Summary
Here’s a roundup of today’s politics developments, as a row has continued about a series of advert published by the Labour party attacking Rishi Sunak.
A Labour shadow cabinet member, Lucy Powell, refused to endorse a social media advert attacking Sunak over sexual offenders who were allowed to walk free despite being guilty.
Lucy Powell said it was the “cut and thrust nature of politics”.
The period referred to includes the 2010-2015 parliament, when Sunak was a hedge fund manager and not an MP.
A second advert was released, again critical of Sunak for people not going to prison for being found guilty of “possession of a firearm with intent to harm”.
As one legal expert has pointed out – there is no such offence.
A teaching union has said the government is treating teachers with contempt if they continue to refuse to negotiate further over pay.
The firm auditing the Scottish National party’s finances has quit, the news coming days after former chief executive was arrested and released as part of an investigation into usage of party funds.
An event in Northern Ireland has marked 25 years since the Good Friday agreement.
Police have warned of an increased terror threat level on Easter Monday, which will be a quarter of a century to the day since the historic accord.
Emily Thornberry has done an interview with the New Statesman and has said the situation between the Labour party and its former leader Jeremy Corbyn is “very sad”.
That’s all from me today on this Good Friday. Thanks for following along. I’ll be back on Monday for more coverage. Have a good weekend.
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A critical view from one member of the legal profession, as the best-selling author and anonymous Twitter account The Secret Barrister has pointed out that Labour’s claim on its latest advert is not a legal offence.
In a tweet they said that while part of the advert was indisputable, in regards to the offence mentioned: “Well done you’ve managed to bungle it again you tedious fools, there’s not even an offence of ‘possession of a firearm with intent to harm’.”
1st para - Indisputable fact
— The Secret Barrister (@BarristerSecret) April 7, 2023
2nd para - Indisputable fact
3rd para - Meaningless bluster, but fine
Image and text - Well done you’ve managed to bungle it again you tedious fools, there’s not even an offence of “possession of a firearm with intent to harm” https://t.co/crAkKbeYY3
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A curious development in the Labour adverts story. Rightwing website Guido Fawkes has found minutes of a sentencing council meeting from 2012, attended by Keir Starmer as director of public prosecutions, at which sexual offences sentencing guidelines were discussed.
Starmer was at the meeting in May of that year when the topic was raised.
This is part of the period which Labour is trying to blame Rishi Sunak for the number of adults convicted of sexually assaulting children that were not jailed.
The minutes say: “The council discussed the sentencing ranges for the offence of sexual assault in the light of current sentencing practice and to ensure that they reflect the range of activity encompassed in the offence”.”
The argument, of course, is that ministers set sentencing parameters which the sentencing council’s guidelines are based on.
In March judges were told to jail fewer people due to the lack of capacity in the prison system to take new inmates. As a result, one man’s six-month jail sentence was replaced with a suspended sentence.
A statement released by Labour said: “The government sets the statutory framework for sentencing. In March, Dominic Raab amended the rules to decrease maximum sentences in the magistrates courts. But the current situation isn’t the Conservative’s fault and they can’t possibly do anything about it?
“The Tories have been in charge for 13 years and their record is appalling. They broke the criminal justice system, left our prisons overcrowded, and our courts with the largest backlog on record. The result is a direction to judges to be lenient with custodial sentences.
“Every denial they issue on this is an insult to victims and their families.”
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Labour publishes new crime advert featuring Sunak
Labour has published another similar advert to the one yesterday, this time about gun crime.
With the same photograph of Sunak, the poster asks: “Do you think an adult convicted of possessing a gun with intent to harm should go to prison?”
Before again answering, “Rishi Sunak doesn’t”, complete with Sunak’s signature – again.
It includes the statistic: “Under the Tories 937 adults convicted of possession of a firearm with intent to harm served no prison time. Labour will lock up dangerous gunmen.”
13 years of Tory failure has broken our justice system.
