On Sky News Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, has just said that in principle his party welcomes the announcement from Keir Starmer about joining the EU’s €90bn loan for Ukraine. (See 8.40am.) But he would want to see the details, Stride said.
However, his colleague Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, was a lot less happy about the Times report suggesting the UK could end up paying the EU up to £1bn a year for better access to the single market.
In his Times report, Oliver Wright says:
European negotiators have made it clear that paying the cash, expected to amount to about £1bn a year, is a condition of further access to the EU’s single market.
They want Starmer to make the concession in principle at a summit between the prime minister and European leaders this summer before detailed negotiations on more integration.
“If the UK wants further integration they must ‘pay to play’,” one European diplomat said. “That is not unusual.”
The govenrment has not denied the story, although it has suggested it does not recognise the £1bn figure.
Commenting on the report, Patel said:
Starmer is unpicking Brexit and planning another undemocratic hit job on British taxpayers by signing us up to a £1bn annual payment to the EU.
Once again, this weak prime minister goes to the negotiating table, comes home empty-handed, having fleeced hard pressed taxpayers with his terrible judgment.
Donald Tusk, the Polish PM, says at the EPC meeting in Armenia today he and Keir Starmer agreed to sign a UK-Poland treaty strengthening defence cooperation on 27 May.
Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, has refused to say if the prime minister should face a leadership challenge if Labour does badly in Thursday’s elections, the Press Association reports. PA says:
While polls suggest Labour could do badly in elections for the devolved parliaments in Scotland and Wales, and in local councils elections in England, the Scottish Labour leader insisted his “focus” was on “removing John Swinney from office” – and not what could happen in Westminster.
SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn has already criticised the “squabbling” and “political infighting” in the UK government, likening prospective candidates vying to succeed Keir Starmer to “auditions for Labour party Celebrity Traitors”.
There has been speculation that health secretary Wes Streeting, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham and former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner could all be considering launching a leadership challenge against the PM.
But Sarwar, who has already called on the prime minister to step down, made clear his focus was on Thursday’s Holyrood ballot – and not on any political manoeuvreing at Westminster.
And despite a poll today showing Labour could drop to just 13 MSPs at Holyrood, Sarwar said: “I’m entirely convinced this election isn’t over.”
He added that Labour’s internal figures were better than they had been in last years Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse byelection, which the party won – and were “going up”.
Sarwar went on to say that 38 of the 73 Holyrood constituencies seats were “on a knife-edge” and could “decide this election”.
But when pressed on why people should vote Labour when the party is in “chaos” at Westminster, he said: “Scotland is in chaos under an SNP government, we need a new government and only I can deliver that new government.
“I don’t care about what’s happening at Westminster or Westminster politicians, I’m only focused on Scotland.
“All I care about is Scotland’s schools, Scotland’s hospitals.”
PA is referring to More in Common’s final MRP poll for the Holyrood election. It suggests Scotland is on course for these results.
Commenting on the figures, More in Common said:
The SNP have flipped five seats since More in Common’s first projection in early April – at the expense of Labour and the Conservatives: Dumbarton and Edinburgh Southern from Labour, Edinburgh Central from Labour (where the Greens have also fallen back), Eastwood from the Conservatives, Galloway and West Dumfries from the Conservatives, and Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch from the Liberal Democrats …
The SNP’s victory is fuelled less by surging support than by fragmentation in the unionist vote. In fact, this result would represent the SNP’s lowest vote share in nearly two decades: their lowest constituency vote share since 2007, and lowest regional vote share since 2003.
Fragmentation and first-past-the-post are fuelling the SNP: Their high seats share comes from the number of high number first-past-the-post constituency seats in Holyrood, and their comparatively more consolidated support in a fragmented party system.
Britain will have to make a contribution to join the EU’s €90bn (£78bn) loan for Ukraine scheme (see 8.40am) and it has been reported that this could be as much as £400m.
Speaking to broadcasters at the European Political Community summit in Armenia, Starmer said this was worth it.
Asked specifically about the Times report saying the UK may have to pay up to £1bn a year for better access to the single market (see 9.31am), Starmer replied:
It’s in our national interest to be closer to Europe, and whether that’s the EU loan scheme, which we are discussing with them, that’s of great benefit to Ukraine, but it’s also a great benefit to the United Kingdom as well, in terms of the jobs that it will create in the United Kingdom. So the benefit there outweighs the cost.
But more generally, it is important that we see our future as a closer relationship with the EU that’s in our national interest, and that’s what I’ve been discussing here and on previous occasions.
UPDATE: According to Sky News, Keir Starmer gave this quote in response to a reporter who asked about the Times report, asked if £1bn a year was a price worth paying, and asked what Starmer would say to people who said he was betraying Brexit bit by bit.
The Green MP Siân Berry has said that she does not know whether the force used by the police last week to arrest a suspect after two Jewish people were stabbed in Golders Green was excessive.
