Afternoon summary
- Momentum has said that it will “now be mobilising thousands [of its activists]” to persuade Labour party members to vote for Long-Bailey in the leadership contest after Momentum members endorsed her in a ballot. (See 2.42pm.)
- Scotland’s sole remaining Labour MP, Ian Murray, has called on his party’s leadership contenders not to come north of the border and talk about Scottish issues without attempting to understand them first. He was speaking as he launched his campaign to be the party’s deputy leader.
- Robert Buckland, the justice secretary, has said the government is planning some “constitutional plumbing” to stop judges getting involved in political decisions. (See 9.44am.)
- Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, has said Labour would be “very happy” to join the cross-party talks the government is planning to try to find a consensus on the reform of adult social care. (See 12.25pm.)
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
Updated
Following the Momentum vote to back Rebecca Long-Bailey, the group has now released this video promoting her campaign.
We're backing Rebecca Long-Bailey for Labour Party leader.
— Momentum (@PeoplesMomentum) January 16, 2020
She's the only candidate that will take on the political establishment and give power back to communities. This powerful speech shows just that.#LabourLeadershipElection #LabourLeadership #RebeccaLongBailey pic.twitter.com/7qEIz0ljzD
Turning back to the Labour leadership, Tim Bale and Paul Webb, two politics professors involved in the Party Members Project have published a very interesting article on the Conversation website giving more details of of the YouGov polling looking at what Labour members think about the Labour leadership. The headline results, that suggest Keir Starmer is comfortably ahead on first preference and that he would beat Rebecca Long-Bailey in the final round by 61% to 39% (Labour uses the alternative vote), were published at the start of the month. But these figures, which explore what members think in more detail, are new.
Do read the whole article, but two charts are particularly important.
First, this one divides up members according to which trait they think is most important in a leader and then shows who comes top in each category. For example, the first line shows that, amongst members saying having a strong leader is what matters most, Starmer is ahead, on 45.5%.
Starmer leads in most categories:
Strong leader
Intelligent
Able to unite party
Able to unite country
Good crisis management
Effective speaker
Appealing to average voters
Jess Phillips is ahead in just one category, good negotiator. Lisa Nandy and Emily Thornberry are not leading in any category (which may partly reflect the fact that the polling was carried out last month, and Nandy in particular has done a lot to raise her profile since). Long-Bailey, Starmer’s main rival, is ahead in just three categories:
Likeable
In touch with ordinary voter
Strong political convictions
And that is where the second chart comes in. Labour members were also asked what what quality was most important when electing a new party leader. And “strong political convictions” - Long-Bailey’s key asset; she is well ahead on this measure - came out top.
Updated
EU commissioner says agreeing all aspects of future relationship with UK by end of 2020 'not possible'
Phil Hogan, the EU’s trade commissioner, has become the latest Brussels figure in recent days to say there is no chance of the UK and the EU negotiating a comprehensive trade deal by the end of 2020. Speaking at an event organised by the Global Counsel consultancy, he said the two sides were “certainly” not going to be able to tie up everything on the future relationship before the end of the year. He said:
Certainly by the end of the year we are not going to get everything that’s in the 36-page document on the future relationship agreed because prime minister Johnson decided we are going to have everything concluded by the end of the year. It’s just not possible.
Last week Ursula Von der Leyen, the president of the European commission, and Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, both said the same thing (see here and here).
Updated
Momentum commits to 'mobilising thousands' for Long-Bailey after 70% of members back her for leader
Momentum, the influential Labour organisation that represents Jeremy Corbyn supporters, has released the results of its poll of members on who it should back for Labour leader. And Rebecca Long-Bailey has won easily, with 70% of members saying the group should endorse her as leader.
Momentum members have also narrowly backed Angela Rayner for deputy leader, with 52% approving a plan to endorse her candidature.
To describe this as a proper ballot would be misleading. Despite being an organisation committed to giving Labour members more say in party decisions, Momentum members were not given the chance of voting for any of the five leadership candidates, or any of the five deputy leadership candidates. Instead, after Momentum’s national coordinating group (NCG), decided to recommend Long-Bailey and Rayner, members were just asked whether the organisation should adopt both of these two recommendations. If members had said no, it is not clear whether the NCG would have chosen someone else to endorse, or whether it would have just stayed neutral.
Earlier this month Momentum’s decision not to hold a proper ballot was publicly criticised by Laura Parker, who until very recently was its national coordinator.
