Vince Cable's speech - Summary and verdict
The Lib Dem leader always struggles to get much of a hearing in British politics. It gets harder when you have just 12 MPs. And if your conference speech coincides with Boris Johnson coming close to the brink of resignation, and President Trump talking about totally destroying North Korea, you’re not going to grab the headlines.
Even with an empty news schedule, Sir Vince Cable’s first speech would not have made it to the top of the bulletins. It contained no significant, newsy announcements, no great personal revelations or stylistic surprises and it did not point the Liberal Democrats in a fresh direction.
But a no-news speech isn’t necessarily a bad speech. There was an inherent seriousness about this that was gratifying, and it was refreshingly free of the slogany guff that usually pollutes party leaders’ speeches. If you are at all interested in the Lib Dems, or centre ground politics, it is worth a read.
Here are the main points.
- Cable said he did not want the Lib Dems to be seen as a single issue party. Although he devoted a large part of his speech to Brexit, and to the Lib Dems’ determination to be seen as “the party of remain”, he also spoke at length about domestic policy and said that he did not want the Lib Dems to be defined purely through the prism of Europe.
We are not a single-issue party … We’re not Ukip in reverse.
- He insisted that the Lib Dems could form a government and that he could prime minister. He first raised this about half way through the speech, saying:
Our party is not just a coalition partner of the past, we are the government of the future.
And my role, as your leader, is to be a credible potential prime minister.
And he finished his speech by saying:
I am ready to take our message out to the country, and I ask you to join me on the journey as we, together, take the Liberal Democrats back to government.
Cable also pointed out that his shadow cabinet contained 10 former ministers, including three former cabinet ministers. By contrast, there were “only two people who have been anywhere near cabinet” in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow ministerial team, he claimed.
When it was put to Lib Dem aides that the idea of Cable forming a government after the last election seemed wholly unrealistic, one said that politics has “speeded up” recently and that at one point the idea of Emmanuel Macron becoming French president would have been equally improbable. Another said:
You can scoff and say it is unlikely. But some pretty unlikely things have happened. And this [Cable] is a guy who has a track record of doing some unlikely things.
- He said that he was appointing the former Lib Dem MP David Howarth to look at the case for replacing tuition fees with a graduate tax. He suggested that the problem for the Lib Dems with the coalition’s decision to raise tuition fees to £9,000 was not so much the policy as the fact that it broke a pre-election promise. (See 3.32pm.) He said the current tuition fee policy already “operates like a tax. But it was not seen as one, he said.
Yet just because the system operates like a tax, we cannot escape the fact it isn’t seen as one …
… the worry about debt does cause students and their families real concern.
Escalating student loan interest rates add to that concern.
And many universities are obsessed with getting bums on seats rather than giving students value for money.
- He floated the idea of giving all young people a learning account to pay for university or training. This could be funded by higher wealth taxes, he suggested.
One idea I want to develop with you – with the party – is finding a way to support all young people in future with an endowment or learning account, which they can use at any stage in life, helping to finance further or higher education, either at the post-18 stage or later in life.
It is a fundamentally liberal idea, handing control to the individual, and I want to explore how it can be sustainably financed through fair taxation of wealth.
Cable did not elaborate on how this might be funded by “fair taxation of wealth”, but he did explore the idea in more detail in a recent speech to the Resolution Foundation on inequality. Here is an extract where he identified loopholes in current wealth taxes. He said:
The present system is a patchwork of different taxes, all flawed in different ways and full of loopholes. Inheritance tax allowances have grown more generous reflecting house price inflation and there is considerable scope for avoidance through gift before death. Capital gains tax too has a plethora of reliefs. Britain has no tax on property values as such and council tax serves as a very unsatisfactory substitute based on ancient property values and not proportional to property or land values. One could add various wealth related charges like stamp duty. Together these taxes raise around £50 bn a year of which half is council tax: representing, overall, half of one percent of household net wealth.
- He called for more public investment, saying “never in British economic history has it been cheaper for a bold, active government to borrow for productive investment”.
- He said he wanted higher taxes for foreigners buying property in the UK for investment, and measures to curb “absentee second home ownership”.
I want to see fierce tax penalties on the acquisition of property for investment purposes, by overseas residents.
And I want to see rural communities protected from the blight of absentee second home ownership, which devastates local economies and pushes young people away from the places where they grew up.
Boris Johnson also floated the idea of raising taxes for foreigners buying property in the UK after Brexit in his Telegraph article last week.
- Cable renewed his call for a referendum on the final Brexit deal. (See 11.25am.)
- He said the Lib Dems had taken the correct stance on “the three great disasters perpetrated by the two main parties in recent years”: the Iraq war, the banking crash and Brexit.
- He claimed a Labour government would be financially irresponsible.
What would a Corbyn government look like?
Their basic appeal is to offer something for nothing. All paid for by someone else.
For them budgeting is just a bourgeois hobby ...
Money and priorities define the crucial difference between us and Labour.
We understand that to govern is to choose. And they don’t.
- He confirmed that the Lib Dems would raise income tax by 1p in the pound to raise £6bn extra for the NHS.
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
Here is my colleague Jessica Elgot’s story about Vince Cable’s speech.
Cable is now winding up.
Only the Liberal Democrats have the ideas, the experience and the commitment to transform the fortunes of our country.
An exit from Brexit.
A grown-up approach to the economy.
And bold ideas to strengthen our society through the 21st century.
