Cleverly says Starmer has a ‘disconnect from reality’ over housing asylum seekers
Hello and welcome to the UK politics live blog.
Newly-appointed shadow housing secretary James Cleverly has criticised the prime minister for a “disconnect from reality” when it comes to housing asylum seekers.
The Tory MP and former home secretary said asylum hotels are being reopened and that more asylum seekers are likely to be sent to an accommodation centre in his own constituency of Braintree.
“The government has lost control,” he told LBC.
“And to add insult to injury, we saw the prime minister at the Liaison Committee just this week blithely saying, oh, there are plenty of houses for asylum seekers, when there are people all over the country struggling to get on the housing ladder, and that complete disconnect from reality, I think, is driving a lot of frustrations.
“There is never an excuse for rioting, and I’ll make that absolutely clear, but the government really is making a difficult situation significantly worse.”
He said that people who live close to facilities housing asylum seekers are “typically well behaved” but that there are “agitators, both of the left and the right, imposing themselves on local communities to try and play out a political agenda, and local people are caught in the crossfire”.
The government should be seen to be “on the side of the people who play by the rules, rather than on the side of the people who abuse the system, jump the queue and try and exploit our hospitality,” he said.
In other news:
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Angela Rayner urged the government to acknowledge people’s “real concerns” and flagged high levels of deprivation where the worst riots erupted last summer nearly a year on from the disorder. The deputy prime minister told Cabinet colleagues that immigration and increasing time spent online are having a “profound impact on society”.
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Edward Argar has stepped down as shadow health secretary, which he said was on the advice of his doctors after a “health scare” earlier this summer. He will be replaced by Stuart Andrew, a former minister who has been shadow culture minister.
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Kevin Hollinrake, who had been shadow housing and communities secretary, will become party chair. He takes over from Nigel Huddleston, who will be the new shadow culture secretary.
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Conservative Senedd member Laura Anne Jones has joined Reform UK, becoming the party’s first Member of the Senedd (MS).
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The UK government borrowed more than expected in June amid speculation the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will need to raise taxes at the autumn budget to repair the public finances. Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed public sector net borrowing rose to £20.7bn, up by £6.6bn from the same month a year earlier to reach the second-highest June borrowing figure since monthly records began in 1993.
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Artificial intelligence technology will be trialled to assess disputed ages of asylum seekers who say they are children, the Home Office has said. Ministers hope to roll out facial age estimation for migrants arriving by small boats and lorries over 2026, subject to further testing of the technology to go ahead this year.
Key events
Kemi Badenoch blamed Labour for the strains on social cohesion highlighted by deputy prime minister Angela Rayner.
The Conservative leader said: “I’m surprised it’s taken her this long to actually understand what is going on.” Speaking in north-west London she said Hillingdon Council had a £17 million deficit because it has had asylum seekers “dumped on their doorstep”.
“Yvette Cooper is waving things through. Rachel Reeves is not providing the money. I’m not surprised. Angela Rayner is saying the social fabric is fraying, but she needs to do something about it.”
She said she was not worried about further riots on the streets this summer but “we need to be very, very vigilant”.
At Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting Rayner urged colleagues to acknowledge people’s “real concerns”, pointing out that immigration and increasing time spent online are having a “profound impact on society”.
She also cited economic insecurity, the rapid pace of deindustrialisation and declining trust in institutions as she gave an update on her work on social cohesion and a coming plan for neighbourhoods.
Kemi Badenoch has insisted she and her new shadow housing secretary James Cleverly are on the same page when it comes to net zero and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
The Conservative leader was asked by broadcasters whether Cleverly was signed up to her position on both.
Badenoch replied: “James and I have always had the same position on the ECHR, and that is that if we need to leave, then we should leave, but it’s not a silver bullet.
“That is why we have a commission on this very issue, which will be reporting at party conference.
“So I wouldn’t bring someone into the shadow cabinet if they didn’t agree with me.”
Indian prime minister makes UK state visit to sign landmark trade deal
India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, is visiting London to sign a landmark free trade agreement between his country and the UK, a pact viewed as a political and economic prize amid global trade tensions unleashed by the US president, Donald Trump.
For Britain, eager to score a post-Brexit win, the deal is its most economically significant trade agreement since leaving the EU. For India, it marks its first major free trade pact outside Asia. For both, analysts say, the agreement signals a long-term economic partnership.
“The UK and India, in many ways we have complementarities. We have had a historical relationship. It’s good to have a deeper trade relationship,” said Indian economist Sanjaya Baru.
During Modi’s two-day state visit starting on Wednesday, his fourth to the UK as prime minister, he will hold “wide-ranging” talks with his counterpart, Keir Starmer, on trade, defence, technological cooperation and security, and will also pay a courtesy call on King Charles, according to an Indian government statement.
Dan Sabbagh
Campaigners have called for Keir Starmer to tell parliament whether US nuclear weapons have returned to British soil after a distinctive US air force transport flight was spotted landing at RAF Lakenheath on Friday morning.
