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Labour conference chance to show alternative to 'toxic divide and decline' offered by Reform, says Starmer
Keir Starmer has said Labour’s conference was a chance to show an alternative to the “toxic divide and decline” offered by Reform UK.
Arriving at the conference centre in Liverpool with his wife, Victoria, he said it was a “really important conference”.
Starmer added that it was a “really big opportunity to make our case to the country, make it absolutely clear that patriotic national renewal is the way forward, not the toxic divide and decline that we get with Reform”.
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Starmer tells students in Liverpool that Reform's policies 'will tear this country apart'
Reform UK’s policies will tear the UK apart, Keir Starmer claimed as he arrived in Liverpool for Labour’s party conference.
Speaking to a group of students at the Liverpool Echo’s offices before the conference, Starmer described Reform’s plans to remove indefinite leave to remain for legal migrants as “one of the most shocking things” the opposition party had come out with.
He said:
These are people who’ve been in our country a long time, contributing to our society, maybe working in – I don’t know – hospitals, schools, running businesses, our neighbours, and Reform says it wants to deport them in certain circumstances.
I think it is a real sign of just how divisive they are and that their politics and their policies will tear this country apart.
It is what it is to be British that we are able to be reasonable, pragmatic, tolerant, live and let live. To tear away at that will destroy our country. I feel very, very strongly about this.
I’m sorry that you’re having to grow up in a world where this politics has found a voice and almost a licence as well.
Labour conference chance to show alternative to 'toxic divide and decline' offered by Reform, says Starmer
Keir Starmer has said Labour’s conference was a chance to show an alternative to the “toxic divide and decline” offered by Reform UK.
Arriving at the conference centre in Liverpool with his wife, Victoria, he said it was a “really important conference”.
Starmer added that it was a “really big opportunity to make our case to the country, make it absolutely clear that patriotic national renewal is the way forward, not the toxic divide and decline that we get with Reform”.
The government will not be legalising cannabis, Keir Starmer said as he took questions from teenagers in Liverpool.
Asked if he would consider legalising it, the prime minister told an audience of students at the Liverpool Echo’s offices:
No, I’m afraid not. What answer did you want me to give?
Starmer then asked the students to put their hands up if they would support legalising cannabis. He added:
There’s probably a few hands that would have gone up if the cameras weren’t here. But, no, we’re not going down that route.
Commenting on the suspension of Scottish Labour’s Foysol Choudhury (see 11.46am BST), Scottish Conservative deputy leader Rachael Hamilton said it showed that “Labour are in complete chaos on the eve of their conference”.
The Tory MSP said:
Confidence in Sir Keir Starmer is gone after a year of broken promises and U-turns, the digital ID scheme has faced instant backlash, Anas Sarwar is engaging in bizarre attacks on independent experts, and now Scottish Labour have had to suspend another MSP.
Labour should launch an investigation into this latest situation and be as transparent as possible about what’s happened.
Here are the latest images coming in via the newswires from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign protest currently under way in Liverpool, outside where the Labour party is set to hold their annual conference.
The conference runs from 28 September to 01 October at the Arena convention centre.
Labour seeks ‘ambitious’ youth mobility scheme with EU
Kyriakos Petrakos
Labour will seek out an “ambitious” youth mobility scheme with the EU, allowing thousands of young Europeans to temporarily live and work in the UK, Rachel Reeves has said.
The chancellor told the Times the scheme would be “good for the economy, good for growth and good for business”, but stopped short of specifying precisely who will be eligible.
A scheme that would allow hundreds of thousands of 18- to 30-year-olds from EU countries to live and work in the UK, and vice versa, has been a key European demand in reaching an economic deal with Britain.
Reeves said the exchange scheme would allow “young people in Britain to be able to go and work, to travel, to volunteer, to gain experience, to learn languages in European countries”.
“And we want young people from those European countries to also be able to come to the UK and have the same opportunities that my generation had to travel, work and study in Europe,” she added.
Education unions back campaign to end two-child benefit limit
Education unions have joined growing calls for the government to scrap the two-child benefit cap, warning that poverty continues to “rip through our communities and schools”.
Labour has been subject to calls to ditch the controversial policy since coming into power last year. The two-child limit was introduced by Conservatives in 2017 and restricts child tax credit and universal credit to the first two children in most households.
In a letter to the prime minister, the National Governance Association (NGA), the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), the National Education Union (NEU), NASUWT and Unison warned of the “critical need” to do away with the policy.
They said:
As school leaders, head teachers, governors, teachers and support staff working in schools and academies across England, we are writing to you about the forthcoming government child poverty strategy and the critical need for it to fully scrap the two-child limit policy.
This poverty-producing policy is harming the lives of hundreds of thousands of children and young people in our classrooms, and we are calling on government to put an end to this this autumn.
No child deserves to live in poverty, full stop. But the educational impact of the poverty that continues to rip through our communities and schools cannot be overstated.
The Government cannot claim an ambitious child poverty strategy while any part of this policy remains in place. We work tirelessly every day to protect children from the harms of poverty, but we come together on behalf of the teachers, school leaders, governors and support staff we represent to ask government to meet us in the middle.
We need bold action that addresses poverty at home, to ensure all children can thrive at school.
More than 100 Labour MPs recently signed a letter to Chancellor Rachel Reeves as she prepares for the autumn budget, urging her to scrap the limit long blamed for keeping children in poverty.
