Early afternoon summary
Keir Starmer is preparing to meet President Biden in the White House for talks on Ukraine. There will be further coverage on our Ukraine live blog.
The Labour party and Keir Starmer have seen their popularity fall sharply since the general election, polling suggests. (See 10.21am.)
Alex Salmond says he would not have quit as first minister if he had known Scotland wouldn't be independent 10 years later
Alex Salmond has said in retrospect he thinks it was “daft” for him to resign as Scotland’s first minister, and SNP leader, after losing the independence referendum
In an interview for a documentary to mark the 10th anniversary of the poll, which took place on 18 September 2014, Salmond said that when he stood down he thought independence would be achieved “in a reasonable timescale”.
He told the programme:
I thought to make a point of departure for the referendum in the future was a right thing for the national movement. Looking back, that was a mistake.
Now, in retrospect, that was a daft thing to do. But then … I thought we were set for independence in a reasonable timescale.
If you’d told me then that 10 years later, we’d still be waiting despite the manifest opportunities there have been, then I would have said, ‘well, I’ll just hang about then and see the matter through’.
Scots voted to remain part of the UK by 55% to 45%. Salmond’s successor, Nicola Sturgeon, argued that Brexit meant a second referendum was justified, but the UK government has repeatedly refused to allow one, and polling suggests Scotland remains fairly evenly divided between supporters and opponents of independence.
In her own interview with the programme, Sturgeon questioned Salmond’s suggestion that he would have been better placed to deliver independence. She said:
Clearly he’s going to think that he could have done things so much better. I say that in as gentle a way as possible, to coin one of his favourite phrases.
Salmond and Sturgeon used to be close allies, but they fell out bitterly over after Salmond faced multiple accusations of sexual misconduct, which he denied. He was prosecuted but acquitted on all charges.
The documentary will be broadcast on ITV Border Scotland at 8.30pm on Thursday.
Defence review should consider need for UK to 'wage peace' as well as war, archbishop of Canterbury tells peers
The government’s defence review should consider the importance of Britain being able to “wage peace” as well as war, Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, told peers.
In a debate in the House of Lords on Sudan this morning, Welby said the strategic defence review (SDR) announced by Labour should include a “peace-building option”, to stop conflict before it happens.
Peace building was “a pillar notably absent” from previous defence reviews, he said. He went on:
A peace-building option, well developed and acting in areas of fragility, would extend our influence, protect our interests and guard against fresh waves of migration …
In other words, the SDR should be full spectrum, preparing this nation not only to wage war but to wage peace as well. I fear that may not be the case …
Stopping conflict before it happens via peaceful, political solutions should be central to any security and defence root and branch redesign.
As PA Media reports, Sudan descended into conflict in April 2023 after months of worsening tensions turned into open fighting between rival factions, including the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), seeking control of the country.
Welby described Sudan as a “human catastrophe on an extraordinary scale” and said the use of “vast quantities” of humanitarian aid only results in temporary solutions.
He also said that, being based in Canterbury and with a diocese on the south coast, he knew that “a very high proportion” of the people arriving in the UK on small boats are from Sudan.
How Starmer tried - and failed - to persuade reporters that not ruling out a tax increase isn't news
Keir Starmer has complained about the media’s habit of interpreting his failure to rule out tax measures ahead of the budget as evidence they will happen.
He expressed his frustration speaking to reporters accompanying him on his flight to Washington, when he was asked if Labour would scrap the 25% council tax discount for single people.
But his answer failed to overpower age-old journalism instincts – with reporters duly filing stories saying he was refusing to rule out the discount being scrapped.
Starmer was responding to a question about whether the government was getting rid of the discount, worth around £3bn, and whether this would amount to a “punishment beating” for pensioners who qualify if they live on their own.
He replied:
No, absolutely not
And let’s just try to quash this now. The budget is on October 30. So, between now and then, you are all going to ask me questions, as you did before the election, ‘will you rule out X, Y, Z?
And knowing that I’m not going to say before the budget what we’re going to do, you will then write a story saying, ‘refused to rule out X, Y, Z’.
I’m not going to say before the budget what we’re going to do.
That does not mean that I’m ruling in anything that you might be putting to me, it simply means, like every prime minister, we’re not going to reveal what’s in the budget before we get to it.
At PMQs on Wednesday the Tory MP Louie French asked Starmer if he would rule out rule out “scrapping concessionary travel fares and council tax discounts, which also help millions of pensioners across the UK”. Starmer gave French the same answer he gave reporters on the flight to Washington, saying he would not pre-empt the budget.
But reporters began to focus on the single-person council tax discount because earlier on Wednesday Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, did rule out getting rid of concessionary bus fares for pensioners, their free prescriptions, and free TV licences available to people 75 or older on pension credit.
When asked about the government ruling out some tax rises but not others, Starmer replied: “We’ve got to look at everything in the round.”
The Local Government Association has said the mandatory single-person discount should end. In a report last year it said councils should instead have more discretion to decide their own support schemes for vulnerable adults.
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James Cleverly says he's 'outperformed' other Tory leadership candidates, but is 'underestimated' because he doesn't boast
James Cleverly has suggested that his own modesty is partly holding him back in his campaign to be the next Tory leader.
He made the argument in an interview with the BBC’s Nick Robinson in which he claimed that, although he was better qualified than his revivals, his reluctance to boast about it led to him being “underestimated”.
Cleverly is one of four candidates left in the contest. In the latest round of voting on Tuesday, he was joint third with Tom Tugendhat, behind Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick, who came top.
But Cleverly has more ministerial experience than the others, and he has held two of the three so-called great offices of state (having been foreign secretary, and home secretary – but not chancellor) – something few politicians achieve.
Speaking on Robinson’s Political Thinking podcast, Cleverly said:
I’ve outperformed everyone else on this leadership ticket … I’ve outperformed all the other runners and riders by a country mile - outperformed almost everyone else in my parliamentary intake. If you Tipp-exed the words ‘James Cleverly’ off my political CV and slid it across the desk, you’d look at it and go, ‘bloody hell’.
Cleverly claimed that he was “really good at his job”, but that his talents weren’t always appreciated because his reluctance to go on about this.
I’m really good at my job. And I’ve spent a lot of my career being a little bit diffident. I’m surrounded in my work by people that parade their accomplishments like peacock feathers. And that’s not a criticism, it’s just an observation.
I’ve perhaps through my career been a little bit less like that. And I’m therefore conscious that sometimes I’ve been under-estimated …
I’m actually really quite good at my job. And I’m a bit fed up of pretending that I’m not good at my job.
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High court overturns last government's decision to approve new coal mine in Cumbria
Here is Helena Horton’s story about the high court ruling saying the proposed new coal mine at Whitehaven in Cumbria should not go ahead.
According to Patrick Maguire from the Times, 27 Labour backbenchers have been appointed as “mission champions” – a job that seems to involve being an unpaid, regional cheerleader for the government (something you might expect Labour MPs to be doing anyway).
CUT-OUT-AND-KEEP GUIDE TO NO 10’S FAVOURITES:
— Patrick Maguire (@patrickkmaguire) September 12, 2024
Ellie Reeves, Labour chair, has just emailed PLP to reveal that 27 MPs have been made “mission champions”
“They will work across departments, working with ministers… to help deliver our long-term plan for national renewal.” pic.twitter.com/8l6Y5tN0wK
Ellie Reeves, Labour chair, has just emailed PLP to reveal that 27 MPs have been made “mission champions”
“They will work across departments, working with ministers… to help deliver our long-term plan for national renewal.”
These MPs — mission champions, I should say — were convened at No 10 yesterday by Reeves and Vidhya Alakeson, the prime minister’s political director. One attendee said the focus was already on the next GE. Sounds like the five national roles will involve a bit of comms.
