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Truss’s admission talks on trade deal with US have been shelved is ‘terrible news for UK economy’, Labour says
Good morning. As my colleague Pippa Crerar reports, it turns out Barack Obama was right after all. When it comes to a free trade deal with the US, post-Brexit Britain really is at the back of the queue.
Liz Truss admitted that she did not expect talks on a free trade deal with the US to start “in the short to medium term” while speaking to reporters last night on her plane over to New York, where she is attending the United Nations general assembly. No one who has followed progress towards the “massive” free trade deal once promised will be surprised by the substance of what Truss said; it has been clear since Joe Biden won the US presidential election that for the time being the deal is all but dead. But the fact that Truss was prepared to admit this quite openly is notable. Last year, on a similar trip to the US, Boris Johnson was more evasive.
In answering the question candidly, Truss was also burying a commitment in the Conservative party’s 2019 manifesto, which said:
Our goals for British trade are accordingly ambitious. We aim to have 80 per cent of UK trade covered by free trade agreements within the next three years, starting with the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
The Truss comment also marks the return of No 10 as a news-generation machine. After the death of the Queen, all government business was put on hold and even the sources who give journalists unattributable briefings more or less clammed up. But now political news is back. We will be hearing more from Truss later today, and this morning Michelle Donelan, the new culture secretary, has done a full interview round. I will summarise the key points shortly.
Labour opposed Brexit in 2016, but under Keir Starmer it is now presenting itself as the party that would “make Brexit work”, and it now routinely attacks the Tories for failing to implement Brexit properly. Nick Thomas-Symonds, the shadow international trade secretary, says Truss’s admission that the US free trade deal won’t happen is “terrible news” for the economy. He says:
The admission that there is no prospect of a trade deal with the USA is terrible news for the UK economy – it is costing billions in lost potential trade opportunities and holding back growth.
There is no doubt that the blame for this mess lies at the door of the prime minister, who tarnished the UK’s international reputation as foreign and international trade secretary. This is an embarrassment for Liz Truss.
The Conservative manifesto promised a trade deal with the United States by the end of this year, now this has no chance of being delivered.
Only the fresh start a Labour government can provide will rebuild these international relationships and run a trade policy focused on growth.
Parliament is not sitting today. Here is the agenda.
Lunchtime (UK time): Liz Truss is expected to record interviews in New York, where she is in a visit to attend the United Nations general assembly.
Around 4pm (UK time): Truss is due to hold a meeting with Emmanuel Macron, the French president.
Also, at some point today Brandon Lewis, the new justice secretary, is due to hold a meeting with the Criminal Bar Association to discuss the barristers’ strike.
I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.
If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
Alternatively, you can email me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com
Key events
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Higher energy bills a price worth paying for UK security, says Truss
Higher energy bills are a price worth paying to guarantee the UK’s security from foreign aggressors, but the cost should not be passed on to householders, Liz Truss has said. My colleague Pippa Crerar has the story here.
At the Downing Street lobby briefing the No 10 spokesperson said that, as well having a bilateral meeting later today with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, Liz Truss will also have one with the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida.
Truss also has a meeting with Gitanas Nausėda, the president of Lithuania.
And she will be visiting the Ukrainian Institute of America, where she will meet Olena Zelenska, Ukraine’s first lady, as well as the Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, and prime minister, Denys Shmyhal. At the institute Truss will view an exhibition on Russian war crimes.
James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, is also in New York for the UN general assembly (UNGA). Today he will have his first meeting in his new post with his US counterpart, Antony Blinken
And while we’re on about people “overegging” things (see 11.37am), my colleague Jennifer Rankin, the Guardian’s Brussels correspondent, says the Labour party is wrong to present the government’s failure to get a trade deal with the US as a grievous blow to the economy (see 9.40am).
Severin Carrell
Rosalind McCall has become the first new member of the Scottish parliament to swear allegiance to King Charles III, after she took her seat at Holyrood on Tuesday morning.
McCall, known as Roz, has taken one of the Scottish Conservatives’ list seats for Mid Scotland and Fife after Dean Lockhart, a former lawyer and convener of Holyrood’s net zero, energy and transport committee, quit parliament to take up a job at a net zero company.
