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Tories say Starmer should sack Reeves for breaking law and breaking ministerial code
The Conservative have said Keir Starmer should sack Rachel Reeves. A Tory spokesperson said:
Rachel Reeves has broken the law and broken the ministerial code, but Keir Starmer is too weak to sack her.
While the chancellor is planning tax hikes for millions of families across the country at the budget, it’s one rule for the chancellor and another for everyone else.
Keir Starmer pledged to restore integrity to politics, but now he’s laughing in the face of the British public.
He should grow a backbone and sack the chancellor now. This is not over.
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John Swinney and Rhun ap Iorwerth discuss SNP/Plaid Cymru 'progressive alliance' to challenge Labour
Severin Carrell
Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.
John Swinney, Scotland’s nationalist first minister, and Rhun ap Iorwerth, who hopes to become the nationalist first minister of Wales, have proposed forging a “progressive alliance” to challenge Labour at Westminster.
The pair met at Swinney’s official residence in Edinburgh this morning to pledge a close working relationship if Plaid Cymru wins next May’s Welsh parliamentary elections and ap Iorwerth becomes first minister, in what is a marked change in strategy for the Scottish National party.
Ap Iorwerth’s visit follows Plaid’s historic victory in the Senedd byelection in Caerphilly last week, beating Reform UK and consigning Labour, which had held the contiguous Westminster seat for a century, to a very distant third.
It signals a very deliberate realignment by the SNP: during Nicola Sturgeon’s time as first minister, she forged a very close bond with Mark Drakeford, the Labour first minister of Wales, jointly agreeing strategies to attack the then Conservative government in London.
The SNP’s ties then with Plaid were fraternal rather than strategic. But Labour’s crises and plunging polling support, and the interconnected rise of Reform UK since last year’s general election, has upended that dynamic.
Opinion polls in Wales show Plaid and Reform are vying for victory in next May’s elections, while in Scotland Labour’s efforts to unseat the SNP remain in deep trouble. Polling puts the SNP on course for a comfortable victory; Swinney believes it could win an overall majority at Holyrood.
In statements issued before their meeting – which did not include a joint press conference – ap Iorwerth said a Plaid administration in Cardiff would try to replicate the Scottish child payment, a £25 per child per week benefit funded from devolved budgets.
He said:
The Scottish child payment is a radical and exciting policy which we are committed to introducing as a Welsh pilot should Plaid Cymru form the next government in May. Thanks to measures like this, Scotland is the only part of the UK where child poverty rates are set to drop in the coming years. I want that to be the case in Wales too.
We have a genuine opportunity to show the power of progressive politics through close and continued cooperation between Scotland and Wales.
For Swinney, Plaid’s surge in popularity has the additional benefit of boosting his efforts to make independence central to next year’s Holyrood campaign: a buoyant Welsh nationalist party will strengthen the SNP’s attempts to appeal to yes voters who have recently stopped voting SNP. The polls show a gap of 10% or more between the SNP vote and support for independence; winning back those voters will bring Swinney closer to an overall majority.
Swinney said:
The Westminster status quo is not working – bills are going up, people are struggling and the UK Labour government’s answer is racing further and further to the right to keep up with Nigel Farage.
That is not a status quo I am willing to accept – and I will be delighted to work with my friends in Plaid Cymru to show the people of Scotland and Wales that there is a positive alternative to Westminster’s despair and decline.
Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/PA
Home Office welcomes figures showing almost 60,000 knives taken off streets
Tens of thousands of knives have been seized by police and handed in through surrender schemes, the Home Office has said. PA Media reports:
Nearly 60,000 blades have been taken away in England and Wales as part of government efforts to halve knife crime within a decade, as latest data shows knife murders have dropped in the last year.
Some 7,512 weapons were removed through the month-long ninja sword surrender scheme before the blades were banned from August under Ronan’s Law.
Some 47,795 zombie knives and machetes were also surrendered last year, the Home Office said, while 3,334 knives were retrieved by Border Force and 618 through operations to tackle county lines drug dealing.
There were no national knife surrender schemes in 2023/2024.
Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, said: “Too many young lives are lost each year to knife crime. This government is determined to halve knife crime. We are making progress, but we won’t stop until we meet that goal.”
Latest crime figures for England and Wales show 196 knife-enabled homicides were recorded in the year to June, down by 18% from 239 in the previous 12 months.
