Tag: Labour Party

Cross-party talks on Brexit between the government and Labour have moved on to the “nuts and bolts” of a possible compromise, Labour’s Sue Hayman has said, with sources on both sides suggesting discussions were taking a more positive tone. Hayman, the shadow environment secretary, said it was “a really constructive discussion” that had been “getting much more into the nuts and bolts of the detail.” She said she now believed the government was “open to moving forward in our direction”. The government has all but abandoned plans to try to force through the Brexit deal using the withdrawal agreement bill and will instead try to devise a way to forge a compromise through new indicative votes if talks with Labour break down. Government sources had previously suggested that, if the talks ultimately ended in impasse, May could use the withdrawal agreement bill to ratify the Brexit agreement and legislate for guarantees on the environment and workers’ rights. However, it is understood the government now believes it is unlikely to reach an agreement with Labour that would enable it to bring the bill to parliament without risking it being voted down at second reading. Downing Street hopes it could get Labour support for a new process of indicative votes, meaning a guaranteed majority for whatever came out the other end, but that support is also not assured. Lidington has previously hinted that a new process for determining what could command a majority in parliament was now needed, rather than a process that produced no support for any option. The meeting in the Cabinet Office was held with their Labour counterparts, including the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, and Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary. The prime minister’s spokesman said the government wanted to get the EU withdrawal agreement bill through parliament first. “That is part of the current Queen’s speech cycle and we need to finish that work.” Bringing the speech forward could give MPs the opportunity to show there is no confidence in the government by voting it down, especially if parliament voted against the EU withdrawal bill and the Queen’s speech was used to introduce it again.

However, the council has switched in recent years between Labour and no overall control, and is run by a coalition of Conservatives and the City Independents, which despite its name is a party and includes among its councillors longtime independents as well as defectors from parties as varied as Labour, Ukip and the British National party. Mohammed Pervez, the energetic leader of the Labour group, which remains the council’s biggest, is fighting an avowedly local campaign, focused on traditional areas such as litter, parking, potholes and schools. During a canvass of comfortably sized postwar terraced houses in his own ward north of the city centre, Pervez delivers a well-drilled message about “four years of chaos” covering everything from children’s services to road maintenance. Our challenge is to make people understand that this election is not about Brexit, but about local services. “We always get asked how, as independents, we have influence on the government,” James says. “But governments have never supported Stoke-on-Trent by putting money into it. The Conservative group leader, Abi Brown, who is number two to James in the council, recounts the period before 2015 when her party had two representatives – her and Brereton – and “were regarded as a bit of an irrelevance”. Now they have seven, and like Pervez, Brown is keen to keep the campaigning as far away as possible from national issues like Brexit: “I’d like to think that in the wards we hold, people know their councillors and while they might be unhappy with things at a national level – and it does get raised – they’ll vote on local issues. Landon declines to tell Pervez how he will vote – “all the councillors have always been rubbish. Now you can’t really predict anything.”

The Conservative MP Christopher Davies has been found guilty of submitting fake expenses invoices for £700 of landscape photographs to decorate his office, meaning he could be kicked out of parliament under the recall process. Davies has not been suspended by the Conservative party but he will now face a recall petition to see whether his constituents want to force him to face a byelection. “It’s shocking that the Conservative party has still failed to take action against Christopher Davies, over a month after he admitted stealing from the public purse,” he said. He then created two fake invoices, so the £700 cost could be split between the two budgets – £450 to the startup and £250 for the other. MPs ask the public to place their trust in them and in an election that’s what happens. “The recall process may end your political career – that’s part of the machinery.” The process can result in MPs who are handed prison terms of less than a year being subject to a petition to oust them. It is not a financial cost, it is a harm to the integrity of parliament.” Forster said his client underspent across every single budget. For the prosecution, Stott said it was accepted that Davies had not sought to profit financially from the action and that he was entitled to claim for the pictures. However, he said Davies was not entitled to split the costs across two budgets, and any claims had to be accompanied by genuine invoices. Davies served as a councillor in Powys before he was elected as an MP at the 2015 general election.

