Early evening summary
Keir Starmer has insisted he can maintain a “good relationship” with Donald Trump after the Republican candidate’s campaign accused Labour of “blatant foreign interference” in the US election. A member of the shadow cabinet, John Lamont, accused Labour of a “diplomatic car crash”. (See 2.42pm.) But Robert Buckland, a former Tory justice secretary, defended Labour and said that he had been campaigning for the Democrats himself because he thought Trump was “not fit for office”. (See 5.32pm.) Alastair Campbell, the former Labour communications chief, said the whole row was just an attempt by the Trump campaign to distract attention from the fact Trump’s former chief of staff has described him as a fascist who in private has praised Hitler. (See 1.51pm.) There is more on this story in our US election extra podcast.
Kemi Badenoch, favourite in the Tory leadership contest, has said that she is a “net zero sceptic” and suggested that an adaption strategy might be a better solution to the climate crisis than just focusing on cutting carbon emissions. (See 3.58pm.)
Updated
Ben Wallace, the Conservative former defence secretary, has criticised the Trinity House Agreement, the defence pact agreed with Germany. (See 5.06pm.) He posted these on social media.
If the new UK/ German “Trinity House” agreement is to mean anything then Germany would have agreed with UK requests to send Taurus to Ukraine AND they would lift any export veto on potential Typhoon sales to Turkey - a Nato member. Otherwise it is pretty hollow 1/2
and made up of stuff we are already doing or had started. This has more to do with “SPD is our sister party” than real military mutual benefit. It does however confirm that Kier Starmer is the UK’s own Olaf Scholz ! -2/2
Robert Buckland defends Labour over US campaigning, saying Trump 'not fit for office' and he's campaigned for Democrats too
Labour is not the only party with members who have been out in the US actively campaigning to stop Donald Trump being elected. Robert Buckland, the Conservative former justice secretary, has been campaigning for Democrats in the US too.
In an interview with Radio 4’s PM programme, Buckland said that Trump was “not fit for office” and that he thought the Trump campaign’s complaint about Labour was just “a bit of electioneering” rather than a serious allegation about a breach of the rules.
Buckland said that he was in the US in September as part of a Havard fellowship, but while he was there he decided to visit friends in Connecticut who were standing as Democracts in various state, congressional and senate elections. “So I went out on the stump to see what it was all about and do a bit of campaigning.”
Explaining why he was opposed to Trump, he said:
I’m free to say what I like. I’m a member of the public now, and I’m not in a government …
I feel that the record of Donald Trump in the presidency is an affront to those who believe in traditional Republicanism. His behavior around 6 January [the attack on Capitol in 2021] makes it clear to me he’s not somebody who believes in the rule of law either and is not fit for office.
Asked about the complaint about Labour activists, Buckland said: “I do think that this is a bit of electioneering.” He said the LinkedIn message by a Labour staff encouraging people to volunteer “might have given a false impression there was an organised visit here being funded, which I don’t think is the case at all”.
But Buckland did accept that the perception that there was an organised Labour operation going on was “damaging”.
Updated
UK-Germany defence pact will be 'major strengthening of Europe's security', says Healey
The UK and Germany failed to respond to the threat posed by Vladimir Putin for too long, Berlin’s defence minister said as the two countries signed a new co-operation agreement. As PA Media reports, the deal is a way of strengthening European security at a time when the potential return of Donald Trump to the White House could see US military resources diverted away from the Nato alliance.
Speaking at a press conference alongside John Healey, the defence secretary, the German defence minister Boris Pistorius said the allies had failed to respond to the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and were now being forced to catch up in the wake of the full-scale war in Ukraine.
I always stress that the Baltics and Scandinavian countries, they woke up (in) 2014 to the annexation of the Crimea.
We woke up, too: Germany, Britain, France and other countries in Europe; but what we did was we pushed the snooze button and turned around.
All the other countries stayed awake, and they did what was necessary to do. And so we lost almost eight years and have now to speed up.
Healey said European nations needed to take “more responsibility for the heavy lifting and the leadership within the Nato alliance”.
Commenting on the deal, known as the UK-Germany Trinity House Agreement, the said:
The Trinity House Agreement is a milestone moment in our relationship with Germany and a major strengthening of Europe’s security.
It secures unprecedented levels of new cooperation with the German Armed Forces and industry, bringing benefits to our shared security and prosperity, protecting our shared values and boosting our defence industrial bases.
As PA reports, under the deal, , German submarine-hunting planes will operate from RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland and arms giant Rheinmetall is set to open a factory producing artillery gun barrels using British steel. Defence AI firm Helsing will also make a £350 million investment in the UK.
