Robinson turns now to Reform UK’s candidates - referring to one who called immigrants “a plague”, another who said Muslims should be removed from the UK, and a third that claimed Africans “have a low IQ”.

Farage says he’s also had “an awful lot of candidates being stitched up in the most extraordinary way with quotes being taken out of context”.

He also says these candidates were recruited before he took an active role in the party.

Robinson asks why people with “these deeply unpleasant and extreme views” rally to Reform UK's cause.

“Nothing to do with me,” Farage says.

Image source, PA Media

Robinson asks now if Farage still thinks the King is "an eco-loony”.

He wasn’t the King then, says Farage, adding: “I can’t speak ill of the monarch, obviously.”

Farage also calls the King’s remark that carbon dioxide was a pollutant a “very stupid comment”.

Robinson now asks about Reform UK’s pledge to spend £140bn a year - “50% more than Jeremy Corbyn”.

Farage mentions his pledge to axe income tax on earnings under £20,000 to get people off the employment register and into work.

Robinson tells Farage: “These figures are nonsense and you know they’re nonsense”.

“Get out of it,” Farage replies, adding his party’s pledge to scrap net zero would save £30bn a year.

• Our colleagues at BBC Verify have looked into this £30bn figure here.

Foreign students cannot bring their mums to the UKpublished at 19:18 British Summer Time 21 June

19:18 BST 21 June

By Tamara Kovacevic

Robinson just asked Farage three times about his claim that foreign students can bring their mothers to the UK.

Farage replies: “It is true.”

But the claim is wrong. The only dependants that students can bring to the UK are their husband, wife, civil or unmarried partner, and their children under 18.

They cannot bring their mothers or other members of their family.

The government website, external lists relevant documents that have to be submitted for the dependants to be granted a visa.

They also have to have a certain amount of money available to them.

Fact-checking Farage’s claim on work visas for dependantspublished at 19:17 British Summer Time 21 June

19:17 BST 21 June

By Ben Chu

Farage says 50% of all the work visas to the UK have been given to dependants over the past two years.

This claim is not correct if you look at the latest figures for overall migrant visas.

Farage did not specify which time period he was talking about but in the year ending March 2024, about a third of all visas issued went to dependants.

His claim is broadly correct though on the numbers coming on work visas.

Out of all the work visas issued in the year ending March 2024, 48% were issued to dependants.

However, it is worth noting that dependants of a person on a skilled worker visa or a student visa are not entitled to claim benefits in the UK.

And they are allowed to work - although we don’t know what proportion do so.

Image source, .

Immigration is next on the agenda. Reform UK’s manifesto - or “contract” - pledges to end net migration if it wins the election.

For context: Net migration is the difference between the number of people coming to live in the UK and those leaving.

“Does that effectively mean one in, one out?” Robinson asks, to which Farage replies: “Yes - it's not as simplistic as that. But yes."

What about exceptions around healthcare — can nurses come to the country, Robinson asks. “Not until we employ the British ones,” Farage says.

“Paramedics, midwives, pharmacists, carers for the elderly - they can all come in?” Robinson says.

“Of course they can come in,” Farage replies.

Have trade exports increased since Brexit?published at 19:12 British Summer Time 21 June

19:12 BST 21 June

By Anthony Reuben

Nigel Farage just told Nick Robinson that the UK has “actually gone, since the Brexit vote, from being the world’s seventh biggest exporter to the world’s fourth biggest exporter”.

This is a claim that our colleagues at BBC Radio 4’s More or Less have been talking about a lot.

The key point is that the UK has only reached fourth place if you include gold, and the Office for National Statistics (ONS), external, which compiles the trade statistics, warns "can be large and highly volatile, distorting underlying trends in goods exports and imports”.

They spoke to Emily Fry from the Resolution Foundation who explained that this gold is mostly the sort that sits in vaults and is traded without necessarily moving at all.

She pointed out that once you exclude gold, the UK drops to being the sixth biggest exporter.

Next, we move onto Brexit.

“It’s a failure, right?” Robinson says.

Farage rejects this - “we failed to deliver.”

Robinson then puts some of Farage’s previous comments to him, including “Brexit has failed” and “we haven’t benefitted from Brexit economically”.

In response, Farage says, since Brexit, the UK has gone “from being the world’s seventh biggest exporter to the world’s fourth biggest exporter”.

