Afternoon summary
- Albania’s prime minister has criticised Michael Gove, the justice secretary, for suggesting that the UK should adopt Albania’s relationship with the EU. Given that Albania wants to join the EU, Edi Rama said this was “ridiculous”. Rama told the World at One:
When I heard about it I thought it was a joke.
Then when I read it knowing that Mr Gove is one of the very intelligent persons in the UK politics I thought it was kind of weird because why in the world Brits would have to follow a model we don’t want for ourselves. We think it’s the other way round.
Talking about this new BBC - British Balkan Confederation - is really amazing, but not for serious politics. I am sorry to that because I have a lot of respect for Mr Gove as a person and it’s, let me say bluntly, ridiculous.
Earlier, writing in the Times, Rama said Albania had only limited access to the EU’s market in services, no passport for financial services, its banks could not operate across Europe in the way British banks can, and it was outside the EU customs union which meant it faced costly red tape.
In his speech last week Gove said:
There is a free trade zone stretching from Iceland to Turkey that all European nations have access to, regardless of whether they are in or out of the euro or EU.26 After we vote to leave we will remain in this zone. The suggestion that Bosnia, Serbia, Albania and the Ukraine would remain part of this free trade area - and Britain would be on the outside with just Belarus - is as credible as Jean-Claude Juncker joining Ukip.
- An online poll for ICM suggests that President Obama’s intervention has not helped the Remain campaign. The poll, conducted between Friday and Sunday, shows Leave marginally ahead, whereas ICM’s online poll the week before showed Leave and Remain 50/50. Here is an extract from the ICM write-up.
Following Barack Obama’s intervention in the EU debate last week, the Remain campaign will have hoped for a boost in public support. During his three-day visit to London, Obama warned that the UK would lose influence if it were to leave the EU, and suggested that it could take up to 10 years to negotiate new trade deals with the US.
However, this week’s data does little to support this idea. Leave takes a narrow lead in ICM’s EU tracker, with 46% in favour of leaving compared to 44% who support remaining in the EU.
Excluding non-voters and DKs, this translates as 51% vs 49% in the topline numbers.
Interestingly, we do see a hardening of resolve among Leave supporters when it comes to turnout, with four in five (80%) saying they are absolutely certain to vote, compared to 75% who said the same in our first April poll – perhaps reflecting a sense of displeasure among Leave supporters about Obama’s comments.
UPDATE: Does this show that President Obama’s intervention backfired? Vote Leave seem to think so. This is from Paul Stephenson, its communications director.
No 10 briefed anyone who would listen that they won #EUref last week - then polls swing against them - typical hubris. Long hard fight ahead
— Paul Stephenson (@stephenson_pr) April 26, 2016
And this is from Dominic Cummings, its campaign director.
As per what I said yesterday, SW1 often misjudges things like Obama - 2 polls now out both showing swing to Leave: https://t.co/8LcXHLfAFg
— odysseanproject (@odysseanproject) April 26, 2016
But, even though the polls may have tightened, that does not necessarily mean that Obama’s comments were counterproductive. In 2014 George Osborne’s announcement (backed by Labour and the Lib Dems) ruling out a currency union with an independent Scotland infuriated the Scots, who saw it as a threat and a bluff, and subsequently the No lead shrank. But, come polling day, uncertainty about what would happen to the Scottish currency and economy in the event of a Yes vote was probably decisive in explaining why No won. Obama’s “back of the queue” comment (another threat/bluff) may well impact on the campaign in the same way; in the short term, it energises the Leave camp, but in the long term it may create a firewall of uncertainty that will keep don’t knows on the Remain side.
- David Cameron has claimed that the whole of Britain will “pay the price” if Labour’s Sadiq Khan becomes London mayor. Supporting the Conservative mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith on a campaign visit, Cameron said:
If Corbyn wins in London next week, he is one step closer to carrying out his dangerous experiment on the country.
Everyone who cares about jobs, common-sense ideas and the future of our country has an interest in stopping Corbyn’s march.
If London sleepwalks into electing Jeremy Corbyn’s candidate, the whole country will pay the price.
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
Updated
Here are two more extracts from Alan Johnson’s speech earlier to the Usdaw conference in Blackpool.
On Labour’s 1945 government
It was here in this hall that the first post-war Labour party conference met after VE Day in 1945.
It was chaired by Ellen Wilkinson, a suffragette, socialist, leader of the Jarrow Crusade, and former organiser for your union. In May 1945, she sat where John Hannett is sitting right now, chairing the Labour conference.
