Key events
Q: Would you increase personal taxes after the election?
Starmer says he wants to see an economy where growth comes before tax and spend.
His first answer on tax is always growth, he says.
He says he wants to ensure the tax burden on working people is as low as it can be.
He says, if the current government had increased growth as much as the last Labour government, the government would have £40bn more for public spending.
Q: Do you want people to get a real living wage, not just the minimum wage?
Starmer says he does want to see people get higher wages. But he says this could be determined by a process.
But people will not get higher wages unless there is genuine growth, he says.
So a growth policy is a policy for higher wages, he says.
He says the model for growth that Labour wants would increase living standards everywhere. He does not want a model that just promotes growth in the south.
Keir Starmer has finished his speech now. I will post more from it when I have seen the full text.
He is now taking questions.
On the subject of the Northern Ireland protocol, he says there are practical steps that could make it work more effectively that could have been introduced some time ago.
The question today is whether Rishi Sunak has “the strength” to sell his deal to his backbenchers, he says.
He says Labour does not have that problems, because the party is not divided.
Starmer warns Britons could be poorer than Polish people by end of this decade on current growth trendsIn his speech on Labour’s growth plan Keir Starmer said that on current growth trends Britons could end up poorer than Polish people by the end of this decade. According to the extract from the speech released in advance, he said:
We need to be frank about the path of decline the Tories have set our country on. The British people are falling behind while our European neighbours get richer. In the East as well as in countries like France and Germany. I’m not comfortable with that. Not comfortable with a trajectory that will soon see Britain overtaken by Poland. Nor am I prepared to accept what the consequences of this failure would mean.
And here is the explanatory note from Labour defending this claim.
World Bank data shows that the UK had a GDP per capita of $44,979 in 2021 (latest available data) compared with $34,915 in Poland, and $33,593 in Hungary, and $30,777 in Romania.
UK GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per capita grew at an average annual rate of 0.5% in real terms from 2010-21, compared to 3.6% for Poland, 3% for Hungary and 3.8% for Romania.
Assuming these trends continue, by 2030, the UK will be around US$600 (PPP adjusted) poorer per person than Poland.
By 2040, the UK will be around US$12,000 and US$8,000 poorer per person than Romania and Hungary respectively.
Rees-Mogg says ‘significant number’ of Tory MPs will not be happy with protocol deal if it does not have DUP backingJacob Rees-Mogg, the former Brexit secretary, has been doing a media round this morning. As reported earlier, he gave Rishi Sunak some credit for what the PM seems to have negotiated, but said that he did not think it would be enough to satisfy the DUP. (See 9.31am.) He said:
From what I’ve heard, he [Sunak] has done very well, but I’m not sure he has achieved the objective of getting the DUP back into powersharing, which is the fundamental point of it.
Here are some of the other points he made.
Rees-Mogg said that a “significant number” of Tory MPs would not be happy with the deal if it did not have DUP backing. He told GB News:
It will all depend on the DUP. If the DUP are against it, I think there will be quite a significant number of Conservatives who are unhappy.
He said Boris Johnson’s views would be influential in determing how Tory MPs responded to the deal. He said:
The position of Boris Johnson is always important. He remains the biggest figure in UK politics and therefore his view will be of fundamental relevance to how this debate is carried out.
Rees-Mogg stressed that he needed to see the text of the deal before making a judgment. He said:
I’m afraid with all the EU deals the devil is in the detail, so when people say ‘we need to see the legal text’, they are not larking about, they really want to see it to understand what the effect is.
He said there seemed to be “some important concessions” from the EU in the deal.
He criticised No 10 for not consulting the DUP more fully ahead of agreeing the deal. He said:
My concern over all of this is what sounds to be quite an achievement has been weakened by not consulting the DUP in the first place to ensure their support was on board before it was announced, rather than taking a punt that they may like it afterwards.
I think that’s unfortunate, I think it hasn’t necessarily been handled successfully in terms of communications.
