Labour conference: Andy McDonald resigns from shadow cabinet, saying party ‘more divided’ under Starmer – as it happened

A party source has said the motion saying Labour should commit to PR has been defeated. Many activists were in favour but it seems it did not have the support of big unions.

Emily Thornberry, the shadow international trade secretary, has told a fringe meeting that Labour would apply the same controls to the provision of military and police training to foreign governments as already apply to the export of arms to foreign regimes.

Addressing the New Statesman meeting on human rights and trade, she said that the British armed forces and police were rightly regarded as among the “most skilled and professional in the world” and that when they provided training to counterparts abroad it was good for relations with Britain’s partners. She went on:

But there is an inescapable problem. If all countries wish to learn from ours, we will inevitably face situations where some of the training being provided in Britain is used to abuse human rights overseas, ranging from the brutal repression of peaceful protesters to the indiscriminate targeting of civilians in war.

She said Labour would make it unlawful for ministers to authorise training like this “where there is a serious risk it will be used by the recipient forces to violate international law, or engage in acts of internal repression, or external aggression”.

She went on:

Like arms exports, the decisions made by ministers on training will be published on a quarterly basis, and like arms exports, those decisions will be subject to scrutiny by parliament and challenge in the courts.

And most importantly, when we conduct the root-and-branch reform of our arms export regime which I promised here in Brighton in 2017, whatever changes we make to that system will apply equally to our provision of training as well.

Here are extracts from Andy McDonald’s resignation letter.

• McDonald says Keir Starmer has made his position as shadow secretary of state for employment rights “untenable” because Starmer told him to oppose raising the minimum wage to £15 an hour. He says:

Yesterday, your office instructed me to go into a meeting to argue against a national minimum wage of £15 an hour and against statutory sick pay at the living wage. This is something I could not do.

Labour is committed to raising the national minimum wage to £10 an hour. Currently the national living wage for people age 23 and over is £8.91.

• McDonald argues that this shows the party does not appreciate the value of low-paid workers. He says:

We live in a time when the people of this country have a renewed awareness of how important the work done by millions of low-paid workers truly is. To have the Labour party, the party of working people, fail to realise that is a bitter blow.

• He claims this is just one of many examples of Starmer failing to stick to the socialist principles that he proclaimed when he was running for leader. And McDonald says the party is “more divided than ever”. He says:

I joined your frontbench team on the basis of the pledges that you made in the leadership campaign to bring about unity within the party and maintain our commitment to socialist policies.

After 18 months of your leadership, our movement is more divided than ever and the pledges that you made to the membership are not being honoured. This is just the latest of many.

The line about Starmer’s commitment to socialist policies refers principally to the 10 pledges he issued during the leadership contest.

McDonald is on the left of Labour, but he is not a hardline Corbynite, and in 2015 he backed Andy Burnham for leader. But he may have felt increasingly isolated in Starmer’s team. He was reportedly the only member of the shadow cabinet to argue against Starmer’s plan to change the leadership election rules when they were announced last week.

Andy McDonald has resigned from his post as shadow secretary of state for employment rights in the shadow cabinet. He says he left because he was ordered to argue against lifting the national minimum wage to £15 an hour (a key GMB demand).

Here is his resignation letter.

John McDonnell, the former shadow chancellor, has said Keir Starmer should “assess his own future” if his conference speech does not lift Labour in the polls. That is tentative code for resign.

Speaking on Times Radio, McDonnell said:

I think if Keir gets the speech right on Wednesday, he can lift everyone’s spirits and go further. If he doesn’t, and we’re not lifting in the polls, Keir is a sensible enough person to actually sit down and assess his own future.

Asked what “assess his own future” meant, McDonnell replied:

I think he’ll look at what he contribution he can make in the future.

Following a card vote, the conference has passed a motion debated this morning criticising the new Australia/UK/US (Aukus) military alliance. The emergency motion, that described Aukus as a “dangerous move that will undermine world peace”, was passed by 70.35% to 29.65%.

