General election: Farage's plan to stand aside in Tory seats amounts to 'Trump alliance', says Corbyn - as it happened

The Lib Dems have “immediately opened disciplinary investigations” into tweets that appear to have been posted by Kevin McNamara, the party’s candidate for Thurrock.

A serious of screenshots purporting to show tweets from his account appeared on social media this evening. The account has now been locked and tweets are no longer visible to people not following it.

Nigel Farage is facing calls from Brexit supporters to stand down further candidates to help Boris Johnson after he made a dramatic public U-turn by agreeing to withdraw his party from all Conservative-held seats, my colleagues Kate Proctor, Rowena Mason and Heather Stewart write.

The Brexit party leader claimed he had changed his mind about fielding candidates in 317 seats held by the Tories after Johnson released a video pledging to take Britain out of the EU by 2020 and to pursue a Canada-style trade deal.

The abrupt nature of Farage’s reversal prompted claims from Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP that he and Johnson had struck a secret pact in favour of a hard Brexit, which both sides denied. Farage admitted he had been offered a peerage by the Tories as recently as last Friday but claimed he had turned this down.

Senior Tories are now pressing behind the scenes for Farage to make further concessions and stand back in Labour-held target seats, after Farage conceded that the presence of his party in those contests could lead to a hung parliament and a second referendum.

Farage claimed he now had more “optimism” about Johnson’s Brexit deal after the prime minister’s clarifications, having previously condemned it as a “sellout” and not a real Brexit.

I have got no great love for the Conservative party at all, but I can see right now that by giving Boris half a chance … and stopping the fanatics in the Liberal Democrats – they even want to revoke the result of the referendum – I think our action, our announcement today, prevents a second referendum from happening.

A former aide to Boris Johnson is facing calls to stand down as an election candidate after Labour accused him of “disgusting racism” over some of his writings that blame immigrants for bringing germs and HIV to the UK and accuse Muslims of having divided loyalties.

Labour called on the prime minister to personally intervene to stop Anthony Browne from contesting the seat of South Cambridgeshire, saying his writings from 2002 and 2003 were “shocking” and “despicable”. In an article for the Spectator, Browne wrote:

It is not through letting in terrorists that the government’s policy of mass migration – especially from the third world – will claim the most lives. It is through letting in too many germs.

After the Cobra meeting was announced, a Labour spokesman said

If these floods had happened in Surrey, this would have happened five days ago.

The prime minister will chair a Cobra meeting on Tuesday to discuss the government’s response to recent flooding, Downing Street has said.

The emergency meeting will be held five days after the flooding hit large parts of northern England and the Midlands.

We reported earlier that the Labour leader was urging him to take such action and suggested that, had the flooding occurred in south-eastern England, it’s likely it would have been declared a national emergency (see 6.37pm).

The former Conservative MP, Nick Boles, has torn into both his own ex-colleagues and the Labour leadership this evening. Formerly a close ally of Boris Johnson, Boles reserves some of his harshest criticism for the prime minister.

In an article for the Evening Standard, he writes:

In years to come, it will be known as the Appalling Choice of 2019. It will be cited alongside classical mythology’s Scylla and Charybdis — the one a six-headed monster and the other a whirlpool — spelling death and destruction for any passing ship. It will be recorded as the only election in modern times in which you wouldn’t trust either of the prime ministerial candidates to mind your children for an hour, let alone run the country.

In the blue corner, we have a compulsive liar who has betrayed every single person he has ever had any dealings with: every woman who has ever loved him, every member of his family, every friend, every colleague, every employee, every constituent.

As a senior member of his cabinet once put it to me: ‘You can always rely on Boris...to let you down’. His bumbling braggadocio disguises an all-consuming ego utterly without conscience, empathy or restraint.

In the red corner is a blinkered Pharisee, a man so convinced of his own rectitude that he sees no contradiction between his pious homilies about racism and equality and a lifetime of support for terrorists, murderers and racist thugs. Like all leaders of a totalitarian mindset, he is entirely uninterested in the lives of individual human beings. He cares only for classes and factions, and the struggle between abstract political forces.

Boles adds that he would be voting Lib Dem at the upcoming election.

