General election: Tory peer says majority of party’s MPs will lose their seats

Rishi Sunak had a go at football training and met a young fan of his home team Southampton as he kicked off the first full week on the election campaign trail.

In his first visit of Monday, the Prime Minister took part in drills at Chesham United football ground alongside young players.

Mr Sunak attempted dribbling practice alongside four different age groups: under-eights, under-nines, under-11s and under-16s.

Sir Keir Starmer has described himself as a “socialist” after delivering his first major speech of the election campaign.

The Labour leader also pledged to voters that he would “fight for you” and argued they could trust him because he had “changed this party permanently”.

Sir Keir has faced criticism from some on the left of his party after rowing back on a number of promises he made when running for the party leadership in 2020.

But in an interview with the BBC on Monday, he insisted he was both a “socialist” and a “progressive”, adding: “I’d describe myself as somebody who always puts the country first and party second.”

Putting the country first was a key theme of his speech on Monday, his first major intervention of the campaign, in which he also discussed how his working class upbringing informed his politics.

The experience of seeing his parents choose to cut off their telephone rather than go into debt to pay bills, he said, meant he appreciated the importance of the security and economic stability that have become staples of Labour messages.

It is that focus on stability that Sir Keir said had made it necessary to row back on the promises of 2020, particularly on tuition fees, which he has previously said he wanted to abolish.

Asked if that was still the case, Sir Keir told the audience in Lancing, West Sussex, he thought there was “a powerful case for change”, with scrapping fees an option, but added the “huge damage to the economy done by Liz Truss and the Tories” meant he had to choose between abolishing tuition fees and providing more funding for the NHS.

He said: “I have taken a political choice, which is to say at the moment we have got to prioritise the NHS.”

Outgoing Ealing Southall MP Virendra Sharma has announced he will not be contesting his seat at the July general election.

He said Labour had “gone from our worst result in a century, to the edge of government”.

In a letter to his local party, he said: “As a British-Indian and as a Hindu, as a Labour member, councillor and MP I have never struggled to reconcile those different, but complimentary, identities.

“Over nearly 50 years I have served the party in one form or another. Now I believe the time has come for another chapter to begin.”

Labour’s shadow minister for music and tourism has announced she is standing down from parliament at the general election.

Barbara Keeley said it had “been an honour” to serve as a government whip and deputy leader of the House of Commons during the last Labour government.

The MP for Worsley and Eccles South said in a statement posted on social media: “Recently, I have had treatment in hospital in London after which I was meant to have a six-week recovery period.

“I was back at work in Parliament within two weeks but then the General Election was called unexpectedly early.

“Thinking about the demands of the campaign, including supporting Labour colleagues in battleground seats, has made me realise that now is the time to step aside for a new Labour candidate for the constituency.”

Labour’s shadow minister for victims and sentencing Kevin Brennan has announced that he will not be contesting his seat at the upcoming general election.

The Cardiff West MP said he had initially intended to stand again but decided to step down “after discussing it with my family over the bank holiday weekend”.

He said in a statement: “The job of a Member of Parliament is immensely rewarding but hugely demanding for the individual and their loved ones.

“I have always enjoyed its intensity and challenge, but after surgery for prostate cancer a small seed of doubt was sown as to whether I should continue in such a full-on role.

“Standing again would mean making a commitment to perform the demanding duties of an MP close to my 70th birthday. This has led me to conclude that this is the right moment to stand down.”

Chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party John Cryer has announced that he will stand down from parliament at the general election.

Mr Cryer said he wanted to spend more time with his young children and that the next parliament was “likely to be extremely busy”.

The MP for Leyton and Wanstead added that the next government would “inherit a very tough situation”.

In a letter to his constituents, posted on social media, Mr Cryer said: “This has been an extremely difficult decision, perhaps the most difficult I have ever had to make.

“It has been an immense privilege to have served as your MP for the past 14 years. As you may know, I have two young children and I feel I should try to spend more time with them.”

Mr Cryer, who was MP for Hornchurch from 1997 to 2005, is married to Labour’s deputy national campaign co-ordinator and MP for Lewisham West and Penge Ellie Reeves.

The Conservatives’ launch on TikTok has been branded “pretty pathetic” by an expert who praised Labour’s “savvier” social media team.

Social media has been touted as a key battleground in general elections for many years, but having launched in the UK in August 2018 TikTok was only in its infancy during the last poll in December 2019.

Likely to play a bigger role than ever this election, the Chinese app was banned from Government phones in March 2023 due to data security concerns but both parties launched profiles in recent days.

For better or worse, Brexit got done and Britain took back control, as Sean O’Grady examines what makes political slogans successful and whether they will have an impact on who enters No 10 on 4 July:

Here’s where the UK’s two largest parties stand on some of the key issues: