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We’re back to tricky amendments, legislative loopholes and possibly even parliamentary ping pong after the government dismayed its own Tory MPs and peers by confirming that it wants to break international law on Brexit. Bob Neill, the Conservative who elicited that infamous response from Brandon Lewis earlier this week, has tabled an amendment to the internal markets bill that would establish a parliamentary lock on changes to the withdrawal agreement. And he says its supporters are “not natural rebels”. There is also trouble in the Lords, where Brexiteers are unhappy with the government’s proposal. Is this whole drama intended to serve as a distraction ahead of UK concessions? And will Labour back the rebels? Silence on that question so far. But the Welsh Labour government isn’t happy, as Mick Antoniw has explained on LabourList.

The latest coronavirus measures aren’t going down well in the Conservative Party either – and I’m not just talking about the libertarians who insist on the right to meet in groups of more than six. The Treasury committee, made up mostly of Tory MPs, has told the Chancellor to “carefully consider” targeted extensions to its furlough scheme. This is what Labour has been calling for: a recognition that some sectors won’t be able to recover by October, even without the possibility of a second wave and lockdown, but don’t deserve to be cut off from support because they could be viable in the future or need more time to adapt. The TUC and Unite are pushing hard for changes to the job retention scheme instead of a cliff edge. If Rishi Sunak cares about avoiding deep scarring to the economy, not to mention his leadership ambitions, he’ll need to listen.

The battles in Scottish Labour are also coming to a crunch point tomorrow. A motion has been submitted to the Scottish executive committee (SEC): "The SEC expresses that it has no confidence in the leader of the Scottish Labour Party." It has been signed by ten SEC members, the number required for the motion to be accepted. There are some swing voters on the SEC, and there is the potential for the result to be close, but this is a matter of building pressure rather than getting the no-confidence motion approved anyway as it would have no binding consequence without other rule changes. And then there’s the matter of regional list selections. More on this stuff from us later.

We’ve had some must-read comment pieces on LabourList this week, and we’ve published so much content that I’m worried you may have missed some of them. On the environment, we had Nadia Whittome backing the climate and ecological emergency bill last week and Andy Newman opposing it this week. On Brexit, Michael Chessum has argued that Keir Starmer is making the same mistakes as Jeremy Corbyn. On Covid, Richard Burgon MP has explained why the government should adopt a ‘zero Covid’ strategy. On the economy, John Lehal set out how Labour can shift the narrative from Tory incompetence to why Labour has the right plan to build back better. And James Meadway suggested ways for Labour to develop a distinctive narrative on business.

For more on Labour’s electoral strategy and internal affairs, Caitlin Prowle’s piece on the GMB report and misogyny in the labour movement is essential reading. Our columnist Jake Richards has explored how Labour could become the party of law and order. On Scottish Labour, David Martin – not someone on the party’s left – defended Richard Leonard. Gurinder Singh Josan shared ideas for fixing Labour’s governance deficit. Alice Perry delivered a report on the latest national executive committee (NEC) meeting. Unite’s Steve Turner issued an urgent #SOS4jobs. Ged Nichols invited you to TUC Congress, all taking place online next week. And there is plenty more comment to come.

Donate to LabourList if you can, and have a great weekend.

Sienna @siennamarla

The Equalities and Human Rights Commission report on Labour antisemitism has been sent to the party, it was confirmed last night. As outlined in an earlier piece on the EHRC drafting process, the inquiry’s conclusions are first sent to the Labour Party for review. Over these 28 days, the party can make written representations on the contents of the document, which is finalised by the EHRC and published at the end of this period. Labour MPs and staffers have been told by new general secretary David Evans not to comment on either the arrival of the draft or the investigation itself.

The worry is that this leak-prone party could see the draft being released early. But if all goes to plan, we should be reading the EHRC report in early August. Labour’s task is then to prepare an action plan, if the EHRC serves the party an ‘unlawful act notice’, and to start implementing the recommendations. The equalities watchdog has supervisory powers over such an action plan, and the Labour leader will also be looking for the approval of groups such as the Jewish Labour Movement and the Campaign Against Antisemitism. Both are prepared to criticise Keir Starmer, as JLM’s statement on Lloyd Russell-Moyle and the CAA’s recent comments on his leadership have shown.

The Labour leader has already laid the groundwork for this moment, by ensuring that he can reliably win votes on the ruling body and by installing a new general secretary. Speaking of which, it’s all change in the wider labour movement: UNISON’s general secretary Dave Prentis has announced that he will be retiring at the end of the year when his term ends. He was thanked by Starmer for “many years of outstanding leadership” and for representing frontline workers during this crisis, as well as by deputy leader Angela Rayner who started as a carer and came up through UNISON to become a Labour MP. Our round-up of MPs’ tributes to Prentis, described as a "giant of the labour movement", can be found here. A huge thanks also from LabourList for UNISON''s crucial support over the years.

The biggest party-affiliated trade unions are going through a period of change. GMB is currently looking for a new general secretary, with an interim head in place at the moment, while three candidates have put themselves forward for the top job at Unite – Howard Beckett, Steve Turner and Sharon Graham. Beckett and Turner will be vying for the endorsement of United Left at a hustings on Saturday. At UNISON, left-winger Roger McKenzie is thought to be keen but there will be plenty of others. This is an exciting time for the wider labour movement: it has played a pivotal role in fighting for workers during this crisis, and any new general secretaries will be boosted by growing union membership. There is much cause for optimism.

Sienna @siennamarla

Brexit talks were extended past the ''deadline'' this Sunday, and will continue this week as both sides agreed to "go the extra mile". No new arbitrary deadline was set with negotiators working frantically ahead of the only one that matters – December 31st. EU Brexit chief Michel Barnier said this morning that an agreement is "still possible" but differences remain over "free and fair competition" and "reciprocal access to markets and waters". In an energetic media appearance on Sunday, Ed Miliband stressed the importance of getting a deal and called on the Prime Minister to "stand up to a small bunch of people in his party whose fantasy it has always been to have no deal", also confirming Labour would be "minded to support" a deal. His Labour colleague Steve Reed described the situation as “surreal” and highlighted that Boris Johnson told the public a year ago he had an ‘oven-ready’ deal. 

Jeremy Corbyn yesterday announced his Peace and Justice Project. In a short video message released on social media, the former Labour leader said the programme will work for "social and economic justice, peace, and human rights in Britain and across the world". Its mission statement commits to "work with labour and social movements and provide platforms to those campaigning for change for the many, not the few". A number on the left have tweeted in support of the project, including Labour MPs Ian Byrne, Beth Winter and former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell who described it as a "brilliant new initiative". It will launch next month with an online event featuring Labour peer Christine Blower, Unite general secretary Len McCluskey and MP Zarah Sultana.

Keir Starmer has this morning called on the Prime Minister to tackle rough sleeping this Christmas, warning it represents "just the tip of an iceberg" of poverty and destitution this winter. In a letter to Johnson, the Labour leader urged him to work with local councils and mayors to ensure access to Covid-secure shelter. The intervention from Starmer comes ahead of his visit to the West Midlands to meet with homelessness projects in Worcester and food poverty campaigners in Birmingham later today. Also to look out for today is our editor Sienna in conversation with Andy Burnham at 6pm this evening. Feel free to send in questions for the Greater Manchester mayor before tuning in.

Elliot @elliot_chappell

We’ve come to the end of the August parliamentary recess and LabourList’s morning email pause. We did not return for big Labour news as promised because there was none: the final Equality and Human Rights Commission report on antisemitism within the party still has not been released, such is the length of the ''Maxwellisation'' process whereby those criticised are given the opportunity to respond. While we continue to wait for that major event in Labour Party history, however, the government has provided us with plenty of news as ministers perform U-turn after U-turn.

Over the last four weeks, I spoke to Labour MPs recovering from coronavirus, Elliot shared the experiences of parliamentary caseworkers during the crisis, we interviewed Cat Smith, and our new columnist barrister Jake Richards looked at judicial review, children in care and Tory cronyism in government procurement. LabourList ran a readers’ survey. We also reported on the SQA results scandal, followed by the predictable A-Level results fiasco, as well as the toing and froing on the use of face coverings in schools. Oh, and we’ve hired a new reporter. Thanks to all who donated to help us reach that goal.

Schools are the top priority this week, as pupils in England and Wales start returning full-time today. Gavin Williamson, the apparently unsackable Education Secretary, has penned an open letter to parents in a bid to reassure them that it is safe. Will it be enough? Teachers have put tons of work into Covid preparations: pupils will be taught in ‘bubbles’, there will be staggered breaks, cleaning stations, face coverings in communal areas if the school wishes or if it is in a high transmission area. But the pressure doesn’t end there. The Mirror reports that headteachers will be responsible for the £216m cost of making schools safe – and could be forced to use funds meant for teaching.

More broadly, the economy is set to suffer a major blow as the furlough scheme ends in all sectors next month. It is no coincidence that as we approach this crunch moment, the government has briefed that people could face the sack unless they return to the office. Should we adapt to the changes brought by the pandemic, which is here to stay for the foreseeable? Nah, just threaten working people instead. The message to millenials was clear: forget the housing ladder, spend your money on avo toast in the city centre! But there is conflict, as ever, among ministers, with Health Secretary Matt Hancock saying he didn’t care where we worked. If you can believe it, the government is sending mixed messages during the coronavirus crisis.

Can Labour set out an alternative vision of the Covid and post-Covid economy? Rishi Sunak is reportedly considering a raft of wealth-targeting measures to pay for the crisis, many of which featured in Labour’s 2019 manifesto. Yet the party under Keir Starmer’s leadership has said this isn’t the time for tax increases. Just how worried should the left be about the slick Chancellor? Could he become a tricky-to-beat rival leader at the next election, or is he being set up for a big fall? I will be discussing all of these questions and more with Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds at 5.30pm. As always, feel free to suggest questions for our Q&A at the end, and visit this link to watch the event live later.

Sienna @siennamarla

The free school meal row is rumbling on, as one Tory council leader has advised parents who struggle to feed their children to shop at Marks and Spencer and accused Marcus Rashford of creating a “political football”. He’s a real comedian, this one. Dido Harding’s husband John Penrose has also chipped in, blaming “chaotic parents” for food poverty. But will ministers listen instead to the government’s own food tsar? Henry Dimbleby has sent Downing Street a four-point plan for a holiday activity and food programme and a healthy food voucher scheme, as well as Labour’s demand for extended free school meals. He is urging them to “set aside ideology”. If the government won’t listen to campaigners, maybe this Etonian from a famous family can convince them.

Devastating news emerged as a migrant boat sank in the Channel yesterday, leading to the deaths of four people including two young children aged five and eight. Others have been hospitalised. As usual, the government has responded by promising to make crossings “unviable”. Labour’s Nick Thomas-Symonds has called for “compassion”, and specifically for the Home Office to reopen safe legal routes and the Dubs scheme, which offered sanctuary to lone minors until ministers decided the mere 480 places had been filled. The opposition is also urging the government to reverse the decision to scrap the Department for International Development and come to an agreement with France.

In Covid news, the Resolution Foundation has released a report with crucial data for the UK’s handling of the economic crisis. The think tank has found that the unemployment rate in September was likely to be 7%, and 20% for 18- to 24-year-olds. Another group being disproportionately affected, as predicted by everyone and highlighted by the Lawrence Review this week, is Black, Asian and minority ethnic workers. 22% of BAME workers furloughed during lockdown have since lost their jobs. Youth and BAME unemployment are the two areas to which Gordon Brown has drawn attention in recent months. Read our write-up here, which features the TUC’s response to the vital research.

On LabourList today, we’ve got an interview with Kate Dearden from Community union on the struggle of self-employed workers to be heard during the coronavirus crisis. We talk about their new campaign and new inquiry, how the self-employed are misunderstood and how they’ve been forgotten by the government. I will also be in conversation with shadow minister Sarah Jones tonight. If you have suggestions for questions on her policy brief, policing and the fire services, please email them to me – and don’t forget to join us at this link from 6pm to watch the event live.

Sienna @siennamarla

Labour is still working out its response to the Chancellor’s summer statement on Wednesday. The party came up with a sound bite to criticise the meal discount scheme, comparing the promised “New Deal” to the delivered “meal deal”. The founder of the Labour Hunger Campaign has written for LabourList on why it’s a “let them eat cake” moment for Rishi Sunak. And Keir Starmer’s party is focusing today on the “secret £1bn giveaway to second homeowners” that was later “snuck out”. Thangam Debbonaire is highlighting that stamp duty on second homes has been reduced from 8% to 3% – benefiting the most well-off, while renters have not had one bit of help during the crisis.

But the opposition party centred its criticisms yesterday on the job retention bonus scheme. This was Sunak’s plan for making sure that employers bring back furloughed workers rather than simply laying them off after the job retention scheme ends in October. It will see employers given £1,000 per employee that is retained until at least January. On Thursday morning, the Chancellor admitted that there was “dead weight” involved in the £9bn initiative, as a number of employers receiving the bonus will have already planned to bring back their staff.

Some commentators found Sunak’s honesty about the flaws in the scheme refreshing. But Keir Starmer leapt on the comment, declaring that “we can’t afford dead weight”. Bridget Phillipson as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury followed this up with a letter to the head of HMRC, piggybacking on reports that he had expressed concern over the “value for money” of the proposal and it went through via a ministerial direction (when ministers instruct senior civil servants to go ahead with a use of public money even if it hasn’t met their tests, a tool that has been used frequently for Covid-19 measures).

Labour is absolutely right to be picking apart this scheme. A one-off £1,000 bonus probably isn’t enough to persuade employers who weren’t already going to retain furloughed staff to start doing so, which means it will mostly serve a nice little bonus that does little to reduce unemployment. As former John McDonnell aide James Meadway has set out, it is an example of corporate welfare: a handout for bosses, not a support for jobs. What scares many Labour members, however, is the language of affordability being used by the leadership. They are talking of “efficient public spending” at a time of crisis, and when the normal rules have been thrown out of the window – something that Labour should surely celebrate.

There are fears on the left that this could be a return to the austerity-lite days of Ed Miliband and Ed Balls. It is ground on which Labour cannot win, many have argued. There are clearly tensions over the response to the government’s current approach to the economy: last night, left-wing shadow Treasury team member Dan Carden rejected a Times story that described Labour backtracking from supporting a wealth tax in principle, though the story is accurate. This all goes to the need for Labour to find a way of criticising the government that doesn’t simply urge it to spend more, but doesn’t call for a targeted approach in a way that might limit the parameters of future policy-making either.

Sienna @siennamarla

The Labour Party was formally referred to the Equality and Human Rights Commission by the Campaign Against Antisemitism in July 2018. The equalities body, set up under a Labour government, decided after receiving evidence that the threshold had been met for a full statutory investigation, which was launched in May 2019. It sought to determine “whether unlawful acts had been committed by the party, its employees or its agents”, and whether the party had “responded to complaints of unlawful acts in a lawful, efficient and effective manner”. The Jewish Labour Movement and Labour Against Antisemitism both made substantial submissions, while the CAA regularly contributed to the inquiry.

