Tag: United Kingdom

Deputy leader of the Labour Party Angela Rayner has revealed that Keir Starmer once discussed with her how she would lead if he fell ill. 

The conversation, Rayner told British Vogue, was proof the Labour leader “respected my position”.

Rayner revealed she discussed the matter with Sir Keir at the time Boris Johnson fell seriously ill during the Covid pandemic. 

She said: “One of the first meetings we ever had was when [Johnson] was seriously ill with Covid. Keir discussed with me how I’d lead if he fell ill. That really told me he respected my position.”

In further comments on her and Starmer’s relationship, she said: “I think we complement each other because we’re very different. If I was just, ‘Yes, everything you say is wonderful,’ you wouldn’t get feedback. Same with him to me.”

She added: “Our leadership has evolved, like any team when you’re thrown together. Whatever the office politics is like… we understand each other now.”

Rayner, who serves as shadow deputy prime minister and shadow levelling up, housing and communities secretary, previously told the BBC’s Today programme in August that she compares her and Starmer’s relationship to an “arranged marriage”. 

She said: “I often talk about it as an arranged marriage. We were both elected by the membership differently and independently. We work constructively together.”

The Labour leader and his deputy have had reported disagreements in the past, including Starmer’s reported attempt to demote Rayner during a botched reshuffle in 2021 following the party’s loss in the Hartlepool by-election.

But what followed was a significant promotion as Rayner, formerly Labour Party chair and national campaign coordinator, emerged with an elaborate 24-word job title as deputy leader, shadow first secretary of state, shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and shadow secretary of state for the future of work.

Keir Starmer’s most recent reshuffle, conducted in September, saw Rayner handed the levelling up, housing and communities brief, previously held by Lisa Nandy. 

She was also officially made shadow deputy prime minister. 

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Jeremy Hunt will announce a series of measures to boost Britain’s economy as he delivers his second autumn statement today.

In what will be one of the last key fiscal events before the general election, the chancellor is expected to pledge to “turbo charge” growth. 

He is set to claim the economy is “back on track” in the statement, which is expected to prioritise tax cuts.

He will vow to “reject big government, high spending and high tax because we know that leads to less growth, not more”. 

The Times has reported that 28 million people would see a cut to their national insurance.

Earlier this month, Hunt said he would address labour supply issues and business investment as he delivers an “autumn statement for growth”.

The chancellor will say in his statement: “After a global pandemic and energy crisis, we have taken difficult decisions to put our economy back on track. We have supported families with rising bills, cut borrowing and halved inflation.

“The economy has grown. Real incomes have risen. Our plan for the British economy is working.

“But the work is not done. Conservatives know that a dynamic economy depends less on the decisions and diktats of ministers than on the energy and enterprise of the British people.”

Ahead of the statement, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves has claimed the Conservatives were the party of “high tax”, adding: “Nothing the chancellor says or does in his autumn statement can change their appalling record.”

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08.45 am — Shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones appears to welcome the news that a 1 per cent cut to national insurance could be announced.

He said: “A couple of hundred quid off per year will be good, but [people are] still going to be down £3,000 – £3,500 a year.”

However, he noted that “inflation is still double” the Bank of England’s target and the cost of living remains high.

He added: “The fact of the matter is it’s too little, too late… The Tories have failed and they’re not going to be able to turn it around at this stage.”

08.40 am — Jeremy Hunt posted on X (formerly Twitter) yesterday afternoon: 

With inflation halved, we can turn to the next phase of our economic plan – boosting our long term economic growth.

Tomorrow, I’ll be setting out an Autumn Statement package that does just that. pic.twitter.com/5aNrLcHU9S

— Jeremy Hunt (@Jeremy_Hunt) November 21, 2023

Halving inflation was the first of Rishi Sunak’s five pledges announced in January this year, politics.co.uk‘s pledge tracker has a full breakdown:

Sunak pledge tracker. Is the PM delivering on his ‘priorities’?

08.35 am —  Conservative MP Stephen Hammond is asked on Sky News if a cut to national insurance points to an early general election. He responds:

I don’t know. I think what it’s pointing to is that we’re starting to show that after last year, the chancellor and the prime minister have the economy beginning to grow, we’ve got debt falling.

