Good day. Keir Starmer is in Edinburgh this morning to attend the first meeting of the Council of Nations and Regions. To publicize it, the government is launching an advert about “More than £24 billion of private investment for pioneering energy projects” although it has been pointed out that some of this is not strictly new. As for the meeting itself, the main story that has emerged so far is that Sue Gray has not turned up, despite being named the Prime Minister's new envoy for nations and regions.
Meanwhile, the Conservative Party continues to make news. Robert Jenrick, One of the two remaining candidates in the leadership race gave an interview this morning to the Hoy program with several interesting lines.
Jenrick confirmed that if elected leader he will expect shadow cabinet members to sign off on his plan for Britain to leave the European human rights convention. This is important because it could lead to many senior parliamentary party officials refusing to take up front-line positions. There are Conservatives who were happy to accept Rishi Sunak's position (without ruling out withdrawal from the ECHR as an option) and who would end Jenrick's position. It is also quite possible that some of them will swallow their principles and accept a Jenrick policy that they consider reckless, just for the sake of a good job in the shadow cabinet, but it is difficult to know at this stage how much of this blatant opportunism they we would see.
Asked whether all shadow cabinet ministers would have to accept withdrawal from the ECHR if he were leader, Jenrick said:
It would be one of the stable conservative policies, so yes, we would go into the next election with it in our manifesto.
Asked if that meant James Cleverly, the former Inside secretary and former Foreign Secretary who was seen as the best-performing leadership candidate at the party conference but who was unexpectedly dropped from the race on Wednesday, would be out of his shadow cabinet, Jenrick replied:
I think it's very important that we do this… I've already told James, who is a friend, someone I respect enormously, that I would be delighted for him to serve in the shadow cabinet if he wanted to.
Cleverly also claimed that the party was not as divided on this issue as people claimed.
I don't think the point of difference is as big as perhaps you suggest. There is now a consensus within the Conservative Party that the ECHR is not working in the interests of the British people, for all the reasons I have just outlined.
Most people now say that, at the very least, we need to reform the ECHR.
My position is simply a step further, that is, perhaps unlike others, because I have thought a lot about this, and that is not disrespectful to other colleagues, they have not always seen the things that I have seen. By virtue of having served as a minister where I have, I have come to the conclusion that we cannot reform it.
The reform requires unanimous agreement from 46 member states, from Iceland to Andorra. It's not going to happen.
What I propose is simply that we leave and replace it with a British bill of rights.
In the interview, Jenrick also denied telling Conservative MPs privately that if he wins the leadership he will stop being right-wing and return to the centre. But he also rejected the suggestion that he had leaned right in the first place, so there is some ambiguity in what he meant. I'll do another post on that soon.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9am: Keir Starmer will meet the First Ministers of Scotland and Wales, and the First Minister and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, at the first meeting of the Council of Nations and Regions. It will begin with bilateral meetings, then there will be a collective meeting with the prime ministers and then, at noon, a plenary meeting with the mayors of the metropolitan area. In the afternoon, Starmer will give interviews to the media.
11:30 a.m.: Downing Road holds a briefing in the lobby.
15:10: Rhun ap Iorwerth, the leaders of Plaid Cymru, speaks at their party conference in Cardiff.
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