Afternoon summary
- Spencer Livermore, Labour’s general election campaign director, has said the party to lose under Jeremy Corbyn unless he significantly changes course. (See 2.52pm.)
- Sadiq Khan, Labour’s candidate for London mayor, has said that successive government’s have done too little to reduce racial segregation in Britain. In a speech to the press gallery, he also said that Muslims had a special responsibility to counter radicalisation - because they were likely to be more effective than anyone else. He also disassociated himself from Jeremy Corbyn’s recent comments on drone strikes and “shoot to kill”. (See 3.55pm.)
- Oliver Letwin, the Cabinet Office minister who overruled a civil servant’s recommendation not to release a £3m grant to Kids Company days before the charity’s collapse, has denied being “blackmailed” into handing over cash. As Rajeev Syal reports, Letwin said he did not regret handing over the money but has been told to expect to be criticised for his role in the debacle during a hearing of the public administration and constitutional affairs committee. The committee heard claims that the charity’s founder, Camila Batmanghelidjh, would write to ministers warning that without more state cash the charity would fold, with a potentially harmful impact on the prime minister’s “big society” agenda. Letwin, one of David Cameron’s closest advisers, admitted authorising two final grants of £4.265m and £3m to Kids Company this year.
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
Yesterday at PMQs David Cameron said: “In the capital city, we have seen a 500% increase in neighbourhood policing.” Labour said this was “staggeringly wrong” and put out a statement saying: “Since May 2010 the capital has lost 5,702 uniformed officers from its neighbourhood policing teams. That’s 2,497 PCs and 3,205 PCSOs lost who could have been on our streets fighting crime in the capital.”
It has taken a while to get an explanation for Cameron’s figures from the government, and for the discrepancy between the two claims, but I have finally had some figures from the Home Office.
The Labour figures are based on the overall number of uniformed officers (police officers and community support officers in the capital) in 2010 and now.
According to the Home Office, Cameron was referring to a different figure. He was using figures for the number of officers categorised as “neighbourhood” by the Metropolitan police. In 2010 there were 895. Now there are 5,612 - a 527% increase. “Neighbourhood” is now the Met’s second largest uniformed worker category. Its largest is “Response” (6,929 officers).
The Home Office said it was up to the Met to explain how many of those were new recruits and how many were existing officers who have been re-categorised or re-assigned.
Four election books reviewed
It may seem ages ago but it is just over six months since the general election and the first books about it are now starting to come out. Four of them have landed on my desk within the last few weeks and, with Spencer Livermore talking about the election earlier (see 2.52pm), today is a good day to write about them. Instant political history of this kind can often by unsatisfactory. The journalists who write these books fit them around a day job and often their behind-the-scenes access can be limited. (It is different in the US, where there is a rich tradition of embedding reporters with political campaigns and giving them plenty of time to cultivate contacts.) Also, readers already know quite a lot about the general election, which means the writers have to write books maximising their use of the new material they’ve obtained, and minimising their use of what we already know, while still telling a coherent story.
That said, all of these books will appeal to hardcore politicos, and they all shed light on what happened in May. As a service to readers, here’s a quick round-up.
Why the Tories Won by Tim Ross: This is probably the most revealing of all the election books so far. Broadly it answers the question in the title, and Ross is particularly good on aspects of the Conservative campaign, the ground war and the cyber war, that received relatively little coverage at the time. A two-word summary of his analysis would be “Lynton Crosby” and, although at time it does seem over Crosby-focused (“some Tories privately wish [Crosby] could have a larger, ongoing role running the government”, Ross writes), I don’t think anyone else has written properly about Crosby at book length, and Ross makes a convincing case for Crosby being a decisive factor in the Conservative victory.
Sample extracts:
One senior Downing Street figure explains that Crosby’s entire focus was to destroy the Lib Dems: ‘The genius of Lynton Crosby’s campaign was being able to spot that the route to victory was through the Lib Dem marginal seats in the south-west, and then to actually deliver it.’
When even Labour activists were conceding that Ed Balls has probably lost to Andrea Jenkyns, the Tory candidate in Morley and Outwood, Cameron leapt up and roared with delight. He never imagined such a prized scalp could be theirs. But, according to those close to him, his euphoria quickly gave way to pathos. ‘It’s a brutal old game, isn’t it?’ he remarked. One member of the Witney entourage noticed how the sobering reality of Balls’s demise genuinely struck Cameron: ‘When you see an election, it is Game of Thrones. A whole load of people figuratively get murdered. If you’re an aide, your reputation is trashed. If you are a politician, you get humiliated.’
