Markus Andrews

The home secretary has said that granting Southend-on-Sea city status would be a “wonderful tribute” to Sir David Amess, who had long campaigned on the issue.Describing the Conservative MP as “Mr Southend, Mr Essex” and “a wonderful advocate”, Priti Patel said on Sunday that there would be “work in government” on the prospect of realising his campaign.Sir David, a father-of-five, was murdered in a suspected terror attack while meeting constituents on Friday at Belfairs Methodist Church. Amid an outpouring of tributes and warmth towards the “hugely kind and good” MP, who was one of the longest-serving parliamentarians in Westminster, many have recalled his energy and humour in ceaselessly campaigning for the Essex town on the Thames Estuary to be designated a city.After the most recent Cabinet reshuffle in September, Sir David had joked to the Commons that he was left disappointed not to be made “minister with responsibility for granting city status to Southend”.Asked by the BBC whether the government was likely to realise his vision, Ms Patel said: “It brings a smile to me and it warms our hearts because I think of his last PMQs, questions to the prime minister, I was in the chamber, it was about Southend.”Pushed on whether it could become a reality, the Essex MP continued: “All I will say is that when David’s name is mentioned going forward, he will bring great cheers and smiles to everybody because he was Mr Southend, Mr Essex – he would always put Southend front and centre of his work and that was David through and through.”Asked again about the issue on Times Radio, the home secretary repeated: “I’m smiling at that suggestion because David was just – you know I’ve said this so many times – a wonderful advocate.”“People will decide about that,” Ms Patel said, adding: “It would be a wonderful tribute to my dear friend David.”The MP for nearby Ilford North, Labour’s Wes Streeting, told Sky News that he “could think of no more fitting tribute” to the late MP than for the campaign to be at the “top of the agenda”.Announcing the launch of a bid to secure city status as part of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations in 2022, Sir David said last month: “If there is any justice, and if this is a fair competition, then Southend will be successful in its bid to become a city. “Why do I say that? Southend is unique and city status would provide long overdue recognition of what we have to offer. The longest pleasure pier in the world, a huge wealth of local talent in the arts and culture industries and a centre of educational excellence, are just a few of the things that make Southend special.”He appeared to have been optimistic of his chances, telling MPs after securing an adjournment debate on the subject in 2019: “I am not messing around.“We have got it from the prime minister that Southend is going to become a city – and it will become a city.”Additional reporting by PA More

The quality of political discourse in the UK “has to change” in the wake of the killing of Sir David Amess, the leader of the House of Commons has urged.The Southend West MP and father-of-five was stabbed to death while holding his weekly constituency surgery in Essex on Friday. The man arrested following the killing, named as 25-year-old British national Ali Harbi Ali, has been detained under the Terrorism Act and Scotland Yard said it has uncovered “a potential motivation linked to Islamist extremism”.Coming five years after a far-right extremist murdered Labour’s Jo Cox as she made her way to see constituents in Batley and Spen, Sir David’s death was also prefaced by rising crimes against MPs and threats to their safety.In a rare intervention, Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle, wrote in a newspaper article that the “hate which drives these attacks has to end”, adding: “Disagreements with politicians should be solved at the ballot box, not via threats, intimidation or murder.”“If anything positive is to come out of this latest awful tragedy it is that the quality of political discourse has to change. The conversation has to be kinder and based on respect,” Sir Lindsay wrote in The Observer.Referencing the outpouring of sorrow and praise for Sir David from across the political spectrum, he added: “This incident has shown that there is unity across the political divide in support of democracy.”While Sir David – one of Westminster’s longest-serving MPs – had himself written of Ms Cox’s murder that such an attack “could happen to any of us”, in a book published last December called Ayes & Ears: A Survivor’s Guide to Westminster, he had continued to champion constituency surgeries.MPs received upgraded security measures in the wake of the Labour MP’s murder in 2016, and Sir David wrote that politicians had been “advised to never see people alone”, adding: “These increasing attacks have rather spoilt the great British tradition of the people openly meeting their elected politicians.”His death less than a year later has, however, sparked debate about whether local surgeries represent a weak point in parliamentarians’ safety, with Tory MP Tobias Ellwood calling for face-to-face meetings with constituents to be suspended until a fresh security review has concluded.But his former ministerial colleague David Davis argued that suspending constituency meetings “would be a terrible reflection” of what their “friend and colleague” Sir David had stood for, adding: “David himself was the ultimate constituency MP”.Home secretary Priti Patel promised on Sunday to do “absolutely everything” to enable MPs to continue meeting their constituents face-to-face.Sir Lindsay said he continued to urge all MPs to take up all of the security measures offered by the House of Commons security department to make their homes and offices more secure in the wake of Ms Cox’s death.