Closing summary
Keir Starmer has said Labour’s conference is a chance to show an alternative to the “toxic divide and decline” offered by Reform UK. Arriving at the conference centre in Liverpool with his wife, Victoria, he said it was a “really important conference”. Speaking to a group of students at the Liverpool Echo’s offices before the conference, Starmer described Reform’s plans to remove indefinite leave to remain for legal migrants as “one of the most shocking things” the party had come out with. Starmer said that Reform’s policies would “tear this country apart”.
He said:
These are people who’ve been in our country a long time, contributing to our society, maybe working in – I don’t know – hospitals, schools, running businesses, our neighbours, and Reform says it wants to deport them in certain circumstances.
I think it is a real sign of just how divisive they are and that their politics and their policies will tear this country apart.
It is what it is to be British that we are able to be reasonable, pragmatic, tolerant, live and let live. To tear away at that will destroy our country. I feel very, very strongly about this.
I’m sorry that you’re having to grow up in a world where this politics has found a voice and almost a licence as well.
Starmer inteds to warn the Labour party that it is in a “fight for the soul of the nation” and that history will not forgive his government if it fails to confront and defeat Reform UK and the populist right.
Most rail journeys in Great Britain will be under public ownership by the middle of next year, the transport secretary is expected to announce at the Labour party’s annual party conference this weekend. Heidi Alexander is expected to say:
This Labour government is calling time on 30 years of failure, frustration, fragmentation. We are returning our railways to the service of passengers.
In February next year, West Midlands Trains will become the next operator to transfer into public ownership.
And today I can go further, and announce that Govia Thameslink Railway, Chiltern Railways, and Great western Railway will follow.
We said we would do it in our manifesto – and we are delivering on our promise.
Teaching unions have written to the prime minister asking him to scrap the two-child benefit cap ahead of Labour’s annual conference, which begins in Liverpool on Sunday. Ahead of Labour party conference, backbench MPs and unions have also renewed calls to end the two-child benefit cap.
Labour has restored the party whip John McDonnell and Apsana Begum 14 months after they lost it for rebelling over the two-child benefit cap, the Guardian understands. After the decision, Begum said she would “continue to expose the two-child limit at every opportunity”.
Fears are growing that shared houses may become the focus of anti-migrant protests, with residents and charities saying tensions are building in some areas.
More than 1.8 million people have now signed a petition opposing the introduction of digital ID cards after Keir Starmer announced plans to make them mandatory for people working in the UK by 2029. Petitions that receive more than 100,000 signatures are considered for a debate in parliament, but there is little evidence of their success in shaping government policy.
Labour will seek out an “ambitious” youth mobility scheme with the EU, allowing thousands of young Europeans to temporarily live and work in the UK, Rachel Reeves said.
Hundreds of thousands more children are to receive a free breakfast through a government scheme, Bridget Phillipson announced on Saturday. The education secretary said that 500,000 more children across England will soon benefit from the government’s role out of free breakfast clubs.
Scottish Labour’s Foysol Choudhury has become the second MSP to be suspended by the party in less than two months, according tothe PA news agency reports. The Lothian MSP is understood to have been administratively suspended by the party pending the outcome of an investigation – with a Labour spokesperson stressing it “takes all complaints seriously”. The party told the PA news agency it could not comment on the matter while the investigation is ongoing.
King Charles is said to have been a vital influence on Donald Trump’s dramatic U-turn on his attitudes towards the war in Ukraine. Earlier this week, Mr Trump went from urging Kyiv to make territorial concessions to insisting it can win back all of the territory captured by Russia since 2022. Andriy Yermak, Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, told The Telegraph:
I’d like to mention that it was a great visit of President Trump to the United Kingdom, and I know the position of His Majesty, the position of prime minister Starmer and the people whom President Trump met … it was very important.
People who have been in jail since last year awaiting trial for alleged offences relating to Palestine Action activities say they have faced a crackdown since the group was proscribed, including being banned from wearing the keffiyeh and from prison jobs.
A Palestine Solidarity Campaign protest took place today in Liverpool, outside where the Labour party is set to hold their annual conference this weekend.
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Watch: Keir Starmer says Reform UK’s policies would ‘tear country apart’:
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