Labour leadership: Candidates criticise ‘terrible’ format chosen by party for official hustings – live news

Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen

Boris Johnson is due to speak shortly at the UK-Africa investment summit in London. According to a press release from Downing Street overnight, he will announce that the UK is going to stop using overseas aid to support coal mining or coal power plants overseas. No 10 says:

At the Summit, the prime minister will announce an end to UK support for thermal coal mining or coal power plants overseas, ending direct Official Development Assistance, investment and export credit.

This announcement forms part of the UK’s wider commitment to use its expertise and experience to help Africa transition away from fossil fuels towards renewable, sustainable forms of clean energy. In 2019 the UK went a record 83 days without generating electricity from coal. The UK was also the first major economy to set a legally binding target to reach net zero emissions by 2050 and Glasgow will host the COP UN Climate Change Summit later this year.

During the general election Boris Johnson told a radio presenter that HS2 would cost more than £100bn. The presenter expressed surprise, because the official budget for the project at that point was just £88bn. but Johnson stuck to his guns. He said he thought the final bill would be “north of £1oobn”.

Perhaps Johnson knew more than he was letting on. Today’s Financial Times says a leak of the review of HS2 by Doug Oakervee says it could cost up to £106bn. The FT story is here (paywall) and our own follow-up is here.

Related: HS2 costs could rise to £106bn or more, warns government review

I’m worried by the suggestion that there might be a delay in the north, or even that we might get some kind of second-class option, a mix of high-speed and conventional lines that it’s talking about.

And to me that would be the same old story. London to Birmingham, money is no object, and then all the penny pinching is done in the North of England.

This isn’t just about north-south rail. The point about HS2 is it lays the enabling infrastructure for the east-west links that we crucially need and most people here would say that those are even more important.

This is about building a railway for the north, right across the north, for the rest of the century.

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Labour leadership: Thornberry in, Lewis out, leaving five candidates as deadline passes – live news

Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen

From Business Insider’s Adam Payne

Asked Nandy whether she’d work with the Greens/Lib Dems at future elections. She says she supports working “with the broadest possible alliance” but pours cold water on electoral alliances, telling me: “it’s a bit defeatist to say we can only win power through electoral pacts.”

This transition period stuff is catching. The Queen has just released a read-out of her talks at Sandringham about Harry and Meghan and it turns out that their breakaway is also going to involve a transition period. Doubtless there will be calls for it to get extended too.

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Clive Lewis: Labour must push for proportional representation

Leadership hopeful stresses need for radical change, saying party must act ‘or it will die’

Labour must embrace proportional representation and learn to work with other parties among other radical changes, the leadership contender Clive Lewis has said, adding that the party “needs to modernise, or it will die”.

In a speech formally launching his campaign, the Norwich South MP said Labour needed to become less centralised and more collaborative, warning that debate was being stifled by “sectarianism and tribalism”.

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Labour leadership: Thornberry gives Corbyn ‘0 out of 10′ for election, but ’10 out of 10’ for principle – live news

Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen

The troubled Northern rail franchise faces financial collapse within months, Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, has said, as the government set out a timetable to tackle the “unacceptable services” for rail passengers in the north. My colleague Gwyn Topham has the full story here.

Related: Northern rail franchise could collapse within months, says Shapps

Nadia Whittome, the new Labour MP for Nottingham East, also says she is going to nominate Clive Lewis for Labour leader without necessarily planning to vote for him because she wants his ideas to be part of the debate. Lloyd Russell-Moyle is in this position too. (See 1.55pm.)

I have nominated @DawnButlerBrent for Deputy and @labourlewis for Leader to ensure both are on the ballot.

I haven't decided who I'll endorse but Clive's steadfast commitment to migrants' rights, and electoral reform and party democracy proposals, must be part of the debate.

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Rebecca Long Bailey launches Labour leadership bid

Shadow business secretary secretary criticises the party’s strategy in last month’s disastrous election

Rebecca Long Bailey has announced that she is standing to become leader of the Labour party with a stout defence of Jeremy Corbyn’s political programme in the general election.

Widely seen as the favoured candidate of the left of the party, the MP for Salford and Eccles announced her candidacy on Monday night with a piece criticising the party’s election strategy and lack of narrative. She promised to defend policies within the party’s current socialist programme with “unwavering determination” in the article for Tribune magazine.

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Labour leadership: NEC meets to consider arrangements for election to replace Corbyn – live news

Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen

Ian Murray, Labour’s only surviving MP in Scotland, is preparing to enter the contest to become Labour’s deputy leader on a platform of constitutional reform and countering nationalism.

