Afternoon summary
- Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, has called for Labour to be rebuilt “as a trusted force for good” following its election defeat. He was speaking after the first poll of Labour members since polling day suggested that he would pick up around a third of first-preference votes if he were up against six of the other likely candidates, and that he would eventually beat Rebecca Long Bailey, his strongest rival, by 61% to 39%. (Labour uses the alternative vote in leadership contests, and so the votes of losing candidates are reallocated.) Starmer refused to confirm today that he will be standing, but there is no doubt about what he is planning and a formal announcement that he will be a candidate is expected soon.
- The DUP has signalled that it will not be rushed into a hasty agreement with Sinn Fein as talks resumed in Belfast on restoring the Northern Ireland assembly and its power-sharing executive. (See 1.55pm.) The two parties need to agree for the executive to be restored. If the devolved institutions are not back up and running by 13 January, the UK government is legally obliged to hold elections for the assembly.
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
DUP says it wants power sharing restored in Belfast, but that any deal must be 'fair and balanced'
And Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP’s new leader at Westminster, also told reporters after the talks about power sharing in Belfast that getting the devolved institutions restored was “an absolute priority” for his party. But he said the DUP would not be rushed into an agreement against its interests. He said:
We want this done as quickly as possible but we also want to ensure that the agreement is fair and balanced, that it is sustainable, that the political institutions that are restored are sustainable, that we have a lengthy period of political sustainability.
We are not in the business of snatching at something because there is a deadline. We want Stormont restored and we want it restored as soon as possible.
Updated
Sinn Féin has said it thinks power sharing in Northern Ireland could be restored relatively quickly. Speaking after the resumption of talks aimed at getting the assembly and its power-sharing executive back up and running, Sinn Féin’s Conor Murphy said there was “no need” for the talks to be drawn out until the 13 January deadline. He said:
We think agreement can be reached in short order, we don’t see any need to run this down to the wire to January 13 in some kind of dramatic way.
The issues that we are dealing with are all well rehearsed, what we need now is political will to get down to resolving very very quickly and that is going to be our focus in the next day or two.
Murphy said there was still disagreement over key issues, including the proposed Irish Language Act and proposals to change the “petition of concern” procedure that effectively allows both nationalist and unionists a veto over legislation (because measures subject to a petition of concern require cross-community approval). But Murphy went on:
There are a range of issues which will be discussed in the next couple of days. None of them, I don’t think, need to be exhausted ad infinitum, we need to be bring this to an conclusion. There are pressures continuing to mount in relation to public health, health services and the treatment of staff in the health service. We need to get back working again so we can fix those as quickly as possible.
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A Welsh Conservative politician has been suspended from his party after he was arrested by police, the Press Association reports. It is understood assembly member Nick Ramsay was arrested on Wednesday evening at his home in Raglan, Usk, Monmouthshire. The Welsh Conservative party confirmed the shadow finance minister has been suspended – both from the Welsh Conservative group at the national assembly for Wales as well as from the Conservative party. But the party would not make any further comment.
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The Liberal Democrats will attempt to get a public inquiry into Brexit when key legislation returns to parliament. Sir Ed Davey, the party’s acting co-leader, has said the party will table an amendment to this effect when the EU (withdrawal agreement) bill returns to parliament on Tuesday. But the government, which has a majority of 80, is not in favour of a Brexit inquiry, and so even if the amendment does get put to a vote, it seems certain to be defeated.
From ITV’s Paul Brand
NEW: I expect Keir Starmer to declare his candidacy for Labour leadership as early as this weekend. Hearing other candidates also likely to fire starting gun this weekend too.
— Paul Brand (@PaulBrandITV) January 2, 2020
How Labour members have become more leftwing since 2015
In the comments below the line (BTL) Leibowitz has asked about my comment earlier about the Labour membership being “significantly to the left” of Yvette Cooper and suggests that this says more about her than it does about the Labour membership.
