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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

Labour conference rules out contentious vote on EU single market in key win for leadership - live

Jeremy Corbyn on the Labour conference platform.
Jeremy Corbyn on the Labour conference platform. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

Afternoon summary

  • Labour faced a backlash from pro-Europeans after the conference voted not to stage a contentious debate on Brexit, and on whether or not the UK should stay in the single market permanently. (See 6.10pm, 6.24pm and 6.37pm.) The topic was one of 13 on a list of potential subjects for contemporary motions, but eight other topics got chosen instead. Unions and Momentum, the pro-Corbyn group now backed by a large proportion on constituency party delegates, both opposed choosing Brexit as a subject for debate. A debate would have highlighted divisions between Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, who are relatively pro-Brexit, and the vocal pro-European faction in the party that wants to keep the UK in the single market. Corbyn revealed his latent Euroscepticism earlier in the day when he told Andrew Marr, in a wide-ranging interview (see 11.01am), that he thought staying in the single market could stop a Labour government implementing its policies. The row over Europe did not stop Corbyn receiving a rapturous welcome in the conference hall. Many speakers strongly praised his performance during the election, including the London mayor Sadiq Khan. Khan famously used his conference speech last year to suggest that Corbyn was not sufficiently focused on gaining power, but today he told a Guardian fringe that Corbyn’s energy and authenticity were the decisive factors in Labour’s better-than-expected election result. (See 4.54pm and 4.56pm.)

That’s all from me for today.

Thanks for the comments.

Updated

Labour MPs from both sides of the Labour Party last night expressed their dismay at the decision not to debate Brexit.

John Mann, the Bassetlaw MP who wants to end the free movement ofnLabour, said:

This decision is wrong. We must have a debate in this party and the leadership must listen to the views of those ordinary union members who voted to leave.

Alison McGovern, who chairs the centrist Progress grouping, told a
rally in Brighton:

I am gutted that our debate didn’t get through. I worry this it’s going to mean that our party isn’t going to be able to consider the biggest issue facing us for a generation.

Ed Miliband floats ideas of auto-enrolment in trade unions

Ed Miliband, the former Labour leader, has floated the idea of people being enrolled into trade unions when they get a job (unless they opt out, presumably), the Telegraph’s Kate McCann reports.

Ed Miliband speaking at a Labour fringe meeting.
Ed Miliband speaking at a Labour fringe meeting. Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images

The Daily Mirror’s Kevin Maguire points out that it is a bit rich for the Tories to criticise Labour for not voting on contentious policy issues at conference. (See 6.10pm.)

Labour faces backlash as MP and MEPs condemn decision to shelve contentious Brexit vote

More MPs and MEPs, mainly from the the centrist/Corbyn-sceptic/pro-European wing of the Labour party, have been complaining about the decision not to have a vote on Brexit and the single market.

This is from the former culture secretary Ben Bradshaw.

This is from Chuka Umunna, the former shadow business secretary.

This is from Chris Leslie, the former shadow chancellor (although not for long).

These are from Stephen Doughty, MP for Cardiff South and Penarth.

From Mary Honeyball MEP

From Jude Kirton-Darling MEP

The Labour MP and former shadow health secretary Heidi Alexander says not having a vote on Brexit and the single market at the Labour conference will make the party “a laughing stock”,

Her tweet has been retweeted by CCHQ.

Sturgeon accuses Labour of 'abdication of responsibility' over Brexit

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, has said Labour’s decision not to have a specific Brexit/single market debate amounts to “an abdication of responsibility”. She posted this on Twitter.

She was responding to this tweet from the Evening Standard’s Pippa Crerar.

The eight topics that have been chosen for contemporary motions. The various motions submitted on each topic will be “composited” - cut and pasted into one catch-all motion - and each one will be put to a vote after short debates between now and the end of conference. The eight topics are: Grenfell Tower, public sector pay, workers’ rights, growth and investment, the NHS, housing, social care and rail.

The five topics that did not make it were: access to education, ban ‘conversion therapy’, LearnDirect, North Korea and Brexit.

Labour conference rules out contentious vote on EU single market in key win for leadership

Labour has announced the results of the ballot on contemporary motions. Eight topics have been chosen for debate, out of 13 possible options, but Brexit has not made the list.

This is a significant win for the Labour leadership, because any debate on a contemporary motion on Brexit would have become a debate about whether or not Labour should commit to keeping the UK in the single market or the customs union permanently. It would have exposed the divisions between the relatively pro-Brexit Jeremy Corbyn and the strongly anti-Brexit faction amongst the membership at large.

As my colleague Jessica Elgot reported this morning, Momentum, the pro-Corbyn group, was telling supporters not to vote for an contemporary debate on Brexit.

Momentum, the grassroots leftwing movement, has told its members to vote against the inclusion of Brexit as a topic to be voted on in Brighton. In an email to supporters, Momentum’s leadership said delegates should pick motions on housing, social care, the NHS and rail for a vote.

Local Labour parties and the TSSA trade union have called for a vote on motions to change Labour’s Brexit policy – including maintaining free movement and keeping the UK within Europe’s single market. Brexit is due to be debated on Monday, but unless the topic is chosen to be put to a vote, the debate will have no effect on Labour policy.

The director of the centrist pressure group Progress, Richard Angell, said: “It is shameful tactics by the Momentum leadership to try and stop members democratically discussing Brexit let alone committing the party to staying in the single market‬ permanently and debating the important principles of freedom of movement.

“Most Momentum activists are desperate to stop a hard Brexit, but the secret Bennite Brexiteers want to keep Labour’s position as vague as possible for as long as possible – also known as a Tory-lite Brexit position. This is clearly Momentum using a ‘stitch and fix’ to avoid Jeremy Corbyn’s blushes.”

