No 10 backtracks on minister’s claim 500 asylum seekers could be on barge by end of week
According to a report in the Times, Liz Truss named 16 people on her original honours list – four for peerages, and 12 people getting other honours. Two people have declined, but there are still 14 names on the list, the Times says, one person for every four days she was in office.
The Labour MP Chris Bryant says resignation honours lists should be abolished.
Continue reading...If both parties win election in 2024, their ideological closeness would make them strong allies, says Nick Thomas-Symonds
Labour’s ideological closeness to the Democrats puts the party in an ideal position to sign trade deals with the US should both parties win their elections next year, the shadow trade secretary has said.
Nick Thomas-Symonds told the Guardian he thought Labour’s shared economic values with the Biden administration meant his party would have more success than the Conservative government has had in making trade agreements across a range of sectors.
Continue reading...Labour leader claims Conservatives’ onshore turbine ban costs families £180 each and makes UK reliant on gas imports
Keir Starmer has condemned the prime minister’s climate policies, declaring the failure to invest in renewables such as wind turbines a “gift to Putin”.
The Labour leader also described the Conservatives’ onshore wind ban as “ludicrous” and said it now means every family in the country is paying £180 more on their energy bills.
Continue reading...Capital’s mayor moves to reduce political fallout over scheme’s extension after Tory byelection win in Uxbridge
Sadiq Khan has expanded the grant scheme for London’s ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) to cover any household with a heavily polluting car or motorbike, spending an extra £50m after intense pressure over the political fallout of the plan.
The revised proposals, announced on Thursday, also notably increase the scrappage payments available for non-compliant vans owned by sole traders and small firms, as well as for minibuses and wheelchair-accessible vehicles.
Continue reading...Deputy PM suggested FBU’s Labour affiliation influenced its decision to raise concerns about the Bibby Stockholm
The deputy prime minister has been accused of making “disgraceful” comments after claiming that the firefighters’ union had raised safety concerns over a barge due to house asylum seekers because of close links to Labour.
Oliver Dowden suggested that the Fire Brigades Union’s affiliation and donations to the opposition were a motivating factor behind fire and overcrowding concerns raised about the Bibby Stockholm in Portland, Dorset.
Continue reading...Party says recruits with relevant skills could help tackle government’s ‘abysmal’ record on unsolved crimes
Directly recruiting new police detectives from parallel fields such as business fraud investigation could help tackle the government’s “abysmal” record on unsolved crimes, according to a proposal from Labour.
Analysis by the party found that 90% of recorded crimes do not get solved and there has been a 60% reduction in the proportion of offences that result in a criminal charge since 2015.
Continue reading...MP said she felt ostracised and accused male colleagues of shouting her down for opposing transgender reforms
A senior member of the Labour frontbench has offered an apology to a fellow MP, Rosie Duffield, who has said she felt ostracised by the party because of her views on gender reforms.
Duffield had also accused male party colleagues of trying to shout her down in the Commons earlier this year when she spoke to back the government’s move to block gender reforms proposed in Scotland.
Continue reading...Leading scientists and medics back London and other clean air schemes and urge politicians to keep their nerve
Leading doctors and scientists have warned politicians against watering down plans to expand city-wide schemes aimed at reducing traffic pollution levels linked to thousands of deaths each year.
They urged politicians not to lose their nerve over plans to improve poor air quality, such as the expansion of the ultra low emission zone (Ulez) in London, which they said were central to tackling “unacceptably high” levels of illness and child deaths, and called for more ambitious policies to reduce toxic air.
Continue reading...Five Conservative-led councils brought legal action against Mayor of London’s plan to expand ultra-low emission zone
The SNP has pushed Labour leader Keir Starmer to commit to scrapping the so-called bedroom tax if his party wins the next election.
Labour has come under pressure in recent weeks after Starmer’s failure to commit to scrapping the two-child benefit cap due to uncertainty around the UK’s economic outlook.
Sir Keir Starmer must admit whether the pro-Brexit Labour Party is secretly planning to keep the Tory bedroom tax, which cut the incomes of almost 100,000 low income households in Scotland last year - and more than half a million households across the UK.
