Sunak Begins Election Campaign By Abandoning Flagship Policies

Bills on smoking ban and no-fault evictions likely to be dropped

- Jessica Elgot ,Eleni Courea, Rowena Mason

Rishi Sunak dropped flagship policies on deporting migrants to Rwanda and banning smoking for young people yesterday on the first full day of his election campaign, leaving his legacy increasingly threadbare.

Ministers confirmed key pieces of legislation that could be rushed through by MPs before parliament is suspended were likely to be dropped, including plans for a football regulator and an end to no-fault evictions.

Keir Starmer, kicking off his campaign in the target seat of Gillingham, Kent, said it was time to "turn the page on Tory chaos", with Labour warning the government's legislative programme was in tatters, with many proposed laws now "up in the air, or in the bin".

The prime minister's admission that migrants who crossed the Channel in small boats will not be flown to Rwanda before 4 July was met with despair by Tory rightwingers, with many of his MPs already unhappy about the early election.

Under the £500m scheme, the cornerstone of his government's promise to "stop the boats", flights would not start landing in Kigali until "after the election", the prime minister said.

As Sunak set off on a whistlestop tour of the UK, heading for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland over 24 hours, he insisted the Rwanda plan would go ahead if he was re-elected as "the flights are booked for July, the airfields are on standby".

But Starmer said his decision to call an early election showed Sunak "clearly does not believe in his own Rwanda plan". At Labour's campaign launch, the party leader said: "I don't think he's ever believed that plan is going to work, and so he has called an election early enough to have it not tested before the election."