Perhaps it does. Cooper was beaten in the 2015 leadership contest by someone much more leftwing, and is fair to assume that her not being leftwing (as opposed to, say, competence) was a key factor in her defeat.
But Leibowitz may be raising a related question: Have Labour members got more leftwing since 2015, and if so by how much? And it is possible to answer this question because some proper data is available.
The YouGov survey of Labour members mentioned earlier (see 9.51am) was commissioned by the Party Members Project, which is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and run by Prof Tim Bale (Queen Mary University of London) and Prof Paul Webb (University of Sussex). Bale and Webb are co-authors, with Monica Poletti, of the recently published book, Footsoldiers: Political Party Membership in the 21st Century and this book contains very detailed information, based on surveys conducted in 2015 and 2017, about what party members think, and how their views changed in the period between the two surveys.
One way of establishing how rightwing or leftwing people are is simply to ask them where they would put themselves on the right/left scale (with 10 meaning far right and 0 meaning far left). On this basis Labour members moved by 0.3 points to the left during this period - more than members of other parties shifted lefwards or rightwards.
Another way of measuring this is to ask people a series of questions to establish where they are on the political spectrum. There are two sets of questions that have been used by the British Election Study. The first relates to how the state and society distribute resources, and on this measure Labour members did move left between 2015 and 2017. On this index, Labour members have exactly the same profile as Green party members. Tory and Lib Dem members actually moved further to the left over the same period, but they were starting from a point further to the right on the scale.
The figures are in this chart. The key statistics are those in the bottom line.
The other set of questions relates to liberty/authority issues, and on this measure Labour members also became more leftwing (if you define socially liberal as ‘left’ compared to socially conservative) between 2015 and 2017. The data is here, and the key figures are those in the bottom line. This chart is more confusing than the previous one because the percentage figures refer to the proportion of members agreeing with the socially liberal response to the question on the left, not with the actual question.
Updated
Starmer says he wants to see Labour 'rebuilt ... as trusted force for good'
Sky News has managed to track down Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, to ask him about the YouGov poll that suggests he is favourite to win the Labour leadership. (See 9.51am.) Judging by the very brief clip just broadcast, he did not seem very keen to discuss the poll. He would not even confirm that he will be a candidate. But he did say he wanted to see Labour rebuilt as “a trusted force for good”. He told Sky:
There’s no contest yet. The NEC [national executive committee] will decide this on Monday.
For me, the most important thing is that the Labour party is rebuilt, we learn the lessons of the last general election, reflect on them, and address them. But we need the Labour party as a trusted force for good.
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Mark Serwotka, head of the PCS union, which represents civil servants, has also expressed concern about the government’s plans for civil service reform. (See 2.32pm.) In a statement he said:
The major problem for the civil service in the last decade has been under-investment, real-terms pay cuts and poor government policy.
Civil servants work tirelessly to make the machinery of government work for the public.
However when you shrink the civil service by over 18% since 2010, you are not going to be able to deliver the same level of service.
Comments by Dominic Cummings that imply he wants to hire and fire at will reveal an anti-trade union mentality and will be strenuously resisted by PCS.
Updated
PM's team has 'fundamental misunderstanding' of how top civil servants operate, says their union
In an article for the Daily Telegraph today Rachel Wolf, a former Tory adviser who contributed to writing the 2019 election manifesto, says that the government’s plans to reform the way the civil service operates are much more radical than many people appreciate. Here is an extract from her article (paywall).
Dominic [Cummings, the PM’s chief adviser] has been reading and thinking about how to transform the public sector for two decades. He does not think it is a distraction, but a prerequisite to delivering even the simplest promises. Without changing how government operates, the prime minister cannot deliver 50m new GP appointments, new train lines, or better bus services. All this and more was promised in the election manifesto (which I helped write) and is crucial to new Tory voters. If the party wants to win again, there can’t be the project overruns and delayed commitments that have symbolised government incompetence and waste for too long.
