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Labour has marked the anniversary of the Conservatives re-entering government at the 2010 election by launching a what the opposition have called “Conflix” website [geddit?] that mockingly tells the story of “14 years of Tory chaos”

The party’s chair, Anneliese Dodds, was challenged about the site on Sky News this morning and whether the party was relying on “stunts” rather than policy proposals. She insisted that the “detail of policy” was there, in the form of initiatives like GB Energy.

The Scottish National Party (SNP) has received an “immediate lift” in canvassing sessions as John Swinney prepares to become its next leader, the party’s deputy leader has claimed.

Keith Brown said the “field is clearing” as it is expected that Swinney will run unopposed and be confirmed as SNP leader later today.

Brown was speaking to the BBC ahead of the close of nominations at noon in the race to replace Humza Yousaf as the leader of the SNP.

Rishi Sunak’s prediction that the UK is headed for a hung parliament is “for the birds,” according to Ben Page, Ceo of polling company Ipsos.

He told Times Radio that the situation is in Labour’s favour:

I think it’s for the birds, to be honest, at the moment. If you look at the swing in Blackpool South, 30 per cent or so, you look at these local election results, which we haven’t seen anything of this kind since just before Labour won a landslide in 1997.

And finally, you look at Keir Starmer, and Keir Starmer isn’t particularly popular, but it’s always compared to what, if you look at how people rate Keir Starmer as best possible candidate for being prime minister with Rishi Sunak, he’s got double the score of Rishi Sunak.

Sunak had claimed in an interview published today that the UK is heading for a hung parliament, as he urged his MPs to put a stop to divisions and “come together” to take on Labour.

These results suggest we are heading for a hung parliament with Labour as the largest party. Keir Starmer propped up in Downing Street by the SNP, Liberal Democrats and the Greens would be a disaster for Britain.

Page did have some crumbs of comfort for Sunak, however.

The silver lining is that Keir Starmer isn’t particularly popular. If he becomes prime minister, no leader of the opposition with his personal ratings will have ever become prime minister with ratings that are that relatively weak. But having said that, it’s more about just people being fed up with the Conservatives.

Labour is winning people back in those areas that are so important on the road to Number Ten, the party’s chair, Anneliese Dodds, told Sky News in an earlier interview.

But she also took issue with analysis that “assumes that you can just take local election results and somehow read off from those what will happen at the general election.”

That’s never been the case. Local elections tend to deliver a far higher proportion of independent councillors, far higher proportion of smaller parties being elected with councillors. That’s about a fifth of those who were elected actually last Thursday.

At least two more Conservative MPs could defect to Labour before the next general election, HuffPost UK’s Kevin Schofield reports.

He says that handful of Tory MPs are understood to have held talks with Labour officials about the possibility of switching sides.

The would join two other MPs elected as Tories in 2019 – Christian Wakeford and Dan Poulter. The latter, a former health minister staged a dramatic defection to Labour last month, saying the Conservatives have become a “nationalist party of the right” that has abandoned ­compassion and no longer prioritises the NHS.

The Chair of Labour, Anneliese Dodds, has told broadcasters the party will “act on the concerns” of people who had voted for it in the past but had turned away against the backdrop of the conflict in Gaza.

It was important for Labour to “have a discussion” and “understand” why people had shifted away from the party and then reflect them, she told Good Morning Britain.

An analysis has shown that despite huge gains in council seats, seizing the West Midlands mayoralty, and Sadiq Khan, the Muslim mayor of London, winning a third term, there was an almost 18% drop in the Labour vote in areas of England where more than a fifth of people identified as Muslim.

Speaking on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Maria Caulfied was unable to explain how Sunak was including Scottish and Welsh voters in calculating there would be a hung parliament at the next election.

Asked repeatedly how many seats Labour would have in Scotland under the projection Sunak was referring too, Caulfield eventually said “I think because these were English local elections, it doesn’t touch on the Scottish results.”

