Get all your news in one place.
100's of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

No 10 refuses to deny Tory donor was asked to pay for Johnson son’s nanny – as it happened

Boris Johnson campaigns in Vale of Glamorgan ahead of Thursday’s elections.
Boris Johnson campaigns in Vale of Glamorgan ahead of Thursday’s elections. Photograph: Reuters

Afternoon summary

  • Downing Street has refused to deny reports that a Tory donor was asked to pay the costs of a nanny for Boris Johnson’s son. (See 1.04pm.)
  • A cross-party group of MPs have pushed for formal action against Boris Johnson for allegedly misleading the Commons over the transparency of Covid contracts, saying the cabinet secretary, Simon Case, incorrectly cleared the prime minister of wrongdoing.

That’s all from me for today. But our coronavirus coverage continues on our global live blog. It’s here:

Updated

Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, has announced that the UK will convene an in-person meeting of G7 finance ministers. It will take place at Lancaster House in London on 4-5 June, before the G7 leaders’ summit in Cornwall on 11-13 June.

Updated

Edwin Poots, Northern Ireland’s agriculture minister and a leading candidate to succeed Arlene Foster as DUP leader, has threatened legal action over post-Brexit trading arrangements with Great Britain. As PA Media reports, Poots told Stormont MLAs that the Northern Ireland protocol “ultimately needs to go”. PA says:

Poots said there are estimations of 15,000 checks on goods per week at the region’s ports once various grace periods for the new rules have ended.

Poots told MLAs that in January he instructed his officials to obtain legal opinion from a top UK constitutional lawyer.

He said an eminent QC has been appointed, and is “currently scrutinising every aspect of that protocol”.

“On completion of that piece of work, it is my intention to lodge judicial proceedings against the protocol,” he said.

“I would hope that the Department for Economy, and the Department for Health, because this is having major implications for both medicines and medical devices, will join with me in taking an action against the European Union and the UK government for the damage that it is inflicting on all of the people of Northern Ireland.”

Edwin Poots.
Edwin Poots. Photograph: Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters

This is from Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s external affairs minister, on the migration deal with the UK signed earlier. (See 3.27pm.)

Updated

Shaun Bailey, the Conservative candidate for London mayor, in the ring during a campaign visit to Dale youth boxing club in west London today.
Shaun Bailey, the Conservative candidate for London mayor, in the ring during a campaign visit to Dale youth boxing club in west London today. Photograph: Victoria Jones/PA

Updated

Sir Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, has told PA Media that he has written to Amanda Milling, the Conservative party co-chair, asking her to lift threats to abolish the Electoral Commission. He said:

I’m deeply alarmed that the Conservatives continue to attack the independent watchdog, the Electoral Commission, when that independent watchdog is investigating the Conservative party.

Conservatives are damaging democracy at every stage. Whether it’s their sleaze, or their attack on democratic institutions, I think that Boris Johnson is a dangerous prime minister.

You’d have thought the prime minister would have been focused single-mindedly on tackling the pandemic, it looks like he’s worrying about curtains and carpets.

Last year Milling said that if the commission did not become more accountable, it should be abolished.

Andrew Bridgen, a Conservative backbencher, launched a fresh attack on the commission in a TV interview last week (although at one point he muddled it up with the independent adviser on ministers’ interests).

Updated

Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader and Scotland’s first minister, posing with SNP candidates Neil Gray (left) and Anum Qaisar-Javed (right) alongside the party’s campaign bus at Drumgelloch near Airdrie. ‘Both votes’ refers to the way the additional member system used in Scotland gives people a constituency vote and a list vote.
Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader and Scotland’s first minister, posing with SNP candidates Neil Gray (left) and Anum Qaisar-Javed (right) alongside the party’s campaign bus at Drumgelloch near Airdrie. ‘Both votes’ refers to the way the additional member system used in Scotland gives people a constituency vote and a list vote. Photograph: Jane Barlow/PA

UK records four further Covid deaths and 1,946 new cases

The UK has recorded only four further coronavirus deaths, and 1,946 new cases, the latest update to the government’s dashboard shows. Yesterday just one death was recorded. Week on week, deaths are down 37% and new cases are down 13.2%.