Beyond that, Downing Street wants to run the most dynamic state in the world – one that gathers the brightest minds to deliver in new agencies focused on innovation, solving the productivity puzzle, and transforming swathes of the country. So delivery and our capacity for transformation, in No 10’s view, need to change. How?
Not “politicisation” per se. The list of civil servants Cummings admires is much longer than the list of politicians. They will want to employ people they think competent and expert. In the right job, they could be socialists. As long as they literally deliver trains on time. Or figure out nuclear fusion.
Wolf also says the current system institutionalises incompetence.
Currently, any official who has spent more than 18 months in a post is seen to have stalled. They are rewarded with promotions to a different job, often in a different department. That is because the civil service prioritises “transferable” skills over knowledge (ironically while the Department for Education has tried to instil knowledge-based teaching in schools).
This has catastrophic effects. It ensures the “Peter Principle” – where everyone rises to their position of incompetence – is ever-present. It kills institutional memory and expertise. It allows officials an escape from accountability. Project gone wrong? That was three postings ago.
Here is a story summarising what Wolf is saying.
Dave Penman, the general secretary of the FDA, the union that represents senior civil servants, said this morning that Wolf’s arguments betrayed a “fundamental misunderstanding” of how the civil service actually operates. He said:
While painting the civil service as resistant to change might make a good headline, the reality is quite different and the idea that civil servants are rising ‘to their position of incompetence’ is so wide of the mark it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the realities of the modern civil service.
All senior civil service roles are externally advertised and appointed on merit.
The so-called ‘merry-go-round’ that Wolf decries is entirely of the government’s own creation, with a decade of pay stagnation and the removal of pay progression leaving the movement between jobs as the only route to a pay rise.
If the prime minister really does want to deliver 50m new GP appointments, new train lines, or better bus services, we need to see a much clearer plan on how these reforms will lead to the transformation promised. Otherwise, we could be left with just another round of reform for reform’s sake.
Penman also claimed the civil service had faced much greater challenges than those posed by Wolf in her article in the past. He explained:
The reforms trailed in the Telegraph are more modest than the challenges that faced civil servants in 2010. Dealing with a series of reforms led by Francis Maude, the civil service managed to support the first coalition government since the second world war and deliver its radical policy agenda, all while absorbing 20% cuts to resources.
Updated
Yvette Cooper is not expected to say whether or not she will be a candidate in the Labour leadership election until the weekend, or early next week, according to sources familiar with her plans. She is not responding today to the Daily Mail story saying that she has decided not to contest the Labour leadership because she thinks her opposition to Jeremy Corbyn would make her unelectable. (See 11.43am.)
But the YouGov poll of Labour members (see 9.51am and 10.21am.) will do nothing to convince her that this assessment is wrong, and Cooper’s office are certainly not denying the Mail story. I’ve been reminded that in an interview before Christmas Cooper said she had to be realistic about where the Labour membership was on the political spectrum (that is, significantly to the left of her).
Updated
Talks aimed at restoring power sharing resume in Belfast
Talks to restore power sharing in Northern Ireland have resumed in Belfast, the Press Association reports. Here is more from the PA report:
The latest process, which was initiated in the wake of the general election, was paused over the festive period after a pre-Christmas deal failed to materialise.
The Northern Ireland secretary, Julian Smith, the Irish foreign affairs minister, Simon Coveney, and the local parties returned to Stormont House this morning to resume the effort.
The Democratic Unionist party and Sinn Féin held separate meetings with Smith, before a roundtable with the other Stormont parties and the Irish government.
Further bilateral meetings are expected to continue throughout the day.
From Thursday morning a number of protesters stating their opposition to an Irish Language Act being included in any potential deal set up camp outside the talks venue holding aloft union flags.
Three years on from the collapse of the devolved government, the Stormont parties have until a 13 January deadline to strike a deal to revive the institutions.
On that date, legislation to give civil servants additional powers to run Northern Ireland’s struggling public services expires and Smith will assume a legal obligation to call a snap assembly election.
