Jamie McIvor
Reporting from the east end of Glasgow

We've been following the breaking news on Diane Abbott, but let's peel away for a moment to get the latest from Scotland.

Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross is also a football referee - so there was, perhaps, a certain inevitability about the theme of his photo opportunity.

Ross wants voters to “show the SNP the red card” - so, in his football boots, he held up a larger-than-life red card - take a look:

The Scottish Conservatives are focusing their efforts on the seats in Scotland which they won in 2019, and those where they came second to the SNP.

They hope to win the votes of opponents of independence who would see defeating the SNP as a priority.

But the location of the stunt - in the east end of Glasgow - suggests the party does not think any part of the country is a no-go area.

The Conservative Party has swiftly reacted to Keir Starmer saying Diane Abbott is "free to go forward" as a Labour candidate - they say he is "losing control" of his party.

"Angela Rayner is pushing Keir Starmer around. Under pressure, he's showing he's a weak leader who's losing control of the Labour Party," a Tory spokesperson said in a statement.

"That makes it even clearer that you don't know what you're going to get if Keir Starmer becomes Prime Minister – apart from higher taxes on you and your family," the statement added.

Momentum, a left-wing Labour campaign group, also reacted, writing on social media: "You come at the queen, you better not miss. Diane Abbott has been bullied & abused her whole career. Starmer tried to force her out. She held firm - and won."

The group writes that Abbott being allowed to stand is "a huge victory" but that "Starmer's appalling treatment of Diane is just one case among many", mentioning Faiza Shaheen, a Labour candidate who was barred from standing earlier this week.

We're now hearing a bit more from Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer.

He says Diane Abbott was elected in 1987 as the first black female member of parliament and "has been a trailblazer, she's carved a path for other people to come into politics and public life".

Asked if Abbott will be allowed to run on behalf of Labour, Starmer replies: "She is free to go forward as a Labour candidate, the whip is back with her, it's been restored."

But he reminds reporters that it is "formally a matter for the NEC" but he has not expressed a view until now and reiterates Abbott is free to run as a Labour candidate.

Image source, Alishia Abodunde

Earlier this week, veteran Labour politician Diane Abbott accused Labour of blocking her from standing as a Labour candidate in the election on 4 July.

This all began when Abbott was suspended as a Labour MP in April 2023 after saying Jewish, Irish and Traveller people do not face racism "all their lives".

Following a lengthy investigation, she was readmitted to the parliamentary party earlier this week.

Starmer and other senior Labour figures denied she had been barred from standing for Labour - and said her political future would be decided by the party's national executive committee.

It follows a major intervention yesterday by deputy leader Angela Rayner, who said she could see no reason Abbott should be barred from standing for Labour.

There was a stand-off - and Diane Abbott wonpublished at 14:05 British Summer Time 31 May 2024

14:05 BST 31 May 2024

Henry Zeffman
Chief political correspondent

The future of Diane Abbott as a Labour candidate is still technically a matter for the party’s national executive committee, but the fact Keir Starmer said he wants her to carry on means the committee will agree.

To put it more straightforwardly: there was a stand-off and Abbott won. Angela Rayner, too.

The deputy leader’s intervention yesterday saying she saw no reason why Abbott should not be allowed to stand raised the stakes significantly.

In the last few minutes, we've heard Labour leader Keir Starmer say Diane Abbott is "free to go forward" as a Labour candidate.

A senior Labour source has clarified that this means Abbott will be Labour's candidate in the constituency of Hackney North and Stoke Newington.

They also confirm the National Executive Committee (NEC), Labour's governing body, will not block her.

The committee will meet next week to endorse all Labour's candidates before nominations legally close on 7 June.

The full list of candidates running in the Hackney North and Stoke Newington constituency will be on our website after nominations close.

Some news just in - Labour leader Keir Starmer says Diane Abbott is "free to go forward as a Labour candidate".

We'll bring you more as we get it.

Hazel Shearing
Education correspondent

Image source, PA Media

The Liberal Democrats say they want to extend free school meals to another 900,000 children in England.

