Category Archives: Labour

Elections 2021: Labour wins mayoral races in Greater Manchester and West of England, holds Welsh Senedd – live

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All the latest news and results as counts continue in England and Scotland after Thursday’s elections

Scotland’s first list results are out, with Central Scotland declaring the following:

First list declaration out - for Central Scotland, it's Leonard (Lab) Kerr (Con), Lennon (Lab), Simpson (Con), Griffin (Lab), Gallacher (Con), Mackay (Green). So three Labour, three Tory, and one Green.

Asked whether it was realistic to have a referendum in the first half of parliament, Nicola Sturgeon said that while getting through the pandemic has to come first, it looks as though it is “beyond any doubt that there will be a pro-independence majority in Scottish parliament”.

She told BBC News: “By any normal standard of democracy that majority should have the commitments it made to the people honoured.

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Keir Starmer concedes Labour has lost the trust of working people

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Leader says party considering moving HQ out of London to show it represents the whole country after May election defeats

The Conservatives inflicted a historic byelection defeat on Labour and regained the Tees Valley mayoralty by a landslide as Keir Starmer conceded his party had lost the trust of working people across England.

The Labour leader, who called the local election results “bitterly disappointing”, is considering moving his party’s headquarters out of London to reflect Labour’s determination to show that it represents the whole country, party sources told the Guardian.

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Sadiq Khan pledges to explore new London Olympic bid if re-elected

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Mayor will say city could look at bidding for 2036 or 2040 Games as post-Covid morale boost for nation

Sadiq Khan is pledging to look at bringing the Olympics back to London within 20 years if he is re-elected as mayor on Thursday.

In a speech at an amateur boxing club in Earlsfield, south-west London, on Tuesday, Khan will set out the prospect of another London Olympics as a post-Covid morale boost that he argues would extend beyond the capital.

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Tory poll lead slashed as key elections loom across Britain

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Stories of Conservative sleaze appear to be having an impact as Keir Starmer faces his first electoral test as Labour leader on 6 May

Labour has slashed the Tories’ poll lead in half as more voters conclude that Boris Johnson is corrupt and dishonest ahead of this week’s bumper set of local and devolved elections.

The latest Opinium poll for the Observer shows the Conservative lead has fallen from 11 points to five points after a week in which the prime minister was at the centre of allegations over the refurbishment of his Downing Street flat, and criticised for reportedly saying he would rather see “bodies pile high” than order another Covid-19 lockdown.

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Labour group urges Keir Starmer to back better Brexit deal

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MPs and activists urge their leader to commit to aligning Britain with Brussels and restoring EU programmes

Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, is coming under pressure from Europhile MPs and party activists to support sweeping changes to the Brexit deal as concern rises about the damage it is doing to Britain’s economy and jobs and the freedom to move and work across the continent.

A report for the leftwing group Another Europe is Possible and separate research by the non-aligned, internationalist Best for Britain organisation both strongly support the case for more active engagement with the EU to improve the deal and rebuild relations with member states.

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Johnson faces MPs’ fury over Downing Street sleaze claims

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Labour urge Speaker to summon senior minister as poll reveals 40% of voters think Tories are corrupt

Labour is aiming to force a senior minister before parliament this week to account for the growing sleaze crisis engulfing No 10 – amid growing cross-party uproar over a collapse in standards at the heart of government.

The Observer understands the opposition is hoping to persuade Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, to grant an urgent question on Monday that would mean a senior minister – most likely the Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove – being summoned to the Commons to account for the crisis, explain steps being taken to end it, and take questions from MPs.

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No 10 refurb row: Grieve calls Boris Johnson ‘vacuum of integrity’

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Former Tory attorney general piles pressure on PM demanding to know how residence revamp was funded

The former attorney general Dominic Grieve has described Boris Johnson as a “vacuum of integrity” as the prime minister came under pressure to explain how the refurbishment of the Downing Street flat was paid for following an explosive attack by his former chief adviser Dominic Cummings.

