Labour party

The claim: The Conservatives claim Labour would spend an additional £1.2tn over the next five years.Reality Check verdict: Without having seen the Labour Party manifesto, it is impossible to reach an accurate tally. The Conservative Party released a dossier, which claimed that a Labour government would mean extra spending of £1.2tn. The Conservatives arrived at this figure by adding up spending pledges from Labour's manifesto in 2017, commitments made by the shadow cabinet since then and policies passed by the Labour Party conference. But the Labour Party has not yet published its manifesto, so the Conservative Party does not yet know what spending commitments it will contain.Just because certain policy positions were passed at the Labour conference or appeared in Labour's 2017 manifesto, there is no guarantee they will be adopted for 2019.And indeed, more spending pledges have been added, such as the plan to nationalise part of BT, to give free broadband to everyone.That … [Read more...] about General Election 2019: Tory £1.2 trillion Labour spending claim fact-checked

Labour claims NHS under-funding is putting patients at risk and the Tories are warning about a hung parliament, as the election enters its final stretch.With two days to go, Labour is pledging a "relentless focus" on the health service if it wins power.Prime Minister Boris Johnson will try to keep the focus on Brexit and the "danger" of another hung Parliament. In a speech later, he will pledge that the Tories would "smash through the gridlock" if given a majority. The Conservatives are also attacking Labour over the costs of delivering and running new government agencies promised in the party's manifesto.It comes after Mr Johnson faced criticism on Monday over his response to an image of a sick four-year-old boy who had to sleep on the floor of a hospital.In other election developments: Former Labour peer Lord Sugar has launched an attack on Jeremy Corbyn and urged voters to elect a Tory government in an article for The Sun In an interview with The Guardian, Mr Corbyn has stood by … [Read more...] about General election 2019: Labour seeks to keep focus on NHS

As another General Election looms, the battle for No10 will fundamentally be fought and won online. In a special series, we will investigate the tactics and dark arts being used by all of the parties to shape the outcome. Today's Part 12 looks at the pro-EU groups behind tactical voting websites.  While the results of this election are harder than most to predict, one thing is clear; tactical voting is high on the agenda.  Research by BMG and the Electoral Reform Society indicates that one third of people intend to tactically vote on Thursday. And this year, there has been an unprecedented influx of competing tactical voting websites.  The six main sites have all been established by pro-EU... … [Read more...] about Tactical voting sites: How do they work and should you trust them?

Our security is probably weaker than at any time since the Cold War A data firm, Zegami, has published an analysis of all party leaders’ tweets in the first half of this election campaign. There were 764 of them, of which 414 came from either Jeremy Corbyn or Boris Johnson. Of those 764, only two tweets mentioned defence. This is the neatest proof I have so far seen of the instinctive ability of rival political parties to collude. Neither the Tories nor Labour want to talk about defence – the first because they have offered no strategy and not enough money, the second because Labour, under Mr Corbyn’s CND influence, does not believe in the armed services, except as a form of public-sector job... … [Read more...] about Tories and Labour are united in their neglect of British defence

The Reality Check team navigates the most questionable figures that have cropped up in the election campaign.£1.2 trillionOne of the biggest numbers to come out of the campaign so far was £1.2tn, which was the extra amount the Conservative Party said that Labour would spend over the next five years.The initial verdict on this was that the Conservatives could not possibly know this because the Labour manifesto had not yet been published.The dossier was released on 10 November, well before the Labour manifesto was published on 21 November.Now that we do have the manifesto, we can make a list of some of the items that were included in the Conservative costing that were not included, together with how much the Tories said they would cost over five years. Abolishing private schools - £35bn Free school meals for secondary school students - £6.8bn Excluding pensions from the 2% target for defence spending - £3bn That's nearly £45bn.Some of the Conservative … [Read more...] about General election 2019: The campaign’s most controversial numbers