Labour is considering lowering the cost ceiling for processing Freedom of Information (FoI) requests, using ‘spiralling administrative costs’ as the latest excuse to limit government transparency. Obviously blaming China wasn’t good enough…
According to briefings in the FT:
“The soaring number of requests comes against a backdrop of heavily constrained Whitehall budgets… the cost threshold for complying with a request is set at £600 for central government and £450 for other public bodies, with staff time charged at a flat rate of £25 an hour. This equates to 24 hours of work, or 3.5 working days, for Whitehall departments and 18 hours of work for other government agencies.”
Lowering the cost ceiling would effectively let departments turn down what they claim would be more complex or time-consuming requests without having to find a specific exemption. In reality, it would inevitably be a useful way to bury inconvenient and embarrassing material from the public. This is a government which makes the hilarious claim it has “strengthened many transparency and disclosure standards“. Total nonsense…
Now Andy Burnham is getting involved, to the surprise of no one. Speaking on the Today programme this morning, Burnham said not only that Rayner’s attack on Starmer “should be listened to“, but her claim that Shabana Mahmood’s immigration policies were “un-British” mirrored his own “moral questions“:
“From my point of view I would have a concern about the mandatory checks on people’s country of origin… my feeling would be that could place an administrative burden on a system that already struggles to cope, and in fact doesn’t cope. It is often in chaos… alongside the problem that it leaves some people in limbo, so [that’s] the moral question that I think Angela was pointing to…”
The morning after Rayner appears at an anti-Starmer faction’s party, the King of the North crops up with his own hot take on where the government is going wrong. Who’d have guessed…
The key quotes from Rayner’s speech last night at Mainstream’s spring reception in Westminster:
“As a party and a movement, we cannot hide. We cannot just go through the motions in the face of decline. There’s no safe ground for us, and we’re running out of time. The change that people wanted so desperately to see needs to be seen. It needs to be felt, and we have to show that it’s a Labour government that will deliver it…”
“… we have to come together in the face of division of hate and make sure that the Labour Party represents the ordinary working people of this country. And I’m in there with you, so I can’t wait to get involved with you.”
Starmer wasn’t the only one in the firing line. She also took aim at Shabana Mahmood’s changes to indefinite leave to remain:
“If we suddenly change that, it pulls the rug from under those that have planned their lives and commitments, and they’re contributing to our economy and to our society. That would not just be bad policy, but a breach of trust… It’s un-British.”
Mainstream’s mission is to prevent Labour’s “clear drift to the right” under Starmer. It is also backed by Andy Burnham. As everyone fully expected, Rayner has parked tanks on Starmer’s lawn. Now, about those taxes…
New polling from Survation in the New Statesman today, in a hypothetical world in which Starmer didn’t stop ‘his friend’ Andy Burnham standing in Gorton and Denton:
Certain to vote: Green 25%, Labour 47%, Don’t Know 7%, Reform 21%
Among all voters: Green 17%, Labour 33%, Don’t Know 30%, Reform 15%
If Burnham had stood, he likely would have taken the seat. There’s always next time. Although the mayoral election to fill his vacancy would be a nail-biter…
There is a whole section in the latest ‘The Labour Rosette’ newsletter to party members, published at 6.31pm last night, dedicated to the government’s ‘right economic plan’. Apparently Labour has “restored stability to our public finances” and the economy is “resilient”. It even reheats the closer to Reeves’ snooze-fest of a Spring Statement:
“My plan is the right one. I am in no doubt about how great the rewards can be if we stay the course.
“The forecasts confirm that the choices this government has made are the right ones. Stability in our public finances. Interest rates and inflation falling. Living standards rising. More children lifted out of poverty, more appointments in our NHS, more investment in our infrastructure.
“A growing economy, and more money in the pockets of working people.”
This morning’s figures show the economy flatlined to 0% growth in January. So it goes…
Labour MPs are having their heads turned by Zack Polanski now the polls show the Greens are taking chunks out of the Labour vote. The Telegraph reports “at least one” Labour MP was approached by the whips on suspicion of defecting, with a ‘Green Party source’ taking real pleasure in milking the moment. Although they say “nothing concrete” has come from informal discussions…
One of the names that did the rounds recently was Dawn Butler. She insisted it was “untrue” when Guido put it to her. Still, plenty of Labour MPs will be glancing across the aisle feeling green with envy after Gorton and Denton taught them there’s no such thing as a Labour safe seat…
Those who defect should once again expect to field questions about the ghost of Christmas past in Jeremy Corbyn. Polanksi explained to the House magazine yesterday why he no longer criticises Jezza for antisemitism, despite saying he couldn’t vote for Corbyn in 2018:
“Since then, we’ve had a book by Paul Holden, The Fraud, which I think has laid out the cynical and systemic deliberate obfuscation of a really serious issue like antisemitism. I believe that I believed what I was reading and what I was seeing…”
A well-trodden path for a few Labour backbenchers…
Former leader of the SNP in Westminster Ian Blackford told Times Radio why he believes Nicola Sturgeon’s claim that she spent no time in the kitchen and therefore didn’t see any of her husband’s purchases:
“She doesn’t have a passion for cooking.”