are you putting money into grammar schools?

May says she wants every child to get the education that is right for them.

Q: In the school I work in, every child will get £898 less by 2020 than under Labour. Why do you care less than Labour?

May says she does care about education.

Updated

Question 4 - Foreign aid

Q: I am voting Tory, but I’m not happy with the aid budget. Why are we giving money to North Korea?

May says it is right to help people in developing countries.

Q: But why North Korea?

May says it is not a paragon of virtue.

Q: Does North Korea get aid money?

May says she does not know the detail.

Q: It was £4m in 2015.

(The Daily Mail, of course, has all the details.)

A woman says it really concerns her that May seemed not to recognise the difference between learning difficulties and mental health when confronted by a woman earlier in the campaign.

May says the lady who spoke to her did raise mental health as well as learning difficulties.

A man says he has failed the work capability assessment on mental health grounds.

A woman says she has been waiting a year and a half for a mental health appointment. She has had problems with the work capability assessment as a result. She is partially sighted too. She was asked about suicide attempts at the assessment. She says she came out crying. She had been insulted.

May says she is not going to make any excuses. She knows the issue of mental health is especially difficult.

But she says again she will not make excuses. She says she is sorry.

Dimbleby asks if it is fair that nurses only get a 1% increase every year and some have to go to food banks.

May says some nurses get progression pay.

Q: Aren’t they a special case?

May says there are people all across the public sector working hard.

She says you may hear later on (from Jeremy Corbyn) that money can be spent on anything. It can’t, she says.

Updated

Question 3 - NHS and pay

Q: As a nurse, why should I support you when you are not giving me a pay rise.

May says the government will put half a trillion pounds into the NHS over the next parliament.

Q: But my pay has not gone up.

A man next to the questioner says in real terms pay has gone down 14%.

May says she is being honest. There is not a magic money tree that can provide everything people want.

Q: You are cutting NHS spending. But you are cutting tax for the rich.

May says she is not cutting NHS spending.

Q: Why are we spending less?

May says more funding is going in.

Updated

Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, says May is not telling the truth about her.

Updated

May says she wants to consult on how the social care cap will work.

Q: If you can tell us what the floor is, why can’t you tell us what the cap will be?

(Excellent question.)

May says she thought it was important to say what the floor was. But she wants to consult on the cap.

Updated

Q: What is the point of saving for care if your house is going to be taken away?

Dimbleby asks for clarification about the £100,000. He seems to confuse the floor and the cap.

May brushes aside his question, and goes back to the question she was asked.

She says people will keep more than now under the Tory plans.

Dimbleby says it was odd to leave the cap out of the manifesto.

May says she set out the principles in her manifesto.

Updated

Q: You want people to trust you. But how can we when your manifesto has no costings?

May says the manifesto is open about the challenges the government faces.

A man says there should be a second referendum. The audience boos.

May says in the past the EU has asked people to vote for a second time. People in the UK objected. If the people have voted, the government should deliver.

Updated

A man says it was unfair of May to criticise Diane Abbott for getting her figures wrong because Philip Hammond got the price of HS2 wrong.

May says the thing about Abbott is that she wants to wipe the DNA of criminals and terrorists from the DNA database.

Q: How much are you prepared to pay to leave the EU?

May says it is not a good negotiating strategy to say in advance how much you will pay.

Q: And do you accept you need to settle the money first?

May says the EU wants to debate the bill first. She wants one of the early discussions to be about EU citizens. They will move on to discussing trade when we make progress in the talks.

A woman asks if May really thinks she has leverage.

Yes, says May, because they need a good deal.

Question 2 - Brexit

Q: If the EU plays awkward, why don’t we just cut and run and pay them no money?

May says other parties would get the worst deal at the highest price.

Dimbleby says May said during the EU referendum that staying in the EU would make us more prosperous. Yesterday she said Brexit would make us more prosperous. Where are you at with this?

May says she always said that the sky would not fall in if we left. What matters most is being able to deliver on the will of the people.

Dimbleby says May must think the people made the wrong choice. Can you honestly say there will be no difference between leaving and staying?

May says she said on balance it would be better to stay. But the key thing now is to deliver, she says.

Updated

A man says she called the election for her own political gains. She replies:

No, it’s not sir.

Then she says (we think) she had “the balls” to call an election.

The man said the Tories called the EU referendum for the good of the Conservative party.

Updated

Theresa May taking part in BBC1’s Question Time Leaders Special.
Theresa May taking part in BBC1’s Question Time Leaders Special. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

A woman in the audience asks who was stopping May implementing Brexit.

May says it is true she got article 50 through the Commons, but it was clear the other parties wanted to frustrate her.

A man in the audience asks if she regrets calling the election. He is a Tory, he says.

May says the only poll that matter is the one on polling day. This is about who has the best Brexit deal.

Dimbleby asks if May was surprised what happened.

May says she is never surprised.

Updated

Question 1 - U-turns and broken promises

Q: Why should the public trust anything you say when you have a track record of backtracking or broken promises as home secretary or prime minister?

(Superb question.)

May says she wants to tell the questioner about her record. She mentions addressing stop and search, being tough on crime and criminals, and keeping DNA details on the database. Diane Abbott does not want to do that, she says.

She does not address the question.

Q: You have backtracked. You said there would be no election and there was. You have not debated Jeremy Corbyn. You backtracked over social care.

May says she is taking questions.

On the election question, she says it became clear other parties wanted to frustrate the will the the people. It would have been easy to hang on. But she called an election because of Brexit.

Updated

Question Time leaders' special

David Dimbleby introduces the programme.

He says a third of the audience intend to vote Conservative, a third intend to vote Labour, and a third support other parties or have not yet made up their minds.

Question Time is about to start.

As it goes along, I may post some tweets from journalists and political commentators. It is not possible to post all the interesting Twitter commentary. I’ll be choosing ones that seem interesting, but the selection will be relatively random.

At the end I will do a more systematic round-up showing what the Twitter commentariat is saying.

Boris Johnson v Andrew Gwynne is starting to become a TV fixture. The foreign secretary and the Labour election coordinator had an entertaining on-screen barney at the Sky/Channel 4 TV showdown on Monday, and they have just had a rematch on Sky.

The Financial Times has an interview with Theresa May tonight. There does not seem to be a news line in it, and the article, by George Parker and Roula Khalaf, conveys a sense of how May’s campaign has been faltering. It is headlined: Theresa May limps towards the election finishing line. Here’s an excerpt.

Speaking to the FT at Derby County’s Pride Park football ground, she gives not an inkling that anything has gone wrong in the campaign or that any mistakes have been made, let alone any misgivings about her gamble in holding an election. Her critics argue that she is in denial. But Conservative strategists hope that, ultimately, her sense of calm will allow her to appear as the no-nonsense figure who emerged from the chaotic aftermath of last summer’s Brexit vote to stabilise the nation.

Mrs May, who had spent the day touring target Labour seats in the north and Midlands, is immaculately dressed in a grey pantsuit, and is wearing a large “power necklace”. When she speaks, her voice betrays a slight nervousness that her rhetoric tries very hard to hide.

“We stand at an historical moment of change for our country,” she says, looking out over the pitch. “The decision people take next week is a decision not just for the next five years but beyond those next five years in terms of the opportunities that will be available to us.”

One senior Tory MP said: “If we do win with an enhanced majority there will be a considerable sigh of relief.” A former Tory minister, fighting for re-election, said: “People don’t like the cult of personality and the apparent Stalinist control. The public can now see it and they don’t like it.”

Updated

General election campaign in three charts

As we wait for Question Time to start, it is worth having a look at these three charts, from Ipsos Mori’s June political monitor, out today. They encapsulate the story of the entire campaign.

1 - How Theresa May’s lead over Jeremy Corbyn has shrunk.

This chart is a bit confusing, but it is worth the effort, because it compares how leaders have been seen on the “most capable prime minister” rating going back to 2001. It shows how, at the start of the campaign, May’s lead over Corbyn was similar to Tony Blair’s over William Hague in 2001. Now Corbyn is closer to the prime minister than Ed Miliband was in 2015, or Michael Howard was in 2005.

Comparing the bottom red line (Blair in 2001 - 52%) with the bottom blue line (Hague in 2001 - 12%) gives Blair a net lead of 40 points. In 2005, Blair had a net lead of 19 over Howard. In 2010, David Cameron was ahead of Gordon Brown by four. Five years later Cameron was 21 points ahead of Miliband.

In April, May’s lead over Corbyn was 38 points. But now it is only 15.

Best PM ratings at elections from 2001.
Best PM ratings at elections from 2001. Photograph: Ipsos Mori

2 - Why May’s lead over Corbyn has shrunk.