A former Tory councillor in Perth & Kinross, she had been due to take her seat earlier this month but that was delayed by the Queen’s death at Balmoral. Instead, McCall’s swearing-in became the first bit of business when Holyrood resumed on Tuesday.
Labour’s Rosie Cooper indicates she will stand down as MP to take new job as chair of NHS trust
Rosie Cooper has indicated that she intends to stand down as Labour MP for West Lancashire to take up a new job as chair of the Mersey Care NHS foundation trust. In her statement announcing the move Cooper says that events in recent years have “undoubtedly taken their toll” – a reference to Cooper being targeted by a neo-Nazi who was jailed for life in 2019 for plotting to kill her.
Cooper’s statement implies she will resign and trigger a byelection. At the last election she had a majority of more than 8,000 over the Conservatives, and in a byelection Labour would be expected to hold the seat very easily.
No need for Truss to apologise to Macron for not saying whether he was friend or foe, says Donelan
Liz Truss is due to meet Emmanuel Macron, the French president, at the UN this afternoon. It will be their first proper meeting since she scandalised mainstream diplomatic opinion during the Tory leadership contest by refusing to say whether she considered him a friend or foe. The response from Macron was seen as considerably more statesmanlike.
Michelle Donelan, the culture secretary, was asked about Truss’s comment this morning. She could have said said that Truss was just making a joke (which was probably at least half true – look at the expression on Truss’s face in the video clip), but it is never wise to contradict the boss and instead Donelan defended what Truss said. Asked if Truss should apologise to Macron, Donelan told Times Radio:
Well, absolutely not. The prime minister is entitled to make comments on any topic she should see fit to do so. So I don’t think she needs to apologise.
But on LBC Donelan did sound more conciliatory. She said it would be a mistake to “overegg” the comment made by Truss, and she claimed the PM has had “many warm conversations” with Macron over the past week.
Global Justice Now, which campaigns for a fairer global economy, has welcomed the news that there will be no UK-US free trade deal in the next few years. Jean Blaylock, its trade campaign manager, said:
It’s a real relief that there’s no immediate prospect of a US-UK trade deal, as Liz Truss has shown few signs she could negotiate her way out of a chlorinated chicken box.
The experience of the Australia trade deal is that Truss is willing to sacrifice almost anything she is asked to sacrifice to get a deal – and food standards, environmental protections and labour rights suffer as a result.
About 250,000 people queued to see Queen’s coffin in London, says culture secretary Michelle Donelan
About a quarter of a million people queued for up to 17 hours to see the Queen’s coffin as it lay in state at Westminster Hall, Michelle Donelan, the culture secretary, said this morning.
She also refused to say how much the government spent staging the state funeral for the Queen, but she said “the British public would argue that that was money well spent”.
My colleague Tobi Thomas has the story here.
The Liberal Democrats say Liz Truss is personally to blame for the failure of the UK to strike a trade deal with the US (see 9.44am) because she used to be international trade secretary, and then foreign secretary. In a statement Layla Moran, the party’s foreign affairs spokesperson, said:
This is the latest broken promise on trade from Liz Truss and the Conservatives. Businesses up and down the country are tangled in red tape, farmers have been sold down the river, and now it turns out that a deal with one of our largest partners is not even on the table.
Liz Truss’s cack-handed diplomacy over the Northern Ireland protocol has become a major roadblock to getting this vital trade deal even started.
Any competent political party would have made sure the trade and then foreign secretary responsible for this series of failures would be held responsible. Instead, the Conservatives have made her prime minister.
Culture secretary claims ‘tweaks’ to make online safety bill less restrictive will only relate to adults, not children
In her first PMQs as prime minister, Liz Truss said that under her premiership there would be “tweaks” to the online safety bill to ensure it did more to protect free speech. The bill is currently at report stage in the House of Commons, which means MPs have already spent many hours debating it, but the government could still table amendments in the Commons or in the House of Lords.
In her interviews this morning Michelle Donelan, the new culture secretary, claimed that the changes proposed by Truss would not affect the measures in the bill protecting children. They would only relate to ensuring “we’ve got the balance right in terms of free speech in relation to adults”, she said.
She told the Today programme:
I’m not going to announce today exactly how we’ll be changing [the bill] because the due process will be to do that in parliament.
