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Private schools will be taxed £1.7bn to fund improvements to the country’s state schools if Labour wins the next election, Sir Keir Starmer has revealed.On the second day of the party’s annual conference, the Labour leader insisted he could not “justify” the charitable status enjoyed by the fee-paying institutions.The party said it would seek to raise the funds by ending the VAT exemption currently in place, which it estimated would bring in £1.6bn, while closing a separate loophole on business tax, adding over £104m.Labour added that it would use the money to guarantee every child had access to a computer device at home, and to establish a “renewal scheme” for the 1.3 million devices delivered during the Covid pandemic to schoolchildren without adequate access to online learning. Sir Keir said the move would ensure pupils were “equipped for life”, telling the Sunday Mirror: “Labour wants every parent to be able to send their child to a great state school. “But improving them to benefit everyone costs money. That’s why we can’t justify continued charitable status for private schools.”The Labour leader also said he wanted to see a “rethink” on education, with the Covid pandemic exposing the widening gap between children of wealthy and poor families.Angela Rayner, the party’s deputy leader, added: “Private schools shouldn’t get a tax break. Labour will tax private schools and spend the money on helping the kids that need it.”The vow to end the charitable status of private schools in England was also included in Jeremy Corbyn’s 2019 manifesto, with a promise to “close tax loopholes enjoyed by elite private schools and use that money to improve the lives of all children”.The announcement comes after the first day of the party’s annual conference was overshadowed by internal wrangling over an overhaul of Labour’s rule book, with Sir Keir forced to water down his proposals in the face of considerable opposition.Later today, conference will vote on the new rules, which include increasing the nominations threshold for future Labour leadership contenders from 10 per cent to 20 per cent – a move opposed by left-wing MPs. More

Labour members who joined the party because they were inspired by Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership were “misguided”, one of Keir Starmer’s shadow ministers has said.Speaking at the party’s conference in Brighton shadow security minister Conor McGinn said members who supported the former leader were not necessarily “irretrievable” but had been “misled” by others. Labour’s membership grew from around 200,000 people during the 2015 leadership election to around 500,000 at its peak – with the vast majority of new joiners supporting the leadership.Speaking at the same event, another shadow minister Wes Streeting, claimed Labour had been characterised by “self-indulgent politics” during the previous leadership as he called for his allies to take the fight to the party’s left wing.Figures on the party’s left reacted angrily to the comments, with campaign group Momentum saying those had really been misled were those who “voted for Starmer on the basis of unity, electability, and the ten pledges – and been repaid with civil war, a polling deficit, and dithering centrism”.Speaking a rally for the centrist Labour First group shadow minister Wes Streeting said Labour’s approach from 2015 had been characterised by “self-indulgent politics, that puts the feeling of a conference hall before the interests of a country”.Turning his fire on the party’s left, he said: “The reason they’re booing, the reason they’re jeering, is because they know they’ve lost the argument, they’re going to be losing the vote, and they’re not going to let Labour lose the next election. So let’s take it to them this week,” he added, adding that Labour could then take it to the Conservatives next week. Mr Streeting, who reportedly seen as a future leader on the party’s right wing, called on members to give their “full throated support” for Sir Keir during the conference. Shadow minister Conor McGinn told the same gathering: “We have to acknowledge that many of [those who joined to support Corbyn] got involved for the right reasons. They may have been misguided, or misled. “But ultimately, they are not irretrievable, and we need to find a way to ensure that that energy and enthusiasm, that those particularly young people brought to the party.”A spokesperson for the left-wing campaign group Momentum said: “The members who have really been misled are those who voted for Starmer on the basis of unity, electability, and the ten pledges – and been repaid with civil war, a polling deficit, and dithering centrism.”Right now thousands of young people at The World Transformed festival discussing socialist ideas and strategy. Until Labour to Win can start to offer actual solutions to the crisis of the 21st century, they will never be able to recreate that energy.” Speaking at the same event Johanna Baxter, a Labour NEC member aligned with Labour First, said the party was now spending £2m a year on legal fees dealing with antisemitism cases. She suggested this expenditure was one reason behind staffing cuts. More

