Summary
I’m sorry that blogging has been a bit intermittent here today. I have been contributing to our Paris attacks blog, and we have been posting all the UK political reaction to Paris there.
But here is a summary of non-Paris stories.
- Harriet Harman, the former Labour deputy leader, has said that Jeremy Corbyn’s wing of the party has not taken women’s rights seriously in the past. Speaking at a Where are the Women event hosted by Lucy Cavendish College Cambridge, she said:
It is very difficult to be a party arguing for women’s advance when your top swathe is men.
I think that the strand of the left that Jeremy comes from has never been a gender motivated part of the left. It comes from a time in a way when gender was a new insurgency that arrived later on and was seen as a bit of a distraction from the proper left right struggle.
She also said Labour should create an additional deputy leader to represent women.
Jeremy needs to think about how [his appointments have] been perceived and there is a very easy way to solve that, which is that we can have an additional deputy who is elected either by all women in the party or all men and women in the party, but who is elected to be the additional deputy who is a woman.
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
Talks in Northern Ireland aimed at resolving the ongoing dispute between Sinn Fein and unionists in the Assembly could result in a settlement this week, the Press Association reports.
Northern Ireland’s leaders have vowed to push for the most comprehensive deal possible amid uncertainty about the breadth of an anticipated agreement to save power-sharing at Stormont.
As First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness expressed optimism a widespread settlement could still be achieved in the coming days, Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers warned local politicians: “It’s make your mind up time.”
While there is expectation some form of deal to stabilise the crisis-hit coalition executive will be announced this week, there is doubt whether it will incorporate measures to deal with the toxic legacy of the Troubles.
The uncertainty is due to an on-going impasse involving Sinn Fein and the UK government over the prospect of some official documents not being disclosed, on national security grounds, to new truth recovery bodies.
Other disputes that have rocked Stormont, including an acute budgetary crisis linked to non-implementation of welfare reforms and the fallout from an IRA murder linked to the Provisional IRA, are set to be addressed in whatever settlement emerges.
As the talks process in Belfast involving the five main Stormont parties and the British and Irish governments entered its tenth week, McGuinness said the next day or two would be “critical”.
“I think I fully expect that there will be an agreement, hopefully a comprehensive agreement, before the middle of this week,” he said.
Most of the lobby briefing was taken up with questions about Paris. There is a summary here, on our Paris attacks live blog.
But there were two other non-Paris lines worth mentioning.
- Number 10 rejected Boris Johnson’s call for the government to give parliament an emergency veto over EU legislation. (See 9.43am.) Asked if David Cameron agreed with this proposal, the prime minister’s spokesman said bluntly: “That’s not part of our negotiation plan.”
- Downing Street played down suggestions that the Paris attacks, and the need for EU leaders to deal with it, could delay progress on Cameron’s EU renegotiation. Asked if Cameron was worried about this, the spokesman said:
The prime minister has set out the timetable, but ultimately we have always said we would do this by substance rather than by schedule. We are looking to have this discussed at the December [European] Council.
- The spokesman said Cameron retained “full confidence” in Robert Halfon, the Cabinet Office minister who has admitted to having an affair.
Updated
Here are two of the non-Paris politics stories from today’s papers.
Labour is to launch its pro-EU referendum campaign in the West Midlands this week, after Jeremy Corbyn’s party tried and failed to persuade a big company to host the event.
Senior Labour MPs had approached leading British companies to provide the backdrop to the launch of “Labour in for Britain”, a campaign to be headed by Alan Johnson, former home secretary.
But corporate leaders declined and one Labour MP admitted: “We couldn’t find anyone willing to do it.” Another said: “Companies are genuinely reluctant to host party political events.”
A chill has descended on relations between business and Labour since the election of Mr Corbyn, who on Saturday called for the partial renationalisation of the British steel industry.
Cabinet ministers will be asked today to take the axe to six-figure payoffs and pensions in a move that could save the taxpayer billions of pounds. Sick pay could also be slashed and spending on agency staff reduced.
