Nigel Farage has claimed the Conservative Party is “about to implode” as his Reform UK party overtook the Tories in the latest YouGov poll.
In his closing speech of the seven-way ITV debate on Thursday night, the Reform leader said: “Britain is broken, everyone knows it and Britain needs Reform.
“Rishi Sunak won’t do it, he’ll probably be in California by then anyway. And the Tory Party is split down the middle and about to implode in this election.”
It comes as he declared that his Reform Party is “now the opposition to Labour” after a YouGov poll published by The Times showed them one per cent above the Conservatives.
“Just before we came on air we overtook the Conservatives in the national opinion polls,” Mr Farage said, as he made his opening speech during an ITV debate. “We are now the opposition to Labour.”
Immigration, education and taxes were the centrepiece topics for the seven-way debate with Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, taking the brunt of the other leaders’ questions.
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Full report:
From cats to dog whistles
Taking a question about immigration, Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth accused Nigel Farage of having been on “a dog-whistle tour of the UK for many, many years and exploiting the anxiety that people have”.
The Plaid leader said: “We need to heed and listen to people who have genuine concerns about the impact of the movement of population, pressures on public services, but we have to put that in the context of public spending cuts by the Conservatives.”
Angela Rayner had said: “What we need at the moment is a skills strategy. We have not had an industrial and skills strategy, so what we have is we’ve been over-reliant in our economy from overseas workers to fill our skills gap, and they’ve done a tremendous job in doing that and we have needed that, but what we really need is, as employment levels have gone higher again, is we need to really match those skills to give people opportunity to take those jobs.”
Nigel Farage replied: “Well, it’s funny Angela Rayner says that because Labour today launched their six key priorities at the General Election and didn’t mention the single most important issue affecting the lives of everybody in this country, namely the population explosion caused directly by migration.”
The EU-sized hole in Starmer’s ‘growth, growth, growth’ manifesto…
You wouldn’t know it from Keir Starmer’s speech at his manifesto launch, but transforming Britain’s relationship with Europe – just as it shifts further to the right – will be one of his biggest priorities in office, says Andrew Grice.
Read Andrew’s piece in full here:
Watch: Reform UK’s party election broadcast: Six words on a screen for four minutes
Reform UK’s party election broadcast: Six words on a screen for four minutes
Reform UK unveiled their party political broadcast on Thursday night (13 June) with no audio and the same six words on-screen for four minutes. The text read: “Britain is Broken. Britain Needs Reform.” Reform leader Nigel Farage tweeted the same video, reassuring those who watched the broadcast that their “TV isn’t broken”. The message aired on the same evening that a new YouGov poll suggested the party has overtaken the Conservatives for the first time ahead of next month’s general election. In the survey, Reform were put on 19 per cent, ahead of the Tories on 18 per cent. Labour remained top on 37 per cent.
ICYMI: Sunak’s Tories hit Truss level of all-time low support as Brexit voters turn to Farage’s Reform
The Tories have hit their joint lowest standing in the weekly tracker poll as Nigel Farage’s Reform takes its biggest share yet and the aftermath of Rishi Sunak’s D-Day gaffe takes effect.
The prime minister apologised for skipping part of the commemorations to do an election interview for ITV last week but the first weekly tracker poll taken by Techne UK after the fiasco reveals the depth of public anger.
Full report:
A game of cat and mouse
Conservative Leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt urged her rivals to keep “dogma” out of public services, such as the NHS, during ITV’s seven-way debate.
“Most of the public don’t care what colour the cat is, they just want some mice caught,” she told her six rivals.
“They (the public) want results and in my experience, listening to people who are actually doing these jobs – police officers who have reduced crime by half over the time we’ve been in office, healthcare professionals who are coming up with amazing initiatives in our hospitals and in our GP surgeries, teachers who are responsible now have 90% of our schools good or outstanding. Listen to the professionals in those services, keep political dogma out of it.”
Plaid Cymru’s Rhun ap Iorwerth hit back: “I have to draw attention to the analogy with the cats and the mice here. What we’ve seen under the Conservatives and 14 years is the fat cats getting rich and getting the cream. I fear that with privatisation of the NHS, we’re going to see the same under Labour.”
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Labour responds to ITV debate
The official Labour Party social media channel on X, formerly Twitter, has responded to Penny Mordaunt’s performance at the seven-way ITV debate.
Attached to the picture of the leader of the house, the channel wrote: “You are the weakest link. Goodbye.”
Nigel Farage trolls Rishi Sunak after appearing on Tory candidate’s election leaflet instead of PM
Mr Sunak, meanwhile, is nowhere to be seen on the leaflets, which also make no reference to the Conservative Party or use of its branding.
Full report:
It’s all about the clips
It will be interesting to know how many people actually sat through the whole of tonight’s ITV seven-way debate.
The debate was undoubtedly the worst yet and once again featured the unedifying spectacle of Penny Mordaunt ripping chunks out of Angela Rayner who spent much of the event looking in a state of shock.
Basically though none of this matters. All that matters is that each participant has the carefully prepared social media clips. They must have been delighted that ITV said no interrupting (Mordaunt did not read the rule book).
Farage, Stephen Flynn and Ms Mordaunt will probably be happiest because they all got their points out cleanly.
Already their parties are posting the clips on Twitter and Facebook.
Unfortunately, for those of us who have to watch these awful spectacles professionally, there are still two more debates to go even though a Labour win looks inevitable.
