It's next put to Starmer that Labour has not unveiled any new major policies and some voters are only voting for the party because they are "fed up" of the Conservatives.

"Could you become prime minister off the back of the dullest campaign ever?" one reporter asks

Starmer responds by saying that his party is putting a "clear choice" before the electorate.

After 14 years of what he describes as the Conservative Party's "chaos, division and failure", he says a vote for Labour means "we can turn the page and rebuild the country".

He says Labour has a plan for growth, wealth creation and wants everybody to feel like they are better off.

Moments before Starmer was asked whether his campaign had been dull, he jokingly introduced himself to the camera as "fresh from Taylor Swift" having gone to the singer's concert with his family at Wembley Stadium in London last night.

The Labour leader tells the BBC he respects JK Rowling and wants to point out what he describes as a "long record that Labour has in government" in passing legislation that has "advanced the rights of women".

It comes after the author wrote in The Times newspaper, external that she believes the party has "turned its back on women".

Starmer says he accepts "those challenges are never over", adding that "we need to make further progress when it comes to women's rights".

He says the election is "an opportunity to reset politics" and to "bring people together".

Starmer now takes a question about comments made by Reform UK leader Nigel Farage on the war in Ukraine. In an interview with the BBC's Nick Robinson, Farage said the West "provoked" Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The Labour leader says Farage's comments are “disgraceful”, adding that Putin “bears sole responsibility” for “Russian aggression” in Ukraine.

Starmer says the Labour Party has always stood behind Ukraine and this was a united stance across Parliament.

“Anybody who wants to stand to be a representative in our Parliament should be really clear that whether it's Russian aggression on the battlefield or online, that we stand against that aggression," he says.

Let's turn our attention to the Labour campaign now.

Labour leader Keir Starmer has been meeting with members of the Windrush generation and their descendants at a school in south London.

A reminder, today is Windrush Day (celebrated on 22 June since 2018) and Labour is making a series of pledges to those affected by the scandal. More on that here.

Starmer begins by saying the day is about telling the history of the Windrush generation and the great contributions made to this country.

He says that it's also a "reset day" and claims the compensation scheme for victims of the scandal is "going too slowly", with many people having died before receiving the money they're entitled to.

The Windrush generation refers to people who arrived in the UK from Caribbean countries between 1948 and 1971. In 2018, it emerged that thousands of people had been wrongly classed as illegal immigrants.

The Labour leader has vowed to re-establish the Windrush Unit in the Home Office and set up a permanent commissioner to be an advocate for the Windrush generation.

Tom Symonds
Reporting with Lib Dems campaign

Image source, PA Media

Sir Ed Davey has been surrounding himself with adoring ladies on the campaign trail this morning.

Sadly, the egg-laying chickens of The Mac’s Farm near the South Downs in East Sussex won’t get a vote in the election.

Davey saw a good pair of trousers ruined by pecking beaks as he fed the birds for the photographers, another stop on his photo opportunity led campaign.

It gets him noticed - the Liberal Democrats have picked up a few points in the polls since this all started, and Davey is not making any apologies.

“In the seats that the matter, I think the Liberal Democrats could do very well if people realise we are the party to vote for if you want to get rid of the Tories in vast tracts of our country,” he told me in an interview just now.

Today, he’s talking about sewage being dumped in Britain’s rivers and chalk streams and promising a Blue Flag scheme to try to stop it happening.

As an issue, sewage is a relatively newcomer to the mainstream political agenda, heightened by celebrity campaigning and a new public realisation of just how much waste is being dumped in otherwise clean waters.

The Lib Dems have done an analysis for today’s campaigning and reckon 48,626 hours worth of sewage were discharged into chalk streams in 2023, more than double the previous year.

But don’t you just have to ban it, I asked, and accept that billions in investment will be needed for better sewage infrastructure.

Davey said he’d get tough with the water companies, who accept they should have invested more, and promised a new Clean Water Authority, combining the forces of several regulators he believes have been less effective against Big Water, when operating alone.

Nigel Farage's comments on Ukraine, in which he claimed Russia's full-scale invasion was due to the Nato alliance expanding further across Eastern Europe, are then put the Lib Dem leader.

Putin "embarked on an illegal invasion" of Ukraine, Davey says, and is responsible for the deaths of "hundreds of thousands" including innocent civilians.

Asked if he has a specific message for Farage, Davey says that he doesn't "share any values" with him and that the Ukraine issue was another example of that.

Davey also brings up the US election in November, saying he's worried that if Donald Trump wins, the US may provide less support for Ukraine, prompting the need for Britain and the rest of Europe to "stand up and work together".

Image source, UK POOL

Davey is now asked about Labour's pledge today to speed up the compensation process for victims of the Windrush scandal (our political reporter outlined those plans in an earlier post here).