State school pupils in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 can have free school meals in England, but older children are only eligible if their household gets benefits like universal credit and has an annual income of less than £7,400.

The Lib Dems say immediate plans would raise that threshold to £20,000 – a recommendation made an independent review in 2021.

They say they’d fund it by introducing a new tax on share buy-backs.

Share buybacks are when a company takes spare cash to buy its own shares from the market, reducing the number of shares in existence.

They tend to push up a company's share price and are popular with investors, but the Lib Dems say they allow companies to profit “from soaring prices during the cost of living crisis”.

The Lib Dems say they would ultimately plan to extend free school meals to all primary school children “as soon as public finances allow”.

It is not clear what measure will be used to determine this, though, and the party has not given a deadline for either phase.

Dulcie Lee
Live reporter

We've heard a lot of passionate words from Labour and the SNP this morning, as they traded blows over their plans for Scotland.

In the meantime, our colleagues at BBC Verify have been looking into Labour's plan for green energy, which Starmer hopes to make front and centre of Labour's message today.

There's been some confusion over the exact nature of their planned Great British Energy company, after Starmer told the BBC this morning it would be an "investment vehicle, not an energy company". We're still getting to the bottom of this and will clarify it as soon as we can.

The SNP leader John Swinney said he "doesn't have certainty" about what Labour's plan actually involves, while the Green Party said the funding behind the plans were "tiny" and "nowhere near enough".

For now though, let's have a look at what the other parties are up to.

The Scottish Conservatives have been reacting to Labour's energy plans - and they're not impressed.

We're expecting to hear from their leader Douglas Ross at a campaign event in Glasgow shortly, but Scottish Conservative candidate Andrew Bowie has criticised what he says are Labour and SNP plans to "turn off the taps in the North Sea".

Bowie was an MP in the north-east of Scotland, where the oil and gas industry employs thousands.

He describes the plans as "economically and environmentally illiterate" and says it would leave us reliant on importing more expensive fossil fuels with a bigger carbon footprint.

Let's move from Scotland to England now, and a radio host's shortlived bid to become an MP in July's general election.

Long-serving LBC presenter Iain Dale announced on Tuesday that he was quitting his job in radio to pursue his other “life ambition”. Dale was hoping to be the Tory candidate for Tunbridge Wells, in Kent, where he's lived since 1997.

Just a day later, a clip has resurfaced from a podcast, where Dale said he had been living in Tunbridge Wells “slightly against my will”; that he “never liked the place” and would “happily live somewhere else”.

The episode, from August 2022, is still available to stream online.

“Now, I instantly recognised the problems with that,” Dale told LBC’s Nick Ferrari this morning.

He has now announced that he has pulled out of being a candidate.

“I had 48 hours to make my mind up as to whether to do this,” he said. “But what if they got something else that I’ve said? I wasn’t willing to suffer death by a thousand cuts.”

Can Labour decarbonise the UK electricity grid by 2030?published at 12:24 British Summer Time 31 May 2024

12:24 BST 31 May 2024

The Tories say Labour’s electricity decarbonisation target for 2030, five years sooner than current plans, would be impossible to hit.

The reality is that experts are divided.

Some, such as Dieter Helm, professor of economic policy at Oxford University, insists Labour’s target is “unachievable”.

But Chris Stark, the former chief executive of the government’s independent Climate Change Committee says that it would take a “Herculean effort” but that it could be done.

One of the biggest (and underappreciated) obstacles in terms of hitting the 2030 target is not the cost of rolling out new solar panels and wind turbines, but the practical difficulty of upgrading the electricity grid network, building new pylons and cables needed to transmit electricity around the UK.

As the head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, put it last year: “We must invest in grids today or face gridlock tomorrow.”