Today the EHRC report on Labour antisemitism has been published. This long-awaited event is a culmination of some of the party’s darkest moments, which have caused pain and hurt to many members – and the days that follow are likely also to be difficult. A press conference by the EHRC is currently underway, the CAA will hold another at half past, Keir Starmer will lead his own at 11am and JLM will do so at 12pm. Jeremy Corbyn is also expected to respond. LabourList will be covering the developments in detail. You can start with our story on the report''s release here.  

Sienna @siennamarla

"A short, sharp, shock to turn back the clock, slow down the virus and buy us more time." The Welsh government has announced a ''firebreak'' lockdown starting at 6pm on Friday. It will look pretty similar to the UK-wide restrictions seen at the height of the pandemic in March, with the key exception that primary schools – and secondary schools for years seven and eight – will reopen in the second week of the lockdown when the half term ends. Mark Drakeford has announced economic support of almost £300m alongside the measure, but the First Minister told Rishi Sunak that more support for workers is needed in the Covid crisis. He warned: "Only the UK government has the financial firepower to guarantee the levels of income support workers need." 

Meanwhile in England, we are just hours away from 2.8 million people being forced into Tier 3 restrictions without adequate economic support, with the government on track to reject the concerns voiced by their local leaders. Mayor Andy Burnham has accused the government of "trying to respond to a pandemic on the cheap" as Greater Manchester local leaders face a midday deadline to agree to enter the most severe measures. A late-night ultimatum was delivered by Housing, Communities and Local Government Secretary Robert Jenrick via the media last night, saying that restrictions will be brought in unilaterally if no deal is agreed. 

The offer on the table, outlined in a letter to council leaders yesterday, is £22m for enforcement and support for vulnerable people, while ministers have said that there will be "additional support commensurate with what we have done in Liverpool City Region and in Lancashire". Merseyside received a financial settlement of £44m, while the government gave Lancashire £42m. But, as Burnham has pointed out this morning, Greater Manchester leaders have never been told how much that support will be. He has said they will write to the PM with what they think is a "fair figure" today, but the mayor has also acknowledged that he will ultimately have to accept the decision of the government.

In other news, ballots have started to drop into members'' inboxes for the national executive committee elections. This marks the beginning of the end of the (very long) process of electing new reps to the party''s governing body, and LabourList has put together a handy explainer on the state of play as voting opens. And make sure you also check out our exclusive interview with UNISON general secretary candidate Christina McAnea on compromise, Communists and Red Clydeside as she discussed her working-class roots and plans for the future.

The LabourList team sends its best wishes to Labour MP Yasmin Qureshi, who is currently in hospital being treated for Covid. 

Elliot @elliot_chappell

Momentum is now chaired by a climate activist living in New York and a firefighter working for the Fire Brigades Union. Replacing Jon Lansman with Gaya Sriskanthan and Andrew Scattergood serves to highlight a number of aims and values for the organisation’s new leadership: diversity, links with the wider labour movement, an emphasis on the Green New Deal policy proposals and a renewed focus on international work. Of course, what everyone wants to know is how they will handle Labour’s national executive committee (NEC) elections. The hope for the party’s left is that the Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance meeting tomorrow goes smoothly and a single slate is formed.

In news from Labour itself, the party is calling today for a new £1.7bn fightback fund to protect the hospitality industry and high streets amid the lifting of coronavirus restrictions. On the theme of “jobs, jobs, jobs”, the shadow business team has identified those most at risk of going under: beauty salons, nail bars and gyms, which remain closed; pubs, bars, hotels and restaurants, which are allowed to open but cannot trade as normal due to distancing guidelines still in place. These partially and fully shut down sectors could risk the loss of one million jobs, Labour says. The proposed new fund would give councils more flexibility over support for their local economy.

This fightback fund idea follows the demand by Labour that the government adapts the furlough scheme being wound down by the Chancellor amid many thousands of job cuts. Anneliese Dodds used the Sunday shows media round to reiterate her message that the “one-size-fits-all” approach should be dropped in favour of sector-specific support. Shadow minister Lucy Powell has warned that the employer contribution aspect of the scheme, which kicks in next month, will be a “step too far” for many businesses. The whole job retention programme is due to end in October, but – as we heard DCMS Secretary Oliver Dowden this morning – many areas of the economy, such as theatres, are not expected to be up and running by the end of the year.

Labour has been attempting throughout this crisis to avoid getting trapped, either by promoting impractical ideas or by being overly critical of the government. But the party could also be trapped if it underestimates the scale of this crisis. The furlough scheme being extended to October, for example, was warmly welcomed by the labour movement. And it was indeed a great victory for trade unions that thoroughly deserved celebration. But that move now looks seriously lacking in ambition: the depth and length of the crisis was not appreciated in that moment. Repeating similar miscalculations must be avoided.

Sienna @siennamarla

We might have assumed that this week would be dominated by Brexit news, as Boris Johnson did set today – the European Council summit – as his deadline for getting a deal. But the Prime Minister has accepted that this self-imposed target will be missed, and has done so with little scrutiny because everyone is talking about coronavirus. Although Andy Burnham has pushed against Greater Manchester being put into the government’s new ‘Tier 3’ category of coronavirus alert level, Downing Street is now expected to do just that to the area along with Lancashire. (Meanwhile, London is expected to enter ‘Tier 2’.) The Labour mayor has warned that this would be “by imposition, not consent” and the region would consider taking legal action over the lack of financial support available to the low-paid and self-employed.

Before final talks with 10 Downing Street, set to be held this morning, again the news was briefed to the national media first and Sky News tweeted it last night. Local council leaders and MPs took to social media in protest – including Tory William Wragg. “They don’t even have lists of which MPs represent GM constituencies and keep leaving people out of briefings,” added Labour’s Barbara Keeley. It is an undeniable mess. Ministers keep claiming that the decisions for local restrictions are being made “jointly” with local representatives, but that clearly is not the case. Of course, the situation could be transformed by a well-functioning test and trace system, yet the Tories will not consider dropping Serco and handing power to local public health teams – as shown in the rejection of Labour’s motion yesterday.

Coming up in the House of Commons today is the government’s controversial covert human intelligence sources (criminal conduct) bill, which Labour will not be voting against at third reading, as revealed by LabourList on Monday. Trade unions and Labour MPs concerned about the bill are supportive of the party’s amendments, seeking to introduce safeguards in the legislation, but the proposed changes will be blocked by the Tories. Although the general secretaries of 14 trade unions have joined with a number of Labour MPs and campaigning organisations including both Momentum and soft left Open Labour to urge Keir Starmer to oppose the ''spycops'' bill if it is unamended, the leadership is undeterred.

After more than just Socialist Campaign Group MPs expressed concerns at the Monday meeting about abstaining on the CHIS bill, the Labour leader arranged personal meetings to persuade them not to break the whip. We will know this afternoon whether this has ensured that the rebellion is kept at around 20 MPs only. Want to know more about the arguments on either side? Diane Abbott wrote for LabourList on why she plans to defy the whip this week, while shadow minister Conor McGinn has also written for LabourList to set out the reasons for the leadership’s decision. Both are worth reading.

Sienna @siennamarla

Deputy leader, party chair and campaign coordinator Angela Rayner was the star of Connected on its opening weekend. She used her media round and speech to promote Labour’s demands for key workers, highlight the “indefensible” average wage of a social worker and declare that “applause on a Thursday night doesn’t pay the rent”. The arguments are all the more relevant in light of fresh reports that Rishi Sunak is looking at freezes on benefits and public sector pay in response to coronavirus.

Rayner also told her personal story, widely considered to be one of the leadership’s greatest assets, to ensure that the message packed a punch. “My first step in politics wasn’t in the Oxford Union, it was in my trade union,” she said. “40 years ago, a girl named Angela was born. She was born into poverty, and grew up in a Britain that was broken. Scarred by mass unemployment and hardship. The odds were stacked against her. But a Labour government changed that.”

Now it’s the turn of Anneliese Dodds, who will deliver the keynote speech today. The Shadow Chancellor has a tough job going up against Sunak: her opposite number has developed a high profile and high personal ratings, being given the ‘Boris’ treatment as people refer to him as ‘Rishi’. Restaurants and pubs have named their discount offers after the Chancellor even after Eat Out to Help Out ended. Missteps have been made, too: the photo opportunity that showed him serving Wagamama diners without a face covering or visor could see Sunak become the poster boy for the second wave. And unless the government acts fast ahead of furlough ending, there will be huge and avoidable unemployment.

In response to these challenge, Dodds has three Rs: “recover, retrain, rebuild”. This is the outline of her three-step economic plan: a job recovery scheme to replace furlough; a national retraining strategy for workers who have had their hours cut or lost their job; a business rebuilding programme that will help struggling but viable firms. She will urge the government to work “hand-in-hand” with trade unions and businesses, as Labour wants people to know that it understands business as well as public service workers.

There are three Rs, and there also three strands to the intervention this morning. Dodds will talk about a “file of failure” that shows how much money has been wasted by the government during the Covid crisis. Similar to past comments made by the shadow Treasury team’s Bridget Phillipson on “value for money”, Labour will argue – somewhat counterintuitively for much of the public – that the Tories are not spending efficiently. The Shadow Chancellor will reinforce the case for more targeted measures by highlighting the contrast between herself (responsible) and Sunak (doesn’t know the value of public money).

The second strand is that the speech will put an emphasis on values, particularly “security and fairness”. Both new general secretary David Evans and Keir Starmer’s head of policy Claire Ainsley are big fans of the ‘values model’, basically believing that policy is not enough to win an election and the worth of reassuring noises should not be underestimated. Evans wrote about it for LabourList in 2017. Labour has struggled with voters who are more socially conservative, which means the new leadership will talk about Britain, patriotism, family and security at every opportunity.

And the third is something for Labour members to celebrate: policy demands being based on green priorities. The retraining of workers could be part of the just transition to a greener economy, and the business rebuilding programme being proposed would see targeted financial support offered when consistent with the UK’s net zero carbon emissions target.

We’ll be covering the day’s Connected events, from Dodds’ speech starting at 10.35am to the Open Labour and Socialist Campaign Group rallies this evening, and much more in between.

Sienna @siennamarla

Labour has opened up its biggest lead over the Tories since Keir Starmer became Labour leader. A new YouGov poll shows the opposition party on 40% with the Conservatives behind on 35%. Coming out a little over 24 hours into lockdown 2.0 for England, a measure the PM assured us would not be needed, the latest numbers suggest the emphasis on ''competence'' has gone down well. Labour is benefitting from the the contradiction between a Prime Minister who repeatedly says he is ''following the science'' while rejecting for weeks calls from his own experts to introduce a lockdown. And, as Starmer highlighted at PMQs this week, no one is buying the argument that the facts "suddenly changed".

But Labour knows it needs to avoid attaching Tory failure over Covid to Boris Johnson alone. Over the past few days we have seen the Labour leader blame Rishi Sunak for not implementing a two- to three-week national lockdown earlier as “his decision”, and Anneliese Dodds yesterday slammed the Chancellor for the "last-minute" U-turn on extending the furlough scheme. Venting frustrations seen across the country, the Shadow Chancellor told the Commons that he “can change his mind at the last minute, but businesses can’t”. As the current favourite to replace Johnson at the top of the Tory Party, Sunak is firmly in the Labour Party''s sights.

The poll released this morning comes as the Labour leadership tries to maintain control of the row over the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn. General secretary David Evans issued a warning to local parties last night, saying there should be no discussion or motions on individual disciplinary cases. A similar instruction was circulated by his predecessor Jennie Formby in 2019. The latest directive comes after allegations emerged earlier in the week that a motion expressing solidarity with the former Labour leader was blocked by party officials at a meeting of the London regional executive committee. 

Across the pond, Donald Trump gave a dishonest and frankly dangerous take on the US election overnight. The President made a number of unfounded claims of vote tampering and being barred from overseeing counts. He declared, without any evidence: "We have so much evidence, so much proof." Several news networks cut their feed of the press conference and the rambling 16-minute speech has been roundly condemned, including by numerous Republican politicians. In a cringeworthy interview this morning, Tory minister Nadhim Zahawi repeatedly refused to condemn Trump''s comments. Shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy, in contrast, slammed "attempts to attack and undermine", tweeting: "Democracy matters and we should not be silent when it is threatened."

Elliot @elliot_chappell

The long-awaited report on Russian interference in the UK has been published, with some pretty extraordinary and damning findings. It confirmed that Russia did try to influence the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, but that even after this the government only "belatedly realised the level of threat" posed. On the 2016 Brexit vote, the document described how the committee had "not been provided with any post-referendum assessment of Russian attempts at interference", and its members accused the government of having “actively avoided” looking for evidence of meddling. So, the government didn''t find any problems with the Brexit referendum... But only because it didn''t look. And while this might be the way I handle my own personal finances, it''s probably not the best way to approach national security.

The government has rejected the claim, along with any suggestion that the UK has been complacent in its approach to Russia. It also rejected the report''s call for a new investigation into the referendum. Reacting to the findings, Labour slammed the government for "deep systemic failings" in its approach to national security. Shadow Europe minister Catherine West has written for LabourList this morning on the need for the government to "make amends for its weak handling of the Russian threat", and called for the introduction of legislation to "clean up the murky dealings of business and politics". The party has tabled an urgent parliamentary question for today. 

Meanwhile, Labour''s lawyers are set to read out an apology in court this morning in the libel case relating to the Panorama documentary about Labour antisemitism. Seven of eight former Labour staffers who appeared in the programme last year took legal action, claiming that senior figures had attacked their reputations and suggested they had personal motives to undermine the party. A Labour spokesperson at the time had described them as "disaffected officials who have always opposed Corbyn’s leadership, worked to actively undermine it and have both personal and political axes to grind”.

The Guardian reports today that both the former Labour leader and the former director of comms Seumas Milne have taken legal advice about the settlement and apology, and that "senior figures are considering routes for a future challenge to the settlement". Keir Starmer reportedly reminded national executive committee (NEC) members yesterday that all candidates in the leadership race earlier this year had pledged to settle the case – and told them it''s the right thing to do both morally and financially. But settling remains controversial within Labour. For some on the left, the leaked report into the party''s handling of antisemitism complaints makes a real difference. The dossier, which emerged after the leadership election, described a “hyper-factional” environment in the party and alleged that disciplinary cases were mishandled in order to undermine Corbyn''s leadership. 

That internal document is of course subject to its own investigation now. A four-person panel, chaired by Martin Forde QC, was appointed to look into the allegations in the report, its commissioning and how it was put into the public domain, and the culture within the party. But constituency party NEC representatives yesterday wrote to Forde and the leadership requesting clarification in response to the panel''s call for evidence, in which it appeared to suggest that the inquiry “intends to focus on paragraph three of the terms of reference" – the bit about party culture. The reps have called for the inquiry to also cover the contents of the report. A Labour spokesperson told LabourList that "an independent investigation into the circumstances, contents and release" of the report is taking place. 

