the reform uk leader, nigel farage, has defended his claim that the west provoked russia into invading ukraine. he said he was not an "apologist or supporter" of president putin. mr farage has been facing cross—party condemnation for the remarks. iran's supreme court has overturned the death sentence of the rapper toomaj salehi and ordered a retrial. he was charged for supporting the 2022 anti—government protests, which began over the death of mahsa amini in police custody. now on bbc news, newscast with adam fleming, laura kuenssberg and paddy o'connell. hello. it's adam in the newscast studio. and it's laura next to you in the studio. and it's paddy in the same place and befitting, smug, chattering class people we got locked out of the studio in broadcasting house, and it's typical of what happens in an election campaign. well, let's hope that by the next

half hour of people hadn't wished that we were still locked in the studio that we managed to get in. and before we were going on air, i was telling paddy about the last time i got locked out of my flat, and it was because i had to go and pick up a signed copy of michel barnier�*s brexit diaries. long, long story and also from a very long time ago, that's very on brand. but should we explain what we're actually doing here? yes. so newscast is our daily news podcast that you can get every day on bbc sounds. obviously, during the election, we are majoring on covering the election coverage, the election campaign of all the parties. and every saturday we're here live on radio four to bring you some kind of newscast style reportage of the week. newscast from the bbc. we will look back at what's been happening all week in the election campaign. but if we've got some breaking news, we will start with the breaking news and there's a classic scoop coming our way.

well, it's interesting. what's made its way into my hands is the note to memo that pat mcfadden, who is the labour campaign chief, sent out to all of labour's candidates yesterday. and it's really interesting because you start and we're going to see labour shifting its message a bit. so everybody listening i'm sure will remember the tories have spent a long time in the last week saying be very scared of a big labour majority. that's what all the polls are suggesting. labour is and i think in quite a big way in the next 2a to 48 hours, going to try to push back that message and turn it into a sort of don't stay at home, don't let the tories fool you. this election is still up for grabs. and just to give you a couple of messages from this memo that i've been shown. mcfadden is essentially instructing his candidates to tell their voters. so, listeners, this may be what somebody says to you when they come and knock on the door, say, do not assume anything about the result. do not vote for a minor party which only helped the tories. the only way to stop the tories is to vote labour.

now i think that there is part of this is a sort ofjust a campaigning tactic, right? you always have a get out the vote operation. but i think there is a genuine nervousness about the impact of poll after poll after poll after poll suggesting that there are these sort of crazily wild, enormous majorities for the labour party. and there's a bit of superstition in there. but there's also the reality that labour doesn't really think these numbers stack up. well they don't, do they, because the polls are so wildly different. the polls should be standing as a political party. i've heard more discussion of the polls than obesity. brexit. literacy. the learning of music in schools. the polls have become a candidate. they are an agent. what's happened? and they're wildly different. and you've got a leaked memo. did he know it would be leaked? and in which he says two things, which i think radio four listeners will chime with. one, there are a lot of undecided

voters and that is completely under—reported. if i had a pound for every time, i mean, i'm not a betting man and i know many people are. that's an important thing to say this week of all weeks. but the thing is that the polls are getting all the coverage and undecided voters are not. and pat mcfadden, in his leaked memo, is trying to get the message out. don't take these people for granted. and he uses a figure of up to a quarter of voters. so when you look at the polls, then they tend to say around 10% or a little bit more. so redfield and wilton, the political strategy firm who do lots of polling, put out an article about undecided voters on wednesday and their number is 9%. so let me tell you how labour gets to this. up to a quarter of voters haven't yet decided completely how they're going to vote. so there are two categories of voters who are basically still swithering. so, one, there is consensus. there are around about five million people who say they don't know. they genuinely haven't made their mind up.

so if they're one of the people that a pollster turns up to with a clipboard and says how you're going to vote, they say, i don't know. there's a second category, though, of people who would name a party in that question. so, adam fleming, you tell me you're going to vote for the hypothetically marvellous narnia party. but as the pollster, i then say to you, and how sure are you that you are definitely going to vote for the absolutely marvellous narnia party? and you say, hmm, well, maybe not that sure. and they're known as the uncertain and there may be around about three million or so of them. so if you put the undecideds with the uncertainties and then you think they're not all going to turn out, labour hq reckons that they're probably around about seven million people who are probably going to vote who have not completely made a final decision. in other words, about seven million votes labour hq reckons are still in play. and that is why when they look at these polls, they have decided they're going to shift their political message to tell everybody listening, do not take anything for granted.

