Category Archives: Labour

Keir Starmer found to have breached MPs’ code of conduct over register of interests

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Labour leader was late in declaring eight interests but watchdog called breaches ‘minor and/or inadvertent’

Keir Starmer has been found to have breached the MPs’ code of conduct by failing to register on time eight interests, including gifts from football teams and the sale of a plot of land.

An inquiry into the Labour leader was opened in June by the parliamentary standards commissioner, Kathryn Stone, relating to claims about late declaration of earnings and gifts, benefits or hospitality from UK sources.

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Labour party is ‘sticking two fingers up’ at working people, says Unite boss

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Head of party’s biggest union donor warns members feel ‘crushed’ and may vote not to pay millions to Starmer

Labour is becoming “irrelevant to workers” and it is now hard to justify handing the party millions in funding, the head of the party’s biggest union donor has warned.

In an interview with the Observer, Sharon Graham, the general secretary of Unite, said she felt Labour’s leadership was, in effect, “sticking two fingers up” at workers with its response to strike action and its abandonment of pledges to renationalise public utilities.

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Sam Tarry says it would have been ‘dereliction of duty’ not to stand on picket line after accusing Starmer of ‘car crash’ – live

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Sacked Labour frontbencher says rail workers had the right to expect Labour to stand with them

Boris Johnson’s reluctance to leave Downing Street in the face of opposition from ministers and Tory MPs seemed a bit “let’s storm the Capitol, chaps”, according to a former senior No 10 aide, likening it to the January 6 insurrection in Washington DC.

The comparison was made by Cleo Watson, a former special adviser to Johnson’s former chief adviser Dominic Cummings in an article for Tatler magazine.

These workers are being forced to take industrial action. I’m a Labour MP so I’m a member of the Labour trade union. When the call comes out from CWU for solidarity to join the picket lines, of course I respond positively.

The actions of the Labour leadership is disgraceful. We will have to deal with that. I think what will happen is that people will see through Labour unless they change their position because it seems to me that Labour want to win an election without any principles or any policies and people won’t accept that.

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Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss facing Tory members in Leeds for first official leadership hustings – UK politics live

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Leadership rivals bid to win members’ support in foreign secretary’s home town

Drug-related deaths in Scotland fell by nine in 2021, according to the latest figures released by National Records of Scotland, the first decrease since 2013 but falling well short of the significant reduction that campaigners are calling for.

The latest figure of 1,330 is still the second highest annual total on record, and Scotland continues to have by far the highest drug death rate recorded by any country in Europe and five times the rate in England.

We’ve had a raft of reports, policies and strategies that say what needs to change, and families are more likely to be included round the table, but it’s much harder to track their influence on the ground. We don’t understand what’s getting in the way of good words becoming good deeds.

1,330 of our fellow Scots have died entirely preventable deaths and we should not be celebrating this as an achievement ... The solutions are no secret. We need action, not reports with recommendations that are never implemented.

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Slough could raise council tax by 20% and be forced to sell off thousands of assets

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Local government minister describes scale of financial challenge as ‘unprecedented’

A bankrupt local authority could have to raise council tax by 20% a year and will be forced to sell off thousands of homes and other assets under “unprecedented” plans imposed on it after it ran up catastrophic debts amid overspending running into hundreds of millions of pounds.

The scale of the financial and management chaos at Labour-run Slough council is revealed in a stark report by a team of government commissioners sent in to run the authority after it declared effective bankruptcy a year ago.

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Up to 70 Labour MPs may join pickets as Starmer faces test of party unity

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Union source claims MPs will join BT staff on Friday despite Labour leader’s call for frontbenchers to stay away

Up to 70 Labour MPs could join union picket lines on Friday as Keir Starmer faces a renewed battle to maintain party unity over support for striking workers.

One shadow minister was believed to be considering joining a Communication Workers Union (CWU) picket line as thousands of BT staff began two days of strikes over pay, which would set up a fresh potential conflict with the Labour leader’s office.

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Truss vows to outlaw street harassment as Sunak pledges ban on ‘downblousing’

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Tory leadership hopefuls set out plans to tackle violence against women and girls, as Labour’s Stella Creasy welcomes Truss U-turn

Liz Truss has vowed to make street harassment a crime months after a similar move was blocked by Boris Johnson, while Rishi Sunak pledged to outlaw “downblousing” – taking a photo down a woman’s top without consent.

Both Tory leadership candidates set out plans to tackle violence against women and girls, which has been the focus of a longstanding campaign by opposition MPs and feminist activists, especially after the killings of women including Sarah Everard, Sabina Nessa and Zara Aleena.

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Chris Bryant to say sorry to billionaire over money-laundering claims

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Labour MP will make court apology to financier Christopher Chandler over Commons comments he later tweeted

The Labour MP Chris Bryant is to make a formal court apology to a billionaire financier he accused in parliament of money laundering, after being sued for repeating the claims in a tweeted letter.

In a highly unusual legal case, Bryant was taken to court by Christopher Chandler, a New Zealand-born investor and co-founder of a London-based thinktank, over comments initially made during a debate in the House of Commons in 2018, during which another MP accused Chandler of links to Russian intelligence

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Unions issue threat of UK general strike as rail crisis grows

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Aslef members voted for action in August, while the RMT chief, Mick Lynch, is calling for a general strike

Unions warned the UK could face a general strike this year as rail workers voted for fresh action set to intensify a summer of industrial unrest.

The vote for further transport strikes came as Keir Starmer sacked shadow transport minister Sam Tarry who conducted broadcast interviews alongside striking RMT workers at Euston station – a move that is likely to increase divisions between Labour and trade unions.

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Labour would fix ‘broken’ water and energy markets through regulation not nationalisation, says Starmer – UK politics live

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Labour would, however, stick to plans to nationalise the railways if it won the next election, Starmer says

Polling from YouGov suggests that Liz Truss was perceived by Tory members to have outperformed Sunak on every issue covered in last night’s debate.

In particular, she led on Ukraine, cost of living and levelling up, although her lead was weaker on Brexit, the environment and taxation.

There are some lines on PA from Robert Buckland, the Wales secretary who is supporting Rishi Sunak for the Tory leadership, defending last night’s fierce TV showdown as “robust debate”.

There’s this balance to be struck between having a vigorous debate and being sort of almost too polite to each other.

I think it’s inevitable that you’re going to have candidates disagreeing, and frankly, we need to hear what the arguments are.

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Labour pledges to fast-track rape and domestic violence cases through courts

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Boris Johnson’s ‘appalling’ attitude to women to blame for lack of progress on gender-based violence, suggests Keir Starmer

Rape and domestic violence cases will be fast-tracked through the courts under a Labour government so that no victim has to wait more than a year for justice, Keir Starmer has pledged.

In an interview with the Guardian, the Labour leader said Boris Johnson had made no progress tackling gender-based violence during his premiership because of his “appalling” attitude towards women.

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Tory leadership: Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak clash in heated BBC debate – as it happened

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Latest updates: final two candidates exchange blows over plans for cost of living, levelling up and China

Starmer says Labour’s approach to levelling up will be based on a practical plan, unlike the government’s.

And he says he was impressed by the approach of Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, whom he met in Berlin recently. Starmer suggests Britain could learn from the way new battery factories are located in poor regions in Germany.

There will be no magic money tree economics with us.

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Tory leadership race live: Kemi Badenoch eliminated as Rishi Sunak tops poll of MPs

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Candidates for next prime minister reduced to three ahead of final MPs’ vote on Wednesday

Penny Mordaunt’s supporters do believe that No 10 has removed the whip from Tobias Ellwood to stop him voting for her in the leadership ballot (contrary to what Nadine Dorries claims - see 11.21am), Newsnight’s Nicholas Watt reports.

Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary and Boris Johnson loyalist, has dismissed as “ridiculous” claims that Tobias Ellwood has had the Tory whip removed to stop him voting against the Johnson candidate in the leadership contest. (See 10.08am and 10.45am.)

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Antisemitism issue used as ‘factional weapon’ in Labour, report finds

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Report commissioned by Keir Starmer highlights ‘toxicity on both sides’ under Jeremy Corbyn

Labour under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn was riven by bitter infighting, with his supporters and opponents using the issue of antisemitism within the party “as a factional weapon”, a long-awaited report has said.

Corbyn declined to be interviewed for the Forde report but he signed a joint submission to the inquiry. It described the former Labour leader as “notably silent”.

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Tony Blair was warned repeal of anti-gay section 28 might harm election chances

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Archives reveal David Blunkett voiced concerns about overturning ban on ‘promotion’ of homosexuality

Tony Blair was warned about his government’s commitment to overturning a ban on the “promotion” of homosexuality in schools in the run-up to the 2001 general election, previously classified records show.

David Blunkett, then the education secretary, twice wrote to the prime minister to voice his concerns regarding the furore over section 28. It followed months of debate over potential changes to same-sex education in schools.

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Tory contest shows government levelling up agenda is dead, Lisa Nandy to say

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Shadow minister to say PM hopefuls are vying ‘for the mantle of Margaret Thatcher, promising tax cuts for the wealthy’

The shadow communities secretary, Lisa Nandy, will claim the Conservative leadership contest has shown the government’s commitment to levelling up is dead, as she announces plans to give local communities the right to buy up assets such as empty shops.

Nandy will use a speech in Darlington to say Labour would press ahead with handing power to communities outside London and the south-east in an attempt to rebalance the UK’s economy.

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Climate chief Alok Sharma warns: I may quit if new PM dumps net zero pledge

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The cabinet minister and Cop26 president could resign if the new Tory leader fails to commit to a strong green agenda

The cabinet minister who led last year’s landmark Cop26 UN climate summit has made a dramatic intervention in the Tory leadership race, suggesting he could resign if the incoming prime minister fails to commit to a strong agenda on the climate crisis.

In an interview with the Observer, Alok Sharma said a total commitment to the net zero agenda from whoever is to lead the country would be essential to avoid “incredible damage” to Britain’s global standing, as well as irreversible harm to the UK and international economies.

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‘Travelling circus’: Starmer says Tory hopefuls have lost economic credibility

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Exclusive: Labour leader, speaking after meeting German chancellor, condemns candidates’ ‘fanciful’ spending plans

Keir Starmer has dismissed the acrimonious Conservative leadership race as a “travelling circus”, in which the candidates have demolished their party’s economic credibility by promising billions of pounds of unfunded tax cuts.

Speaking on a visit to Berlin where he held talks with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, the Labour leader highlighted the “fanciful” spending pledges made by the five contenders battling it out to succeed Boris Johnson.

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Eight MPs make it on to first Tory leadership ballot as Sajid Javid pulls out of the race – live

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Kemi Badenoch, Suella Braverman, Jeremy Hunt, Penny Mordaunt, Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss, Tom Tugendhat and Nadhim Zahawi garner enough support

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Brexit opportunities minister, and Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, have just told Sky News that they are backing Liz Truss for the Tory leadership.

Rees-Mogg says Truss had been his strongest supporter in cabinet in terms of seeking Brexit opportunities. He went on:

When we discussed taxation, Liz was always opposed to Rishi’s higher taxes. That again is proper Conservatism. And I think she’s got the character to lead the party and the nation.

Liz Truss is the best candidate. She’s a proper Eurosceptic. She will deliver for the voters. She’ll deliver for the voters. She believes in low taxation.

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Government refuses Labour time to debate no-confidence motion

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Labour criticises ‘unprecedented’ refusal to allow debate time for motion of no confidence in Boris Johnson

A bitter row has broken out between Labour and the government over Keir Starmer’s plan to table a motion of no confidence in Boris Johnson’s government.

Labour reacted with fury after Downing Street refused to allow parliamentary time for a motion it had tabled, expressing no confidence in the government under Boris Johnson.

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