Afternoon summary
- Jeremy Corbyn has appealed to other former frontbenchers to resume their shadow ministerial roles after Sarah Champion returned to her post as a shadow Home Office minister. According to Guido Fawkes, she wrote to Corbyn asking for her job back.
NEW: @JeremyCorbyn spokesman: "We hope that others will rejoin the shadow cabinet and get on with the job of opposing Government."
— Darren McCaffrey (@DMcCaffreySKY) July 25, 2016
- The Labour MP Neil Coyle has accused Corbyn of presiding over the “Farage-ification” of the party. He told the Evening Standard:
Labour, like Ukip had, has become all about one person. Not about policy or doing what it takes to change people’s lives.
The comparison goes further. No one is allowed to criticise the leader, there’s a complete absence of detailed policy, they turn a blind eye to the worst elements of their support. Most of all there is a culture of blame. Problems are anyone’s fault, the mainstream media and elites, but never his fault.
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
Here is a short Labour leadership contest reading list.
The NHS is a good thing? Check. Council housing is a good thing too? Check. He even dropped opposition to nuclear weapons in the end. And South Wales born and bred to boot! Perfect. Colour me beautiful, I’m a Bevanite.
But if avowal of fealty is to mean anything other than a fatuous namecheck, it would actually have to entail something substantial in terms of socialist commitment. And this is where the ploy all breaks down.
Bevan’s entire stated political philosophy was based on the contention that there are three main forces in British society, namely private property, poverty and democracy. And he was not in any doubt as to which he wished to see prevail:
‘The issue therefore in a capitalist democracy resolves itself into this: either poverty will use democracy to win the struggle against property, or property, in fear of poverty, will destroy democracy,’ Bevan famously wrote. ‘The function of parliamentary democracy … is to expose wealth-privilege to the attack of the people. It is a sword pointed at the heart of property-power.’
Hey Compliance Unit, better check this guy’s Twitter timeline, pronto. Were Corbyn or McDonnell to write anything as explicit as that, they would be crucified.
For what it is worth, my view was that Jeremy, once elected, should have been given two years to prove himself. There is a large grain of truth in the argument that he hasn’t been given a chance. Some of those involved in the current attempt to bring him down were plotting and conniving within hours of his election. Unfortunately, however, Jeremy has not helped himself. His failure to throw himself wholeheartedly into the Remain campaign has played into the hands of his enemies.
The clock cannot be turned back. One way or another Jeremy needs to be replaced by someone capable of offering strong leadership in both the party and the country. Labour needs to get its act together and fast. Failure to do so risks not merely defeat, but annihilation.
Sarah Champion returns to Labour front bench
The Labour party has just announced that Sarah Champion is rejoining the front bench, as shadow Home Office minister focusing on women, equality and domestic violence. She resigned as a shadow Home Office minister last month after Labour MPs passed their vote of no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn.
This is significant. If Labour MPs withdrawing their labour by refusing to serve on the frontbench, Champion’s move could be a sign that the “strike” is beginning to crumble.
Updated
Owen Smith, who is challenging Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour leadership, has issued two press notices today.
This morning he put out one about the Philip Green/BHS scandal. Green should lose is knighthood, Smith said.
The Tories should take immediate action to hold Sir Philip Green to account, starting with stripping him of his knighthood and making sure he makes a proper contributions to cover the blackhole in the current pension fund.
Downing Street said this morning that it was up to the honours forfeiture committee to decide what should happen to Green’s knighthood.
Smith’s email arrived in journalists’ inboxes one minute before the official Labour party press notice with a statement on Green from Jon Trickett, the shadow business secretary. Trickett concentrated on demanding “far-reaching” corporate governance reform. He said
It is clear however that what happened at BHS – whilst attributable to individual greed – amounted also to a failure of weak corporate governance structures.
The government must now launch an immediate and thorough review of how such companies are governed and how their professional advisors operate with the intention of implementing rapid and far-reaching reforms. To avoid doing so would leave other companies at similar risk in the future.
