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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

Jeremy Corbyn puts voters' questions to David Cameron at PMQs - Politics live

Watch video highlights from Jeremy Corbyn’s first PMQs

Afternoon summary

  • Cameron has said that John McDonnell, the new shadow chancellor, should be “ashamed” of comments suggesting Irish republican terrorists should be honoured. Cameron joined Nigel Dodds, the DUP leader at Wesminster, in condemning the remark made by McDonnell in 2003. Dodd said:

The plaques at the entrance door to this chamber in memory of Airey Neave, Robert Bradford, Ian Gow, Sir Anthony Berry, serving members of this House murdered by terrorists as they stood up for democracy and the British way of life. They are a reminder of the savagery and brutality of terrorism, as are the gravestones and headstones in Northern Ireland and right across this land. The opposition leader has appointed a shadow chancellor who believes terrorists should be honoured for their bravery. Will you join with all of us on all sides of this House in denouncing that sentiment and standing with us on behalf of the innocent victims and for the bravery of our Armed Forces who stood against the terrorists.

Cameron replied:

You have spoken for many, many in this House and I would say many, many, the overwhelming majority of people, the vast majority of people in our country ... I have a simple view which is the terrorism we faced was wrong, it was unjustifiable, the death and the killing was wrong. It was never justified and people who seek to justify it should be ashamed of themselves.

McDonnell said in 2003: “It’s about time we started honouring those people involved in the armed struggle. It was the bombs and bullets and sacrifice made by the likes of [hunger striker] Bobby Sands that brought Britain to the negotiating table. The peace we have now is due to the action of the IRA.” This week he said that he might not have chosen the right words, but that he was trying to encourage the IRA that they could disarm with dignity.

  • A shadow cabinet minister has dismissed claims that Labour has been left with an economic policy that many MPs do not agree with under the new leadership. As the Press Assocation reports, Amber Rudd, the Conservative energy secretary, claimed the party was now “saddled” with a new economic policy that a “great swathe” of Labour’s backbenchers opposed. But shadow environment secretary Kerry McCarthy insisted the party’s policy had yet to change. She told BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme:

What is our new economic policy, Amber, because I certainly don’t know yet? There is a discussion to be had and Jeremy has said it is something where he wants to involve as many people as possible. Our economic policy has not changed overnight at the moment as far I’m concerned. It is still the policy that we stood on in the manifesto.

  • Labour sources have said that Corbyn will sign the national anthem at future events. They had to clarify the position after Corbyn gave a non-committal answer in an interview. (See 11.23am and 11.31am.)
  • The GMB union has submitted a motion to the Labour conference saying the party should not support staying in the European Union if employment rights are watered down as part of any membership renegotiations. The motion says:

Conference furthermore confirms that the Labour Party will resist any attempts by the Government to scale back the application of EU employment and social rights to British workers in this process, and that if EU Member State governments allow Cameron to remove these rights, then the Labour Party should not support a vote to remain in the EU.

  • The Duke of Wellington has been elected to sit in the House of Lords, under the procedure that allows places allocated for hereditary peers to be filled by other hereditary peers not in the House, elected by hereditaries who are there. Wellington, a Conservative, was one of 16 candidates. Forty one hereditary peers in the House voted, and Wellington eventually won with 21 votes after a recount. The details are here (pdf).

That’s all for today.

Thanks for the comments.

Updated

Here are three more blogs about PMQs that are worth reading.

Today’s PMQs gives Jeremy Corbyn a bit of firebreak after four days of hostile coverage. My guess is that many viewers want a change in the soap plot, they want things to look and feel different in their politics and the change in tone and format will play well with that section of the electorate.

The moment of maximum impact, though, came later in the session when Nigel Dodds, the DUP MP, asked Cameron about John McDonnell—Corbyn’s campaign manager and now his shadow chancellor—saying that IRA terrorists should be honoured. Cameron was restrained in his answer, concentrating not on attacking McDonnell but on talking movingly about Airey Neave and Ian Gow, two MPs killed by the IRA. But the Labour benches were visibly uncomfortable during the exchange, knowing that a man who has said such an obnoxious, distasteful thing is now their shadow Chancellor. It was a reminder that even if Cameron doesn’t bring them up at PMQs, there are 30 years of hard left statements by their new leader and his allies that will come back to haunt Labour over the next few months.

The BBC’s Robert Peston has written an intriguing post on his blog suggesting that more than one “New Labour Blairite ultras” could join the Tories if they think Jeremy Corbyn is going to hang on for long as Labour leader.