It’s quite simple; her ratings have plummeted, and his have risen sharply. That’s because he’s run a very good campaign, and she has run a very poor one.

Leader ratings.
Leader ratings. Photograph: Ipsos Mori

3 - How the Tory lead has narrowed.

All the polls have shown the Conservative lead narrowing sharply, although there are still big differences in what they assess the lead to be. Ipsos Mori have it at five points.

State of the parties polling
State of the parties polling Photograph: Ipsos Mori

Election events like tonight rarely make any noticeable difference to the polls, but the challenge for Corbyn will be to try to ensure that the red line in the second chart keeps heading north. And May needs to stop the blue line sinking.

Updated

The BBC’s Question Time leaders’ special starts at 8.30pm. Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn have both arrived at the venue in York.

They will both take questions from the audience for 45 minutes, with David Dimbleby chairing. Following the toss of a coin, May is going first.

Theresa May speaks to head of BBC News, James Harding, on her arrival for Question Time special
Theresa May speaks to head of BBC News, James Harding, on her arrival for the Question Time special. Photograph: Lindsey Parnaby/AFP/Getty Images
Jeremy Corbyn arrives for Question Time at the University of York
Jeremy Corbyn arrives for Question Time at the University of York. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Updated

My colleague, Peter Walker, is outside the Home Office building in London, where Green party activists are holding a “dance party” in defence of freedom of movement.

Updated

The Guardian's view: it’s Labour

The Guardian’s leader has been published and it says unequivocally “Labour deserves our vote”, adding that the party’s election campaign under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership “might be the start of something big rather than the last gasp of something small”.

It casts what is labelled an “unnecessary election for which there was no appetite” as an opportunity to:

... begin unwinding a political project of isolationist policies that with Brexit has seeded a fear of the future; to dispense with an economy where chief executives’ pay races ahead while the poorer half of the population sees income fall; to jettison the Victorian idea that moral courage and enterprise could replace the state in securing people’s freedom from want, ignorance and disease.

Labour, on the other hand, offers a genuine attempt to address a failing social and economic model, the article says.

It contrasts the performances of Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn during the election campaign. The prime minister’s campaign has been “grimly negative and entirely joyless” and has exposed May as a “poor judge of campaign tactics”. While the Labour leader is not perfect, the editorial says he has “led a good campaign” and been “energetic and effective on the stump, comfortable in his own skin and in the presence of others. He clearly likes people and is interested in them. He has generated an unfamiliar sense of the possible; once again, people are excited by politics”.

The leader reads:

Our desire is for a Labour government, but our priority is to stop the Conservatives. All politics is local and there are unique dynamics in Britain’s 650 constituencies. The electoral script in Scotland is now plainly different and we will consider the options there in a separate editorial. Similarly, Northern Ireland has its own narrative. There are many reasons to vote Lib Dem, not least their campaign for membership of the EU’s single market and reform of the voting system. Likewise, the Green party – and the epoch-shaping concern over the environment – should not be dismissed. Our support for Labour does not mean a “progressive alliance” of like-minded parties should be discarded. It should be embraced as an idea, but one whose time has not come. To limit the Tories by tactical voting makes sense.

Updated

A song calling Theresa May a “liar” has reached number four in the charts less than a week before Britain goes to the polls.

Despite not being aired on any mainstream radio stations, Captain Ska’s Liar Liar GE2017 has shot up the official singles chart since its release last week.

Originally released in 2010 in response to the coalition government, the seven-piece band recorded a new version ahead of polling day next Thursday which includes samples from the prime minister’s speeches alongside the lyrics “she’s a liar liar, you can’t trust her, no no no”.

At one point, the track was thought to be close to beating pop superstar Justin Bieber to the number one spot.

The BBC and several other radio stations have chosen not to play it and Radio 1 confirmed it would not be played during the chart countdown as it may breach impartiality guidelines during the election campaign. A protest demanding it be played was organised for outside the BBC’s headquarters in central London on Friday afternoon.

Updated

YouGov hit the headlines earlier this week when it published the results of an election forecasting model suggesting we are heading for a hung parliament. The exercise uses something called multi-level regression and post-stratification (MRP) to try to predict results in every seats on the basis of data reflecting their demographic composition, using up-to-date polling data.

But YouGov is not the only pollster running an MRP model. Lord Ashcroft has got one, too, and has just released his latest weekly forecast. Here are the figures.

Election prediction.
Election prediction. Photograph: Lord Ashcroft Polls

And here is an extract from Ashcroft’s write-up.

This week’s estimates from the Ashcroft Model suggest a narrowing of the Conservative majority, though still a comfortable victory for Theresa May. Our “combined probabilistic estimate”, in which we take the sum of each party’s win chances in all the seats in which it is standing, the model gives the Conservatives 355 seats (down from 396 last week), or a potential majority of 60.

However, the majority could be considerably better or worse than this for the Conservatives, depending on the pattern of turnout. Our model calculates three different results, depending on who actually shows up to the polls. If everyone who claims in our surveys to have voted in the EU referendum turns out next week, the number of Conservative seats could fall to 345, with 233 for Labour – an overall majority of 40. But such a surge fails to materialise and turnout is confined to those who actually cast their vote in 2015, our estimated Tory majority rises to 78. Updated vote share and win-chance estimates for each seat are available here.

It is important to remember that we are dealing with probabilities not predictions, and that the result could well fall either side of our central estimates. In the scenario where turnout matches that of 2015, the highest likelihood (35%) is of a Conservative majority between 60 and 79, with a one-in-four chance of a majority between 80 and 99 and a 12% chance of a majority of 100 to 119. But if everyone who says they are certain to vote actually does so, the biggest chance (35%) is of a Tory majority between 40 and 59.

An implied majority of 60 would be a lot better for Theresa May than the hung parliament forecast by YouGov. But the Ashcroft model had May heading for a majority of 142 last week.

That’s all from me for the moment.

My colleague Kevin Rawlinson is taking over now. I will be back to cover the BBC Question Time election special, featuring Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn, which begins at 8.30pm.

Updated

A Sinn Féin election poster featuring Michelle O’Neill is seen in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
A Sinn Féin election poster featuring Michelle O’Neill in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Photograph: Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters

Updated

The Political Studies Association has been surveying experts to find out what they think the election result will be and today they have published a report with their findings (pdf). There were 335 forecasts (by 280 politics academics, plus journalists, pollsters or “other”) and generally they were forecasting a virtual Conservative landslide.

Being academics, they produced two figures for the average Conservative majority forecast: 92 was the mean figure, but 110 was the median (the halfway point).

Here’s an extract from the report.

Just as with vote shares, the headline figures for our expert predictions concerning seats in parliament also suggest a big win for the Conservatives, although some 12% of respondents expected a net loss of seats for the Tories. On average they expected a majority of 92 but most, 59% of respondents, expected a Tory majority of 100 or more. Labour were expected to sink to their lowest number of seats since 1935, with an average prediction of 186 seats. Just 6% of our respondents expected Labour to match or increase their 2015 seat tally.

You can read the full document, with all the numbers, here (pdf).

But there are two reasons not to take these figures particularly seriously. First, most of those people were consulted before the Conservative manifesto was published, leading to the calamitous social care U-turn that has coincided with a sharp drop in the Tory poll lead.

And, second, the last two times the PSA conducted this exercise, the experts were wrong. They thought remain would win the EU referendum by 55% to 45%, and they thought the 2015 election would result in a hung parliament.

So why are they bothering? “The answer is that it is important to properly record and benchmark the predictions of those who analyse politics for a living – and understand those predictions more precisely,” the report says.

Updated

This is quite fun. It’s from Sam Freedman, who now works at Teach First but who used to be a civil servant at the Department for Education.

Jeremy Corbyn has challenged Theresa May to debate with him directly on tonight’s Question Time election programme. This is from the BBC’s Tom Bateman.

Unless May accepts Corbyn’s challenge (which seems improbable, to put it mildly), the two will appear on the programme one after the other, with May due to go first.

The Runnymede Trust, a race equality thinktank, has published figures suggesting that Labour support among non-white voters is rising sharply. Labour now has a 34-point lead over the Conservatives among this group, it says.

Polling among whites and non-whites.
Polling among whites and non-whites. Photograph: Runnymede Trust

Omar Khan, director of the trust, said:

A number of recent polls have suggested that Theresa May’s lead over Jeremy Corbyn has been narrowing and the race is becoming tighter than previously thought. Our polling analysis indicates that Labour’s support among ethnic minorities may well be increasing in the latter stages of this campaign ... Conservative hopes of capturing a greater share of the ‘BME vote’ from Labour may be optimistic.