Smith also put out a press notice criticising Theresa May for not keeping the minister for Syrian refugee post. He said he would have a shadow minister for refugees if he were Labour leader.
A parliamentary petition calling for Tony Blair to be held to account for misleading parliament in the run up to the Iraq war has now gained more than 10,000 signatures. That means the government is obliged to respond to it. It was instigated by Adam Price, the former Plaid Cymru MP who now sits in the Welsh assembly. He said:
I am pleased that this important petition has reached its first parliamentary milestone which requires the UK government to issue a formal response. My hope is that over the coming weeks, the petition will gain further traction and hit the 100,000 target required to hold a Commons debate on the topic.
I have been working closely with colleagues across all parties in the UK Parliament, all eager to ensure that everything possible is done to hold Tony Blair to account for misleading the House of Commons and the public in the run-up to the disastrous intervention in Iraq. As the damning Chilcot report clearly demonstrates, Blair is guilty of a litany of errors and failures. He must face his day of reckoning if justice is to be served to all of those who suffered at his hands.
Downing Street has just announced that Sir George Young, the former cabinet minister who now sits in the Lords as Lord Young of Cookham, has been made a government whip.
Here’s a Guardian video with an extract from Nicola Sturgeon’s speech.
60% of Labour councillors backing Smith not Corbyn, poll suggests
A poll of Labour councillors has shown a majority of them backing Owen Smith for leader. But the same poll shows those councillors expect the members to back Jeremy Corbyn.
It was carried out by the Labour History Research Unit at Anglia Ruskin University. They contacted Labour councillors randomly in marginal constituencies (the 250 seats with the smallest Tory or Labour majorities) and found that 60% are backing Smith for leader, 28% Corbyn, and 11% are undecided.
Even more, 65%, think Smith gives Labour the best chance of winning in their constituency, compared to 23% who think a Corbyn leadership is best for Labour’s electoral chances locally.
But 38% think the majority of party members in their area will back Corbyn, against 28% of them who think a majority of them will back Smith. And 53% think a majority of registered supporters in their area will back Corbyn, against 10% who think their registered supporters will go for Smith.
The survey was carried out between last Thursday and today. The figures are based on responses from 350 councillors.
UPDATE: In the original post I forget to include the figure for the number of councillors surveyed (350). Sorry. It’s in now.
Updated
Lunchtime summary
- May has vowed to maintain peace and stability in Northern Ireland despite fears that Brexit will lead to a “hard border” between the region and the Irish Republic. As Henry McDonald reports, on her first visit to the province as prime minister May tried to assuage fears about a fortified frontier on the island of Ireland.During the referendum campaign while still home secretary and campaigning for a Remain vote May had warned that it was “inconceivable” that border arrangements between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland could remain unchanged if there was a Brexit outcome. The prime minister said: “No one wants a return to the border of the past”. She was referring to the state of the border during the Troubles when hundreds of rural roads were blocked by security barriers, there were armed vehicle checkpoints and even permanent border posts manned by police and British troops.
- Jean-Claude Juncker has said that Britain will have to accept EU rules “without exception or nuance” if it wants to keep full access to the single market after Brexit. Speaking to French TV channel France 2, Juncker denied he was taking a “hard line” on the UK. He said:
It’s not a hard line, it’s common sense. It reflects the philosophy of the European project itself. The day after the Brexit vote, I said - along with president [Donald] Tusk of the European council and president [Martin] Schulz of the European parliament that this was the position of the EU. No access to the internal market if you do not accept the rules - without exception or nuance - that make up the internal market system.
Voting has opened in the Green party leadership contest, the party has announced. Voting is open until 25 August, and the winner will be announced at the party conference starting on 2 September.
There are seven leadership candidates (including Caroline Lucas and Jonathan Bartley as a job share - the clear favourites). The full list is here.
Labour urges people to report members engaged in abusive behaviour so they can be suspended
Iain McNicol, Labour’s general secretary, is urging people to report any Labour members engaged in abusive behaviour so that they can be suspended from the party, and banned from taking part in the leadership contest.