Turnout was very low. Momentum has around 40,000 members, but only around 7,000 of them took part.
But that does not mean the result doesn’t matter. Momentum has huge organisational muscle, as well as a very good social media campaigning team, and this vote means it will now throw its weight behind getting Labour members to vote for Long-Bailey.
Here are the results in detail.
Question 1 of 2: Should Momentum follow the NCG recommendation to endorse Rebecca Long-Bailey as the next leader of the Labour party?
Results: For: 4,995 (70.42%) Against: 2,098 (29.58%)
Question 2 of 2: Should Momentum follow the NCG recommendation to endorse Angela Rayner as the next deputy leader of the Labour party?
Results: For: 3,684 (52.15%) Against: 3,380 (47.85%)
A Momentum spokesman said:
Our membership has spoken and overwhelmingly backed Rebecca Long-Bailey to be the next leader of the Labour party and the next prime minister of the UK. We will now be mobilising thousands to persuade Labour members in the coming months.
Rebecca is at the heart of a new and diverse generation of socialists who recognise that we cannot return to the politics of the past. She has spent the last few years pioneering the policies of the future, including a detailed plan for a green new deal that can revive communities that have been ignored, bring the country together and lead the world in combating the climate crisis.
She is an experienced, principled and inspiring candidate and our movement is proud to support her for leadership.
George Parker, the Financial Times’ political editor, is very astute on the Big Ben nonsense. (See 1.03pm.)
Only in Britain could you have a raging P1 debate about whether Big Ben should “bong” for Brexit but virtually no comment on the fact the Treasury hasn’t produced an assessment of what the @BorisJohnson proposed trade deal would mean for jobs and prosperity
— George Parker (@GeorgeWParker) January 16, 2020
Holger Hestermeyer, an international law specialist at King’s College London, has written an interesting Twitter thread on Robert Buckland’s call for constitutional reform that would keep the judiciary out of political decisions. (See 9.44am.) It starts here.
The government manifesto (attached) on changing the reach of courts is in the press again (h/t @AndrewSparrow ). But some things seem off, so a thread with some clarifications. (Thread) pic.twitter.com/l8Px6xnzm2
— Holger Hestermeyer (@hhesterm) January 16, 2020
And here is what is effectively his conclusion.
The UK system has chosen that legislative acts are not reviewable. That is, if you want, an institutional answer to that question. It seems to me that going beyond that would create far more problems than it would resolve.
— Holger Hestermeyer (@hhesterm) January 16, 2020
Nandy seeks to defuse row prompted by Catalonia remark by stressing her opposition to oppression of separatists
In her interview with Andrew Neil last night the Labour leadership candidate Lisa Nandy was asked to explain the plan she announced in a speech on Monday for “an international commission, led by and for Scottish people, that seeks to learn from the few examples where at times in modern history the cause of social justice has beaten divisive nationalism.” She replied:
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying that rather than turn inwards and argue about resources we should look outwards to other countries and other parts of the world, where they’ve had to deal with divisive nationalism and seek to discover the lessons from when in those brief moments in history in places like Catalonia and Quebec we have managed to go and beat narrow, divisive nationalism with a social justice agenda.
The reference to Catalonia has angered Scottish nationalists because it sounded like an endorsement of the Spanish government’s ultra-repressive treatment of Catalonian separatists. Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, expressed concern at first minister’s questions (see 12.45pm), and the SNP MP Tommy Sheppard put out a press notice earlier claiming Nandy was “condoning violence and imprisonment as a way to oppose independence”.
Now Nandy has written a blog clarifying what she meant when she said Catalonia could be a model. She says:
I have suggested if I become Labour’s next leader I will set up an international commission to learn lessons from experiences elsewhere, in places like Quebec and Catalonia. In Quebec, the positive expression of solidarity from Canadians towards their fellow citizens — coupled with real devolution of powers — was the central reason why separatism was defeated there. It allowed the people of Quebec to be who they wanted to be with overlapping, complex, multiple identities without forcing them into a choice that would require those identities to fragment.
Equally socialists in Catalonia have for years been peacefully resisting the advance of separatists there, and most recent indications suggest that their democratic efforts may well succeed. There are hopeful signs their approach of socialism and solidarity — which stands in stark contrast to the unjustified violence we saw from the Spanish police operating under the instruction of Spain’s then rightwing Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy — may yet win out.
