Labour urged to ‘have courage' to trigger vote on Chagos deal
But the Conservative Party's shadow foreign secretary Dame Priti has called for a similar vote in the Commons.
'With the 21-day Crag (Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010) process about to conclude, it is a disgrace that Labour have breached the parliamentary conventions and denied this House a meaningful debate and vote on ratification,' she told MPs.
To accompany the treaty, MPs will need to sign off on a Bill to wind up the current governance of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT).
The treaty will only come into force once the legislation is 'in place', according to the Government.
Yesterday dozens of Chagossians came to Parliament to tell us how they feel let down, neglected and betrayed by Labour's £30bn Chagos Surrender Treaty. Labour are denying them their rights and blocking the House of Commons from a meaningful debate and vote! @CllrABClarkson pic.twitter.com/482WEUkPPl
— Priti Patel MP (@pritipatel) July 1, 2025
Dame Priti added: 'Having a vote on the Bill is not the same as voting on the treaty under Crag. Earlier this week, the House of Lords – the other place – had a debate and vote where the Lib Dems sided with Labour in backing this £30 billion surrender treaty, which is subsidising tax cuts in Mauritius.
'So, why can't we have a debate and vote in this House? What are ministers afraid of?
'Are they afraid that their backbenchers, now worried about benefit cuts and the impact of unpopular tax rises, will question why so much money is being handed over for a territory that we own and force them into another embarrassing U-turn?'
Dame Priti urged ministers to 'scrap this treaty or at least have the courage to bring it here for a proper debate, full scrutiny, and finally, a vote in this House'.
Treaties are laid before Parliament before they are ratified, but there is no requirement for a debate or vote.
Peers in their vote, which Conservative shadow Foreign Office minister Lord Callanan triggered, agreed not to reject the treaty by 205 votes to 185, majority 20.
Responding, Stephen Doughty told the Commons he was 'disappointed by the tone' of Dame Priti's comments.
'I don't know who writes this stuff,' the Foreign Office minister said.
'I don't know whether it's just performative politics or rhetoric, I don't know what.
'But I should point out that I have received and answered over 100 written parliamentary questions from (Dame Priti), I've answered over 250 questions on this deal and the process in total.
'We've had no less than six urgent questions in this House. We have had two statements from this Government by the Foreign Secretary (David Lammy) and the Defence Secretary (John Healey).
'I personally briefed (Dame Priti) and answered many of her questions in my office just a couple of weeks ago in good faith and in detail, and indeed, I was subjected – quite rightly – to robust scrutiny not only from the Foreign Affairs Committee of this House, but also from the International Relations and Defence Committee in the other House, and indeed the International Arrangements Committee in great detail on these issues.'
Mr Doughty said a Bill would follow 'in due course' but added the deal with Mauritius, presented to Parliament in May, 'secures' the UK-US military base on Diego Garcia, 'secures our national security and that of our allies'.
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The Guardian
11 minutes ago
- The Guardian
To Starmer, his achievements are obvious. As a thought experiment, let's see things through his eyes
He doesn't look like the innovative type, but Keir Starmer is staging a radical experiment. He is testing out a theory of politics a matter of months after it was seemingly – and spectacularly – disproved and, in the process, hoping to pull off a turnaround that would constitute a comeback so stunning it would be closer to a resurrection. The theory in question is that if you deliver practical improvements to the lives of voters, they will reward you at the ballot box. Its guiding principle is 'show, don't tell', with the emphasis on results rather than talk, pragmatism rather than ideology. He's not the first to try it: this was also the animating creed of Joe Biden's presidency – and we know how that worked out. So far the approach seems to be bearing similarly sour fruit in Britain. As Starmer marks one year since his landslide victory, Labour has suffered the biggest post-election drop in public approval since the Conservatives were tanked by Black Wednesday in 1992. The prime minister's personal numbers are the lowest ever recorded for a PM 12 months in: his net approval stands at -54 points. At the equivalent moment in October 2023, Rishi Sunak scored -37. No one has ever come back up from such depths. The PM appears unfazed by all this. It's not that he insists he knows how to climb out of the current hole; rather, he refuses to accept he or his government are in a hole at all. He has a list of first-year achievements he is proud of and, besides, he believes he was written off once before, early in his spell as leader of the opposition – only to plough on, methodically reaching each of the milestones he had set himself and, finally, to win. By way of an anniversary gift, let's assess Starmer as he wants to be assessed. Let's put aside the various missteps of the past year as 'noises off', or as the mere teething pains of a new government. Let us look past both the fiasco of this week's near-defeat on welfare, staved