Each weekday evening for the duration of the campaign, my colleague Andrew Sparrow will be putting together an election briefing. You can read today’s here:

Nigel Farage’s unilateral announcement that he will engage in a one-way electoral pact with the Conservatives will be an undoubted relief to Boris Johnson, but the benefit may be more limited than it first appears.

Headline polling data already indicated that the Brexit party was being successfully squeezed by the Tories’ pro-Brexit strategy. Its polling average had slumped from 12% in the third week of October to its current 9%.

A former Brexit party candidate is defying Nigel Farage’s decision to step aside in Tory-held seats and will stand as an independent instead. Neil Greaves, from the Harlow constituency in Essex, criticised Farage’s approach:

Nigel has let Brexiteers down ... he should be standing up for the 17.4 million people who voted for Brexit. I don’t regard Boris Johnson’s deal as Brexit. It’s not even close.

Farage has been totally outmanoeuvred and out-negotiated without Boris [Johnson] even having to say anything. He says Boris is going to come out on 20 December – really? You believe him?

The constituency voted 68% to leave in the EU referendum but Robert Halfon, the Conservative candidate who won the seat with a majority of more than 7,000 in 2017, backed remain in the referendum. That led Greaves to claim that his pulling out of the race would mean there “won’t be a leave option for Harlow”.

To do a blanket ‘oh we’re not going to stand in Tory seats’ is silly, it’s more nuanced than that. There’s a big centre ground open and I thought we would take that but [Farage] has played a particularly bad hand since Boris became Tory leader – he allied himself too much to the Tories.

His fellow former Brexit party candidate, Ruth Jolley, said she “respected” Farage’s decision but was “disappointed” the people of her South West Norfolk constituency would not be able to vote for a Brexit party candidate.

For me, the Brexit party was about more than Brexit; it was a chance to change politics for good and shake up our institutions.

The former civil servant, who now runs a pet care business, said she would continue to campaign for Brexit party candidates elsewhere but will not vote in the election.

I couldn’t vote for those who are standing in my constituency in all good conscience. I couldn’t vote for Liz Truss (the local Conservative candidate and cabinet minister) because I do think the Tories have negotiated a terrible deal.

Over at the Guardian’s general election fact check desk, my colleague Hilary Osborne has had a look at Emily Thornberry’s claim the UK’s armed forces have “effectively had a pay cut over the last few years”:

The SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, has been seeking to portray the Tories as increasingly in thrall to Nigel Farage after the latter announced that his Brexit party will not stand candidates in Conservative-held seats.

We reported earlier that Sturgeon had said that any form of Brexit that would be acceptable to Farage would be bad for Scotland (see 3.45pm). Here’s a little more on those comments:

The Brexit party’s announcement today really does underline the fact that Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage are joined at the hip and, frankly, any form of Brexit that is acceptable to Nigel Farage is going to be deeply damaging for Scotland.

I suspect there are many traditional Tory party voters here in Scotland and elsewhere across the UK who will be appalled to learn that their party has effectively become the Brexit party.

If you vote Tory, you get the Brexit party and its view of the world and I don’t think that’s what the vast majority of the people in Scotland want. We see a Tory party becoming ever more extreme and rightwing, and out of touch with the majority of people in Scotland.

It really does underline the view that if you don’t take Scotland’s future into Scotland’s hands at this election, then the danger is our future is imposed upon us by Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage.

If the flooding that hit the Midlands and northern England at the end of last week had happened in the south-east, it’s more likely it would have been declared a national emergency, the Labour leader has claimed.

Jeremy Corbyn has urged the prime minister to hold a Cobra meeting and take personal charge of the government’s response as he says his party’s analysis suggests the Environment Agency has lost a fifth of its frontline staff under Tory-led governments.

Here is the full text of his letter to Boris Johnson:

Over the past few days, we have both visited those affected by the devastating floods across Yorkshire and the east Midlands.

You’ll know that hundreds of homes have been flooded and over a thousand properties have now been evacuated. Our hearts go out to those affected, including the friends and family of Annie Hall.

With heavy rain expected in parts of Yorkshire and the Midlands, in areas that are already suffering from flooding, hundreds of further flood warnings are in place. Rightly, there will be hundreds of thousands of people across these regions who remain concerned about their families and livelihoods.

