Labour officially bans Jeremy Corbyn from standing as candidate for party at next general election – UK politics live

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The Home Office is confident today that there will be no explosions during the second day of debate on the immigration bill.

Two sets of Tory rebels – one wanting to ban judges from blocking deportations and another wanting to ensure safe and legal routes for victims of modern slavery – have stood down after being reassured their concerns would be reflected in later versions of the bill.

The rebels will begin talks with No 10 in the coming days, say sources, with both sides wanting to come to a compromise before the bill comes back for another debate in a few weeks’ time.

But as well as warm words, the rebels also have a rhetorical sword to hang over the prime minister’s head. “We have reminded him that his promise was to stop the boats by the end of the year,” says an ally of Danny Kruger, the Tory backbencher who has led the efforts to toughen up the bill. “We are all very committed to that policy pledge.”

Humza Yousaf, the SNP leader, is speaking now.

He says that when Nicola Sturgeon was nominated, she said it was good that two of the candidates for first minister – her and Ruth Davidson – were women. Now, he says, two of the candidates are people of colour and of the Muslim faith, and “the fact that no one no one bats an eyelid at this tells me we are making progress on our nation, for which we should all be very, very proud”.

Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, goes next. He says the SNP has left Scotland dealing with an NHS crisis and a cost of living crisis. The fist minister should focus on the priorities of all Scots, he says, not just for half of them [ie, the supporters of independence], he says.

He says the SNP’s record is one of failure. Labour will deliver the change Scotland needs, he says.

Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader, is speaking now.

He says the SNP is moving further and further away from the priorities of the Scottish people. He says they are “consumed by the debate on independence” and that, when Humza Yousaf was elected SNP leader yesterday, one of his first acts was to say he would ask London for the right to hold another independence referendum.

He says he knows he won’t be elected first minister. But he says that the SNP should have to pay the price for their record in government, and he claims that the Scottish Conservatives are the only party that can make that happen.

Alison Johnstone, presiding officer at the Scottish parliament, is now opening the process for the election of the first minister.

There are four candidates: Humza Yousaf (SNP), Douglas Ross (Scottish Conservatives), Anas Sarwar (Scottish Labour) and Alex Cole-Hamilton (Scottish Liberal Democrats).

All four candidates get to speak.

Cole-Hamilton goes first. He says he know he won’t win, but is standing because politics is about advocating ideas. He says no party has a more positive vision than the Lib Dems.

David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, has published Britain Reconnected, a Fabian Society pamphlet setting out his vision for Labour’s foreign policy.

In a press release summarising its contents, Labour says:

Retooling the Foreign Office to increase the UK’s prosperity, Lammy says Britain’s network of diplomats must be used to seek exemptions to the US’ inflation reduction act subsidies, announce that a Labour government will establish a supply chain working group within the G7 and create a global supply chain commission in the United Kingdom, take a “new approach to trade with Europe that recognises the damage that has been done by the Conservatives’ bad Brexit deal” while remaining outside of the EU single market and customs union, as well as forging in trade and investment with Africa, “recognizing the continent’s enormous potential and the fact that by 2050, one in four people will be from the continent.”

And Lammy said:

Global Britain was an empty slogan, which the government has spent seven years failing to explain or deliver. Labour believes it does not have to be this way. The UK is home to cutting-edge technology and services, world-leading universities, vibrant cultural industries, and unparalleled global connections. With the right priorities, the right partnerships, and the right values, Britain can, and will, thrive.

Within the next half an hour or so, MSPs will the new first minister. It will be Humza Yousaf, the SNP leader.

Unlike Westminster, the Scottish parliament has a straightforward, codified procedure for electing the first minister. The rules are set out here. In London the leader of the party that wins the general election is invited by the king to form a government, but in the event of a hung parliament, or a prime minister being replaced by someone unable to command the confidence of the House of Commons, precedent starts getting a bit murky and the “rules” aren’t always clear.

MPs can pass a motion of no confidence in the government, which triggers a general election. But that does not automatically lead to the resignation of the PM, and the Commons as a whole does not get a direct say in the appointment of a PM (although MPs in the governing party do, if there is a leadership contest).

In Scotland all MSPs get to vote, and, if there are only two candidates, the person with a simple majority wins. If there are more than two candidates, losing ones are successively weeded out, unless the winner gets more votes than all other candidates combined.

Today the Conservatives, Labour and the Lib Dems are all expected to nominate their leaders, as well as the SNP. But there are more SNP MSPs (64) than the Tories (31), Labour (22) and the Lib Dems (4) combined, and so Yousaf should win on the first round.

Momentum, the Labour group set up to promote Jeremy Corbyn’s agenda, has described today’s NEC vote as “a dark day for democracy”.

In a statement yesterday Momentum said that, in proposing to block Corbyn, Keir Starmer was being “venal and duplicitous”.

Keir Starmer’s move to block Jeremy Corbyn from running to be a Labour MP at the next election has been backed by the party’s national executive committee (NEC), PA Media reports. PA says:

A Labour spokesman said the leader’s motion passed by 22 votes to 12, meaning it is now down to Corbyn to decide whether to run as an independent candidate.

