\n<\/p>\n
Matt Western<\/strong>, the Labour chair of the joint committee on national security strategy, told MPs that the Trump document showed that the US consensus that has led the world since the second world war has been \u201cshattered\u201d.<\/p>\n And he said the implication that the US will interfer in European elections is \u201cchilling\u201d.<\/p>\n He criticised Trump for his comments about Sadiq Khan in a recent interview.<\/p>\n And he said he was worried there was no criticism of Russia in the Trump document.<\/p>\n He said he did not expect the government to criticise Trump.<\/p>\n But he wanted to know if the government\u2019s national security strategy is being updated in the light of this document.<\/p>\n Malhotra<\/strong> said it was for the US to set its strategy.<\/p>\n She said there were elements of the strategy that the UK agrees with, such as the importance of Europe providing for its own defence. But there are some aspects of it the government disagrees with, she said.<\/p>\n Referring to Khan, she said he was doing a great job for London \u2013 and she disagreed with what Trump said.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Updated at\u00a006.04 EST<\/p>\n <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Key events<\/p>\n <\/span>Show key events only<\/p>\n Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Calum Miller<\/strong>, the Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesperson, said that President Trump has driven a \u201ccoach and horses\u201d through the alliance with Europe with this document.<\/p>\n He called for an urgent review of the government\u2019s strategy in response to this.<\/p>\n And he asked the minister to state clearly that the UK will not tolerate American interference in elections.<\/p>\n And he asked if the elections bill will deal with the threat of foreign interference.<\/p>\n Malhotra<\/strong> said national security was the priority for the government. She said it was important to recognise that Trump is making efforts to promote peace around the world.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Chi Onwurah<\/strong> (Lab) told Malhotra that she thought she was too discreet to say what she really thought about Trump. But she asked if the government accepted that any defence capability reliant on the US would not be a sovereign capability.<\/p>\n Malhotra<\/strong> said that the UK respected the US as a democracy, and that friends and allies should respect each other\u2019s choices.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Speaking for the Conservatives, Mike Wood<\/strong>, a shadow Cabinet Office minister, did not say anything directly critical of the Trump document. Instead, he asked for confirmation that the government will raise defence spending, and sought an update on Ukraine policy.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Matt Western<\/strong>, the Labour chair of the joint committee on national security strategy, told MPs that the Trump document showed that the US consensus that has led the world since the second world war has been \u201cshattered\u201d.<\/p>\n And he said the implication that the US will interfer in European elections is \u201cchilling\u201d.<\/p>\n He criticised Trump for his comments about Sadiq Khan in a recent interview.<\/p>\n And he said he was worried there was no criticism of Russia in the Trump document.<\/p>\n He said he did not expect the government to criticise Trump.<\/p>\n But he wanted to know if the government\u2019s national security strategy is being updated in the light of this document.<\/p>\n Malhotra<\/strong> said it was for the US to set its strategy.<\/p>\n She said there were elements of the strategy that the UK agrees with, such as the importance of Europe providing for its own defence. But there are some aspects of it the government disagrees with, she said.<\/p>\n Referring to Khan, she said he was doing a great job for London \u2013 and she disagreed with what Trump said.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Updated at\u00a006.04 EST<\/p>\n Seema Malhotra<\/strong>, a Foreign Office minister, is responding to the urgent question about President Trump\u2019s national security strategy (even though it was addressed to the Cabinet Office \u2013 see 10.12am.)<\/p>\n The Trump document was published at the end of last week. Peter Beaumont<\/strong> has an analysis of it here.<\/p>\n Malhotra said all MPs would agree the US\/UK relationship has delivered security for more than a century.<\/p>\n She said the PM and President Trump have both emphasised their commitment to this relationship.<\/p>\n The US strategy has many aspects, she said. But \u201con some areas we take a different view\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n She said the UK government sees Europe as strong. And it recognises that Europe is spending more on defence.<\/p>\n Europe is united behind Ukraine, and behind its values of freedom and democracy, she said.