At the end of last week Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, apologised after reposting a message on social media implying the use of force was excessive. Polanski later said he remained concerned by what he had seen in video of the incident, but that he accepted posting on social media wasn’t the best way to raise this as an issue.
In an interview with Times Radio, Berry was asked if she thought the police arresting the suspect overreacted. She replied:
I don’t know the answer to that. I think that you have to discuss it with the people who know on the ground. You have to ask people to look at the body camera footage.
These are important parts of scrutiny and Greens in the London assembly, Greens scrutinising the police all around the country, are extremely good at this because we are good at balancing civil liberties and the need for action against crime. No one should be giving the police a blank slate.
In Wales the voting system has changed and the new Senedd will be elected using the closed proportional list system, which is a purer form of PR than the additional member system used previously. There is an explanation of how it works here.
There will be 16 constituencies each electing six MSs (members of the Senedd) using the D’Hondt method.
In its report on its latest MRP poll (see 10.02am), More in Common says this means that “seats allocated later in the process are more sensitive to small changes in the vote, especially the fifth and 6th seat in each constituency, many of which could be decided by less than 2.5 per cent of the vote”. It has produced this chart to illustrate how much uncertainty there is in the forecasts produced by its polling.
Here is the Green party’s official response to Reform UK’s plan to site immigration detention centres in places where people vote Green. (See 10.48am). A Green party spokesperson said:
Reform keep making abhorrent announcements in attempts to distract voters from the fact they want to privatise our NHS, roll back workers rights and hand out tax breaks to their billionaire backers. [Nigel] Farage, the establishment stooge, filled his pockets with a secret £5m donation and then puts forward this disgusting idea as if it is a serious policy.
Greens are focused on building council housing, fixing our public services and bringing down the cost of living.
The UK is going to open talks with the EU on joining its European Innovation Council Fund, a €4bn fund providing venture capital for deep tech innovation. Keir Starmer and Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, announced the move after a meeting at the summit in Armenia where they said they wanted to be “ambitious” in strengthening post-Brexit UK-EU links.
In a joint statement, they said:
Today we met to discuss our joint commitment to improving the relationship between the UK and EU to deliver for consumers, businesses and collective European security.
We also reflected on the UK’s plan to participate in the EU’s €90bn / £78bn loan for Ukraine, and agreed it would be a major step forward in the UK- EU defence industrial relationship [see 8.40am] …
We also agreed to commence negotiations on UK participation in the European Innovation Council Fund, including the Scaleup Europe Fund, which will provide support for promising high-growth tech businesses to scale up and support UK and EU ambitions to keep the most promising innovators in Europe.
We looked ahead to the UK-EU summit and agreed on the importance of being ambitious in what we could achieve together for the benefit of both sides.
Tree nurseries could be built at prisons and military ranges could be turned into heathland or peat bogs as part of an ambitious plan to make government land more nature-friendly, Emma Reynolds, the environment secretary, has said. Peter Walker has the story.
Labour MPs are calling for a close to the “endless drama” of leadership speculation, Peter Walker reports.
However, as Peter also points out, even the Labour MPs who would like nothing more than for all talk of leadership contests to dry up recognise that Keir Starmer faces a perilous moment when the election results are announced on Friday. No one knows for sure how the Labour party will respond, but a challenge seems quite possible.
Today the Mail is highlighting a warning to Labour MPs that replacing Starmer could lead to an early election. In their story, Jason Groves and David Wilcock quote a “senior figure” saying:
People should be very careful what they wish for. There is no road to replacing the PM that does not lead to an early general election.
It is obvious that neither Wes [Streeting] nor Angela [Rayner] command the kind of overwhelming support you would need to produce a stable government.
In his London Playbook briefing for Politico, Sam Blewett has a round-up of some of today’s other Labour leadership stories.
In the Times, Oliver Wright and Aubrey Allegretti hear from allies of Ed Miliband that the energy secretary wants to be “kingmaker” in a [Andy] Burnham leadership bid, in return for being offered the post of chancellor. But this scheme would see the left-wing powerbroker join cabinet colleagues in backing Starmer after the locals to buy time for Burnham to find a route back to the Commons. So that’s sort of good news for the PM.
Then, in the Telegraph, Nick Gutteridge hears that Burnham’s camp have asked some of Starmer’s top staff to stay in No. 10 if the “King of the North” finds his way in. Stuart Ingham and Amy Richards are both named as potential holdovers, in what would seem to be quite a mischievous briefing.
Burnham’s allies in Mainstream are preparing an event in Westminster to champion the “political economy of Manchesterism” in mid-May, Playbook hears. The Manchester mayor is holding off on confirming himself as a speaker at the publication launch – but the preparations allow him a platform to swoop down to SW1 in the weeks after the electoral “bloodbath” if he chooses.
If you are trying to make sense of where this all leaves Labour, you should read Lucy Powell’s interview with Jessica Elgot in the Guardian.
Powell, the deputy Labour leader, told Jess:
There’s no magic bullet here for us. We are in a difficult world.
That, at least, is one claim no one is likely to dispute.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
