Rolling coverage of all the developments from the Labour conference in Liverpool, including speeches from Sadiq Khan and Tom Watson

9.05am BST

Labour does not feature much on the newspaper front pages this morning although, given the splash headline on one of the few papers that does lead on Labour, Jeremy Corbyn may consider that a blessing.

Tuesday’s Daily Mail front page:
Labour in la-la-land#tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers http://pic.twitter.com/hjgkCbCMOs

New automated technologies are fusing with the internet, and creating models of work and jobs we haven’t seen before. Daily we hear stories of machines and systems that can do things we thought only humans could do – driving cars, drafting contracts, even composing music.

It’s been called the fourth industrial revolution – a new era of fast, technology-driven change, which we’re beginning to feel in everything we do.

It’s only with Labour in power that we can create a fairer, more equal and more just Britain.

Labour out of power will never, ever be good enough … The people who need us the most are those who suffer the most when Labour is not in power.

Our aim will be to provide the care and support for every child to fulfil their potential, and to help parents back to work. Getting it right will improve the life chances of countless children across the country. That must be our mission.

[Lewis’s] view is that the matter has been decided for the time being. But it is always open for our party members to raise these issues.

Moderate Labour MPs claim that the language used by Mr McDonnell acts as a “nod and a wink” to leftwingers to target them with abuse online.

Some of Mr Corbyn’s closest allies have told the leader that removing his old friend from his post would be the “single best thing” he could do to repair relations in the party …

Continue reading…

Politics blog | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2dcsGCN

Rolling coverage of all the developments at the Labour conference in Liverpool, including John McDonnell’s speech

8.05am BST

It’s the economy day at the Labour conference in Liverpool and the key speaker will be John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor. He has been giving interviews this morning and is about to appear on the Today programme. I will be covering that in detail.

Overnight McDonnell and Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, have announced that a future Labour government would compensate deprived regions for any funding they will lose when the UK leaves the EU. The government has promised to make good this shortfall up to 2020, but not beyond that. Labour would continue to compensate them “into the 2020s and beyond”.

For the period 2014 to 2020, the UK was allocated €10.8 billion in structural funding for our most deprived regions and communities. The Tories have given an undertaking hedged in conditions that funding up to 2020 will be protected.

For the period after, they have said nothing. That is not good enough. Without long-term certainty over funding, our most deprived regions and communities cannot plan ahead. They cannot attract other investment. They cannot make progress.

Labour will rewrite the rules of our economy to foster a British manufacturing renaissance https://t.co/Pv1u4Bfb8W #Lab16

John McDonnell unrepentant over Esther McVey attack: “You have to be honest in politics – you have to express how you feel.” @GMB

McDonnell says ‘people that ask me to apologise, go and meet the families affected by cuts. I have a justifiable anger’ , re Esther McVey

Continue reading…

Politics blog | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2cEBpOI

Rolling coverage of all the developments from the Labour conference in Liverpool, including Jeremy Corbyn’s interview on the Andrew Marr Show

8.16am BST

You might expect Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour conference to be dominating the news headlines this morning, but events in Liverpool are being slightly overshadowed by a Conservative party story – excerpts from a book by David Cameron’s communications chief, Sir Craig Oliver, saying Cameron felt “badly let down” by Theresa May during the EU referendum.

Mail on Sunday front page:
How Theresa torpedoed PM Cameron#tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers http://pic.twitter.com/sTDcZa2HrD

Related: Corbyn ‘vindicated’ as he pledges more power to Labour members

The Labour Party risks extinction unless Jeremy Corbyn drops plans to take revenge on his critics following his landslide win in the leadership election, Sadiq Khan has warned.

The London mayor said bitter divisions between Corbynistas and moderates meant his party was in “more serious” danger of splitting and then dying out than in the early 1980s, when the Gang of Four broke away to form the SDP.

Labour MPs are steeling themselves for a long war of attrition with Jeremy Corbyn and his hard-left supporters that many fear will end in a “catastrophic” general election defeat.

There was dismay after their attempt to oust Corbyn backfired and his victory over rival Owen Smith was confirmed in a half-empty conference hall in Liverpool at noon yesterday, with one former frontbencher saying: “I feel sick.”