Image source, PA Media

Now let’s look at the key takeaways from Sir Keir Starmer’s speech:

• Starmer told Scottish voters that power now shifts to them, urging them to vote for change with Labour
• On GB Energy, Starmer said it would help the transition to net zero and ensure jobs for this generation and the next
• And he railed against the "absolutely shocking" challenges facing the NHS in the country, and says Labour will improve waiting times
• Asked about Diane Abbott's political future, Starmer repeated that no decision to block her from standing for Labour has been taken, calling her a "trailblazer"
• He also said Labour would work with Donald Trump if he was re-elected as US president, after he was convicted of falsifying business records in his historic criminal trial in New York

It's been a busy morning with the SNP and Labour leaders' speeches in Glasgow. There's a huge amount to get through, so we'll take you through the key lines.

The SNP's up first:

• Over in Glasgow's East End, SNP leader John Swinney outlined to Scottish voters the "stark choice" they face at the election
• He accused the Tories of inflicting 14 years of austerity on Scotland - and said the best way to remove them was to vote SNP
• But he also warned of the alternative, saying Labour's economic plans would deliver "austerity on steroids"
• He then called on Labour to implement what he called an "emergency Budget" immediately after the election (assuming they win)
• And on Labour's plans for GB Energy, he warned they would be a "bodyblow" to the Scottish economy"

Lorna Gordon
Scotland correspondent, reporting from Glasgow

Ian Greig lives here in Barrowfield in the east end of Glasgow. He visits the local community centre most days, and was one of the people John Swinney spoke to during his second campaign stop of the day earlier.

He said he is an SNP supporter, but had been “conflicted” about who to vote for because of the recent turmoil in the SNP. But, when it came to John Swinney, he had “decided to give him a chance”.

Swinney has been clear since taking over as SNP leader that he wants to bring stability to his party and hopes to be a “unifying figure” for Scotland.

At the SNP campaign event, John Swinney is taking questions from journalists.

The first question - from the BBC's Lorna Gordon - is about whether Swinney "can do business" with Keir Starmer.

He says he's happy to work co-operatively with the UK prime minister, whoever it is.

"But it's got to be on the basis that it delivers for the people of Scotland," he says.

The second question is about Labour's plans for GB Energy, which Labour calls on their website, external "a publicly-owned clean energy company".

He says having listened to Starmer's BBC interview this morning, he "doesn't have certainty" about what Labour's plan actually involves.

"Keir Starmer said on the radio this morning it wasn't actually going to be an energy company, it was going to be an investment vehicle," Swinney says. "Well, we've got lots of them."

Starmer is now asked if he flew to Scotland in a private jet. Yes, he says, "because we needed to get very quickly to Scotland from Wales yesterday".

"We have to use the most efficient form of transport in the middle of a very, very busy general election campaign," he adds.

The Labour leader says the party offset the carbon as they "always" do (carbon offsetting means donating money to environmental projects in order to balance out one's carbon footprint).

And that's the end of Starmer's speech.

Starmer is joined by Labour's Scottish leader, Anas Sarwar, to answer a question about whether a Labour government in Westminster would work with the Scottish government to boost NHS finances in Scotland.

For context: NHS services are devolved, meaning Scotland - and Wales and Northern Ireland - control them in those nations, while the UK government runs them in England. Currently, the head of the Scottish government is First Minister John Swinney, who leads the SNP.

Sarwar says there is a role for the UK government but the Scottish government needs to better spend its public money, adding that the SNP has seen mass cuts to capital investment.

Donald Trump has become the first former or serving US president to be convicted of a crime - so would Starmer still deal with him if he returns to the White House?

Starmer says he respects the court's decision and process, and that Labour will work with whoever is voted president in November.

He adds that it's still an unprecedented situation and there's "a long way to go" with Trump's court verdict.

You can follow all the latest on Trump in our live page here.

The Labour leader has finished his speech and is taking questions from journalists.

How can voters be confident Labour will honour its election pledges, he's asked.

Starmer replies Labour's plans are "fully costed" and implementable.

He's then asked about Diane Abbott's political future - Starmer repeats that no decision to bar her from standing for Labour has been taken and reiterates that she's been a "trailblazer".