Covid dashboard
Covid dashboard. Photograph: Gov.UK

Updated

The G7 foreign ministers ‘family photo’ at their Lancaster House meeting today. Although it’s the G7, there are eight of them because the EU is included. Front row left to right: the EU’s Josep Borrell, Dominic Raab (UK), Antony Blinken (US), Middle row left to right: Heiko Maas (Germany), Motegi Toshimitsu (Japan) and Marc Garneau (Canada). Back row left to right: Luigi Di Maio (Italy) and Jean-Yves Le Drian (France).
The G7 foreign ministers ‘family photo’ at their Lancaster House meeting today. Although it’s the G7, there are eight of them because the EU is included. Front row left to right: the EU’s Josep Borrell, Dominic Raab (UK), Antony Blinken (US), Middle row left to right: Heiko Maas (Germany), Motegi Toshimitsu (Japan) and Marc Garneau (Canada). Back row left to right: Luigi Di Maio (Italy) and Jean-Yves Le Drian (France). Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Here is some more Twitter comment on Hartlepool and today’s poll (see 9am) from journalists and academics.

From the New Statesman’s Stephen Bush

From the Times’s David Aaronovitch

From the New Statesman’s Harry Lambert

From Rob Ford, a politics professor

From Paula Surridge, a political sociologist

From Charlotte Riley, a historian

Updated

Starmer says government 'sleaze' should never be 'priced in'

On a campaign visit to north Wales, Sir Keir Starmer was asked why Tory “sleaze” allegations did not seem to be making a difference in the election campaign. He said he did not accept claims that these issues did not matter. He told reporters:

The positive story I’m telling is our plan for jobs, our plan to protect the NHS frontline and our plan to reduce crime and antisocial behaviour.

But there is evidence of sleaze, of contracts for mates, privileged access, WhatsApp access, and that is wrong, and this sense that there’s one rule for those at the top of government and another rule for everybody else is wrong.

And I don’t actually go along with this argument that says, ‘well it’s priced-in, it may be that the prime minister is not being straight but it doesn’t really matter.’

Being the prime minister of the United Kingdom is an honour. It’s a privilege and we should not ever accept that it’s priced in, there should be sleaze or the prime minister isn’t being straight.

Sir Keir Starmer talking to an employee while on a campaign visit to tech firm Qioptiq in St Asaph, North Wales, today.
Sir Keir Starmer talking to an employee while on a campaign visit to tech firm Qioptiq in St Asaph, North Wales, today. Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA

Updated

Patel says new migration deal with India will help young Indian professionals experience work in UK

The UK and India have also agreed a joint migration agreement, the Home Office has announced. It is intended to help young Indian professionals visit the UK for work, while also speeding up the removal of illegal migrants from India.

In a press notice, the Home Office said:

In a first of its kind between the two countries, both governments have agreed enhanced mobility provisions for young professional Indian and British citizens which will allow people to live and work in the two countries for up to two years ...

The new bespoke route for young professionals will allow 18-30-year-olds to work and live in the other country for up to 24 months. This professional and cultural exchange programme will work similarly to current youth mobility schemes, with India being the first visa national country to benefit from this.

Professional Indian nationals feature strongly in the UK’s new points-based immigration system, which encourages the best and brightest to come to the UK based on their skills and talent rather than where they are from.

According to the most recent statistics, more than 53,000 students from India came to the UK to study last year, up 42% on the previous year. Nearly a quarter of all international students in the UK are from India.

Priti Patel, the home secretary, said the deal was an example of how the government’s new post-Brexit immigration policy is intended to attract “the best and the brightest” to Britain. She said:

I am committed to delivering for the British public a fair but firm new plan for immigration that will attract the best and brightest talent to UK through our new points-based immigration system, whilst clamping down on those who are abusing the system. This ground-breaking new agreement with India is an important milestone in delivering on this pledge.

This landmark agreement with our close partners in the government of India will provide new opportunities to thousands of young people in the UK and India seeking to live, work and experience each other’s cultures. This agreement will also ensure that the British government can remove those with no right to be in UK more easily and crackdown on those abusing our system.

Full details of the migration and mobility partnership are here.