off only by a series of panicked concessions and U-turns, and last summer's baffling determination to strangle at birth any feelgood factor that may have greeted the ejection of a despised Tory government, filling the air instead with gloom and the promise that things would get worse before they got better. Let's not dwell on the one act of these past 12 months that cut through most to voters: the withdrawal of the winter fuel allowance from millions of pensioners. Let us instead judge Labour on its own terms: delivery. On that list of Starmer's, there's a decent range of items, from the three trade deals that had eluded the Conservatives – with the US, EU and India – to a fall in NHS waiting lists, down to their lowest level in two years; from the expansion of free school meals provision to increased wages. The trouble is, none of those achievements goes anywhere close to repairing the damage Labour itself says was done over the past decade and a half. Inside Downing Street, they still profess their shock at the state they found the country in. Whether it's overcrowded prisons or a dysfunctional water industry, so much is 'busted'. It is a herculean task to turn all that around, and especially to do it fast – all the more so when there is so little money to spend. Starmer might be calm about the fact that a great change hasn't happened within a year, but it requires a Panglossian optimism to believe it will come even within five, in time for the next election. In whichever direction you look, delivery is maddeningly hard. To take just one example, the government has won plaudits for its first moves on housing, including a target of an additional 1.5m homes in England by 2029. That means building 300,000 each year. But for the most recent 12-month period, the tally stood at just over 200,000. If everything goes right, Labour's planning reforms should eventually boost housebuilding by 25% – but that still won't be enough to reach its goal. Still, let's be like Starmer and hope his various plans work and the government really does deliver. The lesson of Biden is that even that won't be enough. In fairness, Labour's high command does get that point, acknowledging mere 'lines on a graph' or stats won't cut it. The improvement has to be felt in people's lives. And yet, that too may not be sufficient. Voters don't usually go in for gratitude; they are as likely to credit themselves as the government for a material advance in their circumstances. What's needed, and Team Starmer swear they understand this too, is a story, a narrative of where the country has been and where it could go next, that the public can follow. Land on the right one, and it gives you the time and space this government has been denied. Margaret Thatcher's self-proclaimed mission to wean Britain off a sclerotic state was compelling enough to make a virtue even of economic hardship: the bitterness of her medicine was deemed proof that it was working. With no equivalent story, every setback of Starmer's is taken in isolation, evidence that the government doesn't know what it's doing. The PM offers no persuasive explanation of what is happening or why it may take a while. That wrecks a party's relationship with the electorate, obviously, but also with its own MPs, as the increasingly restive and frustrated parliamentary Labour party attests. Most Labour folk admit this narrative weakness is their achilles heel, and that it stems from a deficiency in the leader himself. A lawyer, a technocrat, a manager: whatever word they use to describe the prime minister, no one ever accuses him of being a storyteller. The man who seems least worried by this narrative void is Starmer himself. The formative experience of his (short) political career was his early tenure as Labour leader, half a decade ago. Trailing far behind his then opponent, he read commentaries daily telling him that Boris Johnson was going to dominate British politics for the next 10 years and that his destiny was to replicate Neil Kinnock as a transitional figure, preparing the ground for someone else more capable of winning. Those prognosticators got him wrong then and, he believes, they have got him wrong now. Besides, in his mind, the narrative of his government is obvious. How could anyone look at all he has done so far and not see that the common thread is an earnest effort to improve the lives of ordinary working men and women? To him, it's so clear it scarcely needs to be spelled out. Unfortunately, as the last US president discovered, everything needs to be spelled out, a hundred times a day, on every conceivable platform and very loudly. The days of quiet, patient, unflashy achievement, eventually recognised by a grateful electorate, are long gone, if they ever existed. Starmer and those around him need to adapt to that reality soon. If he fails, there is a grinning master of the new politics, who revels in the primacy of talk over action, of grievance over solution, who is currently 10 points ahead – and waiting to pounce. Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
Spectator
15 minutes ago
- Spectator
Revealed: Morgan McSweeney's memo to the PM on how Labour could fail