The two countries will also collaborated on developing long-range, strike weapons that can travel further than the UK’s existing Storm Shadow missiles, and on new land-based and aerial drones.
The text of the agreement is here and the joint communique is here.
Badenoch says commentators 'don't understand downward social mobility' as she defends claim to be working class in teens
Kemi Badenoch has said lots of commentators “do not understand downward social mobility”.
She made the comment in her interview with Nick Robinson for his Political Thinking podcast, when she was asked about her claim that she was working class when she came to the UK as a teenager and had a job in McDonald’s while she was also attending school.
Badenoch was mocked for the claim when she first made it because she had a middle-class upbringing in Nigeria, where her father was a doctor and her mother a professor of physiology. But at the Tory conference she doubled down, saying that it was not working at McDonald’s that made her working class, but that because she was working class at that stage in her life she ended up doing that job. (Badenoch implied it was like a main job, and that she was so poor she had to work; another account, in a biography of Badenoch published by Lord Ashcroft, says it was a part-time job, and that Badenoch did not need to work because her food and rent were being paid for.)
Badenoch told Robinson that the controversy generated by her remarks showed how some journalists did not understand downward social mobility. She explained:
A lot of people in the commentariat classes do not understand downward social mobility, and they think that where you are is what you are and that’s that, and people don’t move between them.
But my understanding of class as it is today is that it is different from what it was during Downton Abbey. People actually do move in between them and, given the level of migration that we’ve had into the country, the old class system doesn’t work and people like me don’t fit into it.
How many people have you met who are doctors in their country who are driving cabs here, for example, what class are they?
And if you are trying to shoehorn people into an outdated class system, you’re going to run into trouble.
Describing her situation now, Badenoch, who is married to a banker, said that she would describe herself as “comfortable”, but added: “I wouldn’t say we’re rich.”
Updated
Kemi Badenoch, the favourite in the Conservative leadership contest, may wait up to two years before coming up with detailed policies, it has been reported. In his Daily Mail interview with her, Jason Groves writes:
If she wins … Mrs Badenoch plans to spend up to two years ‘renewing’ the party before coming forward with a detailed policy platform.
In her Political Thinking podcast interview, Badenoch said she would use policy commissions to decide where the party will go next.
I have said that we are going to set up just like David Cameron did, and just like Margaret Thatcher did, policy commissions where we’re going to pick each of these issues through. We’re going to have an internal debate within the party and then we’re going to come to a conclusion and unite behind it.
She also said that she would not force shadow cabinet ministers to agree with her on policy from the start. She said:
What I’m not doing is what my opponent [Robert Jenrick] has done and said, ‘I have these ideas and people are going to need to sign up to them if they’re in this, if they go into the shadow cabinet.’ I don’t think that you can get a party together that way.
Politics is not like other businesses. It is something that requires consensus. You can’t sack the people who are there. They’re still going to be there. So you need to bring people together.
Badenoch herself first got properly involved with the Conservative party contributing to a policy commission on globalisation and global poverty, chaired by Peter Lilley.
Badenoch explains why she is 'net zero sceptic' and suggests 'adaption' might be better response to climate crisis
Kemi Badenoch, the favourite in the Tory leadership contest, has repeatedly been accused of avoiding the media by her opponent, Robert Jenrick. But in the last 24 hours or so she has done two biggish interviews – with Nick Robinson, for his BBC Political Thinking podcast, and with Jason Groves, political editor of the Daily Mail.
In the interviews Badenoch said that she is a “net zero sceptic” and suggested that an adaption strategy might be a better solution to the climate crisis than just focusing on cutting carbon emissions.
In the write-up of his interview, Groves also said Badenoch “does not completely rule out revisiting the 2050 net target [the UK government’s legal pledge to get net carbons emissions down to zero by 2050]”, but Groves did not include a direct quote from Badenoch on this.
Speaking to Robinson, Badenoch said she was a net zero sceptic, but not a climate change sceptic. She said she accepted there was a problem to be addressed, but that she was not convinced net zero was the solution.
What I’m saying is that climate change is a serious issue that needs work. But what strategy should we pick? We could pick an adaptation strategy, that this is going to happen. How do we build lives that will work within that?
We’ve chosen the strategy, which is to reduce carbon emissions. There is no guarantee that that will work. I want to see something, if we are going down that path, something that has other benefits. So energy security.
Badenoch said that, for her, the question was: “Is net zero a solution or is it a slogan?” She implied she thought it was more of the latter.
If you have a target and you can’t meet it, it’s not real. Just putting something in law doesn’t make it real.
