Sunak’s election tour branded shambolic after Titanic Quarter visit inspires sinking ship comparison – as it happened

• Keir Starmer has said he abandoned his pledge to abolish tuition fees in order to prioritise tackling NHS waiting lists.

• The Lib Dems, Greens and SNP face being cut out of televised leadership debates, as broadcasters plan to focus on two head-to-head contests between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer.

• Rishi Sunak’s election campaign has been criticised as shambolic after he visited the Titanic Quarter in Belfast, where a journalist asked him if he was captain of a sinking ship. It is the latest in a series of mishaps that have exposed him to ridicule from his opponents. (See 3.52pm.)

• Labour’s investigation into Diane Abbott’s comments about racism, which has lasted more than a year, will be completed by 4 June, Keir Starmer says.

• Jeremy Corbyn has confirmed he will stand as an independent candidate in Islington North, vowing to fight for equality, democracy and peace.

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Labour will pledge in its manifesto to bring back the Rishi Sunak plan to stop future generations smoking, Hugo Gye from the i reports.

The smoking ban is not dead, merely resting.

It will appear in Labour manifesto, @theipaper understands, while Sunak would make it a priority if Tories re-elected.

More than 10,000 migrants are thought to have arrived in the UK so far this year after crossing the Channel, PA Media reports. PA says:

Pictures showed groups of migrants, including several children, being brought ashore in Dover, Kent, today amid warm, sunny and clear weather conditions at sea.

As of Thursday, 9,882 people had made the journey from France this year, according to provisional Home Office figures.

This is up 35% on the number recorded this time last year (7,297) and 6% higher than the same point in 2022 (9,326), according to PA analysis of the data.

The number of migrants arriving in the UK after crossing the Channel has already reached a new record high for the first five months of a calendar year.

Commenting on the figures, Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, said:

This is the first time that more than 10,000 people have crossed the Channel in small boats before the end of May, with over a third more people making the crossing this year than last. Far from stopping the boats, Rishi Sunak is presiding over the worst year we have seen since the start of this crisis.

Rishi Sunak told reporters he was “up for the fight” when he spoke to them on his flight from Belfast to the West Midlands.

As PA Media reports, he told them:

I love doing this. I’ve been doing it since the beginning of the year, I’ve been out and about pretty much two, three days a week since the beginning of the year and I love it.

I love talking to people, I love having the debate, I love having the Q&A with people, answering their questions, making sure they know what I’m about and I’m really confident that over the next few weeks we’re going to have a really good conversation as a country about the future we want.

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24 May 202411.46 EDT

Richard Adams

Getting in just before the purdah curtain falls, education secretary Gillian Keegan has named Sir Ian Bauckham as the government’s “preferred candidate” to be the new chief regulator of Ofqual, England’s exams watchdog.

The candidate has to appear before the education select committee and then be confirmed by the education secretary. Since that now won’t happen until after the election, a new education secretary could have a change of mind.

Bauckham is a former chief executive of an academy trust and was appointed acting chair of Ofqual by Gavin Williamson in 2021, following the exam debacle of that year, and later made permanent chair by Nadhim Zahawi. Bauckham was a regular choice by ministers to run things, including its controversial review of initial teacher training, while Keegan appointed him as Ofqual’s acting chief regulator earlier this year.

A reader asks:

Out of interest does an MP who decides to stand down before the election get a bigger pay-off then one who fights the election but loses? If so, in your view does this explain the large number of MPs stepping down?

No. It’s the opposite. All MPs who don’t come back are eligible for the winding up payment, which is equivalent to four months’ salary, minus tax and national insurance.

But if an MP stands and loses, they can also get the loss of office payment. This is paid at double the statutory redundancy payment rate, but is only available to the MP if they have been in office for at least two years.

There are more details in the Ipsa scheme for MPs’ staffing and business costs here.

A parliamentary committee has warned Rishi Sunak of the risk of foreign interference in the election.

In an open letter to the prime minister, Margaret Beckett, chair of the joint committee on national security strategy, said the committee thought “the UK must be prepared for the possibility of foreign interference” in the election.

She went on:

We have considered a number of ways hostile actors may seek to exploit divisions and weaknesses during the forthcoming election period. They may seek to:

-Undermine trust in electoral processes through cyber-attacks targeted at our institutions, including ransomware attacks. Such attacks could raise questions their security as well as their ability to facilitate and safeguard UK democracy.

- Target high-profile individuals such as political candidates to retrieve sensitive information for exploitation through coercion or publication, thereby undermining trust in politicians.

-Spread disinformation online about public figures - including through the use generative AI to create fake videos and audios - to fuel conspiracy theories and undermine trust in UK leaders and institutions.

-Sow division and cause chaos where there are already domestic divides on controversial or politicised topics.

Beckett said the government should take steps to counter these threats, including by issuing guidance to people on how to spot deepfakes and other items of misinformaton or disinformation online.

