Yvette Cooper to chair meeting of taskforce considering ‘alarming rise’ in candidate intimidation – as it happened

More in Common, the group that campaigns to reduce polarisation in politics, published a good slideshow presentation last week, based on polling it carried out, giving an analysis of the general election results. It has followed that up today with the publication of a 129-page report on the election, based on the same polling and on what it learned from focus groups.

One of the main interesting points it makes is that the government will be judged, above all, on whether it can bring down NHS waiting lists and the cost of living, polling suggests. The report says:

How does the public plan to judge the government on its delivery of change and what benchmarks will they use to evaluate progress?

First and foremost, the public will look to NHS waiting lists and the cost of living to judge Labour’s success or failure. These are top performance indicators for every segment, with the elderly tending to be more concerned than average about waiting lists and younger generations more so about the cost of living. As inflation falls and interest rates seem set for a summer cut, waiting lists are arguably the new government’s key challenge in maintaining public support.

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At a briefing on the report this morning, Luke Tryl, executive director of More In Common, said that with no “ideological anchor” uniting Labour’s coalition, delivery was key to Labour remaining in power.

Tryl has posted more highlights from the report on a thread on X starting here.

15 Jul 202407.15 EDT

Campaigners urge Starmer to fix 'broken' settlement scheme for EU nationals living in UK

Lisa O'Carroll

Keir Starmer must take “quick steps” to fix the “broken” Home Office settlement scheme for EU citizens in the country before Brexit to avert a repeat of the Windrush scandal, campaigners have said.

Grassroots organisation the3million and 75 other organisations, including highly respected immigration law firms, civil rights groups and NGOs, have written to the prime minister to seek a wholesale review the Home Office’s implementation of the Brexit withdrawal agreement (WA).

It was supposed to guarantee EU citizens rights but has already ended up with a government defeat in the high court.

Andreea Dumitrache, communications manager at the3million, said:

If the prime minister is serious about repairing the relationship between the UK and the EU, then he has a golden opportunity to do so, by taking quick steps to fix the EU settlement scheme. We believe this would be a significant show of goodwill towards the EU, relieving tensions and opening the door towards a better relationship with a close ally.

The letter calls for efforts to clear the 137,000 backlog of EU citizens still waiting for a decision on their status by the Home Office. Among other proposals, it also says the government should abandon the Home Office’s decision to “expire” UK residence cards held by some EU citizens on 31 December.

The letter says:

We are recommending tangible steps that you can take as a new government to fix the broken immigration system, so people can access their rights and justice, find belonging in the UK, and continue to play their part in our economy and society.

David Lammy met families of hostages murdered or held in Gaza by Hamas on his visit to the Middle East, PA Media reports. PA says:

The foreign secretary used his trip to call for an immediate ceasefire, including the release of all hostages and a rapid increase of aid into Gaza.

In Israel, he “spoke with families whose loved ones were murdered and taken hostage by Hamas”, the Foreign Office said today.

Photos shared on social media showed him embracing and shaking hands with those affected.

In meetings with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mohammad Mustafa, prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, on Sunday, Lammy also made the case for working towards a two-state solution to the conflict.

He announced that the UK will provide another £5.5m this year to UK-Med to fund its work in Gaza. The medical aid charity sends experienced humanitarian medics, including those working in the NHS, to crisis-hit regions. The funding will be used to support the ongoing work of its field hospitals and the emergency department at Nasser hospital.

Lammy said: “The death and destruction in Gaza is intolerable. This war must end now, with an immediate ceasefire, complied with by both sides. The fighting has got to stop, the hostages still cruelly detained by Hamas terrorists need to be released immediately, and aid must be allowed in to reach the people of Gaza without restrictions.

“I am meeting with Israeli and Palestinian leaders to stress the UK’s ambition and commitment to play its full diplomatic role in securing a ceasefire deal and creating the space for a credible and irreversible pathway towards a two-state solution.

“The world needs a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state. Central to this is to see an end to expanding illegal Israeli settlements and rising settler violence in the West Bank.

“Here, in what should be a crucial part of a Palestinian state, alongside Gaza and East Jerusalem, we need to see a reformed and empowered Palestinian Authority.”

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Nick Thomas-Symonds, the minister for EU relations, has said that having “a strong UK-EU alliance is vital”.

In a statement issued ahead of his meeting in Brussels today with Maroš Šefčovič, the European Commission vice-president who leads for the EU on Brexit negotiations with Britain, Thomas-Symonds said:

Our government is committed to resetting the relationship with the European Union, to strengthen ties, reinforce our security and tackle barriers to trade.

