Afternoon summary
The government’s levelling up bill has been criticised by MPs for not including the funding needed to make levelling up happen. (See 2.09pm.)
Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, is to back the growing Enough is Enough movement, whose leaders are planning dozens of rallies against the cost of living crisis which they say will result in people dying. As my colleague Robert Booth reports, Burnham, a former Labour health secretary viewed as a centrist, joins a group with a growing network of local activists in more than 70 towns and cities, from Crawley to Blackpool. Its demands include a cut to the energy price cap to the pre-April level of £1,277 a year, a real-terms public sector pay rise, a reverse to the national insurance hike, and a £20-a-week universal credit increase – a programme that could cost more than £100bn a year.
Covid-19 testing among NHS and care home staff with no symptoms in England is to be “paused” at the end of August, the Department of Health and Social Care has announced.
Officials said that the decision to stop all “asymptomatic testing” comes as cases of the virus continue to fall.
Asymptomatic testing will remain in place for people being admitted hospices and for those going into care homes and for immunocompromised patients who are being admitted to hospital, the DHSC says in its news release.
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Civil service unions have written to the government calling for a cap on pay rises to be lifted in light of the cost of living crisis.
In a joint letter to the Cabinet Office, Mike Clancy, the Prospect general secretary, and Dave Penman, the FDA general secretary, said:
In the context of high and rising inflation, the 2-3% range set in the guidance is clearly not fit for purpose.
The latest predictions suggest inflation could reach 18%, far beyond what was envisaged when the guidance was set for this year.
In that context it is clear that cost of living pressures cannot in any way be meaningfully addressed for our members within an envelope of 2-3%.
A refusal to recognise this across all grades in the service is both unacceptable and damaging.
Clancy and Penman also said they were seeking an “urgent meeting” with the Cabinet Office’s permanent secretary to discuss pay.
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Burnham backs Sarwar's call for metro mayors in Scotland
Local champions are required across Scotland’s communities in order to deliver important change, Scottish Labour has said.
As PA Media reports, Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, made the call alongside Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor and former Labour MP, at the launch of a paper on local government reform in Glasgow.
Sarwar suggested that Scotland could “learn the lessons” of the use of local and metro mayors elsewhere in the UK, and that by introducing such a system north of the border, communities would become more empowered.
Burnham said introducing regional mayors in Scotland could make a “real difference”, adding that cities risked being left behind if they did not have enough power to do things for themselves. He said:
As I look at things today, you know, it’s obviously been good that Scotland’s had devolution to the national level.
But at the same time, I think cities potentially could get left behind if cities don’t have more power to do more things for themselves.
I’ll give you a practical example. A week on Monday, I’m introducing a cap on bus fares in Greater Manchester, so it’d be a £2 cap on an adult journey, £1 on a child journey, and it’s free for 16-18s. And then it’d be £5 cap on fares in a day, no matter how many buses people take.
I would say, well, why shouldn’t Glasgow be able to do exactly the same thing to help people through the cost of living crisis?
For 15 years, the SNP have hollowed out our local communities.
— Anas Sarwar (@AnasSarwar) August 24, 2022
We must reset the balance with:
- Fair & secure funding
- Regional partnerships
- Option of Mayors so we get local champions like @AndyBurnhamGM
Read our plans to push power out of Holyrood: https://t.co/P7sN4mQpqk pic.twitter.com/a0qtUo1zH8
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Johnson pays tribute to 'incomparable will of Ukrainians to resist' at news conference in Kyiv
Boris Johnson told a news conference in Kyiv that Vladimir Putin had been “insane” to invade Ukraine as he praised the country’s resistance.
If we’re paying in our energy bills for the evils of Vladimir Putin, the people of Ukraine are paying in their blood.
As PA Media reports, Johnson said “like one of those indomitable Ukrainian boxers” the country “came off the ropes and hit him with an uppercut that sent Putin’s armies reeling from Kyiv and a hook to drive him from Kharkiv”. He added:
Out of the ashes of your towns and cities, out of the monstrous scares that are being left by Putin’s missiles, something beautiful is blooming and it is a flower that the whole world can see and admire, and that is the incomparable will of the Ukrainians to resist.