There is a general debate on Brexit timetabled for tomorrow morning. But a debate on a contemporary motion would have forced the conference to take a position on longterm single market membership.

Updated

Anti-Brexit campaigners march along the seafront outside the Labour conference holding placards and waving European and Union flags.
Anti-Brexit campaigners march along the seafront outside the Labour conference holding placards and waving European and Union flags. Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images

Back in the conference centre Andrew Gwynne, the shadow communities secretary, has told delegates that Labour would deliver “a renaissance in local government” by giving councils more power, demanding greater transparency and boosting wages. As the Press Association report, Gwynne said the measures amounted to some of the largest reforms to local government in recent times. PA goes on:

Under the plans Labour would ensure council services are run in-house as a default, to stop the tide of privatisation in local government.

Any service that is outsourced would have to go through public consultation.

But Labour would ensure private companies delivering public services would be subject to freedom of information, and demand extra transparency on their finances and performance.

The party would also introduce a “fair wage” clause for outsourced services, to stop workers in the private sector having worse pay and conditions than colleagues in the public sector.

Khan says he does not sleep much. He is a workaholic. He loves his job and thinks it is the best job in the world..

He has relatives in Pakistan. They think he has better opportunities in London than they have.

Viner ends with a quickfire round.

Tube or black cab? Tube, says Khan.

Jeremy Corbyn or John McDonnell? Khan says he used to be the whip for both. They are both very good. “It is like saying which one of the Beatles”

Jacob Rees-Mogg or Boris Johnson? Khan rejects them both.

Metrosexual or one of the lads? Metrosexual, says Khan. Except for football. Khan says you can be a metrosexual footballer.

Mrs Brown or Citizen Khan? Citizen Khan.

Prime minister or England cricket captain? Khan says he thinks England missed out on him. When he was 15, he trialled with Surrey. He was not selected. He thinks he should have been, he says. He is still available.

And that’s it.

Q: When did you last suffer from self doubt?

Khan says it was two days ago, going out with his daughters. He was wearing a red and blue shirt. He was told he was too old for red and blue.

Q: Was Ed Miliband’s manifesto too cautious?

Khan says that was a different era.

And David Cameron was not Theresa May, he says.

It is important to remember Labour did not win, he says. But it is going in the right direction.

Q: What did you like about the manifesto?

Khan says he thought the tuition fee policy was really brave. It showed Corbyn’s team understood what young people thought.

He liked what the party was saying about vested interests, and about people working in the gig economy, during two or three jobs.

And Corbyn did not triangulate. He was being authentic.

And he says this was the first election he can remember where the Tories were not the party of law and order.

Q: What do you make of Jeremy Corbyn and the election?

Khan says Labour did not win. People who experience government policies know that.

But Labour did very well, he says.

He says May called the election because she was 20 points ahead in the polls.

He says he tells school pupils it was like someone holding the FA cup early because the other team had injured players. Labour lost, but not 6-0. They lost 4-2, or 4-3.

Q: Why did Labour do so well?

Because of Jeremy Corbyn, his energy and authenticity, he says.

He says he adopts that line from the West Wing: Let Jeremy be Jeremy.

Q: The Guardian is publishing research showing 97% of top jobs go to whites. Why is that?

Khan says that all people cannot be free if they are denied opportunities.

He says when his father came to London, there were landlords who would put up signs saying “no blacks, no Irish, no dogs”.

It was common to hear the N-word and the P-word, he says.

He says his children have grown up in the same part of London. But they have not experienced that kind of discrimination.

Q: None at all?

Not the same kind of over discrimination, he says.

He says minority people need opportunities. We all know great people in jobs who got their first break working for a relative.

He says he tells BME people going into politics they don’t have to be as good as Barack Obama.

He says confidence is an issue. Some white people feel confident about applying for jobs even if they are not fully qualified. But BME people may not have the same confidence even though they are more qualified, he says.

Q: What do you think of Trump coming here on a state visit?

Khan says having a state visit would be wrong.

Q: Would you be willing to meet him?

Khan says he has said that he would invite Trump to meet Muslim. He said he could come and meet his family. His family were not pleased, he says.

He says some people only know about Islam from what they’ve seen in the media.

He says he proposed inviting Trump to London to meet “pukka Londoners, pukka Muslims”. But that was before Trump said is more recent comments.

Q: What do you think Donald Trump’s problem is with you as London’s first Muslim mayor?

(Viner is channelling Mrs Merton.)

Khan says he objected to the suggestion from Trump that he would ban Muslims, but make an exemption for Khan himself. (Khan responded by saying he did not want Trump to make an exception for him.)

He says Trump was playing Islamic State’s game.

And what message does that send out to American Muslims?

Trump then said he would not forget Khan for what he said.

Khan says he is a proud Westerner. But he is also proud to be a Muslim. There are some people trying to divide us. Khan says he will not let them.

Q: Zac Goldsmith was engaged in something similar during the mayoral campaign.

Khan says he is a big boy. He can cope with this.

But he is worried about the impact on others.

He says he has spent his life encouraging people from minorities to go into politics.

But after the way he was treated by the Tories during the campaign, people came up to him and said they would not like to see their children go into politics.

Q: What’s your favourite place outside London?

Brighton of course, Khan jokes.

Then he says he really loves Manchester. It is really buzzing, he says.

Somehow we got onto the subject of football. Khan was playing in the traditional Labour party v the lobby conference football match this morning.

After some prompting, Khan admits Labour lost 6 nil. The lobby were fielding ringers, he says.

