Michael Dugher, the former shadow culture secretary who is standing down as an MP, has given an interview saying it is “remarkable” how badly Labour is doing under Jeremy Corbyn.Speaking to the New Statesman, Dugher, who was sacked last year by Corbyn from the shadow cabinet for disloyalty, said:
You’d have to have a screw loose not to think things are pretty tough. I noticed when Jeremy addressed the PLP [parliamentary Labour party] he didn’t announce the key seats we’d need to take off the Tories to form a Labour government. I thought that was ominous.
It is a remarkable achievement for the leadership to have taken a catastrophic situation in Scotland and made it quite a lot worse. We seem to be doing worse in Wales ... We’ve gone backwards amongst every demographic, every region of the country. Jeremy is behind Theresa May on managing the NHS! It’s quite a special achievement to put all of that together in a short period of time. Hats off to Jeremy and Seumas [Milne], Diane [Abbott] and John [McDonnell]. That’s pretty special.
Home Office says admin error led to 130 places for unaccompanied child refugees being overlooked
In February the government announced that it would close the so-called Dubs scheme for taking unaccompanied child refugees from Europe after a total of 350 were admitted. This caused outrage because, when the government accepted Lord Dubs’ amendment to the Immigration Act committing it to take some unaccompanied child refugees, it was expected that around 3,000 could be admitted.
Today, in a written ministerial statement, the Home Office minister Robert Goodwill has admitted that a further 130 places are available for unaccompanied child refugees. The Home Office should have know about these extra places when it made its announcement two months ago but it didn’t because it lost the submission from a council saying it could provide the places.
In the statement Goodwill said:
The government remains fully committed to the implementation of our commitment under section 67 [the Dubs amendment] to transfer unaccompanied children to the UK from Europe and no eligible child has been refused transfer to the UK as a result of this error. The home secretary has written to her counterparts in France, Greece and Italy and we are working closely with member states, as well as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and NGO partners so we can identify and transfer children to the UK as soon as possible.
Commenting on the error, Yvette Cooper, the Labour chair of the Commons home affairs committee, said:
It is welcome that an extra 130 children will be brought to safety in Britain under the Dubs scheme. But it beggars belief that these children weren’t helped earlier because of a basic admin error. This shows a shameful failure by the Home Office to talk properly to local councils who were willing and able to help or to check they had counted the figures up right. This shows the Home Office simply hasn’t taken this seriously enough.
Time and again the select committee and local councils across the country told the Home office that there were more places available, but they wouldn’t budge and they failed to follow up. Surely on something as important as this, when children are at risk of trafficking and prostitution, they would have checked the numbers were right.
Here is another picture from Jeremy Corbyn’s NHS visit this afternoon.
Jeremy Corbyn poses for a selfie with NHS nurses, student nurses and midwives, after meeting them at Unison HQ to discuss Labour’s election guarantee for NHS staff. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA
The Scottish Labour party has named a former chief of the pro-UK Better Together campaign, Blair McDougall, and a leading Corbyn supporter, Rhea Wolfson, in their first tranche of general election candidates.
After its rout by the Scottish National party at the 2015 election, Scottish Labour was left with one MP, leaving it the major task of finding up to 58 new candidates when its popularity is at a record low of 14%. This is the first election where Scottish leader Kezia Dugdale and her officials have autonomy from the UK party in choosing candidates.
McDougall, a leading Blairite who ran David Miliband’s unsuccessful Labour leadership campaign, is fighting to regain the East Renfrewshire seat lost by his ally Jim Murphy to Kirsten Oswald of the SNP. She demolished Murphy’s 10,420 majority and defends a smaller 3,718 vote majority.
East Renfrewshire is also a Tory target: the contiguous Holyrood constituency of Eastwood is held by Scottish Tory deputy leader Jackson Carlaw. An open critic of Jeremy Corbyn, McDougall suggested he expected pro-UK voters, including supporters of the Tories and Lib Dems, to back him.
“In East Renfrewshire the Tories are a distant third and are not at the races here,” he said in a party statement. “I brought together the anti independence majority in 2014 and I’m going to do the same on June 8.”
Wolfson, at 26 likely to be one of the party’s youngest candidates and a GMB branch secretary in Glasgow, was elected on the pro-Corbyn slate to Labour’s national executive committee last year and has been chosen to stand for Livingston, a new town west of Edinburgh held by the with a hefty 16,843 majority.
Cara Hilton is standing in Dunfermline and West Fife, where she won the equivalent Holyrood constituency in a byelection against the SNP in 2013. The SNP holds the Westminster seat with a 10,352 vote majority. Paul Sweeney, an engineer at the investment agency Scottish Enterprise, has been chosen to fight Glasgow North East, taken by the SNP in 2015 with a 9,222 vote majority.
Leanne Wood, the leader of Plaid Cymru, has also criticised Jeremy Corbyn for not being willing to take part in a leaders’ debate without Theresa May. She is echoing what her friend and political ally, the SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, said on Twitter earlier. (See 2.08pm.) In 2015 Wood and Sturgeon joined Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, Natalie Bennett, the Green party leader, and Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, in a so-called “challengers’ debate” that did not feature David Cameron.
Wood said:
It is disappointing to hear that the leader of the Labour party is not prepared to take part in any televised leaders’ debates without the prime minister.
These debates are a good opportunity for people to engage with the election and for the leaders to put forward their vision to voters.
They are also a chance for party leaders to challenge each other’s record - either in government or in opposition. By shying away from scrutiny and refusing to take part in the debates, the prime minister has presented the so-called leader of the opposition with an open goal.
However, it seems that Labour are still too busy fighting each other to be focusing on fighting the Tories.
