Category Archives: Labour

Johnson aims to beat Thatcher’s record with another decade in power – reports

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‘Levelling up’ British society will take 10 years, the prime minister writes as Tories slip in polls

Reports that Boris Johnson has ambitions for another decade in power as he aims to outlast Margaret Thatcher’s 11-year tenure in No 10 have been met with consternation.

The Times reported that Johnson wanted to build a legacy. One cabinet member reportedly told the newspaper: “Boris will want to go on and on. The stuff Dom [Dominic Cummings] was saying about him going off into the sunset was nonsense. He’s very competitive. He wants to go on for longer than Thatcher.”

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Labour says PPE contracts must not go to Xinjiang firms that use forced workers

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Exclusive: Emily Thornberry appeals to Sajid Javid to tackle issue of forced labour in Chinese province

Labour has written to the health secretary, Sajid Javid, urging him to ensure a new £5bn contract for NHS protective equipment including gowns and masks is not awarded to companies implicated in forced labour in China’s Xinjiang region.

Following up earlier concerns about medical gloves for the NHS being produced in Malaysia, where there have been consistent reports of forced labour in factories, Emily Thornberry called for an urgent response.

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Cooling consumerism could save the climate | Letters

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Bill Kingdom says the battle against Covid provides lessons in how to cut consumption to ease global warming. Plus letters from Sue Dalley, David Hughes and Dave Hunter

In Adam Tooze’s article (By pushing for more oil production, the US is killing its climate pledges, 13 August), he surmised that economic activity and fossil fuel consumption are hardwired together. It may be more that economic activity and energy consumption are hardwired together – and thus the need to move to renewables or low-carbon energy sources. That must be part of the strategy, along with as yet unavailable technical solutions such as carbon capture.

However, we seem to tiptoe around the consumption part of any strategy. Lower consumption results in lower carbon emissions. The government has managed to exert strong influence over personal actions during the Covid pandemic using a myriad of three-word slogans. We need a similar push linked to consumption and climate change.
Bill Kingdom
Oxford

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Director Ken Loach says he has been expelled from Labour

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Leftwing film-maker claims move by party is because he would ‘not disown those already expelled’

The veteran leftwing film-maker Ken Loach has said he has been expelled from the Labour party.

Loach, whose films are regarded as landmarks of social realism, claimed the move by the party was because he would “not disown those already expelled”, and he hit out at an alleged “witch-hunt”.

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Boris Johnson’s approval rating slips to lowest level since he became prime minister

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Bad news for the Tories does not necessarily lead to good news for Labour: backing for Keir Starmer is also down

Boris Johnson’s personal approval rating has slipped to its lowest level since he became prime minister, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer.

His overall approval rating has fallen to -16, down from the -13 he recorded two weeks ago and -8 a fortnight before that. It is even lower than the -15 he recorded back in January, when Britain was in the grip of a Covid peak, lockdown measures were in place and the NHS was under severe pressure.

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Johnson’s travel policy in chaos, Labour says, after ‘amber watchlist’ ditched

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Ministers need to get a grip on ‘reckless U-turns and confusion’, shadow transport secretary says

No 10 is facing claims that its international travel policy is in chaos after Boris Johnson ditched a plan for an “amber watchlist” that would have created a five-tier warning system for England.

After a revolt in the cabinet and a backlash from the travel industry, government sources said on Monday night that Boris Johnson would not be going ahead with proposals for an amber watchlist tier to warn travellers which countries were at risk of turning red.

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Angela Rayner: ‘We don’t want to be an opposition, we want to be a government’

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Labour’s deputy leader opens up about being a carer, byelections, and achieving a ‘cultural shift’ in the workplace

Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, has said her own experience as a care worker helped to convince her more flexible working could be a “win-win” for staff and employers.

Speaking to the Guardian after announcing new policies last week on employment rights and flexible conditions, Rayner said she had helped negotiate family-friendly working when she was a trade union representative.

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Sajid Javid’s advice to not ‘cower’ from Covid provokes backlash

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Bereaved families, Labour and Lib Dems all condemn health secretary, accusing him of insensitivity


Sajid Javid has provoked a wave of anger from families of the victims of Covid after he said people must no longer “cower” from the virus.

The health secretary announced on Saturday that he had made a “full recovery” from Covid-19 after falling ill eight days ago, and said: “Please, if you haven’t yet, get your jab, as we learn to live with, rather than cower from, this virus.”

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Labour concerned over management of flagship levelling up scheme

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Leaders of £24m Stocksbridge fund include local MP, her husband, and others with personal or business links to plans

Labour has raised concerns about the management of a flagship levelling up scheme after it emerged that decisions about one local £24m fund were primarily led by a group including the local MP, her husband, and others with personal or business links to some of the plans.

Documents also show that the towns fund board for Stocksbridge in South Yorkshire, co-chaired by Conservative MP Miriam Cates, met for eight months before members began filing details of personal interests, and that the scheme of governance was only published after more than a year.

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David Lammy says Labour would reform ‘injustice’ of joint enterprise law

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Campaigners say ‘shoddy’ and ‘outdated’ law has led to bystanders being wrongfully convicted

A Labour government would reform the law of joint enterprise that has led to hundreds of mostly young men unjustly serving life sentences for murder, David Lammy, the shadow justice secretary, has told a protest rally at Westminster.

Organised by the campaign group Joint Enterprise Not Guilty By Association (JENGbA), which is threatening a legal challenge against the justice secretary, Robert Buckland, the rally was attended by about 200 family members and supporters of young people serving long sentences after joint enterprise convictions.

