Latest news with #Starmer
Spectator
4 hours ago
- Politics
- Spectator
Cabinet ministers urge Starmer to recognise Palestine
Parliament may have risen for recess but that doesn't mean that Sir Keir Starmer is getting much of a break. It transpires that the Prime Minister is facing growing calls to immediately recognise Palestine as a state with a number of Cabinet minister understood to be piling pressure on the PM alongside dozens of his backbenchers. On Tuesday, just before MPs left Westminster for summer recess, Health Secretary Wes Streeting urged Sir Keir to recognise Palestine 'while there's still a state of Palestine left to recognise'. He went on: I deplore Israel's attacks on healthcare workers as well as other innocent civilians trying to access healthcare or vital aid. These actions go well beyond legitimate self-defence and undermine the prospects for peace. I sincerely hope that the international community can come together, as the foreign secretary has been driving towards, to make sure that we see an end of this war but also that we recognise the state of Palestine while there is a state of Palestine left to recognise. Streeting isn't the only member of the Cabinet understood to have pushed the issue in meetings. As reported by the Guardian, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn have also brought it up. The Health Secretary's intervention follows that of nearly 60 Labour MPs, who sent a letter to Foreign Secretary David Lammy at the start of the month after Israeli defence minister Israel Katz proposed plans to force Gaza's into a camp in Rafah. While Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard described the move was 'about population transfer to the southern tip of Gaza in preparation for deportation outside the strip', the MP group wrote: 'Though an accurate description, we believe there is a clearer one. The ethnic cleansing of Gaza.' Of course, it's not just Labour politicians who have been vocal on the Middle East. As Mr S wrote in May, more than a dozen senior Tory MPs and peers broke ranks to write to Starmer to urge the PM to immediately recognise Palestine as a state. The seven MPs and six House of Lords grandees have signed a letter that insists 'recognising Palestine would affirm our nation's commitment to upholding the principles of justice, self-determination and equal rights'. The letter was signed by several Tory moderates – including MPs Kit Malthouse, Simon Hoare and father of the house Sir Edward Leigh alongside peers such as Nicholas Soames and Hugo Swire. Mr S was rather interested to note that there were some more surprising signatories, however, with right-wing Conservative MP Sir John Hayes backing the call. Starmer hadn't changed the UK's stance after the Tory group or the Labour backbenchers reached out – but will he be swayed by his own Cabinet ministers? Stay tuned…
Daily Mirror
6 hours ago
- Health
- Daily Mirror
Keir Starmer accused of ignoring veterans for a year as Nuked Blood Scandal grows
Keir Starmer has been warned the Nuked Blood Scandal is growing out of control as veterans say he has ignored requests to meet them for a year The Prime Minister has been accused of ignoring the growing Nuked Blood Scandal since coming to office, with more than 50 veterans dying without justice on his watch. More than 2,000 survivors want the truth about a government programme of blood and urine testing of troops while they were being ordered to take part in nuclear weapons trials during the Cold War. The medical data that was gathered is now missing from their personnel files, denying them war pensions, compensation, and the truth about whether radiation left their families with a poisonous genetic legacy of cancers, blood disorders, miscarriages and birth defects. Keir Starmer was invited to meet campaigners and discuss their calls for a public inquiry within days of winning the general election last year, but his correspondence team did not even acknowledge the request. Since then his government has refused to tell Parliament about evidence it has now found of orders for the long-denied blood tests, serving government lawyers have been identified as having misled courts and judges, and his own officials have admitted scientists may have been conducting the experiments without medical supervision. Alan Owen, founder of nuclear veteran campaign group LABRATS, said: "This is the longest and worst scandal in British history. Long-denied allegations of using our own troops in radiation experiments are being proven with a growing pile of evidence, an expensive lawsuit, and a police complaint. But it seems we're not even on his to-do list." He added: "Either the PM is ignoring a problem that really needs his attention before it gets any worse, or someone is keeping this off his desk on purpose. Either way, we hear about another veteran dying every single week. These men have an average age of 87, a host of chronic health conditions, and they deserve better than this." The PM was tackled on the scandal by backbench Labour MP Emma Lewell in his first appearance at the Despatch Box after the election in July last year, and urged to hold an inquiry. Instead he promised her a meeting with Veterans Minister Al Carns. He has twice met with campaigners, but while he has ordered officials to review 1m pages of archive documents, he has refused all requests to say what he has found. The minister