Early evening summary
Kemi Badenoch has confirmed that she has told Conservative party staff that they need to do a better job. (See 9.20am.)
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, has been accused of being a having “a Marxist ideological dislike of academies” by Katharine Birbalsingh, a leading head teacher. Birbalsingh made the accusation after she held a meeting with Phillipson to discuss the schools bill, which she opposes. (See 3.27pm.) A government source said Birbalsingh showed no real interest in listening to Phillipson at the meeting, kept interrupting and twice had to be asked to stop being aggressive. (See 5.06pm.)
Starmer has said that oil and gas will be “a big part of the future for decades”, in comments seen as a hint that the government won’t block the development of the Rosebank oilfield. (See 4.32pm.)
Updated
Tory MPs will increasingly start calling for pact with Reform UK, George Osborne claims
George Osborne, the former Tory chancellor, reckons Katy Balls is onto something. (See 5.20pm.) On his Political Currency podcast, which he co-hosts with Ed Balls, Osborne said a possible pact with Reform UK is the only thing Conservatives are talking about now, and he predicted that more MPs will come out and publicly call for one.
He said:
The only conversation happening inside the Conservative party right now is, should we do a deal with Reform? That is all you’re going to hear from now on. And it’s going to drown out everything else that Kemi Badenoch wants to say, because they’re going to get hammered in the local elections.
Last time the local elections were held was actually a high point for the Boris Johnson government. So the Tories are bound to lose badly. Reform is going to do well. The New MP for Tatton, the person who replaced me, Esther McVey, has today called for that alliance between Reform and the Tories.
The only thing that Reform wants from any alliance with the Tories is that Nigel Farage is the prime minister. So their price is very straightforward. An increasing number of Tories are going to go, ‘Yeah, whatever, Let’s just get into government. Let’s do a pact with Reform.’ And it’s going to be really hard for the Tory leader to be heard on anything else for the next 12 months and beyond.
Government criticised for delaying fully implementing Awaab's law forcing landlords to remove dangerous hazards until 2027
Awaab’s law to force social landlords to fix dangerous damp and mould will come into force in October, PA Media reports. PA says:
The legislation is named after two-year-old Awaab Ishak, who died as a direct result of exposure to mould in the social home his family rented in Rochdale in 2020.
From October, landlords will have to investigate and fix dangerous damp and mould within a set period of time and repair all emergency hazards within 24 hours.
The law will then be strengthened over time and from 2027 it will require landlords to fix all dangerous hazards.
In a statement about the announcement, Angela Rayner, the deputy PM and housing secretary, said:
We have a moral duty to ensure tragedies like the death of Awaab Ishak never happen again.
Landlords cannot be allowed to rent out dangerous homes and shamelessly put the lives of their tenants at risk.
Our new laws will force them to fix problems quickly, so that people are safe in their homes and can be proud to live in social housing.
But the housing charity Shelter criticised the decision to delay full implementation until 2027. Its chief executive, Polly Neate, said:
Awaab Ishak’s legacy must be that no other family has to witness poor housing conditions putting their child’s life at risk.
These delays to implementation represent a real risk to the health and safety of tenants, and puts lives at risks.
The government must make good on their promise and fully and swiftly implement Awaab’s law.
Updated
In an article in this week’s Spectator Katy Balls says that some figures in the Conservative and Reform UK parties have been involved in informal talks on the prospects for some sort of pact between the two parties. She says:
What would a Tory/Reform pact look like? There are different options depending on each side’s appetite for risk. The first option is the mildest – an unofficial deal similar to the way Labour and the Lib Dems approached the 2024 election. In seats where neither party has a realistic chance of winning, they field a paper candidate to give the other party a better shot. Then they hope for tactical voting in these seats to ‘get Labour out’.
Then there’s the geographical pact. In this scenario, seats in different areas could be divided between Tory and Reform candidates. ‘It would be a north-south pact – provinces vs towns,’ says one insider.