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PM to confirm 19 July end to Covid rules despite scientists’ warnings

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Boris Johnson to press ahead with final stage of unlocking in England amid huge rise in infections

Boris Johnson is to announce that the lifting of most remaining Covid-19 restrictions in England will go ahead on 19 July amid a backlash from government scientific advisers who have warned that doing so would be like building new “variant factories”.

Despite cases having risen to their highest level since January 2021, the prime minister is set to press ahead with the final stage of unlocking in two weeks.

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Labour candidate Kim Leadbeater wins narrow victory in Batley and Spen byelection

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Sister of murdered MP Jo Cox holds West Yorkshire seat for party, easing pressure on leader Keir Starmer

Labour has narrowly won the Batley and Spen byelection, holding on to the West Yorkshire seat after a hotly contested campaign.

Labour won 13,296 votes with the Tories recording 12,973, according to official results. Kim Leadbeater defeated Ryan Stephenson, the Conservative candidate, by 323 votes. George Galloway, representing the Workers Party of Britain, came third with 8,264 votes.

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Labour leader Keir Starmer axes chief aide Jenny Chapman

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Removal of political secretary in face of MPs’ criticism is latest step in reshuffle of Labour’s top team

Keir Starmer’s closest aide, Jenny Chapman, is to be removed from her role as political secretary after significant criticism from MPs, but will move into the shadow cabinet taking responsibility for Brexit.

Chapman’s departure is another major change to Starmer’s top team and follows a sideways move for Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, and the departure of his two most senior communications staff, Ben Nunn and Paul Ovenden.

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John Bercow defects to Labour with withering attack on Johnson

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Former Speaker says party has become reactionary and xenophobic under its current leadership

• The blue wall: what next for the Tories after shock defeat?

John Bercow, the former Tory MP and Speaker of the House of Commons, has delivered an extraordinary broadside against Boris Johnson and the Conservative party as he announces he has switched his political allegiance to Labour.

In an explosive interview with the Observer, Bercow says he regards today’s Conservative party as “reactionary, populist, nationalistic and sometimes even xenophobic”.

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‘Another scare story, like the swine flu’: Boris Johnson refuses to deny Cummings accusation – video

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Boris Johnson has refused to deny that he initially dismissed coronavirus as 'another scare story' in a prime minister’s questions dominated by claims made by his former chief adviser Dominic Cummings.

The PMQs session took place immediately after the first two-and-a-half-hour session of testimony by Cummings to MPs, with Keir Starmer quizzing the prime minister repeatedly about the allegations

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Keir Starmer vows all-new Labour manifesto and economic offer

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Party leader says new blueprint for power will not draw on those of either Jeremy Corbyn or Tony Blair

Keir Starmer has said Labour will have a completely new blueprint for power not based on previous manifestos, as he told activists he would spend the summer making extended visits to places the party must win.

The Labour leader told a conference hosted by the centre-left thinktank Progressive Britain on Sunday that the party’s policy review would not take previous manifestos as its starting point, despite the close attachment of many members to the radical manifestos drawn up under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

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How Angela Rayner came out on top after spat with Starmer over reshuffle

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Labour deputy leader has shown she has a significant power base and is not shy of using it

Joe Biden and his vice-president, Kamala Harris, have a standing weekly date for a private one-to-one lunch, just as Biden did with Barack Obama.

Breaking bread is one way of keeping a political relationship on track. No wonder, perhaps, that Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner have decided to give it a go as they attempt to rebuild their relationship.

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Labour suspends Unite leadership nominee over ‘Patel should be deported’ tweet

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Howard Beckett, a member of Labour’s National Executive Committee, later apologised and deleted the tweet

Labour has suspended a leadership candidate for the Unite trade union from the party after he called for the home secretary, Priti Patel, to be deported on Twitter.

Howard Beckett, the union’s assistant general secretary and a member of Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC), has since apologised and deleted the message following criticism.

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Cruel, paranoid, failing: inside the Home Office

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Something is badly wrong at the heart of one of Britain’s most important ministries. How did it become so broken?

For the thousands of people who end up on the wrong side of the Home Office each year, there is often a sudden moment of disbelief. This can’t be happening, people tell themselves. They can’t do this, can they?

For Ruhena Miah, a sales assistant born and raised in the West Midlands, this moment came when she received a letter saying that if she wanted to marry the man she loved, she would have to move to Bangladesh. For Tayjay Thompson, a young man convicted of a drugs offence when he was 17, it was when he was told he would be deported to Jamaica, a country he’d left as a toddler. For Monique Hawkins, a Dutch software engineer, it was when her application for a residency permit was rejected, despite the fact she had lived in the UK for 24 years. For Omar, a refugee from Afghanistan (who asked me not to use his real name), it was when he stepped off the plane at Heathrow and discovered that he was being taken to a building that looked to him very much like a prison.

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Labour reshuffle: Angela Rayner takes major role after Keir Starmer standoff

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Row between leader and deputy holds up reshuffle while Rachel Reeves’ promotion looks set to inflame tensions with party’s left

Keir Starmer handed his deputy, Angela Rayner, a major promotion on Sunday night after a day of fraught negotiations and power battles. He also sacked his shadow chancellor and promoted his close ally, Rachel Reeves, to the role in a move likely to further inflame tensions with the party’s left.

The reshuffle of Starmer’s shadow cabinet was derailed by a prolonged standoff with Rayner, who was locked in talks with the party leader’s team for hours on Sunday. It came after leaked plans to sack her as party chair and national campaigns coordinator triggered an outcry.

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