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and several experts believe that it is highly likely that a number of US B61-12 gravity bombs were delivered to a US air force squadron last week, the first US nuclear deployment in the UK since 2008.
Tom Unterrainer, the chair of CND, said it was “completely inappropriate” for the public to find out about “a major escalation in nuclear danger” via the assessments of military experts and called for the prime minister to update MPs.
The head of the campaign group said the prime minister “must make a public statement about this major change in Britain’s security arrangements and allow for a transparent and democratic debate” on the issue.
Confirmation of any deployment of nuclear weapons by Starmer or the defence secretary, John Healey, is not expected, however. A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence said: “It remains a long-standing UK and Nato policy to neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons at a given location.”
Michael Savage
One of television’s most prominent directors has accused the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, of attempting to “bully the BBC” over its coverage of Gaza, following her repeated attacks on its director general, Tim Davie.
Peter Kosminsky, the writer and director of the BBC drama Wolf Hall, claimed the government was acting like a “tinpot dictatorship” in heaping political pressure on Davie.
In a letter to Nandy, seen by the Guardian, Kosminsky cited the “ignominious history” of political interference in the BBC. He evoked the death of Dr David Kelly, the government weapons expert, who died in 2003 shortly after being revealed as the source for a BBC story stating the government “probably knew” a claim about Iraq’s weapons capabilities was not true.
“Could I respectfully suggest that you stop trying to bully the BBC, the nation’s primary public service broadcaster, over its coverage of the war in Gaza,” wrote Kosminsky, who made a docu drama about Kelly’s death in 2005.
“The last time Labour was in power, it picked a public fight with the BBC over an editorial matter. It didn’t end well for either party and a man – David Kelly – tragically died.
“I have been a Labour supporter for most of my life. It gives me no pleasure to watch this government behaving like a tinpot dictatorship, trying to pressurise a broadcaster for which it holds the purse strings. You are the current custodians of the 100-year tradition of public service broadcasting in this country. This is not the way to discharge that obligation.”
Home Office minister Seema Malhotra said new measures to share information about asylum hotel locations with food delivery companies to tackle suspected hotspots of illegal working will “improve the speed” of deporting illegal workers.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “If I take one example of where we did an illegal working raid just a couple of months ago – four people who were found to be working illegally, of those, three were deported within a month.
“This is connected with the work we’re doing to improve the way that we are dealing with asylum backlogs, improve the speed with which we are deporting those who have no right to be in the UK – over 35,000 since last July.”
Newly-appointed shadow housing secretary James Cleverly said he understands “the desire to protest” when asked about demonstrations outside hotels believed to be housing asylum seekers.
There have been a series of protests outside the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, since an asylum seeker was charged with sexual assault.
Asked if he has sympathy for people protesting outside asylum hotels, the Tory MP told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I understand the desire to protest.
“There is never any excuse for rioting and we are seeing that agitators, both on the left and the right, are descending upon these communities to try and stir things up and there’s never an excuse for that, but I do understand why local people are frustrated.
“When I was home secretary, as a government we were closing the use of asylum hotels. I, as home secretary, cut net migration in half, still too high, but I cut it in half.
“The Labour government thought it was going to be easy and what we are now seeing is a complete collapse of border control; we saw the worst first half of the year when it comes to small boats arrivals on record; they are opening up asylum hotels; they are increasing the use of asylum accommodation around the country, and people are angry and they’re frustrated.”
He added: “I never said it started under Labour, but it has demonstrably got worse when they thought it was going to be easy.”
Dover asylum protests pose danger to small boat arrivals, charities say
Diane Taylor
Charities have warned of the increasing danger to asylum seekers posed by far-right protesters after small boat arrivals were moved from their usual landing place in Dover to further along the coast to avoid clashes.
The Guardian understands that Home Office officials received intelligence that some of those participating in what was billed the Great British National Protest in Dover on Saturday afternoon could have been planning to target Kent Intake Unit, where small boat arrivals are initially processed after being escorted to shore in Dover by the Border Force.
A flag of the white supremacist party Patriotic Alternative, led by the former BNP official Mark Collett, was photographed at the march.
A total of 153 people who arrived in three dinghies on Saturday were “landed” in Ramsgate and processed at Manston, the site where small boat arrivals are usually taken to after going through KIU.
It is highly unusual for small boats to be landed at Ramsgate, and the change is thought to have been to avoid potential clashes with protesters.
Small boats were previously “landed” in Ramsgate in 2022 owing to the P&O Ferries crisis. Western Jet Foil, another processing site, was targeted by the extreme rightwing terrorist Andrew Leak in 2022, who threw two or three incendiary devices at the site before killing himself.
The Home Office decision to divert small boat arrivals to avoid clashes with the far right comes as tensions mount between asylum seekers and anti-migration protesters at hotels.