Updated

Sir Vince Cable, the former Lib Dem business secretary who is trying to win back his Twickenham seat (which he lost to the Tories in 2015), gave a speech on the economy and business today. He used it to criticise the Conservatives and Labour.

He said that Theresa May was not interested in economic policy and cared more about cutting immigration than about economic prosperity. He said:

[May] has some likable characteristics and admirable characteristics, but it was always very clear that she was never the slightest bit interested in economic policy.

There was one issue actually that crystallised it ... which is the issue about overseas students.

In order to meet the target, they reduced or tried to curb visas for overseas students - but they are not immigrants because they don’t stay here, they go back, but it fits within the numbers, so they have to be cut.

May said he and other ministers objected, saying cutting the number of foreign students coming to the UK was “ridiculous”.

And the answer we got [from May) was intriguing and revealing and highly relevant to today. “It wasn’t: ‘Well, you’re wrong’, it was: ‘So what? What does it matter if it’s damaging the economy? We’re controlling the immigration.’

So this is why the crashing out scenario [leaving the EU with no deal], which is looming now very large, is potentially so disastrous and why the Liberal Democrats have to be absolutely clear that we would not accept that and we would want to provide a route back, an opportunity to think again about this process.

And, on Labour, Cable said:

If you turn to what’s happening on the other side of the Labour party, I find it very difficult to understand why their economic proposals are not being torn to shreds.

They’ve progressed from Keynesian economics to Venezuelan economics ... that was the role model.

Price controls, printing money, nationalise everything that moves or doesn’t move – complete economic chaos at the end of it – that’s their role model.

Updated

Jeremy Corbyn (centre) and shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey are shown an MRI scanner by Professor Gary Green (left) during a tour of the Innovation Centre in York.
Jeremy Corbyn (centre) and shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey are shown an MRI scanner by Professor Gary Green (left) during a tour of the Innovation Centre in York. Photograph: WPA Pool/Getty Images

Updated

A Labour candidate has written to voters in her marginal constituency saying that “realistically” Jeremy Corbyn will not win the general election and urging them to back her as an independent-minded local MP, Jessica Elgot reports. Joan Ryan, who was Enfield North’s MP between 1997 and 2010 and regained the seat from the Conservatives in 2015, encouraged voters to elect her “whatever your misgivings about the Labour leadership” because she expected Corbyn would not become prime minister.

The full details of the Ipsos Mori poll (see 12.08pm) are now on its website. And you can read the charts here (pdf).

Here is an extract from the Ipsos Mori write-up.

Theresa May still commands a lead over Jeremy Corbyn when it comes to who Britons think would be the most capable Prime Minister. Half (50%) think Mrs May would be the most capable (down 6 points from two weeks ago) while one in three (35%) say Mr Corbyn (up 6 points). Younger voters prefer Mr Corbyn (by 57% to 30% among 18-34s), but older voters still choose Mrs May (by 67% to 18% among 55+).

Theresa May also leads Jeremy Corbyn when it comes to leadership satisfaction ratings; however, her numbers are much lower than seen in our last poll two weeks ago. Forty-three percent say they’re satisfied with Theresa May doing her job (down 12 points) while half (50%) say they’re dissatisfied with her (up 15 points) – leaving her a net satisfaction score of -7 (her first negative rating since becoming Prime Minister). This compares with two in five (39%) satisfied with Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader (up 8 points) and half (50%) dissatisfied with him (down 8 points) – giving him a net score of -11. Conservative voters still strongly back Theresa May with 82% saying they’re satisfied with how Theresa May is doing her job (14% are dissatisfied). Labour voters have become more enthusiastic for Jeremy Corbyn, with 71% saying they are satisfied in his performance and 19% dissatisfied.

Gideon Skinner, head of political research at Ipsos Mori, has tweeted these charts.

And here is some Twitter comment on the poll findings.

From Matt Singh, the analyst who runs the Number Cruncher Politics website.

From the academic Matthew Goodwin

From the Press Association’s Ian Jones

From the Evening Standard’s Joe Murphy

Updated

Alan Johnson says he may have been been wrong about Corbyn who now has 'realistic chance' of winning

The former Labour cabinet minister Alan Johnson now believes Jeremy Corbyn has “a realistic chance of winning” next week’s general election.

Just six weeks ago Johnson was interviewed by the Guardian’s Simon Hattenstone and said the opposite. He has also previously called Corbyn “useless”, “incompetent” and “incapable”.

Speaking at the Hay literary festival in Wales, Johnson said: “It is just amazing how things have gone since that interview [with Hattenstone]. Theresa May and the Conservatives committed that cardinal sin of taking the public for granted.”

May has made three big mistakes, Johnson said.

  • Calling the election in the first place, only two years after fixed term parliaments were agreed. “People don’t like that, they don’t like being taken to the polls when there is no obvious need.”
  • The U-turn on having a cap on adult social care. Johnson said he thought he was responsible for the fastest U-turn in recent political history when, in 2006, he was education secretary and changed his mind on forcing faith schools to take more pupils of different faiths. “That took five days … this was within a day!”
  • May’s refusal to take part in the live TV debate. “On top of the other two, suddenly we’re not in strength and stability, we’re in to weakness and instability.”

Asked if he had been wrong about Corbyn, Johnson said: “Maybe. It was always about is he capable of leading us into government? Was I wrong about that … maybe. I hope so.”

Johnson said something was clearly happening out in the country and if it continued “there could well be a Labour government”.

Alan Johnson.
Alan Johnson. Photograph: Colin McPherson for the Guardian

Updated

May 'weak and feeble and spineless over climate change', says Ed Miliband

Here is more from what Ed Miliband said on the World at One about Theresa May being “weak and feeble and spineless” for not being willing to condemn President Trump for pulling out of the Paris climate change treaty. He said:

The reason this matters is the signal it sends, the signal it sends about British leadership, and Theresa may is sending a signal that she is weak and feeble and spineless, I’m afraid ...

If ever there was a moment when Britain needed a strong leader, it was now, and it turns out we’ve got an incredible weak one who is missing in action. I’m afraid that is what people are increasingly thinking about Theresa May ...

Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs does not normally tweet at all. Now, I’m not a friend of Goldman Sachs on everything, but he actually tweeted for the first time yesterday to say how wrong this decision is. And that is the scale of this. Barack Obama, Al Gore, business leaders, scientists, all coming out and saying President Trump. And where is British leadership? It is absolutely nowhere ...

The reason why the British response matters is that the Paris agreement was a fragile thing and a hard thing to negotiate, and the lack of American leadership, and America withdrawing from it, is bad, and let’s make no bones about it. But it’s so important that the rest of the world now says, with determination, not just that we are going to carry on, but that it’s unacceptable, that you are a pariah of the international community, to withdraw from it.

When it was put to him that May has said she expressed disappointment about Trump’s decision, Miliband replied:

Disappointment is when your football team loses a match. It is not when somebody makes a devastating decision like this. America is one of the two largest emitters in the world, along with China. This decision was backed by every country in the world apart from Syria, which is in the middle of a civil war, and Nicaragua, which wanted us to go further. American leadership was so important to this.

Ed Miliband (right) with Jeremy Corbyn during last year’s EU referendum campaign.
Ed Miliband (right) with Jeremy Corbyn during last year’s EU referendum campaign. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Mackinlay insists he's innocent and says expenses charges won't affect his campaign

Craig Mackinlay, the Conservative candidate for South Thanet, has put out a statement on Facebook about the CPS decision to charge him over alleged overspending in the 2015 election. He said:

My candidature in South Thanet is entirely unaffected and my campaign continues as before. I will not let this decision affect the hard work I do for my constituents and the hard work I hope to do for them after 8th June.

Our justice system is underpinned by the presumption of innocence and I am confident that I will be acquitted as I have done nothing wrong and acted honestly and properly whilst a candidate in 2015, and as all candidates do, acted upon advice throughout.

Clearly this is a shocking decision by the CPS, given that I’ve done nothing wrong and I am confident that this will be made very clear as the matter progresses.

I am very disappointed with the way this has been handled by the CPS and Kent police, and I must question the timing of this decision given that Kent police confirmed on 18th April that their file had been sent to the CPS to review and make their decision: why leave this until a few days before the election?

Updated

Lunchtime summary

No. The UK’s position on the Paris agreement remains as it always has been. We believe this is an important international agreement on climate change. The UK is one of the leading nations across the world in dealing with climate change. I made clear to President Trump, as did other G7 leaders last week, that we believed [in] the importance of the Paris agreement and we wanted the United States to remain within it. I spoke to President Trump again last night, I made it clear that the UK would have wanted the United States to stay within the Paris agreement and that we continue to support the Paris agreement.

