Using a relatable football analogy, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Michael Gove has insisted there is still time for the Conservatives to defy the polls, saying: “We’re not in ‘Fergie time’ yet.” Gove emphasized that despite the challenging opinion polls, it’s not the 90th minute, and there is still an opportunity to make arguments that resonate with voters. He highlighted the importance of preventing tax increases and ensuring a strong Conservative voice in Parliament. Gove’s comparison to ‘Fergie time’ from the Sir Alex Ferguson era of Manchester United signifies the potential for a last-minute turnaround, urging perseverance and continued effort in the face of adversity.
Gove claims still time for Tories to defy polls in general election – live | General election 2024
Gove: ‘We’re not in “Fergie time” yet’
Using a relatable football analogy, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Michael Gove has insisted there is still time for the Conservatives to defy the polls, saying: “We’re not in ‘Fergie time’ yet.”
The Cabinet minister told Sky News:
There are opinion polls, as I’ve acknowledged and as we both know, that are not great, but it’s not the 90th minute, we’re not in ‘Fergie time’ yet.
There is still an opportunity for us to make these arguments and as we make these arguments my experience – and I know it’s just me and a range of seats, not every seat in the country – my experience is that when you do talk to voters, outline some of the tax dangers, outline some of Labour’s plans for the future, then people do think twice and people do recognise that by voting Conservatives you are both ensuring that there is a strong Conservative voice in Parliament, but also you are doing everything you can to prevent a series of tax increases that won’t just hit pensioners and first-time buyers, but also will hit the economy in the guts.”
…
I’m a Scotland fan, so you wait until the final whistle.
Sometimes it looks as though the odds are against you, but you keep on fighting.”
Well, he is certainly right about the odds. For those not familiar with the expression ‘Fergie time’, here is an explanation from Football Fancast:
Manchester United are synonymous with late goals. Their long-enduring reign of terror, when a double-digit clock ticks over 90, changed what added time was known as during the Sir Alex Ferguson era. Instead of ‘stoppage time’, it was christened ‘Fergie Time’ – a lingering aphorism that added time is awarded to allow a last-minute winner or equaliser.”
With that, this is me, Helen Sullivan, signing off without a football analogy.
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Updated at 07.59 BST
Key events
Good morning. As Helen said earlier, the theme among the politicians today is housing.
Angela Rayner has pledged that renters will be “better off” with Labour, with the party stating that an affordable and secure rented sector is “crucial” to its plans for economic growth, reports the PA news agency.
The party’s plans include a ban on no-fault evictions, introducing legal protections for tenants when it comes to mould, and putting an end to rental bidding wars and upfront payments.
Labour has also committed to alleviating the current crisis in private renting by building 1.5m new homes over the next five years, and cracking down on extortionate rents.
Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader and shadow housing secretary, said:
Time and time again, the Tories have failed to stand up for renters. From endless delays to no-fault evictions, to failure to sort damp, cold and mouldy homes, the Conservatives are failing working people.
Labour will call time on a decade of Tory vested interest and put renters first. An affordable, secure private rented sector is vital for economic growth, allowing young people to save for a mortgage with more money in their pockets to spend in the day-to-day economy.
Our plans will support good landlords but we are calling time on unscrupulous landlords strangling growth.
Labour will take action to protect renters, with an immediate ban on no-fault evictions, an end to rental bidding wars and extended protections against damp, mould and cold.
The only real way to make renting more affordable is to build more homes, that’s why we have a plan to build 1.5m homes over five years as an antidote to Britain’s failing private rented sector.
Renters will be better off with Labour.”
The party has also said it will aim to cut energy bills and reduce fuel poverty by requiring all landlords to meet energy efficiency standards by 2030.
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Gove is being asked about housing on the Today programme:
He “sympathises hugely” with young people wanting to buy or rent homes.
“We need to make it easier to access finance,” he says. “We’re also going to have a new revived help to buy scheme”.
“There is a particularly acute situation in London,” he says, and has written to the mayor, Labour’s Sadiq Khan, about this.