Updated
Richard Burgon has announced that Laura Pidcock is chairing his campaign for the Labour deputy leadership.
I’m delighted to announce that the Chair of the #Richard4Deputy campaign is the inspirational @LauraPidcock.
— Richard Burgon MP (@RichardBurgon) January 16, 2020
Laura is one of my closest friends but more importantly we share a passionate commitment to a campaigning, socialist and democratic Labour Party. pic.twitter.com/OdfX8ieimK
Pidcock was tipped as a possible leadership candidate herself until she lost her seat at the general election. The 8,792 majority she had in North West Durham in 2017 was turned into a 1,144 majority for the Conservatives.
The Brexiter Tory Mark Francois has said that Boris Johnson would be “mad” not to let a crowdfunding campaign cover the £500,000 cost of Big Ben chiming on 31 January to mark Brexit. Responding to the latest statement from No 10 on this (see 12.12pm), Francois said:
We launched this campaign at 7pm last night and by 12.30pm today we have raised just over £80,000, with donations averaging £16 literally flooding in. As the prime minister effectively initiated this campaign live on TV two days ago and as we are clearly going to hit the target, he would be mad to back away from it.
An appeal on gofundme has currently raised more than £82,000.
Both Tories and Labour attacked Nicola Sturgeon on domestic policy again at first minister’s questions in Edinburgh this week, but the first minister did not miss the opportunity to reference Boris Johnson’s refusal earlier this week to transfer to the Holyrood government the powers necessary to hold a second independence referendum.
Reiterating SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford’s phrasing at PMQs yesterday, she told the chamber that “democracy denial will not prevail”, and that the outcome of the general election - in which the SNP secured 47 of Scotland’s 59 Westminster seats with an increased vote share of 45% - should be respected in Scotland as the Tories demand that it is in the rest of the UK.
She accused the Tories of “running scared” of a second referendum, because they fear that Scotland will choose independence this time.
Sturgeon was also asked about Lisa Nandy’s comments on nationalism during her Andrew Neil interview last night, in which she positively referenced Catalonia, causing outrage among Scottish independence supporters who have taken it as an affirmation of the Spanish government’s violent crackdown on Catalan separatists.
Sturgeon said that she was willing to give Nandy the benefit of the doubt, but called on her to clarify her remarks and, if necessary, apologise.
Updated
This is from Michael Dougan, a law professor at Liverpool University, commenting on what Robert Buckland said this morning about the government’s plans to keep judges out of political decisions. (See 9.44am.)
Buckland's vague, garbled, evasive interview about Tory plans for "judicial reform" left us none the wiser.
— Michael Dougan (@mdouganlpool) January 16, 2020
But just to point out: if you really want to stop judges being dragged into politics, then start by not accusing them of bias every time they find you've acted unlawfully
Here’s the polling expert Matt Singh on the LabourList poll of members on the Labour leadership. Polling party members is tricky because it is harder to get a representative sample than it is when polling members of the public, and this poll was based on LabourList readers who say they are also members of the party. Singh suggests the figures for how they voted in 2016 show they are more Corbynite than the membership as a whole. That might help to explain why Rebecca Long-Bailey has performed better in this poll than in the YouGov poll of party members earlier this month.
Survation/Labourlist poll has recalled 2016 vote of 66-34 compared with 59-41 result among Labour members. Obviously there are reasons why the two may differ besides the sample (recall, compositional change) but this looks like quite a big differencehttps://t.co/TBNv51Cf4x pic.twitter.com/zSkt25ddUf
— Matt Singh (@MattSingh_) January 15, 2020
Labour would be willing to enter cross-party talks on reforming adult social care, says Ashworth
In the Commons Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, is opening today’s Queen’s speech debate. He has just confirmed that Labour is willing to enter cross-party talks with the government intended to reach a consensus on social care. He was responding to a question from the Tory MP Mark Harper, who asked if the Labour leadership contest meant any decision on this might have to be deferred.
But Ashworth also sounded sceptical about the value of such talks. He said Labour proposed a system of free adult personal care in its election manifesto and that there was wide support for this idea. Even the House of Lords economic affairs committee, chaired by the Thatcherite former cabinet minister Lord Forsyth, was in favour, Ashworth said. He said it was the government that was failing to sign up to the consensus on this issue.