May also said that, although the UK had not joined France, Germany and Italy in signing a letter criticising Trump’s decision, Canada and Japan, which were also G7 countries, had not signed it either. But they all agreed the American decision was wrong, she said.

Theresa May.
Theresa May. Photograph: Sky News
  • May has sought to clarify the Conservative position on immigration, saying it would “take time” to hit the party’s target. Last night David Davis, the Brexit secretary, said it could take more than five years to get net annual migration below 100,000, after May herself suggested it would happen in the next parliament. (See 8.09am.) Asked to clarify the position, May said it would “take time” to meet the target. She added:

We haven’t set a timetable in our manifesto. Of course we want to do it as soon as we can, but we have to keep working at this.

Updated

Lucas says abandoning free movement is 'a scandal'

Caroline Lucas, the Green party co-leader, has said that ending free movement after Brexit would create a “very real risk” to public services. Speaking at an event in Sheffield, she criticised the government and Labour for not committing to keep free movement after Britain leaves the EU. She said:

Taking away the right to travel, to study, to work, to live and to learn, and to love in 27 other countries and for them to come here. That is a wonderful, precious gift. And the carelessness, the recklessness, the thoughtlessness with which that is being thrown away by this government, supported, tragically, by the Labour party, I think is little short of criminal, it’s a scandal.

They’ve failed to make that case that migration enriches and diversifies our communities. A culture that’s rich in diversity is exposed to new ways of thinking, new ideas, new languages, new information. It is outward thinking, rather than self-limiting.

And the economic arguments for free movement are strong as well. We would be a poorer country without the taxes that EU nationals pay, without the work they do in our hospitals, our councils, our care homes. Without free movement, there is a very real risk that our economy will not be able to generate enough tax to support current levels of investment in the NHS or other public services, levels which have already, frankly, been cut to the bone.

Updated

May says Mackinlay is 'innocent until proven guilty'

Theresa May has said the Tories continue to believe that the allegations against their candidate for South Thanet, Craig Mackinlay, are unfounded. (See 10.31am.) Asked about the CPS decision to charge him, she said:

The Conservative party continues to believe that these allegations are unfounded. Craig Mackinlay is innocent until proven guilty and he remains our candidate.

Updated

Theresa May meeting women and children during a visit to Kilham Hall community centre on the general election campaign trail near Doncaster.
Theresa May meeting women and children during a visit to Kilham Hall community centre on the general election campaign trail near Doncaster. Photograph: Scott Heppell/PA

The Lib Dems have unveiled a defector. Azi Ahmed was a Conservative candidate in Rochdale in the 2015 general election and spoke at last year’s party conference. But today she attended a Lib Dem election event with Sir Vince Cable.

Explaining her move, Ahmed said:

I voted remain and thought there was still a place in the Conservative party for people like me, but the way they are fighting this election has made me realise I cannot support a policy which goes against the national interest. A hard Brexit is a car crash waiting to happen.

She has written about her defection in more detail in an article for the Guardian.

Updated

Nicola Sturgeon taking a selfie with staff at Bubbles Factory soft play area in Carluke while on the general election campaign trail.
Nicola Sturgeon taking a selfie with staff at Bubbles Factory soft play area in Carluke while on the general election campaign trail. Photograph: Andrew Milligan/PA

Updated

A new Ipsos Mori poll is out. Joe Murphy has written it up for the Evening Standard and it shows the Conservative lead at just five points, down 10 from when Ipsos Mori polled in the middle of last month.

Here are the figures:

Conservatives: 45% (down 4)

Labour: 40% (up 6)

Lib Dems: 7% (no change)

Here is an extract from Murphy’s story.

Women and middle-aged voters are punishing Theresa May following controversies over the “dementia tax” and school meals, an exclusive poll reveals today.

The Ipsos MORI research for the Evening Standard reveals significant shifts to Labour among women and the 35-54 age group — the “pinched generation” juggling caring for ageing parents and their own children ...

Before the Tory manifesto raised care costs and scrapped free meals for infants, women were dividing 49-35 for the Conservatives over Labour. Now that gap has closed to 45-44. Among people aged 35-54 there has been an even more dramatic switch.

Before the social care row they split 52-34 for the Conservatives. Now they divide 36 for the Conservatives and 46 for Labour. In other words, they have switched sides.

Among older voters, aged 55+, satisfaction with May has dropped from 70 to 57, though she is still positive on balance.

And here is an extract from Anthony Wells’ assessment at UK Polling Report.

The drop in the Tory lead here is probably largely just reflecting the post-manifesto drop that we’ve seen in other polls. The forty point figure is the highest Labour have recorded since early 2014 (though of course, back then it gave them a substantial lead … now it still puts them five points behind).

Updated

Corbyn says it was 'unwise' of Tory HQ to comment on Mackinlay prosecution

Asked about the Craig Mackinlay case, Jeremy Corbyn said it was a mistake for the Conservative party to issue the statement it put out earlier (see 10.51am) defending Mackinlay when the case needed to be resolved by the courts. Corbyn said:

Nobody should be commenting on the details of an ongoing case, the police must be allowed to act independently, to investigate on the basis of any evidence they’ve got and the Crown Prosecution Service must be allowed to make its decision on whether to proceed on a case.

I think it is a very bad road when democratically elected politicians start offering a running commentary on independent judicial processes. We have to have total separation of political and judicial powers in this country.

All politicians need to be extremely careful - politicians are elected to parliament to be held to account by the public.

The judicial system and the police have to be independent of political interests and day to day political activity.

I have always opposed interference in the judicial system by politicians, there has to be that separation and therefore I think it’s very unwise to comment on a police investigation or a Crown Prosecution Service decision-making process.

Updated

Nigel Farage has also been commenting on the decision to charge Craig Mackinlay, who defeated him in South Thanet in 2015. Speaking in Claction, he said:

Am I pleased that someone has been charged? Yes. I think that constituency will now be a straight fight between Ukip and the Labour party, and I will be there tomorrow afternoon at 5pm giving a speech.

Asked if the decision would have any impact on the election, Farage said:

Well once again it is bad judgment from Theresa May. Why on earth would you allow someone to go ahead as general election candidate when this cloud was clearly hanging over him. There will be questions.

Updated

Farage says May has turned into Tories' 'biggest liability'

Nigel Farage, the former Ukip leader, is not standing in the election himself, but he has been campaigning for the party in Clacton this morning. He told Sky News that at the start of the campaign a lot of Eurosceptics may have accepted Theresa May’s claim that she needed a big majority to deliver Brexit.

But I think as the campaign has gone on, she has gone from being their biggest asset to being their biggest liability. It’s quite tough to believe anything she says.

Nigel Farage campaigning in Clacton.
Nigel Farage campaigning in Clacton. Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images

In the Times today (paywall) Francis Elliott says Ben Gummer, currently a Cabinet Office minister but an influential figure in Theresa May’s inner circle, is being lined up for the post of Brexit secretary if the Tories win the election. Here’s an extract from his story.

Theresa May’s key calculation as she mulls over possible changes is whether Boris Johnson can be moved, according to senior Tories.

The option of placing Mr Gummer in charge of the Brexit department is being canvassed by No 10, Whitehall sources have confirmed. Although he is not yet a cabinet minister, the Tory candidate for Ipswich and son of Lord Deben, who as John Selwyn Gummer was environment secretary, is highly rated by the prime minister.

Ben Gummer already sits on the Brexit committee as part of his work ensuring that No 10’s priorities are being implemented across government departments. “The thinking is that Ben is the brightest she’s got and Brexit is the biggest issue, so why wouldn’t you put him in there?” a senior Tory said.

Mr Davis, who has been the target of persistent speculation that he will be moved, would be content to move to the Foreign Office, friends say. That leaves Mrs May with the difficulty of what to do with Mr Johnson. He is understood to have made clear last July that he would not accept the job of party chairman — the role for which some in No 10 think he is most suited.

The appointment would be controversial in the Conservative party because Gummer was a strong remain supporter. To boost his chances, the Guido Fawkes website has rounded up some of Gummer’s pro-remain tweets.

Diane James, the former Ukip leader, has put out a statement saying she now has “severe doubts” about the Brexit Theresa May is planning.

Ben Gummer.
Ben Gummer. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe for the Guardian

Updated

Tim Farron was interviewed on LBC earlier. As the Press Association reports, Farron has refused to say whether he thinks homosexuality is a sin during a heated radio interview.

The Liberal Democrat leader was repeatedly asked about his attitudes towards homosexuality during LBC’s Leaders Live with Nick Ferrari.