I think that’s right, Davey says, adding that he's disappointed that the Conservatives haven't made more progress on compensation claims.

All parties should commit to proper compensation for the victims, Davey says.

Image source, UK POOL

Moving away from London, let's now take you south of the capital over to a farm in East Sussex, where Lib Dems leader Sir Ed Davey is feeding chickens while outlining his party's plans to tackle water pollution in chalk streams.

Davey says last year sewage dumping into chalks streams lasted 49,000 hours and that "we're not protecting them well enough".

He adds that his party wants "Blue Flag" status for chalks streams to protect areas from sewage dumping.

Davey says he wants to launch a new regulator - the Clean Water authority - as existing ones have been "allowing" companies get away with sewage dumping.

The party leader also talked about his plans to introduce 100 new enforcers, dubbed "sewage busters".

When asked whether the plans would result in increases to people's water bills, he says water companies have paid huge profit bonuses to their chief executives while failing to make investments, but that "they're not going to get away" with it.

Pressed further on the impact on bills, he say the "money should come from the companies".

The last question put to Sunak by broadcasters at his campaign stop in London concerns comments made by Tory colleagues - including defence secretary Grant Shapps - who say voters need to stop Labour getting a super majority.

Are they defeatist or are you deluded?

"I'm going to fight hard until the last day of this election," Sunak replies, saying his party will continue to deliver tax cuts while the alternative is handing the Labour Party a "blank cheque" which he claims will mean taxes will rise.

"Don't let Labour sleepwalk into Number 10," Sunak says.

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

It's next put to the prime minister that campaigners say that thousands of victims of the Windrush scandal have not been given citizenship and many have not applied for compensation because they don't trust the Home Office.

Sunak says many people suffered an injustice and the Home Office has been "working hard to rectify things".

"Over 16,000 people now have been given the documentation that they deserve and tens of millions of pounds have been paid out," he adds.

He says many outreach events have also been organised and that the Home Office is always "reflecting" and taking on feedback on how it can improve.

For context: So far, the government has paid out £88.6m in compensation to people affected and more than 17,100 people have been given documentation confirming their status or British citizenship.

Sunak is next asked to respond to comments made by Nigel Farage, who said last night in a BBC interview that the West had provoked Russian leader Vladimir Putin to launch his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

What Farage said is "completely wrong" and only plays into Putin's hands, Sunak says, adding that Putin was behind the release of nerve agents on the streets of Britain.

This kind of appeasement is "dangerous for Britain's security" as well as our allies and only emboldens Putin further, Sunak says.

Image source, UK POOL

Over to the campaign trail now, where Rishi Sunak is outlining his party's pledge around the night-time economy at a stop over in London.

The prime minister says young people have been let down by Labour, whether here in London where venues like pubs and clubs are closing at a "rapid rate", or over in Wales where Labour is "hiking up their taxes".

"A Conservative government will support all those venues to make sure they can continue creating jobs and drive our economy forward," he adds.

Image source, PA Media

The Labour Party plans to mark today's Windrush Day - which has been celebrated on 22 June since 2018 - with its campaign pledge to reopen the Windrush Unit, a team inside the Home Office tasked with reforming the department.

As mentioned in earlier posts, the party points to concerns that only 2,459 claims out of 15,000 from victims of the Windrush scandal had been paid through a compensation scheme under the Home Office.

Ahead of the party's campaign stop in London, here's a closer look at the Windrush generation.

Who were the Windrush generation?

The Windrush generation refers to people who arrived in the UK from Caribbean countries between 1948 and 1971 to help build post-War Britain.

They came to the UK after the British Nationality Act gave people from colonies the right to live and work in Britain, as the government needed workers to help fill post-war labour shortages.

Windrush Day commemorates the contribution Caribbean migrants and their families have made to the UK.

What’s the Windrush scandal?

In 2018, it emerged that the Home Office had kept no records of those granted permission to stay, and had not issued the paperwork they needed to confirm their status.

It had also destroyed thousands of landing cards belonging to Windrush migrants, in 2010.

Those affected were unable to prove they were in the country legally and were prevented from accessing healthcare, work and housing. Many were also threatened with deportation.

A review of historical cases also found that at least 83 people who had arrived before 1973 had been wrongly deported.

• Read more about Windrush Day here

Before we turn to the campaign trail for the day, the BBC News has spoken to five of the youngest candidates standing for election next month, giving them a chance to explain why they're running.

The average age of MPs has remained around 50 for the past 45 years, but journalist Michael Crick (who tracks candidate selection for future MPs) has said it is possible more young candidates would be elected.

The combination of experienced sitting MPs standing down and quite a few Labour MPs under 30 means it is possible more younger MPs will be present at the next Parliament, he told the BBC.

Among those we spoke to are:

• an 18-year-old independent candidate in west London running on a pro-immigration platform
• a Labour candidate in Wales who believes young people have a unique perspective they can bring to politics
• a 21-year-old Conservative who says challenges in his education and issues with local infrastructure motivated his standing
• a recent graduate standing for the Lib Dems who wants to bring maintenance grants for students back
• an SNP councillor and candidate calling for young people to be more involved in the decision making process in politics

For the full profiles of these fresh-faced candidates, click here.

Ed Habershon
BBC News

A Ukrainian government source has just told the BBC it will not be commenting officially on Nigel Farage’s comments (some more on those in our earlier posts).

However, a source in the presidential office told the BBC that “The virus of Putinism, unfortunately, infects people. And it can have consequences worse than Covid."

"What else can you say ... The virus of Putinism and the rise of war propaganda. The task of civilised humanity is to fight this virus in the bud. Because in essence, this is fascism 2.0."

Finally, Wallace is asked about the legacy of Boris Johnson, the former Tory prime minister Wallace served under and a man who is also celebrating his 60th birthday tonight with a party.

Host Nick Robinson asks Wallace if supporters of Johnson - who was PM from 2019 to 2022 - will be wondering, if only he'd stayed on, we wouldn't be in this mess?

History will write itself at some future date, Wallace says, so I'm not going to speculate about former PMs,.

"All I know is when I served with Boris Johnson as his defence secretary, and Rishi Sunak, they both leant in and supported defence," Wallace says, before hitting out at shadow defence secretary John Healey.

"I suspect my Labour counterpart, if he were to be defence secretary, will be wanting more from Rachel Reeves and will get precisely zilch."

Continuing on Wallace's critique of Farage last night - he is then asked: why are you so angry with him personally?

The former defence secretary goes on to describe the Reform UK leader as a "bit like that pub bore we've all met at the end of the bar". The kind of person, he says, who often presents "very simplistic answers" to complex, 21st Century problems.

He warns that he would be afraid of how Farage would deal with a figure like President Vladimir Putin if he were to become prime minister, adding that his comments about the Russian leader as being strong is an "odd admiration of totalitarian leaders that we hear from parts of the Trump campaign".

"I don't want that anywhere in our politics."

Image source, Reuters

Let's return to that interview with Ben Wallace, the former Conservative defence secretary, who is now speaking to the BBC's Radio 4 Today programme.

As you'll recall from our earlier posts, Wallace is first asked about the fallout from the Nigel Farage comments on Ukraine.

Overnight, the host points out, the Reform UK leader expanded on his position, writing in a post on X that he is "one of the few figures that have been consistent and honest about the war with Russia", and he added that "Putin was wrong to invade a sovereign nation, and the EU was wrong to expand eastward".

Wallace maintains his argument from yesterday, saying Farage has been "consistently wrong" on the issue and then goes on to say that "Putin isn't really invading Ukraine because of Nato expansion".

He cites an article penned by the Russian leader ahead of the invasion of Ukraine, which only mentions Nato in one paragraph of the 7,000-word essay that instead focused on "ethnic nationalism".

Wallace then contextualises his comments further by highlighting that only 6% of the Russian border has a Nato country on it and that it is a "defensive alliance" as it "doesn't go around invading people like president Putin”.

Harry Farley
Political correspondent

As mentioned in our previous post, author JK Rowling has been criticising the Labour Party for "abandoning" women who take issue with the party's position on transgender rights.

This comes after years of the Harry Potter author being a self-admitted "Labour voter" and donor.

We can now bring you the latest comments from the Labour Party, which begins by saying that it "is the party of women's equality, with a manifesto that puts women front and centre".

"Sex and gender are different, as Labour's Equality Act makes clear," the statement continues, "that's why we have consistently said that we will not introduce self ID and that we will protect single sex spaces for biological women".

Image source, Getty Images

Harry Potter author JK Rowling is accusing the Labour Party of "abandoning" women, saying she would struggle to vote for Sir Keir Starmer over his party's stance on gender recognition.

Writing in the Times, external, Rowling says: "As long as Labour remains dismissive and often offensive towards women fighting to retain the rights their foremothers thought were won for all time, I'll struggle to support them."

She continued: "I've been a Labour voter, a member (no longer), donor (not recently) and campaigner (ditto) all my adult life. I want to see an end to this long stretch of chaotic and often calamitous Tory rule. I want to vote Labour."

In the article, the author also mentions Starmer's comments in 2021 describing then-MP Rosie Duffield's remarks that only women have a cervix as "something that shouldn't be said and were not right".

During the BBC's Question Time Leaders' special on Thursday, Starmer agreed with earlier remarks from former prime minister Tony Blair, saying "biologically, a woman is with a vagina and a man is with a penis".

Rowling said Starmer gave the impression at the debate that there was "something unkind, something toxic, something hard line, in Rosie's words" even though "almost identical words had sounded perfectly reasonable when spoken by Tony Blair".