I would have thought, if I were them, they’d want to show that through next year.

He adds: “What would put people off more… is if we were doing irresponsible things today. This [national insurance cut] is a sensible first move that will actually benefit 28 million people.”

08.32 am  — Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves claimed that nothing Jeremy Hunt announces this afternoon “can change the Government’s appalling record” on the economy.

After thirteen years of economic failure, working people are worse off.

Nothing the Chancellor says or does today can change the Government's appalling record.

— Rachel Reeves (@RachelReevesMP) November 22, 2023

08.30 am — Good morning and welcome back to “Politics Live”, politics.co.uk‘s rolling coverage of the day’s key moments in Westminster and beyond. Here you can keep up to date with today’s major parliamentary debates, press conferences and news events in real time.

Here’s what’s happening today:

• Chancellor Jeremy Hunt will deliver his Autumn Statement
• Prime minister’s questions will talk place from 12.00 pm

Stay with us and we’ll bring you all the latest developments as they unfold.

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What do you picture when you think of farmed animals? I think of chickens, pigs and cows, or maybe sheep. But farming has radically changed over the last fifty years, and other species of animals have become increasingly exploited out of sight, out of mind – far from the ‘fairytale farmyard’.

This World Fisheries Day I’d ask you not to forget these animals, animals like fish. Fish are the second most farmed animal in the UK after chickens. With up to 77 million of them slaughtered each year, we produce considerably more fish than all the pigs, cows and sheep combined. The species we farm most of are rainbow trout and Atlantic salmon. 

Like the majority of farmed animals, these fish are reared in overcrowded factory farms. Giant sea cages, hundreds of metres across, house tens of thousands of salmon. They circle around in huge shoals in an utterly barren environment, the lack of space leading to increased aggression and downright despair. 

In the wild these beautiful creatures swim thousands of miles over the open oceans but crammed into pens for two years at a time, plagues of carnivorous sea lice attack the salmon, literally eating them alive.

Millions die every year and it’s getting worse – 8.9 million salmon had died on farms by the end of July this year, the worst year on record. The water is often thick with excrement and half of the animals can’t hear, a defect caused by fast growth, selectively bred into these fish to maximise profit. If you wanted to design a hell for these sensitive, complex animals you’d be hard-pressed to compete with modern aquaculture. Oh, and yes, that old rubbish that ‘fish don’t feel pain’ is just that – rubbish.

Aquaculture now provides more fish to people than wild fishing and Scotland is the third biggest producer of salmon in the world. But the Scottish government isn’t happy with third place. They have plans to increase production to between 300 and 400 kilotons by 2030 — that’s well over 100 million miserable fish every year. Predictably, as the expansion of fish farming has proceeded unchecked, the welfare of the animals has worsened considerably. 

The neglect of farmed fish is a government policy, baked into the law itself. This is crystal clear when it comes to slaughter. This autumn the government’s own animal welfare committee published an opinion arguing the government must legislate to ensure that fish are stunned before slaughter and killed before regaining consciousness, that they should be killed in water or shortly after being removed from it, and that a back up stunning process must be available. 

But the committee has recommended many of these policies for the last 25 years, and for 25 years consecutive governments have ignored them. This needs to change. 

Slaughter can be a moment of pain and terror for any animal, which is why there are laws in place which require chickens, pigs and other animals to be stunned before the blade is pulled across their necks. But farmed fish have minimal protections. 

Stunning may be practised by the industry, but this is not a standard which should be left to the fish farmers themselves. There are no routine welfare inspections in fish slaughterhouses in the UK. In fact facilities where fish are killed in their thousands aren’t even considered slaughterhouses by the law and therefore escape requirements to contain CCTV, something this new opinion argues must change. 

All this is despite the fact that undercover investigations have exposed welfare abuses at the point of killing.

In a 2021 Animal Equality investigation into a Scottish salmon slaughterhouse fish were seen repeatedly clubbed in the wrong places by poorly trained staff, fish writhed on the floor as they gasped for breath, and had their gills cut with knives while they thrashed about, clearly still conscious. Fish might be very different animals to us, but not so different that we can’t recognise the suffering they endure when they are abused.