Murray, an arch critic of Jeremy Corbyn’s and an opponent of Brexit, is expected to signal his intention to run tomorrow after being asked to stand by other Labour MPs. His plans to run are thought to depend on getting sufficient early nominations, but it would fuel the brewing conflict between the party’s pro-Corbyn wing and its centrists.

There are no doubts that constitutional and nationalist issues are engulfing our politics. I have the experience and knowledge of dealing with both, and the Labour party has ducked this issue for too long. English nationalism from the Tories and Scottish nationalism from the SNP are squeezing the Labour Party and we must stop it.

[The] danger for our party across the UK is what I have been warning of since 2015. If we don’t tackle the big constitutional issues with reference to our own values and the national interest, then we lose our core purpose.

After listening to Angela Rayner’s speech this morning, my colleague Kate Proctor concluded it was hard to see why she was running for the deputy Labour leadership when she might be a strong candidate for leader. (See 12.23pm.) It is not hard to see why. It’s a good speech, with some compelling lines and a superb opening.

Here is the opening.

I wanted to make this speech here, on the estate where I grew up and lived for most of my life.

I talk about my background because for too long I felt I wasn’t good enough; I felt ashamed of who I was. It took me time for that shame to turn into pride.

We fell into the trap of describing a platform of revolutionary change. By the standards of recent politics, it was, and rightly so.

But actually, we could have told a simpler story.

Many of the friends I grew up with, my own family even, voted to leave the EU.

They felt like we treated them as embarrassing aunts or uncles.

There are also lines beyond which there is no dialogue and no compromise possible.

And the first line in the sand is antisemitism.

Nor should we take for granted the new voters we have won over, any more than we should have done those we have lost.

For all that’s said about London, we made no net advance in seats there either. We faced a fight to hold others like Dagenham and Rainham - a place that, like my own constituency, has so much to gain from a Labour government, but where too many people felt our party had lost touch with them.

Across Europe social democratic parties are collapsing.

The once mighty German SPD, the biggest and oldest social democratic party in the world is on 11 percent

I don’t pretend that I have all the answers. That is the point of being a collectivist. That by the strength of our common endeavour, we achieve more than we do alone.

That final sentence is a quote from the new Clause IV introduced by Tony Blair.

I owe much of my life to Labour.

The Labour governments that provided the welfare state, Sure Start, and the minimum wage, which gave me the help I needed to not just survive but succeed.

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To move on, Labour must learn lessons from the left’s failure worldwide | Owen Jones

The party’s defeat was a debacle, but was part of a global trend. Now leadership hopefuls must say how they would buck it

British exceptionalism – the myth that Britain is uniquely different to its European neighbours – afflicts everything from our understanding of our place in the world to our domestic political situation. The rise of Scottish nationalism, the rightwing populist surge, Brexit, Corbynism: all are seen through the confines of the UK’s borders. And so it goes for Labour’s catastrophic electoral rout. But it does not detract from the party’s own failure to understand the broader context: across the continent and even the world, social democracy and the so-called political centre are in crisis.

Related: Can Keir Starmer pass the tests set by the left and win the Labour leadership? | Chaminda Jayanetti

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Jess Phillips poised to enter Labour leadership contest

MP to join Clive Lewis and Emily Thornberry in race to succeed Jeremy Corbyn

Jess Phillips is due to announce she will stand as a candidate in the Labour leadership contest, it is understood.

The Birmingham Yardley MP will join Emily Thornberry and Clive Lewis as confirmed candidates. Others including Rebecca Long Bailey, Keir Starmer and Lisa Nandy are expected to join the race formally in the coming days.

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Keir Starmer calls to rebuild party as ‘force for good’

YouGov poll shows Starmer in lead to head party over nearest rival Rebecca Long-Bailey

Sir Keir Starmer, the favourite to succeed Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, has called for the party to become a “trusted force for good” as up to nine rival candidates consider whether to stand next week.

The shadow Brexit secretary is seen as the candidate to beat following a YouGov poll showing he has a commanding lead over nearest rival and Corbyn ally Rebecca Long-Bailey, the shadow business secretary.

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Labour leadership: Blow to ‘continuity Corbyn’ as poll of members suggests Starmer clear favourite – live news

Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen

The process to strip Northern rail of its franchise has begun after years of poor performance, Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, has said. My colleague Rajeev Syal has the full story here.