— The Labour Party (@UKLabour) April 7, 2023
Victims wait months if not years for justice, while dangerous criminals avoid prison.
Labour will prevent crime, punish criminals, and protect communities. pic.twitter.com/gSBv5oyO0Q
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The veteran political journalist Michael Crick has been speaking to LBC’s Shelagh Fogarty and said he believed Labour’s advert could lead to an “arms race” of increasingly aggressive adverts.
Speaking to her on Friday lunchtime, the former Newsnight and Channel 4 political editor said: “A party led by the former director of public prosecutions should know it’s not ministers or MPs who decide what the punishment should be in an individual case. It’s a judge.
“It would be an appalling country if that wasn’t the case. The whole thing stinks, frankly.
“Labour will say, ‘well the Conservatives started it’, and indeed that’s what they do say. And the Conservatives have put out some pretty disgraceful campaign ads and so on in the past.
“The fact the other side have done something almost as bad, the danger is that it becomes an arms race and the next time the Conservatives respond they go even further over the top.
“The fact [we] are discussing it plays into Labour’s hands, because they will be thinking it’s an old trick in politics, you put out an ad that’s going to shock people and everyone says ‘it is disgraceful and so on’, and the ad gets 100 times more coverage than it would have done if it was an ordinary boring campaign advertisement. The coverage is not given by the original tweet but the discussion taking place on radio and TV today.”
'Hypocrisy in the extreme.'
— LBC (@LBC) April 7, 2023
Political journalist @MichaelLCrick, brands Labour's Twitter graphic as 'absolutely disgraceful', exclaiming 'from the party that played down grooming gangs in northern cities!'@ShelaghFogarty pic.twitter.com/o7WkCtfuiN
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Ministers are treating teachers in England with contempt if they refuse to renegotiate their “miserable” pay offer, according to a teaching union leader who fears the government wants to “walk away” after only six days of talks.
Patrick Roach, the general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, said the government insisted on using forecasts of very low inflation next year to justify its pay offer and was “not serious about compromising” during negotiations last month.
“It was a miserable offer from the government, when we’ve seen teachers’ pay eroded by as much as 25% in real terms since 2011, on this government’s watch, at a time when inflation is running at over 10%. And for teachers to be offered next year 4.5% on average adds insult to injury,” said Roach, who took part in the talks with the education secretary, Gillian Keegan.
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More from the BBC report that the firm that audits the SNP’s finances has resigned.
Scottish Labour’s deputy leader, Jackie Baillie, has said the resignation of Johnston Carmichael poses “serious questions” about the SNP’s financial affairs. She said:
Yesterday, Humza Yousaf attempted to distance himself from the legacy of Peter Murrell – today we need to know what the current first minister plans to do to get the SNP’s house in order.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant – we need transparency and openness from the SNP now.
The Scottish Conservative constitution spokesperson, Donald Cameron, said the SNP should be “fully transparent” over why its auditors decided to quit.
“The public are sick of the SNP shrouding matters relating to their finances behind a wall of secrecy, and senior figures – including Humza Yousaf and Nicola Sturgeon – must be upfront about this situation,” he said.
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The names of the nearly 3,600 people who died as a result of conflict in Northern Ireland between 1966 and 2019 are being read out loud as part of a ceremony in Dublin.
The event at the Dublin Unitarian church on St Stephen’s Green started at midday and was due to end at approximately 3pm.
The Rev Bridget Spain, the minister of the Dublin Unitarian church, said the reading of the names was worthwhile to remember those who died.
“It was such a waste of life, we don’t want to go back there,” she said. “It gives those dead people a voice – just for the second it takes to read their name.”
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The former Sinn Féin leader, Gerry Adams, said countless lives had been saved by the Good Friday agreement, as he addressed a ceremony at Stormont to mark the 25th anniversary of the peace deal.
He said:
The last 25 years have been up and down, and there have been many twists and turns, but one thing is for certain: we are all in a better place. Despite current challenges, the future is bright.
