Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, is on the rise again. At the weekend he gave a speech to a Compass conference that George Eaton from the New Statesman described as “the most wide-ranging critique of the government from any senior Labour figure since the general election” and as ultimately resembling “a leadership manifesto”.

In his report Eaton said:

Though [Burnham] praised “good policies” such as the renationalisation of the railways, he repeatedly outflanked the government from the left, criticising “too much timidity in our offer, too much reluctance to show the courage of our convictions”.

He called for Labour to abandon cuts to health and disability benefits, to impose higher taxes on wealth (Reeves’ aides repeatedly point out that she has already done so), to announce “the biggest and quickest council and social housing building programme the country has ever seen”, to reverse spending cuts to local authorities, to introduce free transport for teenagers in England, to replace first-past-the-post with proportional representation and to abolish the party whipping system (“which makes you vote for things you don’t fully agree with”).

We covered the Burnham speech here.

Burnham has elaborated on this in an interview with Beth Rigby from Sky News for her Electoral Dysfunction podcast. He told her that it was possible Nigel Farage could become the next prime minister and he said Farage had “connected with people”.

Rather than disparage Farage, it was more important to understand why he was connecting with people, Burnham said.

Asked if he thought Labour were not connecting, he replied:

I don’t think we’ve spoken enough to what I called working class ambition.

So I’m thinking of the hundreds of thousands of people in this city, region that we’re in now who are held back by their housing situation. Families who perhaps generations before would have had the amazing benefit of a council house, that was that platform for working class people to have ambition in their lives, and propelled them to do amazing things.

I think we’re in a situation in this city at the moment where the kids can see the skyscrapers from their bedroom window, but they don’t necessarily feel they have a path to those places, or they can’t see themselves working there.

So imagine where this place goes if we give them that give them that path.

And this is all, what we’re doing with what’s called the Greater Manchester baccalaureate, the MBacc an equal alternative to the university route.

There is a clip from the interview here, and the full version here.

Conor Burns, a fomer Tory minister who lost his seat at the election, has welcomed Mel Stride’s speech this morning (see 10.19am), but urged the party to go further – and rule out Liz Truss ever again being allowed to stand as a candidate for the Conservatives.

In a post on social media, he said:

It is long overdue for the Conservative Party to draw a line under the ClusterTruss. It was a period of shame in the Party’s noble history. With a lack of any self awareness, zero contrition and deranged conspiracy theories she has made it hard for the party to rebuild.

So depleted is the party that some of her most inept advocates now linger on the front bench. The Party should go one step further than today’s comments and make it clear that Truss will never again be an endorsed Conservative candidate for elected office.

In that act the country may see, at last, that we get it.

Burns is hardly neutral about Truss. While she was PM, he was sacked as a minister over a misconduct allegation which he strongly denied and for which he was subsequently cleared. He claimed that he had been stitched up because he had spoken favourably about one of Truss’s rivals.

A row has broken out in Reform UK after its newest MP called on the prime minister to ban the burqa, with the party’s chair, Zia Yusuf, saying it was a “dumb” question given that was not party policy, Rowena Mason reports.

Remainers would argue that nothing good has come from Brexit, but they might agree that there is at least one exception: the New European, a weekly paper launched soon after the 2016 referendum to speak up for pro-Europeans, which has since won awards and thrived (no easy feat for a news publication these days). It says it is the fastest-growing politics and culture title in Britain.

And today it has announced that it is relaunching with a new title, the New World. In an article explaining why, Matt Kelly, its editor-in-chief, says this is not because the Brexit era is over; quite the opposite, he argues.

The ideology that powered Brexit didn’t die on the bus – it spread. Trump, Covid, QAnon, the collapse of trust in institutions and authoritative sources, the rise of Milei, the mutation of Modi, the TikTok-ification of public life, and the creeping algorithmic authoritarianism of Big Tech.

