Badenoch describes Reeves as ‘woman problem’ for Keir Starmer
Here is the quote from Kemi Badenoch’s Q&A with journalists where she referred to Rachel Reeves as being a “woman problem” for the PM.
Asked, jokingly, if she would back Keir Starmer if he sacked Reeves (see 2.07pm), Badenoch replied:
If he does the right thing with Rachel Reeves, I will also support him in that, but his ‘woman problem’ is not my concern.
Asked later why she referred to Reeves being a woman in this context (see 2.15pm), Badenoch replied:
Well, when [Reeves] stood up in her budget, she wanted everyone to know that she was the first female chancellor. I didn’t stand up here congratulating myself for being a female leader, or being a black leader. And that’s why when you open the door to those things, it means that people can comment on them.
Key events
Early evening summary
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Yvette Cooper has announced an urgent national review of the scale of grooming gangs as part of a range of new measures to tackle the issue, following sustained political pressure. She also said in a Commons statement the Home Office would fund more local inquiries, starting in Telford and four other towns, (See 3.28pm.) The Tories claimed this was a “totally inadequate” response to public concern about grooming gangs, but Labour MPs who have been campaigning on this issue were generally positive. However one of those MPs, Sarah Champion said that she was concerned that the local inquiries would not have the power of a statutory national inquiry, which can compel witnesses to give evidence, and that the extra £5m set aside for these local inquiries would not be enough, given the Telford inquiry alone cost £8m. Champion also asked Cooper for an assurance that the government would be adopting all the 20 recommendations in the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA) report published in 2022. Cooper said a timetable for addressing the recommendations would be set out before Easter, but she said some of them raised “complex issues” or would require “considerable work”. It has been reported that the IICSA compensation scheme proposal would cost around £7bn. Commenting on Cooper’s reply, Richard Scorer, who represented more than 100 victims at the inquiry as head of abuse law and public inquiries at Slater and Gordon, said:
Last week the government promised that it would implement all the key recommendations of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. Today in parliament the home secretary was pressed by Sarah Champion MP to confirm that all the recommendations would be implemented. In response, the home secretary failed to give a clear and categorical assurance . We are very concerned that the government is backing down on its commitment to full implementation . Any delay or failure to implement IICSA in full is unacceptable and a betrayal of survivors.
Kemi Badenoch ended her speech today with the line:
We are under new leadership, we are back in the service of the British people, and we are going to give you your country back.
Commenting on Bluesky, my colleague Jessica Elgot says;
Quite interesting that this is basically an amalgamation of Labour and Reform UK’s slogans
Stephen Bush has a good assessment of Ed Davey’s EU speech today in his Financial Times Inside Politics briefing. Here’s an extract.
One challenge for the third party at Westminster is to have a distinctive position that gets you in the headlines and has an electoral constituency, but for whatever reason is not going to appeal to the government or the main opposition. And you can be sure neither of the latter parties is going to touch the topic of Britain rejoining the customs union.
There is no prospect of Kemi Badenoch embracing the customs union, for both her own ideological reasons and the balance of forces within the Conservative party. And for reasons of electoral calculation, Keir Starmer won’t either.
Under Badenoch, the Conservatives have had precious little to say about the Lib Dems. This is surprising, given that unless they can make a big dent in the 59 seats Davey’s party gained from the Tories in England, there isn’t a path to a Conservative parliamentary majority. Still, one thing that spooks some Lib Dem MPs is that they end up being seen simply as Labour-by-proxy by the Tory voters they won last time and need to hold on to.
So a distinctive position on which they can criticise Labour without risk of being crowded out by the Conservatives and that aligns with both their activists and core voters ticks a lot of boxes.
Bush has added an update to this on Bluesky.
There’s another element that makes it smart that I hadn’t thought of this morning, which is that the Lib Dems need to attack Labour in a way which makes “my heart is red but I live in the Cotswolds” types go “fair enough” and still vote tactically, rather than “screw you, Davey”:
Starmer won’t attend Trump’s inauguration, No 10 confirms
Keir Starmer will not attend Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony next week, in line with precedent, his spokesperson confirmed today. AFP reports:
Trump has broken with tradition by inviting some foreign leaders to Monday’s event, after which the Republican will return to the White House, but Starmer is not among them.
“It is US custom that foreign governments are officially represented at presidential inaugurations by their ambassadors, and the British ambassador will represent the UK,” his spokesperson told reporters.
“We look forward to working with him [Trump], and you know from the readout of their phone call earlier this month the two look forward to seeing one another at the earliest available opportunity,” he added.
Foreign leaders are by tradition not invited to attend the inauguration of the US president, but Trump has invited the far-right Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni.
French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen will not attend.
The Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, is due to be at the ceremony, as is French far-right politician Eric Zemmour.
The full text of Kemi Badenoch’s speech is now on the Conservative party’s website.
Kiran Stacey is a Guardian political correspondent.
David Lammy, the foreign secretary, has urged Israel to accept the peace deal proposed with Hamas.
In a statement to MPs earlier, he said:
It is critical that there is final approval of this agreement, and as the Israeli cabinet meets, I urge them to back this deal. Now is not the time for any backtracking.
This deal is now final and needs to be implemented.
He also pushed for Israeli politicians to repeal their law to ban Unwra, the UN relief agency, which is due to come into force later this month. “The unravelling of Unwra will make the West Bank even more fragile than it currently is,” he warned.
