Douglas Ross launches Scottish Tories’ campaign – but hardly mentions Tory policies, or Sunak
Severin Carrell
Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader, has launched his party’s general election campaign with a speech where he barely mentioned Westminster or Tory policies, and never once said Rishi Sunak’s name.
In another mark of how the Tories are focusing heavily on local campaigns and not their record, Ross devoted his speech to attacking the Scottish National party government in Edinburgh and the SNP’s sleaze row over Michael Matheson’s iPad expenses claim.
He failed to mention Sunak’s new pledge not to tax pensions, or the cuts to national insurance rates, or the tens of millions spent by the UK in Scottish regions, until those policies were raised by newspaper reporters.
Ross was speaking in the Tory target seat of Perth and Kinross-shire, a newly-created constituency, and said this election was solely about defeating the SNP and attacking its “stale and rotten” government in Edinburgh.
The full colour four page campaign leaflet for local Tory candidate Luke Graham, formerly an MP for a nearby pre-boundary change seat, did not name Sunak and had minimal Scottish Tory branding, with just a small party logo at the bottom of an inside page.
Ross said the Scottish Tory goal was to hand the SNP its worst election result in more than a decade. “On July 4, we can wipe the yellow off the map and put blue on the board in Scotland,” he said.
This is factually inaccurate – the SNP will still hold 63 Holyrood seats until the 2026 Scottish parliament election. Yet his speech underscored the peculiar asymmetry of UK politics, where Holyrood politics can dominate an election for a UK parliament.
Tory strategists insist their voters see this election as an opportunity to “kick” the SNP, which can only be a minority party at Westminster. The Tories are defending seven seats. Based on the 2019 general election result, the SNP are their nearest rivals in all seven but Labour’s recent surge in Scotland is stripping votes from both parties.
Pressed by the Guardian on his failure to focus on Westminster policies, Ross denied the Tories were running scared of Sunak’s record.
He said he had been an MP since 2017 and his constituents were mostly angry about NHS waiting lists, education, cuts to council services – all issues controlled by Holyrood.
These are the issues that come up on the doorstep day in, day out. It’s about the priorities people have, here in Perth and Kinross-shire, in Moray … This is an opportunity that voters have cottoned onto that in key seats up and down the country we can beat the SNP by uniting around the Conservatives; we can deliver an election result which will be one of the worst in a decade.
Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian
Key events
Last night Newsnight’s Victoria Derbyshire reported that the Labour party’s disciplinary investigation into Diane Abbott was concluded in December last year. But the party has still not told Abbott whether or not she is having the whip restored.
Momentum, the leftwing Labour group, claimed this proved Keir Starmer was wrong to claim that Abbott’s fate was entirely in the hands of an independent process. A Momentum spokesperson said:
This is outrageous news which confirms that the Starmer leadership is trying to force Britain’s first black woman MP out of parliament. For months we have been told by Keir Starmer that the process is independent and it’s nothing to do with him. Today’s revelation confirms this is another brazen lie from Keir Starmer – the investigation was concluded months ago, Diane remains a Labour member and the whip should already have been restored as a result.
Starmer’s conduct has already been insulting and demeaning to a woman he rightly called a ‘trailblazer’ – the first step to making amends is to restore the whip and let Diane run as the Labour candidate, as local members wish.
Rishi Sunak took part in a Q&A with workers at a ceramics factory in Stoke-on-Trent this morning. Some of the staff were enthusiastic about his plan for compulsory national service for 18-year-olds, and he told them that he thought the military option (only available for a minority – most people would have to do volunteering) would be very competitive. He said:
I think all of us have felt that our society could do with being more cohesive, reminding us we’re all on the same side, bringing us together, and this will do that. It will foster that culture of service and make our society more cohesive.
But it also, in a very uncertain time, will make our country more safe, so in years to come, and we have thousands and thousands of people who have been trained and things that are practically helpful for our country’s resilience or our security.
And remember, there’s a choice, so if people want to they can do the military component of this, but it will be very competitive and selective.
