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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow and Kevin Rawlinson

Labour leadership: Starmer secures place on final ballot by getting Usdaw nomination – as it happened

Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary and Labour leadership candidate.
Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary and Labour leadership candidate. Photograph: Richard Gardner/REX/Shutterstock

Afternoon summary

  • Boris Johnson has suffered his defeat defeat in parliament since the general election and peers voted to insert an amendment into the EU (withdrawal agreement) bill saying EU nationals should be given a physical document showing they have the right to be in the UK after Brexit. (See 4.41pm.) The defeat is likely to be overturned when the bill returns to the Commons on Wednesday.

In practice candidates can only clear the affiliates nominations hurdle with support from one of five big unions: Unite, Unison, GMB, Usdaw and CWU. Unite is expected to back Rebecca Long-Bailey.

  • Gordon Brown, the Labour former prime minister, has said the UK could break up soon without radical devolution of power to nations and regions. (See 4.32pm.)
  • The Northern Ireland assembly has voted to withhold legislative consent from the UK government’s EU (withdrawal agreement) bill. (See 3.51pm.)
  • The European commission has said the EU will not be ready to open trade talks with the UK on a post-Brexit trade deal before the end of February. (See 12.27pm.)

That’s all from us for this evening. If you’d like to read more, my colleague Rajeev Syal has tonight’s main politics story:

Updated

Here’s some reaction from Labour MPs to the news that Usdaw has backed Starmer – as well as from his campaign chair, the former Labour MP Jenny Chapman:

Updated

Starmer has said:

I’m honoured to have received Usdaw’s endorsement for the Labour leadership. Our campaign is building unity across the labour movement, amongst trade unionists and members.

Usdaw represent over 400,000 workers and fights every day for its members and for a fairer society. If I’m elected leader, Labour will stand shoulder to shoulder with the trade union movement as we take on the Tories and rebuild trust with working people.

Starmer becomes first Labour leadership candidate to secure place on final ballot after winning Usdaw nomination

Usdaw, the shopworkers’ union, has nominated Sir Keir Starmer for Labour leader. With Unison and Sera, the Labour environment campaign, also backing him, this means that he has got enough affiliate nominations to be guaranteed a place on the final ballot. He is the first of the five candidates left in the contest to clear this hurdle.

In practice candidates can only clear the affiliates nominations hurdle with support from one of five big unions: Unite, Unison, GMB, Usdaw and CWU. Unite is expected to back Rebecca Long-Bailey, and the GMB is expected to back Lisa Nandy. If that does happen, that would mean Jess Phillips and Emily Thornberry (neither of whom are likely to get the backing of the leftwing CWU) would only be able to make it onto the final ballot by getting nominations from 5% of constituency Labour parties (33 of them) - something they may struggle to do.

Usdaw is also nominating Angela Rayner for the deputy leadership.

Commenting on the decision, Paddy Lillis, Usdaws’s general secretary, said:

Usdaw believes that Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner are the right leadership team to unite and rebuild Labour after a devastating election loss. Our members desperately need Labour in power, they cannot afford another decade of Conservative governments attacking workers’ rights, incomes and public services.

The Labour party must be led by someone who can persuade voters that they have what it takes to be a prime minister and we are a government in waiting. That is at the heart of Usdaw’s decision to make these nominations.

That’s all from me for today.

My colleague Kevin Rawlinson is taking over now.

Updated

In her webchat with Mumsnet earlier Jess Phillips, the Labour leadership candidate, was asked if she would get rid of Momentum from Labour on the grounds that it was acting as a party within a party. Phillips did not accept that description, and she praised some of its activists, but she also hinted that she had concerns about some of its activities. She said:

Would I get rid of Momentum? I get asked that a lot. The answer is … there are some brilliant Momentum activists in my constituency who are just interested in getting a Labour government. So a blanket approach is inappropriate. However, if there is evidence that any group in the Labour party is organising without inviting anyone who wished to be a member in, or are operating an organisation that is more interested in controlling the party than getting Labour into power then any leader would have to act. If everyone is pulling together in the same direction, then groupings within the party will have the same aim and there should be no problems. Anyone from any group who bullies, harasses, is racist or stops the functioning of any Labour meeting through malice, would have no place in the Labour party.

During the Tory leadership contest the Brexiter Mark Francois said that he had decided to vote for Boris Johnson after Johnson looked him in the eye and said the UK would be leaving the EU on 31 October. The UK did not leave on 31 October.