The proposals are going before a Whitehall public sector expenditure committee overseen by Chancellor George Osborne and Treasury chief Greg Hands. A week-long Daily Mail investigation exposed how senior staff in town halls, police forces, universities and the NHS had been pocketing huge sums with little justification.
The details were obtained by filing almost 6,000 questions under the Freedom of Information Act. But this law, which has exposed numerous public sector scandals as well as wasteful spending, is under threat from the Government. Ministers claim it is ‘too costly’ to administer and have ordered a review.
I’m off to the Number 10 lobby briefing. I will post again after 12 noon.
Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, has given an interview to Lorraine Kelly on ITV this morning.
As we report on the Paris attacks blog, he said he thought further air strikes against Islamic State in Syria would make little difference. There had to be a political solution, he said.
As the Telegraph reports, he also talked about his interest in drain covers. He said they were an important part of Britain’s social history. “I know it sounds a bit zany ... history is what we live all the time,” he said.
Sarah Brown, wife of the former prime minister Gordon Brown, has launched a £1.5m study aimed at improving care for premature babies, the Press Association reports.
The Theirworld Edinburgh Birth Cohort will track the development of 400 babies who are born before 32 weeks, following them right to adulthood.
The research is being funded by the Theirworld global children’s charity, which Sarah Brown founded and is president of.
Brown, whose first child Jennifer Jane lived for just 10 days after being born seven weeks prematurely, said: “This is a unique project which will help give babies the chance of the best start in life and Theirworld is proud to fund it.”
About 15m babies across the world are born prematurely - before 37 weeks - making them more at risk of suffering conditions such as cerebral palsy, autism spectrum disorders and learning difficulties.
Obviously the main focus today is on Paris, the ongoing police investigation, and the international reaction to multiple terror killings on Friday. We’re covering that story on a separate live blog and I will be contributing posts there with UK political reaction, such as David Cameron’s Today interview.
On this blog I will be covering non-Paris politics. And the best story around is Boris Johnson’s call, in an interview with the Sunday Times (paywall) yesterday, for Britain to pass a law giving parliament an emergency veto over EU legislation.
This is what the Sunday Times says about Johnson’s intervention.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, Johnson called on the government to amend the 1972 act of parliament under which Britain joined the EU to say that European law was paramount, unless a “brake” was applied by the House of Commons.
The mayor is lobbying Cameron to adopt the plan as a rabbit out of the hat to reassure Eurosceptics that he is committed to a radically new deal.
And this is what Johnson himself said.
You could amend the act which says that all EU directives, regulations and other obligations have supremacy over British law to say that it has supremacy unless expressly overturned by parliament.
The great thing, which makes it so attractive, is that you don’t need a negotiation. You don’t need Angela Merkel’s permission at all. All you need is to get it through the House of Commons. It could be done by us alone. I hope that will be the end product of what the prime minister is alluding to in his excellent speech ...
[Eurocrats] would go ape but it is very, very sensible. If you had this brake I think it would be used very, very sparingly. It wouldn’t be invoked very often at all but it would mean that when parliament decided that there was some ossified piece of EU legislation that had been in force for decades and was no longer necessary that parliament would have the power to overturn it.
It wouldn’t be an everyday thing but the beauty of it is that it would be there and it would mean that once again we can control our destiny in a way that we can’t at the moment.
The Sunday Times was too polite to point out that this proposal is a total non-starter if Britain has any intention of remaining a member of the European Union; it would amount to giving one member state an opt-out from all EU proposals, which would undermine the whole principle of a single market with agreed, collective rules.
So why is Johnson suggesting it? The interview will fuel speculation that he is preparing to endorse the Out camp in the EU referendum, although it could just be a kite-flying exercise too.
As usual, I will also be covering breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I will post a summary at lunchtime and another in the afternoon.
If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on@AndrewSparrow.