And she also said that her experience of growing up in Nigeria, when there were regular power cuts even though the country was energy rich, helped to explain why she was a net zero sceptic.
I am a net zero sceptic … because I grew up somewhere where the lights didn’t come on, where we ran out of fuel frequently, despite being an oil producing country, there was often petrol scarcity. That is when a system is broken and I see us making similar decisions here. Let’s do something because it looks good, before we figured out how to do it, let’s make an announcement and I don’t want us doing that.
I will post more lines from Badenoch’s interviews shortly.
Updated
DWP publishes details of what it will focus on as it develops child poverty strategy
The Department for Work and Pensions has published a document explaining how it will go about drawing up a child poverty strategy. The plan will shape the work of its child poverty taskforce.
According to the document, the work will focus on four themes.
1) Increasing incomes: Examining how government and business can work together to support parents into secure employment, and support progression in the labour market, building on our plans to Make Work Pay and to Get Britain Working. This will include childcare as a key enabler of parental employment. We will consider how social security reforms could support people into work and help alleviate poverty.
2) Reducing essential costs: Working with business and organisations to understand and tackle the key cost drivers for low-income families (such as housing, energy, food). Looking at where these costs are a barrier to education and employment (like childcare and transport), including addressing the poverty premium and where increased costs of disability exacerbates poverty.
3) Increasing financial resilience: Working with a range of stakeholders, including financial institutions, charities, and consumer representatives to find solutions to problem debt and enabling families to build savings …
4) Better local support, focussed especially on children’s early years: Our society, through our local institutions and our local communities, is at the heart of tackling the impacts of poverty.
The document also gives some details of how employers, unions, thinktanks and other experts will be consulted by the taskforce over the coming months.
In their legal complaint about Labour activists campaigning for the Democrats, Donald Trump’s lawyers quote newspaper reports saying Morgan McSweeney, who is now Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, and Matthew Doyle, Starmer’s communications chief, went to the Democrats’ convention to advise Kamala Harris’s team.
As Steven Swinford from the Times reports, Labour says McSweeney and Doyle were not there as advisers.
Labour denies Morgan McSweeney, Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, and Matthew Doyle, his director of communications, advised the Harris campaign team when they attended the DNC convention in August
They confirm that McSweeney’s costs were paid for by the Labour Party and that Doyle’s costs were met by the Progressive Policy Institute, a Democrat thinktank.
Donald Trump’s six-page filing directly accuses them of trying to ‘exercise direction and control over elements of Harris’s campaign’, in breach of US federal law
Updated
Tory shadow minister accused of 'arrant hypocrisy' after claiming Trump/Labour election row 'diplomatic car crash'
John Lamont, shadow Scottish secretary, told Radio 4’s the World at One that the Trump team complaint about Labour activists campaigning in the US was “a diplomatic car crash” for the government. He said:
It’s a diplomatic car crash by this Labour government. There’s now somebody who could potentially be the next president of the United States who’s lodged an official complaint with the American authorities about the Labour party, the Labour government, and their involvement in their election …
If Donald Trump were to win for the election in a few weeks, how on earth is the prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, going to rebuild that relationship with one of the most important countries in the world, not least from a diplomatic perspective, but also from a trading perspective.
The culture minister Chris Bryant, who was being interviewed alongside Lamont, responded:
What a load of hyperbole and exaggeration. I think the Conservative party in opposition is going to have to learn how to not sound so shrill.
Bryant said that there was nothing unusual about activists volunteering in foreign election campaigns. And he said in this case people were going to the America in their own time, at their own expense, without Labour funding.
He said the story was “a massive fuss about nothing”. Pointing out that Liz Truss went to the Republican convention to support Donald Trump, he told Lamont the Tories were guilty of “arrant hypocrisy”.
Lamont said there was no complaint about Truss going to the Republican convention, but that in this case there was a complaint about the party in government.
Officers on trial after shooting suspects to be anonymous in future, says Yvette Cooper
Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, has told MPs that the identities of armed police officers charged after opening fire at suspects are likely to stay secret in future unless they are convicted. Vikram Dodd has the story.
Daniel Knowles, an Economist correspondent in the US, agrees with the Alastair Campbell analysis. (See 1.35pm.) He has posted these on Bluesky.