When Hungary and Poland joined the European Union in 2004, after decades of Communist domination, they thirsted for Western democratic standards and prosperity.Yet 17 years later, as the EU ramps up efforts to rein in democratic backsliding in both countries, some of the governing right-wing populists in Hungary and Poland are comparing the bloc to their former Soviet oppressors — and flirting with the prospect of exiting the bloc.“Brussels sends us overlords who are supposed to bring Poland to order, on our knees,” a leading member of Poland’s governing Law and Justice party, Marek Suski, said this month, adding that Poland “will fight the Brussels occupier” as it fought past Nazi and Soviet occupiers.It’s unclear to what extent this kind of talk represents a real desire to leave the 27-member bloc or a negotiating tactic to counter arm-twisting from Brussels. The two countries are the largest net beneficiaries of EU money, and the vast majority of their citizens want to stay in the bloc.Yet the rhetoric has increased in recent months, after the EU resorted to financially penalizing members that fail its rule of law and democratic governance standards.In December, EU lawmakers approved a regulation tying access to some EU funds to a country’s respect for the rule of law. This is seen as targeting Hungary and Poland — close political allies often accused of eroding judicial independence and media freedom, and curtailing minority and migrant rights.Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban called the so-called rule of law mechanism “a political and ideological weapon” designed to blackmail countries like Hungary that reject immigration. His Polish counterpart, Mateusz Morawiecki called it “a bad solution that threatens a breakup of Europe in the future.”The EU’s executive Commission has also delayed payment of tens of billions of euros in post-pandemic recovery funds over concerns the two countries’ spending plans do not adequately safeguard against corruption or guarantee judicial independence.In an interview Thursday with the AP, Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto was defiant, insisting that the withholding of EU funds would not compel his country to change course. “We will not compromise on these issues because we are a … sovereign nation. And no one, not even the European Commission, should blackmail us regarding these policies,” Szijjarto said.This month, th e EU Commission moved to force Poland to comply with the rulings of Europe’s top court by recommending daily fines in a long-running dispute over the country’s judicial system.This prompted Ryszard Terlecki, deputy head of Poland’s governing party, to say Poland “should think about … how much we can cooperate,” with the EU and consider “drastic solutions.” Terlecki later walked back his comments. Hungary’s Orban has repeatedly insisted that “there is life outside the European Union.” Last month an opinion article in daily Magyar Nemzet — a flagship newspaper allied with Orban’s Fidesz party — said “it’s time to talk about Huxit” — a Hungarian version of Brexit, the U.K.’s departure from the EU last year.With the finance minister also suggesting Hungary might be better off outside the EU, Orban’s opponents worry he is actually considering that.Katalin Cseh, a liberal Hungarian EU lawmaker, told The Associated Press it was “outrageous” that senior Fidesz politicians and pundits were “openly calling to consider” Hungary’s EU exit.“They stand ready to destroy the single greatest achievement of our country’s recent history,” Cseh said. But Daniel Hegedus, a fellow for Central Europe at the German Marshall Fund, says the Hungarian rhetoric could be “politically calculated leveraging” against the potential loss of EU funding.“(They are saying), ‘If you don’t give us the money, then we can be even more uncomfortable for you,’” he said.Recent surveys show that well over 80% of both Poles and Hungarians want to stay in the EU.This seems to have had an effect on both governments.In a radio interview last week, Orban said Hungary “will be among the last ones in the EU, should it ever cease to exist.”Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Poland’s most powerful politician, said last week that the country’s future is in the EU and that there will be “no Polexit.” Political analyst Jacek Kucharczyk, president of the Institute of Public Affairs, a Warsaw-based think tank, told the AP that while Poland’s ruling party invigorates its nationalist base with its feuds with Brussels, popular support for EU membership constrains its options. “The result is a kind of balancing act,” Kucharczyk said. “Tough words about the EU and immediate and vehement denials that they want Poland to leave the Union.”But Polish opposition leader — and former top EU official — Donald Tusk warned that allowing anti-EU rhetoric to grow out of control could unintentionally touch off an unstoppable process.