Starmer says he wants to ensure any disruption during transition to Burnham government ‘absolutely minimised’
Keir Starmer has recorded a pooled TV interview at an event in Milton Keynes this morning, where he was promoting the government’s Great British Summer Savings Scheme.
Asked if he would serve in an Andy Burnham government, he replied:
Let me make my position absolutely clear.
I am stepping down after two years, leaving the country in a better position than when I found it.
I will do that with good grace, and I will do that making sure that there is an orderly transition.
I’m going to be professional. I’m going to have foremost in my mind the sense of service and duty that has driven me as prime minister.
I will continue to faithfully serve my country to make sure that any disruption is absolutely minimised. And that’s why I’m taking steps now to ensure that that can be done in a sensible way.
Starmer also said he wanted to make sure “that whatever comes next is a success”. He went on:
I love this country, I want this country to thrive, and I shall do everything I can to make sure it’s a success and thrives. The first bit of that is making sure that there’s an orderly transition and we go on and build on the good stuff we’ve done in the first two years of this government.
Key events
Minister rejects claim UK prioritised UAE ties over Sudan atrocity prevention
A minister has rejected claims the Foreign Office prioritised its relationship with the United Arab Emirates over preventing “genocidal slaughter” in Sudan, the Press Association reports. PA says:
Chris Elmore said London “acted swiftly” when it learned the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group was likely to attack El Fasher, a city in western Sudan.
An RSF offensive in El Fasher killed more than 6,000 people over a three-day period last year, according to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) at the Yale School of Public Health found in July 2023 that a “full-scale attack” by the RSF was likely. According to evidence submitted to the Commons international development committee, HRL briefed UK Foreign Office staff privately “over two dozen times” about the threat.
But according to the HRL’s executive director Nathaniel Raymond, who gave the evidence, the Foreign Office appeared to have “prioritised the government’s economic, security and diplomatic relationships with the UAE above preventing the intentional starvation, forced displacement, and the genocidal slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians living in El Fasher and its surrounding communities”.
Sarah Champion, the Labour MP who chairs the committee, has written a letter about this to the international develoment miniser, Jenny Chapman. Champion said: “This evidence was profoundly shocking and, if accurate, would be some of the most concerning accounts I have heard of Foreign Office failure to take seriously its commitments to atrocity prevention.”
In response to an urgent question in the Commons on the allegations, Elmore said: “I have to tell the house that we completely reject these claims.
“The UK acted swiftly, including on June 13 2024, when the previous government were in office, that we penned the UN security council resolution – we demanded that the RSF halt the siege on the city.”
Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative cabinet minister, told MPs: “It seems that whoever comes into government, the Foreign Office’s weak policy with regards to the UAE pertains.
“Surely it is time for a British government to stand up and say, ‘Enough is enough – we are going to sanction all of those individuals responsible for the decision-making in the UAE and in other countries providing arms to the rebels’. If we don’t do that, then all the talk is worthless.”
Badenoch defends jibe about Bridget Phillipson, saying it’s her job to ‘hold her to account’
Kemi Badenoch has declined to apologise for calling Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, a “spiteful class warrior”. (See 10.20am.)
Speaking to reporters today, the Tory leader defended what she said about the education secretary at PMQs. She said:
Yesterday I said that Bridget Phillipson was spiteful and incompetent. It’s interesting that she hasn’t complained about being incompetent, and Keir Starmer didn’t say that she was competent.
Badenoch claimed Phillipson’s imposition of VAT on private schools had “displaced” 40,000 pupils through school closures or because their parents could no longer afford the fees.
And she said Phillipson had failed to deliver the extra 6,500 teachers promised in Labour’s manifesto, saying there were 2,000 fewer teachers than when the party came to power. She said:
We have gone backwards both years she has been education secretary. That is a failure. It is my job as leader of the opposition to hold her to account.
Badenoch also said Phillipson had been “rude” about the shadow justice secretary, Nick Timothy, calling him “a racist” during women and equalities questions in the Commons before PMQs.
Phillipson, who is minister for women and equalities as well as education secrtary, said Timothy had “engaged in appalling racism towards Muslims in our country”. She was referring to the way he condemned a mass prayer event held by Muslims in Trafalgar Square as “an act of domination” and “straight from the Islamist playbook”.
Here are some more pictures from the event in Milton Keynes this morning where Keir Starmer was meeting pupils as he promoted the government’s Great British Summer Savings Scheme.
Speaking at the BCC conference today, Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, was asked if he would consider a coalition with a Labour party led by Andy Burnham. He declined to engage with the question, replying:
I’m very confident about when my party is going to be. It will be, I think, [Kemi] Badenoch who will be worried about questions about coalition.