this election still is not in the bag. and also there are elections throughout our history in which people promised the shining city on the hill, come with me towards the welfare state 1945. come with me towards an in—out referendum on brexit. david cameron, after he was frit by the european elections that we spoke about last week. come with me. i'm going to leave nato. i've had all of this in my life and this election is not like that. this election is different. there is no clear way to lure me into the ballot box. i know that's a big thing to say. different parts of the uk people will feel motivated in different ways. but i think what this leaked memo shows is that the campaign so far has been going with the opinion polls, some leader interviews, and it's not got that feeling of a giant moment in political history based on policy. but isn't that interesting, though? you're saying there's no giant thing or doesn't feel like there's a giant thing on offer at this election. but the polls are suggesting

a change in government and the opposition party becoming the government. and i was at an event with nick robinson the other day there, and he was saying that's only happened three times in his in his adult life. and you realize actually that that's that's the potential big thing. and i sometimes wonder if we don't see the wood for the trees. but i think what you're saying and forgive me if you know, is that there's not an issue as an overriding issue. so what the polls suggest, what our conversations with voters or conversations with politicians of all stripes is a mood. it's a vibe election, actually, as some people might rather nauseatingly say. and what labour candidates and people in labour hq and people in tory and in all of the other parties, what they do say is clearly there is a big direction of travel here, which is conservative decline and people wanting, at this stage, and we are not predicting the outcome radio four listeners, we're not predicting the outcome at all. but that is the very, very clear mood is after years of very difficult politics,

scandal and five tory prime and five tory prime ministers, there is a clear mood and move towards doing something else. but as you say, there isn't a kind of margaret thatcher coming in with swinging, swinging reforms of all sorts of different kinds, tony blair coming in and promising big changes. it's the ins and outs theory. the outs go in and the ins go out. and what i would like to say about this is that all please elaborate. well, the polling takes the public for granted. don't publish these poll after poll after poll. my vote is a very precious thing. and the way these polls are being wound on about all the time. so we stop that. well, look, i'll tell you what i did. i went to true blue essex, which is where i worked first as a journalist. it's a place i know very well, and it's a sort of battleground. essex man, basildon man. you know, you look at all the famous people who meant well. theresa gorman, don't forget, there have been many, many famous tory mps there who are female and priti patel is one of them. absolutely very popular in her area. no, i was just referring to the fact

you'd said that a lot of man i did say that. i met a woman on the street and when we mention individual candidates, all the lists are on the website. but just to say that i met one voter who is undecided now, she said to me on the street, she kept me talking for a long time. i'm someone who remembers. i grew up with my mum telling me women didn't get the vote in this country for until onlyjust about a hundred years ago. we need to vote. and she says, but i've never been so confused. absolutely disgusting. i mean, would it influence how you vote? i'm not sure. ijust don't trust politicians now. we just had this conversation and i said, i don't know what to do because i've always voted and i do not know what to do. could someone still get hold of your vote? could you still be convinced one way or the other? i don't know. i'm very confused about it all.

have you ever been this confused? no. well, thank you for talking to me. 0k. bye bye. so at the start, she's disgusted by the betting story, which we're going to come to. but she wanted to talk in greater detail about what the voting looks like to her. and how she's being unsure and so clear, just being unsure, saying, i don't really know. and, you know, people i've talked to in both the big parties who've been on the doorsteps do all say or they've all said to me, it doesn't feel as clear as the polls are suggesting. now, nobody is saying, oh, it looks like actually the tories at this stage have got anything up their sleeves that could change that overall dynamic. but it's really interesting to hear that sense of, ijust don't really know. ijust don't really know. just to drill into those numbers of of undecided voters, whatever the actual number of them is or whether they're actually undecided rather than uncertain rather than undecided and uncertain. yes, because i'm looking at my very bad handwriting. so i'm focusing on that rather than the actual words i'm using.

yes. so according to redfield and wilton and other political consultants are available when you actually then try and drill down to find out where these voters are leaning towards, 20% of them are leaning towards the tories, 20% of them are leaning towards labour, 15% are leaning leaning towards reform uk. but the biggest group, 24% saying they probably won't vote at all. and the sofa vote, as we've talked about before, is going to be absolutely critical. the stay at homes and you know, that is potentially a massive driver is that the sofa becomes the winner and they sofa more comfortable than actually making making that decision. you know that lady that you spoke to in essex who feels confused, feels maybe a bit bit distressed. she sounded almost like, you know, kind of troubled by it. she might decide, actually, i just don't want to put myself in that position where i'm going to force myself into making a decision that i don't want to make. and i suppose the point about this is if there really are about seven million people, some of them might be listening. good morning to you who are not sure what they're going to do in the privacy of the ballot box

