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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

Conservative conference 2017: Boris Johnson urges Tories to 'let the lion roar' in upbeat speech - as it happened

Boris Johnson delivers his speech at the Conservative party conference on Tuesday afternoon.
Boris Johnson delivers his speech at the Conservative party conference on Tuesday afternoon. Photograph: Super/SilverHub/REX/Shutterstock

Afternoon summary

  • May has denied she is being “undermined” by Johnson. In an interview with the BBC, asked if Johnson’s interventions were undermining her position, she said: “It doesn’t undermine what I am doing at all.” When it was put to her that after her Brexit speech Johnson gave an interview to the Sun setting four new Brexit red lines, she played down the idea that what he said went beyond what she said in her speech (even though it did.) She said:

If you look at the issues that Boris has been talking about they reflect the position we’ve taken in the Florence speech, setting out a vision of what this country can be doing in terms of its partnership with Europe in the future.

  • May has dismissed complaints about her apparent “Maybot” tendencies by saying that actions are more important than personality in politics. (See 5.18pm.)

That’s all from me for today.

Thanks for the comments.

Updated

This is from Sky’s Faisal Islam.

In the comments BTL ScottishPanda points out that Boris Johnson’s peroration (see 4.07pm) had echoes of a Churchill quote.

When Winston Churchill turned 80 on November 30, 1954, both Houses of Parliament assembled in Westminster Hall to pay him tribute. He replied by returning that tribute to the British people. It was they, he said: “Who had the lion’s heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.”

John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, has responded to the reports that Philip Hammond, the chancellor, has been urging businesses to speak out against Labour. (See 2.55pm and 3.19pm.) McDonnell said:

These remarks reveal how desperate the Tories have become that they now have to threaten even their business and financial backers to stay with them. The truth is that our policies are just common sense, which many people in business and every walk of life agree with us on. This is what truly terrifies Philip Hammond.

Business minister warns of 'over-optimistic attitude' about Commonwealth trade deals

Small business minister Margot James has sounded a cautious note about Brexiteers being too optimistic about trade deals post Brexit. She told a fringe meeting:

There is a little bit of an over-optimistic attitude about the extent of trade we can summon up with Commonwealth countries.

There are 51 of them. We export more to Germany [than] we do to the entire Commonwealth, so there’s a lot of work to be done ... We export seven times as much to Germany as we do to India.

She indicated a new trade bill would be published before Christmas but said the UK had to replace not just European economic development funds from the EU but also venture capital funds which feed into one third of small to medium-sized businesses.

The MP for Stourbridge and former PPS to Stephen Green when he was minister for trade and investment said Britain had to do a lot better on exports.

The “vast majority of small and medium sized businesses” do not export and will struggle to help the nation’s economy grow unless there is investment in skilling them up for overseas markets, she said.

Boris Johnson's speech - Verdict from the Twitter commentariat

From the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg

From the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland

From Newsnight’s Ian Katz

From the New Statesman’s George Eaton

Johnson received his ususal standing ovation. Though Jacob Rees-Mogg and Ruth Davidson are vying for the title, the Foreign Secretary remains the closest to a Heseltine-esque conference darling. Johnson’s histrionic rhetoric, however, could not disguise an absence of vision and ideas. His jokes landed better than those of his colleagues (a low bar), but there was nothing here to reanimate a politically and intellectually exhausted party.

After knowingly raising expectations, Johnson fell well below them. Rather than the Winston Churchill du jour, he risks becoming the David Miliband of the Conservative Party: always circling but never striking. Today, the lion didn’t roar – it retreated.

From HuffPost’s Paul Waugh

Boris-sceptics may also see his upbeat vision of the world as a Panglossian fantasy. Johnson’s optimism included claims that we will ‘find a cure’ for Islamist extremism and that we will ‘crack’ global warming through ‘British’ tech and green finance. It felt like a classic Daily Telegraph article. But if Brexit itself was a column that went wrong, this was him saying it would be all right on the night of March 31, 2019 ...

Nothing this week has yet dispelled the idea that the PM’s own survival is under threat from fellow contestants who double up as jungle big beasts. May wasn’t in the conference hall today, worried that her reaction would be grabbed by a thousand cameras. His final flourish went down a storm in the hall. The British people were the lions, and we should ‘let that lion roar’. Johnson stressed: ’We are not the lion. We do not claim to be the lion” (a Royal ‘we’, perhaps). But few doubt he would love to be the Lion King, one day.

From Coffee House, with contributions from Katy Balls, Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth

Coffee House podcast on Johnson’s speech

From the Economist’s Anne McElvoy

From Bloomberg’s Robert Hutton

From ITV’s Robert Peston

(I had to look it up too; it means “combining different and often contradictory beliefs in philosophy or religion.”)

From the Financial Times’ Sebastian Payne

May says actions matter more than personality in politics

Theresa May has been giving more interviews to broadcasters. Here are some of the top lines.

  • May implied she resented being called a “Maybot”. The nickname was coined by my colleague, John Crace, the Guardian’s sketchwriter, and it has been widely adopted because it is deemed to say something revealing about May’s manner. Asked if she was upset at being called a “Maybot”, she replied:

I’m certainly somebody with feelings. I don’t recognise that characterisation of myself.

  • She implied that personality was overrated in politics. She said:

There’s a lot of talk these days of personalities and so forth, but actually when it comes down to it, political personality doesn’t make the difference between somebody getting a job and or getting a job, between that job being created in a balanced economy or not. It’s the actions of government that matter.

  • She rejected claims that Boris Johnson’s intervention led to changes being made in her Florence speech on Brexit. When she was asked if this was the case, she replied:

No, the Florence speech was the result of discussions around cabinet and, yes, my judgement about what it was necessary to say at this stage in the negotiations. The whole cabinet came together. They agreed that speech. They agreed the position the government is taking.

  • She rejected claims that the mood of the conference was miserable. When this was put to her, she replied:

The people I meet haven’t been down, they’ve been upbeat. They are upbeat about the arguments we need to make.

  • She refused to deny that she said she wanted to become prime minister when she was a student. Asked about this, she replied:

That’s not a story I recognise, but we’ll gloss over that.

  • She rejected suggestions that she was not enjoying being prime minister. When Channel 4 News’ Jon Snow asked if she was enjoying being PM, she replied:

Yes. It’s not miserable, Jon, and the reason it’s not miserable is because as prime minister I can ensure that government takes decisions that really improve people’s lives.

I’ve taken the quotes from the Press Association.

Updated

Boris Johnson's speech - Snap verdict

Boris Johnson arrived at the Tory conference with many of his colleagues, in private and in public, expressing anger at his freelance Brexit policy-making activities. He was urged to accept collective responsibility, or to resign. He has made his choice, and the main message from today’s speech was one of loyalty. He said said that he and the rest of the cabinet were fully behind Theresa May’s Florence speech (see 3.44pm) and he even found something to praise in her election record (no easy task). See 3.43pm.

But, as a display of deference, it was minimal - about as little as Johnson could plausibly get away with.

And, although Johnson may have chosen not to deliver a full-throated potential leader’s speech, he did not make much effort to disguise the fact that he offers an alternative agenda. He mostly ignored foreign affairs, and devoted much of his speech to the kind of attack on Labour’s economic policies that May failed to mount at the general election. He said the party had to make the market economy work better (May thinks the same, but has not said how), and he praised low-tax economies, including those with flat taxes *(which are popular on the Tory right). It may be the first speech this conference to reference tax cutting.

Above all, it was funny, and optimistic. After two days of mostly second-rate speeches in the conference hall, the members needed cheering up. Johnson reminded them that he can do that better than anyone.

And yet ... it was also an extraordinarily shallow speech, even by Johnson’s standards. Johnson defended market economics without trying very hard to explain why he thinks it is a beneficial system, but on Brexit, and almost everything else, he seemed to be saying that optimism and good will would be enough. If you give a speech saying that global warming will be solved, or Islamic State defeated (see 4pm), or that Brexit will be a success, you are really under an obligation to say how. Johnson didn’t. Instead all he seemed to offer was wishful thinking.

Updated

Rees-Mogg says Conservative party treats its members 'appallingly'

Jacob Rees-Mogg has compared this year’s Conservative conference to a North Korea-style rally, saying the party will face a crisis unless members are given more stake.

Rees-Mogg said ordinary party members had no power to debate policy compared to when he first entered politics. He told a Policy Exchange fringe meeting:

It has now become like an American presidential convention where we just expect them to turn up and cheer the great and the good. It isn’t even American, it’s Kim Jong Un style. If it stays like that for long enough we’re going to be in real trouble.

