Afternoon summary
Britain faces a further round of strikes. Civil servants working in multiple government agencies have voted to go on strike, teachers in Scotland have also voted overwhelmingly for industrial action, and train drivers have announced a further rail strike on Saturday 26 November (see 1.22pm).
Rishi Sunak has been meeting Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, at the British-Irish Council gathering in Blackpool. (See 9.28am.) This is from UTV’s Tracey Magee.
.@RishiSunak attending the British Irish Council in Blackpool. Also present @NicolaSturgeon & @michaelgove. Attending virtually are @MarkDrakeford & chancellor @Jeremy_Hunt. No NI ministers are present because of the Stormont stalemate pic.twitter.com/wbb7zIVxho
— Tracey Magee (@Tracey_utv) November 10, 2022
Nadine Dorries, the former culture secretary, has expressed concern about reports that Sunak will shelve Boris Johnson’s plan to impose a cap on social care costs. (See 2.35pm.)
Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, has walked away from a Liz Truss commitment to spend 3% of GDP on defence by 2030 – just a few weeks after speculation he might resign from the government if the target was not met.
Simon Wolfson, the chief executive of the clothing and homeware retailer Next, has urged the government to make it easier to allow foreign workers into the UK and said this is “not the Brexit I wanted”.
Hopes that a planned northern high-speed railway line may include Bradford after all have been raised after the new rail minister, Huw Merriman, said he was still “working on options” to link in the city.
Labour has dissolved a local selection panel in a row over candidates for the prized seat of Camberwell and Peckham, currently held by Harriet Harman, with officials reinstalling a key adviser to Sadiq Khan on to the shortlist.
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'Mood music' between London and Brussels has improved under Sunak, says EU ambassador
João Vale de Almeida, the outgoing EU ambassador to the UK, has said the “mood music” between London and Brussels has improved under Rishi Sunak.
Speaking in an interview with the Financial Times, Vale de Almeida said that after Brexit, relations between Britain and the EU were particularly poor. He said:
Contact between leaders and intimacy has been lacking.
We’ve had more summits with China than we have had with the UK. There have been none. That’s not normal. These people need to share their WhatsApp numbers.
But, commenting on the change since Sunak became prime minister, he said:
The mood music has changed, the melody is nicer but we still don’t have the words of a new British song.
The two sides are still at loggerheads over the future of the Northern Ireland protocol. Vale de Almeida said they were “not that far apart”, but he did not suggest that a deal was imminent. Describing the state of negotiations, he said:
There are always talks about talks and real talks — we are somewhere in between. We’re not that far apart. We need now to focus on the landing zone.
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