“Catastrophes like, for example, Brexit, or the possible exit of Poland from the EU, very often happen not because someone planned it, but because someone did not know how to plan a wise alternative,” Tusk said. With Orban’s party facing tight elections next year and Poland’s governing coalition showing strains, battles with the EU can also serve purely domestic political purposes. Hungary’s anti-EU rhetoric is likely a “test balloon” to gauge public support on how far the government can take its conflicts with the bloc, Hegedus said, and to garner support for the ruling party ahead of elections.“I think they are framing this whole issue very consciously so that people will associate the European Union with rather controversial issues which are dividing Hungarian society,” he said. Some European leaders have already run out of patience with both countries.In July, the Commission started legal action against Poland and Hungary for what it sees as disrespect for LGBT rights. In June, after Hungary adopted a law that critics said targeted LGBT people, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Hungary “has no business” in the EU, and suggested Orban activates the mechanism that precipitated Brexit. Huxit would be “clearly against the will of Hungarian citizens, who remain staunchly pro-EU,” Cseh, the European Parliament member, said. “And we will fight for our country’s hard-earned place in the European community with everything we’ve got.”___Gera reported from Warsaw, Poland. More

It’s the premier martial arts group in Europe for right-wing extremists. German authorities have twice banned their signature tournament. But Kampf der Nibelungen, or Battle of the Nibelungs, still thrives on Facebook where organizers maintain multiple pages, as well as on Instagram and YouTube, which they use to spread their ideology, draw in recruits and make money through ticket sales and branded merchandise.The Battle of the Nibelungs — a reference to a classic heroic epic much loved by the Nazis — is one of dozens of far-right groups that continue to leverage mainstream social media for profit, despite Facebook’s and other platforms’ repeated pledges to purge themselves of extremism.All told, there are at least 54 Facebook profiles belonging to 39 entities that the German government and civil society groups have flagged as extremist, according to research shared with The Associated Press by the Counter Extremism Project, a non-profit policy and advocacy group formed to combat extremism. The groups have nearly 268,000 subscribers and friends on Facebook alone.CEP also found 39 related Instagram profiles, 16 Twitter profiles and 34 YouTube channels, which have gotten over 9.5 million views. Nearly 60% of the profiles were explicitly aimed at making money, displaying prominent links to online shops or photos promoting merchandise.Click on the big blue “view shop” button on the Erik & Sons Facebook page and you can buy a T-shirt that says, “My favorite color is white,” for 20 euros ($23). Deutsches Warenhaus offers “Refugees not welcome” stickers for just 2.50 euros ($3) and Aryan Brotherhood tube scarves with skull faces for 5.88 euros ($7). The Facebook feed of OPOS Records promotes new music and merchandise, including “True Aggression,” “Pride & Dignity,” and “One Family” T-shirts. The brand, which stands for “One People One Struggle,” also links to its online shop from Twitter and Instagram.——EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is part of a collaboration between The Associated Press and the PBS series FRONTLINE that examines challenges to the ideas and institutions of traditional U.S. and European democracy.—-The people and organizations in CEP’s dataset are a who’s who of Germany’s far-right music and combat sports scenes. “They are the ones who build the infrastructure where people meet, make money, enjoy music and recruit,” said Alexander Ritzmann, the lead researcher on the project. “It’s most likely not the guys I’ve highlighted who will commit violent crimes. They’re too smart. They build the narratives and foster the activities of this milieu where violence then appears.”CEP said it focused on groups that want to overthrow liberal democratic institutions and norms such as freedom of the press, protection of minorities and universal human dignity, and believe that the white race is under siege and needs to be preserved, with violence if necessary. None has been banned, but almost all have been described in German intelligence reports as extremist, CEP said.On Facebook the groups seem harmless. They avoid blatant violations of platform rules, such as using hate speech or posting swastikas, which is generally illegal in Germany.By carefully toeing the line of propriety, these key architects of Germany’s far-right use the power of mainstream social media to promote festivals, fashion brands, music labels and mixed martial arts tournaments that can generate millions in sales and connect like-minded thinkers from around the world.But simply cutting off such groups could have unintended, damaging consequences.