Harriet Harman has told the Today programme she thinks Starmer, Burnham and Streeting should agree on a ‘process’ for a leadership contest, and Labour MPs should have the final say. Just six weeks ago, Starmer appointed Harman as his new ‘Adviser on Women and Girls’ in the wake of Labour’s local election bloodbath. Now she’s explaining to Justin Webb how he should probably go…
‘[They] should be got in a room by the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Lucy Powell, and the Chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party, Jess Morden, to agree a process whereby the Labour MPs choose who they want… you can’t govern without the support of Labour MPs… But that’s my view. I think the process should be Labour MPs choosing. And I think that’s the best thing for stability of government.”
She did at least add that a woman should be on the ballot as well. So Starmer can be reassured she’s still taking her new role seriously, sort of…
Starmer at the G7:
“Very many times on my political journey, people have said to me, ‘It’s not possible’. They said it’s not possible to turn the Labour Party around. It’s not possible to win an election. It’s not possible, if you do win an election, to invest in your public services and stabilise the economy. Wrong every time.”
Inflation is up, the economy contracted in April, youth unemployment is through the roof, and the welfare budget is a farce. That’s a stable economy apparently. He also claimed the UK will play its “full part” in getting the Strait of Hormuz open. With what navy?
Labour is getting better and better at digitally scrubbing all evidence of a departing Cabinet minister. It’s had plenty of practice by now…
Healey has already been removed from the party’s website. He first disappeared from the full list of Cabinet ministers, and in the last few minutes has been replaced by David Lammy on the ‘Labour People’ page. The ‘DPM’ must be thrilled at yet another fake promotion…
Eventually this photo will just show Starmer alone in a dark room, with a few cobwebs on the wall and tumbleweed drifting across the table…
Ed Miliband is at war with Number 10 over its attempts to slash DESNZ’s budget by at least 1% to help fund the elusive Defence Investment Plan (DIP). According to the Telegraph, Miliband has gone studs up over demands to squeeze around £600m from the department. Will someone think of the heat pumps…
Currently, around £9 billion is set to be spent on carbon capture and storage alone. Miliband thinks this is a worthy investment, even as the DIP is around £4.5 billion short of the funding requested by the MoD. Is Ed aware that Britain’s Navy more or less doesn’t exist?
The ongoing cabinet wrangling over the DIP is increasingly regarded as an academic exercise within Labour circles anyway, given Starmer’s tenure in Number 10 is coming to an end. Although under the new regime, Miliband will still sit at the top table…
The small matter of defence spending was not mentioned once at this morning’s Cabinet meeting. The elusive Defence Investment Plan is still without a publication date, and ministers are now in furious clashes over proposed cuts to their departmental capital budgets to fund an uplift. Rather than try to resolve this endless farce, the Cabinet nattered about AI and social media all morning instead.
There was also no discussion of Starmer’s looming reckoning courtesy of Andy Burnham. Even though No10 briefed last night that he had meet junior ministers to convince them he’d fight on, and on, and on…
The usual squawking from all the non-entity MPs sitting around Farage who know they’re on camera when he’s speaking…
Burnham confirms he spoke to Trump last night about drilling in the North Sea:
“I indicated in the phone call that we had a week last Monday that I would take a pragmatic approach when it comes to the North Sea, and that is my intention as we go forward from here. There is a resource there. When people are struggling, we can’t ignore that. Hence, me indicating that to the president…”