Updated
This is from UTV’s Chris Hagan - confirming the point made by Julian Smith in his statement to MPs earlier. (See 11.47am.)
BREAKING: UNISON is to ballot its members and suspend industrial action at hospitals in NI.
— Chris Hagan (@hagan_utv) January 16, 2020
No 10 quashes prospect of crowdfunding appeal being able to fund Big Ben chiming for Brexit
Downing Street has finally dashed the hopes of keen Brexiters to have the chimes of Big Ben sound on departure night, strongly indicating this will not happen even if the public does raise the £500,000 needed to pay for it.
It is largely the wariness of Commons authorities, who are part-way through a complex restoration of the clocktower housing the famous bell, that has ended this brief and sometimes curious Brexit sideshow, one inspired in part by Boris Johnson.
On Tuesday the PM said the government was “working up a plan so people can bung a bob for a Big Ben bong”. However, it transpired that there was no such plan.
Then the House of Commons Commission, which organises the running of parliament, said the bell was “unlikely” to sound at 11pm on 31 January, in part due to the estimated cost of £500,000 to make it happen.
Work needed would include restoring the clock chime mechanism, testing it, and building a temporary floor in the belfry to allow the work to take place, and delaying other restoration work.
A crowdfunding page for the project has so far raised nearly £70,000, but on Thursday Johnson’s spokesman indicated the Brexiters’ dream seemed doomed. He said:
The House of Commons authorities have set out that there may be particular difficulties in accepting money from public donations. The PM’s focus is on the events which he and the government are planning to mark 31 January.
Asked whether people should thus not bother giving to the crowdfunder, he replied: “What I have said is we’re focusing on the events we’re planning.”
We have yet to hear what the No 10 programme will be, but it is expected to be low-key, with an emphasis on avoiding perceived triumphalism on what is still a hugely divisive issue.
Updated
Conor Murphy, the Sinn Fein MLA who is minister of finance in the power-sharing Northern Ireland executive, has denounced the £2bn package for Northern Ireland announced by the UK government as inadequate. In a statement (pdf) issued yesterday, after the money was announced, Murphy said:
The financial package claims to provide £2bn. £1bn of this was already coming to the executive. A further £240m was already promised as part of the confidence and supply agreement.
The bottom line is with this proposed package, our public services face a shortfall of at least £1bn next year alone.
This will make it extremely difficult to fund public services ...
This act of bad faith makes our job much more difficult.
As finance minister I cannot and will not accept this and will be taking this up with the British government.
£2bn package for Northern Ireland means nurses will get pay parity with GB, Julian Smith tells MPs
In the Commons Julian Smith, the Northern Ireland secretary, is making a statement about the restoration of power-sharing in the region. He confirmed that the UK government was giving the Northern Ireland executive a financial package worth £2bn, including £1bn for infrastructure and £550m to boost the executive’s finances.
Smith said this money would enable nurses in Northern Ireland to be paid the same as nurses in Britain and that as a result the strike by nurses in Northern Ireland was being called off.
My colleague John Crace, who was in the Commons chamber during attorney general’s questions, tells me that when Geoffrey Cox, the attorney general, told MPs the government was fully committed to remaining signed up to the European convention on human rights (see 10.25am), the Tory Brexiter Sir Desmond Swayne said: “How disappointing.”
Ian Murray launches campaign for Labour deputy leadership
Launching his campaign to be UK Labour’s deputy leader, Ian Murray – the sole remaining Labour MP in Scotland – talked passionately about the need for radical change within the party.
Telling an audience of activists gathered at his former high school in Wester Hailes, Edinburgh, Murray said he felt that Labour let the country down in December’s general election campaign.
He pledged to undertake a national listening exercise if elected, to report to party conference next September, so that “never again can the public be telling us ‘I can’t vote Labour’ and we don’t listen”. Murray said: “We listen, we respond or this party dies.”
He said that having a Scot as deputy leader “sends out the message that we care regardless of where you live” and pledged to take personal responsibility for the Labour party taking forward proposals for “how we govern post-Brexit Britain”.
Taking a swipe at the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, he added:
Let’s never again have a senior member of the Labour party coming to a fringe show at the Edinburgh festival and changing our constitutional position.
He also insisted that the party must stop trying to face both ways on independence and Brexit, saying: “Straddling those two constitutional issues means we don’t stand up for anything.”
