Labour’s new council leaders pledge to take cost of living action within 100 days
Labour’s new council leaders have pledged to deliver emergency cost of living plans within 100 days of taking office.
The party has 22 new council leaders as a result of last week’s local elections, which saw Labour triumph in Tory heartlands including Medway, Swindon and East Staffordshire.
On Tuesday, the new council leaders will meet Sir Keir Starmer along with senior members of the shadow cabinet to reflect on their success and set out how they will govern going forward.
Six councils transferred directly from Tory hands to Labour in last Thursday’s election, while the party was also able to win control of councils that were previously under no overall control, including Plymouth and Stoke-on-Trent.
In total, it picked up 528 seats. The party is now the largest in local government for the first time since 2002.
The Conservatives, by contrast, endured a torrid night, losing more than 1,000 seats and control of 48 councils – meeting the worst possible pre-election predictions.
Labour put the rising cost of living at the heart of its local election campaign, promising to bring in a more substantial windfall tax on oil and gas giants as well as freeze council tax this year if it was in power.
PM promises to ‘work day and night’ after Tories lose over 1,000 council seats – politics latest
Speaking ahead of the meeting, Sir Keir said the election results showed there was “appetite for change, right across the country”.
“Our relentless focus on the number one issue keeping people up at night was because we get it,” he said.
“We understand that times are tough, and prices are biting. That people are making different choices, changing their lifestyles, and they’re despondent about the future.
“Labour offered a positive alternative, and people have given us their trust. It’s now our duty to not waste a day in delivering on the Labour commitment to ease the squeeze on people’s pockets.”
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This is how the local election unfolded.
Each new Labour council will be twinned with an existing Labour-led local authority to help them learn the ropes.
One of the first acts the new council leaders will do is review local housing and development plans “to make sure they reflect local need” after Sir Keir promised not to “abandon the ambitions of generation rent”.
One factor that has been blamed for the Conservatives’ poor performance was Rishi Sunak’s decision to scrap house-building targets, which former levelling up secretary Simon Clarke branded “a major mistake”.
As well as the hybrid meeting on Tuesday, Sir Keir will also hold his weekly shadow cabinet where he is expected to stress that despite the positive showing, there is “still more work to be done” and “the hardest part lies ahead”.
He will say: “The fact that Labour won in all parts of the country was a sign of the strides we have made.
“People who turned away from us during the Corbyn years and the Brexit years are coming back.
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Sky’s political editor Beth Rigby assesses election results
“But there is understandably a lot of scepticism about politics out there and now we need to go from reassurance to hope. We need to show that we will be a big reforming government bringing hope of a better life for working people.”
In the coming weeks, the party will launch three new missions on health, opportunity and clean power.
It will also set out more details on its plan to win back Scotland, where Labour has a chance of regaining territory following the turmoil in the SNP leadership.
In recent weeks the SNP has been turning its fire on the Labour Party, with polls showing that the latter is closing the gap on the SNP’s hegemony.
In a further sign that the SNP intends to turn up the heat on Labour, the party has said it would demand a “close relationship” with the EU in the event of a hung parliament at the next election.
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While Sky’s election analyst Michael Thrasher said Labour was on course to be the largest party in 2024, he said it would still nevertheless be short of a majority, meaning the party may have no option but to form a coalition.
Sir Keir has repeatedly ruled out a coalition with the SNP but the latter believes it could hold “the balance of power” at the next election.
The SNP’s EU Accession spokesperson, Alyn Smith MP said: “While independence is the only way for Scotland to regain our EU membership, the SNP could hold the balance of power at the next election and we would use our influence to undo Brexit as far as possible and demand the UK has a close relationship with the EU.
“With all the signs pointing to a hung parliament, the SNP could force a minority Labour government to rejoin the EU single market, reintroduce free movement and transfer power for an independence referendum to Edinburgh, so Scotland can regain our place in Europe.
“At the next election, voting SNP is the only way to beat the Tories in Scotland.”
More than 100 politicians from 24 different countries, including the UK, the US and the EU, have written a joint letter condemning China over the “arbitrary detention and unfair trial” of Jimmy Lai, a tycoon and pro-democracy campaigner.
The parliamentarians, led by senior British Conservative MP Alicia Kearns, are “urgently” demanding the immediate release of the 77-year-old British citizen, who has been held in solitary confinement at a maximum security prison in Hong Kong for almost four years.
