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Starmer calls for Williamson to be sacked, saying he is ‘not fit’ to be in government
Keir Starmer has said Gavin Williamson should be sacking, because he is “not fit” be a government minister.
But, speaking to journalists this morning, the Labour leader focused his criticisim on Rishi Sunak for giving Williamson a job as a minister without portfolio in the Cabinet Office, with the right to attend cabinet.
In a reference to the row about Suella Braveman being appointed home secretary as well, Starmer said:
It is so disappointing that yet again we’re having a discussion about the prime minister’s judgment, this time in relation to Gavin Williamson. He’s clearly got people around the cabinet table who are not fit to be there. That is because he was so weak and wanted to avoid an election within his own party and I think the only way out of this, because these debates are going to go on, because of the weak position the prime minister is in, I think we should say to the public, they should have a choice – do you want to carry on with this chaos or do you want the stability of a Labour government? That’s why I think there is such a powerful case for a general election.
Starmer seemed to be referring to the most infamous UK political tweet of the last decade – David Cameron’s “chaos with Ed Miliband” message about the choice facing voters at the 2015 general election.
Britain faces a simple and inescapable choice – stability and strong Government with me, or chaos with Ed Miliband: https://t.co/fmhcfTunbm
— David Cameron (@David_Cameron) May 4, 2015
Asked if he was calling for Williamson to be sacked, Starmed replied:
I think that the prime minister has got people who are clearly not fit for the job around the cabinet table. Gavin Williamson has got history when it comes to breaches of security and leaking, etc. He is clearly not suitable, but the central focus really here is on the prime minister, to ask the question why has he put these people around the cabinet.
Johnson implicitly accuses Tory net zero critics of peddling ‘nonsense’
In his Q&A at the Cop27 summit Boris Johnson implicitly attacked fellow Conservatives who are sceptical of the drive towards net zero, accusing them of peddling “nonsense”. Some of these MPs have in the past been some of his strongest supporters.
Johnson did not refer to them directly, but he clearly had them in mind when he spoke about net zero scepticism and said it was time to “tackle this nonsense head on”. He went on:
Yes, of course, we do need to use hydrocarbons in the transitional period and, yes, in the UK there is more that we can do with our own domestic resources.
However, this is not the moment to abandon the campaign for net zero, this is not the moment to turn our backs on renewable technology.
In parliament almost all the opposition to the principle of net zero has come from Conservative MPs. Some of them belong to the Net Zero Scutiny Group (NZSG), which has been strongly criticised by environmentalists. The NZSG claims that it accepts the scientific evidence for climate change, but it thinks some of the measures being adopted by governments around the world to cut carbon emissions are unnecessary, or are being implemented too quickly.
The Northern Ireland minister Steve Baker is credited with setting up the NZSG. Baker was a leading Brexiter, and supported Johnson’s campaign for the Tory leadership in 2019. But earlier this year he decided it was time for Johnson to quit as PM, and when when Johnson contemplated standing again last month, Baker said a Johnson comeback would be a “disaster”.
These are from my colleague Peter Walker on Johnson’s Q&A.
Making a speech at a side venue at Cop 27, Boris Johnson introduces himself as “the spirit of Glasgow, Cop 26”. Feels like there could be a, ‘things were better under me’ theme being quietly developed here. pic.twitter.com/Ulp4K3u4LY
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) November 7, 2022
It is politically interesting that Johnson – whatever his many motives – is using this speech to condemn the post-Ukraine net zero sceptics, many in his own party, including those who would “frack the hell out of the British countryside”. Even features criticism of the Telegraph.
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) November 7, 2022
Even doing his best to make serious points, Johnson can’t resist a self-referencing aside. He mentions the UK’s summer heatwave, and half-jokingly wonders if was “perhaps even contributing to unexpected political turmoil in Westminster” – ie his removal as PM.