has ordered the release of a further 10,000 classified documents, thought to include at least 200,000 pages, but there is no date for their publication. Veteran Brian Unthank, 87, who has had 96 skin cancers, two bouts of bladder cancer and is now dealing with an "unusual" prostate cancer, said: "All I want is for Starmer to stand up, admit they got it wrong, apologise and find a way to sort it. But every promise we've ever had has been broken." Starmer was in Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet in 2019 when he signed off on a manifesto pledge to pay survivors £50,000 compensation, but all mention of nuclear veterans was removed from Labour's latest version. Meanwhile nearly 4.8m people have seen a viral video about Labour's broken promises, with footage of deputy leader Angela Rayner, Defence Secretary John Healey and Armed Forces minister Luke Pollard all demanding, while in Opposition, that the Tories order payouts. The government has expanded the criteria for the nuclear test medal after the Mirror highlighted the story of Operation Bagpipes hero Pete Peters, but so far he is the only veteran to have benefited. The minister has been asked to expand it for hundreds more crews who were ordered to take part in sampling missions through the nuclear tests of other nations, but this week he refused to say when they would receive it. Colin Duncan, who was a RAF sergeant in 543 Squadron when planes were sent through the clouds of French hyrdogen bombs in 1974, is fighting for the medal to be granted to comrades who suffer the same horrific pattern of illnesses. "We thought the minister was considering new criteria, but I'm not surprised to hear he's doing nothing of the sort," said Colin, 86, of Chipping Sodbury. "There must be a couple of thousand veterans the MoD is ignoring." If more veterans qualify for the medal, they may also need to be included in long-term health studies which the government relies on to refuse war pensions, which could alter their findings. No10 was contacted for comment.
The Guardian
7 hours ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Tories say Starmer has a ‘disconnect from reality' over housing asylum seekers
Update: Date: 2025-07-23T07:31:51.000Z Title: Cleverly says Starmer has a 'disconnect from reality' over housing asylum seekers Content: Hello and welcome to the UK politics live blog. Newly-appointed shadow housing secretary James Cleverly has criticised the prime minister for a 'disconnect from reality' when it comes to housing asylum seekers. The Tory MP and former home secretary said asylum hotels are being reopened and that more asylum seekers are likely to be sent to an accommodation centre in his own constituency of Braintree. 'The government has lost control,' he told LBC. 'And to add insult to injury, we saw the prime minister at the Liaison Committee just this week blithely saying, oh, there are plenty of houses for asylum seekers, when there are people all over the country struggling to get on the housing ladder, and that complete disconnect from reality, I think, is driving a lot of frustrations. 'There is never an excuse for rioting, and I'll make that absolutely clear, but the government really is making a difficult situation significantly worse.' He said that people who live close to facilities housing asylum seekers are 'typically well behaved' but that there are 'agitators, both of the left and the right, imposing themselves on local communities to try and play out a political agenda, and local people are caught in the crossfire'. The government should be seen to be 'on the side of the people who play by the rules, rather than on the side of the people who abuse the system, jump the queue and try and exploit our hospitality,' he said. In other news: Angela Rayner urged the government to acknowledge people's 'real concerns' and flagged high levels of deprivation where the worst riots erupted last summer nearly a year on from the disorder. The deputy prime minister told Cabinet colleagues that immigration and increasing time spent online are having a 'profound impact on society'. Edward Argar has stepped down as shadow health secretary, which he said was on the advice of his doctors after a 'health scare' earlier this summer. He will be replaced by Stuart Andrew, a former minister who has been shadow culture minister. Kevin Hollinrake, who had been shadow housing and communities secretary, will become party chair. He takes over from Nigel Huddleston, who will be the new shadow culture secretary. Conservative Senedd member Laura Anne Jones has joined Reform UK, becoming the party's first Member of the Senedd (MS). The UK government borrowed more than expected in June amid speculation the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will need to raise taxes at the autumn budget to repair the public finances. Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed public sector net borrowing rose to £20.7bn, up by £6.6bn from the same month a year earlier to reach the second-highest June borrowing figure since monthly records began in 1993. Artificial intelligence technology will be trialled to assess disputed ages of asylum seekers who say they are children, the Home Office has said. Ministers hope to roll out facial age estimation for migrants arriving by small boats and lorries over 2026, subject to further testing of the technology to go ahead this year.
