Braverman tells Sunak to ‘own’ dismal election results and ‘fix it’ but says it’s too late for Tories to change leader – as it happened

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Braverman says Sunak needs to ‘own’ responsibility for election results

In her interview with the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, also said that Rishi Sunak needed to “own” responsibility for the local election results. She said:

Rishi Sunak has been leading us for about 18 months, he has been making these decisions, these are consequences of those decisions. He needs to own this, and therefore he needs to fix it.

She also claimed Tory voters were “on strike”.

I think the problem is that our voters are on strike, they are not coming out to support us, we have seen that with turnouts and we have seen that with losing Conservative strongholds.

(If Conservative voters were public sector workers, the government would be able to use its Strikes (Minimum Services Levels) Act to require some of them to show up. Unfortunately this is not an option for Sunak.)

In her interview Braverman said Sunak should respond to the results with policies like tax cuts and a cap on legal migration.

Asked for evidence that a shift to the right would help the party, Braverman replied:

The evidence is that people are not voting for what [Sunak] is doing because they don’t believe that we are serious about some of these issues.

Asked if she regretted supporting Sunak for the Tory leadership in 2022, Braverman replied: “Honestly, yes I do.”

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Afternoon summary

• Suella Braverman has said the Conservatives have run out of time to oust Rishi Sunak but he needs to “own this and fix it”, after local election results indicated the UK is heading for a Labour government. As Rowena Mason reports, the former home secretary said Sunak’s “plan is not working” and the prime minister needed to change course, as “at this rate we will be lucky to have any Conservative MPs at the next election”. Braverman spoke out after the Conservatives lost 400 council seats in the local elections, as well as Andy Street as the West Midlands mayor, and 10 police and crime commissioners. Street has called for the Conservatives to move to the centre to address voters’ concerns, while others have warned the party is facing more of a challenge on their left flank than the right. (See 7.55am.)

• The Rwandan government cannot guarantee how many migrants it will take from the UK under Rishi Sunak’s flagship deportation scheme, PA Media reports. But Yolande Makolo, a spokeswoman for the east African state, told the BBC this morning that Rwanda would be able to welcome more than 200 migrants initially. Asked by the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg if Rwanda would be able to process tens of thousands of migrants as part of the deal, Makolo said:

We will be able to welcome the migrants that the UK sends over the lifetime of this partnership. What I cannot tell you is how many thousands we are taking in the first year or the second year. This will depend on very many factors that are being worked out right now.

• John Swinney, who is the leading, and so far only, candidate to replace Humza Yousaf as SNP leader and Scottish first minister, has urged a party activist who is not an MSP to drop plans to trigger a contest. It is reported that Graeme McCormick believes it is very likely that he will be able to collect the nomination he needs to be a candidate before tomorrow’s deadline. Swinney said having a contest would “delay the possibility for the SNP to start its rebuilding”. Swinney does not seem to think there is any risk of McCormick winning. (See 3.09pm.)

John Swinney says SNP’s revival will be delayed if party activist stands against him to be next leader

John Swinney, who seems all but certain to be Scotland’s next first minister, has urged an SNP activist who is considering triggering a leadership contest to stand aside.

In an interview this morning on Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, Swinney said that he thought a contest would hold up the party’s recovery.

Swinney, a former deputy first minister and a former party leader, is the only MSP standing for the post and has the backing of most senior figures in the party who have spoken about the leadership. After Kate Forbes, the former finance secretary, announced last week that she was not standing, Swinney was seen as a shoo-in.

But under the SNP’s rules the leader does not need to be an MSP and a candidate can stand with 100 nominations from at least 20 branches. According to a post on the Yours for Scotland blog, Graeme McCormick, a veteran activist, is collecting names to run.

The deadline for nominations is noon tomorrow. According to the National, the pro-independence paper, McCormick thinks he is very likely to get enough nominations to stand.

McCormick told the paper in a letter that he wanted to stand because Swinney was not in favour of an early Holyrood election. McCormick said that if an election delivered a majority of MSPs committed to independence, they would have the authority to “dissolve the union” and establish an independent Scotland without a referendum. He explained:

The polls for independence are consistently positive. The SNP has the opportunity to regain its lost support if it promises to dissolve the union through the ballot box.

This morning Swinney said it would be better if McCormick did not run because, without a contest, Swinney could start reviving the party’s fortunes more quickly. He said:

I think the SNP has got a chance to start rebuilding from the difficult period that we have had, under my leadership, and bluntly, I’d just like to get on with that as quickly as I possible can do, because every day that we spend in an internal contest, which I think we all probably know the outcome of, we delay the possibility for the SNP to start its rebuilding.

If McCormick were to win the SNP leadership contest, he would not be able to become first minister because he is not an MSP. But McCormick reportedly think the two roles should be separated.

According to the Sun’s political editor, Harry Cole, what has annoyed Rishi Sunak most about the elections is the result in York and North Yorkshire, where the Conservatives lost the contest to elect the area’s first mayor to Labour.

NEW: So what result really pissed off the PM?

I hear Sunak is “in a very bad mood” about the York and North Yorkshire metro mayor “cock-up.”

Tory candidate promised to tour the area in a van living on army rations, and nationalise a local hotel.

And PM voted for him:

George Galloway cuts off interview after being challenged over gay relationship comments

George Galloway, the Rochdale MP and leader of the Workers Party of Britain, has cut off a broadcast interview after being asked about remarks in which he suggested he did not think gay relationships were equal to heterosexual relationships, PA Media reports. PA says:

Galloway hung up the phone when asked by LBC’s Sunday With Lewis Goodall about the remarks he made in the interview with Novara Media.

Galloway’s party hopes to act as a challenger to Labour at the general election, and has claimed it will field candidates to stand against the Opposition’s key figures.

In an interview with LBC, Galloway was asked about his comments to Novara.

“This is a clip of a clip. It is an edited clip of an edited clip,” Galloway said, as he suggested a wider point he had made about gender identity had been lost.

He also claimed that the radio station was “ambushing” him, adding: “I have got a simple answer. Listen to the whole thing tonight.”

Galloway then stated he was going to hang up the phone, telling LBC: “More fool me thinking that your request that I come on and talk about the elections was genuine.”

In a clip from an interview with Novara Media, Galloway had said: “I don’t want my children prematurely sexualised at all, I don’t want them taught that some things are normal when their parents don’t believe that they’re normal. Now there’s lots of things not normal, doesn’t mean you have to hate something that isn’t normal. But if my children are taught that there’s – whatever the current vogue number is – 76 or 97 or whatever the number of purported genders that exist, I don’t want my children taught that.”

Galloway said he did not want children to be taught “that gay relationships are exactly the same and as normal as a mum, a dad and kids”.

He added: “I want my children to be taught that the normal thing in Britain, in society across the world, is a mother, a father and a family. I want them to be taught that there are gay people in the world and that they must be treated with respect and affection, as I treat my own gay friends and colleagues with respect and affection but I don’t want my children to be taught that these things are equal because I don’t believe them to be equal.”

A reader asks:

Is there any news of GLA top up seats?

Yes. The results came out late last night.

There are 14 constituency seats in the London assembly, and 11 top-up ones (awarded using a PR formula to make the results proportional).

The full results are here.

Labour won 10 constituency seats, the Tories won 3 and the Lib Dems won 1.

And, on the top-up or list seats, Labour won 1, the Tories 5, the Greens 3, the Lib Dems 1 and Reform UK 1.

This tweet shows how the top-up seats were allocated.