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) November 7, 2022
Asked about a potential shift to scepticism over both climate action and supporting Ukraine in the US if the Republicans see a resurgence in the mid-terms, Johnson partly dodges the question but says he is “praying” for continued US action over both issues.
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) November 7, 2022
Johnson repeatedly refusing to be drawn at all about Rishi Sunak initially declining to go to Cop 27, mock-modestly describing his role at the summit as being “a supporting spear-carrier”. On Westminster issues, “no one gives a monkey’s”, he says,
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) November 7, 2022
Rishi Sunak has met the EU Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, for talks at the UN Cop27 climate summit in Egypt. As PA Media reports, the pair smiled and thanked the media at the start of the meeting.
Afterwards Von der Leyen said she looked forward to a “constructive” relationship.
Good first meeting with Prime Minister @RishiSunak in the margins of #COP27
We face many common challenges, from tackling climate change and the energy transition to Russia’s war against Ukraine.
I look forward to a constructive 🇪🇺🇬🇧cooperation based on our agreements. pic.twitter.com/TeInbLKVSn
— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) November 7, 2022
Shapps says Home Office was ‘in danger’ of breaking law with conditions at Manston when he replaced Suella Braverman as home secretary
Grant Shapps, the business secretary, has said that the Home Office was “in danger” of breaking the law because of conditions at the Manston processing centre for asylum seekers when he was appointed to replace Suella Braverman as home secretary.
Braverman has been strongly criticised for allowing the camp to become overcrowded. She has been accused of ignoring legal advice saying that it would be illegal for migrants to be detained in the camp for more than 24 hours, and of refusing to commission extra hotel accommodation for them. She has denied both these claims. But insiders have claimed that conditions did start to improve when Shapps became home secretary.
In an interview with Sky News, asked why he wanted to move people into hotels, Shapps said:
Simply that we’ve got to be careful not to break the law ourselves by detaining people who are able to be outside of that – well, it’s not a detention centre, but a processing centre at Manston.
So, really just a question of making sure that we were acting within the law. That’s something that the home secretary is continuing to do now.
Asked whether that meant the Home Office was breaking the law under the policies pursued by Braverman, Shapps said:
The advice I had was very clear – that we were in danger of doing that if we weren’t acting. I did act during six days in the job.
Shapps was home secretary for less than a week, and he was replaced by Braverman. With media attention now focused on the scandal of overcrowding at Manston, the Home Office has now been reducing numbers at the camp.
In his Q&A at the Cop27 summit Boris Johnson, the former prime minister, said the world was failing to honour the promises on net zero made at Cop26 at Glasgow. My colleague Bibi van der Zee has full coverage on her Cop27 live blog.
In his interview with the Sun on his flight to Egypt Rishi Sunak restated his opposition to Matt Hancock taking part in I’m a Celebrity. “I was very disappointed,” Sunak told the paper, saying MPs should be working for their constituents.
Sunak was also asked about the rather more consequential topic of what will be in next week’s autumn statement, but the headline on its write-up of his reply – “I’ll be a Santa not a Scrooge for Britain, vows Rishi Sunak” – may turn out to be the least accurate that ever gets written about what will in effect be another colossal budget. It was prompted by Sunak’s evasive reply to a question about whether the budget would make him Santa or Scrooge.
The accurate answer, of course, is neither – because even Scrooge never imposed fiscal tightening on a scale envisaged for next week. As my colleague Jessica Elgot reports, the latest steer is that it will include tax rises and spending cuts totalling £60bn, including at least £35bn in cuts.
At one point government sources were indicating that spending cuts would account for 50% of the savings, with tax rises delivering the other 50%, but it now seems that spending cuts will account for a bigger share of the economising than originally planned. However, the new figures would still make Jeremy Hunt, the current chancellor, more of a tax raiser than George Osborne. When Osborne became chancellor in 2010, his austerity programme was 80% cuts, and just 20% tax increases.
