Starmer still has ‘confidence in his top team’, says Downing Street
Downing Street said Keir Starmer still had confidence in his “top team” follow questions over his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, who was reported to have lobbied for Peter Mandelson’s initial appointment.
The PA news agency reports that when asked if Starmer still had confidence in McSweeney’s judgment, a No 10 spokesperson said:
Of course the prime minister has confidence in his top team and they are getting on with the important work of this government, which has seen us deliver more than 5m extra NHS appointments, new NHS league tables to drive up standards for patients, the new defence industrial strategy, which has included things like the £10bn frigate deal with Norway.
Key events
Keir Starmer is “not up to the job” of prime minister, a backbench Labour MP has said.
Clive Lewis, MP for Norwich South, told the BBC’s The Week In Westminster programme:
You see a Labour prime minister who feels that he’s lost control within the first year.
This isn’t navel-gazing. This is me thinking about my constituents, this country, and the fact that the person who is eight points ahead of us is Nigel Farage. That terrifies me. It terrifies my constituents, and it terrifies a lot of people in this country.
We don’t have the luxury of carrying on this way with someone who I think increasingly, I’m sorry to say, just doesn’t seem up to the job.
Lewis is the first backbencher to call for the prime minister to go, adding there was “a very, very dangerous atmosphere in the PLP (Parliamentary Labour Party) at the moment” following a “deeply unpopular” cabinet reshuffle.
He said:
People are concerned, slightly downtrodden, a little bit browbeaten and feeling as if the party has seen better days – it’s not a great atmosphere.
Mark Brown
There is a “resilience and grit” that comes from being born in the north-east of England, says Fiona Hill, who went from a working-class childhood in County Durham to a top intelligence job at the heart of the White House.
But, she believes, it is also a big reason why she and other notable high achievers have had the success they have. The secret of success could be being from the north-east.
Hill has talked to a number of figures from – or with strong links to – the north-east for her new Forged in the North podcast series, which will be launched at Durham book festival in October.
They include two global figures originally from the same part of Wallsend: the Cramlington primary school teacher turned superstar Sting, and the Yale historian Paul Kennedy.
“It’s basically just listening to two people who seem on the surface so completely different but have this common origin story,” says Hill.
Other podcast guests are Lee Hall, the writer of Billy Elliot; Brendan Foster, the founder of the Great North Run; the north-east mayor, Kim McGuinness; the Dragons’ Den entrepreneur Sara Davies; the dramatist Peter Straughan; and the Paralympian Tanni Grey-Thompson, who lives in Stockton-on-Tees.
Hill was born and brought up in Bishop Auckland, the daughter of a coalminer and a midwife. She and her accent went on to be a foreign affairs adviser to US presidents George W Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump and she is considered one of the world’s leading experts on Russia and Putin.
Last year she was named as one of three advisers to oversee the UK government’s strategic defence review.
The new series is born, Hill says, of a belief that “too much happens down in London, as if the rest of the country doesn’t exist”.
Lisa O’Carroll
The taoiseach Micheál Martin has said “very good progress” has been made on finding a replacement to the controversial British legislation for dealing with historic murders in Northern Ireland following a meeting with Keir Starmer in Chequers this morning.
A new package of measures that would see Ireland drop its interstate lawsuit against the UK is expected to be announced within the coming weeks. This would be a rare move taken after its objections to the Legacy Act, and those of the five main political parties in Northern Ireland, were not heeded by the Conservative government.
Martin said:
Very good progress has been made on legacy, and the prime minister and I agreed that we are close to setting out a framework to address legacy issues, recognising its importance to victims and survivors, and to the wider community in Northern Ireland and across these islands.
They also discussed “the catastrophic situation in Gaza,” he said.
Education secretary Bridget Phillipson, and the ousted cabinet minister Lucy Powell, are set to be the two candidates for Labour’s deputy leadership as other candidates struggled to get the minimum number of nominations.
On Wednesday evening, Phillipson had the backing of 116 MPs and Powell had 77 nominations, three short of the required 80.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy and Paula Barker received support from fewer than 15 MPs, with Emily Thornberry announcing on Thursday she had withdrawn from the race. The communities minister Alison McGovern pulled out on Wednesday afternoon and endorsed Phillipson.
The ballot for members to vote will open on Wednesday 8 October and they will have until Thursday 23 October to have their say. Results will be announced on Saturday 25 October.
The Guardian community team are keen to hear from readers:
What questions would you like us to put to the candidates on your behalf? Let us know. We’ll publish some of your questions, their answers and your verdict on those answers. We will use a photo of those included so please send in an image of yourself as well as your full name, age and where you live. You can see the questions we put to the Green party leadership candidates here.