I am ready to take our message out to the country …
… and I ask you to join me on the journey as we, together, take the Liberal Democrats ..
… back to government.
I will post a summary soon.
Cable says he knows the value of endurance.
Success is often laced with setback.
I reflect on one of the most difficult periods of my life, when many of you will know that I lost my first wife.
In time, I recovered and I found a new partnership with Rachel.
She has sustained and supported me ever since.
Her energy and dedication to me is the source of my energy and dedication to this party.
And politics has proved an even greater waiting game than life.
I had to wait 30 years from my first campaign to win a seat in Parliament.
I had to wait two years to return, after the setback in 2015.
But now, friends, the time for waiting is over.
Cable says votes at 16 are at the centre of Lib Dem demands for political reform.
And he calls for more diversity in the Lib Dems.
I demonstrated in government a commitment to this issue by working with women in business to achieve a demanding target for women on the boards of top companies.
I am committed to similar ambition in our own party.
We have even further to travel in ensuring that we have proper Black, Asian and Minority representation at all levels.
Cable says Lib Dems to consider replacing tuitions fees with graduate tax
Cable says he will review tuition fee policy, with a view to replacing tuition fees with a graduate tax.
We all know we suffered grievous political harm from making a pledge seven years ago on tuition fees that we couldn’t meet.
The problem hasn’t gone away.
We are faced with a fundamental dilemma. The changes we made in government ensured universities are properly funded.
And it is right that the most highly paid graduates pay most; those who earn least pay nothing at all.
Yet just because the system operates like a tax, we cannot escape the fact it isn’t seen as one …
… the worry about debt does cause students and their families real concern.
Escalating student loan interest rates add to that concern.
And many universities are obsessed with getting bums on seats rather than giving students value for money.
I have therefore launched a review, led by former Cambridge MP David Howarth, which will recommend options for reform, including a graduate tax.
Cable says Lib Dems would protect communities from 'blight of absentee second home ownership'
Cable turns to housing.
Home ownership, which spread wealth for generations, is no longer a realistic prospect for younger people with moderate means.
To put this right, we must end the stranglehold of oligarchs and speculators in our housing market.
I want to see fierce tax penalties on the acquisition of property for investment purposes, by overseas residents.
And I want to see rural communities protected from the blight of absentee second home ownership, which devastates local economies and pushes young people away from the places where they grew up.
Homes are to live in; they’re not pieces on a Monopoly board.
And he says councils should be allowed to borrow to build new council homes.
It is utterly absurd that councils are allowed to borrow to speculate in commercial property …
… but are stopped from borrowing to build affordable council houses.
This triumph of ideological dogma over common sense must stop.
Cable says Conservatives have 'abandoned British business'
Cable says he wants the Lib Dems to be pro-business and pro-enterprise.
The Conservatives have given up on business, he says.
Growing numbers have given up on the Conservative Party, because they know it has abandoned British business.
Their home is now with us.
But the Lib Dems also believe in challenging market power, he says.
It’s not a coincidence that the only body strong enough to stand up to Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Facebook is the European Commission.
Does anybody seriously believe that a post-Brexit British government will doanything other than roll over when the big boys in come looking for favours or dodging taxes at will?
Cable says Britain needs more public investment.
This country needs a massive injection of public investment.
… in the railway network – across the north of England and the Midlands to Wales and the South West.
… and in broadband.
… and in housing.
Every pound spent building modern Britain will be returned many times over.
Never in British economic history has it been cheaper for a bold, active government to borrow for productive investment, alongside the private sector.
Cable floats prospect of raising wealth taxes to fund learning accounts for all young people
Cable says Britain needs to do more for the 60% of young people who do not go to university.
I hope you will indulge me if I explain a bit of family history which shows why I care passionately about this subject.
My own parents left school at 15 to work in factories in York.
My father went to night school and qualified to teach building trades at a further education college.
He and I fell out over his right-wing politics but I never lost my admiration for his life’s work with skilled workers, technicians, craftsmen; people that we now desperately lack.
He floats the idea of giving all young people a learning account, funded by wealth taxes.
One idea I want to develop with you – with the party – is finding a way to support all young people in future with an endowment or learning account, which they can use at any stage in life ….
… helping to finance further or higher education, either at the post-18 stage or later in life.
It is a fundamentally liberal idea, handing control to the individual, and I want to explore how it can be sustainably financed through fair taxation of wealth.
Under my leadership, our party will be the champions of lifelong learning, giving everyone a chance of self-improvement and employment at every stage in life.
Cable highlights what he thinks Britain needs.
While France is modernising, Britain is lurching down a nostalgic cul-de-sac of Brexit.
And Britain’s strengths – and there are real, considerable strengths, its openness to trade, people, ideas, its world class universities and inventiveness.
These things are being put at risk.
What the country needs …
more investment;
more innovation;
more training and retraining;
more patient, long term capital;
the renaissance of manufacturing
and the nurturing of creative industries;
the greening of the economy.
To achieve these things requires overcoming the petty tribalism and short termism which are the bane of British politics.
Cable says he wants Lib Dems to be 'a workshop for new ideas'
Cable says the Lib Dems understand that “go govern is to choose”.
He reaffirms their commitment to increasing income tax by 1p in the pound to raise £6bn for the NHS.
And he says the Lib Dems offer “hope and realism”.
In a Britain increasingly dominated by extremists and ideologues, I want us to fill the huge gap in the centre of British politics.
