Category Archives: Politics

Lisa Nandy: Tories’ ‘violent indifference’ to the arts damaged access to culture

Posted on by

Exclusive: culture secretary says predecessors ‘vandalised’ the arts and pledges state funding for every community

The Conservatives’ “violent indifference” to the arts has resulted in communities across the country getting poor access to culture, Lisa Nandy has said ahead of a planned funding review.

The culture secretary accused her Tory predecessors of “vandalism” as she pledged to get state funding to every community and make sure that private philanthropy reached beyond the major cities.

Continue reading...

Cutting winter fuel payments ‘right decision’, says Reeves, as No 10 says no change to council tax discount for single people – Labour conference live

Posted on by

Chancellor says £22bn gap in current spending budget and state pension rise meant she had to make decision on means-testing fuel payments

In interview this morning Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, defended her own decision to accept clothing donations worth £7,500 when she was in opposition.

Speaking on the Today programme, she said:

I can understand why people find it a little bit odd that politicians get support for things like buying clothes.

Now, when I was an opposition MP, when I was shadow chancellor of the exchequer, a friend of mine who I’ve known for years [Juliet Rosenfeld] – she’s a good personal friend – wanted to support me as shadow chancellor and the way she wanted to support me was to finance my office to be able to buy clothes for the campaign trail and for big events and speeches that I made as shadow chancellor.

It’s never something that I planned to do as a government minister, but it did help me in opposition.

It’s rightly the case that we don’t ask taxpayers to fund the bulk of the campaigning work and the research work that politicians do, but that does require, then, donations – from small donations, from party members and supporters, from larger contributions, from people who have been very successful in life and want to give something back.

We appreciate that support. It’s part of the reason why we are in government today, because we were able to do that research work, and we were able to do that campaigning.

Unite and the Communication Workers Union (CWU) have put forward motions which were due to be debated on Monday afternoon, with strong support expected from other unions.

Sources said unions were told late on Sunday that the debate is being moved to Wednesday morning.

Continue reading...

Reeves packs up her troubles until budget day and smiles, smiles, smiles | John Crace

Posted on by

The chancellor beamed her way through a conference speech that offered hope at least but little of substance

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone. If you had thought that maybe today was the day when you made that call to Dignitas, then think again. Cancel that flight to Zurich. At least postpone it. Things might not be quite as bad as you had been led to believe. Or rather, they are that bad but there is some small flicker of hope if you can hold on long enough. There will be pain in the short and medium term. There’s no avoiding that. Try to think of it as character building. But possibly, just possibly, you might come through. We happy few. Blinking into the light of the promised land.

This was Rachel Reeves’s day. And she knew everything was going to be just fine the moment she woke up to find that Liz Truss had posted yet another cry for help on X. You can now follow the Trusster’s decline in real time on social media. It’s got so bad that she now films herself in front of a bookcase where everything is arranged by colour. The kindest explanation is that she thinks she’s filming a hostage video and the books are a coded message for “I’m being held against my will”.

Continue reading...

Scotland could extend winter fuel allowance, Scottish Labour argues

Posted on by

Further devolution next year will bring allowance under Scottish control just months before Holyrood elections

Scottish Labour believes access to the winter fuel allowance could be widened in Scotland as it tries to fight off its opponents’ attacks before the next Holyrood election.

Scotland will be able to decide which pensioners get the allowance from October next year under further devolution of benefits to Holyrood, eight months before a Scottish parliamentary election that Labour sees as critical to its revival.

Continue reading...

Sue Gray ‘shot JFK’ and is ‘hiding Lord Lucan’, jokes Wes Streeting

Posted on by

Health secretary shares light-hearted quip at party’s conference over embattled No 10 aide

Wes Streeting has joked that Keir Starmer’s embattled senior aide Sue Gray also “shot JFK” and was “hiding Lord Lucan” amid a continuing row over her salary.

The health secretary made light of suggestions of mounting acrimony at the heart of government as he spoke at an event on the sidelines of the Labour party conference in Liverpool.

Continue reading...

Rachel Reeves orders investigations into £600m of Covid contracts

Posted on by

Chancellor will confirm inquiries in conference speech as Labour tries to move on from donations scandal

Rachel Reeves will announce on Monday that she has ordered investigations into more than £600m worth of Covid contracts awarded under the Conservatives as Labour struggles to get back on the front foot over questions of ethics.

After days of bruising allegations over donations, the chancellor will confirm that she will refer more than half of contracts for material such as masks to the incoming Covid corruption commissioner, after the previous government recommended dropping any attempt to investigate them.