Five Million Conversations by Iain Watson: This could have been called ‘Why Labour Lost’ and in some respects it complements Ross’s book, although Watson just writes about Labour, while Ross’s book covers the election campaign as a whole. Ross uses an overview narrative. Watson’s approach is different because his book mostly takes the form of a day-by-day diary, describing the day’s events (Watson was covering Ed Miliband’s campaign for the BBC) with background putting what happened in context. It means the book doesn’t have a heavy analytical focus, but the as-it-happened reportage is sharp and very well-written.
Sample extracts:
The answer Miliband had prepared earlier - rather longer than the one he gave on the night - to the question ‘did you overspend’ was as follows: ‘I understand why you are asking the question - I take the view that it wasn’t Labour’s spending that caused the financial crisis. It was the crash that caused the deficit, not the deficit that caused the crash. But the world has changed, money is tight now, there’s a premium on every pound, so I’ll be straight with you. Did overspending cause the crash? No. But we are going to take a different approach to spending now in difficult times? Yes’ ...
The pollsters took the view that it was better to say anything, however unconvincing, other than ‘No’ in response to whether Labour had overspent. Any answering involving the ‘No’ word had been tested in focus group, and had provoked horrifically hostile responses.
‘All good decisions are collective decisions’. That was the familiar refrain from Bob Roberts [Labour’s press chief] whenever he was asked who was behind a particular initiative. ‘So was this a collective decision?’ ‘Eh, no.’ We were standing in the gymnasium of a school in Worcester - home of course to those ‘Worcester women’ who helped Labour to power in 1997 but neither they nor their daughters were going to do so in 2015 ... On one issue the verdict was already clear. What was now being called the ‘Edstone’ on social media was a disaster, and every Labour official present tried to distance themselves from it. Roberts later admitted: ‘We completely underestimated the effect of social media or the reaction it would get on social media.’
Project Fear by Joe Pike: This is primarily a book about the Scottish independence referendum, but is also contains 100 pages on the general election campaign in Scotland which makes sense because you cannot explain the latter without reference to the former. Pike focuses predominantly on Better Together and Scottish Labour, and some of the ‘what went on in private’ material is remarkably revealing, and often amusing too.
Sample extracts:
Early Labour research indicated that the party should ‘in no circumstances rule a coalition out [with the SNP]’. Doing so would risk alienating two key groups of target voters: (i) Those who had voted Yes, but had not supported the SNP at the 2011 Holyrood elections; and (ii) Yes voters who had supported the SNP in 2011, but always backed Labour at Westminster elections. When the idea of ruling out a coalition was put to these people in focus groups, the response according to those watching was ‘violently negative, as if it would be a slight against Scotland’. Some participants even asked: ‘Why would Labour turn against Scotland?’
‘Oh, I sound like a north London twat from an over-privileged background,’ Ed Miliband groaned. Honing his television debating skills was a rigorous and exhausting process.
Labour’s election campaign was relentlessly focused on ‘working people’. Miliband constantly tumpeted his plans for a radical mansion tax, so a sprawling mansion in Kent was an unlikely location for the leader’s secret TV training sessions. Labour peer and TV mogul Waheed Ali’s country pile near Tenterden had, for years, been offered up to senior party figures - although, this time, they were not using the grand house, but the barn.
Tsunami by Iain Macwhirter: Unlike the other books, this is not so much a narrative account of what happened during the campaign as an extended essay on what it all means. When historians look back on the 2015 election it will be obvious that what happened in Scotland was more important by far than anything else, and McWhirter explains why superbly.
Sample extracts:
It was the BBC’s political presenter and author Andrew Marr who first noted during the 2015 general election campaign that Scotland appeared to be going through something like ‘a national revolution’. It seemed a bit of an exaggeration at the time. We don’t do revolutions here. The word evokes images of violent overthrow; of barricades and broken heads. But I increasingly believe he was right to pose it in revolutionary terms, because there is now a fundamental struggle over the location of political power.
What the SNP seems to have achieved in East Edinburgh, as in so many working class communities in Scotland, is to have fused class solidarity with a latent sense of national identity so that many voters can still feel they’re in touch with their Labour roots even though they are voting SNP. It isn’t about identity as such - Scots have rarely had a problem with their identity. Rather, they have, for a variety of reasons, started to feel a degree of self-confidence about it.
Updated
Sadiq Khan's speech on radicalism and extremism - Summary
Sadiq Khan, Labour’s candidate for London mayor, gave a speech to a press gallery lunch this afternoon on radicalism and extremism. Sometimes these press gallery speeches can be relatively perfunctory, but this one was unusually substantial, and colleagues who were there tell me he went down very well. Here are the key lines.
- Khan said British Muslims had a special responsibility to counter radicalisation - because they were best placed to do it.
And to defeat the extremists we simply must do more to stop radicalisation in Britain. It doesn’t just affect us in these awful moments of violence and terror. It is a cancer eating at the heart of our society - all the time. And if we’re honest - not enough has been done to root it out. And in this week of all weeks that makes me angry. Angry because for too long we have buried our heads in the sand.
