Election latest: 'I just want to lose,' says Tory minister - as poll tips Labour to beat Blair's 1997 landslide win (2024)

The first big night of election night this Thursday is the exit poll.

It'll provide us with our first major insight into the result.

Our political correspondent Serena Barker-Singh explains all you need to know:

One of the latest Tory tactics has been to go after Keir Starmer for working "part time" - a line that has come about after the Labour leader said he liked to finish at 6pm on Fridays to spend time with his family.

Former adviser to Boris Johnson Jo Tanner tells the Politics Hub she was "shocked" by the rhetoric.

"It's pretty poor from the Tories to be going after Keir Starmer. They've sort of twisted what he was getting at," she says.

"Friday night isn't exactly the biggest night of the week for events - if anything, it is the day.

"I think it is a bit of storm in a teacup, really... I think they do need a release as well from the pressures of the job."

That brings our coverage of tonight's Politics Hub With Sophy Ridge to an end - but the show returns tomorrow at 7pm. Stay with us in the meantime for the latest election news and analysis.

Child poverty is an issue hitting areas across the whole country, and former prime minister Gordon Brown has recently called for the two-child limit on benefits to be scrapped to help tackle the problem.

Labour's shadow minister for employment and social security Alison McGovern says she will never be comfortable while there is child poverty in the UK, but there needs to be economic stability before the cap could be removed.

"We have to make sure we can grow the economy and take our economy out of the political instability we've had," she says.

"This isn't just poverty now, it's experiencing a childhood where the basic necessities of life are completely uncertain."

She explains that if she was made a minister tomorrow, she would want to reform universal credit.

"We need to review it and have a cross-government strategy to tackle child poverty," she adds.

She does point to Labour's plans for free breakfasts for children at school, but admits: "We will need to do much more."

As election day approaches and Labour remain very much in the lead in the polls, questions are starting to be asked about who will be in Sir Keir Starmer's cabinet.

Specifically, there are questions around if all of his shadow ministerial team - should they be re-elected - will definitely get jobs, which is the expectation in the Labour top team.

We ask Labour shadow minister Alison McGovern if that assumption is wrong, and she says Sir Keir's team has "worked very hard" to put together the party's plan for government.

That includes "the first steps" that can "make an immediate difference" and "longer term missions" that "change the structure of our economy".

She goes on to describe Sir Keir as "very 'Steady Eddy' as a leader" and "good to work with" because "he doesn't react overly, and I think he's somebody who's quite consistent".

But the conversations currently, Ms McGovern says, are about their target seats and winning the election.

Sophy's show is now turning to the issue of delays to the delivery of people's postal ballots.

Both the government and the Royal Mail have been trying to allay people's fears that they may not get their ballots in time, though some have had to resign themselves to not being able to vote as their ballots hadn't arrived before they went on holiday.

'Enormous increase' in postal votes

Vijay Rangarajan, chief executive at the Electoral Commission, the independent body which oversees elections, said he'd be "concerned if anyone was disenfranchised" as a result of delays.

He told Sky News earlier there had been an "enormous increase" in people choosing postal voting this year - with some 6.7 million ballots having already been sent to voters, filled in and returned.

"That's more than at this stage of the 2019 election," he said.

Mr Rangarajan admitted the system "is under quite a lot of pressure", predicting the number of postal votes to reach as high as 10 million.

That's partly down to Rishi Sunak having called the election to coincide with school summer holidays in Scotland.

But he did seek to reassure people who want to vote by post and still haven't been able to.

"People can put them in the mail as late as tomorrow, the day before polling day," he said, and still be confident they'll be counted.

Tory migration ministerTom Pursglove is now being asked about the Conservatives' Rwanda plan.

He says there are still 85,000 asylum claims that are still undecided, and Sophy Ridge asks if that means all of those people are effectively in a queue to go to Rwanda.

She points out that the scheme is expected to cost £500m to send 5,700 people.

"I just can't get my head around this. It feels ridiculous," she adds.

Mr Pursglove says the point of the policy is to be a deterrent and should help "to put out the business of evil criminal gangs".

He adds that there cannot be a "credible answer" on illegal migration if there isn't a destination to send people to.

"You cannot sit down with the Ayatollahs and talk about a returns' agreement," he says, referring to the leaders of Iran.

Tory minister Steve Baker told Politics Hub With Sophy Ridgelast night he would not rule out running for the party leadership after the election, should the Tories lose as expected.

We ask legal migration minister Tom Pursglove what he makes of his colleague's comments, and he replies: "I think all of us as Conservative politicians, people who are aspiring to become MPs at this election, should be focused on one job, which is to articulate the message on doorsteps over the course of the coming days, and the choice that people have on Thursday."

He says the election is not about "individual aspirations", but winning as many seats as possible.

'There's a job to be done'

Sophy puts to him that at least he was honest when asked, rather than dancing around the question, and Mr Pursglove replies: "I haven't really got much time for posturing.

"I think there's a job to be done, and voters expect us to be talking about them, the issues that they care about at this election."

Later in the interview, we ask the minister for his view on which political direction the Conservative Party should take going into the future.

Mr Pursglove quotes Margaret Thatcher, saying the party should be "on the common ground" and "where the majority of the British people are".

He says that means lower taxes and immigration reduced.

"I think those are the sort of issues that will describe the Conservative offer in the years ago," he adds.

There are just two days to go until the election, and people across the UK vote for the party they want to form the next government.

I know it's probably my job to drum up excitement about the election, to talk about jeopardy, to make it seem close - but let's get real.

We've all seen the polls, and the House of Commons projections.

We've all heard the Conservative message change throughout the campaign - until now the key line is people should vote to stop a Labour "supermajority".

You know a party isn't on course to win when the best they have to offer is "vote for us so we lose rather than get completely annihilated".

And you can also tell because the final skirmishes of the campaign are being fought in Banbury, which has been Conservative for 100 years.

Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer have both visited that leafy part of Oxfordshire in the dying days of the campaign, so I'm not going to insult your intelligence by trying to deny all the signs are pointing towards a comfortable Labour majority.

That's not to say it won't be exciting - we could be looking at only the second change of government in 27 years, and a complete redrawing of the political map of the UK.

The Labour Party is almost certainly going to win a majority bigger than Tony Blair's 179-seat majority in 1997, Survation's final MRP poll before the general election predicts.

The pollster says Sir Keir Starmer will win 484 seats out of 650 - giving him a majority of 318 seats.

The Tories are set to crash to just 64 seats - and the Lib Dems are predicted to make huge gains, winning 61 seats.

Labour is also predicted to overtake the SNP as the largest party in Scotland, with the governing party in Holyrood predicted to win just 10 seats.

Here are the results in full:

• Labour: 484
• Conservatives: 64
• Lib Dems: 61
• SNP: 10
• Reform UK: 7
• Green Party: 3
• Plaid Cymru: 3

The poll is based on 34,558 interviews, using data gathered up until 1 July.