Continue reading...

Labour plans to allow travel between England and Wales for NHS treatment

Posted on by

Exclusive: Welsh secretary will use conference speech to announce measure for elective treatment and outpatients

NHS patients in Wales will be allowed to travel to England to receive care for the first time ever under plans to be announced by the Welsh secretary on Monday.

Jo Stevens will tell the Labour conference in Liverpool that she is drawing up proposals to allow patients to travel between England and Wales to receive outpatient or elective treatment.

Continue reading...

Angela Rayner hints at major social housing announcement

Posted on by

Deputy prime minister tells Labour conference she expects chancellor to make promise on building at spending review

Angela Rayner has given her strongest hint yet that Labour will announce a major package of social housebuilding in next month’s spending review, saying the party will have abandoned its “moral mission” if it fails to do so.

The deputy prime minister told an event at Labour conference on Sunday she expected the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to make a promise on social housing next month, with the government under pressure to build hundreds of thousands more social homes.

Continue reading...

Peter Jay, journalist and diplomat, dies aged 87

Posted on by

Tributes paid to one of the UK’s foremost economics commentators who was also ambassador to Washington

Peter Jay, the former BBC economics journalist and diplomat, has died at the age of 87, his family has announced.

Colleagues in the political and media world paid tributes after he died “peacefully at home” on Sunday. Jay was one of the country’s foremost economics commentators of his time, spending time as the economics editor for the BBC and the Times.

Additional reporting by PA Media

Continue reading...

Ofsted cannot be allowed to reform itself, say teachers’ unions

Posted on by

Sister of headteacher Ruth Perry, who killed herself last year, joins call for ‘complete reset’ of schools inspectorate

Education unions are to warn that Ofsted cannot be trusted to reform itself, as headteachers ­continue to report that school inspections are leaving their staff feeling distressed.

Prof Julia Waters, sister of the Reading headteacher Ruth Perry, who killed herself last year after an inspection downgraded her school from outstanding to inadequate, will call on the government to make deeper reforms of the inspectorate at the Labour party conference on Sunday. While welcoming the government’s recent confirmation that Ofsted’s single-word judgments will be scrapped, Waters, along with all four teaching unions, said the inspector still operated with a culture of “fear and terror”.

Continue reading...

‘Planning passports’ that automatically approve high-quality new homes will be a game-changer, says Keir Starmer

Posted on by

Labour wants to see apartment blocks built in more densely populated cities to achieve its housing targets

A radical scheme to speed up the building of more apartment blocks in towns and cities – as opposed to individual houses and bungalows – has been announced by the prime minister on the eve of the Labour party conference.

Keir Starmer told the Observer in an exclusive interview that the new system of “planning passports” would be a “game-changer” as the government strives to build 1.5m new homes within five years.

Continue reading...

Honeymoon over: Keir Starmer now less popular than Rishi Sunak

Posted on by

Opinium poll for the Observer finds a 45-point drop in the prime minister’s approval rating since he won the election

Keir Starmer has suffered a precipitous fall in his personal ratings since winning the election, according to a new poll for the Observer that comes before his first Labour conference as prime minister.

The latest Opinium poll reveals that Starmer’s approval rating has plunged below that of the Tory leader Rishi Sunak, suffering a huge 45-point drop since July. While 24% of voters approve of the job he is doing, 50% disapprove, giving him a net rating of -26%. Sunak’s net rating is one point better.

Continue reading...

Keir Starmer, his wife and ministers ‘to stop accepting clothing donations’

Posted on by

Lisa Nandy says Labour government will stop accepting gifted clothes as they don’t want voters to believe they are ‘living very different lives’

The prime minister and Labour ministers will stop accepting clothing donations because they don’t want voters to believe they are “living very different lives” to people who are “really struggling” in the country, the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, has said.

Speaking before the opening of the Labour conference tomorrow, Nandy told the BBC the government wants to demonstrate that its priorities are “the country’s priorities”, after it emerged Keir Starmer, his wife Victoria, Rachel Reeves and Angela Rayner have all decided to stop accepting free gifts of clothes from Labour party donors.

Continue reading...

Huge crowds expected at pro-Palestine march ahead of Labour conference

Posted on by

Protesters in Liverpool to call on government to implement full arms embargo against Israel over Gaza war

The UK’s first pro-Palestine national march to be staged outside London is expected by organisers to attract tens of thousands of people on the periphery of the Labour party conference in Liverpool.