Related: Northern rail to be stripped of franchise, says Grant Shapps

The YouGov figures showing how votes might get redistributed in a Labour leadership contest (see 10.21am) are worth studying because they show that some assumptions about how people might use their second preference votes might be wrong.

For example, you might think that anyone backing Emily Thornberry would be inclined to opt for Sir Keir Starmer as their next choice because he’s another strongly pro-European north London senior lawyer who performs well in the Commons. But the YouGov figures suggest Rebecca Long Bailey would pick up almost as many Thornberry votes as Starmer in the first instance.

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Labour leadership contest: Corbyn should have kept fighting for remain, says Clive Lewis – live news

Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen

In her Guardian article Rebecca Long-Bailey says she will be supporting Angela Rayner for deputy Labour leader. Rayner, the shadow education secretary, has been tipped as a Labour leadership candidate herself but, as the Guardian reported two weeks ago, after the election her allies said she was focusing on the deputy leadership vacancy, leading to speculation that she and Long-Bailey would run on a joint ticket.

But last night’s Sky’s Sam Coates said that Long-Bailey’s comment was premature, because Rayner is not yet ready to announce that she is running for the deputy leadership.

NEW: Flatmate Fury?

Tonight Rebecca Long Bailey announced she's backing flatmate Angela Rayner as deputy

- Rayner hasn't announced candidacy

- Rayner isn't endorsing RLB this side of the new year - perhaps never. She will make announcements after Wed

Aren't they talking?

I understand Angela Rayner is going to have more discussions with colleagues this week and make an announcement either way (about endorsing RLB back) soon in the new year.

(Whispers) Could Angela Rayner still be considering a tilt at the top job #flatmatefrenemies

I’m describing Clive Lewis as a Labour leadership candidate because he has confirmed that he wants to run, as has Emily Thornberry. Sir Keir Starmer and Rebecca Long-Bailey also seem all but certain to run. Other people who are seriously considering running, or who at least have not ruled it out, are: Lisa Nandy, Jess Phillips, Yvette Cooper, Ian Lavery, David Lammy and Dan Jarvis.

But it is worth pointing out that, to be a candidate on the ballot paper, it is not enough for an MP just to declare that they are standing. They also need the support of 10% of Labour MPs (ie, 21 MPs). It used to be 15%, but the threshold was lowered after Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader. Under the new rules, candidates also need the support of 5% of constituency Labour parties (CLPs) to be included on the ballot (that’s 33 of them), or 5% of the union/affiliates vote. Luke Akehurst has a more detailed guide to the new rules here, in an article for Politics.co.uk.

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Labour: anger, recrimination and bitterness mark fresh battle for party’s soul

The election was bad, but the aftermath is worse for a divided party

Labour leadership contests are normally traumatic events held in very unhappy times for the party. The election of Ed Miliband in 2010 followed a general election defeat that ended 13 years of Labour government. Five years later Jeremy Corbyn was installed after Miliband failed to return the party to power. Then in the summer of 2016 a revolt against Corbyn by his own MPs sparked another contest, which saw the incumbent win again and take revenge on the mutinous parliamentary party.

Inevitably these contests cause internal ruptures as rival candidates set out opposing visions and their supporters divide into camps. The 2010 campaign had its tragic aspects too, as the Miliband brothers, Ed and David, fell out while fighting each other for the right to succeed Gordon Brown.

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Brexit: MPs voting on withdrawal agreement bill – live news

MPs vote on the EU withdrawal agreement bill, and Clive Lewis becomes the second Labour MP to enter party’s leadership contest

Brexit secretary Steve Barclay said the general election had delivered a clear instruction to parliament to leave the EU and so MP should respect that decision and back the bill.

This bill is not a victory for one side over the other. The time has come to discard the old labels to move from the past divisions and to come together as one United Kingdom.

Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary who is predicted to run for the Labour leadership, warned Conservative MPs to “be careful”. “Doing things because the government has a majority doesn’t mean those things are right,” he said.

He said that the move to water down commitments to child refugees is an example of that. “That is a moral disgrace,” he said.

I turn to my own benches. We may have lost the general election, but we have not lost our values and our beliefs and we must fight for them – day in, day out – in this parliament and we will.

That doesn’t mean that the deal negotiated by the prime minister is a good deal. It isn’t. It was a bad deal in October when it was signed. It was a bad deal when it was first debated in this House in October. It was a bad deal last Thursday and it’s a bad deal today.