In this week's cover story, I revealed details of a memo written by Morgan McSweeney, the prime minister's chief of staff, written in May last year, before the general election, which predicted exactly how Labour would struggle in power, because of its historical tendency to want to 'change the world', rather than focusing on re-election in the way Conservative governments do. Central to this uncanny act of clairvoyance was the insight that even a large majority (at the time the memo was written, possible but not certain) would not insulate Starmer from the tendency of Labour MPs to drift into activism and campaigning against their own government, something we saw in spades this week. Today, I can bring you the whole memo. It is notable for a number of reasons: McSweeney's shrewd analysis. There is a reason why he is regarded as an adroit strategist and that is why Starmer backed him last week against calls for 'regime change' in No. 10. The title of the memo was 'May 4th 2028' and it outlines a strategy to win a second general election after four years (rather than the full five-year term). I have had hints since that Starmer's team is already shifting its horizons to 2029 rather than 2028 but it is worth keeping this in mind when the Treasury outlines cuts or tax rises for the back end of this parliament – they may not have come into force before an election. At a time when it was not certain that Labour would win big, Starmer's chief strategist was openly speculating about far closer cooperation with the Liberal Democrats and inviting Sir Ed Davey in to collaborate. Again, if we are heading for a hung parliament in 2029, this is worth keeping at the back of our minds. McSweeney was quick to see that the next big battle for Labour would be against the 'populist right' in the form of Reform, and correct in identifying that Reform would begin to eclipse the Tories, as they have done since the new year. The memo outlines four ways in which the left loses to the populists – by being soft on net zero, immigration, by failing to deliver change voters can 'feel' and by becoming identified with a failed establishment. All four of these seem like pretty live issues/problems for Labour vis-à-vis Reform The memo outlines a blueprint for tackling Reform: levelling with the public, going on the attack, telling a coherent story with heroes and villains, and do not duck the key issues. This is precisely where many Labour people think Starmer is currently failing. Two caveats. My Downing Street sources say some of McSweeney's thinking has changed since he wrote the memo, so it shouldn't be assumed that Starmer is going to follow it to the letter now, but I know it was discussed in No. 10 last week as the PM tried to get things back on track. Secondly, while McSweeney wrote the first section himself, the material on elections around the world was commissioned by him but written by someone else, though he endorsed the conclusions. Nonetheless it represents a rare and valuable insight into the thinking of Team Starmer. Here is the full memo: From: Morgan McSweeney To: Keir Starmer May 4th 2028 – The Change Goes On Changing the world and retaining power The only task Labour finds harder than taking power from the Conservatives is keeping it. Few Labour Prime Ministers have ever secured two, full successive terms. Big Labour victories – 1945 and 1966 – have proved short lived. Today, swing voters are more volatile, less attached to any party and more willing to rapidly switch allegiance than ever before. If Labour wins after a heavy defeat in 2019, it will underscore that a big majority is no guarantee of victory at the subsequent election. When the Tories win power they always do so with the aim of retaining it. The decisions they take are always oriented towards winning the next election. When Labour wins we seek to change the world, to improve peoples' lives as fast as we can, but we ignore that really changing lives and setting the country on a new course takes more than one win. To successfully achieve our mission we must have a dual mindset of changing lives and retaining power. A big majority on July 4th will put even more pressure on the government to focus on the short term, to help people as much as possible as fast as possible, to lose discipline and definition. In 2028 the populist right will try to run a 1979 Tory campaign. Presenting us as continuity with the failures of the political establishment since the economic crash in the way that Thatcher presented Callaghan as the continuity with the Tory leadership of the 1970s and that same politics could fuel a strong return from the SNP. 5 tasks to win again. 1. Define the Mandate Change Britain for the better and every part of it better off. Our mandate is to make Britain better and every part of it better off. We should emphasise that our first steps are exactly that – they are the starting point not the summit of our ambitions. There is much work to be done to precisely understand what people believe they have elected a Labour government to do. Polling suggests that sorting out the NHS is the public's top priority, closing followed by stopping the boats and improving living standards. Median living standards have been stagnating since 2005—before the economic crash. GDP growth is necessary—too many people don't have a sufficient share of it—but people need to feel that they are better off. We need to get productivity and therefore wages to rise. That is easier said than done, but GDP does seem to be growing again and inflation is coming back to normal. There is also a tension with interest rates—the quickest way for people to feel better off will be for rates to fall…but a rise in GDP could mean that they stay higher for longer. We will need to manage expectations. PO [Paul Ovenden, the head of strategy] will oversee a bigger more extensive analysis post-election