He made the call in a lengthy statement that you can read here, on the party’s website.
Here is an extract.
The Labour party should be the home of lively debate, of new ideas and of campaigns to change society.
However, for a fair debate to take place, people must be able to air their views in an atmosphere of respect. They shouldn’t be shouted down, they shouldn’t be intimidated and they shouldn’t be abused, either in meetings or online.
Put plainly, there is simply too much of it taking place and it needs to stop ...
The NEC has already taken the difficult decision to suspend most party meetings while the Leadership election is ongoing. And over the coming days and weeks the Party will be taking further action to protect our members and to identify those responsible for this appalling behaviour.
I want to be clear, if you are a member and you engage in abusive behaviour towards other members it will be investigated and you could be suspended while that investigation is carried out.
If you are a registered supporter or affiliated supporter and you engage in abusive behaviour you will not get a vote in this Leadership election.
Details of any abusive behaviour can be reported by emailing validation@labour.org.uk.
Martin McGuinness, Northern Ireland’s Sinn Fein deputy first minister, told Theresa May when they met that Brexit was “no good news for the people of the north of Ireland” in relation to leaving the EU. McGuinness warned that Brexit would cost the region billions in European aid that would have been sent to Northern Ireland over the next few years.
No 10 lobby briefing - Summary
Here are the main points from the Number 10 lobby briefing.
- Theresa May wants to “tackle corporate irresponsibility and reform capitalism”, the prime minister’s spokeswoman said. The spokeswoman was responding to a question about the Philip Green/BHS scandal. Asked what the government would do about this, she said:
The prime minister has already set out that we need to tackle corporate irresponsibility and reform capitalism so that it works for everyone, not just the privileged few. That means in the long run doing more to prevent irresponsible, reckless behaviour. It is important that we look carefully at the policies linked to that and work out the best way forward.
The spokeswoman said that May was “concerned” about the findings in today’s joint select committee report about Green. But the spokeswoman played down suggestions in today’s Financial Times (see 10.25am) that legislation might be published in the next few weeks. “We need to take the time now to look at what the issues [are],” the spokeswoman said. Plans would be published “in due course”.
At the briefing the spokeswoman objected when one journalist said that “reforming capitalism” was the sort of language that you might hear in Cuba. And she had a point; it would be probably be a mistake to interpret this briefing as evidence that May is morphing into Jeremy Corbyn. But May has been consistent about wanting to curb capitalism’s excesses. May has proposed “reforming capitalism” before, in a speech to ConservativeHome in 2013. May also set out in detail quite bold plans to reform the way business operates in a speech two weeks ago today. For some reason the speech is no longer available on her website, but my summary of it is here.
- The spokeswoman said May had made it clear that she did not want to see “a return to the controls of the past” on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
- Downing Street dismissed claims that the delays at Dover are causes by the French retaliating for Brexit. Asked about this, the spokeswoman said that there was no evidence to suggest that. She said the delays were caused by the French boosting security checks following the Nice attack on the busiest weekend of the year for travel through Dover. She said UK Border Force staff had been “working around the clock” to help their French counterparts deal with the queues.
- The spokeswoman refused to say whether May would be satisfied with a proposal to give the UK a seven-year “emergency brake” on free movement. The Observer yesterday said this was one of the Brexit options being considered by EU officials. The spokeswoman would not comment on that suggestion. But she said May was clear about wanting time to prepare for the Brexit talks so that the UK can “work out what our objectives are”.
- The spokeswoman dismissed complaints that there is no longer a minister with specific responsibility for Syrian refugees. The government was still committed to accepting 20,000 Syrian refugees by 2020, the spokeswoman said, and the Home Office was responsible for delivering this policy.
- Several ministers are meeting foreign counterparts, either abroad or in the UK, to to discuss Brexit. Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, is in Washington, Greg Clark, the business secretary, is in Japan, Alok Sharma, the Foreign Office minister, is in India, and David Gauke, the chief secretary to the Treasury, is hosting Luxembourg’s finance minister in London. The spokeswoman said the various meetings “underline the government’s commitment to making a success of Brexit” and to showing that “Britain is open for business”
- The spokeswoman said that reforming the honours system, and the way peerages are awarded, was not a priority for May’s government.