Sorry but nobody in America gives a shit about a few Labour activists door-knocking or whatever. The Trump complaint is entirely cynical, and one of dozens of random speculative press releases I was sent yesterday. I’m not surprised British media is as ever just fucking delighted for a local angle
The story here isn’t “is door knocking actually an illegal contribution,”, etc. The legitimate UK angle to cover is, “Donald Trump will pick massive fights with the British government over nothing if it wins him a nice headline.” Which we know, from his conduct in office
This is the same Donald Trump who is currently doing private diplomacy with Benjamin Netanyahu and (he didn’t deny when asked by Bloomberg last week) Vladimir Putin. He also isn’t being transparent at all about who is buying & what money he getting from his random commercial licensing deals atm
Alastair Campbell says Republicans pushing Labour 'non-story' to distract from ex-chief of staff saying Trump is fascist
Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former communications chief who now co-hosts the Rest is Politics podcast, told Radio 4’s the World at One that the Trump allegations about the Labour party were just an attempt to distract attention from other campaign stories, like Trump’s former chief of staff calling him a fascist. It was a “non-story”, Campbell told the programme:
I think it’s one of the biggest non-stories of this campaign. And I’ll tell you why. Because the one thing I will give to the Trump campaign, they are very good at divert and distract, and the media tend to fall for their diversions and distractions all the time.
We have just had a situation where the former chief of staff, who worked with Donald Trump more than any other chief of staff, has warned the American people that if they vote for Trump, they’re electing a fascist. Now is that more or less significant?
Is this situation more or less significant than the Russian interference that we had last time around? Is it more or less significant than the Musk millions that are being poured into this?
What Angela Rayner said [at PMQs – see 12.17pm] is right. Since time immemorial, people on the right have gone to America to support Republican candidates. People on the left and the centre-left have gone to support Democrats. There is no evidence whatsoever of the Labour party using resources or money [to campaign for the Democrats].
Campbell was referring to John Kelly, a former general who was Trump’s chief of staff between 2017 and 2019.
Kelly made his comments in an interview with the New York Times. Asked if Trump was a fascist, Kelly told the paper:
Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy …
So certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America …
Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure … He certainly prefers the dictator approach to government.
Kelly also told the New York Times he had heard Trump praise Hitler. Kelly said:
[Trump] commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too.’
As Chris Stein reports on this blog’s US equivalent, the Trump campaign are dismissing Kelly’s comments.
Government determined to maintain good relations with US if Trump wins, John Healey says
John Healey, the defence secretary, has said the Labour government is determined to have a good relationship with the next US administration, whichever party is in power.
Speaking at a press conference this morning, he defended the right of activists to volunteer in the US election, and argued that having Labour people campaigning for Kamala Harris should not affect relations with a possible Donald Trump administration.
Healey said:
Any individual Labour supporters that are over in the US, being part of the Democratic election campaign, are there as individuals. They’re there at their own time. They’re there at their own expense, and if they’ve got accommodation out there that will be also provided by volunteers. This happens in every election. It’s commonplace.
It is very different to the determination and the way the government will work with whoever the American people elect next month as their president.
And just as the UK and the US have a special, deep relationship, and have had for decades, that’s a relationship that has withstood the political ups and downs on both sides of the Atlantic, and we’re determined to make that work in the future.
In an interview this morning Healey suggested that the Republican legal complaint was just an election gimmick. (See 10.33am.) Asked if it was still his view that the Republicans were just “creating controversy”, Healey replied:
This is in the middle of an election campaign. That’s the way that politics works. You’ve been around almost as long as I have. These are volunteers doing their bit, gaining a bit of experience out there, but doing so as individuals.
PMQs - snap verdict
It is nice to see politicians from opposing parties being nice about each other for a change, but maybe Angela Rayner and Oliver Dowden were taking the bonhomie just a little too far. John Crace, who as the Guardian’s sketch writer is paid to take the mick, sounds a bit discombulated by it all.
This PMQs between Angela Rayner and Oliver Dowden was almost tender #pmqs
— John Crace (@JohnJCrace) October 23, 2024
This PMQs between Angela Rayner and Oliver Dowden was almost tender
And Tom Harwood from GB News was pitched into ‘get a room’ mode watching.
This flirting is getting out of hand...#PMQs pic.twitter.com/yBD74Q50eM
— Tom Harwood (@tomhfh) October 23, 2024
This flirting is getting out of hand.
They were set off by this exchange in particular.
“I will miss our exchanges. The battle of the gingers”
— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) October 23, 2024
Deputy PM Angela Rayner responds to Conservative deputy leader Oliver Dowden's question on the importance of the Commonwealth
#PMQs https://t.co/ykFp6P1hy7 pic.twitter.com/1CVndPKDxr
Dowden, a diehard monarchist (even by Conservative party standards), ended his questions sucking up to the king, but he started with the budget, and the charge that raising employers’ national insurance (something Rachel Reeves has not ruled out) would clobber small business owners. On another day, he might have made some progress with this. But Dowden is expecting to be out of the shadow cabinet by the end of next week, and Rayner’s not chancellor or PM, and somehow it felt that he was not really trying. And, even if he had been, Rayner’s opening joke about Dowden’s pushing for an early election – “if his own side hasn’t offered him a peerage, I certainly will” – was so good it would have knocked him off course anyway.
