UK election updates from July 2: Starmer defends taking freebies

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has urged ministers and the Royal Mail to “get on with the job” and sort out problems with the delivery of postal votes.

Starmer told reporters during a campaign visit to Derbyshire that he understood Kevin Hollinrake, minister in charge of postal services, had not met the mail delivery company to discuss the issues.

“If you’re in government, and they are in government at least for the time being, they need to sort it out and get on with sorting it out,” Starmer said.

It would be wrong if people who were entitled to a vote were unable to exercise it, he added.

“So get on with the job, I’d say, and if the Post Office minister hasn’t met them, do it now in the next hour or two,” Starmer said.

Sir Keir Starmer has played down the idea of a reshuffle if Labour wins Thursday’s general election, saying that the constant moving around of ministers by the Tory government had “very, very bad” for the economy.

“We’ve had five prime ministers, I don’t know how many chancellors. Go to housing, I think you’ve had 10 or 11, justice 10 or 11,” he told reporters at a warehouse in Derbyshire.

“It makes for great political cartoons, but it is really bad for running the country because it leads to lack of strategic thinking,” he said.

Starmer said he would ensure the right people were in the right ministerial jobs and not being “chopped and changed” every few months, unlike previous Conservative governments. 

“That has been so bad in terms of delivery for this country and it has put investors off putting their money into this country. That has been very, very bad for our economy.”

The head of the electoral commission has said the postal vote system may be “creaking” under the volume of votes and the timescale of the snap election, as he responded to reports that some ballot papers had not yet arrived just days before the election.

“We could be having a record number of postal votes this time so there is a little bit of the system creaking under the volume of votes and the timescale of doing a snap election so soon after May,” Vijay Rangarajan told the BBC’s World at One. 

He said that an estimated 6.7mn postal votes had already been sent out, completed, and returned to electoral administrators — more than at this stage in any previous election. 

Rangarajan said the last batches of postal votes should have been delivered to voters on Monday and Tuesday.

Scotland’s first minister has expressed his worry at the number of “disenfranchised” voters unable to vote because of late delivery of postal ballots.

John Swinney, who at the start of the campaign voiced concerns about holding the election during the Scottish school summer holidays, said flaws in the facility that generates postal votes was disproportionality affecting voters north of the border.

“I am getting inundated with folk sending me emails,” the leader of the Scottish National party said.

Of the 24 per cent of electors who vote by post, about 90 per cent have received their ballots, but the remaining 10 per cent were due to be delivered by June 27, when some Scottish school terms had already finished. A “volume” of these ballots has not arrived, Swinney said.

Given the large number of marginal constituencies in play across Scotland, a relatively small number of votes could have an outsized impact on the make-up of Westminster come July 5.

Sir Keir Starmer has accused the Tories of becoming “increasingly desperate” after he faced criticism from Rishi Sunak’s allies for wanting to spend Friday evenings with his family if he becomes prime minister.

Speaking to supporters at Hucknall Town football club near Nottingham, Starmer said the attacks on his comments were part of a “negative, desperate loop” from the Conservative party.

The Labour leader said in an interview on Monday that he generally sought to avoid working past 6pm on Fridays in order to have dinner with his children and his wife, who is Jewish.

The Tories have accused Starmer of seeking to be a “part-time” prime minister, with some cabinet ministers even claiming he would refuse to work during an international crisis.

A Reform UK candidate has defected to the Conservatives, the second in the past few days to do so following a backlash over racist remarks made by party activists. 

Georgie David, the party’s candidate in London’s West Ham and Beckton, said she would suspend her campaign with immediate effect. She remains on the ballot paper for Reform. 

In a statement issued by the Conservatives, David said that “the vast majority” of Reform’s candidates were “racist, misogynistic and bigoted”.

“I do not wish to be directly associated with people who hold such views,” she said. 

Reform’s candidate in Erewash, Liam Booth-Isherwood, similarly defected on Sunday, citing “reports of widespread racism and sexism” among party candidates. 

Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, has said “more money” is not the solution to the challenges facing the NHS.

Streeting told Sky News that the Institute for Fiscal Studies — which had warned that Labour’s ambitions for the NHS would require more spending than promised in the party’s manifesto — had “fallen into the trap” of believing that “the answer to every single question must be more money”.

“We never talk about the £170bn we already spend on the NHS and how it could be spent better,” he said. “Because people can’t get a GP appointment that would cost £40, they end up in A&E which costs £400 and is worse for the patient, more expensive for the taxpayer.”

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has insisted that the Conservatives have not given up on winning the election, despite trailing Labour in the polls by more than 20 points.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast from the campaign trail in Oxfordshire, Sunak said an abundance of polling forecasting a Labour landslide on Thursday was “not going to stop me from working as hard as I can over these final few days”.

He warned that Labour would be “unchecked and unaccountable to people” if it won a large majority. He did not directly respond to questions on whether previous Conservative landslide victories, including in 2019, were equally dangerous.

Several media groups have endorsed or are preparing to endorse a Labour government as the best option for the UK as the country prepares to vote on Thursday. 

The Economist last week cautiously backed a victory for Sir Keir Starmer’s party, saying he had “dragged Labour away from radical socialism”. It applauded Labour’s focus on economic growth but disagreed with its plan to create publicly owned GB Energy. 

Some papers’ support for the party comes as much from a loss of faith in the Conservatives than a full-throttle backing of Labour.

The Financial Times at the weekend argued the Conservatives had “run out of road” and that the UK needed a fresh start. 

On Tuesday, Politico reported that The Times newspaper — owned by Rupert Murdoch’s traditionally right-leaning News Corp — was planning “to make an endorsement”, having run a positive front-page interview with Starmer in which he said a big majority would be best for Britain. 

Claire Coutinho, energy secretary, has warned that voters who choose Reform UK over the Conservatives could “feel very let down on Friday”.

Coutinho told Times Radio: “I’ve spoken to people in my own seat who are going to vote Reform. Those people are worried about real things . . . My worry is that they will feel very let down on Friday.”

The Conservative candidate for East Surrey told voters considering Reform that her party was the only option “who will actually be in government” and “who will tackle what you’re concerned about”.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has managed to “win the right to talk about serious things” with his campaign stunts, according to the party’s environment spokesperson Tim Farron.

Farron told the BBC’s Today programme that Davey had “injected some fun into what has otherwise been a miserable [campaign]” but emphasised that there was “a real method in the fun”, which he said had helped to highlight the Lib Dems’ campaign on sewage.

Davey kicked off the campaign by paddleboarding on Lake Windermere with Farron, and has also taken on a slip-and-slide, an aqua-bike, and bungee jumping.

Conservative minister Maria Caulfield has claimed, incorrectly, that Sir Keir Starmer intends to work “a four-day week” if elected as prime minister on Thursday.

Speaking on Sky News, Caulfield echoed her party’s latest attack line by arguing that the Labour leader would be a “part-time prime minister”.

The Tories have seized on comments by Starmer, who told Virgin Radio on Monday that he valued “protected time for the kids” and that he generally avoided working past 6pm on Fridays in order to have dinner with his family.

Starmer has said previously that he regularly enjoys traditional Friday-night dinners with his wife’s family, who are Jewish.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak made an early start on Tuesday, buying breakfast for his team at McDonald’s before visiting an Ocado distribution centre near Luton, Bedfordshire.