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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

Labour leadership contest: We failed on Russia under Corbyn's leadership, says Nandy – live news

Lisa Nandy giving a speech to the RSA thinktank.
Lisa Nandy giving a speech to the RSA thinktank. Photograph: Neil Hall/EPA

Afternoon summary

  • Lisa Nandy, one of the Labour leadership candidates, has said that under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership the party “failed on Russia”. In a speech on foreign policy, in which she also said the party should have defended free movement, she said:

We stood with the Russian government, and not with the people it oppresses, who suffer poverty and discrimination. We failed the test of solidarity.

There is a full summary of her speech and Q&A at 3.36pm. Andrew Fisher, who worked for Corbyn as head of policy until the election, accused Nandy of repeating a false Tory smear. He posted this on Twitter.

  • Boris Johnson has said the government “will legislate” to make sure no one who served in the armed forces suffers “vexatious or unfair prosecution” for historic cases where no new evidence has been provided. He was speaking in PMQs in response to a question from Labour’s Sarah Jones, who asked how this Tory commitment squared with the government’s promise to legislate for a body to investigate killings during the Troubles (a promise made as part of the deal to re-establish power-sharing at Stormont). Jones said:

The press were briefed last year that the prime minister was going to bring an end to all ongoing investigations from the conflict, and he said on Monday that he wouldn’t support vexatious claims when there was no new evidence, but, of course, the Stormont agreement includes the Historical Investigations Unit and the point of all the ongoing investigations is that the original evidence has never been properly investigated.

So will the prime minister today tell us, yes or no, whether he now supports the investigation of every single outstanding claim?

Johnson responded:

We will go ahead and, as I said yesterday, I think there’s a good balance that’s been struck in getting Stormont going again, between those who need truth and those who need certainty and the protection of our armed services and nothing in the agreement, I want to reassure the house, will stop us from going ahead with legislation to make sure that no one who served in our armed forces suffers unfair prosecution, vexatious or unfair prosecution for cases that happened many years ago where no new evidence has been provided. We will legislate to ensure that that cannot happen.

That’s all from me for today.

Thanks for the comments.

Updated

In a blog the New Statesman’s Patrick Maguire has praised the politics of Lisa Nandy’s comments on free movement. (See 1.54pm.) Here’s an extract.

Sources close to Nandy describe the intervention as a “strong defence of free movement”. Politically, the point of offering it is clear: she has no hope of winning among the Labour selectorate if her agenda on towns and regional inequality is seen as synonymous with a rightward lurch on migration.

In framing her reservations with EU migration as it currently exists in terms members like and understand – that is, the failure of successive governments to invest in education and skills training, particularly in the communities that need it most – Nandy will hope she has gone some way to defusing the issue.

Will it work? Questions will remain about whether the tension between Nandy’s call to listen to communities that voted for Brexit and her defence of the principle of free movement can be resolved. But the fact that she has moved to answer them in her own terms, before her opponents have had the opportunity to ask them, goes some way to explaining why it is her leadership campaign that currently appears to be gaining momentum.

From my colleague Jennifer Rankin in Brussels

Rebecca Long-Bailey has announced that she will formally launch her campaign at an event starting at 7pm on Friday. This is about the worst possible time of the week to hold an event if you want it to attract extensive coverage in national newspapers (on Fridays their deadlines are earlier than usual, because they print in larger numbers for Saturday), but given the way most papers cover the Long-Bailey wing of the Labour party, this may be deliberate. The timing will, however, suit supporters who want to attend the event in Manchester after work.

How five unions control the Labour affiliates vote

There are 12 trade unions affiliated to Labour and 20 socialist societies. They all get voting rights at party conference, in accordance with the number of members they have paying to be affiliated to Labour, and collectively they have 50% of the votes at party conference. Ordinary party members have the other 50% of the votes.

Under the new Labour leadership rules, the affiliated organisations play a part because they can nominate candidates. If a candidate fails to get nominated by 5% of constituency Labour parties, they need to get nominations from at least 5% of the affiliate vote, with at least three organisations nominating them.

That does not sound too challenging; finding just three organisations to back you out of 22 should not be too hard. But Labour insiders say that, without the support of one of the five big unions, it is impossible to reach the 5% threshold. That is because the vast majority of 2m-odd votes available in this section are allocated to these five unions.

The Labour party will not release figures showing what percentage of the vote each organisation has in the affiliates section. But here are figures from a party insider showing what the numbers were in 2016. They will have changed a bit since then, but I’m told these are still a good rough guide to what the situation is now.

Unite - around 550,000 affiliated members - 28% of the total vote

Unison - around 400,000 affiliated members - 20% of the total vote

Usdaw - around 400,000 affiliated members - 20% of the total vote

GMB - around 400,000 affiliated members - 20% of the total vote

CWU - around 150,000 affiliated members - 8% of the total vote.