Photograph: Andrew Kravchenko/AP
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According to the polling firm Ipsos UK, three-quarters of all voters, and two-thirds of people who voted Conservative in 2019, think the privileges committee inquiry into whether Boris Johnson misled MPs about Partygate is justified. This is from Kelly Beaver, the company’s chief executive.
NEW: An overwhelming majority of the public tell us they think the ongoing Commons privileges committee investigation into Boris Johnson's conduct around #partygate is justified. @IpsosUK pic.twitter.com/xYrB8K6GJt
— Kelly Beaver MBE (@KellyIpsosUK) August 24, 2022
This is bad news for the Mail newspapers which have been running news articles and opinion pieces clearly designed to kill the inquiry. The Mail group is still very supportive of Johnson and at the weekend it carried a news story based on a briefing circulating among MPs arguing, in effect, that it would be bad for MPs to insist that ministers in the Commons tell them the truth. There was also an opinion piece saying the inquiry was akin to a show trial from Stalin’s Russia – written by someone who had clearly forgotten what actually happened to the victims of Stalin’s show trials.
Pure Privileges Panic at Mail: Three more pages of attack on the Commons Committee - including an explainer on what Kafkaesque means - Johnson clearly in severe trouble here... Dacre is fighting like hell. pic.twitter.com/fyTXGV8LmJ
— David Yelland (@davidyelland) August 20, 2022
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Boris Johnson has been doing a walkabout in Kyiv with President Zelenskiy.
The Kyiv Independent has some pictures.
U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was spotted walking in central Kyiv along with President Volodymyr Zelensky on Aug. 24.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) August 24, 2022
Johnson's visit wasn't announced.
Ukraine marks 31st Independence Day and exactly six months of Russia's all-out war on Aug. 24.
📷Kostyantyn Chernichkin pic.twitter.com/ksLJJqvNmT
And Visegrád 24 has some video footage.
BREAKING:
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) August 24, 2022
British PM Boris Johnson has arrived to Kyiv on a surprise visit to celebrate Ukraine’s Independence Day together with Zelensky.
Looks like the Russians will have to cancel any plans of strikes on government buildings today. pic.twitter.com/5XoY0bcQP5
UK to provide Ukraine with £54m package of drones and missiles
Boris Johnson has announced a further package of military support for Ukraine on his visit. The UK is contributing a £54m package of drones and “loitering munitions”, missiles that stay airborne until they identify a target to attack.
In its news release about the package, No 10 said:
This package of unmanned air systems will be a step up in the Ukrainian’s current capability, improving their long range surveillance and defensive targeting ability.
It includes 850 hand-launched Black Hornet micro-drones, which are specifically designed for use in towns and villages, and are deployed to detect approaching enemy forces.
Military personnel can be trained to fly the helicopter drones, which are smaller than a mobile phone, in under 20 minutes. Each drone feeds back live video and still images to allow forces on the ground to defend urban areas safely.
In a statement Johnson said:
Today’s package of support will give the brave and resilient Ukrainian armed forces another boost in capability, allowing them to continue to push back Russian forces and fight for their freedom.
What happens in Ukraine matters to us all, which is why I am here today to deliver the message that the United Kingdom is with you and will be with you for the days and months ahead, and you can and will win.
This is Johnson’s third visit to Kyiv since the Russian invasion in February. To mark his support for Ukraine, Johnson was awarded the order of liberty, the country’s highest award for foreign nationals.
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Johnson visits to Kyiv to confirm UK backing for Ukraine
Boris Johnson has revealed that he is in Kyiv for what will almost certainly be his final meeting as PM with Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president.
What happens in Ukraine matters to us all.
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) August 24, 2022
That is why I am in Kyiv today.
That is why the UK will continue to stand with our Ukrainian friends.
I believe Ukraine can and will win this war. pic.twitter.com/FIovnqJGTS
Levelling up bill does not include funding needed to make levelling up happen, say MPs
Although the House of Commons is not sitting over the summer, MPs still have work to do and some who chair select committees have been sending out letters. Clive Betts, the Labour MP who chairs the levelling up committee, says that when Greg Clark replaced Michael Gove as levelling up secretary in July, he asked Betts to tell him over the summer what the committee thought of the levelling up and regeneration bill.
Not much seems to be the answer. Today Betts has released the letter he has sent to Clark on behalf of his committee giving an assessment of the bill and here is the key paragraph.
