Afternoon summary
The American XL bully dog breed will be banned by the end of the year after a series of attacks, Rishi Sunak has said. But the Dog Control Coalition, which represents leading animal welfare and veterinary organisations, has criticised the proposal, saying that a ban will not stop attacks and that the government has not provided evidence to justify its decision. (See 4.37pm.) Jessica Murray has an explainer on the topic here.
Britain would take asylum seekers from the EU as part of any returns deal under a Labour government, Yvette Cooper has said, but would not formally join the European quota scheme.
Train drivers have announced two more days of strikes and an overtime ban across England, timed to bring services to a halt at the start and end of the Conservative party conference.
Eighty prison officers did not to turn up for their shifts at Wandsworth prison on the day Daniel Khalife escaped, leaving just 60% of posts filled, the Home Office has revealed.
Susan Hall, the Conservative candidate for London mayor, has liked tweets praising Enoch Powell, as well as some containing Islamophobic abuse towards Sadiq Khan, her Labour opponent, research by a campaign group has shown.
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With the weekend coming up, it is always good to have something decent to read. Obviously, your best option is to splash out on a copy of the Guardian tomorrow, and the Observer on Sunday. But when you have finished all that lot, here are two long articles on Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer that are well worth devoting time to.
George Parker and Lucy Fisher have written an insightful feature for the FT’s magazine on what makes Sunak tick, and why he thinks he can win the election. Here is an insight.
With an election due within the next 15 months, allies admit things will have to speed up. “He has been told he can’t just exist as a problem-solver. He’s got to go out there and have a fight,” says one person close to Sunak. “He’s going to have to do things with which he won’t be comfortable.”
Liam Booth-Smith, his longstanding chief of staff, and James Forsyth, his political secretary and an old friend from Winchester College days, have urged him to become more political. “They have persuaded Rishi he has to move outside his comfort zone if he’s going to hold on to power,” says an ally of Sunak. “That has been a long and difficult process.”
One former cabinet minister close to Sunak says that unlike Johnson — who was inclined to say whatever came into his head if it was politically expedient — the current occupant of Number 10 is reluctant to engage in the grubby side of politics. After his ill-fated 2022 leadership bid, one backer lamented that Sunak had shown no “moral flexibility”.
And here is what is the funniest paragraph in the article.
The price for this cavalcade of mismanagement can be seen in public opinion surveys, which typically show the Tories trailing Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party by between 15 and 20 points, easily enough to overturn the 80-seat majority won by Boris Johnson in 2019. Anthony Wells, director of political polling at YouGov, says he had not seen a government so “exhausted” since John Major’s Conservative administration in the 1990s. Asked for his views for a 4,000-word piece on whether Sunak could win the next election, he replied: “What are you going to say in the other 3,999?”
And, in the New Statesman, Andrew Marr has written an excellent essay on Keir Starmer. Here is an extract, on Starmer’s relationship with class.
We will learn more about Starmer the man next year when the first biography – written with his close cooperation by Tom Baldwin, a journalist and former senior adviser to Ed Miliband – comes out. But a working hypothesis might be that, in a political culture reliant on handy, crude class identities, Starmer simply does not fit in. Sir Keir, with his southern accent and sober suits, doesn’t look or sound working class to most people. He is not posh. So, what is he? Not being sure can make people less likely to form an emotional connection.
As one of his allies puts it, Starmer has a very complicated relationship with class. Coming, famously, from the working-class parentage of toolmaker and nurse, he broke through by hard work to become a lawyer and then director of public prosecutions. (At the despatch box, he doesn’t paint visions in the air: he prosecutes.) Thus far, it’s a straightforward British story of graft and aspiration.
But class matters deeply to Starmer, as his recent speech on state education and breaking the “class ceiling” demonstrated. His shadow cabinet is as working class as any I can remember. Could that be because not all members of his family emerged into the smooth, well-spoken professional world as he did? His three siblings are a carer, a mechanic and a dinner lady. And anyway, if you are working class in a Surrey village, are you really “working class”, as traditionally understood, at all? You don’t have the kind of community or collective that a working-class child would have in the West Midlands or Glasgow. You talk southern, which to much of the country sounds like posh.
Marr’s article also includes, if not quite a scoop, certainly a signpost towards one. When is a tax rise not a tax rise? When it involves closing loopholes, he suggests.
Labour’s Treasury team has, I gather, also been looking at a long list of loopholes that they believe would generate billions of extra pounds, without raising tax rates. They don’t want to give away details because of the danger of the Conservatives swiping more of their policies. But a radical cleaning up of loopholes and allowances would be an obvious source of revenue.
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