Elliot @elliot_chappell

The Prime Minister has released a video to share his views on the Black Lives Matter protests, which in the UK saw the statue of slave trade Edward Colston torn down by protesters. Boris Johnson acknowledges a “depth of emotion” and “feeling of injustice”, agrees that politicians “can’t ignore” certain realities and reassures activists that they are “right to say Black Lives Matter”. But he goes on to condemn “those who flout the rules on social distancing”, preparing to blame activists for a rise in the coronavirus infection rate – as if he hasn’t just unlocked without first putting in place a properly functioning test, track and trace system. And as if 10 Downing Street advisers are not held to different standards.

Labour’s response to the Colston statue being pulled down has been the subject of fierce debate within the party. Nobody expected Keir Starmer to make a media appearance with ‘ACAB’ written across his forehead. Nobody expected the leader to quote his younger self, who was interested in discussing “the question of the role the police should play, if any, in civil society”. What Starmer did do, of course, is tell LBC listeners that the statue should have been removed “properly, with consent”. He argued that “nobody should condone lawlessness”, although it “should have been taken down a long, long time ago”. He followed the mainstream line that appealing to authorities is preferable to direct action, as you would expect.

The substance of the comments were to be expected, but the way in which the message was communicated did fail to recognise that people had tried to get the statue removed or altered through conventional political means for many years without success. It also may have been useful to note that “consent” was never obtained from the black community for the statue, and that much of this discussion assumes black people should “live in spaces that reproduce trauma”, as argued by Sabrina Huck in her latest column. The comments make clear that the priority of this new weekly LBC slot is not particularly to challenge mainstream narratives, but to present Keir Starmer as a Prime Minister-in-waiting.

This is entirely natural for a leader who wants to restore the image of Labour and present it as a party that is ready to win the next election. And this example is representative of a dynamic that many Labour members will take time to get used to after Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership (which did not question the role of the police either, but was more accepting of frontbenchers freestyling on controversial topics and would likely have struggled more with this debate). It is also quite right that remarks such as those on LBC are debated: the tensions between establishment and movement-building politics are entirely appropriate for a democratic socialist party such as Labour. As a critical friend, LabourList exists to accommodate that whole spectrum of debate while supporting the leadership.

Luke Pollard, Shadow Environment Secretary, has today called on the government to take action on animal cruelty amid concerns that there has been a spike during lockdown. This is a timely reminder that I will be in conversation with the shadow cabinet member at 6pm tonight: just revisit this LabourList post at that time to join us for the online event. 

Sienna @siennamarla

The third reading of the covert human intelligence sources (criminal conduct) bill divided the Labour left in parliament yesterday. 34 Labour MPs, plus suspended Claudia Webbe, defied the whip on the controversial government-proposed legislation, and seven frontbenchers including shadow ministers Dan Carden and Margaret Greenwood quit to vote against it. The rebellion was the biggest so far under Keir Starmer’s leadership but could have been far larger: it was in the mid-40s that afternoon, I’m told, but the Labour leader himself took charge of efforts to get Labour MPs in line on Monday evening at the Parliamentary Labour Party meeting and continued to do so yesterday. This lobbying is understood to have prevented at least another eight frontbench resignations.

As Corbynsceptics did over recent years, the Labour left is struggling to settle on a path for maintaining power and influence under Starmer’s leadership. MPs on the left were not divided over the bill’s substance but over strategy: frontbenchers including Andy McDonald, Imran Hussain, Rachael Maskell, Cat Smith, Marsha de Cordova, Alex Sobel, Sam Tarry and Charlotte Nichols decided that abstaining on a bill – that will pass regardless of how they vote – was worth it. Any return to the “sealed tomb”, in which the parliamentary left was encased by Tony Blair, is obviously undesirable. But others considered the subject matter, which includes ‘spycops’ relationships that amount to state-sanctioned rape, to be too sensitive. It was a “matter of conscience”, Carden said.

Those who did not quit took a “collective decision” to “use their roles to ensure the left has a stronger voice in future party policy”, a source close to the group said. They also secured what have been described as “concessions” from Starmer: from aggressively pursuing amendments in the Lords, and a clear statement that Labour in government would reform the bill, to pursuing legislation on trade union issues (e.g. the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign) and voting against the other controversial government legislation, the overseas operations bill, at third reading. But most of those had either already been confirmed by Starmer or they are moves that he would not have a problem with.

Some close to the leadership believe that members on the left are coming round to Starmer’s way of looking at parliamentary votes and the party’s electoral strategy. It is the following. With an 80-seat Tory majority, the government can easily get its business through. The only way to change that is to win the next election. And the only way Labour can win is to fight the impression that it doesn’t care about national security, or even that the party would be a threat to it in government. And part of that mission is abstaining on bills like these, which are “far from perfect” but “necessary”, as Conor McGinn argued on LabourList. Whether that is either morally right or effective (the Tories still put out the message, “Labour can’t be trusted on national security”) is still a subject of debate in the party.

This was not a pivotal moment that will shape Starmer’s Labour: he is the leader, and he has clear ideas of how to get the keys of No 10. A slightly lower or higher number of rebels would not have changed that. But it was an important moment for the Labour left, offering food for thought. The candidate selections leading up to the 2019 general election were a key player in last night’s vote: 16 of the 34 rebels were elected for the first time last year. The Socialist Campaign Group and Momentum aren’t the only sources of power: Geraint Davies and Sarah Owen also broke the whip, and soft left group Open Labour joined trade unions in urging the Labour leadership to change course earlier this week. Whether these lessons can form the basis of a coherent, joined-up approach remains to be seen.

Sienna @siennamarla

You know that whole thing where tens of thousands have been dying due to coronavirus outbreaks in care homes? Well, according to the Prime Minister, “too many care homes didn''t really follow the procedures”. Glad we got that one cleared up. 10 Downing Street has denied that Boris Johnson was blaming care homes since he made that comment, which is up there with the weakest of rebuttals they have had to issue. Liz Kendall has pointed out: “Care workers have gone above and beyond the call of duty, and many of them in care homes have seen really traumatic things.” The other crucial fact is that the “procedures” were wrong: care homes were shutting doors to visitors before being told to do so, and they were being advised for too long that staff did not need to wear face masks.

The Tories like to talk a good game about ‘coming together’ and that sort of thing. They are more than happy to do a bit of clapping for key workers. But ultimately they will shift the blame on to individuals when government failures lead to many avoidable deaths. Meanwhile, frontline workers are being forced to take matters into their own hands. As Shelly explores in the return of her TU-esday round-up column today, postal workers have had to stage walkouts when colleagues test positive for Covid-19, and there have been serious outbreaks in meat factories where safety assessments were not conducted. And then there are those workers who are being laid off in huge numbers.

Labour’s Bridget Phillipson, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has set out ten things to look for in Wednesday’s speech from the Chancellor on LabourList. Her detailed list of priorities for the opposition party will no doubt be used by Labour MPs to assess the announcements made by Rishi Sunak tomorrow and develop their criticisms. This is an important moment: both because the government plans must match up to the scale of the crisis and because the prospect of eminently popular Sunak taking over from Johnson before the next general election (don’t you think he looks tired?) is a worrying one.

This evening, I will be holding our next LabourList ‘in conversation’ event with Jonathan Ashworth, just a couple of days after the 72nd anniversary of the NHS. We will be talking about the Service, the coronavirus crisis and the future of social care, of course, but I’d like to hear your thoughts on what else I should be asking the Shadow Health Secretary. Feel free to email with suggestions, and remember to join us from 6pm on this LabourList page where the event will be broadcast live.

Sienna @siennamarla

Brexit looms large again. After a general election being told about an ''oven-ready'' deal, Boris Johnson is well on his way to collapsing that deal and the ongoing trade talks between Westminster and Brussels, according to the Financial Times this morning. The Prime Minister is set to give a statement today, in which he''ll say that there needs to be an agreement by the time of the European Council on October 15th – otherwise the UK will be prepared to "move on" without a deal. This comes alongside reports that the internal market bill to be published on Wednesday will override two key parts of the withdrawal agreement, signed just ten months ago, on state aid and Northern Ireland customs. The backlash has seen the PM condemned by MPs across the board for reneging on the international agreement. Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary Louise Haigh said it would be an "act of immense bad faith" and one that would be "viewed dimly by future trading partners".

After a bit of a sluggish restart to parliament last week, this one is set to be much busier. Labour has said it will try to amend the government’s fire safety bill today, after it emerged that over 80% of private and nearly 50% of social housing with Grenfell-style flammable cladding has not had the dangerous material removed. The party''s proposals would force the government to implement the recommendations of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s phase one report, published in October 2019. The opposition has also declared it will bring a motion to require the publication of all official documents relating to the exam results chaos over the summer, following reports that the Prime Minister and Education Secretary were warned about the problems with the algorithm weeks or months in advance.

And it''s time for the Health Secretary to face the music in parliament today after almost 3,000 people in the UK tested positive for Covid-19 on Sunday, the highest total since May and a 50% increase in a single day. The government is hanging on to the fact that most of the new cases seem to be in younger people, but there is widespread concern that the government has simply "lost control of the virus". Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth said: "This increase, combined with the ongoing testing fiasco where ill people are told to drive for miles for tests, and the poor performance of the contact tracing system, needs an explanation from ministers."  We can look forward to that later. 

Extinction Rebellion had a busy weekend after a relatively quiet period. More than 100 demonstrators blockaded two printing presses on Friday, disrupting the distribution of papers owned by Rupert Murdoch. Labour''s reaction to the direct action has been mixed. Backbencher Dawn Butler initially tweeted "bravo... excellent work" before deleting the post two hours later. Former Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott defended the protests, saying the action was legal and describing reports that the group might be reclassified as a criminal organisation as "ridiculous". However, Labour leader Keir Starmer has taken a different view, condemning the attack on the "free press" and arguing that "denying people the chance to read what they choose is wrong and does nothing to tackle climate change". 

Don''t miss out on our live event at 7pm today – LabourList editor Sienna Rodgers will be in conversation with Shadow Transport Secretary Jim McMahon. You can watch along here and please email us with questions for the frontbencher about his brief. 

Elliot @elliot_chappell

The coronavirus press conferences have become markedly worse. Two months ago, I wrote that these events were “becoming torturous – lengthy, rambling, with no opportunity for video-linked journalists to ask follow-up questions”. They are not quite as rambling now, but after introducing follow-ups 10 Downing Street has rediscovered the mute button on Zoom and taken to cutting off journalists. As a result, Boris Johnson delightfully sped through the press questions last night. 

The Prime Minister also appeared to stop Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance (who were stood down on Monday) from addressing the Dominic Cummings story. This “Trumpesque” move, as Angela Rayner put it, was a bad look. And when they did speak for themselves, the medical advisers made clear that they didn’t want to be “pulled into politics”. But the need for clarifications on rules post-Cummings is important to public health, and refusing to respond is itself political.

54% of the public believe that lockdown measures are being lifted too quickly, according to a new Ipsos MORI poll. From Monday, schools are being reopened, we’re allowed to meet outside in groups (of up to six in England and eight in Scotland), and Johnson has even encouraged us to have barbecues. (In England, you’re allowed to use the toilet in homes other than your own; in Scotland, you’re not.) Yet we were promised an app and a fully functioning test, track, trace programme before these changes were made, and we don’t have those in place.

There are also concerns that income support schemes are being cut off too early. 113 MPs from across parliament have written to Rishi Sunak to demand an extension of the help available for self-employed workers. Although many will continue to be affected by restrictions, that scheme is due to end this weekend. And while the furlough scheme for employees has been thankfully extended to October, there are worries that forcing employers to contribute 20% of wages from August will lead to huge job losses.

On LabourList today, Jon Ashworth has offered the second of his weekly updates on Labour’s Covid-19 response. The Shadow Health Secretary shares his views on Dominic Cummings, NHS Test and Trace, and the need to give people financial security. It remains unclear just how those who cannot work from home will be expected to take two weeks off if they are told to isolate after coming into contact with someone who has coronavirus. We need more comprehensive and more imaginative solutions from government to get through the coming months. Right now it looks like ministers are seriously underestimating the economic impact of this crisis.

Sienna @siennamarla

New polling has found high levels of consensus among the British public on the economy. Clear majorities were identified in support of a targeted extension of the furlough scheme (66%), job guarantees for under-25s (64%) and benefits covering the entire housing costs of unemployed people during coronavirus (64%). But independent think tank the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), which commissioned the research, warns that this new ‘social contract’ could be undermined by the apparent culture war between ‘cosmopolitans’ and ‘traditionalists’.

Of those who say they “have a lot of respect for traditional British values”, 39% also say the Tories best align with their values, with only 22% opting for Labour. Of those who say it is “a good thing that Britain is getting more diverse”, 43% pick Labour as the party closest to their views, compared to 15% choosing the Tories. These kinds of results are the ones that the new Labour leadership has its eye on. This line of thinking about consensus on the economy versus deep divides over culture came through in the Labour Together election review, and came through in the work of David Evans years before he was appointed as the party’s general secretary. And it will shape this morning’s keynote speech, as outlined by the RSA’s Anthony Painter on LabourList today.

Keir Starmer will use his first party conference address since becoming leader to vow that the Labour he leads will be one of “opportunity, family and security”. Asking voters to “take another look at Labour”, he will share details of his own personal background, showing that Angela Rayner isn’t the only top figure with an emotive story that gives an insight into the origins of their politics. And he will tell this story while talking about the opportunities afforded to him in Britain. Setting out his vision for how this country can be the “best place to grow up in and the best place to grow old in”, the world “values” will appear and be defined as: “Decency, fairness, opportunity, compassion and security.” This is how Starmer intends to bridge the ‘cultural values gap’ and build a broad coalition of voters to win the next general election.

Party members might think it all sounds quite Blue Labour, or ‘travaille, famille, patrie’ à la Vichy France. But this messaging around security, patriotism and family has been running through Starmer’s interventions since he became leader and they are central to his electoral strategy. They explain his appointments, too. Evans, who wrote for LabourList back in 2017 as I mentioned yesterday, advocates the ‘values model’ of understanding political behaviour. As I wrote back in May, policy chief Claire Ainsley would promote use of the word “family” by the leader’s office, based on her theory of ‘the new working class’.

There is a danger that talking about ‘family’ can leave some people feeling that they are not being spoken to. As an only child with a single parent, ‘family’ in a political context sounds like a concept that does not apply to me, thanks to the stigma associated with single mothers particularly when I grew up in the ‘90s – stigma that New Labour reinforced. (My first political act was protesting in parliament, as a three-year-old, against Tony Blair’s lone parent benefit cut.) With coronavirus news dominating the news agenda, Starmer cannot afford to be subtle. For cut-through, his message needs to be bold and clear. But he must ensure that the language he uses does not only appeal to social conservatism, or he risks leaving parts of the all-important voter coalition behind.