The other unions are relatively tiny compared to these big five. According to these figures, the TSSA was the next biggest union in 2016, with around 18,000 members, and 0.9% of the vote. And the entire membership of the socialist societies was less than 26,000, comprising 1.3% of the vote at most.

(If anyone has got more up-to-date figures, please do get in touch.)

Updated

Starmer now just one nomination away from getting on final leadership ballot

Sera, the Labour environment campaign (originally it was the Socialist Environment and Resources Association), has endorsed Sir Keir Starmer for Labour leader. That may not sound very significant, because Sera is a tiny organisation, but it is one of the 20 socialist societies affiliated to Labour and as such it can nominate candidates for the party leadership.

Starmer and the other four candidates still in the race - Rebecca Long-Bailey, Jess Phillips, Lisa Nandy and Emily Thornberry - have already received enough nominations from MPs to make it on to the ballot.

But they won’t be allowed on the ballot unless they clear another hurdle. Under a rule introduced under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, they must either get nominations from 5% of constituency Labour parties (which means 33 of them), or get nominations from at least three affiliates (at least two of which must be trade unions; the other could be a union or a socialist society), comprising between them at least 5% of the affiliate membership.

Starmer has already had an endorsement from Unison, which on its own accounts for more than 5% of the total affiliate membership. Now, with Sera backing him, he needs the support of just one more union to be on the ballot.

Announcing their reason for Sera’s decision, its co-chairs, Jake Sumner and Melanie Smallman, said:

We looked hard at the record and competences of all of the candidates and it was very clear to us that Keir stood out as the candidate who had consistently supported Sera’s positions within the party and in parliament – opposing the expansion of Heathrow airport, standing up to protect environmental legislation in the Brexit debate, and campaigning with us on air quality.

Most importantly, we are in a race to tackle the climate emergency. We need a leader who can take on the government now and who has the experience and broad appeal to take Labour into power and urgently deliver the measures needed to address the looming climate emergency.

Updated

Lisa Nandy's speech and Q&A - Summary

Lisa Nandy’s speech to the RSA thinktank earlier on foreign policy was a lot more substantial than the speech she delivered on Monday. It may not have amounted to an all-encompassing vision, but Nandy has a very good turn of phrase - eg, “the lesson from history is that the path of least resistance has never pointed towards progress”, or “Labour is not yet in power, but we should never believe we are powerless” - and the speech contained some serious arguments. Here is a summary of the main points from what was in it, and from her Q&A.

  • Nandy said Labour “failed on Russia” under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. She did not refer to Corbyn by name in this passage (or anywhere else in the speech), but this critique was clearly aimed at Corbyn and his advisers. It is one of the strongest attacks on any aspect of the Corbyn leadership we have heard during this contest.

Russia is a regime that discriminates against LBGT people,

That demonises Muslims and other minorities and suppresses basic rights.

That has invaded its neighbour and occupied a chunk of its sovereign territory.

That used chemical weapons on the streets of the UK and murdered a homeless person.

It was totally wrong that our response to this was to cast doubt on what happened and call only for dialogue. At a crucial moment, we hesitated in condemning an authoritarian regime that supports Trump, invades its neighbours, steals its country’s wealth, interferes in elections in Europe and America, attacks minority communities and then used chemical weapons on the streets of the UK.

We stood with the Russian government, and not with the people it oppresses, who suffer poverty and discrimination. We failed the test of solidarity.

And as a result, we let the Tories get away with their own shocking weakness on Putin’s Russia: suppressing the ISC report; failing to answer basic questions on their own funding by rich Russian oligarchs; letting the city of London become a paradise for corrupt money laundering.

The Labour leadership failed on Russia. We must put this right.

  • She said Labour should have defended free movement. (See 1.54pm.)
  • She appeared to rule out signing a trade deal with President Trump, saying the UK should not reach such a deal with any country not ratifying the Paris climate change agreement. The US is withdrawing from this agreement. Nandy said:

We cannot turn up at the G20 and pledge our commitment to the Paris agreement while continuing to use government money to invest in fossil fuel projects overseas. Or export plastic waste to dump it in South-East Asia.

As we look to forge new trading alliances across the world, we will need to make choices. We should be clear now: we would refuse to agree any trade deal with a country that has not ratified the Paris agreement. We must use trade to support climate action, not hamper it.

  • She said Labour missed an opportunity to push for a soft Brexit after the referendum. This was a moment when remain and leave voters could have been brought together, she argued.
  • She criticised the Labour remain case in the referendum for its lack of vision, saying it was too focused on defending the status quo.

In recent years the question of internationalism has been reduced to a discussion on the left that can be reduced to this: EU – in or out?