<\/p>\n She said trade links between the UK and the US were strong, and the UK would continue to develop that. Having a strong relationship allows the UK to discuss issues \u201cwhere we disagree\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n The TSSA<\/strong> transport union has joined the FBU (see 9.49am) in saying parliament should sit at the weekend if necessary to get the employment rights bill onto the statute book. Its general secretary, Maryam Eslamdoust<\/strong>, said:<\/p>\n The Labour government must now treat this an emergency and override the Lords\u2019 attempts to override democracy.<\/p>\n It\u2019s imperative that the bill is delivered in full by Christmas, even if that means the Commons sitting at weekends to ensure it passes.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Coming back to the House of Lords, Darren Hughes, chief executive of the Electoral Reform Society<\/strong>, issued this statement criticising the appointment of more political peers yesterday. (See 8.42am.)<\/p>\n Keir Starmer himself not long ago described the wholly unelected and grossly bloated House of Lords as \u2018indefensible\u2019. Nothing has changed since then so it is deeply disappointing to see even more peers being stuffed into the upper chamber.<\/em><\/p>\n Firstly, it is absurd for the Lords, which at more than 800 peers is already the second largest legislative chamber after China\u2019s National People\u2019s Congress, to be getting even more members. It is also patently ridiculous that the government has now added more peers into the Lords than the 92 hereditary peers it is in the process of removing.<\/p>\n The ending of the remaining hereditary peers is a step in the right direction, as people should not be making our laws because of who their parents were. But [the new peerages] highlight just how unsustainable a wholly unelected and unrestrained chamber is.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n The former Tory MP Ben Bradley<\/strong> has defected to Reform UK.<\/p>\n Bradley, who lost his Mansfield seat at last year\u2019s general election and who is also a former Nottinghamshire county council leader, has been appointed as Reform\u2019s \u201chead of local government action\u201d to help cut council spending, the party said.<\/p>\n Bradley said:<\/p>\n Successive governments have failed to deliver for so many people, and have demonstrated that they\u2019re unwilling to actually deliver on key promises to voters.<\/p>\n They have talked about being tough on crime, reducing immigration, about helping working people, whilst in practice they\u2019ve failed to act and have delivered the opposite. The trust in those parties has gone, and it\u2019s not coming back.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been out of politics altogether for a little while, but I feel strongly that I can\u2019t sit on the sidelines any more and watch our country fail.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve come to the conclusion that Reform UK is the only party that is prepared to be different and to tackle the most pressing issues. I\u2019ve been impressed with their recent policy announcements and the clarity they have on a range of issues, and that\u2019s why I\u2019m joining today.<\/p>\n At least 20 other former Tory MPs have defected to Nigel Farage\u2019s party, not including the Reform UK MPs Lee Anderson<\/strong> (who defected in the last parliament from the Tories) and Danny Kruger (who switched three months ago).<\/p>\n In a post on social media, Anderson said that getting Bradley to defect was \u201ca major coup for us as he has left an extremely well paid job to join our team\u201d.<\/p>\n The commentator Sam Freedman<\/strong> has a different take on Bluesky.<\/p>\n Former Tory MP Ben Bradley has now defected to Reform. They really are taking all the worst people from the Boris era.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n The waiting list for routine hospital treatment in England has risen slightly, PA Media reports. PA says:<\/p>\n An estimated 7.40 million treatments were waiting to be carried out at the end of October, up from 7.39 million at the end of September, NHS figures show.<\/p>\n The number of patients waiting for treatment is broadly unchanged at 6.24 million.<\/p>\n The list hit a record high in September 2023, with 7.77 million treatments and 6.50 million patients.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n At 10.30am a Cabinet Office minister will respond to an urgent question on Donald Trump\u2019s national security strategy. It has been tabled by Matt Western, the Labour MP who chairs parliament\u2019s joint committee on national security strategy.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n The Fire Brigades Union<\/strong> is saying Keir Starmer should if necessary force MPs to sit over the weekend to ensure that the employment rights bill will become law before Christmas.