If you doubt that, think of the countless lives that have been saved or reflect on events in other parts of the world at this time. We have a lot to be thankful for and we have a lot to do.
Adams said the Good Friday agreement was for everyone and it was “here to stay”.
The first speaker of the Stormont assembly, Lord John Alderdice, hailed the “extraordinary progress” which led to the agreement.
In those days we made extraordinary progress, not least because we didn’t focus all the time on constitutions and institutions and procedures.
What we did do was to try and deal with the disturbed historic relations between our communities and make sure we found ways of relating to each other.
Lord Alderdice said the difficulties faced by Northern Ireland now were not as great as those 25 years ago, PA media reports.
Monica McWilliams, a co-founder of the Women’s Coalition, paid tribute to all the politicians who had died since the agreement was signed 25 years ago.
The PUP leader, Billy Hutchinson, said the agreement came about because different political parties all pulled in the same direction. “We got there in the end,” he said.
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SNP auditors quit amid police investigation into party funds, BBC says
The BBC is reporting that the firm which audits the Scottish National party’s accounts has quit, days after the arrest of the former chief executive Peter Murrell as part of an investigation into use of party funds.
Johnston Carmichael, who have worked with the SNP for more than a decade, said the decision was taken after a review of its client portfolio.
The party has to submit its accounts to the Electoral Commission by 7 July or face possible penalties.
Murrell was arrested on Wednesday “as a suspect” as part of the investigation and released without charge later that evening. He is the husband of Scotland’s former first minister Nicola Sturgeon.
A spokesperson for the SNP said the party was in the process of finding a replacement firm.
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Some Easter weekend Marina Hyde for you, as she weighs in on the row over Labour’s attack advert (see 9:42am)
As ever, read the piece in full. Here’s some lines in reference to HuffPost UK’s piece quoting an unnamed senior Labour staffer defending the advert.
The thing about political attack ads is that there will always be people, usually the ones who came up with them, who’ll sweep in to explain loftily that actually, the ad in question was a dark form of magic.
“Hey, it’s not pretty, but politics is a bloodsport,” will be the position of some boring little inadequate whose other positions include banning bloodsports and having a number of views about where to get the best flat white in SW1.
She also points out the potential shortsightedness in saying Sunak does not want to punish child sexual abusers – including statistics on a period where he was not in parliament – a year after Boris Johnson accused Keir Starmer of not prosecuting Jimmy Savile when he was director of public prosecutions.
Will Starmer be able to persuade himself that calling a political leader a paedophile protector is good and right when he does it, and somehow nothing to do with “the way we conduct our politics”?
Read the full piece here:
The sons of David Trimble and John Hume have revealed the personal sacrifices their fathers made to help to bring about the Good Friday agreement.
Hume and Trimble were jointly awarded the Nobel peace prize for their efforts in the creation of the deal 25 years ago.
Former Ulster Unionist party leader Trimble died in July 2022 and former SDLP leader Hume in August 2020.
Nicholas Trimble and John Hume Jr both said their fathers would search for solutions if they could see the political deadlock present in Northern Ireland 25 years after the Good Friday agreement.
“I think he would try and think of a better way,” Trimble told PA Media.
“There is always a way through difficulties and the solution that dad would come up with would never be the obvious brute force tactic, he would try and think his way out of a problem first, and I think that’s maybe a trick that’s being missed here.”
Hume said he thought his father would be frustrated to see the current political deadlock at Stormont.
“He’d be very frustrated, just like he was over the years with the deadlock that we had for decades in the north, and I think he would be doing his damnedest to bring the two sides together, to concentrate on everything that is in our common interest and using that common ground to build out to find a way forward,” he said.
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Meanwhile across the Irish Sea in Northern Ireland as the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement being signed approaches, police are warning of potential dissident republican attacks over the Easter weekend
The Democratic Unionist party leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, said the lack of a government in Stormont was not to blame for the increasing threat of violence. His party has withdrawn its support for the power-sharing agreement at Stormont – with the assembly not sitting since last year.
