Reform UK plans â\x80\x98donâ\x80\x99t add upâ\x80\x99 and costings are out â\x80\x98by tens of billions of pounds per yearâ\x80\x99, says IFS â\x80\x93 UK general election live | General election 2024

In the Times this morning Steven Swinford said Rishi Sunak was being urged by senior colleagues to be much more personal in his attacks on Keir Starmer. In his story Swinford said:

One cabinet minister said: â\x80\x9cRishi is a really nice and deeply honourable guy. Iâ\x80\x99m not sure whether heâ\x80\x99s uncomfortable instinctively with the personalised attacks but it has been more generalised so far.â\x80\x9d

The minister said that one of Starmerâ\x80\x99s most difficult moments during the election campaign came when Beth Rigby, the Sky News presenter, questioned him over his endorsement of Corbyn as a potential â\x80\x9cgreat prime ministerâ\x80\x9d.

â\x80\x9cHe was really uncomfortable,â\x80\x9d the minister said. â\x80\x9cWe need to learn from that and be much more explicit in our approach. This guy has never maintained a consistent positionâ\x80\x9d â\x80¦

Another cabinet minister said: â\x80\x9c(Sunak) needs to make it personal. I think he was very badly affected by D-Day (returning from commemorations early) but he needs to go after Starmer now. Rishi getting us 140 to 180 MPs now would be a good result. I donâ\x80\x99t think there are any other options left.â\x80\x9d

A senior Tory said: â\x80\x9cStarmer has been given a relatively easy ride. The core problem with Starmer is that he is untrustworthy. He is a grifter who has changed his position when it suits his career. Rishi needs to go for the jugular. His natural instincts are not to go for the jugular. That can be useful. But itâ\x80\x99s not useful when youâ\x80\x99re in a fight to the death. The question is whether the Tories will end up with closer to 100 seats or closer to 200.â\x80\x9d

Asked about the report, Starmer said it showed the Tories were â\x80\x9cdesperateâ\x80\x9d. He said:

Thatâ\x80\x99s all theyâ\x80\x99ve got left after 14 desperate years. You get to to the last weeks and their only thing theyâ\x80\x99ve got left is to attack me personally, I think that tells you everything.â\x80\x9d

If they had a record to stand on, they would go into the final two weeks saying these are the brilliant things weâ\x80\x99ve done but they havenâ\x80\x99t got a record to stand on and if they said theyâ\x80\x99d done brilliantly people would laugh at them. This is desperate.

Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, has said that it is â\x80\x9cridiculousâ\x80\x9d for Nigel Farage to think of himself as a potential prime minister. (See 8.59am.)

In an interview with Times Radio, asked to respond to what Farage said about being a realistic candidate for PM by the end of the decade, Gove said:

Ridiculous. Nigel Farage is part of a great entertainment machine. He is not someone who can govern this country.

Reform is a giant ego trip, not a serious programme of alternative change. Nigel Farage provides amusement and diversion. What he does not provide is authority and good governance.

In this country, whoever we vote for in the end, the British people choose authoritative, sensible managers, whether from the left or the right.

What they donâ\x80\x99t do, is go in for the performative politics that Nigel has made such a successful financial career out of.

Gove, of course, once ran the campaign to get Boris Johnson elected PM. And, after Johnson was elected, Gove served in his government.

Dan Neidle, the campaigner and tax expert who runs a tax policy not-for-profit consultancy, has published an analysis of the Reform UK plans. He claims that because they are unrealistic, they amount to unfunded plans of at least £38bn â\x80\x93 which he says is twice as bad as what Liz Truss was proposing in her mini-budget. He says:

Reform UK has published its manifesto. They plan tax cuts which they say will cost £70bn; however our analysis shows that theyâ\x80\x99ve miscalculated, and the actual cost will be at least £93bn.

Reform UK says it will fund these tax costs with £70bn of savings and additional revenue, but it provides few details. Their proposal to change Bank of England reserve rules is over-stated by at least £15bn, and the cost would likely fall on businesses and consumers, not banks.

These two factors mean that Reform UKâ\x80\x99s plans have a total unfunded cost of at least £38bn â\x80\x93 about twice the unfunded cost of Liz Trussâ\x80\x99 ill-fated 2022 â\x80\x9cmini-budgetâ\x80\x9d.

We hope other estimates become available soon, but for the moment this is the only currently available estimate of the impact of Reform UKâ\x80\x99s proposals. We asked Reform UK for the calculations they had used; they did not respond.

At his press conference Nigel Farage, the Reform UK, rejected the comparison to with Liz Truss. (See 2.06pm.) But that was on the basis that his plans were propertly costed, a claim not accepted by reputable economists.

Keir Starmer has claimed that a letter by Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, to his constituents shows some of the tax cuts in the Conservative manifesto are unfunded.

The Tories say they would fund some of their tax cuts by welfare reform measures that would save £12bn by the end of the decade. In a letter to constituents, Hunt said that he announced â\x80\x9can enormous back to work programmeâ\x80\x9d in the autumn statement last year and that the savings, worth around £12bn, would fund the manifesto tax cuts.

Starmer said today:

What has emerged this morning is truly extraordinary because what youâ\x80\x99ve got is no less than the chancellor admitting that the money that they were pretending was available in their manifesto for their desperate policies is in fact money thatâ\x80\x99s already been accounted for.