With this in mind, I am writing to urge you to hold a Cobra meeting and take personal charge of the government’s response to the devastating flooding we have seen over the past few days. In addition, we need full assurance from the government that every resource is being utilised to aid those that need it and protect against future potential floods.

With dozens of flood warnings still in place, I have to disagree with your assessment from the weekend that this is not a ‘national emergency’. If this had happened in Surrey, not Yorkshire or the east Midlands, it seems far more likely that a national emergency would have been declared. Every year we don’t act means higher flood waters, more homes ruined and more lives at risk due to climate change.

The government also must ensure that the insurance industry fulfils its responsibilities. In addition, going forward the industry must continue to provide insurance at an affordable level to householders.

I urge you again to hold a Cobra meeting to ensure all is being done to help the families affected.

Patrick Maguire in the New Statesman argues that the Brexit party’s decision to stand down in Tory-held seats won’t be welcomed by all Conservative candidates in those constituencies. Here is an extract.

Although Farage believes his intervention will kneecap the Liberal Democrats, some of its candidates in the south are still cautiously optimistic. Max Wilkinson, the party’s candidate in Cheltenham – a top target – offered a bullish response on Twitter. “I’m disturbed to see that Cheltenham’s Conservative candidate at the election, Alex Chalk, has won the backing of Nigel Farage this time round. Pretty shocking that a so-called ‘moderate’ could stand on a joint ticket with a rightwing extremist.”

Candidates like Wilkinson will now discover whether Farage or Johnson is a bigger electoral asset for the Liberal Democrats. “The Brexit party were taking votes from the Conservatives,” says one Liberal Democrat attempting to dislodge a Tory incumbent. “But this alliance will alienate so many Tory moderates, as Johnson’s leadership already has in large numbers. The big question is whether we’ve reached the floor already, whether there are more teetering on the brink, or whether this stops the very small bleed away of voters who are moderate but will consider voting Tory to get it over with.”

From the Financial Times’ Jim Pickard

John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, has accused Sajid Javid, the chancellor, of trying to avoid a TV debate with him, my colleague Heather Stewart reports.

Here is one baby that Boris Johnson probably won’t be getting his hands on. (See 4.53pm.) This is from Ellie Reeves, who is seeing re-election as Labour MP for Lewisham West and Penge.

The SNP has issued a statement about what it describes as the legal action being taken by “one of the smaller parties” (ie, the Lib Dems - see 4.49pm). It is from Kirsten Oswald, the SNP’s business convenor and its candidate in East Renrewshire.

It is utterly outrageous for any broadcaster to include a minor party like the Liberal Democrats and to exclude the SNP – who secured nearly three times as many seats at the last election, and whose current support suggests will continue to be the third-largest party in Westminster.

We have made that clear to Sky, whose proposed debate is a democratic disgrace, and to ITV – and we are considering our next steps. In all of this, one thing that is clear, is the utter hypocrisy of the Lib Dems, who are happy to see a larger female-led party of remain excluded in their own self-interest as part of a typical Westminster stitch-up.

A Green party candidate has withdrawn in a second marginal seat targeted by Labour, prompting speculation that more Greens could step aside as part of an informal anti-Conservative alliance not sanctioned by the central party, my colleague Peter Walker reports.

My colleague Marina Hyde has written up the Nigel Farage press conference earlier. Here is an extract.

“So in a sense,” he concluded, gearing up for a vintage Farage reverse ferret, “we now HAVE a leave alliance. It’s just that we’ve done it unilaterally.” Funny sort of alliance. Maybe spend some of the two pound fifties on a dictionary.

As for what had prompted this change of heart, was it a high-level personal meeting with Boris Johnson? Written undertakings? Formal assurances? None of these, actually. “Last night I saw Boris Johnson on a video,” conceded Farage, “saying we won’t extend the transition period beyond the end of 2020”. Aha. The ultimate guarantee – a Boris Johnson tweet.

If this was supposed to be a rally, you’d have to call it Triumph of the Willy. Here was a guy who’d spent 10 days bullishly making Johnson an offer he couldn’t refuse. And yet, it seems the PM does not negotiate with Faragists. The Brexit party leader is one of those hapless movie villains who tells a millionaire he’s kidnapped his wife, and the millionaire goes – great, you can keep her.

And here is her article in full.