Priti Patel, the home secretary, at the signing ceremony with Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Indian foreign minister
Priti Patel, the home secretary, at the signing ceremony with Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, the Indian foreign minister. Photograph: Home Office

Updated

Downing Street has said Boris Johnson and his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, agreed to work for a “quantum leap” in the UK-India relationship when they held a virtual meeting at lunchtime.

The two leaders have agreed a 2030 roadmap covering cooperation across health, climate change, education, science and technology, and defence.

Updated

Alex Salmond has insisted that remarks he made about “destroying” his successor, Nicola Sturgeon, were taken “completely out of context”. In a New Yorker profile of Sturgeon and the drive for Scottish independence, Sam Knight states:

When I asked [Salmond] why he had tried to destroy his former protégée, he chuckled for several seconds. “If I wanted to destroy her, that could have been done,” he said.

At a press briefing today, Salmond also told reporters that despite polling suggesting his newly launched Alba party was failing to cut through and that his own popularity ratings were dismal, “we sense on the ground we are doing extremely well”.

Salmond said his argument that voting for the SNP on the regional list was “wasted” because the party did so well in the constituency vote was “striking home” with voters.

He said he was pleased that his concept of a “pro-independence super-majority” at Holyrood, which he argues Alba can help secure, had become one of the key subjects of the campaign.

Alex Salmond at an election event yesterday.
Alex Salmond at an election event yesterday. Photograph: Jane Barlow/PA

Updated

At the Downing Street lobby briefing the prime minister’s spokesman was asked about a Tory leaflet that has been posted on social media apparently showing the Conservative MP Sir David Amess suggesting the government would do less to help an area with a Labour council than an area with a Conservative council. This tweet is from a Lib Dem councillor:

The prime minister’s spokesperson said he could not comment on a party leaflet, but he said the government was focused on helping the entire UK. Asked if the government would discriminate against areas based on how they voted, the spokesperson said his answer was a “firm no”.

According to Left Foot Forward’s Josiah Mortimer, Amess has said he did not approve the quote put out in his name.

Despite the No 10 claims and the Amess denial, voters could be forgiven for thinking this quote is not a totally inaccurate way of describing how public spending is allocated. After the budget it emerged that 39 of the 45 towns getting funding from a £1bn towns fund were represented by Tory MPs. And decisions about who gets priority for a separate levelling-up fund also seem to favour Conservative areas.

UPDATE: Here is the full quote from Amess’s office.

Sir David is both shocked and horrified. The quote is absolutely not from him and the person who made up the quote never spoke to Sir David about it or asked his permission to use it. It most certainly does not reflect his views.

It is absolutely not the case that Ministers do not work with opposition controlled councils- quite the reverse. Sir David has a very good working relationship with the leader of the council and if he ever brings an issue to his attention he deals with it and will continue to do so.

Updated

Labour says No 10 should publish all correspondence relating to attempts to get donors to fund PM's lifestyle

Angela Rayner, the Labour deputy leader, says No 10’s refusal to deny that a Tory donor was asked to pay for Boris Johnson’s nanny (see 1.04pm) implies there has been a cover-up. Downing Street should publish all the correspondence about attempts to get donors to fund the PM’s lifestyle, she says. She says:

We are seeing what looks like another cover-up from the prime minister, who is trying to hide his attempts to fund his lifestyle through secret payments from wealthy Tory donors.

Boris Johnson forcing his MPs to vote against free school meals and making stealth cuts to schools at the same time as asking Tory donors to pay for his own childcare is yet more evidence that it’s one rule for him and his mates another for everyone else. What did these donors expect in return for their generosity, and what were they promised?

With an investigation already under way into potentially illegal activity, the prime minister and Conservative party should stop taking the British people for fools and immediately publish all correspondence relating to all attempts to get Tory donors to fund the prime minister’s lifestyle.

Updated

Summary of Downing Street lobby briefing

Here are the main points from the Downing Street lobby briefing. With parliament in recess, it will be the only lobby briefing this week.