The 19th “national march for Palestine” will start at midday on Saturday near Lime Street railway station and end near King’s Dock, where Keir Starmer’s party is gathering this weekend.

Continue reading...

Farage says Tory brand is ‘bust’ as other Reform UK speeches target immigrants, drag queens, vegans and more – as it happened

Posted on by

Lee Anderson, Richard Tice and Nigel Farage give speeches at Reform party conference. This live blog is closed

Richard Partington is the Guardian’s economics correspondent

UK national debt has hit 100% of the country’s annual economic output, the highest level since the 1960s, underscoring the challenge facing the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, as she prepares for next month’s budget.

As leader, you’ve got a huge job, because you’re campaigning everywhere. You’re sorting out the professionalisation with the chairman and so we’re sharing and sharing alike and that’s an important part of it. You can’t be everywhere all the time. It’s really difficult. But let me tell you, no one works harder than Nigel Farage.

As a leader of a party that is now becoming mainstream, international affairs, our relationship with our most important, strategic international partner – the US – is very important and the world will be a safer place if Donald Trump wins the presidential election. Nigel’s strong relationship with Donald Trump is actually to the benefit of this country and it’s quite right that he cements and strengthens that.

No one’s got more visibility, frankly, than Nigel on social media. I’m getting millions of views on mine. The other three MPs, likewise. We’re out there. We’re making a noise. Frankly, we are the real opposition. The Tories have vacated the premises, we hardly ever see them in the House of Commons.

I’ve spoken 16 times, I’ve challenged the zealot-in-chief, Ed Miliband. I’ve challenged the home secretary. I’ve challenged the health secretary on the failings of the NHS. So look, we’re holding them to account. That’s what people expect of opposition parties.

Continue reading...

Farage says Reform can win election as conference leans into hard-right tropes

Posted on by

Party will modernise, says leader at Birmingham conference dominated by populist discourse

Nigel Farage has predicted he can win the next general election at a packed Reform UK conference that announced a new structure for the party but also leaned heavily into hard-right tropes and occasional conspiracy theories.

“We can win the next general election just with the numbers of people that agree with our principles,” Farage told cheering supporters in Birmingham.

Continue reading...

EU to offer new youth mobility scheme in test of Labour ‘reset’ with Brussels

Posted on by

Officials warn repeat of Tory rejection could dent new government’s hopes of pacts on defence and agriculture

Fresh proposals to allow young people to move between the UK and the EU will be presented to the British government within weeks, in what is seen as a key early test of Labour’s “reset” in relations with Brussels.

Informed sources say the first draft of a new version of Ursula von der Leyen’s April proposal has already been discussed by member states and will be put to a working group in Brussels next week.

Continue reading...

Russian prisoner freed in swap urges UK not to let hundreds more ‘die off’

Posted on by

Vladimir Kara-Murza tells Keir Starmer that further exchanges are a matter of ‘life and death’

Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian dissident freed in the biggest prisoner swap since the cold war, has appealed to Keir Starmer during a meeting in Downing Street to not let hundreds of political prisoners in Russia and Belarus quietly “die off”.

Kara-Murza, who was released last month two years into a 25-year sentence after speaking out against the war in Ukraine, said he had told the prime minister on Friday that organising further such swaps was a matter of “life and death”.

Continue reading...

David Lammy examines plans to evacuate Britons from Lebanon

Posted on by

Officials trying to avoid repeat of Afghan chaos as Israel strikes and foreign secretary tells UK nationals to leave

David Lammy chaired a Cobra meeting to discuss preparations to evacuate remaining Britons from Lebanon, having already urged UK nationals to leave the country amid hostilities with Israel.

The foreign secretary led meetings in Whitehall on Friday as officials try to avoid a repeat of the chaos in which British people scrambled to leave Afghanistan when the Taliban took over in 2021.

Continue reading...

‘He could be here more’: Clacton split over Nigel Farage’s first months as MP

Posted on by

Many remain positive about their high-profile politician but others complain that he ‘got his seat and disappeared’

It happened sometime on Monday morning, locals think, though no one seems to know exactly when. But as staff in the shops on Old Road in Clacton stepped out of work for lunch, they spotted that the billboard on the corner of Crossfield Road had been ripped to ribbons.

Plenty had approved of the poster, placed there by the political campaign group Led By Donkeys, drawing attention to the huge scale of the local MP Nigel Farage’s earnings outside politics. A photo of the billboard posted on X by the group has 24,000 likes.

Continue reading...