Asked about whether the party needed to give more power to its members, Rees-Mogg said:

We treat them appallingly. We expect them to do all the work, deliver all the leaflets, go out in the rain and then the CPF [the members’ policy-making forum] sends in its reports and it gets ignored. We used to have system that took the policy ideas from our members seriously.

Johnson's peroration

And here is Johnson’s peroration.

200 years ago people used to come to this city to see something revolutionary – the beginning of the modern world and once again this country has had the guts to try to do something new and different to challenge received wisdom with a democratic revolution that we can turn into a cultural and technological and commercial renaissance.

There are people say we can’t do it.

We say we can.

We can win the future because we are the party that believes in this country and we believe in the potential of the British people. We have been privileged collectively to be placed in charge of this amazing country at a critical moment in our history.

We are not the lion.

We do not claim to be the lion.

That role is played by the people of this country. But it is up to us now – in the traditional non-threatening, genial and self-deprecating way of the British – to let that lion roar.

And he takes another swipe at Jeremy Corbyn.

We have a growing space programme run by my brother Jo Johnson and I have a candidate for the first man we gently blast into orbit and that is the superannuated space cadet from Islington and I know he has an innocent and vole-trousered air but his domestic policies would rack up unfair debts for our children and grandchildren and his foreign policies would imperil not just this country but our friends and neighbours as well.

Johnson jokingly compares John McDonnell to Pol Pot.

We export a programme to Cambodia called Neak Neng Klay Chea Sethey, which means who wants to be a millionaire. And it is thanks to the triumph of conservative values you are allowed to become a millionaire in Cambodia without being despatched for re-education by some Asiatic John McDonnell.

Johnson says people should stop complaining about the EU referendum result.

The highest number of people in work ever, the number one destination for investment into Europe and every time one of these facts emerges it is reported in tones of slight disapproval, and with the inevitable qualification – despite Brexit.

It is time to stop treating the referendum result as though it were a plague of boils or a murrain on our cattle or an inexplicable aberration by 17.4m people. It is time to be bold, and to seize the opportunities and there is no country better placed than Britain.

Johnson says world can 'crack global warming' and defeat Islamist extremism

Johnson is now turning up the dial on the optimism.

And after Brexit that is what our partners are going to get as this country is freed from endlessly trying to block things in Brussels committee rooms. Freed to stop being negative and to start being positive about what we believe in – including free trade.

And he says we can find a solution to global warming - and defeat Islamic State.

We are going to crack global warming, with British clean technology and British green finance – in which we lead the world.

We will get to a point where we generate as much clean energy as we want and eventually we will stabilise our world populations and raise per capita GDP above all by promoting female education – which is at the heart of all British overseas policy – and we should be proud of the young women and girls that we are helping to teach, in Africa, in South Asia – 6 m of them in the Pakistani Punjab alone.

And if we can drive on that great cause of female empowerment and education, the Swiss army knife that solves so many problems, then I believe we will eventually find a cure for the psychological contamination of radical Islamist extremism. Just as we have eradicated smallpox and polio.

It came and it will go.

Johnson says Britain is a global nation.

We contribute 25% of European aid spending and yet no one seriously complains that we have a sinister national agenda, and that is why the phrase “global Britain” makes sense, because if you said global China or global Russia or even alas global America it would not have quite the same flavour.

I am not saying that everyone automatically loves us or that everyone completely follows our sense of humour, though a lot more than you might think. But there is a huge desire out there for us to engage with the world more emphatically than ever before.

Updated

Johnson mentions a trip to Nigeria – and includes a self-deprecating joke.

Just in the last few weeks I have seen British troops training the Nigerian forces to defeat the numbskulls of Boko Haram around Maiduguri – where British doctors are tending the maimed victims of terror and as our helicopter swooped over the burned and deserted villages they said there was a risk of pot-shots from behind - and I said it was an occupational hazard in my line of work.

Updated

Johnson finally gets round to some foreign policy, with a tribute to the victims of Hurricane Irma.

There are places where it is simply our moral duty to British passport holders, like the overseas territories in the Caribbean where those islands have been overwhelmed by the biggest catastrophe for 150 years.

It is an eerie scene.

Not a leaf remaining on the shattered trees.

Houses turned into streaks of wooden and plastic litter.

Boats hurled on top of one another or lodged absurdly up hillsides.

Of all the disasters in my lifetime, none has overturned the lives of so many UK nationals and yet we should pay tribute to the indomitable spirit of those islanders and together with Priti Patel and Michael Fallon the government will work to put them back on their feet.

Updated

Johnson says Tories must make market economy work better

Johnson says the Tories must make the market economy work better.

We may have the most illustrious battle honours of any political party but now we have to win the battle for the future and the way to win the future is not to attack the market economy, not to junk our gains, but to make it work better – make it work better for the low paid – turning the living wage under this Conservative government into a national living wage.

Make it work for all those who worry their kids will never find a home to own – building hundreds of thousands of homes.

Make it work better for parents who can’t find good enough childcare – with 30 hours’ free care for three- and four-year-olds.

And above all help people who are struggling, by driving benefit reforms that have helped millions back into the dignity and self-esteem that goes with having a job and which has seen inequality fall – as the chancellor pointed out yesterday – to the lowest levels for three decades.

Updated

Johnson is still Labour-bashing.

And yet how crazy it is that a quarter of a century after the working people of these former Soviet bloc countries risked their lives to throw off the shackles of socialism – while the Labour left sneered at them and made excuses for their oppressors – the shadow leader and shadow chancellor are seriously proposing to put the British people back in bondage – a £200bn renationalisation programme. A display of economic masochism that would do incalculable damage to the future of our children.

That’s the difference between this Conservative party and the Labour party.

We want a country with a government that works for everyone.

Corbyn wants a Britain where everyone works for the government.

This battle of ideas is not lost in memories of the 1970s.

It is back from the grave.

Its zombie fingers are straining for the levers of power and that is why we cannot rest.

Updated

Johnson praises low-tax economies

Johnson says around the world Labour’s ideas are being rejected. And he praises low-tax economies.

If you listen to the aspirations of the young people I meet around the world, you will find there is not a single successful global economy that would dream of implementing the semi-Marxist agenda of McDonnell and Corbyn of nationalisation and state control.

And wherever you find enterprise and initiative and start-ups and innovation and economic growth it is where people have followed ideas that were pioneered by our party and by our country – and in this city of Manchester.

From India, to China, to Vietnam, to Thailand, where free markets and deregulation and privatisation have helped lift more people out of poverty than ever in history.

To the central and east European economies that this party – and not the Labour party – helped on the path to freedom and democracy.

You see it in Estonia, tech hub with a high degree of social protection – where they have a flat tax of 20%.

In Romania they have a flat tax of 16% and free health and education and higher education.

In Hungary they have a tax rate of 15% – 15%? We are all tax-cutting Tories but even I think that is going a bit far.

Updated

Johnson says people have forgotten what Britain was like in the 1970s under Labour policies.

Labour would inflict a national humiliation on a par with going cap in hand to the IMF.

And yes, I know: in making these sorts of points we come up against a difficulty we must accept that when we talk about the 1970s we imagine people instantly understand about power cuts, the three-day week, union bosses back in Downing Street, state-made British Rail sandwiches.

We think they get the reference but unfortunately going back to the 1970s sounds to too many people like a massive joint revival concert by David Bowie, Led Zep and the Rolling Stones.

And that is because people can remember the Stones and Bowie and Led Zep, monuments of global culture, but they have totally forgotten that those bands, along with so many other wealth creators, were driven overseas by Labour’s 83% tax rate.

Updated

Johnson says the cabinet is united behind “every syllable” of May’s Florence speech.

Johnson pays tribute to Theresa May.

It is a disgrace – and I can tell you there are many Labour MPs who feel appalled that their party is still led by this man and his peculiar belief – expressed in glutinous victory-style Chavista rallies up and down the country – that he somehow won the election.

He didn’t win.

You won – we won.

Theresa May won.

She won more votes than any party leader and took this party to its highest share of the vote in any election in the last 25 years and the whole country owes her a debt for her steadfastness in taking Britain forward as she will to a great Brexit deal.

Johnson criticises Labour for defending Venezuela.

At a time when the world should unite to condemn Venezuela’s Maduro, we have the leader of Britain’s official opposition giving cover to a government that is jailing opponents, shooting demonstrators, intimidating journalists and repressing human rights.

And he has a Corbyn joke too.

And the most pessimistic of them all is not the media or our friends in the EU commission or the excitable M Guy Verhofstadt – far from it – it’s Jeremy Corbyn.