Many of the delegates were in the uniforms of the Army, Navy and Royal Air Force, with medals on their chests from campaigns in Africa, Italy and Normandy. Major Denis Healey made his first ever speech to a Labour conference. So did Barbara Castle, demanding ‘jam today, not jam tomorrow’. Clem Attlee was seeking permission to dissolve the wartime coalition government and force a general election to chuck out the Tories and vote in a Labour government.
The delegates sitting where you are now demanded two things. First, they wanted peace. Two world wars had started on our continent in the space of just over 20 years: and every 20 years for centuries before that Europeans had been slaughtering one another on the battlefield.
Labour leaders like, Clem Attlee, Ernie Bevin and Herbert Morrison, helped create the United Nations, NATO and the great institutions of the post-war world. They knew that to keep the peace, nations needed strong international institutions to work together, not to cede sovereignty but to pool it, not to reduce British influence, but to enhance it.
But they also wanted what Nye Bevan called ‘serenity’ in the lives of working people. They heeded the lessons of what happened after the first world war, when the men came home from the trenches and found only slums and slump and soup kitchens.
On the 1950s
Nostalgia can be a powerful force in politics.
I have to say, whenever I hear Ukip hanker after the sepia-tinted world of the 1950s, I’m reminded of the conditions that we of a certain age in this hall, grew up in. Living in slums which had been condemned years before as unfit for human habitation. The cards in shop-windows advertising rooms-to-let – “no Irish, no blacks and no dogs”.
A young black man, Kelso Cochrane, was murdered on the corner of my street in the Notting Hill race riots. If you fell in the Grand Union Canal you’d die of the pollution before you drowned. The war hero, Alan Turing, chemically castrated by the state for being homosexual. A married woman couldn’t hire a telly or buy something on hire purchase without her husband being present to counter sign the agreement.
That was Britain in the 1950s – Nigel Farage and his cronies are welcome to it.
Vote Leave chief Matthew Elliott criticised for ducking Treasury committee invitation
Matthew Elliott, Vote Leave’s chief executive, has been criticised for ducking an invitation to give evidence to the Commons Treasury committee about the EU referendum.
Elliott was originally due to give evidence last week, alongside his colleague Dominic Cummings, but he pulled out at the last minute. According to the committee he said he could not be there “for understandable personal reasons”.
The committee asked him to turn up tomorrow instead. But now he has told the committee he can’t come because he has a prior engagement in Switzerland. In a statement Andrew Tyrie, the committee chairman, said this was “unacceptable”. Tyrie said:
Mr Elliott’s decision is unacceptable, and does not reflect well on Vote Leave.
Vote Leave’s response to requests to give evidence is not making parliament’s job any easier.
Given that Cummings’ evidence session was, by common consent, a bit of a disaster, Elliott’s decision to stay away may perhaps be understand. The Sunday Telegraph columnist Simon Heffer said at the weekend that the the “bizarre performance” by Cummings “left some of us wondering whether he was on day release from a secure facility”.
Carmichael says government's ECHR position is now 'utterly incoherent'
Alistair Carmichael, the Lib Dem home affairs spokesman, has issued this statement after the urgent question on the European convention on human rights.
The home secretary first went rogue and then went missing after she failed to come before Parliament and defend her position.
The government’s policy in this area is now utterly incoherent.
Theresa May wants to stay in the EU, but leave the ECHR, the minister for human rights wants to leave the EU, but stay in the ECHR. And Michael Gove wants to leave the EU, stay in the ECHR but ignore its rulings.
The convention on human rights is a British invention and is key to liberty and fundamental rights and something we should be proud of and not wanting to leave.
Earlier the Labour MP David Hanson used a 10-minute rule bill to propose getting rid of the remaining hereditary peers from the House of Lords. In a very good speech he ridiculed the byelection system that allows hereditary peers currently in the Lords to elect a new hereditary peer from outside to join them when one of their number dies. Last week there was a byelection that led to Viscount Thurso, a former Lib Dem MP, being elected to the Lords in a contest with just three voters.
Here’s an extract from Hanson’s speech.
The electorate that held the power of electing the noble peer to the House of Lords was in this case just 3 people.
Now, this House will remember the very great fights on the 1832 Reform Act, an act that abolished, for example, the constituency of Old Sarum, that used to be able to send two members of parliament to this House. Now Old Sarum had 11 voters, positively huge, almost the Isle of Wight in comparison with the noble lord’s election last week.
The electorate last week for the chamber of the noble lord was three Liberal Democrat peers, noble lords Addington, Glasgow and Asquith, all hereditary peers. Baron Addington’s peerage dates back to 1887 when his ancestor, a businessman and Conservative member of parliament, was granted the title. The 10th Earl of Glasgow can trace his title back to 1703 when it was created for his ancestor David Boyle who was subsequently one of the commissioners who negotiated the Treaty of Union. The 3rd Earl of Oxford and Asquith is a more new entrée to the House of Lords, being the grandson of the former prime minister Henry Herbert Asquith, created in 1925.