Otherwise, it was all rather unremarkable. The best question came from the SNP’s Stephen Flynn. (See 12.17pm.) And the worst questions? Hard to say, but it was not just King Charles getting the sycophancy treatment, and the number of ‘Isn’t the government brilliant?’ questions asked by Labour MPs seemed a bit higher than usual. It is hard to know if that is just an impression, or whether No 10 is tightening up on message discipline under the new Morgan McSweeney regime.
John Hayes (Con) says onshore windfarms are a threat to farmland in his Lincolnshire constituency. He says energy security should not compromise food security.
Rayner says the government is committed to energy security.
Kim Johnson (Lab) asks about a hospice threatened with closure in her constituency. Does Rayner agree they should get statutory funding, not just charity funding?
Rayner says the government is aware of the importance of hospices. She promises a ministerial meeting on this.
Rachel Blake (Lab) asks if Rayner agrees that the renters’ rights bill will transform opportunities for renters.
Rayner does agree with that.
Updated
James MacCleary (Lib Dem) asks what the government is doing to cut Brexit red tape for businesses.
Rayner says the government is turning the page on its relationship with Europe. It wants to tear down unnecessary barriers to trade. But that won’t involve rejoining the single market or customs union, she says.
Updated
Anna Dixon (Lab) says the employment rights bill will help care workers.
Rayner says, as a former care worker, she will always champion care workers. They will get a fair pay agreement that will give them the recognition they deserve, she says.
Asked about support for farmers affected by flooding, Rayner says the government inherited a flood defence system that was inadequate.
Meg Hillier (Lab) asks if Rayner will take a personal interest in ensuring that unsafe cladding gets removed from buildings more quickly.
Rayner says she is taking an interest in this. She will ensure action is taken, she says.
Mike Tapp (Lab) says two more people have died trying to cross the Channel in a small boat. What is the government doing to stop these crossings?
Rayner says the government has set up Border Security Command to break up the gangs behind these crossings.
Carolyn Harris (Lab) asks if Rayner will join her in welcoming the appointment of Mariella Frostrup as a menopause employment adviser.
Rayner does welcome this, and says the government wants to help conditions for menopausal women.
Rayner says the humanitarian situation in Northern Gaza is “dire”. She says much more aid needs to get in. The government has concluded that arms sent to Israel could contravene humanitarian obligations in Gaza, she says.
Rayner defends right of activists to campaign in US elections - but avoids praising those wanting to defeat Trump
Stephen Flynn, the SNP leader at Westminster, asks if Rayner will join him in applauding “the brave Labour staff members’” who have gone to the US to campaign against Donald Trump.
Rayner says there are people from all parties who cross the Atlantic to campaign in their own time, with their own money.
UPDATE: Flynn said:
Will the deputy prime minister join me in applauding the brave Labour staff members who travelled across the Atlantic to campaign against Donald Trump?
And Rayner replied:
People in their own time often go and campaign, and that’s what we’ve seen.
It happens in all political parties, people go and campaign and they do what they want to do with their own time, with their own money.
Updated
Daisy Cooper, the deputy Lib Dem leader, asks if the government will consider her party’s idea for a winter taskforce for the NHS to ensure that more care places are available for people leaving hospital.
Rayner says the government does want to improve care, and get the NHS back on its feet.
Cooper says the Lib Dems will work with the government as a “constructive opposition”. But 18,000 small care providers would be affected if employers’ national insurance goes up.
Rayner says she will not speculate on the budget. But it will a budget to rebuild Britain, she says.
Rachael Maskell (Lab) asks if the government will set up a commission to consider how everyone who needs it can get proper end-of-life palliative care.
Rayner says, from her time as a carer, she knows how important this is. She says she will arrange a meeting with a minister for Maskell about this.
Dowden jokes about the Commonwealth being an organisation of countries united by a common culture, like him and Rayner.
Rayner says, while the Tories are fighting among themselves, Labour is rebuilding Britain.
Dowden says business owners will be worried by Rayner’s answers.
He says he wants to use his final questions to Rayner to ask her to join him in praising the king and the work he has done with the Commonwealth.
Rayner says she is happy to join him in praising that.
Dowden asks if Rayner agrees that working people will pay if employers’ national insurance goes up. Those are her words, he says.
Rayner again says working people were let down by the Tories.