Liberal Democrats have always grappled with the big challenges facing our country and our world.
I am determined that, to meet them, our party will once again become a workshop for new ideas.
Cable says Labour’s basic appeal “is to offer something for nothing”.
What would a Corbyn government look like?
Their basic appeal is to offer something for nothing. All paid for by someone else.
For them budgeting is just a bourgeois hobby.
I first encountered this politics of free things as a young Treasury official in Kenya.
President Kenyatta – the father – faced defeat in an election against an opposition offering lots of freebies: free food, free land, free cows, free cars.
He turned to my department for help.
We came up with a winning slogan – Hapana Chakula Kabisa.
Roughly translated it meant: there is no such thing as a free lunch.
(Unless of course it is a Lib Dem free school lunch!)
Cable says the Lib Dems have more experience than Jeremy Corbyn’s team.
I do have one great advantage over Jeremy Corbyn.
I have a great team: our shadow cabinet has 10 former ministers, 3 of whom served in cabinet.
And I’m proud that one of them is now our superb deputy leader, Jo Swinson.
My team has been bloodied in the difficult business of government.
By contrast, in a parliamentary party of 262 MPs, Jeremy Corbyn can find only two people who have been anywhere near cabinet, to serve in his alternative administration.
Cable says Lib Dems are 'government of the future'
Cable says the Lib Dems are a government of the future.
So yes, I want our party to lead the fight against Brexit.
But we should not be consumed by Brexit to the exclusion of everything else.
We are not a single-issue party … we’re not Ukip in reverse.
I see our future as a party of government.
Our party is not just a coalition partner of the past, we are the government of the future.
And my role, as your leader, is to be a credible potential prime minister.
Cable says Lib Dems want 'a first referendum on the facts'
At the Lib Dem conference Cable insists that the Lib Dem call for a second referendum isn’t actually a call for a second referendum.
This is not a call for a re-run.
This is not a call for a second referendum on Brexit.
This is a call for a first referendum on the facts.
When we know what Brexit means, the people should get the choice.
He says that, as a grandparent, he worries what impact will have. And he gets to the best joke of the speech so far.
Now I recognise that the true believers in Brexit are honest enough to admit that it will make us poorer ….
… There is another word for that: masochism.
It isn’t illegal. I am told some people pay good money to indulge in it.
But unlike masochists, the Brexit ideologues usually envisage someone else bearing the pain.
And that pain will mainly be felt by young people who overwhelmingly voted to remain.
Boris Johnson has been tweeting. But even an expert Johnsonologist would be hard pressed to infer much about his intentions from this.
Great to catch up with my Japanese counterpart Minister Kono to discuss North Korea and opportunities for even more trade in the future 🇬🇧🇯🇵 pic.twitter.com/cfpTmOGPFS
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) September 19, 2017
Back in Bournemouth Cable says it is “an outrage” that President Trump has been invited to the UK on a state visit.
And he turns to Labour.
Today’s Labour Party isn’t into problem solving; let alone governing.
Jeremy Corbyn’s acolytes are focused on how to maximise the contradictions of capitalism.
You don’t qualify for the Labour Shadow Cabinet these days unless you have studied the Venezuelan guide on how to bankrupt a rich economy.
It’s no wonder they backed Brexit.
It’s no wonder they lined up behind Theresa May, maximising the chances of chaos and disruption.
Then a few weeks ago the moderates briefly penetrated the Corbyn bunker.
They persuaded him that collaborating quite so closely with the class enemy didn’t look too good.
So, they’ve got a new policy: which is to stay in the single market and customs union …… possibly; or to leave …… maybe.
Or maybe to stay in for a bit, and then leave.
I am being kind here: I am trying to understand what they are trying to say.
I think the current line is … we should transition to the transition gradually while we prepare for a post transition world.
Turning to Theresa May, he says she should take the issue of EU nationals out of the Brexit negotiations. Using them as a bargaining chips is “not only morally wrong but utterly counter-productive”, he says.
Ladbrokes say many people have been betting on Boris Johnson resigning. They are now offering odds of 11/4 on Johnson being sacked or resigning by Monday.
Cable says, when the Lib Dems joined the coalition in 2010, they did so in the national interest.
He pays tribute to Nick Clegg, sending his best wishes in the light of Clegg son’s needing treatment for cancer and saying that “just as parliament now misses [Clegg’s] voice, history will vindicate his judgement.”
He is now talking about Brexit, using the passages briefed overnight. See 11.25am.
Vince Cable's speech
Sir Vince Cable, the Lib Dem leader, is speaking now.
He starts with a tribute to his predecessor, Tim Farron.
He hands over a Party, which is larger, stronger and more diverse than the one he inherited.
He stood up for refugees whose plight the government had shamefully ignored.
He established our very clear identity as the only real, undiluted pro-European party.
And Cable says only people who don’t know the Lib Dems can say they are irrelevant.
People who say they don’t know what we stand for, or that we are irrelevant.
Anyone who doubts the relevance of the Liberal Democrats should reflect on the three great disasters perpetrated by the two main parties in recent years: the war in Iraq; the banking crisis; now Brexit.
Rachel Johnson, Boris’s sister, is attending the Lib Dem conference. But she has no idea what her brother is up to either, the Sun’s Matt Dathan reports.
Rachel Johnson tells us she has "no idea" if her brother Boris is going to quit the Cabinet #LibDemConf
— Matt Dathan (@matt_dathan) September 19, 2017
At the Lib Dem conference they have holding a fund raising appeal before Sir Vince Cable speaks.