And he made a final pledge to root out the “cancer of antisemitism in the Labour party” with a zero-tolerance approach. In an article for LabourList, former MP Ruth Smeeth singles out Murray as a “wonderful man” and one of the few colleagues willing to support her over antisemitism in public as well as in private.
Murray said he was not backing any candidate for leadership, although he did nominate Jess Phillips, but he said that a new leader must demonstrate that they had listened to the electorate.
Updated
In a Q&A for a local church (pdf) before the general election, Rebecca Long-Bailey, the Labour leadership candidate, said that she thought it was wrong for the law to allow abortion up to full term on the grounds of disability, but only up to 24 weeks in other circumstances. Long-Bailey, who is Catholic, said:
It is currently legal to terminate a pregnancy up to full term on the grounds of disability while the upper limit is 24 weeks if there is no disability. I personally do not agree with this position and agree with the words of the Disability Rights Commission that “the context in which parents choose whether to have a child should be one in which disability and non-disability are valued equally”.
The quotes have been flagged up today in a post at Red Roar, a Labour blog sympathetic to “centrists” in the party.
Updated
Here is the latest Politics Weekly podcast from the Guardian. Heather Stewart is joined by Rory Carroll, Henry McDonald, Jill Rutter and Jonathan Isaby to discuss the Northern Ireland assembly reopening, as well as the latest on Brexit and the Labour leadership campaign.
Updated
Some 163,300 EU citizens applied last month to live and work in the UK after Brexit, the Press Association reports. The number of applications received for the EU settlement scheme in December takes the total number received by the end of that month to more than 2.7 million (2,756,100), according to the Home Office. Overall, the number of applications finalised by the end of December was more than 2.45m (2,450,100).
Of those dealt with in December (219,200), 55% were granted permanent leave to remain in the country, called settled status, and 44% were granted pre-settled status - which means they have temporary leave to remain and would need to apply again for permanent permission at a later date. As PA reports, six applications have now been refused on “suitability grounds”, the Home Office report (pdf) said.
In the Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the Commons, has just announced next week’s Commons business. The House of Lords is due to wrap up its consideration of the EU (withdrawal agreement) bill early next week, and Rees-Mogg said that Wednesday has been set aside for the Commons to consider Lords amendments to the bill. That means if the peers amend the bill (as they may well do to reinstate the Dubs provisions for unaccompanied child refugees), and MPs take out those amendments, “ping pong” between the two houses would start on the Wednesday.
In the Commons Nick Thomas-Symonds, the shadow solicitor general, asked Geoffrey Cox about the Tory manifesto commitment to stop judicial review being abused in such a way as to create “needless delays”. (See 9.44am.) He challenged Cox to give examples of this happening.
Cox refused to give any examples. But he said:
There is no question of weakening judicial review. The question is whether we can make it more efficient, streamlined and focused on the purpose, which is holding the government to account for its administrative decisions.
He went on to say there was “no question of backtracking upon the fundamental principle of the independence of the judiciary”.
Updated
Cox tells MPs government fully committed to remaining signed up to ECHR
In the Commons Geoffrey Cox, the attorney general, is taking questions.
In response to a question from the shadow Home Office minister Afzal Khan, Cox said that the government was completely committed to remaining signed up to the European convention on human rights (ECHR) and that it would “never withdraw” from it in “any circumstance”. And he said the government would continue to participate vigorously in the Council of Europe (which upholds the convention).
But Cox also said this does not mean the government was not critical of some elements of human rights law in this country.
For years membership of the ECHR has had cross-party support in the Commons, although when Theresa May was home secretary in 2016 she did say the UK should leave it. But as PM she never tried to implement this.
Updated
Andrew Fisher, who was Jeremy Corbyn’s head of policy until the general election, has a sensible take on the LabourList/Survation leadership polling (see 9.10am) on Twitter.
Some thoughts on Labour leadership polling as new @Survation /@LabourList poll published showing:
— Andrew Fisher (@FisherAndrew79) January 15, 2020
Rebecca Long Bailey - 42%
Keir Starmer - 37%
Jess Phillips - 9%
Lisa Nandy - 5%
Emily Thornberry - 1%https://t.co/1o2YN8xyFO
1) This is very early in the campaign:
— Andrew Fisher (@FisherAndrew79) January 15, 2020
*the first hustings only happens Saturday
*we don't yet know which of these candidates will get through 2nd nomination phase (CLPs/affiliates)
*only 22% of respondents are sure they won't change
But, a big boost for Long Bailey's campaign
2) Be very sceptical about this poll. @YouGov polled a few weeks ago and found Starmer on 31%, Long Bailey on 20%, Phillips on 11%, Lewis on 7%, Cooper on 7%, Thornberry on 6% and Nandy on 5%.@YouGov has polled before in Labour leadership contests and been very accurate
— Andrew Fisher (@FisherAndrew79) January 15, 2020
3) So wait for the 2nd poll from each pollster (@Survation/@Labourlist and @YouGov) and look at the movement from their previous poll.