Each hopeful in this election to write 75 words on why they should be trusted with a seat in the mother of all parliaments. The eventual winner, Viscount Thurso’s manifesto, was excellent for the environment. It was a blank piece of paper. For the gang of three people who voted for him there were no words saying what he would do, or why he would do it.
I’m pleased to tell the House that, unlike the national trend of voter decline, there was 100% turnout, no spoilt ballot papers and miraculously all three votes went to Viscount Thurso in the first round.
The count, by the way, took 24 hours - which is not quite Houghton and Sunderland South [a Commons constituency famous for its fast declarations] but which still resulted in a member of parliament.
Hanson’s 10-minute rule bill will not become law - at least, not in this form, or any time soon - but MPs use this procedure to highlight issue in the hope that one day parliament will legislate.
Lunchtime summary
- Michael Gove, the justice secretary, has overruled Theresa May by saying her call for Britain to leave the European court of human rights is not government policy. Speaking during justice questions in the Commons, Gove said he believed “we should remain within the European convention on human rights”. He also backed Dominic Raab, a junior minister in his department, who said explained in more detail that withdrawal from the ECHR was not government policy, although the idea was not ruled out “forever”. (See 12.34pm.) Labour and SNP MPs said that May’s speech yesterday, which explicitly advocated ECHR withdrawal, had left the government’s policy in disarray, and several MPs criticised May for not coming to the Commons herself to answer an urgent question on the matter.
- Frank Field, the Labour former welfare minister, has said Ukip poses a “deadly threat” to his party and that Jeremy Corbyn should respond by avoiding “more actively” campaigning for Remain in the EU referendum. (See 11.05am.)
- The Labour MP Naz Shah has resigned as a parliamentary aide to John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, after apologising for an anti-Israel Facebook post she made before she was elected to parliament. (See 11.18am and 1.29pm.)
- David Cameron is to visit the steelworks at Port Talbot in south Wales to speak to bosses, unions and staff at the under-threat plant. As the Press Association reports, the prime minister’s surprise visit on Tuesday comes as a director at the TataSteel plant seeks to put together a management buyout of the firm’s UK business.
- The Labour MP David Hanson has proposed a bill getting rid of hereditary peers from the House of Lords using the 10-minute rule procedure. There was no opposition to the bill although, like all 10-minute rule bills, it has no chance of becoming law. (Hanson’s speech was superb, and I will post quotes from it later.)
Naz Shah resigns as John McDonnell's PPS
The Labour MP Naz Shah has resigned as John McDonnell’s parliamentary private secretary (PPS) in the light of the controversy about her 2014 “relocate Israel” Facebook post. (See 11.18am.) She issued this statement.
I deeply regret the hurt I have caused by comments made on social media before I was elected as an MP. I made these posts at the height of the Gaza conflict in 2014, when emotions were running high around the Middle East conflict. But that is no excuse for the offence I have given, for which I unreservedly apologise.
In recognition of that offence I have stepped down from my role as PPS to the shadow chancellor John McDonnell. I will be seeking to expand my existing engagement and dialogue with Jewish community organisations, and will be stepping up my efforts to combat all forms of racism, including anti-semitism.
Sylvia Hernon, the independent MP for North Down in Northern Ireland, says she was horrified when she heard Theresa May propose leaving the ECHR yesterday. What consideration did she give to the impact this would have in Northern Ireland?
Wright says May is aware of the Northern Ireland dimension.
In the Commons Peter Bone, the Conservative MP, asks Wright if it is possible to leave the ECHR and remain a member of the EU? What is the legal position?
Wright says the legal position is not clear.
This is from the legal commentator David Allen Green.
Without the Human Rights Act there would not have been this Hillsborough inquest.
— David Allen Green (@DavidAllenGreen) April 26, 2016
Impact of Article 2 of ECHR on domestic law.
Theresa May, the home secretary, is due to make a Commons statement on Hillsborough tomorrow, and so MPs will have a chance to raise this.
Yesterday Labour’s Lord Falconer claimed Theresa May was wrong to think Britain could stay in the EU while leaving the ECHR. As I reported at the time, this is a matter of dispute.
Today Nick Timothy, who used to work as May’s special adviser in the Home Office, says government legal advice says you can leave the ECHR without having to leave the EU. He has set out his views on Twitter.
1. I happen to take a different view to TM on the EU, and will vote to leave. But we should get facts straight about the ECHR.