on july the fourth or even at the moment are sitting on their kitchen table wondering about filling in their postal vote and they don't know what to do. that is a very, very big number of people, and their decisions, which are not in the bag, would have a massive impact on the potential range of outcomes in this general election. so we've discussed a leaked labour memo, we've linked it to one of the headlines in it from pat mcfadden, which is don't take undecideds for granted. that a quarter of people up in those sort of people are uncertain or undecided. so they are trying to chime in the game of thrones concerns. can are you know what, we are going to move us on. well, no. i was going to sayjust lastly, my favourite bit of this leaked memo is his salutation. it says dear and this is to labour candidates, this memo, dear friend, happy longest day, because it was written yesterday. right. there we are. did you put that in any emails yesterday? idid. longest day? no, but i didn't know my emails would be read. now, look, we move on because i mentioned the woman of essex,

the essex woman who i met and she said she was absolutely disgusted. i don't think i made it plain in that. so forgive me, i'm now going to go back in time by the betting snafu. and this is the situation where at least four people are being looked into by the gambling commission over alleged bets relating to the timing of the general election. and file this under political stories that you could not simply make up. even if you had tried, you could not have made up that during the election campaign, two candidates and even the conservative party's actual director of campaigning would have their behaviour being looked at by the gambling commission. the suggestion is, and they haven't confirmed this officially, but we know they're being looked into. the suggestion is that people placed bets on the date of the general election when they may have had inside information that was not yet in the public domain. one of them actually also on the side is a police officer who was part of rishi sunak�*s close protection squad. but this isjust a kind of, it comes

under the extraordinaryjaw dropping and incredible thing to happen in politics. and it's allowed labour again to get up that argument that yes, the conservatives are in it for themselves. it's all about their own motivations. and of course rishi sunak was i think genuinely appeared to be visibly furious about this. but it came at a week when the tories actually had a moment of having some quite positive news because inflation had actually gone back to the target that it's meant to be at. yeah. and the pm had to deal with this when he was on question time in york on thursday night, taking questions from fiona bruce and members of the question time audience. aren't these emerging allegations about betting on the election- date the absolute epitome of the lack of ethics that we have had to tolerate j from the conservative party for years and years. - well, like you, i was incredibly angry, incredibly angry to learn of these allegations. it's a really serious matter. it's right that they're being investigated properly by the relevant law enforcement authorities, including, as fiona

said, a criminal investigation by the police. and i want to be crystal clear that if anyone has broken the rules, they should face the full force of the law. and that's what those investigations are there to do. and i hope that they do their work as quickly and as thoroughly as possible. that was rishi sunak speaking on bbc one on thursday night, and we've had a statement from solicitors acting for laura saunders, who is one of the conservative candidates who is involved in all of this. the statement says that she will be cooperating with the gambling commission and has nothing further to add. they continue, it's inappropriate to conduct any investigation of this kind via the media, and doing so risks jeopardising the work of the gambling commission and the integrity of its investigation. the publication of the bbc story is premature, they say, and it's a clear infringement of ms saunders' privacy rights, and they say they will be considering legal action. i'm not a solicitor, and here's a statement from me. oh, no, no, no, no. the man who was running, the man who was running the conservatives campaign is no longer running

the conservatives campaign. i don't want solicitors who listen to be offended, but that is certainly a public interest story. in the middle of a general election, this began in the rain. the man launched the campaign standing in the rain. he then came home early from d—day. then his director of communications has gone. campaigning. director of campaigning is gone. thank goodness you're here. she went last year. and of course, it is a matter of giant public interest. really, going back to the first point, i'm a voter. i don't want to be told that my vote is taken for granted. i don't want to be told that subjects are often off topic. this is perfectly on topic for the middle of a general, and also it's just that age old political thing of like if you as a political figure set a yardstick by which you're going to be measured, in other words, probity, we're going to be we're going to be whiter than white compared to the last lot, which is what rishi sunak did on day one. no surprise. if you're going to be judged by that yardstick by everyone else. well, everything that happens afterwards. well, i've got more to say on this. 0k.