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Labour party staff angry at handling of possible redundancies

Corbyn aides Seumas Milne and Karie Murphy moved to permanent contracts, unlike others

Labour party staff who are angry that they face losing their jobs while senior aides to Jeremy Corbyn remain on the payroll have been called in to meetings to discuss possible redundancies.

A leaked email sent on Wednesday shows that workers and advisers from the offices of the Labour leader and shadow ministers have been invited to meetings with their line managers following Thursday’s catastrophic election result.

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‘Extra pathos’: belongings of ex- Labour MP who lost seat incinerated

Commons staff mistakenly destroy some of Graham Jones’s files and favourite outfits

A former Labour whip who lost his seat in the general election has had his clothes and private documents mistakenly incinerated by parliamentary staff.

Graham Jones, the ousted parliamentary candidate for Hyndburn in last Thursday’s general election, returned to Westminster this week to clear his office, which is close to the House of Commons chamber and Strangers bar.

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Emily Thornberry throws her hat into ring for Labour leadership

Exclusive: shadow foreign secretary says she warned party leaders going to polls would be ‘act of catastrophic political folly’

Emily Thornberry has declared she is entering the race to succeed Jeremy Corbyn, revealing she warned the Labour leadership that backing a Brexit election would be an “act of catastrophic political folly”.

The shadow foreign secretary set out her pitch to be the next Labour leader in an article for the Guardian, arguing she has already “pummelled” Boris Johnson across the dispatch box and knows how to exploit his failings.

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Keir Starmer lays out case for ‘radical Labour government’

Exclusive: shadow Brexit secretary calls for end to party infighting and return to being a ‘broad church’

Keir Starmer has set out his pitch for the Labour leadership with a call for his party not to lurch to the right as a result of last week’s devastating election result.

While the leadership race has not yet formally been launched, the shadow Brexit secretary confirmed to the Guardian that, as widely expected in Westminster, he was “seriously considering” running to succeed Jeremy Corbyn.

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Cabinet mini-reshuffle under way as Johnson keeps Nicky Morgan as culture secretary – live news

Simon Hart named new Welsh secretary as prime minister announces that Morgan – who stood down as MP – will get life peerage

Here’s a host more middle and junior-ranking ministerial appointments just announced by No 10:

A mooted plan to merge the department for international development (DfID) and the foreign office (FCO) risks allowing British aid money to be spent on “UK foreign policy, commercial and political objectives”, rather than on helping the world’s poorest people, more than 100 charities warn.

Related: Johnson to tell new Tory MPs they must repay public’s trust

Merging DfID with the FCO would risk dismantling the UK’s leadership on international development and humanitarian aid. It suggests we are turning our backs on the world’s poorest people, as well as some of the greatest global challenges of our time: extreme poverty, climate change and conflict. UK aid risks becoming a vehicle for UK foreign policy, commercial and political objectives, when it first and foremost should be invested to alleviate poverty.

By far the best way to ensure that aid continues to deliver for those who need it the most is by retaining DfID as a separate Whitehall department, with a secretary of state for international development, and by pledging to keep both independent aid scrutiny bodies: the Independent Commission for Aid Impact and the International Development Select Committee.

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Peterborough voters cite ‘Brexit, Brexit, Brexit’ as reason they turned blue

Labour said to have ‘dug its own grave’ with Corbyn as leader as social change mantra failed to cut through

“I feel excellent,” said David Cliffe as he strode across Peterborough’s Cathedral Square, having contributed to a thumping Conservative majority. “I didn’t want to have a communist regime,” said the 71-year-old retired warehouseman. “The country would have been on its knees.”

Cliffe, who was on his way to book his mother a Christmas holiday in Scarborough, could not stop beaming about Boris Johnson’s Conservative landslide, which he reckoned meant Brexit was all but done.

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What will Boris Johnson’s majority mean for Brexit? | Anand Menon

We will leave the EU in a few weeks. But it’s far from clear what kind of relationship with the bloc an emboldened PM will seek

Well it is truly remarkable. Not so much the result of the election, which is surprising enough. But, rather, the fact that following the “Brexit election”, one in which traditional party loyalties seem to have been stretched to breaking point by the leave-remain divide, we emerge not knowing what kind of Brexit the prime minister intends to deliver.

In the short term, there is now no doubt that he will be able to “get Brexit done” in the sense of taking the UK out of the EU by the end of January. And no, that does not mean that Brexit will, in fact, be done (on which more in a minute) in a practical sense. But it may – may – be possible for the government to give the impression that it is in a politically persuasive way.

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