I believe that British Muslims have a special role to play in tackling extremism. A special role not because we are more responsible than others - as some have wrongly claimed. But because we can be more effective at tackling extremism than anyone else. Our role must be to challenge extremist views wherever we encounter them.
To challenge this perverse ideology, and to insist that British values and Muslim values are one and the same.
- He said successive governments had been too tolerant of racial segregation in Britain.
For decades successive governments have tolerated segregation in British society. In doing so, we’ve allowed the conditions that permit extremism to continue unchecked.
We’ve protected people’s right to live their cultural life at the expense of creating a common life. Too many British Muslims grow up without really knowing anyone from a different background. Without understanding or empathising with the lives and beliefs of others.
And too many British people have never befriended a Muslim. Never worked together, never eaten together, never played sports together. As a result, too many people have formed a single identity - too often based around their religion or ethnicity.
This creates the conditions for extremism and radicalisation to take hold. Social segregation will not go away on its own. Tackling it will take a prolonged and concerted effort by us all.
- He said he had personal experience of encountering extremism.
Extremism isn’t a theoretical risk. Most British Muslims have come across someone with extremist views at some point - and so have I. It’s affected my personal life, my friendships, and my career.
People I knew as a boy have gone on to hold extremist views, and even to act on them in terrible ways. When I was a lawyer, as well as representing people who were badly treated by the police or their employers, I sometimes had the unpleasant job of representing people with extremist views.
It was horrible - but it went with the job. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to challenge the hideous views of seemingly intelligent and articulate people.
People who look and sound like normal Londoners, until they say that 9/11 was a Mossad conspiracy. That the Jewish workers in the twin towers were tipped off and escaped ...
Every time I’ve stood for Parliament I’ve been subjected to a campaign of hate. Extremists came and protested outside Mosques in my community.
Handing out leaflets telling the congregation – my friends and neighbours - that voting is banned in Islam. Telling people I’ve known since I was a boy that I am destined to go to hell. They say that Muslims shouldn’t take part in democracy. That we shouldn’t help to make man-made laws.
It’s been painful for me and my family. No one wants to discuss police protection advice with their young daughters. And I don’t want anyone else to have to go through what I’ve experienced because of these people.
- Khan distanced himself from Jeremy Corbyn on drone strikes and “shoot to kill”. In the Q&A Khan also made it clear that he had no objection to the decision to kill Mohammed Emwazi in a drone strike, distancing himself from Jeremy Corbyn, who questioned the legality of the move. Khan said he supported what happened because he lived “in the real world”.
Sadiq Khan in dig at Corbyn: "There is nothing I disagree with in the way Emwazi (Jihadi John) was taken out: I live in the real world".
— Jim Pickard (@PickardJE) November 19, 2015
He also defended shoot to kill, saying the police help to keep people safe.
.@SadiqKhan says those living "in the real world" understand armed police must be able to shoot-to-kill, and back Jihadi John's killing.
— Kevin Schofield (@PolhomeEditor) November 19, 2015
And there were some jokes about Corbyn too.
.@SadiqKhan tells #pressgallery he was "proud to sing not just one national anthem but two" at Wembley this week.
— Robert Hutton (@RobDotHutton) November 19, 2015
Sadiq Khan at lobby lunch: I'm waiting for call from the Leader's Office telling me I'd been disloyal to the leader by doing the Royal toast
— Pippa Crerar (@PippaCrerar) November 19, 2015
This is not the first time that Khan has disassociated himself from Corbyn. A lot of commentators assume that a Khan victory or defeat in London next May will give some indication as to how Labour is doing under Corbyn. Quite why is a mystery because, as these comments show, Khan is clearly running as an anti-Corbynite.
Labour destined to lose under Corbyn unless he changes course significantly, says party's 2015 election chief
Spencer Livermore was Labour’s general election campaign director in 2015. He is now Lord Livermore. Here are the main points from his World at One interview.
- Livermore said Labour is destined to lose under Jeremy Corbyn unless he significantly changes course.
I believe that Mr Corbyn has failed to learn the lessons of why we lost in 2015. And unless he does, on the present course we will lose in 2020 ... On the fundamental backwards we are going backwards rather than forwards.
Livermore said the party had three main problems under Corbyn: it was losing economic credibility, Corbyn was not seen as a suitable candidate for prime minister, and the party’s vision was “more narrow than ever before”.
What progress have we made so far against the enduring weaknesses that led us to lose the election in 2015? Are we further ahead now in terms of economic credibility? Do the British people now see our leader as a potential prime minister. And have we broadened the base of our support in the country? I think if you look at all of those things I think it is impossible to conclude that we are anything but further away from power than we were even on May 8.
- LIvermore said the elections are won and lost on three key issues. Labour lost in May because it was behind on all three, he said.