That is it from me, Helen Sullivan. My colleague Amy Sedghi will take it from here.
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Updated at 08.17 BST
Second Tory candidate being ‘looked into’ by gambling regulator, BBC reports
BBC political editor Chris Mason is reporting that a second Conservative Party candidate is being ‘looked into’ by the gambling regulator over a bet relating to the timing of the General Election.
Mason quotes an unnamed Conservative Party spokesperson as saying, “We have been contacted by the Gambling Commission about a small number of individuals. As the Gambling Commission is an independent body, it wouldn’t be proper to comment further, until any process is concluded.”
Last week, Rishi Sunak’s closest parliamentary aide, Craig Williams, apologised for placing a £100 bet on a July election three days before the prime minister announced the date for the poll.
Michael Gove, asked about the story on the BBC, said it would be “reprehensible” for someone to use inside information to bet on the date of the General Election.
Asked about reports the Gambling Commission was investigating a second Conservative candidate for placing a bet on the date of the election, Gove told the BBC:
If people have used inside information to place bets, that is deeply wrong.
What I can’t do is sort of get too much into the detail of the case while an investigation is going on.
But I can talk about the broad principle and you’re absolutely right, it’s reprehensible.”
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Michael Gove has also told the BBC that Labour could install “yes men and women” in public bodies if it wins a large majority at the election.
Arguing Labour would use a large majority to “rig the system” and ensure it remained in power, the cabinet minister told the BBC, per PA:
My concern is that Labour would use whatever tools they have, if they have that sort of level of unchecked power in the Commons, to entrench it.
I think there are a number of other things that they would seek to do as well, for example make sure that many of the public bodies that we all rely on to help to run our lives, instead of having a balance of people from across the political spectrum with real skills that will help, I think there may be a tendency for them to put people who will be yes men and women in.
That is certainly a concern that I’ve heard from voters in some of the conversations that I’ve had and I do think that it is a factor.”
This is still Helen Sullivan with you, by the way (looks like I have my own stoppage, ehem, Fergie time).
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Updated at 08.17 BST
Richard Adams
The British public values the UK’s universities more highly than the legal system or the BBC, according to a survey of attitudes towards higher education by King’s College London.
Prof Bobby Duffy, the director of King’s College London’s policy institute, said universities came behind only the NHS, the armed forces and the royal family in a league table of UK institutions considered to be among the best in the world by the public.
The representative survey of 2,600 people, conducted in May, found nearly a third put universities ahead of the civil service, newspapers or parliament among key institutions, with similar backing from Labour and Conservative supporters.
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Gove: ‘We’re not in “Fergie time” yet’
Using a relatable football analogy, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Michael Gove has insisted there is still time for the Conservatives to defy the polls, saying: “We’re not in ‘Fergie time’ yet.”
The Cabinet minister told Sky News:
There are opinion polls, as I’ve acknowledged and as we both know, that are not great, but it’s not the 90th minute, we’re not in ‘Fergie time’ yet.
There is still an opportunity for us to make these arguments and as we make these arguments my experience – and I know it’s just me and a range of seats, not every seat in the country – my experience is that when you do talk to voters, outline some of the tax dangers, outline some of Labour’s plans for the future, then people do think twice and people do recognise that by voting Conservatives you are both ensuring that there is a strong Conservative voice in Parliament, but also you are doing everything you can to prevent a series of tax increases that won’t just hit pensioners and first-time buyers, but also will hit the economy in the guts.”
…
I’m a Scotland fan, so you wait until the final whistle.
Sometimes it looks as though the odds are against you, but you keep on fighting.”
Well, he is certainly right about the odds. For those not familiar with the expression ‘Fergie time’, here is an explanation from Football Fancast:
Manchester United are synonymous with late goals. Their long-enduring reign of terror, when a double-digit clock ticks over 90, changed what added time was known as during the Sir Alex Ferguson era. Instead of ‘stoppage time’, it was christened ‘Fergie Time’ – a lingering aphorism that added time is awarded to allow a last-minute winner or equaliser.”