Ed Davey went paddle boarding on Windermere this morning on a campaign visit with Tim Farron, the former Lib Dem leader and MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale. Davey repeatedly fell in. If he were Rishi Sunak, this would be taken as a metaphor for campaign catastrophe. But the Lib Dems are expected to do well in the election, and so no one seems to be reading it that way.
Here is the video.
Douglas Ross launches Scottish Tories’ campaign – but hardly mentions Tory policies, or Sunak
Severin Carrell
Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader, has launched his party’s general election campaign with a speech where he barely mentioned Westminster or Tory policies, and never once said Rishi Sunak’s name.
In another mark of how the Tories are focusing heavily on local campaigns and not their record, Ross devoted his speech to attacking the Scottish National party government in Edinburgh and the SNP’s sleaze row over Michael Matheson’s iPad expenses claim.
He failed to mention Sunak’s new pledge not to tax pensions, or the cuts to national insurance rates, or the tens of millions spent by the UK in Scottish regions, until those policies were raised by newspaper reporters.
Ross was speaking in the Tory target seat of Perth and Kinross-shire, a newly-created constituency, and said this election was solely about defeating the SNP and attacking its “stale and rotten” government in Edinburgh.
The full colour four page campaign leaflet for local Tory candidate Luke Graham, formerly an MP for a nearby pre-boundary change seat, did not name Sunak and had minimal Scottish Tory branding, with just a small party logo at the bottom of an inside page.
Ross said the Scottish Tory goal was to hand the SNP its worst election result in more than a decade. “On July 4, we can wipe the yellow off the map and put blue on the board in Scotland,” he said.
This is factually inaccurate – the SNP will still hold 63 Holyrood seats until the 2026 Scottish parliament election. Yet his speech underscored the peculiar asymmetry of UK politics, where Holyrood politics can dominate an election for a UK parliament.
Tory strategists insist their voters see this election as an opportunity to “kick” the SNP, which can only be a minority party at Westminster. The Tories are defending seven seats. Based on the 2019 general election result, the SNP are their nearest rivals in all seven but Labour’s recent surge in Scotland is stripping votes from both parties.
Pressed by the Guardian on his failure to focus on Westminster policies, Ross denied the Tories were running scared of Sunak’s record.
He said he had been an MP since 2017 and his constituents were mostly angry about NHS waiting lists, education, cuts to council services – all issues controlled by Holyrood.
These are the issues that come up on the doorstep day in, day out. It’s about the priorities people have, here in Perth and Kinross-shire, in Moray … This is an opportunity that voters have cottoned onto that in key seats up and down the country we can beat the SNP by uniting around the Conservatives; we can deliver an election result which will be one of the worst in a decade.
Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian
Farage admits Reform UK has funding problem
Nigel Farage held a press conference in Dover this morning. He is not leader of Reform UK, or even a candidate in the election, but he is the owner of the party (it’s a company, and he is the majority shareholder), he has a much bigger media profile than the actual leader, Richard Tice, and, characteristically, he did not hold back. Here are some of the main points he made.
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Farage admitted Reform UK has a funding problem. Recently Rowena Mason revealed that since 2021 the party has relied on donations or loans from Tice for about 80% of its money. Asked about the party’s financial plight, Farage said:
Funding is an issue. Funding has been an issue. There’s no question about that. We’re not very well funded at the moment.
But we do have quite a considerable database. I’ll be reaching out to them tomorrow to say come and help us.
Are we going to have the £20m, £30m that Labour and the Conservatives have? No, but we do have a message. And that message is distinct and it’s clear, and it’s different.
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He claimed that Rishi Sunak called a summer election because he does not believe deportation flights to Rwanda will take off in July, as he promised. Farage said:
I am absolutely convinced that the overriding reason for calling a snap early general election is because [Sunak] knows those planes in July, as he promised, would not be going to Rwanda. They weren’t going to go. Rishi can’t stop the boats.
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He said that Labour will win the election easily and so, instead of voting Tory, rightwingers should support a party they believed in instead. He said:
This election is a foregone conclusion. Labour are going to win and they’re going to win quite big. And therefore, you could argue actually, that a vote for the Conservative Party is a wasted vote. And given that, you know, Labour are going to win, why not vote for something that you actually believe in?