Last week Johnson said in a BBC interview that he was working on a plan to allow people to crowdfund an appeal to cover the cost of Big Ben chiming on 31 January, when the UK does leave the EU. Again Francois seemed to take Johnson at his word and helped to get an appeal going, even pledging £1,000 himself. But Downing Street then ruled out the idea, saying the Commons authorities could not accept money raided in this manner.

According to the Telegraph’s Christopher Hope, Francois is still hoping that Johnson will help to make his wish come true. Experience suggests this is unlikely.

Angela Smith, the Labour leader in the Lords, has said that the government should not just rely on its majority in the House of Commons to overturn Lords defeats. She said:

I hope the prime minister and his colleagues will not think that they can get every detail of every bill right first time, and recognise that the second chamber is useful.

A large Commons majority means the government is guaranteed to get its legislation through but it would be supremely arrogant to dismiss all scrutiny.

Johnson suffers first defeat on Brexit bill in Lords as peers vote to give EU nationals physical proof of right to stay

Peers have voted for the Oates amendment by 270 votes to 229 - a majority of 41. This is an opposition amendment to the bill that would ensure that EU nationals living in the UK do get a physical document showing they have the right to be in the country.

It is Boris Johnson’s first defeat in parliament since the general election.

Ministers are likely to overturn the defeat when the bill returns to the Commons on Wednesday. If the defeat is reversed, peers will then have to decide whether to accept that, when the bill goes back to the Lords during “ping pong”, or whether to try again to pass the ‘physical document’ amendments. Peers have the power to ask the Commons to ‘think again’, but they almost always back down if the Commons insists on its version of the bill, and given the scale of Johnson’s general election victory last month, peers won’t feel that they have the authority to put up much of a fight.

Gordon Brown's speech on case for radical devolution

The full text of Gordon Brown’s speech about the need for constitutional change is here, on his website. It is worth reading in full, but here are the main points.

  • Brown called for radical devolution of decision-making to the nations and regions of the UK. He said:

The recent revolt of the regions shows us that dictates from the centre will not work and that complaints will not be allayed unless people’s voices themselves are heard and the outlying nations and regions gain new powers of initiative to become decision-making centres within the UK in their own right – given our history as a unitary state, nothing short of a constitutional revolution.

The best start would be a UK-wide constitutional convention that would bring together the regions and nations of the UK to formulate a new way forward for our constitution.

The convention should be preceded by region-by-region citizens’ assemblies that listen closely to what communities are saying and where common ground lies. Citizens’ assemblies – successfully organised in Ireland – can both encourage civilised debate and seek consensus where divisions have previously prevailed.

In an earlier draft he called for a council-led ‘Northern Exchequer board’ to take charge of government spending in the north. (See 1.26pm.)

  • He said the UK could break up if Westminster does not devolve power. He said:

For after two divisive referendums in 2014 and 2016, and three bitter and tempestuous general elections in four years, we have to recognise the outcome of 2019 as a threat to the very existence of the United Kingdom.

Boris Johnson will soon discover that he has no choice – either we remake Britain or we risk losing it.

All parties need to present a positive alternative to nationalism that can reunite Britain and heal our deep divisions.

  • He said the 2019 election was unusual because all major parties were campaigning for change. He said:

The crisis runs much deeper than Brexit. That is why, unlike previous elections when usually one major party campaigned on a safety-first, ‘no change’ agenda, all parties in 2019 could not begin to make progress if they defended the status quo and the result seems more like a plea for change than a positive and enthusiastic endorsement of any party.

  • He said the old post-war social contract “seems broken”. That was because its four pillars were “near a state of collapse”, he said.

First, for millions, work no longer pays.

Second, no matter how hard you strive, opportunities for upward mobility seem limited and there appears to be less room at the top. Parents no longer feel confident that the next generation will do as well as the last.

Third, extremes of wealth cannot now be justified – as once they were – by claiming that the huge remuneration packages that the elites receive are the result of effort and merit. Excessive boardroom remuneration packages, the bankers’ bonus culture and shocking extremes of inequality have put paid to that.

Finally, our 75-year-old safety net looks threadbare, as in every town and city, child poverty and homelessness are on the increase and food banks, clothes banks, bedding banks, baby banks and charities generally substitute for the welfare state.

  • He said artificial intelligence could make the regional divide even worse. He said:

The advance of A.I., whereby jobs are threatened and then displaced by technology, could make the regional divide between a new education-rich and a new education-poor even worse.

  • He said there was a danger of Boris Johnson becoming more extreme by the time of the next election. He said:

There is no doubt that Boris Johnson will find it difficult to reconcile – within his party’s neo-liberal economic framework – the demands from the north for higher spending and more government intervention with the demands of his suburban and shire south that want the opposite – less public spending, less government intervention and lower taxes.