He later adds that if he was put in charge of Brexit “it’d be very, very different”.

Robinson turns now to a tweet posted by Farage on 24 February 2022 - the day Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine - in which he claimed it was a “consequence of EU and Nato expansion”.

“Is that a judgement you stand by?” Robinson asks.

Farage says he warned the European Parliament in 2014 of a war in Ukraine as it was an “obvious” consequence to him of “the ever-eastward expansion” of the two blocs.

He also adds that he’s been saying this since the 1990s.

“We've provoked this war,” Farage says, before adding: “Of course it’s [Putin’s] fault”.

“My judgement has been way ahead of everybody else’s in understanding this,” he says.

Robinson now puts it to Farage that he previously said Russian President Vladimir Putin was the statesman he most admired.

“Hang on a second, I said I disliked him,” interjects Farage.

“But you said you admired him,” Robinson hits back.

Farage replies: “I admired him as a political operator because he’s managed to take control of running Russia.”

The Reform leader adds that it’s “nonsense” that you can pick one area a figure is “talented in” and “suddenly you’re the biggest supporter”.

Nick Robinson begins by putting it to Nigel Farage that if the latest polls are to believed, he’ll play a part in “wiping out the Tory Party”.

Robinson asks - does that give him pleasure?

Farage says the polling company that produced the results Robinson referred to began their fieldwork on 4 June, “before I declared I was in the race”.

He claims that more recent polls show Reform UK is going to win “a good number of seats, but it could become a very substantial number of seats”.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is seated and ready to face questions from the BBC's Nick Robinson as part of a series of Panorama election leaders' interviews.

We'll be sharing the key lines here - and you can follow along by pressing the watch live button at the top of this page.

Nick Robinson
Presenter, BBC Panorama

It’s not so very long since Nigel Farage was in the jungle, where he insisted on being called a “former politician”.

One reason for that is it would allow him to carry on presenting his show on GB News during a general election.

Yet here we are, with Farage now leader of Reform UK, claiming that he can be not just the real leader of the opposition to a future Labour government, but a future prime minister too.

It was with that in mind that I approached my interview with him.

I asked him about his record - the judgements he’s made in the past, such as his previously expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin, praise for Liz Truss’s mini-Budget and admission that Brexit has “failed”.

We talk about how his “one out, one in” system of immigration control could work; whether he believes in charging to see your doctor and the non too flattering things he had to say about the King’s lifelong concerns about climate change.

Farage believes he’s on the brink of breaking open the political system we’ve lived with all my adult life, despite the fact that even if his support grows he’s likely to win, at most, a handful of seats.

It’s a lively watch.

Nadia Ragozhina
Live page editor

With less than two weeks to go until the big day, parties continue to make their pitch to voters - scroll down to see what they've been up to.

As 19:00 BST approaches, we are going to turn our attention to Nick Robinson's interview with Nigel Farage, which you will be able to follow by pressing watch live at the top of the page.

And it's the BBC Wales Election Debate tonight, also taking place at 19:00 BST. It includes representatives of the five most prominent political parties in Wales - follow it live here.

Jenny Hill
Political correspondent, on the Lib Dem campaign bus

The Lib Dem bus is known in press circles as the fun one. There’s always tea and cake, the atmosphere’s relaxed and – of course – there are good visual stunts to film.

Ed Davey is a likeable chap and his team want to capitalise on that; they’ve put him front and centre of a very personal campaign.

The endless activities – paddleboarding, jam-making, trampolining – tend to polarise the public. They make for good pictures for us, but we try to focus on the issues and politics.

Broadcasting on the road is challenging; we rely on phone signal to broadcast live on TV and the signal often disappears with no warning as we travel through the more rural parts of the country.

The days can be long and, as I write this, we’ve been driving for four hours. But there’s air conditioning, well-padded seats and we’ve become adept at making a cup of tea in the tiny galley kitchen as we bump along country roads.

But no one will miss the tiny lavatory.

The BBC also has teams travelling on the Labour and Conservative battle buses.

Becky Morton
Political reporter

Nigel Farage says the West "provoked" Russia's invasion of Ukraine by expanding the European Union and Nato military alliance eastwards, in an interview with the BBC's Nick Robinson.

