Poll gives Labour 17 point lead over Tories ahead of Keir Starmer’s speech to conference – UK politics live

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Meanwhile, more than a few eyebrows were raised last night as the prime minister, Liz Truss, sent her congratulations to Giorgia Meloni, the far-right leader who is set to become Italy’s first female premier.

In early morning broadcast interviews, Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting told mortgage lenders that the “cavalry is coming” with the Labour Party

He told Sky News:

All of us are frankly still recovering from our jaws hitting the floors last week with that budget from Kwasi Kwarteng. And the real world consequences we’re seeing overnight, the withdrawal of mortgage products, tell us about the extent to which our own Chancellor in this country has frightened the markets.

He added that what had unfolded on Monday was “just the tip of the iceberg” and that there would be huge additional costs to people with mortgages, if interest rates go up in the way that some people are predicting.

And what was the Chancellor’s answer yesterday? ‘Don’t worry folks, in November I’m going to come up with some new fiscal rules – ie I’ve ignored all the ones I’ve already got and I’m rewriting the rules and making them up as I go along’. This isn’t serious leadership – it’s a reckless gamble,

Good morning from a chilly Liverpool where many delegates to the Labour conference are waking up to the news that their party has take its biggest poll lead over the Tories for more than 20 years.

The YouGov survey – for the Times – put Labour 17 points ahead, the party’s greatest lead since the firm started polling in 2001.

Labour leader Keir Starmer and aides were meanwhile re-writing key sections of the speech he will make at conference today against the backdrop of market turmoil yesterday which was sparked by Kwasi Kwarteng’s tax-cutting mini-budget.

The Guardian’s Political Editor, Pippa Crerar, reports here on how Starmer will attempt to take on the mantle of Tony Blair later today by describing Labour as the “political wing of the British people” as he accuses the Tories of losing control of the economy and ceding the political centre.

In his keynote speech to the Labour conference in Liverpool, Starmer will set out his stall for the next general election by saying his plans show that Labour is once again “the party of the centre ground”.

He will state that Labour now offers the country a “fresh start” after the turbulence of successive Conservative governments, and will commit to getting the UK “out of this endless cycle of crisis”.

Echoing a view on the last few days’ economic disarray of recent days shared by many jittery Tory MPs, He will say”:

“What we’ve seen from the government in the past few days has no precedent,“

We’re also going to hear keynote speeches today from Labour’s shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, and shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy.

We’ll keep your updated on all developments here in Liverpool and of course on all other political events, not least the government’s response to the crisis surrounding he pound as ministers struggle to prevent a full-scale loss of financial market confidence in their economic strategy.

It’s Ben Quinn here at the moment at the conference – you can find me on Twitter at @BenQuinn75if you’d like to flag up any political story we should also be covering today. Andy Sparrow will be coming on deck shortly as well.