And so to win the next election he may feel compelled to resort to uniting his very different constituencies around another bout of nationalism: to anti-Europeanism or to anti-immigrant gesturing or even to playing the anti-Scottish card, claiming – as his party did in 2015 and 2019 – that under a Labour-SNP coalition, Scotland – they will say with only eight per cent of the UK population – will run England, despite its 83 per cent of the population. Sadly the seeds have already been sewn for this, with the majority of Conservative anti-Europeans saying that the end of the Union is a price worth paying for Brexit.

Updated

Peers vote on amendment to Brexit bill to give EU nationals physical document showing they have right to be in UK

In the Lords debate Lord Oates is responding to the government minister, Lady Williams of Trafford.

He says he was surprised by her argument. He says the Home Office can give EU nationals physical proof of their right to be in the UK while also keeping the details in a digital database. He says people like landlords will expect to be able to see a document showing someone has the right to be in the UK.

He is putting his amendment to a vote.

Peers are voting now.

In the Lords the Home Office minster Lady Williams of Trafford is responding to the debate on clause 7 - the Oates amendment about giving EU nationals a document proving their right to be in the UK. She claims there is a danger of “ID card creep”. She says if EU nationals get a physical document showing they have the right to be in the country, they will be asked to show this. So the Oates plan creates a risk of people being discriminated against for not having documentation in the way that happened to the Windrush generation, she claims.

Earlier in the debate the crossbencher Lord Kerslake, the former head of the civil service, who is backing the Oates amendment, said the Oates amendment would reduce the risk of Windrush-style injustices.

Williams says physical documents can be “lost, stolen or tampered with”. The government wants to use a digital system instead, she says.

Northern Ireland assembly votes to refuse legislative consent to PM's Brexit bill

The Northern Ireland assembly has passed a motion refusing to give legislative assent to the UK government’s EU (withdrawal agreement) bill. In effect, it has rejected Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal. After a debate lasting almost three hours the power-sharing assembly, which was only revived just over a week ago, the motion was passed without opposition.

Opening the debate Arlene Foster, the DUP first minister, said said the Brexit deal posed “significant challenges for Northern Ireland”. She urged MLAs to “take a stand” to show that the assembly was “back in business” and would not be overruled by the government.

The Alliance party Kellie Armstrong said there was no such thing as a good or sensible Brexit and that the assembly should “stand up and protect Northern Ireland”.

Michelle O’Neill, the Sinn Fein deputy first minster, said ahead of the debate:

There is no good to come from Brexit - it brings nothing, only jeopardy to our economy and to jobs, to future prospects, and I think that will be reflected in the debate we will have in Assembly chamber today.

And the SDLP leader Colum Eastwood said ahead of the debate.

We have always said people here did not give consent for Brexit and it’s important that this Assembly withholds consent for Brexit. We know this British Government will ignore us but when they are ignoring us they are ignoring the people of Northern Ireland, people of Scotland and the representatives of the people of Wales.

That shows you what kind of government is sitting now in London. They do not care about people here, they don’t care about people in Scotland, and they are determined to go on with the madness that is this Brexit.

The vote will have no practical impact on the government’s Brexit plans, but it is embarrassing for Johnson given his professed commitment to the union. In a similar vote the Scottish parliament refused to grant legislative consent to the EU (withdrawal agreement) will earlier this month.

The Northern Ireland assembly.
The Northern Ireland assembly. Photograph: Pool/Getty Images

Updated

Peers debate EU (withdrawal agreement) bill

In the House of Lords peers have just started the report stage of the debate on the EU (withdrawal agreement) bill. There is likely to be at least one vote today, and more voting tomorrow, when peers will debate an amendment to effectively re-insert the Dubs provision on unaccompanied child migrants into the bill.

The Lib Dem peer Lord Oates is opening the debate. He is moving an amendment backed by the Lib Dems, Labour and crossbenchers that would ensure that EU nationals remaining in the UK after Brexit get a document providing physical proof that they have the right to be in the country.

Oates says EU nationals will want access to a physical document proving their right to be in the country. Otherwise there will be a risk that, at airports and elsewhere, they cannot prove their right to be in the country if an electronic database is not working. This measure will give them confidence, he says.

He urges ministers to “walk in the shoes” of EU nationals and consider the concerns they have about this.