This is an embarrassment for Keir Starmer, who told MPs that Labour welcomed the Aukus announcement when Boris Johnson made a statement about it in the Commons earlier this month.

The wording of the anti-Aukus motion echoes criticisms of the pact made by Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader.

The former MP Dame Louise Ellman has announced that she has rejoined Labour. She left the party in October 2019 because she was angry about Jeremy Corbyn’s record on antisemitism, and she says today that she is returning because of Keir Starmer’s willingness to address the problem and because of the party rule changes passed yesterday implementing changes to Labour’s disciplinary processes demanded by the Equality and Human Rights Commission in its report into this issue.

Starmer is someone Britain’s Jews can trust, she says.

But she says there is “considerably more work to be done” to repair Labour’s relations with the Jewish community, and she says the motion on Israel passed this morning (see 1.24pm) was “disgraceful”. It shows there are “still too many in the party who are more obsessed with demonising Israel than reaching a solution to this tragic conflict”, she says.

This afternoon the Labour conference will debate a composite motion saying the next party government should get rid of first past the post for Westminster elections and replace it with a form of proportional representation (PR).

Sir Keir Starmer is not seen as an enthusiastic supporter of PR, but during the Labour leadership contest he promised to consult members on electoral reform and the party’s national executive is adopting a neutral stance on this afternoon’s motion. The Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform says 80% of party activists, who have half the votes at conference, support their cause.

If the motion gets passed, Starmer will not be obliged to include PR in the next manifesto. But he will be under more pressure to do so, and campaigners will argue that they have got closer to making this a Labour priority.

Here is an extract from the motion.

With first past the post votes do not have equal value. General elections are decided by swing voters in fewer than 100 marginal constituencies. FPTP has created ‘electoral deserts’.

FPTP privileges ‘swing voters’ over neglected voters - including younger, black and minority ethnic communities. It creates widespread disenfranchisement, disillusion, and disengagement in politics, throwing our democracy into crisis. It exacerbates regional, class, gender, wealth and racial inequalities in the House of Commons, in our political culture, and in national conversation. FPTP is unfit for purpose, stacked against the interests of less affluent people and communities, and urgently in need of reform.

A voting system in which every vote counts equally is needed to address the worrying levels of alienation, division and mistrust in British politics. Labour in government played a leading role in introducing forms of PR to the UK’s devolved Government. There are systems of PR that retain a strong constituency link between MPs and their electorates, while ensuring that all votes count equally and seats match votes.

The full text of the motion is here.

In his speech to the conference earlier Jonathan Reynolds, the shadow work and pensions secretary, confirmed that Labour would replace universal credit with a “better system”. He did not say much about what the replacement might be like, but he said the focus would be on reducing the taper rate (the rate at which people lose benefit for every extra £1 they earn). He said:

For many people, work simply doesn’t pay enough. It won’t take them two hours to make up the £20 cut – it will take five times that. That’s because up to 75% of the extra money they earn is taken away from them through the taper rate, even before travel costs or childcare come into it. Britons on the lowest incomes effectively pay a higher marginal rate of tax than their prime minister because of that taper rate. It’s perverse. So the next Labour government will change that and make sure people keep more of the money they earn. And it’s just part of our plan. Higher wages, increased sick pay, the right to join a union, flexible working for all, protection from unfair dismissal, a real safety net, and real security and prosperity.

Reeves says as chancellor she would invest in green jobs.

Value for money means knowing when and where not to spend.

But it also means knowing when and where to invest – to prevent far greater costs further down the line.

There is no better example of this than in the case of climate breakdown.

As chancellor I will not shirk our responsibility to future generations and to workers and businesses in Britain.

No dither, no delay. Labour will meet the challenge head on and seize the opportunities of the green transition.

We will provide certainty and show leadership in this decisive decade.