Khan playing in the Labour v the lobby football match.
Khan playing in the Labour v the lobby football match. Photograph: Zemanek/BPI/REX/Shutterstock

Khan says there are 1m Londoners from the EU. We should be glad they are here.

Q: But we are leaving the single market?

“Don’t speak too soon,” says Khan.

He says Theresa May called an election to try to get a mandate for her form of Brexit. She did not get it. So the goalposts have moved, he says.

He says Labour’s job is to make sure

Q: So Brexit might not quite mean Brexit.

“Let’s wait and see,” says Khan. He says he is not sure what she meant by that.

Q: Do you ever feel London is in real trouble?

No, says Khan.

He says he fears the next generation could be less well off then this one.

He says his parents came to the UK from Pakistan and wanted their children to be better off. That happened.

But he cannot be sure the same will happen again.

Q: There is a phrase “ghost mansions and zombie flats” to describe the empty luxury housing in London. What can be done about that?

Khan says we need a sea change in attitudes from central London.

Properties are being brought as investments, as “gold bricks”.

Half of them are being brought for £200,000 to £500,000. So they are sold at prices some Londoners could afford. And yet they are being sold to foreigners and left empty.

He says he is taking steps to ensure that these are offered for sale to Londoners first. That could be a condition of planning permission, he says.

He also says central government could allow councils to levy a much higher council tax on these homes. At the moment the penalty for their being empty is minuscule.

He says we should have homes for Londoners.

But 2020 one out of three Londoners aged 30 will be living at home. He says he loves his two daughters, but he wants them to be able to leave home.

Updated

Khan says Grenfell Tower was different.

When Dany Cotton, the London fire commissioner, rang him in the early hours to tell him about it, she said she has never seen a fire like it.

He says the terms of reference for the inquiry are too narrow.

Q: Would you call it social murder, as John McDonnell did?

Khan says he would not use that phrase. But in his mayoral campaign he talked about how London is now a tale of two cities, rich and poor.

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is arguable the richest borough in the world. And yet Grenfell Tower was able to happen. That is unacceptable, he says.

He says the local council is still “in denial”.

Q: There has been an upturin in terrorism attacks in London. What is going on?

Khan says the experts say what is happening is not a spike, but a shift.

Between March this year and now, seven terror attacks have been thwarted, in addition to the ones that took place.

That is about the same number as in the previous four years.

So there has been a shift, he says.

Sadiq Khan interviewed by Katharine Viner

Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, is being interviewed now by the Guardian editor Katharine Viner. We’re in a large room in the Hilton hotel, but the queue to get in stretched through the hotel lobby out of the main door onto the Brighton front.

UPDATE: See what I mean ...

Khan says he is a supporter of disruptive technology.

With Facebook, the issues are different.

He says that artificial intelligence (AI) should be used to ensure that extremist videos are taken down. He says the internet companies need to be more proactive.

Viner starts by asking about Uber.

Khan says he is quite old-fashioned. He thinks people should obey the rules. And in this case the ruled are applied in a quasi-judicial fashion by experts at Transport for London.

If people are angry, they should direct their anger towards Uber.

He says he is not going to apologise for enforcing rules created by parliament.

He says TfL did not give just one reason for Uber losing its licence. It gave four.

A woman who famously “had a go at Amber Rudd on Question Time” has attacked the Tories again at Labour conference, the Press Association reports. Michelle Dorrell hit the headlines in October 2015 when she launched an impassioned attack on the home secretary over tax credits. Dorrell told the BBC programme she was a Tory voter. But, addressing the Labour party conference for the first time, she said she had now joined the party “to fight back against the destruction of my children’s future”. She told the main conference hall:

Good afternoon comrades, my name’s Michelle Dorrell, I’m from the Folkestone and Hythe CLP, and yes, I am the woman that had a go at Amber Rudd on Question Time.

She told delegates how she, her husband and then three-year-old child were left homeless when they were younger, and that the council had housed them in social housing within months.

Somewhere we could call home, somewhere free from the fear of homelessness and anxiety, where we could raise our children and, crucially, we could afford the rent.

That was 15 years ago, and that safety net will never be available to my children or your children in the future.

Not whilst we have a Tory Government hell bent on putting money, corporations and themselves before the people they’re meant to represent.

Labour owes its election success not to being leftwing, but to being pro-EU, research suggests

Peston on Sunday this morning presented some new research about the factors explaining this year’s general election results. It was carried out by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) and in a blog on the NatCen website the psephologist John Curtice explains how Labour increased its share of the vote amongst the six groups that it says make up modern Britain: the Liberal Elite; Young, disaffected JAMs; Liberal Youth; Traditional Working Class; Socially Left Behind.

The biggest increases in support were amongst these three groups.

And here are the figures for all six groups, showing the percentage point increase in the proportion voting Labour between 2015 and 2017.

Liberal youth: +14

Young, disaffected JAMS: +12

Liberal elite: +10

Socially left behind: +8

Comfortable Britain: +1

Traditional working class: +0

The largest group, by some measure, is Comfortable Britain. According to NatCen, they account for 26% of the electorate. The smallest groups are Socially left behind (11%) and traditional working class (14%).

Curtice says the NatCen analysis shows that it was not being leftwing that primarily explained why Labour did so well at the election; what mattered most was being pro-EU.

This point aside, what clearly emerges from our analysis is that Labour’s advance in the 2015 election was strongest not in left-wing Britain but rather in socially liberal Britain, a section of the country that is distinguished not so much by class and occupation as by education and, above all, age. Indeed, the age divide in the level of support for Labour is now bigger than the class divide – over half (53%) of the under forties voted Labour compared with just 27% of the over sixties.

