No 10 declines to criticise police for ‘wanting into’ Sunak not sporting a seatbelt – UK politics dwell | UK information

The Conservative get together chair, Nadhim Zahawi, agreed to pay a penalty to HMRC as a part of a seven-figure settlement over his tax affairs, my colleague Anna Isaac stories. Her full story is right here.

Labour peer suggests Sinn Féin and DUP must be concerned in talks on new EU legal guidelines as a part of answer to protocol row

Lisa O’Carroll

Peter Hain, the Labour former Northern Eire secretary, has known as for an official Norway-style involvement for Sinn Féin and the DUP in EU legal guidelines that apply in Belfast in a bid to finish the “democratic deficit” brought on by Brexit.

He says political leaders must be made “ex officio” of the UK delegations on UK-EU our bodies that debate issues not simply related to the protocol but in addition devolved competence.

In a speech within the Home of Lords this morning, the place friends held a debate on the Northern Eire protocol, Hain mentioned that Norway, which isn’t a member of the EU however is within the single market, has the formal capability to “scrutinise and obtain amendments to all draft EU proposals affecting Norwegians”. He went on:

Boris Johnson and Lord Frost, endorsed by Rishi Sunak, negotiated a deal making Northern Eire an EU rule-taker slightly than, because the UK was earlier than Brexit, an EU rule-maker.

This difficulty is without doubt one of the three pink strains of the European Analysis Group, the hardline, pro-Brexit Tory caucus which is highly effective throughout the Conservative get together and needs to finish of the applying of EU regulation in Northern Eire.

Hain instructed friends that Norway stories that its system is “working effectively” and an identical one within the UK could possibly be arrange by the UK-EU Joint consultative working group.

It meets month-to-month and is the place the European Fee informs the UK about “deliberate union acts throughout the scope of the protocol underneath article 15”.

Hain mentioned the UK authorities “ought to set up formal constructions” to make sure the view of NI ministers, members of the legislative meeting, officers and stakeholders are represented. He went on:

These are sensible, frequent sense options to an actual downside which fairly understandably workouts unionists, and I hope that UK ministers, the Irish authorities and the EU will assist them.

The Downing Avenue foyer briefing has simply completed, and – unsurprisingly – the primary questions have been about whether or not there are any updates on seatbelt-gate.

As my colleague Kevin Rawlinson stories, Lancashire police have mentioned they’re “wanting into” Sunak’s failure to put on a seatbelt when he was filming an Instagram video about levelling up from the again seat of his ministerial care.

And there aren’t any actual updates, the No 10 spokesperson revealed. He mentioned that he was “not going to get forward of any course of” and that so far as he was conscious Sunak has not but had any contact from Lancashire police.

The spokesperson additionally repeated the apology from Sunak for the incident issued yesterday.

Requested if Sunak could be keen to talk to the police about this, the spokeperson simply repeated the road about not getting forward of the method.

Requested if Sunak agreed with the Tory MP Scott Benton that this was a waste of police time, the spokesperson mentioned it was “completely a matter for the police the place they allocate assets”.

The Labour MP Rosie Duffield has described belonging to the get together as like being in an “abusive relationship” as a result of her gender-critical views have made her really feel “ostracised”.

In an article for UnHerd, she additionally means that she’s going to discover it laborious to assist the get together on the subsequent election – suggesting she won’t stand once more as a candidate.

Duffield achieved a shock win in 2017 when she was elected MP for Canterbury, a seat which had principally elected Tories for nearly 200 years. On the 2019 election she elevated her majority from 187 to 1,836.

However in her UnHerd article she describes how she has gone from being seen as an asset to the get together to a legal responsibility due to her outspoken gender-critical views. Her concern about trans ladies with the ability to entry single-sex areas has led to her being labelled transphobic, though that’s not an outline she accepts.

She claims she has been “ostracised for voicing not solely my very own opinions however these of 1000’s of others who’re beginning to query the get together they’ve devoted a lot of their lives to”. And she or he claims different Labour MPs agree with that she thinks however are afraid to talk out.

I do know I’m not the one MP within the get together who thinks this — I’m simply the one one who feels I’ve nothing to lose by talking out. In any case, there’s no front-bench job supply for the one Labour MP in my county. Many people know that self-identifying as a girl doesn’t make an individual a organic lady who shares our lived expertise. However for apparent causes, these views usually are not voiced outdoors of closed rooms or personal and secret WhatsApp teams. Even there, probably the most senior MPs typically don’t submit a single phrase; they know precisely what’s at stake and never lots of them wish to be me. So for now, they principally stay silent.

Duffied has spoken about her expertise prior to now of being in an abusive relationship and she or he says the shortage of suppport she will get from the get together on ladies’s rights reminds her of this.

One of many traits of being in an abusive relationship is “stonewalling”. The abuser will go quiet for days on finish. They may stew, not converse to you, flip their again on you. Belief me after I say I don’t take this evenly: however what I really feel now, after six years of being cold-shouldered by the Labour get together, conjures reminiscences of how I felt in that abusive relationship. Once I come house at evening, I really feel low-level trauma at my political isolation.

Referring to the subsequent election, she says:

In 2019, it was laborious sufficient attempting to persuade my constituents that Labour wasn’t antisemitic. Within the subsequent election, after they inevitably ask whether or not Labour is sexist, I’m unsure I’ll have the ability to do the identical.