Brexit was the beginning: act one of a story that is now truly global – and grotesquely interconnected. From Washington to Budapest, New Delhi to Nairobi, Kyiv to El Salvador, what’s happening isn’t a fluke – it’s a pattern. A dangerous one …

We’re not rebranding because Brexit’s over – we’re rebranding because Brexit was just the beginning. The same toxic forces that drove it are now global: nationalism, disinformation, democratic backsliding. The New World reflects the bigger fight we’re in. We’re certainly not backing off the topic of Brexit – we’re going in harder.

Rachel Keenan is a Guardian reporter.

Candidates in the Holyrood by-election contest for Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse byelection have cast their votes, after a brisk campaign following the death of the sitting MSP Christina McKelvie in March.

The Scottish National party candidate, Katy Loudon, posted a video on Instagram outside a polling station where she says “the stakes couldn’t be higher” due to the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which is also contesting the seat.

Davy Russell, the Scottish Labour candidate, posted a photograph of himself coming out of a polling station with the caption:

It was an honour to vote in the village I grew up in this morning. Polls are open for the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election, so make your plan to vote and let’s put this community first!

The full list of candidates is:

Collette Bradley, Scottish Socialist party

Andy Brady, Scottish Family party

Ross Lambie, Reform UK

Katy Loudon, SNP

Janice MacKay, Ukip

Ann McGuinness, Scottish Greens

Aisha Mir, Scottish Liberal Democrats

Richard Nelson, Scottish Conservatives

Davy Russell, Scottish Labour

Marc Wilkinson, independent

Richard Adams is the Guardian’s education editor.

The 2025 school census, published by the Department for Education this morning, has reignited claims and counter-claims about the effects of adding VAT to private school fees and whether children would be moved out by their parents to save money.

The statistics for England were collected by the DfE in January, when 20% VAT was first added to fees, and show that the number of pupils in private schools dropped by 1.9% or 11,000, compared with the same time last year.

But it came as pupil numbers fell nationally by 60,000, because of a long-term fall in the birthrate. And the number of private schools operating in England went up by 35, according to the census.

A government spokesperson was quick to claim that private school rolls hadn’t been greatly affected by the tax.

Today’s figures shatter the myth that charging VAT on private education would trigger an exodus. The data reveals pupil numbers remain firmly within historical patterns seen for over 20 years.

The 1.9% decline in private school pupil numbers reflects the broader demographic trends and changes in the state sector, with almost no change in secondaries and a 1.3% reduction in state-funded primary school pupil numbers.

This manufactured crisis has failed to materialize. Ending tax breaks for private schools will raise £1.bn a year by 2029-30 to help fund public services, including supporting the 94% of children in state schools, to help ensure excellence everywhere for every child.

The Independent Schools Council, which represents over half of the fee-paying schools in England, responded, with Julie Robinson, the council’s chief executive, saying:

These new Department for Education statistics show that the drop in independent school numbers cannot be explained by the fall in overall pupil numbers.

The government’s own figures now show that, in England alone, 8,000 more students have left independent education than politicians had estimated. This outsized exodus should concern anyone who is interested in this tax on education as a revenue raiser.

Keir Starmer has described the govenment’s decision to extend free school meals for pupils in England as a “statement of intent”, implying it will be followed by changes to the two-child benefit cap.

Speaking to broadcasters on a visit to a school in Essex where he was promoting the free school meals policy, he said:

This is a statement of intent. It’s something that we’ve been wanting to do for a long time. It’s the first time it’s ever been done …

I would see it as part of a wider package, because we’ve already done work on child care, on breakfast clubs, on school uniforms. So it’s about [giving children] the best possible start, but it’s also essentially a cost of living issue for their parents.

In a further answer, he described the policy three times as a “downpayment”. Asked if his use of the word “intent” meant he intended to life the two-child benefit cap, he replied:

I would say this is a downpayment on child poverty. We’ve got a taskforce that will come out with a strategy. I want to get to the root causes of child poverty. One of the greatest things the last Labour government did was to drive down child poverty. I’m determined we will do that.