James Cleverly has said Angela Rayner’s comment about social cohesion “rings a bit hollow” because of her participation in Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests.
The deputy prime minister said in a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday that immigration, time spent online and economic insecurity were having a “profound impact on society”.
The shadow housing secretary told Sky News: “I think she makes a very good point, and I think she’s echoed things that Conservatives have said for a while. I think it rings a bit hollow when she was one of the people that took the knee during the BLM protest.
“She, the Labour party, the prime minister, have jumped on every bandwagon that’s come along, and they have spent so much time seeming to be on the side of the people who don’t play by the rules, who jump the queue, who abuse the system.
“And now that they’re in government, she is saying, ‘Oh, well, I think you know, society is fracturing’, seemingly blind to the role the Labour party have played in driving wedges between communities.”
Rajeev Syal
Len McCluskey, the former head of Unite, accepted private jet flights and football tickets arranged by the company building a multimillion pound hotel for the union, according to an internal dossier.
The Flanagan Group, which is run by friends of McCluskey, overcharged Unite by at least £30m for the Birmingham hotel and conference centre project, the interim report said.
It also found that McCluskey “overruled” advice from staff and the union’s lawyers in signing the construction contract with the Flanagan Group.
Unite’s report said the flights and tickets were “consistently organised and paid for by” the company and there was “no indication” that McCluskey later reimbursed them.
He denied he had overruled staff or lawyers. The Flanagan Group did not respond to requests from the BBC and the Guardian for comment.
McCluskey, who was Unite’s general secretary between 2010 and 2021, was a key player in the labour movement and the leading financial backer of Jeremy Corbyn when Corbyn was Labour leader.
Meanwhile, James Cleverly has said he will not shadow Angela Rayner in her role as deputy prime minister.
He told ITV’s Good Morning Britain:
I’m the shadow housing secretary. In opposition, structures are different and requirements are different.
And in terms of deputy prime minister, I think that’s a job title, rather than a job – an excuse to have an even more bloated Civil Service hierarchy at the centre of Westminster.
And I think that is a reflection on how Angela Rayner has very successfully outmanoeuvred Keir Starmer at every turn, and has accumulated authority and power at the heart of government.
And I don’t, I don’t feel the need to shadow that cumbersome bureaucracy.
My job is about highlighting her failure and the Labour government’s failure to deliver on their promise to the British people, which is to build homes that British people can live in.
He called Rayner “formidable” and said he looks forward to “sparring with her”.
Cleverly says Starmer has a ‘disconnect from reality’ over housing asylum seekers
Hello and welcome to the UK politics live blog.
Newly-appointed shadow housing secretary James Cleverly has criticised the prime minister for a “disconnect from reality” when it comes to housing asylum seekers.
The Tory MP and former home secretary said asylum hotels are being reopened and that more asylum seekers are likely to be sent to an accommodation centre in his own constituency of Braintree.
“The government has lost control,” he told LBC.
“And to add insult to injury, we saw the prime minister at the Liaison Committee just this week blithely saying, oh, there are plenty of houses for asylum seekers, when there are people all over the country struggling to get on the housing ladder, and that complete disconnect from reality, I think, is driving a lot of frustrations.
“There is never an excuse for rioting, and I’ll make that absolutely clear, but the government really is making a difficult situation significantly worse.”
He said that people who live close to facilities housing asylum seekers are “typically well behaved” but that there are “agitators, both of the left and the right, imposing themselves on local communities to try and play out a political agenda, and local people are caught in the crossfire”.
The government should be seen to be “on the side of the people who play by the rules, rather than on the side of the people who abuse the system, jump the queue and try and exploit our hospitality,” he said.
In other news:
-
Angela Rayner urged the government to acknowledge people’s “real concerns” and flagged high levels of deprivation where the worst riots erupted last summer nearly a year on from the disorder. The deputy prime minister told Cabinet colleagues that immigration and increasing time spent online are having a “profound impact on society”.
-
Edward Argar has stepped down as shadow health secretary, which he said was on the advice of his doctors after a “health scare” earlier this summer. He will be replaced by Stuart Andrew, a former minister who has been shadow culture minister.
-
Kevin Hollinrake, who had been shadow housing and communities secretary, will become party chair. He takes over from Nigel Huddleston, who will be the new shadow culture secretary.
-
Conservative Senedd member Laura Anne Jones has joined Reform UK, becoming the party’s first Member of the Senedd (MS).
-
The UK government borrowed more than expected in June amid speculation the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will need to raise taxes at the autumn budget to repair the public finances. Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed public sector net borrowing rose to £20.7bn, up by £6.6bn from the same month a year earlier to reach the second-highest June borrowing figure since monthly records began in 1993.
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Artificial intelligence technology will be trialled to assess disputed ages of asylum seekers who say they are children, the Home Office has said. Ministers hope to roll out facial age estimation for migrants arriving by small boats and lorries over 2026, subject to further testing of the technology to go ahead this year.