While Team Farage is publicly against all this, some Conservatives believe he could be convinced. After all, he is only starting from five MPs. ‘Even if a non-merger deal, for Farage to have 100 to 150 MPs, that would give him permanent power.’ As for a full merger – which could see Farage fulfil his ambition to do what a different Reform party did in Canada after the 1993 Conservative wipeout – well, a name is already doing the rounds. ‘The Reformed Conservative party has a nice ring to it,’ says a Tory.
In an interview with the Sun, for its Never Mind the Ballots TV programme, Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary and runner up in the last leadership contest, dismissed the idea, but did not rule it out.
When Harry Cole, the presenter, put it to him that both parties would benefit from a pact, Jenrick replied:
Reform themselves are saying they don’t want to. Reform has said repeatedly they have no intention of doing this. Kemi [Badenoch] has said she has no intention.
My whole mission is to bring home all the small-c conservatives in this country back to the Conservative party. We should be their natural home. We’re not at the moment, because of the mistakes we made in office. It can be done.
A government source familiar what what happened when Bridget Phillipson met Katharine Birbalsingh has strongly contested the headteacher’s version of what happened. (See 3.27pm.) He said that, although Birbalsingh was invited in good faith, and although Phillipson was keen to hear about her concerns about the schools bill, and about what she was doing at her school, Michaela, the tone of the meeting was “extraordinary”. Phillipson was constantly being interrupted and Birbalsingh would not listen to what she had to say, the source said. He said Birbalsingh twice had to be asked to moderate her tone because she was being “aggressive”. Her manner “was not befitting of a head teacher”, the source said.
He went on:
This is a person who has spoken at Conservative party conference and who was very supportive of the Conservative government’s policies, and who does not like the idea that there’s now a Labour secretary of state who’s got a mandate to drive up standards, improve schools and make changes.
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Starmer says oil and gas will be 'big part of future for decades' in hint Rosebank oilfield won't be blocked
Keir Starmer has said that oil and gas will be “a big part of the future for decades”, in comments seen as a hint that the government won’t block the development of the Rosebank oilfield.
He also suggested that the ongoing need for oil and gas would be part of the “mindset” influencing the decision.
Last week a court in Scotland said the original decision to approve the Rosebank oilfield development off Shetland was unlawful because it did not take account of the impact of the carbon emissions from the oil subsequently produced.
A fresh application will have to be submitted. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is said to be in favour, but within cabinet, and within the wider Labour party, environmentalists are making the case that approving Rosebank will destroy the government’s credibility on net zero.
At the last election Labour said that it would not approve any fresh licences for oil or gas extraction in the North Sea. But it said that it would not withdraw licences approved by the last government and that it would allow those ongoing developments to go ahead.
In the Commons on Monday Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, was asked if Rosebank would be regarded as an existing licence, or a new one, when ministers take a fresh decision about its future. Miliband sidestepped the question.
But, on a visit to the UK National Nuclear Laboratory in Preston today, Starmer hinted that Rosebank might be considered as an existing project.
Asked whether he was minded to grant development at Rosebank, Starmer told Sky News that the licence has to be considered in the light of a new application. But he added:
What we said at the election was we weren’t going to interfere with existing licences. This process started obviously before the election. But the mindset is we know that oil and gas is going to be a big part of the future for many decades to come.
We do need to transition to clean power, but in relation to this particular licence it was granted in the first place, it’s going back through that process.
I can’t pre-empt the decision but you know we did say that where licences have already been granted we wouldn’t interfere with them.
On her LBC phone-in this morning, Nick Ferrari asked Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, about Keir Starmer’s voice coach and whether, in the light of how wooden his performances are in the Commons, he should ask for his money back. Cooper sounded as if she was not sure what he was on about. Ferrari had to explain that the parliamentary sketchwriters were not very complimentary about Starmer’s speaking style. Cooper said she had to confess that she never read them.
So she won’t want to read John Crace on her LBC performance this morning. But you might. It’s here.
Updated
Labour launches ads in Reform-style branding to boast about deportations
Labour has launched a series of adverts with Reform-style branding and messaging as the party seeks to combat the rise of the rightwing party, Kiran Stacey reports.