The letter – which will be embarrassing for Beijing – was made public on the eve of Mr Lai’s trial resuming and on the day after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of a G20 summit of economic powers in Brazil.
It also comes as Hong Kong jailed 45 pro-democracy activists.
The group of politicians, who also include representatives from Canada, Australia, Spain, Germany, Ukraine and France, said Mr Lai’s treatment was “inhumane”.
“He is being tried on trumped-up charges arising from his peaceful promotion of democracy, his journalism and his human rights advocacy,” they wrote in the letter, which has been seen by Sky News.
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Starmer meets Chinese president
“The world is watching as the rule of law, media freedom and human rights in Hong Kong are eroded and undermined.
“We stand together in our defence of these fundamental freedoms and in our demand that Jimmy Lai be released immediately and unconditionally.”
Sir Keir raised the case of Mr Lai during remarks released at the start of his talks with Mr Xi on Monday – the first meeting between a British prime minister and the Chinese leader in six years.
The prime minister could be heard expressing concerns about reports of Mr Lai’s deteriorating health. However, he did not appear to call for his immediate release.
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From October: ‘This is what Hong Kong is’
Ms Kearns, the MP for Rutland and Stamford in the East Midlands, said the meeting had been an opportunity to be unequivocal that the UK expects Mr Lai to be freed.
“Jimmy Lai is being inhumanely persecuted for standing up for basic human values,” she said in a statement, released alongside the letter.
“He represents the flame of freedom millions seek around the world.
“We have a duty to fight for Jimmy Lai as a British citizen, and to take a stand against the Chinese Community Party’s erosion of rule of law in Hong Kong.
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“This letter represents the strength of international feeling and commitment of parliamentarians globally to securing Jimmy Lai’s immediate release and return to the UK with his family.”
Mr Lai was famously the proprietor of the Chinese-language newspaper Apple Daily in Hong Kong, which wrote scathing reports about the local authorities and the communist government in mainland China after Britain handed back the territory to Beijing in 1997.
The tabloid was a strong supporter of pro-democracy protesters who took to the streets of Hong Kong to demonstrate against the government in 2019.
But the media mogul was arrested the following year – one of the first victims of a draconian new security law imposed by the Chinese Communist Party.
His newspaper was closed after his bank accounts were frozen.
Mr Lai has since been convicted of illegal assembly and fraud. He is now on trial for sedition over articles published in Apple Daily.
World
Hong Kong jails 45 pro-democracy activists after accusing them of trying to overthrow the city’s government
Forty-five pro-democracy activists have been jailed in Hong Kong’s largest ever national security trial.
The activists sentenced with jail terms ranging from four years to ten years were accused of conspiracy to commit subversion after holding an unofficial primary election in Hong Kong in 2020.
They were arrested in 2021.
Hong Kong authorities say the defendants were trying to overthrow the territory’s government.
Democracy activist Benny Tai received the longest sentence of ten years. He became the face of the movement when thousands of protesters took to the city’s streets during the “Umbrella Movement” demonstrations.
However, Hong Kong officials accused him of being behind the plan to organise elections to select candidates.
Tai had pleaded guilty, his lawyers argued he believed his election plan was allowed under the city’s Basic Law.
Another prominent activist Joshua Wong received a sentence of more than four years.
Joshua Wong was sentenced to more than four years Pic: AP
Wong became one of the leading figures in the protests. His activism started as a 15 year old when he spearheaded a huge rally against a government plan to change the school curriculum.
Then in 2019 Hong Kong erupted in protests after the city’s government proposed a bill that would allow extradition to mainland China. It peaked in June 2019 when Amnesty International reported that up to two million people marched on the streets, paralysing parts of Hong Kong’s business district.
The extradition bill was later dropped but it had ignited a movement demanding political change and freedom to elect their own leaders in Hong Kong.
China’s central government called the protests “riots” that could not continue.
Hong Kong introduced a national security law in the aftermath of the protests.
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A woman is taken away by police outside the court Pic: Reuters
The US has called the trial “politically motivated”.
Dozens of family and friends of the accused were waiting for the verdict outside the West Kowloon Magistrates Court.
British citizen and media mogul Jimmy Lai is due to testify on Wednesday.
Meeting on the sidelines of the G20 in Brazil, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told China’s President Xi Jinping he’s concerned about the health of Lai.
He faces charges of fraud and the 2019 protests. He has also been charged with sedition and collusion with foreign forces.
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