An exclusive message from the newly re-elected Labour Leader ahead of our special programme live in Liverpool tomorrow at 10am @itv #Peston http://pic.twitter.com/kcNvublbMF

#Murnaghan is live from #Lab16 tomorrow with @johnmcdonnellMP, @HackneyAbbott, @SeemaMalhotra1 and @Patrick4Dales http://pic.twitter.com/T03n8jgKY3

Continue reading…

Politics blog | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2djtyZU

Rolling coverage of the announcement of the result of the Labour leadership election

8.14am BST

At 11.45am the Labour party will announce the result of its leadership contest at its conference in Liverpool. Jeremy Corbyn is widely expected to win and, as we report in our overnight lead, insiders are predicting that he will get 65%. That would be an even bigger win than he achieved last year when Corbyn got 59.5% of first preference votes. A result like this would be a big disappointment for Owen Smith, the former shadow work and pensions secretary who is challenging Corbyn and who, at the very least, hoped to make a dent in Corbyn’s lead.

Last night Corbyn issued a statement appealing for unity.

We must win the next General Election so that Labour can rebuild and transform Britain – so that no one and no community is left behind. We can and must do that together.

That includes those who have voted, volunteered and campaigned for Owen Smith.

This summer, we have had a debate about the future of Labour and the future of Britain. It has been robust, and at times difficult, but it has been overwhelmingly respectful in tone.

Continue reading…

Politics blog | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2dcN6i7

Share breaking news, leave links to interesting articles online and chat about the week’s political events in our open thread

8.08am BST

I’m not writing my usual Politics Live blog today so, as an alternative, here’s Politics Live: readers’ edition. It is intended to be a place where you can catch up with the latest news and find links to good politics blogs and articles on the web.

Please feel free to use this as somewhere you can comment on any of the day’s political stories – just as you do during the daily blog. It would be particularly useful for readers to flag up new material in the comments – breaking news or blogposts or tweets that are worth passing on because someone is going to find them interesting.

Continue reading…

Politics blog | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2cq1NbP

Rolling coverage of all the day’s political developments as they happen

9.18am BST

It’s such a quiet day this morning that on the Today programme they resorted to reading out poetry, Keats’ Ode to Autumn. The Commons is in recess, and the main political parties are getting ready for their party conferences. Labour’s starts at the weekend and, to mark it, the New Statesman has published a special edition, leading with an article by David Miliband, the former Labour foreign secretary, despairing at what has happened to his party. Like the Ode to Autumn (which an academic on Today said was partially influenced by the aftermath of the Peterloo massacre), Miliband’s article laments loss. But, unlike the Ode, it’s not great poetry, and it’s much more specific.

Miliband makes the routine claim (for people from his wing of the party) that Jeremy Corbyn is “unelectable”, but he gives the argument a new twist. Rather than claiming that Corbyn’s policy objectives are fine, but that Corbyn is just the wrong person to be able to implement them (which broadly was Owen Smith’s argument in the leadership contest, with some exceptions), Miliband says that Corbyn has the wrong policies.

The party has ended up pre-New Labour in policy and culture, when we need to be post-New Labour. This year’s leadership election has spent a lot of time debating how to “bring back” various lost icons, such as nationalised railways, rather than focusing on new ideas for the future.

The main charge against Jeremy Corbyn is not just that his strategy is undesirable because it makes the party unelectable. That is only half the story. The real issue is that his strategy makes the party unelectable because it is in many aspects undesirable.

Continue reading…

Politics blog | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2dcQWbn

Rolling coverage of all the day’s political developments as they happen

9.05am BST

Finally the Labour leadership contest is coming to an end. The ballot closes at 12pm today, and the winner will be announced in Liverpool on Saturday, just before the start of the party’s annual conference.

Jeremy Corbyn has always been the favourite to be re-elected and, since a YouGov poll at the end of last month gave him a 24-point lead over his challenger, Owen Smith, the result has been seen as a foregone conclusion.

I think we’re going to win.

I think it’s going to be really tough to get the 59.5% that we got last time around because of the numbers that have been prevented from voting. Some will argue if we dip below the 59.9% that somehow Jeremy’s mandate has lessened. If we win, no matter what, his mandate is still in place.