Tim Shipman features what might be one of the most provocative – but original – claims about an Andy Burnham premiership in his cover story for this week’s Spectator. He says:
If there is pressure to have a woman at the Treasury, that opens the door for [Shabana] Mahmood, who though content to stay at the Home Office would surely not resist the promotion, or Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, who is a trained economist.
Either way, there is a strong sense that a Burnham-led government will be female-dominated. One senior figure in the party even describes Burnham as ‘Labour’s first woman prime minister’. This is not a revelation about his policy on self-ID for trans people, but reflects his interests. ‘The reason Labour have always craved, but also been cautious about, a female leader is because, in a Labour government, she could have an unashamedly female agenda, focused on health, education, family finances and issues like safer streets, social care, online safety for kids, that are disproportionately important to women. [This would be] unlike the Tories’ female leaders, who are under internal pressure – and the weight of history – to show how tough they are on traditionally male issues. Along comes Andy, surrounded by female advisers and backers, but more importantly, genuinely passionate about all those traditionally female-oriented issues, and much less so with the bombs and budgets. So could we finally see what Labour has failed to deliver all these years – a female PM in all but sex?’
According to Kevin Schofield from HuffPost UK, the Burnham team consider this theory “daft”.
In his article, Shipman also says Olly Robbins, who was sacked as permanent secretary at the Foreign Office by Keir Starmer because he had not told Starmer about concerns raised during Peter Mandelson’s vetting process, may be offered a job by the Burnham team. Shipman says:
Allies of Burnham, who regard him as ‘an outstanding operator’, have reached out and he is likely to take a senior job. ‘Olly is incredibly well thought of by both Andy and the people around and influencing Andy’s thinking,’ a source says.
While Robbins probably won’t return to his old post, his background is security and he would be a natural successor to Jonathan Powell, Starmer’s National Security Adviser, who is expected to move on. ‘That looks tailor-made for Olly,’ a senior Whitehall source familiar with the conversations reveals.
Starmer claims he has left UK in ‘better state’ in relation to immigration
Keir Starmer has issued a statement today claiming that he has left the UK in “a better state” in relation to immigration.
He says:
In the first two years of this government, we have made really important progress on immigration.
One of the tests of an outgoing prime minister is whether you leave the country in a better state than what you found it, and I am leaving it in a better state.
Migration has long been a cause for concern.
On lawful migration, which when we came in two years ago, net migration was nearly a million, we got that down to about a fifth of that number, so a huge reduction, over 80% reduction.
On the crossings across the channel, which so many people are understandably concerned about, we brought those numbers down as well. The steps we are taking are beginning to pay off, and at the same time, asylum hotels are closing.
Now those are linked. Fewer crossings mean there are less people that need to be housed. Now there is more to do, but in a much better place than we were two years ago.
The ambition is to close those asylum hotels, reduce those channel crossings. Nobody should be making that crossing. And having got it more under control it’s about keeping it under control and not letting it spiral like the last government.
The Tories have argued that the huge fall in the rate of legal migration seen in the recent figures is primarily a result of much tighter visa rules introduced when James Cleverly was home secretary.
Minister urges pupils to choose degree courses ‘carefully’, as research shows earning variations by subject
As Richard Adams reports, a quarter of UK graduates can expect to be financially worse off after going to university, especially those who take creative or performing arts degrees, according to research carried out by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
The research was funded by the Department for Education, and Jacqui Smith, the skills minister, is urging pupils to consider it before they choose a degree course. In a news release, she says:
Going to university and getting a degree is one of the most transformational things a young person can do. But it is not a universal guarantee of success and not all degrees are equal.
As well as the variation by subject, too many franchised and poor-quality courses do not offer a good deal to young people – selling the dream then leaving students in the lurch.
We’re making the system work better but my message to those thinking about university: choose carefully. Don’t walk into a degree by default.
The IFS report is here. And here is chart showing what earnings have been, by subject, for people who were at university around 20 years ago.
UK to halve tariff-free steel imports to counter glut of cheap Chinese metal
The UK government will halve the amount of tariff-free steel imports allowed in an attempt to counter a global oversupply of cheap Chinese metal and bolster its beleaguered local industry, Lisa O’Carroll and Jasper Jolly report.
Senior Trump official delivers scathing attack on Britain in speech to rightwingers in London mocking ‘Yookay’
Ben Quinn
Ben Quinn is a Guardian political correspondent.
A senior official in the Trump administration has likened the UK to a totalitarian dystopia, telling a rightwing conference in London that British police were “in league with rape gangs”.
Sarah B Rogers, who has become the public face of the Trump administration’s growing hostility to European liberal democracies, went on to draw on a far-right memes and conspiracy theories while singling out cases such as the death of Henry Nowak and an incident in which a child was recently badly injured after being thrown into a zoo’s crocodile pit.
