Prime minister is covering cost of Taylor Swift tickets and designer clothing rental agreement after donations row
Keir Starmer has paid back more than £6,000 worth of gifts and hospitality, including Taylor Swift tickets and rented clothing for his wife, after a row over his acceptance of freebies.
The prime minister handed back some tickets and gifts he had received since he entered No 10 in July as he vowed to overhaul the rules on what ministers are allowed to accept.
Continue reading...Iran sends more than 180 ballistic missiles in dramatic escalation of conflict
Israel has vowed to retaliate after Iran launched a barrage of ballistic missiles at targets across Israel in a dramatic intensification of a conflict that appeared to be escalating out of control.
“Iran made a big mistake tonight – and it will pay for it,” Benjamin Netanyahu told a meeting of his security cabinet late on Tuesday. “The regime in Iran does not understand our determination to defend ourselves and our determination to retaliate against our enemies.”
Continue reading...Conservative leadership contenders Jenrick, Cleverly and Tugendhat reject rival’s comments, while Rosie Duffield criticises Keir Starmer
Q: Do you agree with Kemi Badenoch that some cultures are less valid than others?
Jenrick says culture matters. But he says he disagres with Badenoch on immigration numbers. He says he thinks you have to have a cap on numbers. And he also says he believes the UK has to leave the European convention on human rights. He says Badenoch is just talking about developing a plan in a few years time, and that’s “a recipe for infighting and for losing the public’s trust”.
Continue reading...Prime minister hopes to use talks with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen this week to prepare for a reset in the spring
Keir Starmer will use a meeting with the European Commission president this week to pave the way for a springtime overhaul of Britain’s Brexit deal, amid warnings that closer ties will be essential in his government’s desperate search for growth.
The prime minister will meet Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels on Wednesday. However, it comes with home secretary Yvette Cooper still vehemently opposed to an agreement that would allow young people to move more freely between Europe and the UK – a measure that EU diplomats regard as key to unlocking more serious talks in the spring.
Continue reading...Latest Opinium poll for the Observer shows Labour leader got the opposite of a ‘bounce’ from Liverpool party conference
Keir Starmer’s personal ratings dropped further during his first Labour conference as prime minister, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer.
While party leaders hope for a conference bounce as a result of wall-to-wall media coverage, Starmer suffered the reverse effect, as his ratings plunged to their lowest ever level, and well below those of Rishi Sunak.
Continue reading...Politician cites ‘cruel and unnecessary policies’ as she lambasts prime minister’s ‘managerial and technocratic approach’
A Labour MP has resigned from the parliamentary party after criticising Keir Starmer’s “cruel and unnecessary” policies and lambasting the prime minister’s “managerial and technocratic approach” to politics.
In a furious letter announcing her decision, Rosie Duffield, the Canterbury MP, said she felt relief in making the decision. She said the row over freebies handed to Starmer and his top team demonstrated that “sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice are off the scale”.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Donations worth £10,000 in October 2023 and £6,000 in February 2024 bring gifted clothes total to £32,000
Keir Starmer was given a further £16,000 worth of clothes by the Labour peer Waheed Alli, which was declared as money for his private office, the Guardian can reveal.
The donations, comprising £10,000 in October 2023 and £6,000 in February 2024, bring the total amount in gifted clothes to £32,000.
Continue reading...PM hopes to work more closely on defence, borders and trade with EU as he sets meeting with von der Leyen
Keir Starmer has said a new relationship with the European Union will not be easy “but is possible” before a meeting with Ursula von der Leyen next week, as he set out defence, borders and trade as areas where he hopes for improvement.
The prime minister spoke of his hopes for a reset and did not rule out accepting an EU proposal for greater youth mobility – including easier travel, study and work for under 30s.
Continue reading...The PM and foreign secretary David Lammy met with the Republican candidate, but were not able to schedule a meeting with Kamala Harris
Keir Starmer has met Donald Trump for a two-hour dinner in New York, as he sought to establish a good relationship with the Republican presidential candidate.
The prime minister was accompanied by his foreign secretary David Lammy, who described Trump as a neo-Nazi sympathiser in 2018 but has since said he would work with him in office.
Continue reading...PM says the public can make their own judgments about gifts and maintains no rules have been broken
Keir Starmer has said the row over him borrowing Labour donor Waheed Alli’s luxury flat for filming was “farcical” and that the public would come to their own judgments about his reasons for taking support from the peer.
The prime minister sought to downplay the row over the flat when he was asked about his gifts from the Labour peer while on a trip to New York, after weeks of questions about receiving clothing, spectacles and temporary use of a £18m penthouse from Alli.
Continue reading...The billionaire owner of X has reportedly not been invited to Labour’s international investment summit next month
Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, a thinktank specialising in race and identity issues, says that it is “courageous” for Kemi Badenoch to endorse Elon Musk as enthusiastically as she has done. (See 9.55am.) As he explains, he is using “courageous” in the Yes Minister sense, as a synonym for rash or unwise.