Labour’s advance in June then does not simply lie in the popularity of the more left-wing stance that the party adopted. Indeed, that may not have been particularly important at all. Rather, in an election in which Brexit and immigration were also central issues, Labour’s advance was strongest amongst those who were keenest on staying in the EU and those who were least concerned about immigration. That suggests that if Brexit does indeed go pear shaped and, as a result, Britain has another election soon, one more heave from Labour might be enough to win power. But if by 2022 Britain has sailed serenely into post-Brexit future, the party should not assume that another dose of Corbynism will pay a sufficient electoral dividend.

The complaint about Labour MPs in the balcony not being able to speak at the conference has been acknowledged by the chair. (See 3.15pm.) Paddy Tipping, a former Labour MP who is now the Nottinghamshire police and crime commissioner, has just been called from the balcony to speak. He is criticising police cuts, and calling for more focus on crimes affecting women.

He also says for the last two years police in Nottinghamshire have not taken anyone with a mental health problem into custody.

Updated

This is from the Press Association’s Arj Singh.

In an interview with the Guardian, Len McCluskey, the Unite general secretary and a committed Jeremy Corbyn supporter, said he expected to see Corbyn’s critics marginalised at this year’s conference. “You will always get one or two irrelevant individuals desperately seeking a headline, but no one takes them seriously,” he said.

He was talking about groups like Labour First, a group backing the so-called “centrists” or “moderates” in the party. It held a rally today, and here are some tweets about what was said.

John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, speaking at a rally against NHS cuts outside the Labour conference.
John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, speaking at a rally against NHS cuts outside the Labour conference. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

The BBC has embraced postmodernism. Not content with interviewing Jeremy Corbyn on the Andrew Marr Show, they also interviewed him about preparing for the interview. It went out on Facebook live, and here’s how it went.

The most likely best-attended fringe event today was one on Brexit featuring Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, and various other Labour MPs, queues for which snaked several hundred metres from the door. If the party leadership would rather not talk about the issue, members certainly do.

Starmer told the crammed room – a screen at the Odeon cinema adjoining the conference venue - that he wanted a final departure deal “that retains the benefits of the single market and the customs union”, and how this happened could be determined later. He said:

That is because the single market and the customs union are hugely important to the future of our country. How we achieve that, in my view, is secondary to the fact that we do achieve it.

We can go up hill and down dale about what that means for the single market and the customs unions, go round the houses and have any number of models. For me, what matters is the outcome.

Sceptics might, of course, respond that access to these things without allowing continued freedom of movement, something Labour has not committed to, is not going to be accepted by the EU.

Starmer was perhaps lucky in that he wasn’t challenged on this by a largely remain-oriented crowd at the event, organised by the Labour Movement for Europe – the crowds meant it started late and he had to dash elsewhere before the questions began.

Starmer was, however, still there when the next speaker, Chuka Umunna, a leading light on the soft Brexit end of the party, served notice that this stance would not please everyone.

Umunna, who began by admitting he and his fellow ex-remainers “have been a right pain in the arse for Keir”, said that while he was pleased at Labour’s shift over the summer to call for continued membership of the single market and customs union during a transition period, “we need to go further still”. He went on:

Access is inferior to membership, and that’s why we need single market membership ... We’re pleased at the big step forwards. We just need to nudge to where we really want to go.

Here is Sir Vince Cable, the Lib Dem leader, on Jeremy Corbyn’s comments about Europe in his Marr interview. Cable said:

Jeremy Corbyn has always wanted to leave the EU, leave the single market and leave the customs union. Now he is pulling out his old anti-EU arguments to defend Labour’s endorsement of Brexit.

The idealistic, pro-EU, young people who have rallied behind Corbyn will be mortified to discover that he is working hand in glove with the Conservative party to promote a ‘hard’ Brexit.

The Labour party conference is too London-centric to give a strong voice to people in the north of England, Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, has said

Opposition to freedom of movement ultimately driven by racism, says Clive Lewis

On Sky’s Paterson on Sunday Clive Lewis, one of the Labour MPs saying that Labour should commit to keeping the UK in the single market and the customs union permanently, which would involve accepting freedom of movement, said opposition to freedom of movement was ultimately driven by racism. He told the programme:

In Europe we have the freedom of movement and when you are talking about managing migration it ultimately always comes back down to – and you are not going to like to hear this but it always come back down to something the left in this country have much difficulty with - but ultimately it is about racism. That’s what it comes down to, it’s about racism.

The Labour MP Caroline Flint, who was also on the programme and who thinks Labour has to respond to voter concerns about immigration, flatly disagreed. “Diane [Abbott] has said that she recognises - and Jeremy [Corbyn] has said, and I am absolutely at one with them on this - that there has to be some recognition that there needs to be some changes to the way that we handle movement from the EU,” she said.

Burnham says technical education should get higher priority in Labour policy

Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, told the BBC’s Sunday Politics earlier that he had doubts about the party’s manifesto plan to scrap tuition fees. Labour said the proposal would cost £11.2bn. Burnham said that he would rather see some of that money directed towards technical education. He told the programme:

If you take a policy like tuition fees … If I had that money in Greater Manchester – a billion pounds, let’s say (that would be our share of that policy), yes, I would help university students but I wouldn’t spend it all on university students.

He said he would look at spending more on apprentices and young people who wanted a technical education.

We’ve got to be doing something for them as well. So that would be my message to the party – it’s good to have policies that connect with people but you also have to say, well is this really fair to everybody?

Earlier I said that Len McCluskey, the Unite general secretary, told Peston on Sunday that he was not expecting Jeremy Corbyn and other Labour MPs to explicitly back the idea of unions holding illegal strikes. (See 10.45am.)