Today is a downpayment on that, but it goes with breakfast clubs already being rolled out … But yes, it’s a downpayment on what I want to do in relation to child poverty.

Keir Starmer will host Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte in London next week, Downing Street has said.

Speaking at the morning lobby briefing, the PM’s spokesperson said:

The two leaders have spoken a number of times and this will be the second time that Mr Rutte has visited the prime minister at Downing Street.

You can expect the prime minister to raise how we can ensure all allies meet their stated pledges in support of our collective defence, to keep people safe.

It is worth recognising the UK’s track record on spending and indeed our contribution to Nato, both in terms of our spending and our capabilities.

Rutte is pushing for Nato members to commit to spending 3.5% on the military, with a further 1.5% on defence-related measures.

Q: Today the ONS today has apologised for getting inflation figures wrong. How can any chancellor govern without good data.

Stride said it was “thoroughly reprehensible” that the ONS cannot deliver accurate information in, for example, its labour market data. He said the ONS has admitted that its polling approach to getting information does not deliver good detail, beccause fewer people respond, and so sample sizes are lower. He said that was unacceptable, and that he was surprised this had been allowed to continue for as long as it has.

He said if he were still chair of the Treasury select committee, he would require the ONS to explain this.

Q: Do you think the Conservative party should change its leadership election rules to stop the members choosing another Liz Truss?

Stride says he does not want to comment on that process.

But he says Kemi Badenoch is the best person to deliver the thoughtful style of leadership and politics that he has been calling for. (See 11.23am.)

He says:

If you look at the nature of the challenge and the approach to it that I have set out, which is deep thought through through time and thoughfulness, she is the person to lead us.

She will get better through time at the media. She will get better through time at dispatch box though PMQs, just as Margaret Thatcher, when she became leader in ‘75 , was often criticised for everything from her hair to the clothes she wore to the pitch of her voice to heaven knows what else, in the end, she got it together, and Kemi will do absolutely that.

What she is doing behind the scenes is leading a shadow cabinet that is united, and our party has not been united in that way for a very long time.

And she is going to drive through the process with me and others, so that we come to the right conclusions.

Stride was referring to the many criticisms of Badenoch’s performance (which explain why Henry Hill, deputy editor of the ConservativeHome website, said in a recent Guardian article that Tories assume she will face a leadership challenge.)

Stride probably intended these remarks to be helpful. But Badenoch may not view them quite like that.

Q: Can you get taxes down to pre-pandemic levels?

Stride replies:

Absolutely, we can get taxes down, but we get taxes down in a responsible way that can be paid for, and we do it by addressing a number of deep-seated, deep-rooted issues – the size of the state, whether we’ve got the right skills offer to drive a higher value added economy, that we get energy costs down, and we can control welfare and so on and so forth.

We will only do it if we have a whole plan that all leans in the same direction, but it can be done.

Haldane asks Stride about what Liz Truss tweeted about his speeech. (See 10.19am.)

Stride says he does not believe that just cutting taxes is the right approach.

You can never get away from the bond markets, he says. You need a credible fiscal policy.

He says his “overriding message” that the Tories will never repeat the mistakes of the past.

Stride went on to attack Reform UK, describing their policies as “pure populism”.

He said their policies involved a revival of the “magic money tree” approach to spending. The Tories thought they had seen that off with Jeremy Corbyn, he said. But it was back under Reform, he said.

UPDATE: Stride said:

Populists in particular claim there are easy answers to our problems, telling voters what they want to hear without any credible plan for how they might deliver.

Take Reform. Their economic prescription is pure populism. It doubles down on the ‘magic money tree’ we thought had been banished with Jeremy Corbyn.

They would plough ahead with huge additional welfare spending, as well as tax cuts, with no plan for how to pay for any of it.

We must be radical in our prospectus, but that must be grounded in the principles of stability and responsibility.

Stride stresses the need for politicians to consider policy carefully, saying this is harder in the era of social media.