Sienna @siennamarla

Government communications are not improving. You would have thought that they would be learning from their mistakes during the early stages of the coronavirus crisis, but the same problems keep reappearing. A large proportion of people living in this country have been told via a number of front pages this morning that pubs and restaurants are set to be shut again. Boris Johnson is predicted to announce on Monday that hospitality will close “in northern England”, which will come alongside news of financial support for those living under local restrictions and a tiered system designed to clarify rules. As Jennifer Williams pointed out last night: “It isn’t good enough to brief vaguely about ‘people in the north of England’.” And local leaders are complaining that as usual there was no consultation, with Andy Burnham concluding: “Millions of lives affected by Whitehall diktat.”

Despite this calamitous approach led by Johnson, Keir Starmer struggled somewhat at the latest Prime Minister’s Questions. He highlighted that 19 out of 20 areas in England under local restrictions have actually seen an increase in infection rates: they can’t leave lockdown because their Covid-19 problem is getting worse, not better. The Labour leader called on the PM to “level with” those communities – just what is going wrong? This point has made front pages. He also rightly demanded standardisation: what are the criteria for why local rules are imposed, which measures determine whether they can leave lockdown, do you have a plan for any of this? But Starmer faced an unusually well-prepared Johnson, who picked up on Labour’s abstention on the ‘rule of six’ vote this week and use it to portray the opposition party as flip-flopping.

Starmer said Labour does definitely back the rule of six. But his party didn’t vote in favour because: “This is a government with a majority of 80. It doesn’t need Labour to get its business through.” The practicalities of Commons voting during Covid are a nightmare. And you can argue that Labour was staying out of this issue to allow the Tories to fight amongst themselves. But when the opposition party does have a clear and firm position on something, it seems absurd to have it buried under ‘Captain Hindsight’ accusations. When Starmer attacked the PM over the 10pm hospitality curfew, Johnson similarly replied: our argument for it, without scientific evidence, was enough for you to back it two weeks ago.

To state the obvious, Labour is in the tricky position of not being in government. Without the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, should the party listen to its own experts? The leadership considers that option to be too risky, and Starmer is wary of muddying the crucial public health message. Should Labour create a new rule whereby it will only back Covid rules if the government shows a scientific basis for them? But ministers could simply refuse, and Labour would be portrayed as unconstructive.

It is a very tricky situation, though it would help if Labour had a stronger theme running through its interventions: a line like the decisions being made unilaterally by “men sitting behind desks in Whitehall”, as Lisa Nandy put it during the leadership election, could be helpful. The argument that the Tory ''levelling up'' agenda has disappeared and even been put into reverse, along with the lack of democratic input during Covid, must be made again and again.

Sienna @siennamarla

Many of us assumed that the coronavirus ‘lockdown’ here, always a relatively light touch one, would be lifted significantly later in the year. But the Prime Minister is set to announce sweeping changes this afternoon that would allow pubs, cafés, restaurants, even cinemas and museums, to reopen on July 4th. At 12.30pm in the House of Commons, Boris Johnson will delight his parliamentary party by unveiling the details of ‘Independence Day’. With their top priority of ‘getting the economy moving’, Tory MPs will be delighted.

The upcoming complications are evident, however. Business owners say they will struggle to implement mitigating measures at short notice. A new one-metre-plus rule could cause problems: Usdaw points out that swapping the signs from two-metre instructions to one-metre-plus would be expensive, and that fights could be triggered “if you get a situation where half the population thinks social distancing is over, and the other half are very scared about getting too close”. Unite has raised concerns over outbreaks in the meat processing industry, and how these could be exacerbated.

What does Labour make of these adjustments, including the revised distancing rule? “We support the principle of this change around social distancing, however we do want to see the publication of the government review and its findings,” Bridget Phillipson said this morning. Labour is stressing the need for public confidence and for NHS Test and Trace to be working effectively. But most of all, the opposition is calling for a ‘back to work budget’ that would ensure businesses unable to reopen do not go bust during the pandemic.

Much will depend on communication – from the messaging to the public and the specifics of government instructions for businesses to whether the top scientific advisors are convincing at the press conference later today. We know that the government has frequently failed on these measures over the past few months. We still aren’t being told how many people are tested each day. No wonder 74% of British people are worried about a second wave. Are we right to be anxious? Is health being put at risk to improve GDP figures? And crucially, should Labour be pushing back rather than simply calling for more transparency?

Sienna @siennamarla

“The iron laws of geometrical progression are shouting at us from the graphs,” the Prime Minister announced in his address to the nation last night. In English, big Covid trouble has arrived. There is much debate over how strict the new rules should be at this point, with Professor John Edmunds of the government’s scientific advisory group warning today that there should be tough national restrictions now – or “it will be too late again”. If we don’t act immediately, “we’ll have the worst of both worlds” further down the line, he told BBC Radio 4. “We haven’t learnt from our mistakes.” But Boris Johnson wants to emphasise that this is a “great and freedom-loving country” and the fresh set of rules he has settled on are far from a national lockdown: 10pm closing time for hospitality, table service only, use of face coverings for workers, plus the rule of six.

Keir Starmer had a busy schedule yesterday. He first had the tough job of delivering his first conference(ish) speech to an empty room, which saw him put across distinctly different messaging from that seen in his leadership campaign (more ‘progressive patriotism’ than the ten pledges – did RLB win the argument?). It was broadly well-received, though Momentum did criticise the lack of policy detail and the party’s online left spent the rest of the day debating whether there is such a thing as left-wing patriotism. They can never get enough George Orwell chat. Ultimately, the speech showed an absolute focus on appealing to voters lost in recent years and on winning the next general election, and that’s why members elected Starmer earlier this year.

The Labour leader then responded to the new coronavirus restrictions, which he described as “necessary” but “not inevitable”. He argued that there is still time to prevent a second national lockdown being imposed, and that Labour would support the “national effort” required in the coming weeks and months. Starmer also highlighted the desperate need for more financial support. Applying additional pressure, Gordon Brown told Chancellor Rishi Sunak to deliver a new economic recovery plan “within days”. The former Prime Minister later remarked to John McDonnell: “I actually think this government has had so many U-turns that we can force U-turns on these issues.”

Indeed it looks impossible, particularly now that more rules have come in, for the government to resist calls for extra support. This was all incredibly predictable, but they always need to be dragged kicking and screaming. The Financial Times has reported that Sunak is drawing up post-furlough plans to subsidise wages. Hopefully we’ll hear more in the coming days, rather than at the very last minute, but let nobody hold their breath. In the meantime, we can watch Keir Starmer’s own ‘right of reply’ address to the nation tonight on the BBC, responding to Johnson''s Tuesday evening statement. With his Connected speech being mostly eclipsed by the Covid-dominated news agenda, this will help to introduce the new Labour leader to the country – and it won’t be difficult to deliver a clearer message than that of the Prime Minister.

Sienna @siennamarla

We were treated to a genuinely pathetic performance from Boris Johnson at the first PMQs after summer recess yesterday. It was his worst yet – and that’s saying something. Utterly incoherent at times, the Prime Minister appeared to have dropped his previous jibes about Keir Starmer’s “briefs” (because he’s a lawyer, geddit?) and instead picked up some of the old Jeremy Corbyn material. Despite the much-criticised appointment of Claire Fox to the Lords, Johnson felt confident in accusing the new Labour leader of tolerating IRA support by serving under Corbyn. This simply handed Starmer the opportunity to highlight his anti-terrorism work. “When the Prime Minister has worked with the security and intelligence forces, prosecuting criminals and terrorists, he can lecture me,” he shot back.

While the battle against the Prime Minister appears to be getting easier, as Johnson seems tired and lacking any convincing strategy for attacking the new leadership, there are problems in Labour’s own backyard. The internal criticisms of Richard Leonard were compounded this morning when UK shadow cabinet member Rachel Reeves called on the Scottish Labour leader to “consider his position”. This was after Starmer’s spokesperson carefully avoided getting involved yesterday, saying only that this was “a matter for Scottish Labour”. She has since tweeted to row back on that call. A source told LabourList: “Richard is in good spirits. The plotters don’t have a plan and are now floundering.” They added that he is now convinced “the MSP group needs a change of personnel”. This has been a failed coup – but damaging nonetheless ahead of Holyrood elections.

In the wider labour movement, the independent investigation into sexual harassment at GMB – one of Britain’s biggest trade unions, and a key affiliate of the Labour Party – has concluded. The report by Karon Monaghan QC finds that the union is “institutionally sexist”, and states: “Bullying, misogyny, cronyism and sexual harassment are endemic within the GMB.” National president Barbara Plant has promised that the recommendations will now be acted on and “transformational change” achieved. Of course, a “masculine” culture in which bad behaviour is fuelled by alcohol consumption and sexual harassment is “common” is not limited to any one part of the movement, and needs rooting out across the board. A full reckoning is well overdue.

There is also the publication of Left Out by Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire today. Expect to see more on its contents very soon.

Sienna @siennamarla

The House of Commons returned from recess on Tuesday, and MPs were greeted with a new voting system thanks to the refusal of Jacob Rees-Mogg to keep the remote voting method that was working perfectly well. Public Health England said normal crowding in the voting lobbies would be unsafe amid a deadly pandemic that the government seems intent on ignoring. And that is how the genius solution of a “Mogg conga” was born. It was described by furious MPs as “batshit”, “a joke”, “absolute farce” and “like queuing for a ride at Alton Towers that has just turned out to be a bit shit”.

As well as making the UK parliament “an international laughing stock”, as noted by Tan Dhesi MP, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission said the changes “cannot be right”. They exclude those who must shield or have shielding responsibilities, and they will have a discriminatory impact on older and BAME MPs and those with health conditions. Labour’s Cat Smith confirmed that she almost fainted yesterday while queuing, which took around 40 minutes for each vote. And all apparently because Rees-Mogg found it distasteful that with remote voting in place “some people tweeted they were doing it whilst going for a walk”.

While we’re on the subject of Covid-19 risk for different groups, that Public Health England review did get released after all. But its publication was without fanfare and without press release. It certainly looks like the Sky News report about its further delay spooked the government into getting it out quickly. As for the report itself... it doesn’t tell us much. It confirms that there outcomes vary according to racial and health inequalities but, as pointed out by Labour, does not make recommendations despite those being promised. It doesn’t even try to explain the disparities, stopping short of merely describing them. The Health Service Journal may have found out why: apparently those sections “did not survive contact with Matt Hancock’s office”.

The staggering incompetence and openly hostile attitude of this government has nudged Keir Starmer towards a tougher opposition style. No more Mr Nice Guy. The Labour leader has accused the Prime Minister of “winging it” and of overseeing “mismanagement” of the lockdown easing that has “made a difficult situation ten times worse”. He needs to “get a grip”, Starmer has warned. Thankfully, The Telegraph exclusively reports today that “Boris Johnson is to take “direct control” of the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis”. Exactly who was in charge before now could be one of questions put by the opposition leader to the PM in the chamber this afternoon.

Sienna @siennamarla

When the Public Health England report on disparities in the risks and outcomes of Covid-19 was belatedly published this week, it offered confirmation that Black and Asian people are twice as likely to die from coronavirus than white people. It also said that the risk is higher for people living in deprived areas. This was useful, but the document – despite promising to do so in the terms of reference – did not delve deeper: we needed conclusions as to the causes of these disparities, and recommendations for what needs to be done. Anything less lets the government off the hook.

That is why Labour and the TUC have welcomed the statutory inquiry launched today by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission. The equalities watchdog has promised to use its legal powers – such as the ability to compel evidence from government departments and other organisations – to investigate the impact of coronavirus on ethnic minorities and “develop clear, evidence-based recommendations for urgent action”. The need for such action makes the fact that the equalities minister had never heard of the Marmot Review until yesterday is even more worrying – or “shameful”, as Jonathan Ashworth said. It is fitting that a Covid equalities plan is the subject of his latest weekly update setting out Labour’s coronavirus response.

Labour members online are discussing Britain’s welfare system this morning. In an interview with PoliticsHome, new Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Jonathan Reynolds has expressed support for greater contributory aspects to our benefits. His unequivocal commitment to scrapping Universal Credit in his LabourList piece last month was received well. He also says the two-child limit, the welfare cap and no recourse to public funds should all go in this interview. But the argument about contributions – not a surprising one, given that leader''s office policy director Claire Ainsley also supports the principle – has resurrected a fiery debate within the party.

If you''re interested in further discussion of policy areas, LabourList is planning video interviews with several shadow cabinet members over the coming weeks, which readers will be able to watch live on the website and on Facebook. We have one lined up with international development spokesperson Preet Kaur Gill on June 18th. The next one is on Tuesday, June 9th, with Luke Pollard. As I said yesterday, please feel free to email in suggestions for questions. Remember to keep checking the site today and over the weekend as we host plenty more interesting Labour news and comment.

Sienna @siennamarla

Conservative MPs dutifully, or worse enthusiastically, traipsed into the voting lobbies yesterday to reject a “fair deal” for Tier 3 areas and to oppose free school meals during holidays in the coronavirus crisis. Yet it was not these votes in the House of Commons but a heckle by Angela Rayner that made the news, after she appeared to call Tory MP Chris Clarkson “scum” during a debate.

Labour’s deputy leader apologised last night, but the response of many party activists has of course been: well, they are scum. Those close to Rayner said her response came after Clarkson accused the opposition frontbench of “opportunism” and of holding the vote “for release on social media afterwards”. As Rayner mentioned in the debate, her aunt died of Covid-19 only last week.

It was certainly a heated session in the chamber: Toby Perkins said the Tories were “screwing people over”, Rebecca Long-Bailey compared the sink-or-swim approach to The Hunger Games, and other key moments can be found in my write-up. Just two Tory MPs rebelled in the vote and supported Labour’s call for an 80%, not 67%, furlough scheme.

The debate that followed, on the motion to support Marcus Rashford’s free school meals campaign, was no less intense. 320 Conservatives voted against, and five voted with Labour. Worse than that were the speeches, including that of Brendan Clarke-Smith who declared “I do not believe in nationalising children”, dismissed “celebrity virtue signalling” and called for everyone to “get back to the idea of taking responsibility”.

Rayner’s heckle was not in keeping with the new Labour leadership’s sober style. But any person capable of empathy will have understood where that anger came from, and – if watching the debates that followed – will have seen many on the Tory benches do nothing to disprove her. They talked about free school meals in terms of parents not taking responsibility. We’re in the middle of a pandemic and devastating economic crisis, yet still their ‘scrounger’ rhetoric survives – no matter that Serco receives 40% of its income from the UK government.