Let me tell you today what I would do as your chancellor.

I will invest in this country’s green transition: gigafactories to build batteries for electric vehicles, thriving hydrogen industry, offshore wind with turbines made in Britain, more green places and safe cycle paths, planting trees and building flood defences, keeping homes warm and getting energy bills down, good new jobs in communities throughout Britain.

In other words, protecting and strengthening our everyday economy. And to make this a reality.

She says she would spend £28bn a year on capital investment for the green transition.

Reeves says Labour would create a new Office for Value for Money to check how public money is spent. And it will have “meaningful powers”, she says.

She says no government should be allowed to mark its own homework.

Reeves cites examples of personal protective equipment (PPE) contracts going to people with links to the Tories.

And she says where those contacts have not delivered, “we want our money back”.

Labour will set up a team to review these contractors. Where suppliers have not delivered, the government will seek to get its money back, she says.

UPDATE: Reeves said:

So I say today: To those who have secured Covid contracts and have not delivered. I give you notice.

We expect that money back.

We will set up a team to go through every line of every failed contract where value was not delivered, and clawback every penny of taxpayers’ money we possibly can.

Because that money belongs in our police. It belongs in our schools and it belongs in our NHS.

Reeves says there will be no return to austerity under Labour.

But Labour will not waste money either, she says. She promises “the biggest wave of insourcing of public services in a generation”.

Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, is deliving her conference speech now.

She says she spent most of her childhood under a Tory government. She says she learnt from the condition of her school what the Conservatives felt about public services.

After 1997 she saw what a difference a Labour government could do. She says it cut class sizes, cut waiting lists and lifted millions of children and pensioners out of poverty.

This receives a loud cheer.

(She does not mention the leader at the time, Tony Blair, who is still a very contentious figure here.)

Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, has been at at least two fringe meetings this morning. As my colleague Peter Walker reports, he has been arguing for other English cities to get the sorts of powers than London has.

As the Telegraph’s Tony Diver reports, Burnham has also been praising Michael Gove, the new cabinet minister for levelling up.

Currently Labour has just 199 MPs. Last night the Fabian Society, the Labour thinktank, published a report (pdf) looking at the seats the party would need to win to form a government. It has looked at the 150 seats that the party came closest to winning in 2019, saying that to win a majority of one, the party would need 123 gains.

The main message from the report is that just focusing on the “red wall” seats, the traditional Labour constituencies that fell to the Tories in 2019, is not enough. It says most of the 150 seats are not formerly loyal Labour seats, and that they are a diverse group.

It also says most of these target seats cover towns and villages, not cities. It says:

Ninety-five of the 125 constituencies are made up of towns (or sometimes villages), with many of these in the north, Midlands and Wales and usually not adjacent to core cities.

Luke Raikes, the Fabian Society’s research director and the report’s author, said:

This report shows not just the mountain that Labour has to climb, but the route it needs to take to succeed. Labour has an opportunity to recast its appeal to focus on towns in the country’s demographic ‘middle’. Reaching out to formerly loyal ‘red wall’ seats is necessary but not sufficient for Labour. The party needs to reconnect outside big cities in towns and villages of every shape and size.

Lisa Nandy, the shadow foreign secretary, finished her speech to the Labour conference a few minutes ago. Here are the key points.

• Nandy said Labour wanted “a new foreign policy partnership with Europe to address our shared challenges, from climate change to Russia”.

• She said Labour was launching “a new taskforce on illicit finance with the aim of making the UK the most inhospitable place in the world for dirty money and ill-gotten gains”.

• She said Labour would legislate to place a duty on companies to eliminate forced labour from their supply chains. “We will end cotton imports from Xinjiang,” she said.

• She said Labour would end arms sales to Saudia Arabia.

• She said Labour would remain “a proud, fiercely internationalist party” despite Brexit. She went on:

We face challenges unlike any we’ve faced before.

