Labour and Starmer suffer sharp fall in popularity since election, poll suggests – UK politics live | Politics

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High court overturns last government’s decision to approve new coal mine in Cumbria

Here is Helena Horton’s story about the high court ruling saying the proposed new coal mine at Whitehaven in Cumbria should not go ahead.

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According to Patrick Maguire from the Times, 27 Labour backbenchers have been appointed as “mission champions” – a job that seems to involve being an unpaid, regional cheerleader for the government (something you might expect Labour MPs to be doing anyway).

Ellie Reeves, Labour chair, has just emailed PLP to reveal that 27 MPs have been made “mission champions”

“They will work across departments, working with ministers… to help deliver our long-term plan for national renewal.”

These MPs — mission champions, I should say — were convened at No 10 yesterday by Reeves and Vidhya Alakeson, the prime minister’s political director. One attendee said the focus was already on the next GE. Sounds like the five national roles will involve a bit of comms.

This seems to be a novel example of a trend that is well explained and mocked in Sam Freedman’s excellent new book about what’s wrong with government in the UK, Failed State. Prime ministers want to oblige their MPs to stay loyal, but there is a legal limit on the number of MPs who can serve as ministers (95, including whips). Ministers are, literally, the payroll vote. Tony Blair got round this by expanding the number of parliamentary private secretaries (unpaid aides – the non-payroll payroll vote), and whereas in the past only senior ministers got a PPS, now they are much more common. As Freedman explains, the Tories pushed the creation of loyalty-inducing non-jobs even further.

Conservative prime ministers have recently taken this approach to the next level. Having exhausted the possibilities of the PPS role, they have invented whole swathes of jobs with no precedent, and no pay or ministerial responsibilities, creating a ‘wider payroll’ vote. Cameron created ‘big society ambassadors’; Theresa May added ‘trade envoys’ to various countries which also offered the promise of exotic junkets; Boris Johnson threw in multiple ‘vice-chairs’ of the Conservative party.

This trick doesn’t always work. The former Tory MP Charlotte Leslie told me about the whips’ attempt to use her ‘big society ambassadorship’ to stop her voting against the government: ‘I remember once when I was rebelling on Lords reform, my whip phoned me up, and I said, “I’m just not doing this. It’s just nuts.” And he said, “Charlotte, if you don’t vote for this, we will revoke your big society ambassadorship.” And I hooted with laughter and said, “Do you honestly think that matters?” . . . My problem with politics is that I was completely, catastrophically, unable to see this thing, other than for what it was, which was some ridiculous hat, that someone gives you to wear . . . because they think you’re going to vote for them.’

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Luke Tryl, the UK director of More in Common, has posted these on X about their voting intention (VI) poll mentioned earlier. (See 10.21am.) This post has the full figures.

Our first voting intention since the GE is in today’s Politico Playbook. Labour’s lead sits at 4 points.

🌹LAB 29% (-6)
🌳CON 25% (-)
🔶 LIB DEM 14% (+2)
➡️ REF UK 18% (+3)
💚 GREEN 8% (+2)
🟡 SNP 3% (-)

Changes with GE 2024 (GB only)
10-12 September, N = 2,018

I agree with others who would say the value of VI as stand alone at this stage isn’t that high. But with Budget, conferences and new Tory leader coming up we wanted to be able to track changes which is more useful.

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PA Media has snapped this:

The decision to grant planning permission for what would have been the UK’s first coal mine in 30 years at Whitehaven in Cumbria has been quashed by a high court judge.

Approval for the mine was granted by the last government in 2022. Labour opposed the decision, and it did not try to defend the decision of the last government in court.

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Updated at 06.34 EDT

Labour, and Starmer, suffer sharp fall in popularity since election, poll suggests

Even when Keir Starmer was on course earlier this year to win the election by a landslide, pundits were saying that, given the number of “tough choices” the government would have to take, it would not take long before it became unpopular. Today the polling firm Ipsos has released its latest Political Pulse opinion survey and these predictions have turned out to be accurate; Labour’s ratings have fallen rapidly.

Labour is still much more popular with voters than the Conservative party. But, over the summer, the number of people saying they view Labour, and key figures like Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, unfavourably has risen significantly.

Here are the figures for the Labour party.

Here are the figures for Starmer.

And here are the figures for Reeves.