Week of protests over Palestine Action ban will begin at Labour conference
Haroon Siddique
A week of mass actions protesting against the ban on Palestine Action has been announced, beginning at the Labour party conference in Liverpool and culminating in a national mobilisation in Parliament Square in London on 4 October.
The plans were announced by Defend Our Juries on Friday, a week after 857 people were arrested under the Terrorism Act at a demonstration outside parliament opposing proscription. It said the next phase of the protests represented a “major escalation” that would create an “unprecedented challenge” for the police, with 1,100 people already registered to take part and risk arrest.
“There should be no confusion about where the blame lies: it sits squarely with the government for pursuing this authoritarian ban, plunging an overstretched police force and court and prison systems which are already in crisis, into further chaos,” a spokesperson said. “The power lies with the new home secretary to end this farce by listening to MPs, lords, UN experts, legal professionals, human rights advocates – and the majority of her own party’s members – and lift this dangerous, anti-democratic ban.”
They accused the prime minister, Keir Starmer, of “grotesque double standards” for meeting the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, this week, while people had been arrested for holding cardboard signs in support of Palestine Action. They said it made people “even more determined to do whatever it takes to overturn this unjust ban, including by targeting Starmer’s upcoming conference”.
Protests at the party conference, which begins on 28 September, will be an unwelcome distraction for the prime minister as he attempts to address Labour’s slump in the polls.
Downing Street said the prime minister had confidence in the vetting system but the process was kept under “constant review”.
A Number 10 spokesperson said:
We always keep national security vetting and other procedures under constant review to make sure they retain their position as world-leading.
The prime minister has confidence in the vetting process. But, yes, of course, we always keep these things under constant review.
TfL invites RMT for further talks as London tube services resume after strike
Gwyn Topham
Transport for London has invited the RMT to resume talks as the union’s week of strikes came to a close, with tube train services restored after early disruption on Friday.
Services on all London Underground lines restarted on Friday morning after the morning rush hour, but delays continued due to the after-effects of a series of strikes by 10,000 RMT members that concluded on Thursday night.
The RMT did not confirm whether it would accept TfL’s invitation to further talks next Wednesday, after saying further strikes could follow.
A union source said:
This is a step in the right direction from TfL and has only occurred due to the industrial pressure from RMT members this week.
The RMT hopes to secure a shorter working week and tackle fatigue, but TfL has said any reduction was impractical and unaffordable.
Four days of near-total closures on the tube network cut total patronage on TfL services, measured by contactless tap-ins, by at least 20% each day as many people stayed home.
Hundreds of prison officers may have to leave UK after Labour’s visa rule change
Rajeev Syal
Hundreds of foreign prison officers will lose their jobs and could be forced to return to their home countries at short notice because of a change in visa rules introduced by Labour, governors and a union have warned.
More than 1,000 staff, mainly from African countries, have been sponsored by prisons across England and Wales allowing them to come to the UK on skilled worker visas.
But since a rule change in July, overseas prison officers whose contracts need to be renewed have been told that they are no longer eligible for a visa if they are paid below the threshold of £41,700. Keir Starmer promised in May to drive down net migration to the UK “significantly”.
Mark Fairhurst, the national chair of the Prison Officers’ Association (POA) union, said the change was “scandalous” and done in haste because the government was “pandering to Reform”.
He said:
We have written to ministers asking them to reverse this decision and give prison officers an exemption because we need the staff they are forcing out of the country, but they won’t give it to us.
It is because they are pandering to Reform: they want to seem tough on immigration and reduce the level of overseas workers. But as a result, prisons will be harder to manage, staff morale will plummet and hard-working colleagues will be forced to leave the country. It is a disgraceful way to treat them.
Tom Wheatley, the president of the Prison Governors’ Association, said the changes to visa rules had come as a worrying surprise to members.
Starmer still has ‘confidence in his top team’, says Downing Street
Downing Street said Keir Starmer still had confidence in his “top team” follow questions over his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, who was reported to have lobbied for Peter Mandelson’s initial appointment.
The PA news agency reports that when asked if Starmer still had confidence in McSweeney’s judgment, a No 10 spokesperson said:
Of course the prime minister has confidence in his top team and they are getting on with the important work of this government, which has seen us deliver more than 5m extra NHS appointments, new NHS league tables to drive up standards for patients, the new defence industrial strategy, which has included things like the £10bn frigate deal with Norway.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said the prime minister “should never have appointed” Peter Mandelson, who has been sacked as ambassador to the US over his close relationship with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaking to broadcasters in Cambridge, Badenoch said:
What this is showing is that he [Keir Starmer] had very bad judgment and he was only forced into sacking Peter Mandelson because I raised those questions at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday and a lot of his backbenchers heard how bad it was and put pressure on him.