- May is meeting Tory MEPs in Downing Street this afternoon to discuss Brexit.
Theresa May's statement
Theresa May is speaking after her talks with Arlene Foster and Martin McGuinness.
She says she had successful talks with them both.
Q: What will you do about the border with the Republic?
May says there will be a border. But there was a common travel area between the Republic and Northern Ireland many years before both countries joined the EU. No one wants to return to the old situation where there was a hard border, she says. She says they want to find a way forward.
Updated
May wants to 'tackle corporate irresponsibility and reform capitalism', No 10 says
I’m just back from the Number 10 lobby briefing. The most interesting line was what the prime minister’s spokeswoman said about Theresa May wanting to “tackle corporate irresponsibility and reform capitalism”. This came when the spokeswoman was asked about Downing Street’s response to the Philip Green/BHS scandal.
I will post a full summary in a moment.
Sturgeon attacks UK 'failure to prepare' for Brexit vote
Nicola Sturgeon has been giving a speech in Edinburgh, in which she attacked the UK government for failing to prepare for a Brexit vote. She called it “one of the most shameful abdications of responsibility in modern political history”.
Sturgeon also attacked a “lack of leadership” from the government and leave campaigners in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote.
According to the Press Association, Sturgeon said that after the vote it had been the “the job of politicians not to pretend somehow that we instantly had all the answers but to give a sense of direction, to try to create some order out of the chaos”.
“That’s what I was determined to do for Scotland and I assumed that UK politicians would do likewise,” she said. “It turned out I was wrong about that.
She went on:
In fact, the absence of any leadership and the lack of any advance planning both from the politicians who proposed the referendum and from those who campaigned a leave vote surely must count as one of the most shameful abdications of responsibility in modern political history.
Our Scotland correspondent, Libby Brooks, is at the speech and says Sturgeon also raised the prospect of seeking independence for Scotland if its interests were not protected by remaining in the UK.
Sturgeon: if we find our interests can't be protected in UK context, independence must be option & Scotland must have right to consider it
— Libby Brooks (@libby_brooks) July 25, 2016
Sturgeon: outlook for UK is uncertainty & upheaval; may be that option that offers us greatest stability is that of independence
— Libby Brooks (@libby_brooks) July 25, 2016
Theresa May arrives for talks at Stormont
Theresa May has arrived at Stormont.
Here are Arlene Foster, the Northern Ireland first minister, and Martin McGuinness, the deputy first minister, waiting to meet her.
And here they are greeting May.
Theresa May's first visit to Northern Ireland as PM pic.twitter.com/4uy1ZkTGEp
— Alex Forsyth (@AlexForsythBBC) July 25, 2016
I’m off to the Number 10 lobby briefing now. I will post again after 11.30.
Updated
You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here.
As for the the rest of the papers, here is the PoliticsHome list of top 10 must reads, and here is the ConservativeHome round-up of today’s political stories.
And here are four articles I found particularly interesting.
Labour MPs in despair at Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership must waste no more time before setting up a breakaway party, a leading donor has said.
With the party descending into further chaos and recrimination, Assem Allam, who has given Labour more than £500,000, said that MPs had effectively missed a year by staying after Mr Corbyn was elected leader.
The owner of Hull City football club said that he had held meetings with several Labour members after Mr Corbyn’s victory last September. He said they had wanted to wait a year before considering forming a new party but he insisted that immediate action was needed.
He added that he would not help to fund Owen Smith’s unity campaign for the leadership. Instead Mr Allam said that he would donate generously to anyone who wanted to defect, set up a new grouping in the Commons or start a new party. He said: “Now is the time. We missed a year and look at the damage that has happened in that time. At prime minister’s questions they are taking the mickey out of [Mr Corbyn].”