New Statesman
9 hours ago
- Business
- New Statesman
GMB chief Gary Smith: 'Oil and gas is not the enemy'
Illustration by Ellie Foreman Peck Gary Smith is not a man who disguises his passions. The wall of his office features framed pictures of pioneering Scottish trade unionists, the Durham Miners' Gala, steam ferries on the Mersey, the jazz poet Gil Scott-Heron, and Hibernian FC. As the general secretary of the GMB – the country's third-largest trade union, with around 630,000 members – the blunt, puckish Scotsman leads an organisation that is more central to national life today than it has been for decades. Its parliamentary group alone comprises more than 250 Labour MPs (making it, as Smith likes to quip, over twice the size of the Conservative Party), including Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and Angela Rayner. GMB's presence in sectors such as defence, energy and manufacturing means that cabinet ministers heed its voice. 'It's a huge improvement on what went before, impossible to compare it,' said Smith, 57, with a thatch of boyish blond hair. We met in Euston, central London, at the GMB's national office, Mary Turner House (named after the indomitable Irishwoman who served as the union's president for 20 years). Smith praised the government's rescue of British Steel, its defence industrial strategy, the commitment to build the Sizewell C nuclear plant and the 'transformative' Employment Rights Bill. 'Has the government made mistakes?' Smith asked. 'Yeah, absolutely, and we have been outspoken in our criticism about winter fuel payments. Nobody said there shouldn't have been reform of payments; it was just badly handled. Likewise, on disability benefits, we were very worried about the poorest and most vulnerable – many of our people who are in work get Pip payments.' Smith, who was elected general secretary four years ago, has often been an ally to Starmer when it's mattered most. At the 2021 Labour Party Conference it was post-midnight conversations with Smith in Brighton hotel suites that convinced Starmer and his chief aide, Morgan McSweeney, that they had the votes required to rewrite the party rule book and marginalise the Corbynite left. But Smith is unsparing in his criticism of Labour's first year in office. 'The big thing that is missing is a clear vision about the future. What we need is a sense of national mission and I don't think that's there. I don't think we've got that emotionally compelling story about the future of the country. 'We are emerging into a new world order as well. That's very difficult for any government to navigate. This is a new epoch that's opened up in front of us: the end of globalisation, the end of neoliberalism. Any government's got to wrestle with what Britain's place in the world is going to be.' He added: 'It frustrates me that the right-wing press accuse[s] Labour of talking down Britain. I think in many ways people are underestimating the state the country's in. Our finances are precarious, we've seen that in the past few weeks. We are beholden to the bond markets; this could unravel very quickly. The country's in a really difficult situation and so I don't envy what they've had to inherit.' (The Office for Budget Responsibility's recent report warned that the UK had the sixth-highest debt, fifth-highest deficit and third-highest borrowing costs of the 38 OECD countries.) This year Donald Trump has become the unlikely hero of some US unions, with the United Auto Workers praising his tariffs as necessary to 'end the free-trade disaster'. Smith invoked the US New Right – and its embrace of protectionism over Reaganism – several times during our conversation. 'The New Right saw an opportunity with working-class communities hollowed out by globalisation. We can talk about average GDP, we can talk about how many people in the globe got wealthy. There were a whole number of our communities that were absolutely abandoned. 'People were told that they're competing in this global labour market and the jobs went abroad and that left people embittered, angry and absolutely disoriented. And the New Right in America got this – they certainly got it better than the liberal left did.' To some this will sound reminiscent of Blue Labour, the party's economically interventionist and socially conservative faction. (Its founder, Maurice Glasman, was the sole Labour parliamentarian invited to Trump's inauguration.) But Smith bridled at the comparison. 'I'm not being critical of anybody but we're not Blue Labour. Why do we have to stick badges on things all the time? We're a working-class organisation; we spend a lot of time listening to our members. So I'm not interested in fashionable factions in the Labour Party, I'm just interested in listening to working-class people, and our members have been telling us this for a long time. They are tired of low-paid, insecure employment. That was a Tory economic model. 'You know, we got to a point in Barrow where we couldn't build nuclear submarines. The only growth industry was heroin, and that happened under Cameron and Osborne. So what shapes our world-view is not some factional philosophy in Labour – it's just listening to working-class people and our membership.' Unite, the UK's second-largest union, this month vowed to 're-examine' its affiliation to Labour and excoriated the party's record in office, with union representatives since surveyed on the matter. 'It's up to Unite what they do. We're not interested in what other unions do,' Smith replied diplomatically when I raised the subject. 