Populist firebrand Nigel Farage has been targeted with thrown objects for the second time in the week he's been involved in the United Kingdom's general election campaign.
The right-wing Reform UK leader was pelted with objects from a construction site in the north on Tuesday as the ruling Conservative party launched its election manifesto 200 kilometres further south at the Silverstone motor racing circuit.
A 28-year-old man was arrested after Farage was targeted as he rode in an open-topped bus in Barnsley, roughly halfway between Leeds and Sheffield.
Last week Farage, who has been traversing the country seeking to rally support with his anti-establishment and anti-immigration rhetoric, was doused with a milkshake after a campaign appearance.
His entrance into the campaign, vowing to be a "bloody nuisance" to the established parties, damaged the Tories' already seemingly bleak prospects further.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Tuesday implored British voters, and his own party, to throw him a lifeline, pledging to cut taxes and reduce immigration if his Conservative Party is reelected on July 4.
With the Conservatives trailing the Labour Party in opinion polls, Sunak acknowledged that "people are frustrated with our party and frustrated with me".
But he argued that the Conservatives are "the only party with the big ideas to make this country a better place to live".
Opponents said Sunak was making unrealistic and unaffordable promises in a desperate bid to stave off defeat.
Tuesday's launch of the Tories' manifesto, its main package of pledges, came a day after Sunak was forced to deny rumours he could quit even before polling day as the Conservatives are alarmed over his lacklustre campaign.
Sunak insisted he had not considered resigning and said he was "not going to stop fighting for people's votes".
On July 4, British voters will elect lawmakers to fill all 650 seats in the House of Commons, and the leader of the party that can command a majority — either alone or in coalition — will become prime minister.
Sunak held the manifesto launch at Silverstone motor racing circuit in central England, home of the British Grand Prix, and it could be one of his last big chances to get his spluttering campaign back on track.
His central pitch was the claim that a government led by Labour's Keir Starmer would raise taxes, while a Conservative one would lower them.
In its manifesto the party pledged £17 billion ($32.8 billion) in tax cuts by 2030, to be paid for largely by slashing welfare costs.
The main tax cut is a 2 percentage point reduction in National Insurance, a tax employees pay to qualify for a state pension. The Conservative government has already cut it twice, from 12 per cent to the current 8 per cent.
Sunak said the Conservatives would pay for lower taxes by "controlling the unsustainable rise in working-age welfare that has taken off since the pandemic".
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The Labour Party argues that the tax burden has risen to its highest level in decades during 14 years of Tory rule. Labour campaign chairman Pat McFadden called the Conservative manifesto "the most expensive panic attack in history."
Paul Johnson, director of independent think tank the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said he had "a degree of scepticism" about the math behind the Conservative promises.
"Those are definite giveaways paid for by uncertain, unspecific and apparently victimless savings," he said.
Sunak's surprise decision to call a summer election, several months earlier than most people expected, was intended partly to catch the opposition unprepared.
But it's the Conservatives who have seemed off-balance from the moment Sunak stood outside 10 Downing Street in the rain on May 22 to announce the start of the campaign.