Lord Oates.
Lord Oates. Photograph: Parliament TV

Deputy Lords leader plays down prospect of House of Lords being moved to York

In the House of Lords the Labour peer Lord Foulkes has just asked a private notice question about the report in yesterday’s Sunday Times claiming the government is considering moving the Lords to York. Earl Howe, the deputy leader of the Lords, gave a very non-committal answer. He said that the government would be announcing a commission on constitutional reform later this year, but that the government had not yet decided if this would cover the role of the House of Lords.

When Foulkes said Howe had not answered his question about whether this idea was being seriously considered, Howe said in the past a joint committee looked at the case for moving parliament outside London and decided against it. But he said there was “no reason” why this idea could not be revived. Options were being looked at, he says.

The former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown has told the BBC that he thinks the United Kingdom could soon break up unless its constituent nations and regions get more say in how they are governed.

Simon Coveney, the Irish foreign minister and deputy PM, told reporters after a meeting in Brussels with Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, that it would be a mistake for the British to underestimate the determination of the EU not to allow the UK an unfair competitive advantage after Brexit. He said:

The key issue here is around level playing field issues. There is no way the EU will ever sign up to a trade deal that allows tariff free, quota free and frictionless access to UK goods coming into the EU if there isn’t a level playing field in terms of how they’re produced, because that would be unfair competition ...

From an Irish perspective I think there will be very strong solidarity across the EU, as there was in the first round of Brexit negotiations.

Last week Newsnight’s Nicholas Watt reported that there are UK ministers who believe Britain will have the advantage of being able to exploit supposed EU divisions in the post-Brexit trade talks. Coveney’s words challenge that analysis.

Coveney also voiced his concerns about the short timetable for completing a deal and establishing the effective customs border in the Irish Sea stipulated in the withdrawal agreement. He said:

Because of the decisions the British prime minister has made, time is going to be very short. We have a lot to do and not much time to do it. That is why the mandate and approach the EU will take is important.

The other thing that is very important from an Irish perspective is the full implementation of the [withdrawal agreement] and the protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland because ... the guarantees that have been provided to prevent border infrastructure being necessary between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland require new structures are put in place, new committees are put in place in terms of managing the trade relationship between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

And we all know what is in that protocol and there is a lot of work to ensure that is in place in plenty of time. So those structures need to be put in place in parallel with progressing the negotiations and discussions on future relationship and future trade deal … From an Irish perspective that is really important for obvious reasons.

Simon Coveney speaking to journalists in Brussels today.
Simon Coveney speaking to journalists in Brussels today. Photograph: John Thys/AFP via Getty Images

The Brown event is over. He did not take questions from journalists.

His office has now sent out a partial text of the speech. I will post a summary soon.

Gordon Brown is now responding to the questions/point raised by the five Labour parliamentarians. (See 1.44pm.)

He says he agrees with Angela Eagle about the need for the left to find a response to the paradox of nationalism being international now.

Responding to Charlie Falconer, he says he thinks you cannot separate the economic issues from the constitutional ones.

He says child tax credits have been integrated into universal credit. He says as a result child poverty is rising, and it could reach 5m later this decade. It is a scandal, he says.

He recalls being in George Bush’s office during the financial crisis. Bush complained about Barack Obama, he says, he says he says the Republicans should attack him as a Harvard elitist. Brown says he told Bush that was a bit rich because Bush was a Yale elitist.

But he says Bush’s line illustrated an important point. To attack populists, you have to portray them as being part of an elite. And he says Labour’s problem sometimes has been that it has been seen as part of the elite.

Turing to the SNP, he says they are supposed to be a social democratic party. But education is falling apart in Scotland, he says. He says the SNP are not the radicals they claim to be.

Brown is now talking about the importance of offering hope. In every situation, Labour has to give hope for the future, he says.

He says Boris Johnson cannot claim that he has a majority for Conservative values. People want change, he says. And he says Labour can show what that change should be.

The speech is over. We are now onto the Q&A, but the first “question” comes from Harriet Harman, the former Labour deputy leader, who praises Brown’s speech and says it was a riposte to those in the party who think they just need to keep their heads down, and the party will recover.

Ian Murray, the only Labour MP in Scotland and a candidate for the deputy leadership, is speaking now. He says the devolution agenda is much more advanced in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The real problems is in England, he says.

The Labour MP Chris Bryant jokingly asks Brown if he has considered standing for the party leadership. He says his anxiety is that Labour has become “a grievance machine”, not a source for hope.

And the Labour MP Angela Eagle says Brown has pointed out that paradox that nationalism is now a coordinate, worldwide movement. She says Labour needs to get back to talking about its values.

