Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser, has said that if Nigel Farage were to return to frontline politics, that would create the circumstances in which a new party might be able to replace the Conservatives.

The former Vote Leave campaign director has been writing for some time on his Substack blog about the possibility of a new “Startup party” replacing the Tories, and in an interview with the i published today he explained how it might succeed.

Asked to predict what would happen to the Conservative party, Cumming said:

Depends on what [Nigel] Farage does.

If Farage un-retires, the Tories could easily be driven down to double digit seats and then discussions of a Startup party and replacing them will go from a very fringe idea to being a very mainstream idea.

Explaining the rationale for his Startup party idea, Cummings said:

The only point of doing it is to do something which is completely different from the other parties. The Tories now obviously represent nothing except a continuation of the shitshow; higher taxes, worse violent crime, more debt, anti-entrepreneurs, public services failing, immigration out of control.

But Labour I think will not alter the ultimate trajectory very much, they’ll be continuity Treasury, continuity David Cameron, George Osborne, Sunak, so everything will keep failing and everyone will be even more miserable by 2026 than they are now.

So, to change that you have to have two fundamental things: you have to have an entity which is ruthlessly focused on the voters not on Westminster and the old media. And you have to have something which is friendly towards all the amazing talent in the country, people who build things in private and public sector.

If you can bring those two things together then you have something very powerful and very attractive that most people in the country would get behind.

Cummings thinks a new Startup party should focus on controlling immigration, closing tax loopholes that benefit the richest 1%, investing in public services and reforming Whitehall.

In the interview Cummings did not say whether he had any funding to get his idea off the ground, or whether it is anything more than just talk at this stage. He also claimed a new party could break through without proportional representation. He explained:

It’s seemingly hard but history shows it’s doable but it happens in response to huge system changes. Historically, wars and pandemics are things that reshape states and financial clashes. So now we’ve got all of those things.

Ministers have some encouraging news for seasonal workers spending thousands of pounds to fly across the globe and pick Britain’s fruit.

A Department for Environment and Rural Affairs paper published last night said the department is exploring introducing changes to the seasonal worker visa to ensure that employers pay for workers’ travel and visa costs.

Known as the “employer pays principle”, it would be a major concession since it would mean that anyone coming to work on British farms would not have to fork out the cost of flights and visas. Advocates for the policy say it better protects workers from being charged illegal fees, though there is industry concern that this cost is borne by supermarkets rather than already stretched farms.

The Guardian has previously revealed that Indonesian labourers picking berries on farms supplying major supermarkets were left up to £5,000 in debt to unlicensed foreign brokers for a single season of work in Britain.

The Defra paper, which also announces that the seasonal worker visa will be extended for another five years, says it has committed “to investigating the use of the employer pays principle for the seasonal worker visa route. Doing so would represent a significant step towards alleviating some of the financial burdens that workers can incur in paying for their visas and travel to the UK.”

It adds that it will now be seeking “evidence of the potential impacts across the supply chain, as well as on consumers and workers”.

The announcement follows the decision by the Supplier Ethical Data Exchange (Sedex) to require farming businesses to pay for the recruitment and transportation fees of the seasonal workers they employ. Sedex is a widely backed standard used by major UK supermarkets, who typically demand growers sign up to the scheme before their products are listed.

An open letter from organisations including the union the Landworkers’ Alliance has welcomed Sedex’s announcement but called for the cost to be borne by supermarkets rather than farmers “already struggling with financial pressures”. It argues that retailers “benefit from a greater proportion of the profits while shouldering less of the risk of production”.

Downing Street has issued a readout of what happened at the roundtable at No 10 this morning with universities to discuss antisemitism. Given that it is not available online, and given that this topic is attracting a lot of interest, here is in full. No 10 says:

The PM [Rishi Sunak] began by welcoming attendees to discuss the “growing rise of antisemitism on our campuses”.

He called on universities to “remain bastions of tolerance, where debate takes place with respect for others and where every student feels safe”.

He said that he was looking to university leaders to take “personal responsibility for protecting Jewish students” and adopt a “zero tolerance” approach to incidents of antisemitism, as well as any other form of hatred, prejudice, or discrimination.