It has polarised the whole country, most of whom had much more complex and nuanced views about EU membership and EU structures than this reductionist debate would have us believe.

So we were unable to hear those leave voters who thought close international cooperation was important or remain voters who disliked some of the decisions and direction the EU had taken. Complexity was airbrushed from the debate. Unable to have an honest conversation about what needed to change, we were left defending what was, not being honest with the public about how to build better, more democratic cooperation with our closest neighbours.

How could it be that Labour – a force for radical change that has won only three times in our history when we’ve had an ambitious story to tell about the future - was simply on the back foot defending the status quo?

(Arguably, this is unfair. If the argument about Brexit became binary, that was largely because referendums by their nature reduce matters to a binary choice.)

  • She said Labour should have accepted that the referendum vote was “a call for more power and control”.
  • She said in the Q&A that she did not use the phrase green new deal because it was a phrase that “means absolutely nothing to most of my constituents”. (See 2.02pm.) This will be seen as a dig at Rebecca Long-Bailey, who has championed the plan, although Nandy stressed that she was not opposed to the policy; she was just concerned about the way it was described.
  • She said she was not someone who had always wanted to be Labour leader since childhood. (See 1.46pm.)
Lisa Nandy speaking at the RSA.
Lisa Nandy speaking at the RSA. Photograph: Peter Summers/Getty Images

Updated

Former MP Keith Vaz launches surprise Labour comeback

The disgraced former MP Keith Vaz has made a surprise bid to re-enter Labour politics after being declared as the chair of the constituency party that he represented for 32 years, my colleague Rajeev Syal reports.

Listing Extinction Rebellion as extreme ideology 'absolute disgrace', says Long-Bailey

In her speech in the Queen’s speech debate earlier Rebecca Long-Bailey, the shadow business secretary and Labour leadership candidates, said she was “alarmed” about the report that counter-terrorism police had listed Extinction Rebellion as an “extreme ideology”. She said:

The reports that the government’s response to defend the recommendation to list them [Extinction Rebellion] alongside neo-Nazi terrorists was an absolute disgrace and I urge [Andrea Leadsom, the business secretary] to speak to her colleagues about this because it’s absolutely absurd that our school strikers, that our climate activists who are trying to fight to be heard here in Westminster are being listed alongside terrorist organisations when they’re simply trying to save the planet and deliver a world for their children and grandchildren.

Much of her speech was devoted to the climate crisis, and Long-Bailey argued that the government’s target to cut emissions in the UK to zero by 2050 was “not good enough”. She said:

The IPCC, the world’s leading body on climate change, says that the entire world needs to reach net zero by 2020 to avoid more than 1.5 degrees of warming.

Given the UK’s historic responsibility for climate change and our wealth and resources to do something about it, we clearly need to be ahead of the curve by this, and we need to be honest, that 2050 is not good enough, not if we’re serious about keeping our people safe, and I’d urge the government to revisit this target.

Long-Bailey also said the government had to be honest about the fact that it was not on track to meet its targets. She said:

Let’s be honest about what that means. It’s not like failing an exam or a driving test, failing on climate change means devastating fires sweeping across Australia and the Amazon, it means critical threats to our food security, our water security and our entire ecosystem on which we all depend.

Rebecca Long-Bailey.
Rebecca Long-Bailey. Photograph: HoC

Q: What do you think about Labour’s stance on Russia?

Nandy says she has not been in the shadow cabinet since 2016. She says she does not know why the party adopted the position it did, but she says appearing to show support for President Putin was a mistake.

Q: Why did you not mention the green new deal in your speech?

Nandy says she did not use the phrase because “it means absolutely nothing to most of my constituents”.

She says the party needs to find the right language to explain its policies.

Q: Are you saying that if President Trump pulls out of the Paris climate change accord, the UK should refuse to do a trade deal with him?

Nandy says some of the most inspiring thing she has seen have involved the use of trade deals to drive up standards. That is what she means by standing by your values. And she says she thinks her constituents in Wigan care about this as much as anyone else.

As for whether this would harm the economy, Nandy says the biggest threat to the world is the climate crisis. She says Mark Carney, the former Bank of England governor, has made this point.

Q: How would you make the House of Commons function more effectively?

Nandy says she would like to defend the Commons. In the last parliament MPs were trying to do the right thing.

Q: Who is to blame for Labour’s failures on Brexit?

Nandy says this has been a collective failure.

She says she tried to make the case after the referendum for Labour to engage in a conversation about what should come next. She lost, she says.

In 2019 she made the case for Labour backing a soft Brexit. But she lost, she says.

And that’s it. The Q&A is over.

I will post a summary of the speech and Q&A soon.

