\n<\/p>\n
Keir Starmer<\/strong> has told his cabinet ministers that 2026 will be the year when they need to show that \u201crenewal is becoming reality\u201d.<\/p>\n Speaking at the start of this morning\u2019s political cabinet, he said:<\/p>\n This will be an important year as we show that renewal is becoming reality and that Britain is turning the corner.<\/p>\n Getting our country back on track is hard, difficult work and we will reject the politics of easy answers and gimmicks that, frankly, got us here in the first place.<\/p>\n At the next general election we will be judged on whether we\u2019ve delivered on things that really matter, do people feel better off, are public services improving \u2013 for which they will look to the NHS \u2013 and do people feel more safe and secure in their own community?<\/p>\n They are the issues we will be judged on at the next general election, that is our focus.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n In her Today programme interview, Kemi Badenoch<\/strong> also claimed that Brexit was not working because the UK is not \u201cdoing anything with it\u201d.<\/p>\n Badenoch was an enthusiastic supporter of Brexit, even though she was not an MP at the time of the 2016 referendum, and as a minister she was seen as a keen Brexiter.<\/p>\n Asked by Nick Robinson<\/strong>, the presenter, how she thought Brexit was going, on a scale of one to 10, Badenoch<\/strong> replied:<\/p>\n We\u2019re not doing anything with it, that\u2019s the problem.<\/p>\n Asked again how it was going, she said:<\/p>\n We successfully left the European Union, so 10 out of 10 for leaving. But using the opportunity \u2013 we\u2019re not using the opportunity \u2026<\/p>\n What I\u2019m saying is that nothing\u2019s happening. Nothing\u2019s happening.<\/p>\n We need to compete aggressively with other countries. We need to be close with Europe, not run by Europe. That is Conservative policy. Let\u2019s stay close to our regional and international allies. But sovereignty matters.<\/p>\n Britain formally left the EU in 2020 when Boris Johnson \u2013 like Badenoch, a hardline Brexiter \u2013 was prime minister. Some rightwingers argue that the UK would thrive outside the EU if it deregulated more aggressively, and diverged more from the EU. But in the four years they were in office after Brexit, the Tories did not implement the sort of policies Badenoch seems to be proposing because they judged they would not benefit the economy.<\/p>\n Recent research says Brexit has cut the UK\u2019s GDP by between 6% and 8%.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Updated at\u00a005.00 EST<\/p>\n A new plan to protect public services from cyber threats has been published today, PA Media reports. PA says:<\/p>\n The government has set out measures to make online services more secure and give the public confidence that their data is protected when applying for benefits, paying taxes or accessing healthcare.<\/p>\n The cyber action plan, backed by \u00a3210m, aims to highlight where risks lie across government and take joined-up action across departments as well as speeding up reactions to attacks.<\/p>\n It comes amid efforts to digitise services, which the government hopes will reduce phone queues and paperwork and says could unlock up to \u00a345bn in savings.<\/p>\n Digital government minister Ian Murray<\/strong> said: \u201cCyber attacks can take vital public services offline in minutes \u2013 disrupting our digital services and our very way of life. This plan sets a new bar to bolster the defences of our public sector, putting cyber-criminals on warning that we are going further and faster to protect the UK\u2019s businesses and public services alike.\u201d<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Labour will switch to an \u201cincumbency first\u201d model to protect MPs at the next election rather than targeting seats, the deputy leader, Lucy Powell,<\/strong> has told Labour MPs. Jessica Elgot<\/strong> has the story.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Good morning. Over the last three days it has been hard to find anyone in British politics willing to defend the US raid on Venezuela leading to the capture of its president, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro. In the Commons last night, Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, engaged in a delicate balancing act \u2013 stressing the UK\u2019s support for international law, while doing her best not to criticise the fairly blatant US breach of it \u2013 as MPs from all the main parties lined up to demand a more robust pushback against Donald Trump.<\/p>\n But this morning Kemi Badenoch<\/strong> has defended the US president. At the weekend, her initial response was much like Keir Starmer\u2019s \u2013 noncommittal, and claiming that she could not give a proper view until more information was available. Even yesterday she was still broadly still sitting on the fence.<\/p>\n However, this morning, in a long interview with the Today programme (which is promising in-depth, start-of-year interviews with all the main party leaders), she declared that what Trump did was \u201cmorally \u2026 the right thing to do\u201d. She also implied that faith in the rules-based international order, sustained by international law, was overrated because the world did not operate like that any more.<\/p>\n When it was put to her that Margaret Thatcher condemned the US invasion of Grenada in 1983, Badenoch said that Thatcher was right at the time, but that Trump\u2019s action was different. She went on:<\/p>\n Venezuela was a brutal regime. We didn\u2019t even recognise it as a legitimate government. I think that what\u2019s happened is quite extraordinary. But I understand why America has done it.