That Nato-bashing, Trident-scrapping, would-be abolisher of the British army whose first instinct in the event of almost any international outrage or disaster is to upend the analysis until he can find a way of blaming British foreign policy.

And whose response to the grisly events in Venezuela is to side with the regime – simply because they are fellow lefties.

He says he still admires Bolivarian revolutionary socialism.

I say he’s Caracas.

The joke is corny, but Johnson delivers it quite well.

Updated

Johnson takes a swipe at the Economist and the Financial Times.

Every week I pick up British-edited international magazines, of the kind that you will find in the briefcases of jetsetting consultants.

Glossy-covered, elegantly written, suspiciously unread.

And every week these publications have found new reasons to be slightly less than cheerful about this country.

Every day a distinguished pink newspaper manages to make Eeyore look positively exuberant and across the world the impression is being given that this country is not up to it. That we are going to bottle out of Brexit and end up in some dingy ante-room of the EU, pathetically waiting for the scraps but no longer in control of the menu.

Updated

Like all Tory cabinet ministers, Johnson pays tribute to his ministerial team. He includes this line:

We have that Mount Rushmore of wisdom Sir Alan Duncan.

Duncan and Johnson have a frayed relationship. As a careful writer, was Johnson thinking of the fact that Mount Rushmore is made of stone?

Boris Johnson's speech

Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, is speaking now.

He starts with a George Osborne joke.

This city has shown that nothing and no one can bow the indomitable spirit of the people of Manchester, which in recent years has reinvented itself as the great thrumming engine of the northern powerhouse.

With its vast potential to generate jobs in finance, in academia, in journalism and the arts – and that’s just the ones held by George Osborne.

Sir Michael Fallon, the defence secretary, has just finished his speech to the conference. He said the government would “go on increasing defence spending” – but without giving more detail as to what that actually meant.

Updated

Patel announces overhaul of way aid contracts are awarded

Priti Patel, the international development secretary, used her speech to announce what her department described as a “clean up” of the way aid budgets are awarded. She told the conference:

Today, I am announcing the conclusion of a comprehensive review of DfID’s relationships with suppliers.

I am setting out tough reforms that will encourage the private sector to work with DfID and end the appalling practice of fat cats profiteering from the aid budget …

On my watch I will end the crony market where a handful of suppliers would win contract after contract, which blocked innovation and competition.

I will always put the interests of taxpayers and the world’s poor ahead of consultants and middle-men.

In a briefing note, CCHQ set out more details of the reforms. It said:

The comprehensive package of reforms will include:

A tough new code of conduct which will lead the way across government to ensure the highest standards of ethical and professional behaviour by DfID suppliers, with legally enforceable sanctions - such as ending contracts early - for those caught breaking the rules by a new compliance team.

New clauses in contracts to allow DfID to inspect costs, overheads, fees and profits of suppliers in detail, together with new powers to intervene to tackle profiteering and cut out waste.

Publishing annual league tables of supplier performance to name and shame those who fail to deliver value for money.

Cutting red tape to boost competition and open up DfID’s market to new entrants, driving down costs for the taxpayer.

Calling a halt to so-called “bid candy” practices, by which large suppliers include smaller businesses to win bids, but then drop them from the contract.

Priti Patel.
Priti Patel. Photograph: Hannah Mckay/Reuters

Updated

Philip Hammond, the chancellor, also used a public fringe meeting last night to urge business to speak out against Labour. Speaking at a CBI-sponsored event, he argued that big businesses should be duty-bound to oppose what he called Labour’s “existential challenge to our economic model”. He said:

It has to be responded to by all those who believe in the market, and all those who live by the market. It cannot be left to one political party to make the case for the market economy.

We do not expect big business, PLC business, to engage in party political debate. We do not expect PLCs to support political parties. But I do expect them to support the case for the market, and I do not expect business to pull its punches in making the case for the market economy.

Updated

Students could choose 'a frugal existence' if they are short of money, says Jo Johnson

At a fringe meeting at the conference Jo Johnson, the universities minister, said students who were short of money could manage by choosing to live “a frugal existence”. He was responding to Martin Lewis, the MoneySavingExpert.com founder, who said students who only got a maintenance loan of £5,000 could not afford to live on that. As PoliticsHome reports, when that was put to him, Johnson replied:

There may be a gap but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a gap that must be filled by parental contribution. There are many other ways in which students could fill that gap.

They could work, as many, many students do. They can also save. Then, of course, they can borrow from their parents if they wish, but it isn’t necessarily a parental contribution.

What is also so important to bear in mind is that students have many different choices about the kind of lifestyle they want at university. Some students want to live very modestly and have a frugal existence, focusing on their studies. Other students may want a different lifestyle but there isn’t one cost of going to university; it’s a very specific choice that each student must make.

Updated

Following Amber Rudd’s comments about security services needing access to communications secured with end-to-end encryption, such as WhatsApp (see 12.26pm), one of her junior ministers, Ben Wallace, has hinted there might be other solutions available.

Wallace, the security minister, told a fringe event that he believed tech companies could do more to assist on the issue. He said:

There are other ways I can’t talk about in which we think they can help us more without necessarily entering into end-to-end encryption. We think they can do more.

Wallace said end-to-end encryption was a worry for his department:

We’ve seen on a daily basis that end-to-end encryption protects paedophiles, it protects organised crime. It is very disturbing in my job when I know that we know two paedophiles are talking, we think they’re doing something about snatching a child, but we can’t get into that communication.

He would have said more, but had to dash off to answer a phone call – and not just any call. Before the event began Wallace had warned that there was an anti-terrorism exercise taking place and he might have to take a call from the government’s Cobra security committee. Not a bad excuse for leaving early.

Updated

In his London Playbook morning email briefing Politico’s Jack Blanchard says that Philip Hammond, the chancellor, caused controversy at £400-per-head dinner with business leaders by telling them they should not “collaborate” with Labour. He has been expanding on the story on Twitter.

Updated

Davis says British can still be 'good Europeans' after Brexit

Davis says the British can still be “good Europeans” after Brexit.

Europe’s history will continue, and so will ours, and we will remain good friends and allies.

And for those who claim that we are not good Europeans, well, did you know that we spend one and half times as much on defence as the European average? That is how we stationed troops on Europe’s border in Estonia and in Poland.

I call that being a good European.

We spend over twice the European average helping the poorest people on the planet. Including in Africa where, for many, British aid acts as a ladder for people to climb out of the hands of people smugglers.

I call that being a good European.

And we are the first to help our neighbours in the fight against terror … as both our Belgian and our French colleagues found last year.

I call that being a good European.

Updated

Davis says if the Brexit talks fail, “Britain needs us to be ready for the alternative”. He goes on:

That is what a responsible government does. Anything else would be a dereliction of duty.

Updated

Davis says he is “certain” he can reach a deal on the rights of EU nationals in the Brexit talks “soon”.

Davis claims Labour has had 11 different Brexit policies.

Now, I would be happy to work with the Labour party in the national interest, putting aside our differences for the good of the country.

But they have been playing a different game.

They have now published 11 separate Brexit plans and they are, to paraphrase Tolstoy, each unhappy in its own unique way.

For the customs union … then against it.

For the single market … then against it.

For freedom of movement … then against it.

Where we have introduced a repeal bill to take control of our laws and provide legal certainty … they opposed it and offered no alternative.

Updated

Davis says UK can become 'more international, not less' after Brexit

Davis says there is an internationalist case for Brexit.

One of the most powerful arguments I’ve heard for being outside the European Union was simple.

And it goes like this:

“What kind of internationalism is it which says that this country must give priority to a Frenchman over an Indian, a German over an Australian, an Italian over a Malaysian?”

It couldn’t have been further from a Conservative conference, having been said by Barbara Castle in 1975.

But what she meant, rings true today …

Now that we are leaving the European Union, it allows us to be more international, not less.

It requires us to face the world, not looking away or glancing back, but with confidence and determination about the future we will build.

Updated

Davis says Britain has been given “a one-off, time-limited, extraordinary opportunity” by Brexit.

An opportunity to make sure that all the decisions about the future of this country are taken by our parliament, our courts, our institutions.

Decisions about how to spend our taxes – made here in Britain.

Decisions about who comes into the country – made here in Britain.

All our laws – made here in Britain.

We need to get Britain standing on its own two feet – facing outwards to the world.

Updated

David Davis's speech

David Davis, the Brexit secretary, is speaking now.

He says people want to see progress on Brexit.

When we met last year in the shadow of the referendum, emotions were still raw.

A year later, there is a new mood.

People want to look to the future.

They are fed up that people in Westminster seem to be stuck in an endless debate while the rest of the world wants to get a move on.