Elections are won on the three fundamental issues: whether or not you have credibility on the economy; whether or not your leader can be seen by the country as a potential prime minister; and the breadth of the vision and that plan that you are putting to the country, and how many people can feel part of that plan. And I think that, with the benefit of hindsight, in May we were on the wrong place on each of those issues.
- He said that elections are decided well in advance of polling day, and that Labour lost in 2015 because it did not take the right decisions on the defict and welfare early on in the 2010-15 parliament.
I think we hadn’t taken the difficult decisions early on in the parliament to convince people that we could be trusted on issues such as the deficit and welfare. Having worked now on four general election campaigns, it is increasingly clear to me that elections aren’t won in the six week campaign at the end, probably aren’t won in the year before a campaign, but are won in the first months and years of parliament. That’s when the voters make up their minds really about a party. And if the wrong decisions are made at the outset of a parliament, it is very, very hard, almost impossible, to correct those decisions later on.
- He said Ed Miliband’s leadership was a problem for Labour in 2015, but not the decisive factor in its loss.
I think he would have made a good prime minister but ultimately the public could never quite see him in that role. But I don’t think that in any way was the decisive factor in the election. I think that elections are won and lost on strategy.
- He said the Edstone was, in retrospect, a bad idea, but that stunts like that do not have any impact on election results.
In the interview Martha Kearney mentioned British Election Study research saying Ed Miliband did not lose because he was too leftwing. (See 1.41pm.) But the BES research also found there was “not much [evidence] to support the argument that Labour was not leftwing enough”. I wrote a fairly detailed account of what it does say here.
Updated
Here’s a clip of the Spencer Livermore interview.
On #wato today: in his first intv since #GE2015 @SpenceLivermore on why Labour lost and lessons for @jeremycorbyn https://t.co/EazyMwG3dV
— The World at One (@BBCWorldatOne) November 19, 2015
Q: Corbyn might argue you led the party to a terrible defeat?
He may say that, says Livermore, but I have reflected on the reasons for the defeat.
Q: What do you make of the current bitterness in the party?
Livermore says it is important that people speak out.
And that’s it. I will post a summary soon.
Livermore says in 2015 Labour had not learnt the lessons of its 2010 defeat.
He says he does not want to be sitting here in 2020 saying Labour has not learnt the lessons of its 2015 defeat.
Q: Can you win with Corbyn?
At the moment it is clear that he has not learnt the lessons of the 2015 defeat, Livermore says. If he does not learn those lessons, Labour will lose.
Livermore says Corbyn must be seen as prime ministerial. That includes singing the national anthem.
Q: Should Miliband have stayed on?
Livermore says it is not helpful looking back with hindsight.
He would have hoped the election would settle an argument about whether Labour can win from a soft left position.
Yet now Labour is trying to see if it can win from a hard left position.
Q: There is some British Election Study research saying Labour did not lose because it was too leftwing.
Livermore cites Jon Cruddas’s research showing Labour lost because it was not trusted on the economy.
Is Labour ahead now on economic credibility, or on the credibility of its leader, Livermore asks. He says people would conclude that the party is further away from power.
Q: But Corbyn is generating support?
Livermore says Corbyn has a strong internal mandate.
But he has to translate that into external support. And now he has the lowest ratings of any leader of the opposition in history.
Corbyn does not seem to have learnt the lessons of the election, he says.
He says on fundamental issues Labour seems to be going backwards.
And Corbyn is not seen as a future prime minister.
Updated
Q: How big a factor was Ed Miliband’s leadership?
Livermore says the fact the Miliband was always behind David Cameron on who was seen as the best prime minister was always a problem.
But Miliband had many good qualities too, he says.
Livermore says we can all agree now the Edstone was a bad idea.
But stunts like that do not make any impact on elections, he says.
Livermore says Labour’s internal polling showed what external polling showed. Contrary to some claims, he had not seen some polling showing the Tories ahead.
Q: Why was Labour not trusted on the economy?
Livermore says the party had not taken the difficult decisions early in the parliament on welfare and on the deficit.
Having worked for several campaigns, he know thinks elections are won early on in the parliament - not in the final weeks or in the final year.
Spencer Livermore interview
Spencer Livermore, who ran Labour’s election campaign in 2015, is being interviewed on the World at One now.
He says a party needs three things to run an election: credibility on the economy, a leader seen as a credible prime minister and an attractive vision for the country.
In May Labour was in the wrong place on all three, he says.
BMA criticises Hunt for rejecting its call for ACAS talks to avert junior doctors' strike
In another sign of the bitterness between the two sides and the bleak prospects for a settlement of the junior doctors dispute, the British Medical Association has voiced frustration that Jeremy Hunt has in broadcast interviews rejected their idea of ACAS intervening (see 10.16am) to arbitrate between them and seek a settlement.
A BMA spokesman has just said this:
It is clear that trust has broken down between junior doctors and the government, which is why we are offering conciliatory talks via Acas. If it is true that Jeremy Hunt has refused our offer, all he is doing is entrenching himself even further.
This is not just one or two junior doctors who believe that his proposals are unsafe for patients and unfair for doctors. The fact that today’s ballot result is near unanimous should be a wake-up call for the government. Instead of continuing to ignore the views of tens of thousands of junior doctors who, in the health secretary’s own words are the backbone of the NHS, he should, if he really wants to avoid industrial action, accept the BMA’s offer of conciliatory talks.
Updated
Lunchtime summary
- David Blunkett, the former Labour home secretary, has said voters are “bewildered” by some of the things Corbyn has done and that he has at most two years to prove he is a credible future prime minister. (See 9.48am.)
- Diane Abbott, the shadow international development secretary, has said that a “misunderstanding” may to be blame for claims that John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, signed a statement calling for MI5 to be disbanded and the police to be disarmed. The Sun today reports that McDonnell signed the statement, drawn up by the Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory, before the general election. McDonnell denied this. But the Sun has this morning published a photo of McDonnell holding a document that looks remarkably similar to one on the SCVL website containing the demands relating to the police and MI5 (pdf - see page two). Asked about this on the Daily Politics, said Abbott said McDonnell has said he did not sign the letter. But she went on:
It may well be a misunderstanding ... I can say with confidence that John McDonnell does not want to disband MI5.
- Spencer Livermore, who ran Labour’s general election campaign in 2015, has told the World at One that the party is further away from winning now than it was then.
And the director of Labour's 2015 campaign, @SpenceLivermore says the party is further away from winning power now than it was in May #wato
— The World at One (@BBCWorldatOne) November 19, 2015
.@spencelivermore : "It's impossible to conclude that we are anything but further away from power than we were even on may 8th" #wato
— The World at One (@BBCWorldatOne) November 19, 2015
- Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, has said there are clear signs that Russia has turned its fire in Syria on the Islamic State (Isis) terror group over the past few days.
- Nicola Sturgeon has clarified her position on air strikes against Islamic State in Syria, saying the SNP is still opposed. She was speaking after the BBC highlighted an interview in which she said she was willing to listen to the case for bombing. She posted a message on Twitter saying:
Of course we'll listen - & we share determination to defeat ISIS - but the case for airstrikes has not been made https://t.co/lf908siZiQ
— Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) November 19, 2015
Alex Salmond, Sturgeon’s predecessor, told the Daily Politics that the SNP would insist on a UN resolution before backing air strikes.
There is no change in the SNP’s position and you would have to have an extremely suspicious BBC journalistic mind to try and detect one.
As Nicola has tweeted this morning – a UN resolution is a pre-condition of SNP support for military action. Not, incidentally, just because of the legality, although legalities are quite important in these matters, but also because unless you have that UN consensus you cannot bring peace to Syria.
- Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, has joined those wishing Peter Robinson well following the news that he will stand down soon as Northern Ireland’s first minister and the DUP’s leader.
Good luck 2 Peter Robinson.
— Gerry Adams (@GerryAdamsSF) November 19, 2015
Peter Hain, the Labour former Northern Ireland secretary, said:
If Ian Paisley was the unionist pilot of the peace process then Peter Robinson was the unionist navigator, an indispensable part of the project that has established self-government and a permanent settlement between bitter old enemies. He will stand tall because of that and because of his leadership as first minister.
-
Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, has called for a major programme of infrastructure investment while accusing the Conservatives of planning cuts that go far beyond what is needed to tackle the deficit. In a speech, he said deficit reduction measures taken under the previous coalition government meant the country could now afford an “active, ambitious and targeted” programme of capital spending.
Hunt says BMA strike vote "very disappointing"
Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, has described the decision of junior doctors to vote for strike action as “very disappointing”. He told Sky News:
This is very, very disappointing news today. We want to be able to promise NHS patients that they will get the same high-quality care every day of the week and study after study has shown that our mortality rates at weekends are too high. We’ve put forward a very fair offer for doctors which will see pay go up for three-quarters of junior doctors. We wanted to talk about this to them, but in the end they’ve chosen to strike so we will now have to put in place contingency plans to make sure that patients are safe over a very, very busy period for the NHS and we’ll be doing everything we can to make that happen.
I’ve taken the quote from PoliticsHome.
Dr Maureen Baker, the chair of the Royal College of GPs, has warned that any settlement to the junior doctors dispute needs to happen quickly before the walkouts make things even harder for GP surgeries and hospitals as they enter the pressurised winter period.
Our NHS is being pushed to breaking point, particularly as we head towards what will be a very difficult winter for our general practice and hospitals. A prompt resolution is in everyone’s best interests and the college will do everything we can to support this.