24 May 202411.05 EDT

Richard Adams

The election means a number of consultations affecting schools in England are left in limbo, forcing headteachers to wait longer for government guidance on controversial issues such as how to treat transgender pupils.

Recently the government has opened consultations on its changes to faith schools admissions and statutory sex education, while results from a consultation on its guidance for the treatment of transgender children at school were to be published this year. If Labour forms a government after the election it will want to start from scratch, meaning those consultations will be abandoned.

The election also dashes hopes the government would soon publish the School Teachers’ Review Body report on teachers’ pay in England, making it difficult for schools to finalise budgets for next year. That leaves teachers’ pay as something urgent in the next government’s in-try.

A private members’ bill, backed by the current government, that requires councils to keep a register of local home-schooled children may be scrubbed but Labour has also supported the idea so it could be back in some form - when time allows.

Rishi Sunak’s flagship education policy, an Advanced British Standard qualification for sixth formers, ensuring pupils keep learning maths until 18, saw its consultation close in March. A Labour victory in July would mean it goes no further.

As James McCarthy from BelfastLive reports, Rishi Sunak was visiting the Titanic Quarter in Belfast this morning. This is what happened when Sunak was asked if he was captain of a sinking ship.

(It’s worth watching Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, who smirks momentarily before reverting to ‘serious face’.)

While harmless on their own, the danger with incidents like this is that quite quickly they enable the media (or at least those parts of the media that aren’t slavishly loyal to the Tories) to establish a ‘loser narrative’, and once that’s in place, it can be near impossible to shift. What then happens is that every trivial mishap gets reported as a campaign calamity.

There is some evidence that Sunak is getting stuck with this label already. His ‘things can only get wetter’ election announcement was as a genuine presentational disaster, and two of the most memorable things that happened on day one (yesterday) were a Euros gaffe in Wales, and a Q&A with workers that was not quite what it seemed. Labour mocked both of these in a vicious campaign video last night.

Ruth Davidson, the former Tory leader in Scotland, thinks those organising Sunak’s tour are to blame. She even jokes about whether a “double agent” in CCHQ is doing the planning.

Iain Dale, the LBC presenter and a former Tory adviser, has made the same point.

I mean seriously. Who is in charge of this shambles? Visiting the Titanic exhibition? What next - Sunak pays visit to local funeral directors? It’s almost unfathomable how many basic errors have been made and it’s only Day 3

The Lib Dems, Greens and SNP face being cut out of televised leadership debates, as broadcasters plan to focus on two head-to-head contests between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, Jim Waterson reports.

Here are some of the highlights from speeches in the debate this afternoon for MPs who are standing down.

Harriet Harman, the former deputy Labour leader and mother of the house (the longest-serving female MP), used her speech to stress the importance of having women in the Commons.

When she was elected in 1982, only 3% of her colleagues were women, she said.

To those people who look back through rose-tinted glasses and with nostalgia and talk about the ‘good old days’ in the House of Commons, I would say the House of Commons is better now than it was.

It is more representative and the women who are in this House of Commons now… they also know that it is not that we are doing them a favour letting them be here.

They are a democratic imperative to make this House of Commons representative. They need to have their voices heard. They will not be silenced and they are an essential part of a modern democracy.

Harman said that, despite the problems with abuse on social media, she would still encourage young women to go into politics.

She also said she had spoken in the chamber 9,880 times. “But I have to say that when you discover the prime minister was only two years old when you were first elected, you realise it is time to move on,” she added.

Theresa May, the former prime minister, urged MPs to remember that democracy was under threat, not just from foreign powers, but from within. She said:

Democracy has raised living standards in countries, it has led to the betterment of people in so many parts of the world, but sadly democracy today, I fear, is under threat.

“And while it is easy to answer the question ‘what is the greatest threat to democracy’ by saying ‘well, an autocratic state like Russia or China’, actually we should never forget the dangers to democracy from within.

She also included a jibe at Liz Truss, another former PM.

I was always a Conservative, I’ve never been a member of another party, I have always been a Conservative in the room and I will continue to be a Conservative in the room.

That was a reference to the title of Truss’s recent book, Ten Years to Save the West: Lessons from the Only Conservative in the Room.

Ben Wallace, the former Tory defence secretary, urged all parties not to neglect defence spending. Referring to the line used by the Labour party about when it will raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, he said:

Defence is not an add-on after health and education. When we come to our manifestos please invest in defence, make sure it is core. Don’t let leaders say things like ‘when economic conditions allow’.

We don’t say that about health, we don’t say that about education.

And Matt Hancock, the former Tory health secretary, said that as an MP he had always “tried my hardest”. And, referring to what he would miss, he said he would have liked to have been in the Commons to vote for assisted dying.

