Rishi Sunak to meet monarch after Liz Truss chairs her final cabinet meeting at 9am
I’m Helen Sullivan, with for the next while. If you have questions or see news we may have missed, you can get in touch on Twitter here.
We’re expected to hear from Nadhim Zahawi, who made a dizzying U-turn from supporting Johnson to supporting Sunak yesterday, on Sky News at 07.05 this morning.
Continue reading...Northern Ireland minister Steve Baker also says new elections will be called if deadline to return to Stormont passes
The Northern Ireland minister, Steve Baker, has made a direct appeal to the Democratic Unionist party to accept EU-UK negotiations on the Brexit protocol and return to powersharing in Stormont.
He also warned that if the DUP did not return to Stormont by Friday’s deadline, the government would call fresh assembly elections .
Continue reading...Ireland’s taoiseach says party should honour mandate of people of Northern Ireland ahead of election deadline
Ireland’s taoiseach has called on the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) to “honour” the mandate of the people of Northern Ireland by contributing to the restoration of the Stormont institutions as the election deadline looms.
Micheál Martin said it does not appear that devolved government at Stormont will be restored by Friday’s deadline. He added that it is “not satisfactory” that the powersharing institutions are not functioning.
Continue reading...Home secretary departs after sending an official document by personal email but uses resignation letter to criticise PM
Plans to create Great British Railways, a public sector body to oversee Britain’s railways, have been delayed, MPs have been told.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the transport secretary, told the Commons transport committee that the transport bill, which would have set up the new body, has been delayed because legislation to deal with the energy crisis is being prioritised. She said:
The challenges of things like the energy legislation we’ve got to bring in and various others has meant that we have lost the opportunity to have that [bill] in this third session.
What we are continuing to pitch for will be what I would call a narrow bill around the future of transport technologies, the legislation around things like e-scooters.
Continue reading...NI secretary Chris Heaton-Harris indicates second poll of the year in mid-December unless power sharing quickly restored
Northern Ireland will face assembly elections before Christmas unless power-sharing is restored in the next 10 days, the government has confirmed.
Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, hinted at an 8 or 15 December polling day during evidence at a House of Commons select committee. It would be the second election for Northern Ireland this year.
Continue reading...In England about one in 35 people had Covid in week ending 3 October, according to ONS data
Covid infection levels are rising across much of the UK, with more than 1.7 million people thought to have had the virus in the most recent week, data has revealed.
About one in 35 people in England – 2.8% of the population – had Covid in the week ending 3 October based on swabs from randomly selected households, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics. It is an increase from one in 50 the week before.
Continue reading...Chris Heaton-Harris also repeated that he would call an election on 28 October if power sharing is not restored
The British government has said it is looking to move on from the row with the EU over Northern Ireland and is aiming to “move quickly” to reach a solution on Brexit arrangements.
After a joint meeting with Irish ministers in London, the Northern Ireland secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris, said he optimistic for a settlement after the resumption of talks after an eight-month standoff.
Continue reading...This live blog has now closed, you can find our latest political coverage here
In his interview with LBC Jake Berry, the Tory chairman, was asked if he was channelling When Harry Met Sally when he described Liz Truss as the “Yes, yes, yes prime minister” in his speech to the conference yesterday. (Robert Hutton is very funny about this, and much else, in his sketch for the Critic.) Berry said he was referring to Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister when he delivered that line.
In the same interview, Berry revealed that his joke-making has not improved since yesterday. Talking about the conference in general, Berry said:
I think colleagues saw yesterday that when the going gets tough, the Truss gets going.
I do think my language was a bit clumsy in that regard and I regret it.
The point I was making ... is that the government needs to go for growth to ensure that it can grow the economy and Britain can get a pay rise. You don’t have to tell me how hard people graft in this economy. I know how hard people work.
We’ve got to wait until those figures are available … You simply cannot make a decision on figures you do not currently have.
Continue reading...Northern Ireland minister says he and colleagues had not always respected others’ ‘legitimate interests’
Steve Baker – arch Brexiter and one of the Conservative party’s fiercest campaigners to get the UK out of the EU – has apologised to Ireland and Brussels for the way he and some of his colleagues behaved over the past six years.
Baker told the Tory party conference that he and others in the party had not shown respect to the “legitimate interests” of Ireland or the EU during the campaign to leave the bloc.
Continue reading...Delay to protocol resolution likely to pause Stormont elections that were expected this year
The UK has given a six-month deadline for the Northern Ireland protocol row to be resolved, indicating Liz Truss is far more relaxed about the absence of a devolved government in Stormont than previously indicated.
An April 2023 date for the resolution of the Brexit row emerged after a meeting between the prime minister and the US president, Joe Biden, and would coincide with the 25th anniversary of the Belfast Good Friday agreement.