Viva! has uncovered similar horrors in English trout farms – we know industry standards get flaunted and yet we’re compelled to rely on the industry itself to report these breaches. Moreover, half of UK trout farming isn’t even covered by optional regulation schemes – that’s 6 million animals with no practical protection from harm.

This is why I am supporting The Humane League UK to fight for fish and to campaign for their basic protections at the point of slaughter. So please can I urge you all to sign their petition, and demand that the government act now to make a difference. If we do not stand up for these fish then millions more will be killed behind closed doors, mishandled, mistreated and left to die in agony. The wellbeing of our second most farmed animals is far too important to forget.

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The electoral battleground in the UK has been redrawn.

Updates to the parliamentary constituencies in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland will play a significant role in the next UK general election.

 

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There is a new phenomenon taking the SW1 scene by storm: the “alternative budget” — a fiscal plan produced by some dispossessed faction and designed, at once, to focus minds on a chosen subject in government and to posture and position as antagonists press ahead with their own proposals. 

The “alternative budget” trail was blazed, of course, by none other than Liz Truss. The former PM is not one to shirk an opportunity for fiscal innovation and in October it was reported that she, acting vicariously through her “Growth Commission” think tank, would be penning a series of fiscal proposals to compete with the government’s. 

With the Autumn Statement set to be delivered by the chancellor tomorrow, the Trussite wonks kept their promise to the ever-grateful public and unveiled a plan to reverse “stagnation” in the British economy last week. Truss, nominally the convenor of the group, was among those who attended the launch of the “growth budget”, alongside close allies Jacob Rees-Mogg, her former business secretary, and Lord Frost, once Boris Johnson’s Brexit negotiator.

Among the measures being proposed by the commission are cutting corporation tax from 25 per cent to 15 per cent and unfreezing tax allowances. The group argues its proposals could boost GDP by 23 per cent and household incomes by £26,000 by 2044.

Still, Truss’ Growth Commission is a curious collective. The former prime minister is not herself a member — but her intellectual patronage is keenly felt, both in personnel and policy terms. For example, Julian Jessop, that high priest of Trussonomics and Institute of Economic Affairs fellow, is among the assembled free marketeers. The grouping also boasts a tangible transatlantic tilt, as it assembles American economists mainly connected with the libertarian Mercatus Center. 

In one sense, the Growth Commission is Trussonomics retreating to its intellectual and institutional homesteads: the realm of secretive policy institutes and think tanks. The flickering free market flame needs nurturing, Truss has long-calculated — having done such damage to her cause last year. The commission, therefore, is intended to operate as a kind of chrysalis chamber, wherein the messaging of British libertarianism will be protected, honed and eventually propelled back into mainstream thought. 

And, on its free-market crusade, the commission is supported by its de facto sister organisation the “Conservative Growth Group”. The Conservative Growth Group is a parliamentary caucus helmed by former environment secretary Ranil Jayawardena but, again, convened by the former prime minister. Thus the conclave, which has the backing of around 60 MPs, can be expected to take up the commission’s policy offering in the weeks to come. 

But the group faces keen competition within the Conservative Parliamentary Party, including from their foremost factional antagonists: the One Nation Conservatives.

In fact, those much-denigrated fifth columnists, charged with leading consecutive coups last year, have their own fiscal plan — leaning headstrong into Liz Truss’ strategic playbook with apparent unabashed apostasy. 

Yesterday the grouping, headed by former de facto deputy PM under Theresa May Damian Green, published its own set of policies in a bid to drag the party back to the centre ground. Among the proposals are ideas to tax second homes that are not registered as such or made available to rent, making it easier to build housing above railway stations; and allowing first-time buyers to use their pension funds towards a deposit.

The group’s new document said the plan would “help the government reclaim the support of millions of voters who are undecided about the next election but who have supported the Conservative Party since 2010”. 

Stephen Hammond, the MP for Wimbledon and a member of the One Nation group, subsequently told the Times: “For too long we have been too quiet and these ideas are the fresh start of renewal for our caucus.”