This is from the anti-Brexit group Best for Britain.

The BBC has apologised for mistakenly showing old footage of Boris Johnson laying a wreath on BBC Breakfast this morning, instead of footage from yesterday, when Johnson put his wreath down the wrong way round. The error has prompted claims on social media that this was evidence of pro-Tory bias. But the truth was more straightforward, according to Richard Frediani, executive editor of BBC Breakfast.

Nigel Farage has claimed he was offered a peerage at the end of last week, the Mirror’s Ben Glaze reports. Farage told the Mirror that he turned down the offer (he did not say who made it) and that he would not accept a knighthood or a peerage.

Here is more from the politics academic Matthew Goodwin on the impact of the Brexit party standing aside in Tory-held seats.

Nigel Farage’s decision to stand down Brexit party candidates in Tory seats is not as clear cut in Scotland as it may seem, since it could damage Tory campaigns to unseat the Scottish National party in at least one key target seat.

A Brexit party spokesman has confirmed they will still stand candidates in SNP seats, and that could prove significant in Perth and North Perthshire, the Scottish Tories’ top target seat. The Tories are fighting on two fronts: pledging to “get Brexit done” but also leveraging opposition to a second independence referendum.

The SNP’s Pete Wishart holds a wafer-thin, 21-vote (0.04%) majority over the Tories in Perth and North Perthshire. In the 2015 general election an arch-Brexiter standing for Ukip, John Miles, took 1,110 votes there.

Wishart’s chances of holding the seat were boosted when the pro-independence Scottish Green party decided at the weekend not to stand a candidate against him, decreasing direct competition for SNP votes. (See 1.57pm.)

There is strong pro-Brexit sentiment in the area. The Brexit party came third in the council area of Perth & Kinross in the 2019 European parliament elections, with 8,088 votes, and Ukip took another 770. Those pro-Brexit votes accounted for 17.5% of all those cast in the area.

The Brexit party’s candidate for Perth and North Perthshire, Stuart Powell, is campaigning with the pledge: “We are real people doing ordinary jobs and intend to serve rather than rule”.

Boris Johnson repeated his claim that he had given up alcohol “until Brexit is done” when he posed for a photograph at a pub in a Wolverhampton. He then added: “I’ll wet my whistle”, before taking a sip from a pint.

The Plaid Cymru leader, Adam Price, claims Nigel Farage’s decision to stand down Brexit party candidates in Tory-won seats implies the government is planning a no-deal Brexit. In a statement, he said:

That Nigel Farage is willing to endorse Boris Johnson is proof that they are planning to deliver a disastrous no deal.

The fact that he assumes there will be no extension at the end of the next phase is evidence enough that a crash-out Brexit is an inevitability in the eyes of the Brexiteers.

Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage don’t care about Wales. They want to rip us out of the EU in a disastrous crash-out Brexit which would decimate our agriculture and manufacturing sectors and devastate our economy.

From my colleague Martin Belam

The Tories have got a candidate in Hartlepool, my colleague Josh Halliday reports, correcting an earlier claim they didn’t have one. (See 2.34pm.)

Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader and prominent Brexiter, told the BBC’s World at One that Nigel Farage’s announcement was a “good thing”. He said:

I would hope that this is the start of the Brexit party recognising that even standing across the board in [Labour-held] seats will also end up helping those Labour incumbents who are sitting there worrying at the moment about the fact that they have a very, very large leave vote, and if that is split, then that means they might just sneak through, which could be the difference between us winning a majority and only becoming the majority party and of course winning a majority is critical if you want to deliver Brexit and Boris to stay.

Paul Sweeney, the Labour candidate in Glasgow North and a shadow Scotland Office minister, has said that no UK government could refuse another Scottish independence referendum if there is a pro-independence majority in the Scottish parliament. But, speaking in George Square in Glasgow after a ceremony marking the Armistice in 1918, Sweeney said independence was not an issue for this election. He said:

The reality is [independence] isn’t an issue for this election. The reality is this is an issue for the Scottish parliament election in 2021.

We’ve been clear that if a mandate were to happen, then no government in the UK could stand against that, even the Tories have admitted that’s the case.

We’re saying it’s not an issue for this election. Let’s focus on getting a Labour government into power that can invest in our public services.