With that, this is me, Helen Sullivan, signing off without a football analogy.
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Updated at 07.59 BST
Labour under pressure to be more radical about reforming private renting
Robert Booth
Back to housing: Labour is facing pressure to deliver more radical reforms of private renting amid fears landlords will find new ways to evict tenants despite the party confirming it would end no-fault evictions, ban bidding wars and introduce time limits to fix potentially lethal mould.
In a campaign push aimed at the “rip-off private rented sector”, Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, and the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, claimed private renters would be £250-a-year better off under a Labour government after it forces landlords to improve the energy efficiency of leaky rental homes.
Private landlords would no longer be able to auction rented homes to the highest bidder and requests for upfront rent will be capped, although it is not clear at what level. Labour has reiterated its pledge to “immediately ban no-fault evictions” and said it will “crack down on unscrupulous landlords ripping off tenants with extortionate rents and lurid living conditions”.
ShareZoe Williams
It was four weeks before election day when I spoke to one member of the constituency Labour party in Holborn and St Pancras, in central London, as he was on his way out of the door to go canvassing in Barnet, several miles away in north London. This is not at all unusual: victory is assured in Keir Starmer’s constituency, which has been continuously red since its creation in 1983. Next door, in Islington North, it was once a similar story. It has been Labour since 1937, with a couple of turbulent SDP years in the 80s; their canvassers have in the past been twinned with Stevenage, considered more useful there than in their own backyards.
Bookies are giving odds on Starmer’s win in his constituency of 1/250 and 1/500, making him one of the safest bets in the general election. The result in Islington is less predictable, since Jeremy Corbyn is standing as an independent. His popularity as a local MP is well known. But, as Corbyn’s communications guy, Oly Durose, tells me, there are the people on the doorstep who say: “I’ll vote Jeremy, of course. I’ll vote Labour.” Hard to say from this distance which of those loyalties will win out – the party or the man – once everyone is clear that they are at odds.
Almost every member of the constituency Labour party who spoke to me did so on condition of anonymity. Sometimes that was because what they’re engaged in would see them expelled from the party (canvassing for Corbyn, for instance, when Labour’s candidate is Praful Nargund); other times because they’re embroiled in local rivalries and enmities of such epic history, spanning decades, that to break cover in the press would be an inelegant escalation.
In neither constituency is any party but Labour in serious contention, but in each there is an independent challenger from the left. That reflects the wider picture: this election has 459 independent candidates standing, about 10% of the overall number, and more than twice as many as in 2015. But the red-on-red battle varies from place to place, in its subjects and its symmetry.
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Theme of the day: housing.
Housing Secretary Michael Gove and Shadow Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook will be in the Today program from 8.10am. Keir Starmer will be campaigning in North Yorkshire on Thursday morning where he is expected to tour a housing development.
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That interview is over. The takeway was: there is no doubt from these polls that the Tories will lose. What is interesting (to pollsters, primarily) is how much the geographical differences – so, how many more seats the Tories will lose than would be indicated simply by them trailing 20 points overall.
The Guardian’s Ipsos poll showed the Tories winning just 115 seats, with Labour on 453.
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Updated at 07.24 BST
John Curtice: What all these polls are trying to do is work out the geographical difference in party performance. All of the polls are telling us that the Conservative party is on course to lose more seats than what would happen if we just said what would happen if the Conservatives were just on 20 points.
Nick Robinson asks whether Curtice is in any doubts that the Conservatives are headed for defeat.
John Curtice: in terms of vote share [they] are headed for their worst result since the first world war
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Updated at 07.21 BST
John Curtice says two things stand out about the latest polls. The first is that only 63% of people say they are going to vote for Labour or the Conservatives, which could be a record low. The second is that just 21% said they would vote for the Tories.
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Political scientist and pollster Professor John Curtice is BBC Radio 4 right now with Nick Robinson, and we’ll bring you the key points from that interview.