Engaging with a Chinese government essential to progress on climate change while standing firm in defence of human rights, freedom and security.

A Russian state that uses chemical weapons on the streets of the UK.

A world where drones, cyber-attacks and disinformation can be deployed without consequence against innocent people on the other side of the world.

The Tories say we can turn our backs.

Conference, they are wrong.

Building walls is easy. Building bridges – in the world, in the country and let’s be honest, with each other – that’s the hard part.

• She said a Labour government would push at the UN human rights council for a global treaty to end violence against women and girls.

There are two announcements in Rachel Reeves’ speech that were briefed overnight by Labour. She is announcing a plan to scrap business rates, funded temporarily by what will effectively be a £2.1bn windfall tax on tech firms, although Labour has not said what the ultimate replacement for business rates will be.

But she is also announcing a review of all government tax reliefs, worth £170bn in total. Reeves says:

We will look at every single tax break. If it doesn’t deliver for the taxpayer or for the economy then we will scrap it.

Labour will tax fairly, spend wisely, and get our economy firing on all cylinders.

In a briefing note released to journalists, Labour explained why it is doing this. Here is an extract.

The government spends over £170bn a year on tax reliefs – more than it does on the health service. While some help create jobs or promote important social policies, others are wasteful and inefficient.

There are some tax reliefs we would keep – such as the VAT exemption on food. There are other reliefs Labour would scrap – such as the tax breaks that private schools benefit from through their charitable status.

We would review the others to make sure public money is being well spent. The government does not even know how much all their reliefs cost. Our review will make sure money is not being wasted on tax reliefs that have little or no benefit.

In its most recent figures, HMRC reports there are over 1,000 tax reliefs in the UK. Of those that have been costed, the exchequer loses over £174bn per year. These are defined as those that are intended to help or encourage particular types of taxpayers, activities, or products for economic or social objectives.

HMRC has published cost details of 186 non-structural reliefs, but the remaining 153 are uncosted. That means they do not know the cost of the majority of tax reliefs that exist.

The public accounts committee looked at the system of tax reliefs in 2020 and found “tax reliefs have an enormous impact on tax revenue but it is far from clear whether they deliver the economic and social objectives many are supposed to support.”

The note also says that, when it considers which reliefs to keep and which to scrap, Labour would consider issues like whether they help create jobs, whether they reduce the cost of living and inequality and whether they improve the efficiency of the tax system.

Here are the main lines from Rachel Reeves’ various interviews this morning. I’ve taken the quotes from PA Media.

• Reeves, the shadow chancellor, said the government was to blame for the current fuel shortages at petrol stations. She said:

Since last year I have been meeting and talking with the Road Haulage Association and hauliers about some of the problems coming down the line. The government ignored those problems, which is why we are now facing the situation where people go to the supermarkets and see shortages of goods on the shelves, and why they are queuing up at petrol stations and not being able to fill up their tank. That is not acceptable, this is an out-of-touch and complacent government.

• She said most people “couldn’t care less” whether HGV drivers are British or foreign. The goverment has said it will allow an extra 5,000 visas for foreign drivers, but yesterday Keir Starmer said up to 100,000 foreign drivers may be needed.

• She said Labour would take a “pragmatic” approach to nationalising services like energy. She said:

What matters is that essential services like gas and electricity are delivering for consumers, and we would look at that in the round. But I agree with Keir Starmer, this is not the moment to be looking at nationalising companies, we need to be focusing on the day-to-day bread-and-butter issues that are affecting people’s lives.

I have always believed that we should take a pragmatic approach, that we should look at what works for taxpayers and our economy.

Where that means common ownership – for example, some of the rail services have come into public ownership – that is the right thing to do.

But I would always take a pragmatic approach: what is good value for taxpayers and what is good for our economy?

• She said raising income tax was not on Labour’s agenda. She said:

Keir and I are both very clear, we have no plans to increase income tax and neither of us want to increase income tax, it is not on our agenda.

