Sunak cites ‘confidential’ inquiry as he refuses to answer questions over aide and election date bet – as it happened | General election 2024

We will be starting a new live blog later tonight to cover the Northern Ireland debate on BBC, starting at 9pm.

British television viewers preferred Georgia v Portugal over Sunak v Starmer last night, with the final televised leaders’ debate losing a ratings battle to live Euro 2024 football.

BBC One’s final head to head between the two main candidates to be prime minister peaked at 3m viewers, with audiences possibly suffering from election ennui.

ITV’s offer of a more competitive contest featuring an unexpected victory for the underdog attracted a peak of 6.4m viewers, as Georgia celebrated a historic victory.

Televised debates have continued to shape this election, even though their live audiences have been around 60% lower than when they were first introduced at the 2010 election.

Many millions of people will see and hear clips from the debates on news bulletins, even though they didn’t watch the live programmes.

Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has condemned statements made by some of his campaign team in Claction as “reprehensible”. In a statement released ahead of publication of a story by Channel 4 News, he did not reveal what the offending words were. But he said:

I am dismayed by the reported comments of a handful of people associated with my local campaign, particularly those who are volunteers. They will no longer be with the campaign.

The appalling sentiments expressed by some in these exchanges bear no relation to my own views, those of the vast majority of our supporters or Reform UK policy. Some of the language used was reprehensible.

Reform UK is a party for everybody who believes in Britain. I am proud that our supporters, candidates and national campaign team come from all backgrounds and identities.

I would be interested to know whether Channel 4 is subjecting the grassroots volunteers of all the political parties to similar subterfuges, or whether Reform UK has been singled out for special attention.

Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, attracted a big audience in Sunderland where he gave a speech announcing that the businessman and former Tory donor Sir John Hall is backing his party. (See 1.01pm.)

Here are some of the other lines from what was a relatively long and wide-ranging speech. Farage has been delivering inflammatory, provocative oratory to rightwing audiences for at least a decade, and much of what he said will have not have sounded surprising to anyone familiar with his record. But perhaps there was more of a Trump flavour to it than in the past, evident in his hubris (he boasted about having a better understanding of foreign policy than anyone in government), in his contempt for the Conservative party (in the past he wanted to influence them; now he wants to replace them) and in his lockdown-scepticism.

The Tories say we’re in economic trouble because of the pandemic. But hang on – you didn’t need to lock us down for a second and a third time. You didn’t need to take away our freedoms in a way that weren’t even done during world war two, and all of it done with Labour support.

I actually believe the long-term economic and psychological damage from lockdowns two and three perhaps represents the biggest mistake any British government, supported by the opposition, has ever made in peacetime.

I don’t know about the Downing Street parties, I treated those last two lockdowns, I must be honest, with total contempt. And I’m sorry – I just thought government’s gone way, way too far.

• He claimed that he had a better record on foreign policy than recent prime ministers. Defending his recent claims about how the expansion of Nato and the EU provoked Russia to invade Ukraine, he said he was right. “All I did, alone, was to predict what would happen. That is not a sin.” He said when the Iraq war took place, unlike the Conservative and Labour parties, he was asking what the exit strategy was. And he said he was right about David Cameron’s attack against Libya being “madness”. He said that conflict helped to create Islamic State. “We are absolutely idiotic when it comes to these things,” he said, claiming the war also led to the small boats problem. He went on:

I would put myself up, on foreign policy, against any of these people. I have got the track record of being right.

We’re up against the Conservative party – or should I perhaps, more accurately, describe them as an international betting consortium. It gets worse every day, doesn’t it. Story after story. Now we learn about a Conservative MP who allegedly has put £8,000 on his Labour opponent in his own seat to win. I mean, would you bet against your own team at football. If you were caught, you’d be kicked out of the club and quite right too. More and more of them are being dragged in and it shows you their sense of arrogance and entitlement.

As for the small boats, well, it was me going out into the English Channel repeatedly in the spring of 2020 filming, explaining that unless we got a grip on this, that it would be a huge problem.

And I dared to use a word, a word so repulsive that it must never be repeated in polite society. A word so awful that I’m to be a pariah for the rest of my life.

I dared to say that I feared there would be an invasion of small boats across the English Channel. Well now – 4,000 boats and 128,000 people later – if it’s not an invasion, what the hell is it?

Badenoch claims Labour’s plans to monitor ethnic pay disparities like ‘apartheid South Africa’ and ‘morally repellent’

Peter Walker

Kemi Badenoch has explicitly compared Labour plans to introduce monitoring over ethnic pay disparities to apartheid South Africa, saying the policy would be “used to work out what people of different ethnicities should be paid”.

In a typically combative speech, speaking at the British Chambers of Commerce conference in London, the business secretary also likened the plans to policies used by the repressive regimes in China and Myanmar.

Badenoch was not seemingly being accurate in saying Labour’s plan would set out rates of pay for people of different ethnicities. The policy extends existing protections about pay on gender grounds to ethnicity and introduces reporting on disability and ethnicity pay gaps for large employers.

It does not say pay should be based on ethnicity. The idea of an ethnicity pay gap reporting was also proposed by Theresa May in 2018.

In her speech, Badenoch claimed that Labour would be going further than this with an explicitly “political” agenda. She did not cite any evidence for the claim.

There would be, she said, “a law that will be used to work out what people of different ethnicities should be paid, and they will be checking on you”.

She went on:

Labour’s proposals divide the country into black/white, rich/poor, old/young, because they see people as target groups not as individuals, and they see you as greedy exploiters not wealth creators.

I think classifying your workforce by race and having this influence their salaries is morally repellent. It’s what they did in apartheid South Africa and what they do now in China and Myanmar. We should not be going anywhere near this stuff.

Badenoch is a vocal opponent of policies based on structural inequalities, an idea she has dismissed repeatedly.

A Reform UK general election candidate has been dropped after it emerged that he had been on a list of members of the British National party (BNP), Ben Quinn reports.

Rishi Sunak has declined to say whether he told Craig Williams, his parliamentary aide, in advance about his decision to hold the general election in July.

Williams placed a bet on July three days before the surprise announcement. He has now been disowned by the Tories as a candidate, and is being investigated by the Gambling Commission. He says he made an error of judgment, but he claims he did not commit an offence.

During a visit to Derbyshire, asked repeatedly if he told Williams in advance about the election date, Sunak said he could not answer because he might compromise the inquiry.

When it was put to him that he would not prejudice the inquiry by answering the question, he replied:

No, it’s absolutely not right when there are ongoing independent investigations that those are compromised in any way shape or form … They are rightly confidential and it’s important that they stay that way.

Sunak also said he was “not aware” of any Tory candidates or party officials being investigated beyond those already in the public domain.