because, you know, we finished 11th third. well, no, because look, the police officer who has not been found guilty of anything. no. has been suspended. the politicians, political people who have not been found guilty of anything have not been suspended. the director of campaigning has taken a leave of absence. yes, he has got ho, but the candidates are still on the ballot paper, which i think may give people pause for thought. because you can't take them off. yes, but i think sunak because actually i think he's going to keep getting that question. is it clear that's likely? is it being asked why that's okay for them to be running? is it clear why i'm interrupting you so much? is it clear? i think it is because this morning you are outraged, just so i've got more to say. which is, is it clear that this is the final list of innocent people who are being looked into? is there going to be more innocent people being looked into? possibly. do you have information? no, but there is lots of what i'll say. how around which we do like to share

with you on newscast and you are listening to newscast rather than anything else on radio four. so if you're wondering what on earth is going on with me, outraged of fitzrovia, mr paddy o'connell to my left and adam fleming to my right. you are not having your normal radio for broadcast on a saturday morning but newscast during this election campaign. but there has been lots of howl round in political circles in the last couple of days about the possibility of there being more names and all sorts of scurrilous suggestions, which i'm not going to repeat. but, you know, the sunday newspapers are quite good at ferreting things out. who knows what will land on the newsstands tomorrow morning. and also, rishi sunak had that dilemma when he was launching the conservatives welsh manifesto on friday, and he was doing questions from the media about this. and someone said, are there more people whose names could come out innocent or otherwise? and he had to do that thing of like, i'm just not getting into this, which is not denying it, which means the story can live for a bit longer because then journalists can say, well, he didn't deny it, which suggests there might be. and here's a phrase i thought i'd never use. it's hyphenated and what it's data—scraping. so apparently the way this comes

to light is you get hold of how the money's moving. and it's an unusual spike. and it doesn't seem clear to me that the number of innocent people who are being looked into adds up to the total amount of money that moved. therefore, there's a there's an arithmetic gap there implying there might be more innocent people to be looked into, presumably we'll be told prematurely. but it's not clear to me that the total number of innocent people adds up to the total amount of money seen moving. we will see. there is another interesting little kink around that is if we go back to that time when rishi sunak announced the election in a dreadful downpour. in the days preceding labour hq had noticed, on the tuesday, i'm told that there had been a surge in betting around the days of the election and they actually started spending money and buying ad space and spending money for candidates on the basis of that before the election was called, on the basis of the betting surge. so not only have some conservatives

ended up with this terrible embarrassment, but it also seems that they managed by doing what they are alleged to have done to give a jump to labour headquarters in times of turning the taps on for the campaign. so talk about shooting yourself in the foot. and just continuing our discussion about the conservative campaign, which doesn't have a head of it any more. and that we should be clear about that. so. so tony lee, who we've been talking, was the director of campaigning, which is essentially the sort of field operation. they absolutely still have their campaign director and campaign chief, as it was the experienced strategists who'd run the 2019 campaign, and james forsyth, who's the close ally of the prime minister. but my question to you doesn't mean it's not a big deal. butjust to be clear about the who, the personnel, the hierarchy of who's disappeared. but my question was going to be about the ground campaign, because you see on social media

so many posts about going, oh, there's a rumour that tory candidates have been told to go from this what used to be a fairly safe seat to this very, very safe seat. this suggests this panic or like they're going to lose loads more places than you ever would have thought. what's your take on that? well, i think it's completely normal for parties to move resources around in campaigns. and they go to where they think they have more of a chance of holding on or winning. and they move resources around. they move also online ad spending around. and actually, in this day and age, things about where they're spending their digital budget and the kind of advertising adverts that they're making is also a huge part of the calculation. so of course, this always happens, but it also sometimes always happens in it also sometimes happens in unexpected places. so little problems pop up in different constituencies that parties might not have anticipated. what's interesting, though, is we know from the campaign declarations that labour has raised absolutely tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of cash in this election campaign, and the conservatives are way behind in terms of what's

been raised now. they say they raised a lot in the run up to the election. so basically it's not an issue, but that factor has also been been going on. but it's interesting, though, because i think this polling conversation that you allude to and then the betting story, all of these stories mean that so much of the oxygen in this campaign has been taken up by, well, actually, what somebody described to me is sort of witnessing a kind of public collapse of the tory party. that's how some people feel about it, rather than what you might expect is such, you know, incredibly intense scrutiny of labour's plans. now of course there has been scrutiny of labour's plans, of course there has been, we're all doing that. but the news stories have really been about in majority, i think it's fair to say, have been about kind of disasters going on in conservative quarters, which is an interesting thing. so i'm going to say why don't we talk about some substance? because there are always events in election campaign and appropriately, we nearly didn't

make it to air because the bbc could not unlock a door. so, i mean, there's a lot of blame to go around. burly men to try to break it down. well, they may have done, but there's a lot of blame to go around. so let's just turn our attention in the closing minutes. and you listening, you'll be glad to know these are the closer we get to the snp and reform manifesto /contract launches. so let me begin with the scottish national party because they have said that a majority of seats heading their way would again trigger independence talks. and i thought that was rather intriguing because that does throw open the prospect that you do not get a majority of seats. indeed. and whatjohn swinney, the first minister, does not want to answer is the natural logic of that position. he's been asked lots of times this week, if you don't get a majority of seats in scotland, does that mean that you'll accept that you no longer have a mandate to push for independence? he doesn't want to answer that question. he was asked lots of times.

