Latest news with #summerrecess
Irish Times
5 days ago
- Politics
- Irish Times
New rows over old divisions in Labour before Westminster MPs take summer break
The House of Commons doesn't officially rise for summer recess until Tuesday, but a giddy, end-of-term vibe had already enveloped parliament by Thursday afternoon, the time of week when most MPs leave Westminster and head back to their constituencies. After an exhausting, battle-laden few weeks for Keir Starmer 's Labour government, the prime minister sent his charges off for the summer with a flurry of decisions aimed at reasserting his waning authority over the restive parliamentary party. Late on Wednesday afternoon, it emerged he had suspended four MPs, including three of the new intake from last year's general election landslide win. They had been prominent among Labour rebels who recently forced the government into an embarrassing U-turn on £5 billion (€5.8 billion) of disability benefit cuts. The decision to remove the whip from newbies Brian Leishman, Chris Hinchliff and Neil Duncan-Jordan, as well as rebel leader Rachael Maskell, who was first elected in 2019, was viewed in Labour as a warning that Starmer will not idly brook such dissent. READ MORE However, as the party's MPs gathered for the last of Westminster's relentless stream of booze-fuelled summer receptions later that evening, many on Labour's soft-left wing complained the suspensions had made Starmer look vindictive and weak. Others, notably MPs supportive of the view that Labour should focus on countering the populist threat of Reform UK, argued it was about time he was robust. With Labour's factional fault lines laid bare, the only thing that seemed to unite Labour MPs as the week ended was that they all badly needed a break to reset over summer. The situation was complicated further on Thursday morning by the emergence of comments by Diane Abbott, the veteran Hackney MP. She told the BBC she had 'no regrets' over a furore sparked by a letter she wrote to the Observer newspaper in 2023. Her critics argued the letter had downplayed bigotry experienced by Travellers, Irish and, crucially, Jewish people compared to racism suffered by the Black community. The original row led to Abbott's suspension from Labour for alleged anti-Semitism, which she had always denied. She was only readmitted on the eve of the last general election campaign, as a groundswell of support for her opened Starmer up to accusations of vindictiveness against a woman who had experienced racism all her life – Abbott was also an ally of former leader Jeremy Corbyn , whose backers Starmer had sought to vanquish. By effectively doubling down this week on her original comments, Abbott presented the prime minister with a dilemma were he to reopen his row with her and, with it, old divisions that had damaged his party in the past. Meanwhile, Thursday's announcement that Labour will lower the voting age to 16 in advance of the next general election points to divisions that may affect the party's future. It had always been assumed that any move to reduce the voting age would directly benefit Labour over the Tories, as younger voters tend to tack left. Recent polls from ITV and More in Common, however, suggest the impact might be more nuanced. A July survey by More in Common, a Westminster think tank, found that among 18- to 24-year-olds, the youngest cohort allowed to vote, the Greens were by far the most popular party, on 32 per cent versus 24 per cent for Labour. If that trend continued into 16- to 17-year-olds, then whatever Labour gained from the Tories on its right flank might be eliminated on its left, where anger over Starmer's stance on Israel pervades. Meanwhile, an ITV poll of 16- and 17-year-olds found that while Labour was the most-supported party, the most popular politician was Starmer's old foe Corbyn, which doesn't play well for the prime minister as he battles with his predecessor's acolytes. Both surveys also point to surprising levels of support among young people for Nigel Farage's Reform, which will cheer the populist politician as he gears up for his summer break. The numbers were awful, however, for the party he seeks to supplant, the Tories, down to just 6 per cent among 18- to 24-year-olds in the More in Common survey. The decision by Starmer to risk more infighting in his party by suspending rebels was also criticised by some in Labour for letting the Tories off the hook; it took the focus off the Conservative party's handling when it was in power of a 2022 leak of the identities of 18,700 Afghans who had risked their lives by helping British forces there. The fiasco, which emerged this week only after a court superinjunction was lifted, sparked an airlift of up to 24,000 Afghans to Britain to keep them safe from Taliban retribution. It was the perfect opportunity for Starmer to remind voters of what one of his minister's this week described as Tory 'ineptitude'. Yet as the week petered out and the summer break beckoned, the British press was full of headlines over Labour division and the possible galvanisation of the party's left.