But that element is in relation to adults. The bits in relation to children and online safety will not be changing. And that is the overarching objective of the bill, and why we put it in our manifesto.
But Donelan did not explain how the provisions in the bill could be made less restrictive for adults without the ability of children to access harmful material also being affected. Social media companies have been notoriously bad at enforcing age controls.
Ministers to review Channel 4 privatisation and scrapping of BBC licence fee
Ministers are reviewing the decisions to privatise Channel 4 and to scrap the BBC licence fee, Michelle Donelan, the new culture secretary, has said. My colleague Jessica Elgot has the story here.
Truss says UK military aid to Ukraine in 2023 will match, or exceed, military aid offered this year
Liz Truss will address the UN general assembly on Thursday. In another item of news to emerge from her trip overnight, No 10 has said she will promise that UK military aid to Ukraine in 2023 will match, or exceed, the military aid offered this year. In its news release Downing Street says:
The UK is already the second largest military donor to Ukraine, committing £2.3bn in 2022. We have trained 27,000 members of the Ukrainian armed forces since 2015, and in the last year we have provided hundreds of rockets, five air defence systems, 120 armoured vehicles and over 200,000 pieces of non-lethal military equipment.
Last week saw the largest commercial road move of ammunition since the second world war as tens of thousands more rounds of UK-donated artillery ammunition went to the front lines in Ukraine.
The precise nature of UK military support in 2023 will be determined based on the needs of the armed forces of Ukraine. However, it is expected to include equipment like the multiple launch rocket system, provided to Ukraine by the UK and others, which has been decisive in allowing Ukraine to re-gain over 3,000 square kilometres of territory in recent days.
Truss’s admission talks on trade deal with US have been shelved is ‘terrible news for UK economy’, Labour says
Good morning. As my colleague Pippa Crerar reports, it turns out Barack Obama was right after all. When it comes to a free trade deal with the US, post-Brexit Britain really is at the back of the queue.
Liz Truss admitted that she did not expect talks on a free trade deal with the US to start “in the short to medium term” while speaking to reporters last night on her plane over to New York, where she is attending the United Nations general assembly. No one who has followed progress towards the “massive” free trade deal once promised will be surprised by the substance of what Truss said; it has been clear since Joe Biden won the US presidential election that for the time being the deal is all but dead. But the fact that Truss was prepared to admit this quite openly is notable. Last year, on a similar trip to the US, Boris Johnson was more evasive.
In answering the question candidly, Truss was also burying a commitment in the Conservative party’s 2019 manifesto, which said:
Our goals for British trade are accordingly ambitious. We aim to have 80 per cent of UK trade covered by free trade agreements within the next three years, starting with the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
The Truss comment also marks the return of No 10 as a news-generation machine. After the death of the Queen, all government business was put on hold and even the sources who give journalists unattributable briefings more or less clammed up. But now political news is back. We will be hearing more from Truss later today, and this morning Michelle Donelan, the new culture secretary, has done a full interview round. I will summarise the key points shortly.
Labour opposed Brexit in 2016, but under Keir Starmer it is now presenting itself as the party that would “make Brexit work”, and it now routinely attacks the Tories for failing to implement Brexit properly. Nick Thomas-Symonds, the shadow international trade secretary, says Truss’s admission that the US free trade deal won’t happen is “terrible news” for the economy. He says:
The admission that there is no prospect of a trade deal with the USA is terrible news for the UK economy – it is costing billions in lost potential trade opportunities and holding back growth.
There is no doubt that the blame for this mess lies at the door of the prime minister, who tarnished the UK’s international reputation as foreign and international trade secretary. This is an embarrassment for Liz Truss.
The Conservative manifesto promised a trade deal with the United States by the end of this year, now this has no chance of being delivered.
Only the fresh start a Labour government can provide will rebuild these international relationships and run a trade policy focused on growth.
Parliament is not sitting today. Here is the agenda.
Lunchtime (UK time): Liz Truss is expected to record interviews in New York, where she is in a visit to attend the United Nations general assembly.
Around 4pm (UK time): Truss is due to hold a meeting with Emmanuel Macron, the French president.
Also, at some point today Brandon Lewis, the new justice secretary, is due to hold a meeting with the Criminal Bar Association to discuss the barristers’ strike.
I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.
If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
Alternatively, you can email me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com
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