he was asked it by the excellent audience on question time, who i think have won this week of campaigning. i think the stars of this week's campaign have been the question time audience, and the snp do not want to answer that question, partly because the expectation is if you speak to them privately and also if you look at those dreaded polls that they are going to lose lots and lots of seats and they're probably not going to be the biggest party. so you've actually got a story here of two unpopular governments. you've got the westminster picture and the conservative party predicted in polls that you may have caught. you may, of course, in coverage of the polls predicted to have perhaps a wipe out moment. so say the polls, which are getting a lot of coverage. the scottish national party is one of the most, like the conservatives, one of the most successful election machines in the history of our democracy here, also facing the prospect of a dramatic reduction in the things they are, but in terms of proportion that we've got to be careful about that comparison. so it is you see headlines

and you have private conversations with conservatives using words like wipe—out. the snp are expecting a significant chunk down, but they're not expecting a kind of wipe—out. so you're right though, there is that sort of feeling of sort of exhaustion around parties that have been in power for a long time. also, the snp manifesto is one of those kind of win—win documents. they can say, oh, you should put up health spending in england so that as a result of all the formulas for how public spending works elsewhere in the uk, the scottish government gets more money to spend on the nhs. so either that happens and john swinney can say, see, i said that should happen win or it doesn't happen. and he can say, oh those, those evil people in westminster starving the scottish nhs of resources. oh, it's also a win for him. i can't believe you said formulas not formulae. for oh like my podcasting roots are not my radio for the snp. like the greens and the lib dems are saying more money for public spending, more taxation in contrast to the party that would just talk to at the end the reform party that also launched their contracts

with the country. of course, that outfit now headed by nigel farage, who's in a lot of bother today over comments he made to the bbc�*s nick robinson yesterday, essentially saying that nato bore some of the responsibility for creating such a situation where vladimir putin then felt it the right thing to invade ukraine. and there's a huge news story about that running very hard today. he's being accused of appeasement by rishi sunak, the prime minister, with a very strong pushback to that. but their manifesto very, very different to all the others talking about a freeze in immigration, cut in taxes, but more spending at the same time. and also on this question, i notice it's leading the radio 4 news, this question of putin and expansion eastwards of nato's and the european union. and he does say he's at fault, putin's at fault. but he is suggesting that that was a provocation. so, of course, it's an existential question for many people in the west and for nato. and president macron himself, of course, came out suggesting a few weeks ago there could be

boots on the ground. and the germans said, no, no one is saying that. macron, of course, has called this giant election. so i think if you were to risk calling together some of the themes in these two great democracies in europe, the united kingdom and france, you are seeing some fundamental questions raised, which takes us back to the beginning. i would rather hear the air time consumed with these big issues thanjust another examination of another poll, which is so transactional when we have these existential questions that we could be discussing. and it's occurred to me a lot in the last few weeks, actually, that none of our politicians have really wanted to talk about foreign policy a lot, think how much on newscasts and on our various other programmes that we're lucky to work on we have talked about all of those huge things going on in the world, the connections between russia and iran and north korea and ukraine in the middle east. and there's been very little discussion of foreign policy and true to form, we've just given it 30 seconds at the end of this programme. so maybe when we're back next week, we'll be able to talk

more about foreign policy in this campaign. who knows what will have happened by then. newscast from the bbc.

live from london, this is bbc news. officials in gaza say 38 people have been killed in israeli airstrikes. the british prime minister has criticised the reform uk party leader nigel farage after he said the west provoked russia's invasion of ukraine. no sign of british teenager

jay slater missing in tenerife, as the search enters its sixth day. greek police have arrested 13 people on suspicion of causing a wildfire which has been blamed on fireworks shot from a private yacht. and british and american royalty are pictured together at a concert in london. hello, i'm samantha simmonds. welcome to bbc news. we start in the middle east — where hamas says at least 38 people have been killed in israeli attacks in several neighbourhoods of gaza city. israel says its fighterjets struck hamas infrastructure. hamas says the attacks targeted civilians. separately, the international committee of the red cross says its field hospital is treating badly wounded people, including children, after explosions in a tent camp on friday, which also damaged its gaza office. here's our middle east

correspondent, yolande knell.