Before Vince Cable's speech, it's traditional at Lib Dem conference for them to literally hand round a bucket for cash pic.twitter.com/DlpU6RmVGt
— Jessica Elgot (@jessicaelgot) September 19, 2017
While in London Labour’s national executive committee is passing the new Labour leadership rules, Channel 4 News’s Michael Crick reports.
"This is historic!!!!" Labour NEC member tells me. It seems NEC about to agree new leadership rules, quite possibly unanimously
— Michael Crick (@MichaelLCrick) September 19, 2017
The NEC has also been discussing plans to increase its size. LabourList’s Emma Bean says there are fears this could hit the NEC’s gender balance.
Here is my colleague Owen Jones’ take on Boris Johnson’s antics.
And this is how it starts.
A Stephen King film set to the Benny Hill theme tune: that’s Britain’s current political plight. It feels like a horror show without end yet it is simultaneously preposterous and absurd. For the last two years, Britain has been held hostage by the Tories’ disastrous scheming, plotting and manoeuvring: the EU referendum campaign, the chaotic aftermath, the snap general election. Boris Johnson – and goodness knows what we all did in a past life to deserve him – opportunistically backed Brexit as a career move. Despite his demonstrable buffoonery, he is astute enough to realise that Tory Brexit is spiralling into disaster. He risks going down in the history books as one of the principal architects of a national catastrophe. So now he plots and schemes, helping to plunge an already politically crippled Tory administration into further turmoil as Britain navigates through its postwar greatest crisis.
Scottish and Welsh government propose joint amendments to EU withdrawal bill
The first ministers of Scotland and Wales have written to Theresa May calling on her to work with – not against – the devolved nations.
As they published joint amendments to the UK government’s EU withdrawal bill, Nicola Sturgeon and Carwyn Jones acknowledged their shared responsibility to work together across the United Kingdom to prepare for Brexit. But they said substantial amendments were needed before they could recommend the bill to the Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly
In the letter to May the two leaders said:
The Scottish and Welsh governments recognise our responsibility to prepare our laws for the upheaval of EU withdrawal.
The governments of these islands have much work to do to ensure that stability and continuity can be achieved on exit day, and all governments will have to work together if that is to be done most effectively.
So we stand ready to work in a cooperative and coordinated way with others to prepare for Brexit. But the approach of the UK government to devolution in the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill is preventing this essential cooperation and coordination.”
We want a European Union (Withdrawal) Bill that can be made to work with, not against, devolution. The current bill will need to be substantially amended for us to be able to recommend to our respective legislatures that they give their consent to it.
My colleague Ian Prior is sceptical of the claim (see 1.59am) that the Telegraph’s Boris Johnson resignation story was briefed by Johnson’s enemies.
We are kindly asked to believe that the Telegraph, Boris's personal bullhorn, is running lies briefed by 'enemies' https://t.co/gKRh7D9q4l
— Ian Prior (@ianprior) September 19, 2017
Updated
Mike Russell, the Scottish government’s Brexit minister, has said the UK ministers want to centralise EU powers over railway ownership, GM foods, pesticides regulation, sharing criminal data, protected food names, state aid, EU citizens voting rights and fracking.
In a bid to substantiate the Scottish and Welsh governments’ accusations of a Brexit “power grab” by Westminster, Russell said these were on a list of 111 “important policy areas” currently controlled by the European Commission which directly affect Scotland’s devolved powers.
He published a summary of those powers as Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, and her Welsh counterpart Carwyn Jones, released a full set of amendments they say must be included in the UK government’s EU withdrawal bill before their devolved parliaments will support the bill.
Because the two governments’ devolved powers are different, and devolution less advanced in Wales, the Welsh “power grab” list will be shorter.
However, both governments insist all EU powers over devolved competencies should first be repatriated directly to Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. But in clause 11 of the EU withdrawal bill, the UK government states many new powers will devolved but only after they first return to Westminster.
Russell is about to start talks with the Scottish Tories about striking a deal on the amendments and powers, so struck a conciliatory tone.
But he said in a letter to MSPs at Holyrood:
The restrictions in clause 11 of the bill apply to many areas of Scottish devolved responsibility vital to the success of our country, such as agriculture, the environment, fisheries, forestry, research, or justice co-operation.
The restrictions have the effect that the Scottish parliament would have no say over what is done with these important policy areas after EU withdrawal.
Russell acknowledges many EU powers will need to be shared at UK level in joint frameworks: Scotland’s farmers, food industry leaders and businesses also want UK level laws over devolved competencies. The Scottish government is likely to give way on many topics in that list of 111 but will battle hard over others, such as fracking, GMOs, rail franchises, EU citizens voting – because that could affect voting rights in a future Scottish independence referendum, and economic investment.
Boris Johnson was for many years a journalist and prize columnist at the Daily Telegraph, and so when it publishes a story about his private intentions on the resignation front (see 1.22pm), it is worth taking it seriously.
But Johnson also has a close association with the Spectator, of which he used to be editor. And James Forsyth, the Spectator’s political editor, is saying on Twitter that he is being told by Johnson’s friends that the Telegraph story about Johnson possibly resigning this weekend is being spread by his enemies.
Friends of Boris rushing to say that talk of him resigning this weekend is being spread by his enemies. The plot thickens again...