It is unfortunate that this is now happening just before a state visit. We now don’t have an ambassador in place. All of that is Keir Starmer’s fault, not anyone else’s.
Hundreds of demonstrators – both for and against the assisted dying bill – have gathered outside parliament as the first House of Lords debate on the proposed legislation takes place.
As peers took their seats in the unelected upper chamber, campaigners held placards showing their passionate stances on a divisive issue, reports the PA news agency.
There is not expected to be a vote on the bill at this stage, with a further day of debate due to be held next Friday.
A group associated with the campaigning organisation Dignity in Dying held banners with faces of loved ones and sang chants of “yes to choice, yes to dignity”.
Elise Burns, from Faversham, told the PA news agency she is hopeful the bill will pass into law. The 51-year-old said she has secondary cancer of her lungs, liver and bones. Asked if she was worried about the bill being blocked, she said:
I would be completely devastated if that were to happen, it’s the will of the people, plus the will of the elected MPs.
She said she had heard rumours of measures being used to “try and time it out” but said change to the current law is “urgent”. She added:
It’s going to be too late for me, but not for hundreds of people in the future, if not thousands of their families.
I would love [peers] to look me in the eye and tell me why me and my friends, and anyone with terminal illness, don’t deserve to die with dignity and to have the choice to die as they choose, without pain.
Opposite the Lords, some people with terminal illnesses, and their family and friends, stood outside in opposition to the bill.
Storm Green, 27, from Plaistow, was joined by her father, Cecil Harper, 64, who was diagnosed with cancer and given just two years to live back in 2019. Both told the PA news agency they are against the bill being passed.
Green pleaded with peers to make “good law” and warned the current bill could leave those who feel they are a burden vulnerable. She said:
We want to live in a country that has good law, that encourages people to thrive, that encourages people to contribute to society, to feel valued by the people around them, and I think ultimately this bill encourages a deaf culture of some sort.
Unfortunately, in a lot of cases, some people feel like they are burdened and that they don’t really have a choice.
Echoing this, her father, Cecil, said:
It may affect their mind in the fact that, ‘My life’s not worth living any more, I might as well go down that route because there’s a choice I didn’t have before’.
He said people can make “bad decisions” if they are “in the depths of depression and a lot of pain”, adding:
This law shouldn’t be passed, it shouldn’t even be an issue.
Libby Brooks
The newly appointed Scottish secretary Douglas Alexander has told off Scotland’s first minister for “playing politics” over Scotch whisky tariffs.
Earlier this week, Swinney briefed the media on his “very substantial” meeting with Donald Trump at the White House, saying that he had succeeded in pushing Scotch tariffs up the US president’s agenda where the UK government had failed.
Swinney was accompanied to the meeting by Peter Mandelson in one of his last duties before he was sacked at US ambassador.
In a statement released overnight on Friday, Alexander warned:
With president Trump’s state visit just days away, we all need to put Scotland’s economy first – not political point scoring.
Later, he told BBC Scotland:
When [Swinney] said that he had put whisky on the agenda, with great respect, we’d already done a deal with India, where whisky was a central feature of that deal.
We’ve had negotiators on the ground in Washington every day this week, and because we’ve shared that information with him, he’s fully aware that long before John Swinney arrived in the Oval Office, we were talking with and engaging with the US administration on the issue of whisky.
The Irish taoiseach Micheál Martin said “very good progress” has been made to reach an agreement with the UK on dealing with the legacy of the Northern Ireland troubles.
Martin made the comments after what he was described as a “very warm and constructive” meeting with prime minister Keir Starmer at Chequers on Friday morning.
“We discussed a broad range of matters, including the positive relations between our two countries and the extensive programme of bilateral cooperation under way between our two governments, including in preparation for the upcoming UK-Ireland summit, which will take place in Ireland in the spring,” he said.
“Very good progress has been made on legacy and the prime minister and I agreed that we are close to setting out a framework to address legacy issues, recognising its importance to victims and survivors, and to the wider community in Northern Ireland and across these islands.
“We discussed the catastrophic situation in Gaza – the need for a ceasefire, release of all hostages and a massive surge in humanitarian aid. We also committed to continue working together with the coalition of the willing to strengthen support for Ukraine and increase pressure on Russia to stop its war of aggression on the people of Ukraine.”
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