It is the committee’s view that the main tool to achieve levelling up will be through appropriate funding to those areas that need it most. This funding will help in making progress on the levelling up missions related to public transport and local connectivity; transforming digital connectivity; improving education outcomes; increasing the number of adults who complete high quality skills training; and increasing healthy life expectancy. None of the provisions in the bill will directly contribute to making progress towards achieving these missions – other than setting them. There is also no funding for levelling up associated with the bill.
Like all select committees, this one has a narrow Conservative majority.
And in a statement to journalists Betts said:
In its current form, the bill does little to reassure that levelling up will prove to be more than just a slogan and that we will have meaningful change in local communities across the country. In key areas, it is unclear how the government intends to drive change and they are yet to commit to the spending that is necessary to level up the country.
Our inquiry has focused on the planning provisions in the bill, which can be described as loosely-connected proposals to tinker with the current system, hopefully achieving some improvement. It has been difficult to conduct scrutiny due to a lot of the detail of the provisions having not yet been published.
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The Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank has published its own assessment of the significance of today’s Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS) report for 2021-22. (See 12.02pm.) It says the underlying public finances are improving in Scotland because of oil and gas revenues, but that long-term challenges remain.
Summarising the IFS analysis, David Phillips, an associate director at the thinktank, says:
Today’s GERS figures are a tale of two stories. The headline numbers show Scotland’s deficit falling by more relative to GDP than the UK as a whole, driven by a rebound in oil and gas revenues, and a recovery in GDP from a bigger decline during the height of the pandemic. However, digging deeper shows that onshore revenues grew less quickly than the UK as a whole: they are now £800 lower per person, compared to around £500 lower over the previous five years, and broadly similar to the UK average in the early 2010s. Government spending also fell by less in Scotland last year than in the UK as a whole.
Figures for the current financial year, 2022-23, will come just before the date the Scottish government hopes to hold a referendum on independence. That timing could be fortuitous for the ‘yes’ camp as further increases in oil and gas prices, together with the windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas producers, mean Scotland’s headline overall deficit could be at a similar or even lower level than the UK as a whole for the first time in over 10 years.
But, the long-term decline in North Sea output means that even if these higher prices are sustained, at best they would buy the government of an independent Scotland more time to boost onshore economic growth and revenues. Without this, an independent Scotland would still likely face bigger tax rises or spending cuts in the decades ahead.
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Starmer insists Labour just as committed to supporting Ukraine as government, saying UK 'united' on this
Keir Starmer has insisted that Labour party is just as committed to supporting Ukraine as the government. On a visit to Salisbury Plain, where he met British and Ukrainian soldiers, he told journalists that Britain was united on this issue. He said:
Six months after the start of the conflict in Ukraine, I’ve been here in Salisbury Plain watching Ukrainian troops being trained by British troops with live rounds, simulating the situation they are going to be facing.
That’s given me the opportunity to say and to reiterate Labour’s commitment and support for the Ukrainian people, and our unshakeable support for Nato and our allies.
I’ve been so impressed with the training I’ve seen here, that the global reputation of British forces is of grit, of class and that sort of steely determination and courage on the battlefield.
My mission, my message to the Ukrainian people, to our troops, our Nato allies, is that on the issue of defending Ukraine against Russian aggression, we stand united. We will not be divided politically in the United Kingdom on this and I’ve been able to deliver that message first-hand amongst this very, very impressive training.
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If Liz Truss becomes prime minister, she could delay the next election until early 2025, according to the FT’s Sebastian Payne. In a long feature about her plans for government he writes:
Although many senior Tories assume that the next election will be in spring or autumn 2024, Truss may wait until January 2025, the last possible date one can be held. ‘Don’t rule out her waiting as long as possible if the economic cycle will benefit our chances,’ one ally said. ‘There is a lot to do and very little time left.’
The last election was held on 12 December 2019. It is generally assumed that a general election has to be held at least every five years, but the law just says a parliament can only last five years and so in practice a general election can take place around five years and a month or so after the last one.
John Major was the last prime minister who delayed a general election until the last moment, holding the 1997 one five years and three weeks after the previous one. It did not stop him being crushed by a landslide. But in 1992 he also delayed the election until almost the last possible date, and on that occasion he pulled off a surprise victory. In 2010 Gordon Brown held an election exactly five years after the previous one and he lost.
