Good morning and welcome to our general election coverage as Jeremy Corbyn prepares to launch Labour’s campaign manifesto with big promises on housing and green jobs. You can stay up to date during the day with our live politics coverage but for now let’s jump into this morning’s top stories.
What’s going on?
Corbyn will seek to reassure voters he is “on your side” when he launches the party’s manifesto this morning, with a huge boost to social housing at its heart. The party’s £75bn plan to “build for the many” includes the promise to fund the biggest increase in council housing construction since the second world war. By the end of its first term in office Labour is pledging to build 100,000 council houses a year and 50,000 social homes through housing associations. It’s a huge boost compared with what is happening now, with just 6,287 council homes built in 2018-19.
Corbyn is anticipating the “hostility of the rich and powerful” to the plan as “inevitable” but is hoping to win over the almost 1.6m families raising children in rented homes, a figure that has doubled in the last decade. There are also 4.5 million households renting privately in England. And paying for the policy? Labour says it will use half of its recently announced £150bn “social transformation fund”. You can see the Guardian’s fact check on whether the numbers stack up.
For the Tories’ part they will announce a “fairer deal for renters” today including a government-guaranteed scheme to allow tenants to transfer their deposit from one property to another.
At a glance
Labour’s election manifesto will also include a promise of a million green jobs to tackle the climate crisis.
Boris Johnson has let slip that the Tories plan to cut national insurance.
Corbyn must convince voters under 40 that Labour’s manifesto is worth voting for or Johnson will triumph, writes Owen Jones.
It’s time for tactical voting in this election, writes Martin Kettle, who says Brexit is too terrifying for political piety.
The day ahead
Corbyn will launch Labour’s election manifesto at 10am in Birmingham.
Johnson is expected to continue his campaigning in the Bedfordshire area.
The Scottish Greens’ co-leader Patrick Harvie is due to join Edinburgh West candidate Elaine Gunn for a bike ride, before talking about the party’s policies to radically transform Scotland’s transport network.
The former Scottish first minister Alex Salmond is due to appear in court in Edinburgh on sexual assault and attempted rape charges, which he denies.
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Best of the rest
> Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the EU, has delivered a devastating blow to Donald Trump at the impeachment inquiry. “Was there a ‘quid pro quo? … the answer is yes,” Sondland testified, saying that officials had “followed the president’s orders” in putting pressure on Ukraine to carry out politically motivated investigations of his rivals. “Mr [Rudy] Giuliani demanded that Ukraine make a public statement announcing investigations of the 2016 election/DNC server and Burisma. Mr Giuliani was expressing the desires of the president of the United States, and we knew that these investigations were important to the president.” And don’t forget, this evidence comes from a Trump donor.
> Prince Andrew is to make an unprecedented withdrawal from public duties after his disastrous attempt to explain away his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the paedophile mogul who killed himself in a US jail. Andrew said he was “willing to help any appropriate law enforcement agency with their investigations if required” concerning investigations of Epstein.
> The world’s donkey population is facing wipeout as millions are slaughtered for their hides to meet rising demand for a gelatin-based traditional Chinese medicine called ejiao. Donkeys labour in support of about 500 million people in some of the most impoverished parts of the world. A report from the Donkey Sanctuary says many of them are being stolen from those communities to service the market in China, which consumes an estimated 4.8m hides a year. China’s donkey numbers have fallen by three-quarters since 1992.
Today in Focus podcast: What would Labour nationalise?
On the day of Labour’s manifesto launch, economics editor Larry Elliott and financial editor Nils Pratley discuss the party’s radical plans to nationalise key British industries. Plus Max Rushden on the return of Jose Mourinho to the Premier League.
Lunchtime read: How home delivery reshaped the world
When John Lewis built its Magna Park 1 warehouse a decade ago, it was intended to service the company’s stores. But then online shopping started to explode – resulting in Magna Park 2, then Magna Park 3. In all the three “sheds” cover several million square feet.
John Lewis’s appetite for shed space is, at its heart, the story of the explosion of home delivery – a story in which we have all been willing participants, since it is our clicking and swiping that has powered the boom. But the great trick of online retail, writes Samanth Subramanian, has been to get us to shop more while thinking less about how our purchases reach our homes.
Sport
José Mourinho has been told that he will have to work with Tottenham’s existing squad as there is no money for an overhaul in January. Questions are being asked if Mourinho is the right fit for Spurs, but chairman Daniel Levy and the new manager have more in common than might be supposed. Saracens, attempting to deal with the fallout from one of the biggest scandals in English club history, insist their heavy punishment for salary-cap breaches will not have an impact on Eddie Jones’s squad in the forthcoming Six Nations.
The FA’s plan to help Phil Neville turn the Lionesses into world-beaters is to receive a major boost with the addition of the US Women’s National Team’s high performance coach Dawn Scott to his staff. Andy Murray says he did not deserve to beat the young Dutch outsider Tallon Griekspoor in his first Davis Cup match in three years but Great Britain were grateful yet again for his extraordinary resilience in Madrid. Anthony Joshua has bristled at suggestions that he could be mentally scarred by his shock stoppage defeat to Andy Ruiz Jr in June, telling reporters he has “not become a pussy overnight”. And former NBA player Charles Barkley has apologised for telling a female reporter, “I don’t hit women, but if I did, I would hit you.”
Business
Rupert Murdoch said that there are “no climate change deniers around here” when he was questioned about the scepticism on the subject of his Australian newspapers at News Corp’s AGM in New York overnight. He pointed to the company’s reduction in its carbon footprint as evidence. The possibility that Donald Trump will sign legislation protecting the rights of Hong Kong protesters saw stocks in Asia fall as investors worried that it might jeopardise the first phase of the US-China trade accord. The FTSE100 is set to fall nearly 0.5% this morning while the pound is up a fraction at $1.293 and €1.167.
The papers
Prince Andrew dominates the papers today, with the Mail splashing with a single-word headline: “Outcast”. It says the Queen and Prince Charles forced the duke to stand down from royal duties. The Sun’s splash is “Prince Endy”, adding the Queen was said to be “very disappointed with her second son”.
The Express has “Andrew shamed into stepping down”. The Mirror has simply: “I’m sorry Mummy” over a picture of Prince Andrew. The Guardian carries a large picture of Andrew with the headline: “Scandal forces prince to suspend public duties”. It reserves its splash for “Labour in £75bn pledge to tackle UK housing crisis”.
The Times’ headline is: “Duke stands down after crisis talks with Queen”, while the Telegraph has: “Duke departs from public life”. The Financial Times is the only paper to ignore the royal crisis, instead leading with “Sondland ‘followed’ orders from Trump on Ukraine quid pro quo”.
You can see our full review of the papers here.
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