PM says budget stabilised the economy, while mortgage rates are ‘individual decisions for the banks’
Keir Starmer has conceded he was disappointed in the UK growth figures last week, but denied that his government’s budget was responsible for a recent rise in mortgage rates.
The prime minister told journalists travelling to the G20 summit in Rio: “What we have done with the budget is to stabilise the economy and that, in my view, was the essential first step.
Continue reading...Move follows US president Joe Biden’s agreement to supply similar American long-range Atacms weapon
Britain is expected to supply Storm Shadow missiles for use by Ukraine on targets inside Russia, now that the US president, Joe Biden, has agreed to do the same for the similar American long-range Atacms weapon.
Keir Starmer, the prime minister, said at the G20 summit that the UK recognised it needed to “double down” on its support for Ukraine, while diplomatic sources briefed they expected other European countries to follow the US lead.
Continue reading...PM questions sanctions against MPs and plight of Jimmy Lai as China’s president says Starmer ‘fixing foundations’
China’s president, Xi Jinping, has heaped praise on Keir Starmer’s economic policy, as the UK prime minister used their first meeting to raise concerns about sanctions on MPs and the treatment of the pro-democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai.
During their conversation at the G20 summit in Rio, the first meeting between the UK and China’s leaders in six years, Starmer said he would be keen to host a full bilateral meeting with Xi and the Chinese premier, Li Qiang, in Beijing or London as soon as possible, aimed at turning the page on frosty UK-China relations.
Continue reading...Prime minister says he wants to ‘be clear about issues we do not agree on’ after meeting Chinese president Xi Jinping at G20
Keir Starmer has held his bilateral with Xi Jinping in Rio at the G20, offering to meet his counterpart, the Chinese premier Li Qiang, in Beijing or London at the earliest opportunity.
But the PM also raised human rights issues with Xi, including the sanctions on parliamentarians and the persecution of Hong Kong and British citizen Jimmy Lai.
A strong UK China relationship is important for both of our countries and for the broader international community.
The UK will be a predictable, consistent, sovereign actor committed to the rule of law.
Continue reading...Prime minister wants bilateral at G20 to lead to closer ties with China, which he sees as key to faster growth
Keir Starmer will become the first UK prime minister in six years to meet the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, promising to turn the page on UK-China relations by building “a pragmatic and serious relationship”.
Starmer and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, have been pursuing a thawing of relations with the world’s second-largest economy on pragmatic grounds, suggesting that the UK cannot achieve its growth ambitions without better terms with China.
Continue reading...UK prime minister to meet world leaders at summit in Brazil that Vladimir Putin has declined to attend
Ukraine will be “top of the agenda” this week at a meeting of leaders from the world’s most powerful economies, Keir Starmer has pledged, though he said he had “no plans” to follow the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and speak directly to Vladimir Putin.
Starmer will meet world leaders on Monday at the G20 summit in Brazil, which the Russian president has declined to attend, sending his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, in his place.
Continue reading...Reform may well be Labour’s new main opponent, and the next battleground may not be where anyone expected
Two key rules of politics are to always look ahead, and to understand your opponent. And so it is that just months after crushing the Conservatives in a general election, many Labour MPs are bracing for fresh challenges and a new foe – Reform UK.
Nigel Farage’s party is in parliamentary terms a minnow, its five MPs giving it little more than 1% of the Commons strength enjoyed by Keir Starmer. But many within Labour believe that by the time of the next election, things could be very different.
Continue reading...PM confirms target of 81% emissions cut at Cop climate summit but says ‘I’m not going to tell people how to live their lives’
Leadbeater introduces the next speaker, Nat Dye, who has terminal cancer. She says she thinks his views are the most important for people to hear at this press conference.
He says he has known “positive” experiences of death. His fiance and his mother both had relatively peaceful deaths. He says palliative care can work for some people.
Imagine I am dying and palliative care hasn’t improved. Well, I have no choice whatsoever: I die in pain or I die in pain.
I see this as a chance just to act with kindness and a choice for people at their darkest hour.
Continue reading...Prime minister says victims of serial abuser John Smyth ‘failed very, very badly’
Keir Starmer has refused to back the archbishop of Canterbury, who has faced growing demands to resign over his handling of an abuse scandal.
Pressure on Justin Welby has been intensifying since the publication last week of a damning report on the church’s cover-up of John Smyth’s abuse in the UK in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and later in Zimbabwe and South Africa. About 130 boys are believed to have been victims.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Target is 81% emissions cut compared with 1990, but activists say it must be backed by plan of action
Keir Starmer will announce a stringent new climate goal for the UK on Tuesday, the Guardian can reveal, with a target in line with the advice given to the government by its scientists and independent advisers.
The UK will pledge to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, a target in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Continue reading...This live blog is closed
Here are some of the main points from Jonathan Reynolds’s evidence to the Post Office inquiry so far this morning.
Reynolds said he accepted as business secretary he was responsible for ensuring the compensation scheme operated properly. He said in the past there had been “insufficient accountability”.
He said that since the general election there has been a “significant increase” in the pace at which compensation is being paid. The journalist Nick Wallis (who wrote a superb book, The Great Post Office Scandal) is live tweeting from the inquiry, and he quotes Reynolds as saying:
Since the general election there has been a significant increase in the pace at which compensation has been paid. The overall quantum of compensation is up in the last four months by roughly a third and the number of claims to which there has been an initial... offer being made in response to that claim has roughly doubled in the last four months [to] what it has been in the four months preceding the general election.