but we need a working definition now. 2. Tories / Reform Never again Our next fight will be with a more muscular populist right: it is more likely that the rump of the Tory party merges into Reform that vice-versa. But no matter how the populist right coalesces, our job will be to paint them as a continuity chaos or a return to it. A coalition of chaos that cannot be let loose of the public again. We should hammer them with the records of the extremists in their ranks. And they must be painted as a continuation of the politics that has left Britain on its knees. Populist Right politics leads to chaos, leads to short term thinking, chasing headlines, looking for attention. Chaos will always cost you more. Populist right politics will always present simple solutions – cut taxes fast, fly people off to Rwanda etc. The story must be told through its consequences on the country. We must define the problems in the country in a way that disqualifies the Populists from winning again. The problems the country has – low growth, high taxes, falling living standards, rising bills, high waiting lists, crumbling public services and open boards- Beware the politician with simple ideas. In this election campaign, our central message has been that Keir has been able to change the party so he will be able to change the country. It is encapsulated by the single-word campaign message 'Change'. But this story has stuck in people's minds precisely because we were able to define a villain: Jeremy Corbyn and the left that corrupted the party by putting it in the service of its members and supporters, not of working people. Keir has been the one to confront that culture within the party, to take them on and win. We must approach every action in government with clarity about who is the villain: who is responsible for getting us into this situation? And how are we taking them on to turn things around. The answer to this, at first, is easy: the Tories are the villains. Our audits will lay bare the damage that they have done to our economy, society and public services. We should not lose sight of the outrageous behaviour that characterised their time in office. This is no time for magnanimity. This is the time for accountability. And we should make sure that we hold them individually as well as collectively accountable for their actions. Every Minister, MP or Adviser who referred their friends or associates into the 'VIP Lane' for Covid contracts should face investigation, but it cannot just be about the 'what' it must also be about they 'why'. 3. Keir Starmer – Your force for change A government with a colossal majority is no more able to govern than one with an ordinary working majority, and may, in fact, face more challenges not less. On our own side, there will be pressure to adopt causes that are popular with our own supporters and to lose focus on the electorate. There will be hundreds of MPs with rather a lot of time on their hands who may start to behave like super activists or campaigners, rather than parliamentarians. And our internal critics will surely make the argument 'you had the power to do anything—and this is all you achieved…' as if the size of the majority somehow directly correlates to solving complex and long-term policy problems. It will, therefore, be important to maintain discipline within our own ranks. Keir should be positioned as unlike ordinary politicians—rather than the typical politician who makes all sorts of promises and then breaks them, Keir should do the opposite. He should consistently under promise and over deliver. This can become powerful because it means that when Keir speaks people will be more inclined to listen. At the same time, Keir should be positioned as the force for change in the country. A cast-iron approach to 'what gets said gets done' should be combined with storytelling around Keir's priority to put the Party, and therefore the British state, in the service of working people. Keir must be associated with big inward investment deals, projects getting shovels in the ground on projects. KS is the dealmaker, the builder and the challenger. We should use the full power of the government machine to do this. This will also mean putting people who are aligned with our mission into the key institutions of the state. The Tories have spent 14 years rewarding their donor and friends with jobs in public institutions; we should not do the same. But we should clear out the beneficiaries of nepotism and appoint capable people who share our ambitions for the country. We will need a steady drum beat of announcements from central government that reinforce this narrative and occupy political space. Finally, a key message should be that Keir is making Britain 'respected abroad' again. We should think about what international visits would cement this reputation—in Europe, the United States, and beyond. 