Earlier this week, Andy Burnham called the cap an abhorrent policy that represents the “worst of Westminster”.
The Labour government’s Child Poverty Strategy is due imminently this autumn. Education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, has said the two-child policy had “punished and pushed children into hardship” and that the cap’s abolition was “on the table”.
Watch the Guardian’s video on “Raising kids in poverty: The UK’s ‘inhumane’ two child limit”:
A union leader is warning the government there is widespread disappointment at Labour’s “failure” to deliver the scale and speed of change it promised at the general election.
Matt Wrack, general secretary of the NASUWT teachers’ union, said there was frustration which was rooted in “decades of neglect” of communities hollowed out by deindustrialisation, reports the PA news agency.
Wrack said:
The so-called ‘left behind’ communities are often talked about, but little is actually done to meet their hopes and their needs. In this bleak landscape, the far right stokes division – blaming migrants and refugees for the failings of government and the economy.
Ignoring this wake-up call is currently likely to deliver further major blows to Labour at elections next May. The prospect of Reform in government in some form is now not an unreasonable one.
The reality for millions is that despite its claims, the Labour government has failed to halt austerity, failed to invest in public services, and failed to tackle the cost-of-living crisis.
Deeply unpopular measures like the winter fuel changes and the two-child limit confirm people’s worst fears: that despite voting for change, things carry on under Labour much as before.
Billionaires get richer while the rest pay the price, and the next generation faces worse prospects than their parents.
Wrack said the trade union movement must offer, and demand, an alternative, adding:
That means investing resources in a common campaign. It means challenging the Labour government over its failures.
There is little point telling people the far right offers nothing, only to advise them to accept more of the same – an unresolved cost-of-living crisis, declining services, bleak job prospects, and endless failure to build decent housing.
Anas Sarwar uged to 'come clean' after Labour MSP Foysol Choudhury suspended
Scottish Labour’s Foysol Choudhury has become the second MSP to be suspended by the party in less than two months, reports the PA news agency.
The Lothian MSP is understood to have been administratively suspended by the party pending the outcome of an investigation – with a Labour spokesperson stressing it “takes all complaints seriously”. The party told the PA news agency it could not comment on the matter while the investigation is ongoing.
A Labour party spokesperson said:
The Labour party takes all complaints seriously. They are fully investigated in line with our rules and procedures, and any appropriate action is taken.
The suspension of Choudhury, who was elected to Holyrood at the last election in 2021, comes just over a month after fellow MSP Colin Smyth was suspended from the party after he was arrested and charged in connection with possession of indecent images.
After that, SNP MP Kirsty Blackman insisted that Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar “must urgently come clean on the reasons why yet another Labour party MSP has been suspended, shortly after Colin Smyth”. Blackman said:
The public deserve full transparency.
Given the long list of scandals that have rocked the Labour party recently – with Foysol Choudhury, Colin Smyth, Peter Mandelson, Morgan McSweeney, Paul Ovenden and Angela Rayner all caught up in the last month alone – voters deserve answers.
Whatever the explanation, with yet another scandal on the eve of their party conference, there’s no doubt the Labour party is in crisis.
Starmer asks Conservative peer to write planning bill to block judicial reviews
Helena Horton
Keir Starmer has tasked a Conservative peer with writing a new planning bill to remove the ability for environmental groups to delay projects such as Heathrow’s third runway with judicial reviews.
The Guardian understands that leaving the Aarhus convention is being discussed as an option. This is an international treaty signed up to by the EU and other countries in Europe, which protects the right for campaigners to bring legal claims against large infrastructure projects such as waste plants, nuclear power stations and motorways.
Doing this would “destabilise Britain’s constitution” and silence legitimate objections, leading planning lawyers have warned.
The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has put Heathrow expansion at the heart of her push for economic growth, claiming it would make the UK “the world’s best-connected place to do business”. The Treasury sees the new bill – including blocking what one source close to Reeves called “stupid” judicial review cases for nationally significant infrastructure projects – as essential to ensuring work can start on a new runway before the next general election.
Reeves has repeatedly complained that the protection of “bats and newts” has interfered with the UK’s ability to complete major infrastructure projects. She has also insisted that pursuing economic growth must trump Labour’s net zero commitments, saying “growth underpins everything else”.
Starmer and Reeves earlier this year introduced a planning bill to parliament that would override EU-derived environmental protections and put important wildlife sites at risk of development. After campaigns by activists and MPs, the government added amendments that gave some extra protections for nature. But ministers still believe deregulation has not gone far enough.
Charles Banner KC has been asked by the prime minister to find a way to remove the cap on costs for groups bringing a judicial review. He has previously worked on human rights cases with Starmer, and is considered an expert on judicial reviews. He has worked on cases involving Heathrow and Stansted airports, as well as Thames Water’s Abingdon reservoir.
Alfie Packham
Keir Starmer has announced plans for a digital ID system, which will become mandatory as a means of proving the right to work in the UK.
From concerns around civil liberties and cybersecurity to a helpful system to streamline services in line with other European countries’ existing ID schemes, eight people share their views here:
Here are some images coming in via the newswires as Keir Starmer and other Labour politicians head to Liverpool for the party’s annual conference.
The conference runs from 28 September to 01 October at the Arena convention centre.