Here is the full quote. McCluskey said:

I don’t expect the leadership of the Labour party or any Labour MP to support a call to be outside of the law. I know that they are opposed to the current law and they will do all they can inside parliament to change this law. So I’m not, I’m not looking for that support.

Len McCluskey.
Len McCluskey. Photograph: Pete Summers/REX/Shutterstock

Diane Abbott's speech - Summary

Here is the text of Diane Abbott’s speech to the conference. And here are the main points.

  • Abbott, the shadow home secretary, claimed the Tories have “weaponised immigration”. She said:

Tory opportunism on immigration is a disgrace. They continue to talk about bogus immigration targets, which they have not met and will never meet.

The Tories have weaponised immigration.

Using the language in Labour’s manifesto, Abbott said that Labour’s approach to immigration in government would focus on “fairness and the reasonable management of migration”. But she also strongly stressed the benefits of immigration.

  • She said Labour would reverse the government’s cuts to the counter-terrorism budget.
  • She said she thought the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea should be taken over by commissioners because of its failings over Grenfell Tower.

The Tory controlled Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea treated the residents of Grenfell like second class citizens.

And when the disaster struck the Royal Borough’s response was shameful. Even now, out of the all the families made homeless only a handful have been offered permanent homes. And this in a borough with over two thousand empty properties. Am I the only person wondering why Commissioners have not been sent into the failing Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea?

  • She said the Grenfell Tower fire was “a direct consequence of deregulation of fire standards and inspection, privatisation and outsourcing”.
  • She said the fire service should be the lead agency for fire inspections and assessing fire risk.
  • She said a Labour government would order inquiries into three separate miscarriage of justice allegations involving the treatment of workers involved in industrial disputes: Orgreave, the Shrewsbury 24 and the 37 Cammell Laird workers.
Diane Abbott with Jeremy Corbyn after her speech.
Diane Abbott with Jeremy Corbyn after her speech. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

The Tories are determined to attack Jeremy Corbyn for supporting illegal strikes - even though he didn’t (at least, not explicitly.) This is what Conservative HQ has put out in response to the Corbyn interview with Andrew Marr. (See 11.01am.) This is from Patrick McLoughlin, the Conservative party chairman.

Jeremy Corbyn seems unable to give a straight answer to a simple question. Today he refused to commit to controlling migration from the EU and he refused to condemn illegal strikes.

Jeremy Corbyn is once again showing he is unfit to govern. He would backtrack on Brexit and fail to take the balanced approach on the economy that this country needs - and it would be ordinary working people that pay the price.

In the protecting our communities debate Daniel Harris, a delegate from Hove, has just addressed conference. He said he used to be in care, and was homeless until a couple of years ago. He said when he was living in emergency accommodation, he saw people die because they were not getting the support they needed. There was no support to help people considering suicide, he said.

The government had to build more housing, he said. One million extra homes was not enough. We need 2m, 3m, 5m homes, he said.

Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leadership contender, has relinquished his shares in his family’s cash and carry firm in an effort to head off mounting charges of hypocrisy over its minimum wages and non-unionised workforce.

Sarwar announced on Saturday he was putting his 23% shareholding in United Wholesale (Scotland) Ltd, which have a value on paper of about £4.8m, into a blind trust for his three children and had signed deeds relinquishing any benefits from the shares.

Sarwar has been dogged by revelations that undermine his claim to be a democratic socialist who supports Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership after it emerged UWS pays many of its 250 staff the basic minimum wage, and has no recognition deal with the shop workers union Usdaw.

Sarwar’s move came on the eve of UK Labour’s annual conference in Brighton, where his left-wing rival for the Scottish leadership, Richard Leonard, is likely to receive a warmer reception from delegates.

Now emerging as the front-runner, Leonard is a former GMB political officer who trades heavily on his consistent and long-standing support for Corbyn’s agenda. His campaign is now being coordinated by Simon Fletcher, Corbyn’s former campaign director and chief of staff, and an aide to both Ken Livingstone while London mayor and Ed Miliband.

The two men go head-to-head at a conference hustings on Tuesday, organised by the Daily Record newspaper. Although Sarwar has since made his peace with Corbyn’s allies at Holyrood after signing an anti-Corbyn letter last year, Leonard is being backed by Corbyn’s supporters in Scotland and several unions, including Unite.

Sarwar has repeatedly insisted he has no say over the company’s policies and has never been a director, working only as an NHS dentist, yet he sidestepped questions by the Guardian and BBC Radio Scotland last week on whether he personally benefitted from his shareholding.

He was asked whether he received any remuneration from UWS, and said no in both cases, yet failed to disclose he had had up to £20,000 a year in share dividends until he became an MSP in May 2016. He and his wife send their three children to a £10,000 a year fee-paying school in Glasgow. UWS also donated £12,500 to Sarwar’s office while he was an MP, in 2010 and 2011.

The firm was set up by his father Mohammed Sarwar, the former Labour MP for Glasgow Central. Anas Sarwar said he backed proposals to ban MSPs from holding second jobs while in office.

In a statement on Saturday, Sarwar said: “Scotland has cradled my family, nurtured it and gave it opportunity and success. And it’s the Labour party that allowed them to share that success to help others. I’m in the Labour party because of those values and because I know our party remains the single best vehicle for change in this country.”

Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, is addressing the conference now.

I will post a summary when I’ve seen a text of her speech.

John McDonnell's interview with Robert Peston - Summary

Here are the main points from John McDonnell’s interview on Peston on Sunday.

  • McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, said it was “difficult to see” how Labour could support staying in the single market permanently given the way it operates. In this, he was echoing the position set out by Jeremy Corbyn in his Marr interview. (See 11.01am.) But McDonnell also floated the possibility of the single market being reformed in such a way as to make it acceptable to Labour. (See 11.21am.) He said:

Our view is that the single market at the moment, in terms of the decision of the referendum - [it] is difficult to see how we can maintain within, with all the four freedoms that need to be guaranteed. However, you know we’re talking to our European colleagues [about] what reforms can take place, how we can achieve a relationship which ... receives the benefits of the single market. So I think we’re moving on in these discussions.

  • He signalled that he was in favour of a Brexit transition lasting longer than two years. On the subject of the transition, he said:

We made it very very clear, there had to be a transition deal ... [The Conservatives have] set this two year period, we’ve said as short as possible but as long as necessary. So we’ve got this flexibility … We think there’s an element of flexibility beyond the two years that might be necessary in certain sectors of work.

When it was put to him that Chuka Umunna, the Labour MP, was saying Labour backed a transition lasting up to four years, he replied: “Chuka and I, there’s not a cigarette paper between us.” But McDonnell did subsequently admit he was not proposing that the UK should stay in the single market indefinitely, as Umunna is.

In the preparation for the next general election our next manifesto, we’re going to look at all the debt itself.

He also referred to a recent Institute for Fiscal Studies report on this subject. The IFS said that claims that writing off all student tuition fee debt would cost £100bn were wrong, and that if only the debt incurred by the increase in tuition fees from £3,000 to £9,000 were included, the cost of writing it off would be £10bn by 2050.

  • He described Uber as “a disgrace”. He said he did not think he had ever used an Uber himself, but that he could not be sure because sometimes broadcasters booked taxis for him to use.
John McDonnell (left) and Jeremy Corbyn at a pre-conference rally yesterday.
John McDonnell (left) and Jeremy Corbyn at a pre-conference rally yesterday. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

Watson says Labour 'don't support people breaking the law'

Tom Watson, the deputy Labour leader, was more specific than his leader Jeremy Corbyn when asked on Sky this morning the question about whether Labour should back trade unions holding illegal strikes. He replied:

I have actually received a letter from Len McCluskey this week where he says he accepts Labour MPs aren’t going to support calls for illegal strike action.

We don’t support people breaking the law. We don’t want people to break the law, we are democrats.

We are going to change the law so that trade unionists can have greater rights because we think our current framework of laws is very unfair.

On Twitter Andy Tarrant, an EU competition law specialist, flags up a report he wrote with Andrea Biondi, a law professor, for the Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy saying that EU law would not stop Labour implementing its policies. He thinks Jeremy Corbyn was wrong in what he said about this on the Marr show. (See 11.01am.)

Here is their conclusion.

As it develops its position on the UK’s future relationship with the EU, the Labour party should not be held back by incorrect assumptions about the constraints imposed by single market membership on its economic policies. Neither EU state aid rules, nor other EU rules which are distinct from state aid rules but sometimes considered in the same bracket, provide any obvious barrier to the implementation in the UK of the measures contained in Labour’s 2017 election manifesto.

McDonnell floats possibility of EU single market being reformed

In his Peston on Sunday interview John McDonnell was also asked about the possibility of Labour staying in the EU single market permanently. He said, given the way it operated at the moment, it was “difficult to see” how Labour could agree to stay in it. But he also floated the possibility of it being reformed. Labour was talking to EU allies about this, he said. Those discussions were “moving on”, he said.

Updated

John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, was interviewed on Peston on Sunday. Like Jeremy Corbyn, he was also asked if the unions would be justified going on strike if they failed to meet the thresholds set out in the Trade Union Act. He brushed aside the question, saying he thought it was irrelevant because enough people would vote to strike to ensure the thresholds were met. When Robert Peston asked what would happen if they did not meet the threshold, McDonnell told him that he had “a lack of confidence in the working class” and that he (McDonnell) didn’t.

In this clip Peston is asking about the 50% threshold. This applies to the provision in the Trade Union Act saying 50% of workers have to take part in a strike ballot for it to be valid (which means just over 25% of the workforce have to be in favour.) But the act also says that, in some public services, 40% of the workforce have to cast a vote in favour of the strike. McDonnell seemed to be implying he thought this threshold could be met too.

At Brighton the conference proceedings have started. Jeremy Corbyn has received a hero’s welcome, Politico’s Jack Blanchard reports.

Jeremy Corbyn's interview with Andrew Marr - Summary

Here are the main points from Jeremy Corbyn’s interview with Andrew Marr.

  • He suggested Labour could back a Brexit transition period lasting longer than two years. Labour has said it wants the UK to stay in the single market and the customs union during the transition. Asked how long that would be, Corbyn said the transition should last “as long as necessary”. When asked if it could last 10 years, he said he did not think so. But he said the two-year timetable for a transition set by Theresa May was abritrary. “I’m not quite sure where this two-year figure came from,” he said.
  • He said he expected “a lot of movement” between the UK and Europe to continue after Brexit. Asked what he felt about Labour members wanting to keep free movement, he said he understood what they were saying. But he said he was opposed to the abuse of free movement by some employers. He went on:

But we have to recognise that in the future we are going to need people to work in Europe, and people from Europe are going to need to work here. There’s going to be a lot of movement.

  • He claimed that May was planning trade deals that would lead to workers’ rights being diminished.

I’m very concerned about the idea that Theresa May and others have been flying around the world this summer offering all kinds of sweetheart trade deals which could be damaging to our working conditions in this country.

May claims that workers’ rights will not be weakened after Brexit under her government.

What I said was that we need at least two terms of a Labour government to start to address issues of poverty and injustice and inequality in Britain and to build the houses we need in this country.

