The View from Westminster
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Rishi Sunak, the continuity candidate |
Welcome back. MPs are back at Westminster, but the prime minister set the agenda with a visit to Lancashire this morning in which he set out the election choice facing the country this year. The candidate of change has changed and is now the candidate of continuity. We can either "stick with the plan", he said, or "go back to square one" with a Labour government that doesn't know what it is doing. It is the only plausible message from a government on the defensive, but a lot of voters might think that "square one" might be a good place to start afresh. A Conservative source confirmed to Alex Wickham of Bloomberg that there has been an "evolution" in Rishi Sunak's approach, from trying to be the change candidate at the Tory conference in October. For those sticking with the plan, there will be votes on the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill at 10pm this evening, but they are on the principle of the bill, so expect Conservative abstentions rather than votes against – except from Chris Skidmore, who confirmed today that he is no longer a Tory MP.
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What did Steamboat Willie and Tigger have in common on 1 January? |
Answer at the bottom of today's email |
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| Labour leader promises a taskforce every autumn to help prepare | |
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| Former cabinet minister and Cop26 president said the legislation is a 'total distraction, which frankly changes nothing' |
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| Rishi Sunak would support stripping Paula Vennells of her CBE over Horizon scandal – as Keir Starmer urges ministers to 'get on' with compensation |
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Articles driving the biggest conversations |
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What else do you need to know today? |
● Victoria Atkins, the health secretary, claimed the NHS had started preparing "earlier than ever before" for winter pressures; her shadow, Wes Streeting, mocked the prime minister's interview at the weekend, saying that even Rishi Sunak knew that if you wanted the answers to questions about Britain's future, you had to ask Keir Starmer ● Humza Yousaf, the first minister of Scotland, said in a speech at the University of Glasgow that Scottish households would be £10,200 a year better off if the country were independent – a figure arrived at by comparing Scottish GDP with that of "comparable" countries, Ireland, Denmark and Finland ● Kevin Hollinrake, the minister for the Post Office, will be making a statement in the Commons as this newsletter goes out, trying to convince MPs that the government is doing its best to compensate the Horizon scandal's victims |
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| ● I wrote at the weekend about Chris Skidmore's resignation as an MP, causing a by-election designed to damage the prime minister ● Professor Rob Ford of Manchester produced a "reasonable worst-case scenario" for the Conservatives at the election, suggesting a Labour majority of 52-126 – in other words, not a Blair-scale majority of 179 ● Sharon Kerrigan remembers the sickening moment her mother was accused of stealing £44,000 from the Cumbrian village post office that she'd set up |
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| Our political commentator Andrew Grice on what to look out for tomorrow |
Rishi Sunak will chair the cabinet's first meeting of the year.
Commons questions to Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, and his ministers at 11.30am will give MPs another chance to raise the Horizon IT scandal at the Post Office. Labour plans to use its opposition day to raise the government's controversial plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.
MPs will have a rare opportunity to quiz David Cameron, the foreign secretary, when makes his first appearance before the Foreign Affairs Committee at 2.30pm. The Middle East and China will probably loom large. Senior peers will talk about themselves – well, at least the size of the 785-member House of Lords – before the Commons public administration committee at 9.30am.
Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, will outline a plan to reduce pupil absenteeism in a speech to the Centre for Social Justice at 10am. |
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"Politics needs to change. We need to change politics if we want to change our country. That's the change I'm bringing." What Rishi Sunak said to the BBC after his conference speech in October |
Quiz answer: They were out of copyright in the US (after 95 years) |
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