It’s clearer by the day that the SNP is the only party offering real change with independence and real help with the cost of living. In contrast, (Rishi) Sunak and Starmer are lurching further to the right and taking money away from millions of households across Scotland and the UK.
If Starmer’s logic is that he won’t scrap the Tory two-child cap then it is increasingly likely that if in government his Labour Party wouldn’t scrap the bedroom tax either.
It’s time for the Labour Party to come clean, if they get into government will they scrap the bedroom tax or keep it?
Continue reading...Mayor of London hits back at prime minister over ‘pathetic gesture politics’
Rishi Sunak has failed to give his full backing to Sir Howard Davies, chairman of NatWest, in interviews this morning, PA Media reports.
PA says that Sunak did not back calls for the resignation of Davies in a pooled interview this morning – but also that Sunak would not say whether he had confidence in him.
What I said right at the start of this was that it wasn’t right for people to be deprived of basic services because of banking, because of their views.
This isn’t about any one individual, it’s about values – do you believe in free speech and not to be discriminated against because of your legally held views?
As a result of this policy, a dozen classrooms of children, including some of the most traumatised and vulnerable children in the world, have gone missing and, sickeningly for us, 50 children are still missing from the hotel used in Brighton and Hove.
Importantly the high court also makes clear that the home secretary already has the power to require local authorities across the country to take children into foster care via a statutory rota system called the national transfer scheme.
Continue reading...Jim McMahon, MP for Oldham and shadow environment secretary, criticises prime minister for tweet about Labour and immigration law firms
Michael Gove has been accused of showing how “disjointed” the government’s net zero strategy is by Greenpeace UK.
In a statement released after Gove’s media interview round this morning, in which the levelling up secretary appeared to firm up the government’s commitment to at least one green target, while signalling that others might be relaxed (see 10.04am), Doug Parr, Greenpeace UK’s director of policy, said:
Michael Gove has demonstrated how disjointed the government’s new strategy is. If ministers genuinely want to help lower costs for households, they should be doing everything in their power to switch our homes, energy and transport systems away from expensive, climate-wrecking fossil fuels and run them instead on clean technology and cheap renewables.
Mr Gove is right to reaffirm the government’s commitment to ending the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles from 2030 – and Sunak should now do the same, whilst making the transition as easy as possible for people with extensive charging infrastructure and the promised mandate on manufacturers. But allowing more oil and gas drilling, delaying the phase-out of gas boilers and giving landlords longer to insulate the homes of renters will only keep bills high and continue to fan the flames of climate change.
The leaders discussed recent developments on the battlefield and the continued progress by Ukrainian forces despite the challenging conditions. The prime minister added that he was appalled by the devastation caused by recent Russian attacks on Odesa.
Discussing the Black Sea grain initiative, the leaders agreed on the importance of ensuring grain was able to be exported from Ukraine to reach international markets. The prime minister said the UK was working closely with Turkey on restoring the grain deal, and we would continue to use our role as chair of the UN security council to further condemn Russia’s behaviour.
Continue reading...Party chair says since act was passed by party in 2004, there is now a ‘much better understanding of the barriers trans people face’
Labour will overhaul an “outdated” law to make it easier for transgender people to transition while maintaining protections for single-sex spaces, the party’s chair and shadow equalities secretary has said.
Writing in the Guardian, Anneliese Dodds accused the Conservative party of seeking to stoke “culture wars” by pinning its hopes for electoral success on “demonising vulnerable LGBT+ people”.
Continue reading...London mayor is open to ideas to mitigate impact on residents, but not on scheduling of policy some blame for loss of byelection
Sadiq Khan is open to new ideas for mitigating the impact of the anti-pollution levy in London being expanded next month, but refusing to back down on the planned timing of its implementation.
Despite pressure from some in Labour for city hall to rethink the policy they believe lost the party the Uxbridge and South Ruislip byelection on Thursday, the mayor is determined for it to come into force.
Continue reading...Keir Starmer’s approval ratings suffer but his party remains far ahead of Conservatives as Westminster summer recess begins
Labour goes into the Westminster summer break with a commanding 17-point lead over the Conservatives, despite a fall in approval ratings for party leader Keir Starmer.
The latest Opinium poll for the Observer puts Labour on 42%, down one point since a fortnight ago, while the Tories are down three points to 25%, their poorest showing since the disastrous premiership of Liz Truss.
