The headlines for much of this week might have been about the Rochdale byelection, which takes place on 29 February, but pressingly it is the final day of campaigning in the Wellingborough and the Kingswood byelections today. Here is a quick reminder of what is going on there …
Wellingborough has a byelection after veteran Conservative MP Peter Bone was subject to a recall petition after a watchdog found he had bullied a staff member and exposed his genitals near their face, which Bone has denied. The Conservatives have selected his partner Helen Harrison to defend the seat, which has not gone down well with locals. Bone won in 2019 with a majority of 18,540.
Gen Kitchen is the Labour candidate and Keir Starmer was in the constituency with her yesterday. Ana Gunn is standing for the Liberal Democrats and Will Morris standing for the Green party. The co-deputy leader of Reform UK, Ben Habib is their candidate. Labour overturned even bigger Conservative majorities in October 2023 byelections in Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire, leading to some expectation resting on Kitchen that she will win.
Peter Walker recently visited the constituency for us, which you can read about here: ‘We’re not complacent’ – Labour wary of overconfidence in Wellingborough byelection
John Harris also went there recently to produce an episode of the Politics Weekly podcast for us, in which he spoke to local groups helping to deal with knife crime and the closure of youth centres, and met Habib. You can listen to that here.
Kingswood has it byelection after its Conservative MP, Chris Skidmore, a leading Tory voice on green issues, resigned in protest againt his party’s dash for oil and gas. Sam Bromiley is defending Skidmore’s 11,220 majority from 2019. Labour have selected Damien Egan in a seat which has swung between the Tories and Labour over the last century. The Green party came fourth in Kingswood in 2019 but since then has become the largest group on Bristol city council, and has Lorraine Francis standing for it. Andrew Brown is standing for the Liberal Democrats. Reform UK and Ukip also have candidates, with Rupert Lowe, former chairman of Rishi Sunak’s beloved Southampton MP, standing for Richard Tice’s party.
Steven Morris was there in January as the campaign got under way: ‘Not a practice run’: Labour braves the cold before Kingswood byelection
Of course, all these visits and reports were before the events of the last few days, where Labour’s candidate selection procedures have come under intense scrutiny.
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My colleague Phillip Inman has this analysis on this morning’s inflation figures:
Good news came from the food industry, where inflation fell from December to January, but the annual rate remains high at 7% and food and non-alcoholic beverage prices are about 25% higher than they were two years ago, the Office for National Statistics said.
Worse is the price of electricity, gas, and other fuels. Inflation for this category has fallen by 18% since its peak in January 2023. However, prices last month were 89% higher than they were in January 2021.
These are dramatic increases in the cost of living. So it is no wonder the boss of the TUC, Paul Nowak, is hopping mad about any talk of lower inflation somehow meaning the problem has gone away for most people.
At the Bank of England, policymakers will be concerned that strong wage increases are flowing into higher prices and that its job of taming inflation is not yet done.
The hotel and restaurant trade seems to show that trend in action. However, low-paid workers are being helped by the national minimum wage, which employers know is going up by almost 10% in April, to £11.44 an hour. Like the energy price cap, this is a government initiative that the Bank cannot do anything about.
Read more of Phillip Inman’s analysis here: UK households face battle to regain former living standards even if inflation eases
Here is a scoot around the newspaper front pages today, more than a couple of which make for pretty grim reading for Keir Starmer. The Times, Telegraph, Independent and Guardian all feature the party’s mess over candidate selection, with the Times and Telegraph both using the word “crisis”.
Starmer must be grateful that the Daily Mail is more obsessed with attacking Harry and Meghan than it is about attacking the Labour leader, leading with a bizarre story about the couple’s “provocative” new website address.
The death of radio DJ Steve Wright also features prominently. The Daily Express leads with reporting of an incident at the house of Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood.
Labour’s shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves has reacted to the inflation figures, which show prices still rising at 4% annually, by saying that “millions of families” are still worse off under the this government than they were at the last election.
She said:
After 14 years of economic failure working people are worse off. Prices are still rising in the shops, with the average household’s costs up £110-a-week compared to before the last election.
Inflation is still higher than the Bank of England’s target and millions of families are struggling with the cost of living.
The Conservatives cannot fix the economy because they are the reason it is broken. It’s time for change. Only Labour has a long-term plan to get Britain’s future back by delivering more jobs, more investment and cheaper bills.
The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, said:
Inflation never falls in a perfect straight line, but the plan is working; we have made huge progress in bringing inflation down from 11%, and the Bank of England forecast that it will fall to around 2% in a matter of months.
Inflation was at 11% in November 2022, its highest rate since October 1981, just after Rishi Sunak took office as prime minister.
Richard Partington and Larry Elliott report:
Britain’s annual inflation rate remained unchanged at 4% in January despite an increase in energy bills as the cost of living crisis persisted.
Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed inflation as measured by the consumer prices index defying predictions of an increase in January, after the first monthly fall in food prices for more than two years offset the rise in gas and electricity costs.
The Bank of England had predicted a small rise in inflation last month after an increase in the Ofgem energy price cap for households across Great Britain, while economists polled by Reuters expected an increase to 4.2%.
Last month’s better-than-predicted news on the cost of living is likely to be followed by a fall in inflation to the government’s 2% target in the spring.
Inflation was last at 2% in July 2021 and rose to a peak of 11.1% in October 2022 before starting to decline.
