6:54 am, June 24, 2024
Sunak warns Labour government would be ‘disaster’ as he battles to save campaign
Rishi Sunak will warn that it would take decades to recover from the ‘disaster’ of a Labour government as he seeks to rally Tories to fight for every vote in the closing stages of the General Election campaign.
The prime minister will tell activists they have just 10 days to ‘take our message to every corner of the United Kingdom’ before polls open on July 4.
With the Conservatives still around 20 points behind in the polls and after a bruising few days dominated by allegations about alleged insider betting, Sunak will urge Tories not to ‘surrender’ to Sir Keir Starmer’s party.
Davey warns ’10 days to save NHS’ as figures show long waits for A&E admission
Senior medics warned of a ‘shameful, shocking’ and ‘dangerous’ situation for patients attending England’s A&E departments as figures showed almost 440,000 patients waited 12 hours or more to be admitted last year.
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) said patients were being forced to wait for hours or ‘even days’ on trolleys, increasing the risk to their lives.
Analysis of NHS England figures by the Liberal Democrats showed 439,411 people waited for 12 hours or more after a decision to admit had been made in 2023/24, up from just 3,262 in 2018/19.
Johnson lashes out at Farage over ‘morally repugnant’ Ukraine comments
Boris Johnson has accused Nigel Farage of a ‘morally repugnant’ repetition of Vladimir Putin’s justification for the invasion of Ukraine.
The former prime minister, who has championed the UK’s support of Ukraine, accused the Reform UK leader of spreading ‘Kremlin propaganda’. Farage said he was not an ‘apologis’ for the Russian president but ‘what I have been saying for the past 10 years is that the West has played into Putin’s hands, giving him the excuse to do what he wanted to do anyway’.
Johnson said: ‘The people of Ukraine voted overwhelmingly in 1991 to be a sovereign and independent country. They were perfectly entitled to seek both Nato and EU membership. There is only one person responsible for Russian aggression against Ukraine – both in 2014 and 2022 – and that is Putin. To try to spread the blame is morally repugnant and parroting Putin’s lies.’
Man to stand trial accused of plot to kidnap and murder Holly Willoughby
A shopping centre security officer is to stand trial accused of a plot to kidnap and murder TV presenter Holly Willoughby.
Gavin Plumb is charged with soliciting a man – David Nelson – to commit murder, and incitement to commit kidnap.
The 37-year-old is accused of planning to assemble a ‘kidnap and restraint kit’ and encouraging a third party to travel to the UK to carry out the alleged offences. Plumb, of Harlow, Essex, denied all charges at an earlier hearing at Chelmsford Crown Court.
Listen to this week’s Car Dealer Podcast
James Baggott and Jon Reay sit down with prestige and performance car dealer Steve Hurn. They chat about the week’s top stories.
You can listen on your favourite streaming services.
Manchester Airport flights expected to ‘run as usual’ on Monday after power cut
Flights are expected to ‘run as usual’ on Monday after heavy disruption hit passengers over the weekend due to a major power cut, Manchester Airport said.
The outage, which hit systems in the early hours of Sunday, meant that by lunchtime, 66 outbound flights (25% of all departures) and 50 inbound journeys (18% of all arrivals) were axed, according to aviation analytics company Cirium.
The airport had said no flights were departing from terminals one and two, leading to huge queues and disruption to baggage processing throughout the day.
Typical first-time buyer mortgage payment ‘has jumped by 61% since 2019’
Someone newly getting onto the property ladder can expect to pay around £400 more per month for their mortgage than five years ago, analysis suggests.
Calculations by property website Rightmove suggest the average first-time buyer mortgage payment has risen by 61% since the last General Election year of 2019, from £667 to £1,075 per month.
The calculations made various assumptions, including that first-time buyers would have a 20% deposit to put down, that their mortgage term would last 25 years and that they were taking out a five-year fixed-rate mortgage on an average rate. Rightmove also used average asking prices of a typical first-time buyer homes, with two bedrooms or fewer, for the research.
Weather
A warm day for most of the country with long sunny spells, particularly in the south-east, northern England and southern Scotland, reports BBC Weather. The far north-west may see the odd shower. Highs of 26 degrees in London and the south-east.
Cloud and showers will drift into Northern Ireland and northwest Scotland and showers will move in from the west. Dry and clear elsewhere.