  • Downing Street refused to deny reports that a Tory donor was asked to pay for a nanny for Boris Johnson’s son. (See 1.04pm.)
  • The prime minister’s spokesman refused to deny a report in today’s Times (paywall) saying that the announcement of plans to reform adult social care are being delayed until after the Queen’s speech later this month. In his report, Steven Swinford says the speech is expected to mention reform plans - without giving details of what they are. Asked about the story, the spokesman just said the government was standing by its commitment to finding a long-term solution to social care.
  • The spokesman declined to confirm that by 17 May people would be able to use the NHS Covid app to prove their Covid status when travelling abroad. Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, has said the plan is to use the app for this purpose. International travel is due to open up from 17 May at the earliest. Asked if the app would be ready for this purpose on time, the spokesman said the government was working at pace to get it ready. But he also stressed that that there were “other routes to achieving the same end goal”.
  • The spokesman described as “speculation” a report in the Sunday Telegraph (paywall) saying the government will commission a new boat seen as a successor to the Royal Yacht Britannia that will be named after the Duke of Edinburgh. The Telegraph has been campaigning for this for years, and, asked about the report, the spokesman did nothing to suggest it was not true. (“Speculation” is normally a term used by Whitehall spin doctors for a story that is true, but set to be announced later.) The spokesman said:

The PM has an exciting vision for shipbuilding in this country, and is committed to making the UK a ship-building superpower. We are looking for new ways to promote “Global Britain” around the world, driving investment back to the UK and delivering value for money for British people. But I’m not going to get into speculation about this idea of the ship at the moment.

For those of us who covered Tony Blair’s election campaign in 1997, the Royal Yacht story brings back happy memories. John Major’s government was committed to buying a new one, thinking that this would be popular. But the line in Blair’s standard stump speech that always attracted the loudest applause was when he said that in government he would have to take hard choices, and that he was sorry to have to tell everyone that he would not be able to go ahead with spending £60m on a new Royal Yacht. Blair, ever the actor, would always pretend to be surprised when he announced this anti-monarchy spending cut. A recent reader survey in the Daily Express, which is not a paper for leftwingers or republicans, suggests public opinion has not changed much since 1997.

  • Johnson is meeting the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, in Downing Street this afternoon.

Updated

No 10 refuses to deny Tory donor was asked to pay for nanny for Boris Johnson's son

The Downing Street lobby briefing has just finished. And the prime minister’s spokesman refused to deny reports in the Sunday papers claiming that a Tory donor was asked to fund the prime minister’s nanny.

Asked about the stories, the spokesman just said that political advisers had already said over the weekend that “the prime minister has covered all the costs of all childcare”. The spokesman also said he had nothing more to add on this.

Here is an extract from the Sunday Times story (paywall) by Caroline Wheeler, Tim Shipman and Tom Calver carrying this story at the weekend.

Senior Conservatives say donors have been approached about funding other aspects of the couple’s lifestyle. A prominent MP received a complaint from a Tory donor that they were asked to foot the bill for a nanny for Wilfred, Johnson’s son with Symonds, who turned one last week. The donor is alleged to have said: “I don’t mind paying for leaflets but I resent being asked to pay to literally wipe the prime minister’s baby’s bottom.”

Sky News has published new polling that suggests the SNP is on course to win an outright majority at Holyrood in the election this week.

Here is the Opinium projection for what this might mean in terms of seats at Holyrood.

Seat projection for Holyrood based on Opinium poll
Seat projection for Holyrood based on Opinium poll Photograph: Sky News

In a Twitter thread starting here, Sky’s Beth Rigby says the SNP having a majority would be a nightmare for Boris Johnson.

Here are two blogs worth reading on the Hartlepool poll.

If the Tories take the seat, which has always been Labour’s, it will show that Keir Starmer hasn’t stopped the bleeding for Labour in the red wall. It will indicate that the realignment of English politics is continuing even without Brexit and Corbyn. A Tory win would suggest that the 2019 general election was not a freak result or a unique product of voters’ desire to get Brexit done combined with their concerns about Corbyn, but rather part of a substantial shift in the electoral geography of England.

You can view Hartlepool as the Labour-held seat that it is on paper, or treat it as a de facto Conservative seat given how one would expect the 25 per cent vote for the Brexit Party (which has disbanded) to break in favour of the Tories. Yet whatever the starting point, if Labour was in a position to win a majority at the next general election it would be comfortably ahead in Hartlepool.

Johnson to publish white paper fleshing out his plans for levelling up, No 10 says

Downing Street has just announced that it will publish a white paper on levelling up later this year. It has also confirmed that Neil O’Brien, the Conservative MP for Harborough and the former head of the Policy Exchange thinktank, will serve as the PM’s levelling up adviser. A new No 10/Cabinet Office unit is also being set up to pursue this agenda.