This seems to be a novel example of a trend that is well explained and mocked in Sam Freedman’s excellent new book about what’s wrong with government in the UK, Failed State. Prime ministers want to oblige their MPs to stay loyal, but there is a legal limit on the number of MPs who can serve as ministers (95, including whips). Ministers are, literally, the payroll vote. Tony Blair got round this by expanding the number of parliamentary private secretaries (unpaid aides – the non-payroll payroll vote), and whereas in the past only senior ministers got a PPS, now they are much more common. As Freedman explains, the Tories pushed the creation of loyalty-inducing non-jobs even further.
Conservative prime ministers have recently taken this approach to the next level. Having exhausted the possibilities of the PPS role, they have invented whole swathes of jobs with no precedent, and no pay or ministerial responsibilities, creating a ‘wider payroll’ vote. Cameron created ‘big society ambassadors’; Theresa May added ‘trade envoys’ to various countries which also offered the promise of exotic junkets; Boris Johnson threw in multiple ‘vice-chairs’ of the Conservative party.
This trick doesn’t always work. The former Tory MP Charlotte Leslie told me about the whips’ attempt to use her ‘big society ambassadorship’ to stop her voting against the government: ‘I remember once when I was rebelling on Lords reform, my whip phoned me up, and I said, “I’m just not doing this. It’s just nuts.” And he said, “Charlotte, if you don’t vote for this, we will revoke your big society ambassadorship.” And I hooted with laughter and said, “Do you honestly think that matters?” . . . My problem with politics is that I was completely, catastrophically, unable to see this thing, other than for what it was, which was some ridiculous hat, that someone gives you to wear . . . because they think you’re going to vote for them.’
Luke Tryl, the UK director of More in Common, has posted these on X about their voting intention (VI) poll mentioned earlier. (See 10.21am.) This post has the full figures.
Our first voting intention since the GE is in today’s Politico Playbook. Labour’s lead sits at 4 points.
— Luke Tryl (@LukeTryl) September 13, 2024
🌹LAB 29% (-6)
🌳CON 25% (-)
🔶 LIB DEM 14% (+2)
➡️ REF UK 18% (+3)
💚 GREEN 8% (+2)
🟡 SNP 3% (-)
Changes with GE 2024 (GB only)
10-12 September, N = 2,018
Our first voting intention since the GE is in today’s Politico Playbook. Labour’s lead sits at 4 points.
🌹LAB 29% (-6)
🌳CON 25% (-)
🔶 LIB DEM 14% (+2)
➡️ REF UK 18% (+3)
💚 GREEN 8% (+2)
🟡 SNP 3% (-)
Changes with GE 2024 (GB only)
10-12 September, N = 2,018
I agree with others who would say the value of VI as stand alone at this stage isn’t that high. But with Budget, conferences and new Tory leader coming up we wanted to be able to track changes which is more useful.
PA Media has snapped this:
The decision to grant planning permission for what would have been the UK’s first coal mine in 30 years at Whitehaven in Cumbria has been quashed by a high court judge.
Approval for the mine was granted by the last government in 2022. Labour opposed the decision, and it did not try to defend the decision of the last government in court.
Updated
Labour, and Starmer, suffer sharp fall in popularity since election, poll suggests
Even when Keir Starmer was on course earlier this year to win the election by a landslide, pundits were saying that, given the number of “tough choices” the government would have to take, it would not take long before it became unpopular. Today the polling firm Ipsos has released its latest Political Pulse opinion survey and these predictions have turned out to be accurate; Labour’s ratings have fallen rapidly.
Labour is still much more popular with voters than the Conservative party. But, over the summer, the number of people saying they view Labour, and key figures like Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, unfavourably has risen significantly.
Here are the figures for the Labour party.
Here are the figures for Starmer.
And here are the figures for Reeves.
The Ipsos polling does not include voting intention (VI). Asking people who they would vote in a general election is rather pointless at this stage in the electoral cycle, and polling companies mostly have not been publishing VI figures. But some in the Labour party may be alarmed by this snippet in Dan Bloom’s London Playbook for Politico.
A More in Common poll shared with Playbook has Labour’s lead down to just 4 (!) points — with the party on 29 percent, Tories 25, Reform UK 18 and Lib Dems 14. An Ipsos tracker adds 46 percent of voters view Starmer unfavorably — up 8 points since August. He never could expect much of a honeymoon.
Ipsos says, at 46%, Starmer’s unfavourability rating is his joint highest as Labour leader. The only other time so many people were saying they were unhappy with his performance was just after Labour lost the Hartlepool byelection in 2021.
But it is not all bad for Labour. Although the Conservative party is slightly less unpopular than it was at the time of the general, the Ipsos figures shows that its recovery still has a long way to go.
And Starmer has a higher net favourability rating than any of the four Tory leadership candidates left in the contest (Robert Jenrick, James Cleverly, Kemi Badenoch and Tom Tugendhat).
Commenting on the figures, Keiran Pedley, director of politics at Ipsos, said:
There are some early warning signs in these numbers for Keir Starmer and Labour. Whilst the next general election is several years away – and perceptions of Labour remain stronger than perceptions of the Conservative Party – these figures do represent a sharp drop from those recorded in August.
In his interview on Sky News this morning, Peter Kyle, the science secretary, said that he also wanted a wider change in how social media companies operating, with more emphasis on products being tested for safety before they are launched. He said:
I’m trying to create a situation where safety is baked in at the start of social media products before they land in society, because at the moment, they’re free to land products in society.
We deal with the harms, and then we’re sort of retrospectively legislating and regulating.
We need to get to a point where there is more testing of these products before they make it out into society.
We’re not there yet. I’m not there yet, but I’m taking steps forward, and I think social media companies can see the approach that I and this government are taking to make sure that safety is there right from the outset.
Government to use Online Safety Act to toughen rules forcing social media firms to tackle ‘revenge porn’
Good morning. Keir Starmer is in Washington today where he is holding talks in the White House with President Biden which should confirm a decision that might help Ukraine significantly in its war against Russia. Dan Sabbagh is travelling with him, and here is his overnight story.
The key meeting will take place late tonight. This blog will have closed by then, and most of our coverage of the Ukraine elements of Starmer’s trip will be on our Ukraine war live blog, which is here.
Back in the UK, parliament is now in recess, because the party conference season is starting this weekend (with the Liberal Democrats, in Brighton). The government is focusing on an announcement that will toughen the law on what it describes as “the sharing of non-consensual intimate images” – or ‘“revenge porn”, as it is more commonly known.
“Revenge porn” is already illegal; it is an offence under section 66B of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. But today Peter Kyle, the science secretary, is announcing that online porn will now be place in the most serious category of online offence under the Online Safety Act.
Explaining what this will mean in practice, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology says in a news release:
The Online Safety Act will require social media firms and search services to protect their users from illegal material on their sites, with protections due to come into force from spring next year. The most serious forms of illegal content are classed as ‘priority offences’ meaning regulated online platforms will have additional duties to proactively remove and stop from appearing on their sites.
Today’s move will mean intimate image offences are treated as priority offences under the Act, putting them on the same footing as public order offences and the sale of weapons and drugs online.
If firms fail to comply with their duties the regulator Ofcom will have robust enforcement powers, including imposing fines that could reach up to 10% of qualifying worldwide revenue.
And this is how Kyle explained it in an interview with Sky News this morning.
The two actions that will result from what I’m doing today is that social media companies must take action to prevent any material going online in the first place. They must prove to our regulator Ofcom that they have taken the measures – in other words, they are using the algorithms – to protect people, not to allow content to go on.
Secondly, if content does make it onto these platforms, the platform owners must take action to remove it swiftly. If they don’t, there will be very heavy fines as a result.
What I’m trying to do is move away from the fact where these companies are allowed to produce products into our society, harms emerge, and then we deal with the harms. What I’m trying to do is make sure the safety is baked in from the outset, so the harms don’t emerge in the first place.
There is not much in the diary today, but the UK politics news never dries. I’m sure we will find plenty to cover.
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