British Politics Thread

Ford has said it will consider closing its two remaining UK automobile factories, both of which are in towns where the majority of people voted to leave the EU, to cover costs of $1 billion over the next two years.

Ford stopped making passenger cars in the UK in 2002. But it still makes engines at plants in Dagenham and Bridgend that are exported to the EU where the cars are assembled.

Many cars are then shipped back to the UK to be sold.

The two UK plants employ around 3,800 people in towns where the majority of people voted to Leave the EU.

In Dagenham, 62 per cent of people voted to leave while in Bridgend 55 per cent said they wanted out.

Ford has already slashed some 5,700 EU jobs in the last five years after closing two of its UK plants and one in Belgium.

The price of Ford cars in the UK will also rise, according to Bob Shanks, chief financial officer, who blamed the changes on the tanking value of the pound against the dollar since the referendum. That has made Ford, a US brand, more expensive in the UK.

In a wide-ranging interview about his plans for the capital, the former Labour transport minister sought to distance himself from Labour’s drift to the left under Mr Corbyn, declaring himself unashamedly pro-business and positioning himself as an ally of the City as the country prepares for Brexit.

Mr Khan said he was “an advocate for wealth creators in London”.

"I feel comfortable around success and I am pro-business.”

“For me it is a source of embarrassment that at the last general election there weren’t businesses backing Labour. You were hard pushed to find anyone supporting Labour in business. That can’t be right.

“I accept the unease the City had with Labour in the 2015 general election. And particularly with the current leadership the national Labour party has got.

“I speak as someone who used to run a small business. I recognise that politicians don’t create jobs. Politicians create the environment in which business people create jobs. My job is to create the right the right environment for them to flourish and thrive.”

The Mayor said he was lobbying David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, to take advice from City Hall on the priorities for London during negotiations with the EU. The financial passport that allows City institutions to carry out transactions on the continent, and access to the single market are “absolutely crucial”, he said.

Mr Khan added: “I want JP Morgan and others to know the Mayor is on their side. I want them to stay here, they are welcome here.”

The comments put Labour’s most powerful politician in office at odds with the party machine, which under Mr Corbyn has adopted what is seen as a hostile attitude to the City and business. Mr Khan branded the party’s plan to introduce a levy on financial transactions “madness”.

The Mayor’s comments are his most vocal criticism of Mr Corbyn since his election, but he refused to endorse Owen Smith, the challenger in the Labour leadership election, saying a “running commentary” would not be in the interests of London.

“For me it is a source of embarrassment that at the last general election there weren’t businesses backing Labour. You were hard pushed to find anyone supporting Labour in business. That can’t be right.

Theresa May will not intervene in the official process of approving David Cameron’s resignation honours list because it would “set a very bad precedent”, Downing Street has said.

The prime minister had been facing calls to block honours for No 10 “cronies” after a leaked list revealed that her predecessor has requested knighthoods for party donors, pro-EU campaigners and political aides.

Labour and Liberal Democrat politicians called for an overhaul of the system as it emerged that one of Cameron’s last acts in office was to propose rewards for more than 40 allies, including four cabinet ministers and donors to the Conservatives and the EU remain campaign.

May was dragged into the row after it emerged that she would have to recommend the names put forward by Cameron to the Queen and therefore has the power to block them.

Her official spokeswoman said: “It is standard for an outgoing prime minister to submit a resignation list. Nominations for that list are at the former prime minister’s discretion, and they will now go through all the proper processes and committees.

“It would set a very bad precedent for a new prime minister to interfere in that process, which is long established.”

She dismissed the idea of a review of the honours list, saying the government was focusing on its priorities, and would give no comment on May’s personal reaction to the names put forward by the last prime minister.

The spokeswoman also would not be drawn on whether current members of the cabinet – Philip Hammond, Michael Fallon, David Lidington and Patrick McLoughlin – would be directed by May to turn down their honours.

The list, leaked to the Sunday Times, is particularly controversial because it proposes rewarding a string of people who helped Cameron’s failed bid to keep Britain in the EU.

One of the most contentious proposed knighthoods is for Ian Taylor, an oil executive who gave almost £1m to the Conservatives in the past 18 months and helped fund the campaigns against Scottish independence and in favour of the EU. Andrew Cook, an engineering businessman who donated the use of a private jet to Cameron before the 2010 election and gave about £250,000 to the remain campaign, was also put forward for a knighthood.

According to the leak, Cameron recommended awards for more than 20 Downing Street advisers and staff as well as knighthoods for the four pro-EU cabinet ministers. George Osborne, Cameron’s closest political friend, who lost his job as chancellor after helping to run the unsuccessful remain campaign, was put forward to become a companion of honour.

