Boris Johnson news: Keir Starmer condemns top civil servant’s exit as PM dismisses claims replacement must be Brexiteer
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Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has criticised Boris Johnson for “focusing on reshuffles” in the midst of the coronavirus crisis following the announcement Sir Mark Sedwill will step aside as cabinet secretary.
Mr Johnson was said to be keen on a Brexiteer as Sir Mark’s replacement – but he dismissed those reports on Monday and hailed Britain’s “impartial” civil service as the best in the world. It follows a call from Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove for government to be “closer to the 52 per cent who voted to Leave”.
Mr Johnson said he wanted a “Rooseveltian” rebuilding of the economy as he set out plans for an infrastructure spending blitz. It comes as the mayor of Leicester said the government wants to extend lockdown in the city for two weeks beyond 4 July to deal with a spike in Covid-19 cases.
PM finds warm words for his department cabinet secretary
“Sir Mark has given incredible service to this country. He came in at a very difficult time,” PM told Times Radio.
“He has seen the government through all sorts of very tough stuff – changes in the premiership, an election, Brexit, dealing with the worst bits of the Covid crisis. He has got a lot more to offer and I am sure he will.”
He played down suggestions that Sir Mark had been the subject of a series of negative briefings in the media.
“I try not to read too much of the negative briefing. There is an awful lot of stuff that comes out in the papers to which I wouldn't automatically attach the utmost credence,” he said.
“People brief all kinds of things into the newspapers. All I can tell you is Mark is an outstanding servant to this country and will continue to be so.”
Starmer questions why PM was so ‘determined’ to move top civil servant during pandemic
Asked about Sir Mark Sedwill stepping from his dual role as cabinet secretary and national security adviser as part of an alleged wider shake-up of the civil service, Labour leader Keir Starmer said the PM should not be focusing on reshuffles in the midst of the coronavirus crisis.
Speaking on Sky News, Sir Keir said: “I don’t think that now is the time to start moving around senior civil servants. We've got an economic crisis just around the corner.
“Spend your time getting the budget together, spend your time getting schools back open, rather than moving around senior civil servants at this time. It’s a question of priorities.”
When asked if he saw Sir Mark’s stepping down as a de facto sacking, Sir Keir added: “It seems to me obvious that the prime minister wanted to move the cabinet secretary and was determined to do so.
“Why you do so in the middle of a pandemic and a crisis instead of actually focusing on the crisis, is a question the prime minister needs to answer.”
He added: “What we can’t have in a crisis like this is a prime minister who shifts responsibility from himself to somebody else … Don’t think know is the time to start moving around senior civil servants.”
Starmer: I’m sweating blood to rebuild trust in Labour
Sir Keir Starmer has said he is “sweating blood” to rebuild public trust in his party, despite a recent poll suggesting that public opinion favoured his leadership over that of Boris Johnson.
Asked if he thought he would make a better prime minister than Johnson on Sky News, Starmer said: “I focus on the fact that last December the Labour party lost very badly in a general election, and that's our starting point.
“I’ve got a mountain to climb to get our party from where it is to where it needs to be to win the next general election, and I’m sweating blood on that.
Starmer has said he stands by his decision to sack Rebecca Long-Bailey from her role as shadow education secretary last week.
Speaking on Sky News, he said: “When I took over as leader of the Labour party, I said I would root out antisemitism, and I’ve been judged by my actions, not by my words.”
Starmer also said the chancellor urgently needs to introduce a July budget, and criticised the government for being “asleep at the wheel” on the issue of reopening schools.
Defunding the police ‘nonsense’, says Keir Starmer
When asked about one of the political aims of the Black Lives Matter movement, to defund the police, Sir Keir Starmer described it as “nonsense”.
The Labour leader, who was pictured taking the knee in support of Black Lives Matter, told BBC Breakfast: “Nobody should be saying anything about defunding the police.
“I was director of public prosecutions for five years, I’ve worked with police forces across England and Wales bringing thousands of people to court, so my support for the police is very strong.
“There’s a broader issue here. The Black Lives Matter movement – or moment, if you like – internationally is about reflecting something completely different, it’s reflecting on what happened dreadfully in America just a few weeks ago and showing or acknowledging that as a moment across the world.