No 10 is feeling the pressure to pull the plug on Brexit talks with Labour and move to an alternative plan, amid warnings that the opposition is in no hurry for a deal before the European elections. Ken Clarke: ‘Brexit is like a parody version of student politics’ Read more However, government sources acknowledge Theresa May is under much greater time pressure than Labour, which has little incentive to do a deal before the European and local elections that are likely to result in the Conservatives suffering heavy losses to Nigel Farage’s Brexit party. Ministers and their opposition counterparts are taking part in working groups on some issues this week, but there will be no discussion before Easter on the big issues of a customs union or a confirmatory referendum, making it easy for Labour to reject the prime minister’s overtures so far. The government’s alternative plan is for MPs to thrash out an acceptable version of May’s deal through a series of votes or by amending the withdrawal bill, but experts said there was barely enough time to do this in the five weeks before the European elections. Nikki da Costa, formerly the legislative affairs director in No 10, suggested getting the withdrawal bill passed by 22 May would “require a level of legislative aggression from government not seen in this parliament”. There is also concern in No 10 that Labour may not get behind the plan to let MPs amend the withdrawal bill to find a way forward. “We don’t know if they are going to work and it may be that we need to find a way to rebuild the Conservative-DUP coalition,” Hunt said. One Conservative MEP told the Guardian that it was “cloud cuckoo land” to think European elections can be avoided at this stage. Conservative party officials are privately acknowledging the party will lose around half of their MEPs. A Tory party source said: “As is usual, Conservative candidates are expected to represent the Conservative party.”

Talks between Labour and the government are unlikely to advance much further in the coming week unless Theresa May moves on her red lines over a future customs union, sources close to the talks have suggested. Labour has suggested the ball is in the government’s court and, while the opposition will engage on other topics including workers’ rights and security, the key question on customs arrangements remains unresolved. “We think it is possible to get the benefits of a customs union but still have the flexibility for the UK to pursue an independent trade policy on top of that with other countries outside the EU. He said there was “no date ringed in the calendar” for the talks to end but if agreement could not be reached on some form of Brexit deal then he hoped the two sides would be able to agree a binding mechanism for parliament to agree a way forward. May and Corbyn are not expected to be involved in the talks this week during the Easter recess, though Tory MPs expect speculation over the prime minister’s position and leadership jostling to continue. I think those dates still stand,” he told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, the two peers said there was “nothing standing in their way” if MPs agreed to change the rules, though the committee’s current chair, Sir Graham Brady, said he was “less certain that it would be possible to change the rules during the current period of grace”. “There has been a stop Boris campaign since the days of Michael Howard pushing forward Cameron and Osborne,” she tweeted. Many of those with their own eye on No 10 aren’t a fan of that prospect.” Duncan Smith said many in the party were deeply concerned about the most recent polling predicting a Labour lead of up to seven points and dire forecasts for the local and EU elections. “The big problem was as soon as we didn’t leave, you could see all the poll ratings start to crash.”

Labour’s announcement that it will support automatic voter registration (Report, 12 April) is a welcome step in the right direction. Far from being radical, though, automatic registration is the common right across advanced democracies. All parties need to be looking at how to modernise our democracy when so many millions feel unheard and excluded. We need a registration revolution – steps to ensure that registration isn’t a lottery but is instead encouraged at every stage of interaction with official bodies, from sorting pensions to getting a driving licence or benefits. It’s time the “missing millions” were heard. Dr Jess Garland Director of policy and research, Electoral Reform Society • Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com • Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters • Do you have a photo you’d like to share with Guardian readers? Click here to upload it and we’ll publish the best submissions in the letters spread of our print edition

What now for Labour? Two key problems threaten the prospect of success: the prime minister’s almost non-existent authority, and whether it is ultimately ever going to be in Labour’s interests to do a deal with the Tories. This is also believed to have been a factor in the 31 October extension date offered by the EU. That was the calculation May made when she cancelled the first Brexit vote before the Christmas recess, but MPs returned still determined to vote her deal down. What now for the second referendum campaign? Once the question is agreed the Electoral Commission would then designate lead campaigners for both sides, adding more time to the process, before a 10-week campaign period. The People’s Vote campaigners have said that the EU would be minded to extend article 50 further if a referendum was already in play and more time was needed. The Brexit delay prolongs the sense of limbo for EU citizens in the UK and British nationals in the rest of Europe. The government wants the remaining 3.4 million to apply by the end of December 2020 if there is a no-deal Brexit, or by June 2021 if there is a deal. But the EU leaders hope that the threat of European elections on 23 May might push some Brexiters to finally back the withdrawal agreement.