He said the collapse of the power-sharing institutions “did not stack up” as an excuse for why the threat had increased.
“While Stormont was sitting for many years these dissident republicans engaged in violence, they murdered police officers,” he told BBC Radio 4.
The DUP leader added: “I remember during one sitting of the assembly they murdered two soldiers in Co Antrim as they were preparing for deployment to Afghanistan.
“Of course we want to see Stormont fully functioning, but the idea that when we get Stormont back up and running, that dissident republicans will put their guns away, I didn’t hear the chief constable [Simon Byrne] suggest that.”
Tony Blair has urged the DUP to “show leadership” and return to power sharing. He told Politico’s podcast: “In the end, politics only makes progress when political leaders lead, and that usually means persuading your own support of something they don’t want to be persuaded of. And instead of playing to the gallery, being prepared to look at the genuine interests of the people you represent.”
Former Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams said the DUP should be given a “limited amount of time” to make a decision on the Windsor framework, the latest dispute that is stopping the DUP from returning to Stormont.
Speaking to RTÉ, he said the British and Irish governments should step in via an intergovernmental conference if the party does not return.
“It’s rarely been called, the Irish government have not been proactive on it.
“It deals with non-devolved matters, issues pertinent to our current situation.”
However, he claimed Donaldson “knows” that his party will return to power sharing. “Basically, he’s refusing to go into an assembly over an issue which the assembly has no responsibility for, or authority over, and can do very little about.”
Adams added that in terms of the upcoming anniversary, the DUP of the time deserved credit. However, he added: “That shouldn’t be a sort of a reminiscence, or even a victory lap. It’s the next 25 years.”
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One in five young teachers are forced to live with their parents due to the high cost of housing, according to a survey by the NASUWT teaching union.
Ahead of the NASUWT annual conference this weekend, it asked more than 1,000 teachers under the age of 30 about housing, with 71% responding that high costs are making them reconsider teaching as a career.
Two-thirds of those surveyed said their rent or mortgages had gone up in the last 12 months, causing them to cut back spending on food, heating or essential household items.
Of those who want to buy a house, more than half said they think it will not be possible on a teachers’ salary.
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Advert sign of 'Labour fighting as viciously as Tories', source says – reports
A Labour source has said the party has been advised to “fight as viciously as the Conservatives”, as a row continues over a social media advert featuring Rishi Sunak posted yesterday (see 9:42am)
HuffPostUK’s Kevin Schofield has spoken to an unnamed senior Labour staff member who is unrepentant about the advert and that it is start of a wider pattern going forward – picking up advice from the Australian Labour party and US Democrats.
They told HuffPostUK: “They told us to ignore the wailings of the people who expect you to be kind losers and fight as viciously as the Conservatives do.
“Sunak never condemned Johnson when he accused Keir of letting Jimmy Savile off.
“What’s the difference between this and what he says every single week about ‘Starmer voted against tougher sentences’, or when he said Keir was ‘the friend of people traffickers’?
“We’re not prepared to be the mopes any more, while the Tories say whatever they want.
“Their entire 13-year record is up for grabs next year – from the horrors of the NHS to the failures on crime.
“They told us to ignore the wailings of the people who expect you to be kind losers and fight as viciously as the Conservatives do.”
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Thornberry: Corbyn situation with Labour 'very sad'
Emily Thornberry has done an interview with the New Statesman [paywall], which is worth a browse over your breakfast on Good Friday, and has said the situation between the Labour party and its former leader Jeremy Corbyn is “very sad”.
Last month Corbyn was barred from standing again for the party, meaning if he wants to win again in Islington North, which he has held since 1983, he will have to stand as an independent.
Thornberry, of course, has a neighbouring constituency covering the other half of Islington – Islington South and Finsbury. She said: “I find the whole thing very sad. I’m not going to pretend that I don’t.
