Candidates to lead Labour on Glasgow council revealed as party veteran stands down
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Sky News
an hour ago
- Sky News
Eighty years on from Labour's landslide, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza brings Clement Attlee's failure on Israel and Palestine to mind
Here's one for the aficionados: 26 July 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of Labour's landslide victory in the 1945 general election. Trade unionists and Labour MPs are celebrating, claiming the nation still owes a debt of gratitude for the historic achievements of Clement Attlee's government. Yet today, as the world watches the humanitarian crisis in Gaza with horror, it's worth recalling that one of Attlee's biggest failures was his Israel - Palestine policy. (Oh, and while Attlee's health minister Aneurin Bevan boasted he "stuffed their mouths with gold" to overcome doctors' opposition to the NHS, today doctors are on strike over pay again.) The 1945 election took place on 5 July, the same date Sir Keir Starmer entered 10 Downing Street last year. But with British armed forces still serving overseas in 1945, it took until 26 July to declare the result. 9:30 Labour won 393 seats in 1945, compared with 411 last year. But while Sir Keir's Labour only won 34% of the votes, Mr Attlee won nearly 50%. But then, there was no insurgent Reform UK back then. Celebrating the 80th anniversary, Joanne Thomas, who became general secretary of the shopworkers' union Usdaw in April this year, said the Attlee government left a lasting legacy. "Usdaw's predecessor unions were proud to play a role in the 1945 election victory and to see 18 of our members elected," she said. "Not least a hero of our union 'Red Ellen', a fiery trade union organiser who led the Jarrow hunger march and went on to serve as education minister." Wilkinson was indeed red. Attlee biographer Trevor Burridge wrote: "Ellen Wilkinson was made minister of education despite the fact that she had actively campaigned against his leadership." She was MP for Jarrow, not a million miles from the current education secretary and Starmer super-loyalist Bridget Phillipson's Houghton and Sunderland South constituency. But not even her best friends would call her red! Ellen Wilkinson was also the only woman in Attlee's 1945 cabinet. Last year, Sir Keir made history by appointing 11 women to his cabinet. Labour MP Marie Tidball, elected last year, joined the tributes to Attlee. "He transformed Britain for working people and this legacy laid the foundations for Britain today - our NHS, welfare state and homes for heroes. "Those public services meant I could grow up to fulfil my potential. Labour legend." But if Attlee's NHS, welfare state and nationalisation are viewed as successes by Labour trade unionists and MPs, his government's policy on Palestine is widely agreed to have been a failure. In his acclaimed biography of Attlee's foreign secretary, "Ernest Bevin: Labour's Churchill", former Blairite cabinet minister Andrew Adonis wrote: "Why did Bevin get Israel/Palestine so wrong?" Adonis says Bevin's policy on Palestine "led to the precise opposite of its declared intention of stability and the peaceful co-existence of the Jewish and Palestinian communities within one state at peace with its neighbours". He concluded: "Instead, Bevin's legacy was a Jewish state of Israel, much larger than even most of its advocates previously favoured, in periodic war and perpetual tension with both its Palestinians and its Arab neighbours." Where did Bevin go wrong? Adonis wrote: "In the first place, because, during the three key years 1945-48, he did not agree that his central policy objective was 'good relations with the United States'." As Sir Keir Starmer prepares to meet Donald Trump in Scotland, 80 years after the historic Attlee victory, that's clearly not a mistake the current Labour PM has made in his relations with the US president. " I like your prime minister," the president said as he arrived in Scotland, "he's slightly more liberal than I am, but I like him". So, 80 years on from Attlee, lessons have been learned. So far, so good, that is.
The Independent
3 hours ago
- The Independent
Labour must speed up plans to shut all asylum hotels, says party's red wall chief
Labour must shut down all asylum hotels 'a lot quicker' than its current plan to put a stop to them by the end of the current parliament in 2029, the chairman of the party's red wall group of MPs has said. Jo White, the MP for Bassetlaw, who leads a caucus of around 40 MPs in the party's traditional heartlands, said Chancellor Rachel Reeves ' plan to axe the use of asylum hotels by 2029 needed to be sped up. There are currently around 32,000 asylum seekers in hotels around the UK. Anti-migrant demonstrations last week outside one of those hotels, in Epping, led to more than a dozen arrests. The hotel was thrust into the spotlight after a man living there was charged with sexual assault, harassment and inciting a girl to engage in sexual activity. The man, from Ethiopia, has denied the offences and remains on remand in custody. Ms White told The Telegraph: 'There's a commitment to close down the hotels by the end of the parliamentary term. I think we all want it to be a lot, lot quicker than that.' 'There is a huge sense of unfairness because people work hard here in this country and commit to supporting the country and then there's the sense that what asylum hotels cost is a huge drag on what should be invested into our NHS, our schools and our infrastructure. 'So they have to close, we have to get those asylum hotels cleared out.' She added that she believes Labour ministers share her frustrations and went on to urge Sir Keir Starmer to 'stop the incentives' for those seeking to reach the UK illegally. A record 24,000 migrants have crossed the Channel so far this year, the highest tally for the first half of the year since records began in 2018. It represents a 48 per cent rise compared to the first six months of last year. Ms White welcomed home secretary Yvette Cooper 's plan to share asylum‑hotel locations with food‑delivery firms, calling it a sensible measure to crack down on illegal working. She also urged Sir Keir Starmer and Ms Cooper to revisit the idea of national identity cards, a proposal repeatedly ruled out by Downing Street. Reflecting on last week's demonstrations in Epping, however, she described the scenes as 'really frightening and quite scary', adding that while anger is understandable, violence against asylum seekers could not be condoned. It was revealed last week that plans to reduce the number of asylum hotels could see migrants rehoused in vacant residential properties and council‑owned homes. Public concern over the scheme has intensified as Sir Keir has vowed to significantly reduce both legal and illegal migration. At the same time, more than 40,000 failed asylum seekers remain in limbo, having appealed against their decisions and still requiring housing. A government spokesman said that since taking office, ministers had acted immediately to fix the asylum system, closing hotels and removing over 35,000 people with no right to be here.