In its announcement No 10 said:

The government will publish a landmark levelling up white paper later this year, articulating how bold new policy interventions will improve opportunity and boost livelihoods across the country as we recover from the pandemic.

Despite the challenges of Covid-19, levelling up and ensuring that the whole UK can benefit from the same access to opportunities remains core to the government’s vision.

The white paper - which will be led by the prime minister - will focus on challenges including improving living standards, growing the private sector and increasing and spreading opportunity.

Until now “levelling up” has been seen as little more than a slogan - Downing Street has never explained what metrics will be used to assess whether or not it is exceeding - but the appointment of O’Brien, a genuine policy expert, has been seen as evidence that Boris Johnson is now taking this seriously. This is what Torsten Bell, chief executive of the left-leaning Resolution Foundation thinktank, said about O’Neil’s appointment when it was reported yesterday.

My colleague Patrick Wintour thinks the appointment may have something to do with Michael Barber, the former head of Tony Blair’s delivery unit, now acting as an adviser to Johnson.

Neil O’Brien
Neil O’Brien Photograph: UK Parliament

Updated

The ONS has also published figures today on the extent of Covid infection in schools in England in March. The survey was conducted between 15 and 31 March, soon after most pupils in England returned to class, and it found 0.34% of secondary school pupils testing positive, and 0.19% of secondary school staff.

These figures were “significantly lower” than the equivalent figures when schools were surveyed for Covid in November and December, the ONS says.

Covid infection rates in secondary schools in England
Covid infection rates in secondary schools in England. Photograph: ONS

Updated

Gordon Brown, the Labour former prime minister, told Radio 4’s Women’s Hour that it would cost around £30bn a year to ensure that most of the world is vaccinated against coronavirus and that this would be a “very small price to pay” for the benefits. He told the programme:

It’s about $30bn a year that we’re going to need so that we can vaccinate most of the world. We’ve got to start from the proposition that this is in our self-interest as well as a charitable act.

Nobody is safe anywhere until everybody is safe everywhere. If we don’t have mass vaccination round the world the disease will spread, it will mutate and it will come back to hit even those people who’ve been vaccinated in our own country, Britain, and so no country is really going to be finally Covid-free until we’re all Covid-free. Just like smallpox in the past, you’ve got to find a way that every country gets the benefit of vaccination.

A majority of people who test positive for Covid-19 are continuing to follow the rules for self-isolating, a new survey has suggested. PA Media reports:

Some 84% of respondents said they fully adhered to the self-isolation requirements for the entire 10-day period after testing positive for coronavirus.

Just 15% of people reported at least one activity during self-isolation that broke the rules, such as leaving home or having visitors for a reason not permitted under legislation.

The figures have been compiled by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) based on responses collected from adults in England between 12 and 16 April.

They suggest that most people are still following the requirements for self-isolating despite the sharp fall in Covid-19 infections and deaths in recent weeks, along with the ongoing rollout of coronavirus vaccines.

However, self-isolating is continuing to have an impact on people’s wellbeing.

More than a third (37%) of those who tested positive reported that self-isolation had a negative effect on their mental health.

The Survation poll from Hartlepool (see 9am) is not the only disappointing one for Labour this morning. As the Times’ Patrick Maguire reports, an Opinium poll suggests Andy Street is on course to win re-election as the Conservative mayor of the West Midlands quite easily, beating Labour’s Liam Byrne.

In 2017 Street was just one point ahead of his Labour rival (Siôn Simon) on the first ballot, and after second preferences were taken into account he won by less than 1%.

Another Opinion poll suggests Ben Houchen is on course to win re-election at the Conservative mayor of Tees Valley by a huge margin. In 2017, with second preferences taken into account, Houchen’s winning margin over Labour was just 2%.

Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, sitting between Marc Garneau, the Canadian foreign minister, and Motegi Toshimitsu, the Japanese foreign minister, at the meeting of G7 foreign ministers at Lancaster House in London this morning.
Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, sitting between Marc Garneau, the Canadian foreign minister, and Motegi Toshimitsu, the Japanese foreign minister, at the meeting of G7 foreign ministers at Lancaster House in London this morning. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

A record number of people have registered to vote in this week’s Scottish parliamentary elections, with the total electorate only 3,153 lower than the all-time record electorate signed up for the 2014 independence referendum.