'For us, a relationship with government should be contentious, there should be disagreement and debate. But I'd much rather have a Labour government in power than the alternative. And let's be clear about the Tories – they're done – the alternative is going to be Reform.' What does Smith believe is fuelling Farage's ascendancy? 'This is a fuck-you vote, people are just angry: they're pissed off and they're looking for somebody to kick. A lot of this ultimately is about declining living standards. We're a country where in our towns and communities people just look beat. You live in a city like London and even if you're on a good wage you're struggling to keep your head above water… Farage is feeding off that anger and frustration and decline.' In recent months, Farage has reframed Reform as 'the party of working people', speaking of his desire for a 'sensible relationship' with the trade unions and vowing to reopen the Port Talbot steelworks. But Smith – precisely the kind of earthy general secretary whose endorsement Farage would relish – is unimpressed. 'I think he's a chancer. He is no friend of trade unions or working-class people. Peel back the rhetoric: where was he on the Employment Rights Bill? He's voted against working people at Amazon having the right to organise and collectively bargain over their pay. He's voted against people having stronger collective rights at work, which will allow us to better redistribute wealth in this country.' Smith ridiculed Farage's claim that he was appalled by Michael Heseltine's closure of coal mines as Conservative trade and industry secretary in the 1990s. 'Do you think he went on picket lines and supported the miners? Do you think he argued for the steel workers? No, he was a metal trader in the City of London, lifting another glass of Champagne as all this devastation of UK industry and communities went on.' Gary Smith was born in Edinburgh in 1967; his father was an electrician and his mother a bookmaker's clerk. He became a Scottish Gas apprentice at the age of 16 (the GMB later paid for him to study at Ruskin College, and he gained a Master's degree in industrial relations from Warwick University). His political consciousness was shaped by the fraught social conflicts of the early Thatcher era. 'I saw working-class people and communities getting treated very badly,' he said. 'I get so angry when I listen to people talk fondly about the Thatcher era because a lot of kids didn't get off the housing estates. It was mass unemployment, cheap heroin, and HIV/Aids. There's a whole generation of young men who died and never made it through that period.' Four decades on, Smith is once more haunted by the spectre of deindustrialisation. He spoke of a recent encounter with an oil and gas worker moved to tears in Middlesbrough ('big guy, really impressive guy') who declared at a town hall meeting: 'They're doing to us what they did to Middlesbrough in the 1980s.' For this, Smith attributes much blame to the UK's net zero policy of which he is the fiercest Labour critic. 'For too long, we were exporting jobs and importing virtue, so we closed down British industry. That was great for emissions, not great for communities. Our notional emissions have fallen but all we've done is export jobs and industry to China, where they burn coal to produce the goods we then import on diesel-burning barges and ships – and that includes the vast bulk of all renewables industry.' Though he emphasises that he is not a climate change denier – 'We're not in the same place as the US New Right' – he believes that current energy policy is a gift to Farage. 'We have been decarbonising through deindustrialisation and it's counterproductive because the communities that have seen their industries closed down, they've been abandoned and will end up voting for the right, and exactly the way that they have in America.' Smith fears that the political ramifications of net zero could be greatest of all in his native Scotland – he lives in Paisley – where Labour aims to prevent the SNP winning a fifth term next May. 'On the current policies, I don't believe that Labour can win in Scotland,' he warned of the government's decision to ban new North Sea oil and gas licences. 'People don't get that energy is an emotional issue in Scotland. We went hundreds of miles out in this inhospitable sea and built this incredible, groundbreaking energy infrastructure. 'If you're on the west coast of Scotland, most people of a certain age have a drop of oil from Sullom Voe because there are so many families who were involved in building that project when they landed the oil in Shetland. This was an emotional story about Scotland. It's important to its sense of self and the economy, and I don't think people have really got that.' While Starmer is expected to grant permission to the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields in the North Sea – which are exempt as existing licences – he has consistently reaffirmed the ban on new ones. 'That is absolutely our position,' he recently declared (a stance that Trump publicly derided ahead of his planned meeting with Starmer in Aberdeen). Does Smith believe that Labour will ultimately be forced to rethink its policy? 