Afternoon summary
David Lammy, the foreign secretary, has said that spending money on defence can still save lives around the world. Speaking to a Lords committee, and responding to questions about the impact of the government’s aid spending cuts, he said:
Sometimes, investing in hard power saves lives, by the way. The war in Ukraine has cost the continent of Africa [by] some estimates 7 billion, upwards 9, and so us investing in hard power at this time is important for global security and saves lives, not just in our own country.
For a full list of all the stories covered here today, scroll through the key events timeline at the top of the blog.
Dominic Cummings urges people to vote Reform UK in local elections
At PMQs Keir Starmer taunted Nigel Farage by referring to reports that Reform UK is taking advice from Liz Truss. This afternoon another Tory figure from the Boris Johnson era came out to help Farage. Only Dominic Cummings has formally endorsed the party.
In a post on his Substack blog, Cummings, Johnson’s chief adviser in No 10 until November 2020, said:
On Thursday, you should vote Reform if you have a local vote, unless you’re voting personally for someone you know about. Why? To signal a desire for big change and strengthen the forces pushing for big change. Voting Tory just encourages the useless gang in charge to think they should carry on what they’re doing which is wasting everyone’s time. Per my previous blog we need to either a) push them in a useful direction (and a necessary condition is retiring KB [Kemi Badenoch]) or b) close and replace them ASAP. It’s also the best way to spook No10 to abandon some of the dumb things they’re doing — e.g letting the worst elements of the HMT/OBR consensus govern economic policy.
Like Truss, Cummings is widely seen as a crackpot by his opponents – and by many of his former political colleagues. But, unlike Truss, Cummings is also seen as a successful political operator. Many people think Vote Leave would have lost if he had not been in charge.
Cummings now spends a lot of time on social media speculating about how the Conservative party might the replaced, as the first step towards revolutionary overhaul of the UK state. But at one stage he was talking about setting up his own startup party. Now he seems more interested in working through Reform.
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