Nandy says Labour should have defended free movement

This is what Lisa Nandy said about free movement in her speech.

We should have been bold enough to defend free movement, and the opportunities and benefits it brings. But this would have required recognising it has flaws, and not dismissing concerns as simply racist anti-immigrant sentiment.

We should acknowledge that over decades governments have used the steady influx of skilled labour to cover up a lack of investment in skills and training in the UK and address this.

I believe in free movement. If it were paired with renewed and radical investment that enabled opportunities for young people, decent jobs, training and skills - then the same concerns would have fallen away.

I have fought for the rights of migrant workers in the UK all my life and unlike Boris Johnson, I know that the so-called Red Wall communities do too.

Q: You voted for airstrikes against Islamic State in Iraq, but against them in Syria. What are your tests for military intervention?

Nandy says it is about what the consequences would be.

She says Wigan is a town with many people in the armed services. They go off to war, and risk death.

She says the legality of any military action is a key test.

On air strikes against Syria, she was genuinely open-minded, she says. She says there was a huge row about this in shadow cabinet. She says air strikes would have hit civilian populations.

Nandy is now taking questions from journalists.

Q: Should the UK be close to Saudia Arabia?

No, says Nandy. She says it is shameful that the UK has not distanced itself from Saudia Arabia.

Q: You back freedom of movement. Could you offer that to the EU in return for a soft Brexit?

Nandy says she thinks she was the first Labour MP to say it was a mistake for Labour to say free movement had to end.

She says the party loses its way when it pretends its values are not its values. People benefit from free movement, she says.

And she says, in the negotiation with the EU, free movement would always be on the table. Labour should stand for jobs. It should adopt a stance that would prioritise jobs.

But she says Labour is now far away from that position. The UK is leaving the EU with the loosest of all arrangements. She says the UK has to think seriously about how it remains a competitive nation.

Q: The 2015 Labour leadership contest was a choice between three continuity candidates, and one change candidate, and the change candidate won. This time there seems to be one continuity candidate, and the others represent change. What is different about you from the other candidates?

Nandy says she is not interested in differentiating herself from the other candidates. She is not someone who has always wanted to be Labour leader since she was seven, she says.

Q: What did you want to be when you were seven?

Probably a baker, says Nandy - although she says she cannot cook.

Returning to the question, Nandy says she has always thought that it is not enough for Labour just to change the leader to succeed. She says a different approach is needed.

Nandy says she likes the approach followed by Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of New Zealand.

She is in this contest because she thinks this is a moment when Labour must step up.

The path back to power will be steep, she says.

She says in places like Wigan you can feel the ground beneath you move (metaphorically). She says there is a hole where Labour should be. She says the path back to power may be steep, but it does not have to be long. She says she thinks Labour could win the next election.

Q: What is your view on Israel/Palestinian?

Nandy says for the last seven year she has been vice chair, and then chair, of Labour Friends of Palestine.

She says she has been ashamed of the obvious antisemitism in the party. And she has been ashamed of Labour’s reluctance to defend the right of Israel to exist.

She says she has always defended the two state solution because that is the only solution.

Q: What is your instinct on interventionism?

Nandy says she worked for a refugee organisation before she was an MP. She has never believed in the UK going it alone. She is not a pacifist. Sometimes you have to stand up to get peace.

She says she marched against the Iraq war. She worked for a Labour MP who voted against the war. Labour has been scarred by Iraq, she says, and it has been hard to move on. But she says it is important to recognise that there are times when you stand up for the country.

She says the Iraq war had popular support. It was hard for Labour MPs to vote against it, she says.

She says the UK should be a challenging partner in the relationship with the US. It should be demanding assurances that the killing of Qassem Suleimani.

Q: What would your view be of a trade deal after Brexit?

Nandy says she has had a view on what sort of Brexit the UK needs. It put her at odds with the government, and with the Labour leadership. She wants a soft Brexit, she says.

She says there was a moment when Theresa May opened the door for a soft Brexit. Labour should have taken that chance, she says.

She says Labour has rendered itself “irrelevant” because it did not take that chance.

She says Labour needs to think harder about what trade deals achieve. They are big and clunky, focusing mostly on agriculture. They do not focus on the trade that actually takes place. She says when Rolls-Royce sells products, 80% of the value comes from services.

Lisa Nandy's Q&A

Lisa Nandy has finished her speech, and she is now taking question. She is on stage at the RSA with Matthew Taylor, who runs the RSA and who used to work as head of policy for Tony Blair in Downing Street. There is a live feed here.

Q: Why is internationalism so important to you?

Because this is the moment for Labour, she says. She says she wants to see an internationalist Labour party.

She says she was in despair during the Brexit referendum about the way people were just asked to choose between one of two sides.