A caller named Brian said there was a “huge question mark” over Farron’s views, accusing the leader of thinking “homosexuality is a sin”.

Farron said he was “a Liberal and ever since my day of joining the party 31 years ago I’ve been an active campaigner for LGBT+ rights”.

The caller asked Farron to clarify his views on homosexuality, to which he replied: “I’m talking to you about my passionate concern about LGBT+ rights.”

But the caller said the leader’s religion was “very important”, adding: “I want to know why you think homosexuality is a sin, and why you think that is a crime.”

Farron said: “My view very, very much is about I am a political leader and I am a Liberal to my fingertips,” adding that he “dealt” with the issue “weeks ago”.

The Lib Dem leader has previously said he did not think gay sex was a sin after being dogged with questions about his beliefs.

When asked to remind the caller about his views, he said: “We’re not going there - my personal faith is my personal faith. I dealt with that weeks ago.”

He said the caller had “heard me talking about it some weeks ago”.

Ferrari asked why Farron would not remind listeners, to which he replied: “To be honest with you, a person who is a leader of a political party, it is their job - and someone who is passionate about LGBT+ rights - to prove it by your actions and not by your words, and my actions absolutely are 100% about defending LGBT+ rights.”

The presenter said Farron would not answer whether it was sin, and he replied: “I’ve already answered that - let’s move on.”

Tim Farron taking part in LBC Leaders Live hosted by Nick Ferrari at LBC studios in central London.
Tim Farron taking part in LBC Leaders Live hosted by Nick Ferrari at LBC studios in central London. Photograph: Isabel Infantes/PA

I’m afraid we’ve had to close comments on the blog for now because of the risk of prejudicial comments relating to the Craig Mackinlay story.

It is possible that they may get reopened later in the day.

Updated

Tory HQ stands by Mackinlay, saying it expects him to be proved innocent

The Conservative party has issued a statement about the decision to charge Craig Mackinlay. The party could have decided to disown him as an official candidate, but it is not doing that. It is standing by him, and it says that it thinks the allegation is “unfounded” and that Mackinlay will be proved innocent.

This is from a party spokesman.

The legal authorities have previously cleared Conservative candidates who faced numerous politically motivated and unfounded complaints over the Party’s national Battlebus campaigning.

We continue to believe that this remaining allegation is unfounded. Our candidate has made clear that there was no intention by him or his campaigners to engage in any inappropriate activity. We believe that they have done nothing wrong, and we are confident that this will be proven as the matter progresses.

The individuals remain innocent unless otherwise proven guilty in a court of law. The press, parties and those on social media should be aware of the provisions of the Contempt of Court Act and the strict liability rules against publishing anything which would prejudice the course of justice.

There is a broad consensus that election law is fragmented, confused and unclear, with two different sets of legislation, and poor guidance from the Electoral Commission. Conservatives are committed to strengthening electoral law to tackle the real and proven cases of corruption that were exposed in Tower Hamlets in 2015.

Updated

The contest in South Thanet at the 2015 general election was a particularly fierce one because Craig Mackinlay (who was deputy leader of Ukip for some years in the late 1990s, and briefly acting leader, before joining the Tories) was up against Nigel Farage, the then Ukip leader. Ukip were doing well in the polls in 2015 and Farage hoped to win the seat. Mackinlay won by 2,812 votes.

Full details of the charges against Craig Mackinlay, Nathan Gray and Marion Little

Here are the details of the charges from the CPS press statement.

Craig Mackinlay

That on 11 June 2015, being a candidate at the UK General Election on 7 May 2015, you knowingly made the declaration accompanying the return for the regulated period from 19 December 2014 to 29 March 2015, delivered under Section 81(1) of the Representation of People Act 1983, required by Section 82(1) of the same Act, falsely, contrary to Section 82(6) of the same Act.

That on 11 June 2015, being a candidate at the UK General Election on 7 May 2015, you knowingly made the declaration accompanying the return for the regulated period from 30 March 2015 to 7 May 2015, delivered under Section 81(1) of the Representation of People Act 1983, required by Section 82(1) of the same Act, falsely, contrary to Section 82(6) of the same Act.

Nathan Gray

That on 11 June 2015, being an election agent at the UK General Election on 7 May 2015, you failed to deliver a true return containing a statement of all election expenses in the regulated period from 19 December 2014 to 29 March 2015 as required by Section 81(1) of the Representation of the People Act 1983, contrary to Section 84 of the same Act.

That on 11 June 2015, being the election agent at the UK General Election on 7 May 2015, you failed to deliver a true return containing a statement of all election expenses in the regulated period from 30 March 2015 to 7 May 2015 as required by Section 81(1) of the Representation of the People Act 1983, contrary to Section 84 of the same Act.

That on 11 June 2015, being the election agent at the UK General Election on 7 May 2015, you knowingly made the declaration accompanying the return for the regulated period from 30 March 2015 to 7 May 2015, delivered under Section 81(1) of the Representation of People Act 1983, required by Section 82(1) of the same Act, falsely, contrary to Section 82(6) of the same Act.

Marion Little

That you did aid, abet, counsel and procure Craig Mackinlay, a candidate at the UK General Election on 7 May 2015, to knowingly make the declaration accompanying the return for the regulated period from 19 December 2014 to 29 March 2015, delivered under Section 81(1) of the Representation of People Act 1983, required by Section 82(1) of the same Act, falsely, contrary to Section 82(6) of the same Act.

That you did aid, abet, counsel and procure Craig Mackinlay, a candidate at the UK General Election on 7 May 2015, to knowingly make the declaration accompanying the return for the regulated period from 30 March 2015 to 7 May 2015, delivered under Section 81(1) of the Representation of People Act 1983, required by Section 82(1) of the same Act, falsely, contrary to Section 82(6) of the same Act.

That you did aid, abet, counsel and procure Nathan Gray, an election agent at the UK General Election on 7 May 2015, to fail to deliver a true return on 11 June 2015 containing a statement of all election expenses in the regulated period from 19 December 2014 to 29 March 2015 as required by Section 81(1) of the Representation of the People Act 1983, contrary to Section 84 of the same Act.

That you did aid, abet, counsel and procure Nathan Gray, an election agent at the UK General Election on 7 May 2015, to fail to deliver a true return on 11 June 2015 containing a statement of all election expenses in the regulated period from 30 March 2015 to 7 May 2015 as required by Section 81(1) of the Representation of the People Act 1983, contrary to Section 84 of the same Act.

That you did aid, abet, counsel and procure Nathan Gray, an election agent at the UK General Election on 7 May 2015, to knowingly make the declaration accompanying the return for the regulated period from 30 March 2015 to 7 May 2015, delivered under Section 81(1) of the Representation of People Act 1983, required by Section 82(1) of the same Act, falsely, contrary to Section 82(6) of the same Act.

The decision to charge Craig Mackinlay does not stop him being a candidate in next week’s election. His name is on the ballot for the poll and that does not change.

Tory candidate for South Thanet charged over alleged overspending in 2015 election

The Conservative candidate for South Thanet, Craig Mackinlay, who has been under investigation for alleged overspending in the 2015 general election, when he beat Nigel Farage, has been charged, the Crown Prosecution Service has announced this morning.

Nathan Gray, Mackinlay’s agent, and Marion Little, a Tory organiser in the campaign, are being charged too.

Here is the CPS statement in full. It’s from Nick Vamos, its head of special crime.

On 18 April we received a file of evidence from Kent Police concerning allegations relating to Conservative party expenditure during the 2015 general election campaign. We then asked for additional enquiries to be made in advance of the 11 June statutory time limit by when any charges needed to be authorised.

Those enquiries have now been completed and we have considered the evidence in accordance with the Code for Crown Prosecutors.

We have concluded there is sufficient evidence and it is in the public interest to authorise charges against three people.

Craig Mackinlay, 50, Nathan Gray, 28, and Marion Little, 62, have each been charged with offences under the Representation of the People Act 1983 and are due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 4 July 2017.

Criminal proceedings have now commenced and it is extremely important that there should be no reporting, commentary or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice these proceedings.

Updated

In response to a question about ecosystems, Corbyn says environmental policy should not just tackle climate change. It should protect ecosystems as well.

He says when he visited York after the floods he spoke about the need to improve upriver management.

Labour would not promote GM crops. And it would not allow water pollution, he says.

He says the party is committed to a big tree-planting programme.

That’s it. I will post a summary soon.

Updated

Q: [From a Swedish journalist] Do you see any way of making European social democracy more successful?

Corbyn suggests that the journalist represents the Swedish version of the Guardian.

