Lammy: next election a chance to ‘turn the page on the post-Brexit rancour’ in relationship with EU
David Lammy has said the next election is a chance to “turn the page on the post-Brexit rancour” in the UK’s relationship with the EU after a “messy divorce”. He said an incoming Labour government would “approach those conversations in a positive manner”.
Speaking at an event hosted by the Institute for Government, the shadow foreign secretary said:
The next election is an opportunity to turn the page on the post-Brexit rancour of the past, and the low point at which a UK prime minister described the French president as an enemy and during which we had an integrated review in which Europe was barely mentioned.
And actually, I thought it was most peculiar that it took more than 18 months in office for Rishi Sunak to actually visit our friends and allies in Berlin. This is extraordinary.
I want to get back to structured dialogue with the EU on the issues that matter. If we have the privilege of serving, and we’re not naive, of course there are always trade offs with the European Union. But we will approach those conversations in a positive manner.
Lammy was referring to comments made by Liz Truss before she was prime minister. In the penultimate Conservative leadership hustings in August 2022 she said that “the jury is still out” on whether the French president was “friend or foe”.
At the time Emmanuel Macron responded by saying the UK remained “a friendly nation” and strong ally for France “regardless of its leaders, and sometimes in spite of its leaders and whatever little mistakes they may make in a speech from a soapbox”.
Lammy had been asked the question today by a member of the audience who said they had left their role in the FCDO because of Brexit, and Lammy said it had clearly caused “low morale”.
Lammy said:
We had a very, very messy divorce. It was a divorce that went on for years. It was only really with the Windsor framework more recently that we sorted out the custody of the children.
We need to get back on trusted friendly terms, and I believe a Labour government can do that, building that trust back with a UK-EU security pact.
I think when I speak to European colleagues that they recognise the key challenges around war in the continent, the key challenges around energy and climate and over-dependency of unfriendly states particularly.
And they also recognise in a period of low growth across Europe, that there are opportunities for us continuing to work together.
So that’s the spirit into which we enter discussions with our European partners. And of course, it has been very important for me to visit Brussels, Paris, Berlin, other partners across the continent to build and rebuild those relationships.
Key events
A pilot programme has unveiled the level of abuse directed at MSPs with almost 500 posts passed to Police Scotland, PA Media reports.
A programme set up last year has shown that, for the 38 participating MSPs, 461 threats were deemed serious enough to be passed to Police Scotland. On average, each MSP was on the receiving end of 12 abusive posts which were reported to police in less than a year.
In total, the tool used by Holyrood officials found almost a quarter of a million – 245,420 – online comments which met the search criteria for threatening or abusive language but, after an investigation by a security analyst, just over 8,000 were deemed to be abusive.
Lammy: next election a chance to ‘turn the page on the post-Brexit rancour’ in relationship with EU
David Lammy has said the next election is a chance to “turn the page on the post-Brexit rancour” in the UK’s relationship with the EU after a “messy divorce”. He said an incoming Labour government would “approach those conversations in a positive manner”.
Speaking at an event hosted by the Institute for Government, the shadow foreign secretary said:
The next election is an opportunity to turn the page on the post-Brexit rancour of the past, and the low point at which a UK prime minister described the French president as an enemy and during which we had an integrated review in which Europe was barely mentioned.
And actually, I thought it was most peculiar that it took more than 18 months in office for Rishi Sunak to actually visit our friends and allies in Berlin. This is extraordinary.
I want to get back to structured dialogue with the EU on the issues that matter. If we have the privilege of serving, and we’re not naive, of course there are always trade offs with the European Union. But we will approach those conversations in a positive manner.
Lammy was referring to comments made by Liz Truss before she was prime minister. In the penultimate Conservative leadership hustings in August 2022 she said that “the jury is still out” on whether the French president was “friend or foe”.
At the time Emmanuel Macron responded by saying the UK remained “a friendly nation” and strong ally for France “regardless of its leaders, and sometimes in spite of its leaders and whatever little mistakes they may make in a speech from a soapbox”.
Lammy had been asked the question today by a member of the audience who said they had left their role in the FCDO because of Brexit, and Lammy said it had clearly caused “low morale”.
Lammy said:
We had a very, very messy divorce. It was a divorce that went on for years. It was only really with the Windsor framework more recently that we sorted out the custody of the children.
We need to get back on trusted friendly terms, and I believe a Labour government can do that, building that trust back with a UK-EU security pact.
I think when I speak to European colleagues that they recognise the key challenges around war in the continent, the key challenges around energy and climate and over-dependency of unfriendly states particularly.
And they also recognise in a period of low growth across Europe, that there are opportunities for us continuing to work together.
