Starmer says Nick Timothy should be sacked for his attack on Muslims praying in Trafalgar Square
Badenoch says Starmer did not answer the question. Did he pick up the phone to Mandelson.
She says Starmer said Mandelson lied to him. That implied that they spoke.
Starmer again criticises Badenoch. He says she should have sacked Nick Timothy for his attack on Muslims praying in Trafalgar Square. (See 10.28am.)
UPDATE: Starmer said:
double quotation markShe appointed the shadow justice secretary. He said last night that Muslims praying in public, including the mayor of London, practising his faith are not welcome.
He described it as an act of domination. Straight from the Islamist playbook. If he was in my team, he’d be gone. It’s utterly appalling. She should denounce his comments and she should sack him.
Nick Timothy pictured in parliament earlier this year Photograph: House of Commons/PAShare
Updated at 10.02 EDT
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Reform UK-supporting students at Scottish university being investigated for alleged racism and mocking disabled person
Severin Carrell
Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.
Reform UK-supporting students at St Andrews university are under investigation for alleged racism and mocking someone with a disability, after Reform itself complained about alleged intimidation of a party meeting last week.
Reform said today it had written to the university in Fife, Scotland, famous for its association with Prince William and Catherine, after people believed to be students harangued a group of Reform supporters in a pub on Friday night.
Footage on Instagram suggested the clash was verbal without any physical acts, but Malcolm Offord, Reform UK’s Scottish leader, claimed the event was “hijacked by a gang of hard-left agitators who hurled abuse and tried to intimidate young people into silence.”
Suella Braverman, the party’s UK education and skills spokesperson at Westminster, said:
double quotation markWhat happened at St Andrews was mob rule. Students were targeted simply for supporting Reform UK, such behaviour that has no place in a university. St Andrews university must show it still stands for open debate and intellectual freedom. Reform UK will always defend Scotland’s universities and the principle of free speech.
A university spokesman said it had not yet received the complaint Offord publicised, but added:
double quotation markWe have a culture of robust debate at St Andrews, and that is precisely as it should be at an international university with a diverse and politically engaged student population.
Freedom of speech does not, however, extend to the right to intimidate others and there is no place for that type of behaviour here, nor for attempts to stoke culture wars. We have invited the Reform Society to submit a complaint so that these allegations can be properly investigated.
We are also investigating a complaint that some people at a recent Reform Society event made racist remarks and publicly mocked a person with a disability.
Another Instagram reel appeared to show one of the protestors being warned by a pub employee to stop shouting or face being made to leave.
Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, was one of the Muslims praying in Trafalgar Square on Monday at the event criticised by Nick Timothy. (See 10.28am.) He posted this on social media yesterday responding to the shadow justice secretary’s outburst.
ShareLabour says Polanski’s speech shows he has ‘wrong answers on economy’
Labour has said that Zack Polanski has “the wrong answers” on the economy. Responding to Polanski’s speech this morning, Anna Turley, the Labour chair, said:
double quotation markZack Polanski has the wrong answers on the economy. Respected economists have sounded the alarm over the Greens’ “catastrophic” plans to print money, which would hammer working people and their living standards.
Polanski attacks Tory austerity now but as a Lib Dem during the coalition years he was a cheerleader for it at the time – even though it saw public services slashed and people made poorer. You can’t trust him.
But there was a more positive response from the thinktank Common Wealth. Its director, Mathew Lawrence, said:
double quotation markZack Polanski is right. With global energy prices spiking, we need action to decouple the price of electricity from expensive gas so that we don’t get a repeat of the last energy crisis: where energy giants made vast windfalls while people struggled to heat their homes.
Zack Polanski giving his economy speech this morning at a New Economics Foundation event at Wolves Lane Centre in London. Photograph: James Manning/PAShareStarmer revives attack on Badenoch and Farage over Iran policy, and says early ‘negotiated settlement’ best outcome
Alexandra Topping
Alexandra Topping is a Guardian political correspondent.
Keir Starmer today reprised his accusations made at PMQs last week that Badenoch had criticised Starmer for not immediately backing US and Israel’s attacks on Iran, then reversed her position.
