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EU commission chief calls for focus on common ground on climate change, human rights and security
Boris Johnson and the new European commission president have had a positive first meeting about the next round of Brexit talks in which they discussed their aspirations for a deal based on friendly cooperation, shared history and interests and values, Downing Street has said.
Both sides made a concerted effort to put the bitter divisions of the past three years aside, with Ursula von der Leyen describing the meeting as the start of a new era of “old friends and new beginnings”.
Stephanie Kelton says Australia could ‘absolutely’ benefit from a program similar to the Green New Deal
Australia’s unprecedented bushfires are a wake-up call to the world about the importance of tackling climate change, Bernie Sanders’ economic adviser said, and the country should consider implementing a green new deal to transition to a low carbon economy.
Stephanie Kelton said Australia could benefit from an ambitious program of spending, similar to the one proposed by Sanders and others that aims to transform the US economy and help keep global heating below 1.5C.
Ursula von der Leyen expected to talk up future negotiations during visit to London
The EU’s opening negotiating position on the future relationship will lack detailed demands to avoid an early clash with Boris Johnson as both sides seek to take the heat out of the coming post-Brexit trade and security talks.
In that vein, the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, is expected to talk up the prospects of the coming negotiations during a visit to London on Wednesday.
Exclusive: leaked resolution by main political groups follows threats of deportation made by British minister
The European parliament will express its “grave concern” about the attitude of Boris Johnson’s government to the 3.3 million EU citizens living in the UK following threats of deportation made by a British minister.
In a leaked resolution drafted by the main political groups and due to be backed by MEPs next Wednesday, Johnson’s administration is accused of creating “anxiety” in recent months.
Shadow business secretary secretary criticises the party’s strategy in last month’s disastrous election
Rebecca Long Bailey has announced that she is standing to become leader of the Labour party with a stout defence of Jeremy Corbyn’s political programme in the general election.
Widely seen as the favoured candidate of the left of the party, the MP for Salford and Eccles announced her candidacy on Monday night with a piece criticising the party’s election strategy and lack of narrative. She promised to defend policies within the party’s current socialist programme with “unwavering determination” in the article for Tribune magazine.
Ian Murray, Labour’s only surviving MP in Scotland, is preparing to enter the contest to become Labour’s deputy leader on a platform of constitutional reform and countering nationalism.
Murray, an arch critic of Jeremy Corbyn’s and an opponent of Brexit, is expected to signal his intention to run tomorrow after being asked to stand by other Labour MPs. His plans to run are thought to depend on getting sufficient early nominations, but it would fuel the brewing conflict between the party’s pro-Corbyn wing and its centrists.
There are no doubts that constitutional and nationalist issues are engulfing our politics. I have the experience and knowledge of dealing with both, and the Labour party has ducked this issue for too long. English nationalism from the Tories and Scottish nationalism from the SNP are squeezing the Labour Party and we must stop it.
[The] danger for our party across the UK is what I have been warning of since 2015. If we don’t tackle the big constitutional issues with reference to our own values and the national interest, then we lose our core purpose.
After listening to Angela Rayner’s speech this morning, my colleague Kate Proctor concluded it was hard to see why she was running for the deputy Labour leadership when she might be a strong candidate for leader. (See 12.23pm.) It is not hard to see why. It’s a good speech, with some compelling lines and a superb opening.
Here is the opening.
I wanted to make this speech here, on the estate where I grew up and lived for most of my life.
I talk about my background because for too long I felt I wasn’t good enough; I felt ashamed of who I was. It took me time for that shame to turn into pride.
We fell into the trap of describing a platform of revolutionary change. By the standards of recent politics, it was, and rightly so.
But actually, we could have told a simpler story.
Many of the friends I grew up with, my own family even, voted to leave the EU.
They felt like we treated them as embarrassing aunts or uncles.
There are also lines beyond which there is no dialogue and no compromise possible.
And the first line in the sand is antisemitism.
Nor should we take for granted the new voters we have won over, any more than we should have done those we have lost.
