The government has been firing round an official summary of its flagship “Make Work Pay” plans to stakeholders. Today’s Employment Rights Bill contains about a third of the measures which make up those plans…
Curiously the government refers to the bill straight away as the “Employment Rights Union Bill.” Did they forget to delete the name of the working draft?
The Freudian slip won’t be much comfort to businesses and workers, who will have to deal with massive restrictions on zero hour contracts, statutory protection of “flexible working,” and a rollback of trade union legislation. As expected most changes will be subject to consultations in 2025 and the government makes clear that the majority won’t come into place until 2026. Labour has softened its rhetoric on unfair dismissal, which will now be subject to a “light-touch” statutory probation period instead of “day one protection.” The unions for whom the bill is named will be hard at work to chip away at that concession…
Labour will also establish “day 1 rights” to paternal leave as well as a “Fair Work Agency” and “Employment Rights Unit” to deal with enforcement. Large companies can look forward to being required to produce “action plans” on how to address their gender pay gaps and how to “support employees through the menopause.” A pen-pusher’s charter…
Read the full summary below:
Starmer has now outlasted Liz Truss’ time in office. Just as he breathes a sigh of relief a devastating blow has come across the bows…
The PM’s hopes of celebrating with a pint in Jeremy Clarkson’s new pub in Asthall, Oxfordshire have been shot by the owner himself:
“He’s banned. Actually, he’s the first person to be banned. He’s actually on a board in the hall, he’s banned.”
Clarkson had some thoughts on Labour’s understanding of the rural economy when talking to Times Radio just now: “I don’t think any of them have set foot outside Kentish Town for the last 35 years. They’re a hopeless bunch.” That’ll leave a bitter taste…
You would be forgiven for thinking Henry Tufnell- a 32-year-old Old Radleian who grew up on his parents’ 2,000 acre estate in the Cotswolds – was a Tory. Yet the new MP for Mid and South Pembrokeshire, the spitting image of a young aristo, is one of many new Labour parliamentarians in line for a hefty inheritance. More red princes and princesses to be revealed soon…
Tufnell is descended from typical Tory origins. His father Mark fights for our landed gentry’s interests in his role as President of the Country Land and Business Association, while his mother Rosina was once High Sheriff of Gloucestershire. The CLA’s 28,000 members control over ten million acres…
After attending Radley and an Ivy League university in the United States, Tufnell trained as a barrister. We presume it was here he met his fellow barrister wife Poppy, whose full name is Poppy Elisabeth Charlotte Reed Rimington-Pounder. Yes you read that correctly…
Tufnell’s selection for the Pembrokeshire seat ruffled a few feathers in Wales. His connection to the constituency, where second home owners are charged 200% council tax, comes through his mother’s holiday home near St Davids, known locally as the county’s poshest area. Another victory for the Labour parachute regiment…
To appeal to Pembrokeshire’s rural voters, Tufnell highlighted his farming origins. He stated on his website: “I grew up in a farming family and have spent many Easters lambing and many summers doing the harvest.” He cites: “hard work, community and caring for others” as his values, yet at the time of writing he is yet to set up a constituency office more than six weeks after the election. Ewe’ve got to be joking…
And if you fancy working for the man Tatler are calling Westminster’s most handsome MP, you can apply to be Tufnell’s constituency assistant here. Stunning views in Pembrokeshire…
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner took to Twitter this morning to boast of the government’s commitment to “hard yards of governing in the national interest.” She promised Labour would ditch the “gimmicks and slogans” that have befallen the public in the past…
A Government of public service means fixing the fundamentals to deliver for the British people.
No more gimmicks and slogans, but the hard yards of governing in the national interest.
The department I lead will be the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
— Angela Rayner (@AngelaRayner) July 9, 2024
One to bookmark, but not for long – her fellow cabinet members just couldn’t resist. Approximately an hour and a half after Rayner’s tweet, Transport Secretary Louise Haigh declared her department’s new motto is, insufferably, “Move Fast and Fix Things”. Sounds suspiciously like an empty slogan…
Jacqui ‘I’m a disgrace and shouldn’t be a peer’ Smith was given a peerage over the weekend to serve as education minister in Starmer’s “change” government. Co-conspirators will remember that Smith was the first to fall to expensegate in 2009 – taxpayers paid for her husband’s porno thrills and almost everything else, literally including the kitchen sink, right down to her 88p bath plug. She resigned and declared in 2012 on Question Time: “I don’t think people who have been disgraced should go to the House of Lords”…
It’s worth remembering what the former Home Secretary said last time an ex-politician with experience of government entered the Lords to work again. Literally nine months ago on the For The Many podcast she said:
“It is a bit of a sign that you’re coming to the end of a government… it’s not undoable, where I think it matters more and it mattered when Peter Mandelson came back is – it slightly suggests that you don’t think there are any of your own backbenchers who are able to do it and there might be a few people that are a bit peeved about it… it is also done, as the Peter Mandelson thing was done, as an attempt to try to limit a potential defeat that is coming down the track…”
Starmer will be surprised to hear his government is coming to an end…
Former Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry has finally broken her silence over finding out she is not now the Attorney General. She must have been waiting for a good enough consolation job…
Now she releases a statement:
“After eight-and-a-half unbroken years in the Shadow Cabinet, a longer record of service than anyone else in that time, I have always worked my hardest to keep the Labour Party united, support our candidates across the country, take the fight to the Tories, and put a positive case to the British people about what we would do differently, including – most recently – setting out our party’s policies to tackle every aspect of the fraud epidemic facing Britain, to support whistleblowers on sexual harassment in the workplace, to protect women in co-habiting relationships, and to treat the crime of stalking with the seriousness it deserves.
I am very sorry and surprised not to be able to continue that work in government, but I wish all my brilliant colleagues well, and I know that Richard Hermer KC – a much more accomplished lawyer than I could ever hope to be – will do an outstanding job as Attorney General. Nothing in the personal disappointment I feel can detract from the amazing and historic victory that all of us in the Labour movement worked together to win last week, and the chance that we now have to change our country for the better. I will continue giving my unstinting loyalty to our Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, as he leads that work, as I have done since he became leader, and I look forward to supporting his government in every way I can in the years to come.”
Starmer has gone ahead and appointed his own questionable Attorney General. Will Emily be a thorn in Starmer’s side from here on?