— Nick Timothy (@NickJTimothy) April 26, 2016
2. Government legal advice has always been clear: you can leave the ECHR without leaving the EU.
— Nick Timothy (@NickJTimothy) April 26, 2016
3. There is no provision in EU law that says member states must sign up to ECHR.
— Nick Timothy (@NickJTimothy) April 26, 2016
4. The EU itself is not yet a signatory to the ECHR. If that happens it will affect EU institutions only and not member states.
— Nick Timothy (@NickJTimothy) April 26, 2016
5. It is highly unlikely the EU itself will actually sign up to ECHR, given an opinion already issued by the ECJ.
— Nick Timothy (@NickJTimothy) April 26, 2016
6. The UK has a veto over the EU becoming an ECHR signatory anyway.
— Nick Timothy (@NickJTimothy) April 26, 2016
7. If it was impossible to leave ECHR but not EU, why has the pro-EU PM refused to rule out leaving the ECHR?
— Nick Timothy (@NickJTimothy) April 26, 2016
8. Bill Cash, EU expert, told Pol Home on 6 March 2013 that “the UK could leave the Convention and stay within its EU treaty obligations”
— Nick Timothy (@NickJTimothy) April 26, 2016
9. Former Attorney Gen Dominic Grieve: Leaving the ECHR “would have not any bearing on our membership of the European Union.”
— Nick Timothy (@NickJTimothy) April 26, 2016
10. PM himself said in Bloomberg speech: "Some antipathy about Europe really relates to the European Court of Human Rights.”
— Nick Timothy (@NickJTimothy) April 26, 2016
11. I am baffled why people who want to leave the EU (like me) think we can’t leave the ECHR - a much simpler exercise.
— Nick Timothy (@NickJTimothy) April 26, 2016
Yvette Cooper, the former shadow home secretary, says Theresa May said clearly Britain should pull out of the ECHR. Is that government policy?
Wright says he has set out government policy. What May was doing yesterday was saying the status quo is unacceptable, he says.
Wright says Human Rights Act has been 'tarnished'
Harriet Harman, Labour’s former deputy leader, says when Wright says the government won’t rule out ECHR withdrawal, that sounds like a “direction of travel”. She says that is chilling. She says the government wants to exempt itself from ECHR jurisprudence. That would me a mistake, she says. All governments need some sort of restraint on what they do.
Wright says he thinks there is no prospect of this government, or any other, moving away from human rights.
He says Harman attaches “too much significance” to the Human Rights Act. He says it has been “tarnished” by cases that have undermined support for the HRA.
And he says Harman is overlooking the way British courts hold government to account.
Joanna Cherry, the SNP justice spokeswoman, says Theresa May’s comments caused great concern in Scotland.
She says MSPs are opposed to withdrawal from the ECHR. The Human Rights Act is “hard-wired” into the Scottish parliament, she says. The Scottish parliament would never give legislative consent to withdrawal from the ECHR. Any attempt to do this would provoke a constitutional crisis, she says.
Wright says:
I think there is a risk in this discussion that we make a little too much of what happened yesterday.
He repeats the point about the prime minister and others not ruling out ECHR withdrawal.
He says the SNP seem to be saying they will oppose any human rights reform. But at the same time the SNP are also urging the government to bring forward its reform.
He accepts the proposals will involve significant consequences for devolution. The government will consult fully, he says.
Crispin Blunt, a Conservative former justice minister, says this illustrates what happens when you contract out policy to the tabloid press. He says the government reformed the way the European court of human rights worked in the last parliament. Now the government should work with it, he says.
Wright is responding to Slaughter.
He says all ministers agree that the status quo with the ECHR is not acceptable. That is why the government is bringing forward plans for reform.
Andrew Slaughter, the shadow justice minister, says we are certainly not short of government policy on the ECHR.
He says Theresa May should have replied to the UQ herself. Without her it is like “Hamlet without the prince”.
What is the status of May’s speech? Was it just a stump speech for the Tory leadership, he asks.
Wright is responding to Carmichael.
He says there is no confusion about the government’s position. He set it out, as did Dominic Raab earlier. (See 12.34pm.)
He says it is not clear whether or not a country has to remain in the ECHR to stay a member of the EU.
Theresa May 'went rogue', says Alistair Carmichael
Alistair Carmichael is responding to Jeremy Wright.
He says Theresa May, the home secretary, should have been here today responding to the UQ.
He says yesterday she went rogue; today she has gone missing.
He says May wants to stay in the EU, but leave the ECHR. He says the minister for human rights (Dominic Raab) wants to leave the EU, but stay in the ECHR. And Michael Gove wants to leave the EU, stay in the ECHR but ignore its jurisprudence. Thank heavens we don’t have the instability of a coalition government, he jokes.
