Evening summary
No 10 is braced for a potential defeat on a Labour conference vote to condemn cuts to the winter fuel allowance, as major trade unions lined up to back the motion to reverse Rachel Reeves’s decision.
Angela Rayner, the deputy PM, has said she understands why some voters are perturbed by donations accepted by her and other government ministers, while arguing that a complete stop to such gifts would require a wider debate about how politics is funded. As Peter Walker reports, she pushed back strongly against claims she might have not properly declared donations such as accommodation on a holiday in New York, saying she had done everything necessary. In another interview Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, said she had accepted donations for a 40th birthday event and another reception because they were held “in a work context”. As Sam Coates from Sky News points out in a blog, the two replies indicate the lack of coherence at the heart of Labour’s response to the freebies controversy. Coates says:
It is increasingly easy to find Labour figures railing about “disproportionate” focus in the media on donors and gifts and freebies as new stories arrive hourly.
Yet, they have come unprepared to answer questions; cabinet teams still making up contradictory answers on the fly.
On Sunday morning, education secretary Philipson said taking donations from Lord Alli was fine because the birthday party he funded was a work event.
An hour later and deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, said that taking donations in kind – namely the New York apartment – is fine because the holiday was a private event.
How do we reconcile both?
David Lammy, the foreign secretary, indicated that delicate negotiations with the White House to allow Ukraine to use Storm Shadow missiles inside Russia are ongoing, arguing it was a time for “nerve and guts”.
Hollie Ridley, Labour’s new general secretary, said the far right is just as much a threat now as it was in the days of the BNP, only “better dressed”. (See 3.47pm.)
Keir Starmer said Labour’s plans for “planning passports” to enable homes to be build more easily in urban areas will “put rocket boosters under housebuilding”. (See 11.15am.)
Updated
Here is John Crace’s sketch on the first day of the Labour conference.
