Sunak says plan ‘making a distinction’ in Question Time election present

Rishi Sunak tonight vowed to kick out any Tories found to have broken rules over betting on the election date as he faced a Question Time grilling.

The PM admitted he was ‘incredibly angry’ after two would-be Conservative MPs and the party’s director of campaigning were dragged into allegations about gambling. 

But Mr Sunak begged Brits to recognise his plan is ‘starting to make a difference to your lives’, as he made another bid to turn the tide with just a fortnight to go until July 4.

Mr Sunak was asked if he was ’embarrassed’ to be leading the Tories after the Liz Truss meltdown. 

But he urged voters to look at falling inflation, insisting that he had stabilised the country. ‘The alternative is Keir Starmer who is going to put your taxes up,’ the premier said.

Mr Sunak faced calls of ‘shame’ from the crowd – chosen to include supporters of all parties – as he warned he is ready to quit the ECHR if it blocks his Rwanda deportation plans. However, the premier insisted he ‘would not apologise’ to putting the country’s interests above a ‘foreign court’. 

Taking his turn being interrogated by the audience earlier, Keir Starmer dodged on why he backed Jeremy Corbyn for PM – and said he still believed the veteran left-winger would have been better in the job than Boris Johnson.

The Labour leader wriggled as he was challenged on why voters should ‘trust’ him after his support for Mr Corbyn, arguing he wanted to be ‘re-elected’.

Asked why he claimed that the left-winger would be a ‘great PM’, Sir Keir said: ‘It wasn’t a question that arose because I didn’t think we would win that election.’

He added: ‘I was campaigning for the Labour Party… I wanted to be re-elected.’

Sir Keir was also berated for refusing to give a target on reducing immigration, his shifting position over whether women can have penises, and whether adding VAT to private school fees would heap pressure on the state sector. 

The increasingly grim picture for Mr Sunak was underlined this evening with a poll showing Nigel Farage‘s Reform overtaking the Tories. Redfield & Wilton became the latest firm to detect a ‘crossover’ moment, putting the insurgents on 19 per cent compared to 18 per cent for the Conservatives.

Although the figures are within the margin of error they come on top of a host of other apocalyptic findings in large-scale research using the so-called MRP methodology.

  

 

YouGov suggested that the Tories face being reduced to just 108 seats, while Savanta went further to suggest Labour could win more than 500 and leave the Tories with just over 50.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, Home Secretary James Cleverly, Defence Secretary Grant Shapps and Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt are among those shown as likely to lose their seats in the huge surveys.

The bleakest of the polls, conducted using the so-called MRP method, even found that Rishi Sunak could be defeated in Richmond & Northallerton – where he has a 24,000 majority. 

That would mark the first time a sitting PM has shared the fate of Michael Portillo, who was memorably ejected from his constituency in 1997. 

The two-hour Question Time election special was hosted by Fiona Bruce in York. 

Lib Dem leader Ed Davey took the first turn, getting a kicking over the Lib Dems’ broken promises on tuition fees and his madcap campaigning.

He was followed by SNP leader John Swinney, who triggered yawning in the audience as he spoke about Scottish independence.

Mr Sunak, who went last, has been under pressure to take action after two would-be Conservative MPs and the party’s director of campaigning were engulfed in the  gambling claims.

Laura Saunders, her husband Tony Lee, and Craig Williams – a close aide to Mr Sunak – are caught up in allegations about betting on the timing of the election.

A Metropolitan Police officer – one of the PM’s protection officers – has also been removed from operational duties as part of the growing scandal. 

The huge row over people with links to No10 and the Tory party has come as a fresh blow to the PM’s faltering campaign to stay in Downing Street ahead of polling day.

In a sign of the public anger over the allegations, Mr Sunak was grilled about what action he would take during Question Time this evening.

The PM replied: ‘Well like you I was incredibly angry, incredibly angry to learn these allegations. It’s a really serious matter.’ 

On the political fight, Mr Sunak said it is time to ‘make sure we realise all the benefits’ of Brexit.

Quizzed on whether Brexit had denied young people a future, he said ‘we had a referendum, it’s time to get on’.

The PM pointed to the Teesside Freeport as one such benefit.

‘I was there recently talking to young apprentices,’ he said.

Questioned about NHS waiting lists, Mr Sunak said they had started to come down ‘over the last five months’. ‘I come from an NHS family,’ he said.

But Mr Sunak admitted his Government had ‘not made as much progress as I would have liked’.

During Sir Keir’s session earlier, an audience member asked: ‘You criticised the Tory manifesto as Jeremy Corbyn-like. Anything you want can go in it, nothing is costed. Why did you back his original manifesto in 2019?’

He replied: ‘In 2019 I campaigned for the Labour Party as I’ve always campaigned for the Labour Party.’

He said that afterwards it became clear the electorate ‘thought it was too much and they wanted to see something which was fully costed and fully funded.’

Host Fiona Bruce then repeatedly challenged him over his one-time statement Mr Corbyn would make a great prime minister.

‘It wasn’t a question that really arose because I didn’t think we were going to win the election,’ Sir Keir said.

When Bruce asked for a yes or no answer to whether he meant it, there was laughter from the audience when he did not give one, instead saying that Mr Corbyn would be a better premier than Boris Johnson.

Sir Keir claimed he was a ‘common sense politician’ when asked why he had not kept a promise to abolish university tuition fees.

Asked why he had backtracked on the pledge, the Labour leader told the Question Time audience: ‘We don’t have the money to do everything we want to do. We do want to change the tuition fees.

‘But I have a choice to make, which was of the available money do I use it for getting rid of the tuition fees… or do I use that money to get our waiting lists down? That is a political decision and I took it.

‘I am not going to do the tuition fees abolition, because I want to put that money to get our NHS back on its feet.’

Sir Keir also said he chose Labour’s plan for a windfall tax on oil and gas companies over nationalising energy companies, as the latter would require huge amounts of money to ‘pay off the shareholders’.

The Labour leader said: ‘I am a common sense politician. I work through the issues and to me it did not make sense to nationalise energy and not get the bills down, so I decided we would go for getting the bills down.’

Sir Keir said he agreed with Tony Blair’s recent comment that a woman has a vagina and a man has a penis.

But Sir Keir said that biology was different to gender. ‘There are many people who don’t identify with the gender they are born into,’ he said.

Pressed on plans to remove tax breaks from private schools, Sir Keir said he knew ‘how hard people work’ to pay for private school fees, but said he wanted ‘all children to have the same options’.

Sir Keir’s poll advantage, and the impact of Reform’s advance, means Labour are increasing looking set for a massive majority. 

There are claims that CCHQ is diverting funding to ultra-safe seats in a desperate bid to avoid a complete meltdown in a fortnight’s time. 

However, Cabinet minister Michael Gove tried to install a sense of calm as he toured broadcast studios this morning. 

He admitted the polls were ‘not the cheeriest reading. But the Aberdonian Levelling-Up Secretary, who is not standing at the election, likened the party to the Scotland football team – plucky underdogs who don’t give up.

He told Sky New this morning: ‘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 … 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.

‘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.’

He added: ‘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.’

A Cabinet minister told The Times: ‘Colleagues are understandably concerned about their area but some of these projections are beyond people’s wildest nightmares.’

Another said: ‘The country has made a fundamental decision overall. Anything that is said about tax or anything else is ignored. 

‘There is no way of sorting this. You don’t give up locally. But there is no quick fix to this.’