The government has said Johnson paid for the refurbishment, reportedly costed at £58,000, but in a blogpost Cummings claimed the prime minister had sought outside funding from Conservative supporters.

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A year on, Keir Starmer’s grand vision is still in question | Letters

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Dr Anthony Isaacs thinks the Labour leader must unite the party and restore the whip to Jeremy Corbyn, but Bruce Sawford has lost hope

No new opposition leader could have been expected to gain much media attention in their first year against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the government has clearly benefited from the vaccine rollout. But after a promising start, Keir Starmer’s declining poll ratings (Keir Starmer: one year in, Labour leader’s popularity has plunged, 2 April) indicate that his cautious style and lack of defined policies have failed to gain traction. The pandemic has, paradoxically, opened the way to an alternative agenda that plays to Labour’s strengths of promoting social solidarity and investment in public services. Starmer must embrace the opportunity of the waning infection rates to move the fight away from equivocation and abstention over Tory culture wars to ground of Labour’s own choosing.

Your editorial (2 April) points to Labour’s need for a transformative agenda that both rallies the party and speaks to the wider public. To bring this about, Starmer must first unite the party. Restoring the whip to Jeremy Corbyn would be an important symbolic gesture, opening the way for the party’s factions to work together in devising popular policies to combat the corruption and market failures epitomised by our current government. The second task is to unite opposition parties around an electoral strategy as the only hope of preventing continued Tory dominance. That will be a true test of leadership.
Dr Anthony Isaacs
London

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Labour calls for changes to lobbying law after Greensill row

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Party says rules should be widened to include ‘in-house’ roles such as that carried out by David Cameron

The law must be changed to prevent the type of lobbying undertaken by David Cameron on behalf of the financier Lex Greensill, Labour has argued, after more details emerged about the extent of Greensill’s influence inside Cameron’s government.

Only external lobbyists who deal with the government are required to be on a formal industry register, and not so-called “in-house” lobbyists like Cameron, who took an advocacy role for Greensill Capital after leaving Downing Street.

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Amid unease on the left, Starmer aims to ‘bring Labour home’

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A year on from landing the party’s top job, the leader plans on taking his message directly to the voters

Keir Starmer plans to spend the summer months criss-crossing the country to make his pitch directly to voters at scores of town hall-style meetings, in an attempt to “bring Labour home” to its traditional supporters.

A year after his election, with his personal poll ratings slipping and amid growing internal unease about his leadership, Starmer’s team say he hopes to emulate David Cameron, who fielded voters’ questions face to face on his “Cameron Direct” tour in 2008.

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IRA Brighton bomber ‘scouted Labour conference seven years earlier’

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Patrick Magee says he was in IRA team that visited town in 1977 to potentially target government figures

The IRA bomber who almost wiped out Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative cabinet in 1984 secretly scouted a Labour party conference in Brighton seven years earlier, he has disclosed.

Patrick Magee surveilled the Brighton conference centre in October 1977 when the IRA sought to hit back at the then Labour government for its policies in Northern Ireland.

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Cressida Dick refuses to quit over vigil policing and dismisses ‘armchair critics’

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Metropolitan police chief stands firm after criticism from London mayor and home secretary

Britain’s most senior police chief defied pressure to resign as she dismissed “armchair” critics amid widespread outrage over officers manhandling women who were mourning the killing of Sarah Everard.

Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, was publicly rebuked by the home secretary, Priti Patel, and the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, for providing an unsatisfactory explanation of why police broke up a vigil for Everard in London’s Clapham Common on Saturday, near where she was allegedly abducted before being murdered.

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‘We haven’t been good enough’: Anas Sarwar pledges to rebuild Scottish Labour as leader – video

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Anas Sarwar said becoming Scottish Labour leader was the greatest honour of his life, and pledged to rebuild the party. ‘I know Labour has a lot of work to do to win back your trust,’ Sarwar said. ‘I’m sorry we haven’t been good enough.’