The Ipsos polling does not include voting intention (VI). Asking people who they would vote in a general election is rather pointless at this stage in the electoral cycle, and polling companies mostly have not been publishing VI figures. But some in the Labour party may be alarmed by this snippet in Dan Bloom’s London Playbook for Politico.

A More in Common poll shared with Playbook has Labour’s lead down to just 4 (!) points — with the party on 29 percent, Tories 25, Reform UK 18 and Lib Dems 14. An Ipsos tracker adds 46 percent of voters view Starmer unfavorably — up 8 points since August. He never could expect much of a honeymoon.

Ipsos says, at 46%, Starmer’s unfavourability rating is his joint highest as Labour leader. The only other time so many people were saying they were unhappy with his performance was just after Labour lost the Hartlepool byelection in 2021.

But it is not all bad for Labour. Although the Conservative party is slightly less unpopular than it was at the time of the general, the Ipsos figures shows that its recovery still has a long way to go.

And Starmer has a higher net favourability rating than any of the four Tory leadership candidates left in the contest (Robert Jenrick, James Cleverly, Kemi Badenoch and Tom Tugendhat).

Commenting on the figures, Keiran Pedley, director of politics at Ipsos, said:

There are some early warning signs in these numbers for Keir Starmer and Labour. Whilst the next general election is several years away – and perceptions of Labour remain stronger than perceptions of the Conservative Party – these figures do represent a sharp drop from those recorded in August.

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In his interview on Sky News this morning, Peter Kyle, the science secretary, said that he also wanted a wider change in how social media companies operating, with more emphasis on products being tested for safety before they are launched. He said:

I’m trying to create a situation where safety is baked in at the start of social media products before they land in society, because at the moment, they’re free to land products in society.

We deal with the harms, and then we’re sort of retrospectively legislating and regulating.

We need to get to a point where there is more testing of these products before they make it out into society.

We’re not there yet. I’m not there yet, but I’m taking steps forward, and I think social media companies can see the approach that I and this government are taking to make sure that safety is there right from the outset.

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Government to use Online Safety Act to toughen rules forcing social media firms to tackle ‘revenge porn’

Good morning. Keir Starmer is in Washington today where he is holding talks in the White House with President Biden which should confirm a decision that might help Ukraine significantly in its war against Russia. Dan Sabbagh is travelling with him, and here is his overnight story.

The key meeting will take place late tonight. This blog will have closed by then, and most of our coverage of the Ukraine elements of Starmer’s trip will be on our Ukraine war live blog, which is here.

Back in the UK, parliament is now in recess, because the party conference season is starting this weekend (with the Liberal Democrats, in Brighton). The government is focusing on an announcement that will toughen the law on what it describes as “the sharing of non-consensual intimate images” – or ‘“revenge porn”, as it is more commonly known.

“Revenge porn” is already illegal; it is an offence under section 66B of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. But today Peter Kyle, the science secretary, is announcing that online porn will now be place in the most serious category of online offence under the Online Safety Act.

Explaining what this will mean in practice, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology says in a news release:

The Online Safety Act will require social media firms and search services to protect their users from illegal material on their sites, with protections due to come into force from spring next year. The most serious forms of illegal content are classed as ‘priority offences’ meaning regulated online platforms will have additional duties to proactively remove and stop from appearing on their sites.

Today’s move will mean intimate image offences are treated as priority offences under the Act, putting them on the same footing as public order offences and the sale of weapons and drugs online.

If firms fail to comply with their duties the regulator Ofcom will have robust enforcement powers, including imposing fines that could reach up to 10% of qualifying worldwide revenue.

And this is how Kyle explained it in an interview with Sky News this morning.

The two actions that will result from what I’m doing today is that social media companies must take action to prevent any material going online in the first place. They must prove to our regulator Ofcom that they have taken the measures – in other words, they are using the algorithms – to protect people, not to allow content to go on.

Secondly, if content does make it onto these platforms, the platform owners must take action to remove it swiftly. If they don’t, there will be very heavy fines as a result.

What I’m trying to do is move away from the fact where these companies are allowed to produce products into our society, harms emerge, and then we deal with the harms. What I’m trying to do is make sure the safety is baked in from the outset, so the harms don’t emerge in the first place.

There is not much in the diary today, but the UK politics news never dries. I’m sure we will find plenty to cover.

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Updated at 05.24 EDT