Over a year later I still get people coming up to me every day saying: “Best of luck,” or: “Get a good deal for us Mr Davis,” and even: “Surely it can’t be that difficult?”

And that’s just the cabinet.

Updated

And Fox said free trade leads to lower prices.

We may think that the benefits of free trade are self-evident but we need to sell our vision and mission to a public that is often either unaware or sceptical about the benefits.

We need to say that when the UK sells its goods and services to other countries it helps the UK economy grow and become stronger.

We need to say that improving trade and selling more into markets overseas support jobs at home.

And we need to point out that the choice and competition that comes from trade means a greater variety of goods in the shops, helping keep prices down and making incomes go further.

Getting cut-price produce from Lidl and Aldi is free trade in action.

Getting bigger widescreen TVs at lower prices from Currys is free trade in action.

Getting lower cost school clothing or having a full range of fruit and vegetables all year round is free trade in action.

Updated

Fox summarised what his department has been doing to scope out possible future trade deals.

We have already begun discussions with the United States, Australia and New Zealand about future relationships.

We have established a trade policy group to lead our trade negotiations of the future and recruited the terrific Crawford Falconer from New Zealand to head up a new trade profession, creating new skills and career opportunities in trade.

We have established 12 working groups with 17 countries from India to Brazil and from the Gulf to Australia.

As ministers we have travelled to over 100 global markets, promoting British exports of goods and services, encouraging inward investment to the United Kingdom and seeking overseas investment opportunities so that British companies develop a genuinely global footprint.

Am I optimistic about the future? Absolutely.

When people ask if I’m a glass half full or half empty man – I just tell them that I’m Scottish and the glass isn’t big enough.

Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, is speaking now.

He started with a Johnsonian appeal for optimism.

OK. It’s time for some optimism.

And then he launched into a “despite Brexit” riff.

The naysayers got it wrong – and doesn’t it annoy you when people preface any piece of good news with the phrase “despite Brexit”. Well, doesn’t it?

So let’s just have a reality check.

We have the highest number of people in employment ever, “despite Brexit”.

Last year we had the highest inward investment to the UK ever, creating over 75,000 new jobs and safeguarding over 32,000 others, “despite Brexit”.

We have new cars being built in Sunderland and Cowley, amongst the highest economic growth rates in the developed world, an 11% rise in exports and the best order books for British manufacturers in 22 years.

No, not despite Brexit but because of the sound economic management of a Conservative government under the leadership of our prime minister, Theresa May and chancellor, Phillip Hammond.

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The chief executive of the Dover Port has said it is a “tough ask” to get systems in place for customs and border checks within two years.

Tim Waggott said a transition period of 24 months after Brexit day would give authorities including HMRC, freight and logistics companies “more of a chance” but warned there was “a lot of legwork to be undertaken to get ourselves prepared”.

He told a fringe event audience that 99% of freight through the port was currently covered by EU rules and took just two minutes to get through the port.

Delays of just minutes post Brexit would have a massive impact, he warned.

If we double the time from two minutes to four minutes, it means 17-mile queues on each side of the channel. That’s not in anybody’s interest.

The Dover and Deal MP, Charlie Elphicke, warned that the much-trumpeted Midlands engine and northern powerhouse would “conk out” if the roads to Dover became choked.

He called on the Department for Transport to expedite plans, currently being legally challenged, to create a lorry park at Standford West near the M20 not just to alleviate traffic but to create a zone where compulsory agrifood checks could be conducted post Brexit.

But Elphicke and Waggott claimed they were optimistic that HMRC would have a new customs declarations checks (CDC) system in place in time for Brexit.

Elphicke conceded that the National Audit Office had said the new CDC system would only handle 180m checks of the 255m checks that will be needed every year. However, he said HMRC was looking at running the old CHIEF system alongside the new service to cope.

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Nick Timothy, who was Theresa May’s co chief of staff and most influential policy adviser until he resigned after the election debacle (he wrote the manifesto, and so must bear quite a lot of the blame), has written a column for the Sun suggesting some of the things May should say in her speech tomorrow.

It is clear from what he writes that he does not rate Greg Clark, the business secretary. Timothy says:

In the coming months, the Tories should cap energy bills and reform the market to keep costs down in the long term. They should tell the business department to hurry up and implement the long-awaited industrial strategy.

They should set out how, when we have left the EU, we will create our own development funds that encourage economic growth across the country.

They should change the way ­companies are governed to make sure executive pay is fair and workers are included in important decision-making.

They should ensure, as the economy changes, people have all the workplace rights and protections they need.

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Sir Michael Fallon, the defence secretary, has told Sky News that he would like to see defence spending increased, to above 2% of GDP, Sky’s Beth Rigby reports.

Barbara Keeley, the shadow minister for mental health and social care, has criticised Jeremy Hunt for failing to address social care in his speech. Hunt barely mentioned social care, and did not say anything about how the social care service could be improved.

Keeley said:

In his speech Jeremy Hunt failed to address the crisis in social care which his government has created. Tory cuts to local authority budgets have led to falling care quality, cuts to care services and people stuck in hospitals because there is no care available for them in their community.

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Tory tuition fee reform will increase long-term cost to government by 41%, says IFS

At the weekend the Conservatives announced two changes to tuition fees: a freeze in fees and, more significantly, an increase at the threshold at which graduates start paying money back.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has now published an analysis of the impact of these reforms, and it says that lifting the threshold will, in the long run, increase the cost to the state of higher education by 41%.

The IFS says freezing fees would ultimately make the system unsustainable – although the government is reviewing the system as a whole, and so the freeze is not likely to apply long-term.

Here is an extract from the IFS briefing.

This apparently small technical change [lifting the threshold] will save middle-earning graduates a lot of money – up to £15,700 over their lifetimes. It also represents a big shift in policy raising the long-run cost to the taxpayer of providing higher education by around 40%, or over £2.3bn a year in the long run.

Tuition fees will also be frozen. In the short term this is a much smaller change, reducing the debt on graduation of the next cohort of students taking three-year degrees by just £800 and saving government £0.3bn. In the long run it will be unsustainable as university funding falls in real terms.

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Ministers should take more risks in delivering public services and accept that there will be occasional failures along the way, Liz Truss has argued, using the rollout of free schools as an example.

Speaking at a fringe event on public services, Truss, the chief secretary to the Treasury, said the idea of making mistakes was “particularly tough in the public arena”. She said:

We should accept failure as part of the learning process. If you look at things like free schools, free schools have been a brilliant policy but some free schools didn’t work. They got absolutely hammered. But that was a sign, in my view, that people were taking risks. We’re not good enough at justifying that in public, we know that.

And if you think, that’s the political side, where you are able to take risks; if you’re a civil servant the disincentives are even more severe.

Truss is certainly correct that free schools bring a risk of failure – in fact they fail Ofsted inspections at three times the rate of traditional state school, and some have closed due to low pupil numbers or poor standards.

Whether the programme as a whole has been “brilliant” is more debatable: in April the public accounts committee condemned the system as “incoherent and too often poor value for money”.

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'If you ignore young people, you perish,' Bear Grylls tells Tories

This is what Bear Grylls had to say in his speech to the Tory conference on scouting.

If you ignore young people, you perish …

We have young Muslim men and women joining our ranks in the thousands.

In fact, we’re experiencing such overwhelming demand that even as a leading UK youth charity, as Scouts we cannot keep up – not by a long margin.

Currently there are 55,000 young people – black, white, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, all British – just on the waiting list to join the Scouts.

And I’m here to show you – the government of our nation – that the truth is there is a sea of young people out there desperate for the British scouting values that we provide.

Yet we have no choice every day to say to the mosques, to the imams, to the hard-working families with hot-headed teenagers that we cannot fulfil this demand – but we can with your help.

Grylls ended by effectively asking for £50m – or half a DUP MP, to use a currency unit familiar to the prime minister.

If I was prime minister, and I could make a relatively small investment in scouting, that £50m would be the best money I’ve ever spent. Truth.

That seems a bit steep for a speaking fee, but good try …

Bear Grylls (centre) addressing Tory conference.
Bear Grylls (centre) addressing Tory conference. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images

Updated

This is from HuffPost UK’s Paul Waugh.

Or it might be that there hasn’t been a huge amount of applause to milk …

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Rudd ended by claiming that Britain would not be safe with a Labour government.

When the country is facing so many complex threats, I do not believe that our country would be safe in the hands of Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott. The Conservative party has always been, and always must be, the party of law and order. And I will give credit to previous Labour home secretaries that took important steps to improve our security.

But this lot are different.