Nicola Sturgeon has accused the Scotland secretary of performing “like a governor common” in an extra escalation of hostilities between the Westminster and Holyrood governments, my colleague Libby Brooks stories.

Eire’s taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, has mentioned he regrets that the Northern Ireland protocol he agreed with Boris Johnson to finish a Brexit deadlock was signed with out the settlement of unionists and nationalists, my colleagues Matthew Weaver and Lisa O’Carroll report.

Schooling unions are assembly authorities officers for a marathon six-hour spherical of talks in an try and avert instructor walkouts within the coming weeks, PA Media stories. PA says:

Friday’s assembly comes after union leaders mentioned there had been “no progress” after discussions with the training secretary, Gillian Keegan, on Wednesday.

The Nationwide Schooling Union (NEU) plans seven days of strike motion in England and Wales in a dispute over pay – with the primary on 1 February coinciding with walkouts by workers at universities, on the rail community and in Whitehall.

The union has mentioned strike motion may have an effect on greater than 23,000 colleges.

The deliberate size of Friday’s assembly was described as a “step ahead” by Geoff Barton, the overall secretary of the Affiliation of Faculty and Faculty Leaders (ASCL).

The ASCL is just not a part of strike motion, however Barton, who mentioned he can be on the talks, mentioned there may be anger amongst his members over a spread of points, together with training funding and issues with recruitment and retention in addition to pay.

The colleges minister Nick Gibb mentioned the federal government understands the pressures going through lecturers and is keen to barter, however warned in opposition to “inflation-busting pay settlements”.

He instructed BBC Breakfast: “Officers within the division at present are spending six hours with the 4 unions discussing the problems that we mentioned on Wednesday, and the secretary of state mentioned they may begin discussing points like pay but in addition different points corresponding to workload and the circumstances of lecturers in colleges.

“So you understand, we do perceive the pressures that lecturers are underneath.”

Ambulance staff have introduced a sequence of recent strikes together with one subsequent month that was already predicted to be the largest day of stoppages in NHS historical past, my colleagues Matthew Weaver and Anna Bawden report.

Good morning. “Are you higher off than you have been 4 years in the past?” That is without doubt one of the strongest questions in electoral politics, made well-known when Ronald Reagan requested it in 1980 and now more and more being used by the Labour party. It was additionally, partially, the inspiration behind Boris Johnson’s levelling up marketing campaign. When Johnson received his shock near-landslide election in 2019, taking seats in disadvantaged areas that had voted Labour for many years, the Tories admitted that in the event that they have been going to carry these constituencies, then by the point of the subsequent elections voters must be feeling that jobs have been selecting up, the excessive avenue was smarter, the place was getting higher.

However they don’t. Final evening YouGov printed devastating polling for the federal government exhibiting that levelling up has didn’t make folks really feel their neighborhood is getting higher and that there’s nearly nowhere the place voters assume their native space is enhancing.

Polls exhibiting folks sad concerning the state of the nation come out nearly every day these days. However this one is totally different as a result of it entails knowledge from greater than 100,000 folks between August and October final 12 months, and it makes use of multilevel regression and post-stratification (MRP – an information analytical method) to provide outcomes on an area authority-by-local authority foundation. Listed here are the important thing findings.

• Total there may be nearly nowhere in Britain the place folks usually assume their native space has improved lately, the ballot suggests. In most council areas (215) the most typical response was for folks to say circumstances had stayed about the identical. And in 142 council areas the most typical response was for folks to say the world had declined.

• There are solely 4 council areas the place folks have been almost certainly to say they felt their native areas had improved lately, the ballot suggests. They’re all in London: Hackney, Islington, Southwark, and Tower Hamlets.

• Individuals residing in areas given high precedence within the first spherical of awards from the levelling up fund have been extra more likely to say their areas had acquired worse lately than folks in tier two precedence areas, or in areas that didn’t get any funding in any respect, the ballot suggests. Spherical one levelling up funding was introduced in autumn 2021.

The YouGov report on the figures is here. And right here is probably the most helpful chart.

For those who needed to put a constructive gloss on this for the Tories, you can level out that these figures are actually just a few months old-fashioned. You could possibly say they could simply replicate a common despondency concerning the state of the nation, brought on by the price of residing disaster. And you can say that, the place folks residing in locations getting levelling up cash are extra pessimistic than common about what is occurring to their space, which may simply be as a result of levelling up cash goes to locations which can be notably disadvantaged.

However, nonetheless, it’s laborious to not learn the ballot as compelling proof that, in political/electoral phrases at the very least, levelling up is failing.

As we report in our splash at present, yesterday’s announcement of the second spherical of levelling up awards additionally prompted criticism. A Guardian analysis discovered that Tory seats have been awarded considerably extra money from the fund than areas with related ranges of deprivation.

Right here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: MPs begin debating backbench payments.

11.30am: Downing Avenue holds a foyer briefing.

1pm: Keir Starmer takes half in a panel dialogue on the World Financial Discussion board at Davos.

I’ll attempt to monitor the feedback under the road (BTL) however it’s inconceivable to learn all of them. When you’ve got a direct query, do embody “Andrew” in it someplace and I’m extra more likely to discover it. I do attempt to reply questions, and if they’re of common curiosity I’ll submit the query and reply above the road (ATL), though I can’t promise to do that for everybody.

If you wish to entice my consideration shortly, it’s most likely higher to make use of Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

Alternatively, you’ll be able to electronic mail me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com