So that’s the spirit into which we enter discussions with our European partners. And of course, it has been very important for me to visit Brussels, Paris, Berlin, other partners across the continent to build and rebuild those relationships.
Labour have continued to push their line that there is an unfunded £46bn tax cut in Conservative plans, with a video clip which uses images of a laughing Liz Truss and a clip of Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak facing off at question time.
The script of the video runs:
Here’s how Rishi Sunak’s £46bn unfunded tax pledge puts your state pension and our NHS at risk.
Rishi Sunak has a £46bn plan to scrap national insurance, and there’s a reason he won’t tell you how he’s funding it.
Last time the Tories tried to force through unfunded plans, they crashed the economy and you had to foot the bill. But Rishi Sunak’s unfunded tax pledge is even more expensive than Liz Truss’s.
To pay for it he could cut state pensions or increase the state pension age by five years. He could cut funding for the NHS or he could raise income tax.
When Keir Starmer asked him which one it would be, Sunak refused to rule any of them out.
Your state pension isn’t safe. Our NHS isn’t safe. And your bank account isn’t safe from Rishi Sunak.
This is why Rishi Sunak’s £46 billion unfunded spending commitment puts your state pension and our NHS at risk 👇 pic.twitter.com/mY3KIl2eBz
— The Labour Party (@UKLabour) May 17, 2024
Earlier today, while in the process of unveiling a document which he said showed that Labour had £38.5bn of unfunded plans, chancellor Jeremy Hunt called this attack “disgusting” and “fake news”. [See 10.05 BST]
He said:
[Labour] may try to distract people by claiming the government has its own black hole of £46bn pounds as a result of our ambition to abolish employee national insurance over time.
We’ve been explicit that we will only deliver it when it can be afforded. It will come through growth in the economy, and not by increasing borrowings or cutting spending. It is frankly disgusting to try to scare pensioners by misrepresenting that policy, but it won’t fool anyone.
Conservative peer Lord Kulveer Ranger, who was ennobled in Boris Johnson resignation honours list, is set to be banned from House of Lords bars for a year. He was found to have bullied and harassed two people while drunk.
The House of Lords Conduct Committee recommended he be suspended from the House for three weeks after an investigation into an incident in parliament’s Strangers’ Bar in January.
The committee’s report said Lord Ranger had been “visibly drunk” and made “various inappropriate comments” to a group of people in the bar.
He then returned to the same group and “acted aggressively, shouting and swearing”, calling them “fucking useless” and “invading their personal space”.
Lord Ranger said he did not recall the incident but was “deeply mortified at the descriptions of my behaviour”.
PA Media report committee said: “Lord Ranger’s bullying behaviour was prolonged in duration, with two separate incidents separated by up to an hour, alcohol was an important factor, and it led to a finding of harassment as well as bullying.”
The committee recommended he be banned from the House of Lords bars for 12 months to “underline the House’s disapproval of alcohol-related misconduct” and invited House of Commons authorities to institute a similar ban for its own facilities.
The suggested sanctions still need to be approved by peers, who are expected to vote on the recommendations in early June.
Lammy: Labour will address lack of ‘grand strategy’ in UK foreign relations
David Lammy has said that the UK has a lack of a “grand strategy” in its diplomacy and foreign policy which could lead to the UK being “buffeted by the tides of superpower competition” unless it changes course. He said a Labour government would enhance the existing strategy unit, form a “soft power council” of cultural influences, and recommended “doubling down” on the use of technology and AI to provide insight.
Noting that the world was going through a “vastly changing moment” the shadow foreign secretary argued that it was “commensurate with the period after the second world war when Britain was losing an empire and much of Britain lay in rubble.”
At that time, he said, Ernest Bevin “was deeply realist about us setting up Nato and about the importance of the nuclear deterrent. That’s grand strategy. And we need to get that back.”
Lammy said “we need to address and sometimes learn from the increasingly dynamic diplomacy approaches of countries like India, Brazil, and the UAE,” adding that the economic diplomacy of “our closest competitors, such as the French … can often feel more hard-headed and realist than our own.”
He told the event, hosted by the Institute for Government:
The last Labour government upgraded the-then policy planners function into an expanded strategy unit. Countries that execute international strategy effectively, from the US to Singapore, place a huge emphasis on such functions.
But at present, neither the FCDO nor the national security council is delivering the sharp, coherent international strategy which the country urgently needs.
Without such strategy we should expect to be buffeted by the tides of superpower competition, not only between the US and China, but also by the many rising powers who are threatening our competitive advantages economically and militarily.
He went on to say “We will build up and empower the existing strategy unit to put it at the heart of the organisation, making it a place to go for the sharpest geopolitical minds.”