She backed the idea of an independent arbitrator, suggested today by the British Medical Association, as the best way forward.
Speaking on behalf of a branch of the medical profession that is already facing serious problems persuading newly-qualified doctors to join it, she added:
The current situation has led to the lowest morale amongst doctors in a generation. We are incredibly concerned about the effect that this will have on the future of our profession and the wider NHS, particularly in terms of efforts to recruit and retain enough doctors to deliver safe patient care to our patients.
We must do whatever we can to support our junior doctors and make them understand how valued – and how essential to the future of patient care - they are. Doctors choose medicine because they genuinely want to care for their patients and contribute to the health service. This decision is an overwhelming indication that junior doctors do not think the proposed contract will enable them to do this.
NEET numbers fall by more than 100,000 over the last year
The number of NEETs (young people not in education, employment or training) has fallen by 100,000 in the past year, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics. The Press Association has filed more details.
There were 848,000 young people aged from 16 to 24 classed as Neets in the three months to September, a decrease of 74,000 from April to June and down 106,000 from a year earlier.
A total of 11.7% young people were Neet, down by 1% over the previous quarter and by 1.3% from a year earlier.
Just under half of all young people in the UK who were Neet were looking for work and so were classed as unemployed.
The rest were either not looking for work or not available for work, so classified as economically inactive, said the Office for National Statistics.
Professor Sir Bruce Keogh, National Medical Director of NHS England, has written to the BMA seeking “formal assurances” that no action will be taken which will endanger patient safety and urgent and emergency care.
He also asked what junior doctors would do if there were a major incidence on one of the strike days. In the letter he said:
In light of the tragic events in Paris last Friday night, and the ongoing threat level in the UK, we need to ensure we have a clear understanding of arrangements should a major incident be declared.
Will the BMA ensure that members will be available to respond to a major incident, whether this is declared because of a sudden single event or an unprecedented surge in activity?
Will junior doctors who would otherwise have been rostered for duty make themselves available to respond in a timely way, within one hour of a major incident being declared?
NHS England said the NHS was drawing up “contingency plans” for the strike but that it hoped negotiations would resume between junior doctors and their employers.
No 10 urges BMA to return to renegotiations to avert junior doctors' strike
Downing Street is urging the BMA to return to negotiations to try to avert next month’s junior doctors strike. This is from the prime minister’s spokeswoman.
Clearly it is regrettable that the BMA have decided to go ahead with this action that will put patient safety at risk. We want to sit around a table and negotiate. We would urge the BMA , rather than striking, to return to negotiations.
We value the hard work that junior doctors do up and down the country. That’s why we want to secure a fair deal for them.
Esther McVey gets government quango job
Esther McVey has got a job. The former Conservative employment minister lost her seat at the general election, but now she has been appointed chair of the British Transport Police Authority (BTPA). This is from the Press Association.
McVey will oversee the authority’s work on transport security and tackling sexual violence on the rail network as part of her four-year term.
The BTPA sets the force’s strategy and allocates funding.
McVey, who was appointed by Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin following an independent selection process, said: “With more and more people using the railways, the role of the British Transport Police in allowing people to travel safely is more important than ever.
“I am delighted to have been appointed chair of the police authority and am honoured to be taking up this role.”
McLoughlin said: “The security of the travelling public has never been more important and Esther McVey will bring considerable skills to this vital task.”
Heidi Alexander, the shadow health secretary, has put out a more detailed statement about her proposal for the government and the BMA to go to mediation. (See 10.14am.) She said:
Jeremy Hunt needs to take responsibility for the fact that this is the first time in 40 years that junior doctors have voted to take such significant industrial action. There is clearly huge anger about the way in which these negotiations have been handled by the government. It is imperative that in the next 10 days Jeremy Hunt and David Cameron find a way to avoid a strike. There has been a fundamental breakdown in trust between the Health Secretary and junior doctors, which is bad for the NHS and bad for patients.
I have written to the prime minister suggesting that an independent mediator is brought in to break the current stand-off. If he dismisses this suggestion, he will be risking patient safety in both the short and long term.
Dave Prentis, the Unison general secretary, says his union supports the BMA strike action. Unison represents many health service staff. Prentis said in a statement.
The result is a sign of huge dissatisfaction with NHS pay. It sends a clear message that staff will no longer tolerate the government’s approach of making savings in the health service solely by withholding pay and cutting jobs.
Jeremy Hunt might think that cutting the extra cash that junior doctors and other NHS staff receive for working at night or weekends – when most other people are either sleeping or enjoying their leisure time – is no big deal. But pay austerity has meant that health workers now rely on unsocial hours payments just to boost their shrinking salaries and make it through the month.
