Nigel Farage repeating Putin’s ‘speaking notes’ on Ukraine, ex-defence secretary says – UK election live | General election 2024

Water companies in England have come under mounting criticism for the level of raw sewage being discharged into rivers and seas (data revealed raw sewage was discharged for more than 3.6m hours last year, a 105% increase on the previous 12 months).

Both the Labour party and the Lib Dems have stepped up their attacks on what they have framed as the Conservative sewage scandal.

Labour, which says waterborne diseases have “put over 10,000 people in hospital” since 2019, has reiterated its pledge to put water companies dumping sewage into UK rivers and seas under special measures to force them to “clean up their act”.

The party highlighted new analysis of NHS hospital admissions data showing the number of people diagnosed with diseases transmitted via waterborne infection nearly doubled over the last two years, rising to a record high of 3,261 cases last year.

The steepest increase was in the number of typhoid fever cases, which doubled to more than 603.

Labour shadow environment secretary Steve Reed said:

It is sickening that the Conservative sewage scandal has put over ten thousand people in hospital.

They just folded their arms and looked the other way while water companies pumped a tidal wave of raw sewage into our rivers, lakes and seas, putting the nation’s health at risk.

It is time for change. The next Labour government will put the water companies under special measures and strengthen regulation to force them to clean up their act.

We will give the regulator tough new powers to make law-breaking water bosses face criminal charges and ban the payment of their multimillion pound bonuses until they clean up their toxic filth.

The Lib Dems, meanwhile, set out a plan to save chalk streams, which the party’s analysis suggested suffered nearly 49,000 hours worth of sewage dumping in 2023 – more than double the previous year.

The streams, which spring from underground chalk reservoirs, are one of the world’s rarest freshwater habitats and are found primarily in the south of England and Yorkshire.

The Lib Dems repeated its proposal to launch a public consultation within the first 100 days of the next government which could see rivers and lakes awarded a new Blue Flag status to protect them from sewage dumping, the PA news agency reports.

Davey said:

Water firms are destroying our precious rivers and chalk streams all whilst making massive profits. Conservative ministers have let these water firms get away with it for too long, while their toothless schemes have failed to protect swimmers and wildlife.

We need urgent action to save our precious chalk streams from this environmental disaster. The swimmers made ill, the wildlife killed and the chalk streams dried up should act as a watershed moment to put an end to the sewage scandal.

Every vote for the Liberal Democrats at this election is a vote for a strong local champion who will tackle the sewage scandal and clean up our rivers, lakes and beaches.

The conservatives have defended their record in government, saying monitoring of water quality has increased and thatthe party has put legal requirements for water companies to implement sewage discharge reduction plans while also“fast-tracking record levels of investment”.

Peter Walker

Peter Walker is a senior political correspondent for the Guardian

Increased disenchantment with the Conservatives could result in the Greens taking two rural seats from the Tories in the general election, a Green co-leader has said, after internal polling showed they were ahead in both constituencies.

Adrian Ramsay said the polling in the seats, including Waveney Valley, which he is contesting on 4 July, demonstrated how recent local election successes had helped the party move beyond its traditional strongholds in urban, Labour-facing seats.

A lot of usually Tory voters “feel deeply left out by a Conservative party that’s torn up the rulebook on standards in public life, and also deeply care about the environment”, Ramsay, who co-leads the Greens in England and Wales with Carla Denyer, told the Guardian.

“Voters in rural constituencies are very connected with the environment, and very angry about sewage in rivers,” he said. “Time after time I’ve spoken to Conservative voters who say they’re thinking about what the future is going to be like for their children or grandchildren and that they’re voting Green for the first time.”

Ramsay said another major worry for wavering Tories was the decline in public services, including a lack of NHS dental services in areas such as Waveney Valley, which straddles Norfolk and Suffolk.

Previous polling has shown that the Greens could win two urban seats: Brighton Pavilion, which the party has held since 2010 under the now departed Caroline Lucas; and Bristol Central, where Denyer could unseat Labour’s Thangam Debbonaire.