For all that’s said about London, we made no net advance in seats there either. We faced a fight to hold others like Dagenham and Rainham - a place that, like my own constituency, has so much to gain from a Labour government, but where too many people felt our party had lost touch with them.
Across Europe social democratic parties are collapsing.
The once mighty German SPD, the biggest and oldest social democratic party in the world is on 11 percent
I don’t pretend that I have all the answers. That is the point of being a collectivist. That by the strength of our common endeavour, we achieve more than we do alone.
That final sentence is a quote from the new Clause IV introduced by Tony Blair.
I owe much of my life to Labour.
The Labour governments that provided the welfare state, Sure Start, and the minimum wage, which gave me the help I needed to not just survive but succeed.
Prime minister also intends to press his Brexit bill through Commons in three days
Boris Johnson will host the president of the European commission, Ursula Von Der Leyen, in Downing Street this week as he prepares to take Britain out of the EU at the end of this month, kicking off a race against time to secure a free trade deal.
The prime minister will use the comfortable majority he won at last month’s general election to press his Brexit bill through the House of Commons in three days when MPs return to Westminster on Tuesday.
Prime minister has spoken to Donald Trump about US drone strike on Iranian general
Boris Johnson has said that assassinated Iranian general Qassem Suleimani was “a threat to all our interests”, and that while “we will not lament his death” he called for de-escalation from all sides.
The prime minister spoke to the US president, Donald Trump, on Sunday after the US drone strike on Iran’s top military leader on Friday.
Company’s work in 68 countries laid bare with release of more than 100,000 documents
An explosive leak of tens of thousands of documents from the defunct data firm Cambridge Analytica is set to expose the inner workings of the company that collapsed after the Observer revealed it had misappropriated 87 million Facebook profiles.
More than 100,000 documents relating to work in 68 countries that will lay bare the global infrastructure of an operation used to manipulate voters on “an industrial scale” is set to be released over the next months.
The party’s defeat was a debacle, but was part of a global trend. Now leadership hopefuls must say how they would buck it
British exceptionalism – the myth that Britain is uniquely different to its European neighbours – afflicts everything from our understanding of our place in the world to our domestic political situation. The rise of Scottish nationalism, the rightwing populist surge, Brexit, Corbynism: all are seen through the confines of the UK’s borders. And so it goes for Labour’s catastrophic electoral rout. But it does not detract from the party’s own failure to understand the broader context: across the continent and even the world, social democracy and the so-called political centre are in crisis.
MP to join Clive Lewis and Emily Thornberry in race to succeed Jeremy Corbyn
Jess Phillips is due to announce she will stand as a candidate in the Labour leadership contest, it is understood.
The Birmingham Yardley MP will join Emily Thornberry and Clive Lewis as confirmed candidates. Others including Rebecca Long Bailey, Keir Starmer and Lisa Nandy are expected to join the race formally in the coming days.
Boris Johnson’s chief adviser touts for ‘unusual’ applicants outside of the Oxbridge set
Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s chief adviser, has written a rambling blog calling for “weirdos and misfits with odd skills” to apply for new jobs within No 10.
In a move way outside the usual recruitment procedures of Whitehall, the key architect of Johnson’s election victory has outlined a set of “unusual” qualities he wishes to see in applicants in the blog post which runs to nearly 3,000 words.
YouGov poll shows Starmer in lead to head party over nearest rival Rebecca Long-Bailey
Sir Keir Starmer, the favourite to succeed Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, has called for the party to become a “trusted force for good” as up to nine rival candidates consider whether to stand next week.
The shadow Brexit secretary is seen as the candidate to beat following a YouGov poll showing he has a commanding lead over nearest rival and Corbyn ally Rebecca Long-Bailey, the shadow business secretary.
Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen
The process to strip Northern rail of its franchise has begun after years of poor performance, Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, has said. My colleague Rajeev Syal has the full story here.