He welcomes the journalist. There is a change happening over the whole of the industrial world. People are fed up with the message they will get less housing and less healthcare and will have to take out insurance.

There is a sea-change in attitudes. That was shown in the US elections, and especially the Democratic primaries.

People do not believe that services have to be slashed.

Our whole offer to the people of Britain is difference. Instead of punishing those who did not cause the crisis, we invest in their future.

He says the UK will not leave Europe. It wants to work with Europe on issues like environmental protection.

Communities together can achieve things, he says.

Corbyn's Q&A

Jeremy Corbyn’s speech was relatively short. He was mostly just introducing Rebecca Long-Bailey, the shadow business secretary, who then ran through Labour’s industrial policy.

Corbyn is now taking questions.

Q: Would you host President Trump in Number 10? And what would you say to him?

Q: You have said repeatedly you don’t do insults. Will you make an exception for Trump?

Corbyn says Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement is “absolutely shocking”.

  • Corbyn says Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement is “absolutely shocking”.

Think about how much work went into getting that deal, he says.

The Paris conference was a culmination of many events.

He says he spoke to Ed Miliband, the former Labour leader and former energy secretary, about this this morning.

So Trump’s decision is a very, very big shame, he says.

And he says he thinks it will not be popular in the US. They are affected by climate change too.

He says he would meet Trump and would be polite to him.

I do not believe you get anywhere by insulting people and shouting at them.

Q: You present yourself as a pretty straight guy. Will it be impossible to turn around the Tory lead on economic competence?

Corbyn says Labour’s economic strategy is fully costed and fully prepared.

Labour has put its plans out for people to read.

It has set out a good strategy. It would invest in pre-schools and in schools, and stop students being saddled with debt.

Labour’s strategy is innovative, very well thought-out, and exciting, he says.

He says we cannot go on with having an economy that is not balanced.

He says the Labour manifesto is not just the product of the Labour party. Hundreds of organisations have shared their expertise with the party and had an input.

Long-Bailey says if you want to talk about economic competence, look at the Tories’ record. The deficit is higher than it ever was under Labour, wages have stagnated and business cannot get access to finance, she says.

She gives an example of how Labour would have helped a firm. It wanted to install solar panels. That would have cut its energy costs. But, because investment in plant and machinery puts business rates up, it was not cost-effective. Labour would take investment in plant and machinery out of business rate calculations.

Jeremy Corbyn and Rebecca Long-Bailey.
Jeremy Corbyn and Rebecca Long-Bailey. Photograph: Reuters

Updated

Corbyn accuses May of 'subservience to Trump' over climate change and failing to show leadership

Jeremy Corbyn is giving his industrial policy speech.

He starts by criticising Theresa May for not joining the other European G7 countries (France, Germany and Italy) in signing the joint statement criticising President Trump for pulling out of the Paris climate change deal.

Donald Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate change deal is reckless and dangerous. The commitments made in Paris are vital to stop the world reaching the point of no return on climate change, and there can be no question of watering them down.

The Paris deal should not be up for renegotiation. The other three European members of the G7, France, Germany and Italy, have written to Donald Trump to make this clear.

So why does Theresa May not have her name on this joint statement?

Given the chance to present a united front from our international partners, she has instead opted for silence and once again subservience to Donald Trump. It’s a dereliction of both her duty to her country and our duty to our planet. This is not the type of leadership Britain needs to negotiate Brexit or stand up to defend our planet in an era of climate change. A Labour government would do it very differently.

Updated

Jeremy Corbyn is due to give a speech on industrial policy shortly.

According to the extract released overnight, Corbyn will say that a Labour government would create “at least one million good jobs” by promoting investment across the country. Rebecca Long-Bailey, the shadow business secretary, will be speaking alongside Corbyn and she will say:

Unlike the Conservatives, Labour will make full use of all policy levers to drive growth and economic development, working in partnership with the private sector and trade unions to rebalance our economy so that it serves the many, not just the few.

Labour’s industrial strategy will have real muscle, powered by our National Transformation Fund and £250bn of investment from our new National Investment Bank and network of Regional Development Banks.

We will deliver a million good jobs over the course of the next parliament.

The Lib Dems claim Conservative policy on immigration is in “chaos” in the light of David Davis’s latest comments. (See 8.09am.) This is from Brian Paddick, the Lib Dems’ home affairs spokesman.

Theresa May and David Davis can’t both be right - which one is telling us the truth? This is a ludicrous policy that would cause enormous damage to our economy and devastate our public services like the NHS who rely on migrant workers.

Theresa May as home secretary continuously failed to meet this target, a pattern she has continued in Number 10.

This is pure immigration chaos for the Conservatives. If they can’t even agree amongst themselves, how can we trust them to present a united front in the Brexit negotiations that will start in the weeks following the election.

SNP deputy leader Angus Robertson is on course to lose his seat in the election according to analysis of a new poll. As the Press Association reports, the survey, carried out for the Herald by BMG, puts support for the SNP at 43%, 13 points above the Scottish Conservatives on 30%.

It has Labour on 18%, the Liberal Democrats at 5% and the Scottish Greens at 2%, after “don’t knows” have been excluded.

According to the Electoral Calculus projector, the SNP would lose seats to the Tories.

Constituencies the Scottish Conservatives would seize include Aberdeen South, Aberdeenshire West and Kincardine, Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk, as well as Dumfries and Galloway, the analysis suggests.

Robertson, who is standing for re-election in Moray, would not be re-elected, projections suggest, while shadow SNP Westminster group leader Peter Wishart would also lose his seat of Perth and North Perthshire.

The survey, which was carried out before the Manchester bomb attack, claims the number of Scottish Tory MPs would rise from one to eight.

UPDATE: The fieldwork for the poll was carried out between 12 and 18 May, so opinion may have shifted since then.

Updated

Q: You are no fan of Corbyn. When he ran against Owen Jones for the Labour leadership, you said he was not up to the job.

Dugdale points out that Robinson means Owen Smith, not Owen Jones, the Guardian columnist. Robinson apologises.

Dugdale says there was a leadership election. She accepts the result. She says those most in need of a Labour government are most enthusiastic about his leadership.

Q: What will happen if there is a minority government?

Dugdale says Labour would put forward a programme and a budget. It would be up to the SNP to decide whether or not to support it.

And that’s it.

Kezia Dugdale's Today interview

Nick Robinson is now interviewing Kezia Dugdale, the Scottish Labour leader.

Q: Are you seeing a Corbyn surge?

Dugdale says the Labour vote is definitely edging up.

Q: Corbyn is focusing on issues that are devolved to Scotland.

Dugdale says there is “tangible anger” in Scotland about the prospect of a second independence referendum.

Q: People opposed to a second referendum think it is the Tories who are speaking up against this.

Dugdale says she does not accept this. She says it is Tory decisions in Westminster that have angered Scots and boosted the case for independence.

Q: Your position is ambiguous. Your manifesto opposes a second referendum. But Corbyn has said the Scots have the right to have one.

Dugdale says Corbyn has been clear. He opposes one.

Q: But every time he comes to Scotland he says something ambiguous, and you have to clear up the mess. If Corbyn led a government, could you guarantee there would be no second referendum?

Dugdale says Corbyn has been clear: Labour is against one, because of the austerity it would cause.

Updated

This is from Alan Roden, communications director for Scottish Labour, responding to Nicola Sturgeon’s comment about how she would expect to have talks with Labour about supporting it on an issue-by-issue basis in the event of a hung parliament.

Q: How many election campaigns have you fought?

Sturgeon says she has been SNP leader for two and a half years, and has fought four elections.

Q: One of your candidates has put out an advert saying this election is not about independence.

Sturgeon says she wants the people of Scotland to have a choice about the future at the end of the Brexit process.

Q: Scottish voters are saying they don’t want a referendum soon because the Scottish economy is not doing well. Shouldn’t you be worrying about that?

Sturgeon says there are many reasons to be positive about Scotland’s economy. Unemployment is lower than in the rest of the UK, and productivity is growing more quickly.

That’s it.

Q: You are never going to be in a stronger position. You have as many MPs as you could want. But you are irrelevant in Westminster. Why shouldn’t people vote Labour?

Sturgeon says a vote for Labour in Scotland would let the Tories win seats.

But she says even the SNP’s harshest critics would accept it has been effective at Westminster.

Angus Robertson has taken on the PM at PMQs. And the SNP has led the charge on issues like the rape clause.

Q: The Tories want to take the UK out of the single market. But Labour would keep us in, which is what you want.

Sturgeon says Robinson is wrong. Labour wants to come out of the single market, she says.

She says if people vote SNP, they will give Sturgeon a mandate for her Brexit position.

