Jacob Rees-Mogg criticises photo ID voting law, calling it move to ‘gerrymander’ elections – UK politics live

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At the Downing Street lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson said Rishi Sunak did not favour allowing EU nationals or 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in general elections, as Labour is considering. (See 11.04am.) The spokesperson said:

The right to vote in parliamentary elections and choose the next UK government is restricted to British citizens, citizens of those with the closest historical links to our country. That’s the position of the vast majority of nations across the world.

On allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to vote, the spokesperson said that 18 “is recognised as the age at which one becomes an adult – full citizenship rights, drinking, smoking, voting are only gained at adulthood”.

“We have no plans to change the national voting age,” the spokesperson said.

In an article in the Financial Times Jim Pickard says Keir Starmer is actually going back on a proposal he made in 2020 for all EU nationals to be allowed to vote in general elections. Labour is now only proposing to extend the franchise to EU nationals who have been resident in the UK for some time, Pickard says.

This is from Chris Rennard, a Lib Dem peer and former chief executive of the party, on Jacob Rees-Mogg saying the photo ID law amounted to gerrymandering. (See 11.50am.)

On the basis of the advance briefing, Suella Braverman’s speech to the NatCon conference today is being viewed as a challenge to Rishi Sunak and other colleagues on immigration policy.

But at the Downing Street lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson played down suggestions of a rift. He said Braverman would be speaking on behalf of the government when she delivered her speech this afternoon. Asked if Sunak agreed that more Britons should be trained to drive HGVs, work as butchers or pick fruit, the spokesperson replied:

We have said before we want to see employers make long-term investments in the UK domestic workforce instead of relying on overseas labour as part of building a high-wage and high-skilled economy and we’re supporting those industries to do that.

The spokesperson also said Sunak did want to reduce the level of net immigration. But he would not say when this would happen, or what Sunak considered to be the “baseline” level of immigration.

Asked if Sunak was confident he could cut immigration while growing the economy (because economists, including the OBR, believe immigration is necessary for growth), the spokesperson replied: “Both those things remain government commitments, to grow the economy, to reduce overall [immigration] numbers”.

The spokesperson would not say whether the commitment to reduce immigration meant the government would stop adding news jobs to the shortage occupations list (making it easier for foreign workers in those jobs to get visas to work in the UK). He said he would not get into the process for those decisons.

And when it was put to him that, if the government wants more Britons to work, for example, picking fruit, it should just tell employers to pay more, the spokesperson replied:

We are not in the business of telling private sector companies what are the right salaries to pay their staff. That is for them to decide.

This is from Gavin Barwell, the Tory peer and chief of staff to Theresa May when she was prime minister, commenting on the Times preview of speeches being given at the NatCon conference today. The Times quotes Jacob Rees-Mogg as describing Jeremy Hunt’s plans to expand free childcare as “fundamentally anti-Conservative”.

Rishi Sunak and Volodymyr Zelenskiy spoke to broadcasters after their talks at Chequers. Zelenskiy said they had discussed creating a “jets coalition” to help Ukraine, and he said a decision would be announced soon. He said:

Today we spoke about the jets. Very important topic for us because we can’t control the sky …

We want to create this jets coalition and I’m very positive with it.

We spoke about it and I see that in the closest time you will hear some, I think very important decisions but we have to work a little bit more on it.

Sunak confirmed that the pair had discussed how to build up Ukraine’s fighter combat capability, and he said this involved not just providing planes, but training pilots too. The UK was playing a big part in that, he went on. He said:

One thing we will be doing starting actually relatively soon is training of Ukrainian pilots and that’s something we’ve discussed today and we’re ready to implement those plans in relatively short order.

Sunak also said he and Zelenskiy had discussed “the security arrangements we should put in place among allied countries for Ukraine for the long term to ensure it can defend itself and provide effective deterrence against future Russian aggression”.

My colleague Peter Walker has more on Jacob Rees-Mogg‘s speech at the NatCon conference.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Tory former business secretary, has described the requirement for people to need photo ID to be allowed to vote as “gerrymandering”.

The law, which came into force following the Elections Act 2022, will apply throughout the UK at the next general election, and took effect for the first time at the English local elections earlier this month.

In his speech to the NatCon conference, Rees-Mogg (who defended the legislation when he was a minister and it was going through parliament) said:

Parties that try and gerrymander end up finding their clever scheme comes back to bite them, as dare I say we found by insisting on voter ID for elections.

We found the people who didn’t have ID were elderly and they by and large voted Conservative, so we made it hard for our own voters and we upset a system that worked perfectly well.