Corbyn, the veteran left-winger who has represented Islington North since 1983, had criticised the move as “undermining the party’s internal democracy” before its approval.

The motion says he “will not be endorsed by the NEC as a candidate on behalf of the Labour party at the next general election”.

Corbyn running as an independent in the north London constituency where he retains significant support could cause a distracting challenge for Starmer at the next election.

According to the i’s Paul Waugh, at today’s meeting of Labour’s national executive committee Shabana Mahmood, the party’s national campaign coordinator, said that Jeremy Corbyn was “a barrier to winning elections”.

In the Commons Johnny Mercer, the veterans minister, is now making a statement about Afghan refugees.

He says 24,500 people have been relocated to the UK from Afghanistan. They have been given help to integrate into British society, he says.

As a temporary solution, people were put in hotel accommodation, he says. But he says this was never meant to be a permanent solution.

More than 9,000 Afghans have been put into settled homes, but about 8,000 remain in hotels. More than half are children, and more then half have been there for more than a year, he says.

He says this is costing more than ?1m a day.

He says the government will write to Afghans from the end of April saying they will need to move. They will have three months to relocate, and they will get support to move into other accommodation.

He says extra funding will be made available to councils to house people.

This amounts to a generous offer, he says.

But, he says, if an offer of accommodation is made and refused, another offer will not be made. “It is not right that people could choose to stay in hotels where another perfectly suitable accommodation is available,” he says.

And here are some more lines from the Downing Street lobby briefing this morning.

The PM’s spokesperson rejected suggestions that the plans for Afghan refugees being announced in the Commons later (soon after 1pm) would mean people being kicked out of hotels. The spokesperson said:

This is about how we’re accelerating support for Afghans who have been forced to remain in hotel accommodation for sometimes more than a year.

We’ve made a large commitment to them to support them in the UK to make a new life here and this will be the next stage of that.

We do think it is right to help them into settled accommodation, there will be a significant package of support that sits behind them to both help them to find accommodation and to help them fully integrate into their new community.

Johnny Mercer, the veterans minister, will give details in a statement to MPs.

The spokesperson said it would be “hugely disappointing and disruptive” if strike action by teachers disrupted exams in England. (See 9.19am.)

The spokesperson confirmed that Rishi Sunak will miss PMQs tomorrow because he will be attending the funeral of the former Commons Speaker Betty Boothroyd. Dominic Raab, the deputy PM, will stand in for Sunak.

The spokesperson said Sunak was likely to speak to Humza Yousaf, the new Scottish first minister, “soon”.

The spokesperson said Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, will provide an update to MPs later this week on “the latest government work to deal with the challenge of illegal immigration”.

In his speech this morning Ed Miliband, the shadow secretary for climate change and net zero, claimed the UK was already “behind in the global race” for green energy. (See 12pm.) There is particular focus on this issue this week because the government is due to set out its revised net zero plans on Thursday, and at cabinet this morning Grant Shapps, the energy secretary, insisted the government was doing well on renewable energy. It amounted to a rebuttal of the Miliband claim, even if it was not intended as such.

This is from the No 10 cabinet readout.

[Shapps] said the UK was well ahead of many advanced economies in transitioning to renewable energy. He said the UK will soon have all four of the world’s biggest offshore windfarms, with wind power increasing by 25% in 2022.

He said the government’s plan would set out where we can go further, including through the use of more nuclear power, to curb emissions while growing the economy and creating jobs.

The prime minister concluded cabinet by saying that the UK would build on its record of innovation to make the UK the premier location for investment in green technology.

The government has announced that the threat of a terrorist attack in Northern Ireland has been raised from substantial (meaning an attack is likely) to severe (meaning an attack is highly likely).

In a written ministerial statement Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, said the decision was taken by MI5. He said:

Over the last 25 years, Northern Ireland has transformed into a peaceful society. The Belfast (Good Friday) agreement demonstrates how peaceful and democratic politics improve society. However, a small number of people remain determined to cause harm to our communities through acts of politically motivated violence.

In recent months, we have seen an increase in levels of activity relating to Northern Ireland related terrorism, which has targeted police officers serving their communities and also put at risk the lives of children and other members of the public. These attacks have no support, as demonstrated by the reaction to the abhorrent attempted murder of DCI Caldwell.

Jon Lansman, the leftwing Labour activist who helped to run Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign for the party leadership in 2015 and who set up Momentum to promote Corbyn’s agenda, told Matt Chorley from Times Radio this morning that he thought Keir Starmer was behaving like “some kind of Putin” in relation to his predecessor.

Lansman said:

We’ve got to recognise that the radical policies that we had under Jeremy Corbyn … were not the problem. The party still supports them. I think we should be campaigning still for radical policy …

We’re a democratic party. This is not an authoritarian party. Keir Starmer unfortunately is behaving as if he was some kind of Putin of the Labour party. That is not the way we do politics.

But Lansman also said that he did not think Corbyn should stand for parliament as an independent at the next election. He said he thought Corbyn would have more influence if he remained a Labour member. And Lansman said he would not campaign for Corbyn if he did run as an independent because he wanted Starmer to win the election.