The Reform UK leader says "of course" the war was President Vladimir Putin's fault, but adds that the expansion of the EU and Nato gave him a "reason" to tell the Russian people "they're coming for us again".

In the interview - airing here in full in an hour's time - Farage is challenged over his judgement and past statements, including when he named Putin as the world leader he most admired in 2014.

"I said I disliked him as a person, but admired him as a political operator because he's managed to take control of running Russia," Farage says.

• Nick Robinson has been interviewing the leaders of the main political parties for BBC Panorama. Watch the interview at the top of this page from 19:00 BST

We return once again to our headline story that four people are being looked into by the Gambling Commission over alleged bets relating to the timing of the general election.

Here’s how the UK’s major parties and party leaders responded:

Labour: Party leader Sir Keir Starmer said it showed a “total lack of leadership” from Sunak, adding: “If they were my candidates they’d be gone by now”

Lib Dems: Echoing this, Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey said he hoped Sunak would take “tougher action”

Greens: The Green Party told the BBC it did not have any comment

SNP: The party’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn said the Tory campaign had gone “from bad, to worse, to catastrophic”

Plaid: Luke Fletcher MS, Plaid Cymru Senedd member, said the allegations were proof that “to the Tories this is all just a game”

Reform: Leader Nigel Farage accused the Tories of “stealing the light bulbs on the way out of the building”

Tories: Last night, the prime minister told a BBC audience he was "angry" at the allegations, vowing to “boot out” anyone found to have broken gambling laws

Harry Farley
Political correspondent

Labour received more than £4.3m in the second week of the election campaign, 15 times more than the Conservatives.

Labour’s single largest donation between 6 and 12 June came from Lord David Sainsbury who gave £2.5m, and the former Autoglass boss Gary Lubner gave £900,000.

Holly Vukadinović, better known as Holly Valance, gave £50,000 to Reform UK with the party raising £742,000, mostly through their chairman Richard Tice’s company.

The Conservatives raised £292,000, less than the Liberal Democrats who raised £335,000.

The Electoral Commission this afternoon published the donations to political parties from 6 to 12 June.

Parties must submit weekly reports during the election campaign setting out the donations and loans they have received over £11,180. They have 30 days after receiving the donation to check the source is permissible and to decide whether to accept it.

Sara Girvin
Ireland Correspondent

Image source, PA Media

Staying in Northern Ireland, where the leader of the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) party said the future of the United Kingdom had never been more “perilous”.

Launching the TUV’s Restore the Union general election manifesto, Jim Allister heavily criticised his unionist rivals, the DUP, over post-Brexit trading rules for Northern Ireland.

He said the rules meant the UK had been “splintered by a partitioning border in the Irish Sea”, adding that the TUV was seeking its “reunification”.

The event was attended by Ben Habib, the deputy leader of Reform UK, which has an electoral alliance with the TUV.

However, Reform leader Nigel Farage recently personally endorsed two DUP candidates, including Allister’s rival standing in North Antrim.

But the TUV leader dismissed the fallout from Farage’s comments as a “media story”.

Reform UK said it was “committed” to its partnership with the TUV.

Some of the TUV’s other manifesto pledges include a “robust” migration policy across the UK, including a freeze on “non-essential” immigration, plans to campaign for a “fair” funding deal for Northern Ireland and opposition to “gender-neutral” changing rooms becoming “the norm”.

The TUV has never had a seat at Westminster and is running 14 candidates in Northern Ireland.

You can read more about the party’s manifesto here, while a list of all the candidates standing in North Antrim can be found here.

Sara Girvin
Ireland Correspondent

Image source, PA Media

Let's turn our attention to Northern Ireland for a moment and the leader of Alliance Party, Naomi Long, has denied she is “a Republican in sheep’s clothing”.

She was speaking to BBC Radio Ulster earlier today.

Northern Ireland’s justice minister was responding to an allegation that on the constitutional question – whether Northern Ireland should remain as part of the United Kingdom, or leave and form a united Ireland – she was “running with the hare and hunting with the hounds” and that in the general election her party was mainly targeting unionist votes.

“The people who criticise me on that basis are also the people who tell me that I’m a Republican in sheep’s clothing and that doesn’t add up,” she said.

Naomi Long is standing in East Belfast where she will be challenging the leader of the Democratic Unionists, Gavin Robinson.

A full list of candidates standing in East Belfast can be found here.