Badenoch says Reeves has more questions to answer about rental licence error
Peter Walker
Peter Walker is the Guardian’s senior political correspondent.
Kemi Badenoch has said she thinks Rachel Reeves has more questions to answer about her rental licence mistake.
Speaking to reporters after her rally this morning, the Tory leader said:
I think that the more I hear about the story, the more questions there are to answer. This is a 2004 statute that was brought in by Labour. She has tweeted about how it should be extended, and yet she wasn’t following it herself.
And it’s all very well blaming someone else, the lettings agent didn’t do this or that, she is the chancellor. She needs to be on top of her paperwork. She was aware of this legislation. I think there should be an investigation.
But the bottom line is that Keir Starmer said again and again, that lawbreakers shouldn’t be lawmakers. So if she’s broken the law, then he should apply his own rules to her.
Badenoch declines to commit to reversing any tax rises in budget
Kemi Badenoch did speak to reporters in a “huddle” after her speech at the Tory rally this morning. (A “huddle” is mediaspeak for a mini press conference, normally standing up, and off camera.)
Asked if she would commit to reversing any tax increases in the budget, she declined to say she would.
Well, this is one of those things where we have to see where we are in four years’ time.
We talked about the things which we are going to reverse, the family farms, tax, family business taxes, taxes on education.
We want to abolish stamp duty. We want to scrap business rates for high streets.
But we don’t know what kind of mess Labour is going to be leaving in four years’ time.
All we know is that they’re going to be leaving one hell of a mess, and we’ve got to clear it up, and we will do that through applying our golden economic rule, making sure that we’re paying down the deficit as well as making investments.
This is the answer that you would expect an opposition leader to give at this stage in the budget process and the electoral cycle.
Robert Peston, ITV’s political editor, says he thinks it is a mistake for the Conservatives to be saying Rachel Reeves should have to resign over the rental licence error. He explains why in a post on social media. Here is an extract.
Kemi Badenoch’s call for Starmer to sack Reeves, for failing to register her family home when she rented it on moving to Downing Street, lowers the bar quite significantly for sackable offences by ministers. I am not certain all her shadow cabinet colleagues will thank her.
The point is that there is a clear distinction between Rayner’s failure to take stamp duty advice and Reeves’s failure to register her home with the council for rent.
In the case of Rayner, there was the potential for very large personal material gain. Her dismissal was inevitable …
Badenoch is apparently saying that almost all cock ups in a minister’s personal life should disqualify them from holding public office.
Would that stipulation really give the British people the public servants they deserve, or perhaps simply deter anyone with common sense from going into politics?
Here are more pictures from the Conservative party rally this morning.
In the Commons there will be an urgent question at 10.30am on the massacre at the El Fasher in Sudan.
Alan Campbell, the leader of the Commons, will take business questions at about 11am, and at about 12pm a Cabinet Office minister will give a statement with an update on the infected blood compensation scheme.
Badenoch says Reeves should have to resign if she puts up taxes in budget
Badenoch ends by addressing this to Reeves:
I know you’ve got a lot of problems now with the new issues, with being a landlord and messing up your lettings. But no one is interested in your problems. We need you to solve our problems.
If she puts up the tax, give Reeves the axe.
Again, this is odd messaging. “No one is interested in your problems.” The Tories definitely were; Badenoch herself has posted about it twice on social media, and CCHQ has put out a press release.
After her speech, Badenoch does not immediately take questions, so reporters do not get the chance to ask whether the Tories are most keen on getting Reeves to resign now, or getting her to resign when taxes go up in the budget.
It is not unusual for the opposition to call for a minister to resign. But it is strange to be calling, on the same day, for someone to resign over two seperate matters, on two separate timescales.
Badenoch says, if Reeves can't handle her own paperwork, she can't manage the country's
Kemi Badenoch is speaking now.
She says they are there to talk about Rachel Reeves.
[Reeves] promised not to put a tax on working people. Apparently, farmers aren’t working people. Apparently, anyone who has a job isn’t a working person because they put up the jobs tax and look at what’s happened.
And she refers to the rental licence story.
Rachel Reeves apparently has broken a law. Just like Angela Rayner before her and Louise Haigh before her. All we see is the Labour cabinet making mistakes, breaking laws. If the chancellor can’t even get it on top of her own paperwork, how is she going to get on top of the country’s paperwork?
