Starmer to face final PMQs as Burnham nears Labour leadership finish line – UK politics live
Starmer faces final Cabinet and PMQs as Burnham nears Labour leadership finish line
Good morning. Everyone likes a leaving do and today it’s Keir Starmer’s, or at least his parliamentary one. If the colleague who is going is someone you like and admire, then the chance to see them thanked and celebrated is welcome. And if the colleague who is going is someone that you don’t like, or who has stayed too long, then that’s even better. At a good leaving do, there are also decent jokes. And, in politics, a final PMQs is one of the rare moments when even opponents tend to be polite and respectful (which is something people watching from outside the circus tend to like).
Starmer is chairing his last cabinet meeting this morning, and taking his final PMQs at noon. Doubtless he has had a chance to study how his predecessors handled this challenge, and he may have read what Tony Blair said on the day he left the Commons – worth quoting again because it is a good summary for those of us who think politics is still a worthy calling.
Some may belittle politics but we who are engaged in it know that it is where people stand tall. Although I know that it has many harsh contentions, it is still the arena that sets the heart beating a little faster. If it is, on occasions, the place of low skulduggery, it is more often the place for the pursuit of noble causes. I wish everyone, friend or foe, well. That is that. The end.
In his memoirs, writing about his final PMQs, Blair also said he felt this was a day when there was “no point in my trying to advance things; no point in the opposition trying to criticise things”. At that point he clearly hadn’t met Kemi Badenoch, and it will be surprising if she can get through six questions without lashing out at least some of the time. The Tories wanted to use an opposition day debate today to force a vote on their (entirely reasonable) call for the recess to be delayed so that Andy Burnham could address MPs before they all disappear for a six-week summer break. Yesterday, in an act of “low skulduggery” of the kind described by Blair, the government changed Commons business to stop that vote taking place. A minister claimed it was vital for MPs to debate Iran instead. But it is hard not to conclude that No 10 just wanted to silence the Tories on this issue, and Burnham is happy with the Commons recess starting tomorrow.
The papers are full of speculation about who will be doing what jobs in Burnham’s cabinet when he announces it on Monday. More on that soon.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Morning: Keir Starmer chairs cabinet.
10.30am: Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson, holds a press conference.
11.30am: Matt Brittin, the BBC director general, and Samir Shah, the BBC chair, give evidence to the Lords communications committee about BBC charter renewal.
Noon: Starmer takes PMQs.
2pm: Bev Craig, Labour’s candidate for Greater Manchester mayor, launches her manifesto.
Afternoon: Dan Jarvis, the defence secretary, is on a visit in Yorkshire.
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If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
Key events
As mentioned earlier, today’s papers are full of reports about Andy Burnham’s plans for cabinet appointments. Here is a round-up of some of the stories.
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Steven Swinford and Patrick Maguire in the Times say “senior allies of Andy Burnham believe that they have succeeded in preventing Ed Miliband from becoming chancellor over concerns he would become a lightning rod for criticism of the government”. They report:
Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, spoke to Burnham about the economy during a meeting last week, although the bulk of their discussion focused on home affairs.
She is said to be the frontrunner for the role, but a source close to Burnham insisted that no final decision had been taken …
One ally of Burnham said that “the tide has turned against Ed”, while another said that “it looks like the right outcome has been reached”. A third said: “Ed would have been a lightning rod for criticism. He is out of the running.”
Burnham’s team has refused to comment on a growing view at Westminster that Miliband, energy secretary, will be passed over for the Treasury role, with some MPs claiming he could become foreign secretary instead …
Labour whips, whose job it is to gather political intelligence, have told colleagues that they expect Mahmood to become chancellor and Miliband to go to the Foreign Office, where he would be sidelined from his current economic role overseeing the government’s net zero plans.
One Miliband ally said: “He’s close to Burnham, stuck his neck on the line, supplied some of his support team and is well aligned with the key figures. So we’re all expecting him to be chancellor for myriad reasons. But he doesn’t know for sure — or if he does, he’s not telling.”
The conversations were still taking place as late as yesterday, sources say, suggesting Burnham has been unable to make this fundamental decision about the direction of his government. He becomes PM in five days and no one knows who his chancellor will be including apparently him. It will fuel criticisms he has no plan.
Burnham’s approach of holding off from making appointments until this late stage has stoked uncertainty and infighting among his allies already, several of them told Bloomberg. Many long-standing allies who helped his rise to power have yet to be told whether they’ll be given jobs in the cabinet or No10, they said.
