General election 2024 - live: Jeremy Corbyn to fight Labour as ex-Tory Brexit minister told he cannot stand

The PM’s election announcement was a washout thanks to his sodden appearance at the podium outside No 10, but not even a brolly could have saved him. In this piece, Simon Mills asks what’s a man to do?

He writes: “Watching it, one did wonder, though… perhaps someone – deputy Oliver Dowden, say – could’ve stood by Rishi with a Tory-merch umbrella?

“Or maybe his staff looked at the forecast and figured that a man as slim and slight as Rishi could simply stand in between the raindrops’ trajectory and avoid any dampness by remaining stately and stationary.”

Read the full article here.

The UK’s top organisation for Muslims has urged political leaders not to use minorities as a “punching bag” during campaigns for the upcoming general election amid concerns over an increase in attacks on mosques in the wake of attacks in Gaza, Race Correspondent Nadine White reports.

The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) is calling for “hopeful” political lobbying following Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s announcement on Wednesday that the next polling day will take place on 4 July.

Britain’s leading political parties face a crisis in confidence among Muslim communities amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

“I urge our political parties and all those seeking our votes to pursue a campaign that is hopeful: to resist the urge to scapegoat Muslims and minorities and proposing a future where all Britons can play a positive role,” Zara Mohammed, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain said. Read The Independent full story here

The former PM bid farewell to the House of Commons saying MPs can be a “voice for the voiceless” and are not there to “advance themselves, but to serve”.

She added that being an MP “is the best job in the world - of course it has its frustrations”.

MPs standing down from Parliament are saying their last goodbyes to colleagues in the House.

Among the members are SNP leader Ian Blackford and former health secretary Matt Hancock.

Craig Mackinlay has become the 76th Conservative to quit at the election.

The South Thanet MP, whose hands and feet were amputated after an episode of sepsis last year, said his life now revolved around medical appointments and he faces numerous future operations following the near-fatal illness.

He wrote: “The snap election announcement has caused me 36 hrs of intense soul-searching. Whilst my heart tells me to stand again, there being so much unfinished business across local regeneration and national issues which are important to me, my head knows this to be impossible at this time.”

He added: “Upon being re-elected it would be difficult for me to sustain 70- to 80-hour working weeks which were the norm prior to my illness.”

Mr Mackinlay, who has joked he wants to be known as the “bionic MP”, received a standing ovation on Wednesday as he made his first appearance in the Commons since his ordeal.

The police probe into Angela Rayner’s tax and property affairs will be concluded before the general election, and Labour is increasingly confident she will be cleared, according to reports:

Former cabinet minister Greg Clark is the 75th Conservative MP to announce he is standing down at the general election.

He said on social media: “After nearly 20 years as MP for Tunbridge Wells I will not be standing at the general election.

“I am grateful and proud to have been able to speak and fight for the people of this beautiful and famous place. Standing is a 5 year commitment and it’s time to pass the baton on.”

Labour has picked its candidate to run against former leader Jeremy Corbyn in Islington North.

In a showdown that comes four years after Mr Corbyn quit as leader of the party, it has picked local entrepreneur Praful Nargund to stand against him.

It will be one of the most closely watched contests on election night, with Mr Corbyn hoping to hold the seat as an independent.

He was first elected the Labour MP for Islington North in 1983 and has promised to “continue to be an independent voice for equality, democracy and peace”.

Mr Nargund is an Islington-based entrepreneur and campaigner whose focus has been for the last decade on tackling inequalities in fertility treatment.

Tory rule has been characterised by the exactly the sort of chaos the party warned its opponents would cause, argues Sean O’Grady.

“So farewell then, the Conservativegovernment of 2010 to 2024 – and, with its likely demise only about 40 days away, this seems as good a moment as any to attempt an obituary,” O’Grady writes.

“After all, the first draft of history is what journalism is supposed to be all about. It does all seem a bit of a sleazy, Euro-obsessed, divisive and traumatic blur, though.

“The present chancellor boasts about substantial growth, the best foreign inward investment and millions of jobs created... but it’s also true that household living standards have hardly risen, we have record NHS waiting lists, trains that don’t run on time, sewage in the rivers and crumbling schools.

“As they say on the social media memes, if we set ‘how it started’ against ‘how’s it going’, it doesn’t seem that the last decade and a half has achieved that much.”

Read the full piece here

John Sweeney has been named as the new Liberal Democrat candidate for the Sutton Coldfield constituency.

Mr Sweeny spend nearly a decade reporting for Panorama and Newsnight.

Alicja Hagopian’s data analysis looks into how many promises were actually delivered by the end of 2023, and which have failed to meet the mark.

1. Halve inflation: The commitment to halve inflation in 2023 was successful. However, the cost of living is still being felt by many Brits. With a benchmark of around 5.4 per cent (half of 10.7 per cent at the end of 2022), inflation settled comfortably below this number, ending at 4.0 per cent in December 2023, according to data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS).
2.  Grow the economy: According to ONS data, the UK economy was stagnant or shrank for most of 2023, ending at a minor recession of -0.3 per cent in the final quarter of the year.
3. Reduce debt: The UK’s debt pile has reached £2.7 trillion, up by nearly £200 billion from January 2023. As a proportion of GDP, debt has also continued to rise, exceeding the total GDP at 101.3 per cent.
4.  Cut waiting lists: NHS data shows that the number of patients waiting for non-emergency treatment is at 7.54m as of March 2024, around 300,000 (4.5 per cent) higher than when Sunak pledged to cut waits in January 2023.
5. ‘Stop the boats’: In 2023, there were less small boat crossings across the English Channel than in 2022, down by over a third to 29,437. Some 7,567 people were detected crossing the English Channel from January to April 2024, a new record for the first four months of a calendar year.