Telegraph
4 hours ago
- Telegraph
Households at risk of £12.7bn bill for switching off turbines on windy days
Households and businesses risk facing a £12.7bn-a-year bill to cover the cost of switching off wind turbines and solar farms under net zero plans. The grid operator has warned that the cost of paying energy firms to shut down renewables could surge by more than fivefold by the end of the decade. But it also said the Government could avoid the payments by abandoning its climate targets and prolonging the use of gas. Critics said that the latest net zero costs would come as a 'slap in the face to hard-pressed consumers struggling to pay their energy bills'. The payouts will be sparked by the huge expansion of intermittent renewable power sources under Mr Miliband's plan to decarbonise the energy grid. When the wind blows strongly and the sun shines, turbines and solar farms produce more electricity in a short period than the network can cope with. To stop the system being overwhelmed, potentially triggering widespread blackouts, the grid operator has to step in and tell firms to switch them off. Energy companies are then handed payments, known as 'constraint costs', to compensate them for the electricity those sites would have generated. Ministers said they would 'minimise' the increase in costs by fast-tracking new infrastructure such as pylons to connect offshore wind farms to the grid, despite opposition in areas where these are likely to be built. It comes after Ed Miliband was forced to increase subsidies for new wind farms to 'eye-watering' levels to get developers to build them. The Energy Secretary is already under pressure from No 10 over when his green electricity drive will deliver promised lower bills for households. In a new report the National Energy System Operator (NESO) warned that such subsidies could increase by more than fivefold by the end of the decade. It found that in the worst case scenario, compensation payouts could surge from £2.5bn a year at present to a high of £12.7bn a year in 2030. That would occur if the Government fails to force through any major upgrades to the grid, such as new pylon routes, over the next five years. In the report, the NESO said: 'Connection dates for new network build remain uncertain and changes to delivery timelines could significantly impact balancing costs, particularly around 2030. 'If no further network reinforcement takes place (current transmission network remains unchanged) constraint costs could peak at £12.7bn in 2030.' The NESO also projected a surge in the total rebalancing costs – including constraint costs – that taxpayers will face to fund the switch to net zero. If current policies work out, including 'strong consumer engagement' in reducing electricity usage, those total costs are still likely to rise by £8bn a year. The operator found that the best case net zero compliant scenario involved a rapid switch to hydrogen, reducing the financial burden to just over £6bn. But the cheapest option for households was a 'counterfactual' scenario in which Mr Miliband abandoned plans to phase out gas use and petrol cars. In that instance the NESO calculated that total rebalancing costs would rise only slightly, to just over £3bn a year at the end of the decade. The operator expects payouts to fall back after 2030, though only in the counterfactual scenario would they drop below current levels by 2035. Mike Foster, the chief executive of the Energy and Utilities Alliance, said the report showed that ministers should be focussing on a switch to hydrogen. He said: 'So-called constraint payments are a slap in the face to hard-pressed consumers struggling to pay their energy bills. 'The warning from the system operator, that they could reach £13bn by 2030, over £400 a year for the average bill, cannot be justified. 'What is worse, is all that surplus wind and solar power generation wasted could be used to produce green hydrogen – the holy grail in reaching net zero.' Octopus Energy, one of the country's leading providers, said that taxpayers have already forked out £700m on constraint costs this year. The business said that was already £250m more than at the same time last year, adding that the projected £8bn cost by 2030 was 'staggering'. It had previously calculated that subsidies would hit the £6bn mark by the end of the decade, at a cost of £200 per household in the UK. A spokesman for the net zero department said: 'These claims are fundamentally misleading, and wrongly assume that no network infrastructure will be built over the next five years. 'Through our clean power mission, we are working at pace to deliver the biggest upgrade in Great Britain's electricity network in decades, which will minimise constraint costs.'