Continue reading...British prime minister and Micheál Martin understood to have agreed there is opportunity for reset of relations
Hopes that talks between the UK and the EU will resume over a protracted dispute about the Brexit arrangements in Northern Ireland have risen after a 45-minute meeting between Liz Truss and the Irish prime minister in Downing Street on Sunday morning.
The taoiseach, Micheál Martin, was one of five world leaders to have “leaders’ meetings” with the British prime minister before the Queen’s funeral on Monday, in what was seen by some as a mark of the UK’s determination to reset soured relations with its neighbour.
Continue reading...Meeting rearranged for Wednesday in New York as Bidens travel to UK for Queen’s funeral
Liz Truss’s planned meeting with Joe Biden in Downing Street, which was to be her first major diplomatic event as prime minister, has been rescheduled for Wednesday at the UN.
Officials from both countries said that a meeting in the margins of the UN general assembly would allow “fuller” bilateral discussion and was not the result of friction. But, whenever the two leaders meet, they face disagreements over Northern Ireland.
Continue reading...Experts revise initial assumption that sighting was space junk linked to Elon Musk’s satellite programme
A fireball seen over many parts of the northern UK has been confirmed as a meteor after a day of confusion about its identity.
The fireball was visible above northern England, Northern Ireland and Scotland as it blazed across the clear night sky just after 10pm on Wednesday night.
Continue reading...UK Meteor Network says object in night sky most likely a deorbiting satellite from Elon Musk’s SpaceX
A fireball seen over Scotland and Northern Ireland is likely to have been space junk from Elon Musk’s satellite programme, according to astronomers examining it.
The UK Meteor Network said the fireball was visible for 20 seconds just after 10pm on Wednesday night. It received almost 800 reports from Scotland, North Ireland and northern England.
Continue reading...Move likely further to antagonise EU but leaders hope Queen’s death may help bring about reconciliation
The UK has made a unilateral decision to continue suspending border checks on farm produce and other goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain, a move likely to antagonise the EU but not provoke further action.
London notified Brussels of its decision on Thursday in its formal response to seven lawsuits brought by the EU over the alleged failure of the UK to comply with the Northern Ireland protocol.
Continue reading...New monarch meets politicians and public as he tries to build on late Queen’s efforts at reconciliation
King Charles has resolved to “seek the welfare of all the inhabitants of Northern Ireland”, in a formal response to the region’s assembly on his visit to Hillsborough Castle to meet the public and politicians.
After being greeted by crowds chanting “God save the King” at the gates of the royal residence in County Down, he made the pledge in response to a message of condolence from Alex Maskey, the nationalist Speaker of the Northern Ireland assembly and a former IRA internee.
Continue reading...Brexit chief extends olive branch in effort to bring UK back to negotiating table in long-running dispute
The EU has initiated a fresh attempt to end the Northern Ireland Brexit dispute with the UK with a proposal to reduce checks on goods crossing the Irish Sea to a near “invisible manner” involving just “a couple of lorries” a day.
Maroš Šefčovič, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, said physical checks would be made only “when there is a reasonable suspicion of illegal trade smuggling, illegal drugs, dangerous toys or poisoned food”.
Continue reading...Loyalists and unionists grieve as politicians remember late monarch’s historic 2011 visit to Ireland
Political leaders across Ireland and Northern Ireland have hailed the Queen’s role in applying balm to centuries of conflict between nationalism and unionism as one of the most consequential uses of her symbolic power.
Grief was most viscerally expressed in loyalist and unionist areas of Northern Ireland, where murals of the late monarch turned into shrines and gathering points for people to share memories.
Continue reading...Biden administration says undoing the protocol would not be ‘conducive’ to a trade deal between the UK and US
The Biden administration has sent Liz Truss a message on her second day in office warning against “efforts to undo the Northern Ireland protocol”.
The warning came from the lectern in the White House briefing room, where spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about new British prime minister Truss’s first phone call with Joe Biden and whether a US-UK trade deal was discussed.
Continue reading...The new British prime minister also spoke to Volodymyr Zelenskiy on her first day in office, pledging UK ‘assistance for the long term’
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing global energy crisis have emerged as a leading foreign policy priorities for Britain’s new prime minister Liz Truss, as she and her US counterpart Joe Biden promised to strengthen their relationship in face of Vladimir Putin’s aggression.
Truss’s call to Biden on Tuesday night followed a conversation with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and focused on what she called “the extreme economic problems caused by Putin’s war”. Biden and Truss “reinforced their commitment to strengthening global liberty, tackling the risks posed by autocracies and ensuring Putin fails in Ukraine”, according to Downing Street.
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