Early evening summary
Donald Trump has resumed his war of words with Keir Starmer over Iran, accused the PM of being over-reliant on his advisers and unwilling to take decisions on his own. He was speaking at a press conference in the US where he complained about Starmer not committing to sending ships to help the US reopen the strait of Hormuz. (See 5.43pm.) At his own press conference earlier in the day, Starmer insisted the UK would not be drawn into the wider war in the Middle East. But he did say he wanted to see the strait reopen, and he said that as many countries as possible should be involved in a mission to allow this to happen. (See 11.03am.)
Michelle O’Neill, Northern Ireland’s first minister, has described the government’s grant to Northern Ireland to help families hit by rising heating oil bills as a “slap in the face” because it is only worth £17m. (See 12.27pm.) The government is spending £53m across the UK, but almost half the money is going to Northern Ireland because around 50% of homes there use heating oil. In the rest of the UK it is far less common. O’Neill told MLAs at Stormont:
I find the £17m that has been put on the table today to be a real slap in the face, a real slap in the face to families that are struggling, who are already struggling to pay their oil bills.
Alex Burghart, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, has accused the government of failing to fully comply with the humble address obliging it to release documents relating to Peter Mandelson being appointed ambassador to the US. In a Commons urgent question, he said:
Since last Wednesday, it’s become increasingly clear that either the government did not follow due process in its appointment of Peter Mandelson or that it is not disclosed all of the relevant documents.
In different terms, either the prime minister’s assurances that full due process was followed were misleading, or the government has not complied with the humble address.
Either would be a contempt of parliament …
There are many, many documents missing. I have detailed 56 to him in a letter that I have sent [to Darren Jones, chief secretary to the PM] to give a few examples.
There is no prime ministerial readout on the advice he received. This is a breach of protocol. A prime ministerial decision, even if made oral orally, should be formally recorded. Where is that record? It starts to stink of the sofa government we had under Tony Blair.
There are no minutes of any meeting at which this appointment was discussed by anyone at any time.
Most suspiciously of all, we have no material from the prime minister, from the chiefs, from his chief of staff or from Peter Mandelson. No box returns, no emails, no forms, no WhatsApp, nothing. It is as though their fingerprints have been forensically removed.
In response, Jones said that some material was being held back because the police were worried it might prejudice a prosecution, and that further documents would be published later. He did not go into detail about why particular documents had been held back, and he would not say why the government had not, in some cases, acknowledged that particularly documents existed without publishing them in full. The Tories repeatedly asked if Mandelson had submitted a full declaration of interests, but Jones sidestepped questions about this.
Updated
'You don't need to meet your team, you're the PM' - Trump slams Starmer for being over-reliant on his advisers
At his press conference Donald Trump also accused Keir Starmer of being overly-dependent on his advisers.
Referring to a decision about Britain deploying a warship to the Gulf, Trump said:
The prime minister of UK, United Kingdom, yesterday told me, I’m meeting with my team to make a determination.
I said you don’t need to meet with your team, you’re the prime minister, you can make your own, why do you have to meet with your team to find out whether or not you’re going to send some minesweepers to help us or to send some boats.
I said you don’t have to meet with your team, it’s the same thing here.
This might be a rare example of Trump saying something that will meet with the approval of at least some Labour MPs. One of the big talking points at Westminster over the past 48 hours has been the publication in the Sunday Times of an extract from the the paperback version of Get In — The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund. Maguire and Pogrund are widely respected for their access and insight into people at the top of the Labour party. The hardback edition of the book depicted Starmer as an opposition leader over-reliant on Morgan McSweeney, but the update is arguably more damaging because it contains numerous quotes from unnamed Labour figures complaining about how passive Starmer has been as PM.
Here is an extract.
[Starmer] only discovered that Sue Gray, his chief of staff, and Louise Haigh, the transport secretary, had given striking train drivers a new pay deal after it had been agreed. The civil servants who had just begun to work with Starmer were baffled at first. Then, as the months ground on, the confounding realisation struck them. Why would Haigh have bothered to consult him? In the frantic meetings after the winter fuel allowance announcement he was a conspicuous, unfelt absence. “We were surrounded by people, who had worked for Blair and Brown,” one adviser said. ‘They would have known exactly what they would have said had they been in a room like that. None of us could say the same about Keir. It wasn’t just that we didn’t know what he would say. We didn’t know whether he would have said anything” …
Cabinet ministers and No 10 advisers strained for loyalty. But it proved too difficult for some. “He is,” said one influential aide upon their departure from Downing Street, “the least intellectually curious person I have ever met.” Said another politician upon whom Starmer relied heavily: “He can only prepare by reading briefing books for hours on end. He doesn’t brainstorm. He has no fixed views on anything. There’s no clarity because there’s no belief. There’s no belief because there’s no understanding. There’s no understanding because there’s no curiosity.”