The latest push to restore power sharing broke up the week before Christmas, with UK and Irish governments singling out the DUP as the party standing in the way of a deal.
The party rejected the claims, insisting it would not be “bounced” into a quick fix that fell apart when tested.
Devolution can only be restored once the DUP and Sinn Féin – the region’s two largest parties – agree terms to re-enter a mandatory coalition executive in Belfast.
Expectations of a breakthrough rose after the DUP and Sinn Féin both suffered bruising results in the general election.
With many interpreting the outcome as a public judgment on the parties’ failure to do a deal, stalled efforts to restore the institutions appeared to gain fresh momentum in December.
However, proposals to reform a contentious cross-community voting mechanism in the assembly have emerged as a key sticking point in efforts to finalise an agreement, with the DUP unhappy about what is being countenanced.
The DUP is also seeking changes to ensure the devolved institutions are more stable in future and cannot be readily pulled down.
Proposed legislative protections for Irish language speakers are another crucial element of the negotiations.
The Stormont parties are also seeking firm commitments from the UK government on a financial package to accompany the return of devolution – money that would likely be targeted at the region’s crisis-hit health service.
Updated
John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, has said the latest economic survey from the British Chambers of Commerce confirms the UK has suffered “a lost decade” because of Tory policies. In a statement he said:
This survey confirms, exactly as the vast majority of economists predicted in 2010, that the Tory economic strategy of austerity and lack of investment would result in a lost decade.
It’s not just the uncertainty caused by the government’s negotiations with the EU undermining our economy but 10 years of failed and discredited Tory economic policies.
Updated
Here are some more tweets on the YouGov poll.
From the polling expert Ian Warren
Labour leadership polling (in brackets the % of public who've heard of that person according to YouGov)
— Ian Warren (@election_data) January 2, 2020
Starmer 31% (41% have heard of him)
Long-Bailey 20% (24%)
Phillips 11% (33%)
Cooper 7% (65%)
Lewis 7% (27%)
Thornberry 6% (44%)
Nandy 5% (19%)#LabourLeadershipElection
Now the net favourability of each
— Ian Warren (@election_data) January 2, 2020
Starmer -4 (41% have heard of him)
Long-Bailey -2 (24%)
Phillips +2 (33%)
Cooper -5 (65%)
Lewis +5 (27%)
Thornberry -8 (44%)
Nandy +2 (19%)#LabourLeadershipElection
From the politics professor Rob Ford
1. The membership has never been as dogmatically Corbynite as many discussing Labour under Corbyn imagine. Therefore, the idea that The Anointed Successor to the Absolute Boy would just walk it was always flawed. 2/?
— Rob Ford (@robfordmancs) January 2, 2020
Ford has posted a thread on this topic. You can read it by clicking on the link above. Here is one of his conclusions.
This relates to sthing @election_data has emphasised with me in the past - Lab members take fairness very seriously. Corbyn won two big mandates therefore should be given a fair go. But now he's had two shots at general elections, and lost the second badly, they move on?
— Rob Ford (@robfordmancs) January 2, 2020
YouGov included Yvette Cooper in its list of seven potential Labour leadership candidates for its poll of party members. (See 9.51am and 10.21am.) But, according to a story by Jason Groves in the Daily Mail, Cooper is expected to announce that she won’t be standing, because she has concluded that her opposition to Jeremy Corbyn would make her unelectable given how popular he is with members. Groves quotes a “friend” of Cooper’s as saying:
From the way Yvette is talking, she is not going to stand. The way the party is now, it is going to be very difficult for anyone who has criticised the Dear Leader, as she has. It’s ridiculous when he’s just lost us another election. It’s also a crying shame. Yvette is one of the few grown-ups we’ve got left – she’s probably our best chance.
Cooper’s office has not commented yet on the story.
Cooper did stand for the leadership in 2015, but came third, behind Corbyn and Andy Burnham.