Home Office officials do not believe Labour’s plan to “smash the gangs” will work as a way of bringing down illegal migration to the UK, i can reveal.
They say that civil servants in the department have been “underwhelmed” by the approach that was being outlined again this week by Sir Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper.
Continue reading...British and French leaders will discuss Ukraine and defence amid fears for future of Nato after Trump’s re-election
Keir Starmer will join Emmanual Macron in Paris for the French Armistice Day service in a pointed show of European solidarity days after Donald Trump’s re-election, with Ukraine and defence on the agenda for private talks between the two leaders.
The visit will have a symbolic element with Starmer becoming the first UK leader to attend France’s national commemoration event since Winston Churchill in 1944.
Continue reading...Total number of arrivals by small boats reaches 32,691 this year, up 22% on same time last year but fewer than in 2022
Nine boats carrying 572 people have been intercepted while attempting to cross the Channel, according to the Home Office.
The latest crossings come after Keir Starmer announced plans to tackle what he described as the “national security threat” of people smugglers, pledging an extra £75m and a new team of detectives.
Continue reading...Lord West says Republican victory is chance to show Britain is willing to prioritise military by allocating 3% of GDP
Keir Starmer is being urged to consider an emergency cash injection into defence and to accelerate Britain’s planned review of its military capabilities before Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
Senior defence figures are now assessing how Trump’s victory will shape a strategic defence review (SDR) that was already under way in Whitehall, whose findings are due to be reported in the spring. The SDR comes alongside a crucial review of public spending.
Continue reading...Former Tory defence minister says leadership of Sunak era is lacking and bureaucracy is holding up equipment
Momentum on Ukraine has “dropped back” since Labour took office, according to the ex-Tory defence minister and former army officer Sir Ben Wallace.
Responding to recent comments by Kyiv officials that Ukraine’s relationship with the UK has “got worse” since Keir Starmer was elected prime minister, Wallace said that was because “the leadership that Britain showed right from the start has started to drop back into the pack”.
Continue reading...Jonathan Powell led talks on Chagos Islands in September and played key role in Good Friday agreement
Jonathan Powell, the former chief of staff to Tony Blair, has been appointed as Keir Starmer’s national security adviser in a further sign that leading figures from the New Labour era are returning to the government.
The veteran former diplomat, who played a significant role in the Northern Ireland peace deal struck in 1998 and served Blair for a decade, will be responsible for advising on the UK’s approach to the war in Ukraine and the international implications of Donald Trump’s presidency.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Official in Zelenskyy administration expresses frustration with Starmer over lack of missiles
Ukraine’s relationship with the UK has “got worse” since the Labour government took power in July, officials in Kyiv have told the Guardian, voicing frustration over Britain’s failure to supply additional long-range missiles.
The UK prime minister is yet to visit Ukraine four months after taking office and a frustrated Kyiv has said that a trip would be worthless unless Keir Starmer committed to replenishing stocks of the sought after long-range Storm Shadow system.
Continue reading...Keir Starmer’s team expected a Trump win and has long been building bridges despite political differences
While Kemi Badenoch was the first politician since the US presidential election result to publicly challenge Keir Starmer over Labour’s previously tense relationship with Donald Trump, she is unlikely to be the last.
Yet the UK prime minister, according to government sources, is less anxious about the return of the divisive populist to the White House than the new Tory leader, and many in his own party, might have assumed.
Continue reading...Both PM and leader of the opposition offer congratulations with more full-throated support from Tory rightwingers such as Truss and Braverman
Another Labour politician who has criticised Donald Trump strongly in the past is Emily Thornberry, shadow foreign secretary when Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader and now chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee. In an interview on the Today programme this morning she said Trump’s victory (or apparent victory – he still has not officially hit 270 electoral college votes) was “disappointing”, and that it made the world “unpredictable”.
When it was put to her that she described him as a “racist, sexual predator” when he visited the UK during his first term as president, she replied:
Well, he is. But he is the president of the United States, and we need to work with him.
I know that many Londoners will be anxious about the outcome of the US presidential election. Many will be fearful about what it will mean for democracy and for women’s rights, or how the result impacts the situation in the Middle East or the fate of Ukraine. Others will be worried about the future of NATO or tackling the climate crisis …
The lesson of today is that progress is not inevitable. But asserting our progressive values is more important than ever - re-committing to building a world where racism and hatred is rejected, the fundamental rights of women and girls are upheld, and where we continue to tackle the crisis of climate change head on.
Continue reading...Public congratulations but private foreboding as heads of state, ministers and diplomats express hopes for cooperation and peace
Western leaders raced to respond to the return of Donald Trump to the White House with a powerful mandate to put his policy of “America first” into action once again. But many of the public congratulations could do little to disguise the private foreboding of what the next four years will augur for European security, populism and the world economy.
Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister and the European leader closest to Trump, was one of the first to hail his ally’s victory. He posted on social media: “The biggest comeback in US political history! Congratulations to President @realDonaldTrump on his enormous win. A much-needed victory for the world!”
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