Politics latest: Michael Gove predicts November election; 'no need' for me to see Angela Rayner legal advice, Keir Starmer says

Michael Gove thinks the election will be in November - but professes to have "no inside knowledge". Meanwhile, Sir Keir Starmer and his deputy Angela Rayner have launched Labour's local elections campaign. Listen to the latest episode of the Electoral Dysfunction podcast as you scroll.

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That's all for the Politics Hub tonight

But before you go, here are today's headlines:

  • Sir Keir Starmer has warned Labour can't "turn the taps on" to help struggling councils if he wins the next general election;
  • He also told Sky's Beth Rigby levelling up had been "strangled at birth" by Rishi Sunak;
  • He was speaking as Labour launched its campaign for the local elections on 2 May;
  • Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner has said she will not publish the "personal tax advice" she received on the sale of her council house despite a police development over her living arrangements;
  • The chief executive of Thames Water has refused to rule out bill increases of up to 40% for customers as the troubled company tries to secure its future;
  • Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove has predicted the general election will be in November, but stressed he has "no inside knowledge".

We'll be back from 6am with all the very latest.

Reform MP Lee Anderson empty chaired after pulling out of politics show

Reform MP Lee Anderson has been empty chaired after failing to appear on a politics show. 

Mr Anderson was scheduled as a guest on The Sun's Never Mind the Ballots. 

"After agreeing to come on today's show, Lee has now pulled out at the very last minute," Sun political editor and host Harry Cole said.

Revealing the empty chair, he added: "I will leave you to draw your own conclusions on how interested he really is in gaining your support at the election".

Mr Anderson defected to Reform from the Conservative Party earlier this month, becoming the party's first MP.

Electoral Dysfunction: Royals' cancer diagnoses put struggling NHS in the spotlight

By Beth Rigby, political editor

There is an edict in our democracy that politics and royalty must not mix.

Sure, we live in a "constitutional monarchy" where King Charles is head of state, wading through government papers and meeting the prime minister weekly.

But when it comes to the task of setting the political direction and framing our nation's political debate, the Royal Family has to zip it and remain entirely neutral.

And just as the royals don't stray into political territory, political editors like myself and politicians don't talk much about the Royal Family.

In fact, politicians actively swerve any questions inviting them to comment on the latest tabloid drama around the royals.

But this week on Electoral Dysfunction, we've broken with our own conventions to discuss the Princess of Wales's announcement that she has cancer, and ask whether this might be a moment when the cultural and social role the Royal Family play in our national life takes a more political tilt.

Read more below - and listen to Electoral Dysfunction wherever you get your podcasts.

Email Beth, Jess, and Ruth at electoraldysfunction@sky.uk, post on X to @BethRigby, or send a WhatsApp voice note on 07934 200 444. 

Ireland's deputy leader appeals to Israel to 'show humanity' and allow more aid into Gaza

Ireland's deputy premier has appealed to Israel "to show humanity" and allow more aid into Gaza. 

Micheal Martin, who is Ireland's foreign affairs minister, described the humanitarian situation as "catastrophic".

According to the United Nations, a quarter of Gaza's 2.3 million population faced starvation. Around 80% had fled their homes since Israel launched its military campaign.

Israel launched the offensive in response to the Hamas attacks of 7 October. 

"Nothing can get away from the fact that what would really have an immediate impact is really a proper flow of aid through the land routes," Mr Martin said.

"It is criminal, it is absolutely a scandal that children are malnourished, that half the population are facing famine, and others in terms of insecurity. There is no need for this.

"There's excessive checking at the borders. And I spoke this morning to Ayman Safadi, the foreign minister in Jordan, I spoke to Egyptian foreign minister Sameh Shoukry yesterday, and I spoke to the Palestinian prime minister yesterday also.

"They're telling me the situation is dire, absolutely catastrophic. And I would appeal to Israel to show humanity in terms of enabling the essentials of life to get into Gaza for the civilian population."

Mr Martin was speaking at an event in Dublin alongside EU commissioner for humanitarian aid and crisis management Janez Lenarcic, who described the conditions in Gaza as "a man-made disaster".

The comments come as the UN's top court ordered Israel to open more land crossings to allow food, water, fuel and other supplies into Gaza. 

In a unanimous decision, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said Israel must take "all the necessary and effective action" to prevent a further deterioration of the "catastrophic living conditions of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip".

Piling even more pressure on the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, the justices observed that "Palestinians in Gaza are no longer facing only a risk of famine... but that famine is setting in", as they called for urgent action to prevent mass starvation.

Ireland's premier Leo Varadkar said Israel "must immediately comply" with the ICJ provisional measures.

For more on the ICJ order, click the link below:

Will Labour or the Conservatives win the next election? Latest polling from the Sky News live tracker

The Sky News live poll tracker - collated and updated by our Data and Forensics team - aggregates various surveys to indicate how voters feel about different political parties.

As Labour launches its local elections campaign, it is still sitting comfortably on a roughly 20-point lead, averaging at 43.5% in the polls, with the Tories on 23.5%.

In third is Reform UK on 11.9%, followed by the Lib Dems on 10.0%.

The Green Party stands at 5.9%, and the SNP on 2.9%.

See the latest update below - and you can read more about the methodology behind the tracker here.

Exclusive: More than £1m claimed as Post Office 'profit' may have come from sub-postmasters

By Adele Robinson, business correspondent 

More than £1m of unexplained transactions were transferred in to Post Office profit at the height of the Horizon scandal, leaked documents have shown.