The New Statesman’s Stephen Bush has written a good blogpost about the YouGov Labour leadership poll. He says that it feels “about right” as an account of opinion in the party at the moment, but that a lot could change. It is worth reading the article in full, but here’s an extract.
One of the many, many errors that people make in reporting the Labour party rank and file is imagining that it is a hyper-engaged and incredibly online group of people. This is not the case. The average Labour member is a socially concerned person who gets their news via the Guardian’s website and the BBC. They are also not particularly factional: Momentum, the organisation that grew out of Corbyn’s first leadership election, is the largest factional organisation in Labour politics by some distance: but only one around one in every 10 Labour party members is a Momentum member.
The moment when Jeremy Corbyn sealed the deal with Labour members in 2015 was not on Twitter, or even on Facebook. It was in the first televised debate of the race. That was when, according to the private polling I obtained at the time, he first opened up a lead among Labour members.
This is just supposition based on anecdote, but my impression is that there are five candidates in this contest who are well-known and about whom Labour members have strong opinions: Keir Starmer, Rebecca Long Bailey, Yvette Cooper, Jess Phillips and Emily Thornberry. These candidates have the least room to grow – I’m not saying it is impossible for them to improve their standing among Labour party members, but they are the ones who are competing against strongly held preconceptions about them.
Opinions about Lisa Nandy and Clive Lewis are for the most part up for grabs and therefore they could do much better than suggested by these polls – if they get on to the ballot, which is not certain for either.
Updated
The process to strip Northern rail of its franchise has begun after years of poor performance, Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, has said. My colleague Rajeev Syal has the full story here.
The YouGov figures showing how votes might get redistributed in a Labour leadership contest (see 10.21am) are worth studying because they show that some assumptions about how people might use their second preference votes might be wrong.
For example, you might think that anyone backing Emily Thornberry would be inclined to opt for Sir Keir Starmer as their next choice because he’s another strongly pro-European north London senior lawyer who performs well in the Commons. But the YouGov figures suggest Rebecca Long Bailey would pick up almost as many Thornberry votes as Starmer in the first instance.
The YouGov figures assume Lisa Nandy would drop out after the first round of voting, with her votes being distributed fairly evenly among the remaining candidates. Thornberry would drop out next, YouGov suggests, boosting Starmer by three points and Long Bailey by two points. Clive Lewis would fall out next under this scenario, with his support being split evenly between Starmer and Long Bailey. Yvette Cooper would be the next to be eliminated, YouGov suggests, with half of her votes going to Starmer, and the rest split between Jess Phillips and Long Bailey. And Phillips would be the last person to drop out, with her votes breaking two to one for Starmer.
Updated
How Labour leadership votes might be redistributed over six rounds of voting - YouGov
The full YouGov Labour leadership polling figures are not available online yet, but here is the chart showing how votes would be re-allocated in the various rounds of the count. Labour uses the alternative vote system in leadership contests, meaning that people are able to rank candidates in order of preference. If no one gets 50% in the first round, the lowest performing candidate gets eliminated and their votes are redistributed. YouGov can model what might happen because it asked Labour members to rank seven candidates in order.
Updated
Blow to 'continuity Corbyn' as poll of members suggests Starmer clear favourite
Good morning and happy new year to everyone.
It certainly is for supporters of Sir Keir Starmer as next Labour leader. Over the last three weeks he and Rebecca Long Bailey have been seen as more or less joint favourites for the post – but for different reasons. Starmer has been seen as a likely winner because he is highly regarded by the public at large and if “looking like a credible PM” were the sole criterion for the job, he would probably easily beat the other candidates. But Long Bailey was seen as a likely winner because she was highly regarded by the Corbynites at the top of the party, and it was assumed that if they wanted her in the top job, the pro-Corbyn membership would duly vote for her too.
But the first poll of Labour members since the election defeat suggests that the second assumption is wrong, and that Starmer will prove much more popular with members. My colleague Kate Proctor has written it up here.
This is how her story starts.