Lammy pushed the increased use of technology by the UK’s diplomatic service. He said “We cannot meet the disruptive challenges of the 2020s with a 20th century diplomatic playbook. In an era of fiscal constraint, we need to work smarter, adapt our tools and make better use of technology.”
He then went on to recommend that the FCDO “should be doubling down on adopting AI and other emerging tech to generate insights and to free up staff to concentrate on frontline activity”. He wanted less time “spent by staff in King Charles Street, compiling biographies and background briefings.”
He said “diplomacy and development no longer operate within the old institutional boundaries” and announced Labour would set up what he called a “soft power council” which he said would bring together “figures from across the arts, culture, creative industries and academia to work together with the British Council and the BBC World Service to advance the national interests.”
I must confess that I paused the live stream of the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry while David Lammy was speaking, in order to listen to that, so I am running behind but two points of note that have just come up.
Firstly, Jason Beer KC has just drawn some ironic laughs after there was an issue with putting some documents up on screen, by echoing the Post Office’s own modified language about the Horizon system and saying “Perhaps we have some bugs … or even anomolies.”
Secondly, and more importantly, he also revealed that Paula Vennells has just supplied the inquiry today with a further 50 documents relevant to it. The former managing director of the Post Office is scheduled to appear to give her evidence over three days next week. Persistent late disclosure of documents to the inquiry has been repeatedly criticised by the chair and lead counsel of the inquiry.
By the way, I know there have been some questions in the comments and on social media about how legitimate it is for the government to have used civil servants in the Treasury to cost Labour policies.
The Institute for Government have just re-promoted an explainer they wrote on the topic earlier this year, which says:
Government ministers can ask civil servants to ‘cost’ policies proposed by opposition parties. This is usually coordinated by the Treasury, with the chancellor directing officials on which policies to look at. Other government ministers can ask officials in their own department to do the same, but any resulting figures must then be agreed with the Treasury.
All government policies are costed prior to announcement and MPs or peers, of any party, can request factual information on these costs via parliamentary questions. This means the opposition can in effect ask that civil servants produce costings for government policies, so successive governments have held the view that they should be able to ask for the same of opposition policies.
It is only government ministers, not special advisers, that can formally request that the Treasury cost opposition policies.
What is less clear is the extent to which the Conservatives will be able to pursue their frequent attack line that Labour “does not have a plan” when they have apparently produced detailed costings of multiple policy pledges.
A private member’s bill that would make it easier for pubs to open for extended hours to celebrate national or local events is closer to becoming law, after it received an unopposed third reading in the Commons today.
Labour’s Emma Lewell-Buck’s Licensing Hours Extensions Bill aims to simplify the “costly, overly bureaucratic, time consuming and restrictive” parliamentary process for extending permitted hours.
She said “Love for our pubs is strong across all of our constituencies, if there is one thing guaranteed to unite us it is sporting and royal events. We tend to gather for those events in our local pubs, because they are the beating heart of our communities.”
The topic has been a subject debate after England’s women reached the World Cup final last year in Australia. The match in Sydney kicked off at 11am on a Sunday UK time, and it caught the industry and politicians by surprise.
Under current rules, pubs need to apply five days in advance for notice to serve drink earlier than usual, or else MPs must approve a temporary national order to extend licensing hours, as happened for the platinum jubilee.
PA Media reports Conservative MP Nickie Aiken said she supported the Bill in parliament today, but raised concerns about the impact on residents who live near pubs and hospitality venues, saying “It is important to not to forget that such extensions will see an increase in consumption of alcohol and therefore likely, as often is the case, sadly result in an increase in antisocial behaviour and disturbances for residents.”
James Cleverly has again defended Rishi Sunak’s policy of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda, saying it is “robust” despite what the home secretary declared was a “concerted effort” to prevent the policy going into operation.
He told PA Media in comments overnight that:
We’ve recognised that there has been a concerted effort to prevent this policy being deployed through legal challenge. And we’ve made sure that the law, the Safety of Rwanda Act, is robust, that it addresses the legal concerns that were highlighted to us.
Rwanda is a safe and welcoming country. They are keen to work with us, and it’s incredibly important that we have that deterrent. People are dying in the channel. People are being abused by people smugglers.
The Rwanda scheme is part of a deterrent, which is about saving lives and breaking the business model of criminal gangs. That’s why the prime minister, myself and the whole of government are so determined to deliver on it.
Labour leader Keir Starmer recently said he had “no doubt” that the government would eventually succeed in getting flights into the air, but that Labour would scrap the scheme if elected.
Back in November, Cleverly repeatedly failed to deny to broadcasters that he had previously called the Rwanda deportation policy “batshit”.
Labour have been having a hiccup with their social media attack on Jeremy Hunt, having initially tagged in the wrong Jeremy Hunt. Here is the current version …
Shadow foreign secretary David Lammy has been asked about his comments about Donald Trump, after apparent criticism from London mayor Sadiq Khan.