So that means youâ\x80\x99ve got a manifesto from the Tories which isnâ\x80\x99t worth the paper on which it is written because it is completely unfunded.

It is extraordinary â\x80\x93 the fact that it has come from the chancellor I think makes it even more extraordinary.

Hunt did announce his back to work programme in the autumn statement, but at the time he did not say it would raise £12bn. Full details of what was planned were unclear because it was not specified how many people would see their benefits cut, or by how much.

In its assessment of the Tory manifesto last week, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said:

The trouble is the policies that have been spelt out are not up to the challenge of saving £12bn a year. Some have already been announced and included in the official fiscal forecasts; others are unlikely to deliver sizeable savings on the timescale that the Conservatives claim.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank has published its assessment of Reform UKâ\x80\x99s tax and spending plans and it says they â\x80\x9cdonâ\x80\x99t add upâ\x80\x9d. And they are not just relatively unrealistic, it says. It says the costings are out â\x80\x9cby a margin of tens of billions of pounds per yearâ\x80\x9d.

Here is a an excerpt from the analysis.

Reform UK proposes tax cuts that it estimates would cost nearly £90bn per year, and spending increases of £50bn per year. It claims that it would pay for these through £150bn per year of reductions in other spending, covering public services, debt interest and working-age benefits.

This would represent a big cut to the size of the state. Regardless of the pros and cons of shrinking the state, or of any of their specific measures, the package as a whole is problematic. Spending reductions would save less than stated, and the tax cuts would cost more than stated, by a margin of tens of billions of pounds per year. Meanwhile the spending increases would cost more than stated if they are to achieve their objectives â\x80¦

Even with the extremely optimistic assumptions about how much economic growth would increase, the sums in this manifesto do not add up. Whilst Reformâ\x80\x99s manifesto gives a clear sense of priority, a government could only implement parts of this package, or would need to find other ways to help pay for it, which would mean losers not specified.

Keir Starmer has confirmed that the Labour peer Michael Cashman has had the whip suspended after accusing the partyâ\x80\x99s Canterbury candidate, Rosie Duffield, of being too â\x80\x9cfrit or lazyâ\x80\x9d to attend hustings.

Speaking to reporters today, Starmer said what Cashman said was â\x80\x9cparticularly inappropriate and thatâ\x80\x99s why the support of the whip was withdrawn as it was very swiftlyâ\x80\x9d.

After the backlash to his remarks, Cashman, a former EastEnders actors and MEP, said:

I apologise unreservedly for a post that I put out regarding the Labour candidate for Canterbury. I fully understand any complaints that will be sent to the Labour party.

Rishi Sunak has said that he understands why voters are frustrated, but that Britain is now â\x80\x9con the right trackâ\x80\x9d.

Speaking on a visit to a Centrica gas rig in the North Sea, he said:

Thereâ\x80\x99s still two-and-a-half weeks to go in this election, Iâ\x80\x99m fighting hard for every vote because I believe we can win.

Asked if he understood why people were frustrated and tempted to vote for Reform UK,

Of course I understand peopleâ\x80\x99s frustrations with that, I mean thatâ\x80\x99s undeniable, and Iâ\x80\x99ve been very clear that we have made progress but there is more to go.

But the point now is we are on the right track and this election is about the future.

The choice is clear: if you want your border secure and migration down, if you want your taxes cut, your pension protected, itâ\x80\x99s only the Conservatives that are going to deliver that for you.

Libby Brooks

The Scottish Liberal Democrats launched their manifesto at a farm near Edinburgh, where leader Alex Cole-Hamilton arrived on a tractor in true to Ed Davey-style â\x80\x93 and narrowly avoided bumping into one of his candidates.

The Scottish Lib Dems are hopeful of taking a clutch of seats from the SNP in Scotland, including Mid Dunbartonshire, where former leader Jo Swinson was defeated by votes in 2019. Their focus is regaining status as third largest party in Westminster with all the additional status and coverage that brings and which the SNP has put to good use.

This morningâ\x80\x99s manifesto was a mix of crowd-pleasers, some of which are actually the remit of the Holyrood parliament â\x80\x93 eg faster access to GPs and dentists.

Cole-Hamilton admitted that half an eye is on the Holyrood elections in 2026, telling the BBC: â\x80\x9cAs soon as this election is over, we will be focusing on the change that is coming for Scotland as well.â\x80\x9d

The manifesto includes is a £500m â\x80\x9crescue package for careâ\x80\x9d, enabling people to be discharged from hospital and creating a carerâ\x80\x99s minimum wage, as well as support for Scottish farmers who have been â\x80\x9ctaken for granted by government in Edinburgh and Londonâ\x80\x9d. There is also a 10-year plan to upgrade homes to make them warmer and cheaper to heat.

Q: Are you giving people hope, or is this just a list of things to hate?

Farage says people always think he just attracts a protest vote. That is what they said about Ukip.

But people voted Ukip because they believed in what he was saying.

He claims the biggest beneficiaries from the ideas in this document could be people trapped on benefits, or trapped on low incomes.

He goes on:

There is a lot more here, far more here, for those on the lowest end of the income scale than there is for anybody else.