So here is the chatter: that one or a number of the New Labour Blairite ultras could cross the floor to the Tories, because of their personal relationship with Osborne - to whom they feel closer, in a political and social sense, than they do to Labour’s new leader, Jeremy Corbyn

Osborne mixes in the same modish London metrosexual and metropolitan elite circles as them. He takes their calls, responds to their emails, and is fully abreast of their current agony.

And they admire him. More than once I’ve been told, by a couple of their gang, that Osborne is the most impressive politician of the moment ...

So will one or a number of Blairites find themselves on the Tory side of the house?

It would not be an easy relocation for them, partly because they may decide that they owe it to their constituents to resign and force a by-election - which they could well lose.

But for what it’s worth, and this may be the more important point, more than one of them has told me that they could not possibly remain in Corbyn’s Labour Party for long if it looks as though Corbyn will endure.

Make of that what you will ...

Here is some more Labour reaction to Jeremy Corbyn’s performance at PMQs.

Toby Perkins, a Labour MP and former frontbencher, said he thought Corbyn did “fine” but the approach could be refined to involve follow-up questions to pin down more answers out of Cameron. Perkins said:

He’s had a pretty tough week and lurid headlines and having an opportunity to say he’s speaking for a lot of people here is perfectly sensible. But in the longer term that approach doesn’t actually put the PM under a great deal of pressure. And oppositions do actually need to expose problems with government policy. I suspect the approach will evolve. But putting down a marker for the first time, given that people were going to learn more about Jeremy Corbyn than David Cameron today, it’s a perfectly sensible approach.

Helen Goodman, Labour MP for Bishop Auckland, said she thought Corbyn’s new approach was “rather clever” because “it meant Cameron couldn’t sneer at Marie and Paul and Claire.” But she said there was always room for improvement: “It takes practice. It’s a very difficult thing to do. But that was even the case for [David Cameron] himself.”
Many Labour MPs tweeted their praise of the new format. Ian Lucas, Labour MP for Wrexham, said Corbyn had clearly won because his sincerity was “clear and contrasted with the prime minister”, while Stockton North MP Alex Cunningham said it was a “great start for our new leader at PMQs” as there was little room for Cameron to attack
questions that have come from people across the country.
However, one Labour shadow minister said they were worried that in the long term Cameron would “look pretty good and come out all but unscathed”.

Another critic was Simon Danczuk, who told LBC, it was a “problem” that Corbyn had neglected to follow Cameron’s lead after the prime minister began by praising the RAF’s role in the Battle of Britain.

From Chuka Umunna, the former shadow business secretary

From John Prescott, the former deputy prime minister

Here is the Guardian’s story about a BBC cameraman being treated in hospital after allegedly being pushed over by Jeremy Corbyn’s driver - a government car service employee. And here’s an excerpt.

A BBC cameraman has been treated in hospital after he was allegedly pushed over by Jeremy Corbyn’s driver.

James Webb was filming Corbyn, who was elected as Labour leader on Saturday, as he left his north London home on Tuesday when the incident occurred, reportedly leaving him with face and neck injuries ...

The Labour party said the incident involved an employee of the government car service (GCS) and referred any queries to the Department of Transport (DfT).

A DfT spokesperson said: “We are investigating media reports of an incident yesterday involving a government car service vehicle. We are looking at whether the driver was involved and the extent and nature of that involvement.”

GCS operates a fleet of about 90 cars and provides a “high-quality, secure car service” for ministers and other senior officials, according to information on the DfT website.

Webb declined to comment when approached by the Guardian.

A statement from the BBC said: “The BBC can confirm there was an incident involving a BBC cameraman while filming Jeremy Corbyn leaving his home yesterday. He sustained some injuries for which he’s received treatment. The BBC has spoken to the Labour party, who has confirmed the incident involved a government driver, not a Labour party member of staff.”

Here are four verdicts on PMQs from four Comment is Free commentators.

Here is a brief flavour of what they are saying. But do read the whole thing.

From Tom Clark

After damaging rows over white poppies and anthems not sung, in the House of Commons today Jeremy Corbyn notched up a sorely needed success.

From Polly Toynbee

How well he did. What a disappointment to all those waiting for calamity in the press gallery above, poison pens poised. Those with tickets to a bare-knuckle, cockfight massacre of an innocent were cheated. It just didn’t happen.

From Gary Younge

Cameron held his own in the chamber, but I think Corbyn came off better in the living room.

From Mark Wallace

Only Jeremy Corbyn could radically change something to make it more bland.

For those of you interested in how the government came to win the vote on cutting tax credits so easily yesterday, desconocido in the comments has flagged up this article on the subject by Stephen Bush at the New Statesman. It includes a full list of those MPs who voted for and against, and of those who did not vote.

Here’s an extract.