There was also criticism over a proposed CBE for Will Straw, the chief executive of the cross-party pro-EU campaign, who is the son of the former home secretary Jack Straw and a former Labour parliamentary candidate.

It is said to include proposed OBEs for the Downing Street aide Isabel Spearman – a former PR for a luxury handbag designer who assisted Samantha Cameron with her diary, official parties and outfits for engagements – and for Osborne’s aide Thea Rogers, an ex-BBC producer.

The list, leaked in an unprecedented breach of secrecy, comes on top of a separate slate of those recommended for peerages, which is tipped to include two longstanding former aides, Gabby Bertin and Liz Sugg.

Cameron started as Conservative leader by saying he wanted to clean up politics, but Guardian research has found he handed peerages to at least 13 major Tory party donors during his tenure, as well as a number of knighthoods and lesser honours.

Desmond Swayne, a former international development minister who also served as a parliamentary aide to Cameron, defended the former prime minister’s actions, arguing it was normal for him to repay those who have helped him in the job.

“Over a period of government, particularly a difficult government in a coalition, a prime minister has to cajole and get the support of a number of people and he builds up a debt of honour and I think that frankly, an honours list is a relatively light way of paying it off,” Swayne told the Westminster Hour on BBC Radio 4.

“I think we get far too excited about these things. The reality is with any honours list there are names that will warm our hearts and names that will send us into an apoplectic rage.”

Jeremy Corbyn would require companies with more than 250 employees to accept new industrial laws under which they would have to recognise a specific union with which to bargain over pay.

Aides to the Labour leader said a Corbyn government would “repeal” 1999 union legislation that was passed by a Labour government to introduce a new French-style framework of union rights.

Writing in the Observer, Corbyn said change was made urgent by the corporate governance scandals involving Mike Ashley at Sports Direct and Philip Green at BHS, and the row over the decision by the Byron hamburger chain to help immigration officials arrest 35 of its staff who were working illegally in the country. “Even Theresa May understands she has to pay lip service to change in the workplace and the boardroom ...,” writes Corbyn.

“But the best way to guarantee fair pay is through strengthening unions’ ability to bargain collectively – giving employees the right to organise through a union and negotiate their pay, terms and conditions at work,” he writes. “That’s why it should be mandatory for all large employers, with over 250 staff, to bargain collectively with recognised trade unions.”

Currently a union seeking recognition must show that 10% of employees are members and 50% want them to lead on pay bargaining. If that is not the case, a secret ballot is held and union recognition requires a majority of those voting and at least 40% of those eligible to vote to support recognition.

Corbyn also proposes that all employees be given guaranteed hours which must be specified and written into a contract – bringing an end to zero-hour contracts. If an employer wants workers to work beyond those hours, they must specify the length of additional work along with a reason for asking.

An employer will also have to give reasonable compensation, akin to an “on-call” payment to an employee, for agreeing to make themselves available for additional work, whether they are ultimately asked to do so or not.

“Economic failure is a central reason why people are no longer prepared to accept politics as usual, across the advanced industrial world,” Corbyn writes. “It’s one of the reasons I was elected Labour leader in a landslide 10 months ago – and why there can be no going back to a broken economic model or the politics of the past.”

Britain's Border Force has a "worryingly low" number of boats to patrol the UK's coasts, MPs have said, amid concerns that coastal security is under threat from people smugglers.

The Home Affairs Select Committee said that only three boats were available to patrol 7,000 miles of shoreline. Royal Navy vessels should be made available to plug any gaps, it said.

The Home Office says it makes use of radar and aerial surveillance and has ordered eight more boats. The UK has a total of five Border Force vessels, but one has been deployed to the Mediterranean and another is in dock for maintenance.

The Border Force has been given a "key role in implementing strengthened coastal security measures", but it is "experiencing problems in gaining access to a sufficient number of patrol boats", the committee said.

Labour MP Keith Vaz, chairman of the committee, told BBC Radio 5 live: "The government has done the right thing in ordering more vessels but this should have been done much earlier and criminal gangs are not going to wait until order books have been fulfilled.

"They are making huge amounts of money and they are the ones we are going to be targeting - we need to ruthlessly deal with them."

The MPs also called for security to be stepped up at smaller ports, after the National Crime Agency warned earlier this year that they were being targeted by people smugglers.

Martyn Underhill, the police and crime commissioner for Dorset, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We are in a lot of trouble and I've been raising this with the government now for a year.