  • He said he did not think he had ever taken an Uber. But he defended the Transport for London proposal to take away its licence. There had to be “proper regulation” of taxis, he said. (Corbyn is getting some mockery on social media for not knowing if he has ever used an Uber, but his uncertainty is understandable; politicians at his level routinely let other people - aides, or TV producers - fix them up with a taxi, and so he was probably answering like that in case he has jumped in one inadvertently.)

McCluskey says he does not expect Corbyn to speak out in favour of illegal strikes

On Peston on Sunday Len McCluskey, the Unite general secretary, has just said he does not expect Jeremy Corbyn or other Labour MPs to speak out in favour of Unite holding an illegal strike. He said he was satisfied with Labour’s position because it wanted to repeal the Trade Union Act.

This effectively immunises Jeremy Corbyn from any criticism from the left over the fact that he would not explicitly back the idea of Unite breaking the law in his Marr interview - see 9.52am. But it is hard to imagine that anyone on the left was likely to criticise Corbyn anyway, because he did implicitly back Unite and McCluskey’s stance.

UPDATE: Here is McCluskey’s quote.

I don’t expect the leadership of the Labour party or any Labour MP to support a call to be outside of the law. I know that they are opposed to the current law and they will do all they can inside parliament to change this law. So I’m not, I’m not looking for that support.

Updated

Corbyn suggests staying in EU single market could stop him implementing Labour policies

This is what Jeremy Corbyn said in his interview about how staying in the EU single market could stop him implementing Labour policies. (See 9.41am.) When it was put to him that 66% of Labour members want to stay in the single market, he said he would listen to them. He also said he wanted tariff-free access to the single market. But he want on:

I would also say that we need to look very carefully at the terms of any trade relationship, because at the moment we are part of the single market, obviously. That has within it restrictions on state aid and state spending. That has pressures on it, through the European Union, to privatise rail, for example, and other services. I think we have to be quite careful about the powers we need as national governments.

Updated

Q: Labour’s manifesto proposed spending more money on getting rid of tuition fees, which would help middle class students, than on raising benefits. Why are you prioritising the middle class over the poor?

Corbyn says Labour would start by spending £2bn on raising benefits. But that would not be the end of it, he says.

Q: You used to be on the fringe at Labour conferences. Now you are in charge. Is this revolution permanent?

Corbyn says a lot of people were fed up with the way things were.

And that’s it.

I’ll post a summary shortly.

Q: Churchill’s government in the 1950s had much higher death duties than we have now. Why are you so worried about taxing wealth?

Corbyn says he is not worried about taxing wealth. But he wants to tackle tax evasion and tax avoidance first.

Q: A lot of people on Twitter are surprised you cannot answer the question about supporting illegal strikes.

Corbyn says he will be with workers supporting a decent pay rise.

Corbyn says he does not think he has ever taken an Uber.

Q: After 10 years of a Labour government, would Britain be like Venezuela.

Corbyn says after 10 years of Labour, Britain would be much fairer.

Q: Some people may like your ideas, but feel you do not really understand the market economy.

Corbyn says Labour would set up a national investment bank. It would invest in infrastructure.

Q: Your tax proposals are quite modest. Vince Cable is talking about a wealth tax. Why won’t you?

Corbyn says Labour has put forward plans to raise more money from business.

We can’t stand still. We need an investment-led economy.

Corbyn condemns Trade Union Act, but refuses to explicitly defend union plans to defy it

Q: Do you agree with Len McCluskey that trade unions should defy the law on strike thresholds?

Corbyn says unions represent their members.

Instead of blaming them, let’s look at the conditions they face.

Q: The new law has put unions in a difficult position?

Corbyn says the new law is very unfair.

Q: McCluskey says the law must be resisted. He cited Ghandi and Mandela as examples of people who resisted unfair laws.

Corbyn says governments that try to interfere with unions get into a mess.

Q: So do you agree with McCluskey.

Corbyn says we have rights secured because people protested.

Q: You are supposed to be a straight talker, yet you won’t answer the question.

Corbyn says he is supporting working people, and that Labour will repeal this law.

Q: Will you back workers if they go on strike on this?

Corbyn says he will do that.

  • Corbyn condemns the government’s Trade Union Act, but refuses to explicitly say that unions would be right to defy it.

Q: On pay, do you agree that a public sector pay rise would have to be more than 5%?

Corbyn says any pay rise would have to take into account the current level of inflation, almost 3%,

Public sector workers should have a reasonable pay rise.

Q: Should it be 5%?

Corbyn says this has to be negotiated.

Q: Do you want to stay inside the customs union permanently.

Corbyn says the UK should stay in for as long as necessary.

Q: How long will that be? Ten years?

Corbyn says he does not think so.

But he says he does not know where the idea of the transition lasting two years came from.

Corbyn says he wants to protect consumer and workers’ rights after Brexit. He also wants to remain a member of some EU agencies.

We have to recognise the economic importance of Europe, he says. He wants to continue a “good relationship with Europe”.

He says he is worried May has been going around the world offering sweetheart trade deals that could be damaging to workers’ rights.

Q: Some of your members want to keep free movement. Do you agree with them?

Corbyn says he understands their point of view.

But he is opposed to people coming to the UK from abroad and being exploited.

Corbyn says EU membership could stop Labour government intervening to protect economy

Q: Will Labour members be able to make policy at conference?

Corbyn says he has put plans forward to the national executive.

He wants conference to take the final decision about policy.

Q: Some 66% of members want to stay in the single market. Will you listen to them?

Of course, says Corbyn.

He says a large amount of UK trade is with Europe. We need to protect that.