Surveys for the party by the pollsters WeThink suggest the party is ahead in its two other major target seats, Waveney Valley and North Herefordshire.

You can read the full story here:

Keir Starmer has given a (relatively) revealing interview to Charlotte Edwardes, a feature writer for the Guardian’s Saturday magazine. Here are some of the interesting takeaways:

• Starmer says he has never been to therapy

• He sometimes refers to himself in the third person

• Starmer’s two teenage children – whom he refers to as “my boy” and “my girl” to protect their identities – each “thinks the other is the favourite”

• His first memory, aged four, was his dad bringing home a blue Ford Cortina

• The last time he “physically lashed” out at someone was playing football a couple of years ago

• Starmer insists he would never go private for health treatment

• He said he felt like Boris Johnson’s character would bring him down so he did not need to resort to personal attacks in the Commons

The comments on this blog will be turned on at about 10am. Thanks for following along.

HuffPost’s Kevin Schofield has pointed out that the Conservative party is yet to give an official response to Nigel Farage saying the west provoked Russia into invading Ukraine (see earlier post at 08.52 for more details). James Cleverly, the home secretary, criticised Farage’s comments, saying he was “echoing Putin’s vile justification for the brutal invasion of Ukraine”, but there has been nothing from Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, David Cameron, the foreign secretary, or from a Conservative party spokesperson.

Yvette Cooper has promised to re-establish the Home Office’s Windrush unit, promising a Labour government would “turn the page” on the scandal with a series of measures such as expediting compensation claims.

Writing for the Guardian to mark Windrush Day she said the party would appoint a new “Windrush commissioner” who would “oversee the delivery of the compensation scheme” and be a “voice” for families and communities, adding that trust needed to be rebuilt between Windrush victims and campaigners and the Home Office.

A Labour government, she said, would start by ensuring that the Windrush compensation scheme is “delivered effectively”. It would also restore “community engagements to encourage applications, as well as the reconciliation events promised after the Wendy Williams Lessons Learned review but abandoned by the Conservatives”.

You can read the full story here:

Bloomberg has got sight of some internal Conservative polling this week that confirms public polling that projects a parliamentary majority for Labour as high as 200.

A senior Conservative minister, who was briefed on the polling, said he anticipated election night being like the Battle of the Somme, one of the bloodiest of the first world war, in which more than one million people were killed or injured.

Officials told Bloomberg that over half of the cabinet is at risk of losing their seats, something that would be unprecedented in British electoral history.

It has been reported previously that Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, could lose his seat to the Lib Dems, with fellow cabinet ministers Grant Shapps and Mark Harper among those who could be ousted by Labour.

Alex Wickham, Bloomberg UK’s political editor, wrote:

There are now growing concerns among Tory officials that Sunak’s own constituency of Richmond and Northallerton is no longer completely safe, after one poll implied he could be the first serving premier in history to lose his seat.

At the end of the interview, Nick Robinson asked Ben Wallace if there are some wishing that Boris Johnson stayed leader of the Conservative party given the dire position of the Tories in the polls.

Asked to comment on Johnson’s legacy as prime minister, Wallace said: “All I know is when I served with Boris Johnson as his defence secretary, and with Rishi Sunak, they both leant in and supported defence.”

He added: “I suspect my Labour counterpart (John Healey) if he were to be defence secretary will be wanting more from Rachel Reeves and will get precisely zilch.”

Labour has said it would have an “iron-clad commitment” to supporting Ukraine if they form the next government. Rishi Sunak has said the party would not match Tory defence spending.

The former defence secretary Ben Wallace has been on the Today programme, speaking about Nigel Farage’s comments about the west provoking Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

He said what threatens Vladimir Putin are the values embodied by the EU and Nato, adding that Putin’s “very bizarre view of the world” ignores the fact that Ukraine has been separate from Russia in its history longer than it has been together and ignores the treaties signed by Russia in the 1990s upholding the right for states to choose their own alliances.