In this instance, Labour’s Whips’ office, like Labour’s frontbench, is still under construction, perhaps accounting for the mess-up. Tory whips, fearing a bigger rebellion than arrived, ensured that their MPs voted in greater numbers, suspended pairing, and called in George Osborne to reassure uneasy backbenchers, which is why the bigger victory happened.

Yesterday Tom Clark, a Guardian leader writer and former aide to a Labour minister, wrote a piece about the spin methods that Corbyn could have used in his first few days. After the anthemgate, here’s his next bit of advice.

Well, it goes without saying that we wouldn’t be starting from here. A day after nervous Tory MPs voted through vicious cuts to tax credits for the working poor, against which Corbyn has made a firm, principled and potentially popular stand, the chief talking point is the disinclination of the Labour leader to sing along with the national anthem.

The most obvious way to close the argument down was, as team Corbyn has latterly been doing, to protest that “Jeremy preferred to stand in respectful silence”. But to make that line stick, there needed to be an accompanying insistence that this was not a careful “decision”, but rather a spur of the moment impulse about what “seemed right”, which “bore no relation at all to Mr Corbyn’s views on the Monarchy or anything else”. To lighten the mood, a spinner might have chucked in a quip – “believe me, if you’d heard Jeremy sing, you’d appreciate that staying quiet was the more fitting tribute to the Battle of Britain pilots” – or observed how Wayne Rooney sometimes prefers to stand listening in silence before the kick off, and noted that this has not stopped him scoring more times for his country than anyone else.

But this sort of half-explanation, half-brush off approach, isn’t going to work any more. The idea that the Labour leader was making a calculated stand of some sort has been allowed to run for long enough for the media to dig up footage of Corbyn heartily singing along with the red flag, inviting a tricky compare and contrast. The chauvinist end of Fleet Street thinks it has Corbyn bang-to-rights here. More flannel isn’t going to persuade them to back off, and – because it will sound disingenuous – it could at the same time alienate Corbyn’s core camp of supporters who love him precisely because he refuses to play the game.

At this point, therefore, there is little choice but to dismiss the row as “tittle tattle” which the “hostile press and the Tories are running with because they’d rather talking about singing songs than disappearing tax credits”. It might even be worth sources “close to Mr Corbyn” going on the offensive. “If you must know”, they might say, “Jeremy does have a worry about the anthem, but it’s nothing to do with the Queen. It’s those half-forgotten later verses about “quelling rebellious Scots”. Any true patriot has to be concerned about that when Britain is struggling to keep the Union in place”.

This row is ugly, but it will soon enough go away. The crucial thing to take away from it is not to duck fights, but to pick them more carefully: battling the benefit cap? yes, absolutely, it’s a question of principle; disdaining the national anthem? no, it’s not worth the grief. The Labour leader who did more to transform British society than any other, Clement Attlee, was in the words of his biographer “an instinctive conservative in everything apart from his politics”. “If you want to change British society too”, a savvy spinner should be whispering into Jeremy’s ear, “you need to learn a lesson or two from old Clem”.

The New Statesman’s George Eaton has posted his verdict on PMQs. He says it was a qualified success for Jeremy Corbyn.

Here is some more reaction to PMQs from politicians.

From the Labour MP Toby Perkins (who ran Liz Kendall’s leadership campaign)

From Tristram Hunt, the former shadow education secretary

From the Conservative MP Gavin Barwell

From George Freeman, the life sciences minister

From Lord Ashcroft, the former Conservative deputy chairman

Theo Bertram, a former Labour adviser who worked for Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, has given his verdict on Jeremy Corbyn’s approach to PMQs on Twitter.

Updated

Here eight Guardian readers give their views on PMQs.

(Head BTL and you will find almost 5,000 readers giving their verdict too!)

Here’s my colleague Nicholas Watt’s story about PMQs. And here’s how it starts.

Jeremy Corbyn has moved to end the “theatrical” nature of prime minister’s questions by tabling a series of questions to David Cameron submitted by 40,000 people who responded to his call for ideas.

The new Labour leader calmly asked the prime minister in a non-confrontational way about the housing crisis in the rental sector, the government’s cuts to tax credits and the crisis in the mental health sector.

Cameron, who has been thinking hard how to respond to his rival’s more consensual style, congratulated Corbyn on his resounding victory in the Labour leadership contest and made a point of mentioning the names of the people whose questions were read out by the Labour leader.

The Labour MP Karl Turner says he asked David Cameron after PMQs about the new format.

Marie, one of those whose question on housing was read by Corbyn, later said on LBC radio that the new Labour leader needs to “change the way he does things, mix things up each week and really not let the Conservatives know which side it’s coming from – firing on all corners but doing it in a calm and collected way.”