4. Energising the party and keeping it mobilised We need to mobilise the party to the same cause as the government: to be in the service of working people. We could begin by asking all backbenchers to spend the summer in a major listening exercise where they go out and meet people in their communities and in public services and listen to the difficulties that they face. We could create a programme that would enable them to feedback these stories to Keir and to the Cabinet. It would create activities for our MPs and it would offer a means to cement in the public's mind just how bad things have become and lead both their constituents and local parties on our agenda for economic reform. As well as listening, we need to make sure that we deliver on the causes that are most precious to our members and supporters as well as to the country. The three issues that are most salient for our base are child poverty, climate breakdown, and services and benefits for society's most vulnerable. We should make sure that vulnerable groups are systematically examined in the audits of public services. We could follow up on the audits by asking a leading figure to look at reforms to help society's most vulnerable. Child poverty must come down under a Labour Government and we need a visible strategy to cut it. 5. Brining the country together Large parts of the country will feel disenfranchised by this election. It's possible that Reform gets twice as many votes as the Lib Dems but that the latter have 10 times as many seats. We know that younger voters and many Muslim voters will have supported candidates and parties that will have no representation in parliament whatsoever. This provides fertile ground for populists of left and right to try to delegitimise a Labour government from day one. We need a clear strategy to engage with alienated voters. There are some obvious things that we can do – such as visibly governing in closer partnership with Scotland and Wales and making sure that the Government is a visible presence in their politics. A more radical approach would be to welcome Ed Davey to Downing Street in the early days of a new administration. If we have a large majority, there will certainly be pushback from within the party. But the benefits could be considerable: it will show our intentions to work with others and a different tone and style of politics. [The following section was commissioned by McSweeney but not written by him] Lessons from around the world Four ways centre-left governments make themselves vulnerable to the populist right 1. They underweight the costs of net zero, so populists become defenders of working people. The transition to net zero is this century's greatest economic transformation. Countries that seize this opportunity will secure significant economic benefits which will, in the long run, significantly outweigh costs. But there are big costs, especially in the short term. Many changes to decarbonise homes (heat pumps, retrofits, electric vehicles) are currently unaffordable and disruptive for households to adopt. In Germany, Olaf Scholz's government nearly fell apart as voters reacted angrily to the idea of having to ditch boilers as part of a ban on new oil and gas heating systems from 2024. The far-right AfD complained of an 'eco-dictatorship', and the popularity of Scholz's government tanked. It has not recovered and the policy has been watered down. Without an approach led by political strategy, the populist right can position itself as being on the side of working people, against a government captured by the moral imperative to decarbonise. A small group of voters, who live largely in safe Labour seats, feel climate change is a key issue, and an equally small group, on the right of the Tory coalition, are fully-fledged deniers. Most, and particularly swing voters, take a nuanced view. They think climate change is real, but working people should not be forced to pay to solve the problem, and that the government should focus on issues that more immediately affect them.1 We must constantly focus policy and argument on 'energy security' (reducing dependence on hostile foreign nations), the cost of living (jobs and reducing bills), and the local environment (nature, water, green spaces). 2. They look reluctant to act on migration, ceding 'control over borders' to populists. Biden pledged to reverse most Trump-era policies on immigration. On his first day in office, he paused nearly all deportations, and vowed to show compassion to those entering the United States while securing the southern border. He wanted to demonstrate that the US was humane and that government could work. Instead, he has found himself on the defensive. Many voters say immigration is their top concern and most do not have confidence in Biden to address it. Biden's approach has failed even on its own terms: the humanitarian crisis on the border and in major US cities is worse than ever, as Democrat Mayors have highlighted. With an eye to the next election, Biden has adopted a tougher posture, calling for stricter enforcement at the border. But it looks inauthentic, and as a result, is not working. Voters sense, correctly, that Biden's first instinct was to adopt a compassionate approach to migrants, not to secure America's borders. His conversion to tougher action looks cynical – something he has been forced to do because of public pressure, not because he really believes it. We must be tough from the start. The first things we do on migration must be about getting control over our borders, smashing the gangs, and tackling small boats. We must earn the trust to address more fundamental challenges: Home Office reform, or more boldly, reframing legal migration as a matter of industrial strategy by moving legal migration out of the Home Office and into the Department for Business and Trade (DBT). What we say and do must constantly underscore the argument that the Tories lost control of our borders, and we are taking it back. 3. They become defenders of the system, allowing populists to be seen as agents of change – in style as well as substance. In Germany, Scholz deliberately styled himself as the incumbent. He wanted to be a