The EU and Member States are among the UK’s closest friends and allies. With war in Europe, and shared global challenges, in areas such as climate change and illegal migration, a strong UK-EU alliance is vital.

A reader asks:

How many bills does a monarch’s speech typically contain?

It depends. There is no set number, but normally it mentions around 25 to 30 full bills, and then a handful more bills to be published in draft over the next 12 months. Last year’s king’s speech contained 21 bills, the lowest number for almost a decade, but the government did not expect to get through a full session ahead of the election. In May 2022 the queen’s speech contained 38 bills.

But, as the parliamentary session goes on, governments almost always find themselves introducing new bills not in the queen’s or king’s speech, and so it is never a comprehensive guide to what is coming up.

At the weekend No 10 said the government was “working on more than 35 bills to deliver an ambitious parliamentary session that will be built on a bedrock of economic security, to enable growth that will improve the prosperity of our country and the living standards of working people”.

The Guardian has published a leader this morning saying the king’s speech should include a commitment to abolish the two-child benefit cap. (See 11.02am.) Here is an extract.

Sir Keir Starmer wants to end child poverty. One of his defining five missions is to “break down barriers to opportunity … to make sure there is no class ceiling on the ambitions of young people in Britain”. And last year he pledged his government would be “laser-focused on poverty”.

Fine words, and this week gives the chance to prove them. Amid the proposed laws in this government’s first king’s speech should be one that scraps the two-child cap on benefits. It impoverishes children, penalises ethnic minorities and humiliates women who have been raped. Unfair and morally repugnant, it is “the worst social security policy ever”, say academic experts. And government ministers know this.

The policy was dreamed up by George Osborne as chancellor, argued for by David Cameron as prime minister and finally launched by Theresa May and Philip Hammond in 2017. Under the cap, families on benefit receive a payment for each of their first two children from child tax credit or universal credit, but no more for any additional offspring. Larger families lose out on £3,455 a year for each child – a huge sum, especially for those on low incomes.

And here is the article in full.

Keir Starmer faces a possible test to his authority in the Commons next week after the SNP said that it would table an amendment to the king’s speech saying the two-child benefit cap should be abolished.

In a letter to the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, the SNP’s leader at Westminster, Stephen Flynn, said that “the moment Keir Starmer stepped into Downing Street, the Tory two-child cap became the Labour party two-child cap”.

Flynn said Sarwar should instruct Scottish Labour MP to back the SNP amendment. In a statement he said:

The two-child cap is pushing thousands of Scottish children into poverty – and scrapping it is the bare minimum the Labour party government must do if it is serious about tackling poverty.

I urge Keir Starmer to include it in his programme for government this week but, if he fails, the SNP will lay an amendment to abolish it immediately. It is shameful and it must go now.

Labour MPs opposed the two-child benefit cap when it was proposed by the Conservative chancellor George Osborne, and many of them have harshly condemned it because it is a major cause of child poverty.

But Keir Starmer has repeatedly refused to commit to getting rid of the policy, which the Resolution Foundation says would cost £2.5bn, saying that he will only commit to policies he is able to fund. In the run-up to the election this stance became emblematic of his determination to show that he put fiscal responsibility ahead of heeding to the concerns of leftwingers.

But it is not just leftwingers who have opposed the two-child benefit cap. Earlier this year the rightwing Tory former home secretary Suella Braverman said it should go.

Starmer has a working majority of 180, according to the House of Commons website, and there is no chance of his losing a vote on the king’s speech. Even if the SNP amendment were to pass, it would not have legislative force. But the SNP clearly intends to use any vote as a campaigning mechanism, forcing Labour MPs unwilling to rebel to vote against an amendment many or most of them may privately favour.

It is for the speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, to decide what amendments get put to a vote. The SNP are now the fourth largest party in the Commons, not the third largest, and they only have nine MPs, and that will make it harder for them to get amendments selected than in the last parliament. But the speaker normally selects several opposition amendments when MPs vote on the king’s speech, and in autumn last year an amendment from the fourth party (then the Liberal Democrats) was selected, and so there is a good chance the Flynn amendment will be put to a vote.

MPs will start debating the king’s speech on Wednesday, and they will vote on it next week.

As Patrick Butler and Aletha Adu reported last week, the latest figures show that a record 1.6 million children are living in families affected by the two-child benefit cap.

In her interview with Times Radio this morning, Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, more or less confirmed that a football governance bill will be in the king’s speech on Wednesday. Asked if Labour would bring back the bill, which was introduced by the last government earlier this year but dropped when the election was called, Nandy replied:

It will be a top priority for me, so I think you can read into that that there’ll be early action from this government.