Dowden claims Rayner is saying small business owners aren’t working people. But they will be affected if the government puts up employers’ national insurance, he says.
Rayner says the Tory approach to business was “f… business”.
Dowden asks if the five million people who own small businesses are working people.
Rayner says people like that were let down when the Tories crashed the economy.
Oliver Dowden, the shadow deputy PM, asks Rayner how she defines working people.
Rayner starts by saying this is their first PMQs together since Dowden pushed for an early election. If the Tories do not give him a peerage, she will, she says.
She says working people are people let down by the Tories.
Angela Rayner starts by saying Keir Starmer will be discussing shared economic opportunities at the Commonwealth summit.
She says the UK has today signed a defence agreement with Germany.
And she expresses her support for Chris Hoy, the Olympic cyclist who has disclosed his terminal cancer, and expresses sympathy for the victims of the train crash in Wales.
Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.
Angela Rayner takes PMQs
With Keir Starmer flying to Samoa for the Commonwealth summit, Angela Rayner, the deputy PM, is taking PMQs.
Labour donor Lord Alli apologises to Lords over four 'minor' breaches of rules about registering interests
Lord Alli, the Labour donor, has been ordered to write a letter of apology after a Lords committeed found he had committed four “minor” breaches of the rules relating to registering interests.
Three of them related to interests that Alli believed he did not need to register for technical reasons, and the fourth was in interest that was registered late.
In a report, the Lords commissioner for standards, Martin Jelley, says:
I consider these to be minor breaches for which remedial action is appropriate …
While I consider each individual breach of the code to be minor, I have found there to be four breaches in total, and have therefore recommended that Lord Alli write a letter of apology to the chair of the conduct committee, Baroness Manningham-Buller.
Alli’s apology is included as an appendix in the report. In it he says:
I am writing to you today to offer my apology for my breach of conduct by not registering my interests correctly. I will endeavour to keep to the Code of Conduct at all times to avoid such circumstances again.
Alli is the donor who contributed clothing, accommodation and glasses to Keir Starmer before the general election, which became embarrassing when reports about the extent of what Starmer was getting were published over the summer, at the same time as the government was cutting the winter fuel payment for pensioners.
Labour party rejects claim its activists campaigning for Democrats have broken US electoral law
The Labour party has put out a statement rejecting allegations that it broke US election law because activists and staff members have been volunteering to help the Democrats.
A Labour spokesperson said:
It is common practice for campaigners of all political persuasions from around the world to volunteer in US elections.
Where Labour activists take part, they do so at their own expense, in accordance with the laws and rules.
Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has said that “the main taxes that working people pay” will not be going up in the budget.
In an interview with Matt Chorley for his Radio 5 Live show being broadcast this afternoon, asked if people earning more than £100,000 would have to pay more tax under the measures in next week’s budget, Reeves replied:
We said that because working people had already paid the burden under the last government, we wouldn’t increase the taxes, the main taxes that working people pay, so income tax - all rates - national insurance and VAT. So those taxes that working people pay, we’re not increasing those taxes in the budget.
She also said there would be no return to austerity.
We go into this budget with a number of challenges - the £22bn black hole just this year, in the public finances, the unfinanced company compensation schemes, for example on infected blood and Horizon, it’s really important that we honour but they weren’t in the forecasts from the previous government.
The fact that the previous government had baked in austerity to our public spending settlements in the years to come, and we committed to not return to austerity.
And so all of those things mean that, yes, we do need to find additional money.
Greg Swenson, chair of Republicans Overseas UK, has said that, even if the Labour volunteering effort for the Democrats was not illegal, it was a mistake.
In an interview on Times Radio, asked if the initiative would backfired, he replied:
It’s hard to disagree with that. It is election interference. I think it’s a mistake. I think it will backfire not only on the Democrats here, on Kamala Harris, but I think it will backfire on Labour in some respects.
So, yeah, I think it’s uncool. I don’t know if it’s illegal, but I think it’s uncool.
He also claimed it was unfair to compare what the Labour volunteers were doing with Nigel Farage backing Donald Trump. He said:
[Trump and Farage] have been friends a long time. So the fact that Nigel supports Trump is just because they were friends long before the recent election. So anyway, I think it’s apples and oranges. And I don’t think it ends up hurting Trump to have him.
Health secretary Wes Streeting to vote against assisted dying bill over concerns NHS not ready to deliver it safely
The health secretary Wes Streeting is to vote against the assisted dying bill, saying he had concluded that end-of-life care was currently not fit to deliver it safely.
Speaking to Labour backbenchers, Streeting said he had initially believed in the right to choose by terminally ill patients but said that he had changed his mind given the degraded state of the health service.