A Miliband supporter warns Burnham will face outcry from the Labour left and soft-left if he bottles the appointment, expressing disappointment he hasn’t already been confirmed. Another points out it was Miliband who led the charge against Starmer on Burnham’s behalf for the last year, and Miliband who advised Burnham to commit to the existing fiscal rules.
Burnham is also said to be under pressure from senior Labour women to ensure that women occupy at least half of the most senior positions in his new administration.
Keeping a woman at the Treasury would therefore carry both political and symbolic significance, allowing Burnham to argue he is building on rather than rolling back Labour’s recent progress on female representation at the top of government.
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Darren Jones, chief secretary to the PM, has told LBC that he has already been writing a handover note because he expects to lose his job in next week’s reshuffle.
Yusuf defends calling Tories ‘traitors’, claiming that is different from extreme insults directed at Reform UK
Q: [From the BBC] You have criticised other parties for the language they have used about Reform UK. But you have called the PM sick and depraved, and you have called the Tories open borders lunatics and accused them of being traitors. Will you reconsider the language your own party is using?
Yusuf defended calling his opponents traitors.
The definition of traitor is somebody who is engaged in betrayal. And as far as I’m concerned, it is demonstrable that, for example, the Conservative Party has acted in betrayal of the people who voted for them. And I’m not going to make this an attack on the Conservative Party right now in this answer. But that is demonstrable.
Yusuf said this was not the same as calling Reform UK Nazis or fascists, which amounted to comparing them to “regimes that are clearly the most brutal and horrific in history”.
Yusuf says a Reform UK government would pay for round-the-clock protection for all MPs
Zia Yusuf wrapped up his long speech at the start of his press conference (a long complaint about what he described as the demonisation of Reform UK by the media and political opponents, with a renewed complaint about the government for allegedly downgrading Nigel Farage’s security) with a policy announcement.
He said:
If Reform win the next general election as home secretary, I will ensure that all members of parliament of all parties are provided with round-the-clock protection.
We will also allocate significant new resources to protect former politicians still active in public life.
Yusuf is now taking questions. The first was from GB News, who asked if Yusuf thought the police were biased against the police. Yusuf said he had no evidence to support that.
Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf claims extreme criticism of his party amounts to incitement to violence
Zia Yusuf, the Reform UK home affairs spokesperson, is holding a press conference.
He is claiming that the extreme criticism that Reform UK politicians face amounts to incitement to violence.
He set out a version of this argument in a post on social media yesterday.
(Yusuf does not seem to have said anything yet about the extreme language used by him, and others in his party, about their opponents.)
Labour should ditch triple-lock pensions promise, says OECD
Labour should ditch the triple-lock pensions promise to help tackle the UK’s straitened public finances, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has urged. Heather Stewart has the story.
Photograph: Isabel Infantes/Reuters
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Cabinet ministers have bought Keir Starmer a carriage clock as a leaving present, Patrick Maguire reports in the Times. He says:
David Lammy, the deputy prime minister, has organised a ministerial whip-round for Labour’s departing leader, who will receive a bespoke timepiece at his final cabinet meeting.
The gift, engraved with a tribute from his cabinet, has been crafted especially for his departure by Dent London, the clockmakers who furnished the Elizabeth Tower, which houses Big Ben.
Ken Skates confirmed as Welsh Labour’s new leader
Ken Skates has been confirmed as the new leader of Welsh Labour after the party’s historic Senedd election defeat, the Press Association reports.
Skates, a former journalist for the Wrexham Leader newspaper and BBC Wales, had been interim leader since the resignation of Eluned Morgan in May after the election.
Labour had led Wales since the Senedd was established as the National Assembly for Wales in 1999, and was the largest party in the country for more than a century, PA says. But in May it won just nine Senedd seats, making it the third largest party in the parliament.
Nominations opened for a permanent replacement last week and Skates was confirmed as leader after receiving the unanimous backing of Labour MSPs.
Skates said:
I am deeply honoured to have the unanimous backing of my colleagues in the Senedd in seeking the leadership of Welsh Labour.
I joined the party as a 14-year-old, and my belief still stands that no child’s future should be determined by their background.
That no young person should be judged on anything other than the efforts they make and the decency they show to others.
The Labour movement for me is a movement for fairness, justice, security and liberty.
It is a movement that seeks to empower people and communities, to fight against injustice, intolerance, nepotism and cruelty.
Skates, who was first elected in 2011, held several Welsh government roles including transport secretary and economy and infrastructure secretary.