Read more of Richard Partington and Larry Elliott’s report here: UK inflation remains unchanged at 4% as food prices fall
The headlines for much of this week might have been about the Rochdale byelection, which takes place on 29 February, but pressingly it is the final day of campaigning in the Wellingborough and the Kingswood byelections today. Here is a quick reminder of what is going on there …
Wellingborough has a byelection after veteran Conservative MP Peter Bone was subject to a recall petition after a watchdog found he had bullied a staff member and exposed his genitals near their face, which Bone has denied. The Conservatives have selected his partner Helen Harrison to defend the seat, which has not gone down well with locals. Bone won in 2019 with a majority of 18,540.
Gen Kitchen is the Labour candidate and Keir Starmer was in the constituency with her yesterday. Ana Gunn is standing for the Liberal Democrats and Will Morris standing for the Green party. The co-deputy leader of Reform UK, Ben Habib is their candidate. Labour overturned even bigger Conservative majorities in October 2023 byelections in Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire, leading to some expectation resting on Kitchen that she will win.
Peter Walker recently visited the constituency for us, which you can read about here: ‘We’re not complacent’ – Labour wary of overconfidence in Wellingborough byelection
John Harris also went there recently to produce an episode of the Politics Weekly podcast for us, in which he spoke to local groups helping to deal with knife crime and the closure of youth centres, and met Habib. You can listen to that here.
Kingswood has it byelection after its Conservative MP, Chris Skidmore, a leading Tory voice on green issues, resigned in protest againt his party’s dash for oil and gas. Sam Bromiley is defending Skidmore’s 11,220 majority from 2019. Labour have selected Damien Egan in a seat which has swung between the Tories and Labour over the last century. The Green party came fourth in Kingswood in 2019 but since then has become the largest group on Bristol city council, and has Lorraine Francis standing for it. Andrew Brown is standing for the Liberal Democrats. Reform UK and Ukip also have candidates, with Rupert Lowe, former chairman of Rishi Sunak’s beloved Southampton MP, standing for Richard Tice’s party.
Steven Morris was there in January as the campaign got under way: ‘Not a practice run’: Labour braves the cold before Kingswood byelection
Of course, all these visits and reports were before the events of the last few days, where Labour’s candidate selection procedures have come under intense scrutiny.
Good morning. This time tomorrow polls will be open in the Wellingborough and the Kingswood byelections, which were expected to be a big test of whether Rishi Sunak would retain a grip on his leadership of the Tory party if results went against the prime minister. Instead they are likely to be viewed almost entirely through the prism of Labour in the wake of the suspension of two parliamentary candidates in two days.
Here are the headlines …
A second Labour parliamentary candidate was suspended yesterday over comments made about Israel in a private meeting of Labour activists. It is understood that the party has suspended Graham Jones, its candidate for Hyndburn. Jones is the second Labour parliamentary candidate to be suspended in less than 24 hours over comments made during the meeting, following the decision by Keir Starmer to withdraw support from Azhar Ali, the party’s candidate in Rochdale.
Britain’s annual inflation rate remained unchanged at 4% in January despite an increase in energy bills as the cost of living crisis persisted. The first monthly fall in food prices for more than two years offset the rise in gas and electricity costs. The Bank of England’s target is 2%. We can expect words from Rishi Sunak on this later.
The Northern Ireland budget settlement will be discussed in Stormont, with the permanent secretary of the department of finance to appear before the newly reconstituted assembly’s finance committee.
Hundreds of frontline NHS staff are treating patients despite being under investigation for their part in an alleged “industrial-scale” qualifications fraud. More than 700 nurses are caught up in a potential scandal, which a former head of the Royal College of Nursing said could put NHS patients at risk.
The UK’s hostile environment policies had a worse effect on the mental health of black Caribbean people than the coronavirus lockdown had on the wider population, researchers have found.
The Commons is in recess. The Lords is sitting from 11am and Rwanda is on the agenda later in the day. The Senedd and the Scottish parliament are not sitting. Stormont has a finance committee meeting.
It is Martin Belam here with you again today, desperately trying to avoid shoehorning Valentine’s day references into the blog non-stop. I do try to read and dip into the comments when I can, but if you want to get my attention the best way is to email me – martin.belam@theguardian.com – especially if you have spotted an error or typo.
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2024-02-14 08:51:00Z
CBMilgFodHRwczovL3d3dy50aGVndWFyZGlhbi5jb20vcG9saXRpY3MvbGl2ZS8yMDI0L2ZlYi8xNC9sYWJvdXItY29uc2VydmF0aXZlcy1yb2NoZGFsZS1raW5nc3dvb2Qtd2VsbGluZ2Jvcm91Z2gtcmlzaGktc3VuYWsta2Vpci1zdGFybWVyLXVrLXBvbGl0aWNzLWxpdmXSAZYBaHR0cHM6Ly9hbXAudGhlZ3VhcmRpYW4uY29tL3BvbGl0aWNzL2xpdmUvMjAyNC9mZWIvMTQvbGFib3VyLWNvbnNlcnZhdGl2ZXMtcm9jaGRhbGUta2luZ3N3b29kLXdlbGxpbmdib3JvdWdoLXJpc2hpLXN1bmFrLWtlaXItc3Rhcm1lci11ay1wb2xpdGljcy1saXZl