The papers, seen by Sky News, show a snapshot of transfers from a Post Office "miscellaneous client" suspense account over a four-year period, up to 2014.

A suspense account is where unexplained, or disputed, transactions remain until they are able to be "reconciled".

Unaccounted-for transactions were transferred out of the Post Office suspense account and into their profit and loss account after three years.

Ian Henderson, director of Second Sight - the forensic accountants hired years ago by Post Office - said: "The Post Office was not printing money. It was accumulating funds in its suspense account.

"Those funds belong to somebody, either to third-party clients or to sub-postmasters, and part of the work we were doing in 2015 was drilling into that."

Mr Henderson said they were sacked not long after asking questions about whether the Post Office profited from shortfalls paid for by sub-postmasters.

Read more here:

UK almost doubles aid to Sudan as 'devastating' humanitarian crisis deepens

The UK will almost double its aid package for Sudan as the war-torn nation's humanitarian crisis grows.

The £89m package for 2024/2025 announced today is up from almost £50m in the current financial year. 

Almost a year of fighting has left more than half of Sudan's population in need - some 25 million people. 

New analysis, shared exclusively with Sky News, has revealed 180 separate incidents of settlements in Sudan being set on fire, with 108 villages, towns and cities affected since the start of the war (read more here).

Meanwhile, the UN has warned the nation is at risk of famine this year.

The funding was announced by Africa minister Andrew Mitchell during a trip to the Sudan-Chad border, a crossing point for Sudanese refugees fleeing the fighting. 

"The conflict in Sudan is devastating lives. Millions are displaced and facing catastrophic hunger conditions. There is growing evidence of atrocities against civilians," Mr Mitchell said.

"The package announced today will help save lives. We have not forgotten the war in Sudan - nor must the world. The urgent priority is to end the violence."

According to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the cash boost will include funding to Unicef, which will provide emergency and food supplies, particularly to people in hard-to-access areas, including for 500,000 children under five. 

An additional £4.95m will provide prevention and response services to 100,000 women and girls facing female genital mutilation, child marriage and gender-based violence.

For more on that analysis shared with Sky News and the conflict in Sudan, follow on the link below.

PM's knighthood of Tory donor either 'arrogant' or 'self-indulgence', says Labour

We reported earlier that a major Tory donor, as well as four Tory MPs, have been named in the latest honours list on the recommendation of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (read more here).

Labour has now responded to that announcement, describing it as either "arrogant" or "self-indulgence".

"This is either the arrogant act of an entitled man who's stopped caring what the public thinks, or the demob-happy self-indulgence of someone who doesn't expect to be prime minister much longer," said Labour Party chairwoman Anneliese Dodds.

"Either way, it shows a blatant disrespect for the office he should feel privileged to hold."

Businessman Mohamed Mansour, a senior Tory treasurer who gave £5m to the party in last year, was knighted for business, charity and political service.

News agency PA says senior Number 10 sources have pointed to Sir Mohamed's charitable work and record of public service, including support for The Prince's Foundation - now The King's Foundation. 

It says he was also a major contributor to St Paul's Cathedral's Remember Me project, which raised money for a physical memorial to those who died of COVID in the UK.

Four Tory MPs were also on the honours list. 

Electoral Dysfunction: Where do royalty and politics meet?

While the Royal Family have faced a challenging few weeks, our political editor Beth Rigby, Jess Phillips, and Ruth Davidson explore the points where royalty and politics meet, and what the family will say publicly about the state of cancer care following the King and the Princess of Wales's diagnoses.

Plus, is deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden someone likely to be feeling on top this week after calling out China-backed cyberattacks and announcing sanctions against two individuals and a company? Beth, Jess, and Ruth discuss the extent of the Chinese threat.

And they go through more of your messages and questions.

Listen here:

👉Tap here to follow Electoral Dysfunction wherever you get your podcasts👈

Email Beth, Jess, and Ruth at electoraldysfunction@sky.uk, post on X to @BethRigby, or send a WhatsApp voice note on 07934 200 444.

Warning: some explicit language.

Analysis: Sir Keir Starmer needs to level with voters - concrete change may only come in a second Labour term

By Beth Rigby, political editor 

It may have been Labour's local election launch, but it was used by Sir Keir Starmer to roll out his national campaign messaging ahead of the general election later in the year: "The country needs change and we are the change."

It is, if you like, a dry-run for the general election as Labour strategists target areas in their battleground seats around the West and East Midlands and Tees Valley. They will talk up Sir Keir's "national missions" and test out Tory attack lines.

There is no doubt that Labour is expected to win big as political watchers look to see if there will be a repeat of the sort of huge gains Sir Tony Blair saw in the 1996 local elections before his 1997 landslide.

Labour strategists might mutter that in every general election year, the government gain seats in local elections even when there's a change of government, but the expectation is that Labour could win hundreds of seats from the Conservatives and perhaps take the scalp of the Conservative West Midlands mayor Andy Street - while Sir Keir will be looking at this as an important staging post on his path to power, his opponent Rishi Sunak is just trying to survive.

But beyond the drama of the Conservative fortunes and the prime minister's fate, what is also emerging in this election campaign is the secondary strap of Sir Keir's 'change' message.

When he says change, what he really means is patience, and that is perhaps the national conversation we are going to be having much more in the run-up to this general election.

Read more here: