Category Archives: Labour

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Campaigners say ‘shoddy’ and ‘outdated’ law has led to bystanders being wrongfully convicted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