Rishi Sunak will deliver his third economic update in a month, once again revising his winter economic plan this morning. He is expected to announce support for businesses and workers in Tier 2, which London has now entered but many other areas have been living under for months. The measures will undoubtedly be welcome, though not go far enough. A new joint statement from trade union, mayors, MPs and councillors brought together by Unite has called for 80% furlough and more. The Chancellor is not thought likely to deliver on these demands, but they will become increasingly necessary. Roll on, economic update number four.

Sienna @siennamarla

The first Pfizer/BioNTech jab was administered to a 90-year-old woman this morning, marking the start of the roll-out. A historic day in the fight against Covid. But, as we have been reminded by the Prime Minister and Matt Hancock, there is a long way to go. Labour has welcomed the news, with Jonathan Ashworth calling for us to head outside and clap the medical scientists and clinical researchers in the same way we did health and care workers. But the Shadow Health Secretary also urged the government to clarify when residents in care homes will get the vaccine, when new vaccination centres will open and when local GPs will start administering jabs – questions that will surely come to dominate the coming months. The UK is armed with a vaccine, but the crisis is far from over.

The PM and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen yesterday agreed over the phone that the "conditions for finalising an agreement are not there" on post-Brexit trade talks. Differences remain over the ''level playing field'', governance and fisheries. Boris Johnson is set to pack his bags and head to Brussels this week. Downing Street has not confirmed exactly when but tomorrow looks likely since the European Council is due to hold its final summit of the year on Thursday, at which it will want to sign off any deal. Labour used an urgent parliamentary question yesterday to remind the PM that the country is waiting for that ''oven-ready'' deal promised last December. Meanwhile, The Guardian has reported that Keir Starmer is expected to whip in favour of backing any deal despite eight members of his shadow cabinet expressing doubts over the party''s strategy.

MPs voted last night to reinsert the controversial sections of the internal market bill, which would allow the UK to unilaterally rewrite parts of the withdrawal agreement and break international law, after they were removed by the Lords last month. The vote took place just hours after the PM offered to remove clauses 44, 45 and 47 at a later date if an agreement with the EU can be reached. But, as Ed Miliband pointed out during the debate, significant reputational damage has already been done. He described the row over the legislation as "embarrassing and toxic" for the UK and argued it was no surprise that the “beginnings of the climbdown” were now happening. He added: "If there is one thing this whole sorry saga has shown the world beyond any doubt, is that with this government their word is not their bond. They cannot be trusted because they are willing to rip up international agreements they made less than a year ago." The bill will now head back to the Lords. 

Janet Daby has issued an apology for her comments on same-sex marriage on Friday, which saw her resign her role as shadow faith minister yesterday. The Telegraph reported on Saturday that Daby had argued there should be a conscience clause to protect people of faith being penalised for objecting to performing certain tasks for religious reasons. Announcing her decision to resign, the Lewisham East MP tweeted: "I’m proud to support same-sex marriages. On Saturday Labour celebrated 15 years of civil partnerships, and all the progress we’ve made since. I sincerely apologise for my misjudged comments on Friday, and have decided to resign as shadow faith minister." 

Labour’s national executive committee yesterday afternoon agreed the draft action plan on tackling antisemitism to be presented to the Equality and Human Rights Commission. It comes after Labour was served with an unlawful act notice in late October and given six weeks to produce an action plan in response to the findings of the report by the equality body. LabourList understands that the plan, outlining steps around changing Labour’s procedures and culture, will be submitted this week and implementation will begin once agreed by the EHRC. LabourList has also been told that the party is not allowed to publish the draft as it is not the action plan until it secures EHRC approval. Whether the final approved plan will be released has not yet been decided. Find details of the plan’s content and the NEC meeting in Sienna’s write up. 

Elliot @elliot_chappell

Jon Lansman is stepping aside as chair of Momentum, LabourList revealed over the weekend. In a comment piece, the founder of the Corbynite organisation said he would continue in post until new members of Momentum’s national coordinating group are elected on June 30th, at which point he will “hand over to a new leadership”. And those contests are being hard-fought.

The latest platform is ‘Momentum Renewal’, which launched on Sunday with a statement exclusively published on LabourList. Big names have signed up: several MPs including Ian Lavery and Jon Trickett; members of Labour’s national executive committee (NEC); Tribune and Novara editors; activists such as Grace Blakeley. It will be interesting to see whether this approach is more successful than that of ‘Forward Momentum’, which launched early last month.

Going for a grassroots vibe, FM focused on pushing the democratisation of Momentum and itself held open primaries to put together a slate of candidates (to be announced today). This has already led to controversy over whether members linked to the Alliance for Workers'' Liberty (AWL) should be allowed to stand, and so on. Implementing democratic processes without creating further internal divisions is difficult. Then again, FM activists might say a top-down approach only serves to temporarily cover up such disunity.

We’ll have more Momentum news over the coming days. Its future is significant in forging the direction of Labour as a whole – particularly in terms of whether a united left slate can be established for the NEC. Who sits on the ruling body is crucial, of course. Tomorrow the NEC will discuss conference and its own elections, due to be held this summer. Yet local parties have not had the chance to meet, nominate candidates, pass motions. It will also debate the introduction of a single transferable vote (STV) system for NEC elections. More on that soon.

The immigration bill returns to the Commons this afternoon. Unfortunately for the Tories, a big political move against migrants in the UK has become trickier thanks to Covid. Labour’s new Shadow Home Secretary has accused the government of “rank hypocrisy” as the plan will “make workers in the NHS and the care sector feel unwelcome in this country”. The proposed legislation “creates a threat to our national interest”, Nick Thomas-Symonds says. But an 80-seat majority means it should pass easily.

And finally, we have a piece from Unite the Union assistant general secretary Steve Turner today. It is a message for the Chancellor. He is urging Rishi Sunak to again get ministers round the table with trade unions and employers, this time with the aim of agreeing a post-Covid plan. As Keir Starmer so often says, the country can''t go back to business as usual.

Sienna @siennamarla

Keir Starmer again used Prime Minister’s Questions this week to push along the news agenda and potentially government policy too. Boris Johnson appeared to commit to having a testing and tracing operation in place by June 1st, with 25,000 contact tracers able to track 10,000 new cases a day, although ministers had previously said this would not be possible. The new target will offer another metric by which the Labour leader can hold the government to account on its own terms, allowing him to be critical without appearing to make those “impossible demands” that he warned against when first elected.

The opposition leader then announced that Labour would table an amendment to the immigration bill to exempt NHS and care workers from the immigration health surcharge. (This is the payment, required by some visa applications, that is due to increase from £400 a year to £624 in October.) When confronted with the idea, the Prime Ministers panicked and claimed it would cost the UK £900m. But Labour’s Seema Malhotra has said Johnson was either “poorly briefed or deliberately misleading” as analysis that she obtained from the Commons library shows the potential cost is “somewhere between £1.2m and £35m” depending on the scope of the exemption.

With a Tory majority of 80 in the Commons, the immigration bill passed easily at second reading and will do so at the third. Already, however, a Tory MP has publicly backed the call for the NHS and care worker exemption. Whether Starmer’s proposal chips away at Conservative consensus, highlights the true nature of the ‘nasty party’ or actually changes policy, there is no clear downside for the Labour leadership. Party members might take a different view, however.

Activists have already raised concerns over the possibility that this amendment promotes ‘divide and rule’ tactics and implies that migrants must literally put their lives on the line to be seen as ‘deserving’. (Not to mention that other key workers taking risks are not included in the exemption.) Asked whether Labour was in favour of scrapping the charge altogether, Starmer’s spokesperson confirmed that it was, “but this amendment is specifically targeted at making a bad bill better”. The party hasn’t retreated policy-wise, it’s just that the new Labour leader reckons he should only pick fights that he has a chance of winning.

Labour’s general secretary appointment panel will interview and shortlist candidates today. There is much nervousness around the process because the national executive committee officers group has a clear left majority, and these are the members who form the panel. The leadership has only managed to add one ally, Shabana Mahmood, to it. The party’s right is pushing for David Evans, who held senior posts during the Blair era, and they are concerned that he might not be shortlisted. It is certainly true that left unions are not keen on him. But there are other candidates that the leadership would be happy with – indeed, Jon Lansman has suggested that Evans is a red herring. Follow LabourList today for all the developments.

Sienna @siennamarla

Boris Johnson has described the “situation” – i.e. efforts to secure a post-Brexit trade deal – as “very tricky”, but said he hopes that “the power of sweet reason” will allow an agreement to be reached. He is meeting Ursula von der Leyen for dinner in Brussels from 7pm tonight. Will high-level political talks move things along? Should we interpret the agreement in principle yesterday over the Northern Ireland protocol, and the UK’s subsequent move to ditch law-breaking legislation that MPs only on Monday spent time putting back into the internal market bill, as signs of progress? It’s too early to say, and neither side now expects the details to be ironed out before the European Council summit.

Another deadline, Thursday, is probably going to come and go, and the uncertainty will continue until the very last possible minute. The key deciding factor is whether the Prime Minister prioritises listening to Brexiteers in his party or to ordinary voters, who I think we can assume do not care that the Tories were referring only to the divorce agreement when they said a deal was “oven-ready” last year. While Rishi Sunak might be pleased with the idea that he can patch up the economic effects of the transition period ending on December 31st with the help of Covid support schemes, the pandemic and arrival of vaccines make supply chain disruptions all the more critical.

A new report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation today has found that the number of people experiencing destitution rose by 54% between 2017 and 2019, and that 2.4 million people were experiencing “extreme hardship” before the Covid crisis hit. Labour’s Jonathan Reynolds has taken the opportunity to highlight yet again those five desperately-needed changes that the party proposed at the start of the pandemic, from scrapping the five-week wait to uprating legacy benefits. As Steve Turner writes in a piece for LabourList today, Unite is holding a day of action on Universal Credit. A live event tonight will focus on keeping the £20 uplift that the JRF report identifies as one of the few positives in our social security system right now.

Last time the Labour leader could not attend Prime Minister’s Questions due to a period of coronavirus self-isolation, Angela Rayner stepped up. The former care worker grilled Johnson on pay in the social care sector and on the crisis that still goes unaddressed by the government despite promises of cross-party working. This afternoon, however, while self-isolating after a staff member in the leader’s office tested positive for Covid-19, Keir Starmer will take on PMQs himself. Fingers crossed the video link will work better than it did for the PM last month.

Sienna @siennamarla

Labour welcomed another government “U-turn” as Rishi Sunak unveiled a new job support scheme to parliament yesterday. With furlough ending next month, the Chancellor announced that its replacement would protect “viable jobs” in the next stage of the coronavirus crisis, as many businesses and whole industries face lower demand due to restrictions. Echoing the views of anti-lockdown Tory MPs, as well as Labour’s John Spellar, Sunak even declared that everyone “must learn to live without fear”. Unfortunately, the economic measures fall far short of what is required by those in hard-hit sectors, and there is much for people to fear over the coming months.

Anneliese Dodds offered an immediate response to the economic update in the chamber. She used it to stress that Labour has been calling for the introduction of a targeted wage support system repeatedly, and that the new scheme “comes too late for many people who have already lost their jobs”. The Shadow Chancellor also pointed out that Sunak said little of training and retraining, which are crucial if the economy is changing drastically for the foreseeable – and if instead of suspended animation, the government is now aiming only to protect “viable jobs”. Perhaps most importantly, though, Dodds questioned whether the new jobs scheme truly incentivises short-hours working. Does it make employers want to retain more staff on reduced hours than retain some full-time and make others redundant?

The truth is that in many cases no such incentive is presented – and we are talking here particularly about low-paid work. As highlighted by the Resolution Foundation and outlined in our piece on why the new support scheme isn’t up to the job, if we’re talking about a £17k a year job, it would cost an employer more to employ two people part-time under this scheme than it would to employ one full-time person. That is because it will see employers pay 55% of the salary of a worker who will work only 33% of the hours they are being paid for, rather than the one fifth that employers contribute now under furlough. Ministers say the new scheme needs to be considered alongside the job retention bonus, which is the only way it actually works, but the bonus is set to end in January whereas this scheme runs for six months.

What is a “viable job”, according to the Chancellor? You would assume that “viable” means any jobs that could exist once the pandemic is over, or there is a vaccine, or there is an incredibly effective test and trace system. But many jobs that fit into this category will still go down the pan next month because this new scheme is nothing like the German Kurzarbeit in its level of government support. And there was no mention by Sunak of improving Universal Credit, or otherwise helping the unemployed. There is no V-shaped recovery in sight here, but for many UK workers there is much reason to live with fear.

Sienna @siennamarla

Are we all recovered from the excitement of Labour’s new national executive committee (NEC) election results? The outcome released on Friday offered all party factions cause for celebration: the Labour left did better than expected, winning five of nine local party reps, plus both disabled and youth places, while Keir Starmer increased his majority on the ruling body, partly thanks to the introduction of a new voting system earlier this year that prevented a ‘winner-takes-all’ conclusion. Our write-up – including links to detailed vote breakdowns – is available here, and for more analysis, you can watch back our live event from the night and read my deeper dive from the weekend.

More internal Labour news emerged over the weekend when the Labour Muslim Network released its findings on Islamophobia within the party. The survey conducted for the report saw one in four Muslim members and supporters of Labour report directly experiencing it in the party and one in three say they have directly seen it. A series of recommendations has been issued, which Starmer has committed to implementing, from a code of conduct around Islamophobia and more education for members to an improved complaints system. These urgently needed steps will be added to the already overflowing in-tray of Labour’s general secretary and new NEC.

Labour’s weekend policy push was around anti-vax content on social media. With preparations underway to roll out the Covid vaccine as soon as possible, concerns around hesitancy and the sharing of disinformation are mounting. Both Jonathan Ashworth and Jo Stevens used the morning Sunday shows to make the case for online harms legislation designed to deal with these anxieties, which would see financial and criminal penalties introduced for failures leading to “serious harm”. This action would be aimed at big tech companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, rather than individuals.

Someone who will be spending yet more time online is Boris Johnson. We can safely assume that Zoom will play a key role in governing the UK in the near future, as the Prime Minister has been told by Test and Trace to self-isolate. He only has PMQs to front, a delayed ten-point climate change plan to announce, a Brexit deal to strike and a chaotic No 10 to sort out. You might assume that during coronavirus and following the exits of certain notable staffers the childish briefing war between the Vote Leave lads and others in Downing Street might die down, but if anything it is escalating. After all the incompetence and cronyism on display during this crisis, the idea that Johnson can bounce back to his cuddly London mayor image seems laughable right now.

Sienna @siennamarla

"Our health emergency is not yet over and our economic emergency has only just begun," Rishi Sunak told us as he launched into his spending review. 2.5 million public sector workers will see their pay frozen – including 90% of police, 80% of fire service and 75% of prison officers, at least 80% of secondary school teachers and 75% of those in primary schools. This, remember, just a week after the PM unveiled the biggest investment in defence since the Cold War. The Chancellor announced a new £4bn ''levelling up'' fund that will see MPs bid for money in what looks to be the same mechanism that led to the controversy over the Towns Fund – in which the Tories prioritised spending to marginal seats ahead of the last election. He was silent on the £20 uplift to Universal Credit – the emergency top-up grudgingly given earlier in the pandemic. Failing to extend it will slash annual incomes for 16 million households by £1,040 in April. And, of course, the Chancellor rounded off all that (and much more) by going back on the Tory manifesto promise to keep UK aid spending at 0.7% of gross national income.