“But it has been made clear to Jeremy what was expected of him. In the end it is all about the movement and getting a Labour victory. It’s not about an individual. Jeremy and I were friends for years and I made it perfectly clear to him what I thought he should do and he just wouldn’t do it.”
She said that she thinks the Conservative party are in a “death roll”, but makes a left-field comparison at a time where the current political landscape is regularly being compared with 1992 or 1997.
Instead she casts her mind further back, to an election held where Labour won a grand total of 29 seats. In 1906.
The shadow attorney general said the 2019 general election was similar to the 1900 ballot where voters thought the second Boer war had been won. However, it continued for another two years and a landslide for the Conservatives became a landslide for their Liberal opposition.
“People were writing at the time [in 1900] that the Liberals were finished and the Tories were the natural party of government,” says Thornberry. “The Tories won a single-issue election, then they started falling apart and took people for granted. And I said after the last election that the Tories will do that now, and that one issue is Brexit.”
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More than 1,300 offshore oil and gas workers are to stage a 48-hour strike in a dispute over pay.
Unite warned that dozens of oil and gas platforms will be brought to a “standstill” by the stoppage that begins on 24 April.
The union has previously warned of a “tsunami” of industrial unrest in the offshore sector over pay and conditions.
The Unite general secretary, Sharon Graham, said: “Oil and gas companies in the offshore sector are enjoying record windfall profits.
“There’s no question that contractors and operators can easily afford to give Unite members a decent pay rise.
“The scale of corporate greed in the offshore sector has to be challenged.”
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Shadow minister refuses to endorse Labour attack ad on Sunak
Good morning from London.
Labour has managed to end its week focusing on crime and antisocial behaviour with a row over an advert posted on social media on Thursday afternoon.
Next to a photograph of Rishi Sunak, it says: “Do you think adults convicted of sexually assaulting children should go to prison? Rishi Sunak doesn’t,” and then features the PM’s signature, a throwback to adverts run by the Treasury when he was chancellor.
It received heavy criticism yesterday from both its own MPs and members of the commentariat – former shadow chancellor John McDonnell urged the party to withdraw it, tweeting: “This is not the sort of politics a Labour party, confident of its own values and preparing to govern, should be engaged in….We, the Labour party, are better than this.”
The New Statesman’s senior editor George Eaton branded it “one of the worst political adverts in recent UK history”.
Now this morning a member of the shadow cabinet, Lucy Powell, has declined to endorse the tweet although admitted it was “not to everybody’s taste” and said it was the “cut and thrust nature of politics”.
Labour is the party of law and order. pic.twitter.com/EP6VXToK9z
— The Labour Party (@UKLabour) April 6, 2023
The shadow culture secretary told BBC Breakfast: “What I stand by is what that graphic is trying to show, which is that the prime minister of our country is responsible for the criminal justice system of our country and currently that criminal justice system is not working.”
As Playbook’s must-read morning email points out, the element of the advert referring to the number of adults convicted of sexually assaulting children serving no prison time includes 2010-15. At the time Sunak was a hedge fund manager. It’s hard to attribute blame to him with a straight face.
But it is a sign of an openly aggressive Labour operation – featuring members of its backroom team who worked in the Blair and Brown governments. More recently it is a throwback reminiscent of the party’s “Controls on immigration” mugs in the run-up to the 2015 general election which was used to claw back Conservative and Ukip voters.
Meanwhile the Easter getaway at Dover continues as passengers continue to face long delays – and as the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement approaches on Monday, one of its architects Bertie Ahern says that a review of the peace accord is possible – but only if the DUP returns to Stormont.
Former DUP first minister Arlene Foster has interviewed Ahern for GB News in an interview that will be aired on Easter Sunday, perfect viewing for the post-roast dinner food coma.
I’m sitting in for politics blog stalwart Andrew Sparrow this week, and you can get in touch with any comments or tips, either by emailing harry.taylor@guardian.co.uk or my DMs are open on Twitter where you can find me @HarryTaylr.
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