Updated
Attorney general says ECHR a 'fine document'
Alistair Carmichael, the Lib Dem justice spokesman, asks for a statement about the European court of human rights. He asked for a statement from the home secretary, Theresa May, but Jeremy Wright, the attorney general, is replying.
He says the UK is a founder member of the European convention of human rights. The government has made clear it has no objection to the document. It is a “fine document”, he says.
But he says the government was elected with a mandate to modernise Britain’s human rights framework. It will replace the Human Rights Act with a British bill of rights.
A consultation will be published in due course, he says.
He says the intention of reform is to protect human rights, but to introduce some common sense into the system.
The prime minister has said the government rules nothing out. Its intention is to stay in the ECHR. But it will not stay in at any cost, he says.
Wright says any reforms will protect human rights.
The government passed the Modern Slavery Act, he says. And it has taken a leading role promoting human rights around the world.
What Raab says about the ECHR
Here is the full quote from Dominic Raab, responding to Alistair Carmichael.
On the ECHR the government’s position remains clear. We cannot rule out withdrawal forever, but our forthcoming proposals [for a British bill of rights] do not include withdrawal from the convention, not least because of the clear advice we have received that if we withdrew from the ECHR while remaining an EU member it would be an open invitation to the Luxembourg court [the European court of justice] to fill the gap which could have far worse consequences, and because the convention is written into the Good Friday Agreement.
We are confident that we can replace the Human Rights Act with a bill of rights and reform our relationship with the Strasbourg court. That is precisely what we intend to do.
In a subsequent answer Michael Gove, the justice secretary, said he backed what Raab was saying.
Gove snubs May, saying government not planning to leave European court of human rights
In justice questions Alistair Carmichael, the Lib Dem MP, has just asked if the government plans to leave the European convention on human rights.,
Dominic Raab, a justice minister, said the government did not rule out leaving the ECHR “forever”. But he said the government’s forthcoming plans for a British bill of rights would not involve plans to leave the ECHC, not least because leaving would create a vacuum that would be filled by the European court of justice ruling more on human rights issues.
He also said that the Good Friday Agreement was based on Britain being signed up to the ECHR.
- Michael Gove’s Ministry of Justice snubs Theresa May, saying government does not plan to leave the ECHR.
Jeremy Wright, the attorney general, is responding to the UQ on the ECHR.
There will be an urgent question in the Commons at 12.30pm about the European convention on human rights. The Lib Dem justice spokesperson Alistair Carmichael has tabled the question in the light of Theresa May’s speech yesterday, in which she said the UK should leave the ECHR, going well beyond government policy on this issue.
1 UQ at 12.30 - Alistair Carmichael MP to Home Secretary on the UK's membership to the European Convention of Human Rights.
— Labour Whips (@labourwhips) April 26, 2016
Alan Johnson's speech - Highlights
Alan Johnson is still speaking, but some extracts from his speech were released in advance. Here are the highlights.
- Johnson said Tories were backing Brexit because they wanted to reduce workers’ rights.
And what about Michael Gove and Boris Johnson? Does anyone really believe they want to leave the EU because it will help working families?
No, their vision is a small state with few, if any, workplace rights, and the Thatcherite “supply side” economy that Nigel Lawson was eulogising the other day. They know the EU protects workers’ interests, and it’s one of the principal reasons why they want to leave the EU.
According to Michael Gove, we should emulate Albania. Boris Johnson says we should ignore the President of the United States because of his Kenyan ancestry, and Chris Grayling (a man who lights up a room when he leaves it) says that our country is never on the winning side whenever there’s a vote at the council of ministers when the facts show that we get our way on the vast majority of occasions.
- He said almost 4m workers are represented by the 10 unions backing Remain. The 10 unions are: Unite (1.3m), Unison (1.2m), GMB (630,000), USDAW (435,000), CWU (197,000), UCATT, Community, the Musician’s Union, BECTU and TSSA.
- He said unions were backing the EU because EU membership protected workers’ rights.
The rights of working people are protected by our EU membership and Labour and our union movement are united in campaigning for Britain to Remain in Europe.
To protect the jobs that depend on our EU membership and the protections at work guaranteed through our EU membership, it is vital that our Unions campaign for a Britain to Remain in Europe.
- He said the EU referendum was as important as the 1945 general election.
I believe the vote in the referendum on the EU on June 23 is every bit as important as that election in July 1945. Perhaps more so. It is a vote about whether we remain or leave the EU, and there will be immediate consequences to that decision for everyone here, and every family in the land. But it’s about more than that. For me, it’s about what kind of country we are, what kind of society we want to be.