But Badenoch then reverts to her argument that, if Reeves puts up taxes in the budget, she should be sacked. (See 9.05am.)
Stride says the Tories have an alternative economic policy. He refers to the plans set out at party conference to slash spending, and use the savings to abolish stamp duty, among other things.
Badenoch and Mel Stride hold press event
Kemi Badenoch and Mel Stride are speaking at an outdoor rally/press event on the south bank in London.
Stride, the shadow chancellor, is speaking now. He says Labour has broken its promises on tax and that’s “disgraceful”. He specifically refers to inheritance tax being extended to farms, which is something the party had previously ruled out.
Kemi Badenoch is about to deliver her speech shortly.
Within the last hour, she has posted a message on social media saying that, if Rachel Reeves puts up taxes in the budget, she will have to resign.
Rachel Reeves promised “no more tax increases”. That now looks like a lie.
If she puts up tax, Starmer must sack her.
This is confusing, given that the party is already saying Reeves should be sacked over the rental licence error. (See 8.42am.) If they think she is not fit to be chancellor now, it seems odd to be saying that she should also have to resign over a hypothetical decision happening in a month’s time.
Tories say Starmer should sack Reeves for breaking law and breaking ministerial code
The Conservative have said Keir Starmer should sack Rachel Reeves. A Tory spokesperson said:
Rachel Reeves has broken the law and broken the ministerial code, but Keir Starmer is too weak to sack her.
While the chancellor is planning tax hikes for millions of families across the country at the budget, it’s one rule for the chancellor and another for everyone else.
Keir Starmer pledged to restore integrity to politics, but now he’s laughing in the face of the British public.
He should grow a backbone and sack the chancellor now. This is not over.
No 10 releases letters from Reeves and Starmer about chancellor inadvertently renting home with necessary licence
Good morning. Ministers often complain about Whitehall being slow and inefficient, but last night the government’s ethical standards machinery settled a misconduct allegation in record time. After the Daily Mail revealed that Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, had inadvertently rented out her south London home without requiring the specific licence required by the council, before midnight Downing Street had already released an exchange of letters on the issue between Reeves and Keir Starmer.
Reeves apologised for the mistake. Her spokesperson has said that the letting agency she used told her a licence was not needed.
And Starmer said that he had already consulted his ethics adviser, Sir Laurie Magnus, who had advised that, in the light of Reeves’s apology and her willingess to rectify the situation, no further action was needed.
So, from Downing Street’s perspective, the whole thing was sorted before the Mail’s final edition went to press.
In many European countries, this would not even come close to registering as a scandal and it would all be swifty forgotten. But, with a censorious media, and papers like the Mail actively hostile to Labour, Starmer and Reeves are unlikely to shut down the story quite that easily. Starmer is also open to the accusation of double standards. In other cases where ministers have been accused of breaching the ministerial code of conduct, he has taken a strict approach to enforcing the rules. Angela Rayner also inadvertently failed to comply with the relevant legislation in relation to a housing matter, and that led to her having to resign.
Kemi Badenoch is due to give a speech shortly and she is not letting up. Last night she said that, if Reeves broke the law (and Southwark council says not having the right licence is a criminal offence), she should resign.
The Prime Minister must launch a full investigation.
He once said “lawmakers can’t be lawbreakers”.
If, as it appears, the Chancellor has broken the law, then he will have to show he has the backbone to act.
And this morning, highlighting a recent tweet from Reeves in which the chancellor welcomed a selective licensing policy for landlords in Leeds, Badenoch said it was hard to believe she did not know she needed a licence for her London rental home.
Rachel Reeves was celebrating the renting law being expanded in her constituency, at the same time she was breaking that law with her own house
Claiming that she wasn’t aware of these laws is about as credible as her CV.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Morning: John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister and the SNP leader, and Rhun ap Iorwerth, the Plaid Cymru leader, are meeting in Edinburgh to discuss a joint approach to countering “Westminster’s despair and decline”.
9am: Kemi Badenoch and Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, speak at a Conservative press conference in London.
9.30am: Peter Kyle, the business secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
9.30am: The Ministry of Justice publishes quarterly figures relating to prisons, including the number of assaults and deaths.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
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