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Updated at 07.16 BST
Sunak not expected to make campaign visits on Thursday
Here are some more politicians’ movements this morning. Rishi Sunak is not expected to make any campaign visits on Thursday, per PA, ahead of his Question Time appearance tonight:
Keir Starmer will be campaigning in North Yorkshire on Thursday morning. He is expected to tour a housing development.
Housing Secretary Michael Gove is on the morning round for the Conservatives. Gove will visit west London at 10.30.
Matt Pennycook, shadow housing minister, is on for Labour.
Liberal Democrats leader Ed Davey will visit Sheffield in the morning.
Nigel Farage will make a speech in Frodsham, Cheshire at 11.30am before possibly doing a walkabout in a nearby town.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, at 8.30am, and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, at 11.20am, are speaking at the Times CEO summit.
Scottish Greens General Election manifesto launch with co-leaders Lorna Slater and Patrick Harvie.
Shadow rural affairs secretary Rachael Hamilton will launch Scottish Conservatives’ rural manifesto on Thursday morning.
At 8pm: The Question Time leaders special, with Sunak, Starmer, Ed Davey and John Swinney.
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Updated at 08.09 BST
NHS will need extra £38bn a year by 2030, thinktank warns
Denis Campbell
More now on that report into the NHS. The NHS will need £38bn more a year than planned by the end of the next parliament in order to cut the care backlog and end long treatment delays, political parties have been warned.
Labour and Conservative promises on NHS funding “fall well short” of what the beleaguered health service needs to recover from years of underinvestment, according to the Health Foundation.
Politicians are not being honest with the public about the money needed to revive an NHS that is grappling with record numbers awaiting care, inadequate access to GPs and a collapse in public satisfaction, it added.
The analysis said: “Addressing the funding required to improve the NHS would mean facing up to difficult trade-offs with the funding needed by other public services and levels of taxation.
“Honesty about these trade-offs has so far been conspicuous by its absence from a general election debate that has been characterised by ‘a conspiracy of silence’ about the choices on public spending and taxation that will confront the next government.”
Whoever is prime minister on 5 July should “level with the public” about the true level of funding the NHS will need to once again deliver key waiting time targets, such as the 18-week wait for hospital care, as well as paying staff more and increasing capital investment.
NHS bosses endorsed the Health Foundation’s analysis. “Put simply, if a new government is going to fulfil campaign promises to tackle NHS backlogs and improve performance, then it will have to invest further,” said Dr Layla McCay, the NHS Confederation’s director of policy. The NHS will need “billions of extra funding”, she added.
Julian Hartley, the chief executive of hospitals group NHS Providers, said health trusts desperately need more capital funding to tackle the effects of “chronic underinvestment in buildings and facilities”, which has left some hospitals so decrepit that they “threaten patient and staff safety”.
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This morning’s front pages
It is 7am in the UK. Let’s take a look at today’s lead stories.
The Guardian has an interview with shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, who has promised to close the gender pay gap, which now stands at 14.3%. She promises to make companies of more than 250 employees report on and come up with plans to fix pay disparities.
And then there are the Tories, who dominate the rest of the headlines thanks to some terrible polls, along with words like “bloodbath”, “despair” and “worst defeat for 100 years” – or wait, make that “for 200 years”.
The Financial Times is a little more restrained, with Sunak “taking credit for” inflation falling to the BoE target. Sunak, the FT writes, “argued that the Tories, who trail the opposition Labour party in the polls by about 20 points, had restored economic stability and could cut taxes as a result.”
“However”, the article continues, “services and core inflation remain higher than in the Eurozone and the BoE’s Monetary Policy Committee is widely expected this Thursday to keep rates on hold at their 16-year high of 5.25%”
It quotes an economist as saying an August rates cut is a “long shot”.
The Times
The i: Tories despair as poll signals worst defeat in 200 years.
The Independent: Major poll shock: Sunak to lose seat in Tory bloodbath
The Express and Daily Mail are leading on Just Stop Oil activists spraying orange powder paint over Stonehenge.
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Updated at 07.02 BST
Read the full story on www.theguardian.com
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/jun/20/uk-general-election-2024-live-updates-labour-tories-polls-seats-inflation