Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Exclusive: Members say flag may alienate ethnic minority voters as some associate it with far right
Keir Starmer is facing discontent from Labour MPs over the dominant use of the union flag in election campaign material amid concern it may alienate ethnic minority voters and others.
Concerns were raised at recent meetings of the party’s black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) group at Westminster and also by London members of the parliamentary Labour party. There is also unhappiness among some activists who are reluctant to handle the material.
Greater Manchester mayor predicts regaining lost ‘red wall’ seats in Q&A with Guardian editor-in-chief
Andy Burnham has said Labour is on the brink of government, predicting the party will win back all of the “red wall” seats it lost in 2019.
The Greater Manchester mayor also doubled down on calls for Labour to reinstate the 20p tax rate after planned cuts by Liz Truss, saying the money should be directed to public sector pay, and reiterated calls for nationalisation of the railways, calling it a “no-brainer”.
Labour leader and deputy have promised to resign if found to have breached Covid rules by eating curry and drinking beer at event
Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner have returned questionnaires to Durham constabulary, giving their account of a gathering during last year’s local election campaign, the Labour party has confirmed.
The pair have both promised to resign if they are found to have breached Covid rules by eating a curry and drinking a beer at the event, which was caught on camera.
A year on from landing the party’s top job, the leader plans on taking his message directly to the voters
Keir Starmer plans to spend the summer months criss-crossing the country to make his pitch directly to voters at scores of town hall-style meetings, in an attempt to “bring Labour home” to its traditional supporters.
A year after his election, with his personal poll ratings slipping and amid growing internal unease about his leadership, Starmer’s team say he hopes to emulate David Cameron, who fielded voters’ questions face to face on his “Cameron Direct” tour in 2008.
Anas Sarwar said becoming Scottish Labour leader was the greatest honour of his life, and pledged to rebuild the party. ‘I know Labour has a lot of work to do to win back your trust,’ Sarwar said. ‘I’m sorry we haven’t been good enough.’
Sarwar, 37, faces a battle to save Labour from what polls suggest could be another humiliating Holyrood election in May. After losing every Scottish and UK election since 2007 to the SNP, including losing all its MEPs in the 2016 European elections, Labour has since gone through seven Scottish leaders. Sarwar will be its eighth
Keir Starmer condemns ‘criminal damage’ but says we can’t have ‘a slaver on a statue’
The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, sparked unease among some on the left of his party on Monday, as he condemned as “completely wrong” the tearing down of the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol at the weekend.
Starmer and the shadow home secretary, Nick Thomas-Symonds, said they shared the sense of injustice that had brought more than 100,000 people out on to the streets of the UK to join Black Lives Matter protests in recent days.
New leader brings in one former rival for key post but no role yet for Rebecca Long-Bailey
Keir Starmer has made Lisa Nandy, one of the candidates he defeated to become Labour leader, his shadow foreign secretary, and Anneliese Dodds, who became an MP only in 2017, his shadow chancellor.
Speaking before the first tranche of top appointments, the new Labour leader promised he would create a shadow cabinet balanced between the various wings of the party.
As Corbyn prepares to step down as leader, Alvarez says Labour failed to ‘pull together’
Laura Alvarez, the wife of Jeremy Corbyn, has said she regrets Labour failed to “pull together” to win elections, condemning the media and his opponents in the party on his last day as leader of the party.
In a rare public statement, Alvarez said it had been “incredibly hard” for her to watch her husband vilified by the media and even harder to watch him be attacked by his own party.
Labour’s four-month leadership election to replace Jeremy Corbyn has hampered the party’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, according to some of its MPs.
Critics said the party’s leadership has been sluggish in responding to the crisis and Corbyn, as outgoing leader, has failed to command authority.
The next leader should focus on building support among young people, families and precarious workers around urban centres
The candidate who secures the mandate of the Labour membership in April will require humility and subtlety. Humility, because the size of the Tory majority is formidable; subtlety, because the electorate is changing in ways that suggest there is no easy path to revive Labour’s vote share.
To win the most seats at the next election, let alone form a majority government, the new leader will need to engineer a breakthrough in several parts of the country simultaneously, from politically ambivalent Cornwall to the new SNP strongholds in Scotland. Along the way, of course, large chunks of support will need to be clawed back in the so-called “red wall” areas of the post-industrial north and Midlands, which turned so decisively blue in 2019.
Frontrunner on 53% ahead of Rebecca Long-Bailey on 31% and Lisa Nandy on 16%
Keir Starmer has been predicted to win the Labour leadership contest in the first round with more than 50% of the vote, according to a poll by YouGov and Sky News.
The frontrunner’s campaign was given a boost by the poll, which is the first to sample trade unionists and registered supporters as well as party members. It showed Starmer receiving 53% of the vote, ahead of Rebecca Long-Bailey on 31% and Lisa Nandy on 16%.
Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen, including Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs and Michel Barnier’s Brexit speech
Ian Blackford, the SNP leader at Westminster, says immigration is crucial for the Scottish economy. The Scottish government’s plans for a Scottish visa system have been welcomed by business and even Scottish Tories. Does the PM accept it was a mistake to reject the plan?
Johnson says this idea was rejected by the migration advisory committee. He says under the government’s plan firms will be able to get the workers they need.
Corbyn says he has learnt a lot from visiting victims of flooding. The PM should try it. He says people cannot get insurance. Isn’t it time the PM found an urgent solution to this problem? Just imagine what it must be like. People are looking to the government for help.
Johnson says there are problems with insurance. But the government scheme has helped many households. He says he is looking at what can be done to protect homes that cannot get insurance. He says any government led by Corbyn would not be able to help.
Labour leadership hustings saw frontrunner criticised for party’s ‘tone-deaf’ approach
The contenders to become Labour leader have clashed over Brexit and compulsory re-selection for MPs in an occasionally testy hustings event, with the race to succeed Jeremy Corbyn intensifying as party members start to cast their ballots.
At Tuesday night’s event in Manchester organised by the Guardian, frontrunner Sir Keir Starmer came under sustained fire from Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy over what the latter called Labour’s “tone deaf” approach to Brexit, which they said helped contribute to December’s crushing election loss.
Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen, including Boris Johnson chairing a meeting of the new cabinet and further government reshuffle developments
PCS union chief Mark Serwotka says party must not lose ‘radical anti-establishment, socialist message’
A key ally of Jeremy Corbyn has said failing to elect Rebecca Long-Bailey to be the Labour party’s next leader risks turning the clock back to 2015 and the leadership of Ed Miliband.
Mark Serwotka, head of the civil servants’ union PCS, said that the other candidates – Keir Starmer, Lisa Nandy and Emily Thornberry – would either struggle to maintain the radical policies of Jeremy Corbyn or have failed to realise that prevarication over the party’s Brexit policy was a key reason for the devastating 2019 defeat.
Shadow Brexit secretary assured of place on final ballot after nomination by Usdaw
Sir Keir Starmer has guaranteed himself a place on the final ballot to become Labour’s next leader after becoming the first candidate to be backed by a second major trade union.
Usdaw, the retail union and Labour’s fourth largest affiliate, on Monday nominated the shadow Brexit secretary for leader and Angela Rayner for deputy leader.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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 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.