The fallout from the review rumbles on today. Tory backbenchers and grandees are furious over the aid budget. Unions have roundly condemned Sunak''s statement as "austerity plain and simple" and slammed the government for pitting public sector against private employees. Anneliese Dodds has been doing the media round this morning and it is all about "responsible choices" for the Shadow Chancellor. Echoing Keir Starmer in PMQs yesterday, she emphasised the need to stamp out the "eye-watering waste and mismanagement" on the Today programme. Tory cronyism in Covid public procurement and incompetent splurging of taxpayer money featured prominently in her response to the spending review. The party is keen to highlight that while the government is busy laying the burden of the pandemic on millions of the lowest paid and those on the Covid frontline, it has spent months “spraying public money at contracts”. While friends of the Tories make bank and the PM wastes your hard-earned cash, low-paid workers pay the price.

The row over Starmer deciding to withhold the Labour whip from Jeremy Corbyn after he was readmitted to the party is set to escalate. Sources close to Corbyn say there was a deal with Starmer’s office for his reinstatement, including agreement on the timing and wording of his second statement, and they believe the publication of correspondence will “show that there was a deal”. This claim is disputed by those close to the current leader. Corbyn’s team is starting legal proceedings and will submit a pre-action disclosure application today. One source told LabourList: “One way or another, things will come out in the wash soon enough.” Meanwhile, Labour left national executive committee members have said they took the decision to withdraw from the meeting on Tuesday “in the hope of pressing a reset button and returning hopefully to a more reasonable environment”. Speaking at a Momentum-hosted online event last night, newly-elected reps Gemma Bolton and Mish Rahman discussed the virtual walkout and made a call for party unity.

Look out for the announcement of which tier you''ll be placed in at around 11.30 today. And we have some exciting polling of Labour members to be released soon so keep following LabourList.

Elliot @elliot_chappell

The public are being told to follow the guidance over Christmas, not the law. What is legally allowed should be considered a “maximum, not a target”. At the same time, Boris Johnson talks of people who “simply want to spend Christmas with their families”, giving the impression that bubbling up and travelling to see them is therefore an entirely reasonable course of action. He reckons it would be “frankly inhuman” to cancel Christmas and has made clear that the UK government will not do so – while accusing Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions of wanting to do just that. This jibe, combined with his chaotic messaging at the latest coronavirus press conference, could not have made it clearer that policy is being guided by the potential for bad headlines possibly featuring the word ‘Grinch’, rather than expert advice.

While the law in England will not change, with three households still allowed to form a bubble for five days, Labour’s Mark Drakeford took the step of toughening up not only the guidance but also what is legal in Wales, where only two households will be allowed to bubble over Christmas. (Wales will also enter a fresh lockdown from the 28th.) The four-nations approach fell apart yesterday, despite claims of unity from Johnson. This is deeply unfortunate, but the reasons are obvious. Daily Covid cases topped 25,000, deaths are rising, hospitalisation is increasing. The vaccine roll-out has just begun, meaning immunity is just weeks away for many elderly people, yet the legal situation decided three weeks ago will enable all sorts of risky behaviour in the meantime. It is difficult not to conclude that Starmer has made the right call in describing this approach to Christmas as “the next big mistake”.

The key point made by the Labour leader at PMQs was this: the majority of Tier 2 and Tier 3 areas in the country are seeing coronavirus infections go up instead of down. This applies in three out of four Tier 2 areas and over half of Tier 3 areas, Starmer pointed out. How can anyone claim that the Prime Minister’s tier system is working? Although London and parts of Essex and Hertfordshire entered Tier 3 early this week, the scheduled review still took place and Matt Hancock will reveal new tier allocations later this morning. Johnson stated three weeks ago that it “should be possible for areas to move down the tiering scale” at this review, but reports suggest this is unlikely. The bigger question, however, is whether anyone will acknowledge that the whole system needs a rethink.

Although a Brexit deal has not been struck, the House of Commons and Lords will rise for recess today, providing that outstanding legislation is passed as planned. Talks between the UK and EU are continuing, and both sides are making more optimistic noises about the chances of an agreement before December 31st. MPs and peers could be recalled at 48 hours’ notice to sit as early as Monday, but at the moment we simply do not know whether it will happen next week, between Christmas and the New Year, or not at all. Talk about a short Christmas...

Sienna @siennamarla

The Tory immigration bill was passed by the House of Commons at second reading last night, with 351 votes in favour and 252 against. The move will end EU freedom of movement and introduce a new, as yet €, immigration system. This is the reality of an 80-seat majority for the Conservatives: amid a pandemic, they can prioritise rushing through legislation to punish many of those on the frontline and many of those most at risk of losing their lives to the virus. Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary focused his arguments on this point: the bill sends a signal to key workers, many of whom earn under £25,600, that they are “unskilled and unwelcome”.

Labour MPs were on a three-line whip to vote against the bill. None voted in favour, but 15 had no vote recorded. A number of them – including frontbencher Rachel Reeves and backbencher Clive Lewis – said they had technical difficulties, because this vote was done remotely. But chair of the home affairs select committee Yvette Cooper announced in the chamber that “in cross-party spirit” she would not vote against the bill. “I believe that this bill is flawed, but I recognise that legislation on immigration is now needed,” Cooper said.

The former Labour leadership candidate has long taken the view that the UK needs “more honest public debate about immigration”, which from her perspective means not setting unachievable net migration targets but also being tough on illegal immigration. The party membership is overwhelmingly supportive of a more pro-immigration approach, however, and 2019 conference backed extending free movement. Some online activists expressed concern that Cooper’s move marked a return to the days of immigration mugs, but that the party unequivocally set a three-line whip against the bill stands in contrast to the indecision we saw when Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour ordered abstentions before performing a U-turn.

Labour’s national executive committee will meet virtually today. Members will discuss party conference, the next set of NEC elections and the voting system used for those contests. On conference, the leadership is understood to be keen on holding it in some kind of virtual form, which will allow for a speech by Keir Starmer and perhaps the passing of rule changes made necessary by the EHRC antisemitism investigation. Local parties have not been able to pass motions – though that suits the leadership just fine when it wants to go slow on policy-making at the start of a parliamentary term. There is broad consensus on conference arrangements.

There is less consensus on NEC elections. The moderates are keen for the contests to take place this summer, while the left members are less so – they say local parties have not been able to nominate candidates and the process should be put off until next year. A similar divide is seen on the issue of a switch to a preferential voting system for NEC elections, with Labour First/Progress-aligned NEC members happy with the change and Momentum-aligned reps not. However, Labour left figures such as Clive Lewis – more associated with Compass and electoral reform – are also in favour of STV, and it is thought Jon Lansman himself could vote for it. And of course the soft left are leading the STV campaign. You can read my preview of the NEC meeting here.

Sienna @siennamarla

MPs will vote today on whether to adopt the updated tier system for Covid restrictions. Debate will start from 12.45pm with the final showdown expected after 7pm. Keir Starmer declared last night that Labour will be abstaining. The party has no problem with the tier system itself, but does have a problem with the lack of business support for those under the strictest tiers and the still failing ''NHS'' track and trace programme. Shadow minister Lucy Powell said this morning that Boris Johnson "still has time" to announce a "cash injection" for businesses in Tiers 2 and 3. Why won''t Labour simply oppose the measures? If Labour MPs were whipped to vote against, the new rules might not pass, which would force the government to pass them via emergency procedures. Some argue this risks the accusation that Labour is not providing ''responsible opposition''.

Labour is not completely united in its response, however. Labour MP Emma Lewell-Buck, for example, has urged the leadership to offer a free vote on the issue. She argued: "You''re not going to get the government to look at a new approach if you keep abstaining and sitting on your hands." Meanwhile, Jon Trickett MP has written for LabourList on the publication of a new report by No Holding Back this morning and called for "uniform restrictions that treat the country as one". But with dozens of Tory MPs reportedly planning on rebelling against the Conservative whip this evening, the focus should remain on the splits in Prime Minister''s party over the measures.

Today is World AIDS Day and Alex Norris has written for us on the hopes that we can end new HIV transmissions here in the UK. The shadow minister has highlighted a new HIV Commission report, which he says provides a "roadmap to get us there". Elsewhere on LabourList, Labour backbencher Zarah Sultana has marked the end of Islamophobia awareness month with a call for solidarity across discriminated groups and wrote: "In uniting our struggles, we all stand taller." And University of Manchester Rent Strike activist Ben McGowan penned a piece in which he explained that "the biggest student uprising in a decade is forming". The Labour member highlighted the absence of Labour from the movement, arguing that "the party feels invisible at the moment" and urging it not to turn its back on students.

Elliot @elliot_chappell

Boris Johnson has said that the UK is “now seeing a second wave coming in”. The Prime Minister has described a second national lockdown as “the last thing anybody wants” – but the scientific advisers have warned that there is no real alternative to doing just that, as they expect to see hundreds of daily coronavirus deaths here within weeks. It seems under-acknowledged now that the whole point of the NHS Test and Trace system was to prevent another full lockdown. Yet there is little chance of avoiding one as the government has so badly squandered the opportunity to sort out the system and get it working over the summer.

As Labour’s Angela Rayner communicated very well on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, there are important measures that the government has not taken despite the levers being right there for the pulling. Not just in relation to Test and Trace, which could see improvements by prioritising local public health teams over outsourcing firms with terrible records, including literal fraud in previous work for the government. And they could stop awarding Covid contracts to their mates and top Covid jobs to their peers. There is also the very basic move of giving people enough financial support to enable them to self-isolate.

Speaking ahead of online conference ‘Connected’, Rayner has declared that the Labour Party is “offering the country the leadership it needs” and highlighted the need for key workers to be properly paid and respected. As public service union UNISON’s new campaign says: there should be no going back to normal. The deputy leader has written for The Guardian with a key message: our social care workers must be paid a living wage. It picks up on the theme adopted for her PMQs session earlier this week, which saw the Prime Minister unable to say – or unwilling to admit – that the average wage for a care worker is a little over £8 an hour.

On the subject of the care sector, which is of course dominated by women, Labour’s conference ‘Women Connected’ takes place today. The LabourList team will be covering the whole online series of events, so expect to receive these extra emails over the weekend and look out for lots of new content on the site.

Sienna @siennamarla

Coronavirus restrictions are being lifted from today, and yet the conditions that we were told would be in place before this happened... are not in place. There is no tracing app. Testing may have reached the 200,000 daily target for capacity but not for tests actually carried out. And then there is the number of people being tested, which we can only assume is pitiful because that figure is no longer being disclosed. They have refused to explain the omission at the press conferences. In fact, far from the “world-beating” system that the Prime Minister promised by June 1st, NHS Test and Trace is in chaos and won’t be fully operational until the end of June.

As public health officials accuse the government of “misjudging the balance of risk” by lifting “too many restrictions, too quickly”, schools are reopening for many more pupils. The Labour leadership has been accused by journalists and the party’s left of not being entirely clear in its position on schools. Frontbenchers have been careful about endorsing the refusals of some Labour councils to reopen schools, and the party did not back the National Education Union’s call for the move to be delayed until mid-June. Rebecca Long-Bailey as Shadow Education Secretary is pretty straightforward, however, saying “schools should only open when it is safe to do so”.

On LabourList today, we have a focus on our care workers. Angela Rayner, a care worker herself before entering parliament, recently hosted a Zoom call with frontline workers in the sector. Noting that half are not paid the real living wage, her piece sets out the anxieties of those workers who have risked their lives without receiving support. Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard has also penned a LabourList article on this subject. He makes the case for care staff not only to be given “better pay, improved conditions and recognised trade union representation” but also a “re-evaluation of their status”. Leonard slams the SNP for joining forces with the Tories against Scottish Labour’s proposal to extend collective bargaining rights to care workers.

There is plenty of news here, with lots of evidence that the UK government is risking lives in order to get more of the economy ‘back to normal’. But our attention is being drawn to events in the US. Following the police killing of George Floyd, there have been widespread protests fuelled by righteous anger. In response, the white supremacist in the White House, who recently encouraged anti-lockdown protests, tweeted: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Trump has since claimed that Antifa, the amorphous anti-fascism movement, will be designated as a terrorist organisation.

Across more than 75 US cities, police officers have driven cars into crowds, used tear gas and batons, shot people with rubber bullets to seriously injure and blind them. They know that they have the backing of their President, after all. The response of Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab? He doesn’t want to comment on Trump''s statements. The footage is “very distressing”, he says, and “we want to see a de-escalation of all of those tensions”. Bothsidesing it, basically. We would expect nothing else. But the UK left must stand in solidarity with those scared and angry in the US, recognise that this country is home to discriminatory state violence too and – as party activist Jake Cable has written – work to ensure that Labour delivers justice for Black people and People of Colour.

Sienna @siennamarla

New coronavirus restrictions have come into force across Greater Manchester, east Lancashire and parts of West Yorkshire. As of midnight, households in those areas of the North are not allowed to meet each other indoors – although they can still visit pubs and restaurants while social distancing. There are plenty of details still to be cleared up, and this is yet another of government Covid communications being utterly unclear. For example, can a family in an affected area meet a household from outside the area in their home? Matt Hancock didn''t seem able to answer that question this morning.

The news of these rules affecting four million people emerged after 9pm last night, with further information released at 11.30pm. Is this incompetence, or is it deliberate? This will particularly affect families celebrating Eid, and the last-minute notification was a bit like being told on Christmas Eve that you shouldn’t be meeting with family members the next day, which is difficult to imagine happening. Hancock has insisted that the new lockdown has nothing to do with Eid, but few will believe that the timing is purely coincidental.

Keir Starmer was not impressed by the rushed announcement, calling it a “new low for the government’s communications during this crisis”. But perhaps most importantly, he pointed out that a functioning track and trace system has not been delivered and that those affected by new lockdowns must be supported. Because if one thing is clear, it’s that the government is thinking about how to balance the books – despite borrowing costs hitting record lows, even turning negative – and not prioritising the need to protect jobs as we enter a deep recession.

Labour is launching a new ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’ campaign today, which will run throughout August. As set out by the shadow Treasury team’s Dan Carden in a piece for LabourList, the party has a five-point plan to fight for jobs and offer targeted support as the furlough scheme comes to an end. The campaign kicks off with a warning to Rishi Sunak: there are “24 hours to save British jobs” before the first furlough changes come in tomorrow. If the Chancellor refuses to abandon those changes, Anneliese Dodds says it would be a “historic mistake” and there will be a “python-like squeeze on jobs”.

