What a racket: Lib Dem leader Ed Davey took time out for a quick game of tennis before his keynote speech at the party’s conference in Brighton on Tuesday. © PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo
Conference Season is well and truly underway, as this week saw the Liberal Democrats head down to the Brighton seaside and celebrate their record number of MPs. With Lib Dem leader Ed Davey arriving at Conference on a jet ski (not entirely unexpected), the Conference saw motions passed on the prison system, Buy Now Pay Later, the UK’s relationship with the EU, maternity care, early education, and on the creation of three new National Nature Parks. With few MPs given keynote speeches (due to the impending reshuffle), Davey rounded up proceedings on Tuesday afternoon with the leader’s speech, emphasising that he wanted to “consign the Conservative Party to the history books” and arguing that it was his party who were the real opposition to the Labour Government.
Before the dust had even settled in the Brighton Centre and Grand Hotel, the Lib Dems were announcing a huge reshuffle of their frontbench, with new MPs given important spokesperson roles while longer-serving MPs have seemingly been consigned to the backbenches… Deputy Leader Daisy Cooper was moved from Health to Treasury, with Helen Morgan replacing her in Health, and Sarah Olney moved to shadow the Cabinet Office. Newbies such as Calum Miller (Foreign Affairs), Lisa Smart (Home Affairs), Helen Maguire (Defence) and Steve Darling (Work and Pensions) have all been given roles, while Jamie Stone, Wera Hobhouse, Sarah Green, Richard Foord and Sarah Dyke were all dropped from the frontbench, despite forming part of the small Lib Dem grouping before the election. You can see the whole new frontbench on the Lib Dem website here.
5% - The current Bank of England base interest rate, maintained this week by a majority of 8-1
£13.7bn – Government borrowing in August 2024
153 – Number of donations willingly made to the Treasury over the past two decades, worth over £4m
£80 – How much new Labour MP, Patrick Hurley, has been paying per night to live in LSE student accommodation since being elected
33 – Number of MPs on the Liberal Democrat’s new frontbench team
70,000 – Number of Russian soldiers who have now died in Ukraine, according to the BBC
The Bank of England held the base interest rate at 5% on Thursday after the MPC voted by 8-1 for no change to monetary policy. Governor Andrew Bailey said inflation had “come down a long way” but warned the Bank would need to see more evidence that it will remain low before cutting rates further.
Junior doctors in England accepted the Government’s pay offer of a 22% pay rise, ending the most prolonged industrial dispute in the NHS’s history. This means that a doctor starting foundation training in the NHS will see their basic pay increase to £36,600, compared to around £32,400 before the deal. Train drivers also agreed on a deal that will see the end of more than two years of strike action at 16 train companies, with Aslef union members accepting an offer which includes a 5% backdated pay rise for 2022-23, a 4.75% rise for 23-24, and a 4.5% increase for 24-25.
Keir Starmer insisted that he is “completely in control” amid tensions in Government after it was revealed that his Chief of Staff is paid more than him. Sue Gray reportedly asked for and was given a salary of £170,000 after the election - £3,000 more than the PM and more than any Cabinet Minister – or her Conservative predecessor. Starmer also spent this week defending his decision to accept corporate hospitality from Arsenal football club, arguing he can no longer use his normal seats as Prime Minister. It follows recent scrutiny of gifts received by both the PM and his wife Victoria.
Domestic abuse specialists will be embedded in 999 control rooms as part of the Government’s pledge to halve violence against women and girls in the next decade. This will form part of ‘Raneem’s Law’, in memory of Raneem Oudeh and her mother Khaola Saleem, who were murdered by Oudeh’s ex-husband in 2018, with the Government to fund this pilot in targeted police forces from early 2025.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy delivered his first major policy speech, focusing on the climate and nature emergency, which he assured would be “central to all the Foreign Office does”. He announced that the Government will appoint new UK Special Representatives for Climate Change and Nature; and set out plans to form a Global Clean Power Alliance to accelerate the energy transition.
The ‘lockdown generation’ are set to receive ‘life-changing support’ through major reforms to get Britain working again. In her first speech since taking office, Employment Minister Alison McGovern set out the need to ‘move away from the obsession with welfare and boost employment with fundamental change’, highlighting that there are 2.8 million people out of work sick and over nine million people economically inactive. A ‘Get Britain Working Again’ white paper is set to be published in the Autumn.
A new package of measures aimed at tackling the ‘scourge of late payments’ was unveiled. The Government confirmed that it will consult on ‘tough new laws’ which will hold larger firms to account and get cash flowing back into small businesses, with late payments costing SMEs £22,000 a year on average. In addition, new legislation being brought forward in the coming weeks will require all large businesses to include payment reporting in their annual reports.
Israel blurred the lines of reality and spy fiction when it detonated hundreds of pagers and walkie talkies used by its Lebanon-based enemy Hezbollah. The attacks killed 37 people and wounded 3,000 and were a devastating psychological and physical blow to Hezbollah, which accused Israel of crossing “all red lines”. Cross-border rocket and air strikes have since increased.
Donald Trump suffered another apparent assassination attempt when a man trespassed onto his Mar-a-Lago estate with the intention of shooting the former president. The suspect was spotted by Secret Service agents about 400 yards from where Trump was playing golf and was later apprehended.
10 years after the Scottish Independence referendum (heaven knows where the past decade has gone…), multiple polls were unsurprisingly published this week on Scots’ latest views on the divisive subject. In general it seems the picture hasn’t really changed, with YouGov’s survey providing a 44%-56% Yes/No response… just one point off the 45%-55% vote in 2014.
Half of Britons are disappointed in Labour government so far… That was Ipsos’s headline this week, helpfully published two days before the start of the Labour Party Conference. Not only does their latest poll reveal 50% of Brits aren’t too pleased with the Government so far … 26% of Labour voters are reportedly disappointed too. It’s hard to believe Keir Starmer achieved the biggest landslide victory since 1997, just over two months ago…
Accountability in public procurement is the focus for the Institute for Government’s latest incredibly comprehensive report out this week. The report sets out the scale of public procurement, how accountability in procurement works in practice, how the Procurement Act will change this, and the opportunities and risks for the new Government to grasp in the months ahead.
A deep dive into the Government’s growth agenda is another report worth flicking through this weekend. The Resolution Foundation’s latest briefing note takes a look at the Government’s key supply-side reforms focused on infrastructure, housing, and trade, and evaluates their potential impact on productivity, wages, and GDP over the next five years.
Ed Davey’s antics certainly haven’t ceased since his rather lively General Election campaign, as he has been demonstrating over the weekend. In the lead up to the Lib Dem Conference, he jumped at the chance for a few more photo ops – this time, some tennis, volleyball and construction, silly photos aplenty. To put the cherry on top of the cake, he was heard belting out a bit of Abba on stage – watch here for some very out of tune warbling if your ears can take it.
And with six weeks still to go in the Tory leadership election, Kemi Badenoch was back in action, revealing the moment she discovered she had become working class… when she started working in McDonalds… Worth listening to the whole episode of Choppers’ Political Podcast for this and much, much more…