This, in essence, is the one nation Conservative group saying the quiet bit out loud. Rather like the increasingly isolated “soft left” in Labour, one-nationers nominally make up a “faction”, but they have taken far from enthusiastically to “factionalism”. They are “wet” by name and, typically, wet by nature. 

But grouping appears to have concluded that their relative collective quiet over recent years — as abbreviated antagonists have amassed in the European Research Group (ERG), the Northern Research Group (NRG), the New Conservatives, the Common Sense Group (CSG), the Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG) and now the Conservative Growth Group (CGG) — has spurred the political tides against them. In fact, before Hammond’s round of self-reflection yesterday, Damian Green had already argued in an article for the Times last September: “Maybe we have been too quiet for too long”.

An “alternative budget”, therefore, is an immediate consequence of the grouping’s newfound willingness to flaunt its parliamentary muscle. And it is far from an isolated example: last week, Green compared ex-home secretary Suella Braverman’s Rwanda “Plan B” tests, outlined in the Telegraph, to “what Putin and Xi do”. 

Viewed in full, the former first secretary of state’s pre-Autumn Statement media round has provided a forum for him to intensify his attacks on his party right colleagues. He has even urged the government not to pursue a “full fat” approach in dealing with the small boats crisis; Green prefers a more measured, “semi-skimmed” strategy. The one nationers are limbering up it seems — slowly and supported by tortured analogy — to the Conservatives’ factional fracas.  

Step back, and this pre-Autumn Statement debate, as moderate and right-wing wonks battle it out with their respective alternative budgets, is illustrative of Rishi Sunak’s enduring party-management travails. And, as the one nation Conservatives rediscover their confidence, the PM’s problems in and around his party look set to intensify. 

What is more: the apparent entry of the one nation Conservatives into the intra-party debate is symbolically significant. Because it was this vast collective of moderate MPs — far more so than the Braverman-backers who swung behind Sunak after her endorsement in October — who enabled him to become PM. 

But the prime minister has since been seen to abjure on the vision of his parliamentary patrons. Indeed, despite the elevation of Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton last week, the PM has opted to side with his party right at moments of heightened pressure. Sunak’s speech yesterday, which hinted at tax cuts to come, may be the latest example. 

These “alternative budgets”, therefore, speak to a well-rehearsed truth: that Sunak is ideologically unmoored in his party and without a factional anchor among his backbenches. He is trapped between competing visions, reductively of “right” and “moderate” elements, as he struggles to hone his own vision for the party. The two key events of last week, with the appointment of David Cameron as foreign secretary and the subsequent reaction to the Supreme Court’s Rwanda ruling, probably speak further to this dire dynamic. 

The prime minister hence seems trapped in his party, unwilling to wholly embrace one section of the Conservatives’ factional tapestry. All the while, backbench groupings manoeuvre — sometimes in the background and at others in the foreground — with one eye, surely, on a potential leadership contest to come. 

Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Twitter here.

Politics.co.uk is the UK’s leading digital-only political website, providing comprehensive coverage of UK politics. Subscribe to our daily newsletter here.

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Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s former chief scientific adviser, accused the Treasury during the pandemic of “pure dogma”, private notes written at the time reveal. 

Questioned at the Covid inquiry yesterday, Sir Patrick said his comments in October 2021 were probably made late at night in “frustration”.

The entry said: “Economic predictions. HMT (the Treasury) saying economy nearly back to normal and Plan B would cost £18 billion. No evidence, no transparency, pure dogma and wrong throughout.”

Questioned on the comments, Sir Patrick said: “I did think there was a lack of transparency on the economic side and it was difficult to know exactly what modelling had been done, and what input there had been to various assertions and comments made.”

This was one of a number of revelations at the Covid Inquiry yesterday as it was also revealed that Sir Patrick described Boris Johnson as “bamboozled” by graphs and data.

The private notes said the ex-PM appeared “broken” as he warned “we are too s*** to get our act together. 

Giving testimony yesterday, Sir Patrick also said it was “highly likely” that the then-chancellor Rishi Sunak‘s Eat Out to Help Out scheme drove up Covid deaths.

He revealed that scientists were not told about the plan to get people back into restaurants before it was announced in August 2020.