— Andrew Fisher (@FisherAndrew79) January 15, 2020
Is there a shift to Long Bailey? Wait for YouGov to be sure... but bear in mind, Long Bailey hadn't even declared when that YouGov poll was done
4) And please bear in mind point 1), but early indications suggest a two-horse race between Starmer and Long Bailey.
— Andrew Fisher (@FisherAndrew79) January 15, 2020
(Then again most betting at this point in 2015 put it as a two-horse race between Burnham and Cooper)
5) But if the leadership is looking like a two-horse race the deputy leadership race is even narrower according to @Survation/@LabourList:
— Andrew Fisher (@FisherAndrew79) January 15, 2020
Angela Rayner 60%
Richard Burgon 19%
Ian Murray 9%
Dawn Butler 8%
Rosena Allin-Khan 5%
But again, please note 1) ...
The number of knife crimes being dealt with by the police and courts are the highest in a decade, official figures show. As the Press Association reports, there were 22,286 knife and offensive weapon offences formally dealt with by the criminal justice system in England and Wales in the year ending September 2019, according to Ministry of Justice statistics (pdf). This is a 3% rise on the previous year and the highest since September 2009 (26,364). The figures follow Tuesday’s announcement that the prime minister ordered all Whitehall departments to take action on tackling crime.
Ministers planning 'constitutional plumbing' to stop judges getting involved in political decisions, says justice secretary
Among the many unknowns attached to Boris Johnson’s government is what it will do about constitutional reform. In the Conservative manifesto (pdf) there is a notorious “page 48” passage implying that Johnson will somehow curtail the powers of the supreme court. It says:
After Brexit we also need to look at the broader aspects of our constitution: the relationship between the government, parliament and the courts; the functioning of the royal prerogative; the role of the House of Lords; and access to justice for ordinary people ... We will ensure that judicial review is available to protect the rights of the individuals against an overbearing state, while ensuring that it is not abused to conduct politics by another means or to create needless delays. In our first year we will set up a Constitution, Democracy & Rights Commission that will examine these issues in depth, and come up with proposals to restore trust in our institutions and in how our democracy operates.
During the election campaign no one managed to find out what this actually meant. During PMQs yesterday the Tory Brexiter Sir Desmond Swayne raised this topic and asked Johnson if he would “let bygones be top priority” - which seemed to be a way of asking if, instead of deciding not to revisit the supreme court prorogation decision (which might amount to letting bygones be bygones), Johnson would enact revenge. But Johnson did not engage, and he just read out the wording from the manifesto.
This morning, in an interview on Sky’s All Out Politics (ostensibly about the decision to allow broadcasters to film judges delivering sentences in crown courts) Robert Buckland did give a few more clues about what is being planned. The full quotes are below, but here is a summary of what he was saying.
- Buckland said the government was planning some “constitutional plumbing” to stop judges getting involved in political decisions. He did not elaborate on how this would happen, but he claimed that increasing the courts had become involved in taking political decisions because “government over the years has increasingly contracted out some of the political decision making”.
- He said that he was not in favour of moving to a US-style system, with senior judges subject to political confirmation hearings.
- He rejected claims that what the government was planning was revenge on the supreme court of its decision to rule Johnson’s five-week prorogation of parliament illegal.
Asked by Sky’s Adam Boulton what the planned commission would do, Buckland said:
I don’t think there is any question of revenge or hitting back ...
This is all about taking a calm and considered approach to what has been a very febrile time in our constitutional history. I think it would be a missed opportunity for us as a government not to look carefully at the issues and to get that outside expert opinion as well that can help inform policy and allow us to do a bit of constitutional plumbing in a way that I think is in the best traditions of Conservative governments.