“However, we now need to take stock and review whether those measures are adequate to safeguard members, staff and constituents, especially during surgeries,” he said. “We are working closely and at pace with the Home Office and the police to identify options.”Ms Patel said on Sunday that she is considering banning anonymity on social media in a move to stop the “cruel and relentless” online abuse of MPs and others, warning: “We can’t carry on like this.”Sir David had also described “the fallout from social media” as a “worrying development”, and had called for the law on anonymity to be changed “as a matter of urgency”.“My frustration is with the law governing social media generally,” the MP of 38 years wrote in his book Ayes & Ears. Taking aim at sites hosting abusive comments “without any requirement for the abuser to leave their name and address”, he added: “It means that these ignorant cowards are allowed to get away with, quite frankly, appalling behaviour and there is no means to find out who is abusing.”Meanwhile, data from the Metropolitan Police’s Parliamentary Liaison and Investigation Team, set up after the death of Ms Cox, suggests that reported crimes against MPs are rising – having totalled 678 between 2016 and 2020.The team received 582 reports of malicious communications and handled 46 cases of harassment, with nine cases classified as relating to terrorism, according to the Press Association. More

MPs’ frustration with police responses to fears over their safety burst into the open today following the murder of Sir David Amess.Labour frontbencher Lisa Nandy said there was “a huge disparity” between the support offered by forces in different parts of the country, and Tory backbencher Andrew Rosindell said his own pleas for assistance were repeatedly ignored.The complaints came as home secretary Priti Patel promised to do “absolutely everything” to enable MPs to continue meeting their constituents face-to-face, amid growing unease about the practice of holding open-to-all surgeries of the kind where Sir David was attacked on Friday.Ms Patel said action was already under way to improve MPs’ security, and said further measures – which could include a regular police presence at surgeries or airport-style metal detector arches – will be announced soon. At one point she even appeared to indicate she was ready consider close protection for MPs of the kind currently provided to the prime ministers and senior cabinet members.But Ms Nandy told Sky News’s Trevor Phillips on Sunday: “My biggest fear is that this just keeps happening and we keep having this debate and then nothing very much changes.“There are additional measures that are needed, not just about security but about support for people to be able to go about their daily lives ,about proper advice.“There’s a huge disparity between the advice and support that’s offered by different police services around the country.”Ms Nandy said support offered to MPs was “very patchy”, and complained of her own treatment after being “accosted” during a pro-Brexit rally outside parliament in which effigies of London mayor and then-PM Theresa May were dragged through the streets.“We were told by police officers we had to walk through that rally in order to get into parliament,” she said. “We were surrounded and there was very little response and when I complained to the parliamentary authorities… I was told ‘Well, unfortunately, people have strong views about Brexit and they’re entitled to voice them’.“Of course I accept they are, but I don’t accept that Members of Parliament should be blocked from entering Parliament or intimidated in the course of their daily duties.“You have to protect MPs to be able to go about their daily business and be free to speak on behalf of their constituents, if you want to protect democracy.”Asked whether she felt safe doing her job in her constituency, Ms Nandy replied: “No, not really if I’m honest.”Mr Rosindell said his constituency office had been set alight by arsonists, and that he had personally received “nasty emails, messages and threats”.“I’ve had four or five incidents where I’ve had to report things to the police,” the Romford MP told Times Radio. “And quite often they literally don’t do anything or the onus is on me to give endless statements which lead nowhere.”Ms Nandy said she would back proposals for additional security at surgeries, which she described as “a magnet for people who want to cause trouble”.Ms Patel told Sky News that a lot of work was already taking place, with numbers of MPs taking up the offer of a police presence at events they attended on Saturday. All MPs were contacted following Sir David’s death by officers from the Operation Bridger programme set up after the murder of Jo Cox, to discuss details of their movements and security arrangements, she said.She said she was working with Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle and police to “close any gaps” in the security offered to MPs.She confirmed that the option of posting officers at all MP surgeries was being considered, as well as airport-style metal detectors.And asked if MPs could be offered close protection from plain-clothes bodyguards of the kind provided for her and Boris Johnson, she replied: “All these issues and options are in consideration right now.”