She added that she hoped Corbyn’s new style would counter the Tories’ “short, sort of little sarcastic comments, quips and shouting” .

“I think he’ll pull another rabbit out of the hat and that’s the point - to keep them guessing,” Marie said.

She added of Cameron’s response to her question: “What made me laugh was what he said about the economy and keeping wages down in order to keep jobs but they’ve all just had a £10,000 raise, haven’t they? All those people that look very self-satisfied sitting there. What does that do to the economy? What do ordinary people think about that?

“All I’ll say to people is if you don’t care about politics start thinking about what it actually means for you. Start listening to this and thinking they’re self-satisfied people sit there every week and make these decisions about your lives.”

Updated

Conservative MP for Bristol North West, Charlotte Leslie, seems to have spent Corbyn’s first PMQs sketching the opposition benches. (You aren’t allowed to take photos in the chamber.) She has quite a talent.

PMQs - Verdict

PMQs - Verdict: This may be Jeremy Corbyn’s best moment since becoming leader. For even the most experienced frontbencher PMQs is a terrifying experience and Corbyn arrived with no experience at all of even asking a question at the despatch box, having spent four days being ridiculed mercilessly in the papers, and having spent at least some of the morning (when he should have been preparing for noon) dealing with the anthemgate repercussions. If not confident, he certainly looked competent at PMQs. He held his own, and emerged with his reputation intact, or perhaps even enhanced. He did not do an Iain Duncan Smith.

And the crowdsourcing experiment had at least two advantages. First, it elevated the tone of the exchanges as a whole. It was interesting to hear Cameron say that he, too, wanted a more cerebral PMQs, and that he liked the way it went last week, and, again, this week’s encounter sounded like a sensible conversation between grown-ups. Second (and this is partly why the tone was improved) crowdsourcing the questions inoculated Corbyn against partisan slander. Cameron knows that it is acceptable to denounce the opposition leader as weak, pathetic or whatever, but he daren’t say the same thing about Paul or Claire.

But there is a serious flaw in the crowdsourcing theory; it implies that previous opposition leaders have not bothered asking questions that might interest members of the public, and have instead simply pursued their own hobby horses. That simply isn’t the case. Opposition leaders are normally acutely aware of the responsibility they have at PMQs to hold the prime minister to account, and in the past they almost always have asked questions important to the voters. Any competent political leader should not need to process 40,000 emails to know what matters to people outside Westminster.

More significantly, by crowdsourcing the questions, Corbyn forfeited the right to a follow-up. And, as any interviewer knows, the follow-up questions are always the most important. That applies at PMQs too. Follow-up questions are the tools used to pick holes, identify flaws, and expose lies. Corbyn did not challenge Cameron about the answers he was giving and so the net result was just to give Cameron, who is well briefed and can answer broad questions about topics like housing and tax credits quite easily, a platform to promote government policy. He gets a lot more out of this format than Corbyn does.

And that’s why I can’t see it lasting. Readers often complain about Cameron not answering questions at PMQs but, as a political event, it is not really about answering questions. It is about the assertion of authority, and stress-testing political messages. Labour MPs will be relieved that their leader did not lose today, but quite soon they are going to want to see him notch up a win.

One other point. It was interesting to see how restrained Tory MPs were in their attacks on Corbyn. The most damaging backbench jibe at him came from Nigel Dodds, the DUP MP. If this had been Ed Miliband half way through the last parliament, there would have been endless questions about bin Laden, Hamas, the national anthem etc. Is this because Tory HQ has suddenly decided to eschew brutal character assassination? Of course not. More likely, it is because they have decided collectively that there is nothing to be gained by undermining Corbyn aggressively when his own MPs are doing it quite well themselves.

Updated

The ‘baby of the house’ and MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South, Mhairi Black, had this response to Corbyn’s new approach to PMQs –

And the Green Party’s only MP and former leader, Caroline Lucas, was very positive –

Updated

Cameron says national security will always be the government’s priority.

And that’s it. PMQs is over.

I will post a full verdict shortly.

Labour’s Tom Blenkinsop asks for a meeting about the state of the steel industry.

Cameron says everyone is concerned about the steel industry in Redcar.

James Gray, a Conservative, asks about soldiers who went to west Africa to help tackle the Ebola crisis.

Cameron says people like that are some of the bravest he has met.

Sierra Leone is almost Ebola-free, he says. He says this shows the value of the armed forces, and the importance of spending 0.7% of national income on aid.

Cameron says the trade union bill is designed to stop strikes taking place on low ballots.

Two years ago there was a school strikes. It was based on a ballot that was two years old, and the turnout was just 27%, he says.