Asked if he thought the supreme court was becoming too powerful, Buckland replied:
I don’t think the judges choose the cases that they get before them. What I am clear about, and I think this view is shared by many senior judges and retired judges, is that we do not want a constitutional court in the UK such as we have in the US. A constitutional court means that that is a court that by its own definition is going to be involved in politics, and that of course means in the US congressional hearings to appoint judges. That is not something that I favour at all.
Boulton said some Tories did seem to favour confirmation hearings for judges. Buckland replied:
I think colleagues are responding to the fact that they see politics coming into the traditional arena more and more, and therefore they are seeking for a solution to deal with that.
Now, I think it is absolutely right to have that debate. But I do think at the end of it all we must preserve the independence of our judiciary, we must protect judges from ending up increasingly getting into a political arena, because I don’t believe that they want to be there. And I think it is the job of politicians to actually make those decisions. And I think we therefore need to look at ourselves as well, and the way in which government over the years has increasingly contracted out some of the political decision making, created a vacuum, and into that vacuum we have seen unfortunately in some cases the judiciary having to make decisions. I don’t think that is desirable for anybody. This is all about getting the balance right. But it is about looking at ourselves in the mirror as much as looking at the wider system as well.
Updated
Labour leadership contest: Nandy praised for Neil interview as poll suggests Long-Bailey in lead
Good morning. It looks relatively quiet today in terms of government/Westminster politics, but the Labour leadership contest is warming up and overnight there were developments boosting two of the leading candidates.
- A poll of Labour members organised by the LabourList website and Survation suggests Rebecca Long-Bailey is on course to win. As Sienna Rodgers explains in her LabourList write-up:
If the election took place today, the results of the poll suggest that Long-Bailey would win 42% of first preferences while Starmer would receive 37%. Jess Phillips is far behind on 9%, Lisa Nandy on 7% and Emily Thornberry on just 1%.
Although Starmer receives the majority of second preferences from all candidates in the race, they are not enough to eliminate Long-Bailey’s first round lead, with Long-Bailey leading 51% to 49% after second preferences are taken into account.
My colleague Kate Proctor has more on this here.
- Lisa Nandy has been widely praised for her performance last night in her BBC interview with Andrew Neil. Facing an Andrew Neil interview is the toughest challenge in broadcasting for any politician, and there is a wide consensus that Nandy handled it extremely well last night. In his London Playbook briefing for Politico Europe Jack Blanchard has a good summary of the reaction.
The reviews are in: And lefty journos and commentators are gushing in their praise. “She did tremendously well,” the Guardian’s Peter Walker wrote. “Direct, engaging, and handled [Neil] brilliantly. Sets the bar for the other candidates.” The New Statesman’s Ailbhe Rea said Nandy was “brilliant … Unflappable, warm and totally on top of detailed policy.” Politics.co.uk editor Ian Dunt called it “seriously impressive.” HuffPost’s Paul Waugh said Nandy “handled Neil’s questions better than most politicians I’ve seen.” And in his sketch for the Indy, Tom Peck deems her “bright, articulate, honest and tenacious … A serious person, running for a serious job.” (“But of course,” Peck adds gloomily, “the party doesn’t want that.”)
And it’s not just the lefties: “Dare I say it, she’s bossing this,” the Sun’s political editor Tom Newton Dunn wrote as he watched the interview last night. Evening Standard deputy editor Charlotte Ross was equally impressed. “Nandy will have helped her cause,” the Spectator’s political editor James Forsyth noted cautiously, while rightly pointing out she was “visibly nervous” at the start and that some arguments did not quite stand up to scrutiny. He adds: “We wait to see if the frontrunners Keir Starmer and Rebecca Long-Bailey are confident enough to subject themselves to the same treatment.” Let’s hope so.
You can watch the 22-minute interview on YouTube here. And here is the transcript.
I will post more on the poll and the interview later.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10.15am: Ian Murray launches his campaign for the Labour deputy leadership in Edinburgh.
After 10.30am: Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the Commons, makes a Commons statement about next week’s business.
After 11.30am: Julian Smith, the Northern Ireland secretary, makes a statement in the Commons about the restoration of power-sharing in Belfast.
12.15pm: Phil Hogan, the EU’s trade commissioner, is interviewed at a Global Counsel event by Peter Mandelson, the former EU trade commissioner.
At some point today Guy Verhofstadt, the European parliament’s lead Brexit spokesman, is having talks in London with Stephen Barclay, the Brexit secretary, about EU citizens’ rights.
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.
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