Tory co-chair braces party for big losses as Kemi Badenoch launches local elections campaign
Good morning. For Keir Starmer, it is a military day. This morning Downing Street has released video footage and pictures of Starmer meeting the crew of a nuclear-armed submarine earlier this week as it returned to Faslane in Scotland. Later this morning he is in Barrow, where he is going to “lay the keel to the first boat of the next generation nuclear armed submarines, knowns as the Dreadnought class”, No 10 says. He is also announcing that “the king has agreed to confer the ‘Royal’ title to the Port of Barrow in recognition of the town’s unique and critical contribution to national security as home of nuclear submarine building in the UK”. And this afternoon, in the south of England, he is going to attend a meeting of military chiefs and planners from the 30-odd countries that are part of the “coalition of the willing” offering to help protect Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire.
I will cover some of that here, but Jakub Krupa will lead the Ukraine-focused coverage on his Europe live blog.
For Kemi Badenoch, a different type of battle planning is on the agenda. She is launching the Conservative party’s local election campaign at an event in Buckinghamshire.
It is going to be a low-key launch, we’re told. Yesterday CCHQ officials were doing their best to persuade lobby journalists that it would not be worth the effort attending. And the overnight words released from Badenoch are story-free. Badenoch says:
The Conservatives are the only party that stands up for families, for rural communities, and for local businesses. Labour pander to the unions, the Lib Dems waste your taxes, and Reform have no experience running anything.
The Conservatives will be your voice in your local community, delivering value for money, lower taxes and better services – so vote Conservative on 1 May.
But Nigel Huddleston, the Conservative party co-chair, gave a clue as to what is really going on in an interview on Sky News this morning. It is not unusual for parties to downplay expectations ahead of local elections, but Huddlestone went overboard, implying that the party is expecting serious losses. He said:
This is us having an election after losing the general election last year, [defending the] high-water mark of the 2021 local elections, where we got an incredible 65% of all seats. That’s about 30% higher than we normally get in local elections. This is following on from the vaccines roll-out. We won the Hartlepool byelection on the same day. So 2021 was a really high-water mark, and that’s what we’re facing against now.
Now, we are fighting for every single vote in every single seat, but it will be difficult.
Are the Tories right to be worried? Probably. Earlier this month Electoral Calculus published some MRP polling for the local elections and the results suggest the Conservatives are on course to lose hundreds of seats.
Electoral Calculus says:
Our prediction is that the Conservatives will lose a large amount of support and councillors to the Reform UK party. The Liberal Democrats are also expected to make some gains, while Labour might lose ground a little. The Green party and independent candidates are more difficult to predict accurately, so their predictions are subject to a greater amount of uncertainty.
What might help the Conservatives is the fact that in some of the council areas where elections should be taking place, voting is being delayed for at least a year because of the local government reorganisations. The predicted election results in the table above are projected figures including places where voting is happening in May, and places where voting is delayed. As this table shows, when they separated the results, Electoral Calculus found that Reform UK were on course to do even better in the places where polling is not happening this year.
Of course, this is only a poll. They are not always accurate. But politicians study them very closely, and CCHQ will have seen figures like this. They explain why Badenoch is no making a fuss of her local elections campaign launch, and why Huddleston is preparing his party for big losses.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Steve Reed, environment secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
9.30am: The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government publishes council tax figures for England for 2025-26.
10.30am: Lucy Powell, the leader of the Commons, makes a statement to MPs on next week’s business.
10.40am: Kemi Badenoch launches the Conservatives’ local election campaign at an event in Buckinghamshire.
Morning: Keir Starmer is in Barrow to lay the keel for the first of the next-generation Dreadnought nuclear-armed submarines that are being built.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
About 11.30am: David Lammy, the foreign secretary, makes a statement to MPs about Gaza.
Noon: John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, takes questions at Holyrood.
12.30pm: Darren Jones, chief secretary to the Treasury, gives a speech at the Institute for Government.
2.30pm: Lammy gives at speech at the British Chambers of Commerce conference.
