Brexit news – live: Corbyn called ‘preening narcissist’ by defeated Labour MP as Boris Johnson warned over ‘strange’ statement
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Boris Johnson has been accused of “reckless and irresponsible behaviour” after he amended his Brexit bill to prevent MPs extending the Brexit transition period beyond the end of 2020 – sending the pound plunging as it puts the possibility of no-deal back on the table.
Mr Johnson is also accused of showing “two fingers to democracy” after announcing Nicky Morgan has been handed a peerage and will carry on as culture secretary, despite standing down as an MP. Baroness Morgan ruled out taking a job in any Johnson cabinet last year.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told MPs during a Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) meeting that he was "very sorry" for Friday's election defeat. However defeated Labour MP Mary Creagh said Mr Corbyn was guilty of "preening narcissism", after revealing no one from his team had been in touch after she lost her seat.
Earlier in the day, the PM made his ministers chant false campaign claims about nurse and hospital numbers as he assembled his cabinet for the first time since the election. It comes as Angela Rayner is reportedly ready to step aside and support Rebecca Long-Bailey’s bid to become the next Labour leader.
Pound declines after no-deal fears revived
The pound slumped more than 1 per cent after No 10 announced the amendment to the Brexit bill to outlaw any extension to the transition period, according to Bloomberg.
“The pound is right back where it was before the December 12 vote and the subsequent ‘Boris bounce’,” said Valentin Marinov of Credit Agricole SA.
Corbyn facing calls to sack his advisors
Jeremy Corbyn is set to address a meeting of his parliamentary party in Westminster on Tuesday, as MPs return for their first day back after last week’s landslide victory for Boris Johnson.
The Labour leader is facing demands to apologise for the party’s election defeat – and sack those closest to him deemed responsible for the failure – when he faces the diminished group.
Corbyn is resisting calls to step down immediately from senior MPs, including former deputy leader Harriet Harman, amid concerns he is staying on to ensure his successor takes on his left-wing agenda.
More details here:
Unemployment rate stays at 3.8 per cent
The number of people claiming unemployment benefits decreased by 13,000 to 1.28 million for the quarter, the Office for National Statistics said.
It meant the rate of unemployment stayed flat at 3.8 per cent, surpassing analyst expectations which had forecast an increase to a 3.9 per cent rate of unemployment.
However, the reduction in unemployment came as wage growth stalled over the period and the number of job vacancies also shrank.
Youngest MP will give majority of her salary to charity
Lots of in interest in the new arrivals at Westminster today.
Nadia Whittome, a 23-year-old project worker for a social enterprise, became the youngest member of parliament after Thursday’s poll when she was elected to represent Nottingham East.
The Labour MP is promising to keep only £35,000 of her MP’s salary, donating the rest to charity.
“It’s not berating MPs for taking the full salary,” she told The Independent. “It’s not saying MPs don’t deserve the £79,000. It’s saying workers need a pay rise - carers, teaching assistants, nurses - and I’ll take mine when they take theirs.”
Baroness Morgan laughs off questions about life peerage
Nicky Morgan – now Baroness Morgan – has arrived at No 10, waving at reporters.
The culture secretary has been retained despite standing down as an MP, as Boris Johnson rushed through a role in the House of Lords for her in less than a day.
When asked if she was pleased with her life peerage, she laughed.
Nicky Morgan arrives at No 10 for cabinet (Reuters)
Three out of four Labour members want PR voting system
Just over three-quarters of Labour members want the party to support electoral reform and adopt proportional representation (PR) as a policy, new polling shows.
A survey by YouGov found that 76 per cent supported the change, with just 12 per cent opposed and a further 12 per cent who said they did not know.
It follows a study by the Electoral Reform Society that showed Boris Johnson would have been denied a majority if we had used the voting system adopted for European parliament polls at the general election.
While Labour would have won 10 more seats and the Greens another 11, the Lib Dems would have been the biggest beneficiaries by taking 59 more seats.
PM gets cabinet to chant false claims – and mixes up employment with unemployment
Boris Johnson has addressed his new cabinet, thanking them for their “hard work” in the election.
The PM also got his cabinet members to chant in unison some of the false claims made during the campaign – about 50,000 more nurses and 40 new hospitals being built.
The FullFact group has pointed out that the claim the government was building 40 new hospitals was false because money had only been committed for six new ones.
The 50,000 more nurses claim was universally debunked, since the figure included almost 19,000 existing nurses. Also, Johnson used the word “hire” today. “How many more nurses are we going to hire?”
The cabinet members shouted: “50,000!”
The PM told them: “We should have absolutely no embarrassment about saying that we are a people’s government and this is a people’s cabinet and we are going to be working to deliver on the priorities of the British people.
He added: “Of course, the first 100 days were very busy, 140 days or whatever it was, you may remember it was a very frenetic time, but you ain’t seen nothing yet folks.”
Johnson also said: “I’m proud to say today that Saj has just passed me some, at the risk of sounding more North Korean than normal, Saj has passed me some good economic news that unemployment is up again … employment is up again and unemployment is down.”
Cummings wanted to ‘whack’ favoured people into the House of Lords
After all the criticism about Nicky Morgan’s ennoblement, a 2014 clip has emerged showing Boris Johnson’s closest adviser Dominic Cummings talking about how much he wanted the prime minister could appoint “whoever he wants as a minister”.
The PM’s right-hand man claimed you should you should be able to “take ministers from wherever and whack them in the House of Lords” – and said it would be “on my to-do list if I ever successfully manage to get control at No 10”.
BuzzFeed News’ Mark Di Stefano shared the clip.
The age voters more likely to vote Tory than Labour down to 39, YouGov finds
YouGov has carried out a huge, post-election, interviewing over 40,000 British adults to discover patterns across demographics: age, gender, class, education and previous votes.
It finds that age remains the biggest dividing line in British politics.
The “youthquake” factor was not quite as striking as it might have been for Labour: 56 per cent of 18 to 24 year olds for Jeremy Corbyn’s party, while 67 per cent of over-70s voted Tory.
For every 10 years someone ages, their chance of voting Tory increases by around nine points, the pollster found. The new age at which a voter is more likely to have voted Conservative than Labour is 39, down from 47 at the last election.
The Tories also comfortably beat Labour across all social classes, although support was more striking among working-class groups.
The new Tory MPs: C4 reality star, Krypton Factor champ – and a former dolphin trainer for Terry Nutkins
The new batch of Tory MPs will no doubt be doing lots of TV interviews after they’re sworn in this afternoon. But some have a strange amount of telly and telly-related experience already.
Dehenna Davison, MP for Bishop Auckland, appeared in the Channel 4 reality show Bride And Prejudice two years ago, which showed the then 24-year-old marrying a Conservative councillor 35 years her senior.
Aaron Bell, MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme, appeared on University Challenge in 2001 and became champion of the rebooted Krypton Factor in 2009.
And Virginia Crosbie, MP for Ynys Mon. once trained dolphins with Animal Planet host Terry Nutkins at Woburn Safari Park. “One child actually jumped in before we could stop her, but she got out fine.”
Aaron Bell, new Tory MP and Krypton Factor champ (PA)
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