She says Labour has to connect the local and the global. It has to choose both, she says.

Here are some lines from the Lisa Nandy speech. I will do a full summary when I have had a chance to read the text.

Jackson Carlaw launches campaign to be Scottish Tory leader

Jackson Carlaw has launched his campaign to become the next leader of the Scottish Conservatives, a role he has been filling on an interim basis since Ruth Davidson stepped down last August. Carlaw, who enjoys majority support within the party but still faces a contest with shadow social security secretary Michelle Ballantyne, proposed the following:

  • Tax cuts for middle-earners. Those earning £27,000 and above now pay more than in the rest of the UK after the SNP changed Scottish tax bands.
  • A sweeping policy review. Carlaw has already signalled that he wants to put forward a more populist policy agenda, to dovetail with Boris Johnson’s plans for the UK party, and win over blue-collar voters disillusioned with the SNP and Labour.
  • Restoring the 2.000 teachers who he says have been lost from Scotland’s classrooms since the SNP came into power in 2007 and attacking Nicola Sturgeon’s performance in what has been her key priority in government

Carlaw, who has not always employed the most judicious turn of phrase when referring to the first minister, said he would be “taking down” the SNP leader. Sturgeon immediately responded on Twitter “Tough man talk - but didn’t he just ‘take me on’ in the general election and lose half his seats? On the strength of that performance, he’s certainly my favoured candidate for Tory leader!”

Earlier in the day, Douglas Ross, a junior Scotland Office minister, told BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland that the Tories will block a second independence referendum for up to 50 years, regardless of SNP success in elections. Ross said that the party’s “once in a generation” pledge made in advance of the 2014 referendum should last “30, 40 or 50 years”.

He added that the pledge “was given in the Scottish parliament by Nicola Sturgeon when she was deputy first minister of Scotland, in the final debate that the Scottish parliament held before the referendum campaign. It was written down in the official report.”

In the Commons Rebecca Long-Bailey, the shadow business secretary and a Labour leadership candidate, is speaking now in the Queen’s speech debate. She has been focusing on the climate crisis, defending Labour’s plans for a green new deal, and criticising the government for not doing enough to cut carbon emissions. You can watch on the parliamentary website here.

And Lisa Nandy, another leadership candidate, is also on her feet, delivering a speech at the RSA thinktank on foreign policy. There is a live feed here.

I will post highlights from both speeches in due course.

PMQs - Snap verdict

Last week’s PMQs felt flat and underpowered, and frankly a bit dull, and this week’s was too. It will probably be like this for a while, for various structural reasons. Boris Johnson clearly doesn’t feel remotely threatened by the outgoing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (even when Corbyn has a point, as he did today), there are no awkward squad Tory MPs posing difficult questions and the Labour leadership contest - where what is said in the next few weeks by candidates will decide the outcome - did not feature, because none of Corbyn’s potential successors got a question.

Corbyn devoted all his questions to health and social care and the points he made about what has happened to the NHS after 10 years of Tory government were strong and unanswerable. But as an election loser who is working his notice, Corbyn doesn’t really have the authority to unsettle Johnson, and the PM rambled through quite easily. Corbyn’s reference to the Labour manifesto gave Johnson the chance to deliver an effective put-down. (See 12.11pm.) Otherwise, on the NHS, Johnson did not have an answer to the question as to why waiting times had got so much worse over the last 10 years, but as usual he sought to brush this off with super-charged, ‘will do better’ optimism.

In a small chamber dominated by supportive Tory MPs, this worked. But for quite how long can he pull this off? Exchanges like today’s must be helping to convince Johnson that, if he has not measurably improved the NHS after five years, he will be in real trouble. But he also has a tendency to over-promise - at one point today he came close to committing to cure dementia (see 12.20pm), which would be headline news if anyone believed him - and a lot of he is saying at this point in his premiership may pose problems for him further down the line, when reality catches up with him.

Sir Ed Davey, the acting Lib Dem leader, says widowed parents with children used to receive payments while they had children at home. These payments were cut, and replaced with payments lasting just 18 months. Will the government review this?

Johnson says he will meet Davey to discuss this.

And that’s it. PMQs is over.

Snap verdict coming up soon.

Maria Miller, a Conservative, asks what the government will do to protect children from online abuse.

Johnson says the cabinet discussed this yesterday. The government will be taking more action in the near future.

From the Spectator’s James Forsyth

Johnson says there is 'no threat' to UK's participation in EU's Erasmus+ student exchange scheme after Brexit

The SNP’s Douglas Chapman asks about the end of the Erasmus+ scheme. It will be a disaster, he says, quoting Muriel Gray.

Johnson says there is “no threat” to the Erasmus+ scheme.

Helen Grant, a Conservative, asks about the government’s plans for the UK-Africa investment summit.