He said that it would be “ridiculous” for the Conservative party to change leader again before the election. Asked about Johnson returing as party leader, he told Good Morning Britain:
Boris was a great leader, it was a mistake to get rid of him but, no, I do not want to see a change in the Tory leadership now. I think we would look ridiculous to change leader again …
I’m not saying that I never want to see Boris come back, for the whole of eternity. But I want to see Conservative MPs and Conservative party members supporting Rishi Sunak.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (right) being interviewed by Ed Balls and Susanna Reid on ITV’s Good Morning Britain this morning. Photograph: Ken McKay/ITV/REX/ShutterstockKeir Starmer is about to deliver a speech on Labour’s growth policy. You can watch a live feed here.
I will post more on the speech shortly.
Theresa Villiers says MPs must get vote on protocol dealAs my colleague Lisa O’Carroll reports, the former Northern Ireland secretary Theresa Villiers, a leader Brexiter, said this morning it is “crucial parliament has a vote” on the much-anticipated deal.
Sunak and von der Leyen to unveil protocol deal as leading Tory Brexiter suggests PM has done ‘very well’ but not enoughGood morning. Rishi Sunak is today unveiling his own Brexit deal – an agreement with the EU on changes to the Northern Ireland protocol. Theresa May lost office because she could not get her own Brexit deal accepted by her party, or parliament. Sunak is in a much stronger position than she was (the issue is more marginal, the Tory Brexiters are less potent, most MPs just want to move on, and Sunak has Labour on his side) but it is still, as Peter Walker reports in his overnight summary, a perilous moment for him.
The Daily Mail splash headline sums up the key question for the day.
But sell the deal to whom? There are at least five groups that matter.
The DUP: The main unionist party has set seven tests for the deal, and it has said it will not lift its boycott of the power-sharing in Northern Ireland, which has led to the executive being suspended for the last year, if it is not happy. DUP MPs have been complaining about not being shown the text of the deal in advance, and the most hardline have recently been setting what seem like increasingly unrealistic demands for what it must say.
Tory Brexiters in the European Research Group (ERG): Broadly they claim to have the same concerns as the DUP and some of them say they will be guided by the DUP’s response, and that they will reject the deal if the DUP does. But their politics are not 100% aligned. Some of them are Boris Johnson supporters who are motivated in part by animus towards Sunak. But they are also Tories, who might be swayed by the argument that a split won’t help the party at the next election.
People in Northern Ireland: The deal is supposed to remove some of the obstacles affecting trade going from Britain to Northern Ireland. The fact that Sinn Féin MPs do not take their seats in the Commons means that the DUP gets a disproprotionate voice in Northern Ireland. But they don’t represent all unionists, and they only got 28% of the vote in last year’s assembly elections. The public as a whole in Northern Ireland is much less critical of the protocol than the DUP, and more likely to back Sunak’s deal.
Conservative party members: Sunak was not chosen as leader by party members, and a ConservativeHome survey published yesterday suggests 41% of members do not support his policy on the protocol, and only 36% do. If members are unhappy, that won’t really show this week. But it will create a problem for Sunak in the future.
The UK electorate: Outside Northern Ireland, and particularly in England, Britons take little interest in what happens on the other side of the Irish Sea and “solving” a Northern Ireland problems confer little or no electoral benefit. But the protocol is also about “getting Brexit done”, and if Sunak does conclude a successful protocol deal, he might get some credit for competence.
Although much of what is in the deal has been reported, we have not seen the full details, and we do not know yet how the key groups will react. We will know a lot more tonight, but it might take some days before the DUP or the ERG deliver a definitive yes or no. From No 10’s point of view, at least it has not been firmly rejected already.
This morning Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary and an arch-Brexiter loyal to Boris Johnson, gave Sunak a mixed assessment. He said he thought Sunak had done “very well”, but possibly not enough to satisify the DUP.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10am: Keir Starmer gives a speech on Labour’s plans to increase growth.
11am: Kate Forbes, the SNP leadership candidate, holds a campaign event.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
Lunchtime: Rishi Sunak is due to hold a meeting with Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, to sign off the deal on the Northern Ireland protocol. After that Sunak will chair a cabinet meeting where the cabinet will be briefed on the deal.
Around 3.30pm: Sunak is due to hold a press conference with von der Leyen in Windsor.
Late afternoon/early evening: Sunak is expected to make a statement on the deal to MPs.
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