Bridget Phillipson accused of having 'Marxist ideological dislike of academies' by leading headteacher
Katharine Birbalsingh, who is credited with being one of the best headteachers in the country because of her success with Michaela school in London, has launched a ferocious attack on the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson.
In an open letter published on social media, Birbalsingh described Phillipson as having “a Marxist ideological dislike of academies” and claimed she was unable to answer questions about her schools bill when they met on Monday this week.
Birbalsingh also claimed Phillipson showed no interest in learning how Michaela, a non-selective inner city school, has been able to achieve outstanding results.
Two weeks ago Kemi Badenoch quoted Birbalsingh at PMQs when criticising the children’s wellbeing and schools bill, which will limit the freedoms enjoyed by academy schools. Birbalsingh, who is widely admired by Tories but who describes herself as a floating voter, published a lengthy criticism of the bill last month. But her latest critique is much stronger.
In the letter she says:
Politicians who truly want to raise standards for our deprived communities would ordinarily be interested in hearing from the people who know best how to do it: the teachers.
Take our own school of Michaela. Last year, pupils at Eton College (fees £60,000 per year) received 53% grade 9s across all their GCSEs. Michaela (a non-selective state school in a converted office block in Wembley) achieved 52%. Anyone who thinks that black and brown kids from the inner are destined to be underachievers are wrong. They should meet our children. And with the right values, the right leadership, the right school freedoms, we prove them wrong every time. One would have thought a secretary of state keen to spread aspiration across the country would want to ask: how is this done? How can we raise the standards everywhere? Yet when we spoke of our successes, you did not probe to find out how we achieve what we do. You are not interested …
We asked you to explain why it is that academies were able to drive up standards. You are removing their freedoms so you clearly don’t believe their freedoms lead to success. So what does? You could not answer that either. We asked you to name any single school that you believed is driving up standards. You talked around the houses as politicians do but, again - no real answers.
Academies tailor their curricula to the communities they serve and are only able to do this because of curriculum freedoms - freedoms that you are now removing. You insisted that some schools were not meeting your ‘floor’ curriculum requirements. We asked you to name one school that does not offer a core curriculum to its pupils. You could not name a single one …
You are passing a law that we must all follow a brand-new curriculum, before you have even told us what it is. Every teacher knows what this means: more money and thousands of hours spent changing resources, on content you haven’t even decided or announced. Time away from children means time away from raising standards. We tried to explain this, but again, no answers.
The full letter is here.
Following my meeting on Monday with the Education Secretary @bphillipsonMP my open letter to her is below and here:https://t.co/O9T19eJaXr
— Katharine Birbalsingh (@Miss_Snuffy) February 6, 2025
My first open letter to her on 17 Jan is here: https://t.co/phAiybzQFx pic.twitter.com/EYMJ79opq0
Asked to respond to the letter, a spokesperson for the Department of Education said:
We would not comment on what was a private meeting, held in good faith.
As the education secretary said in her speech at the CSJ, debate around education policy is welcome, and ministers will always meet with a wide range of stakeholders, with a range of different views.
UPDATE: See 5.06pm for a stronger response from a government source familiar with what happened at the meeting.
Updated
Anas Sarwar urges Scottish government to end its 'ideological block' on nuclear power
At first minister’s question at Holyrood this lunchtime, the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar challenged John Swinney to end his government’s “ideological block” on nuclear power following Keir Starmer’s announcement of plans to make it easier to build mini reactors in England and Wales.
Sarwar argued the SNP’s veto on nuclear energy projects has allowed “jobs, growth and skills to go elsewhere”, including the EU and China, whilst a similar approach in Scotland could “end the reliance on dictators like Putin”.
But Swinney said there would be no “green light” forthcoming from the Scottish government and that the development of green renewables was already “delivering formidably” for the country.
Meanwhile he attacked the UK government for its failure to decide on a carbon capture and storage project at Grangemouth, after workers at the oil refinery received their redundancy letters yesterday.
Swinney says he was becoming “increasingly impatient” and called on the UK government to authorise the proposed transition project to give “certainty” to the workers.