Charlie Falconer, the former Labour lord chancellor, says he is worried about Brown’s plan to reopen the constitution for debate at a time of economic uncertainty. Isn’t there a danger that people just go for the populist option, as they almost did in Scotland? Wouldn’t it be more important to focus on economic issues.

Brown ends with another line familiar to people who have heard him speak in the past - quoting approvingly the President Kennedy speech (pdf) calling for not a declaration of independence, but a declaration of interdependence.

Brown says Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the regions of England should be able to come together to put the case for the devolution of power over spending to the UK government. He says he knows from his own time as chancellor that a UK chancellor can resist these entities if they are on their own. But if they were united, the UK government would not be able to resist, he says.

Brown is now making the case for using regional citizens’ assemblies to consider the case for constitutional reform. He says he ha studied how they were used in Ireland, and he believes they would take the heat out of the debate on constitutional reform.

Gordon Brown calls for council-led 'Northern Exchequer board' to take charge of government spending in north

Gordon Brown is speaking now. As is customary for the former PM, he is speaking without notes, and his speech is a mixture of new analysis with jokes and anecdotes that people familiar with his speeches will have heard before.

A summary of the speech released by Brown’s office in advance says Brown is calling for a UK-wide constitutional convention and region-by-region citizens’ assemblies to gauge public opinion and to respond adequately to the needs of the regions and nations.

It also says Brown is proposing “a forum of the nations and regions” to prevent post-Brexit centralisation of power in London. Brown is arguing that the anachronism of the House of Lords cannot be solved just be moving it to York, his office says. Brown says:

An outdated institution 200 miles or so north of its current location is still an outdated institution.

The summary also includes this quote from Brown calling for the creation of a “Northern Exchequer board” to take charge of Treasury spending in the north. Brown says:

I will argue for a council of the north and council of the Midlands that bring together local authorities, mayors and MPs and in the form of a Northern Exchequer board take powers from the Treasury over the allocation of regional resources - so that on vital issues, outlying regions and communities will no longer be governed simply by dictates from London second guessing what they want.

The demand for more power to the north is far greater than can be met by gimmicks or gestures given that the UK is a unitary state but a multinational country; that it is asymmetric with 83% of the votes at elections in England and that political, financial and administrative power has been over-concentrated in one city in the south.

The Labour MP Alison McGovern introduces Gordon Brown.

She starts by saying some people have been talking about how the UK has had 40 years of neo-liberalism. (That is a reference to the new Labour MP Zarah Sultana, who used her maiden speech in the Commons to call for an end to “40 years of Thatcherism”.) McGovern challenges this analysis. She says under Margaret Thatcher inequality and child poverty rose. But under Brown inequality flattened, and 1m children were taken out of poverty, she says.

(Sultana introduced the Labour leadership candidate Rebecca Long-Bailey when Long-Bailey held her official campaign launch in Manchester on Friday.)

Gordon Brown's speech

Gordon Brown is about to deliver his speech on constitutional reform at Westminster. There is a live feed here.

Updated

And this is from the International Institute for Environment and Development, a sustainable development thinktank, on the PM’s announcement about UK aid and coal. (See 10.23am.) This is from the IIED’s director, Andrew Norton.

The UK government’s decision to stop providing aid to support coal projects is long overdue and a welcome step in the right direction ― but it needs to go further.

To meet the scale of the climate crisis, it must stop subsidising all fossil fuel exploration and production. And the climate finance it has committed to help developing countries, must be geared to meet local people’s priorities and needs in their efforts to develop and thrive in the face of climate change.

Global Witness, the anti-corruption, pro-environment campaigning organisation, has said that Boris Johnson’s promise to end the use of UK aid money to fund coal mining or coal power plants (see 10.23am) will make little difference. This is from its senior climate campaigner Adam McGibbon.

The UK government has not funded a coal plant overseas since 2002. This commitment to ‘no new coal’ therefore makes very little difference to the UK’s lack of climate ambition, and it leaves untouched the billions in oil and gas support that the UK will continue to spend worldwide.

To be a real climate leader, the UK government needs to end its support for all fossil fuels overseas. In a year that the UK is hosting a major UN climate summit, we need to see much stronger commitments from the UK that match up to the climate challenges the world is currently facing. Climate leaders don’t spend billions overseas making climate change worse for the world’s poorest people.

According to Global Witness, 97% of energy support backed by UK Export Finance goes on fossil fuel projects, almost all involving oil and gas. It says these will not be affected by Johnson’s announcement.