Usdaw’s general secretary Paddy Lillis has explained why this is so crucial to the retail sector in his LabourList piece, and asked exactly the right question: “Why protect jobs through the early stages of the pandemic, just to sacrifice them now?”. Unite’s Steve Turner has written this week about the struggles of UK aerospace and of bus makers. Community’s Roy Rickhuss has highlighted the importance of manufacturing in the coronavirus recovery. The message from the labour movement is crystal clear: if the government ignores the warnings of trade unions at this critical moment, the consequences will be devastating. And they will have been avoidable.

LabourList’s morning email will be paused throughout August – but we will return when there is big news for the Labour Party, including the publication of the Equality and Human Rights Commission report on antisemitism, and we will keep returning to your inboxes to remind readers that the website is hosting new content every day. We will be covering Labour news and publishing comment pieces as normal, and our weekly events will continue, such as our next ‘in conversation’ with Cat Smith on Wednesday. Have a great summer.

Sienna @siennamarla

Labour released the action plan sent to the Equality and Human Rights Commission yesterday, after sending it to the equality body earlier this month and now having secured approval for the document. Delivery of this plan was legally required, but publication of it was not, and such transparency is very welcome. It begins with words from Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner, reiterating their commitment to tackling antisemitism. As LabourList reported would be the case, the action plan does not go into detail about exactly what the party’s new independent complaints process will look like; however, there are other interesting features.

The EHRC submission commits Labour to having the new disciplinary system “up and running” by December 10th next year, which recognises that an overhaul requires a rule change, and this in turn requires a conference. (As I’ve noted before, those close to the leadership were not keen on a special interim conference: partly due to the ongoing pandemic; partly due to concerns around recalling delegates from 2019.) While Labour is being allowed to take a year to set up a new system, the plan specifies that “independent elements” will be implemented sooner. And an advisory board of Jewish stakeholders will “act as a sounding board” on reforms. Read my write-up for further details and the plan in full here.

It has also emerged that the government not only took an absurdly aggressive approach in response to slightly early school closures in areas with the highest infection rates – ministers have now announced on the last full day of term that mass testing will have to be put in place for their January return. Schools minister Nick Gibbs has denied that teachers will be responsible for administering the tests, as “volunteers” will do them. Guidance will be sent next week, apparently, to which Wes Streeting asks: “When? Christmas Day?!”. The shadow minister adds: “Who will be recruiting these volunteers? How will safeguarding checks be undertaken before these volunteers are sent into schools?” Another mess, putting frontline workers under unnecessary additional pressure.

The EU''s Michel Barnier has declared this morning that there “just a few hours left” to agree a post-Brexit trade deal. If one is agreed by the weekend, the Commons is expected to be recalled on Monday, allowing the necessary legislation to be passed before Christmas. We have learnt to take claims around interim Brexit deadlines with a bucket of salt, however. Some Brexiteers reckon – or hope, because they think it will make for a better deal – that a bill will go through parliament after Christmas and before New Year’s Eve. Our LabourList morning briefing will pause over the festive period – but if MPs return to vote on a deal, we will be back in your inboxes. I also hear Starmer will be giving a constitutional convention speech on Monday, and we will be covering that too unless it is delayed again. Have a lovely break.

Sienna @siennamarla

Public health officials has warned that it is “extremely likely” the North West will see around 3,000 Covid-19 patients in hospital by the end of the month, reaching the same levels as experienced during the peak of the virus in April, according to a document seen by the HSJ. The second wave has definitely arrived. The details that have trickled out in advance suggest the Prime Minister will announce on Monday that shielding is back and household mixing will be banned in high infection areas, plus there will be a ‘tiered’ system for clarity. The Chancellor is also set to unveil the “next stage” of his job support scheme (better late than never) with help for businesses having to close over the coming weeks and months. The TUC has called for a local furlough scheme, and something like their proposals is expected.

Many of us living in the South and in other areas of the country have been unaffected by the second wave and its restrictions so far, but how long can that last? Boris Johnson is insisting that we push on with the strategy of ever stricter local lockdowns, instead of national restrictions (other than the rule of six and some hospitality changes such as mask-wearing and table service only). But without a properly functioning Test and Trace – its contact rate is actually getting worse, by the way – it can only be a matter of time before Johnson’s own constituents are hit by further measures. Nicola Sturgeon has opted for a sort-of circuit breaker whereby over the next 16 days pubs and restaurants can only serve food and non-alcoholic drinks from 6am to 6pm, for example.

The current approach goes completely against the government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda, of course. As ITV’s Hannah Miller pointed out to the PM last week, the infection rate in his own constituency is higher now than the rates of almost all the areas in Greater Manchester when they were first put under restrictions. There appear to be no criteria for when areas enter and leave lockdown, and the delay in the extra financial support now being promised is simply outrageous. Our columnist Jake Richards today argues that Johnson’s ‘levelling up’ pledge is a slogan in search of a policy.

Could Starmer make the bold call for a second national lockdown, as John McDonnell has done? Incredibly unlikely. His instincts from the start of the pandemic have been to resist restrictions that might themselves have a negative impact on public health. But the Labour leader can develop a community empowerment narrative, echoing the views of Andy Burnham and other local figureheads. That''s why we’ve taken a look at the new Local Government Information Unit report, offering suggestions with which Starmer could "hand power down to level up" and fill the policy gap left by Johnson. These ideas for radical devolution would align well with his complaint in the Telegraph today that the government is operating under the ‘Whitehall knows best’ view, as noted in yesterday’s LabourList email.

Hope you have a great weekend.

Sienna @siennamarla

Asking government ministers about restrictions that they have put into place with little debate or scrutiny, affecting millions of people in the country, has a “gotcha” element to it. That is according to Business Secretary Alok Sharma, who compared the question to that of a “quiz show” this morning, and also presumably according to the Prime Minister who was unable to explain the coronavirus rules for the North East yesterday. That we still don’t have a handy way of checking local restrictions on the Covid app or a simple postcode-entering tool on a government website is bad enough, but there is no hope if Boris Johnson can’t be bothered to remember what is coming into force ahead of a national TV appearance – even after a minister made the same blunder that very morning. Angela Rayner called it “grossly incompetent”.

As for the economic side of the crisis, Anneliese Dodds has written to the Chancellor with seven ways his winter plan “fails Britain’s workers”. Mocking the slick, neatly branded graphics always put out by Rishi Sunak to celebrate his policy announcements, and showing an awareness that he is the favourite to replace Johnson, a new Labour attack line has also emerged: “It’s got his name all over it”. And exploring the detail of Labour’s problems with the winter plan, Dan Carden has written for LabourList to point out the gaps in Rishi Sunak’s new job support scheme and set out Labour’s genuine job recovery scheme proposal.

As Carden says of Sunak''s update last week: “It is staggering that the Chancellor had nothing to say to the millions facing unemployment and real hardship over the winter.” Labour has consistently called for five urgent changes to social security, which will be desperately needed over the coming months, but there is no sign of them being implemented. 50 organisations have now demanded that the planned cut to Universal Credit – which would take away the temporary £20-per-week increase Covid increase – does not go ahead in April. Jonathan Reynolds is supporting the campaign.

The Downing Street residents may be blundering their way through Covid with remarkable little care, but for now the Tories still have an 80-seat majority – and they were able to get Commons approval for the internal market bill without a single Conservative MP voting against it. Closing the debate for the opposition, Ed Miliband expressed hope that the Lords would “bring this bill into compliance with the rule of law and salvage our reputation”. We know that there will be Tory peers uncomfortable with giving ministers the power to override parts of the withdrawal agreement with the EU, such as Richard Keen who resigned over it and former leader Michael Howard. But was it all just showmanship, a ploy for EU negotiations?

Yet more Tory rebellion is threatened over the Coronavirus Act. One question is whether such a rebellion will even have the opportunity to manifest itself, as Speaker Hoyle is no Bercow and he is thought unlikely to select the Brady amendment. Another is whether Downing Street will bow to pressure anyway in a bid to improve its handling of party management – and the cross-party demands for some parliamentary scrutiny of Covid rules are, after all, very reasonable. We’ll find out more from the chamber this afternoon, plus we’ve got PMQs at the usual midday and a coronavirus press conference at 5pm.

Sienna @siennamarla

In the latest in the Panorama libel case row, Momentum''s national coordinating group has issued a statement saying that members deserve to know “whether or not these settlements were in line with the legal advice the party received”. Calling for the party to be "honest and transparent", the left group''s governing body has demanded that Labour publish this advice. The comments from the NCG follows remarks from both the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Unite general secretary Len McCluskey, who''ve said that the advice suggested that Labour had a strong defence. This is controversial since critics of the decision to settle have said it represents a waste of members'' money. At the same time, reports in this morning''s papers suggest that the potential payouts for further legal action being taken against the party, many related to the leaked antisemitism report such as that involving former general secretary Ian McNicol, could amount to £8m. 

Meanwhile, Labour''s Jo Stevens has called on Ofcom to review Russia Today''s licence to operate in the UK, following the publication of the report by the intelligence and security committee. Keir Starmer raised the issue in this week''s PMQs, challenging Boris Johnson to “stop the spread of Kremlin-backed disinformation” and adding that a 2018 High Court ruling had found that RT broadcasts "pose actual and potential harm”. Shadow Culture Secretary Stevens did the media rounds this morning to discuss the letter she penned to the communications regulator, highlighting that RT has committed "over 20 breaches" of broadcasting code. RT hit back to say that Stevens "knows nothing about the law", and suggested ominously that if its license is taken away, "something would happen to the BBC" in Russia.

The Labour Party has continued its focus on education, with Kate Green giving her first interview since taking up the post as Shadow Education Secretary. She slammed the government for its approach to schools and for a “wasted summer”, with poor holiday catch up provision and no "plan B" for what will happen if the UK sees a surge in coronavirus cases later in the year. And Labour also launched a campaign on higher education yesterday, setting out seven tests to make sure that students and universities are "safeguarded from the economic impact of this crisis” – including a demand that no university should be allowed to go bust. 

In other news, allegations of gerrymandering by a Tory council leader and Conservative group of councillors are to be investigated following a letter sent to the PM by local Labour MP Jon Cruddas – the accusations follow the release of a 32-minute recording of a Tory Party meeting, in which the leader of the council is heard discussing how he had influenced the local boundary review to make it "politically advantageous" for the Conservatives. And as the rules on mandatory face coverings in all shops comes into force in England today, lots of businesses have said that they won''t be enforcing it. Unions have warned that retail workers should not be made responsible for enforcing the law, with Usdaw general secretary Paddy Lillis saying that this could be a “flashpoint" for abuse of staff.

Elliot @elliot_chappell

It is National Windrush Day, marking the 72nd anniversary of the first big post-war migrants group arriving in Britain on HMT Empire Windrush. The campaign of former Labour councillor Patrick Vernon to get this observed day recognised by the government only succeeded when details of the Windrush scandal emerged. Two years later, there has been a review concluding that the Home Office showed “ignorance and thoughtlessness” and perpetuated “foreseeable and avoidable” injustices while operating a “culture of disbelief”. Its recommendations have not been implemented.

Wendy Williams, an inspector of constabulary, conducted this ‘lessons learned’ review. In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour last night, she issued a predictable but stark warning: there is a “grave risk of something similar happening again” if government inaction continues. The compen sation scheme is “not demonstrating the benefits that it should”, she said, and the police use of stop and search powers is “far from satisfactory”. As Keir Starmer and David Lammy have highlighted, announcing another review on race inequality without first implementing the recommendations of many existing reports on the same subject is deliberate procrastination and simply insulting.

Many of the criticisms levelled against the Home Office can also be applied to the Department for Work and Pensions, which similarly creates a hostile environment for already marginalised people while operating a “culture of disbelief”. The work and pensions committee has released a report this morning on the DWP’s response to coronavirus. While the department should be commended for a swift reaction, it concludes, the increased demand has further exposed flaws in the system – from the five-week wait for Universal Credit to the problems around legacy benefits.

The cross-party report recommends that legacy benefit rates are lifted and such changes are made easier, as people will be claiming them until at least 2024 according to the government, that the no recourse to public funds policy is suspended during the crisis, and that Universal Credit is made more flexible. Labour’s Jonathan Reynolds said: "This report reinforces what Labour has said since the beginning of this crisis: our social security system is not fit for purpose.” It shows that the problems are integral to the system, which is why Labour has pledged to scrap and fully replace Universal Credit.

If you’re interested in discussing the findings and recommendations of the Labour Together 2019 general election review, join us tonight at 7pm for an online panel and participatory workshop where you can do just that. Sign up here.

Sienna @siennamarla

Government has again leaked to the press about upcoming changes to Covid restrictions. New plans include a new regional tier structure and "additional household bubbling" over the festive period. The Prime Minister will this afternoon outline the tougher set of tiers to come into place as England leaves lockdown on December 2nd. The plans for Christmas are due to be outlined later in the week. Tory backbenchers are gearing up to rebel on the more severe measures. On the vote for the second lockdown, 32 Conservative MPs broke the whip – this time, reports suggest as many as 70 are considering doing so. Labour has not committed to unconditionally backing the new measures, with Anneliese Dodds saying that the party needs to "see the detail of those proposals" first.

Jonathan Ashworth has been doing the media round this morning in the wake of positive results for the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine. The Shadow Health Secretary called on the government to appoint a "dedicated minister for vaccines" to boost accountability and avoid repeating the mistakes seen with the procuring of personal protective equipment and the NHS test and trace system. Many will welcome a bit of extra scrutiny, particularly as reports today revealed £5.6bn of taxpayer cash wasted in the last year, including £42m on bonuses for Whitehall officials. This, remember, from a government that refused to spend £20m on free school meals over half term and is planning a public sector pay freeze for many of the frontline workers in this pandemic.

Rishi Sunak will deliver the spending review on Wednesday. Concerns around a public sector pay freeze have been mounting with reports that the Chancellor is planning a freeze from which NHS workers will apparently be exempt. Shadow Chancellor Dodds has slammed the proposal, which could see real pay fall for firefighters, community health workers and others, as "completely irresponsible" while citing the existing recruitment difficulties for many essential public service roles and the economic impact a freeze would have on high-street spending.

Nationals are picking up on the fact that Labour Party membership has fallen by 57,000, around 10%, since Keir Starmer became leader earlier this year, a rate of almost 250 per day. 552,835 were eligible to vote in the leadership election in April but this fell to 495,961 in the national executive committee elections two weeks ago. As Charlie Mansell pointed out in his thorough, deep-dive look into those numbers, membership totals rise and fall. But this is perhaps an indication that those on the left, upset by the direction of the party and the suspension of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, are not heeding calls from John McDonnell MP and others to stay and fight.

Elliot @elliot_chappell

It has been 100 days since Keir Starmer became Labour leader. There were always going to be tough challenges for any successor to Jeremy Corbyn: the party has just suffered a devastating defeat, from which it would take a historical turnaround to recover in a single term, the internal (should I say eternal?) warfare is vicious, and significant numbers of members have felt deep hurt. He was elected during a Brexit transition period after an election all about that issue. And, most importantly, Starmer took over in the middle of a deadly pandemic that has been particularly fatal in the UK where the government response is shambolic.