“Our elected representatives need to be able to go around with confidence that they are safe and secure in the work that they are doing,” said Ms Patel.But she added that MPs themselves need to be “conscientious” about their personal safety as they undertake their work, for instance by operating a booking system for surgeries and checking details of those making appointments, rather than advertising their location and talking to anyone who turns up.She insisted that the fear of violence must “never, ever break that link between an elected representative and their democratic role, responsibility and duty to the people that have elected them to be their representative”.Former prime minister Gordon Brown said he expected close police protection to be offered within days to MPs who feel that they are at risk.Mr Brown told Trevor Phillips: “We must say to Members of Parliament: ‘Of course, be careful where you hold your constituency surgeries, in a place that is protected. But at the same time, if you need police protection that is going to be available’.“It need not be obtrusive, it need not be so obvious, but I think the protection has got to be made available now to Members of Parliament who feel that there is a risk to what they are doing. I think that will be introduced in the next few days.” More

Home secretary Priti Patel has said she could remove the right to anonymity on social media in the wake of the murder of Sir David Amess, to stop the “cruel and relentless” abuse of MPs and others.Ms Patel said that she and many other MPs had suffered “appalling” online attacks and warned: “We can’t carry on like this.”She said she wanted to make “big changes” to the law to deal with the problem, and made clear a ban on anonymous posts was being considered.Asked on Sky News’s Trevor Phillips on Sunday what could be done to tackle the coarsening of political debate in the UK, Ms Patel replied:  “This is about wider public discourse and I would go as far to say social media and anonymity on social media, where Members of Parliament are the subject of some of the most cruel comments and attacks, and they are relentless.“I’ve seen my colleagues go through some of the most appalling attacks online, and I have as well.”Asked whether she could introduce legislation to remove the right to online anonymity, she replied: “I want us to look at everything and there is work taking place already.“We’ve got an Online Harms Bill that will come to parliament. There’s work taking place on it right now.“I’ve done a lot of work on the social media platforms, mainly around encryption and areas of that nature.“But we can’t carry on like this. I spend too much time with communities who have been under attack, who’ve had all sorts of postings put online and it’s a struggle to get those postings taken down. We want to make some big changes on that.”Shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said Ms Patel’s comments were “a bit rich” after the government failed to back Labour calls for penalties for tech executives who fail to prevent their platforms being used for abuse.She said there was a place for “limits” on the anonymity of accounts, but warned that an outright ban could catch people with legitimate needs to protect their identity online.“The difficulty with removing anonymity altogether is that you’ve got pro-democracy protesters and campaigners, you’ve got whistleblowers, people around the world who sometimes have to use some level of anonymity in order to make themselves heard,” Ms Nandy told Trevor Phillips.“There are limits perhaps that you can put on anonymous accounts for what they’re able to do and how they’re able to interact with other people online, and surely there have to be repercussions for people engaging in what would be criminal behaviour if it happened in person, but doing so online.”But she added: “It is a bit rich for the home secretary to say that she takes that very seriously when the government have been dragging their feet on this legislation for years and currently we’re at a situation where they’re not proposing that there’ll be any penalties for top executives of tech companies who don’t abide by the online proposed code if there are repeated breaches of that code.“If they’re not upholding their responsibilities there ought to be penalties for that. We can’t continue with a situation… where some people are targeted so severely that it does impact on their ability to speak out.”In a later interview on BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show, Ms Patel said that any restrictions on anonymity would have to be “proportionate and balanced” to ensure that pro-democracy campaigners were not impacted.Ms Nandy said: “We’ve got to get the balance right, because social media can be an enormous force. I see it very much in the course of my day job where you’ve got some incredible campaigners – the women of Belarus, the pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, the young people of Afghanistan – they’ve managed to use social media in order to make themselves heard.“And if you speak to ChildLine they’ll say that social media has been a major problem for a lot of young people, but it’s also been a way in which young people can now reach out and get help in a way that they couldn’t when I was a child.“So we’ve got to get the balance right to make sure that we use this as a force for good. In every era where we’ve been through technological revolutions that’s always been the case.“The one thing I do agree with Priti Patel about is that I really don’t think that we’ve got to grips with this yet. We haven’t worked out how to manage it so that it works in the interests of democracy, rather than working against it.” More