— James Forsyth (@JGForsyth) September 19, 2017
Updated
Labour’s most powerful governing body will be asked to agree to sweeping reforms when it meets this afternoon ahead of the party’s conference, with the aim of handing significantly more power to the membership, my colleague Jessica Elgot reports.
Boris Johnson dismisses reports he is going to resign
And this is what the Press Association has filed about Boris Johnson’s comments.
Boris Johnson has denied the cabinet is split over Brexit, insisting “we are a nest of singing birds”.
Johnson dismissed suggestions he might resign his post as foreign secretary over differences with Theresa May over the kings of Brexit deal the UK should strike.
His comments come after days of speculation about rifts at the top of government sparked by his publication of his personal blueprint for Brexit.
The foreign secretary spoke to TV cameras in New York after bumping into them at a hotel lift as he returned from a jog.
Johnson is due to see the prime minister for the first time since his Telegraph article as the pair attend the United Nations general assembly.
Asked if there was a cabinet split on Europe, Johnson said: “No, we are a government working together, we are a nest of singing birds.”
And asked directly if he would resign, he replied: “No.”
Johnson said: “We are working together, that is the key thing, to make sure that Britain can take advantage of the opportunities of Brexit.”
Boris Johnson has also been speaking publicly to reporters in New York. The message they have been getting is slightly different.
These are from ITV’s Robert Peston.
We bumped into Boris in lobby. Insists not resigning
— Robert Peston (@Peston) September 19, 2017
But Boris says he has still not spoken with May, though they are in same hotel
— Robert Peston (@Peston) September 19, 2017
Boris: sweating but not quitting. "We must take advantage of opportunities that Brexit presents" pic.twitter.com/LULqOdwCzi
— Robert Peston (@Peston) September 19, 2017
Boris: "you are not still going on about that article". Ha!
— Robert Peston (@Peston) September 19, 2017
And this is from Sky’s Beth Rigby.
BREAK just bumped into sweating BorisJohnson at lift - he'd just run four miles). Says he's won't resign & cabinet a "nest of singing birds"
— Beth Rigby (@BethRigby) September 19, 2017
Boris Johnson “will resign as foreign secretary before the weekend if Theresa May veers towards a “Swiss-style” arrangement with the EU in her Brexit speech in Florence”, Gordon Rayner is reporting in the Telegraph (paywall).
Rayner says the red line for Johnson would be May agreeing for the UK to make payments to the EU permanently in return for access to the single market. The Telegraph characterises this as a “Swiss-style ‘EEA minus’ option”. Switzerland is not in the EEA (European Economic Area), but it is in Efta (the European Free Trade Association).
Rayner also says Johnson wants any transition period to end by December 2020 (ie, to last less than two years) and insists that the UK should only agree to pay money to the EU during the transition in return for an assurance that there will be a free trade agreement.
In his speech to the Lib Dem conference Norman Lamb, the party’s health spokesman, proposed cutting business rates for firms that take steps to improve the health of their workers. He told party members:
Let’s set a ten year plan to get employers really focused on the health and wellbeing of their workforce.
As part of my work chairing a commission on mental health in the West Midlands, I’ve proposed a ‘wellbeing premium’ - a temporary discount on your business rates if you take tangible steps to improve wellbeing at work. The evidence is there of what works. So let’s do it.
Neil McEvoy, a Plaid Cymru AM (assembly member), has been suspended from the Plaid group in the Welsh assembly, the BBC reports. It is partly because he criticised Plaid’s decision to back a Welsh government move to stop “right-to-buy”, the policy allowing tenants to buy their council house.
Number of zero-hours contracts falls
The number of zero-hours contracts has fallen by 300,000 over the past year, the Press Association reports. It says:
A survey of businesses in May showed there were 1.4m contracts that did not guarantee a minimum number of hours, down from 1.7m, although the share of total contracts remained unchanged at 5%.
The Office for National Statistics said people on zero-hours contracts were likely to be young, part time, female or in full-time education.
Other data found that the number of workers employed on zero-hours contracts in their main job in the three months to June fell by 20,000 to 883,000 compared to the same period a year ago.
Commenting on the figures, Frances O’Grady, the TUC general secretary, said:
While it’s good that some employers have ditched them as a result of union campaigning, let’s not pretend that life at the sharp end has become easier overnight.
One in 10 UK workers remain in insecure jobs. The spread of low-paid self-employment, agency work and short-hours contracts mean millions are struggling to get by.
The Government cannot afford to take its eye off the ball. We need more decent jobs in the parts of the country that need them most.
And Daniel Tomlinson, policy analyst at the Resolution Foundation thinktank, said:
Today’s figures provide further evidence that the use of zero-hours contracts is declining in the UK.
This decline fits with a wider move away from atypical work by many companies, as agency work and self-employment have also stopped growing, and almost all of the employment growth over the past 12 months is from increases in the number of full-time employees.
A stronger labour market delivering better job security is good news, but levels of insecure work are still unacceptably high.
The increase in full-time jobs has also yet to translate into higher pay. Average weekly earnings remain 16 a week below the pre-crisis peak in 2008, so there is still a way to go before we have a labour market that works for all workers.
Vince Cable's conference speech - Extracts
The Lib Dems released some extracts from Sir Vince Cable’s conference speech overnight. My colleague Jessica Elgot wrote it up overnight. But are some more quotes.
- Cable will launch a withering attack on the government’s handling of Brexit, saying decisions are being taken by people who “live in a world of infantile fairy tales”.
