Burnham tells Zelenskyy’s UK’s support for Ukraine ‘will not change’ – as it happened
Özet haber: Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, is holding talks with Andy Burnham in No 10 now, where he said he would be discussing with the PM “difficulties” caused by Ukraine getting less intelligence and reduced access to the Starlink internet access in the light of Washington striking a diesel deal with Russia. (See 5. 31pm.)
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, is holding talks with Andy Burnham in No 10 now, where he said he would be discussing with the PM “difficulties” caused by Ukraine getting less intelligence and reduced access to the Starlink internet access in the light of Washington striking a diesel deal with Russia. (See 5. 31pm.)
Andy Burnham has ruled out Labour doing deals with the Green party after its conference voted for a motion saying “Zionism is racism”. (See 12. 57pm.) The UK is expanding its sanctions powers to freeze assets and target entities enabling illegal Israeli settlements, obstructing humanitarian aid or unlawfully holding prisoners.
For a full list of all the stories covered on the blog today, do scroll through the list of key event headlines near the top of the blog.
Dominic Cummings has not received much coverage for his appearance at the Lords constitution committee this morning, where he was talking about constitutional safeguards, and I’ve afraid I have too much other stuff on to give it much attention.
But if you want to listen to a better expert on the constitution, Peter Hennessy, the historian and crossbencher peer, has given an interview to the Lord Speaker’s Corner podcast. The transcript and audio are here. Hennessy said constitutional safeguards could quickly crumble. He said: So much would go wrong.
If we had a government that came in, if it was a Reform government, and the first thing they did was sack the cabinet secretary, and got rid of the career officials who came in under the Northcote-Trevelyan merit, not partisanship rubric of selection, and had a go at the judges, too – it would be very easy if they had a big enough majority for them to take away the fundamentals … as the first act that they were doing week one.
Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, has told published a consultation paper on employment status reform. This sets out how the government proposes to implement plans he announced at Labour conference to close the “bogus self-employment loopholes” that deny workers basic rights.
Explaining the plans, the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade says: Bogus self-employment is a practice whereby some businesses mislabel staff as self-employed to avoid statutory obligations. However, the day-to-day reality is that many of these people are treated as workers, not self-employed.
External estimates suggest that as many as 900,000 people may currently be affected by this and could be missing out on core employment rights. The proposals to be consulted on could provide greater clarity to businesses and workers, levelling the playing field for those businesses who are already doing the right thing and clamping down on abuses. This could help workers such as parcel couriers,
And this is what Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, said in reply to Andy Burnham. We are very thankful, all our people in Ukraine, we absolutely thankful to your nation. You are strong people, a very supportive nation … [This is a] terrible war. Absolutely terrible as. Zelenskyy said Ukraine was being attacked by ballistic missiles and hundreds of Iranian drones. There was no energy ceasefire, he said.