This is from Adam Bienkov from Byline Times on Bluesky on the Tory citizenship/migration announcement today. (See 2.24pm.)
So the first policy announcement by Kemi Badenoch, who has spent the past six months accusing immigrants of failing to “integrate”, is a plan to make it harder for immigrants to integrate
How Tories are planning to change citizenship rules to try to reduce net migration
The Conservative party does not seem to have published its new migration/citizenship plan on its website yet. We’ve explained it in a story here, but, for the record, here is the summary of what it involves from the CCHQ press release sent out last night.
The Conservative party have a plan to ensure that everyone gaining indefinite leave to remain is contributing to the country:
-We would double the period of time you have to be in this country before you can claim ILR [indefinite leave to remain], increasing the period from 5 years to 10 years.
-We would add new conditions so that to get ILR after 10 years, the individual must: not have claimed benefits or used social housing during the entire qualification period; be a net contributor, on a household basis - so a higher earnings threshold would apply if a person has dependents who would also receive ILR; not have any criminal record.
-We also call on the government to ensure that any individuals present on a work or study visa, and their dependents, who are in breach of the terms of their visa, or who have applied to lift the condition of No Recourse to Public Funds, will have their visas cancelled and be removed. Of course, anyone whose visa has expired should leave or be removed.
-We would also extend the time to apply for British citizenship from 12 months to five years after obtaining ILR. This country is not a hotel or a dormitory - it is our home. And citizenship must be a privilege, not something which can be automatically acquired.
-We would mandate that if an individual enters this country illegally or stayed here illegally (i.e. a visa over stayer), they would never get ILR or citizenship. We also believe Labour is wrong to repeal the provisions in the Illegal Migration Act preventing an illegal immigrant from getting citizenship in their new border security bill.
-Any individual who is found to have obtained ILR or citizenship on the basis of false information would have their status revoked.
-These changes would not apply to those on the Ukraine scheme and British National (Overseas) from Hong Kong.
In her BBC interview yesterday, Kemi Badenoch claimed these rules would make a “huge” difference to overall net migration numbers because people denied ILR, or without the prospect of obtaining ILR, would leave. She claimed there were 2m people in the country who have arrived since 2021 and who are on the track to ILR.
In an interview on the Today programme this morning Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said that, in deciding if someone met the “net contributor” test that would allow them ILR, the Tories would make a general assessment based on their household income – and not try to work out whether it applied in their individual family circumstances.
He said this when asked what would happen if a migrant worked, and contributed via their taxes, but also cost the NHS a great deal of money as a result of cancer, for example. Philp replied:
It’ll be based on salary levels. It won’t be based on looking at each individual person’s medical record. There’ll be a salary level that we say, ‘Look above that salary level, you are likely to be making a net contribution’.’ The people with dependents – that salary level will be a bit higher.
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Staff at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have overwhelmingly voted for strike action in protest at continuing cuts resulting from their university’s financial crisis.
More than 82% voted for strikes, which the University and College Union (UCU) said was the highest proportion in UEA’s history, in the latest sign of budget stresses hitting campuses across the UK.
The dispute is over proposals at the end of last year for 190 job losses, including at least 30 in medicine and health sciences, 25 in the science faculty, 22 in arts and humanities, and at least 90 from professional services positions across the university.
Jo Grady, UCU’s general secretary, said:
This ballot result reflects the justified anger university staff feel over management’s failings, and university leadership now needs to start listening to their staff and work with us to avoid compulsory redundancies and further unrest on campus.
When the strike ballot was announced, a spokesperson for UEA said:
Although our long-term finances remain sound, UEA has been affected by inflationary cost pressures and a reduction in international postgraduate numbers, which is common across the HE sector, meaning regrettably we do face having to make redundancies.
We continue to do everything we can to mitigate the impact on individuals and will support affected colleagues and continue consultation with our trade unions.