It was then put to her that the assumption being made is that Labour would retain just one seat in Scotland. Recent polling has suggested that Labour may have taken a small lead over the SNP in voting intention for a general election.

She was told “nobody is suggesting that these results would be replicated at a general election. The experts aren’t suggesting it. I put it to you that, really, the prime minister, if he is suggesting it to his own side, is taking them for fools.”

Caulfield went on to say:

What we can see from these results and it was consistent … is that people are not switching to Labour. Labour did not get the results in places like Teeside or Harlow that they were expecting, even though they threw the kitchen sink at some of those. Voters are tending at the moment to stay at home. They don’t want a Labour government.

Health minister Maria Caulfield has repeated prime minister Rishi Sunak’s assertion that the UK is on course for a hung parliament, and said that Conservative voters who stayed at home for last week’s elections will back the Government at the general election.

She told viewers of Sky News:

If you look at Blackpool South, for example, the vast majority of our voters that voted for us in 2019 stayed at home, they didn’t switch to Labour. They didn’t switch to Reform. They stayed at home and that shows that they haven’t really been tempted by other parties.

That isn’t a particularly accurate reading of the figures, as on a low turnout Labour’s vote share went from 38.3% to 58.9.%, rising by 20 points. The 32 points of share that the Conservatives lost appeared to have gone to them, with Reform UK getting a ten point boost from their performance as the Brexit party in 2019.

Speaking to the Times, Sunak has said that the projection by the elections expert Michael Thrasher that extrapolated the share of local council voting nationwide to a general election showed that the country was heading for “a hung parliament with Labour as the largest party”.

The fifth Conservative prime minister in the last eight years told the newspaper:

Keir Starmer propped up in Downing Street by the SNP, Liberal Democrats and the Greens would be a disaster for Britain. The country doesn’t need more political horse trading, but action. We are the only party that has a plan to deliver on the priorities of the people.

John Swinney looks set to become the next SNP leader when nominations close at noon.

The former first minister is expected to run unopposed in the race to replace Humza Yousaf.

Yesterday Graeme McCormick said he had the secured 100 nominations from 20 branches needed to run against Swinney, but later announced that he would not be standing.

Assuming there are no last-minute challengers – the deadline for nominations is noon – then the leadership bid will not have to be put to SNP members, and he is likely to become Scotland’s next first minister – the third in just over a year – as early as Tuesday.

The Scottish government cabinet will meet on Tuesday, with MSPs later given the opportunity to elect a new first minister.

Good morning, and welcome to our live coverage of UK politics today.

We are expecting John Swinney to be confirmed as new SNP leader after Graeme McCormick said he had the support to run but opted not to. The nominations will be announced at noon, and Swinney may be the only candidate.

Here are your headlines …

• The president of the Trades Union Congress has warned that watering down Labour’s plan to strengthen workers’ rights would be disastrous for the party’s relations with unions. Amid reports that Sir Keir Starmer may bow to pressure from business and amend important parts of his “new deal for workers”, Matt Wrack said the Labour leader risked causing “significant anger” among union members.

• Aslef restarts rail strikes in England with a week of action.
  Drivers in the Aslef union will strike for 24 hours at each of England’s national train operators over the course of three days from Tuesday until Thursday, while an overtime ban will apply nationwide from Monday until Saturday.

• Leaked documents seen by Sky News suggest the government had planned a Rwanda-style deportation deal with Iraq. Rwanda has admitted it can’t guarantee how many deported asylum seekers it will take in

• Farmers’ confidence has hit its lowest level in at least 14 years, with extreme weather and the post-Brexit phasing-out of EU subsidies blamed for the drop

• The Conservative party is continuing to come to terms with shattering local election and mayoral contest losses over the weekend and last week. The prime minister will take questions in a pooled interview on a visit to a community centre in the late afternoon.

It’sBen Quinn here