Britain now ‘safest place’ for young people online, minister claims
In his media interviews this morning, Kanishka Narayan, the online safety minister, also claimed that Britain is now the safest place for young people online as a result of government policies. He explained:
The big thing I’d say is this is part of an overall package that means Britain is now the safest place for young people in their experiences online.
[We’ve] banned it for under-16s, the first country in the world to ban romantic and explicit content on chatbots for young people.
Now the first country in the world to do mandatory breaks on AI chatbots as well, limiting harmful features on gaming. And today, yes, support for 16 and 17-year-olds as well.
So this is but one part of an overall package, which means Britain is now firmly on the side in terms of regulation of families and parents, not tech platforms.
Here are pictures of cabinet ministers arriving for Keir Starmer’s final cabinet this morning.
Some of them will probably be back doing this walk on Monday, when Andy Burnham will be appointing his cabinet. And some (those not being kept on) will probably be sacked off camera, either in a meeting on the parliamentary estate or by phone.
Minister rejects claim social media curfew for 16 and 17-year-olds pointless if just voluntary
Sixteen and 17-year-olds are to be encouraged to observe a midnight social media curfew, in the latest stage of Labour’s bid “to protect the next generation” from online harms, including poor sleep caused by night-time scrolling.
As Robert Booth explains in his story on this, critics have argued that a voluntary curfew of this kind, imposed via a default setting that can easily be switched off, is of little use.
This morning Kanishka Narayan, the online safety minister, was doing an interview round, and he rejected this argument. He told Sky News:
I wouldn’t belittle that because when we have seen evidence on this sort of stuff. In October, for example, some platforms introduced these defaults of this sort – 90%-plus teenagers said to us that they’ve maintained those defaults as well.
And so the evidence base is clear, the motivation is very clear and I wouldn’t do the disservice to teenagers of saying they’re all going to switch it off.
Andy Burnham urged to overhaul ‘timid and limited’ elections bill
The government was “timid” and “incremental” when deciding what to include in its elections bill, Rushana Ali, a former minister who helped write it, has said. She urged the incoming prime minister, Andy Burnham, to go further.
Kiran Stacey has the story.
Starmer faces final Cabinet and PMQs as Burnham nears Labour leadership finish line
Good morning. Everyone likes a leaving do and today it’s Keir Starmer’s, or at least his parliamentary one. If the colleague who is going is someone you like and admire, then the chance to see them thanked and celebrated is welcome. And if the colleague who is going is someone that you don’t like, or who has stayed too long, then that’s even better. At a good leaving do, there are also decent jokes. And, in politics, a final PMQs is one of the rare moments when even opponents tend to be polite and respectful (which is something people watching from outside the circus tend to like).
Starmer is chairing his last cabinet meeting this morning, and taking his final PMQs at noon. Doubtless he has had a chance to study how his predecessors handled this challenge, and he may have read what Tony Blair said on the day he left the Commons – worth quoting again because it is a good summary for those of us who think politics is still a worthy calling.
Some may belittle politics but we who are engaged in it know that it is where people stand tall. Although I know that it has many harsh contentions, it is still the arena that sets the heart beating a little faster. If it is, on occasions, the place of low skulduggery, it is more often the place for the pursuit of noble causes. I wish everyone, friend or foe, well. That is that. The end.
In his memoirs, writing about his final PMQs, Blair also said he felt this was a day when there was “no point in my trying to advance things; no point in the opposition trying to criticise things”. At that point he clearly hadn’t met Kemi Badenoch, and it will be surprising if she can get through six questions without lashing out at least some of the time. The Tories wanted to use an opposition day debate today to force a vote on their (entirely reasonable) call for the recess to be delayed so that Andy Burnham could address MPs before they all disappear for a six-week summer break. Yesterday, in an act of “low skulduggery” of the kind described by Blair, the government changed Commons business to stop that vote taking place. A minister claimed it was vital for MPs to debate Iran instead. But it is hard not to conclude that No 10 just wanted to silence the Tories on this issue, and Burnham is happy with the Commons recess starting tomorrow.
The papers are full of speculation about who will be doing what jobs in Burnham’s cabinet when he announces it on Monday. More on that soon.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Morning: Keir Starmer chairs cabinet.
10.30am: Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson, holds a press conference.
11.30am: Matt Brittin, the BBC director general, and Samir Shah, the BBC chair, give evidence to the Lords communications committee about BBC charter renewal.
Noon: Starmer takes PMQs.
2pm: Bev Craig, Labour’s candidate for Greater Manchester mayor, launches her manifesto.
Afternoon: Dan Jarvis, the defence secretary, is on a visit in Yorkshire.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (between 10am and 3pm), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