The PM also said it was “right” that the Office for Students will be introducing a new condition of registration to deal with harassment, including antisemitism, “because universities should be held to account for their commitment to protect Jewish students”.

Representatives from the Union of Jewish Students described a “year like no other” for Jewish students, with a six-fold increase in the number of antisemitic incidents since 7 October.

University vice-chancellors recognised this challenge and discussed the importance of properly enforcing disciplinary procedures against students found to be inciting hatred or violence, while respecting the legitimate right to protest.

They said that effective dialogue with students was essential and that this included the need to clearly communicate expectations around respect for other members of the university community.

Vice-chancellors also raised support for interfaith networks, cooperation with the police and use of eviction orders, where students are in clear breach of university rules.

Concerns were raised around non-student “agitators” infiltrating on-campus protests in order to stir division.

The security minister [Tom Tugendhat] condemned any “tolerance of hatred” and assured attendees that he was “personally committed” to supporting universities. He said that actions have consequences and freedom of speech didn’t extend to the right to abuse or intimidate.

The communities secretary [Michael Gove] said that tackling antisemitism was a shared responsibility and he noted the government’s BDS [boycott, divestment, sanctions] bill, currently progressing through parliament, which will prevent public bodies fuelling division by imposing boycotts on foreign countries.

The cabinet secretary [Simon Case] said that universities were not alone in dealing with the rise in antisemitism and that it was a growing problem across the public realm. He said that he was committed to working with public bodies to standardise processes and practices in relation to dealing with antisemitism.

The education secretary [Gillian Keegan] concluded by thanking attendees for their commitment to protect Jewish students and foster a positive environment on campus. She said that government would continue to engage closely with sector ahead of the publication of new guidance

The meeting was attended by leaders from 17 leading universities of colleges, as well as representatives from Community Security Trust, the Union of Jewish Students, the University Jewish Chaplaincy and Universities UK.

During the Q&A with journalists after his speech this morning David Cameron also claimed that defence policy, and security, would be dividing line issues at the general election.

The foreign secretary and former prime minister told reporters:

To me, security is definitely on the ballot paper.

If you ask me ‘what’s the most important thing we can do right now as a country’, it is to enhance our security – that is to spend more on defence, to build up our alliances, to work with our partners, to seek out allies, to harden defences at home, to protect ourselves against cyber [attacks], to invest in our intelligence services.

All of these things are about recognising the world’s changed fundamentally compared with a decade ago and the biggest need, in my view, is security.

I would broaden that because, fundamentally, security to me, is the most conservative value of all.

Cameron also said that, while Rishi Sunak has committed to increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030, Labour has not matched that promise.

Labour have not matched the 2.5%, so there’s going to be a very clear choice at the election: if you are worried about the dangerous world, if you want Britain to have strong defences, if you want a government that’s absolutely committed to it and has set out a timetable: here are the guys with a plan.

And if you want a bunch of people who’ve got no plan, who have got no idea, then it’s a very different case from the Labour party.

David Cameron, the foreign secretary, has said the UK will not be following the US in withholding arms sales to Israel, saying the positions are not comparable since the UK is not a large state-to-state arms supplier to Israel. Patrick Wintour has the story here.

Cameron was speaking during a Q&A after his foreign policy speech at the National Cyber Security Centre. The full text of his speech is here, and here is Patrick’s preview story about the main message.

Natalie Elphicke, who defected to Labour from the Conservatives yesterday, has apologised for comments she made supporting her ex-husband after he was convicted of sexual assault.

The comments, made after Charlie Elphicke, her predecessor as MP for Dover, was sentenced to two years in jail for three counts of sexual assault against two women, have been cited by Labour MPs as a particularly powerful reason why she should not be welcome in the party.

In an interview with the Sun in 2020, after her husband’s conviction, Elphicke dismissed the claims of his accusers and said that he was being punished for being “charming, wealthy, charismatic and successful – attractive, and attracted to, women”. Last night the Labour MP Jess Phillips told ITV’s Peston programme that what Elphicke said at the time was “very painful” to the victims, and that she needed to apologise.

In a statement today Elphicke said:

My decision to join the Labour party is not one I have taken lightly but one I made because I am convinced that this country needs a new government led by Keir Starmer to fix the problems we see from housing to small boats.