But he says he wants the government to be able to intervene in the economy in ways that might be blocked by Europe.

Q: Can you give an example?

Corbyn cites the steel industry, and proposals to save Redcar.

Some countries flout state aid rules. Others don’t.

  • Corbyn says EU membership could stop a Labour government intervening to protect the economy.

Jeremy Corbyn's interview

Andrew Marr is now interviewing Jeremy Corbyn.

Q: You say today you want to be in power for 10 years.

Corbyn says, in his Mirror interview, he says the country needs two terms of a Labour government.

  • Corbyn plays down suggestions he is planning to serve two terms as prime minister.

Q: Do you think there will be an election by Christmas?

Corbyn says it is not up to him.

But the current system is unsustainable.

The Tories would not even take part in two recent votes on NHS pay and tuition fees, he says.

Nick Clegg, the former Lib Dem leader and former deputy prime minister, is being interviewed by Marr now. He says he thinks it is possible to stop Brexit. He quotes David Davis, who once said that a democracy that cannot change its mind is not a democracy. He says when the final Brexit deal is available, MPs will have to decide whether what is on offer is what people thought they were voting for in the referendum. If the offer is different, then MPs should not accept it, he says.

He says he thinks the UK will not be able to revert to the status quo ante. But he says Britain could adopt an “outer orbit of membership” in a reformed EU.

Asked about Jean-Claude Juncker’s plans for more EU integration, he says Juncker’s views are not widely shared in Brussels.

Brexit may have reached its actuarial highpoint, he says - implying that Brexit voters are dying off.

He says Jeremy Corbyn would not be able to stop austerity if Brexit happens.

Q: What do you say to a keen Brexit voter who thinks, after May’s speech, we will still be effectively inside the EU nearly five years after the vote.

Davis says he does not accept that. We are leaving in March 2019, he says.

And that’s it. The interview is over.

Q: There are those who say we need to stick near to EU regulation. And others say we need to strike out on our own. Where are you on that spectrum?

Bang in the middle, he says.

Q: But UK regulation will diverge from EU regulation, won’t it?

Yes, says Davis.

Q: So trade with the EU can’t be frictionless.

Davis says there are many examples of trade deals where countries agree some common boundaries, but leave states free to set their own laws.

Q: Is it true that after March 2019 people won’t be able to spot much difference.

Davis says the UK wants to register EU citizens coming to the UK.

Q: The EU says that is against EU law.

Davis says the UK will be outside EU law then. So this will be a matter for negotiation.

David Davis's Marr interview

The Marr show is now showing the interview with David Davis, the Brexit secretary, which was recorded yesterday.

Davis says the government has had “the most positive response” to Theresa May’s speech from the EU.

He says the government is still in the middle of a negotation.

Q: The PM said we would honour our obligations.

Davis accepts that, but says what they are has to be negotiated. He says the EU is putting a “maximalist” interpretation on it. He says the £40bn figure, on the front of the Times on Saturday, was just what the EU was saying the UK owed.

Q: Boris Johnson says he has changed May’s policy.

Davis says he does not think so. He thinks the Brexit policy was settled some weeks ago.

  • Davis rejects suggestions that Boris Johnson was responsible for firming up Theresa May’s pro-Brexit stance ahead of her Florence speech.

Q: Amber Rudd said Boris Johnson was “backseat driving”.

Davis says it was a good interview.

The Observer has splashed on Labour today.

But many of the other Sunday papers are focusing on the Tories.

According to the BBC’s Eleanor Garnier, Jeremy Corbyn did not feel the need to overdo it on the homework front ahead of today’s interview with Andrew Marr.

“We are now the political mainstream,” Jeremy Corbyn writes in the Observer today. Two years ago, when the Labour conference was last in Brighton and Corbyn had come from being a 100-1 outsider on the far left of the party to being elected leader, that would have sounded a preposterous proposition. And Labour’s didn’t actually win the general election (even if some members of the cabinet won’t accept that they lost either). But with Theresa May now accepting Labour’s policy on a Brexit transition within the last 48 hours, the Conservative government ditching austerity rhetoric and abandoning the public sector pay cap, and even some arch Thatcherites accepting the case for higher taxes to fund better public services, Corbyn’s boast is now perfectly plausible. It means that the Labour conference is opening in the most benign climate facing the party for some years.

We will be hearing from the man himself shortly. Here’s the Observer’s overnight splash about the conference.

Here, in case you missed it yesterday, is my colleague Heather Stewart’s excellent long read about Labour’s election campaign.

And here is the agenda for the day.

9am: Jeremy Corbyn is the main guest on the Andrew Marr Show. David Davis, the Brexit secretary, is also interviewed.

10am: John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, and Len McCluskey, the Unite general secretary, are the main guests on Peston on Sunday. The Conservative MP Ken Clarke and Labour’s Chuka Umunna are also appearing.

10am: Tom Watson, the deputy Labour leader, and Dave Prentis, the Unison general secretary, are the main guests on Sky’s Sunday with Paterson. The Labour MP’s Caroline Flint, Lisa Nandy and Clive Lewis are also appearing.

10.30am: Conference opens. The main debate in the morning is on protecting our communities, with Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, due to speak at about 11am.

11am: Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, is interviewed on Sunday Politics.

2.15pm: Conference resumes, with further debate on protecting communities, followed by the Welsh and Northern Ireland reports.

4pm: Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, is interviewed at a fringe event by the Guardian editor Katharine Viner.

4.30pm: Conference session on general election, with speeches Andrew Gwynne and Ian Lavery, the campaign coordinators, and Iain McNicol, the general secretary.

I will be covering all the key Labour conference developments today. I plan to post a summary at lunchtime and another in the afternoon.

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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