A disaster looms. Brexit. The product of a fraudulent and frivolous campaign led by two groups of silly public school boys living their dormitory pillow fights.
And now, thanks to Boris Johnson, they have degenerated into a full-scale school riot with the head teacher hiding, barricaded in her office.
In the real world, we have yet to experience the full impact of leaving Europe. But we have a taste of what is to come in the fall of the value of the pound.
Foreign exchange dealers are not point scoring politicians. Their cold, hard, unsentimental judgement has been, quite simply, that Brexit Britain will be poorer and weaker after Brexit than if we had decided to stay in Europe.
Brexit was described by the Brexit secretary himself as an operation of such technical complexity that it makes the moon landing look simple.
It is a pity that the Brexit landing is being managed by people who would struggle to get their heads around a toddlers’ Lego set. They live in a world of infantile fairy tales.
- He will accuse Labour of not having a clear Brexit policy.
So, they have a new policy: to stay in the Single market and Customs Union, possibly; or to leave, maybe. Or maybe to stay in for a bit, and then leave.
I am trying to be kind here: I am trying to understand what they are trying to say. I think the current line is, we should transition to the transition gradually while we prepare for a post-transition world.
This is what they mean by the smack of firm leadership on the biggest issue of the day.
But if Jeremy Corbyn sits on the fence any longer, he is in danger of being sliced up the middle by the serrated edge.
He would do better to get off the fence and refurbish his revolutionary credentials. Jeremy – join us in the Anti Brexit People’s Liberation Front!
- He will say the Lib Dems want to work with “sensible grown-ups” in other parties to minimise the impact of Brexit.
What the people want. What the country now desperately needs is some political adults.
That’s you. That’s us.
Fortunately, we are not alone. There are sensible grown-ups in the Conservative party and the Labour party and the Greens. And beyond them are millions of people deeply worried about what is happening.
We have to put aside tribal differences and work alongside like-minded people to keep the single market and customs union, essential for trade and jobs.
- He will renew his call for a referendum on the final Brexit deal.
At the end of these tortuous divorce negotiations, the British public must be given a vote on the outcome.
Let me be clear. This is not a call for a re-run – a second referendum – on Brexit.
It is a call for a first referendum on the facts: when we know what Brexit means. We know that our call will, of course, be resented by the Brexit fundamentalists.
We will be denounced as traitors and saboteurs. I’m half prepared for a spell in a cell with supreme court judges, Gina Miller, Ken Clarke, and the governors of the BBC.
But if the definition of sabotage is fighting to protect British jobs, public services, the environment and civil liberties, then I am a proud saboteur.
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The Lib Dem conference has been relatively low key. With just 12 MPs, the party would be struggling to make news even in a quiet political period. And the last few days have been anything but quiet ...
But Lib Dem conference traditions endure. Last night they staged their regular Glee Club, devoted to singing satirical songs (often self-directed) and there was a new addition to the songbook, Guide Me, O Thou Great Theresa, sung to the tune of Cwm Rhondda. Here’s an excerpt.
Guide Me, O thou great Theresa
Pilgrim through this Brexit land;
I am weak, but thou are mighty,
Hold me with thy powerful hand;
Strong and stable, strong and stable,
Strong and stable was the call:
Strong and stable was the call ...
But you’ll tax my poorly granny,
And take the children’s lunch away;
Don’t show up for the debates
What a shambles, your campaign
Weak and wobbly, weak and wobbly
You’re not stable any more
You’re not stable any more.
The Lib Dems are calling for Boris Johnson to be sacked. Referring to the IFS rebuttal in the Times (see 9.30am), Tom Brake, the Lib Dem Brexit spokesman, said:
This analysis demolishes Boris Johnson’s £350m lie.
His position is completely at odds with the government’s own official forecasts, which show Brexit will mean less money for public services like the NHS.
Is Boris really proposing to strip farmers, scientists and UK regions of all their current funding?
Theresa May must sack him now for contradicting the government and peddling blatant mistruths.
With the cabinet’s Brexit negotiations reaching a crunch point this week, here are some of the key Tory Brexit stories and articles from the papers and the web this morning.
The foreign secretary has told friends that it’s vital the government prepares to walk away from the stalled talks as the EU will not give the UK any big concessions.
Boris told one close friend recently that “nobody ever beats the EU in a negotiation”, and the Brussels elite will again succeed in grinding down the PM and force her to accept bad terms.
The senior Tory’s thinking explains why he is pushing Mrs May to keep to a hard line in talks and not give away big sums of money or agree to trade restrictions ...
A close confidante of Boris’s added: “He always makes a point of saying ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ because he thinks it will be what we have to do.
“They want to punish us, that has always been Boris’s view, and that has now come abundantly clear from the negotiations so far.”
Amid a deepening Cabinet row over strategy, the Foreign Secretary repeated his concerns about the dangers of being dragged into a long transitional deal.
Friends said he was also concerned that Remainers in the Cabinet might wreck Brexit by keeping Britain in the single market in the long term ...
Asked in New York he was planning to quit, the Foreign Secretary initially said: ‘I think you may be barking up the wrong tree.’
But he later added: ‘When the burden of office is lifted from my shoulders I will of course look back with great pride on my time doing all sorts of things.’
Mr Johnson’s father Stanley also suggested his son was unhappy with the Government’s position on Brexit ahead of a major speech by Mrs May.