Johnson says this will take place on 20 January. It will allow the UK to show its huge commitment to Africa, and the opportunities there are there.

Andrew Rosindell, a Conservative, says after the UK has left the EU, it will be able to lead the world in animal welfare standards. Will Johnson make this his priority?

Yes, says Johnson. As the UK leaves the EU, it will be able to ban the live shipment of animals. Under Labour plans this would not be possible, he says.

This is from the Full Fact fact-checking website.

Sir Desmond Swayne asks about the government’s plans for a commission looking at the relationship between the government and the judiciary. It is a closed question, and Johnson gives a non-commmital reply. Swayne then asks about bygones.

That seems to be a reference to Brexit, and the supreme court.

Johnson says the government wants to stop the abuse of judicial review.

Labour’s Debbie Abrahams says dementia is the biggest cause of death in the UK. Will the PM commit to more research into this?

Johnson says the government is doubling funding on this. He wants a “moon shot” and to be able to cure this, if possible.

Sir David Amess, a Conservative, says Johnson promised to make Southend a city.

Johnson says the citification of Southend continues.

Labour’s Clive Efford says research this week shows the oceans are heating up at a catastrophic rate. The government will miss most of its environmental goals for 2020. Will the PM give the new Office for Environmental Protection powers to fine the government if it misses targets?

Johnson says the Office for Environmental Protection will have powers to hold the government to account.

Johnson restates his commitment to rolling out superfast broadband.

The SNP’s leader at Westminster, Ian Blackford, says the PM is a “democracy denier”. He says Johnson refusal to allow Scotland another independence referendum is unsustainable.

Johnson says Blackford and the SNP are the deniers of democracy, because they said they would abide by the result of the 2014 poll.

Blackford says the only union Johnson is interested in is his union with Donald Trump. What backroom deals are being done with Trump?

Johnson criticises the SNP’s record on education. Children are not getting the chances they deserve because of the SNP’s obsession with independence. “Change the record,” he says.

Robert Halfon, a Conservative, says white working class boys underperform at school. Does Johnson agree the government should invest in apprenticeships?

Johnson says he does accept this. The government will reform the apprenticeship levy, he says.

Corbyn asks why the government is putting into law an inadequate funding level. The NHS needs more, he says. Johnson promised a clear plan on social care last summer. Where is it?

Johnson says he wants to hold cross-party talks on this. He wants to ensure no one has to sell their home to pay for care. He can do this with Labour support. He says he is now tackling a problem shirked by many previous governments.

Corbyn says Labour has a plan for free personal care, with support for carers. He offers to send Johnson a copy of the manifesto. He says the legislation being published today committing the government to raising NHS spending is a “gimmick”. He says the Tories should fund the NHS properly.

Johnson says he is glad Corbyn is still fighting on his manifesto, because the public made it clear what they thought of it. He says the Tories are now the party of the NHS, and they support the policies that would pay for it.

Corbyn says action is needed urgently. Last week a patient in his 90s had to wait more than four hours because a bed was not available. And last month more than 2,000 patients had to wait more than 12 hours for a bed.

Johnson says what happened to this patient was unacceptable. But most patients get fantastic treatment. The hospital in Leicester involved in this case is being rebuilt, he says.

Corbyn says Johnson promised 40 new hospitals, but it turned out to be just six. He says the investment in the NHS will not be enough.

Johnson says the Tories had to pick up from the mess left by Labour. He says he is putting more money into the NHS.

Jeremy Corbyn asks why patients are waiting longer for NHS care after 10 years of Tory government.

Johnson says the government is investing record sums in the NHS. Today the legislation is being published that will guarantee this funding.

Corbyn says the number of people waiting more than four hours at A&E for more than four hours is at a record high. And waits for cancer treatment are growing. Why is this allowed?

Johnson says the NHS is doing a fantastic jobs. But waits for cancer treatment are “unacceptable”, he says. He says the government will get those times down.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, a Tory, asks when the whole country will get gigabit broadband.

By 2025, says Johnson.

Labour’s Gill Furniss asks Boris Johnson about the loss of steel industry jobs. When will the government bring forward a comprehensive plan for this industry?

Johnson says the government is doing all it can to ensure that steel made in this country has competitive advantages. Everyone working for Liberty Steel will be able to stay in the industry because they will be offered jobs in a successor company.

PMQs

PMQs is about to start.

Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.

PMQs
PMQs Photograph: HoC

Boris Johnson wants to move CCHQ, the Conservative party’s HQ (CC stands for Conservative Campaign), out of London, according to ConservativeHome. A No 10 source told the website it should be in the north or the Midlands. Paul Goodman reports:

Downing Street told us that the new venue should be “somewhere reasonably close to a university with good maths/physics departments (we should get a data team up there), good train links, well placed in political terms”.