Ministers insist that the legislation was not introduced for party political advantage, and the Electoral Commission originally called for people to have to show ID when they voted. But the system actually chosen by the government – compulsory photo ID, with the list of acceptable photo ID cards appearing to favour pensioners – did fuel opposition suspicions that the move was, at least in part, intended to suppress the anti-Tory vote.

At the weekend the Tory peer Lord Cruddas told the Conservative Democratic Organisation that Labour policies, including abolishing voter ID, would make it impossible for the Tories to win an outright majority again. That confirms that, even if photo ID was not intended as a gerrymandering measure by ministers, at least some Tories saw it as achieving that.

In fact, Labour is not committed to repealing the voter ID law. See 11.04am.

The Conservative MP Miriam Cates, told the NatCon conference that falling birth rates “the one overarching threat to British conservatism and indeed the whole of western society”.

Arguing that economic and social policy had ceased to value having children, she said:

You cannot be socially liberal and economically conservative. If you think that government and society should have nothing to say about the conditions that promote strong families, don’t be surprised if you end up with a high tax, high spend economy, with a nation of broken people dependent on the state.

People do what others value and so, as conservatives, we must seek to restore the value of children in British society.

For children are not an economic burden. They are not a threat to personal autonomy or a lifestyle choice. Children are a joy and a blessing, they are the symptom and the cause of a society that has hope.

She also claimed “cultural Marxism” was “destroying our children’s souls”. She said:

[Hope for the future] is sadly diminishing in so many of our young people today, because liberal individualism has proven to be completely powerless to resist the cultural Marxism that is systematically destroying our children’s souls.

When culture, schools and universities openly teach that our country is racist, our heroes are villains, humanity is killing the earth, you are what you desire, diversity is theology, boundaries are tyranny and self-restraint is oppression, is it any wonder that mental health conditions, self-harm and suicide, and epidemic levels of anxiety and confusion characterise the emerging generation?

My colleague Peter Walker, who was listening, says “cultural Marxism” is a conspiracy theory.

But he says in other respects the speech was intellectually coherent.

Here are the main points from Keir Starmer‘s LBC phone-in.

Starmer confirmed that Labour is considering giving EU nationals, and 16- and 17-year-olds, the vote in general elections. Referring to media coverage of these proposals, he said this not about reversing Brexit. There would be “increasingly hysterical” headlines as the election approached, he said. (See 9.09am.) He stressed that these were just options, and that there was “no settled policy here” yet. But he implied there was a good case for both measures. On EU nationals, he said they could vote in local elections anyway. He went on:

The thinking behind it is if someone has been here, say, 10, 20, 30 years, contributing to this economy, part of our community, they ought to be able to vote.

Let me bring it alive. I’ve obviously knocked a lot of doors in the last few years and you go to door sometimes in a general election election and you’re met with someone who says: ‘Look, I’m an EU citizen. I’ve been living here for 30 years. I’m married to a Brit. My kids are raised and brought up here. They’re now working in the UK. I’m working in lots of community projects, etc. But I can’t vote.’ That feels wrong, and something ought to be done about it.

And on 16- and 17-year-olds, he said people could have babies at this age, or join the army. He went on:

It’s not such an outlandish idea, In Wales it already happens, in Scotland it already happens [in local elections, and elections to the Scottish and Welsh parliament] … These are some of the ideas that are going into the mix but they’re not policy. We’re just looking at them.

But Starmer said PR was not a priority for him. Asked if that was going into the mix too, he replied:

Not really … To be fair, there is a lot of people in my party who think very strongly, there is a fierce debate. Again, in Wales and Scotland you have got versions of PR.

But I have been very clear. I think we are going to inherit a real mess if we are privileged enough to come into power. I know that means an incoming Labour government needs to be laser focused on fixing the things that need fixing and PR isn’t one of my priorities. I want to fix the economy, fix the NHS.

He said that he would not commit to immediately repealing the Public Order Act because, now it was passed, he wanted to let it “settle in”. Asked if he would repeal it, he replied:

I said as the legislation was going through that I didn’t think we needed it because we had the existing powers. Now it’s on the books I think we need to let it settle in. With public order legislation you often need a bit of time and guidance.

He also said he wanted to look at the review of the impact of the photo ID voting law before deciding whether to scrap it. (See 9.33am.)

Momentum, the leftwing Labour group, says Starmer should commit to repealing the Public Order Act and the photo ID voting law.

Starmer refused to rule out doing a deal with the Liberal Democrats, saying that he was going for an outright majority but that “we’re going to have to see what the situation is next year”. (See 9.14am.)

He described the government’s Rwanda policy for asylum seekers as “morally unacceptable”, as well as impractical.

