Lib Dem leader Ed Davey was speaking to Good Morning Scotland ahead of launching the party’s Scotland campaign later today, borrowing from both Labour and the SNP in his messaging. With four seats in Scotland, the Lib Dems are targeting the weaknesses of the SNP and former leaders Jo Swinson and Charles Kennedy. The party is desperate to return to third place in the Commons behind Labour and the Tories, a key battle in this election campaign. Meanwhile, the Conservative plan to bring back a form of compulsory national service has received mixed reactions, with Labour highlighting unanswered questions about the policy and criticisms from former Tory defense secretaries. The policy is described as unravelling by Labour, with concerns about unfunded costs and implementation. Campaign events for the day include speeches from Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak, as well as campaigning from the Liberal Democrats and SNP leader John Swinney.
Starmer and Sunak on campaign trail as Labour says Tory national service pledge ‘unravelling by the minute’ – UK politics live | Politics
Libby Brooks
A sleepy bank holiday listener to BBC Radio Scotland would be forgiven for getting their party leaders mixed up this morning.
Lib Dem leader Ed Davey was speaking to Good Morning Scotland ahead of launching the party’s Scotland campaign later today – but it was curious to hear him borrowing from both Labour – “we are part of the change” – and the SNP – “vote Lib Dem to send a message to Westminster”.
With four seats on Scotland, the Lib Dems are eyeing up the weakness of the SNP and targeting others, in particular the seats of former leaders Jo Swinson and Charles Kennedy.
It was clear from the interview just how desperate the Lib Dems are to return to third place in the Commons behind Labour and the Tories – not surprising given the profile it has brought the SNP since 2015 – and this will be one of the key battles in this election campaign.
Share
We don’t have comments open yet, but we plan to open them at 10am. Because it’s a bank holiday, we don’t have as many moderators working as usual.
Share
Good morning. We had the first big policy surprise of the election campaign at the weekend, and the Conservative plan to bring back a form of compulsory national service has had a mixed reception, to put it politely. As Eleni Courea and Aletha Adu report, a former head of the navy has described it as bonkers.
The propoal gets an enthusiastic write-up on the front page of the Tory loyalist Daily Express.
But the Daily Mail is notably more equivocal in its coverage.
Last night, in a sign they think the Conservatives are vulnerable on this issue, Labour issued a lengthy briefing note highlighting 22 “unanswered questions” about the policy. Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the Foreign Office minister, was doing a media round this morning, and when some of these were put to her on the Today programme, her answers were not particularly compelling.
Labour says:
The MoD could have to supply a 50% increase in Army accommodation, which based on the cost for new bed spaces could cost £4.8bn just on accommodation. Does the Conservatives’ costs take this into account?
When Justin Webb asked the minister a version of this question, saying she must have “some idea” where the new recruits would live, Trevelyan just said that a royal commission would consider the details, and that the Tories were not planning to implement this in full until the end of the next parliament.
And Labour says:
The National Citizen Service had its funding slashed by two-thirds by the government in 2022, when Rishi Sunak was chancellor. What were the flaws in that model of youth service which made it a bad use of money, that have been corrected in the new plan proposed this week?
Webb suggested that proposing to spend £2.5bn a year on national service, having just slashed the budget for the National Citizen Service programme (the voluntary programme launched by David Cameron when he was PM), implied “incoherence”. Asked to explain why the budget for the National Citizen Service had been cut so much, Trevelyan blamed Covid and other shocks to the economy that had led to spending being cut back in some areas.
In addition to highlighting criticisms of the plan from Michael Portillo, a former Tory defence secretary, Labour pointed out that Thin Pinstriped Line, a defence policy blog, has published a withering assessment of the plan. It said: “It’s hard to see how this policy could be delivered for the stated cost of £2.5bn per year given that even rough calculations are showing that it would cost billions more to deliver both short and long term.” Ben Wallace, another former Tory defence secretary, recently said this blog was “the voice of reason” which could not be bettered for defence analysis.
Labour said the policy was clearly unravelling. A party spokesperson said:
The Tories’ National Service promise is unravelling by the minute, with the full scale of the scheme’s unfunded costs growing ever larger, and the list of unanswered questions about how it will work growing ever longer.
Here are some of the main campaign events of the day.
9.30am: Keir Starmer gives a speech, and takes questions from journalists.
Morning: Rishi Sunak is doing a campaign event, and he is also due to record an interview with the BBC’s political editor, Chris Mason. But his main campaign event will be in Chesham and Amersham at 5pm.
The Liberal Democrats are launching their battlebus, which they are calling Yellow Hammer 1.
And the SNP leader and Scottish first minister John Swinney is campaigning in Dumfries.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line (BTL) or message me on X (Twitter). I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word. If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use X; I’ll see something addressed to @AndrewSparrow very quickly. I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos (no error is too small to correct). And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
Share
Updated at 09.14 BST
Read the full story on www.theguardian.com
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/may/27/keir-starmer-rishi-sunak-general-election-campaign-trail-labour-conservative-national-service-pledge-unravelling-uk-politics-latest-updates