Labour and the Liberal Democrats will not contest the expected Southend West by-election following the murder of MP Conservative MP Sir David Amess, it is understood.The parties will follow the precedent of Jo Cox’s murder in 2016, when the main opposition parties refused to select candidates in the subsequent Batley and Spen by-election “as a mark of respect”.Ms Cox was murdered by a neo-Nazi outside a constituency surgery in Birstall, West Yorkshire.Sir David was killed while meeting constituents at a routine public surgery on Friday.Labour peer Lord Pendry said leaving the seat uncontested would “honour” the Conservative politician.“This is an occasion when you see the leader of the opposition and the prime minister together, and it shows that our democracy transcends all that sort of thing,” he said. “I think we should be saying that whoever the Conservatives put up, it is their seat because they were deprived of it, so they should have it back.“I think all the major parties should stand aside in the interest of democracy and our own democratic way of life.”Senior Labour figure who knew Sir David Amess “pretty well” gets in touch to propose that Opposition parties should give Tories “a free run” & not stand in Southend West by-election.— Jon Craig (@joncraig) October 16, 2021 A 25-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder and counter terror detectives are currently investigating his motivations, say Essex Police – potentially linked to Islamist extremism.The investigation is being led by the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command who declared it a terrorist incident. More

Kosovo is holding municipal elections Sunday in which the left-wing party that has been in government for eight months is aiming to capture the city hall of the capital, Pristina About 1.9 million voters are casting ballots to elect mayors for 38 municipalities and some 1,000 town hall lawmakers. Preliminary results are expected by midnight. In previous polls many of the communes have gone to runoffs, which take place in a month’s time.The main contest will be for Pristina City Hall for which the governing left-wing Self-Determination Party, or Vetevendosje!, has nominated its former health minister, Arben Vitia.Voting in the north populated predominantly by the ethnic Serb minority will attract much attention following two incidents in the past two months that have led to soaring tensions between Kosovo and Serbia Earlier this week, Kosovo police clashed with ethnic Serbs during an anti-smuggling operation, and last month an issue over vehicle license plates was resolved only after mediation from the European Union and the United States The NATO-led Kosovo Force, or KFOR, deployed troops to the border area, ending the spat.Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 but Serbia doesn’t recognize the move.Elections are taking place during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, a tough test for the people and authorities. Officials running the election process must have had at least one shot of vaccine, while voters must wear masks. Election teams are taking the ballot box to the homes of people who are currently positive for the virus. More

Voters agree that “levelling up” should be a top priority for Boris Johnson’s government, but little more than a quarter (28 per cent) believe he is sincere in his professed aim of spreading prosperity to disadvantaged corners of the UK, a new poll has found.Almost half (47 per cent) of those questioned by pollsters Savanta ComRes for The Independent said they did not believe the prime minister’s claim that “levelling up” was a central goal of his administration, with scepticism about his pronouncements strongest in the northern and Midlands areas which he has promised to help.One third of those questioned (31 per cent) said that the target of levelling up the UK would never be achieved, and a further 16 per cent said it would take more than 10 years to complete the task that Mr Johnson has set himself. Just 10 per cent said that the project could be concluded within the five-year timescale needed if the PM is to be able to boast of success by the time of the next election and a further 21 per cent said it would take up to 10 years.The poll found deep levels of concern about financial prospects in the coming year, with more than half (56 per cent) expecting their standard of living to be hit by rises in the cost of essentials like energy, housing and food. Large numbers also said they expect to lose out financially from changes to tax rates and benefit levels, as well as the fallout from Brexit.Overall, a quarter of those questioned (25 per cent) said they expect to be worse-off in the coming year than they were last year and one in five (21 per cent) said they would be worse-off than they were in 2019 before the Covid pandemic struck.The gloomy picture came ahead of Rishi Sunak’s crucial autumn budget and spending review on 27 October, at which the chancellor is expected to impose tight restraints on state spending as he starts the job of paying down the £407bn bill for support during the Covid pandemic.A new report from low-pay thinktank the Resolution Foundation called on the chancellor to prioritise action to help families hit by increases in energy bills, expected to reach an average £1,650 a year by April – a 50 per cent increase on 2020.The Foundation said that low-income households will be disproportionately affected, as they currently spend three times as much on energy, as a proportion of their incomes, as the richest fifth of households.By next year, energy costs could make up more than 10 per cent of the spending of the poorest tenth of households, compared to around 3.6 per cent for the richest tenth.Resolution Foundation senior economist Jonny Marshall said that the best way to alleviate the crisis would have been for Mr Sunak to preserve the £20-a-week uplift to Universal Credit introduced last year in response to Covid and scrapped earlier this month.If that was no longer possible, he should instead immediately increase the Warm Homes Discount for low-income groups from its current £140 to £161, with a further uprating to £208 in April to keep pace with rising bills, said Mr Marshall. And he said that the £25 Cold Weather Payment – issued when temperatures drop below zero for seven consecutive days – should be extended to an additional 4 million means-tested households.