“We don’t want to head down a path where we are telling sites they should remove people based on who they are but not what they do on the site,” said David Greene civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco.Giving platforms wide latitude to sanction organizations deemed undesirable could give repressive governments leverage to eliminate their critics. “That can have really serious human rights concerns,” he said. “The history of content moderation has shown us that it’s almost always to the disadvantage of marginalized and powerless people.”German authorities banned the Battle of the Nibelungs event in 2019, on the grounds that it was not actually about sports, but instead was grooming fighters with combat skills for political struggle.In 2020, as the coronavirus raged, organizers planned to stream the event online — using Instagram, among other places, to promote the webcast. A few weeks before the planned event, however, over a hundred black-clad police in balaclavas broke up a gathering at a motorcycle club in Magdeburg, where fights were being filmed for the broadcast, and hauled off the boxing ring, according to local media reports.The Battle of the Nibelungs is a “central point of contact” for right-wing extremists, according to German government intelligence reports. The organization has been explicit about its political goals — namely to fight against the “rotting” liberal democratic order — and has drawn adherents from across Europe as well as the United States.Members of a California white supremacist street fighting club called the Rise Above Movement, and its founder, Robert Rundo, have attended the Nibelungs tournament. In 2018 at least four Rise Above members were arrested on rioting charges for taking their combat training to the streets at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. A number of Battle of Nibelungs alums have landed in prison, including for manslaughter, assault and attacks on migrants.National Socialism Today, which describes itself as a “magazine by nationalists for nationalists” has praised Battle of the Nibelungs and other groups for fostering a will to fight and motivating “activists to improve their readiness for combat.”But there are no references to professionalized, anti-government violence on the group’s social media feeds. Instead, it’s positioned as a health-conscious lifestyle brand, which sells branded tea mugs and shoulder bags.“Exploring nature. Enjoying home!” gushes one Facebook post above a photo of a musclebound guy on a mountaintop wearing Resistend-branded sportswear, one of the Nibelung tournament’s sponsors. All the men in the photos are pumped and white, and they are portrayed enjoying wholesome activities such as long runs and alpine treks.Elsewhere on Facebook, Thorsten Heise – who has been convicted of incitement to hatred and called “one of the most prominent German neo-Nazis” by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in the German state of Thuringia — also maintains multiple pages.Frank Kraemer, who the German government has described as a “right-wing extremist musician,” uses his Facebook page to direct people to his blog and his Sonnenkreuz online store, which sells white nationalist and coronavirus conspiracy books as well as sports nutrition products and “vaccine rebel” T-shirts for girls.Battle of the Nibelungs declined to comment. Resistend, Heise and Kraemer didn’t respond to requests for comment.Facebook told AP it employs 350 people whose primary job is to counter terrorism and organized hate, and that it is investigating the pages and accounts flagged in this reporting.“We ban organizations and individuals that proclaim a violent mission, or are engaged in violence,” said a company spokesperson, who added that Facebook had banned more than 250 white supremacist organizations, including groups and individuals in Germany. The spokesperson said the company had removed over 6 million pieces of content tied to organized hate globally between April and June and is working to move even faster.Google said it has no interest in giving visibility to hateful content on YouTube and was looking into the accounts identified in this reporting. The company said it worked with dozens of experts to update its policies on supremacist content in 2019, resulting in a five-fold spike in the number of channels and videos removed.Twitter says it’s committed to ensuring that public conversation is “safe and healthy” on its platform and that it doesn’t tolerate violent extremist groups. “Threatening or promoting violent extremism is against our rules,” a spokesperson told AP, but did not comment on the specific accounts flagged in this reporting.Robert Claus, who wrote a book on the extreme right martial arts scene, said that the sports brands in CEP’s data set are “all rooted in the militant far-right neo-Nazi scene in Germany and Europe.” One of the founders of the Battle of the Nibelungs, for example, is part of the violent Hammerskin network and another early supporter, the Russian neo-Nazi Denis Kapustin, also known as Denis Nikitin, has been barred from entering the European Union for ten years, he said.Banning such groups from Facebook and other major platforms would potentially limit their access to new audiences, but it could also drive them deeper underground, making it more difficult to monitor their activities, he said.