Labour unveils commitments for next general election – UK politics live | Politics

The Labor an event in Thurrock where the party launched its campaign promises has just started. Angela Raynerdeputy manager, initiates the proceedings.

We’re told the event will last 90 minutes and there are suggestions every shadow cabinet member could speak.

Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, is giving interviews this morning about new guidance for schools in England on sexuality education, which says “challenged gender identity theory” should not be taught. The proposals were presented to right-wing newspapers earlier this week, but Department of Education there is only now issued a press release. The new version of the manual doesn’t seem to be available online yet.

In interviews this morning, Keegan argued that the government should act because students were exposed to “inappropriate” material. She told the Today program:

I’ve seen some material that talks about gender identity being a spectrum, there are many different genders looking at trying to have children [to] take quizzes about what is a different gender identity and what is not.

Ignoring biological sex in the material I saw anyway … and a lot of that material was disturbing.

Asked how widespread the problem was, she admitted she didn’t know. She answered:

I don’t think it’s widespread, I mean, I don’t know, because you know it’s not something that we’ve gone and done specific research on.

Keegan also distanced himself from a comment he made in 2020 saying “transwomen are women”. She said that while she is happy to say that she considers a man who has undergone gender reassignment and surgery to be a woman, that is not her opinion of all trans women.

Good morning. Westminster is still waiting for the official date of the general election to be announced, but voters will note that the campaign is already underway and today we get a momentous moment; the official opening of Labor party threshold, retail offer – the six promises he will prioritize in the short campaign. Pippa Crerar there’s the story here.

Labour’s pledges are very similar to the pledge card used by Tony Blair and New Labor in 1997. At the time this was considered an innovative and successful campaign tactic. Labor doesn’t call this version a promise – as Pippa explains in her story, the party believes voters are more wary of politicians’ “promises” than they were in the Blair era – but in practice it’s the same thing.

One obvious complaint is that there’s nothing very left-wing about the bid – nothing to reduce child poverty or inequality – and almost nothing that Rishi Sunak wouldn’t be happy to put his name to. (The Tories are not proposing a new, public energy company, but Labour’s other five promises broadly amount to things the Tories already say they want to do or are doing.)

Pat McFadden, Labour’s national campaign co-ordinator was giving interviews this morning and on the Today program he defended the party’s decision to reach the middle.

Prompted by a question about Natalie Elphick’s defection, he said:

What it says about the party is that it has changed and that maybe there are people who see it in a different light today.

And I have an obvious message for listeners and anyone thinking of voting in the next election. We’re not going to win the next election just by appealing to people who have always voted Labour.

The only way to win the next election is to appeal to people who have traditionally not voted for you and who voted Conservative on many occasions in the last election.

It’s the difference between losing and winning, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Here is the program for the day.

10 am: Keir Starmer launched Labour’s election promise card, described by the party as its proposal for “first steps for change”, at an event in Thurrock.

10 am: Sue Gray, who is now Starmer’s chief of staff, is giving evidence to the UK’s Covid inquiry in Belfast in her capacity as Permanent Secretary to the Treasury for Northern Ireland during the pandemic.

11.30 am: Downing Street is holding a lobby briefing.

After 11.30 am: Deputies discuss the reports from the Parliamentary and Health Ombudsman saying that up to £10 billion should be paid to women who lost out because they were not given proper warning of the State Pension age rise.

Noon: John Sweeney answers First Minister’s Questions at Holyrood.

12.15 p.m.: Tom Tugendhat, the security minister, gives a speech on Taiwan at the Policy Exchange think tank.

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