The key question for the Brexit party and the Conservatives is what is going to happen in the Labour-held leave-voting seats where they both fancy their chances. Will there be some sort of unofficial non-aggression pact, where they divide up targets between them? We don’t know but my colleague Josh Halliday has just posted these about the contest in Hartlepool, the Labour-held seat where Richard Tice, the Brexit party chairman, is standing.

UPDATE: Actually, there is a Tory candidate. Josh subsequently posted this.

These are from my colleague Rajeev Syal, who has been in the high court this morning.

I’ve been back on the Lib Dems’ electric-powered battle bus, and for once the party was not talking about Brexit.

Sam Gyimah, the recently-defected former Tory MP who now speaks on business matters for the Lib Dems, was taken all the way from Westminster to Marylebone Road – slightly over two miles – to talk about the slightly awkwardly-named “skills wallet” plan, a commitment to give all adults £10,000 to spend on training over various points in their lives.

He visited a company that provides tech-based apprenticeships, called WhiteHat. It was co-founded by none other than Euan Blair, eldest son of the former Labour PM, but he is currently on paternity leave and so missed any awkward questions about who he might vote for.

Gyimah, a former universities minister, happily chatted to staff and apprentices about all sorts of subjects, not least tuition fees, something of a toxic subject for the Lib Dems after they broke their 2010 manifesto pledge to support higher fees in the coalition government.

Gyimah would not say what Lib Dem policy would be ahead of the party’s manifesto, but spoke strongly against ending fees, saying this ends up rationing access to higher education.

This brought no murmurs of dissent from the apprentices. Perhaps they were being polite, or having decided against university it was less of an issue. But it could also be that as younger voters, the events of 2010 feel like ancient history. The Lib Dems will certainly hope so.

Gyimah has abandoned the East Surrey seat he represented since 2010 to try his luck in Kensington. Labour’s Emma Dent Coad took this from the Conservatives in 2017, with the Lib Dems a distant third.

Speaking to me on the bus before the visit, Gyimah said he hoped to do well in a strongly pro-remain area, and to capitalise on Dent Coad’s occasionally divisive reputation:

My pitch is that Kensington can do better than a hard Brexiteer or a class warrior ...

I knock on doors and I talk about views I passionately believe in, and there are a lot of voters who are welcoming of those view. To be honest, it would be more difficult the other way if I was holding my views as a Conservative, in a Conservative seat.

Will he do it? Some polls have Gyimah currently second behind the Tories, but given the volatility of the election it is not impossible he could win.

The Scottish Greens have decided not to stand candidates in two hyper-marginal seats being defended by the Scottish National party, boosting the SNP’s hopes of holding them.

The pro-independence Scottish Green party (SGP) said its local branches had opted not to contest North East Fife, won by the SNP by just two votes in 2017, and Perth & North Perthshire, held by the SNP with a 21-vote margin in 2017, for “various reasons”.

The SNP is under intense pressure in both seats, with the Liberal Democrats determined to regain North East Fife from Stephen Gethins, the SNP’s international affairs spokesman, and the Scottish Tories investing heavily in defeating Pete Wishart in Perth and North Perthshire.

The Tories have repeatedly tried to unseat Wishart, who was furious when he found the SGP had a candidate to stand against him. He accused them of helping the Tories by diluting the pro-independence vote, leading to angry attacks on Green politicians on social media.

On Sunday, hours after the local SGP branch decided not to contest his seat, Wishart tweeted a recommendation by one tactical voting website, Progressive Alliance, to back him.

The SGP fielded a candidate in the 2015 election, taking 1,146 votes, and there is little love lost between the two parties. The Scottish Greens are highly critical of Nicola Sturgeon’s defence of North Sea oil and say her record on the climate crisis is much weaker than her rhetoric.

An SGP denied this was an organised deal to protect pro-independence seats: they are likely to attack Wishart’s record of voting for the oil industry. A SGP spokesman said:

Pete Wishart describing this as standing aside is a bit cute. They’ve not stood aside for him. A large part of it is about concentrating our resources on 2021 [the Scottish parliament elections]; that’s the main reason why most of our branches have opted not to stand [this time].