You have probably got the point about “strong and stable leadership” by now, but just in case you haven’t, the Guardian video team have produced a video pointing out just how frequently the Tories hammered home this message at PMQs.
Jeremy Corbyn has renewed his call for Theresa May to take part in TV election debates. And he has signalled that he won’t take part if she is not included. Speaking to Sky News, he said:
I asked Theresa May this morning about the TV debates, lots of people asked her about it, and she said they’re over because there are no more prime minister’s question times because parliament is now dissolved, or will be dissolved next week. And so, actually, the debate has to include the prime minister, the leader of the Conservative party, and we are up for that debate.
Asked what debates he would take part in if there was no leaders’ debate, he replied:
You will see me all over the country taking questions from people on the streets.
Jeremy Corbyn has been meeting health workers today.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn pretends to use a stethoscope with 2-year-old Haroon, after he met NHS nurses, student nurses and midwives at Unison HQ. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA
On BBC Radio 5 Live Michael Gove, the former Conservative justice secretary and a leader of the Vote Leave campaign, said he was “absolutely convinced” that Brexit would result in more money going to the NHS. When it was put to him that Vote Leave had said at one point that an extra £100m a week would go to the NHS if the UK left the EU, and he was asked if he still expected that, he replied:
I am absolutely convinced that we will be spending significantly more on the NHS [after Brexit.] I hope it’s £100m.
Of course, the Vote Leave bus also carried a slogan suggesting that leaving the EU would free up £350m a week for the NHS. The £350m figure was widely discredited (the UK’s net weekly payments to the EU are significantly lower), and during the campaign Vote Leave argued that the savings should not all be spent on the NHS.
Arlene Foster, Democratic Unionist leader and first minister in the last power sharing government in Northern Ireland, took time out today from electioneering to pay a highly symbolic visit to Irish language pupils at a Catholic school near the border.
Foster had been criticised earlier this year for her opposition to an Irish Language Act - a key demand by Sinn Fein - which would put Gaelic on an equal par to English throughout Northern Ireland.
At the time Foster likened giving in to Sinn Fein’s lobbying for the act as feeding a crocodile.
But the DUP leader, in a bid to draw the sting out of the row over the Irish language, met with pupils from Our Lady’s Grammar School in Newry today. She even managed a few words in Irish both at the start and end of her meeting which included “go raibh maith agat” - thank you in Irish to pupils and staff.
Foster said that after her encounter with the Irish language students she felt “uplifted.”
Her presence at the school is hardly likely to harvest many votes, either extra ones from within the unionist community or even new ones from within the nationalist community.
However it might improve the mood music at the talks which are still taking place in parallel with the general election campaign, which are aimed at restoring power sharing government in the region.
The atmosphere, nonetheless, is still relatively toxic between Foster’s DUP and Sinn Fein. Earlier today Sinn Fein’s leader in the Stormont parliament Michelle O’Neill came under withering criticism from the DUP over her decision to speak at the memorial for 8 IRA members shot dead by the SAS while they were attacking a police station at Loughgall, Co Armagh in 1987. One victims organisation accused O’Neill of engaging in “terrorism idolatory.”
Arlene Foster speaking to members of the media following a meeting with a delegation of Irish language speakers at Our Lady’s Grammar School in Newry. Photograph: Brian Lawless/PA
Now Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, is accusing Jeremy Corbyn of “running scared” after it emerged that Corbyn will not take part in TV election debates if Theresa May is not included. Farron said:
Corbyn is running scared. He is running away from facing his opponents, he is running away from defending his policies, he is running away from leadership.
Lib Dems drop David Ward as candidate over 'wrong and antisemitic' comments
The Liberal Democrats have barred former Bradford East MP David Ward from standing again for the party, after Tim Farron said his comments about Jews had been “deeply offensive, wrong and antisemitic”, my colleague Jessica Elgot reports.
Corbyn will not take part in TV election debates without May, Labour says
Heather Stewart
In the huddle for lobby journalists after the final PMQs of the parliament, Jeremy Corbyn’s spokesman struck an upbeat note about Labour’s prospects. He said the Conservatives’ poll lead will narrow once the campaign gets underway and the public get to hear Labour’s message, “in our own voice”.
We are confident that we can win this election, and we’re fighting for every seat, and we’re confident that once Labour’s message is clearly heard, and there is a chance for the public to hear policies that many of them won’t have heard before, but which are extremely popular, and we know to be so, that will have cut-through, and Labour support will increase.
He also said recent events had shown that political polling has a “chequered record.”
The politics and the polling is actually quite complex and quite varied across different countries, and I don’t think it’s just a technical issue to do with the polling companies that we’re in; I think it’s to do with the volatile and fluid political situation, with much more fragmentation.
Labour believes the strict rules governing broadcasters during elections will help them to shift the focus to their policies - which internal polling suggests will be well received - rather than seeing everything through the prism of Corbyn’s leadership.
However, the spokesman said Corbyn would not appear in a broadcast debate during the campaign if it didn’t include the prime minister.
There has been some suggestion that Theresa May could be “empty chaired”, if she refuses to participate in a head-to-head debate; but the spokesman said just appearing alongside the other opposition leaders would not help voters to decide whether they want a Labour or Tory government.
The spokesman also dismissed the claim, raised by the prime minister, that the shadow chancellor has in the past supported disbanding MI5, as “recycled fake news”.
This was all dealt with when the allegation first came out, and it’s not the case that John McDonnell signed any such statement. When the story was first run about a year ago it was made clear that it was confusion about another statement; he never signed the statement involving MI5, it was another story entirely. This is recycled fake news.
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