Alan Johnson, chair of Labour In for Britain, is speaking at the Usdaw conference in Blackpool now. There is live coverage here.
Updated
Frank Field's Q&A
Here is more from what Frank Field said when taking questions after his speech.
- Field said David Cameron’s EU renegotiation was “pathetic”.
Field calls PM's renegotiation: "Pathetic", "judgment wrong"-Country would have been "most pleased to postpone ref" till a proper deal done.
— Harry Cole (@MrHarryCole) April 26, 2016
- He claimed that President Obama’s intervention was helpful for the Leave camp.
Frank Field welcomes Obama's EU intervention because it "increased the resolve" of Leave supporters. "I would love him to come every week."
— Emily Ashton (@elashton) April 26, 2016
- Field said that Alan Johnson’s claim in a speech this morning that the EU referendum was as important as the 1945 election was laughable. (I will be posting extracts from Johnson’s speech shortly.)
Labour clash: Frank Field says Alan Johnson’s claim “remain” vote more important for workers than election of ‘45 Attlee govt is laughable.
— Joe Churcher (@JoeChurcher) April 26, 2016
- He said Theresa May’s speech yesterday showed she was preparing for a Tory leadership contest in the event of a vote to leave the EU.
Frank Field says Theresa May's speech yesterday shows she's "preparing for the Remain side's loss in the referendum"
— Michael Deacon (@MichaelPDeacon) April 26, 2016
Frank Field says Theresa May call to leave ECHR looked like a senior cabinet minister positioning for leadership after loss of referendum
— Rowena Mason (@rowenamason) April 26, 2016
Labour MP Naz Shah apologises over 2014 'relocate Israel' Facebook post
A Labour MP has apologised for any offence caused by a social media posting in which she appeared to endorse the relocation of Israelis to the US, the Press Association reports.
Bradford West MP Naz Shah shared a graphic which showed an image of Israel’s outline superimposed onto a map of the US under the headline “Solution for Israel-Palestine Conflict - Relocate Israel into United States”, with the comment “problem solved”.
The Facebook post - shared in 2014 before Shah became an MP - suggested the US has “plenty of land” to accommodate Israel as a 51st state, allowing Palestinians to “get their life and their land back”.
It added that Israeli people would be welcome and safe in the US while the “transportation cost” would be less than three years’ worth of Washington’s support for Israeli defence spending.
Shah added a note suggesting the plan might “save them some pocket money”.
After the posting was highlighted by the Guido Fawkes website, Shah released a statement in which she said: “This post from two years ago was made before I was an MP, does not reflect my views and I apologise for any offence it has caused.”
Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, has welcomed Frank Field’s speech.
Labour's Frank Field right in saying EU membership has pushed down wages for British workers. Only by Leaving EU can we control immigration.
— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) April 26, 2016
Labour voters who feel disappointed by Mr. Corbyn's support for the EU and open borders can help change his mind by voting UKIP on May 5th.
— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) April 26, 2016
Frank Field's speech - Summary
Frank Field has delivered his Vote Leave speech, titled “How the referendum will determine the future of Europe but also the Labour party”. Here are the key points.
- Field said Ukip had become a “deadly threat” to Labour.
There’s no point in Labour MPs whingeing about Ukip. Ukip has only risen in support and become a deadly threat to Labour to the degree that a Labour leadership, supported by all too many Labour MPs, allowed the party to desert the bedrock of its long-term support and particularly over immigration.
- He said over the last 10 years the Labour leadership had become Ukip’s “primary recruiting sergeant” because it has not responded to voter concerns about immigration.
As a very minimum we can say that over the past decade the Labour leadership has been the primary recruiting sergeant for what are now millions more Ukip voters.
It is important, however, to recall just how significant the Labour haemorrhage has been to Ukip. What began as a trickle is now a mighty flood. In the 2010 general election Ukip had only managed to recruit 138,000 voters who previously had voted Labour.
Compare that position now with the position in 2015. Nearly a million (931,000) Labour voters deserted their traditional party and put crosses against Ukip candidates. Almost a quarter of Ukip’s vote in 2015 came from voters who in the 2005 general election had voted Labour.
- He said Labour had been captured by the “upper-middle class”.
Long-term trends are at work here. A succession of Labour leaderships have appeared to have fallen increasingly out of love with representing traditional Labour voters, as they sought to ensure that Labour appealed to those parts of the electorate usually untouched by the party’s appeal. The process began under Mr Blair and continued under Gordon Brown. Triangulation, or as it turned out to be self-strangulation, was the order of the day as the views and interests of an emerging upper-middle class increasingly captured the Labour party.
