UK general election live: Starmer will try to set up ‘permanent Labour government’ if he wins, James Cleverly claims

Good morning. Rishi Sunak has always sounded unconvincing when he tells interviewers that he genuinely thinks the Conservative party could win the general election but last night, after England’s victory in the Euros, he was able to post this message on X giving Tories a crumb of hope. “It’s not over until its over,” he said.

Of course, the analogy is not exact. England were rescued by a player capable of brilliance.

With only three full days of campaigning left to go, the parties are reverting to their core messages and, for the Conservative party, it is not in fact ‘we could still win’, but ‘don’t let Labour win with a massive majority’. James Cleverly, the home secretary, has been doing an interview round this morning and he claimed Keir Starmer would want to establish “a permanent Labour government” if he won. Cleverly told the BBC:

The reason that this is so important is because Labour have already said they are going to gerrymander the system, they have said they’re going to pack out the House of Lords, they’ve said they’re going to get votes at 16, they’re going to get votes for foreign nationals, they’re probably going to get votes for criminals.

They are determined to have a permanent Labour government and they are quite willing to distort the British political system to get that – that is what is at stake. This is not an election which is about giving the Conservatives a bit of a telling off, and many people might think that is legitimate …

[Labour] have said they’re going to distort the political system and I think there’s a real risk, there is a genuine risk, that they take a majority if that is what they get to try and lock in their power permanently, because they don’t really feel confident that they’re going to be able to make a credible case to the British people at the next general election.

As Kiran Stacey reports, Rishi Sunak will be making a similar argument in speeches today.

Here is the agenda for the day.

8.30am: Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, is campaigning in Eastbourne. Later he will be in Wokingham and the Cotswolds.

9.45am: Keir Starmer is campaigning in Hertfordshire. Later he will be in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.

10.30am: Rishi Sunak has a campaign visit in Staffordshire, where he will take part in a Q&A. In the afternoon he will be in the West Midlands, and in the evening in the East Midlands.

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