symbol of continuity with Angela Merkel (in whose coalition he served). He was even photographed making Merkel's hallmark diamond-shaped hand gesture. But, however popular Merkel was when she was in office, voters didn't want continuity, they wanted change. In practice, this narrowed the political space for Scholz to argue that the system is broken, ceding this territory to the AfD. This is also about the stylistic element of politics. Some on the centre-left have responded to the headline-grabbing shock-and-awe of populists by rising above the fray and refusing to engage. This was how Joe Biden began his presidency, instructing the Justice Department to be slow in prosecuting Donald Trump for the insurrection, and ignoring the populist right. This proved impossible and ineffective. When Biden came out fighting, such this year's State of the Union, it bolstered support. We must be insurgents from the outset. In terms of substance, voters understand perfectly well that the British state is broken and in need of radical reform: Whitehall, delivery, public services, the responsibilities and powers of devolved governments, combined authorities, and local government. We need to be impatient, ceaseless reformers. Careful and precise in what fights we chose and why, but as soon as we look like we are defending the status quo of our politics and government, when voters know it does not work, we risk ceding the ground to the populist right. We cannot vacate the terrain of showing voters we are listening to and fighting for them. We need streetfighters who communicate clearly, understand delivery, and can be deployed as outriders. This requires an energetic, pugnacious and courageous communication style, a willingness to take risks and have the argument, not shirk it. It also requires effective engagement with new, fragmented media beyond mainstream outlets and savvy use of social media. 4. They deliver change that working people cannot see or feel. For governments to rebuild trust with working people, they must address visible problems and focus policy on their experience. In the United States, the Infrastructure Act, CHIPS Act, and Inflation Reduction Act represent the most significant legislative achievement of a US President in decades. But they aim at structural transformation, whose long-term benefits are relatively intangible in the short term. Labour has made a clear argument about the need to focus on the long-term and end sticking plaster politics. This is right and vital in managing the public's expectations. However, voters must also experience improvements in their material and physical environments. They want tangible things that make a difference: better pay and lower bills, safer streets and cleaner parks, better roads with fewer potholes, a doctor or dentist they can see when they need one. Politics starts with the local, on people's streets and local areas, so we must focus on the things that people see and feel in their own lives. The closer we get to the next election, the more important those will become. That requires a constant balancing between governing for the long-term, to demonstrate we will not duck hard decisions like the Tories, without neglecting the political imperative for short-term wins. Four ways centre-left governments beat the populist right 1. Level with the public with an honesty that takes people off guard. Working people understand that in politics, as in life, there are few quick or easy wins. They do not expect to be mollycoddled. They want to be treated with honesty and respect. There is much greater appetite for hearing hard-truths than politicians often suppose. Hard truth's should be at the core of Labour's message. The country is in a terrible mess. Labour must keep making a virtue of the fact it will not lie to voters or make promises it can't keep, and that it will be slow and painful to drag ourselves out of this mess. But Labour has a plan, and things will slowly get better. When we're inevitably attacked because things aren't improving fast enough, we must call out gimmicks and point out that gimmicks got us into this mess in the first place. 2. Tell our own story of us-versus-them. Most voters think all politicians are the same: 'them' not 'us'. Centre-left governments need their own version of this story: the 'us' is the working people of Britain and their Labour government prepared to tell hard truths and do hard yards to tackle big problems. The 'them' are dishonest Tory con merchants and clowns who got the country into this mess – with lies and broken promises – and even profited from it. They are the villains of this story and working people are the heroes. We must constantly demonstrate that a Labour government serves working people. This will be difficult. Politicians must tell stories and deliver arguments that focus on experience. We cannot settle for abstract, structural logic against the populist right's more concrete, linear reasoning. For instance, on immigration, instead of explaining the complexity of the problem or reducing it to economics, we must own the language of control, jobs, and houses. 