What the polling says about Britain joining the fight against Isis in Syria
Yesterday in the House of Commons Angus Robertson, the SNP leader at Westminster, quoted an opinion poll on bombing Islamic State (Isis) in Syria. He told MPs:
The first survey of UK public opinion on Syrian intervention since the Paris attacks, conducted by Survation, has shown that 52% believe that “the UK should engage with all countries to co-ordinate an appropriate response, military or otherwise, backed by United Nations resolution” and only 15% believe that UK should independently launch air strikes.
But today the Daily Mail is splashing on a ComRes poll saying 60% of Britons do favour air strikes. (See 9.04am.)
How can we resolve this apparent contradiction? Actually, it is relatively easy. As with all polling, it depends how you frame the question. The Survation questions and the ComRes questions were very different.
The Survation poll involved a multiple choice question. When offered a choice between “[engaging] with all countries to coordinate an appropriate response, militarily or otherwise, backed by a United Nations resolution” and independently launching air strikes against Isis immediately, 52% were in favour of the multilateral, coordinated approach. Only 15% wanted Britain to bomb straight way. But the proportion saying Britain should “stay out of this situation completely” was even smaller, at 13%.
That final figure probably helps to explain why, when offered a binary choice, there is a clear majority for bombing Isis. ComRes found that, when people were asked if Britain should launch air strikes against Syria in the light of the Paris attacks, 60% said yes and only 24% said no. These figures are very similar to those in a YouGov survey (pdf) at the weekend which found that, when asked if the RAF should take part in air strikes against Isis in Syria, 58% said they were in favour and only 22% said they were opposed.
Surprisingly, ComRes and YouGov both found that the public supports the idea of sending British troops to fight Isis on the ground (an idea flatly rejected by almost everyone at Westminster, apart from a few hawks like Liam Fox.) ComRes found 50% of respondents in favour of British troops getting involved in a ground war (against 31% opposed), rising to 59% in favour (24% against) if countries like the US and France are involved in a ground war too. YouGov found 42% in favour of Britain and the US sending troops to fight Isis in Syria, and only 37% against.
And here is my colleague Denis Campbell’s story about the strike. And here is how it starts.
The NHS is about to be hit by a wave of strikes after junior doctors voted overwhelmingly to walk out in protest at the government’s decision to impose a new contract on them which they regard as unfair and unsafe.
In a ballot of more than 37,000 junior doctors in England, organised by the British Medical Association, 98% have voted in favour of full strike action. Ninety-nine per cent voted for action short of a strike.
The decision means that non-urgent services in many hospitals, such as planned operations and outpatient clinics, will have to be cancelled on the three strike days announced so far – 1, 8 and 16 December – as many of the 45,000 NHS’s trainee doctors take action.
Junior doctors – all medics below the level of a consultant – last took strike action 40 years ago, in November 1975, also over a new contract they claimed would lead to them working dangerously long hours.
Updated
The Patients Association has urged the government and the BMA to talk again to avert the strikes planned for next month. This is from Katherine Murphy, its chief executive.
The Patients Association are extremely worried by the confirmation that industrial action by junior doctors will go ahead. Patient safety will undoubtedly be put at risk by this decision. Whilst the views of doctors must be heard, the potential consequences of this strike for patients are severe.
It is not too late for this industrial action to be called off. We call on the government and the BMA to hold talks to try to resolve the dispute before December 1.
We understand it may be difficult for both sides, but if they don’t reach agreement then patients will suffer. All sides must work together to find a compromise that is in the best interest of patients.
Here is the first take from the Press Association on the strike vote.
Thousands of junior doctors have voted overwhelmingly in favour of strikes in a bitter row with the government.
Some 98% voted in favour of strikes, with 2% against and 11 spoilt ballot papers, the British Medical Association (BMA) said.
More than 37,000 doctors were balloted by the BMA, and 76% took part in the vote.
Doctors will strike over three days, providing emergency care only for 24 hours from 8am on December 1, followed by full walkouts from 8am to 5pm on December 8 and 16.
There is expected to be mass disruption to the NHS, with hospitals forced to cancel outpatient clinics and non-urgent operations.
The BMA has offered to go to ACAS - the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service.
BMA have offered to go to ACAS for talks
— Hugh Pym (@BBCHughPym) November 19, 2015
Labour says government should call in mediators to avert strike
Labour is urging the government to call in mediators to stop the strike. This is from Heidi Alexander, the shadow health secretary.
Huge Junior Dr vote in favour of industrial action. The PM must do responsible thing & call in independent mediator for sake of patients.
— Heidi Alexander (@heidi_mp) November 19, 2015
Following the vote, junior hospital doctors will only provide emergency care for 24 hours from 8am on December 1, followed by full walkouts from 8am to 5pm on December 8 and 16.
Junior doctors vote in favour of IA & invite @jeremy_hunt to @acasorguk talks #juniorcontract | More soon pic.twitter.com/zvKSiQeBRk
— The BMA (@TheBMA) November 19, 2015
98% of junior doctors vote for strike action
The BMA has just announced the results of its junior doctors strike ballot.