The Scottish Greens won 1,387 votes in North East Fife in 2015, when Gethins first took the seat from the Liberal Democrats when Menzies Campbell, the former Lib Dem leader retired after nearly 30 years as the local MP. Despite backing out in that seat, they are contesting another SNP marginal nearby, of Dunfermline and West Fife. They took 1,196 votes there in 2015; the SNP held the seat by 844 votes in 2017.

Nigel Farage’s announcement has lifted sterling on the foreign exchange markets.

The pound has hit a six-month high against the euro, at €1.168.

Sterling is also up a cent against the US dollar at $1.288.

City traders are calculating that a hung parliament is now less likely - although the Brexit party will still be competing in Conservative target seats.

Neil Wilson of Markets.com says:

It’s a massive moment for the campaign and gives the Tories a clear run at Downing Street. But it will not make it any easier to hoover up seats from opposition parties – the risk of the Brexit party sucking in leaver votes in areas being targeted by the Tories remains.

For Labour and in particular the Lib Dems in the south of England, it’s going to make life very hard to dislodge incumbent Tories.

And here is an essay question from another politics professor, Chris Hanretty.

This is from Will Tanner, the former No 10 aide who now runs the Conservative thinktank Onward.

These are from Matthew Goodwin, a politics professor specialising in the rise of Brexit party-style national populist parties.

Here is my colleague Kate Proctor’s full story about Nigel Farage’s decision.

Here is some more comment on Nigel Farage’s decision from journalists.

From Sky’s Lewis Goodall

From my colleague Owen Jones

From the Spectator’s James Forsyth

From the Financial Times’ George Parker

From my colleague Peter Walker

From the Observer’s Nick Cohen

From the Mail on Sunday’s Dan Hodges

From Isabel Oakeshott

From the BBC’s Norman Smith

From my colleague Dan Milmo

From the Times’ Daniel Finkelstein

From Bloomberg

Farage says he is taking this decision to prevent the risk of a second Brexit referendum.

He says that what he is announcing is, in practice, a leave alliance.

Farage says last night he saw something that was optimistic.

He says he saw a video of Boris Johnson saying he would not extend the Brexit transition.

He says people might say Johnson broke his promise not to delay Brexit beyond 31 October.

But at least this was an unequivocal statement.

But Farage says Johnson also said he would negotiate a super Canada-plus trade deal with no alignment.

Here is the video Farage is referring to.

Farage says he tried to build a leave alliance.

He tried to put out the idea that putting country before party was the right thing to do. But that came to naught, he says.

Farage says he has had to consider what the consequences of this would be.

He says he does not accept fielding 600 candidates would allow Jeremy Corbyn to win.

But, he says, he does think that would have led to there being a hung parliament.

And it would have led to a large number of Lib Dem gains.

If the remainer parties could get to 320 seats, there would be a second referendum, he says.

He says the UK would be offered a false choice between remain, and a form of remain.

He says it has not been easy to decide what to do.

Farage says what he was worried about most was that the UK would align itself to EU rules under Boris Johnson’s plan.

He says he thought this was not real Brexit.

That is why the Brexit party decided to stand candidates in 600 seats.

Farage says he was “very unhappy” when he heard about Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal.

Unlike many people who praised it, he read it, and drew the conclusion it was not Brexit, he says.

From the BBC’s Faisal Islam

My colleague Kate Proctor is in Hartlepool for the Brexit party news conference, which is due to start shortly. She has just posted this on Twitter.

Nigel Farage, the Brexit party leader, is in Hartlepool today, and at 12pm he will be holding a press conference. Perhaps he will announce he has been appointed by Boris Johnson as the UK’s new European commission? (See 11.23am.)

Probably not. But Sky’s Lewis Goodall says Farage will announce whether the party remains committed to standing candidates in almost all seats in Britain.

This is from my colleague Jennifer Rankin in Brussels.

And this is from my colleague Heather Stewart, who has just come back from the No 10 lobby briefing. (During the election campaign the civil service wing of Downing Street briefs journalists just once a week, on Mondays.)

Labour continues to face criticism over its decision to select Kate Osborne as its candidate in Jarrow despite the fact that two years ago she posted a picture on social media showing a gun being held to Theresa May’s head. According to a party source, 37 members of the Jarrow CLP (constituency Labour party) have written to Jennie Formby, the party’s general secretary, saying that even though Osborne has apologised, she should not be a candidate. Her selection “sends a message that threats of violence against women in politics can sometimes be accepted”, the letter claims.