‘This is so important,’ he said. ‘I would have thought he would be happy, happy to walk away from the whole thing.’ Downing Street has apparently put Mr Johnson on ‘resignation watch’ amid fears he may walk out.
- Francis Elliott and Sam Coates in the Times (paywall) say May has “summoned ministers to a special cabinet meeting at which she will seek to bind Boris Johnson to her vision of Brexit on the eve of a key speech this week.” It is reportedly scheduled for Thursday.
In an interview with HuffPost European editors, Clemens Fuest said that British GDP would be up to 4% lower in 2027 than it would have been if the UK had stayed in the European Union.
Fuest, president of the highly-respected Ifo Institute for Economic Research, stressed that Brexit “will not be a catastrophe for the UK” because lower growth will be offset by a devalued pound, boosting exports ...
“I hope for a status of permanent transition that could look like ‘Norway plus’ [with the UK outside the EU but in the single market]. That would be my preference: that state of transition would be forever,” Fuest said.
In her speech in Florence on Friday, the prime minister is supposed to be unveiling her route map but even now, Whitehall sources say, the text is being rewritten and recalibrated as a weak and incompetent leader tries to balance the competing forces around her. Although she is said to be finally consulting colleagues, if it feels like anarchy it’s because there is no agreement ...
Crucially, and potentially catastrophically for the prime minister, the government’s position on Brexit has still not been agreed by senior ministers. In fact, there has been no substantive cabinet discussion on our future relationship with the EU, nor any agreement around the top table about the trade-offs that should be made between access to the single market and immigration controls. That is not only astonishing but outrageous.
As well as seeking to sideline parliament, Mrs May is also trying to bypass cabinet because she knows she is too weak to assert her authority over it. One ally of the prime minister says of Mr Johnson’s intervention: “Theresa would prefer ministers to air their differences in private.” The reality is they haven’t had a chance.
We must not sleepwalk into some Remoaner-friendly compromise, some pseudo-membership keeping us shackled to EU rules and court judgements.
We need a separate EU free trade deal and complete freedom to make others worldwide, like the one Canadian PM Justin Trudeau talked up yesterday.
We should walk out on anything less and take our chances. The EU has more to lose if talks collapse.
Hague and Clarke back Labour's policy on Brexit transition
In his Telegraph column (paywall) William Hague, like Ken Clarke (see 9.09am), said the UK should stay in the single market and the customs union during the Brexit transition. This is Labour party policy.
Being diplomatic, Hague says Boris Johnson is right to be optimistic about Brexit.
On what basis, then, can differences over the nature of Brexit – the transition, the bill, the immigration controls – be settled? I suggest the answer is what we might call “upbeat realism”: positive and enthusiastic about the future of the UK but realistic about the formidable difficulty of leaving the EU without damage.
The instinct of Boris that the world needs to hear the upbeat message about Britain is correct, because far too many people abroad are now assuming that we are in some rather pitiable and paralysed state.
But then Hague calls for a two-year transition, involving continued membership of the single market and the customs union, ongoing payments to the EU and the acceptance of free movement. This is where he and Johnson part company. Hague says:
It is complete common sense that [businesses] need time to adapt and, as the CBI and others have pointed out, only one upheaval rather than two. Having a big change in customs, tariffs and regulations to enter a transition phase and then another one perhaps two years later is a nightmare if you are importing or exporting.
The lesson of this is that it is very much worth going for a simple deal with the EU, with a couple of years when we stay in the single market and customs union and then have enough time to settle a good free trade deal.
Doesn’t that involve still paying into the EU? Yes, but doing so would partly end the argument over money. Wouldn’t we be unable to restrict immigration in that time? True, but it turns out that net migration from EU countries has already fallen to about zero in recent months.
Brexit likely to generate 'net fiscal loss', not £350m per week extra for NHS, says IFS
In his Telegraph article Boris Johnson claimed that “we will take back control of roughly £350 million per week” after Brexit and that it would be a “fine thing” if a lot of that money went to Brexit. The UK Statistics Authority said that this misleading and that Johnson was guilty of a “clear misuse of official statistics”. Johnson disputed this. I covered their dispute, and the arguments behind it, at length on the blog yesterday. (See here, here and here for example.)
But, on matters of public finance, it is customary in Westminster/media circles to defer to the judgment of the Institute of Fiscal Studies. And the IFS has now pronounced, in a letter to the Times (paywall). It says that, far from Brexit saving the taxpayer £350m per week, the taxpayer is more likely to lose money from it overall, because of the impact Brexit will have on growth.
It also points out that this is the official government position, because the government has accepted this analysis in the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast.
Here is the letter, from the IFS’s deputy director Carl Emmerson.
The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts the outlook for the UK economy and the public finances; these forecasts have been adopted by the chancellor as the government’s own. They contain an allowance of almost £250m per week — not £350m — for funding that could in principle go to the NHS rather than the EU. But this would involve no state support for any other activities, such as subsidies for agriculture, that are at present funded in the UK by the EU.
The bigger picture is that the forecast health of the public finances was downgraded by £15bn per year — or almost £300m per week — as a direct result of the Brexit vote. Not only will we not regain control of £350m weekly as a result of Brexit, we are likely to make a net fiscal loss from it. Those are the numbers and forecasts which the government has adopted. It is perhaps surprising that members of the government are suggesting rather different figures.
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Ken Clarke's Today interview - Summary
Here is a full summary of the best lines from Ken Clarke’s interview on Today.
