Starmer says Rochdale decision ‘tough but necessary’ for Labour – UK politics live | Politics

For those of you who have been following the story of the delayed ferries being built at Ferguson Marine, the Glen Sannox has departed today for her first sea trials.

Costs for Glen Sannox and sister ship Glen Rosa have more than tripled to at least £360m and they are expected to be delivered about six years late.

Labour’s Steve McCabe has been on GB News, and added his voice to those commenting on the withdrawal of support for the party’s candidate for the Rochdale byelection. The shadow minister for veterans told viewers:

It is obviously difficult and embarrassing for the Labour party. But I mean I think when you are confronted with a situation like this, you don’t have a choice and you have to do what you believe to be right.

I have been involved in times where allegations have been made about candidates. Sometimes you have to weigh up. You know, you have to ask how important it is, what else is influencing it?

I think the issue is that conditionally people were prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt that he said his apology in good faith. But I think with the further revelations it was too late and that was just the end of it.

The Daily Record’s political editor Paul Hutcheon is claiming an exclusive that Labour in Scotland are set to back an “immediate” ceasefire in Gaza at their conference at the weekend.

Labour’s leader in Scotland, Anas Sarwar, told the paper that he welcomed those planning to attend a protest in Glasgow on Saturday, saying:

What I’d say to those protesting is I understand your anger. I want peace in the Middle East. So, yes, come make your voice heard, you have every right to do that, but do so in a peaceful way because ultimately we want the same thing.

On the same Saturday of the march our conference will be doing our own plea in terms of supporting the humanitarian effort in Gaza, and we will also be debating and passing a motion calling for an immediate ceasefire. The very things people will be demanding outside the hall we will be calling for inside the hall.

The violence has to stop. We need a ceasefire now. We need the immediate release of hostages. We need immediate access to humanitarian aid and we need a pathway to a peace process.

The House of Lords has started sitting for the afternoon. There will be oral questions, scheduled for 40 minutes, and then foreign secretary David Cameron is appearing for questions before the house.

There are four questions tabled for him:

• what recent discussions he has had with international counterparts on a strategy to reduce debt in the developing world from Ray Collins (Lab)

• what his department is doing to ensure the lives and security of the children of Gaza from Natalie Bennett (Green)

• what progress the government has made in implementing the AUKUS security partnership between the UK, Australia and the US from John Woodcock (crossbench)

• what discussions he had with the government of the US before his announcement on 1 February that the United Kingdom should recognise a Palestinian state in advance of the conclusion of any future bilateral talks between Israel and representatives of the Palestinian people from Stewart Jackson (Conservative)

Here is a reminder of what Cameron said about the potential recognition of a Palestinian state.

 

Keir Starmer was campaigning in Wellingborough, where Labour has been odds-on to overturn the majority of more than 18,000 won by disgraced former Conservative MP Peter Bone in 2019.

As Toby Helm noted last weekend, “The circumstances of Bone’s departure and subsequent selection of his partner Helen Harrison as the Tory candidate to replace him, have left local people angry and disillusioned. Tory MPs are refusing to campaign in Wellinborough for fear of being ridiculed and insulted, and because they think it would be a complete waste of their time.”

That byelection, and the one in Kingswood are on Thursday. The Rochdale byelection takes place on 29 February.

Andrew Fisher, one of the architects of Labour’s 2017 manifesto, has said Labour “have made the correct decision” over Azhar Ali candidacy in Rochdale, but argued that it highlights fundamental problems with the party’s processes.

Fisher, who quit as an advisor to Jeremy Corbyn prior to the 2019 election, told Sky News:

They should have done it straight away when the first allegation against him was raised on Sunday. Instead, they were out canvassing for him on Sunday and sent shadow cabinet members all around the media, including Sky News, to defend him, as if this was some kind of one-off error he had made.

Of course, further allegations have come out. There clearly wasn’t due diligence done on this candidate to have highlighted this in advance. It shows the double standards there are when tackling serious issues of racism and conspiracy theories within the party.

The UK government has confirmed details of a £3.3bn funding package to support the restored powersharing administration in Northern Ireland.

PA Media reports the settlement was outlined in a letter to Stormont finance minister Caoimhe Archibald.

The government described it as a “significant, fair and generous” package, which includes a requirement for the executive to deliver a balanced budget for 2024/25 that includes a minimum of £113m raised through locally generated income.

Northern Ireland secretary of state Chris Heaton-Harris said: “This package tackles the immediate budget pressures facing the restored executive and allows it to take action to rapidly stabilise public services, while increasing opportunities for investment and improved infrastructure.”

PA Media is carrying this list of elements of the package:

• reform of the Barnett formula for allocating Treasury funds to Northern Ireland, with funding rates for the region set at 24% above comparative rates in England. The government said this would reflect the “different levels of need in Northern Ireland”.

• a £1bn fund to stabilise Stormont’s public finances.

• £34m to tackle hospital waiting lists.

• funds to help meet public sector pay demands in the current financial year.

• increase the Executive’s annual capital borrowing limit by 10% in 2024/25, a limit which will then increase annually in line with inflation.

The prospect of raising additional revenue has become a thorny topic. First minister Michelle O’Neill (Sinn Féin) yesterday ruled out introducing water charges in Northern Ireland, saying “I’m saying very clearly that you can’t burden people who are living through a cost of living crisis with additional household bills whilst their public services are declining.”