According to Payne, Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Brexit opportunities minister, will get a major job in Truss’s team – but not the levelling up portfolio, as some recent reports suggested.
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Unionists claim latest public spending figures for Scotland show Scots get 'union dividend' of £2,184 per person
The Scottish government has this morning published the Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS) report for 2021-22. It is produced independently by government statisticians and it sets out how much government revenue is raised in Scotland, and how much government spending is directed at Scotland. Its publication every year provides new evidence for use in the debate about whether Scotland could afford to be independent.
There is a summary of the findings here, and the full report is here.
In its take on the figures, the SNP-led Scottish government says: “Scotland’s net fiscal balance has improved rapidly since last year, reflecting the economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and the phasing out of pandemic health restrictions and support schemes.”
But Alister Jack, the Scottish secretary in the Conservative UK government, said the report showed how “people and their families [in Scotland] benefit massively from being part of a strong, resilient UK”.
In his formal response to the report Jack said it showed that public spending in Scotland per capita was £1,963 above the UK average in 2021-22, but that revenue per capita was £221 below the UK average. He said this meant the “union dividend” (the value of higher spending, making allowance for lower revenue) was equivalent to £2,184 for each person.
Other unionist politicians have made the same argument. Daniel Johnson MSP, the finance spokesperson for Scottish Labour, said the report showed that “independence would require tax increases or spending cuts at a time when these actions would shatter households as their bills spiral”.
The report confirms that Scotland’s net fiscal balance is worse than the UK’s. Here is the key chart. Jacks says it shows “Scotland’s deficit” standing at £23.7bn.
The Fraser of Allander Institute, an economic thinktank based at the University of Strathclyde, has produced a useful briefing on what the GERS figures mean. Here is an extract.
GERS takes the current constitutional settlement as given. If the very purpose of independence is to take different choices about the type of economy and society that we live in, then it is possible that a set of accounts based upon the world today could look different, over the long term, in an independent Scotland.
That said, GERS does provide an accurate picture of where Scotland is in 2022. In doing so it sets the starting point for a discussion about the immediate choices, opportunities and challenges that need to be addressed by those advocating new fiscal arrangements. And here the challenge is stark, with a likely deficit far in excess of the UK as a whole, other comparable countries or that which is deemed to be sustainable in the long-term. It is not enough to say ‘everything will be fine’ or ‘look at this country, they can run a sensible fiscal balance so why can’t Scotland?’. Concrete proposals and ideas are needed.
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Truss says as PM she would declassify more UK intelligence to expose what Russia is doing to undermine west
Liz Truss, the foreign secretary and frontrunner in the Tory leadership contest, has said that if she becomes prime minister, she will declassify more UK intelligence to expose what Russia is doing to undermine the west. In an article for the Daily Telegraph she says:
When malign actors are ready to peddle falsehoods, our duty is to ensure the world hears the truth. That is why we set up the Government Information Cell to counter the Kremlin’s false narratives. We will continue to step up our work to counter the efforts of Russia and other authoritarian regimes to use disinformation to sow confusion and undermine global stability, drawing on the skills and tools at our disposal alongside our international partners.
I will go further as prime minister by doing everything possible – including declassifying more intelligence – to expose Putin’s playbook to the world. My government will use intelligence strategically to reveal the Kremlin’s attempts to undermine and destabilise freedom-loving democracies. Where there are lies, they will be exposed, where there is barbarism, we will call it out. I will take the same tough approach to counter malign activity from potentially hostile states and others who threaten global security.
She also says that as PM she will “do everything I can to ensure the flame of freedom in Ukraine continues to burn bright”.
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Shielding Britain’s households from energy crisis ‘will cost more than £100bn'
The energy industry’s favoured plan to shield Britain’s households from the soaring cost of energy will cost more than £100bn over two years, Keith Anderson, chief executive of ScottishPower, has confirmed. My colleague Joanna Partridge has the story.
Russia in 'very fragile position' in war with Ukraine, says defence secretary Ben Wallace
Today is Ukraine’s independence day. It is also the six-month anniversary of the Russian invasion. Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, gave an interview to the Today programme to mark the occasion, and here are the main points he made.
Wallace said Russia was in a “very fragile position” in the war. He explained:
I spoke to my intelligence chiefs this morning before coming on; Russia’s advance can be measured in metres per week, not miles.