“While much of the debate around rising gas prices has focused on protecting affected firms, the chancellor must prioritise protecting affected families in his upcoming budget, not least as average bills are set to increase by 50 per cent in just two years,” said Mr Marshall.“Having missed the best opportunity to help families by failing to maintain the uplift to Universal Credit, he should now to look to improving schemes like the Warm Homes Discount and Cold Weather Payments to help low-income families in particular.“The current crisis reminds us all of the need to wean Britain off fossil fuels, and to heat and insulate our homes in a more sustainable way. Fixing those problems will be the ultimate test of the government’s energy policy this autumn.”Today’s poll found that fears over rising cost of living are strongest among the elderly, with 73 per cent of over-65s saying they expect their finances to be hit by inflation on essentials – including 31 per cent who expect their standard of living to get significantly worse over the next 12 months.Some 43 per cent of those responding to the Savanta ComRes poll said they expect their financial position to worsen over the coming year as a result of tax rises, against just 12 per cent who said changes to taxation would benefit them. Three in 10 (29 per cent) of voters said their finances will take a hit from changes to welfare benefits and a quarter (25 per cent) from problems with employment.More than a third of voters (37 per cent) said they expect their personal finances to suffer over the coming year from the impact of Brexit on the UK economy, compared to just 17 per cent who thought EU withdrawal would be good for them financially.No region of the UK, social class or age group believed on balance that Brexit would benefit them financially. And even among Leave voters there was little sign of hope that Brexit would deliver a boost to finances, with just 22 per cent saying they would be better off over the coming year as a result, against 21 per cent who said it would leave them worse-off.Concerns over the cost of living crisis were strongest in the Yorkshire and Humber region and West Midlands, which include many of the so-called Red Wall seats seized from Labour by Conservatives in the 2019 general election on a promise of “levelling up” living standards.Today’s poll found strong support for the levelling up agenda, with 43 per cent saying it was right to make it the government’s top priority and backing highest in London, Yorkshire and the Humber, the northwest, northeast and West Midlands. Just 29 per cent said it should not be the top priority.But just 28 per cent said they believed Mr Johnson was sincere in his claim to have put the project at the heart of his agenda, against 47 per cent who said he was not and 25 per cent who did not know. Even among Tory voters, more than a quarter (27 per cent) did not believe the PM was sincere about it, against 48 per cent who said he was.Meanwhile, 28 per cent said they did not understand what “levelling up” means and 17 per cent said they had never heard of it. Fewer than half (47 per cent) had heard the phrase and believed they knew what it meant.• Savanta ComRes questioned 2,103 British adults on 9 and 10 October. More

Senior officials in the French government have concluded that Boris Johnson is a populist who plans to derail any progress in the post-Brexit relationship with the EU, a report has suggested.French sources told the Guardian this week that Emmanuel Macron’s government believes Mr Johnson is motivated by “short-term domestic political interests” and wants to use tensions with France to keep Brexit alive as an issue in British politics.The report follows talks between the UK and EU over the implementation of the Brexit agreement signed late last year amid growing concern over trade issues in Northern Ireland.If no solution can be found, there are fears that the trade deal could be suspended, potentially leading to retaliatory measures between the two sides.A French source told the Guardian that the “instability” in the relationship was due to Mr Johnson and Brexit minister Lord David Frost’s attitude to the negotiations.“The instability is that some have concluded that Johnson and Lord Frost do not want agreements on the Northern Ireland protocol, or anything much, but will continue ramping up demands until they are impossible,” they said.There are also concerns that the UK government does not want to improve relations until after France’s presidential election next April, according to the report, when Mr Macron is set to battle for a second term in office.Earlier this week, the European Commission unveiled a package of measures to reduce checks on food crossing the Irish Sea by 80 per cent as part of efforts to ease trade tensions in Northern Ireland.Lord Frost acknowledged on Friday that the EU had made “encouraging” moves towards resolving the dispute but indicated that the UK government wanted the bloc to go further.“I think the EU has definitely made an effort in pushing beyond where they typically go in these areas and we’re quite encouraged by that,” he said on Friday.“But obviously there is still quite a big gap. And that’s what we’ve got to work through today and in the future.”The Brexit minister has also said that the UK government wants the EU to agree to removing the European Court of Justice from Northern Ireland’s trading arrangements – a concession that Brussels has so far refused.Additional reporting by Reuters More