Good morning. I hope you all had summer season.
The primary week in September all the time tends to be a busy time at Westminster. MPs return anxious to implement all of the concepts they’ve been mulling over whereas on vacation, there’s a stack of points backed up as a result of parliament has been in recess and the looming occasion convention season means the senior figures are underneath specific strain to agency up some bulletins.
This yr the choice logjam appears extra intense than ever: a complete set of issues needing ministerial consideration have been on maintain, not simply over the summer season, however because the begin of the Covid pandemic. In his London Playbook briefing, Politico’s Alex Wickham has recognized 18 critical points that Boris Johnson wants to deal with, nearly all of them with the potential to create a significant disaster. And one of many greatest is the necessity to reform grownup social care, which is about to be the story of the week. Johnson doesn’t want reminding that the final prime minister to announce a plan to boost more cash for social care by no means actually recovered from the harm it did to her popularity with voters and her occasion.
As Jessica Elgot reviews in her in a single day story, Johnson is already going through an enormous Tory backlash – over plans that haven’t even been introduced but.
Johnson has a working majority of greater than 80, however that implies that if simply over 40 Conservatives vote with all of the opposition events he’ll lose and, studying the papers in the present day and over the weekend, it feels as if that many Tories have already spoken out about Johnson’s plan to boost nationwide insurance coverage to make the system extra beneficiant in order that pensioners shouldn’t have to promote their properties.
In an interview with the Daily Mirror this morning, the Labour chief, Sir Keir Starmer, confirms that Johnson cannot rely on the main opposition party to bail him out. Starmer instructed the paper:
We do want extra funding within the NHS and social care however nationwide insurance coverage, this manner of doing it, merely hits low earners, it hits younger individuals and it hits companies.
We don’t agree that’s the applicable technique to do it. Can we settle for that we’d like extra funding? Sure we do. Can we settle for that NI is the correct technique to do it? No we don’t.
However we’ll have a look at what they put ahead as a result of after eleven years of neglect we do want an answer.
Starmer stated it was “inevitable” that taxes must go as much as deal with the social care disaster. “We want a good technique to elevate the cash that’s wanted,” he stated. However he wouldn’t supply an alternative choice to the Johnson plan, insisting a choice was not wanted till the occasion printed its manifesto.
Right here is the agenda for the day.
10am: Tony Blair, the previous prime minister, offers a speech on the Rusi thinktank to mark the forthcoming twentieth anniversary of 9/11.
11.30am: Downing Road holds its each day foyer briefing.
2.30pm: Gavin Williamson, the schooling secretary, takes questions within the Commons.
After 3.30pm: Boris Johnson offers an announcement to MPs about Afghanistan.
There might be some Covid information coated right here, however for extra in depth coronavirus protection, do learn our world reside weblog.
I attempt to monitor the feedback beneath the road (BTL) however it’s not possible to learn all of them. You probably have a direct query, do embody “Andrew” in it someplace and I’m extra more likely to discover it. I do attempt to reply questions, and if they’re of basic curiosity, I’ll publish the query and reply above the road (ATL), though I can’t promise to do that for everybody.
If you wish to entice my consideration shortly, it’s most likely higher to make use of Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
Alternatively, you possibly can e-mail me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com
