Sky News crew thrown out of Tory election campaign launch live on air

Security guards removed a Sky News broadcast crew from the centre where Rishi Sunak was launching the Conservatives’ election campaign.

Journalist Darren McCaffrey and a film crew with him were escorted from the ExCel Centre in London before the prime minister gave his speech.

The political correspondent said they had not been allowed in because broadcast arrangements had been “pooled” - so other broadcasters there were obliged to share footage with others.

Outside, Mr McCaffrey and the crew – who had apparently been invited to the event – were followed by security guards as they walked around the exterior of the ExCel centre.

After the event, a solitary Sky producer, sans cameraman and Mr McCaffrey, was waiting patiently as everyone filed out of the Excel.

The group had been warned by a Conservative Party media handler that there was not enough room for their camera in the cramped room where Mr Sunak was to launch his campaign.

The producer told The Independent: “We told them we were going on live and they were like ‘we don’t care’.

“We weren’t going to stop filming. It was absolutely ridiculous, absolute nonsense. If they don’t want us here then why did they invite us?

“Now they’ve locked all our stuff away and I have to wait for everyone to clear out before I can pick up my cameraman’s bag.”

At the rally with his Cabinet and Tory activists, Mr Sunak - in shirt sleeves having ditched his suit jacket that was soaked in Downing Street - stepped up his attack on Sir Keir Starmer.

“The only certainty with Labour is that they will run out of money,” he said.

The prime minister said Labour would scrap the Rwanda policy and “enact a de facto amnesty for asylum-seekers, making us a magnet for every illegal immigrant in Europe”.