Rogers, who has publicly attacking policies on hate speech and immigration by ostensible US allies and promoted far-right parties abroad, centred her speech around the notion of “Da Yookay” – originally a viral meme heavily associated with the online far fight.
“In ‘Da Yookay’ you can be remanded without bail for an inflammatory tweet, while a psychopath who seizes a three-year-old and feeds him to crocodiles walks free,” Rogers told the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) which was addressed this week by Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch.
Rogers went on:
In ‘Da Yookay’ the moral sense of jurors won’t save you, because jury trials for speech crimes are abolished. In ‘Da Yookay’ a girl can escape from a rape gang, flag down a police constable, and discover the cop is in league with the rapists. In ‘Da Yookay’ you get a free car for pretending to be disabled. In ‘Da Yookay’ cops defer to a murderer who calls his victim racist. Then they handcuff you as you bleed to death if you’re white.
Rogers repeatedly quoted George Orwell, claiming that the censorship envisaged by him is “easily imaginable” in the Britain of today.
Starmer says government has been holding official-level Cobra meetings to discuss heatwave
In his pooled TV clip Keir Starmer also said that officials have been meeting in the government’s Cobra emergency committee to discuss how schools and other public services deal with the heat wave.
Asked specifically about schools, he said:
It is very hot and obviously schools will have to take the appropriate measures and each school will gauge for itself what the measures are.
But it is important that we as a government coordinate this across the country and with all of the countries within the United Kingdom, which is what we’re doing.
We’re having Cobra meetings at the official level to monitor what’s going on, give the appropriate advice.
But obviously it falls to me and others to say take care, be sensible with precautions.
And schools are going to have to decide, and they are deciding. most of them finishing a little bit early, or many of them. But they will gauge that according to their local conditions.
Cobra is the government’s emergency committee. Cobra meetings led by officials are not as serious as those led by ministers.
Starmer says he wants to ensure any disruption during transition to Burnham government ‘absolutely minimised’
Keir Starmer has recorded a pooled TV interview at an event in Milton Keynes this morning, where he was promoting the government’s Great British Summer Savings Scheme.
Asked if he would serve in an Andy Burnham government, he replied:
Let me make my position absolutely clear.
I am stepping down after two years, leaving the country in a better position than when I found it.
I will do that with good grace, and I will do that making sure that there is an orderly transition.
I’m going to be professional. I’m going to have foremost in my mind the sense of service and duty that has driven me as prime minister.
I will continue to faithfully serve my country to make sure that any disruption is absolutely minimised. And that’s why I’m taking steps now to ensure that that can be done in a sensible way.
Starmer also said he wanted to make sure “that whatever comes next is a success”. He went on:
I love this country, I want this country to thrive, and I shall do everything I can to make sure it’s a success and thrives. The first bit of that is making sure that there’s an orderly transition and we go on and build on the good stuff we’ve done in the first two years of this government.
Labour and Reform UK almost neck and neck in Greater Manchester mayoral contest, poll suggests
Josh Halliday
Josh Halliday is the Guardian’s North of England editor.
Labour and Reform UK are virtually neck and neck in the race to replace Andy Burnham as Greater Manchester mayor, according to the first poll since the byelection was confirmed last week.
The poll of 1,143 adults in Greater Manchester, carried out by Focal Data on behalf of the campaign group Hope Not Hate, showed Labour winning 33.2% of the first preference votes with Reform UK on 30.1%. That means Labour’s lead is within the margin of error.
The Green party, which has described the byelection as a two-horse race between it and Reform UK, were third on 12.5%, followed by the Conservatives on 11.1% and the Liberal Democrats on 7.6%.
The byelection will take place on 30 July and is one of the biggest contests of its kind in modern British politics, with more than two million people eligible to vote.
The supplementary vote (SV) system will allow voters to pick a first and second choice. If no candidate wins more than 50% of the vote when the first preferences are counted, the winner will be decided by counting the second preferences of all those who backed the eliminated candidates.
This is significant in such a tight race and is seen as benefiting Labour, as it is more likely to win the second preference support of Greens and Lib Dems and perhaps some Conservatives.
The polling data suggests that 37% of Green voters would give their second preference to Labour, compared to 25% of Lib Dems and 20% of Conservatives.
Reform UK, meanwhile, can rely on a much smaller pool of second-choice support (26% of Conservative voters and 22% who plan to vote for independents or other minor parties).
That will be small comfort to Labour’s candidate, Bev Craig, who knows she faces an extremely tough contest despite her predecessor’s popularity in Greater Manchester (he won 63% of the vote in 2024).
Nearly half of those polled said they were unhappy with the Labour government, while 54% said they felt Greater Manchester’s growth had been more concentrated in the city than the surrounding boroughs.
Immigration was the fourth most important issue for voters, according to the data, behind the cost of living, NHS and crime.