Nigel Dodds, the DUP MP, mentions the plaque commemorating the death of Airey Neave, and other MPs killed by terrorists. Corbyn has appointed a shadow chancellor who says terrorists should be honoured. Will Cameron denounce that?

Many MPs express support.

Cameron says many MPs have expressed their agreement. Airey Neave was his first MP. Ian Gow was the first politicians he wrote a speech for. He condemns politicians who try to justify the kind of terrorism that killed them both.

Corbyn's first PMQs – Twitter reaction

The general reaction from the Twitter commentariat seemed moderately positive. Lots of political journalists (even some of the more critical ones) tweeted that the change of format could go down well with the public.

Some were less convinced by the new format ...

And, of course, journalists started scrabbling to find the lucky people who had their questions asked by Corbyn –

Updated

Asked if he favours the independent nuclear deterrent, Cameron says defence is the most important duty for a prime minister. He supports and independent nuclear deterrent and membership of Nato. The fact that Labour is turning away from this is worrying, he says.

Labour’s Daniel Zeichner asks about the state of his local hospital in Cambridge.

Cameron says at the election the Tories proposed £8bn more for the NHS, effectively £10bn (with the extra money already announced). Labour did not support that, he says.

Kelly Tolhurst, a Conservative, asks about Rochester A&E.

Cameron says he remembers discussing this (presumably during the Rochester byelection). The government will continue working on that hospital, he says.

Labour’s Kate Hollern asks about a medical condition for which Nice has not authorised the drug that can help. Will Cameron encourage Nice to come to a speedy decision.

Cameron says Hollern is right to raise this. He will try to ensure Nice reaches a speedy decision.

Kevin Hollinrake, a Conservative, asks about regional devolution to Yorkshire.

Cameron makes a joke about his Yorkshire gaffe last week. Devolution is coming, he says.

Labour’s Ronnie Campbell says public sector workers have never had a pay rise for five years. They have been promised now just a 1%. Why won’t the government give them a decent rise.

Cameron says inflation is zero percent. And Campbell has forgotten to mention progression pay in the NHS.

(Cameron does not mention the fact that the government wants to get rid of progression pay for some workers.)

PMQs - Snap Verdict

PMQs - Snap Verdict: Corbyn held his own, and the rather more elevated, serious tone of the exchanges was definitely welcome, but I would be surprised if crowdsourcing PMQs lasts long as an experiment, because mostly all it did was give Cameron a platform to sell his message. Labour MPs expect their leader to use PMQs not as a fact-finding exercise, but as an opportunity for political point-scoring, and in this respect Corbyn failed to score.

Updated

Corbyn says he hopes the extra spending planned for mental health is brought forward. Angela says beds are unattainable, or people go into hospital too far away from home. What does Cameron say to people who want to know that people take seriously their conditions?

Cameron says he would say that we need to do more as a country to help tackle mental health. Corbyn talks about mental health beds. But so is the service people get from their GP. They need access to better treatment there. So let’s change public attitude to mental health, but we won’t be able to do that without a strong economy, he says.

Corbyn says people should be able to live decently. He received more than 1,000 questions on mental health. Do you think it is acceptable that mental health services are on their knees, Gail asked, he says.

Cameron says mental and physical health have parity in the health system. There is funding for better health services.

He says we will not have a strong NHS unless we have a strong economy. If Labour goes for unlimited spending, we won’t be able to afford a strong NHS, he says.

Corbyn says the IFS says there are 8m people eligible for tax credits. They will only get 26% of this compensated by the national living wage. He asks a question from Claire, who says her income will plummet. How is this fair?

Cameron says the country has to live within its means and the government was left with a system where it did not pay to work. Unemployment is falling in every region, except the south east. We are moving from a low wages, high tax, high welfare economy to one with higher wages, less tax and less welfare. Let’s not go back to days of unconditional welfare, he says. Labour’s policy is to remove the benefits cap, he says.

Corbyn turns to the tax credit changes. They are shameful. He had more than 1,000 questions on this. Paul asks why the government is taking tax credit away from families. More is need to stop people being reliant on food banks.

Cameron says we need a country where work pays. That is why the government is brining in the national living wage. After some jeering, he says: “I thought this was the new question time.”

Between 1998 and 2009 inwork benefits went up as inwork benefits when up hugely, he says.

Corbyn says cutting rents to housing associations will cause problems. Stephen says 150 jobs will be lost where he works because the housing association will have less money to spend on repairs.

Cameron says what he would say is for years we had a merry-go-round, with rents going up, housing benefit going up, and then taxes going up. He would rather see more people have higher pay.

But housing associations need to become more effective, he says.

Jeremy Corbyn starts thanking those who took part in the Labour leadership election. He has taken part in many conversations with people about the Commons, and PMQs. Many said PMQs was too theatrical. They wanted their voice heard. So he decided to do things in a different way.