Continue reading…

Politics blog | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2cPAMCu

Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen, including Tim Farron’s speech on the final day of the Lib Dem conference

9.11am BST

The Liberal Democrats are today heading into the fourth and final day of their autumn conference but, with only eight MPs, very little leverage over power at Westminster or anywhere else and Labour’s civil war hogging the headlines, they have struggled to leave much of a footprint on the national news.

Today, though, they have a chance to make some headlines. The leader’s speech is generally the most important showpiece event at any party conference and Tim Farron is closing the conference this afternoon.

And let’s stop being complacent about our NHS. We have of course a brilliant NHS, the best staff in the world, free care at the point of access…but we are spending at least far less every year than we need to make sure that we have a health and care service that really will provide for you and your family from cradle to grave.

So we need to face the hard truth that the NHS needs more money – a lot more money – not just to stop it lurching from crisis to crisis but so that it can meet the needs and the challenges it will face in the years ahead. So that it can be the service we all need it to be for the long-term. To provide confidence in our health service for the next fifty years.

Related: Lib Dems will turn NHS into National Health and Care Service, says Farron

Continue reading…

Politics blog | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2cVw3Q1

Rolling coverage of all the day’s political developments as they happen

8.36am BST

The “good cop/bad cop” routine is a familiar one in any negotiation and it is a strategy the Labour leadership seems to have been adopting as Jeremy Corbyn ponders what to do about the majority of MPs who do not support his leadership. Some of his allies are quite happy to issue threats to the dissidents, as the Guardian reports in its splash today.

Related: Len McCluskey: disloyal MPs ‘asking for it’ and will be held to account

I have made it my business to talk to quite a lot of Labour MPs and will continue to do so and I hope they will understand that we’ve been elected as Labour MPs …

It doesn’t mean everybody agrees on everything all the time – that I understand – but the general direction of opposition to austerity, opposing the Tories on grammar schools, those are actually the kind of things that unite the party.

That then becomes, surely, a very strong campaigning basis for the Labour movement, becomes a campaigning factor in towns and cities where there’s never been very much activity before. That does begin to change the debate and national mood. I think you’ll begin to see that play out, particularly in local elections next year and after that.

I’ve been at political rallies all my life, of various sorts. What I find exciting and nice, but slightly depressing, is when I know half the people at the meeting I go to. I go to these events all over the country, and some of them, I don’t know anybody. I don’t know anybody at all, and they’re people who come up to me who say ‘I’ve never been involved in politics before, I’m interested in what you have to say, because I’m interested particularly in the economic argument that you have to rebalance society away from inequality towards equality’.

Continue reading…

Politics blog | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2cjrjV4

Rolling coverage of the Ukip conference in Bournemouth, including Nigel Farage’s final speech as leader and the announcement of his replacement

9.18am BST

The United Kingdom Independence Party (Ukip) starts its autumn conference in Bournemouth today. Its supporters would claim that it is the most successful party in the history of British politics. Its detractors would claim that it is one of the most shambolic and useless. Both descriptions are reasonably accurate.

Ukip has only won one national election (the European elections in 2014) and it only has one MP, but if you judge a party by whether it has achieved its key objective, then Ukip’s record is hard to fault. Just over 20 years after it was founded, it got exactly what it wanted: a referendum on EU membership, and a vote to leave. No other party can make this boast. There is an argument to be had about quite how important a part Ukip played in the EU referendum campaign itself. (Douglas Carswell, Ukip’s only MP, told the Guardian at the weekend that leave only won because Vote Leave ignored the approach favoured by Ukip’s leader Nigel Farage.) But Ukip was decisive in ensuring that the referendum was held in the first place. David Cameron has a hearty dislike for Farage and Ukip, and he conceded a referendum because he was under pressure to do so from Tory MPs, but those Tories had leverage because the Ukip started soaring after the 2010 general election and Cameron concluded that, without offering a referendum, the Conservative party could not win in 2015 (and/or he could not survive as leader).

Related: Nigel Farage aide defects to Tories claiming a mass exodus from Ukip

Continue reading…

Politics blog | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2ciFec8