They have spent three decades opposing anti-terrorist laws. They have talked of their “friends” in Hamas and Hezbollah. They are silent on the antisemitism that festers in their party. They won’t clearly condemn the actions of the IRA. They don’t support police officers shooting to kill. They have called for the dismantling of the police, the disbandment of MI5 and the disarming of police officers.

Saying you condemn all violence when specifically asked if you’ll condemn one group’s actions isn’t good enough. Staying silent when your supporters abuse and insult people because of their religion, sex or political views isn’t good enough. Simply paying lip service to demonstrate your commitment to our security isn’t good enough.

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Rudd says selling acid to under-18s will be made illegal

Rudd says selling acid to under-18s will be made illegal.

Acid attacks are absolutely revolting. You have all seen the pictures of victims that never fully recover. Endless surgeries. Lives ruined. So today, I am also announcing a new offence to prevent the sale of acids to under-18s. Furthermore, given its use in the production of so-called “mother of Satan” homemade explosives, I also announce my intention to drastically limit the public sale of sulphuric acid.

Updated

Rudd renews her call for the police or security services to be enabled to access to end-to-end encryption.

But we also know that end-to-end encryption services like WhatsApp are being used by paedophiles. I do not accept it is right that companies should allow them and other criminals to operate beyond the reach of law enforcement. There are other platforms and emerging trends that are equally worrying.

As Alan Travis reports, at a fringe meeting last night Rudd dismissed criticism from those who have complained that she does not understand the problems with her stance on end-to-end encryption. Here’s an extract from his story.

Rudd also caused some consternation at the fringe meeting by criticising the tech industry for their “patronising” attitude that “sneered” at politicians who did not always get it right. She claimed it was not necessary for her to understand how end-to-end encryption worked to know that it was helping criminals.

Asked by an audience member if she understood how end-to-end encryption actually worked, she said: “It’s so easy to be patronised in this business. We will do our best to understand it. We will take advice from other people. But I do feel that there is a sea of criticism for any of us who try and legislate in new areas, who will automatically be sneered at and laughed at for not getting it right. I don’t need to understand how encryption works to understand how it’s helping the criminals,” she went on. “I will engage with the security services to find the best way to combat that.”

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Rudd says the government is investing in a new IT programme to remove images of child sexual abuse from the web.

Today I can announce the UK government is investing in a ground-breaking technology, which partners in Canada have developed.

It is called Project Arachnid. An apt name. It is software that crawls, spider-like across the web, identifying images of child sexual abuse, and getting them taken down, at an unprecedented rate.

Our investment will also enable internet companies to proactively search for, and destroy, illegal images in their systems. We want them to start using it as soon as they can.

Our question to them will be: “If not, why not?” And I will demand very clear answers.

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Rudd says the government will try to ensure businesses do not face “unnecessary burdens” when it publishes its post-Brexit immigration plans.

And later in the year we will publish a paper on our future immigration system – showing how we will have greater control over our immigration rules in the future. But also how there will be no cliff edge for businesses. Because I appreciate it will take time for them to adjust after over 40 years of free movement.

As we build that new immigration system and deliver on the result of last year’s referendum, I’m committed to working with businesses, both large and small, to make sure we don’t impose unnecessary burdens, or create damaging labour shortages.

Rudd says Brexit will be challenging, but also offers “great opportunities”.

With David Davis, I have proposed an ambitious new security treaty. So that even as we leave the EU, we can continue to work with our European allies to keep us safe.

Rudd turns to internet companies. She says they must do more to remove extremist material from the web.

In the aftermath of the Westminster Bridge attack, I called the internet companies together. Companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter and Microsoft. I asked them what they could do, to go further and faster.

They answered by forming an international forum to counter terrorism. This is good progress, and I attended their inaugural meeting in the West Coast.

These companies have transformed our lives in recent years with advances in technology.

Now I address them directly. I call on you with urgency, to bring forward technology solutions to rid your platforms of this vile terrorist material that plays such a key role in radicalisation.

Act now. Honour your moral obligations.

Rudd says she has been reviewing counter-terrorism powers.

We have seen what could be interpreted as a shift towards crude attacks, with lone or few attackers, using everyday items. There also appears to be a trend towards shorter timescales from aspiration to attacks.

If we’re going to keep people safe we need to disrupt plots in their early stages. Many such plots will include some element of online radicalisation.

She says the government will change the law to close a loophole allowing people to view extremism material.

Extremists and terrorist material can still be published online, and is then too easily accessible on some devices within seconds … Messages of hatred and violence accessible from any laptop or smartphone.

Progress has been made, but this has got to stop.

Today I am announcing that we are tightening our laws for individuals looking at this type of material online.

We will change the law, so that people who repeatedly view terrorist content online could face up to 15 years in prison. This will close an important gap in legislation. At present, the existing offence applies only if you have downloaded or stored such material – not if you are repeatedly viewing or streaming it online. A critical difference.

The government will introduce another change, she says.

We will also change the law in another important way. If someone publishes information about our police or armed forces for the purpose of preparing an act of terrorism, then they could face up to 15 years in prison.

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Rudd says she has added rightwing groups to the list of banned organisations.

We also face a real and growing threat from the extreme right. We all remember the tragic murder of the excellent MP Jo Cox as she took part in our democratic process. Last year, I made the first terrorist proscription for an extreme rightwing organisation – National Action. And just last week I banned two more repugnant mutations of that organisation.

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Amber Rudd's speech

Amber Rudd, the home secretary, is speaking now.

She starts by remembering those killed in this year’s terrorist attacks, including PC Keith Palmer, who was murdered in the Westminster Bridge attack.

She says there is a need for more initiatives to tackle extremism.

As home secretary, you see the sorts of initiatives around the country that are doing excellent work to build stronger, more resilient communities.

After the year we have faced, we will need more of them.

I’ve spoken to mothers learning about what their kids do online, so they know where they could be vulnerable to pernicious influences. I’ve seen groups set up to challenge racism in sports, and places where those same sports are being used to encourage greater integration in communities.

Establishing the new Commission on Countering Extremism will further support this agenda, by exposing extremism and division. It will be key in challenging those who preach hatred.

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A further 31 state schools across the UK will have cadet units helping to instil values of “discipline and loyalty” in pupils, Sir Michael Fallon, the defence secretary, has announced. The latest units are part of the Tory drive to increase the number of cadet units in state schools to 500 by 2020.

A defeated Conservative parliamentary candidate has said her party is failing to tackle the health injustices that “disfigure” the UK. As the Press Association reports, the junior doctor Suzanne Bartington, who stood in Oxford East at this year’s general election, said overcoming “burning injustices” was at the heart of the party’s values. But she said the government had not yet done enough for the next generation.

Despite the progress that has been made to improve the social conditions in which we’re born, grow, live, work and age, we have failed as a government and as a party to tackle the health injustices that continue to disfigure our country.

The health injustices that mean a baby born in inner Glasgow can have a shorter life expectancy than one born in areas of sub-Saharan Africa.

The injustices that mean that same baby can have 17 years less in good health than one born in central London.

Although advances have been made in the social conditions under the Conservative government, we have not yet done enough for the next generation.

To be a party of social mobility and opportunity, we need to tackle those injustices and avoidable differences in health outcomes.

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Bear Grylls appears on conference platform

The conference is now listening to a session on scouting. It was introduced by Bear Grylls, the adventurer, TV presenter and chief scout. He stressed that he was not speaking in a personal capacity, and spoke about the power of scouting to bring people together.

This is from the Lib Dems.

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Lidington announces initiative to stop drones delivering drugs to prisons

David Lidington, the justice secretary, has delivered his conference speech. Here are the main points.

  • Lidington said he was launching a new initiative to stop drones being used to smuggle drugs and other items into prisons. He said:

Prison officers face enormous pressure. The levels of violence inside our prisons are too high. So are cases of self-harm and suicide among prisoners.

Last year, the prisons ombudsman said that the arrival of new synthetic drugs into our prisons was a game-changer. These drugs, smuggled in from the outside, were – he said – increasing violence, debt, poor health, and instability.

Today, more of that drug traffic is being orchestrated by sophisticated criminal networks. Gangs smuggle not only drugs, but mobile phones for their operations. They use drones to drop as much as a kilo of drugs at a time. They stop at nothing, even spraying children’s drawings – sent to inmates – with liquid synthetic drugs to infiltrate our prisons.

This is no cottage industry. This is not a matter of opportunism. It is serious organised crime.

I am determined to do more to track and target that crime. So today I can announce the start of additional intelligence-led counter-drone operations, to disrupt drones as they enter prison airspace and trace them back to the criminals involved.

