Keir Starmer said he plans to go further in bolstering Britain’s public services than he set out in Labour’s manifesto, calling the party’s election pledges merely a “first step”.Talking about his pledge to recruit 6,500 extra teaches - which would amount to one teacher for every three schools - Starmer told the BBC’s Nick Robinson: “That is set out in the manifesto very clearly as a first step, a down payment, one of the steps that I hope that we’ll be taking literally on day one in government starting down that recruitment… It’s a first step, it’s billed as a first step.” Asked separately about his pledge to create 2m more NHS appointments a year - less than a 2% increase - he said: “It’s a first step, it’s a down payment.” Conservative leadership hopefuls are already lobbying for support to take over from Rishi Sunak amid widespread fears the party is heading for a disastrous defeat on 4 July, the Guardian has learned. Candidates and advisers had begun lining up behind their preferred contenders, sources said, with some Tory campaigners complaining they were being inundated with messages from potential leaders. One Tory adviser said: “There is quite a bit of manoeuvring going on already. Members of the cabinet are texting candidates regularly just to ‘check in’, while others are already lining up their leadership teams.” Nigel Farage has declared himself the real “leader of the opposition” and predicted his Reform party will gain more than 6m votes, after polling ahead of the Conservatives for the first time in a single poll. At an impromptu press conference in Westminster, the Reform leader said there was a momentum behind his party, and he “absolutely” believes that he will gain more votes than the Tories. He went on to demand that the BBC allows him to take part in a leaders’ debate with the Tories, Labour, Liberal Democrats and the SNP next week, and challenged Keir Starmer to a head-to-head debate on immigration. Labour would be handed a “blank cheque” if current polling were replicated at the election, Rishi Sunak has said. The prime minister said he was still fighting for every vote after a YouGov poll put the Tories in third place behind Labour and Reform UK, dealing a fresh blow to his struggling campaign. Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, has said there is “nothing inevitable” about Labour winning the 4 July general election and forming the next government. He said “I’ve been knocking on doors right across the country in seats that Labour needs to win in order to win the next general election, and there are millions of undecided voters out there”. Streeting also said rising NHS waiting lists in England have “blown a hole in Rishi Sunak’s credibility”. Conservative chief secretary to the Treasury Laura Trott gave a press conference to promote the publication of a booklet the Conservatives claim shows Labour have 18 tax rises planned. At a Sinn Féin candidate launch event in Belfast, party president Mary Lou McDonald said a vote for the party was a vote for “hope and optimism, strong leadership and positive change”. Northern Ireland’s first minister Michelle O’Neill said she believed that Sinn Féin would defend the seven Westminster seats it holds – but doesn’t take up – and that they would increase their vote. Rhun ap Iorwerth, Plaid Cymru leader, told the BBC “We’re not going to be forming the next UK government, so it’s about how we use influence and I think in this election, perhaps it’s clearer than in any election for a while what that specific role is. Keir Starmer will become prime minister regardless of what Wales says. We can try to mould the kind of change that’s going to happen in this election. Making sure that labour are kept honest if you like, kept in check”. ITV said Thursday night’s seven-way debate had an average audience 2.1 million and a peak of 2.4 million across devices John Swinney, along with other senior SNP figures, were in Munich ahead of Scotland’s match against Germany in the opening game of Euro 2024. Prof Sir John Curtice, in an interview with the Guardian, has said the 4 July exit poll is in “uncharted waters” this year, telling Libby Brooks “The scale of the Conservative losses are unprecedented if the polls are at all right, so we will spend a lot of the day really worrying about how big is the number we should be putting up [for Labour], or in the case of the Tories, how small.” Council staff across Scotland have rejected a new pay offer and Unison Scotland are to hold a ballot on potential strike action.