The only people who are increasing taxes for working people are the Tories with their jobs tax that comes in next year that hits ordinary working families and struggling businesses.

• She said Labour wanted “those with the broadest shoulders” (ie, the wealthy) to pay more in tax.

• She said she would not have called the Tories scum, although she could understand why Angela Rayner felt angry about them.

• She said she objected to the debate about trans issues being reduced to a question about whether only women have a cervix. Asked this, she told LBC:

I just think that this issue has just become so divisive and toxic, and it pits people against each other – both groups who have faced discrimination in society – women and trans women. I just find this debate incredibly unhelpful and unproductive, to be totally honest.

Pressed on whether it was transphobic to say only women have a cervix, Reeves replied: “I don’t even know how to start answering these questions.” When asked the question again, she replied: “I wouldn’t say that. If somebody identifies as a woman or a man, they should be able to do so whatever their body parts are.”

This is from LBC’s Matthew Thompson.

Good morning. Sir Keir Starmer won the vote last night on the internal Labour reforms that will require leadership candidates to have the backing of 20% of MPs, not 10%, stop registered supporters voting in leadership elections and make it harder for activists to trigger a reselection ballot in their local Labour MP. The changes were passed by 53.67% to 46.33%, which was closer than some expected, but it does go some way to compensating for Starmer’s failure to get the unions to back his plan to change the leadership election system more fundamentally (he wanted to return to the electoral college) and his allies are treating this as a significant victory.

In an interview for the Today programme this morning, Lord Mandelson, one of the main architects of New Labour and a Starmer supporter, was much more explict about what this might mean than Starmer himself, and his shadow ministers, have been. He said this was all about locking out another leader like Jeremy Corbyn. He said:

Jeremy Corbyn built on the rules that Ed Miliband introduced, which allowed hundreds of thousands of people to apply to vote for our future leader without actually caring about the Labour party, knowing about the Labour party and in many cases not even becoming a member of the Labour party.

That avalanche of people who were allowed in the Labour party to back one far-left candidates who they wanted to see elected leader will now no longer be allowed to happen ...

What these rule changes mean, and this is perhaps absolutely fundamental for people out in the country, when they’re asked to vote for Keir Starmer as their next prime minister, they can know with almost complete certainty that they’re not going to wake up one day and find Jeremy Corbyn there instead.

Today the focus at the conference will be on Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, who will use her speech to announce plans to scrap business rates. Here is my colleague Jessica Elgot’s preview story.

Reeves has been doing a morning interview round, and I will post the highlights soon.

Here is the agenda for the day.

10.15am: Frances O’Grady, the TUC general secretary, speaks to conference.

10.15am: Lisa Nandy, the shadow foreign secretary, opens the international debate. At 11am John Healey, the shadow defence secretary, will wind it up.

11.15am: Jonathan Reynolds, the shadow work and pensions secretary, opens a debate on the economy.

12pm: Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, delivers her keynote speech.

2.15pm: Mark Drakeford, the Welsh first minister, speaks to the conference.

2.45pm: Steve Reed, the shadow communities secretary, opens a local government debate. Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, speaks at 2.50pm, Nick Forbes, leader of Newcastle city council and head of the Labour group on the Local Government Association, speaks at 3.50pm and Joanne Anderson, the mayor of Liverpool, speaks at 4.40pm.

4.45pm: Louise Haigh, the shadow Northern Ireland secretary, delivers a speech.

4.50pm: Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester, Tracy Brabin, mayor of West Yorkshire, and Dan Jarvis, mayor of South Yorkshire, take part in a panel discussion.

5.10pm: Anas Sarwar, the leader of the Scottish Labour party, delivers the final speech of the day.

I expect to be focusing just on Labour today. For the latest in the fuel shortage crisis, do read my colleague Graeme Wearden’s business live blog.

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