  • He said he was setting up a New Futures Network to help offenders find work when they leave prison.

From Timpsons, to Greggs the bakers, to Halfords, to the construction firm Mitie, employers are appreciating what ex-offenders have to offer: the hard-work and dedication of someone committed to proving they deserve that second chance.

We need to take this further. That’s why I am today announcing a new national task force – the New Futures Network – to match offenders with employers and make sure training in prisons mirrors the demands in the local jobs market.

The evidence shows that a former prisoner who has got both the responsibility and opportunity that comes with work is far less likely to reoffend. Getting prisoners into employment works.

  • He criticised Labour figures for refusing to condemn the prospect of unions holding illegal strikes.

No individual, no organisation, no government is above the law.

That is why the refusal by the leadership of today’s Labour party to rule out supporting illegal strikes is a shameful abdication of responsibility from a party seeking to govern.

  • He announced plans to increase the number of staff in youth offender institutions by 20%.

So I can today announce a new investment of £64m to entrench reform of youth custody. We will boost the number of frontline staff in youth offender institutions by 20% – that’s 120 additional recruits, including newly trained specialist youth justice workers, equipped to tackle the needs of young offenders.

David Lidington
David Lidington Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images

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LGC’s Sarah Calkin points out that Jeremy Hunt had nothing to say about social care.

In his speech Jeremy Hunt claimed that the creation of the NHS was a cross-party achievement. He said:

Now next year the NHS has an important birthday. Like Prince Charles and Lulu it will turn 70.

Here are the words of the health minister who announced its formation back in 1944. [A video was played.]

Nye Bevan deserves credit for founding the NHS in 1948. But that wasn’t him or indeed any Labour minister.

That was the Conservative health minister in 1944, Sir Henry Willink, whose white paper announced the setting up of the NHS.

He did it with cross-party support. And for me that’s what the NHS should always be: not a political football, not a weapon to win votes but there for all of us with support from all of us.

On Twitter Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, says Hunt’s account of events is rather partial.

UPDATE: This is from Aquarius9 BTL.

User avatar for Aquarius9

Andrew this is taken from Wikipedia re Sir Henry Willink

Willink was made a Privy Counsellor in 1943, the year he became Minister of Health. Willink served in this role until the Conservatives lost the 1945 general election. He, with John Hawton, was responsible for the 1944 White Paper, following the Beveridge Report, called A National Health Service. It proposed the creation of a fully comprehensive, universal healthcare system, free of charge and available to all citizens irrespective of means.

When Labour came into office in 1945, it presented its own plan in preference to Willink's, which it had supported. The principal difference was that Willink's plan talked of a "publicly organised" rather than a "publicly provided" service, and Labour's plan brought hospitals into full national ownership. Bevan, however, made concessions to General practitioners.

Will someone at the G please, please challenge the lies spouted by Hunt?

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RCN expresses concern about plan to increase nurse apprenticeships

The Royal College of Nursing is concerned about the government’s plans to increase the number of nurse apprenticeships. It has put out this statement about Jeremy Hunt’s announcement. (See 11.12am.)

Updated

Jeremy Hunt says number of nurses being trained to increase by 25%

Here are the main points from Jeremy Hunt’s speech.

  • Hunt, the health secretary, said the government would increase the number of nurses in training by 25% – including by making it easier for people to become nurses without needing to do a degree. He said:

So today I can tell you we’ll increase the number of nurses we train by 25% – that’s a permanent increase of more than 5,000 nurse training places every single year. And we’ll do that not just by increasing traditional university places, but also by tripling the number of Nursing Associates so people already in the NHS can become a registered nurse after a four-year apprenticeship without having to do a traditional full-time university course. Derby, Wolverhampton and Coventry Universities have already offered to run apprenticeship nursing courses on hospital and community sites and others will follow, always making sure we maintain the high standards required by the nursing regulator. We’ll also launch a new initiative to encourage nurses who have left the profession to come back.

  • He said he would introduce more flexible working into the NHS.

[Nurses] need to be able to work flexibly, do extra hours at short notice, get paid more quickly when they do and make their own choices on pension contributions. So today I’m also announcing that new flexible working arrangements will be offered to all NHS employees during this parliament. And we’ll start next year with 12 trusts piloting a new app-based flexible working offer to their staff.

  • He said NHS staff would get first refusal on affordable homes built on NHS land. Up to 3,000 families would benefit, he said.

Like many people, NHS staff can also struggle to find homes near work they can actually afford. So from now on when NHS land is sold, first refusal on any affordable housing built will be given to NHS employees, benefiting up to 3,000 families.

  • He said improving NHS care was not just about spending more money.

Then we asked ourselves a difficult question. Is quality care just something you have to buy? Of course money matters – you need enough nurses on the wards and that costs money. But it turned out to be a more complex relationship.

All trusts are paid the same NHS tariff. But on average the “good” or “outstanding” trusts were in surplus and the “requires improvement” and “inadequate” ones were in deficit. Why’s that? Because poor care is about the most expensive care you can give. If someone has a fall and stays in hospital an extra week, it’s not just terrible for them. It costs us more too.

  • He claimed that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour was a threat to the NHS.

And most of all tell [people] that if they’re really worried about the NHS being destroyed, then there’s one thing they can do: ditch Corbyn and McDonnell’s disastrous economic policies, which would bankrupt our economy and bring our NHS to its knees.

Because the economic facts of life are not suspended for the NHS: world-class public services need a world-class economy and to ignore that is not to support our doctors and nurses, it’s to betray them.

Jeremy Hunt addressing the conference.
Jeremy Hunt addressing the conference. Photograph: Phil Noble/Reuters

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Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, has just finished his speech to the conference. The Local Government Chronicle’s Sarah Calkin reckons she has heard much of it before.

I think she is referring to passages like this one.

I became health secretary five years ago. It’s a long time ago - but I’ll never forget my very first week.

Someone gave me the original Francis report into Mid Staffs to take home to read. I was gobsmacked. How could these terrible things really happen in our NHS?

The chief executive of the NHS told me I’d better get used to the fact in hospitals all over the world 10% of patients are harmed. Another senior doctor told me there were pockets of Mid Staffs-like problems everywhere. And academics told me that 3.6% of all hospital deaths were probably avoidable – that’s 150 deaths every single week - causing immense heartache to families.

But there was some new material in the speech. I will post a summary shortly.

Updated

May's morning interviews - summary and analysis

Here are the main points from Theresa May’s morning interview round.

  • May claimed that she did not want a cabinet full of “yes men”. That would be “weak leadership”, she said. She used the line repeatedly during the morning, in response to questions about Boris Johnson and whether he was unsackable, with perhaps the fullest version here.

I was asked that question some time ago and I said no, of course a prime minister makes decisions about who is in their cabinet. But, crucially, what I would say is this, Piers. You talked a little earlier about strong leadership and what this shows about leadership.

Weak leadership is having a cabinet full of yes men. Weak leadership is having a team of people who only agree with you. Actually, strong leadership is about having a diverse range of voices around the cabinet table who then come together, who then come together, discuss the issues and then come up with the answer.

May could not give a straight answer when asked if Johnson was unsackable on the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday and, having had 48 hours to think of a better one, we saw the results today. She pointed out that in the past she has said no one is unsackable. (She did not refer to this on Sunday.) She was still reluctant to say directly that Johnson is sackable. To do so would have been seen as a provocation by Johnson, and would also have begged the question as to why she was not so direct on Sunday. Instead she claimed she did not want to be surrounded by yes men. This is a fairly standard line used by leaders with disruptive colleagues (didn’t John Major say the same thing?) and it is not necessarily wrong; a strong leader needs to listen to alternative views. And May was right to say that the cabinet needs to come to a collective view. But the point about Johnson is that, after the cabinet collectively agreed to support the Florence speech on Brexit, he promptly ran off to the Sun and gave an interview undermining the agreed strategy.

  • May refused to rule out the Brexit transition lasting a bit longer than two years. Johnson said in his Sun interview that it should not last “a second” longer than two years. Asked if it could be longer than two years, May said:

I said “around two years” because it’s a practical period, but I also said it could be less than two years in some areas. If we find that there are some things that can be changed in a shorter period of time without disrupting economies, without disrupting business, then we will bring those in earlier.

In her Lancaster House speech in January May floated the idea of having implementation periods of varying lengths for varying aspects of Brexit. Her Florence speech just referred to single implementation period, implying the multi-speed approach had been dropped, but today May seemed to be reviving the idea.

  • She said that a Telegraph story saying David Davis, the Brexit secretary, planned to retire in June 2019 was based on a misunderstanding of a joke comment Davis made in the conference bar. Asked about the story, she said:

I think David was joking with someone in a bar and it seems to have been turned into a serious report in a national newspaper.