Afternoon: Starmer attends a military planning meeting for countries from the “coalition of the willing” offering to help protect Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
Key events
Disabled people’s access to transport in UK a ‘national embarrassment’, MPs say
Disabled people’s access to transport has been called a “national embarrassment” by MPs on a parliamentary committee, who said a new enforcement regime was needed to uphold their right to travel. Gwyn Topham has the story.
Jesse Norman, the shadow leader of the Commons, paid tribute to his father, Sir Torquil Norman, who has just died, during business questions in the chamber this morning. Torquil Norman’s toy company created the Polly Pocket brand.
His son told MPs:
Almost exactly 24 hours ago, my father Torquil Norman died at the age of 91. He was an extraordinary man who flew Seafires and Sea Furies during his national service in the Fleet Air Arm.
He created Polly Pocket, a toy which bought unbelievable joy to millions of young people around the House and around the world.
And he rebuilt the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm in London, not just as an incredible performing arts centre but as a creative centre for young people and for them to find their way from whatever backgrounds into jobs.
One person has died trying to cross the Channel in an overloaded boat, after another person died earlier attempting the same journey, according to the French authorities, Diane Taylor reports.
Tories confirm their policy review to look at council tax as figures show average bills in England up £109
The average Band D council tax bill in England will rise by £109, or 5%, in 2025-26 according to government figures released this morning. The average Band D total bill will be £2,280, up from £2,171.
In an interview on the Today programme this morning, Nigel Huddleston, the Tory co-chair, said his party’s policy review would consider alternative approaches. He said:
We’re going to be using our time in opposition very wisely and Kemi [Badenoch] laid out earlier this week the policy renewal work and policy renewal programme that we will be doing, which will look at every single area of government – and obviously council tax is an area of major concern because it is an important part of people’s annual expenditure.
Barrow-in-Furness is a “blueprint” for how increasing defence spending can boost prosperity across the UK, Keir Starmer has said ahead of a visit to the town at the heart of Britain’s submarine-building industry. PA Media says:
Keir Starmer will lay the keel for the next generation of Britain’s nuclear deterrent submarines when he visits the Cumbrian town today, as he argues his plans to boost defence spending will help fulfil his mission to grow the economy.
Just days ago, Starmer secretly joined a crew of submariners as they returned home to their families for the first time in months, making him the first prime minister to join a so-called “day zero” since 2013.
King Charles is meanwhile due to confer the Port of Barrow with the title “Royal”, to recognise the town’s contribution towards national security as a hub of submarine building.
In February, the prime minister announced the government will increase defence spending to 2.5% of the UK’s economic output by 2027, something which ministers think will help drive economic growth and create jobs across the UK.
The prime minister said: “When I say that our Plan for Change is delivering security for working people and renewal for our country, there is no better blueprint than Barrow.
“Defence spending here is supporting highly skilled jobs, driving opportunities for young people and delivering world class capabilities to keep us all safe, but it’s also crucially putting money in the pockets of hardworking people.”
SNP claims cuts planned by Rachel Reeves in spring statement means Labour lied to Scots about no return to austerity
In today’s Guardian splash Kiran Stacey, Pippa Crerar and Jessica Elgot reveal that Rachel Reeves will announce the biggest spending cuts since austerity at next week’s spring statement.
This is particularly difficult for Labour in Scotland, where their main opponents, the SNP, are fiercely anti-austerity and Labour MSPs are split over whether to defend the economic policies of the UK government or criticise them.
Commenting on the Guardian’s story, Dave Doogan, the SNP’s economy spokersperson at Westminster, said:
People in Scotland will never forgive the Labour party for imposing a new era of devastating austerity cuts on public services and household incomes.
It’s clear the Labour party lied to voters during the election. They promised no return to austerity cuts but they are cutting billions of pounds from vital services.
UK data recording of biological sex causing potential risks, report finds
Official UK data recording people’s biological sex and their gender identity is often unclear or conflated, a government-commissioned report has found, causing confusion and potential risks, for example in healthcare and safeguarding. Peter Walker has the story.