- 98% of junior doctors voted for strike action. The turnout was 76%.
Blunkett says voters 'bewildered' by Corbyn and that he has at most 2 years to win them over
David Blunkett, the former Labour home secretary, has become the latest Labour figure to express doubts about Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. He did so in an interview on the Today programme this morning. Here are the key points.
- Blunkett said that voters were “bewildered” by some of the things Corbyn has done and that he had at most two years to prove he was a credible future prime minister.
I think they’re [the public] bewildered, and I think Jeremy has got a very short space of time, and I mean in politics short spaces of time are 18 months, two years, to actually demonstrate that he wants to be prime minister, he knows how to be prime minister and if he was people would feel confident in what he said and he did. Eight weeks on, well nearly nine weeks on, I think he has got a lot to learn.
- He said that although Corbyn was doing some things well, like PMQs, some of his appointments were flawed. He was not just talking about appointing Ken Livingstone as co-chair of the defence review, he said. There were “people around [Corbyn] who have an entirely different view about which way the Labour party should proceed,”, Corbyn said. Blunkett did not say who these people were, but he seemed to be referring to staff in Corbyn’s office like Seumas Milne, the former Guardian columnist who is now Corbyn’s communications chief and Andrew Fisher, the political adviser currently suspended from the party.
- He said that Livingstone should stand down as co-chair of Labour’s defence review. Livingstone had twice lost in London mayoral elections, he said, implying that Livingstone should accept he was not a vote-winner for the party.
I’ve come to that point, where you have to be really circumspect about your past, including your failures. I’m trying to do that myself in teaching politics at the University of Sheffield, and one of the lessons I’ve learned is that if you’ve made mistakes you won’t continue making them. Ken lost the mayorship of London twice, I think he should be circumspect about why.
- Blunkett appealed to “sane, sensible people” join the Labour party to counter the influence of some of the more extreme Corbyn supporters. He said:
I want your listeners, if they are interested in politics and they are left of centre to do something which is totally counter intuitive at the moment; I want them to join the Labour party. I want them to join it so that their voice of sane, sensible people wanting radical policy can get the Labour party into a position with those radical policies, but in a credible situation to win the next general election.
- He urged Labour shadow ministers unhappy about aspects of Corbyn’s leadership not to resign from the front bench.
- He said Corbyn should give Labour MPs a free vote on extending air strikes against Islamic State to Syria. He was personally in favour, he said. And, if Labour MPs were told to vote against, frontbenchers should abstain, he said, and “challenge Corbyn to sack them”
I’ve taken the quotes from PoliticsHome.
Updated
Peter Robinson has announced that said he intends to step down as Northern Ireland’s first minister and leader of the Democratic Unionist party. The full Press Association story is here.
Britain seems to be inching closer to an escalation of the air war against Islamic State. David Cameron is pushing increasingly hard for a Commons vote and this morning, in an indication of how the mood has changed, it is emerged that the SNP is prepared to consider the case for bombing Isis in Syria. Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader and Scottish first minister, said so in a BBC interview. You want watch the key exchange here, and here is the key quote.
I’m not yet convinced the case for air strikes has been made. That is not to say I will not listen to the case that David Cameron will make ...
I think it is incumbent on the prime minister if he is going to bring forward a proposal for air strikes to the House of Commons that he makes that case and that he addresses these key points that are not just being raised by the SNP but by the foreign affairs committee in the House of Commons itself.
It would be a mistake to read too much into this; Sturgeon still gives the impression that, having listened to Cameron’s arguments, the SNP is still more likely to vote against than in favour. But until now the SNP has been resolutely opposed to extending air strikes but now its position is not so quite clear.
The news coincides with the publication of a poll showing the public would support Cameron if he did order the RAF to bomb Isis in Syria.
Thursday's Daily Mail front page: We should bomb Syria say 60% of Britons #tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers pic.twitter.com/i9nhuNdm0q
— Nick Sutton (@suttonnick) November 18, 2015
I will post more on this through the morning.
Otherwise, it is a mixed day. Here is the agenda.
9am: Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, delivers a speech on the economy.
9.30am: The Home Office publishes statistics covering arrests, stop and search, and other matters. Figures are also being published covering trends in the criminal justice system, and NEETs (young people not in education, employment or training).
9.45am: Tim Loughton, the former children’s minister, and Oliver Letwin, the Cabinet Office minister, give evidence to the Commons public accounts committee about Kids Company.
Morning: The BMA releases the results of the strike ballot by junior doctors.
1.30pm: Sadiq Khan, the Labour candidate for London mayor, gives a speech to the Commons press gallery.
As usual, I will also be covering breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I will post a summary at lunchtime and another in the afternoon.
If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on@AndrewSparrow.