  • She seemed to admit that not taking part in the election TV debates was a mistake. Asked if she would take part in them if she was leading the party at the time of the next election, or if she would run away again, she replied:

I didn’t run away from anything. I actually like getting out there on the ground. There are TV debates and TV debates … Let’s say we might take a different approach next time.

  • She said that Boris Johnson’s conference speech had been seen by No 10. “His speech has been looked at, don’t worry,” she said. But she did not say whether she had seen it herself, or whether her office had insisted on any changes.
  • She said the blanket public sector pay cap would go but that any future pay rises had to be affordable. She said:

We’ve had a blanket cap in the past. We accept there needs to be some flexibility. But of course it all needs to be affordable. It needs to be affordable for the taxpayer, many of whom of course are nurses and teachers and people working in the public sector.

  • She said the government was not aware of any Britons being injured in the Las Vegas massacre.
  • She said Britons would expect the US to introduce gun controls after the Las Vegas attack. She said the UK had strict gun laws that were tightened after the Dunblane massacre. She went on:

Of course, America has a different approach to guns. It’s up them to see what they will do now. But I think most people here in the UK would say, if you look at what has happened here, surely they will want to do something.

This seems relatively mild, but previous prime ministers have refused to publicly criticise American gun laws (partly because it is a matter for Americans, and partly because being lectured by foreigners about the idiocy of their gun laws probably does not help the gun control cause in the US) and so May is going a bit further than some of her predecessors.

Theresa May at the Conservative conference.
Theresa May at the Conservative conference. Photograph: Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty Images

Updated

Boris Johnson’s speech is reportedly titled “Let the lion roar”. As this Ukip account points out, that fits well with the new logo Ukip unveiled at the end of last week.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the European commission president, and Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, have both been speaking in the European parliament debate about the Brexit talks.

Juncker said that the Brexit talks had not made sufficient progress to justify moving on to phase two. He told MEPs:

When it comes to Brexit we still cannot talk about the future without any real clarity. We first need to agree on the terms of the divorce and then we see if we can lovingly find each other.

The prime minister’s speech in Florence was conciliatory but speeches are not negotiating positions. Work still needs to be done. We have not yet made the sufficient progress needed.

Jean-Claude Juncker (standing) speaking to the European parliament this morning, with Michel Barnier sitting alongside him.
Jean-Claude Juncker (standing) speaking to the European parliament this morning, with Michel Barnier sitting alongside him. Photograph: Patrick Hertzog/AFP/Getty Images

And Barnier said there were still “serious divergences” between the two sides, especially on the issue of the financial settlement. He suggested that Theresa May’s offer to pay into the EU budget until 2020 did not far enough. He was applauded by MEPs as he said:

We will never accept for the 27 to pay what was decided on by 28, it’s as simple as that. The taxpayers of the 27 don’t have to pay for the consequences of the decision that they didn’t take. So, no more, no less.

Barnier also suggested that Britain was underestimating the “very heavy human and social, legal, financial, technical and economic consequences” of Brexit. “Often these consequences are underestimated,” he said.

And he said he could not recommend the required “sufficient progress” on the financial settlement, citizens’ rights and the Irish border to justify moving the Brexit talks on to phase two. He told MEPs:

We haven’t yet today on these key subjects, we have not yet achieved sufficient progress to undertake in full confidence the second phase of negotiations.

Updated

May could help Brexit talks by sacking Boris Johnson, says leading MEP

In the European parliament debate Manfred Weber, leader of the centre-right EPP grouping in the European parliament and a key ally of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, called for Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, to be sacked.

Weber said the foreign secretary’s recent Brexit interventions showed “the British government is trapped by their own party quarrels and political contradictions”. Addressing Theresa May, he went on:

Please sack Johnson because we need a clear answer who is responsible for the British position.

Guy Verhofstadt, the European parliament’s lead Brexit spokesman, also said the negotiations were being hampered by divisions among senior British ministers. He told MEPs:

There is a lack of clarity, there is even disunity. There are oppositions between Hammond and Fox. There are divisions between Johnson and May.

It is difficult to make sufficient progress. It is difficult to make the steps towards the second phase of the negotiations.

Manfred Weber.
Manfred Weber. Photograph: Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images

You don’t have to be called Nick to be allowed to interview the prime minister – but it seems to help. This is from the BBC’s Jane Garvey.

Updated

These are from the Sunday Times’ Tim Shipman.

MEPs expected to vote against moving Brexit talks to next phase

In Strasbourg the European parliament is this morning debating and voting on a resolution saying that the UK and the EU have not made enough progress in the Brexit talks to justify moving on to phase two, the part dealing with the a future trade deal. The resolution is expected to be passed by a large majority.

This will be a snub to the UK government, which wants to move the talks on to phase two as soon as possible.

You can read the resolution here (pdf).

Here is the key clause:

[The European parliament] is of the opinion that in the fourth round of negotiations sufficient progress has not yet been made on citizens’ rights, Ireland and Northern Ireland, and the settlement of the United Kingdom’s financial obligations; calls on the European council, unless there is a major breakthrough in line with this resolution in all three areas during the fifth negotiation round, to decide at its October meeting to postpone its assessment on whether sufficient progress has been made;

Here is an extract from the Press Association story about the vote.

The European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, is set to address the parliament’s plenary session in Strasbourg and has already said it would take “miracles” for trade talks to begin before the end of October.

A fifth round of Brexit negotiations is expected to begin on 9 October but Juncker’s comments suggest a breakthrough is unlikely before the council summit on 18 October.

The council president, Donald Tusk, and the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, have also said the UK needs to do more on top of Theresa May’s Florence initiative before negotiations can move on.

The motion to be voted on by MEPs says it is “vital” that commitments the PM made in that speech translate into “tangible changes” to the UK’s position and “concrete proposals”.

The text, tabled by the parliament’s Brexit co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt, stresses that Britain must obey EU rules including free movement and European court of justice (ECJ) judgments during the transition period of around two years proposed by May.

It “takes note” of her offer to pay into EU coffers during the transition but bemoans “the absence of clear proposals” and sets out further “financial obligations”.

The resolution acknowledges May’s olive branch on EU citizens’ rights – a promise to write them into UK law – but stresses the ECJ must remain the “sole and competent authority” for enforcing the withdrawal agreement.

The government is also accused in the motion of attempting to “predetermine” trade talks by committing not to introduce any new physical checks on the Irish border, as it presumes either the UK or Northern Ireland will remain in the single market and customs union.

A rival motion has also been tabled by the Ukip MEP Jonathan Arnott on behalf of the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) group in the European parliament.

Updated

May has now finished her morning interview round. She’s done six. I will post a summary shortly.

Q: Do you know of any British involvement in the Las Vegas shooting?

May says the government does not know of any British casualties. There were Britons in the area who were not hurt.

And British troops training nearby were able to help look after victims.

She says the British find this hard to understand. We have strong gun laws. And they were tightened after Dunblane. The Americans are different. But people will assume they might want to take action.

Q: How is your voice? It sounds like you have a cold.

May says it is better than it was.

And that’s it.

Updated

Q: You are sticking with universal credit.

May says she recognises there have been problems. But performance is improving, she says.

May confirms that Jeremy Hunt will be announcing plans to allow people to train as nurses without having to do a degree.

Q: There was a story at the weekend about how the Queen was annoyed by the delay in the Queen’s speech.

May says she never talks about her audience with the Queen. But the Queen was able to open parliament and go to Ascot later in the day.

May's interview with LBC

Theresa May is now being interviewed by Nick Ferrari on LBC.

They start talking about Grenfell Tower. May says support for residents initially was not good enough. She confirms that she shed a tear when she visited survivors in hospital.

She says it was important to ensure residents got the right alternative accommodation. It was better to do that than to put them in some accommodation as soon as possible.

She says the tenants were raising problems, but no one was listening. That is why Alok Sharma, the housing minister, is touring the country listening to tenants.

Q: The Telegraph today reports that David Davis plans to retire after Brexit in 2019, leaving the implementation to Boris Johnson.

May says this was a joke comment that Davis made it in the bar. Yet it got written up as a serious story in a serious newpaper.

(She drops her voice as she says “serious story etc …”, in mock solemnity.)

Updated

I’m sorry comments were left off earlier. That was just a mistake. They’ve been turned on now.

Q: You are talking about “balance” a lot. What does that mean? That you agree with Corbyn on the problems, but have more moderate solutions?

May says Robinson should go back and look at the speech she gave when she became PM. She is very clear about the problems facing society.