'You can all fuck off' - what Mandelson told the FT when asked about his relationship with Epstein
In his long Financial Times interview (see 12.11pm) Peter Mandelson told George Parker, the FT’s political editor, to “fuck off” when Parker asked about Mandelson’s friendship with the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Parker says an “icy chill” descended when he raised the subject. Asked about Epstein, the new UK ambassador to Washington replied:
I regret ever meeting him or being introduced to him by his partner Ghislaine Maxwell. I regret even more the hurt he caused to many young women.
I’m not going to go into this. It’s an FT obsession and frankly you can all fuck off. OK?
A report by JP Morgan bank, which dealt with Epstein’s finances, referred to him having a “particularly close relationship” with Mandelson, as well as with Prince Andrew.
Updated
Dangerous meat could appear on UK supermarket shelves if the government fails to adequately fund food security checks at Dover port, the Conservatives have warned.
As PA Media reports, Victoria Atkins, the shadow environment secretary, raised this during environment questions in hte Commons. She said:
The head of port health at Dover warned the select committee this week that if funding is not secured within seven weeks, then food security checks at the border will be stopped.
This will mean unchecked and potentially dangerous meat appearing on supermarket shelves and in restaurants, at a time when foot-and-mouth disease is in Germany. When will the Secretary of State protect out borders and confirm this funding?
Daniel Zeichner, the food security minister, said the issues at the port were “significant”, and that the last government had left funding unresolved. He added:
We are very aware of the challenges that are faced, we are on it, and we will make sure that we are talking to the Dover Port health authority.
A Russian diplomat in London has had their accreditation revoked, the Foreign Office has announced. This is retatliaton for “the unprovoked and baseless decision to strip the accreditation of a British diplomat in Moscow in November”, a spokesperson says.
No 10 insists national security adviser Jonathan Powell will stop ignoring joint committee's request to give evidence
Downing Street has said Jonathan Powell, the national security adviser, will give evidence to a parliamentary committee, after it complained publicly that he was ignoring its requests to attend a public hearing.
The joint committee on the national security strategy (JCNSS) says it has contacted Powell three times since he was appointed in November inviting him to give evidence.
In an open letter to the PM released this morning, Matt Western, the Labour MP who chairs the committee, says:
The committee would like to take evidence from Jonathan Powell at the earliest opportunity and, given the time-sensitive nature of the government’s various reviews and upcoming decisions, we attach particular importance to speedy engagement.
We remain unclear about the reasons as to why such engagement with our Committee is proving more limited than expected.
At the Downing Street lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson said Powell would be giving evidence to the committee. He said:
In his role [Powell] should be taking accountability very seriously. Of course the national security adviser, as with other key appointments, will be accountable in his role.
The spokesperson did not say when an appearance at the committee might take place.
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Bank of England cuts interest rates to 4.5% but halves growth forecast
The Bank of England has cut interest rates to 4.5%, but warned UK households face renewed pressure from rising prices and a sluggish economy as it halved its growth forecasts for the year, Richard Partington reports.
Mandelson says he will treat Trump and his team with 'respect, seriousness and understanding' in new job as ambassador to US
The Financial Times has published a very long, but highly readable, interview with Peter Mandelson, the former Labour cabinet minister, former European trade commissioner and new UK ambassador to Washington. It’s by George Parker, the FT’s political editor. Here are some of the main points.
Mandelson says as ambassador to Washington he will treat President Trump and his team with “respect, seriousness and understanding”. In the article Parker says:
Mandelson has a simple plan for dealing with Trump’s team. He says he will treat them “with respect, seriousness and understanding of where they are coming from politically. Politics is in turmoil. There’s an often alienated and angry electorate which feels the system has let them down.” He admits that supporters of globalisation, which has been a central tenet for Mandelson, had become complacent, as wages stagnated and inequality grew. “A number of politicians, President Trump included, are seen as an antidote to that.”
Parker says Mandelson has two priorities in his new job: persuading the Trump administration to maintain its security guarantee for Europe; and using the UK-US relationship to boost growth. Mandelson said: “Maintaining America’s security guarantee in Europe is of paramount importance to me.”