He told MPs today:
double quotation markShe didn’t do the work. She didn’t think through the consequences.
Committing our military to a war without thinking through the consequences is the gravest mistake a leader of the opposition can have. And she comes back a week later and says, oops, I got that one wrong. She’s utterly irrelevant and she’s got no judgment.
Starmer also attacked Reform leader Nigel Farage, who he said he was “perfectly, perfectly clear” that Britain should be involved in initial attacks on Iran by the US and Israel.
Starmer went on:
double quotation markJust like the leader of the opposition, the member for Clacton said we should do all we can to support the US strikes. And he said, “I made that perfectly, perfectly clear.”
It was perfectly, perfectly clear he got it completely wrong and perfectly clear that he’s now desperately trying to U-turn. He had absolutely no judgment and he is not fit to be prime minister.
Asked if he would guarantee that MPs would get a vote before the UK became involved in any further conflict, Starmer said:
double quotation markUnlike the leader of the opposition, my principles have been clear and unwavering. We will protect our people in the region. We will take action to defend ourselves and our allies, and we will not be drawn into the wider war.
I want to see this war end as quickly as possible. The longer it continues, the bigger the impact on the cost of living.
And that’s why we’ve intervened to support households with costs of heating oil.
The best way forward is a negotiated settlement, with Iran giving up any aspirations to develop a nuclear weapon.
Updated at 10.55 EDT
Lee Anderson filmed paid-for Cameo videos at parliament in possible rules breach
The Reform UK MP Lee Anderson has used his parliamentary office to record paid-for personalised messaging videos, in a possible breach of rules that prohibit the commercial use of the Palace of Westminster, Henry Dyer and Michael Goodier report.
SharePolanski says Greens would ditch GDP targets and focus on wellbeing instead
Here is Peter Walker’s report of Zack Polanski’s economy speech, and what he said in his Q&A afterwards.
At a post-PMQs briefing, a spokesperson for Kemi Badenoch defended Nick Timothy for his comments criticising Muslims praying in Trafalgar Square. (See 10.28am.) The spokesperson said Timothy’s comments were based on footage showing segregated males praying at the event.
He said:
double quotation markThe Conservative party believes in British values and those British values mean we are an open and open and tolerant society, but with boundaries.
And freedom of religion does not mean the freedom to do anything. It comes with responsibilities.
People are free to practice their faith, but that practice does not require exclusionary use of our shared civic spaces. That is not about worship. It becomes something else which undermines social cohesion. So that is where we draw the line. And that is what Nick Timothy was talking about.
Asked about other pictures showing women at the event, the spokesman said they were “outside the barriers”.
(Timothy’s original tweet criticising the Muslims praying in Trafalgar Square said nothing about the group being segregated by gender. And a follow-up tweet by Timothy this morning defending his original message does not mention gender segregation either.)
SharePMQs – snap verdict
It is not unusual for the prime minister and the leader of the oppostion to be speaking at cross-purposes at PMQs but today was an extreme example; if your only exposure to what happened comes via short social media clips, you might assume they were speaking at two separate events.
Kemi Badenoch was determined to attack Keir Starmer again over his appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the UK, and she started by asking if Starmer had spoken to Mandelson personally about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein before he appointed him. Badenoch knew exactly what the answer was – because it was a lead story in the Times last week. The Times reported:
double quotation markSir Keir Starmer did not speak to Lord Mandelson before appointing him as the ambassador to the US and instead delegated the vetting of his links to the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein to two personal friends of the peer.
Starmer refused to confirm this. But he did not try to deny it either, and it was obvious from the exchanges that the Times story was true. Badenoch was withering, and – on this topic – effective.
Starmer strategy was to turn this instead into a debate about the Tories’ rather confused stance on the Iran war, and Nick Timothy latest anti-Muslim diatribe. (See 10.28am.) In debate, trying to fend off an attack by changing the subject is always a sign of weakness (because it’s an admission that you do not a proper answer to the accusations you are facing) and it is often unsuccessful (because the audience may consider the original topic more important than the distraction topic). But it can work if the counter blast is strong enough.