Here is Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, responding to comments by Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, in her Today interview this morning that she personally supported military intervention in Kosovo to protect Albanians from Serbia. Thornberry was replying to a question about how Jeremy Corbyn didn’t back this campaign, or other recent occasions when the UK government decided to deploy the armed forces.

Adam Wagner, the barrister and legal blogger, has posted a useful Twitter feed about the Tory plan to amend the Human Rights Act to say it does not apply to events before 2000, in an attempt to limit prosecutions of armed forces veterans over historical cases. (See 7.38am and 8.05am.) It starts here.

And here are two of his main points.

And here is the New Statesman’s Patrick Maguire on the same plan.

Britain has narrowly avoided going into recession, according to the official growth figures out this morning. My colleague Graeme Wearden has all the details on his business live blog.

From Boris Johnson’s point of view, as an election development that’s probably an item of news to file under the category “it could have been worse”. The claim in the Daily Express splash (they were taking a punt before the growth figures were published) that the economy is “firing on all cylinders” is laughable. As Graeme reports in his blog, annual growth is at the lowest level since 2010.

As my colleague Peter Walker reports, in an interview on BBC Radio 5 Live Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, also said that Labour would introduce “managed migration” for EU nationals in the event Brexit happens. Peter’s full story is here.

Later, on the Today programme, Thornberry said service personnel would be paid a “proper wage” through the lifting of the public sector pay cap under Labour’s proposals.

We ask them to make the ultimate sacrifice and the least we can do is to give them some decent pay. They have effectively had a pay cut over the last few years and we think that is wrong. So much of the accommodation provided to the military is through the private sector and some of it is really terrible.

Thornberry welcomed the Tories’ pledge to stop “vexatious and unfair actions” against veterans, but pointed towards Theresa May’s undelivered announcement of a similar policy. However, she said she did not believe the Human Rights Act had to be changed to address this, and said prosecuting authorities should instead not allow such claims to be heard in court.

Questioned about Jeremy Corbyn’s personal support for the armed forces, Thornberry said: “When you see Jeremy interacting with members of the armed services … you can see he is incredibly empathetic.”

However, she was unable to provide an example of when Corbyn backed UK military action abroad.

I think that people from the military listening to the radio this morning, and those from their families and supporters, would want the same that we do, which is, if and when we use military action, we use military action in order to ensure we can stop genocides or unfair actions happening.

In principle, Jeremy is not a pacifist, we are not pacifists. There will be times where we need to use military force. But when we use it we need to ensure it actually makes the situation better in the long term.

Pointing to interventions in the Middle East and Libya, she said recent military campaigns had not led to what the UK had wanted. Nevertheless, she restated Labour’s support for maintaining the Trident nuclear weapons system.

The shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, has been questioned over what would be on the ballot paper under Labour’s plans to offer a second referendum.

We want to be able to negotiate the sort of deal that we have been talking to the Europeans about for more than three years. It is being in a customs union, in a single market, in a close alignment of rules and regulations. We have talked to them uphill and down dale about what it is we would do and what our deal is. And we think that’s the best way of looking after jobs in the economy.

She was also asked whether she would use a nuclear weapon to defend the UK.

Moving on to another election pledge, Wallace said serving personnel would be provided with free wraparound care for their four- to 11-year-old children.

The £165m scheme to help service people “with their pressures” would be introduced alongside a veterans’ railcard and a new help-to-buy scheme under a future Tory government.

“We’re going to invest in the most important equipment of our armed forces if we win this election and that is our servicemen and women,” he said.

There should be a 10-year limit on the prosecution of soldiers unless “compelling new evidence” emerges, Wallace said. But he stressed the UK would not be leaving the European court of human rights.

Asked what exactly would change, Wallace said:

Firstly in events that have happened outside the jurisdiction of the [European court of human rights], such as Afghanistan and Iraq, the government believes there should be a statute of limitations of at least 10 years unless compelling new evidence comes forward to make sure that we can’t have lawyers … going out shopping round Iraq and Afghanistan looking for victims.

Asked whether it would apply to everyone who might be involved in these inquests, including paramilitaries, terrorists and soldiers, Wallace said it would apply for all.