The move by the health secretary is likely to seed some doubt among MPs ahead of the free vote at the end of November. The justice secretary Shabana Mahmood has also said she will vote against the bill from the backbencher Kim Leadbeater, citing her faith as a reason to oppose it. She told The Times that she had an “unshakeable belief in the sanctity and the value of human life”.
Keir Starmer, whose mother suffered from a degenerative illness, has said he is in favour of assisted dying and had promised there would be a parliamentary vote – though said it should come via a private members’ bill.
Streeting has previously spoken publicly about his doubts about legalising assisted dying, but confirmed his decision to vote against in comments at the Labour PLP meeting on Monday night, according to the Times. Sources close to Streeting confirmed that was his decision.
Cabinet ministers have been told they are allowed to express an opinion on the matter but have been cautioned against getting involved heavily in one side of the debate.
Leadbeater’s bill, which will be debated on 29 November, would restrict assisted dying to terminally ill patients and requires two doctors and a judge to sign off the procedure.
Streeting told the FT Weekend festival earlier this year that he was unusually torn over the decision – having voted for it in the past. He told the FT Weekend Festival last month:
Underneath that philosophical ethical question are a whole series of practical ones about which I am deeply uncomfortable.
Candidly, when I think about this question of being a burden, I do not think that palliative care, end-of-life care in this country is in a condition yet where we are giving people the freedom to choose, without being coerced by the lack of support available.
That is one of the reasons why I can buy into the principle and think about people in my own life who have really suffered at the end of life and not want to impose my views on assisted dying as to whether they should have a choice. But I am not sure as a country we have the right end-of-life care available to enable a real choice on assisted dying.
John Healey, the defence secretary, has suggested that the Trump campaign complaints about Labour are little more than an electoral stunt.
As the BBC reports, Healey told BBC Radio Sheffield that the Trump campaign “got this wrong” and that there was no organised effort to interfer with the election, against electoral law.
Healey said the people going to the US were individual Labour members. He added:
There’s no organised deal on this - they’re all volunteers, they pay their way …
This is Trump’s campaign doing what campaigns do, creating controversy during an election.
Healey also said Labour would “work with whatever president the American people elect”.
Farage claims Labour volunteers were breaching US electoral law – despite his own record backing Trump
Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader who has spoken in support of Donald Trump at rallies in the US, has claimed that when a Labour official encouraged people working for the party to volunteer in support of Kamala Harris’s campaign, that was against US law.
Speaking on GB News, Farage said:
They have perfectly clear rules that whilst people from overseas can come take part in campaigns, make statements, appear on media, all things incidentally that I’ve done over the years, what they can’t do is do it if they’re being funded.
Now, the important thing about the LinkedIn advert that went out to Labour employees and supporters is no mention was made that you’d have to pay your own air fare.
No mention was made that you’d have to take time off work and not have your salary paid. And of course, on top of that, they were told free accommodation would be provided.
If you take that at face value, it is a very clear breach of American electoral law, and that is what the Trump campaign is complaining about.
Farage also said that, when he spoke at a major Trump rally in 2016, he made a point of telling the audience he was not telling them how to vote. And he was not paid, he says.
But in the register of members’ interests Farage declares as a donation worth £32,836 flights and accommodation paying for him to visit the Republican convention in July. Under purpose of the visit, he says: “To support a friend who was almost killed and to represent Clacton on the world stage.” The donation was from a British cryptocurrency investor, Christopher Harborne.
And, as Rowena Mason revealed in the Guardian last week, in the register Farage did not mention the free PR support he got from a Republican PR firm during the trip, or the fact that the company settled his $3,531.10 hotel bill.
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Opinion in the commentator class is divided as to whether the Trump/Labour election interference row is just largely confected nonsense, or whether it is really quite serious. In his Inside Politics briefing for the Financial Times, Stephen Bush inclines to the latter view. Here is an excerpt.
Keir Starmer is wholly correct when he says it is normal for Labour party staffers and former Labour party staffers to volunteer their own time in US presidential campaigns.
But the big and important difference now is that Donald Trump is a very different kind of politician. In the unlikely event that Poilievre loses the next Canadian general election, Justin Trudeau, leader of the Liberals, would not freeze out a Jenrick-led British government. Clinton and John Major worked well on a range of issues, as did Tony Blair and George W Bush. Trump is mercurial, unpredictable and chaotic.
If Trump does return to the White House in November, that will, I think, be the defining moment in the life of the Labour government. Any hope of a return to “normal” politics will die alongside Kamala Harris’s presidential ambitions. Starmer’s government will have to find a new way of approaching the US-UK relationship: and what has, until now, been a “normal” exchange of volunteers between the two countries’ major centre-left parties may soon become a major diplomatic liability.
