Election latest: Farage says Reform ‘new opposition’ and makes false vote fraud claim

Lib Dem deputy leader has said injuries would not stop Sir Ed Davey from engaging in stunts during the campaign trail.

Daisy Cooper said: “There’s almost nothing that’s going to stop Ed from getting out and about, meeting people, doing the stunts and having a lot of fun.”

She added: “We take our politics very seriously but we don’t think politicians should take themselves too seriously.

“Ed has won a lot of people’s hearts and minds with this strategy.”

Council staff across Scotland have rejected a new pay offer, with a vote now set to open on potential strike action, a union has said.

Unison Scotland balloted members on the offer from local authority body Cosla, but it said 91% of respondents rejected the 2.2% uplift, which would have increased by a further 2% after six months.

The union said over the coming weeks, its members – including cleansing workers and school staff – will now be consulted on walkouts.

Colette Hunter, chairwoman of the local government committee at the union, said: “This result must be a wake-up call for Cosla that council workers need to be rewarded fairly for the essential services they provide.”

Nigel Farage has demanded a spot on the BBC’s four-way leaders’ debate panel, which Fiona Bruce will host in York next Thursday.

The Reform UK leader suggested the broadcaster should feature him in the line-up after a landmark poll put his party ahead of the Conservatives.

Mr Farage added: “I think we can demand of right now that the BBC put us into that debate.”

The two-hour Question Time Leaders’ Special is set to feature the leaders of Great Britain’s four largest political parties.

Mohammad Al Kharewsh, 25, said he kept questioning why he was among the first chosen and became increasingly depressed during his time in Gatwick detention centre.

His arrival in the UK in 2022 had seen him reunited with his brother, who was granted asylum in the UK as a minor, and the prospect of being separated again was “extremely intimidating”, he said.

Mohammad was one of more than 100 asylum seekers rounded up by the Home Office in May ahead of planned deportation flights to Rwanda.

The former prime minister has endorsed a fourth Conservative candidate as he joins the election campaign.

He hailed Jane Stevenson, who is running in Wolverhampton North East, as “full of passion”.

Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer told BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour that her party “has a lot to offer women voters”.

She boasted about the Greens’ manifesto and said it includes policies on equal pay, flexible working, increasing carer allowances, making misogyny a hate crime, and childcare support plans.

Denyerwas also asked about the controversial promise to reduce the number of medical interventions in childbirth, which the party ditched last week.

She insisted that it “was never going to be in the manifesto”, and apologised “for the anguish this has caused”.