General election 2019 latest: Labour’s radical ‘manifesto of hope’

The general election is three weeks’ today, and Prince Andrew is doing his upmost to keep it off the front pages. The Duke of York fell on his ceremonial sword last night, retiring from public life over his links to Jeffrey Epstein.

Elsewhere, the Lib Dems released their manifesto yesterday, in what leader Jo Swinson hopes will be the second most important launch of her life.

The party promised to stop Brexit, legalise cannabis and invest in the NHS and education, but Swinson admitted to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg that it would be a “big step” for her to become prime minister.

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The Labour Party will launch their “manifesto of hope” today, calling it the “most radical and ambitious plan to transform our country in decades”. Jeremy Corbyn will pledge higher NHS spending, a second Brexit referendum, a £10 minimum wage, and free broadband for all.

And the Labour leader will promise the biggest affordable house building programme since the 1960s, with plans to build 100,000 new council homes and 50,000 social homes a year by 2024.

Boris Johnson let slip plans to cut the threshold for paying National Insurance to £12,500 - only to row back later and tell the BBC that the threshold would be £9,500 for the first budget of a Tory government, with no schedule for the further £3,000 rise.

Meanwhile a long-running tracker by pollsters Ipsos MORI has seen 60% of voters put the NHS as their number one priority in the election, ahead of Brexit/the EU on 56%.