I’m very keen that it becomes an issue that we take party politics out of and that we get behind the fans, we get behind grassroots football, and we get behind kids in this country who deserve the right standards.

Ministers are not supposed to say in advance what will be in the king’s speech because that is deemed a discourtesy to Buckingham Palace, but that never stops the government letting the media find out most of what it will contain. Eleni Courea wrote a good guide at the end of last week.

The football governance bill, which had cross-party support when introduced by the Tories, will set up an independent football regulator to promote teams’ financial sustainability.

Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, said this morning that the government wants “far more light, far less heat” in political debate in the UK. Expanding on what she said on Sky News (see 9.36am), she told ITV’s Good Morning Britain:

We had the independence referendum in Scotland, we had endless rows about Brexit that became very polarising across the whole of the UK and particularly in England, we found all these different ways to divide ourselves from one another, and I reflected on it a few years ago, standing in a debate in the House of Commons, where I was hearing remain-supporting and leave-supporting MPs hurling insults at each other across the floor, calling each other traitors.

It’s no surprise then that, when we walk out on to the streets of Britain, we hear that language reflected back to us, and that’s why I was so pleased that the prime minister, his first instinct [yesterday, after the attempt to kill Donald Trump] was to get on the phone to President Trump to express our utter condemnation.

Our interest, as the new government, is firmly in taking some of the heat out of this very toxic political debate that we’ve had, shedding far more light, far less heat, and showing leadership in the way that we conduct ourselves towards each other, but particularly towards political opponents that we disagree with.

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Good morning. This is one of those days when the main focus of the news industry is definitely not on Westminster but on the US, where people are still trying to assess the consequences of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. But the shooting at the Trump rally may have an impact on the UK, partly because it may affect who wins the presidential election in November but also because it has revived interest in what can be done to reduce the polarisation, aggression and violence that has marred politics on both sides of the Atlantic in recent years.

Last week Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, said that new Labour government wanted to end the era of culture wars. This morning she has been on the media, in interviews that were lined up when it was expected that the football would be the top story of the day, and, in the light of the attempt to kill Trump, her call for a calmer form of political debate has added resonance. As Peter Walker reports, she had a vivid way of expressing this on Sky News where she said:

When kids were turning on their TV sets last night across England, every single one of them will have been able to see themselves reflected in that team. And in doing so he’s told an inclusive story about the country that we can be.

It has felt very difficult for people to feel part of our national story, and it’s firmly my intention that this government will be different, will be far more Gareth Southgate, and far less Michael Gove.

The era of division needs to end, and I think this team and Gareth Southgate in particular has shown the leadership that we need in some really difficult times for this country. So we owe him an enormous debt, whatever he decides to do in the future.

Peter has the full story here.

America is not the only body with a leadership contest in the autum. The Conservatives have to find someone to replace Rishi Sunak, and later this week we are expecting to get some details from the party as to what the timetable for the contest will be. Sunak himself has said he will stay in place as leader until the process is under way, but he has not committed to remaining until his replacement as been elected and there has been talk of an interim leader standing in if the election continues until the party conference in October, or beyond.

This morning a senior Tory said Sunak should stay until the new leader has been elected. Andrew Mitchell, the shadow foreign secretary, said that, although he thought Sunak’s instinct was “almost certainly to go”, he thought he should stay on. He told Times Radio:

An interim leader is not, in my view, the best option. The best option is to seek to persuade Rishi to remain. It’s not an enormously long time in the scope of things. It’s probably till mid to end November …

I think his instinct is almost certainly to go. I hope that he won’t. I hope he will stay till November for the reasons that I have described. And at the 1922 Committee meeting last week, there was a widespread feeling of sympathy and respect for Rishi Sunak. And I’m sure that if he does stay, that will be the overwhelming feeling of the party.

Mitchell said the party should hold the leadership election after the party conference, as it did in 2005. He explained:

I think we should play it long. I think the example of Michael Howard in 2005 is a good example, allow members of the Conservative party, the country, to see what is on offer from the talented group of people who will no doubt put their names forward …

I very much hope that what the party will decide to do is to mirror what Michael Howard did in 2005 and allow the party conference the space for candidates who are offering themselves to say what they would do for their party, say what they would do for their country, and that members of the party, members of parliament, can then take a view as a result of that showcasing.

The House of Commons is not sitting today, and there is not much in the diary for the day. But we are getting a lobby briefing from Downing Street at 11.30am, David Lammy, the foreign secretary, is in Israel where he has a meeting with the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Nick Thomas-Symonds, the minister for EU relations, is in Brussels for a meeting with his EU counterpart, Maroš Šefčovič.

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