Deputy first minister Emma Little-Pengelly (DUP) had said it was not right to ask people to pay more for “poor public services”. The SDLP’s Matthew O’Toole said there should greater clarity on what had been agreed with the government in Westminster.

Keir Starmer has said he took “tough” and “decisive” action to withdraw support for Labour’s Rochdale by-election candidate.

Speaking while campaigning in Wellingborough, where there is a byelection on Thursday, Starmer said:

Certain information came to light over the weekend in relation to the candidate. There was a fulsome apology. Further information came to light yesterday calling for decisive action, so I took decisive action.

It is a huge thing to withdraw support for a Labour candidate during the course of a by-election. It’s a tough decision, a necessary decision, but when I say the Labour Party has changed under my leadership I mean it.

Starmer said any allegations against other Labour councillors present at the event at which Azhar Ali made his remarks would be “fully investigated by the party”. He said:

Those comments were appalling and that is why we took decisive action. It is virtually unprecedented to withdraw support for a candidate in the way I withdrew support from this candidate yesterday. That’s what a changed Labour Party is all about. Of course, any allegation will be fully investigated by the party, but the important thing is the decisive action that’s been taken to make it absolutely clear that this is a changed Labour Party.

Responding to accusations that factionalism had played a part in Labour’s handling of the case, the opposition leader said:

I set out four years ago to tear antisemitism out of the Labour Party. It’s the first thing I said I’d do as Labour leader, and to change our party. I have taken a series of decisions along those lines ruthlessly changing our party, and it’s made no difference to me where somebody stands in the Labour party. The change I’ve brought about is a Labour party that is now back in the service of working people.

Sadiq Khan’s London Plan for housing works to “frustrate rather than facilitate the delivery of new homes”, a report commissioned by Michael Gove has said.

The review of the mayor’s strategy, published on Tuesday, said the consequences of housing under-delivery have significant economic, societal and personal impacts, particularly on those who face no alternative but to live in temporary accommodation, or are forced into poor-quality rental accommodation, PA reports.

The report also said:

Public and private sector stakeholders are clear in their view that the London Plan is not the sole source of the problem: wider macro-economic conditions; fire safety; infrastructure constraints; statutory consultees; viability difficulties; and planning resourcing pressures have all contributed.

However, there is persuasive evidence that the combined effect of the multiplicity of policies in the London Plan now works to frustrate rather than facilitate the delivery of new homes, not least in creating very real challenges to the viability of schemes.”

The ONS has published data showing that the current government has presided over the highest total number of working days lost to strikes during a 19 month period for 30 years.

5.05m days are estimated to have been lost in labour disputes in the UK from June 2022 to December 2023, the highest since 5.34m days were lost from July 1989 to January 1991.

Some disputes remain unresolved, including those involving junior doctors and some train unions.

First minister of Northern Ireland Michelle O’Neill has paid tribute to Francie Molloy, who has announced this morning that he is stepping away from politics. He has been Sinn Féin MP for Mid Ulster since 2013, having first been elected as a local councillor in 1985.

In her tribute, O’Neill said “Francie Molloy has made a huge contribution to politics and the peace process here. He was heavily involved in the early civil rights movement, including the protest outside the Caledon Squat in 1968 which is often considered as the spark for people in their demand for better housing, better jobs, and civil rights. Francie has been involved in political activism his entire adult life, and has been elected many times … I have worked closely with Francie for many years and I’m confident that though he is retiring, he will continue to make a contribution in promoting equality for all in the time ahead.”

David Cameron is expected to meet his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, this weekend for the first time since unexpectedly becoming British foreign secretary. The Foreign Office has pencilled in a meeting between Cameron and Wang at the Munich security conference, according to two government sources.

Read more here: David Cameron to have first meeting with Chinese foreign minister

Henry Dyer

The Conservative MP David Duguid failed to declare his wife’s £50,000 shareholding in BP while speaking in debates about windfall taxes on the oil and gas industry, the parliamentary commissioner has found.

The parliamentary commissioner for standards carried out an investigation into the MP for Banff and Buchan and former Scotland Office minister after the Guardian revealed Duguid’s wife’s shareholdings.

Parliamentary rules require MPs to declare while speaking in debates the financial interests of a spouse or other family member, where there could be considered a conflict. MPs have to register shares they own worth £70,000 or more than 15%, and any other interests that might “reasonably be thought by others to influence a member’s actions”. Duguid has never disclosed his wife’s financial interest in the House of Commons register.

The Guardian’s analysis of BP’s share register suggested Duguid, who worked for 25 years in the oil and gas industry, including 10 years with BP, had moved his shares into his wife’s name five years before his election as an MP.

The commissioner found three debates in 2023 in which Duguid ought to have declared an interest, noting that in these debates the shareholding “might reasonably be thought by others to influence [his] words or actions as a member”.

Duguid told the commissioner that he did not believe “anything I could have, let alone actually, said or did as a member of parliament could have had any bearing on the BP share price”.

The commissioner decided that Duguid’s repeated failures to declare the interest were “inadvertent” and the result of a misunderstanding about the rules. The commissioner required Duguid to apologise and to attend training on the parliamentary rules on declaration of interests.

Read more here: Tory MP David Duguid failed to declare wife’s BP shares during oil and gas debates