No winners after final TV leaders debate with a week to go until Polling Day

A man understood to be a member of the Labour Party who was arrested in connection with the Westminster ‘honeytrap’ scandal yesterday has been released on bail.

A Metropolitan Police spokesperson said: ‘On Wednesday June 26 police executed a warrant at an address in Islington.

‘A man was arrested on suspicion of harassment and committing offences under the Online Safety Act. He was taken into custody and has since been bailed until a date in late September.

‘The arrest relates to an investigation being carried out by the Met’s Parliamentary Liaison and Investigation Team following reports of unsolicited messages sent to MPs and others.

‘The investigation remains ongoing.’

You may know by now that Metro hosted its first General Election hustings on Tuesday, attended by representatives from the six biggest political parties in the country.

Clips and quotes from it have featured in this blog and other stories, but this morning you can finally watch the event in its entirety on YouTube.

We took questions sent in by you and put them to each of the parties, without telling them what was coming up.

Please take a look at the video – it might help you make up your mind about where you put your X a week today.

That’s the claim made by satirist Henry Morris in a tweet which gained a bit of traction over the past day.

Former Conservative chairman Greg Hands posted a video on social media featuring a woman named ‘Amanda’ who said she was planning to vote Tory for the first time.

Morris replied to the post with a screenshot of a local councillor named Amanda Lloyd-Harris, and implied Hands had got her to lie for the video.

It’s gained more than 1,200 retweets and 6,000 likes – despite the fact the councillor Amanda and the Amanda in the video don’t look that similar at all.

Amanda Lloyd-Harris told us: ‘This is completely absurd, we are not the same person, frankly we do not even look alike.’

She supplied the surname of the woman in the video, but asked that we don’t use it online.

Hands wrote on Twitter: ‘These aren’t the same Amanda. There are more than 100,000 people in Chelsea & Fulham. There will obviously be hundreds of people called Amanda.

‘Please delete your misinformation.’

A separate post by Morris has been deleted, but his reply to Hands’ tweet remains on the site.

Labour is reportedly pulling resources from its candidate Jovan Owusu-Nepaul, who is standing against Nigel Farage in Clacton, due to fears he is stealing the spotlight.

The Guardian said the local party has been told to stop printing leaflets and is unable to access the campaign’s social media, while Owusu-Nepaul has been asked to canvass in the West Midlands instead.

A campaign source quoted by the newspaper said: ‘At one point [Jovan] was getting more retweets than Keir Starmer.

‘The officials were furious with him and said he was distracting [from] Starmer’s campaign.’

The 27-year-old candidate has gained attention for his snazzy outfits, and was even interviewed by GQ earlier this month.

However, his party is said to regard Clacton as unwinnable and a straight race between the Conservatives and Reform UK.

Author and one-time Labour donor JK Rowling tweeted during the debate last night to knock Keir Starmer over his line on trans people.

She wrote: ‘It’s very important that we protect women’s spaces… but men can also be women, says the Labour leader.

‘My postal vote is literally lying next to me. I wanted to wait to hear what @Keir_Starmer said tonight to fill it in.’

A quick reminder of what Keir Starmer said last night – he committed to protecting women’s rights to single-sex spaces, saying it was ‘very important’ to do so.

However, he also acknowledged that trans people exist and said he will treat them with ‘dignity and respect’. That appears to be the bit that peeved Rowling.

If you were watching the TV debate last night, you may have been able to hear muffled chanting and cheering while the leaders answered questions.

As presenter Mishal Husain explained, this was due to a demonstration taking place outside the studio.

A large group of pro-Palestine protesters waved flags, held signs and shouted through a megaphone as the debate went on inside.

There was also a smaller gender rights protest, where a woman held a sign reading: ‘Keir Starmer, 100% of women do not have penises’.

During the debate, the Labour leader said it was ‘very important’ to protect women’s only spaces.

He received one of the biggest cheers of the night from the audience when he added: ‘What I will also say is that I do recognise that there are a small number of people who are born into a gender that they don’t identify with, and I will treat them, as I treat all human beings, with dignity and respect.’

As we’ve said above, a snap poll of viewers after the debate found that 50% thought Rishi Sunak won, and 50% thought Keir Starmer won.

Not a glowing result for either reason. But YouGov also asked more specific questions in its poll, and they provide a bit more insight.

Starmer came across as more trustworthy (50% to 39%), likeable (52% to 33%), in touch with ordinary people (63% to 18%, ouch), and Prime Ministerial (42% to 41%), according to the poll.

But when it came to individual issues, viewers thought Sunak was better on immigration – a topic which drew some of the more dramatic moments – by a margin of 55% to 35%, and on tax by 48% to 37%.

Starmer outperformed Sunak on welfare and benefits, Britain’s relationship with the EU and the economy, in the viewers’ estimation.

But ultimately, the main word they used to describe the debate – by a 22% margin – was ‘frustrating’. Following that was ‘interesting’, then ‘helpful’, so it’s not all bad.