The Electoral Commission said 4,280,785 people had registered for Thursday’s Holyrood elections, compared to 4,098,462 in the 2016 Scottish parliament election. In the 2014 referendum, 4,283,938 registered.

The very high registration figure follows widespread concerns that the turnout could be low this year, due to the oddly lacklustre campaign, fears among voters about going to polling stations because of the pandemic, and election fatigue. Polling stations will use queues and enforce social distancing.

A high registration figure is no guarantee of a high turnout: while more than 4 million people registered in 2016, the turnout was only 55.6%. In 2011, the year Alex Salmond and the SNP won Holyrood’s first and so far only overall majority, turnout was 50.6%; in 2007 it was 53.9%.

Anxiety about the safety of voting in public places helped fuel an increase in postal vote applications this year: 1,010,638 people did so this year (nearly 24% of the electorate). That was far lower than the 2 million people which surveys last year by the commission had suggested could do so, but is still a record high.

The franchise for Holyrood elections is also larger than for UK elections, including 16- and 17-year-olds, EU and Commonwealth citizens and other non-UK nationals with residency. Scotland’s population has also slightly increased.

Prisoners serving sentences of less than 12 months can also now vote, for the first time, after Scottish ministers finally responded to repeated rulings by the European court the UK was breaching prisoners’ human rights by refusing them the vote.

Updated

These are from the Daily Mirror’s Pippa Crerar and the FT’s Sebastian Payne on the Hartlepool poll. Payne is writing a book about Labour’s performance in “red wall” seats.

And this is from my colleague Jessica Elgot.

Anthony Wells, head of political research at the polling company YouGov and author of the UK Polling Report blog, has posted a thread on Twitter saying there is nothing suspect about the methodology of the Survation poll from Hartlepool and that it would have to be “very wrong” for Labour to win the seat on Thursday. The thread starts here.

Covid infection rates in UK ‘very encouraging’, says Neil Ferguson

Recent data on Covid deaths and rates of infection in the UK are “very encouraging”, and though a third wave of infections was possible in late summer it was unlikely to overwhelm the NHS, the leading epidemiologist Neil Ferguson has said. My colleague Caroline Davies has the story here.

Prof Jane Green, co-director of the British Election Study, has posted a thread on Twitter this morning with evidence that makes the Survation Hartlepool poll (see 9am) very plausible. It starts here.

Using British Election Study figures, Green says 84% of people who voted for the Brexit party in the European elections in 2019 voted for the Conservatives in the general election that year. In seats where no Brexit party candidate was standing at the general election, 91% of the Brexit party vote at the European election went to the Tories.

Starmer rejects claims Johnson has shifted Tories on to Labour territory

Here is more from Sir Keir Starmer’s interview on the Today programme. As well as arguing that turning around Labour was always going to take more than a year (see 9am), he also described how he saw the main differences between Labour and the Conservatives.

  • Starmer rejected claims that under Boris Johnson the Conservative party has become more similar to Labour. When Mishal Husain, the presenter, put it to Starmer that Johnson’s policies on issues like climate change and public services showed the party had changed, Starmer replied:

I don’t accept that. Of course, during the pandemic they put in place support for businesses, and we supported that. But that was force of necessity. That was during the pandemic. That wasn’t an ideological shift that somehow happened in Conservative party thinking in the last year, and all the instincts are to go back to where we started.

Husain then cited policies like the proposed corporation tax increase, levelling up, infrastructure spending and moving civil servants out of London as evidence that the Conservatives had changed. Starmer replied:

Is universal credit, the uplift of £20 has been a lifeline to millions of families, going to be kept? No. Is the public sector having its pay frozen? Yes. Are the NHS frontline getting a pay cut in real terms?

This is not evidence of a party that has ideologically moved to a sort of progressive agenda. On the contrary, it’s a it’s a party retreating back to the same old ways.