Mandelson said the European Union is over-regulated to an extent that is harming growth. He said:
I’m very worried about Europe. Primarily the problems of the EU are of its own making, regardless of who is in the White House. The most recent period has seen an acceleration, a gamut, of far-reaching regulation, which they are now trying to blunt, reverse or reform.
Mandelson says Brexit “has inflicted the greatest damage on the country of anything in my lifetime”. But he also now says that the UK needs to be “looking at any opportunities opening up as a result of Brexit”. He says the EU model has turned businesses into “compliance machines”.
Mandelson says he wants to assure Trump’s team is not a woke leftwinger. He says:
Some around Mr Trump see me as they view many in Europe. They see me as a leftwing progressive, somebody who might even be anti-business or somebody who might be following the sort of liberalism they’ve just defeated in America. What they will discover is I’m not an uber-liberal, I’m not a wokey-cokey sort of person, and I’m pro-market and pro-business.”
He insists he has the skills to be a good ambassador. “I’ve always been capable of being diplomatic,” he says. And he says George W Bush used to call him “Silvertongue” becaue he was persuasive.
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England saw net loss of social homes in 2023/24, due to sales and demolitions, figures show
England saw a net loss of 7,638 social homes in 2023/24, having now sold or demolished more council homes than it has built every year for the past 10 years, analysis shows.
New figures released today show that 17,504 social homes were sold or demolished in 2023/24, a 28% decrease from the previous financial year. But the number of homes completed has stood almost static at 9,866, meaning the country has once again lost more stock than it has built.
In total, England has seen a net loss of 43,821 social homes over the past 10 years.
Despite some yearly net gains over a longer period, net losses are a continuing trend. Between 1991/92 and 22/23, 843,209 social homes have been either sold or demolished in England. 543,869 have been built since then, meaning a net loss of nearly 300,000 homes in this timeframe.
These figures show the scale of Labour’s task in addressing the housing crisis for the most vulnerable in our society. At the end of 2023, there were 112,660 homeless households living in temporary accommodation, which, according to Crisis, cost local authorities £2.2bn last financial year.
Angela Rayner has announced plans to make it harder for tenants to buy social homes, but will need social home building to improve too, with 1.3m people on social home waiting lists and the state not replenishing stock.
During PMQs yesterday Keir Starmer implied there were national security factors not in the public domain that explained why the government was so committed to transferring sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.
Alex Wickham from Bloomberg says he has cracked the secret. It is all to do with the International Telecommunication Union, apparently. He explains this in a post on social media. Here is an extract.
The US and UK currently have full and unrestricted access to the electromagnetic spectrum at the Diego Garcia military base, allowing them to securely control American and British military and diplomatic communications in the region, as well as monitor hostile activity from foreign states, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity discussing sensitive information …
The US and UK are members of the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency based in Geneva, Switzerland which coordinates the electromagnetic spectrum and global satellite communications. If an international court was to rule in future that the US and UK were using Diego Garcia to run satellite communications in breach of international law, that would have consequences for the base and defense and technology companies involved in supply chains used there, the people said, highlighting the need to secure its legal status.
UK will oppose any effort to move Palestinians out of Gaza against their will, minister tells MPs
Anneliese Dodds, the development minister, has given the UK’s strongest opposition yet to Donald Trump’s proposed plan for Gaza, while once again not directly criticising the US president.
Yesterday Keir Starmer made it plain that the UK would not support Trump’s idea of removing Palestinians from Gaza so it could be rebuilt, condemned by many as proposed ethnic cleansing.
Starmer told MPs that Palestinians “must be allowed home”.
Responding to an urgent question in the Commons, Dodds said the UK would oppose “any effort to move Palestinians in Gaza to neighbouring Arab states against their will”.
She went on:
There must be no forced displacement of Palestinians, nor any reduction in the territory of the Gaza Strip. Palestinian civilians should be able to return to and rebuild their homes and their lives. That is a right, guaranteed under international law.
The UK is clear that we must see a negotiated two state solution, with a sovereign Palestinian state, which includes the West Bank and Gaza, alongside a safe and secure Israel with Jerusalem as the shared capital that has been the framework for peace for decades.