EU confirms that it will not be ready to start talks on trade deal with UK until end of February

The European commission has confirmed that it will not be ready to open talks with the UK on a future trade deal until the end of February at the earliest. The commission’s chief spokesman, Eric Mamer, told journalists this morning:

The commission can adopt its proposal for the negotiation directives only once the UK has actually withdrawn from the EU.

But then there is still an institutional process for these to be adopted by the [European] council.

This we know will take some time, which is why we have said we will start negotiations as quickly as we can, but it will certainly not be before the end of February, beginning of March.

This is not a slowing down or speeding up of the process. This is simply the nature of the institutional process and the consultations that need to take place before the negotiation directives can be formally adopted.

Boris Johnson has ruled out extending the post-Brexit transition period, and this timetable means that the UK and the EU will have just 10 months in practice to agree and ratify an agreement on their future partnership.

Downing Street wants the talks to start soon, and has not ruled out opening talks with Washington on a UK-US deal before talks with Brussels get going. (See 12.05pm.)

At the briefing Mamer was also asked about the comment from Sajid Javid, the chancellor, at the weekend saying the UK will not align with EU rules after Brexit. Mamer confirmed that this would mean less access to the single market for the UK. He said:

There is a link between moving away from EU regulations and the degree of access that is possible into the single market.

That position has not changed. I think both sides have expressed their positions very clearly and, hence, I have nothing to add to the comments that were made this weekend.

Updated

This is from my colleague Peter Walker, who is at the UK-Africa summit.

Updated

Steven Swinford has more from the No 10 lobby briefing.

At the Downing Street lobby briefing this morning the PM’s spokesman hinted that, despite Jeremy Corbyn reportedly nominating John Bercow, the former Speaker, for a peerage in the dissolution honours, Boris Johnson could still block this. This is from the Times’ Steven Swinford.

In the past it has been normal for Speakers to be given a peerage when they retire. But nothing has been announced yet for Bercow, who stood down as an MP at the general election. Some Brexiter Tories believe that he should be denied one because they think he was biased in favour of remain when he was in the chair. Johnson’s own intentions are unclear, although some reports have claimed that he is not opposed to Bercow ever receiving a peerage, but that he only wants to delay the appointment until after claims that Bercow bullied staff when he was an MP have been investigated. Bercow denies the allegations.

Boris Johnson testing at device at the Pavegen stand in the innovation zone at the UK-Africa summit in London. The company develops technology designed to convert footsteps in to energy.
Boris Johnson testing at device at the Pavegen stand in the innovation zone at the UK-Africa summit in London. The company develops technology designed to convert footsteps in to energy.

 Photograph: Leon Neal/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Greenpeace has given a qualified welcome to Boris Johnson’s announcement about the UK government ending aid spending on coal mining or coal power plant projects. (See 10.23am.) But it says the move does not go far enough. This is from John Sauven, Greenpeace UK’s executive director.

It’s great that in the middle of a climate emergency the UK government is finally putting a stop to taxpayers’ money being used to support coal plants and mines abroad. But if Britain wants to lead by example, it should also urgently phase out support for oil and gas developments, which are pushing the world closer to climate chaos.

Supporters of HS2 have renewed their calls for the project to go ahead despite the reservations implicit in the Oakervee review leaked to the Financial Times. (See 9.33am.)

This is from Adam Marshall, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce.

Our business communities want to see HS2 delivered in full without further delay.

This project is an investment that will transform the capacity of our railways and the potential of so many areas across the UK. While there can be no blank cheque, cutting the project back would put development and investment plans across the country at risk.

This is from the Northern Powerhouse Partnership director Henri Murison.

Clearly we will have to wait to see if this leak is genuine. But all of the signals coming out of the official, thorough review by respected figures suggest that the only way we can truly hope to level up the UK economy and create the same opportunities for businesses and young people in the North and the Midlands as in London and the South East is in this year giving the green light to continue HS2.

And this is from Manuel Cortes, general secretary of the TSSA transport union.

The north of England has spent too long as the poor relation of transport investment. HS2 must go ahead and be built through to Scotland. It’s time we brought our railways into the 21st century with confidence and pride.

Here, fairly randomly, is some more political reaction to the FT story about the HS2 review concluding the project could now cost more than £100bn. (See 9.33am.)

From David Davis, the Conservative former Brexit secretary

From the SNP deputy leader and MSP Keith Brown

From the Green MEP Ellie Chowns

Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary and Labour leadership candidate, has used the Phillips/Nandy complaints about the Labour hustings format (see 9.08am) to make a point about her own considerable frontbench experience.