- He said he had hoped that the “one overwhelming plus” of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership would be continued opposition to the EU. But Corbyn is now supporting Remain, he said.
- He said Jeremy Corbyn should avoid “more actively” campaigning for Remain.
The last thing Jeremy needs to do is to undermine further the traditional Labour vote, much of which wishes to leave the European Union. For the Party leader more actively to campaign for the Remain campaign will push even more Labour voters into the arms of Ukip.
- He said the May elections would provide the “first inkling” as to how successful Corbyn’s leadership was.
- He suggested that a Labour win in London would not be particularly revealing because Labour should win comfortably.
We should have won the mayoral election last time in London. And on the 2015 general election results, poor as they were, we should win London handsomely. In 2015 the Tories won 34.9% of the London vote while Labour piled up 43.7%.
- He said the results in Wales would show to what extend Ukip was eating into the Labour vote.
Frank Field is delivering his speech now. I will post a summary shortly.
Frank Field warns that Jeremy Corbyn's "new pro-EU stance" will drive voters into the arms of UKIP pic.twitter.com/laTCdPhnxt
— Emily Ashton (@elashton) April 26, 2016
Here are five of the most interesting EU referendum-related articles from the rest of today’s papers.
With turnout taken into account, Remain captures 51 per cent of all definite voters, down one point since last week, and Leave attracts 46 per cent, an increase of three points.
This increase in support for Leave, however, is not driven primarily by an increase in turnout by Leave voters. They are just as motivated to vote at this stage of the campaign as they were at the beginning of April. The proportion of those who will definitely come out to vote Leave on referendum day remains at 70 per cent - a figure that has held steadfast over the course of the past month. Meanwhile, motivation on the Remain side continues to grow, with turnout for those who want the UK to remain in the EU standing at 66 per cent, a slight uptick of one point since last week and a more significant increase of five points since the start of April.
David Cameron and Michael Gove’s best friend wives have spectacularly fallen out over the EU referendum, The Sun can reveal ...
The confrontation took place at Tory party chairman Lord Feldman’s 50th birthday party at the end of February, a few days after Mr Gove’s bombshell decision.
Seething Mrs Cameron began it, launching into a tirade at Sarah Vine to accuse her of “betrayal”.
An eyewitness said Sam insisted Mr Gove’s decision meant he was abandoning her husband’s premiership.
The PM’s wife was also livid about a long newspaper article that Ms Vine had written to explain Mr Gove’s tortured dilemma, in which she aired his private conversations with the Premier about it.
The pair ended up raising their voices and “effing and blinding”, the well placed source who heard the exchange said.
Polling and focus groups among swing voters has convinced the Leave campaign that raising the threat to public services is by far the most persuasive argument in favour of Brexit. It turns a dry constitutional debate about Brussels into an accessible “kitchen table” issue that affects people’s everyday lives ...
Having tested the approach with the health service, the strategy will soon be extended to schools and housing, with the campaign stepped up after the local elections on May 5. People who work in the public services such as doctors and teachers will be recruited to make the case for Brexit along with business people and politicians. One insider explains: “The public services angle connects money and immigration. It cuts through in a very powerful way” ...
Politically, though, the decision to focus on public services will mean a dramatic escalation of hostilities within the Tory party. The contagion of Europe is spreading to areas of domestic policy, dispersing the virus of disunity across Whitehall in a way that will be hard to treat once the referendum is over.
Downing Street — aware of the potential long-term damage to the government — has tried in vain to warn Brexit ministers not to go down this route. “The highest moment of anger and unhappiness in Number 10 has been the prospect of Conservative MPs lending weight to the campaign on the NHS,” says one senior figure. “They have been putting extreme pressure to try to stop it but in fact it’s been stepped up.”
EU membership, and even Swiss-style semi-detachment, imposes an extreme openness on labour markets that most people resent. Remainers can only argue that it is worth it. Voters secretly agree, judging by their revealed preferences: migration was absent from last year’s general election campaign and the government routinely flunks its own net-inflow target without incurring a political cost. But here is a chance to test that forbearance: a referendum that can be framed as a direct vote on our porous labour market.
If Leavers frame it as anything else, they are done for. Other allied countries will voice variations of Mr Obama’s line. More and more employers will weigh in. Albania might remind us that it wants to join the EU. There is only one case for exit that cannot be laughed out of town by relevant third parties. Leavers’ path to victory — or respectable defeat — is monomania.
For 40 years, now, we’ve been lied to about the EU. And I’ve had enough.
Ever since we were first conned into voting for the EU by Harold Wilson, the steady pursuit of and progress towards ever-closer union and ultimately the achievement of complete integration has meant a grinding erosion of our hard-won freedoms and rights and in the process a damaging corrosion of our democracy.