If you want to make a claim that an already investigated crime or already inquest event has taken place, and in some of these inquests we’re into the third or fourth inquest of the same event, if one of these has already taken place and you want to go back and effectively in some areas abuse our legal system with new evidence without much specifics, then actually you need to go direct to the European court in the Hague.

Asked how this is not an “amnesty for terrorists”, he said: “It’s not an amnesty. Everyone will still be able to avail themselves of the European court of human rights in the Hague. But what they won’t be able to avail themselves of the right, is continually going back to our courts in the UK.”

Questioned over his previous remarks in the House of Commons, when he said “I don’t support amnesty for people who went out and killed many of these young men and women who went out to defend us. I don’t think that’s a solution”, he replied:

I don’t. This is about people who have already had trials, already been prosecuted, already had inquests … People have been tried, under inquest found not to have been at fault, then suddenly along comes a claim of new evidence. Very rarely does it see much test before it falls over and time and time again our service personnel are reinvestigated.

We’re not leaving the European convention on human rights, what we’re doing is changing the route to that and we’re saying that our courts are not there to be abused. There are inquests going on at the moment to things that have gone on in the 1970s that have already been two or three inquests.

Questioned over the failure of previous defence secretary’s to promise to deliver the proposal, he said: “It’s time to finish this.”

News that British Steel may be about to be bought by a Chinese conglomerate for £70m could spark discussion about Britain’s industrial policy on the campaign trail.

A deal with Jingye Group could go through in the next couple of days according to our reporter Rob Davies, who has seen an email sent to employees about the sale.

That is good news for the company’s 4,000 employees, most of whom work in the marginal constituency of Scunthorpe. The seat is held by Labour’s Nic Dakin with a majority of just over 3,000. The North Lincolnshire town is traditional Labour territory but it also voted heavily for Brexit – 68.68% in favour of leaving compared with 31.32% for remain.

Here’s Rob’s full story:

On the Ulster campaign trail, the SDLP leader, Colum Eastwood, says Northern Ireland should become a leader in renewable energy technology. Eastwood, who is standing for the constituency of Foyle, says better education of children to raise awareness of global warming is a moral imperative.

We cannot force our children and their children to pay the price for our casual disregard for the body of science which says we are destroying our climate. We should also take the opportunity to become a world leader in renewable technology and climate rehabilitation.

Good morning. I’m Martin Farrer and welcome to the election live blog.

The fifth day of the campaign might be Armistice Day but there is no prospect of a ceasefire between the parties. The unusual instance of Remembrance Day falling in an election campaign has left the big players unable to resist promoting policies for veterans. The Tories are planning to offer more childcare help for families in the military, a railcard for veterans and will also repeat previous pledges to prevent “vexatious” legal claims such as those faced by ex-soldiers who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Labour has said it will improve pay and conditions for service personnel by scrapping the public sector pay cap, better housing and improved access to schools for children of force members.

Another major focus will be immigration. Our political editor, Heather Stewart, reports that Labour activists are pushing Jeremy Corbyn to incorporate radical changes to migration policy in the party’s manifesto. Senior leaders are meeting today to thrash out the party’s definitive stance with many calling for them to adopt the more open border policy backed by members at party conference in September. The Tories are hoping to portray Labour as soft on immigration and believe that a more liberal policy could cost Corbyn votes in northern and Midlands heartland seats.

One Midlands seat that will be a bit different this time is Leicester East, where Keith Vaz’s name will not be on the ballot paper for the first time in 32 years. The former minister, who was facing suspension from the Commons for “expressing willingness” to purchase cocaine for sex workers, announced last night that he is standing down. Vaz, who is 62, said it had been “an honour and a privilege to serve my constituency”, while Corbyn said Vaz had led the way for black and Asian Labour MPs.

No campaign day would be complete without a spending row and this one will be no exception with Labour hitting back at Tory claims that its policies would cost £1.2tn. Andrew Gwynne, Labour’s election coordinator, described the claims as “absolute work of fiction by the Conservatives”. Our economic correspodent, Richard Partington, has interrogated the Tory claims and concludes that they have added in the cost of Labour policies over a five-year period to inflate the headline number.

Thanks for joining us and enjoy day five.