I always knew that this decision would put a spotlight on the prosecution of my ex-husband and I want to address some of the commentary around this head on.

The period of 2017 - 2020 was an incredibly stressful and difficult one for me as I learned more about the person I thought I knew. I know it was far harder for the women who had to relive their experiences and give evidence against him.

I have previously, and do, condemn his behaviour towards other women and towards me. It was right that he was prosecuted and I’m sorry for the comments that I made about his victims.

It is vital that women can have confidence in the criminal justice system and our rates of prosecution and conviction are far too low as a country.

Keir Starmer’s mission to halve male violence against women and girls is critical and I wanted to take the opportunity to express my explicit support for Labour colleagues working to realise it.

John Swinney endured a difficult inaugural outing at first minister’s questions with Patrick Harvie, his former colleague in government, accusing him of returning Scotland to the “repressive values of the 1950s” by appointing Kate Forbes as his deputy.

In an early taste of the opposition attack lines Swinney faces as first minister, Harvie followed up challenges from the Conservatives and Labour on protecting teachers’ numbers by accusing Forbes, a member of the conservative Free Church of Scotland, of being a social reactionary.

Harvie, the former housing minister who is now a backbench opposition leader, said human rights and equality were at stake. He said:

The Scottish Greens have been clear that we acknowledge the SNP’s right to form a minority government. But we’ve been equally clear that the first minister must quickly give a signal of the direction his government will take.

Yesterday that signal came pretty clearly: progressive ministers sacked and the second most powerful job in government given to someone who has opposed LGBT people’s legal equality, who’s expressed judgmental attitudes against abortion, and who’s even expressed the view that people who have families without being married are doing something wrong.

Is this the Scottish government’s vision for the future of Scotland, taking us back to the repressive values of the 1950s?

Swinney rejected that attack, first insisting his government “will be led from the moderate left of centre position that I have always occupied and which is the policy position of my party, and which is supported by all of our members”.

Harvie alleged Forbes, a former finance secretary, was opposed too to progressive taxation – a charge Swinney rejected. He said it was “a matter of historic record” Forbes had pushed through higher income taxes for the better off and seen the Scottish child payment introduced. He went on:

I take very seriously the challenge that Mr. Harvey puts to me because I want people to be reassured in this country by my leadership. And when I say that I want to be the first minister for everyone in Scotland, I deeply mean that.

I want to lead a modern, dynamic and diverse Scotland, a place for everybody. Where everybody feels at home, at peace, that they have a place and that their place in our society is protected by my leadership of this country.

David Cameron, the foreign secretary and former prime minister, has claimed that Keir Starmer’s decision to Natalie Elphicke join his party shows Labour doesn’t have any core beliefs.

Taking questions after his foreign policy speech this morning, Cameron said:

What does this tell us about the party she’s joining? In life, if you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.

I thought that’s sort of what yesterday showed, that there isn’t a policy about anything, it’s just been about clearing the decks to try and focus attention on the governing party.

Cameron said that, as the general election got closer, people would stop being asked to take part in “a referendum on the governing party” and instead have to choose between two parties. He went on:

And I thought yesterday, you wake up and hear about the defection, you think ‘oh no, not another one, how are we going to handle this?’

By the end of the day it was like ‘that says so much more about Keir Starmer and the Labour party having a complete lack of a plan than it does about a prime minister who is a good man doing a great job at a difficult time’.

Rishi Sunak urged university vice-chancellors to take a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitic incidents and to take responsibility for protecting Jewish students at this morning’s summit at No 10, Downing Street said.

At the morning lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson also told journalists that Sunak said universities should “remain bastions of tolerance where debate takes place with respect for others and where every student feels safe”.

The meeting was called to discuss how universities should respond to the pro-Palestinian protests at British universities. More than a dozen campuses have encampments where students are showing their support for Gaza.

After the meeting Guy Dabby-Joory, head of campaigns at the Union of Jewish Students, told PA Media:

It was a very productive meeting, we were very grateful to the government for arranging it.

Every vice-chancellor understood there is a huge issue of antisemitism on campus, that Jewish students have been struggling for the last seven months. We hope the universities will take their duties far more seriously, we hope they will show zero tolerance to antisemitism of any form.