“It’s dangerous because they can recruit people,” he said. “Prohibiting those accounts would interrupt their contact with their audience, but the key figures and their ideology won’t be gone.”Thorsten Hindrichs, an expert in Germany’s far-right music scene who teaches at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, said there’s a danger that the apparently harmless appearance of Germany’s right-wing music heavyweights on Facebook and Twitter, which they mostly use to promote their brands, could help normalize the image of extremists. Extreme right concerts in Germany were drawing around 2 million euros ($2.3 million) a year in revenue before the coronavirus pandemic, he estimated, not counting sales of CDs and branded merchandise. He said kicking extremist music groups off Facebook is unlikely to hit sales too hard, as there are other platforms they can turn to, like Telegram and Gab, to reach their followers. “Right-wing extremists aren’t stupid. They will always find ways to promote their stuff,” he said. None of these groups’ activity on mainstream platforms is obviously illegal, though it may violate Facebook guidelines that bar “dangerous individuals and organizations” that advocate or engage in violence online or offline. Facebook says it doesn’t allow praise or support of Nazism, white supremacy, white nationalism or white separatism and bars people and groups that adhere to such “hate ideologies.” Last week, Facebook  removed almost 150 accounts and pages linked to the German anti-lockdown Querdenken movement, under a new “social harm” policy, which targets groups that spread misinformation or incite violence but didn’t fit into the platform’s existing categories of bad actors. But how these evolving rules will be applied remains murky and contested. “If you do something wrong on the platform, it’s easier for a platform to justify an account suspension than to just throw someone out because of their ideology. That would be more difficult with respect to human rights,” said Daniel Holznagel, a Berlin judge who used to work for the German federal government on hate speech issues and also  contributed to CEP’s report. “It’s a foundation of our Western society and human rights that our legal regimes do not sanction an idea, an ideology, a thought.” In the meantime, there’s news from the folks at the Battle of the Nibelungs. “Starting today you can also dress your smallest ones with us,” reads a June post on their Facebook feed. The new line of kids wear includes a shell-pink T-shirt for girls, priced at 13.90 euros ($16). A child pictured wearing the boy version, in black, already has boxing gloves on. —-Contact AP’s global investigative team at [email protected] or https://www.ap.org/tips/ More

A Labour government would bring back binding industry-wide agreements governing workers’ wages, the party’s deputy leader is to announce.Opening the party’s annual conference in Brighton on Saturday Angela Rayner will commit the party to introducing “Fair Pay Agreements” – staring with the social care sector.The announcement, strongly welcomed by trade unions, echoes a commitment in the party’s 2017 and 2019 manifestos under Jeremy Corbyn.The agreements would be introduced alongside a raft of new employment rights including an immediate increase in the minimum wage to £10 for all workers, rights for all workers in the gig economy, and high statutory sick pay.The party is also promising to ban one-sided zero hours contracts, improve enforcement, introduce mandatory ethnic minority pay gap, and give all workers the right to flexible working and to “switch off” in the evening.Collective bargaining agreements across sectors set minimum standards for wages and conditions that companies in that industry must follow. Across Europe an average of around 60 per cent of workers are covered by such agreements, with British workers once enjoying a similar level of coverage.But since the 1980s the UK has become an outlier and the number of workers covered by such broad collective agreements has plummeted to between just 20 and 30 per cent. Countries including France, Belgium, Austria and Finland all have over 90 per cent of workers covered by such agreements. In German the figure is 59 per cent, Spain 69 per cent, and the Netherlands 84 per cent. “Working people don’t want a hand out from a Minister sat in Whitehall – workers want the power to stand up for themselves and demand their fair share and a better deal,” Angela Rayner will say.“The best way to improve the lot of working people is collectively, achieving more by the strength of our common endeavour than we achieve alone.“So the next Labour government will bring together representatives of workers and employers to agree Fair Pay Agreements that will apply to every worker in each sector, starting in social care. Fair Pay Agreements will drive up pay, improve conditions in the workplace and stop bad bosses from exploiting their workers and driving down pay and standards for everyone.