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England and Wales are holding a series of elections on Thursday, with several regional mayors and police and crime commissioners being decided as well as council seats up for grabs. Polling stations will be open from 7am to 10pm.
Wednesday 1 May 2024 23:28, UK
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Guto Harri, the former Number 10 director of communications under Boris Johnson, has said it is a “realistic prospect” the Conservatives could move against Rishi Sunak if the results of the local elections are bad.
“I think that would be mad and unfair, but I think it’s a realistic prospect now,” he tells Sophy Ridge.
“It’s clear that one or two mayoral contests could be read as the trigger. It could be that the overall number is so bad that that is the trigger.”
‘It can be very brutal’
Mr Harri says that, by Sunday, there could be conversations across Westminster on whether Tory MPs could move against Mr Sunak.
“It can happen very, very quickly, and it can be very brutal,” noting the speed at which his old boss Mr Johnson was toppled.
Andrew Fisher, former head of policy for Jeremy Corbyn, says that, in contrast, Thursday could be a good night for Labour.
“It’s clearly going to be a bad night for Rishi Sunak,” he says.
We’ll be back from 6am as polls prepare to open in local elections across the country, with mayoral and police commissioner votes also planned.
Until then, here are the headlines:
Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf has resigned – days after he cut the SNP’s powersharing deal with the Scottish Greens.
It followed a bitter row over the SNP’s climbdown on climate targets as he said the agreement between the parties had “served its purpose”.
As a result, his former Green allies teamed up with the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats to get behind two no-confidence motions, one in himself as leader of Scotland and another regarding the entire Scottish government.
Now attention turns to another SNP leadership contest and what the divisions in Scottish politics could mean for the future of the independence campaign.
On the Sky News Daily, Matt Barbet speaks to Paul Hutcheon, political editor of the Daily Record, and Shona Craven, from The National, about how the SNP can move on after Mr Yousaf’s resignation.
Plus, Connor Gillies, our Scotland correspondent, explains how the leadership election will unfold.
Sir Keir Starmer told Sky News today he doesn’t “believe” in the government’s Rwanda scheme.
He said Labour would ditch it, vowing not to “flog a dead horse”.
His plan would be to “stop the gangs that are running this vile trade” of smuggling people across the Channel, working with law enforcement in Europe.
“And that’s why I’ve already had discussions in The Hague (including with EU law enforcement agency Europol) about how quickly we can share data intelligence to do that,” he said.
“I’m absolutely determined to tackle this problem because the government has lost control of the borders.”
Watch more below:
It’s been three years since the 2,600 council seats up for grabs this week were in play – and Sir Keir Starmer couldn’t be in more different place as he goes into polling day.
Back in 2021, facing an ascending Boris Johnson, Sir Keir lost the Hartlepool by-election, hundreds of councillors and a clutch of councils.
It was, Sir Keir tells me on his final election rally in the Essex town of Harlow – where Labour wants to take the council off the Tories this week and win the constituency back at the general election – a “low point”, as he confirmed for the first time that he considered quitting as the results came in and the Johnson inflatable blimp flew high over Hartlepool.
“I did [consider quitting] because I didn’t feel that I should be bigger than the party and that if I couldn’t bring about the change, perhaps there should be a change,” he said.
“But actually in the end I reflected on it, talked to very many people and doubled down and determined no it is the change in the Labour Party we need.”
You can read more from Beth below:
A trade union representing senior civil servants has submitted an application for a judicial review against the government’s controversial plan to send migrants to Rwanda.
The FDA said its move related to the relationship of the Civil Service Code with the government’s Safety of Rwanda Act.
The union said that under the act a minister could determine whether to comply with an order made by the European Court of Human Rights.
A direction to ignore such an order would breach international law, which conflicts with the duty of civil servants under the Civil Service Code to act in compliance with the law, which includes international law, said the FDA.
General secretary Dave Penman said it was not a decision the union had taken lightly, adding: “The government has had plenty of time to include an explicit provision in the act regarding breaking international law commitments which would have resolved this but it chose not to.
“Civil servants should never be left in a position where they are conflicted between the instructions of ministers and adhering to the Civil Service Code, yet that is exactly what the government has chosen to do.
“This is not an accident, or down to poor drafting. It’s a political choice from the government, made not for the good of the country but to avoid upsetting either of the warring factions within its own party.”
Mr Penman said the union had to protect the interests of its members and the integrity of the Civil Service Code.
A government spokesperson said: “The Home Office already sought advice from the director general of proprietary and ethics in the Cabinet Office on the issue of the Civil Service Code and claims over the legality of implementing the Rwanda deportation scheme under the new legislation.”
The week has kicked off with a huge political story – the resignation of Humza Yousaf – and will end with another, as voters across England and Wales turn out for the local elections.
Sky’s political reporter Alexandra Rogers has looked ahead to a potentially defining night for Rishi Sunak’s premiership, when hundreds of council seats, police and crime commissioner jobs, and mayoral posts will be up for grabs.
Read her full explainer below:
The Tory mayor of the West Midlands is sending voters an endorsement from Boris Johnson which urges people to “forget about the government”, Sky News can reveal.
Andy Street’s campaign website makes no mention of Rishi Sunak on its homepage and is coloured in green rather than Conservative blue, suggesting the mayor is trying to run on his credentials as an independent campaigner rather than under the unpopular Tory brand.
Other campaign literature – including the front page of a campaign “newspaper” seen by Sky News – makes no mention of the Conservative leader.
You can read more from Sky News below:
The Sky News live poll tracker – collated and updated by our Data and Forensics team – aggregates various surveys to indicate how voters feel about the different political parties.
With the local election campaign well under way, Labour is still sitting comfortably ahead, with the Tories trailing behind.
See the latest update below – and you can read more about the methodology behind the tracker here.
By Sam Coates, deputy political editor
More than 2,600 seats are up for election in 107 English councils on Thursday.
Now, YouGov has made its final calls for some key contests using the MRP polling method after interviewing almost 9,000 people over two weeks.
Here, exclusively on Sky News, are the headlines.
We’ll start with two key battlegrounds…
By Tomos Evans, Wales reporter
Calls for an investigation into a £200,000 donation to Welsh First Minister Vaughan Gething have intensified in recent weeks.
A motion calling for an independent probe into the money was debated in the Senedd on Wednesday and defeated by 27 votes to 25.
But former deputy climate change minister Lee Waters said Mr Gething should do “the right thing” and return the donation.
Mr Gething was elected leader of Welsh Labour in March and succeeded Mark Drakeford as Wales’s first minister.
Opposition parties launched a bid to appoint an independent advisor to check whether there was any conflict of interest over the donation during the leadership campaign.
You can read more from Sky News below:
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