Tory co-chair braces party for big losses as Kemi Badenoch launches local elections campaign
Good morning. For Keir Starmer, it is a military day. This morning Downing Street has released video footage and pictures of Starmer meeting the crew of a nuclear-armed submarine earlier this week as it returned to Faslane in Scotland. Later this morning he is in Barrow, where he is going to “lay the keel to the first boat of the next generation nuclear armed submarines, knowns as the Dreadnought class”, No 10 says. He is also announcing that “the king has agreed to confer the ‘Royal’ title to the Port of Barrow in recognition of the town’s unique and critical contribution to national security as home of nuclear submarine building in the UK”. And this afternoon, in the south of England, he is going to attend a meeting of military chiefs and planners from the 30-odd countries that are part of the “coalition of the willing” offering to help protect Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire.
I will cover some of that here, but Jakub Krupa will lead the Ukraine-focused coverage on his Europe live blog.
For Kemi Badenoch, a different type of battle planning is on the agenda. She is launching the Conservative party’s local election campaign at an event in Buckinghamshire.
It is going to be a low-key launch, we’re told. Yesterday CCHQ officials were doing their best to persuade lobby journalists that it would not be worth the effort attending. And the overnight words released from Badenoch are story-free. Badenoch says:
The Conservatives are the only party that stands up for families, for rural communities, and for local businesses. Labour pander to the unions, the Lib Dems waste your taxes, and Reform have no experience running anything.
The Conservatives will be your voice in your local community, delivering value for money, lower taxes and better services – so vote Conservative on 1 May.
But Nigel Huddleston, the Conservative party co-chair, gave a clue as to what is really going on in an interview on Sky News this morning. It is not unusual for parties to downplay expectations ahead of local elections, but Huddlestone went overboard, implying that the party is expecting serious losses. He said:
This is us having an election after losing the general election last year, [defending the] high-water mark of the 2021 local elections, where we got an incredible 65% of all seats. That’s about 30% higher than we normally get in local elections. This is following on from the vaccines roll-out. We won the Hartlepool byelection on the same day. So 2021 was a really high-water mark, and that’s what we’re facing against now.
Now, we are fighting for every single vote in every single seat, but it will be difficult.
Are the Tories right to be worried? Probably. Earlier this month Electoral Calculus published some MRP polling for the local elections and the results suggest the Conservatives are on course to lose hundreds of seats.
Electoral Calculus says:
Our prediction is that the Conservatives will lose a large amount of support and councillors to the Reform UK party. The Liberal Democrats are also expected to make some gains, while Labour might lose ground a little. The Green party and independent candidates are more difficult to predict accurately, so their predictions are subject to a greater amount of uncertainty.
What might help the Conservatives is the fact that in some of the council areas where elections should be taking place, voting is being delayed for at least a year because of the local government reorganisations. The predicted election results in the table above are projected figures including places where voting is happening in May, and places where voting is delayed. As this table shows, when they separated the results, Electoral Calculus found that Reform UK were on course to do even better in the places where polling is not happening this year.
Of course, this is only a poll. They are not always accurate. But politicians study them very closely, and CCHQ will have seen figures like this. They explain why Badenoch is no making a fuss of her local elections campaign launch, and why Huddleston is preparing his party for big losses.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Steve Reed, environment secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
9.30am: The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government publishes council tax figures for England for 2025-26.
10.30am: Lucy Powell, the leader of the Commons, makes a statement to MPs on next week’s business.
10.40am: Kemi Badenoch launches the Conservatives’ local election campaign at an event in Buckinghamshire.
Morning: Keir Starmer is in Barrow to lay the keel for the first of the next-generation Dreadnought nuclear-armed submarines that are being built.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
About 11.30am: David Lammy, the foreign secretary, makes a statement to MPs about Gaza.
Noon: John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, takes questions at Holyrood.
12.30pm: Darren Jones, chief secretary to the Treasury, gives a speech at the Institute for Government.
2.30pm: Lammy gives at speech at the British Chambers of Commerce conference.
Afternoon: Starmer attends a military planning meeting for countries from the “coalition of the willing” offering to help protect Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
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