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
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.
Here is Peter Walker’s story about Yvette Cooper’s announcement.
Cooper also says the Home Office will increase support for police tackling online abuse, including funding undercover online officers infiltrating live streams and chat rooms.
Cooper says Home Office to fund more local inquiries, starting in Telford and four other pilot areas
Cooper says local inquiries can be more effective than national inquiries.
And so she has asked Tom Crowther, who carried out the Telford inquiry, to develop “a new framework for victim-centered, locally-led inquiries where they are needed”.
These will start in Oldham, and four other pilot areas, she says.
And this will include support for councils who want to explore “other ways to support victims, including local panels”.
Cooper says there will be an extra £5m to back these inquiries.
Cooper says Louise Casey will do 3-month audit of extent of gang-based abuse, including looking at ethnicity of offenders
But Cooper says just looking at historical cases is not enough. She goes on:
There are currently 127 major police investigations under way on child sexual exploitation and gang grooming across 29 different police forces. Many major investigations have involved Pakistani-heritage gangs and the police taskforce evidence also shows exploitation and abuse taking place across many different communities and ethnicities.
She says the ethnicity data is not adequate. She says she has asked for an overhaul, with data published covering when investigations end, not just when they begin.
And she says she has asked Louise Case, the crossbench peer and former civil servant, to carry out a “rapid audit” of gang-based exploitation across the country, and to make recommendations.
The independent inquiry into child sexual abuse concluded that an accurate picture of the prevalence of child sexual exploitation could not be gleaned from the data and evidence it had available. So this audit will seek to fill that gap.
Cooper says the audit will look at evidence not previously available. And it will “properly examine ethnicity data and the demographics of the gangs involved and their victims”.
Cooper says Casey is the right person to do this because she carried out a “no-holds barred” report on child abuse in Rotherham.
Cooper says Casey will spend three months on this audit, meaning she can start before she has to start work on the commission on social care that she has also been asked to lead for the government.
Cooper says the government will introduce stronger sentences for grooming, making organising abuse and exploitation an aggravating factor.
She says the remit of the independent child sexual abuse review panel will be extended, so it does not just cover historical cases before 2013. That means any victim will be able to ask for a review of their case, without having to go back to the institution that failed them.
She says she is writing to all chief constables urging them to look again at historic gang exploitation cases where no further action was taken.
Cooper says timetable for implementing child abuse inquiry recommendations to be set out before Easter
Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, says Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, has been meeting survivors of sexual abuse in Oldham today.
She says she will tell MPs what the next steps will be.
She says the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA) produced its report, after a seven year inquiry, in 2022.
She says before Easter the government will set forward its timetable for implementing the recommendations from the IICSA report.
Four of the 20 recommendations relate to the Home Office. They wll be accepted in full.
And all the recommendations from IICSA’s standalone report into grooming gangs, published in February 2022, will be implemented.
Yvette Cooper’s statement to MPs about grooming gangs
Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, has just started giving her Commons statement about grooming gangs.
Badenoch’s speech – snap verdict
Kemi Badenoch’s problem is that she leads a party with a dire record in government and has not yet done much to persuade voters that she’s different. The extracts from her speech released in advance contained a hint that she was willing to address this, because in those passages she went further than she has done before in disowning the Tory record on Brexit. (See 9.36am.) But, overall, the speech as a whole did not live up to the expectations created by the overnight preview. Badenoch’s enthusiam for truth-telling seems extremely limited and, after she got through the pre-briefed bits (which were mostly at the start of the speech), the rest of it sounded very familiar. The analysis of its drawbacks filed earlier, at 11.45am, still stands.
Sam Coates from Sky News had a point, too, when he said the overall tone was negative and gloomy. None of it sounded uplifting.
But Nigel Farage has found something to joke about. He posted this on social media.
A total of 21 people are currently watching Kemi Badenoch’s speech on Facebook and her YouTube stream crashed.
It’s a good job she understands the digital age.
That is a reference to Badenoch’s tweet over the Christmas holidays about the Reform UK membership ticker, in which she claimed Farage “doesn’t understand the digital age”.
Badenoch plays down need for apologising over Tories’ record, saying getting Labour out more important
Q: [From Katie Balls from the Spectator] Is there anything you want to apologise to voters for on behalf of Tory party? And do you think Donald Trump’s election will lead to a ‘“vibe shift”?
On apologising, Badenoch said:
When we had a speech last month about immigration – and that’s one of the things where I came out upfront and said we acknowledge that we made mistakes – I was knocking on a door recently, and I was apologising to the person at the doorstep, and said, I’m not interested in your apology, I want you to get these people out, and that’s what I’m going to be focused on.
On vibes, Badenoch said:
I think that things have been in a state of flux for at least 10 years. There’s been a vibe shift almost every 18 months, and we’re seeing the latest iteration. We are going to have to be flexible as a party.
And that was it.
Badenoch took a lot of questions, but none from leftwing news organisations.
Badenoch says public ‘aren’t interested in litigating membership numbers’, drawing line under row with Reform UK
Q: Do you think the last Conservative government should have held an inquiry into grooming gangs? And do you still stand by your claim Reform UK membership numbers are wrong?
On the inquiry, Badenoch says she does support a national inquiry into grooming gangs. That was not her view at the time, but it is her view now, because of what has happened since.
On the row about the Reform UK membership figures (she claimed Reform were making up the figures – Reform produced evidence that seemed to disprove this), Badenoch says:
I stand by between I made at the time. I think if you read [the tweet] very carefully, you’ll see I was very specific.
But I don’t think the public are interested in litigating membership numbers. They want to know what we are going to do for them, and that is what my speech today is about.
In her tweet, Badenoch claims the Reform UK membership numbers being shown on a ticker were fake, but also that Reform were wrong to claim they had more members than the Tories because Reform were using the last published figure for Tory members – when the most recent figure has not been disclosed.
Her answer today suggests she wants to draw a line under the affair.