Given the reference to maths, physics and data, it seems likely that the source was Dominic Cummings, the PM’s most senior adviser. He is obsessed about the need for more science skills in government and in politics.

Jess Phillips, the Labour leadership candidate, has released a new campaign video this morning. It is basically a round-up of some of her greatest hits in the House of Commons.

The news that the Leave Means Leave Brexit party will go ahead in Parliament Square on 31 October will no doubt revitalise the campaign to get Big Ben chiming on the night. Two newspapers, the Sun and the Daily Express, are running front page stories today about Boris Johnson supposedly backing a crowdfunding plan to raise the £500,000 cost - even though, as my colleague Peter Walker reports in his story on this, the plan does not exist.

On ITV’s Good Morning Britain this morning the Tory Brexiter Mark Francois claimed that the £500,000 needed could be raised from the public within days. He said:

It seems to me and many of my colleagues in the House of Commons patently daft that we have got the most iconic clock in the world - literally, it’s a world heritage site - that that should stay silent on this occasion.

Francois has said he would donate £1,000 to the cause. On the Today programme this morning Iain Duncan Smith, another Tory Brexiter, said that he would be happy to chip in for this too.

Will this madness ever end? Perhaps Brexit will turn out to be a great success, but if it doesn’t, anyone telling the story of Britain’s national decline is going to have to include a chapter about the fetishisation of a Victorian clock and why it has become such an all-embracing Brexiter obsession. It is quite peculiar ...

Nigel Farage, the Brexit party leader, has said that the party Leave Means Leave is planning for Parliament Square to celebrate Brexit on the night of 31 January is going ahead.

Scottish government has 'many options' to force referendum on independence, Scottish minister claims

Mike Russell, the Scottish constitutional relations secretary, claimed this morning that the Scottish government had “many options” it could follow to ensure a second independence referendum took place. Under the Scotland Act the Scottish government needs Westminster approval to hold a vote, but yesterday Boris Johnson said he would not allow this.

Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme, Russell said:

I think you can either have democracy or you can have dictatorship, you can’t have both.

If Boris Johnson wants to be a dictator that simply says ‘other people’s votes don’t matter, Scotland’s doesn’t matter, Scotland isn’t a nation’, that is a decision which cannot hold in my view, because it goes so much against the views of the people of Scotland.

Even those who are not in favour of independence, we know, are in favour of saying it is right that if the people of Scotland vote for something they get their chance to choose. That is all this is about.

The Scottish government has refused to rule out taking legal action in a bid to win the right to hold a fresh independence ballot. Russell said SNP ministers had “many options” but added he did “not want to go into them”.

Mike Russell.
Mike Russell. Photograph: Ken Jack/Getty Images

Matt Hancock signals A&E waiting targets likely to be scrapped

Matt Hancock has signalled that four-hour waiting targets for A&E are likely to be scrapped for the NHS in England after the worst figures on record this winter, my colleague Rowena Mason reports. She says:

The health secretary said it would be better if targets were “clinically appropriate” and the “right targets”, as he defended the NHS’s failure to meet the standard that 95% of patients attending A&E should be admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours.

The target was put under review by Theresa May’s government and the NHS unveiled plans last March to pilot changes that would prioritise patients with serious conditions while patients with minor problems could wait longer than four hours.

A decision about the flagship four-hour target is due to be taken by NHS England in the coming months.

And here is her story in full.

Jess Phillips says she is open to being persuaded of case for decriminalising drug use

Jess Phillips, another Labour leadership contender, was in Glasgow yesterday, and she gave an interview to the Daily Record. Here are the main points.

  • Phillips strongly criticised John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, for saying last summer that Labour would not oppose having a second referendum on Scottish independence. She said:

For Scottish Labour, that was like pulling the rug away without any forewarning ... What John McDonnell did harmed Scottish Labour.

She suggested this move by McDonnell implied that a Labour government would operate in alliance with the SNP and she said this was damaging to the party. She said:

Why would you vote Labour in Scotland if you knew you could vote SNP and get a Labour government?

  • She described herself as a unionist. Asked about this, she said:

Yes … I am proud to be from the United Kingdom. I would never, ever want to see the break up of our nation.

  • She said she was open to being persuaded of the case for decriminalising drugs. Asked about this she said:

I am absolutely open minded to be brought round on that matter.