Continue reading...She represented her Cynon Valley constituency in South Wales for 35 years, eventually becoming the oldest woman to sit in the House of Commons
Labour leaders past and present have led the tributes to the long-standing former MP Ann Clwyd after it was announced that she had died at the age of 86.
Clwyd represented her Cynon Valley constituency in South Wales for 35 years, eventually becoming the oldest woman to sit in the House of Commons before she stood down at the 2019 election. Clwyd was first elected in a byelection in 1984 and had already served as an MEP for Mid and West Wales for five years in the European parliament.
Continue reading...Science and business leaders say lurch away from climate agenda after byelections would be deeply unpopular with voters and damage UK’s reputation
Britain’s leaders have been warned against a “politically suicidal” lurch away from their green pledges as concerns grow that both major parties may dilute their plans to combat the climate crisis in the wake of a shock byelection result.
Senior figures from business, the scientific community and across the political divide warned that any watering down of climate policies would be deeply unpopular with voters, set back the international fight to reach net zero and damage Britain’s green reputation.
Continue reading...With a local dispute swaying voters, the result in Boris Johnson’s old seat did not accurately reflect the national mood
• Read more: Starmer under pressure after Uxbridge as Tories tackle mission impossible
One out of three ain’t bad? A surprise win in Boris Johnson’s former seat of Uxbridge gave Conservatives something to cheer on Friday morning as Rishi Sunak narrowly avoided being the first prime minister since Harold Wilson to suffer three byelection defeats on the same day. But with a local dispute swaying Uxbridge voters, the contests in Selby and Somerton may provide a clearer indication of the national mood. The picture they paint is bleak: two heavy defeats for the government to different opponents at opposite ends of England.
In the week when Labour leader Keir Starmer took to the stage for the first time with his predecessor Tony Blair, Labour achieved a byelection breakthrough in North Yorkshire worthy of Blair’s mid-1990s prime. Selby and Ainsty’s 20,000-vote Conservative majority is the largest ever overturned by Labour in a byelection, and the swing to Labour was the second largest recorded. Labour comfortably outperformed its current polling with a swing which would decimate the Conservative benches if replicated in a general election. This was the performance of an opposition on its way back into government.
Continue reading...Johnny Mercer had mocked 25-year-old Keir Mather’s lack of real-world experience after he won the Selby and Ainsty byelection
Sir Keir Starmer has called the government minister Johnny Mercer a “silly sod” who will “soon be history” in politics after he compared Labour’s new 25-year-old MP to a character from the teen sitcom The Inbetweeners.
The minister for veterans’ affairs said Keir Mather had been “dropped into” the Selby and Ainsty constituency and was an “identikit Labour politician”. Earlier he had said: “[Parliament] mustn’t become a repeat of The Inbetweeners.”
Continue reading...Starmer hails results as ‘cry for change’ as Sunak’s party loses Selby and Ainsty and Somerton and Frome, but clings on in Uxbridge
Rishi Sunak’s chances of guiding the Conservatives to victory at the next general election looked increasingly slim on Friday after his party suffered two shattering byelection defeats.
Labour gained its second biggest swing from the Tories since 1945, overturning a 20,000-vote Tory majority in Selby and Ainsty, with the Liberal Democrats also toppling the Conservatives in the previously safe West Country seat of Somerton and Frome.
Continue reading...All the leaders concluded that things had panned out just as they had hoped, if not better
And the winner is … Absolutely everyone. It was the morning after the night before and – slowly, slowly – the leaders of all political parties began to emerge from their bunkers to face the media. And what a tale they had to tell. They had had time to reflect on the results of the three byelections and – amazingly – had all concluded that things had panned out just as they had hoped. Better even. Everyone was on course to win the next general election in 2024 and everyone else was facing an electoral wipeout.
Rishi Sunak was first to show his face in a cafe. “This is an historic day for the Conservatives,” he said. “And also for me. By holding – where am I? This part of London all looks the same to me – Oh, yes, Uxbridge and South Ruislip, I have avoided becoming the first prime minister since Harold Wilson to lose three byelections on the same night. So by only losing two safe seats, I have shown I am on course to win a general election.
Continue reading...