Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak clash over Rwanda as election campaigns kick off

Yesterday the Prime Minister told LBC that planes carrying asylum seekers would take off after polling day, but insisted that “preparation work” had already begun.

Stopping small boat crossings has been one of Mr Sunak’s five key pledges since he became Tory leader, but numbers have since hit record levels for the first four months of the year.

Sir Keir Starmer, during a visit to the Conservative heartland of Kent, accused the Prime Minister of never believing that his plan to stop boat crossings would work.

“He has called an election early enough to have it not tested before an election,” he said.

It comes as yesterday’s latest migration statistics showed that net migration remained high at 685,000.

This is a 10 per cent drop since record numbers last year, but remains more than three times higher than the levels promised by the Conservatives in their 2019 election manifesto.

Yesterday Bloomberg reported that Tory strategists are aiming to make Rwanda the key dividing line between the two main parties in this election, with suggestions that this may limit the number of seats lost to Labour if voters can be won back from Reform UK.

During his party’s campaign launch, Richard Tice, the party’s leader, said that Mr Sunak was “absolutely terrified” of Reform’s progress in the polls and had called an early election to “cut and run”.

However, the Prime Minister was handed some positive news for the campaign, after Nigel Farage, one of the key architects of Brexit and Reform’s honorary president, ruled out standing as a candidate for the party, with pollsters speculating that this could have led to a rapid rise in Reform’s popularity.

The Prime Minister yesterday sought to recover from a poorly-received speech which saw him announce the 4 July election date in the pouring rain outside Number 10 Downing Street.

However, at a campaign event in a brewery in South Wales Mr Suank asked staff if they were looking forward to the football later this summer, despite Wales not qualifying for Euro 2024, with one employee telling him: “we’re not so invested in it”.

Meanwhile, his cabinet colleague and once leadership rival Penny Mordaunt warned voters against backing “ruthless socialists” during Parliament's final business questions before the election.

The Commons Leader said that “so much is at stake” ahead of polling day, adding: “We on this side of the House are undoubtedly the underdog in this fight.

“But I go into this election – and I will be standing up and fighting – filled with optimism and hope because I am proud of our record.”

However, yesterday also saw other members of her government standing down ahead of the election, leaving the Conservatives to find candidates for dozens of seats before July.

Two serving Government ministers are among the Conservative MPs who have announced they will not seek re-election.

Transport minister Huw Merriman and work and pensions minister Jo Churchill shared resignation letters, with reports that more MPs and ministers could follow suit after Mr Sunak’s party reacted negatively to the announcement of an early election given many were privately assured that it was still several months away.