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He suggested Reform UK is hoping for a breakthrough at the next election. As PA Media reports, he said he changed the party’s name from Brexit to Reform because the party is not after a “quick hit” but rather is seeking to “build a base” and “launch a serious assault” in the next election of 2028 or 2029.
I’ve only stood once for parliament seriously, and what happened? I stood just a few miles up the road here [in South Thanet], and what happened?
Third party campaign groups spent unbelievable sums of money, putting negativity through people’s doors, the likes of which you can’t believe. The Conservatives cheated, to such an extent that one of the agents got a nine-month prison sentence for mass overspending.
So for me, to fight and win any constituency, I’m going to need a lot of time and a lot of data. I can’t do that in six weeks, so you can call me what you like, but I think realist might be more accurate.
I believe the world was a much better, safer place with Donald Trump in the White House than it has been with Joe Biden.
So that’s the context, I’m not saying Britain doesn’t matter, far from it. Of course not, I’m British, I’m here. But I do think who wins in America for global safety is absolutely vital.
[Sunak] wants to have six debates with Keir Starmer. Well, all I’m saying is ‘have one with me’.
Look, I will always get attacked because I’ve always been prepared to put the head up and talk about things that other people would rather brush under the carpet and say it’s just too awkward in polite society.
You might have noticed that Angela Rayner yesterday was campaigning in her constituency begging, begging a group of Muslim leaders to please vote Labour. You’ll have noticed not a single woman in the room.
So we’re moving into an age in our inner cities and towns I’m worried to say of sectarian politics, with women completely excluded.
Libby Brooks
Keir Starmer is continuing his drive for Scottish votes by writing in the country’s left-leaning tabloid the Daily Record this morning and pledging that “Scotland will not be a spectator in this election”.
Pushing hard at the strategy of attaching the case for change to the Holyrood election in two years time as well as this coming general election, Starmer says:
After 17 years of SNP failure and 14 years of Tory chaos, Scotland is crying out for change.
Yesterday some Scotland-only polling from More In Common was released saying Scots were more likely than voters elsewhere in the UK to believe that it was “time for change” in this election.
Research elsewhere suggests that Scottish voters, even soft independence supporters, are prioritising getting the Tories out of Westminster over sending a message about their constitutional preferences this time around – a significant shift from previous elections and one that Labour is keen to exploit.
Reeves says biggest risk to economy is five more years of Tory government
Here is the full text of Rachel Reeves’ speech this morning.
And this is what she said about why she thinks the biggest risk to the economy is five more years of Tory government.
No matter how much they tell us that Liz Truss was nothing to do with them, their every action tells us otherwise.
They haven’t learnt their lesson.
They’re singing from the same songbook.
With the Prime Minister’s priorities dissolving into thin air, what is his last, desperate throw of the dice?
Not to deliver on the promises he has made over the last two years.
But instead, to offer up £64 billion worth of unfunded tax cuts.
They offered up another one just last night.
The Conservative cannot say how they’re going to pay for them.
What cuts will they make to public services?
What other taxes will they raise?
Or will they be paid for by yet more borrowing?
And why should anyone believe them, after – I’ll say it again – the tax burden has reached it’s highest in seventy years?
Be in no doubt, the single biggest risk to Britain’s economy is five more years of the Conservative party.
Reeves appears to rule out emergency budget before summer recess if Labour wins election
Q: Are you planning a fiscal event or budget before the summer?
Reeves has already ignored two questions on this.
She says the OBR require 10 weeks notice for a budget. And she would not deliver one without an OBR forecast.
That appears to rule out an emergency budget before the summer recess, if Labour wins the election.
(In theory, perhaps, the OBR could already start work costing an emergency Labour budget now, but constitutionally that might be awkward, and if news of that got out, it would look as if Labour were taking the election result for granted, which is the last thing Keir Starmer wants.)
Q: Would you need to raise any other taxes?