  • She said she backed calls for safe consumption rooms for drug addicts. She said that her brother used to be a heroin addict and that as a result this issue really mattered to her.
  • She was lukewarm in her support for the Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard, before admitting that she had not had many dealings with him.
Jess Phillips (left) visiting a Glasgow shelter for the homeless.
Jess Phillips (left) visiting a Glasgow shelter for the homeless. Photograph: David Cheskin/Getty Images

Nandy criticises Labour remainers for not having internationalist vision of UK's place in world

In a speech this afternoon Lisa Nandy, one of the five candidates still in the contest for the Labour leadership, will criticise Labour remainers for not being internationalist enough. According to a preview by Jane Merrick for the i, Nandy will argue that remainers were so focused on making the case for staying in the EU that the ended up paying only “lip service” to its broader internationalist traditions.

We have not seen the full text of the speech yet, but according to the i Nandy will say:

For Labour internationalism has become just about being in the EU.

We’ve paid lip service to our proud internationalist history but without ever explaining what that meant for the future. Because we’ve been locked in a corrosive debate solely focused on remain or leave.

One of the problems with the referendum was that there was no story about our place in the world. They said we were a small nation with a proud history of punching above our weight. We said we’ll cut your mobile phone roaming charges.

Nandy voted remain in the 2016, but she represents Wigan, where 64% of people voted leave, and in the last parliament she was one of the Labour MPs arguing that the party should accept the result of the referendum and implement a soft version of Brexit.

Lisa Nandy giving a speech in Dagenham on Monday.
Lisa Nandy giving a speech in Dagenham on Monday. Photograph: Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images

Leadsom defends Flybe rescue plan

As the BBC reports, the government’s decision to offer a rescue package to the regional airline company Flybe has been criticised by the British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh. In a private letter to Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, Walsh said Flybe did not need government support. According to the BBC, Walsh said:

Prior to the acquisition of Flybe by the consortium which includes Virgin/Delta, Flybe argued for tax payers to fund its operations by subsidising regional routes.

Virgin/Delta now want the taxpayer to pick up the tab for their mismanagement of the airline. This is a blatant misuse of public funds.

Flybe’s precarious situation makes a mockery of the promises the airline, its shareholders and Heathrow have made about the expansion of regional flights if a third runway is built.

But Andrea Leadsom, the business secretary, has defended the government’s move. She told BBC Breakfast:

The government isn’t in the market to bail out private companies. What we do on a case by case basis is look to see whether a business is viable. In the case of Flybe, it is a viable business. There are structural challenges ...

The regional connectivity role that it provides for the UK means that there are some routes that are very tricky, and what we have agreed to do as a government is a review of regional connectivity that takes into account, for example, our net zero carbon emissions. And what that will do is it will continue to create a level playing field for all airlines.

A Flybe aircraft at Manchester airport.
A Flybe aircraft at Manchester airport. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

Trump praises Boris Johnson for suggesting US should draft new Iran deal

Ostensibly Boris Johnson is a close ally of Donald Trump’s, but on matters of substance the Johnson government has shown some willingness to keep its distance from Washington and how the relationship will end up remains to be seen. On Huawei, Johnson is so far refusing to adopt the Washington line. As my colleague Dan Sabbagh reports, the UK is rejecting some of the warnings coming from the Trump administration and the Times today (paywall) says opinion in government is “leaning towards rejecting US demands to ban the company on security grounds”. And on Iran, although the UK did not criticise the decision to assassinate the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani, its support wasn’t unequivocal and full-throated.

It is hard to know where the relationship will end up, but yesterday there was an interesting development when Johnson used his BBC interview to urge Trump to come up with a replacement to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Obama-era deal to stop Iran developing a nuclear weapon that Trump has rejected. Johnson said this even though Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, later told MPs that the UK had still not given up on the JCPOA. Trump has welcomed Johnson’s comments. Overnight he tweeted this.

Trump’s tweet is based on a misquote; it leaves out an “if”. What Johnson actually said was: “If we are going to get rid of [the JCPOA], let’s replace it and let’s replace it with the Trump deal.”

Trump may have praised Johnson’s intervention, but it has been criticised by the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani. According to Reuters, in a speech yesterday Rouhani said the offer of a Trump deal was “strange” and he said Britain and the US should stick with the JCPOA. He said:

This Mr Prime Minister in London, I don’t know how he thinks. He says let’s put aside the nuclear deal and put the Trump plan in action.

If you take the wrong step, it will be to your detriment. Pick the right path. The right path is to return to the nuclear deal.

We are likely to hear more on this at PMQs.

Here is the agenda for the day.

11am: Peers resume their debate on the EU (withdrawal agreement) bill.

12pm: Boris Johnson faces Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs.

1pm: Lisa Nandy, the Labour leadership candidate, gives a speech on foreign policy.

As usual, I will be covering breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I plan to post a summary when I wrap up.

You can read all the latest Guardian politics articles here. Here is the Politico Europe roundup of this morning’s political news. And here is the PoliticsHome list of today’s top 10 must-reads.

If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.

If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter.

Updated

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