What about today? Tory MPs were indignant about Starmer’s worse-than-usual topic dodging, and there were a string of questions about this at points of order. The Tory papers (and GB News – see 12.27pm) will write this up as a Badenoch win. And people watching who had not spent the morning on Twitter might have been a bit unsure as to what Starmer was on about when he repeatedly condemned Nick Timothy.
But Labour MPs understood why the Timothy intervention was so inflammatory. The normalisation of Islamophobia in rightwing circles is one of the more egregious features of modern politics, and today Starmer spoke with more passion and authenticity than we are used to. Here is one of his answers.
double quotation mark[Badenoch’s] position is that the shadow justice secretary is defending British values when he says Muslims praying together in Trafalgar Square are not welcome.
Even Tommy Robinson, I can hardly believe I’m saying this, has said today that if the shadow justice secretary had made these hateful comments two years ago the Conservative party would have kicked him out.
Tommy Robinson isn’t some sort of moral signpost, he was pointing out how much their party has changed. They’re more inclined to his views, and he’s right about that. The fact he’s sitting on her front bench shows she’s too weak and has got absolutely no judgment.
Starmer was referring to this post by Robinson (whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) on X.
Since Morgan McSweeney left No 10, Starmer seems to have become more confident defending the multiculturalism that some Blue Labour types were more inclined to question and today it felt as he had landed a moral argument successfully. He’ll count that as win.
Andrew Snowden (Con) asks why Starmer refused to answer Badenoch’s questions about Peter Mandelson. When he found out Mandelson had an ongoing relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, did he speak to him personally before making him ambassador?
Starmer says he has set out the process.
And he is not surprised the Tories do not want to talk about the Iran war, or Nick Timothy.
Greg Smith (Con) says Starmer used to oppose HS2, as he does. He asks for his Mid Buckinghamshire consituents to be treated with fairness as this goes ahead.
Starmer agrees people affected by HS2 do need to be treated fairly.
Noah Law (Lab) asks if Starmer will meet the Labour rural MPs group to discuss extra help for farmers.
Starmer says the government has already set up a farming and food partnership board to help the sector.
Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, says the Norwegians have opened 49 drill sites for oil in the last year. The UK has opened none. He says Britain should follow Norway.
Starmer says oil and gas will be part of the UK’s energy mix for years to come.
And he says Farage is highlighting the consequences of a war he supported.
ShareStarmer defends plans to restrict access to jury trials
David Davis (Con) says when Starmer was a laywer he argued that scrapping juries would increase the chance of miscarriages of justice. And the Institute for Government says it will not save as much money as the government claims.
Starmer says he is not abolishing jury trials. Many victims have to wait years for cases to go to trial. He says he is not prepared to do nothing about this. Under this plan, the proportion of cases that go to jury trial will just fall from 3% to 2.25%.
(The figure is just 3% if you include all cases that would not go to a jury, because they are heard by magistrates, and guilty pleas.)
UPDATE: Starmer said:
double quotation markWe’re not abolishing jury trials, and he knows that.
I have worked with with women and girls who have been victims of sexual violence and rape, who have waited a very, very long time for their cases to come to court. Many of them drop out because of the wait.
They have described to me personally, the mental anguish that they go through when their case can’t get heard for years, when they’re told of adjournment time and time again. I’m not prepared to look them in the eye any longer and not do something about it. We owe it to them.
This is about getting the balance right. We’re not abolishing jury trial. There’s about 3% of cases go to jury trial, as he very well knows, 97% don’t. After this, it’ll be 2.25%. That is the difference between the policy we’re advancing and the policy as it now is.
So it’s not abolishing jury trials. But I’m not prepared to see those who have been victims of violence against women and girls, I’m not prepared to see them repeatedly let down.
That’s what happened for 14 long years. It’s not good enough.
Updated at 10.00 EDT
Paul Davies (Lab) says, under Reform UK, decent healthcare would only be available to people who can afford it.
Starmer says waiting lists are at their lowest level for three years, and the best ambulance response times for five years, because of Labour’s investment in the NHS.
Dawn Butler (Lab) asks Starmer to back calls for phone manufacturers to be required to install a kill switch on phones that will stop them being used if they have been stolen.
Starmer says the government would like to work with the industry on this issue.