Metropolitan police says at least 7 officers now under investigation over election timing bets The number of Metropolitan police officers under investigation over bets on the timing of the general election has risen to at least seven, the force has said. On Tuesday the Met said six officers were being investigated – of whom one was the close protection officer who was arrested. The other five, who were not close protection officers, had not been arrested, but were being investigated by the Gambling Commission, it said. Early evening summary The number of Metropolitan police officers under investigation over bets on the timing of the general election has risen to at least seven, the force has said. Keir Starmer has admitted for the first time that he would not return people to Afghanistan, after a bitter exchange in Wednesday night’s debate where Rishi Sunak mocked him for planning to “sit down with the ayatollahs” to negotiate return agreements. Labour would rather have stability in the UK’s relationship with Europe than try to seek accelerated economic growth by rejoining the EU’s single market or customs union, Jonathan Reynolds, the shadow business secretary, has said. The number of people dragged into paying income tax in the UK has leapt by an estimated 4.4 million in three years because of the government’s freeze on thresholds, official data shows, a statistic likely to reignite the election debate on tax. We will be starting a new live blog later tonight to cover the Northern Ireland debate on BBC, starting at 9pm. 3m people watched Sunak v Starmer, but twice as many watched Georgia v Portugal, figures reveal 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. Farage says he is "dismayed" by "reprehensible" comments by some of his campaign team in Clacton 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. Here is Archie Bland’s Election Edition briefing on today’s events. Do we have any indication of how the electorate feel about the trans rights anti-woke nonsense of the Tories? Any polling on the issue? I’m sure this is one of those areas where, depending on how you frame the question, you can get the polling to say whatever you want. I have not had time to research this properly. But More in Common do a lot of research on attitudes to cultural issues, like this one, and their work is always blanced and insightful. Here are three points made by their director, Luke Tryl, that are worth noting. 1) There is evidence suggesting people think politicians talk too much about trans rights, not too little. As well as asking people their top election issues we asked people this week if politicians were talking too much or too little about those issues. Interestingly debates about transgender people were the only issue where more said it was talked about too much than too little. The worry about an over focus on trans also emerged in @BurnsConleth debate focus group in Basildon - not that people thought there weren’t important issues involved to get right, but the relative airtime compared to other issues during the campaign/debate. 2) Labour allegedly “not knowing what a woman is” does not seem to be a big reason for people not switching to the party. Social issues don’t seem to be motivating votes/be high on lists of concerns, the charge ‘Labour doesn’t know what a woman is’ ranked near the bottom of people’s hesitations about voting Labour - concerns about not doing a better job on cost of living were at the top. 3) Allowing gender self-ID was the most unpopular of a series of policies polled by More in Common – and it was unpopular even with Labour and Green voters. Farage says he treated 2nd and 3rd Covid lockdowns "with total contempt", implying he ignored rules 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. Farage implied that he broke lockdown rules during the pandemic. He said that he treated the second and third lockdowns “with total contempt” and described those lockdowns as perhaps the worst misake made by a British government in peacetime. He said: 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. He said the election date betting scandal illustrated the “arrogance and entitlement” of the Conservative party. He said: 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. He defended his decision to use the word “invasion” to describe the number of people arriving in small boats. He said: 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" 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. Rishi Sunak has suggested that just 150,000 voters could be enough to stop the Conservatives losing by a landslide. As the Telegraph reports, Sunak made the comment in an interview with GB News being broadcast tonight. Asked about the Conservative party’s dire opinion poll ratings, Sunak said: I’d say to everyone watching ‘those polls aren’t destiny’. People watching can make the difference … There’s other research that just shows it’s something like 150,000 voters in key places will make the difference. Those are the people that will be watching, right? If you’re watching this show right now, you can make the difference. Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer and Ed Davey have all been doing pottery-related campaign events today. Reform UK drops candidate revealed to have been BNP member 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. Steve Baker, the Northern Ireland minister, will stand for next Tory leader if he remains an MP after the election, HuffPost UK reports. In his story, Kevin Schofield says Baker dropped hints about standing in a speech last month. Baker also told the website: It’s a fact my colleagues sent for me four times to provide leadership through crisis to success: before and after the referendum, in Covid and in relation to the cost of Net Zero. I’m widely expected to lose my seat. We will see. Baker is seeking re-election in Wycombe, where he had a majority of just 4,214 in 2019. According to the latest YouGov MRP poll, Labour is on course to win the seat easily, beating Baker by 42% to 22%. Baker spent the first few days of the election campaign on holiday in Greece. Sunak refuses to say if he told Craig Williams in advance about election date, saying it would be wrong to "compromise" inquiry 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.