Steve Reed, the environment secretary, has said that when he accepted free football tickets from a company last year, he did not know it was owned by a firm that owns most of Northumbria Water.
Reed accepted the tickets, donated by a phone company, last year, when he was shadow environment secretary.
In an interview with Sky News this morning, asked if he knew that CK Hutchison Holdings, who donated the tickets, owned 75% of CK Infrastructure Holdings, the owner of Northumbrian Water, Reed replied:
There was nobody from a water company that was involved in offering those tickets. There was nobody from a water company at that event.
Asked if he would take the tickets again, Reed replied:
I probably wouldn’t, but I didn’t know at the time and it hasn’t influenced a single decision that I’ve taken.
Asked why he would not do the same thing again, he told the presenter, Kay Burley:
The implication, Kay, is it somehow influences the decisions that I’m taking … I wasn’t aware that there was any relationship with a water company. Water wasn’t discussed even for one second at that event.
I’m doing the best by the public: The things that we said we do in the general election. My intention is to reset a failing water sector so it serves customers and the environment in a way it hasn’t done for decades.
UK will start running short of drinking water in 10 years if infrastructure does not improve, says minister
Steve Reed, the environment secretary, has said that Britain will start running short of drinking water in about 10 years if action is not taken to improve infrastructure.
In an interview with LBC to defend the need for the review of the water industry he is launching today, Reed said:
The lack of water infrastructure is now holding back economic growth in this country, so we can’t build the homes that we need in parts of the country.
Cambridge, for instance, lacks clean water supply. Oxford lacks sewage systems sufficient to allowed house building to go ahead.
And a third point here is that by the mid-2030s unless we take action to increase water supply – reservoirs as well as infrastructure – then the demand for drinking water will start to outstrip supply, in a way that already happens in some Mediterranean countries.
We cannot allow the water system, the water sector, to continue in this way.
Steve Reed says it is 'perfectly normal' for political activists to volunteer in other countries' election campaigns
Good morning. Steve Reed, the environment secretary, has been doing the morning interview round, and he expected to be talking about the appointment of an independent commission, led by the former Treasury official and former deputy governor of the Bank of England Sir Jon Cunliffe, to consider the future of the water industry. Details were briefed out last night, here is the news release, and here is Helena Horton’s story.
But instead Reed has spent the morning fending off a rather bizarre story about the Trump campaign filing a complaint with election regulators in the US alleging that the Labour party is interfering in the US presidential election. Eleni Courea has the details here.
In an interview with the Today programme, Reed said that it was “perfectly normal” for political activists to volunteer in election campaigns in other countries. In an interview with the Today programme, he said:
It’s up to private individuals what they do with their free time, and it’s actually perfectly normal for people who are interested in politics to go from one country to campaign for a sister party in another country. I‘ve seen Americans in the UK doing that in our elections.
He also said the pro-Democrat volunteering effort had not been official organised or funded by the Labour party.
None of this has been organised or paid for by the Labour party. This is just individuals using their own time and their own money.
Asked about a post on LinkedIn from Sofia Patel, head of operations at the Labour party, inviting more people to volunteer and saying their housing would be sorted out, Reed said Today programme would have to be speak to her, but “the Labour party has nothing to do with organising this”.
When it was put to him that the fact that the post has been taken down was an admission that it was badly worded, Reed just said he had not seen it.
Reed is right, of course. Volunteering like this is routine (Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, helped out with the Bill Clinton campaign at one stage in 1992), and the Trump campaign don’t seem too bothered about British inteference when the person doing the interfering is Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader. In one respect, the most interesting feature of the story is the fact that Donald Trump and his campaign team appear to be the only people on the planet who think that Keir Starmer’s Labour party is “far left”.
But Trump may well win the US presidential election in two weeks’ time and, although Starmer has been scrupulous about being respectful towards him as PM, and describes their relationship as “good”, Trump is unpredictable and vindictive, and so this could be a story with repercussions.
Starmer is spending all day travelling to the Commonwealth summit in Samoa, so we are not going to hear much more from him on this. But we’ve got PMQs, and so the topic may come up there.
Here is the agenda for the day.
11.30am: John Healey, the defence secretary, holds a press conference with his German counterpart, Boris Pistorius, after they signed a UK-Germany defence pact.
Noon: Angela Rayner, the deputy PM, faces Oliver Dowden, the shadow deputy PM, at PMQs.
After 12.30pm: MPs debate regulations relating to the infected blood compensation scheme.
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