And Edward Isaacs, president of the Union of Jewish Students, said: “The burden is now on vice-chancellors to ensure we don’t see scenes in the US replicated in the UK.”

As they left the meeting Prof Irene Tracey, vice-chancellor of Oxford University, said the meeting had been “really positive, while Prof Nic Beech, vice-chancellor of the University of Salford, also it had been “very good’ and “really constructive”.

John Swinney has axed the post of minister for independence, in a clear signal to Scottish voters that his government is focused on their immediate cost of living concerns before the general election, Libby Brooks reports.

Victoria Prentis, the attorney general, told the Commons that Britain continues to view its arms sales to Israel as legal a day after US president Joe Biden warned he would pause the delivery of bombs because they had been previously used to kill Palestinian civilians.

During questions in the Commons, the government’s chief law officer was pressed on the legal position governing the UK’s arms sales, which the law says should be halted if there is a “clear risk” they could be used by the buyer to commit war crimes, in breach of international humanitarian law (IHL).

Responding to Brendan O’Hara of the SNP during questions, Prentis said while she couldn’t share specific legal advice, she could state the current position taken by Lord Cameron, the foreign secretary:

I can say that the foreign secretary has reviewed the most recent advice from the IHL cell, and that has informed his decision that there isn’t a clear risk that the items exported from the UK might be used to commit or to facilitate a serious violation of IHL. That leaves our position on export licences unchanged, but that position is kept under review.

Overnight Biden confirmed the US had paused the delivery of 3,500 2,000lb and 500lb bombs in response to Israel’s threat to attack Rafah, in southern Gaza, where around 1 million people are sheltering and explained he did not support an attack on the city.

“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they [Israel] go after population centres,” Biden said, a rare acknowledgment of the humanitarian impact of the supply of such weapons.

Britain is a relatively modest arms supplier to Israel, supplying £130m worth of arms during the last five years according to official data, although that does not include any supplies since Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October. The US has transferred at least $23bn in arms since that date.

The size of the waiting list for routine hospital treatment in England was unchanged in March, following five consecutive monthly falls, PA Media reports. PA says:

An estimated 7.54 million treatments were waiting to be carried out at the end of March, relating to 6.29 million patients, the same numbers as in February, NHS England said.

The list hit a record high in September 2023 with 7.77 million treatments and 6.50 million patients.

The figures also show that in March there were were still 50,000 people waiting more than 65 weeks for a treatment, even though NHS England was supposed to eliminate waits of more than 65 weeks by March 2024.

Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, said:

The Conservatives have failed to meet their pledge to end waits of more than 65 weeks and waiting lists are not falling. Rishi Sunak has broken every pledge he’s ever made on the NHS, causing patients to wait for months in pain and discomfort as a result. The crisis in the NHS will only get worse if the Conservatives are given another 5 years.

Ben Houchen, who was the Conservative to win a metro mayor electoral contest last week (he was re-elected as Tees Valley mayor), has said that the route to Tory electoral recovery is “getting narrower by the day”.

In an interview with BBC Radio Tees, he said:

Things don’t look great for the Conservative Party at the moment … There is still a way through but that way through is getting narrower by the day.

Asked if Rishi Sunak was to blame for the party’s problems, Houchen replied:

Ultimately it always rests on the shoulders of the leader, all responsibility goes back to the top, it’s the same in my job as well. Ultimately, you’re the one responsible for it.

But there are lots of people who are involved in the problems with the Conservative party. It’s a bit of chaos at the minute, right, isn’t it?

There’s lots of people fighting with each other in the Conservative party, there are defections going on and ultimately the public do not vote for parties who are not united and are not presenting a united front and also aren’t talking to the public.

If they’re fighting with each other like rats in a sack instead of saying to the public ‘this is what we’re going to do for you’, that doesn’t win elections.

Obviously, it ultimately lies with Rishi but there are lots of people that need to get their act together, stop messing about and start talking to the public about what they can offer them, rather than just fighting with each other.

University vice-chancellors need to “show leadership” in response to student protests over Israel’s military action in Gaza, Gillian Keegan, the education secretary has said. Eleni Courea has the story.

Nadhim Zahawi, a former chancellor under Boris Johnson, has become the latest Conservative MP to announce he will not be standing again at the general election, Ben Quinn reports.