Sarwar, 37, faces a battle to save Labour from what polls suggest could be another humiliating Holyrood election in May. After losing every Scottish and UK election since 2007 to the SNP, including losing all its MEPs in the 2016 European elections, Labour has since gone through seven Scottish leaders. Sarwar will be its eighth

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Anas Sarwar wins Scottish Labour leadership election

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Sarwar wins snap election triggered by surprise resignation of Richard Leonard six weeks ago

Anas Sarwar has won the Scottish Labour leadership contest after a snap election triggered by the surprise resignation of Richard Leonard six weeks ago.

Sarwar, a former deputy leader of Scottish Labour backed by a majority of the party’s parliamentarians, defeated the other candidate Monica Lennon, a less experienced MSP backed on the party’s left, winning 57.6% of the vote.

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Keir Starmer under pressure to back plans for corporation tax rise

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Labour leader has faced backlash after saying he would oppose any new tax on business in budget

Keir Starmer is under pressure to back future rises in corporation tax after a backlash when the Labour leader said he would oppose any new tax on business in next week’s budget.

Treasury officials are believed to be looking at increasing the tax on company profits from the current rate of 19% to up to 25% as the government tries to recoup some of the massive debts incurred during the pandemic, though the rise may be delayed until later in the parliament.

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Unite calls special meeting over alleged overspend on £50m building project

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Union denies wrongdoing after contracts for Birmingham complex given to firms investigated for bribery

Unite, Labour’s most generous backer, is organising a special meeting of its ruling body to discuss an alleged overspend on a multimillion pound construction project funded by the union.

The executive council will convene on Friday 29 January to discuss a seven-storey hotel and national conference centre in Birmingham funded by the union.

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Keir Starmer outlines ‘optimistic’ future for UK with Biden as president

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Labour leader uses first address on foreign policy since taking office to build bridges with US and EU

Sir Keir Starmer has set out his “optimistic” vision for a wide-ranging new relationship with the US under Joe Biden.

Speaking before Biden’s inauguration on 20 January, Starmer said he was “incredibly optimistic about the new relationship we can build” and that Britain must once again be “the bridge between the US and the rest of Europe”.

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Starmer accepts end of EU free movement in Brexit reversal

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Labour leader rules out extensive renegotiation if party wins next election

Keir Starmer has abandoned the commitment to free movement of people in the European Union he made to Labour members during the party’s leadership contest.

The Labour leader said his party had to be honest with the public, and that if it won the next general election a major renegotiation of the Brexit treaty would not be possible.

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Keir Starmer: Labour will support ‘necessary’ new lockdown measures – video

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The Labour leader said he supported Boris Johnson's decision to move England into a third national lockdown amid a sharp rise in coronavirus cases. 'Whatever our criticisms of the government, we've all got to pull together now to make this work,' Starmer said. Under the strict new measures, announced the day the UK recorded a record high of 58,784 new cases, people will be ordered to stay at home unless they are engaging in a small number of exempted activities

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Is the leftwing vision of Brexit Britain just fantasy? | Letters

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Readers respond to an article by Larry Elliott calling for those on the left to see the UK’s departure from the EU as an opportunity to rebalance the economy

Larry Elliott is consistent in his criticism of the EU (The left must stop mourning Brexit – and start seeing its huge potential, 31 December). He points out the neoliberalism inherent in the core EU policies of free movement of goods, services, capital and people. He then extols the advantages for the UK of being freed from EU shackles to pursue its own destiny in the world.

But aren’t we committed to chasing the same neoliberalism on a broader canvas? He says nothing of the EU’s social and political projects – health and safety, employment protection, social welfare, retirement rights and other programmes. He ignores the ambitions of a gradual rapprochement between nations that engaged in monstrous wars in the recent past. Brexit UK is moving backwards, self-condemned to continued national decline, as other countries find ways of developing at least some elements of a progressive agenda in a harsh and divided world.
Peter Taylor-Gooby
Professor of social policy, University of Kent

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