Khan had said “I understand on Trump. He’s a racist. He’s a sexist. He’s a homophobe. And it’s very important, particularly when you’ve got a special relationship, that you treat them as a best mate. If my best mate was a racist, or a sexist or a homophobe, I’d call him out and I’d explain to him why those views are wrong.”
The mayor’s comments came after Lammy, in a Washington DC speech, said he “gets the agenda that drives America First”, and insisted he would seek to find “common cause” with Donald Trump if the latter were elected president in November.
During an event at the Institute for Government today, answering notably rather carefully, Lammy cited his experience of visiting Ukraine, and said:
This is a profoundly serious moment. And it requires seriousness. That seriousness means that the special relationship between the UK and our American friends is core not just to our own national security, but the security of much of the world.
And so, just like Wilson, Nixon, Blair, Bush, whoever is in the White House, in a big, big election year in the US, or whoever is in number 10 in a big election year in our own country, of course, we must work together.
In 2017 Lammy said that Trump was a “racist Ku Klux Klan and Nazi sympathiser”, and that he vowed to “chain myself to the door of No 10” if the UK welcomed the US president on a state visit. He was asked by a reporter from the Daily Mail if those comments might now “imperil any potential trade deal” if there was a Labour government. Lammy said today:
Now that the truth is that you’re going to be hard pressed to find any politician, particularly politicians who were on the backbenches, who haven’t had something to say about Donald Trump.
I take very seriously the responsibility of being on the frontbench and the responsibility of finding common cause on behalf of the national interests of this country, and whether it’s in relation to our national security or the growth that our economy needs.
He then went on to say:
It feels pretty clear to me that the US has set its face against trade deals. That’s not particular to the UK. But the political establishment, both Democrat and Republican, is not focused on trade deals at this time. And therefore I think, unless that changes, we would be spending an awful lot of effort unnecessarily.
He also raised comments that the current foreign secretary David Cameron had made, saying “I think David Cameron put [Trump] in his book. So his was a really considered thought. And Cameron described him as xenophobic and misogynistic.”
The unusual set dressing for that Jeremy Hunt speech, with him behind a podium that said “Labour’s tax rises” in red, was inevitably going to be mocked by Labour.
Here is the document published by the Conservatives this morning which it says has costed out “absolutely clear policy commitments made by Labour”. In the introduction, the chancellor Jeremy Hunt says:
This document shows that Labour cannot and will not take the tough and responsible decisions required to build an economy that supports working people up and down the country. It lays bare that despite what they say, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are following the same old Labour playbook: higher public spending that will inevitably lead to higher taxes.
This detailed work, based on formal costings by HMT, and only including absolutely clear policy commitments made by Labour, shows that Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are making billions of pounds of unfunded spending commitments with no plan to pay for them.
Whatever they say about these figures these are the numbers officials will present them with if they get into office. The result of this economic failure is a black hole of over £10bn a year by 2028-29 or nearly £38.5bn over the next four years.
This means one of two things – either Labour will break their fiscal rules or they will have to put taxes up. It would be the height of irresponsibility to break the fiscal rules. It would take us back to square one. It would mean an increase to VAT, or national insurance or income tax. This would be a hammer blow for families up and down the country.
The Labour policy commitments costed are listed by the Conservatives as:
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Two million more NHS appointments
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42 GP Hubs
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Double NHS scanners
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700,000 extra dentist appointments
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8,500 mental health professionals
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Bring back the family doctor
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Free breakfast clubs – 1 hour at 50% take up
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£2,400 teacher retention payment
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Ofsted regional improvement teams
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Mandatory Qualified Teacher Status
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Skills England
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Mental health support teams
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300 new planners
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13,000 PCSOs
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Bus service reform
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Insourcing
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Decarbonising the power grid by 2030
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Fair Pay Agreement: Social Care
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Ukraine support
It suggests that Labour has committed to raising revenue in these ways:
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Halving consultancy spend
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Business Rates for private schools
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VAT on private school fees
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Carried Interest
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Non-resident SDLT at 4%
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Tackling the Tax Gap paper
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Additional changes to non-domiciled status
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Energy Profit Levy changes
You can download the pdf here.
Shadow foreign secretary David Lammy is giving a speech at the Institute for Government this morning, which you can watch here. We will bring you the key lines as they emerge.
Larry Elliott
The Bank of England governor, Andrew Bailey, has announced a big expansion of its operations in Leeds, with one in 10 officials to be based in the city within three years.
Bailey said the current 70-strong team at the central bank’s northern hub would swell sevenfold to 500 by 2027 through a combination of voluntary relocation and local recruitment.