Frank Field may be overstating the proportion of Labour voters who are in favour of Brexit. He is saying 40% of the party’s supporters are in this category. But this recent YouGov poll (pdf) has just 23% of Labour voters backing Leave, 59% backing Remain, and the rest not knowing or not saying.
Frank Field's Today interview - Summary
As promised, here is more from Frank Field’s interview on the Today programme.
- Field said Labour had been losing votes to Ukip because people felt it did not support their views on issues like immigration. He said:
Since we had Tony Blair’s mega election victory in 1997 we have lost 4.2m voters. Many of those - maybe a million at the last election - went to Ukip.
They went because they thought we had a leadership which didn’t represent their views about the nature of the country they wished to live in, the country they were born in. I think therefore the question about borders, and control over borders, is crucial to this referendum vote.
- He said he wanted to ensure that the views of Labour supporters who want to leave the EU are properly represented.
- He said he was “mightily surprised” when Jeremy Corbyn gave his recent speech backing EU membership because in the past Corbyn has been opposed to the EU. Field said:
Every key vote that we’ve had on Europe since I’ve been in House of Commons and since Jeremy joined the House of Commons, we’ve actually been in the same lobby together, critical of Europe ...
I can’t tell you the number of times we’ve been in the same lobby, critical of what the EU does, both to the way of life in this country and also because it has resulted in uncontrolled immigration, it is Labour voters who have actually born the cost of that, with wages being pushed down, house prices rising, not being able to get the place in a school of your choice. I thought that Jeremy agreed on that and that come this referendum fight we would have a leader saying ‘These are my views, the majority of the parliamentary party may disagree with me, but I’m making sure that those core voters that we have, which have bled in the past to Ukip, should remain.’
- He said the parliamentary Labour party was “very unrepresentative” of the views of Labour voters.
- He said if Corbyn only backed Remain because he was worried about a threat to his leadership, that was unnecessary.
The truth is there is no threat to Jeremy’s leadership because there is no alternative candidate. Therefore if it was done for that reason, it was done for very poor political reasons.
Frank Field is the Cassandra of the House of Commons and today he is delivering a fresh prophecy. It should be an interesting speech.
Cassandra was the figure from Greek mythology who was blessed with the power of prophecy, but cursed so as to ensure that, when she made a prediction, no one believed her. The parallel is not exact but Field, a lonely Labour backbencher whose brief record as a welfare minister was not a success, does have a habit of speaking uncomfortable truths. He was an early critic of Gordon Brown’s plans for a massive expansion of means-tested benefits, and some of his concerns were vindicated. In an unusual alliance with Sir Nicholas Soames he started warning about the dangers of mass immigration when many in the political mainstream were reluctant to admit it was a problem. He correctly forecast that Brown’s decision to get rid of the 10p starting rate of tax would be a disaster. And he was similarly prescient about George Osborne proposed tax credit cuts last year. Osborne, like Brown, ended up eventually having to admit Field was right and U-turn.
Field isn’t always right - no one ever is - but when he does speak out, it is probably worth paying attention, and today he has a warning for Labour. Field is one of the handful of Labour MPs backing Brexit and in a speech he will say that the party’s decision to campaign prominently for Remain could result in the party alienating the 40% of its supporters who are backing Leave. As my colleague Anushka Asthana reports in her preview story, Field says this stance could end up being the “second longest suicide note in Labour’s history”.
Field was on the Today programme, and it was not clear what he thought Labour should be saying about the EU referendum, given that a majority of its supporters do favour Remain. I will post more from the interview later. But, in the light of what happened in Scotland, where Labour supporters who did not back the party in the independence referendum subsequently abandoned it for good, Field’s concerns may be well-founded.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Sir Andrew Dilnot, chair of the UK Statistics Authority, gives evidence to the Commons public administration and constitutional affairs committee about its work and about EU migration statistics.
10.30am: Frank Field gives his speech on the EU referendum.
10.55am: Alan Johnson, chair of Labour In for Britain, speaks at the Usdaw conference in Blackpool.
11.30am: Michael Gove, the justice secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
12.30pm: The Labour MP David Hanson proposes a 10-minute rule bill on removing hereditary peers from the House of Lords.
2.30pm: Jane Ellison, the health minister, gives evidence to the Commons health committee on EU membership.
I generally won’t be covering the junior doctors’ strike today because we are covering that on a separate live blog.
I will pay special attention to the Frank Field speech but, as usual, I will also be covering other breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I will post a summary at lunchtime and another in the afternoon.
If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m @AndrewSparrow.
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