Wallace told the BBC:

It is not about Nato. Yes, he wants that to be played across our constituencies and played into the hands of the likes of Mr Farage who is only too keen often to what looks like repeat what looks like some of president Putin’s speaking notes. But certainly that is not the actual historical case.

Farage expanded on his position on Ukraine, writing on X yesterday evening that he is “one of the few figures that have been consistent and honest about the war with Russia”.

Wallace, who is not standing in the upcoming general election, said Farage has been “consistently wrong” on the issue, stressing that Nato is a defensive alliance.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

I think Nigel Farage is a bit like that pub bore we have all met at the end of the bar who often says if ‘I was running the country’ and presents very simplistic answers to actually I am afraid in the 21st century complex problems. It is not that easy to govern a country but also to find international solutions to problems …

If he became prime minister tomorrow morning, what is his solution to dealing with a President Putin that he alleges he admires? A man who remember was involved in the murder of a British citizen Dawn Sturgess with deployment of nerve agent on Salisbury. Is his answer to that we provoked him? He is going to have to deal with the real world.

Good morning, and welcome to our continued coverage of the 2024 general election campaign.

Nigel Farage, the Reform party leader, has been criticised for suggesting the west “provoked” Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine by expanding the EU and Nato eastwards.

He told Nick Robinson in the BBC Panorama interview that aired last night:

I stood up in the European parliament in 2014 and I said – and I quote: ‘there will be a war in Ukraine’. Why did I say that? It was obvious to me that the ever eastward expansion of Nato and the EU was giving this man a reason to his Russian people to say they are coming for us again and to go to war.

Robinson said that Farage was echoing Vladimir Putin’s narrative in justifying the war. Farage replied:

Sorry I have been saying this actually since the 1990s – ever since the fall of the wall. Hang on a second: we provoked this war. Of course, it is his fault.

Challenged on his beliefs over the invasion of Ukraine, and his stated admiration for Putin, Farage said he disliked the Russian president personally but “admired him as a political operator” because of the extent of his control over Russia.

James Cleverly, the home secretary, criticised Farage’s comments, saying he was “echoing Putin’s vile justification for the brutal invasion of Ukraine”, while the former defence secretary Ben Wallace said the Reform leader was voicing “sympathy” to someone who “deployed nerve agents on the streets of Britain”.

John Healey, the shadow defence secretary, called the comments “disgraceful”, adding that Farage has “shown that he would rather lick Vladimir Putin’s boot than stand up for the people of Ukraine. That makes him unfit for any political office in our country, let alone leading a serious party in parliament.” You can read more on this story here.

Here is some of what to expect on the campaign trail today:

• Labour’s shadow environment secretary Steve Reed will visit a county on the south coast to talk about sewage. Reed has threatened to put water bosses in prison, ban their bonuses and impose fines for sewage spills. Water companies would also be unable to mark their own homework, with new independent water monitoring. The Labour party leader, Keir Starmer, meanwhile, will be out in London to unveil his party’s plans to expedite payments for the thousands of victims of the Windrush scandal.

• Rishi Sunak will trail his party’s plan for pubs, clubs and festivals, which include ways to “crack down” on councils setting “disproportionate conditions and restrictions on licences” in an attempt to cut red tape for businesses in the entertainment sector.

• Reform UK campaigning continues on the Tendring Peninsula in Essex, as Nigel Farage hosts a bumper set of campaign days in the Clacton constituency he is contesting.

• SNP leader John Swinney will visit the Royal Highland Show in Edinburgh, where he will put the spotlight on his party’s drive for “sustainable funding for farming” with financial backing rising “to at least pre-Brexit levels”. The party has also called for a rural visa pilot scheme to “mitigate against the severe labour shortages” which it attributes to Brexit, and a veterinary agreement with the EU.

• Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey will also visit a farm on the campaign trail in a week where the Conservatives have sought support from rural communities.

It is Yohannes Lowe here for the next couple of hours. If you want to get my attention then please do email me on yohannes.lowe@theguardian.com.