“When Labour is in government there won’t just be a former social care worker and shop steward in the office of Deputy Prime Minister, working people will have a seat at the Cabinet table and their voices will be heard. The next Labour government will end poverty wages and insecure work for good.”TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said the agreements would “be a game-changer for millions of working families”She added: “Giving workers and their unions more power to bargain collectively is the best way to improve pay and working conditions across Britain. “These much-needed proposals are about making sure that hard work pays off for everyone.” Andy McDonald, Labour’s Shadow Employment Rights and Protections Secretary, said: “Instead of an employment model that delivers for working people the Conservatives have ushered in one that means a race to the bottom on the backs of working people. “Outsourcing, zero-hours contracts and agency work drive down pay, standards and conditions across our whole economy for everyone.“It is high time that the key workers who got us through this crisis – and all working people – are given the dignity and security at work that they deserve.”The party’s left wing also welcomed the policy. Callum Bell, Momentum vice chair, said: “Sectoral collective bargaining would allow working people to shift the balance of power in the workplace back in our favour. These are kind of policies which could start to transform our economy to benefit ordinary workers rather than billionaire elites. If only policy like this was going to be the focal point of conference, rather than the leadership’s fumbling attempts at anti-democratic rule changes.” More

The government has won an interim injunction to prevent protesters from occupying the A20 and strategic roads linked to the Port of Dover after climate protesters blocked access this week.Kent Police arrested 39 people on Friday when activists connected to Insulate Britain – an offshoot of the climate action group Extinction Rebellion – blocked roads in and out of the cross-Channel ferry port at about 8.20am.The demonstration created long queues of vehicles, with several drivers expressing anger with the activists.Those who breach the injunction will be in contempt of court, putting them at risk of imprisonment and an unlimited fine, according to the government.“We are absolutely committed to protecting the right to peaceful protest, but it is unacceptable that people cannot go about their day-to-day businesses and that businesses or critical supplies should be put on a knife’s edge because of the reckless actions of a few protesters,” transport secretary Grant Shapps said.“I commend the work of Kent Police and the Port of Dover authorities today to quickly resolve the issue and keep our critical supplies moving, and I will do everything to prevent these sort of guerrilla tactics from putting people’s lives at risk and keeping our emergency services away from the communities that need them.”The injunction request came after members of Insulate Britain blocked parts of the M25 five times in the past fortnight, causing disruption for motorists and passengers who were caught up in miles of traffic.Speaking on Friday, Chief Superintendent Simon Thompson of Kent Police said: “The impact this disruption had on the local community and port-bound traffic is not lost on us and I would like to thank those adversely affected by it for their patience whilst we made the area safe again.“Kent Police is working with the other forces, the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] and partner agencies to gather evidence and ensure there are consequences for those who break the law.”One Insulate Britain protester, a 27-year-old called Stephanie, told the PA news agency that the group’s actions were necessary to prevent “chaos” from climate change in the future.“I want to be home with my family spending time with them, but if we don’t do this they aren’t going to have a future,” she said.“The government are not doing enough. On the current trajectory we are heading for chaos.”The Port of Dover is Europe’s busiest ferry port, used by an average of 6,200 road haulage vehicles every day in 2020, and handles 17 per cent of the UK’s trade in goods.Additional reporting by PA More

Keir Starmer endured a “car crash” meeting with union chiefs on Friday afternoon in which he failed to drum up support for changes to Labour party rules. The opposition leader had wanted to rewrite the regulations for his party’s internal elections in a move critics said was an attempt to “gerrymander” future leadership elections to the disadvantage of the left.But Sir Keir looked set to lose his first major conference battle after catastrophically misjudging the level of opposition to the move – which would have ended “one member, one vote” and brought in an electoral college system whereby MPs and unions would hold most of the power. If all had gone to plan, Sir Keir would have won support for the change at the meeting on Friday afternoon before taking the proposal to the party’s national executive committee (NEC) in the evening for approval – and then on to conference next week.But after union leaders panned his proposals for a second time this week, Labour sources admitted on Friday evening that the proposals would not be brought to the NEC meeting.Allies of Sir Keir are now thought to be trying to negotiate a “face-saving” rule change that would give the leadership a desperately needed win to restore its authority – and potentially still dilute the power of the left. But Sir Keir’s critics from within the party celebrated the apparent death of the electoral college plan.