Mrs May’s promise to tackle “irresponsible behaviour in big business” has been under the spotlight in her first weeks in office, with criticism by MPs of Mike Ashley at Sports Direct and Sir Philip Green’s stewardship of BHS.
The prime minister sees both cases as examples of a dangerous breakdown in trust between workers and some bosses, whom she accuses of contributing to an “anything goes” capitalist culture.
Mrs May has said the Brexit vote was, in part, a protest by people who feel they have gained little or nothing from globalisation and that some corporate leaders “still don’t get it”.
The prime minister’s allies say that a package of measures to improve corporate governance are being drawn up and will be published in the coming weeks.
Theresa May is to startle constituency locals with random door knocks on Saturday afternoons to survey their views, The Sun can reveal.
The new PM has carried out weekend canvassing sessions ever since she was first elected as an MP 19 years ago.
That included through out her six year stint as Home Secretary.
Workaholic Theresa insists the unannounced voters’ visits in her Maidenhead constituency are a vital way for her to keep her finger on the popular pulse.
Mrs May has now told No10 officials that she has no intention of dropping them now that she has become PM, despite the extra security concerns.
What form might a domestic political realignment take in Britain today? The vote for Brexit in June’s referendum was primarily an English working-class insurrection. It challenged Labour on how it engages with a dispossessed, abandoned and often despised tribe that created the party in the first place. There has been a rupture of trust between working-class values and culture and the dominant cultural liberalism that holds sway on both sides of the Labour debate. It is telling that as the working class reasserted the primacy of parliament by voting to Leave, Mr Corbyn claimed that sovereignty resides with the membership and not the parliamentary party.
Corbynism is essentially a liberationist hard-left politics that recognises no borders, bolted on to a tech-savvy middle-class protest movement. In certain respects, it is not too dissimilar to the remote liberalism of what today passes as Blairism. Both are heavily economistic — as was the Remain campaign. Both disregard relationships and place, earning and belonging in favour of a kind of universalist proceduralism.
Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon will make a speech today at an IPPR event in Edinburgh outlining the key Scottish interests at stake in Brexit negotiations and how she imagines those negotiations will proceed.
We’re hoping for much more detail from her this morning, but some overnight lines suggest that she will talk about safeguarding freedom of movement, funding for Scottish farmers and universities, and access to the single market; the importance of ensuring continued protection for workers’ rights and human rights; as well as the desire to have an influence over what the rules of the single market are.
Sturgeon, who has spoken both explicitly and implicitly about the potential for a second independence referendum following the Brexit decision, will emphasise again today her intention to explore “every option” for maintaining Scotland’s relationship with the EU. She will say:
Democracy, economic prosperity, social protection, solidarity and influence - these are the vital interests that we now seek to safeguard. They are not abstract. They are real and they matter - for jobs, the economy, trade, investment and living standards.
That’s why my task today and tomorrow and throughout the length of the coming negotiations will be to protect Scotland’s relationship with and interests in the European Union, and to explore every avenue and every option for doing so.
Stage set for @NicolaSturgeon's speech setting out key asks for Scotland in EU negotiations. https://t.co/Q0t0aWlgPD pic.twitter.com/jPvqsRZxtU
— First Minister (@ScotGovFM) July 25, 2016
The prime minister will hold talks with the First and Deputy First Ministers of Northern Ireland around 11am at Stormont.
Theresa May will also have separate meetings with first minister Arlene Foster and then deputy first minister Martin McGuinness.
She arrives in Belfast as news emerged of a legal challenge by a host of community and human rights groups aimed at overturning the Brexit result in Northern Ireland. The region voted 56% in favour of remaining inside the EU.
Among other issues that may be raised during her visit which will be over by lunchtime is the possibility of a border poll or plebescite on Irish unity.
Here are more extracts from Seema Malhotra’s interview on the Westminster Hour last night.
- Malhotra urged Jeremy Corbyn to think of need for unity in the Labour party. On the Andrew Marr Show yesterday John McDonnell, who is one of Jeremy Corbyn’s closest allies, made a dramatic appeal for the party to unite.