Reeves says there are not additional tax rises needed under Labour’s plans beyond those already set out.
Q: What tax would you like to cut if you could afford it?
Reeves says she would like working people to pay less income tax and national insurance.
But she won’t promise something she cannot afford. She won’t pay fast and loose with the national finances.
Q: What do you say to people who claim putting VAT on private school fees will put pressure on the state sector?
Reeves says the IFS says this policy will raise £1.4bn. That will go to state schools.
She says she was one of the children taught in portacabins, growing up under the last Tory government. And there were not enough books to go around.
She is not prepared to accept conditions like that now.
Reeves says she calls herself social democrat rather than socialist
Q: Are you a socialist?
Reeves says she describes herself as a social democrat.
What I mean by that is that I believe that children, from whatever background they come from, should get an equal start in life for the opportunities that our country offers.
I believe in strong public services to support people all through their lives from the cradle to the grave.
And I believe that work should always pay and offer security to people.
Reeves says Labour is pro-business and pro-working people
Q: If you are the pro-business party, who is the pro-labour party?
Reeves says Labour is both.
You can’t be pro working people unless you’re pro the businesses that drive the jobs and the prosperity to ensure that good jobs are available all across our country.
And you can’t be pro business unless you’re pro skilling up and supporting working people to fulfil their potential.
They’re two sides of the same coin.
Q: Why has the business endorsement letter not got FTSE 100 leaders on it?
Reeves says she is really proud of the names on the letter.
Reeves says ‘crucial difference’ between Tories and Labour is Tories offer unfunded tax cuts, but Labour won’t
Q: Does this mean pensioners would pay tax under Labour?
Reeves says she wants taxes to be lower.
But she won’t make unfunded tax cuts, she says.
When Liz Truss made unfunded tax cuts, mortgage rates and interest rates went though the roof, she says.
She says the “crucial difference” between Labour and the Tories is that Labour won’t offer unfunded tax cuts.
Reeves is now taking question.
Q: [From Faisal Islam, the BBC’s economics editor] You won’t match the Tory triple lock plus policy. So, under you, pensioners could pay tax. Is that because you don’t think the Tory policy is a good idea, or is it because you don’t have the money? And will you have a budget before the summer?
Reeves says Labour is committed to the triple lock.
But, she says, the Tories have already promised unfunded tax cuts worth £64bn. And this one is an extra one, on top of that.
She says the money they are saying they would use to fund this they already earmarked for the national service plan.
Reeves says her watchwords will be stability, investment and reform. People will hear those words from her a lot, she says.
She sets out Labour plans, highlighting in particular the six first step proposals.
Labour will unlock potential, turn the page on chaos and decline, and start a new chapter for Britain, she says.
Reeves says every policy in the Labour manifesto will be fully costed and fully funded. She goes on:
No ifs, no ands, no buts. That is the attitude that I will take into the Treasury because taxpayers’ money should be spent with the same [discipline] which people spend their own money.
She says she recalls her mother sitting at the kitchen table going through bank statements and receipts when she was growing up. They were not badly off, but they did not have money spare, and every penny matters. She says that is the attitude she would take into the Treasury.
Reeves says she would lead ‘most pro-growth, pro-business Treasury’ UK has ever seen
Reeves says she worked in the private sector and in financial services before she became an MP. She goes on:
I want to lead the most pro-growth, the most pro- business Treasury that our country has ever seen, with a laser focus on delivering for working people.
Reeves says Sunak’s decision to call early election shows he knows his economic plan not working
Reeves says Rishi Sunak claims that the eonomic problems facing the UK were caused by global economic shocks – Covid, and the energy price spike caused by the war in Ukraine.
But, she says, that is not correct, because the UK has been hit worse than comparable economies because of decisions taken by the Tories.
She says taxes have reached a 70-year high, national debt has more than doubled, and mortgages have gone up as a result of Liz Truss’s mini-budget.
If the UK economy had grown at the rate of the OECD average over the past 14 years, it would be £150bn larger, she says.
Rishi Sunak’s plan is not working, she says. And she says the clearest sign of that is his decision to call an early election.