“Starmer’s attack on democracy is floundering,” said Gaya Sriskanthan, co-chair of left-wing campaign group Momentum.“This delay has been won by the grassroots members who have taken action to organise their delegates, lobby their unions, and mobilise ahead of conference.“But it’s not over yet. We have to keep up the pressure to make sure this rule change, and all the other regressive changes concocted by the leadership, get comprehensively rejected.”The NEC will meet again on Saturday morning, and Sir Keir’s allies hope they will have agreed something concrete with union chiefs in advance that they can bring to conference.Sources say the meeting with the trade unionists on Friday afternoon was characterised by even those who are normally allies of Sir Keir giving the leader a hard time over the policy.As was the case earlier in the week, some unions were openly hostile to the proposals, with even moderates unconvinced.Before Friday’s meeting, Unison, the country’s biggest union, appeared to set itself against the plan after a majority of members on its Labour Link committee, which governs its relationship with the party, released a statement saying they opposed the change. Sir Keir ordinarily has a majority on the party’s NEC as long as he has support from moderate-led trade unions, but he failed to win their support for the proposals on this occasion. A return to the electoral college has little support in Labour ranks outside its Blairite right wing, which would benefit from such a change because it has minority support within the membership but a major caucus among MPs in the parliamentary party. More

Rather than seeking a punch-up with the left at this week’s Labour conference, Sir Keir Starmer intends to speak directly to voters about his aim to lead the “party of change” at an election which will be fought on cost-of-living issues such as unaffordable houses and spiralling energy prices, a close shadow cabinet ally has told The Independent.Many expect a clash with the left at the Brighton gathering, after they branded this week’s pamphlet setting out Sir Keir’s vision as a breach of his promise to stick with key elements of the agenda of predecessor Jeremy Corbyn.In a provocative move, Mr Corbyn himself on Friday accused the leadership of “failing to listen” to the Labour movement over calls for a wealth tax and rapid decarbonisation of the economy and warned that the leader has been trying to sideline members and unions and “shut down debate” with plans to give more power to MPs to pick future leaders.But on the eve of the five-day conference, shadow housing secretary Lucy Powell insisted that the policy platform being developed is “radical” and will allow Labour to go into the election expected in 2023 or 2024 as the party of change after almost 15 years of Tory-led government.She dismissed as “hackneyed” the idea that Sir Keir must follow the example of Neil Kinnock or Tony Blair in seeking confrontation with his own party to demonstrate he is in charge.“I don’t really buy into that argument that he has to create some kind of false internal row in order to show strength,” said Ms Powell.“I don’t think that’s what Keir is about and I don’t think that’s what his intention is.“What this conference needs to be about and will be about, more than anything, is speaking directly to the country and to voters about the issues that they care about.“That means the cost-of-living crisis and the housing crisis. It means the huge catch-up in education and mental support and social interaction that our kids need and the massive backlog of pressure that the NHS is under, and that’s before you even get to the climate crisis. I’ve no doubt that will be the main focus of this conference.”Mr Corbyn will address a number of fringe events in Brighton, sparking fears that he could distract from efforts to show that Labour is under new leadership. In an eve-of-conference challenge his successor, the former leader said: “Our movement has the answers to the big questions of the age – inequality, the climate crisis and the pandemic – but our leaders are failing to listen and put these solutions front and centre.“At conference, I hope to hear how Labour will bring in a wealth tax to fund a National Care Service like the NHS, will take the radical action needed to decarbonise by 2030, stand against the drumbeat of a new cold war and will rein in the runaway wealth and power of a tiny elite.