The new leader has adopted a softly, softly approach to opposing the government and a ruthless one for internal party politics. Naturally, this has been divisive among Labour members, many of whom would have expected the reverse. Starmer has reshaped the party in his image remarkably quickly. He has forged a slim but reliable majority on Labour’s national executive committee, replaced Jennie Formby with a general secretary who is widely considered to be on the party’s right, and sacked his Corbynite leadership opponent from the shadow cabinet. The Labour frontbench has been thoroughly overhauled, both in terms of who’s on it and the tone that they take in interviews. The leadership has slowly ramped up criticism of the Tories over Covid-19, but caution is still the watchword for media engagement.

The core objective of Starmer’s team appears to be ‘detoxifying’ the Labour brand. If we’re assessing these 100 days on that basis, the leader’s brilliant personal approval ratings certainly give cause for optimism – but the party has some catching up to do, still lagging behind the Conservatives in voting intention despite their calamitous response to the crisis. Perhaps most notably, the Keir Starmer/Anneliese Dodds team scores badly compared to the top Tory team including Rishi Sunak, who also presents a danger as a charismatic but crucially competent-looking politician with possible leadership ambitions.

Much of Labour’s troubles right now relate to its economic policies, as highlighted by the recent confusing messages on a wealth tax. Starmer said he supports the idea in principle, but it is understood that the leadership is not backing such a proposal. The party seems to want to get away with saying nothing on taxes before the next general election campaign, but a key lesson from the 2019 defeat arguably should be that Labour needs a decent run-up for its policies – if we want a fair hearing, our ideas need to be normalised first. And Starmer’s personal appeal must be put to good use. There is a risk that the Tories could appear to outflank Labour from the left on the economy.

A message from LabourList to kick off the week: huge thanks to everyone who has donated over the past couple of weeks, and even bigger thanks to those who have become regular donors. Your support, along with that of Unite and UNISON and hopefully other trade unions in the coming months, means our organisation can grow. We are now looking for another journalist to join our team, which will allow us to expand LabourList’s coverage of the labour movement and explore new ways of giving a platform to views from across the party. The details can be found here.

Sienna @siennamarla

The coronavirus crisis has always been intensely political, but it has only recently become intensely party political. With the confidence of a man who has fought many Westminster and internal Labour battles, before finding clarity of purpose in a mayoral post, Andy Burnham has spoken up for Greater Manchester and every area that will soon enter Tier 3. This is why the government backlash has been so fierce: not only do they resent a politician who can talk like a normal person while giving voice to very real concerns on the ground; ministers are determined to preserve the messy – and crucially opaque – local negotiation approach to keep us quiet. Agreeing to an 80% furlough for employees and the self-employed in Tier 3 would have been a victory for the whole country and a huge concession by this stubborn government.

The 4pm press conference by Andy Burnham and other Greater Manchester leaders was the start of an extraordinary few hours in the coronavirus crisis yesterday. Announcing that the government had walked away from negotiations after rejecting the local leaders’ proposals, the mayor asked whether they were “playing poker with people’s lives” and declared that “this fight is not over”. He was then shown a message that said Greater Manchester MPs had been told the area would only be getting £22m, which turned into a viral clip. Tories are frustrated because apparently this amount is only for test and trace and the £60m is still “on the table” – but the Prime Minister refused to confirm as much in his 5pm press conference, and it was only suggested by Matt Hancock in a 7pm statement that this was the case.

UK Labour will today back up Burnham’s efforts with real action. Since last week, the party has replaced its original ‘fire and rehire’ and social care opposition day motions with debates on free school meals and a “fair deal” for those living under Tier 3. Both of these votes should make Tory MPs feel deeply uncomfortable. Conservative Robert Halfon, a former minister, has said he will vote with Labour today on free school meals unless the government backs down in the face of Marcus Rashford’s renewed campaign. This is highly unusual for an opposition day motion. The other vote will force Tories to admit that they do not want a “fair one nation deal” for those living under the toughest Covid restrictions. The motion explicitly calls for 80% furlough, rather than 67%, and the government struggles to defend the lower rate because it is unjustifiable. Why would people deserve 80% in March but only two thirds now?

Burnham is right: this fight is not over. Robert Jenrick claims there is a formula being applied to every Tier 3 area, which is £8 per head for track and trace and £20 per head for business support. But as Lucy Powell points out, this would mean a better-off rural area with fewer businesses and more retired residents could receive more than an area with a high concentration of business and low-paid, working age residents. “The very definition of levelling down, not up.” Meanwhile, ministers intend to cut Universal Credit back to its pre-Covid rate in April, despite repeatedly referring to the benefit as justification for the less generous local furlough scheme. Yet we don’t know what the pandemic will look like next year, and what we can accurately predict is that unemployment and poverty will have risen. And while the North-South divide is key in all of this, London is not protected from hardship either: the government is threatening to take direct control of Transport for London unless Sadiq Khan accepts a hugely enlarged congestion zone and higher fares including cut concessions for children and pensioners. Playing poker with people’s lives, indeed.

Sienna @siennamarla

Keir Starmer used his first TUC Congress speech as leader, delivered from his attic, to accuse Boris Johnson of having “failed on all counts” during the pandemic. Instead of sorting out the chaotic test and trace system, he said the Prime Minister’s priority had been “reopening old wounds on Brexit” and “trashing Britain’s reputation abroad”. The Labour leader also announced his first major new policy that will not apply only in the time of Covid: urging the government to outlaw ‘fire and rehire’ tactics. These have been used by companies such as British Airways and British Gas to drive down worker pay and employment standards, particularly in this crisis. And on working with trade unions and businesses to prevent those failures, Starmer’s key message to Johnson was: “My door is open.”

The Labour leader’s TUC address got a very warm reception from trade unions, particularly Unite general secretary Len McCluskey who said it “showed him to be absolutely on the side of working people”. Unions have come together in recent months to use the same key terms to deliver their demands and warnings: we need to ‘build back better’, and the government is risking a ‘tsunami of job losses’. Labour’s call for the furlough scheme to be replaced by more targeted measures shows the movement is working as one. Reinforcing the message, McCluskey has today written to the PM urging him to act before the “redundancy floodgates” open and requesting a meeting.

While the unions and the party have been applying pressure on the issue of extending and reshaping the job retention scheme, Gordon Brown has continued his ambitious ‘Alliance for Full Employment’ campaign with Mark Drakeford and Labour metro mayors. Here is something else in Johnson’s inbox: 1,200 Labour council leaders, mayors and councillors from across the country have written to the PM asking for “strategic use of furlough and full quarantine support”, as Brown puts it. Statutory sick pay urgently needs to go up, and support must be given to hard-hit sectors and lockdown areas. It is understood that unions will soon also back Brown’s other calls, including for the Bank of England to focus on job creation.

The extent to which our test and trace system has unravelled is clearer than ever. Richard E. Grant summarises the problem: “Please can someone explain to me why, when you land in Rome, there is a swift and well organised Covid test, with the result given 30 minutes later, yet we don’t have this in the UK?”. And because the UK system is in such a mess, Starmer is “still awaiting the test result for a member of his family”, according to his spokesperson, and needs to keep self-isolating. Angela Rayner will be standing in for the opposition leader at PMQs this afternoon, and she’ll be facing the PM himself. As Ed Miliband showed this week, it is hugely rewarding for the Labour frontbench to show off different ways of skewering Johnson. And later we’ll be treated to another liaison committee performance by the PM. Perhaps he''ll reveal there is another basic government policy that he knows nothing about.

Sienna @siennamarla

Labour is keeping connected, despite the pandemic. The party''s online ''Connected'' series kicked off on Saturday morning with an updated slogan: "A New Leadership". Doing the media rounds this morning, Keir Starmer defended the branding. "Not very subtle, is it?" He was asked. "Corbynites might be a bit disappointed." But the Labour leader echoed sentiments he expressed in his campaign earlier this year. Steering away from commenting on Corbyn, he told Sophy Ridge on Sunday that leadership under Starmer is about recognising that the party has "lost not just one election, but four". 

The party''s online conference launched with ''Women Connected'' yesterday and LabourList remained glued to the screen to bring you all the highlights. We heard from Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds on the Covid "motherlode", Shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy on women leading on the pandemic response around the world, and shadow early years minister Tulip Siddiq on childcare and unpaid carers in the health crisis. Former Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbbott seized the chance to speak out at an anti-racism Black Lives Matter rally, criticising Labour''s failure to recruit Black staffers in its London headquarters: "It’s astonishing to me that in 2020, you can walk into Southside – the Labour Party’s HQ on Victoria Street – and see hardly any Black people."

And there is plenty more to come today. We''ll be hearing from deputy leader Angela Rayner at 11am, and Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard is expected to demand a targeted furlough scheme for Scotland. Panels will discuss the future of social care, whether the term BAME is fit for purpose and how we put health and wellbeing at the heart of society. There are also some interesting The World Transformed events taking place alongside Connected. Len McCluskey and Sam Tarry MP will join a panel to discuss the relationship between Labour and the unions, for example, and MP Rebecca Long-Bailey will be talking about left utopianism at 8pm. Keep your eyes peeled for LabourList updates.

Elliot @elliot_chappell

"It’s time for a bold and ambitious plan." Ed Miliband and Anneliese Dodds have challenged the government to ‘Build it in Britain’ and support the creation of 400,000 new jobs as part of a green economic recovery from the Covid crisis. It would see at least £30bn invested over the next 18 months, dedicating funds to low-carbon industries. The stimulus package would aim to recover jobs, retrain workers via an emergency training programme to equip those affected by Covid unemployment, and rebuild business with the creation of a national investment bank (a policy promoted by John McDonnell). Developed after a consultation on a green new deal, proposals include upgrading ports and shipyards for offshore wind supply chains; expanding investment in carbon capture tech; accelerating investment in electric vehicle charging; new orders for electric buses to help struggling manufacturers; a new National Nature Service; energy efficiency and retrofit programmes, including in social housing; new sectoral deals to protect jobs and promote the shift to net zero; and flood protection investment. The challenge is there. Let''s see what happens at the comprehensive spending review expected later this month.

Cautious optimism was the watchword for the Prime Minister''s Covid briefing in the wake of the news of the first effective vaccine. With a string of frankly painful metaphors – featuring trains, football, arrows, "the distant bugle of the scientific cavalry", swallows and slam dunks – Jonathan Van-Tam and Boris Johnson stressed that its still early days in delivering a vaccine. Although we know the vaccine is effective, the government does not yet know that it is safe and there will be difficult challenges with the roll out. But this is, for the first time in months, good news. Trials show 90% Covid protection achieved within seven days of the second dose (keep in mind, that figure is based on only 94 confirmed cases out of the 43,538 participants so precise effectiveness may change). And Pfizer and BioNTech say they will have enough safety data by the third week of November to take their vaccine to regulators.

As Labour leader Keir Starmer has said, this is "encouraging". Unite general secretary Len McCluskey also welcomed the news from Pfizer, saying it "reflects the professionalism, skill and dedication of Unite''s membership across the company". He called on the government to "build on this glimmer of hope" by investing in manufacturing supply chains needed to "turn it into the genuine breakthrough it can become". UNISON assistant general secretary Christina McAnea declared that "this could be the news the world’s been waiting for", but has strongly warned the vaccine must be delivered by public health bodies and the NHS after the "test and trace fiasco".

The government suffered a large defeat in the House of Lords last night on its internal market bill, with peers voting to reject clauses allowing ministers to break international law and override the EU withdrawal agreement. Members voted by a majority of 268 against the powers and all parties expressed concerns about the contents of the proposed legislation. Labour’s leader in the House of Lords Baroness Angela Smith said the government would likely react with "bravado" and try to dismiss the votes, and indeed Downing Street has already said it will retable the clauses in the Commons. Keep watching for some parliamentary ping-pong. Also to watch out for is our editor Sienna Rodgers live in conversation with John Healey this evening. Tune in here at 6pm and please email in any questions you have for the Shadow Defence Secretary.

Elliot @elliot_chappell

The Prime Minister will deliver a statement this afternoon on the new ‘three tier’ system, under which every area of the country will be classified as ‘medium’, ‘high’ or ‘very high’. The details of which restrictions belong to each alert level are not entirely clear yet, but it is understood that ‘medium’ means current national rules, ‘high’ means additional restrictions on household mixing indoors, and ‘very high’ means no household mixing indoors or outdoors plus business closures. Crucially, however, it appears that not all areas in the highest tier will be under the same restrictions, which undermines the idea that this new system will clarify everything.

Andy Burnham predicted back in May that the local lockdown policy would be a “recipe for chaos”, and he is being proven right so far. MPs, mayors and councils in the worst-hit places in the North of England – whether Labour or Tory – are not happy with the government’s handling of their Covid spikes, but the particular complaints vary: there are those most concerned about the level of restrictions, and those most worried about insufficient financial support for businesses and workers. The Chancellor has given his winter economy plan a makeover, but – as I set out on Friday – there are many holes in his latest set of proposals.

After months of no consultation with local elected representatives and little transparency over data and decision-making, the government is now trying to kill two birds with one stone – impose restrictions, but allow Labour mayors to take the blame. They are continuing to present already finalised Covid measures, but meetings are taking place to guard against complaints that local leaders are not being engaged with. One minister is quoted by The Telegraph as saying of mayors: “We want them to own it.” For Liverpool, the focus is now on upping the financial support available; for Manchester, Burnham is still fighting the extent of restrictions (as students are a big factor in the spike there). Negotiations are ongoing.

We have a busy day ahead, including a PM statement to the Commons at 3.30pm and a coronavirus press conference at 6pm. Keir Starmer will also address the Parliamentary Labour Party at 7pm, and there is much for Labour MPs to discuss. At PMQs last week, Boris Johnson found a rather successful attack line: highlighting Labour abstentions on crucial matters. The Conservatives have released attack ads to the same effect, saying Starmer “can’t decide” and “Labour’s got new no leadership”. They must be aware that these abstentions are controversial within the party – not just with Labour activists, but MPs too.

LabourList understands that frustration among Labour MPs is growing over the leadership’s ‘abstention strategy’. Both the overseas operations bill and the ‘spycops’ bill saw Labour abstain at second reading, and Starmer has confirmed that they will also be told to abstain on the 10pm hospitality curfew this week despite Labour''s own tough criticisms of the arguably counterproductive measure. The Labour leader says he is worried that if the curfew is voted down, nothing will take its place. (There is also the issue of the Welsh Labour government having a 10pm “drinking-up time”, which is why Starmer is calling for reform along those lines.) But as Labour whips contacted MPs over the weekend, it is thought that irritation over the current approach was expressed by representatives from across the party and not just the left.

Sienna @siennamarla