"Talk to the public and they will tell you they don't know who's coming in and out. We know that organised crime groups will always go for the weakest link and we know that Calais has been strengthened and they are starting to come in in other ways."

In May ministers announced measures to bolster maritime security, including new patrol boats for the Border Force to supplement the existing five-vessel fleet, but full deployment is not expected until the end of next year.

Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services union, said: "We have said for years that the Border Force doesn't have enough resources, but successive governments have continued to cut budgets and staff."

In May, 18 Albanians were rescued from a sinking inflatable boat off the Kent coast and in April two Iranian men were found floating in a dinghy in the English Channel.

Earlier this year, an ex-Border Force manager said Britain's coastal security was under threat from people smugglers because its fleet of patrol vessels was too small.

London's police force will deploy an additional 600 armed officers across the capital to protect against the threat of attacks, authorities announced on Wednesday.

The threat level in London remains at "severe" and the increase is not in response to any specific intelligence but is a long-term response to a spate of deadly attacks in European countries.

"Anyone who's been following events in Europe over the past few weeks will understand why we want to show our determination to protect the public," Metropolitan Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe said in a statement.

In line with British policing methods, the majority of London police officers do not carry firearms.

"The reality of having to deal with armed and deadly attackers is that you need firearms officers who will use force to stop those attackers in their aim. Our firearms officers are the ones who will run towards the danger," said Hogan-Howe.

The additional armed officers will be visible to the public and will work across London, both on foot and in vehicles.

Police are investigating reports of two men acting suspiciously near the British army garrison in Aldershot, Hampshire.

Officers received a report from a civilian member of staff who works in the military complex that two men were behaving suspiciously in a blue Renault Clio parked nearby.

There was no contact made between the two men and the person reporting the incident and there is nothing to suggest a crime was committed, the police added.

A statement from Hampshire police said: “We were called to a suspicious incident at 8.42am today at the junction between Queens Avenue and Hospital Hill, Aldershot. Two men were seen acting suspiciously in a blue Renault Clio. At this stage there is nothing to suggest that a crime has been committed but we are looking into why the two men had stopped the car on this stretch of road.”

Bulford military camp on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, was placed on lockdown on Thursday after reports that three people had been seen on a nearby ridge with a “long-barrelled weapon”. But police said the incident was a false alarm and that tensions were high following the Marham incident and the Bastille Day attack in Nice.

ritain's UK Independence Party, whose growing influence helped prompt a June 23 referendum that saw the country vote to quit the European Union, was plunged into turmoil on Wednesday over the choice of a new leader.

Nigel Farage, among Britain's most outspoken and effective anti-EU campaigners, said last month he would stand down as UKIP leader after realising his ambition of winning the referendum.

On Wednesday, the party's National Executive Committee (NEC) said Steven Woolfe, the favourite to replace him, had been excluded from the leadership ballot after submitting his nomination papers late.

The decision is likely to lead to civil war over the future of the party, fuelling tensions between those loyal to Farage and those, including UKIP's only lawmaker Douglas Carswell, who want to take UKIP in a more liberal direction.

On Sunday, a spokesman for Woolfe said he had submitted his application before the deadline but due to "technical problems" it had gone through 17 minutes too late.

"By a clear majority of NEC members, Steven Woolfe MEP's application was considered to be ineligible as a result of a late submission," the party's returning officer Adam Richardson said in a statement.

It was in a bid to stave off rising support for UKIP that former prime minister David Cameron first promised the EU referendum in 2013, and the party and its large grassroots network played a key role in the campaign to leave the bloc.

UKIP won 12.6 percent of the vote at last year's national election but due to Britain's winner-takes-all system, only has one seat in parliament.

Three NEC members resigned following the announcement, saying in a statement that a growing number of the committee were "placing personal ambitions, loyalties and jealousies at the heart of their decision-making".

One of those resigning, Michael McGough, said there was bitter fending within the party.

"We're excluding a candidate who is very popular with the membership," he told BBC radio.

"To me this is a fight for survival. If we don't get a competent leader ... the party could be finished. It's life or death now and that's why I've taken such a strong decision to leave the NEC because we need reform and we need it now."

McGough and fellow resigning members Victoria Ayling and Raymond Finch called for an extraordinary general meeting to hold a vote of no confidence in the NEC, something that has also been backed by major UKIP donor Arron Banks.

Suzanne Evans, previously seen as a possible leader, has also been unable to run in the contest as she was temporarily suspended from the party earlier this year for publicly criticising a UKIP candidate.

Among the six relatively unknown candidates who made the ballot, UKIP European Parliament member Diane James is now the bookmakers' favourite.