But there are no simple solutions, she says.

Q: If you read the papers, you would lead an endless list of your weaknesses. What are your strengths that people are ignoring?

May says she has said leadership is not about having yes men in the cabinet.

Q: So do you want to stay to solve these problems?

May says there is a long-term job to be done.

And that’s it. The Today interview is over. Just one more to go …

Updated

Q: You talk about big problems. But you come up with small solutions. Corbyn is saying there is something fundamentally wrong with our society.

May says government must find solutions that address the problems. The question is, will it make a difference?

Q: Labour have more radical policies on tuitions fees and housing. Some people here are saying the Tories are becoming Labour-lite.

On tuition fees May again asks why an 18-year-old electrician should pay for a neighbour to go to university.

Updated

Q: People see Grenfell Tower as a symbol of injustice. What did you learn from that? Is it a monument to injustice?

May says we need to find out what happened. That is why she set up the inquiry.

Q: I’m asking for an emotional inquiry. Plenty of people say Grenfell Tower showed the impact on inequality, deregulation and cuts. Is that what you see?

May says the inquiry will tell us whether it was the regulations, or the applications of regulations, that was at fault.

What has come through is that people in social housing raise their voices, complain, and nothing happens. That is why the housing minister Alok Sharma is going around the country listening to tenants.

Updated

Q: You are publishing data about racial inequalities. What will change as a result?

May says she said the government would publish its racial disparity audit as soon as she became PM. As home secretary she had realised some racial groups were being treated quite differently. It will be published next week. It will make “uncomfortable” reading.

BME people are more likely to be unemployed. As a result the government will set up 20 hotspots where special help will be available.

Updated

Q: How soon do you need to tell people what the consequences of no deal would be like?

May takes issue with Robinson for describing the transition proposal as a request.

It is not just matter of the UK asking. It is a negotiation.

Q: Should parliament publish a plan for no deal?

May says the government should do what it is doing, which is preparing for no deal.

Q: Should we see that?

May says some of it will be in the Brexit legislation.

Q: There will be a transition. It might be weeks more than two years, or months more. Is that the government’s position?

May says there will be an implementation period. She thinks it is important, so people know this is about practicalities. When people hear the word transition, they think it might go on and one.

Q: Could it be more than two years?

May says she said around two years. But it could also be less than two years.

Q: You seem to be saying you won’t sack Johnson, but you can ignore him because it is you who are in charge.

May says of course she is in charge.

But the government has come together and formed a view.

Her Florence speech “changed the dial”, she says.

May's interview on Radio 4's Today

Nick Robinson is interviewing Theresa May.

Q: You arrived here on your birthday. Were you ever tempted to give yourself a present and give up?

May says she is happy to be here. She says Jeremy Corbyn did not give Today an interview last week.

Q: What keeps you going? Is it a sense of duty? Stubbornness?

May says after the election she told her party she took responsibility. She got them into the situation, and will get them out of it.

But it is not about the party. It is about the people of the country. She came into politics to make people’s lives better.

Q: Wouldn’t a strong leader sack Boris Johnson for disloyalty?

May says people want the government to focus on their jobs.

Q: But you told me last year you were pleased to be seen as a “bloody difficult woman”. Shouldn’t you be bloody difficult with Johnson and sack him?

May uses the line she has used already this morning about weak leadership being having a cabinet of yes men. (See 8.09am.)

Updated

Here is the full answer that Theresa May gave to Piers Morgan about not wanting yes men in her cabinet. (See 7.46am.)

I was asked that question some time ago and I said no, of course a prime minister makes decisions about who is in their cabinet. But, crucially, what I would say is this, Piers. You talked a little earlier about strong leadership and what this shows about leadership.

Weak leadership is having a cabinet full of yes men. Weak leadership is having a team of people who only agree with you. Actually, strong leadership is about having a diverse range of voices around the cabinet table who then come together, who then come together, discuss the issues and then come up with the answer.

Updated

May seems to admit that ducking TV election debates was a mistake

May says the government will be leaving the EU. But it has to show how it will build a global Britain.

She is hugely ambitious.

Britain is a leader in many areas, she says, like battery technology.

She wants to protect renters as well.

Q: Will you do TV debates if you lead the party into the next election?

May says she likes getting out and campaigning. There are TV debates and TV debates. But she goes on:

But we might take a different approach next time.

  • May seems to admit that ducking TV election debates was a mistake, saying she might “take a different approach” next time.

And that’s it. That one is over.

Q: There seems to be a fundamental change going on. Selling capitalism to people with no capital is a big ask.

May says the government has to go out there and make the argument.

What Corbyn is offering is something tried only in a few countries around the world. You don’t see people better off in Venezuela.

Q: This is going to sound like garage flowers – too little, too late. Aren’t you the wrong person to deliver this?

May says it is not about who is delivering. It is about whether change is delivered.

She says yesterday she met a couple who bought their home with help to buy. That was a Conservative policy making a huge difference.

Q: When will people see that?

They are already seeing it, says May. “I’ve just told you.”

Updated

Q: Your manifesto only had 77 words on climate change, even though that is important to young people. Yet you pledged a vote on foxhunting. That played badly with young people. When did you realise this?

May says she recognises the issue of generational unfairness. That is why the government wants to do something about housing.

Q: And tuition fees?

May says she thinks graduates should make a contribution to tuition fees.

Jeremy Corbyn wants an 18-year-old electrician to have to pay for the university education of someone down the road. She does not think that is fair.

Q: Yet fees were tripled. Were you not in the room?

May says at the time ministers thought that universities might change, that some might offer shorter courses, or charge less than the maximum.

But that did not happen, she says.

She says when she announces a policy, she wants to ensure she can deliver.

She can only deliver by having a “balanced approach to the economy”.

Updated

May's interview on 5 Live

Theresa May is now being interviewed on Radio 5 Live. Nicky Campbell and Rachel Burden are presenting.

Q: We have been talking about the generational gap in politics. It is said the average age of Conservative members is 72. How many members do you have?

May says fewer than Labour. She says she does not have the precise figure.

Updated

Q: Have your changed anything in Boris Johnson’s speech?

May says all speeches are cleared.

Johnson will be speaking about how we build a global Britain, she says.

That’s it. The Good Morning Britain interview is over.

Piers Morgan says her message is that Boris can going on being Boris. But did she say no one was unsackable? Morgan says he is not sure.

Susanna Reid says May had a new line: that she does not want a cabinet of yes men.

'Weak leadership is having a cabinet full of yes men', says May

Q: Is anyone unsackable?

May says she was asked that some time ago, and she said no, of course a prime minister makes decisions about who is in the cabinet.

She says:

Weak leadership is having a cabinet full of yes men … Strong leadership is about having a diverse range of voices around the cabinet table.

UPDATE: See 8.09am for the full quote.

Updated

Q: Boris Johnson is speaking today. He is very good at distracting attention from what you are doing. Have you asked for or seen his speech?

May says speeches are seen in advance.

What she is doing is showing how the government will build a country that works for everyone.

The home secretary has an announcement. And Jeremy Hunt will make one about more nurses.

Q: Johnson will be talking about the ambition he has for Britain after Brexit. The smart thing to do would have been to say no one is unsackable. Shouldn’t you sack his sorry little backside?

May says people want the government to focus on their jobs.

Q: Chris Grayling gave a speech yesterday to three men and a dog. There seems to be no one there. Yet Labour got a rock star reception. You look like losers.

May says she has set out a clear vision.

She says she recognises that people need help being able to buy a home. She mentions young people, but says by that she means people under 40.

Updated

Q: What is your reaction to the worst mass shooting in modern American history?

May says this was an absolutely appalling attack. It was cowardly, utterly senseless.

She says the attacker had a significant arsenal of weapons, in his hotel and at home.

It is a contrast with this country, where we have very tough gun laws.

She says most people would assume that the Americans would want to introduce gun controls. But the Americans may take a different view.

May's interview on ITV's Good Morning Britain

Theresa May is now being interviewed by Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.

May says she does not want 'yes men' in her cabinet

Theresa May has been doing a round of interviews this morning. She is about to start her third.

This is probably the best line so far.

Here is the agenda for the day.

10.30am: Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, speaks.

11.05am: David Lidington, the justice secretary, speaks.

12pm: Amber Rudd, the home secretary, speaks.

2.10pm: Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, speaks.

2.25pm: David Davis, the Brexit secretary, speaks.

3pm: Priti Patel, the international development secretary, speaks.

3.15pm: Sir Michael Fallon, the defence secretary, speaks.

3.40pm: Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, speaks.

You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here.

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.

Updated

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