.@johnmcdonnellMP looks straight into the camera: "We've got to stop this now. We've got to unite"#marr https://t.co/LmXjhl3CgN
— The Andrew Marr Show (@MarrShow) July 24, 2016
Malhotra, who resigned from the shadow cabinet like many others because she no longer has confidence in Corbyn, said that Corbyn had to think about unity. Responding to McDonnell’s comments, she said:
The point [McDonnell] raised about people wanting to destroy the Labour party, well I think there is a huge question about unity which he rightly talked about. Unity is what we all want to see but we’re going to do that by truly understanding where people feel that we need to be. I was very clear that I voted in having no confidence in the ability of our leader to take us forward and supported a leadership election. The reason we’re all doing that is because we believe very much that the Labour party is bigger than any of us individually and we want to see a Labour party that’s fit and ready to fight a general election as well as be an effective opposition. I have said previously that it can’t happen under Jeremy Corbyn – he’s lost the confidence of 180 members of parliament.
- She said the Labour leadership needed to do more to tackle bullying in the party.
I do think the leadership needs to do far more, I’m not the only person who has said this. I am of the view that there is a culture of bullying that has entered the Labour Party which isn’t what we’re about, it isn’t what we stand for and it’s something we have to stamp out and absolutely that has to start with the leader.
Corbyn has repeatedly condemned the bullying and abuse of MPs.
- She said she had written to Iain McNicol, the Labour party general secertary, to ask him to investigate the unauthorised entries to her office.
I have written to the general secretary of the Labour arty because I think the issue of having somebody from the leader’s office being intimidating to my staff should be a matter of investigation as well because that person is employed by the Labour party.
Good morning. After four weeks of intense turmoil after the Brexit vote, British politics is getting back to - well, normal probably isn’t quite the right word, but “non-frantic” is correct. The Commons is in recess, and sensible people are planning their holidays. And political correspondents are left with just three leadership contests to cover (Ukip, the Greens, and of course Labour).
On the Labour front, the “officegate” row is still rumbling on. As the Observer reported on Sunday, Seema Malhotra, the former shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, has accused staff working for Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell of entering her office without authorisation. McDonnell responded yesterday in an interview on the Andrew Marr show, dismissing the incident as an honest mistake. But last night Malhotra hit back, using an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Westminster House to accuse McDonnell of trying to downplay the seriousness of what happened. She told the programme:
I was pleased for my staff to hear John apologise and I think that was important, but I have found his reaction to my concerns extraordinary in trying to shift away from the seriousness of what happened ... This is about the safety and security of MPs’ offices, about parliamentary privilege, which means people’s confidence that an MP’s office, where constituency and parliamentary business is carried out, is secure. It’s extremely sad that a team that is working incredibly hard were feeling intimated, so intimated by somebody from the leader’s office, that they didn’t want to leave anyone alone in the office because they weren’t sure who would come in, what would be said.
I will post more from her interview soon.
There are two other Westminster stories worth noting.
- Theresa May is making her first visit to Northern Ireland as prime minister. Here is our preview story. She is arriving in the morning, and I will cover the visit in more detail later.
- Frank Field, the chair of the Commons work and pensions committee, has described Sir Philip Green as worse than Robert Maxwell. Field was talking about the report out today strongly condemning Green’s role in the downfall of BHS. My colleague Graeme Wearden has more details about Field’s comments, and about other reaction to the Green report, on his business live blog.
As usual, I will be covering the breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I will post a summary at lunchtime and another in the afternoon.
If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m @AndrewSparrow.
I try to monitor the comments BTL but normally I find it impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer direct questions, although sometimes I miss them or don’t have time. Alternatively you could post a question to me on Twitter.
If you think there are any voices that I’m leaving out, particularly political figures or organisations giving alternative views of the stories I’m covering, do please flag them up below the line (include “Andrew” in the post). I can’t promise to include everything, but I do try to be open to as wide a range of perspectives as possible.
Updated