<\/p>\n The Commons is due to rise a week today for the Christmas recess, but the employment rights bill cannot become law until the dispute between the elected house and the Lords is resolved. (See 8.42am.) Commenting on the vote in the Lords last night, Steve Wright<\/strong>, the FBU general secretary, said:<\/p>\n For 14 years, the Tories hammered the living standards of working people. They are now using the unelected Lords to continue that policy.<\/p>\n This is a disgraceful attempt to subvert democracy. The employment rights bill was a clear manifesto commitment, and the electorate has backed it.<\/p>\n The Labour government cannot allow the Tories to use their inbuilt majority in the Lords to deny workers protection against unfair dismissal and zero-hour contracts.<\/p>\n There must be no more watering-down of the bill. Keir Starmer must prioritise the urgent delivery of the legislation – and get it passed before the Christmas recess. If that means MPs must sit on a Saturday, as the Commons did during Brexit, then so be it.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Updated at\u00a005.45 EST<\/p>\n Neil Shastri-Hurst<\/strong>, a Conservative MP, has been ordered to apologise after an investigation found that he allowed an all-party parliamentary group (APPG) that he chairs to receive funding from a foreign government.<\/p>\n In a report, the Commons standards committee<\/strong> says that Shastri-Hurst failed to carry out proper due diligence checks in his capacity as chair of the APPG for defence technology.<\/p>\n It says:<\/p>\n As the registered contact of the APPG, Dr Shastri-Hurst failed to ensure that adequate due diligence checks were made on RUK Advanced Systems Ltd, which in turn enabled a foreign government, in this case the Government of Israel, to act as an indirect, eventual funder of the secretariat.<\/p>\n APPGs often receive funding from organisations linked to the subject area they cover, and the APPG for defence technology invited groups to contribute either as tier 1 partners, paying \u00a31,499, or tier 2 partners, paying \u00a35,000. In return, partners received either limited or enhanced access to its events.<\/p>\n RUK Advanced Systems Ltd was a tier 1 partner.<\/p>\n Shastri-Hurst referred himself to the parliamentary commissioner for standards after Declassified UK revealed that RUK Advanced Systems Ltd is part of a defence firm owned by the Israeli government.<\/p>\n The committee says Shastri-Hurst should issue a written apology for breaking the rules.<\/p>\n The committee also says the Commons authorities should consider \u201ctaking advice from external advisors with professional expertise in due diligence on how best to advise APPGs on conducting due diligence, perhaps by seeking to establish clear principles and a checklist which chairs and registered contacts might use to inform their actions as they undertake this responsibility\u201d.<\/p>\n Next year the committee is going to carry out its own review of the rules governing APPGs to see if they need clarifiying.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Alison McGovern<\/strong>, the homelessness minister, has pledged to end the use of bed and breakfasts as emergency housing, even as new figures show that the country\u2019s homelessness problem has worsened since Labour came into government. McGovern was speaking to the Guardian to promote the homelessness strategy being announced today. Kiran Stacey and Jessica Murray<\/strong> have the story.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Good morning. Yesterday Keir Starmer announced the creation of 25 Labour new peers. About an hour or so later, the government lost an important vote on the employment rights bill \u2013 by 24 votes.<\/p>\n The defeat was unexpected, because the government already announced a significant U-turn on the bill, as part a compromise deal negotiated with business and unions intended to ensure the legislation clears the Lords quickly. What is going to happen next is not yet clear.<\/p>\n Here is the PA Media story on the Lords vote.<\/p>\n Flagship workers\u2019 rights<\/em> reforms face a further holdup as peers inflicted a defeat over a late change linked to the government concession on unfair dismissal that has been branded \u201ca job destroyer\u201d.<\/p>\n The latest setback means a continuation of the parliamentary tussle over the employment<\/em> rights<\/em> bill<\/em> known as \u201cping-pong\u201d, when legislation is batted between the Commons and Lords until agreement is reached.<\/p>\n In an attempt to end the stand-off, the government recently ditched its election pledge to give employees day-one protection against unfair dismissal and instead accepted a six-month qualifying period for the workplace safeguard, demanded by the upper chamber.<\/p>\n However, alongside this it introduced at the 11th hour a measure to scrap the compensation caps for unfair dismissal, which are currently the lower of 52 weeks\u2019 pay or \u00a3118,223.