Q: How would it work? You would talk to Corbyn?

Sturgeon says if this is what happens, it is what the electorate want. They would want parties to talk to each other.

But she repeats her point about how she thinks this is unlikely.

Nicola Sturgeon's Today interview

Good morning. I’m taking over from Claire.

Nick Robinson is interviewing Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister, on the Today programme.

Q: Will you help Labour get into power if they are the largest party?

Sturgeon says if there is a hung parliament, she would want the SNP to be part of a progressive alternative to a Conservative government, but not as part of a coalition.

Q: How would that work? Would you have talks with Jeremy Corbyn and agree to vote for certain things?

Sturgeon says she would look at things on an issue by issue basis.

If that were to arise, the electorate would have decided it does not want either of the two big parties to govern with a free hand.

But she is “sceptical”, she says. She sees a narrowing of the polls. But Theresa May and the Tories are still on track to win. But they might not get a bigger majority.

That means Scotland is more important, she says.

Andrew Sparrow is now taking the live blog reins.

If you’d like to receive the Snap, our daily election email briefing, do sign up here. You can read today’s here.

David Davis on migration target

The Brexit secretary’s comments came yesterday evening on BBC Question Time (the regular version; the special edition featuring May and Corbyn, separately, screens this evening).

Earlier on Thursday, policing minister Brandon Lewis said that cutting net migration to the tens of thousands – included in the manifesto – should happen “over the course of the next parliament”. That’s 2022, presuming we get a five-year parliament next time round.

The prime minister, quizzed about Lewis’s comment, agreed:

That’s what we’re working for.

But David Davis, on Question Time, seemed to row back from the 2022 goal:

That wasn’t actually in the manifesto, it was ‘we will bring it down’, we didn’t say, we didn’t put a date.

We would like to do it in the parliament, but I think, you know, it will be dictated by a number of things.

The economy, the speed with which we can get our own people trained up to take the jobs, the changes in the welfare to encourage people to work.

A whole series of things which were designed to ensure this is an economically successful policy.

[It’s] the aim, yes, but we can’t promise within five years, that’s the point.

Updated

At the launch of the Scottish Conservative manifesto, Davidson said she would not disagree with a questioner who asked if she thought May should not be held to ransom by “Brexiteer bastards”.

Today she says:

I wouldn’t use that language in public, maybe in private …

She says she thinks it is important for the prime minister to have the space within the House of Commons to negotiate Brexit “without having to be held to ransom by either side of the aisle”.

May needs to have “maximum manoeuvrability”, Davidson adds.

That would appear to go for the issue of net migration, too, on which Davidson – who campaigned for remain – says not much that diverges from the official Tory line:

The policy is to bring down net migration to the tens of thousands.

On that commitment to remain, she says it was right to change her mind, adding that SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon “said she would respect the result [of the independence referendum] and she hasn’t … it would not be right and proper” not to respect the EU referendum result.

That’s it. But Davidson will earn a bonus point at CCHQ for her mention of “Theresa May and her team”.

Updated

Ruth Davidson Today interview

Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader, has been speaking to Radio 4.

She denies the Tory campaign is in trouble, despite some squeaky polls:

We’re in the mid-40s … which is higher than even Tony Blair got in his 1997 landslide.

She says Labour’s poll climb is more to do with what she calls the “disastrous Lib Dem campaign”. It’s the media’s job to say the polls have narrowed as an election nears, she says.

I haven’t seen an election yet - and I’ve fought six of them as leader plus two referenda - where it hasn’t been the media’s job to start creating expectation about the result by saying that the polls have narrowed and, funnily enough, two weeks out, they started that narrative, and it is continuing through to polling day.

I think that people that have the experience need to hold their nerve, put your head down, keep working, because there is no substitute in an election for hard work.

She is pressed on the issue of pensioners’ winter fuel allowance, which Theresa May’s manifesto said would be means-tested – but not in Scotland. Davidson insists this is fair:

The issue is a devolved issue … in Scotland we have a different social care model … I’ve decided that we won’t means-test that … Politics is about hard choices: this is the choice I chose to make.

I think this is a universal benefit that people have always relied on … This is an area that I personally do not want to see means-tested.

Her “colleagues down south” made a decision to spend the money elsewhere, she says.

Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, laughs during a photo opportunity in front of the Forth railway bridge in South Queensferry, Scotland, Britain, June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Russell Cheyne TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
Ruth Davidson in front of the apparently hilarious Forth railway bridge yesterday. Photograph: Russell Cheyne/Reuters

Updated

Len McCluskey, one of Jeremy Corbyn’s closest allies and leader of Britain’s biggest union, is facing claims that his re-election in April should be declared void because of multiple rule breaches.

Gerard Coyne, who lost the leadership election by less than 6,000 votes, will ask the certification officer on Friday to investigate whether the leader of Unite and his staff manipulated the union’s procedures to win the poll.

McCluskey’s support has been seen as vital to maintaining Corbyn’s leadership of Labour over two years of challenges from senior MPs.

Documents show that alleged rule breaches include allowing McCluskey to use databases while stopping Coyne from doing the same during the campaign to become general secretary; union employees actively seeking to prevent Coyne raising the legitimate question as to whether Union resources were improperly used to assist with the purchase of a luxury flat; and repeated harassment of Coyne and his supporters by union employees.

A Unite spokesman said the union rejected the allegations, which come at a critical moment for the Labour movement as the Conservatives struggle in their election campaign.

Andrew Murray, Unite’s chief of staff, could be called upon to offer evidence to any inquiry. He has been seconded to Corbyn’s general election campaign.

Theresa May’s low-key response to the decision by Donald Trump to pull the US out of the Paris climate agreement has prompted some angry retorts.

May did not put her name to a strong statement issued by her counterparts in Germany, France and Italy; instead Downing Street said late on Thursday that the prime minister was feeling “disappointment”:

President Trump called the prime minister this evening to discuss his decision to pull the US out of the Paris agreement.

The prime minister expressed her disappointment with the decision and stressed that the UK remained committed to the Paris agreement, as she set out recently at the G7.

She said that the Paris agreement provides the right global framework for protecting the prosperity and security of future generations, while keeping energy affordable and secure for our citizens and businesses.

Other party leaders were not impressed:

Willie Rennie, leader of the Scottish Lib Dems, has been speaking to the Today programme.

The party is hoping for a bounce-back from its 2015 performance, which saw it lose all its seats in Scotland, bar Alistair Carmichael’s in Orkney and Shetland.

Rennie says it’s not a contradiction for the party to oppose a second referendum on Scottish independence but also call for a second referendum on a Brexit deal:

On Brexit we think it’s such a monumental issue … people should have the right to reject a bad deal.

In Scotland we rejected a bad deal three years ago.

You can’t possibly have another independence referendum all the time.

Independence, he says, is “already rejected”; with Brexit, there is still a “need to conclude the process”.

As Tim Farron has said of the UK-wide party, Rennie confirms that the Lib Dems would not enter a coalition with Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister – because of Brexit.

No, we’re out …

We couldn’t possibly … do a deal with either of them.

We’ll do it vote by vote to get a better deal on Brexit.

The Snap: your election briefing

Welcome back to the final Friday of campaigning. By this time next week everything will be, if not over, at least clearer. Ish. I’m Claire Phipps with your morning roundup; the live blog will steer you through the rest of the day.

What’s happening?

Manifestos are a funny thing: we assume most voters don’t read them, but we like to think that the politicians haggling for our votes have. This is also why we like them to get their numbers right, or not to pretend that a howling U-turn was there all along. It’s also why, when a senior government minister contradicts the PM within hours on a key manifesto ingredient, those whose job it is to condense daily politics news into a handy morning briefing can get a bit tetchy.

The Conservative commitment-turned-pledge-turned-aspiration to cut net immigration to the tens of thousands made it into the manifesto for the third time, despite never sighting success. Yesterday, Theresa May teetered perilously close to making it a commitment again, agreeing with policing minister Brandon Lewis that it should happen “over the course of the next parliament”.

“That’s what we’re working for,” May confirmed.

But on BBC Question Time hours later, the Brexit secretary David Davis wasn’t so sure:

That wasn’t actually in the manifesto, it was ‘we will bring it down’, we didn’t say, we didn’t put a date … [It’s] the aim, yes, but we can’t promise within five years, that’s the point.

Five years is a long time in politics, especially when May is, she told us yesterday, “just focused on polling day”. (You thought she was just focused on Brexit negotiations? That was the day before yesterday.) Perhaps that’s why the PM did not join her French, German and Italian counterparts in their statement scolding Donald Trump’s decision to crumple up the US copy of the Paris climate agreement and lob it in the non-recyclables bin. Downing Street later said May had voiced her “disappointment” to the US president, as Nicola Sturgeon accused her of an “appalling abdication of leadership” and Labour’s Emily Thornberry claimed she had “failed to raise even the quietest peep in protest”.

Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May reacts as she speaks at an election campaign event at Pride Park Stadium in Derby on June 1, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / POOL / STEFAN WERMUTHSTEFAN WERMUTH/AFP/Getty Images
Theresa May: it’s oh so quiet. Photograph: Stefan Wermuth/AFP/Getty Images

With both May and Jeremy Corbyn making speeches on a post-EU UK yesterday, we now have a misty idea of what Brexit means, and it’s either terrible or completely brilliant, and don’t trouble yourself too much with the knotty details. The PM set out her 12-point plan for a brighter Brexit, which stretched the definition of plan with “points” including:

  • 1. Provide certainty and clarity.
  • 3. Strengthen the union.
  • 5. Control immigration.
  • 12. Deliver a smooth orderly exit from the EU.

(Don’t @ me: the other eight bullet points do appear in the plan, although that would have been a forgotten numbers gaffe to make a fuss about.)

While this sets the Tories apart from parties pledging uncertainty, obfuscation and an unruly stampede to the emergency brexits, it does still leave a few questions unanswered. Such as: yes, but what are you actually going to do?

Could Labour be more specific? Shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer said they wouldn’t be putting a figure on migration. Corbyn confirmed that – unlike the “no deal is better than a bad deal” PM – he wouldn’t walk away without … something:

There is no such thing as no deal. No deal is in fact a bad deal; it is the worst of all deals.

Tim Farron, the latest leader to face the BBC’s Andrew Neil, knew what deal he wanted, and it sounded rather like being a member of the EU:

I cannot see any chance of us getting a better deal than the one we have now.

Tim Farron would campaign to stay in EU in second referendum

With Neil labelling the Lib Dem leader “a Eurosceptic remoaner” and “a populist who’s not popular”, and May telling us that Corbyn “doesn’t believe in Britain” (whenever a politician says “I don’t believe in Britain” there’s a little cup of tea somewhere that goes tepid), is there any respite from final-week jibes? Even the Economist, while endorsing the Lib Dems, called it “a dismal choice” and predicts “a dreadful result” for its chosen party.

All round for a jam sandwich at Corbyn’s house then, where, he told journalists yesterday, even his own party critics would be welcome:

I do a lot of group hugs with lots of people. I love a group hug.

Cosying up would be Bernie Sanders, who last night told an audience at the Brighton festival that Corbyn had his backing.

Not included in the embrace? The SNP, Lib Dems, Greens or any other party that might be angling for an alliance in the event of a hung parliament. Corbyn and Thornberry said there would be “no deals, no coalitions, no pacts” under a Labour minority administration. Or possibly no anything, under Thornberry’s plan:

If we end up in a position where we are in a minority, then we will go ahead and put forward a Queen’s speech and a budget and, if people want to vote for it, then good, but if people don’t want to vote for it, then they are going to have to go back and speak to their constituents and explain to them why we have a Tory government instead.

Today we’re gearing up for another bout of May v Corbyn that doesn’t involve May or Corbyn clapping eyes on each other. Each will step up separately with David Dimbleby for a BBC Question Time special. But first, the PM will be making sure she doesn’t fluff her figures on Woman’s Hour by remembering her figures – no, sorry, by not showing us the costings for her manifesto and sending education secretary Justine Greening to Radio 4 instead.

At a glance:

Poll position

How’s that Tory revival looking in Wales? According to a fresh poll by YouGov for ITV and Cardiff University – and in keeping with other recent YouGov results – not as rosy as it was. April saw the Tories top Labour by 40% to 30%, though that had reversed by mid-May. Yesterday’s poll keeps Labour ahead, 46% to 35%, a projection that could see them swipe back two seats – Gower and the Vale of Clwyd – from the Conservatives. This, as with other polls showing the Tories on a shakier footing, relies on ample young voters turning out.

Plaid Cymru, the Lib Dems and Ukip would stay as they were, on this projection, with respectively three seats, one and zero.

No surprise in the Evening Standard poll by the ever-busy YouGov that puts Labour on 50% over the Tories on 33% in London. But for the first time, the capital’s voters rated Corbyn (37%) over May (34%) as the best candidate for PM.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn delivers a speech on Brexit during a campaign stop in Basildonepa06003856 Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn delivers speech on his party’s plans for negotiating Brexit during a campaign stop in Basildon, Essex, Britain, 01 June 2017. British Prime Minister Theresa May has called an snap general election for 08 June 2017. EPA/WILL OLIVER
Jeremy Corbyn: taking the metropolitan line. Photograph: Will Oliver/EPA

Diary

  • At 9am, Tim Farron faces Nick Ferrari for the LBC Leaders Live event.
  • Jeremy Corbyn’s speech on job creation is at 9.30am.
  • At 10am, Caroline Lucas and Natalie Bennett are in Sheffield to pledge Green support for immigrants and free movement.
  • Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie campaigns in Edinburgh this morning, as does Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale, but not together.
  • Nicola Sturgeon takes the SNP roadshow to four Scottish constituencies; and her Tory counterpart Ruth Davidson is in Moray.
  • John McDonnell, David Gauke and Susan Kramer attend a small business hustings at London’s Imperial War Museum at 11am.
  • At the same time, Farron is back, this time for a Facebook Live Q&A with ITV News.
  • At 5.30pm, Ukip’s Suzanne Evans faces the LBC radio phone-in.
  • And the big Friday night special is Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn – separately, naturally – in a BBC Question Time with David Dimbleby. That’s 8.30pm in York and on the telly.

Read these

If the PM does not get the landslide she was hoping for in calling a snap election, what, asks Mary Dejevsky in the Independent, might this mean for Brexit?

What would it mean that a prime minister who went to the country seeking an explicit parliamentary mandate for Brexit had essentially been rebuffed? (And this would surely be the significance of anything less than a clearly increased majority.) As seen from Brussels – or Berlin or Paris – the British bargaining position would be substantially weakened. The government’s mandate would be a lot less convincing than it would have been without a vote. How would any UK prime minister then proceed?

One consequence could be that the initiative passes from the government to parliament. Given that the election post-dated the referendum, a slim victory for May (or less) could encourage those many MPs with misgivings about Brexit to take another look at the ‘will of the people’. They could well argue that now an election had been fought on Brexit – after all, this is what Theresa May intended, even though many other issues came to cloud the vote – the ‘will of the people’ was rather less clear.

We’ve all heard the Corbyn cheerleaders. But there are shy Corbynites too, writes Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett in the Guardian:

I had become so used to political commentators popping up every time I expressed admiration for Corbyn’s principles to call me naive or a narcissist or an Islington-dwelling champagne socialist or a loony lefty, as though we were in some pompous game of whack-a-mole, that I began to sort of believe it. But I never did stop believing in the same things Corbyn does – in equality, social justice, social mobility and peace. Nor did I ever doubt that families such as my own would be much better off under a Labour government than a Tory one. Which is why I’m going to vote for him again.

Bookmark of the day

One for those who like to plan ahead for results night (welcome; I have found my people): Press Association’s estimated declaration times for each constituency.

The day in a tweet

And another thing

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Updated

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The 20-year-old controversial social media star promotes the theory that maximizing male attractiveness — often through surgical intervention – is the key to success and superiority
The Independent UK
The Independent UK
Why Zendaya Is ‘Disappearing’ From Public Life After 2026
Why Zendaya Is ‘Disappearing’ From Public Life After 2026
Marie Claire
Marie Claire
“This Is Why She Can’t Keep A Man”: Jennifer Lopez, 56, Brutally Slammed Over Her Daring Stage Outfit
“When grandma won't accept that she's just embarrassing," wrote one user.
Bored Panda
Bored Panda
Las Vegas girl gets a random DM from a woman and finds out she’s being stalked by a rude regular at her gym: ‘There’s photos of you in his phone’
The safety of our digital footprints is a recurring anxiety in the age of social media. For Las Vegas gym creator Klair Elena (TikTok/@klaielena), that fear became a chilling reality after a stranger’s DM.
The Mary Sue
The Mary Sue
Astronaut’s spooky image aboard the ISS sparks fear with some convinced they’re looking at an alien
NASA astronaut Don Pettit has finally shared the real story behind a bizarre, tentacled object photographed aboard the International Space Station (ISS) that had many people online convinced it was an alien. This image, which quickly went viral, had social media users scratching their heads and even feeling a little…
The Mary Sue
The Mary Sue
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