It is grinding in small parts of the country in an attempt to advance - completely opposite of the three-days special operation that it touted at the beginning of this, six months ago.
We accept observations of Russian losses to be - if you combine deaths, injuries, desertions - over 80,000 of their armed forces. That’s 80,000 in six months compared to 15,000 they lost in a decade in Afghanistan.
I think we are in a position where Russia is in a very fragile position.
He said it was possible for Ukraine to retake territory from Russia. Asked if this was realistic, he replied:
I think Ukraine is getting itself into that position. First and foremost, Ukraine already has had throughout this the moral component, as we call it in defence, and if you look at the morale of the Ukrainian forces, it is leagues ahead of the Russian morale, which is poorly-trained troops etc.
He rejected claims that support for Ukraine amongst the international community was starting to weaken because of the energy crisis. He said:
I don’t think that there’s been any wavering, I think that’s what Putin would love the world to do. It’s what he would fantasise, we’d all sort of go back to our sun loungers.
The simple reality is we see this as a direct threat not only to Ukraine, but to our values, and the world is still pretty solid and determined.
Now, of course, as we see, he will use gas as a weapon. I think we saw yesterday a reduction in parts of the gas pipeline into Europe, deliberately to drive up prices. But, of course, that is why he must not be allowed to be successful in Ukraine in the long term.
Wallace accepted that there had been “a few disagreements about the levels of sanctions” to be imposed on Russia amongst the international community, but overall it was “united against what Putin is doing”, he said.
He said conditions could be tightened for Russians wanting to get visas to visit the UK, but he said he was not convinced an “outright ban” on Russians visiting the UK would be right.
He said some countries were wrong not to respond when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. “The problem has been all the way back to 2014, [when] Russia invaded Crimea, illegally annexed it, and then it was allowed in some countries to carry on as if nothing had really changed,” he said.
The rightwing Conservative MP John Redwood has welcomed Liz Truss’s refusal to commit to appointing a new ethics adviser for No 10 if she becomes prime minister.
Good news that Liz Truss does not want to appoint an Ethics Adviser. She will judge right and wrong with the whole country watching. There will be other posts she can do without in government.
— John Redwood (@johnredwood) August 24, 2022
Redwood was Welsh secretary under John Major, but he has not served in government since 1995 and he last sat on the Conservative frontbench in 2005. But he has been tipped for a ministerial job if Truss becomes PM.
Gavin Barwell, who was chief of staff for Theresa May when she was PM, says that, even if Truss can tell the difference between right and wrong herself, she will find it useful having an independent ethics adviser.
She will discover that when you have to sack one of your ministers - possibly a close friend - it is actually helpful to a prime minister to have an independent figure confirm that they have broken the ministerial code, rather than that having to be your judgement alone https://t.co/NR43RuoMLV
— Gavin Barwell (@GavinBarwell) August 24, 2022
Sunak says freezing energy price cap would require too much government borrowing
And here is a full summary of the main lines from Rishi Sunak’s interview with the Today programme.
Sunak refused to commit to voting for Liz Truss’s emergency budget if she becomes prime minister. See 9.04am.
He defended his decision not to back plans to freeze the energy price cap at the current level - saying this would require too much government borrowing. Labour and the Liberal Democrats are proposing an energy price cap freeze, and many energy companies also want to see the energy price cap frozen at the current level, alongside a mechanism being put in place to compensate them for the income they would lose. Sunak said that the energy companies had not spoken to him directly about their plan. (He seemed to be referring to the Scottish Power proposal for a £100bn rescue plan.) But he said this would involve too much borrowing. He said:
This is a challenge that is going to be with us for some time. And in that context, we need to make sure that what we’re doing is not only affordable, but also isn’t going to make inflation worse.
And at a time when we’re already borrowing an enormous amount of money, I think embarking on policies and programmes that add not just tens of billions, but tens and tens and tens and tens of billions of pounds on a permanent basis to our borrowing are risky, and that’s actually been a debate that we’ve had in this leadership race now.
I think that is a gamble with people’s savings, with their pensions, with mortgage rates, in making inflation become more embedded, and that won’t help anybody if that happens, because inflation makes everybody poor. It’s pernicious.
So, yes, I am nervous and sceptical about plans that are complacent about that risk.