Cameron will welcome this, he says, because he said he wanted to do it differently in 2005. But something happened to his memory.

He received 40,000 replies to his crowdsourcing exercise. More than 2,000 were about housing. Marie asks what the government will do about the shortage of housing, and extortionate rents.

Cameron welcomes Corbyn to the front bench. They will have disagreements. But where they can work together, he will.

If if they can change PMQs, no one will be more delighted than him. He thought last week’s exercise was good.

He says the government delivered more affordable housing in the last parliament. But more needs to be done. He mentions various initiatives. And he says you can only keep Britain building with a strong economy.

Updated

Gordon Henderson, a Conservative, asks about the Battle of Britain. It is appropriate that the RAF defended the Isle of Sheppey. Will Cameron pay tribute to those airmen?

David Cameron says he will. There was a moving service at St Paul’s yesterday. Many people paid tribute the RAF, and to an important moment in world history.

And here’s Sky News’ Joey Jones’s very sound summary of the task facing David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn.

Here’s the Guardian’s preview story about today’s PMQs, covering how Jeremy Corbyn has been crowdsourcing his questions.

And here’s what it says about how David Cameron will approach the exchanges.

Downing Street has been thinking long and hard about how to respond to Corbyn. The prime minister will be personally respectful towards Corbyn and will acknowledge his personal achievement in winning such a strong victory.

The two men had a friendly chat during the summer as the prime minister waited in a Westminster corridor to attend his end-of-term meeting with the 1922 committee. The prime minister joked to Corbyn that they agreed on one thing – that he should be elected Labour leader.

But the prime minister wants to move quickly to define Corbyn as a hard leftwinger out of touch with ordinary people. Aides say Cameron will need to be careful not to come across as overly aggressive. He is expected to say the Tories are the true party of working people.

Jeremy Corbyn's first PMQs

Jeremy Corbyn also told Sky New in his brief clip this morning that he wanted to take the “yah-boo” element out of PMQs.

I want things to be rather different because I think the public have had enough of yah-boo sucks theatrical politics and that’s what I am going to try and bring to PMQs today.

It’s going to be interesting. I don’t expect it’s going to be easy but then our job is to hold government to account; our job is to speak up for ordinary people over the country and the day-to-day problems they are facing in their lives. That is the function of Parliament. It is not a club - or should not be a club - and I will try and treat it with the respect it deserves.

Michael Crick has posted more on Twitter about the incident involving a cameraman outside Jeremy Corbyn’s house.

The Labour MP John Mann told the BBC just now that he was getting letters from Labour supporters unhappy at what is happening under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. He would be passing them on to Corbyn, he said.

On the Daily Politics Lisa Nandy, the new shadow energy secretary, says she finds it offensive to suggest that the only way to show respect for those who served in the second world war is to sing a particular song.

Corbyn will sing the national anthem in future, Labour sources say

This is getting confusing. Labour sources are now briefing that Jeremy Corbyn will sing the national anthem at future events.

What Corbyn told Sky about the national anthem row

Here is the full transcript of what Jeremy Corbyn said in his clip for Sky News about anthemgate.

Corbyn declined to say he would be willing to sing the national anthem at future events. All he would say was that he would take “a full part”.

Q: You want to be PM, representing the country abroad. Are you really not going to sing the national anthem?

JC: I was at the Battle of Britain memorial yesterday. I was there out of respect for that amazing moment in British history. I was also thinking about my family, my mum and dad who were there at that time in London and who worked as air raid warnings during the Blitz. I was thinking about them. It was a respectful ceremony, and I stood in respect throughout it.

Q: Just to be clear. Members of the shadow cabinet have been struggling to defend this. Are you saying that you will sign the national anthem in future?

JC: I’m going to be at many events, and I will take part fully in those events. I don’t see a problem about this. The issue, surely, is that we had a memorial for the Battle of Britain, I was there, I showed respect for it, and I will show respect in the proper way at all future events. That’s what I will be doing.

Q: And is the proper way singing the national anthem?

JC: The proper way is to take a full part in them, and I will take a full part in them.

Updated

Corbyn sidesteps questions about whether he will sing the national anthem at future events

Jeremy Corbyn has given an interview about not singing the national anthem.

He says that he was thinking about his parents during the service yesterday, and their service during the second world war.

Asked if he will sign it in future, he says he will take part in those events in the proper way.

Asked about PMQs, he says it won’t be easy. But he wants to get rid of the “yah-boo element”.

I will post the full quotes in a moment.

  • Corbyn sidesteps questions about whether he will sing the national anthem at future events

Here are some of the more interesting tweets I’ve seen about anthemgate.