Sir Patrick said: “It would have been very obvious to anyone that this would inevitably cause and increase in transmission risk, and I think that would have been obvious to ministers.”

Elsewhere, Sir Patrick’s diary said Rishi Sunak was overheard saying ministers should focus on “handling the scientists, not handling the virus”.

The July 2 2020 entry states: “They then got flustered when the CMO [Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty] chipped in later and they realised he had been there all along. PM [Boris Johnson] blustered and waffled for five mins to cover his embarrassment.”

Sir Patrick also revealed yesterday that he pushed for imposing lockdown in London earlier as Covid was spreading rapidly.

He said that this prompted criticism from then-chancellor Rishi Sunak. 

He said: “I made that point at the meeting. It was discussed, there was a very clear rejection of that proposal. And certainly, I don’t think the chancellor looked terribly pleased at that moment”.

When asked why Sunak was not pleased, Sir Patrick said: “Well, quite rightly, he’s concerned about the economy and London is very much the engine of the economy.”

After Sir Patrick’s testimony yesterday, professor Sir Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, is set to be the latest high-profile figure to reveal his first-hand experience of the Covid pandemic when he gives evidence to the inquiry later today.

Alongside Sir Patrick, Sir Chris became a household name when the pair appeared alongside politicians at the daily Covid news conferences.

As chief medical officer, Sir Chris is responsible for providing public health and clinical advice to the Department of Health and the rest of government.

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Tomorrow’s autumn statement is set to include measures to get hundreds of thousands of people with mobility and mental health problems into work as part of a bid to reduce benefits expenditure.

Under plans to be announced in the autumn statement, to be revealed on Wednesday, these individuals face having their benefits reduced by £4,680 a year.

According to a report in The Times, it is part of a wider government plan to tackle a decline in workforce participation since the Covid pandemic.

In a speech to an audience of local business and community leaders yesterday, Rishi Sunak said the welfare system was not “sustainable”.

Asked about a possible squeeze on welfare payments in the autumn statement, the prime minister said: “Our view on the welfare system is that it should be compassionate, it should be fair and it should be sustainable. …

“With over 2 million people of working age who are not currently working, that isn’t a good situation. It’s not sustainable for the country, for taxpayers. It’s not fair. But it’s also not compassionate to write people off”, he added.

Speaking to Sky News this morning, chief secretary to the Treasury and former work and pensions minister Laura Trott was asked if such a policy was uncaring. 

She replied: “I think that if you can work, as a principle, you should work. And that is what the government believes, that’s been the thrust of all of our policies.

“Of course, there should be support for people to help them into work or to help them with issues that they’re facing. But ultimately there is a duty on citizens that if they are able to go out to work, that’s what they should do.”

Trott said it will be the Department of Work and Pensions who will decide whether someone is fit to work. “You’ve got some brilliant civil servants there who are working very hard to make sure our welfare system is supporting those who need support”, she said.

“But those who can work, can contribute, should contribute. And that is the principle that we must keep throughout all of this.”

In his full comments on plans to overhaul the benefits system in his speech in north London yesterday, Sunak said: “We believe in the inherent dignity of a good job. And we believe that work, not welfare, is the best route out of poverty.

“Yet right now, around two million people of working age are not working at all. That is a national scandal and an enormous waste of human potential. So, we must do more to support those who can work to do so.

“And we will clamp down on welfare fraudsters. Because the system must be fair for the taxpayers who fund it. By doing all of this, by getting people off welfare and into work, we can better support those genuinely in need of a safety net.”

As part of further plans to be announced in the Autumn Statement, welfare claimants who “refuse” to engage with their jobcentre or take work offered to them may lose benefits.

Speaking last Thursday, chancellor Jeremy Hunt said the government wanted to address the “rise in people who aren’t looking for work” to help grow the economy.

“These changes mean there’s help and support for everyone – but for those who refuse it, there are consequences too. Anyone choosing to coast on the hard work of taxpayers will lose their benefits.”

Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, said the government was expanding the help available for people with health conditions and disabilities. “But our message is clear: if you are fit, if you refuse to work, if you are taking taxpayers for a ride – we will take your benefits away.”

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