“It’s a shame it’s getting tangled up with these organisational issues, with the organisation Black Lives Matter, but I wouldn’t have any truck with what the organisation is saying about defunding the police, that’s just nonsense.”
Leicester mayor says government suggesting local lockdown extension
The mayor of Leicester – the city facing the country’s first local lockdown amid a spike in coronavirus cases – has slammed the “intensely frustrating” process of getting information from the government.
The city has recorded 866 of its 2,987 coronavirus cases in the last two weeks – sparking speculation that its inhabitants could be plunged into a localised lockdown.
Mayor Sir Peter Soulsby and the council’s director of public health Ivan Browne will meet government officials on Monday morning to discuss the latest coronavirus testing data.
“Frankly it’s been intensely frustrating,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“It was only last Thursday that we finally got some of the data we need but we’re still not getting all of it and it was only at 1.04am this morning that the recommendations for Leicester arrived in my inbox.
“What they’re suggesting is not a return to lockdown, it seems that what they’re suggesting is that we continue the present level of restriction for a further two weeks beyond 4 July.”
Government refuses to abolish coronavirus law used unlawfully in every prosecution
The government is refusing to repeal a “draconian” coronavirus law – despite it being used to wrongly prosecute scores of people.
The Coronavirus Act has not been used lawfully in a single criminal case since it came into force in March, according to a review by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
Gregor McGill, the CPS’ director of legal services, said the application of the law was improving and errors had “significantly reduced” in May.
When asked by The Independent why the CPS did not stop police using the Coronavirus Act, given the 100 per cent rate of unlawful prosecutions, he replied: “It’s not for the CPS to stop charging offences, it’s to make sure that it’s appropriate.”
The Department of Health said it would not abandon the Coronavirus Act.
Our home affairs correspondent Lizzie Dearden has all the details:
Political appointees ‘more likely to be yes-men’, warns ex-cabinet secretary
Former mandarins have criticised the big shake-up at No 10. The changes not only see Sir Mark Sedwill depart as cabinet secretary, but his role as national security adviser filled by the PM’s Europe adviser David Frost – a political appointment rather than an impartial civil servant.
Ex-cabinet secretary Lord O’Donnell said: “I’m worried about the appointment of David Frost as national security adviser because I’m not quite sure how putting a special adviser in that role works.”
He told the BBC that political appointees were “more likely to be yes-men” rather than “speaking truth to power”.
‘Sedwill was roadblock to Cummings plans’
Our political commentator Andrew Grice has taken a closer look at cabinet secretary Sir Mark Sedwill’s looming exit from No 10.
The prime minister and his allies “judged that Sedwill was like Macavity the Mystery Cat when the Covid-19 crisis erupted”, he writes.
“His crime was to be seen as a roadblock to Dominic Cummings’s post-Brexit mission – to shake up the civil service.”
‘Labour can’t just give up the Brexit fight’
UK and EU negotiators are due to meet face to face in Brussels in Monday for the first time since early March (following a series of talks via video).
Both sides have agreed to intensify talks, but there remain wide gaps between the two sides, with the EU demanding a level playing field on social, environmental and workplace protections, while the UK wants the freedom to set its own rules.
Tuesday marks the final deadline for the UK to request an extension to the transition period ending on 31 December.
Political commentator Michael Chessum says neither Labour nor the wider political left having raised the issue clearly, so the result is a foregone conclusion: there will be no extension, and the UK will leave the orbit of the EU at the end of December.
“Brexit is, and always has been, a battle for the kind of country Britain will become,” he writes. “It is too late to stop it entirely, but if Labour is to remain attached to political reality then it must develop a strategy to resist, oppose and, eventually, reverse the Brexit juggernaut.
Read more here:
First to 50 push-up battle at PMQs?
Keir Starmer was asked about the prime minister’s push-up stunt (he did some during his Mail on Sunday interview) when he appeared on Good Morning Britain earlier. Host Piers Morgan asked: “Can you do more than one push-up?”
The Labour leader replied: “I can. I was thinking of PMQs this week … Maybe question one should be, ‘First to 50?’”
Morgan said: “You know what I would actually pay good money to watch that.”
One more serious issues, he said: “We lost that December election really badly and I don’t want anyone in Labour party and Labour movement to ever forget that … It’s for me to win the trust of the British people back in the Labour party as force for good and force for change.”
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