In his summary of the hustings on Saturday the New Statesman’s Stephen Bush said Thornberry came over as “the most fluent and polished of the candidates”, although he also said she would benefit the most from a less rigid format.

Labour is not responding publicly at this point to Lisa Nandy’s call for the format of the official leadership hustings to be changed (see 9.08am), but Nandy is going to get a reply from Jennie Formby, the general secretary, and Nandy’s points are going to be raised with the party’s procedures committee, according to a party source.

Johnson says UK will stop using overseas aid to support coal mining or coal power plants

Boris Johnson has finished his speech. Here is the full quote from the passage where he announced that the UK would no longer spend aid money on fossile fuel projects. He said:

A decade ago we were the one of the most carbon-heavy nations in Europe. Today we’re a world leader in offshore. We regularly generate more of our electricity from renewables than from fossil fuels. And we have almost entirely weaned ourselves off coal.

But there’s no point in the UK reducing the amount of coal we burn if we then trundle over to Africa and line our pockets by encouraging African states to use more of it.

We will breathe the same air, we live beneath the same sky, we all suffer when carbon emissions rise and the planet warms.

So from today the British government will no longer provide any new direct official development assistance [ie, overseas aid], investment, export, credit or trade promotion for thermal coal mining coal or coal power plants overseas.

To put it simply, not another penny of UK taxpayers money will be directly invested in digging up coal or burning it for electricity. And instead we are going to focus on supporting the transition to lower and zero carbon alternatives.

According to a report last year, the British government has spent £680m of its foreign aid budget on fossil fuel projects since 2010.

Updated

Johnson is now addressing the point about the UK ending the use of aid money for investment in coal mining and coal power stations overseas. (See 9.51am.)

He says there is no point the UK cutting its carbon emissions domestically if it is promoting carbon emissions abroad.

He says the UK will encourage the development of alternative energy sources abroad.

He says he does not accept that cutting emissions and promoting growth cannot go together. He says UK emissions have been cut by 42% since 1990. But GDP has grown by 67% over the same period, he says.

Johnson says all the half tea drunk in the UK comes from Kenya. Britain without tea is not worth thinking about. And so Britain without Kenya is not worth thinking about, he says.

He says he is talking about tea coming through Kenya, not necessarily tea grown in Kenya.

Johnson is still speaking.

He says the UK has a depth of expertise that cannot be matched elsewhere.

He is referring now to UK exports to Africa. Here is an excerpt on this from the overnight press release.

The prime minister will use his opening speech to illustrate this modern partnership with examples of UK businesses like Dorset-based Low Energy Designs, which is installing smart street lighting across Nigeria, Northern Irish firm Lagan which has won the contract to build a business park in Uganda, and Diageo which is investing £167 million to build a state of the art, environmentally friendly breweries in Kenya and wider East Africa.

Johnson also claims chicken from Northern Ireland is being exported to Angola.

Boris Johnson's speech at UK-Africa summit

Boris Johnson is speaking at the UK-Africa summit now.

He says he regards this event as the culmination of the work he did as foreign secretary. As foreign secretary, he visited more African countries than any British politician in living memory, he claims.

As foreign secretary he argued that the UK was a country African nations should be doing business with, he says.

He says the UK is the “obvious partner of choice”. It is the ultimate “one-stop shop”, he says. He says in the City investment finance is being raised for every project you can imagine, in every possible currency.

He says Canary Wharf alone is a bigger banking centre than Frankfurt.

He says the UK has the biggest tech sector in this hemisphere.

He says one in seven of the words kings, queens, presidents and prime ministers were educated in this country, including the Japanese emperor. The UK has a monopoly on the education of emperors, he jokes.

He says the immigration system is changing. It will become fairer, treating people the same wherever they come from.

Boris Johnson.
Boris Johnson. Photograph: Sky News

Boris Johnson is due to speak shortly at the UK-Africa investment summit in London. According to a press release from Downing Street overnight, he will announce that the UK is going to stop using overseas aid to support coal mining or coal power plants overseas. No 10 says:

At the Summit, the prime minister will announce an end to UK support for thermal coal mining or coal power plants overseas, ending direct Official Development Assistance, investment and export credit.

This announcement forms part of the UK’s wider commitment to use its expertise and experience to help Africa transition away from fossil fuels towards renewable, sustainable forms of clean energy. In 2019 the UK went a record 83 days without generating electricity from coal. The UK was also the first major economy to set a legally binding target to reach net zero emissions by 2050 and Glasgow will host the COP UN Climate Change Summit later this year.