3. Always be on the offensive. Attacking your opponents matters as much in government as in an election campaign or opposition. Done well, it enables you to define – and toxify – your opponents before they define themselves. After the election, the Conservatives will find themselves in a painful and prolonged debate, in which its relationship with Farage, probably as an MP, will become existential. While they are distracted, Labour quickly cement their culpability for Britain's ills in voters' minds. This is what the Conservatives did in the summer of 2010. While Labour was debating its future, the Conservatives ruthlessly and relentlessly pinned the blame for the financial crisis on Labour. The starting point must be to endorse the depth of the disillusionment, even rage, many feel. Voters aren't wrong to believe that politics has stopped serving working people. It has. Worse, it has started to serve itself. In the most egregious cases, politicians have used their office to enrich themselves and their friends. Voters have been let down by their leaders. The system has been rigged against working people. The people who did that are the Conservatives. In government, we must continue to be streetfighters in communication and campaigning, putting our opponents on the defensive. 4. Visibly occupy the issues that populists want to exploit. Populists draw strength from promoting ideas that have been insufficiently addressed by the current government. Attacking populists for talking about these issues or seeking to move the debate onto other matters plays into their hands. Voters see it as avoiding or downplaying their concerns. So Labour must visibly and proactively own the debate on issues the populist right seeks to exploit. Not as issues to be managed for narrow political reasons, but as core parts of Labour's own governing agenda. Tackling migration is not a defensive play Labour tactically deploys when under pressure, but a continual and core element of its programme, which Labour is proud to advance because it wants to make life better for working people. This means keeping Labour's governing programme disciplined and focused on voters' priorities. It also means always running a forward-looking agenda, offering an optimistic – but realistic – vision of a better future for working people.
Scottish Sun
15 minutes ago
- Scottish Sun
Major rule change for anyone living in a council house under new Labour crackdown
SMART MOVE? Major rule change for anyone living in a council house under new Labour crackdown A MAJOR rule change has been introduced for anyone living in a council house under a new Labour crackdown. Stringent restrictions will be placed on the government scheme going forward. 1 A major rule change has been introduced for anyone living in a council house under a new Labour crackdown The right-to-buy scheme Right to Buy was the policy of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, helping to propel her to her first general election victory. But discounts for council tenants seeking to buy their homes are now to be drastically cut by Angela Rayner. As a result of the move, which will impose stringent restrictions on the right-to-buy scheme, the Deputy Prime Minister was accused of an 'attack on aspiration'. Under the new scheme, the discount will be cut to between five and 15 per cent, which is drastically down from 35 per cent at present. Ms Rayner also announced that tenants must have lived in a council house for 10 years – which previously used to be only three – to be able to qualify. Plus, those people who have previously benefitted from the scheme will be barred from trying again Newly built council houses exempt Newly built council houses will be exempt from the right to buy for 35 years. Kevin Hollinrake, shadow housing secretary, called Ms Rayner a 'hypocrite' because she had benefitted from right to buy herself. Ms Rayner bought her former council house in Stockport, Greater Manchester, in 2017 for £79,000 after claiming a 25 per cent discount reports The Telegraph. She later sold the property for £48,500 more than she paid for it. You'd never know I live in a council house thanks to how good it looks - I shopped in IKEA & an Amazon tip saved me cash Mr Hollinrake said: 'Today, Labour has chosen to quietly bury bad news, slipping out a policy that slashes right-to-buy eligibility and discounts. 'This is nothing short of an attack on aspiration. Labour is turning its back on the very families who work hard and want a stake in their future.' The scheme has helped millions Mr Hollinrake explained that for decades, the right to buy has helped millions take their first step onto the housing ladder. He continued: "Now, this Government is making it harder than ever to own a home. "It is increasingly clear that the only guaranteed route to housing in this country is to arrive on a small boat. 'And the hypocrisy is staggering, Angela Rayner has personally benefitted from right to buy. "Yet under her party's watch, that opportunity is being stripped away from others. Labour's message to aspiring homeowners is clear.' Sir Keir Starmer promised wholesale reform to restrict access to the scheme, saying it had too dramatically reduced the number of social houses available to people who needed them. Ms Rayner's Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government department believe the move would allow councils to rebuild their stock. As well as better ensure that only tenants who have paid rent on their homes for many years are able to benefit from the scheme. The changes will prevent existing property owners, or those who have previously benefitted from the scheme, from exercising the right to buy unless there are exceptional circumstances, such as being the victim of domestic abuse. Newly built social and affordable housing will be exempt from the right to buy for 35 years, making it more financially viable for the council to build new homes.