Grant Shapps, the business secretary, was the No 10 voice on the airwaves this morning. In an interview with Sky News, he said Gavin Williamson should not have sent aggressive messages to Wendy Morton. Shapps said:
I don’t think it was the right thing to do, to send messages like that. I see they must have been sent in a moment of frustration. I think, generally, it is the case that it’s much better to write things which you would not live to regret later.
And especially with colleagues, writing things which are polite, even if you have a point of view to express, I think is not unreasonable. So, I don’t think he was right to send them. The prime minister said the same. I know that the party is going through a process looking at them at the moment.
My colleague Peter Walker has the full story here.
And here is the clip.
Rishi Sunak under fresh pressure over Gavin Williamson as new allegation emerges
Good morning. Rishi Sunak is in Egypt, attending the Cop27 climate summit, in his first overseas visit as prime minister. And, like all prime ministers, he is learning that, although you can take the prime minister out of Westminster, you can never leave it behind, because domestic political hassle continues to clog up your in-tray, even on a day when you want to focus on international issues and hobnobbing with world leaders. One such problem for Sunak is Gavin Williamson.
On Friday and over the weekend it emerged that Sunak had appointed Williamson a Cabinet Office minister, with the right to attend cabinet, even though the Conservative party is considering a complaint about him from Wendy Morton. She says he sent her offensive, threatening messages when she was chief whip, because he was angry about not being invited to attend the Queen’s funeral.
As he flew to Egypt for the summit, Sunak told the Sun in an interview that the messages from Williamson were “not acceptable”. He said:
They were not acceptable or right. It was a difficult time for our party at the time, but regardless, people always should be treated with respect.
I am glad Gavin has expressed regret. There is an independent complaint process which is running, its right and reasonable we let that conclude.
Sunak says he did not read Williamson’s messages until yesterday. But he has not denied being aware of them when he appointed Williamson to his government. (No one seems quite sure what Williamson is doing as minister without portfolio at the Cabinet Office, and the appointment looked as if it might have more to do with rewarding an influential supporter than enhancing. the performance of the government.)
Some would argue that, if the messages were unacceptable, having Williamson in government should not be acceptable either. That is not Sunak’s position as of now, but this morning the Times has made it harder for Sunak to keep Williamson by reporting a fresh allegation about Williamson’s conduct when he was chief whip. In their story, Steven Swinford and Gabriel Pogrund say a minister (who they have not named) has claimed that “Williamson raised details about her private life during a conversation in an attempt to silence her while she was on the back benches”. Swinford and Pogrund report:
The Tory MP, who told the Conservative party at the weekend that she was willing to discuss the matter, said that Williamson had called her into his office when he was chief whip in 2016.
At the time she was campaigning on an issue that was causing the government difficulty. During the meeting Williamson is said to have raised a sensitive issue about her private life, which she interpreted as a tacit threat.
Allies of Williamson denied that he had been trying to silence the MP and said that he had raised the issue in a “pastoral capacity”.
We are likely to hear more on this as the day goes on.
My colleague Bibi van der Zee will be covering Cop27 on a separate live blog.
I will cover some of the UK line from Cop27 here, but I will largely be focusing on non-Cop issues. Here is the agenda for the day.
8.10am (UK time): Rishi Sunak is due to hold a bilateral meeting with Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, at the Cop27 summit in Egypt. He also has bilaterals scheduled with Giorgia Meloni, the new Italian prime minister, at 9.15am, and with Emmanuel Macron, the French president, at 2pm.
8.45am: Boris Johnson, the former PM, is due to speak at a New York Times event at Cop27.
11.30am: Sunak speaks at a roundtable event at Cop27. He is also due to be taking part in an afternoon event.
Morning: Keir Starmer is on a visit this morning linked to Labour’s green prosperity plan.
2pm: Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, speaks at a Cop27 event.
2.30pm: Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
4pm: James Bowler, the new permanent secretary at the Treasury, gives evidence to the Commons public accounts committee, about the creation of the UK infrastructure bank.
I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions and, if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.
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