(Quite how deep, sincere or long-lasting the Tory shift under Johnson will turn out to be is a fascinating question, but it was perhaps surprising that Starmer did not acknowledge that there has at least been some change. Johnson’s Conservatism is not the same as David Cameron. Paul Goodman, the ConserativeHome editor, posted an interesting article on this topic on his website at the weekend._

  • Starmer claimed he wanted to be like Joe Biden in making vast, transformational changes. When asked if Biden, and the big plans he was putting to Congress, were “the model” for Labour, Starmer replied:

Yes it is, and let me just give you five headlines of that.

First on the economy, short termism has bedevilled our economy for years and years. We’ve got low wages, low standards, low investment, low skills, low productivity. That has got to be changed to a long-term model, and there are plenty of leading people in the business sector who completely agree that we have to transform and change our economy.

The second head is public services. We have got to move to a model of preventative public services, cross-cutting public services. I feel very strongly about this; you will not deal with criminal justice if you don’t deal with education, mental health, schools etc and housing at the same time.

We need, thirdly, a much stronger skills and education agenda so that there’s a world-class education for every child wherever they live, wherever they are from, and skills that equip them for life.

We need, fourthly, to make sure that decisions are much closer to people, to really have the courage to devolve.

And, fifthly, we need to change the culture. Over the last 10 years, in America, across the world and here in the UK, we have spent far too much time identifying what divides us, what the differences are, setting people against each other, rather than valuing what actually brings us together.

And empathy, that old Labour party value that we’ve seen so brightly in the pandemic, we need to capture and make central as we go forward.

  • But Starmer refused to be drawn on how much borrowing he would sanction to pay for a transformational agenda. Husain said Biden had two plans each worth $2 trillion. She said she thought Starmer stood for fiscal responsibility. In response, Starmer said the current economic model was not working.

The inequality that’s built into our economic model is morally unjust, but it’s economically stupid.

Starmer said Labour would have a fully-costed manifesto at the next election. Asked if he would spend “whatever it takes to transform the economy”, he replied:

We will put forward a fully-costed manifesto at the next election. Of course we will and it will be crawled all over and quite right, too.

But we can’t aspire to go back to where we started at the beginning of the pandemic. We can’t clap people on the front line. They were underpaid and undervalued and either we just shrug our shoulders and say: “Well, that may well be, but we’re not going to do something about it”, or we step up and we set out what a brighter, better future will look like.

Keir Starmer (right) in Hartlepool last week with Dr Paul Williams, the Labour candidate.
Keir Starmer (right) in Hartlepool last week with Dr Paul Williams, the Labour candidate. Photograph: Ian Forsyth/PA

Updated

Here are some more tables from the Survation poll in Hartlepool. The data tables are here (pdf).

Polling is never 100% reliable as a guide to the outcome of elections, byelection polling is even more difficult and this poll is based on a sample of just 517 residents. The 17-point lead it is giving the Conservatives does look, superficially, unrealistic. But, as Damian Lyons Lowe from Survation explains in his analysis, Hartlepool is a seat that would probably have flipped to the Conservatives in the 2019 general election, along with other so-called “red wall” Labour heartlands seats mostly in the north, had it not been for the fact that the Brexit party got more than 25% of the vote in the town in the general election - its third best result in the UK - partly because its leader, Richard Tice, was standing there. Lyons Lowe says:

The Conservative party appear to be attracting the lion’s share of the (28%) in Hartlepool who cast a vote for the Brexit party in 2019 . Now renamed Reform UK, just 1% of the voters we spoke to intend to vote for the newly named party. Only 8% of those we spoke with said they had a favourable view of party leader Richard Tice, while 14% said they either didn’t know their view or had not heard of (39%) Nigel Farage’s replacement as party leader – despite his insurgent candidacy in this seat. While a fairly small sample, 77% of those we spoke to that remembered voting for the Brexit party in 2019 say they will now vote for the Conservatives, vs only 5% planning to cast a vote for Labour.

In terms of prior voter retention, the Conservatives are maintaining their 2019 voters better than Labour, 85% of those that voted Conservative in 2019 said they will vote for the party again, while a smaller number – 73% of Labour’s 2019 voters say they will stay with the party.

Independent candidates Thelma Walker (former Labour MP for Colne Valley) and Sam Lee (12% of the vote combined) appear to be taking share more from Labour’s vote than the Conservatives, meaning Labour risk polling fewer votes than in 2019 despite the Brexit-Reform UK party collapse ...

