Category Archives: Keir Starmer

Rosie Duffield resigns as Labour MP with scathing attack on Keir Starmer’s leadership

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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”.

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Peer gave Keir Starmer more clothes worth £16,000, declared as money for private office

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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.

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New relationship with EU possible but will not be easy, Keir Starmer says

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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.

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Keir Starmer meets with Donald Trump in push for good relationship

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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.

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‘Pretty farcical’: Keir Starmer downplays use of Waheed Alli’s £18m penthouse

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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.

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Badenoch says she’s a ‘huge fan’ of Elon Musk, as other Tory leader candidates decline to praise him – UK politics live

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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.

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Labour crackdown on non-doms may raise no money, officials fear

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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.

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Keir Starmer under pressure to ‘get a grip’ on Sue Gray tensions

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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.

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Starmer says Tories should apologise for winter fuel payments cut ahead of possible conference defeat – UK politics live

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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.

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Long-term sick need to get back to work where they can, says Starmer

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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”.

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‘Davos on the Mersey’: key conference takeaways as Labour tries to woo business

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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.

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Starmer avoids backing anti-Trump comment before potential meeting

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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.

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Keir Starmer heads to US for summit at UN as aides seek meetings with Harris and Trump

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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.

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Keep the faith, Starmer urges as he vows to build ‘a new Britain’

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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.

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Starmer needs the public’s trust to be able to make the hard choices to come

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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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Germany and France call for Europe-wide deal with UK on migration

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Letter sent to EU said Brexit had gravely affected ‘the coherence of policies’ on asylum and migration

Germany and France have called for a Europe-wide deal on migration and asylum with the UK government, to capitalise on Labour’s more “constructive” approach to EU-UK relations.

In a letter to the EU home affairs commissioner, the German interior minister, Nancy Faeser, and her former French counterpart, Gérald Darmanin, said Brexit had gravely affected “the coherence of migration policies”.

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Cutting winter fuel payments ‘right decision’, says Reeves, as No 10 says no change to council tax discount for single people – Labour conference live

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Chancellor says £22bn gap in current spending budget and state pension rise meant she had to make decision on means-testing fuel payments

In interview this morning Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, defended her own decision to accept clothing donations worth £7,500 when she was in opposition.

Speaking on the Today programme, she said:

I can understand why people find it a little bit odd that politicians get support for things like buying clothes.

Now, when I was an opposition MP, when I was shadow chancellor of the exchequer, a friend of mine who I’ve known for years [Juliet Rosenfeld] – she’s a good personal friend – wanted to support me as shadow chancellor and the way she wanted to support me was to finance my office to be able to buy clothes for the campaign trail and for big events and speeches that I made as shadow chancellor.

It’s never something that I planned to do as a government minister, but it did help me in opposition.

It’s rightly the case that we don’t ask taxpayers to fund the bulk of the campaigning work and the research work that politicians do, but that does require, then, donations – from small donations, from party members and supporters, from larger contributions, from people who have been very successful in life and want to give something back.

We appreciate that support. It’s part of the reason why we are in government today, because we were able to do that research work, and we were able to do that campaigning.

Unite and the Communication Workers Union (CWU) have put forward motions which were due to be debated on Monday afternoon, with strong support expected from other unions.

Sources said unions were told late on Sunday that the debate is being moved to Wednesday morning.

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Sue Gray ‘shot JFK’ and is ‘hiding Lord Lucan’, jokes Wes Streeting

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Health secretary shares light-hearted quip at party’s conference over embattled No 10 aide

Wes Streeting has joked that Keir Starmer’s embattled senior aide Sue Gray also “shot JFK” and was “hiding Lord Lucan” amid a continuing row over her salary.

The health secretary made light of suggestions of mounting acrimony at the heart of government as he spoke at an event on the sidelines of the Labour party conference in Liverpool.

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Rachel Reeves orders investigations into £600m of Covid contracts

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Chancellor will confirm inquiries in conference speech as Labour tries to move on from donations scandal

Rachel Reeves will announce on Monday that she has ordered investigations into more than £600m worth of Covid contracts awarded under the Conservatives as Labour struggles to get back on the front foot over questions of ethics.

After days of bruising allegations over donations, the chancellor will confirm that she will refer more than half of contracts for material such as masks to the incoming Covid corruption commissioner, after the previous government recommended dropping any attempt to investigate them.

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‘Planning passports’ that automatically approve high-quality new homes will be a game-changer, says Keir Starmer

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Labour wants to see apartment blocks built in more densely populated cities to achieve its housing targets

A radical scheme to speed up the building of more apartment blocks in towns and cities – as opposed to individual houses and bungalows – has been announced by the prime minister on the eve of the Labour party conference.

Keir Starmer told the Observer in an exclusive interview that the new system of “planning passports” would be a “game-changer” as the government strives to build 1.5m new homes within five years.

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