The YouGov figures showing how votes might get redistributed in a Labour leadership contest (see 10.21am) are worth studying because they show that some assumptions about how people might use their second preference votes might be wrong.
For example, you might think that anyone backing Emily Thornberry would be inclined to opt for Sir Keir Starmer as their next choice because he’s another strongly pro-European north London senior lawyer who performs well in the Commons. But the YouGov figures suggest Rebecca Long Bailey would pick up almost as many Thornberry votes as Starmer in the first instance.
As a year of big EU decisions begins, the bloc’s most important relationship is stuck in a rut
In early December, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel sat down opposite each other in Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant at the Savoy Hotel, central London, for a two-hour tête-à-tête dinner. They had some talking to do.
Cordial and constructive, diplomats in Paris and Berlin said, the evening apparently cleared the air. But it will take more than a dinner to clear the structural obstacles to a relationship that is critical to what Europe can achieve in 2020.
PM talks up Britain’s future as he attempts to reach out to those who did not vote Tory
Boris Johnson has pledged to represent remainers and work with them as “friends and equals”, in a New Year’s Day message in which he sounded upbeat about the UK’s fortunes in the 2020s.
The prime minister, who is seeing in the new year on the private Caribbean island of Mustique, said he was “acutely aware” that millions of people did not vote for him despite the Tories’ landslide election victory.
Archives show British PM was warned France may have made secret deal with Bosnian Serbs
Days before the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995, John Major was warned France had possibly brokered a secret deal with the Bosnian Serbs to halt airstrikes in return for the release of western military hostages.
This claim, detailed in a secret Foreign Office note to the prime minister, is among documents available to read at the National Archives in Kew fromTuesday that expose the depth of Anglo-French distrust during the Balkans conflict.
Released papers expose ‘associate membership’ plan and Yeltsin’s drinking habits
Russia could have become an “associate member” of Nato 25 years ago if a Ministry of Defence proposal had gained support, according to confidential Downing Street files which also expose Boris Yeltsin’s drinking habits.
The suggestion, aimed at reversing a century of east-west antagonism, is revealed in documents released on Tuesday by the National Archives at Kew.
Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen
In her Guardian articleRebecca Long-Bailey says she will be supporting Angela Rayner for deputy Labour leader. Rayner, the shadow education secretary, has been tipped as a Labour leadership candidate herself but, as the Guardian reported two weeks ago, after the election her allies said she was focusing on the deputy leadership vacancy, leading to speculation that she and Long-Bailey would run on a joint ticket.
But last night’s Sky’s Sam Coates said that Long-Bailey’s comment was premature, because Rayner is not yet ready to announce that she is running for the deputy leadership.
NEW: Flatmate Fury?
Tonight Rebecca Long Bailey announced she's backing flatmate Angela Rayner as deputy
- Rayner hasn't announced candidacy
- Rayner isn't endorsing RLB this side of the new year - perhaps never. She will make announcements after Wed
Aren't they talking?
I understand Angela Rayner is going to have more discussions with colleagues this week and make an announcement either way (about endorsing RLB back) soon in the new year.
(Whispers) Could Angela Rayner still be considering a tilt at the top job #flatmatefrenemies
I’m describing Clive Lewis as a Labour leadership candidate because he has confirmed that he wants to run, as has Emily Thornberry. Sir Keir Starmer and Rebecca Long-Bailey also seem all but certain to run. Other people who are seriously considering running, or who at least have not ruled it out, are: Lisa Nandy, Jess Phillips, Yvette Cooper, Ian Lavery, David Lammy and Dan Jarvis.
But it is worth pointing out that, to be a candidate on the ballot paper, it is not enough for an MP just to declare that they are standing. They also need the support of 10% of Labour MPs (ie, 21 MPs). It used to be 15%, but the threshold was lowered after Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader. Under the new rules, candidates also need the support of 5% of constituency Labour parties (CLPs) to be included on the ballot (that’s 33 of them), or 5% of the union/affiliates vote. Luke Akehurst has a more detailed guide to the new rules here, in an article for Politics.co.uk.