He said that, instead of giving her immigration speech today, Suella Braverman, the home secretary, should be sorting out the backlog in processing asylum claims. He said:

Suella Braverman, the home secretary, is today making a speech about what she thinks ought to happen on immigration. She is the home secretary.

They’ve been in power for 13 years. This is like [Mikel] Arteta … doing a speech this afternoon on what Arsenal ought to do.

This is pathetic. I’d say to the home secretary: stop the speech, cancel that, get back to the office and sort out the processing of these claims.

He defended his right to abandon his pledge to abolish tuition fees. When Nick Ferrari put it to him that this meant nobody could believe a word he said, Starmer replied:

I don’t think that’s fair.

There’s two rival arguments here. One is, if you said it, you stick to it, even when the economy is completely different. And I think you would be challenging me pretty hard to say: ‘Look, Keir, for heaven’s sake, you may have said that, you may think that, but you can’t ignore the fact that now we are in debt in a way we’ve never been since the second world war.’ So one theory of leadership is you just stick stick to your guns even when it’s pretty obvious that you can’t really deliver. I don’t actually agree with that. And I don’t think many people do.

Or you say: ‘Look, there are good things I wanted to do. Looking at the situation as it now is, there’s no doubt the damage has been done to the economy by this government. We’re going to have to look again across the board and make some difficult choices.’

I think on balance the British public wants someone who says: ‘Look, I’m going to square with you and say we can’t do some of the things I wanted to do because there isn’t the money after they’ve destroyed the economy.’

He said that he was “not a status quo person” on Scotland and that he wanted to give it more power. Asked by an SNP supporter why she should vote Labour, he replied:

I’m not a status quo person. I don’t think that it’s enough to say to you or anybody else in Scotland that we need to just keep things the way they are. And so I want more decision making in Scotland and want more power to Scotland, but I want Scotland to stay within a strong and changed United Kingdom.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Tory former business secretary, was interrupted by a protester as he spoke at the NatCon conference, PA Media reports. PA says:

Shortly after the Tory MP began speaking, a man joined him at the lectern and told the audience: “I would like to draw your attention to a few characteristics of fascism.”

The protester was then bundled off the stage.

Rishi Sunak has welcomed Volodymyr Zelenskiy to Chequers, the PM’s official country residence. In a clip broadcast by the BBC and Sky News, Sunak was shown inside the house saying that Zelenskiy was the first foreign leader he had hosted at Chequers. Sunak said they were standing in a room from where Winston Churchill delivered many of his famous wartime speeches.

Sunak also referred to Zelenskiy as “my friend”, in a tone that suggested he really meant it. The picture Sunak posted on Twitter of the two men embracing when Zelenskiy arrived gave the same impression.

Earlier, in the tweet posted just after 7am announcing his visit, Zelenskiy also referred to Sunak as a friend.

UPDATE: Sunak said:

You are actually the first foreign leader I have had the privilege of welcoming here as prime minister and there’s a lot of great history here.

In fact this room that we are standing in, Winston Churchill made many of his famous speeches in World War Two from this room.

And the same way today, your leadership, your country’s bravery and fortitude are an inspiration to us all.

I look forward to us discussing what more we can do to support you and your country.

My colleague Peter Walker is at the National Conservatism conference in London today. Here are some of his early tweets, which give a flavour of what it’s like.

Q: Do you support the extension of the Ulez low emissions zone to outer London?

Starmer says there is a scheme in place to help the low-paid meet the cost. He says, when he visited a cancer research institute last week, he was shown the impact of air pollution on a lung. If we don’t use schemes like Ulez to tackle air pollution, what else can we do to protect people from air pollution, he asks.

And that’s the end of the phone-in.

I will post a summary soon.

Q: Would you get rid of the photo ID law for voting?

Starmer says he wants to see what the review of how it worked says.

But the government should have publicised the new rule more effectively, he says.

Q: I vote for the SNP. Why should I vote Labour in the general election?

To get a better Scotland in a better UK, Starmer says.

He says he is “not a status quo person”. He wants more decision-making in Scotland and more power to Scotland.

Q: What is happening with the Labour investigation into Nick Brown, the former chief whip?

Starmer says an investigation is taking place. He says he cannot say any more.

The process is independent, and confidential, he says.

Q: What do you respond to the revelation that Boris Johnson thinks Sue Gray is a psycho?

Starmer says he and Johnson rarely agree on anything. He knows Gray, has worked with her and admires her, he says.

He dismisses Johnson’s theory that Gray was trying to help Labour with the Partygate report as nonsense.

Q: Are you committed to the triple lock for pensioners?

Yes, says Starmer. He says Labour would keep it.

He recalls meeting a pensioners in Dewsbury who spends the day under a blanket because she is concerned about her heating bills.