Boris Johnson at UK-Africa summit.
Boris Johnson at UK-Africa summit. Photograph: Sky News

Updated

Burnham says downgrading HS2 north of Birmingham would be 'fundamentally unacceptable'

During the general election Boris Johnson told a radio presenter that HS2 would cost more than £100bn. The presenter expressed surprise, because the official budget for the project at that point was just £88bn. but Johnson stuck to his guns. He said he thought the final bill would be “north of £1oobn”.

Perhaps Johnson knew more than he was letting on. Today’s Financial Times says a leak of the review of HS2 by Doug Oakervee says it could cost up to £106bn. The FT story is here (paywall) and our own follow-up is here.

According to the FT, the Oakervee review says that “on balance” HS2 should continue, but it recommends that work on the link from the West Midlands to Manchester and Leeds be put on hold for six months to explore whether it could be made up of a mix of standard and high-speed rail.

Speaking on the Today programme this morning, Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, said watering down what was proposed for the route north of Birmingham in this way would be unacceptable. He said:

I’m worried by the suggestion that there might be a delay in the north, or even that we might get some kind of second-class option, a mix of high-speed and conventional lines that it’s talking about.

And to me that would be the same old story. London to Birmingham, money is no object, and then all the penny pinching is done in the North of England.

That would not be acceptable to me, and I’m sure wouldn’t be acceptable to many other leaders across the north.

Burnham also said the development of an east-west rail route across the Nnorth - known as HS3 or Northern Powerhouse Rail - relied on HS2 being built. He explained:

This isn’t just about north-south rail. The point about HS2 is it lays the enabling infrastructure for the east-west links that we crucially need and most people here would say that those are even more important.

This is about building a railway for the north, right across the north, for the rest of the century.

And that’s why I don’t support the idea that we will see downgrading of what is done north of Birmingham.

That would be fundamentally unacceptable. If we get to a position where trains can go high-speed into Birmingham and then trundle their way north, then I’m sorry but that just isn’t good enough.

Andy Burnham.
Andy Burnham. Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA

Labour leadership: Candidates criticise 'terrible' format chosen by party for official hustings

The first official party hustings in the Labour leadership contest took place on Saturday, in Liverpool, and some observers said afterwards that the format made it all a bit dull and inconclusive. Under the rules drawn up by party HQ, candidates were given just 40 seconds to answer questions, and they were not allowed to interrupt each other or ask each other questions. Paul Mason, the Labour-supporting journalists, said this arrangements was “dire”.

Now it seems at least two of the candidates agree with him.

In an article for the Guardian Jess Phillips says she thought that she performed badly, and that the format was partly to blame. She says:

The hustings was awful. I was awful because I was trying to hit a million different lines and messages in 40 seconds. Some were my lines, some were other people’s, and it fell flat.

It was not all my failing. The format of the hustings is terrible. To answer any question in 40 seconds is ridiculous. If it were possible to sum up, for example, an economic plan or an industrial strategy in 40 seconds, one wonders why they are actually hundreds of pages long. What a ridiculous farce.

And now, as HuffPost’s Paul Waugh reports, Lisa Nandy has written to Labour’s general secretary, Jennie Formby, asking her to change the rules. She says the candidates should be given more than 40 seconds to reply to questions, and allowed to engage with each other. She says:

We need these hustings to ignite a passionate debate in our party and this cannot be achieved by proscribing answers to 40 second sound bites and hermetically sealing the candidates from direct conversations between ourselves.

The next official hustings is due in Leeds on Saturday. We will find out later what Labour HQ has to say about the Nandy request.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: The UK-Africa investment summit opens. Boris Johnson is hosting it. There will be a live stream here.

11am: Downing Street lobby briefing.

12.45pm: Gordon Brown, the former prime minister, gives a speech in Westminster on remaking Britain. He will use it to expand on arguments he made in this article for the Guardian.

1pm: Jess Phillips, the Labour leadership candidate, takes part in a live webchat for Mumsnet.

After 3.30pm: Peers begin debating the report stage of the EU (withdrawal agreement) bill. They are expected to vote on amendments relating to citizens’ rights and on the independence of courts.

At some point today the executive of the Usdaw union is meeting to decide who to nominate in the Labour leadership contest. This is important because Usdaw is one of the five unions big enough to ensure that a candidate meets the 5% hurdle in this category.

And at some point today Tory backbenchers are voting in an election for the chairmanship of the 1922 Committee. Sir Graham Brady is facing a challenge from Bill Wiggin.

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 plan to 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.

Updated

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