Good morning. Defections are supposed to damage the party losing the defector, not the one welcoming them, but almost 24 hours after Natalie Elphicke’s ultra-surprise conversion to the Labour cause, at PMQs yesterday, it is starting to look as thought this might cause more bother for Keir Starmer than for Rishi Sunak. As the Guardian reports, the decision to admit the Boris Johnson-supporting rightwinger has gone down badly with Starmer’s MPs, and presumably with Labour members more widely.

Elphicke’s move is widely seen at Westminster as unprincipled, and it is assumed that her support for her new party is not sincere. For once, the Daily Express has a splash headline that many Labour MPs probably agree with.

The defection is also a bonus for other progressive parties competing with Labour. The National in Scotland summarises the SNP’s view.

Anneliese Dodds, the Labour chair, was doing an interview round this morning and she had the awkward job of defending the decision to admit Elphicke. One of the most tricky moments came when she was asked to explain why Elphicke is now a member of the parliamentary Labour party, but Diane Abbott isn’t. Dodds did not have a particularly convincing answer.

Abbott, of course, was suspended more than a year ago after writing a letter to the Observer that suggested that antisemitism was not as serious as racism directed towards black people. Abbott has apologised, but the disciplinary inquiry into what she said is still going on, there is no sign of when it might end, and Abbott has concluded that that she is not being treated fairly.

In an interview on the Today programme, Amol Rajan asked why Elphicke was in the PLP but not Abbott. He said:

It’s taking a hell of a long time in the case of Diane Abbott, isn’t it [to resolve the inquiry]. So Diane Abbott – here’s someone who has given her adult life to your party. She was elected in 1987 as the first black woman MP, who has apologised unreservedly unreservedly for remarks she she made last April, but who it seems can’t be a Labour MP while Ms Elphicke can. Are you sure you’ve got your priorities straight?

And Dodds replied:

I have enormous respect for Diane Abbott and she was an absolute trailblazer. We set out those proposals for a new Race Equality Act some weeks ago and I was really privileged to be able to discuss them with her.

But we have got a process [for investigating complaints], there is an independent one that does operate without fear or favour, that is quite right. And it’s not one that’s subject to political influence, nor indeed should it be.

Asked why the inquiry into Abbott was taking so long, when the party had been “very quick” to admit Elphicke, Dodds said she could not go into details of the complaints process. “That wouldn’t be appropriate,” she said.

Dodds made a similar point about the importance of Labour having an independent process for dealing with complaints when Rajan asked why Elphicke was in the party but not Jamie Driscoll, the former North of Tyne mayor who quit Labour after the party banned him from standing to be North East mayor because he had shared a stage at an arts festival with the leftwing film director Ken Loach.

Referring to Elphicke, and one of her previous comments about the England footballer Marcus Rashford and his campaign for free school meals, Rajan said:

So it’s okay to venerate Boris Johnson, denigrate Marcus Rashford, which is what Natalie Elphcike has done, but not to share a stage with Ken Loach if you want to be a leading light in the modern Labour party. Is that right?

Dodds replied:

My understanding is that Natalie, I think, rightly apologised for those unacceptable comments about Marcus Rashford. But I would say it’s very important that every political party has a robust mechanism for dealing with complaints. We have applied that without fear or favour.

In a separate interview on BBC Breakfast Dodds dismissed claims that Elphicke’s previous comments showed she did not belong in the Labour party, saying “people can change their minds”. She told the programme:

I can see that in [Elphicke’s] statement that what she set out is absolutely fundamental to the Labour party … making sure that we have a country that is secure, making sure that we’re delivering on those issues of security, and also making sure we’re delivering on housing as well.

People can change their minds and, as I said before, Natalie Elphicke is not the first Conservative MP to take this decision.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9am: Rishi Sunak and Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, meet university vice-chancellors in Downing Street to discuss protecting Jewish students.

9.30am: NHS England publishes its monthly waiting time figures.

11am: David Cameron, the foreign secretary, gives a speech at the National Cyber Security Centre. At Patrick Wintour reports, he will “warn that the west is not learning the lesson of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that authoritarian adversaries will only be spurred on if the west shows hesitation or caution”.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

Noon: John Swinney takes first minister’s questions at Holyrood for the first time as FM.

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