- Clarke, the Conservative former chancellor, said that Boris Johnson deserved to be sacked for his Brexit disloyalty. He said Johnson’s Telegraph article on Brexit policy was an “irrelevant nuisance” and that the claim he made about Brexit making an extra £350m available for the NHS was “simplistic and dishonest”. If Johnson had concerns about policy, he should have raised them with Theresa May in private, Clarke said. He said that Johnson deserved to be sacked, but that May was too weak to do this. (See 8.33am.)
When you’re foreign secretary, you’re a leading member of a government. The foreign policy you propound is the policy of the government, which you’ve agreed with your colleagues. It’s the only sensible, grownup way to run a government.
- Clarke said that urging people to be optimistic about Brexit, which was one of the main themes of Johnson’s article, was “not a policy”.
All this ‘if you jump of the cliff and spread out your arms, you’ll find you’re flying up to the broad blue yonder’, that’s not a policy.
- Clarke said he agreed with William Hague’s argument (see 8.33am) that, if the Tories could not unite around a Brexit policy, Labour would end up in power. “That’s obvious common sense,” he said. And he said EU countries were also concerned about the lack of leadership coming from the government.
And actually that is how we are perceived by our continental neighbours at the moment. Things have really stalled because we have lots of friends, inside the European Union and across the world, who cannot understand what we think we are doing.
- He particularly criticised Johnson for making his Brexit arguments in the Daily Telegraph, “the most Eurosceptic paper you can think of that is read by most of the people who’ve got a vote in the leadership election.” (But Johnson was a Telegraph journalist and then columnist for many years, making that an obvious place for him to place his article.)
- Clarke said the Brexit transition would have to be long.
It will need a long transitional period to sort out the details. The idea that it will all be done overnight is just nonsense.
This is one of the key areas of disagreement in the Conservative party. Yesterday Johnson said it was “pretty important” that the transition was “not too long”.
- Clarke said the UK should stay in the EU single market and the customs union during the transition. This is Labour party policy. Government policy is to leave the single market and the customs union when the UK leaves the EU, although Philip Hammond, the chancellor, and David Davis, the Brexit secretary, have both said they want to preserve something very similar to single market and customs union membership during the transition. See here (Hammond) and here (Davis).
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Boris Johnson deserves to be sacked for his Brexit disloyalty, says Ken Clarke
Yesterday Theresa May sought to assert her authority over Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary who used a lengthy and surprise essay in the Daily Telegraph on Saturday to try to constrain her options on Brexit, by asserting that she was in charge.
This morning Ken Clarke, the former chancellor and leading Conservative pro-European, was much more blunt. Describing Johnson’s intervention as an “irrelevant nuisance” and “dishonest”, he said that Johnson would have been sacked for what he did, if it were not for the fact that May was in such a weak position. He told the Today programme:
Personal publicity and campaigning by the foreign secretary is actually just an irrelevant nuisance. I think people have already said quite enough about somebody who is the foreign secretary just joining in a few days before and repeating one of the more simplistic and dishonest arguments of the hardline leavers during the referendum campaign ...
They should tell him that if he wants to be foreign secretary, he should actually make some more serious contributions on wider foreign policy, give his views on the Brexit deal privately, as ministers have always been supposed to do, and remember that there [is] what is called collective responsibility. Sounding off personally in this way is totally unhelpful, and he should not exploit the fact that [Theresa May] has not got a majority in parliament and he knows perfectly well that, although normally a foreign secretary would be sacked for doing that, she unfortunately after the general election is not in a position to sack him. But he should stop exploiting it ...
In any normal circumstances, he would have been sacked the day after.
Clarke’s intervention came after another Tory grandee, the former Tory leader and former foreign secretary William Hague, used his Telegraph column (paywall) to say that, if the party could not unite and agree a Brexit strategy, they would hand power to Labour. Hague said:
More bluntly, it is now 15 months since the referendum, and high time that all members of the government were able to express themselves on this subject in the same way as each other, putting forward the same points, as part of an agreed plan.
Hopefully, that happy circumstance will follow the speech the prime minister is due to give on the subject in Florence on Friday.
If not, there will be no point Conservatives discussing who is going to be the foreign secretary, chancellor or prime minister in the coming years, because Jeremy Corbyn will be prime minister, sitting in Number 10 with John McDonnell and Diane Abbott, completely ruining this country.
I’m in Bournemouth today for the final day of the Lib Dem conference, where Sir Vince Cable will be delivering his first conference speech as leader. My colleague Jessica Elgot previewed it overnight.
Cable is going to tell the Lib Dems that “what the country desperately needs is some political adults” taking charge of Brexit. It sounds like Clarke and Hague may be cheering him on ...
Here is the agenda for the day.
9am: The Lib Dem conference opens. The morning includes debates on Euratom, small businesses, gun and knife crime and a speech from Norman Lamb, the health spokesman. Sir Vince Cable, the party leader, will wrap up the conference with a speech after 2pm.
Theresa May is in New York, where she has meetings at the United Nations. And Labour’s national executive committee is meeting, and expected to agree proposed new rules for the election of a party leader.
As usual, I will be covering breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I plan to post a summary at lunchtime and another after the Cable speech.
You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here.
Here is the Politico Europe round-up of this morning’s political news from Jack Blanchard’s Playbook. And here is the PoliticsHome list of today’s top 10 must reads.
If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
I try to monitor the comments BTL but normally I find it impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer direct questions, although sometimes I miss them or don’t have time.
If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter.
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