From the Times’s Philip Collins

From the New Statesman’s George Eaton

From the Labour peer George Foulkes

From the writer Armando Iannucci

From Christian Wolmar, the Labour activist and former potential mayoral candidate

From Sunny Hundal, the journalist and campaigner

From Harry Leslie Smith, the writer and campaigner

From Kevin Pringle, the former SNP communications chief

From the Times’s Hugo Rifkind

From the FT’s John McDermott

From the New Statesman’s Stephen Bush

Updated

Sky News’s Darren McCaffrey has posted video footage on Twitter of an incident involving a TV camera outside Jeremy Corbyn’s house.

Michael Crick, the Channel 4 News political correspondent, has posted these on Twitter. A Guardian colleague has confirmed that there was an incident, and we will be publishing our own story soon.

UPDATE AT 2.25PM: Here is the Guardian story about this incident. I have removed a tweet suggesting a Corbyn aide was involved. As the story says, the cameraman was allegedly pushed over by Corbyn’s driver - a government car service employee.

Updated

We are trying to seek clarity from Corbyn’s team and Labour about whether “Jeremy Corbyn 4 PM” officially speaks for the leader. The Twitter account has a blue tick to show it is verified but the Facebook page that published the longer statement does not. There are separate official “Jeremy Corbyn” pages.

Amid all the fury over anthemgate, you might have missed the claim yesterday that Jeremy Corbyn pinched some sandwiches intended for veterans after yesterday’s Battle of Britain service. Helpfully, Huffington Post has a story saying that allegation is totally untrue, and that the sandwiches were intended for anyone attending the service.

Composite of today’s newspapers on Jeremy Corbyn
Composite of today’s newspapers on Jeremy Corbyn Photograph: The Guardian

Updated

My colleague Roy Greenslade has read all the newspaper coverage of Jeremy Corbyn, and the national anthem row, so that you don’t have to. He’s written a round-up of their coverage here.

Roy’s with Corbyn on this one.

At this point, I need to declare that I do not sing the national anthem. I am a member of Republic, the organisation dedicated to the abolition of the monarchy. And I shared a platform with Corbyn at a Republic annual meeting many years ago.

It also means that I, like Corbyn, am a republican in the UK and a republican in Ireland - but definitely not a Republican in the US.

There are, quite obviously, not many of us to be found in the rightwing press, so the response to Corbyn’s anthem silence was predictable. (If he had sung the anthem, the headlines would, of course, have said “Hypocrite Corbyn”) ...

The Mirror was noticeably more sympathetic. “It is important not to confuse patriotism with loyalty to the crown,” said its leading article. “People can love their country but not support the monarchy.” It continued:

“Whatever your view of him, it is absurd to suggest he was showing a lack of respect to our country’s war heroes. He was there to pay them respect and he chose to do so silently.

People are inevitably divided on the issue. Those who enjoy singing the anthem should be allowed to do so and those who prefer to reflect shouldn’t be abused or bullied.”

Yes, I can’t fault that argument. And I think, going on my own experience, the Queen might even agree. When she was a guest at a Newspaper Society lunch some years ago I failed to sing the anthem while standing at a table within her sight.

Her press secretary later told me she wasn’t in the least bit offended. Well, that’s what he said anyway.

The Labour MP Simon Danczuk, one of the Labour MPs who has been most critical of Jeremy Corbyn, has been out again today having a go at him over not singing the national anthem.

Unemployment up by 10,000 to 1.82m

Here are the headline unemployment figures.

  • Unemployment rose by 10,000 between May and July to 1.82m.
  • The claimant count last month rose by 1,200 to 791,700
  • Average earnings increased by 2.9% in the year to July, 0.5% up on the previous
    month.

Here is the Office for National Statistics summary. And here is the ONS statistical bulleting, with the full details (pdf).

There is some consolation for Jeremy Corbyn this morning. In his Telegraph column, William Hague, the Conservative former foreign secretary, says he has some admiration for him.

I have a confession to make: as foreign secretary I always respected and made time for Jeremy Corbyn. He was an inveterate campaigner on many issues, from the return of the Chagos Islanders to nuclear disarmament. Consistent and predictable, he asked his own questions in the Commons without paying the slightest attention to his front bench, a quality which, provided it was confined to Opposition, seemed to me to be entirely commendable.

This comes at the top of a good column about the multiple difficulties of being leader of the opposition.

Here’s Jeremy Corbyn leaving home this morning.