Keir Starmer has emerged as an early frontrunner in the Labour leadership race to succeed Jeremy Corbyn after a poll of members suggested he was the first choice in all regions of the UK, age groups and social classes.
The shadow Brexit secretary is yet to formally launch his campaign but is expected to do so in the first few weeks of the new year. The new leader will be elected in March after Corbyn said he would step down following the party’s catastrophic general election defeat.
Polling by YouGov for the Party Members Project put Starmer as winning with a 61% vote share to 39% for the shadow business secretary, Rebecca Long Bailey, in the last round.
Jess Phillips, the chair of the women’s parliamentary Labour party, who has yet to declare if she is running, was the third most popular choice among members, who were surveyed between 20 and 30 December.
And here is a Guardian graphic with some of the key figures.
It is routine to point out that polling can be unreliable (although that is not something people have been saying since the general election result, which was broadly in line with what the pollsters were predicting). And polling party members is harder than polling the public at large, because there are fewer of them. But YouGov can poll Labour members because it has a vast number of people on its database, and in 2015 and in 2016 its Labour membership polls turned out to be reliable guides to the outcome of the two elections that Jeremy Corbyn won handsomely.
The fact that Starmer is so far ahead at this stage does not mean he has it in the bag. He has not even announced his candidature yet and a lot could change during the campaign, particularly when candidates face the sort of scrutiny that they have never received before.
It is also important to remember that YouGov just polled Labour party members. In the leadership campaign two other categories of people get to vote: people affiliated to Labour through membership of a trade union or a socialist society, and people who pay a one-off fee to get a vote as a registered supporter. Although these two groups are broadly similar in outlook to Labour members, they don’t vote in exactly the same way. In 2015 and in 2016 the registered supporters were proportionately significantly more pro-Corbyn than members and affiliates.
And the fact that this poll has now come out will affect the dynamics of the contest. It will establish Starmer as the clear frontrunner – and incentivise his opponents. Labour’s national executive committee is meeting next week to determine the timetable for the leadership election, and how the registered supporters scheme will operate for this contest, and, in so far as the NEC is controlled by a particular faction in the party, it is not a faction that wants Starmer to win.
Andrew Adonis, the pro-European Labour peer, is one of the Labour figures who has welcomed the poll findings on Twitter this morning.
This poll shows that Labour members want a leader who can inspire them with boldness and realism - not a Corbyn Continuity candidate https://t.co/ppHU85Mhyd
— Andrew Adonis (@Andrew_Adonis) January 2, 2020
But Steve Howell, who was deputy director of strategy and communications for Labour in the 2017, has said that Starmer would be the wrong choice. Howell does not have a party role at the moment, but his views are always worth paying attention to because they tend to align with those of the “4Ms” – Seumas Milne, Corbyn’s communications chief, Karie Murphy, Labour’s elections chief, Len McCluskey, the Unite general secretary, and Andrew Murray, an adviser to McCluskey and Corbyn – who are seen as four of the most powerful figures in the Corbyn leadership.
Sorry, much as I respect Keir and think he has a big role to play, electing as leader the man who drove Labour "quickly through the gears" to support a second referendum would be like a parody of how out of touch we are with the voters we need to win back.https://t.co/xL8WtmSj2n
— Steve Howell (@FromSteveHowell) January 2, 2020
It looks as if it is going to be a quiet news day but, as usual, I will be covering breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I will post a summary when I wrap up.
You can read all the latest Guardian politics articles here. Here is the Politico Europe roundup of this morning’s political news. And here is the PoliticsHome list of today’s top 10 must-reads.
If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is 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 questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.
If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter.
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That Rob Ford fella is spot on re the Labour membership. The Labour membership as a whole isn’t that much to the left, so if the membership is significantly more to the left than Yvette Cooper then that says far more about Cooper than it does about Labour members.
It would be good for Andrew Sparrow to comment on this seen as though the ‘significantly to the left’ of Cooper is his phrase and his inference.