General election news – live: Boris Johnson campaign hit after ‘secret plan to sell off NHS’ revealed, as PM’s most senior adviser warns about hung parliament
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Jeremy Corbyn has released an uncensored version of government documents which he claims shows the NHS is “on the table” in any post-Brexit trade deal with the US. “This is not only a plot against our NHS, it’s a plot against our country,” said the Labour leader.
It comes as a record number of people registered to vote on the final day applications were open, with 660,000 signing up in the huge last-minute spike. Around 450,000 of them were under the age of 35 – the demographic most likely to vote Labour at the general election.
Nicola Sturgeon, meanwhile, has warned “there is worse to come” if the Tories win the election as she launched the SNP manifesto today. She claimed her party can stop the Conservatives “selling off Scotland’s NHS” under any future trade deal with the US.
Corbyn hails 4.1m who registered to vote since end of October
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has thanked those who encouraged people to register to vote, after the deadline passed on Tuesday night.
Corbyn tweeted: “4.1 million registered to vote in the last five weeks, compared to 2.9 million in the same period in 2017. Thank you to the enormous efforts of people across our country who made this happen. Real change is coming.”
Over 2.5m young people have registered to vote since election called
Our friends at Statista have taken a look at the record voter registration surge following last night’s deadline.
More than 2.5m people signing up since the election was called are under the age of 35 – around two-thirds of the total.
Voter registration applications (Statista / Independent)
Islamophobia ‘tolerated’ by the Tories, says MCB
The Muslim Council of Britain spokesman Miqdaad Versi said “people don’t have any trust” in the Tory party’s handling of the issue, adding: “Islamophobia is a specific problem within the Conservative party.”
He told the BBC: “There’s unfortunately a structural problem with Islamophobia within the Conservative Party, where ... Islamophobia is not only tolerated, but people who have engaged in Islamophobia in different ways are let back into the party. If any action is taken in the first place and when they are secretly let back in, we don't know about it.
“There’s no transparency, the processes themselves are not clear and unfortunately people don't have any trust in the way that things happen.
“What we need is transparency, what we need is trust being built up, and we can’t have this deceit where even actually the prime minister goes around saying ‘there’s zero tolerance, people are out on the first bounce’. There’s just example after example after example that that’s not the case.”
Asked if the Equality and Human Rights Commission should investigate the party’s processes, he said: “They definitely need to look at this.”
Housing minister Robert Jenrick said earlier he hoped the Conservatives would launch a review into “prejudice and racism and discrimination” within the party by the end of the year.
Corbyn claims Labour has ‘unredacted documents’ showing NHS is on the table for post-Brexit trade deals
Jeremy Corbyn’s speech on the NHS began with a video with about talks between UK officials and US drug companies – and clip of Trump saying the NHS is “on the table”.
Corbyn says Labour has obtained “451 pages of unredacted documents” about the role of the NHS in future trade deals – and he holds up the government’s redacted version as comparison.
The Labour leader said: “These uncensored documents leave Boris Johnson’s denials in tatters.”
Corbyn claims any NHS deal with US will ‘put lives at risk’
Jeremy Corbyn and shadow trade secretary Barry Gardiner has been answering questions about what they claim to have found – after several NHS staff members hand out the 451 pages of the “unredacted” documents.
Corbyn that the meetings between UK and US government officials took place in Washington and London from July 2017 to “just a few months ago”.
“We are talking here about secret talks for a deal with Donald Trump after Brexit,” he said.
On medicine pricing, the Labour leader said discussions had already been concluded between the two sides on lengthening patents.
“Longer patents can only mean one thing - more expensive drugs. Lives will be put at risk as a result of this,” he said.
Despite wanting to talk about the NHS, the Labour leader is also asked about antisemitism. He pledges that he will lead “the most anti-racist government you’ve ever seen.
Corbyn reveals NHS-related documents in London (EPA)
PM’s ‘new’ Tory manifesto plan for mobile phone blackspots was agreed in last parliament
Boris Johnson is under fire for hailing a “new” £1bn plan to end poor mobile signals after it emerged the deal was struck in the last parliament.
Countryside areas would no longer be dogged by so-called ‘not spots’ through a plan for companies to create a “shared rural network” by 2025, the PM said.
But it was pointed out that the agreement with the mobile phone firms had been reached last month.
All the details here:
Tory candidate calls on PM to apologise for comments about Muslim women
Parvez Akhtar, the Tory candidate for Luton South, has called on Boris Johnson to apologise over his comments about Muslim women – and demands an inquiry into Islamophobia in the party.
He refers to the “hurt and anger caused” by the PM’s own statements about Muslim women (he described hijab-wearing women as resembling “letterboxes”) in his statement – and said it reinforced the “widely held view that the Conservative Party has a blind spot when it comes to Muslims”.
Momentum says 120,000 registered to vote through its Facebook ads
The left-wing, Corbyn-backing Momentum group said just over 122,900 people registered to vote via its voter registration adverts on Facebook between the start of the election campaign and the registration deadline on Tuesday evening.
The campaign group said more than 100,000 of those who registered through Momentum were under the age of 35 – almost all of whom were in marginal constituencies.
Laura Parker, Momentum’s national co-ordinator, said: “People of all ages who have never voted before now have a reason to. They have a chance to break with nine years of the same old Tories running the country into the ground by voting for real change with Labour. December 12 could be the date of the biggest establishment upset in British political history.”
Sturgeon will demand ‘Scotland’s NHS’ protected from US trade deals
Nicola Sturgeon has claimed her party can stop the Conservatives “selling off Scotland’s NHS” under any future trade deal with the US.
Speaking at her party’s manifesto launch in Glasgow, Scotland’s first minister said: “A vote for the SNP is a vote to stop the Tories selling off Scotland’s NHS.”
She said there would be “worse to come” if Johnson remained PM, adding: “This is just the start. Brexit is nowhere near being done. The Tories have barely got going.
“Because of Johnson’s hardline position there’s every chance that the UK could leave without a trade deal next year.” Sturgeon added that, even if Johnson gets the deal he wants before the December 2020 deadline, it will “be a nightmare”.
Sturgeon said her party pledged a second referendum on Brexit while attacking the Labour leader's plans for a neutral stance. “Jeremy Corbyn, incredibly, says that he is neutral on the issue of Leave or Remain … he would be happy to sit back and see Scotland taken out of the EU, even if there is a majority for Remain in Scotland but not in the UK.”
She reiterated her assertion that Brexit will “dominate” Westminster in the coming years, adding that “Scotland will pay a heavy price for the Tories’ Brexit obsession.”
Sturgeon said she was open to forming a “progressive alliance” with other parties following the election. She said: “There is every chance that the SNP could hold the balance of power at Westminster.
“Unlike the Liberal Democrats, the SNP will never, ever help the Tories into government, but we will be prepared to talk to other parties about forming a progressive alliance.”
Andy Burnham will campaign for Leave
The mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham has become the first senior Labour figure to indicate he will campaign for Leave if the party succeeds in forcing a fresh Brexit referendum.
Burnham broke with colleagues – most of whom are committed to backing Remain – to say it would be in “the public interest” to leave the EU with a new, better deal.
“If we get a deal that, you know, keeps us pretty close, with a customs union, I think the public interest will lie, in my view, in supporting that and helping the country move forward,” Burnham said.
Our deputy political editor has the details:
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