<\/p>\n The government insists this formed part of the compromise agreement reached with business groups and trade unions although this is disputed.<\/p>\n With the clock ticking down to the Christmas recess, peers backed by 244 votes to 220, majority 24, a Tory call to force a review of the existing compensation limits, which ministers are seeking to remove.<\/p>\n The fresh defeat has sparked an angry response from the unions, with unelected members accused of \u201cdefying the will of the British public\u201d and told to \u201cmove out the way\u201d.<\/p>\n But speaking in the Lords, Tory shadow business minister Lord Sharpe of Epsom<\/strong> said: \u201cThe constitutional implications of introducing major new policy at ping-pong are profound.\u201d<\/p>\n He added: \u201cThis is not obstruction. It is the bare minimum that a competent administration should undertake.\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking after the vote, Paul Nowak, the general secretary of the TUC<\/strong>, said:<\/p>\n Continuing to vote down the employment rights bill \u2013 a clear manifesto commitment \u2013 is undemocratic. This bill has been debated and scrutinised for months. Tory Peers are actively defying the will of the British public and their own supporters who overwhelmingly support measures in this bill.<\/p>\n Mike Clancy, general secretary of the Prospect<\/strong> union, went further. He said:<\/p>\n The behaviour of the House of Lords can no longer be seen as constructive scrutiny and increasingly looks like cynical wrecking tactics that risk a constitutional crisis if they continue.<\/p>\n Further delay is in nobody\u2019s interests and only prolongs uncertainty, the bill must pass before Christmas including lifting the caps on compensation.<\/p>\n The Lords vote came as Starmer was also facing criticism over the fact that he has now appointed almost 100 new peers to the Lords, an institution he once suggested he would abolish.<\/p>\n Here is the agenda for the day.<\/p>\n 9.30am:<\/em> NHS England publishes its monthly performance figures.<\/p>\n Morning:<\/em> Keir Starmer is on a visit in Norfolk promoting government policy on buses.<\/p>\n 11.30am:<\/em> Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.<\/p>\n 2pm:<\/em> Starmer holds a further video call with \u2018coalition of the willing\u2019 leaders, after a call yesterday with Donald Trump involved \u201cpretty strong words\u201d, according to the president.<\/p>\n If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (normally between 10am and 3pm at the moment), or message me on social media. I can\u2019t read all the messages BTL, but if you put \u201cAndrew\u201d in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.<\/p>\n If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.<\/p>\n I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can\u2019t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Updated at\u00a005.21 EST<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Trump’s threat to interfere in European elections in new US security strategy ‘chilling’, MPs told Matt Western, the Labour chair of the joint committee on national security strategy, told MPs that the Trump document showed that the US consensus that has led the world since the second world war has been \u201cshattered\u201d. And he said<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36871,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[1859,3580,715,20509,132,414,124,1242,1670,1162,2315,71],"class_list":{"0":"post-36870","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-chilling","9":"tag-elections","10":"tag-european","11":"tag-interfere","12":"tag-live","13":"tag-mps","14":"tag-politics","15":"tag-security","16":"tag-strategy","17":"tag-threat","18":"tag-told","19":"tag-trumps"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Lib Dems call for review of UK’s security strategy in light of Trump’s foreign policy shift<\/h2>\n
Trump’s threat to interfere in European elections in new US security strategy ‘chilling’, MPs told<\/h2>\n
Minister tells MPs UK governments takes ‘a different view’ from US on some aspects of Trump’s national security strategy<\/h2>\n
Electoral Reform Society says it’s ‘ridiculous’ that Starmer has created more peers than he’s removed<\/h2>\n
Former Tory MP Ben Bradley defects to Reform UK, saying his old party ‘failed to deliver’<\/h2>\n
Treatment hospital waiting list figures rise slightly, NHS England figures show<\/h2>\n
Minister to answer Commons urgent question on Trump’s national security strategy<\/h2>\n
MPs should sit if necessary at weekend to get employment rights bill passed before Christmas, union leader says<\/h2>\n
Tory MP inadvertently allowed APPG on defence technology to be part funded by Israeli government, standards watchdog says<\/h2>\n
Homelessness minister promises to end use of B&Bs as emergency housing<\/h2>\n
Peers told they risk \u2018constitutional crisis\u2019 after surprise vote to continue blocking employment rights bill<\/h2>\n