One showed that the opposition Blue and White party of Benny Gantz had a clear lead. Two others showed it was tied with Likud, the party of the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. This fragmentation is partly because of the sheer diversity of a country made up of Jews and Arabs, Jews of European and Middle Eastern origins, and Jews of varying degrees of piety. The next prime minister will be the leader of the party who can form a majority coalition. Despite its ever-shifting political landscape, Israel has known some form of two-party alternation. In 1977, though, the more nationalist Likud party dethroned Labour and formed its own coalition of right-wing and religious parties. Especially in the 1990s, power passed between Labour and Likud every few years. If he wins a fifth election victory, Mr Netanyahu may yet become Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, beating the record of the country’s founding father, David Ben-Gurion. Israel’s last Labour prime minister, Ehud Barak, left office in January 2001. In today’s election, for the first time, some young Israeli voters will have never have known a Labour prime minister.

The PM set out a clear ask in terms of an extension and it is important that she set out the rationale for that.” The prime minister has requested an extension to article 50 until 30 June but this has previously been turned down and some EU leaders have suggested they would rather grant a longer extension of about a year, potentially with a break clause if the UK ratifies a deal during that time. If no extension is granted, the UK is set to leave the EU without a deal on Friday. During the weekend, Conservative ministers talked up the chances of a compromise with Labour, with Downing Street making clear the government could be open to making changes to the political declaration in order to sign up to a form of customs union. And that’s what these conversations are about.” However, the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, said Labour was waiting for the government to move on issues such as the customs union. “There aren’t any scheduled talks yet but I’ve no doubt things will develop today,” he told ITV News. “At the moment we haven’t seen a change of position from the government. “All they’ve done so far is to indicate various things, but not to change the political declaration. Where next for Brexit? MPs vote to establish favoured option - May said she would back this Yes 10 April EU considers UK proposal, including extension, at summit EU disagrees EU agrees No deal on 12 April UK revokes article 50 Can Commons pass deal before 22 May? “To agree to be non-voting members of the EU, under the surrender proposed by Jeremy Corbyn – it cannot, must not and will not happen.” Brexit may destroy parties.

Theresa May is facing intense cabinet pressure to avoid the prospect of a long Brexit delay, amid increasing expectations that last ditch cross-party talks on a compromise departure plan will not produce anything concrete. Before a crucial EU summit later this week, the prime minister is facing a fast-diminishing range of options that could split the Conservative party and prompt a mass cabinet walkout, or could result in the UK crashing out of the EU without a deal on Friday. Under the terms of the previous brief extension agreed with the EU, if Brussels does not agree another delay, a no-deal Brexit will happen on Friday. Alexandre Holroyd, an MP from Macron’s En Marche party whose brief covers Brexit, told the BBC that this should come with conditions, for example, the UK should have no say on the next EU budget. They said: “A long, non-flexible extension would come with EU elections as well, which is another red line for lots of the Conservative party. The shadow business secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey, who was among the Labour delegation, said on Sunday that while the mood of the talks had been positive, there was as yet no sign on where May might budge, particularly Labour’s key demand for a post-Brexit customs union with the EU. Adding to the sense of drift, Leadsom indicated that it was up to Labour to accept the customs arrangement already in May’s rejected deal, and that she and other Brexiter members of May’s ministerial team could not accept a full customs union. “There are various different types of arrangements, and those discussions are still ongoing,” Leadsom said, calling May’s existing customs plan “an excellent proposal”. “My expectation – and I’m not party to the discussions – is that the prime minister will only seek to agree those things that still constitute Brexit.” What does seem clear is that May’s options are closing in, with her deal conceded as lost, and a backbench bill led by the Labour MP Yvette Cooper mandating the PM to avoid a no-deal departure is expected to become law late on Monday, after finishing its progress through the Lords. Another source said the plot for the Brussels summit seemed clear: “I expect she’ll have a pretty bruising time and then walk away with a long extension.”