Telegraph
6 days ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
The elephant in the room during PMQs
This session of Parliament drew to a close today not with a bang but with a whimper. It is unclear whether the relatively low-key nature of the final Prime Minister's Questions before the summer recess should be welcomed as a desperately needed sign of maturity or a further sign that MPs do not share the electorate's grievous pessimism about where the country is heading. Despite the criticism that has been aimed at Kemi Badenoch from some in her party, she can take the credit for maintaining an adult level of discourse when so many of her predecessors have succumbed to the temptation to screech their condemnation across the opposing front benches. She was controlled, relaxed and moderate in her tone, although she again wasted at least one of her six questions by asking Keir Starmer if he would spend his summer break considering how to reduce public borrowing – this does not reflect most people's chief political concerns at the moment. The problem with the Prime Minister's responses – I will avoid, for reasons of accuracy, referring to them as answers – is that he is still behaving exactly as he did while he was in Ms Badenoch's place: campaigning, seeking to win votes and banging on at length about the Conservatives' record in office. As is now traditional, even Liz Truss got a name-check in Starmer's tired recitation of the opposition's sins. Given the recent revelations about data leaks from the Ministry of Defence, and the super-injunction put in place by the Conservative Government in 2023 to hide ministers' embarrassment at having to offer political asylum to 24,000 Afghans, it is surprising that, aside from an opening reference to the scandal by the Prime Minister, the subject barely figured during the half hour. It was studiously avoided by Ms Badenoch. Gaza and the Middle East still play a much larger role in the Commons than it does in the lives and conversations of the vast majority of those whom MPs actually represent. Today it was left to Sir Ed Davey to raise the matter, carefully and tactfully using his first question to express his disapproval of anti-Semitism. And even as he did so, the viewer just knew that this was no more than a careful preparation for question number 2: this week's inevitable condemnation of Israel. Let's face it: after a year in opposition, the Conservatives are still suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder following their shellacking at the general election and their continued third place in the polls thanks to the emergence of Reform UK as the party's nemesis. And Labour are still trying to come to terms with just how difficult and unpopular governing actually is. On both sides of the House, the summer recess cannot come quickly enough. Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats still can't believe that after their own defenestration in the first three elections after the end of the Conservative-LibDem coalition, they have more MPs than ever. Reform still can't believe their poll lead has been sustained for almost a year. And a collection of independents and Gaza-obsessives are excitedly planning an unpredictable future under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn: Magic Grandpa 2.0, anyone? The final PMQs before the summer recess was, if anything, an accurate snapshot of British politics in mid-2025: the main parties nervous about what comes next, the smaller parties looking forward to it. And we're only half way through the year.
The Guardian
14-07-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Treasury minister says ‘headline' rate of income tax won't go up, in hint thresholds might be frozen in budget
Update: Date: 2025-07-14T08:31:38.000Z Title: Darren Jones Content: Good morning. This is the last full week the Commons is sitting before the summer recess starts (on Tuesday next week) and, although there is a fair amount coming up (see below), there is no big story dominating the news agenda. The national newspapers are all splashing on different items – which is normally a sign that it was a slow news day yesterday. The government wants to talk about its new £500m 'better futures fund'. And , chief secretary to the Treasury, has been in the broadcast studios this morning to promote it – as well as giving an interview to my colleague Heather Stewart. But, as is often the case, in search of stronger news, broadcasters have been trying to tease out details of what might be in the budget in the autumn. And they may have made a tiny bit of progress. At PMQs last week Keir Starmer said that he remained committed to the tax pledges that Labour made in its manifesto. That might sound straightforward, but it isn't, because there is some ambiguity as to what they mean. People thought Labour promised not to raise income tax, VAT or national insurance contribtions – which are levied on employers and employees. But in the budget last year Rachel Reeves did put up employer NICs and, when accused of breaking a manifesto promise, she highlighted the eight-word preamble to the pledge, which in retrospect could be read as a hint that employer NICs were not exempt. Labour will not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT. The person who wrote the manifesto clearly knew what was coming – but the clue was hidden so well that almost no one managed to decypher it. In an interview on ITV's Good Morning Britain Jones said this. The thing I can tell you is that our manifesto commitment coming into this election was that we were not going to increase the headline rate of income tax or employee national insurance on working people in the pay slips that people get when they go to work or on VAT because we know that that disproportionately affects people on lower incomes because they spend more of their money on the day to day shop, essentially. In fact, the manifesto does not mention the 'headline' rate of income tax. But the fact that Jones sees this as relevant can be seen as yet another hint that Rachel Reeves is considering extending the freeze on income tax thresholds in the autumn. This is seen by economists as very likely, and was not ruled out by Starmer at PMQs last week. Ed Balls, the former Labour shadow chancellor who is now a broadcaster and podcaster, regularly argues on his Political Currency podcast that freezing tax thresholds would in practice be a breach of the manifesto, because it would amount to a tax increase for workinng people. Jones's comment can be seen as the rebuttal argument. In his interviews Jones also declined to rule out a wealth tax, as other ministers, have done. But he also suggested that people were 'getting a bit carried away' in interpreting what Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, said about tax yesterday. Alexander told Sky News: We made a commitment in our manifesto not to be putting up taxes on people on modest incomes, working people. The Telegraph has interpreted this as meaning that taxes will rise for middle-class workers. But, in his Good Morning Britain interview, Jones said Alexander was just referring to the manifesto promise. Asked what 'modest incomes' meant, he went on: Modest income means different things to different people. But it's not entirely relevant, because the thing that is relevant is our manifesto commitment not to increase national insurance or employee national or income tax in the payslips that people receive every month. Jack Maidment from the Telegraph argues that the mixed messaging is a bit of a mess. Treasury minister says Labour's 'working people' tax pledge refers to 'anyone that gets a payslip, basically'. Significantly broader than Transport Sec Heidi Alexander's definition yesterday of 'people on modest incomes'. What a mess, and not for the first time. Here is the agenda for the day. 10.30am: Sajid Javid, the former Tory health secretary, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry about the impact of the pandemic on the care sector. Morning: Rachel Reeves, chancellor, speaks to broadcasters on a visit in Wigan where she is promoting plans for a £500m 'beter futures fund'. 11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing. 2pm: Wes Streeting, health secretary, gives evidence to the health committee. 2.30pm: Angela Rayner, deputy PM and housing secretary, takes questions in the Commons. After 3.30pm: Ed Miliband, energy secretary, is expected to make a statement to MPs about the state of the climate report. Afternoon: Keir Starmer hosts Petr Fiala, prime minister of the Czech Republic, at Downing Street. 5pm: Pat McFadden, Cabinet Office minister, gives evidence to the joint national security strategy committee. And at some point today the Department for Business and Trade publishes a green paper on the Post Office. If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (normally between 10am and 3pm at the moment), or message me on social media. 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