MPs were unusually united in their comments as members from both sides welcomed the proposed ceasefire in Gaza and joined Lammy in urging the Israelis to accept it.
Some Tories encouraged him to continue putting pressure on the Israelis to abide by the agreement.
Oliver Dowden, the former Conservative deputy prime minister, said:
Can I urge the foreign secretary to use all the diplomatic efforts of His Majesty’s government … to secure agreement from the Israeli cabinet?
Ex-MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle cleared after Labour drops inquiry into surprise complaint that ended his Commons career
Aletha Adu
Aletha Adu is a Guardian political correspondent.
Former Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle has been readmitted into the Labour party, after he was suspended last May and blocked from standing at the general election.
Russell-Moyle, a leftwinger who was the MP for Brighton Kemptown since 2017, was barred from standing one day after it emerged Labour officials were planning to also block Diane Abbott from contesting her seat if she would not agree to stand down. Russell-Moyle had been expecting to stand again, and the launch of disciplinary proceedings came as a surprise.
Today he said:
I am pleased to announce that in final weeks of December, I received a letter from the Labour party informing me that the complaint against me, which I said at the time was ‘vexatious, politically motivated and designed to disrupt the election’, had been dropped and the party has no remaining case against me. My membership of the party has been restored.
After thanking his team for their support as they also “lost their jobs”, he added:
This complaint has had a deep and lasting impact on me and my health, but with this ordeal now over, I am looking forward to putting this year behind me with my reputation restored and my head held high.
Sources close to the former MP believe he is seriously considering his future within the Labour party, given the handling of this investigation.
The Guardian understands Russell-Moyle has been a long supporter of devolution in the Sussex region, in which his former constituency sits, and would be interested in a future leadership role. The government’s devolution plans would create one strategic authority which would govern East Sussex, Brighton and Hove and West Sussex. It would require for the new members of the new authority and a mayor of Sussex.
Leader of Tory group on Glasgow council defects to Reform UK
Severin Carrell
Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.
The leader of the Scottish Conservative group at Glasgow city council, and a former Westminster candidate for the Tories, has defected to Reform UK.
Thomas Kerr, a councillor in Shettleston who fought the Rutherglen and Hamilton West byelection for the Tories, is the highest profile of a handful of council defections to Reform UK in Scotland recently.
According to several recent polls, Reform UK is now neck and neck with the Scottish Tories. One earlier this week from Survation put Reform on 15% and the Tories on 13%, raising the prospect the party will win seats in next year’s Holyrood elections.
In a statement, Kerr, until now one of only two Conservative councillors in Glasgow, said:
Reform UK represents the change our communities desperately need, and I’m excited to continue my work for Shettleston with this dynamic new party.
Reform said it was “delighted”.
Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay described Kerr’s announcement as “very disappointing”. Asked by reporters at Holyrood whether there might be further defections, he said: “I can’t control what people may or may not decide to do.”
There is speculation the second Tory councillor in the city may also defect, as well as another former Labour councillor.
Reform has yet to win an election in Scotland despite a raft of council byelections. But it now has six councillors, including five in Aberdeenshire and two in North Ayrshire, after a spate of defections from the Tories and realignments by previously independent councillors
Kerr was first elected to Glasgow city council in 2017 aged 20, and became the Conservative group leader in 2019. He came a distant third in the Rutherglen byelection, which was comfortably won for Labour by the current junior energy minister Michael Shanks.
Badenoch describes Reeves as ‘woman problem’ for Keir Starmer
Here is the quote from Kemi Badenoch’s Q&A with journalists where she referred to Rachel Reeves as being a “woman problem” for the PM.
Asked, jokingly, if she would back Keir Starmer if he sacked Reeves (see 2.07pm), Badenoch replied:
If he does the right thing with Rachel Reeves, I will also support him in that, but his ‘woman problem’ is not my concern.
Asked later why she referred to Reeves being a woman in this context (see 2.15pm), Badenoch replied:
Well, when [Reeves] stood up in her budget, she wanted everyone to know that she was the first female chancellor. I didn’t stand up here congratulating myself for being a female leader, or being a black leader. And that’s why when you open the door to those things, it means that people can comment on them.
Cooper suggests lack of national inquiry powers won’t hold back local inquiries
Bernard Jenkin (Con) told Yvette Cooper that he welcomed her statement, and that he thought she had come a long way since last week, but that he thought the local inquiries need to have the power to summon witnesses to appear and to compel the production of documents. He said they should have these powers.
Cooper said that the best protection for victims would come from the work done by police. And she said the previous local inquiries did not have the powers of a national inquiry (which can order the production of papers and witnesses). But those inquiries “still managed to uncover serious problems and also make serious recommendations”, she said.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp says Labour’s plans for five local inquiries ‘totally inadequate’
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, accused Keir Starmer of “smearing” people concerned about child rape by suggesting they were far right last week.
(That is a misleading account of what Starmer actually said.)
He described the announcement of local inquiries in five towns as inadequate.
What the home secretary has announced today is totally inadequate. It will only cover a fraction of the towns affected, and it appears these inquiries will not have the legal powers they need. That is why we need a full national public inquiry covering the whole country and with the powers under the Inquiry Act needed to obtain the evidence required.