“I know our trade unions and members have developed these policies. But the signs are that the party leadership wants to try to shut down debate, sideline the members and trade unions with the end result that Labour props up rather than challenges our broken political and economic system.”Despite widespread calls for Sir Keir to offer an olive branch to the left by readmitting Mr Corbyn into the parliamentary party, Ms Powell said she expected a “warm” reception for the leader at his first in-person conference, after last year’s event was forced online by the Covid pandemic.Annual conference gives the opposition a rare opportunity to command the attention of the media and TV audiences and the leader can be expected to use it to “open up” more to voters about his personality, background and formative experiences and his hopes for the country, she said.With probably only two conference speeches ahead of him before the general election, many in Westminster expect Sir Keir will want to take the opportunity to shake off perceptions that his approach is over-cautious and his presentation wooden and uninspiring.Ms Powell said he had been held back by the pandemic in seizing the agenda in the way he would have wanted.Eighteen months after he won the leadership with a warning that Labour had “a mountain to climb” to regain power, she admitted that the party was still “at base camp” with a mountain ahead.“We’ve been in a massive national crisis and, quite naturally, the opposition gets squeezed out because people want to hear what the government is doing,” she said.“This is undoubtedly the biggest moment he has to project the party and himself as a leader and I’ve got no doubt that he’ll seize that opportunity with relish.”While insisting that the next election remains “winnable” – in part because of the “volatility” of the modern electorate – Ms Powell said Sir Keir was also focused on longer-term change to the party and must not be sidetracked by concerns over its weak current performance in the polls.“My advice to Keir and to any other leader at any other time is that you can’t slavishly follow the polls,” she said. “You’ve got to pick your strategic direction of travel and move towards it. Sometimes you get a short-term gain, sometimes you get a short-term hit. But the challenge is to keep the eye on the prize of the next election and the one after it and the one after that.“It is like turning an oil tanker around. You can’t judge it on short-term changes in polls. You’ve got to have that long-term view in order to make the strategic headway and the big-change headway that we need to make.”She pointed to her own portfolio of housing and levelling up as a key area where Labour can make inroads into Tory support in election battlegrounds ranging from young city dwellers unable to buy a home to traditional Labour voters in the former Red Wall of the Midlands and north who are watching bills spiral out of their reach.Launching plans earlier this week to force developers to build more affordable homes and give first-time buyers priority on new properties, Ms Powell made the bold claim that Labour is now “the party of home ownership” after a decade of skyrocketing prices, falling property ownership and unaffordable rents under Tories.The long-standing promise that hard work will be rewarded with the ability to enjoy a secure and affordable home has been shattered by Conservative governments constantly pandering to the needs of speculators and developers over those wanting to buy or rent property, she said.This can be seen in new figures showing that rents are now £1,800 higher in England – and more than £4,200 in London – since 2011, she said.And over the same period, the cost of buying a home has shot up nearly 50 per cent, outstripping wage growth by almost three times.The impact has been hardest on the younger generation with 774,000 fewer home-owing households aged under 45 than there were when Labour left office.Ms Powell – who will develop her proposals further in a keynote speech in Brighton on Sunday – said she was “relishing” the chance to take on Michael Gove on the issue at the despatch box, after prime minister Boris Johnson moved his cabinet consigliere to a new Department for Levelling Up.The PM’s decision to put regeneration and housing at the centre of his policy agenda in the coming years could backfire on Tories, she suggested.“I don’t think ‘levelling up’ means very much to the voters and I don’t think it means very much in reality,” she said. “Housing is a key part of levelling up. It sits well in the middle of those strategic issues that the rebalancing of our country should be about, including transport infrastructure, skills and access to good decent jobs.“I’m sceptical about the government’s real appetite to take on some of these issues, because what we’ve seen over the last 10 years is they constantly come down on the side of a rigged market which puts all the power in the hands of developers and landowners and away from communities.“Unless you’re prepared to come forward with policies like those we are setting out this week, which are actually very radical, but sensible and necessary, then you’re not going to deliver on that so-called ‘levelling up’ agenda, because you’re not prepared to do what’s necessary.“As a proud northerner and Mancunian, I’m more than happy to take on Michael Gove on tackling the root causes of regional inequality in this country and that deep-seated inequality that affects parts of the north.” More