Together, the Brexit party and the “Get Brexit Done*” party took 55% of the 2019 vote to Labour’s 38%. True to his promise, Boris Johnson got Brexit done, and in a seat where where Brexit is a major driver of voting behaviour we can only look to his +23 favourability rating to see what these voters think about that.

Updated

Starmer downplays expectations ahead of elections as poll suggests Tories set for Hartlepool win

Good morning. There are now less than 48 hours to go until polling opens for “Super Thursday”, a bumper day of elections in which every adult in Britain will get the chance to vote for either the Scottish parliament, the Welsh Senedd, city or metro mayors, councils (the local elections combine this year’s and last year’s, which were cancelled because of coronavirus), the London assembly, police and crime commissioners - or a new MP in Hartlepool.

Political parties will perform better in some of these elections than in others, but attention is likely to focus overall on Scotland, and on whether Labour is making any sort of comeback under Sir Keir Starmer, and in relation to the second question, the result in Hartlepool will be crucial. It will also be the only major result available on Friday morning (most of the counting is on Friday and Saturday), which means it will frame the narrative going into the weekend.

And this morning a poll suggests the Conservatives are on course for a historic win. Governing parties very rarely gain seats in byelection, but a Survation poll suggests the Tories have a 17-point lead in the seat that has always been Labour since it was created in its current form in 1974.

Starmer has been giving interviews this morning, and he has been downplaying expectations. This is what he told the Today programme.

Well, I hope we won’t lose Hartlepool, we’re fighting for every vote there and I know that every vote has to be earned and that’s why I’ve been in Hartlepool three times in the campaign and we’ve got teams on the ground.

My job as Labour leader was to rebuild the Labour party out of that devastating loss in 2019 and put us in a position to win the next general election.

I said on the day that I was elected that that was a mountain to climb. It is, we’re climbing it and I’ve got a burning desire to build a better future for our country, and Thursday is a first step towards that better future.

But I don’t think anybody realistically thought that it was possible to turn the Labour party round from the worst general election result since 1935 to a position to win the next general election within the period of one year; it was always going to take longer than that.

I will post more from his interviews, and from the Survation poll, shortly.

There is not much in the diary today because parliament is in recess, and the government is in purdah mode ahead of the elections. Here are the items on the agenda.

9.30am: The ONS publishes reports on coronavirus infections in school, on Covid and older workers and on compliance with self-isolation.

12pm: Downing Street is expected to hold its lobby briefing.

Also, Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, is hosting a meeting of G7 foreign ministers at Lancaster House.

Politics Live has often been wholly or largely focused on Covid this year, but this week I expect to be concentrating mostly on the elections. For global coronavirus news, do read our global live blog.

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. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

Updated

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100's of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
‘I’m trying to de-escalate. He has a needle in my arm’: Southern California woman goes to tattoo shop. Then the owner asks her something shocking
A woman has sparked discussion online after she called out her tattoo artist for his inappropriate behavior once he learned she was recently single.
The Mary Sue
The Mary Sue
Forget birdwatching, I’m into moth-watching: they’re fascinating and misunderstood insects
According to new research, distinguishing between the UK’s 2,500 species could halt cognitive decline – so my brain could not be happier, or healthier, says science writer Helen Pilcher
The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
I tried HigherDose’s $1,400 PEMF mat to help me relax. I got weird dreams and disappointment
This pricey infrared therapy mat claims to help mood, sleep and muscle recovery. It felt more like a glorified heating pad
The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Florida judge asked if Black defendant had ever ‘chopped cotton’ as he mulled community service sentence, report says
The judge acknowledged his remarks were ‘ill-considered,’ court documents state
The Independent UK
The Independent UK
Watch Zakk Wylde in emotional video for Black Label Society's Ozzy Osbourne tribute
Zakk Wylde and Black Label Society release video for Ozzy's Song – their touching tribute to the late Prince of Darkness
Metal Hammer
Metal Hammer
Robert Pattinson Sparks Buzz After Relationship “Red Flag” Remark Fans Link To Kristen Stewart
“100% shading Kristen Stewart,” one user wrote
Bored Panda
Bored Panda
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.
Download on the AppStore Get it on Google Play