Tories reject claim new migration policy has been rushed out in response to Reform UK surge
The Conservatives have denied putting out their new migration policy as a direct response to the Reform UK surge in the polls.
When this accusation was put to Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, on Sky News this morning, he replied:
This isn’t about opinion polls. This is about doing the right thing. It’s about identifying a problem the country faces, which is [that] we’ve had far too many people coming in in recent years.
And when the BBC’s Chris Mason asked Kemi Badenoch yesterday if she was “panicking about Nigel Farage”, she replied:
I think that people need to look at the past. This is not the first time we’ve been in this situation.
I remember 2019, the elections when the Brexit party won [the European elections], we were 9% in the polls. I remember when the SDP was polling at 50%.
We need to make sure that we understand what is going wrong, and that is that we’ve just been kicked out of government.
The public aren’t just going to rush back to us because Labour is doing badly. We knew they’d do badly. We need to rebuild trust with the public, so of course, they will put their vote with the protest party. They did that with the Liberal Democrats before. We need to make sure that we are fit and ready, and that’s by rebuilding trust and showing that we are a credible alternative to government.
There are two notable things about Badenoch’s reply.
First, although she may remember that the SDP hit 50% in the polls, it is unlikely that she remembers when it happened. The SDP/Liberal Alliance reached that level of support in December 1981. Badenoch was yet to reach her second birthday at that point, and living in Nigeria, and so it is unlikely she does recall it being on the news.
More importantly, Badenoch is implying that Reform UK is just a party for protest votes, like the Liberal Democrats. If that is what she thinks, she is probably making a category error. Reform are a party for protest votes. But they are also an insurgency party, which the Lib Dems aren’t. Protest vote politicians say vote for us because the other parties are doing a bad job; insurgency politicians say vote for us because the whole system needs blowing up. The Disruptive Delivery paper published by the Tony Blair Institute last week is quite good on this distinction.
Tories dismiss government's land use plan for England as 'food lunacy'
The Conservative party has described the land use framework plan for England announced by the government last week as “food lunacy”.
During environment questions in the Commons, Robbie Moore, a shadow environment minister, said:
When we thought it couldn’t get any worse, the Government roll out their latest attack on our farming community and UK food production, setting the direction that they want to replace food production with around 20% of farmland being dedicated to solar farms, tree planting, biodiversity offsetting and wildlife habitats, all to meet green targets.
The proposed figures are astonishing, with well over a million hectares being proposed to be taken out of food production by this Government, and the economic analysis already predicts that well over 12,000 farms will be lost within a generation as a result of this government’s policies …
Does the minister recognise the fear amongst our farmers that their policies amount not to food security, but food lunacy?
Mary Creagh, the nature minister, dismissed Moore’s comments as “sound and fury” and said the plan was a development of something the last government had been working on. She also said it had been welcomed by farmers as “giving certainty and security”.
Civil servants will need to work efficiently or face redundancy under new rules
Senior civil servants must find cuts in their Whitehall budgets or risk losing their jobs under new rules, ministers are announcing today. Eleni Courea has the story.
At 10.30am there will be an urgent question in the Commons on Gaza. It has been tabled by the Labour MP Andy McDonald, and a Foreign Office minister will reply.
After that, at about 11.15am, Lucy Powell, the Commons leader, will give a statement on next week’s Commons business. And after that, at about 12.15pm, Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Cabinet Office minister, will make a statement on UK-EU relations.
Cooper doesn't comment on detail of new Tory migration policy, but says people can't believe 'single word they say' on this
Yvette Cooper told LBC that she did not believe the Conservative party had any credibility on migration.
In her phone-in, asked about the plans announced by Kemi Badenoch today, Cooper did not comment on the detail of what the Conservatives are saying but instead just attacked their record. She said:
I just can’t take seriously a single word they say.
They said all sorts of things, and then they quadrupled net migration in the space of four years. They totally lost control of our borders, and on the Channel, they saw this huge increase in boat crossings [and] every time they said they were going to do something, the opposite happened.