I’ll miss the ability to contribute to national debates. The single vote I’m regretting not being able to take part in is the vote on assisted dying which surely will come, and which I’ve come to support very passionately.

Labour has chosen Praful Nargund as its candidate in Islington North. He will be standing against Jeremy Corbyn, the former party leader, who is running as an independent.

In a post on X Nargund, a local councillor, said:

It’s an honour to have been chosen as Labour’s candidate for Islington North and I look forward to the campaign ahead. I promise to be a truly local MP, that represents all families and businesses that call this special place their home.

Only Labour can change the country and fix 14 years of Tory failure.

Corbyn had a majority of more than 26,000 at the last election, when he was the Labour candidate and party leader. Normally independent candidates find it very, very hard to win in parliamentary elections, but Corbyn has a huge profile and a strong personal following, and even his critics accept he has been an assiduous local MP.

A post-war record number of Conservative MPs are standing down ahead of the general election, PA Media reports. The total not seeking re-election on July 4 hit 75 on Friday, surpassing the previous record of 72 who quit prior to Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide win for Labour. It came after outgoing Tories Matt Hancock and Bob Stewart both had the party whip restored and former minister John Redwood announced he is stepping down, PA says.

We still don’t know what the Conservative manifesto will say about the European convention on human rights, and whether Rishi Sunak will bow to the wishes of those Tories who want it to float the prospect of ECHR withdrawal. In an open letter to the goverment, the Commons Northern Ireland affairs committee says withdrawal would be a mistake. It has taken evidence on this issue recently and in his letter Sir Robert Buckland, the committee chair and a former Tory justice secretary, says:

Witnesses concluded that that if the UK were to withdraw from the ECHR it would have a detrimental impact on Northern Ireland. They argued that the government would knowingly be in breach of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement and a promise to the people of Northern Ireland that their human rights would be protected “and not subject to political will or change of government”. Alyson Kilpatrick [chief commissioner at the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission] added that “we all know how dangerous it is to breach promises. To do it without reason, justification or any real rationale would be very troubling”.

Party leaders normally have a pack of journalists travelling with them during an election campaign. Here is Rishi Sunak speaking to reporters on a plane taking them from Northern Ireland to Staffordshire.

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A reader asks:

How (if at all) pre-election purdah will affect GMP’s investigation of Angela Rayner?

Not at all, if a report by Fiona Hamilton and Steven Swinford in the Times today is correct. They write:

The police investigation into Angela Rayner is expected to be concluded before the election with Labour increasingly confident she will be cleared, The Times understands.

An announcement on the fate of the Labour deputy leader, who has faced questions over where she lived in the 2010s and the sale of her former council house in Stockport, is expected within about a week.

Rayner’s allies hope that Greater Manchester police will make a clear public statement so that questions about the investigation do not plague her campaign for re-election.

And Greg Clark, who was business secretary when Theresa May was PM, and very briefingly levelling up secretary at the end of the Boris Johnson premiership, has announced he is standing down. He says that, after nearly 20 years as an MP, it is “time to pass the baton on”.

Clark is MP for Tunbridge Wells, which is normally seen as a true blue constituency. But his majority was 14,645 at the last election and the YouGov MRP polling suggests the Liberal Democrats are on course to win it narrowly.

James Heale from the Spectator says the number of Tory MPs standing down has now reached 75.

Greg Clark has now announced he’s quitting. We have now reached the same number of Tory MPs who stood down ahead of the 1997 election - 75. There will be more.

Craig Mackinlay, the Conservative MP for South Thanet, explained why will not be a candidate again in a post on Facebook. He said:

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. It would be difficult to withstand the rigours of an all-out election campaign, a campaign that I’d always wish to lead from the front. Thereafter, 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.

I had hoped to phase my return to the House of Commons over the coming months as my abilities improved. Since leaving in-patient rehabilitation a month ago my life now revolves around various medical appointments. I face numerous future operations as a result of the serious sepsis that I suffered which very nearly took my life. I have only just started the prosthetic journey and I have weekly physiotherapy and occupational therapy sessions.

I had the most memorable appearance of my time as an MP at this week’s PMQs: it was emotional and the experience quite surreal. I shall never forget it. I had expected it to be the start of my return. It will, however, be remembered as my last hurrah.

Mackinlay had a majority of 10,587 at the last election. The constituency has been renamed East Thanet after boundary change and the YouGov MRP poll suggests Labour is easily ahead there, by 45% to 27%.

Craig Mackinlay, the Conservative MP who returned to the Commons on Wednesday after almost losing his life to sepsis, and having his feet and hands amputated, will not be a candidate again, Darren McCaffrey from Sky News reports.

NEW: Craig Mackinlay, the Conservative MP who lost all his limbs to sepsis, will not run for his South Thanet seat in the upcoming general election

The MP only returned to the Commons on Wednesday to loud applause, hours before Rishi Sunak confirmed the polls will open on 4 July