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MP Rosie Duffield has resigned the Labour whip, accusing the prime minister of “hypocrisy” and pursuing “cruel and unnecessary” policies.
In a resignation letter, Ms Duffield attacked Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to keep the two-child benefit cap and means-test winter fuel payments.
In her resignation letter, she wrote: “The sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice are off the scale.”
Ms Duffield, who will sit as an independent, also slated Sir Keir’s acceptance of more than £100,000 of freebies including clothes.
Earlier, Kemi Badenoch warned that Tory members will be “very angry” if MPs take part in a “stitch-up” to lend votes to other candidates to keep her out of the top two in the leadership contest.
Allies of Ms Badenoch claim she is the victim of a “dirty tricks” campaign, with Robert Jenrick in effect lending votes to James Cleverly, which the former has strongly denied.
Asked whether she believed Mr Jenrick was taking this approach, she told The Times: “I think that may be happening. But what else is happening is that there is tactical voting.”
Boris Johnson Unleashed: No Narcissus ever stared more intently into the limpid waters of self-love
Some have said that these were the nation’s worst years since the Napoleonic wars, and there is one politician who has blazed a meteoric trail across almost every page of this teeming history: Boris Johnson. But only now is he telling his story, for no less than a reported half a million pounds and counting.
At that price, never mind setting the record straight, he’ll have to deliver. But what is in the offing from such a maverick pen? As he might put it, a macédoine of regret, maybe mortification, and dismay? As the first parts of Unleashed are serialised, we finally get a hint of what might be to come.
Read the full article here:
Tories facing ‘dire’ finances as businesses and donors switch to Farage and Starmer
In the weeks before the conference in Birmingham, set to get underway on Sunday, it was claimed that the party was still struggling to find a sponsor for its VIP blue room, previously sponsored by the retail company Regent Street Group.
Read the full article here:
Starmer’s pragmatic approach to government is proving to be what’s best for the country
Almost three months into his administration, Sir Keir Starmer’s self-styled “British pragmatism” has made a refreshing – indeed invigorating – change from the ideological obsession and grinding search for new culture wars that disfigured politics under the Conservatives.
Such controversies as there have been – notably about the cuts to the winter fuel allowance and policy in the Middle East – have been fact-based and verging on the empirical.
The same is true about his efforts to build a personal rapport with Donald Trump, and the apparent willingness to rethink taxing the super-rich non-doms, given reports that the Treasury fears little if any new revenue may be raised by attacking these extremely mobile people.
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Revealed: Starmer’s ‘three pillar’ blueprint to rebuild EU ties with youth mobility a negotiating chip
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Is this the moment that Rachel Reeves put ‘what works’ before dogma?
This could be the moment that the Labour government started to find its feet. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is “ready to water down” her tax raid on non-doms because the Treasury fears that it may “fail to raise any money”, the Financial Times reported on Thursday.
The timing of this realisation is interesting, the day after the end of the Labour conference at which the news might have been greeted with howls of “betrayal” from the marginalised, but still vocal, usual suspects.
But what is important about this U-turn is that it means the cold light of realism has been allowed to penetrate the pie-in-the-sky slogans of Labour’s pre-election economics.
Read the full article here now:
We trashed our brand, says ex-PM Theresa May
Conservative former party leader and prime minister Theresa May has warned that the party “failed to see the threat from the Liberal Democrats” while focusing too much on Reform.
Writing in The Times, Baroness May said the candidates for the leadership could “play into Reform’s hands” by failing to understand why they lost the election.
She said the Conservatives lost power because the party had “trashed our brand”, losing its reputation for “integrity and competence”.
Blaming the Partygate scandal and Liz Truss’s mini-budget, Lady May added the Tories had spent “too long tacking to the right in order to appease potential Reform voters” and “forgot that we are not a right-wing party but a centre-right party”.
Tory party chair set to say sorry to members and voters
The interim chairman of the Conservative Party will tell the membership that he is “profoundly sorry” for the election loss as he opens the party’s conference within hours.
Richard Fuller will tell delegates in Birmingham that the parliamentary party “needs to learn and has to change”, and is also expected to announce details of a review of the general election
The contest for the party leadership will feature prominently in the first conference since the election defeat in July.
Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat will all have an opportunity to address the conference – which will run until Wednesday – and their campaigns will be lobbying MPs before parliamentarians pick the final two on 10 October.
The final result will be declared on 2 November.
Mr Fuller is expected to say: “I am profoundly sorry to you, the members of the Conservative Party.
“To our activists. To our current and former councillors, police and crime commissioners and mayors who found their strong local records of service were dominated by negative national headlines.
“To Conservative voters and to the country at large for the consequence: a reckless, ideological socialist government with a huge majority based on a paltry share of the electorate.
“I am deeply sorry.”
Labour freebies: The gifts Starmer and other MPs have accepted as PM under fire
The donation was declared to Parliament by the prime minister somewhat cryptically as “accommodation.”
The nature of the massive donation from Labour donor Lord Waheed Alli had remained a mystery until Sir Keir was asked by the BBC about its purpose.
Read the full article here:
Top Tories cash in on Duffield move to slate Starmer
Conservative leadership candidates have taken aim at the prime minister over Rosie Duffield’s resignation.
Former security minister Tom Tugendhat said the move showed Sir Keir’s government was “about self-service”, while frontrunner Robert Jenrick said the government was “already in disarray, crumbling under the weight of their rank hypocrisy”.