They said Rwanda was going to solve it, and they spent £700m pounds sending four volunteers to Rwanda.
So you’ll forgive me if I don’t give much credibility to anything that the Conservatives say.
Updated
In the LBC phone-in, asked if she thought the public should have been told more about the terrorism aspects of the Southport murders, Yvette Cooper said the Crown Prosecution Service decided this did not meet the definition of a terrorist incident. But it was clearly terrorising.
Asked if the police were “gagged” from saying more, Cooper said people in government wanted to be able to say as much as possible. But the guidance from the CPS was clear, she said; they said it had to wait for the trial.
Asked if she thought the CPS made a mistake, Cooper said the last thing anyone wanted to do was prejudice a jury trial.
Yvette Cooper says she would like tech companies to do more to enable stolen phones to be disabled
Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, has been taking part in a phone-in on LBC.
Asked if she would like tech companies to have the ability to just “switch off” stolen phones, she said that is what she would like to see. She said this does happen already to some extent, but that she would like to see it extended.
She also said she wanted the police to do more to recover stolen phones. Asked if she was concerned about the many reports of people telling the police they have found where their stolen phone in, using a find my phone app, and the police refusing to act, Cooper said she wanted to see “swift action [by the police] in those circumstances”
She said she is holding a summit today to consider how this problem can be addressed.
Kemi Badenoch confirms she told Tory staff they need to do a better job
Good morning. Kemi Badenoch has been saying that the Conservative party should not have to have a full policy offer at this stage in the electoral cycle, but she has not ruled out having any policy and today she has launched a brand new one. She has said that foreign workers would have to live in the UK for 10 years without claiming any kind of benefit before being allowed indefinite leave under a Tory government. Kiran Stacey has the story here.
To publicise the plan, Badenoch has given a long interview to the BBC’s political editor, Chris Mason, and in it she confirmed that on Monday she told Conservative party staff that they weren’t as effective as they should be and that they needed to do a better job.
Mason asked about a report on the Guido Fawkes website saying that on Monday Badenoch summoned all CCHQ staff for a call where she told them they had to raise their game. The website reported:
Guido hears that Kemi summoned an all-staff call at CCHQ today, rallying the wider party. After 100 days in LOTO, Kemi’s verdict is that machine “must do better”, saying party members told her during the leadership election they “wanted everyone in CCHQ sacked,” with some even saying they should “burn the whole place down.” At the time she defended CCHQ—now that she’s seen it up close, she’s shifting course…
When Mason asked if it was true that she had told CCHQ staff they were not up to the job, Badenoch replied:
I believe that everyone who works for the Conservative Party needs to be fully dedicated to the mission.
Asked if she was saying some weren’t, Badenoch went on:
It is what the members have asked for. And if we feel that there are people who are doing a great job, we will tell them. And when people aren’t doing a great job, we will do the same. We need to make sure that we have good feedback. And one of the things that I want to see.
Mason said that Badenoch seemed to be saying that she thought some of her staff were “useless”. Badenoch did not accept that categorisation, but she repeated her point about the need for staff to improve. She replied:
No, that’s not what I’ve said at all. What I want people to know is that we want to have a high performing organisation. And leadership isn’t just about telling everybody how great they are. Sometimes it’s about telling them how to improve.
And quite frankly, one of the things that we’re seeing in this country is millions of people out of work, and not enough people getting pulling their socks up and getting back on their feet. We need sometimes to have tough words when people aren’t doing well, and words of praise when they are doing well. And that’s exactly what I did.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9am: Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, takes part in an LBC phone-in.
9.30am: Steve Reed, the environment secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
Morning: Keir Starmer and Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, are on a visit to promote the government’s plan to expand nuclear power in England and Wales, by changing planning laws to make it easier for more small modular reactors (SMRs) to be built.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
Noon: The Bank of England announces its interest rate decision. As Heather Stewart reports, it is expected to cut interest rates and downgrade forecasts for economic growth.
Noon: John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, takes questions in Holyrood.
5.15pm: Starmer has a meeting with Dick Schoof, the Dutch PM, in Downing Street.
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