Jeremy Corbyn leaving home
Jeremy Corbyn leaving home Photograph: Ben Pruchnie/Getty Images

But the Corbyn team view is not shared by Lord West, the former head of the navy and a former Labour security minister (although not a tribal Labour figure - he was one of Gordon Brown’s “government of all talents” (goat) appointments). Asked about Jeremy Corbyn not singing the national anthem, West said:

I think [the military] will be offended, and a large number of people in this country will be offended by it and I think extraordinary is the right word but they will be offended by it as well and I think that should have been thought through.

Corbyn team dimisses national anthem row as 'demeaning' and 'tittle tattle'

Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign team has dismissed the row about his not singing the national anthem at the Battle of Britain service yesterdays as “tittle tattle” and “demeaning” to the political debate he has launched. The campaign posted this on its official Twitter account.

Here is more from Kate Green, the shadow minister for women and equalities, explaining Labour’s position on the benefits cap. (See 8.38am.)

Referring to Labour’s general election manifesto, she said that the party’s current position was to “support the principle” of the benefits cap. But that could change, she acknowledged.

Well, the party has a collective process for making policy. That has led us to our present position which is to support the principle of the benefits cap introduced in the last Parliament. The government is now seeking to reduce the level of the cap. We think that will cause very significant hardship to a number of people who can’t do very much about their circumstances.

She said that the amendments being tabled by Labour to the welfare bill would remove many vulnerable families from the cap.

As to whether the party decided whether or not to back the full abolition of the benefits cap, Green said that it would not necessarily have to decide on that until it came before parliament for a vote.

I don’t think it is any secret that Jeremy and other London MPs in particular are against the cap because they have seen it having a particularly harsh affect in London where housing costs are very high. The present policy position of the party, decided collectively by the party - and that is the way we make policy in the party; Jeremy is very respectful of that collective approach - is that we accept the principle of the cap but it is not currently before parliament to have a vote to remove it altogether. Obviously if that becomes a possibility in Parliament the party will collectively decide where we stand...

It is not the current policy of the Labour party [to oppose the principle of a cap] but it is clearly something that Jeremy feels very strongly about.

Corbyn, though, told the TUC yesterday that he thought the Labour amendments would give MPs the chance to vote on abolishing the benefits cap altogether. (See 8.38am.)

I’ve taken the quotes from PoliticsHome.

Kate Green
Kate Green Photograph: Chris Bull / Alamy Stock Photo/Alamy Stock Photo

Corbyn faces shadow cabinet split over abolishing benefits cap

Jeremy Corbyn faces his first PMQs today with two fresh Labour controversies in the news. Both of them illustrate how his election as leader is taking the party into very unfamiliar territory.

  • Corbyn’s attempt to commit Labour to wholesale abolition of the benefits cap has been resisted by members of his shadow cabinet. In his speech to the TUC yesterday Corbyn said that he was wholly opposed to the benefit cap, and that the party would table amendments to the welfare bill to get rid of it altogether. This would amount to a departure from the policy at the election which was to accept the cap in principle. Corbyn told the TUC:

As far as I am concerned, the amendments we are putting forward are to remove the whole idea of the benefit cap altogether.

But two members of the shadow cabinet have said he is not yet speaking for the party on this. On Newsnight last night Owen Smith, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said Labour was only opposing plans to reduce the benefits cap (the total that a family can claim in out-of-work benefits) from £26,000 to £23,000. Smith said it would be “foolhardy” for the party to “set our face unthinkingly” against a policy that had public support.

I think the truth is we still must support overall reductions in welfare spending. I think we have also got to have limits on what individuals and individual families can draw down. Can I be clear - our policy is to oppose the Welfare Bill which includes the reduction from £26,000 to £23,000 on the benefit cap for individual households.

When it was put to him that Corbyn said the cap should be scrapped altogether, he replied:

No, our policy is to review that aspect of it. We are very clear. We are in favour of an overall reduction in the amount of money we spend on benefits in this country and we are in favour of limits on what individual families can draw down. Because I don’t think the country would support us saying we were in favour of unfettered spending.

On the Today programme this morning Kate Green, the new shadow minister for women and equalities, also said the current policy was to accept the cap in principle.

  • Corbyn has been criticised by one of his own shadow cabinet ministers for not singing the national anthem at the Battle of Britain commemoration service yesterday. Asked about this on the Today programme this morning, Green said:

Jeremy absolutely stands with and respects everybody who has fought, who has lost their life, been wounded in fighting oppressions and defending our freedoms. For many people, the monarchy, singing the national anthem is a way of showing that respect. I think it would have been appropriate and right and respectful of people’s feelings to have done so.

I will be covering more on both of these developments.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Unemployment figures are released.

Noon: David Cameron faces Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs.

2.15pm: Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, is questioned by MPs on the Commons Treasury committee.

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 after PMQs.

If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on@AndrewSparrow

Updated

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