UK politics live: Rosie Duffield slates Labour ‘sleaze and nepotism’ as Badenoch warns of Tory ‘stitch-up’

Almost three months into his administration, Sir Keir Starmer’s self-styled “British pragmatism” has made a refreshing – indeed invigorating – change from the ideological obsession and grinding search for new culture wars that disfigured politics under the Conservatives.

Such controversies as there have been – notably about the cuts to the winter fuel allowance and policy in the Middle East – have been fact-based and verging on the empirical.

The same is true about his efforts to build a personal rapport with Donald Trump, and the apparent willingness to rethink taxing the super-rich non-doms, given reports that the Treasury fears little if any new revenue may be raised by attacking these extremely mobile people.

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Sir Keir Starmer is still open to agreeing a deal with the EU on free movement for young people – but does not want to give away his negotiating hand too early as he prepares to head to Brussels next week.

The Independent understands that the Labour government has a “three pillar” blueprint to reset the relationship with the EU in painstaking talks.

The main talks will be headed by European affairs minister Nick Thomas-Symonds, who is based in the Cabinet Office and has been handed some of the most complex and sensitive tasks in the Starmer government.

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This could be the moment that the Labour government started to find its feet. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is “ready to water down” her tax raid on non-doms because the Treasury fears that it may “fail to raise any money”, the Financial Times reported on Thursday.

The timing of this realisation is interesting, the day after the end of the Labour conference at which the news might have been greeted with howls of “betrayal” from the marginalised, but still vocal, usual suspects.

But what is important about this U-turn is that it means the cold light of realism has been allowed to penetrate the pie-in-the-sky slogans of Labour’s pre-election economics.

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Conservative former party leader and prime minister Theresa May has warned that the party “failed to see the threat from the Liberal Democrats” while focusing too much on Reform.

Writing in The Times, Baroness May said the candidates for the leadership could “play into Reform’s hands” by failing to understand why they lost the election.

She said the Conservatives lost power because the party had “trashed our brand”, losing its reputation for “integrity and competence”.

Blaming the Partygate scandal and Liz Truss’s mini-budget, Lady May added the Tories had spent “too long tacking to the right in order to appease potential Reform voters” and “forgot that we are not a right-wing party but a centre-right party”.

The interim chairman of the Conservative Party will tell the membership that he is “profoundly sorry” for the election loss as he opens the party’s conference within hours.

Richard Fuller will tell delegates in Birmingham that the parliamentary party “needs to learn and has to change”, and is also expected to announce details of a review of the general election

The contest for the party leadership will feature prominently in the first conference since the election defeat in July.

Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat will all have an opportunity to address the conference - which will run until Wednesday - and their campaigns will be lobbying MPs before parliamentarians pick the final two on 10 October.

The final result will be declared on 2 November.

Mr Fuller is expected to say: “I am profoundly sorry to you, the members of the Conservative Party.

“To our activists. To our current and former councillors, police and crime commissioners and mayors who found their strong local records of service were dominated by negative national headlines.

“To Conservative voters and to the country at large for the consequence: a reckless, ideological socialist government with a huge majority based on a paltry share of the electorate.

“I am deeply sorry.”

Labour has come under renewed pressure in its ongoing ‘freebies’ row after it was revealed that Sir Keir Starmer accepted £20,000 in accommodation costs to help his son study for his GCSEs.

The donation was declared to Parliament by the prime minister somewhat cryptically as “accommodation.”

The nature of the massive donation from Labour donor Lord Waheed Alli had remained a mystery until Sir Keir was asked by the BBC about its purpose.

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Conservative leadership candidates have taken aim at the prime minister over Rosie Duffield’s resignation.

Former security minister Tom Tugendhat said the move showed Sir Keir’s government was “about self-service”, while frontrunner Robert Jenrick said the government was “already in disarray, crumbling under the weight of their rank hypocrisy”.

The 2024 Conservative Party Conference will be a drastically different affair from last year’s gathering in Manchester, when Rishi Sunak’s government was in its dying days.

Back then, ministers announced a slew of eye-catching policies that would reshape the future of the country in a desperate last few roles of the dice - Alex Chalk promising to offshore prisoners, Jeremy Hunt planning to slash the number of civil servants and Rishi Sunak scrapping HS2.

This year, Mr Sunak is a lame duck Tory leader and all eyes will be far from the diminished former prime minister. Instead it will be a four-day battle for the future leadership of the party, with the four remaining contenders thrashing it out to try to win over Tory members.

James Cleverly, Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick and Tom Tugendhat will be put to the test in a series of hustings and speeches, as well as taking part in intense lobbying and networking behind the scenes in Birmingham with MPs and the party rank and file.

On offer elsewhere will be former Tory MPs, ousted by the public in July’s general election, setting out where they think the party went wrong and what it needs to do next.

High profile names expected to appear are ex-PM Liz Truss, former business secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg and incoming Spectator Editor Michael Gove.

The Independent will be bringing the latest updates and analysis from the conference.

Rosie Duffield is a long-time critic of some of the Labour Party’s policies and its leadership.

She has attacked Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to retain the two-child benefit cap, branding it “heinous”.

And as a staunch defender of women’s rights and women’s spaces, Ms Duffield has repeatedly criticised Labour’s leadership over what she sees as its lack of support for women in trans issues.

Last year, she accused male party colleagues of trying to drown her out during a Commons debate when she spoke against gender reforms proposed in Edinburgh.

She said she felt “cold-shouldered by the Labour Party” and compared her membership to being in an abusive relationship.

And she said it was “dystopian” that Sir Keir had been reluctant to say whether a woman could have a penis.

She opted not to attend the Labour Party conference in 2021 after receiving threats and being branded transphobic, which she denies.

And when she said only women have a cervix, Sir Keir disagreed.

The Canterbury MP urged Sir Keir to maintain support for biological females to feel protected in prisons and domestic violence refuges, but said she was not confident the policy would be upheld.

She condemned the decision to apparently let a Labour aide keep his job after being found to have groped an intern 20 years his junior.