<\/p>\n And the reason why I say this is because, where the legal certainty is not yet clear, morally I do think it was the right thing to do.<\/p>\n Badenoch said she was saying this because she was different from other party leaders and MPs.<\/p>\n I grew up under a military dictatorship [in Nigeria], so I know what it\u2019s like to have someone like Maduro in charge. I know what it\u2019s like to have people celebrating in the street. So I\u2019m not condemning the US.<\/p>\n Asked again if sending special forces in to seize Maduro was the right thing to do, Badenoch replied: \u201cMorally, yes.\u201d<\/p>\n Badenoch did say that the invastion raised \u201cserious questions about the rules-based order\u201d. But, in another shift from the position adopted by Keir Starmer, she went on to question how robust the rules-based international actually is any more. She explained:<\/p>\n As we all know, international law is what countries agree to. Once people decide they don\u2019t agree, there is no international law. There\u2019s no world police, no world government, no world court. These are agreements.<\/p>\n And when we look at what the opposition leader, Mar\u00eda Machado, said, she said Venezuela had already been invaded. It had been invaded by Russia, by Iran, by Hezbollah. Where were the people talking about international law then?<\/p>\n Badenoch was then asked if she agreed with Stephen Miller<\/strong>, Trump\u2019s deputy chief of staff, who said yesterday that \u201cwe live in a world \u2026 that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.\u201d Badenoch<\/strong> implied that she did. She replied:<\/p>\n The US has actually been saying this for a very long time. I remember as trade secretary, the US has basically walked away from the World Trade Organization saying that everybody else was breaking the rules, China in particular, and if people weren\u2019t following the rules, there was no rules-based order.<\/p>\n And we go through the motions, we act as if it is still 1995, we were living off the peace dividend of the cold war and World War Two.<\/p>\n The world has changed. What I want to see is a strong Britain. We can\u2019t control everything that the US does. Venezuela is very far away from here. It\u2019s not Grenada, for example. But what they do respect is strength. And we are getting weaker.<\/p>\n This is quite a bold position to take, not least because it is at odds with what most Britons think.<\/p>\n I will post more from the interview shortly.<\/p>\n Here is the agenda for the day.<\/p>\n 9am:<\/em> Keir Starmer chairs cabinet. Most of the meeting will be devoted to a political cabinet, where civil servants leave the room and ministers focus on party political matters \u2013 such as the Scottish parliament, Welsh Senedd and English local elections in May.<\/p>\n 10am:<\/em> Dave Hinton, chief executive of South West Water, gives evidence to the Commons environment committee about the Tunbridge Wells water shortage last month.<\/p>\n 10.30am:<\/em> Stephen Doughty, a Foreign Office minister, gives evidence to the Commons foreign affairs committee as part of its inquiry into \u201cDisinformation diplomacy: How malign actors are seeking to undermine democracy\u201d.<\/p>\n Morning:<\/em> Kemi Badenoch is on a visit in London.<\/p>\n 11.30am:<\/em> Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, takes questions in the Commons.<\/p>\n Noon:<\/em> Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.<\/p>\n Afternoon:<\/em> Keir Starmer joins other European leaders in Paris for a meeting of the \u201ccoalition of the willing\u201d group willing to provide security guarantees to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, and Donald Trump\u2019s advisers Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are attending. A press conference is due at around 5.45pm.<\/p>\n 2pm:<\/em> The Commons business committee takes evidence from former post office operators, laywers, the Post Office, ministers, and others about progress in Post Office Horizon scandal compensation payments.<\/p>\n 2.30pm:<\/em> Craig Guildford, chief constable of West Midlands police and Mike O\u2019Hara, an assistant chief constable at WMP, give evidence to the Commons home affairs committee about claims they misrepresented the intelligence they used to justify their call for a ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans attending the Villa Park match last year.<\/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\u00a004.37 EST<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Starmer tells cabinet they need to show 2026 is year when ‘renewal is becoming reality’ Keir Starmer has told his cabinet ministers that 2026 will be the year when they need to show that \u201crenewal is becoming reality\u201d. Speaking at the start of this morning\u2019s political cabinet, he said: This will be an important year<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[3494,3547,132,7825,124,10420,71,4723],"class_list":{"0":"post-40487","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-badenoch","9":"tag-kemi","10":"tag-live","11":"tag-morally","12":"tag-politics","13":"tag-raid","14":"tag-trumps","15":"tag-venezuela"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40487","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=40487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Badenoch claims Brexit not succeeding because UK ‘not doing anything with it’<\/h2>\n
Government publishes plan to protect public services from cyber threats<\/h2>\n
Labour to protect existing MPs above winning more seats at next election, deputy leader Lucy Powell says<\/h2>\n
Kemi Badenoch says Trump\u2019s Venezuela raid was \u2018morally\u2019 right, as she suggests faith in rules-based global order overrated<\/h2>\n