'They will have to rethink it because the consequences in terms of energy prices, in terms of national security, in terms of the economy and jobs, are so profound. What we should be doing is taking a public stake in what is left of the oil and gas sector and using the profits for that sector, or part of them, to invest in a new green future. We should be talking about North Sea Two, how we're going to collaborate with Norway – not just decarbonising the North Sea, but what comes next. Oil and gas is not the enemy: it's actually the gateway to whatever comes next, and we've got to stop seeing it as a threat.' The GMB's stances have often put it at odds with the Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband – who has championed net zero as the 'economic opportunity of the 21st century' – but Smith hints at something of a rapprochement: 'I hope and think that Ed realises that in haemorrhaging jobs through this charge to net zero, the political consequences could be very, very profound for Labour. I get a sense that he's starting to listen and I think he also knows that a lot of these new, fashionable green companies are vehemently anti-union. 'And that's a huge problem because it's completely at odds with the government's agenda. Sea Wall in the North East – we're fighting for recognition there and have a strike ballot – they've had access to tens of millions of pounds of government funding and they're anti-union. Octopus Energy? Anti-union.' We return to Labour's future. Even those who sympathise with Starmer often say they do not know what he stands for ('There is no project,' one loyalist MP recently told me). 'If I'm honest with you, I don't think we've clearly defined what Starmerism is,' Smith said. 'There's huge opportunities post-globalisation and post-neoliberalism. How do we grasp those? 'Keir has done some really good stuff on the international stage. But we need to have a national mission and people need to believe again that there is a brighter tomorrow. Labour does need to be that light on the hill.' Just a year into government, cabinet ministers already speculate about whether Starmer will fight the next election. Does that surprise Smith? 'I always said that people underestimated him – let's see. He's got a huge and really tough job but people have underestimated him before. I never thought I'd see a Labour government again in my working life; Keir was part of the team that delivered that extraordinary election result last year and I think he deserves a bit of credit and a bit of time. If they end up all just turning on each other, stabbing each other in the back, it'll just be electoral disaster for them.' [See more: Can Nigel Farage have it both ways?] Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Related
The National
11 hours ago
- Politics
- The National
SNP call on Labour backbenchers to push for end to two-child cap
The SNP has warned ministers they will be making a "political choice" to send thousands more children into poverty if they fail to scrap the measure in the coming months. The warning comes exactly one year since the Labour Government voted down an SNP amendment to scrap the two-child cap in the new UK Government's first King's speech. Immediately after the vote, Keir Starmer suspended seven Labour MPs for voting to support the SNP's amendment. Kirsty Blackman (below), the [[SNP]]'s work and pensions spokesperson, is now challenging Labour backbenchers to replicate their opposition to the Labour Party's welfare cuts and use their "voices and votes to finally scrap Starmer's two-child cap". READ MORE: Scottish energy bills to rise to pay for English nuclear plant She said: 'It is worth remembering that exactly a year ago one of the first choices the new Prime Minister made was to punish seven of his own MPs for voting with the SNP to scrap the cruel two-child cap which would have lifted thousands of children out of poverty. 'It's time for Labour backbenchers who have finally found their appetite for rebellion in recent months, to use their voices and votes to finally scrap Starmer's two-child cap. 'It is also worth remembering that last year not one Scottish Labour MP supported the [[SNP]]'s amendment to scrap the two-child cap - despite the hollow words of Anas Sarwar who claims he supports scrapping it in Scotland. 'Last year only seven Labour MPs voted with the [[SNP]]. When the next rebellion comes its true test will be if there are enough Labour backbenchers to force Keir Starmer's hand and reverse his government's policy of keeping the two-child cap." The cap was introduced in 2017 by then-chancellor George Osborne and has been maintained by Labour. It restricts means-tested benefits to the first two children in a family, unless specific exemptions apply. The number of households affected by the cap has increased by more than 13,000 over the past year, with more than 1.6 million children across the UK now impacted. READ MORE: Scottish Water hits back at UK minister Steve Reed's pollution claim According to statistics released earlier this month, 469,780 households claiming Universal Credit were affected by the two-child limit policy in April this year, which represents a 3% increase in the past 12 months. There were 1,665,540 children living in those households – 37,150 (or 2%) more than the year before. A chunk of households had an exception to the policy (26,300), but the vast majority (453,600) were not receiving the child element of Universal Credit because of the measure. SNP analysis suggests more than 100,000 children in Scotland live in households hit by the cap. The Scottish Government has pledged to mitigate the effect of the cap from March 2 next year. However, the Labour Government's current policy of keeping the two-child limit across the UK will mean Scotland's budget will be hit by the policy.