He said plans that implied government did not need to make difficult choices were generally “too good to be true”. He made this point when he was specifically talking about the proposals to freeze the energy price cap, but he also made it clear that he thought some of Liz Truss’s plans came into this category. See 9.04am.
He said that, in stressing the need for government to take difficult choices, he was following the lead set by Margaret Thatcher. He mentioned her when asked to name the conservative thinker who had influence him most. He said that people who had worked with her endorsed his approach to tackling inflation, not Truss’s. He went on:
One thing I admire and respect about [Thatcher] … is that she was prepared not just to say the easy things that people may have wanted to hear, she said the things that may have been difficult to hear but were right for the country, and had the courage of her convictions. And that’s a standard that I hold myself to.
He refused to accept that Labour’s plan to freeze the energy price cap for the winter was fully costed. He said the proposal had been “wildly criticised for [the] credibility of that costing”. Sunak was referring in particular to Labour’s claim that £7bn to pay for the plan would come from lower government debt interest payments.
He implied that he was in favour of the government telling people to use less energy this winter. Asked if the government should be doing this, as other governments are in Europe, Sunak replied:
We have to look at all options available for us, and there are things that the builders and plumbing association have mentioned which I thought were quite sensible, about changing flow rates on boilers, which I didn’t know about which can help reduce energy usage without people seeing any real impact on how they consume energy. So we should be looking at all of these things.
Also I would embark on a programme of massive energy efficiency upgrades in people’s homes.
Rajan asked this question because the current government, and the Truss campaign, are resisting the idea that people should be asked to cut their energy use. This position has been fiercely criticised, for example by the FT columnist Sarah Connor.
Why on earth is the government saying this? We DO need to cut back our energy usage, of course we do. pic.twitter.com/FztF5upPJj
— Sarah O'Connor (@sarahoconnor_) August 23, 2022
Something you use has become wildly expensive & is set to become more so, but don't try to figure out how to use less of it, whatever you do
— Sarah O'Connor (@sarahoconnor_) August 23, 2022
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Rishi Sunak refuses to commit to voting for Truss’s emergency budget if she wins Tory leadership
Good morning. Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor who will only beat Liz Truss in the Tory leadership contest if multiple polls turn out to be completely wrong, has been giving an interview to the Today programme this morning. He has been accepting plenty of interviews recently, which may partly be related to the fact that he is a confident media peformer, but probably says more about the fact that, as the underdog in the contest, he has nothing to lose. In contrast, Truss has repeatedly refused invitations to setpiece media interviews.
Speaking to Amol Rajan, the Today presenter, Sunak refused to commit to voting for Truss’s proposed emergency budget in September if she wins. He has already indicated that he would not take a job in her cabinet because he disagrees so strongly with her plan to reverse the national insurance increase that he implemented as chancellor. (He sees it as an unfunded tax cut that would push up inflation and disproportionately benefit the rich.) At the Tory hustings last night in Birmingham Sunak dodged a question about whether he would vote for Truss’s plan if she won. Rajan tried again, and he told Sunak people would like to know whether he would vote against Truss’s planned emergency budget. Again, Sunak would not give an answer. He replied:
I’m not going to engage in these things partly because acting like this race is not over isn’t right.
But elsewhere in the interview he restated his claim that Truss’s tax proposals were essentially implausible. He said:
Governing is hard. Governing involves choices, it involves difficult trade offs.
Plans, whether they come from my opponent, or indeed the energy companies or anyone else, who seem to suggest that you can have absolutely everything you want, and you don’t have to make a difficult choice – that you can have lots of tax cuts, you can help people with the cost of living, borrowing doesn’t matter, inflation will take care of itself – if that all sounds a bit too good to be true, I think most people listening will think most things, when they do sound too good to be true, they probably are.
I will post more from the interview shortly. My colleague Gemma McSherry covered the hustings in Birmingham on the blog last night. You can read her coverage here.
Otherwise it looks relatively quiet today, but here are three things in the diary.
9.30am: The ONS publishs a report on the impact of sanctions on UK trade with Russia.
10am: Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, joined Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, in Glasgow at an event to discuss Labour palns to empower commmunities.
12pm: Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, takes part in an “In Conversation” at the Edinburgh fringe.
I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.
If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
Alternatively, you can email me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com
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