But Katwala is citing polling about the views of Conservative party voters. It is hard to know what Conservative party members think, because they are harder to poll, and so less polling is available, and they are the group that will ultimately elect the next Tory leader. If their views align with the views of Reform UK voters, then her stance on Musk might help her.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Watchdog may conclude that emigration of wealthy individuals could actually cost Treasury revenue
Keir Starmer’s promised tax crackdown on non-doms could yield no extra funds for the Treasury, leaving a £1bn hole in the government’s planned spending for schools and hospitals.
Labour planned to use the money raised from wealthy individuals who are registered overseas for tax purposes to invest in ailing public services.
But the Guardian understands that Treasury officials fear estimates due to be released by the government’s spending watchdog may suggest the policy will fail to raise any money because of the impact of the super-rich non-domiciles leaving the UK.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Some ministers have rallied around chief of staff while others accuse her of ‘control freakery’
Keir Starmer has become exasperated about in-fighting across government involving Sue Gray, with the prime minister under pressure from senior aides and cabinet ministers to resolve the row.
Sources said the situation would come to a head after he returned from his trip to the UN in New York, where he was joined by his chief of staff. Starmer is said to be dismayed at tensions inside the No 10 machine.
Continue reading...Labour party delegates expected to condemn decision to means-test winter fuel payments as prime minister says Conservatives should apologise
One of the most significant passages in Keir Starmer’s conference speech yesterday was the passage where he talked about trade-offs in politics, and how it was important to tell people that to achieve positive outcomes, they sometimes had to accept consequences they might not like.
Speaking to reporters on his flight to New York, Starmer said this was something politicians did not talk about enough. Talking about his speech, he said:
It’s the first [conference] we’ve had for 15 years with Labour in government, but also really importantly, the first big opportunity to say not only what are we doing – the sort of ‘what did we inherit’, the doom and gloom if you like, and the immediate difficult decisions – but also why are we doing it …
I’m convinced that if we take the difficult decisions now, we can get to where we need to. So that was part of it.
Under the plans, teams of leading clinicians are being sent to hospitals to roll out their reforms and get patients treated faster.
Top doctors who have developed new ways of working are delivering up to four times more operations than normal. Operating theatres at Guys and St Thomas’s in London run like a formula one pit stop to cut time between procedures.
Continue reading...Labour leader says there should be more support to help people back into jobs, vowing to do ‘everything we can to tackle worklessness’
People who have been on long-term sickness leave and claiming benefits will need get back into the workplace “where they can”, Keir Starmer has said.
The prime minister said he wants more schemes across the country that support people back into work from long-term sickness because he believes in the “basic proposition that you should look for work”.
Continue reading...As the budget looms, where the party stands on investment in the UK economy, workers’ rights and more
For a second year running, corporate Britain descended on Liverpool for Labour’s annual conference, in an event so packed with executives that some insiders joke the socialist gathering has developed into a full-blown “Davos on the Mersey”.
Like last year, the exhibition and conference fringe had sponsored events, lounge areas and advertising from exhibitors including Gatwick, National Grid, Ikea and Specsavers. This year, however, business leaders were looking for clues about how Labour will govern after July’s election landslide.
Continue reading...PM hopes to meet both candidates on US trip but attempt to see Trump undermined by Home Office minister saying he had emboldened racists in UK
Keir Starmer has said he wants to meet Kamala Harris and Donald Trump before the US election, as he declined to back one of his ministers who said the Republican candidate had contributed to racist rhetoric in the UK.
The prime minister said he was hoping to find time with both candidates as he travelled to New York for the United Nations general assembly – his third trip to the US since taking office.
Continue reading...PM to give speech on international issues as team hopes to set up talks with both presidential candidates
Keir Starmer is heading to the US for his third trip in three months, with aides pressing for meetings with the presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
Fresh from his speech at the Labour conference, the prime minister headed to the United Nations general assembly in New York where the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, will be pushing for a deal on the use of Storm Shadow missiles against Russia.
Continue reading...PM tells Labour conference he will not con people with false hope but says difficult trade-offs will help bring ‘national renewal’
Britain can become a country of pride, wealth and stability if the public accepts a series of difficult “trade-offs”, rejects nimbyism and sees through the Conservatives’ populist “lies”, Keir Starmer has said.
In his first Labour conference speech as prime minister, he urged the public to keep faith amid difficult and sometimes unpopular choices made by the government, telling them he understood their impatience for real change.
Continue reading...Labour needs voters to believe politics can make their lives better not that politicians are all the same, hence why the donations row was so damaging
When Keir Starmer wanted to inject a moment of levity into his first speech as prime minister at the Labour conference, he told a story about visiting a holiday cottage in the Lake District where the owner joked about wanting to push him down the stairs.
As lighter moments go, it had a dark edge. It is British humour, of course, but there is a reason it made an impression on Starmer – it’s a microcosm of what he and his closest advisers see as their greatest threat: the cynicism and disdain with which ordinary people view politicians. The view that they are all the same, all on the take. The widespread lack of trust that politics can make lives better.
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