Our modern digital world has many advantages, but in some ways it has ushered in the death of what we might call the age of thoughtfulness.

By which I mean the careful consideration of arguments in order to establish the truth.

In a world of 24 hour news on the go and social media, we don’t stop to think things through like we used to.

Audiences are increasingly attracted to the fleeting sparkle of the novel, or shocking or celebrity or in some cases simply the fake.

And that risks allowing attractive but shallow arguments to take hold.

Populists in particular claim there are easy answers to our problems, telling voters what they want to hear without any credible plan for how they might deliver.

He says politicians should continue to think things through carefully, as they used to.

We must accept that for too long governments of both colours have failed to free us from this malaise.

For my party to find a path back to regaining trust, we must show that we are serious about listening to people and creating a better future underpinned by a credible plan.

If we do not, then we risk the same mistakes happening again.

(This is a brave argument for Stride to make, because one of the complaints about Kemi Badenoch is that she has abandoned “the age of thoughtfulness” for an obsession with social media, although in his speech Stride is supporting her, and not criticising her personally. Although being very socially media focused, Badenoch is also someone who talks about the importance of understanding problems properly.)

Stride says the Conservatives must accept that, for many people, the economy has not been working for them for a long time.

The fact is, for a large swathe of the population, our economy simply has not been working for them for some considerable time.

Incomes have stagnated. Many feel that the system only works for the benefit of others, for large corporations or people from other countries, but not for them and their families.

We must accept that for too long, governments of both colours have failed to free us from this malaise.

For my part, to find a path back to regaining trust, we must show that we are serious about listening to people and creating a better future underpinned by a credible plan.

If we do not, then we risk the same mistakes happening all over again.

Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, is giving his speech now.

He has just delivered the “never again” line briefed by the party in advance. (See 10.19am.)

Reform UK has put out a comment in response to the Tory briefing about Mel Stride’s speech. (See 10.19am.). It is from Richard Tice, the party’s deputy leader.

The first sentence could have been scripted by Labour. Tice said:

We’ll take no lectures on economics from a party that more than doubled the national debt, raised taxes and government spending to 70 year highs and shrank economic growth to 70 year lows.

But probably not the second sentence, which refers to Reform’s local council Doge operation. Tice went on:

Meanwhile we unearth Tory-run councils wasting £30m on a bridge to nowhere. They can never be trusted again.

Commentators would argue that Reform are in no position to lecture anyone (even Liz Truss) on fiscal probity. In a recent post on his Substack blog, the Economist journalist Archie Hall looked at Reform UK tax and spending plans in detail and concluded they would be an “unmitigated disaster”. He explains:

Implementing [the Reform plan], or anything close to it, would amount to a colossal fiscal shock—and one that Britain, still stumbling out of the shadow of the Truss debacle, can ill afford.

If we extrapolate from Sushil Wadhwani’s back-of-the-envelope breakdown of the impact of Liz Truss’s unfunded tax cuts on the gilt market, this policy package would mechanically raise borrowing costs for the government by something like 150 basis points (1.5 percentage points). Throw in the possibility of a proper loss of faith in Britain’s macroeconomic stability alongside that, and you can easily get to far scarier numbers still.

To be explicit: that would be an unmitigated disaster. Government borrowing would become more expensive, probably semi-permanently. Brits would pay the cost, in higher taxes and shabbier public services. Britain’s current bleak low-growth, high-rates quandary would shift from being an aberration to a norm. I can think of few faster ways to cement national decline.

Hall also cites this Economist chart comparing Reform’s plans to the Truss mini-budget.

Another commentator who has done a thorough analysis of Reform’s plans is Sam Freedman. In a post on his Substack blog, Freeman backs the Economist’s analysis of Reform’s fiscal plans and describes the policies in Reform’s election manifesto as a mix of “mainstream policies (a social care commission, increasing defence spending to 3%), completely delusional promises with no explanation of how they’d be achieved (ending NHS waiting lists in two years, radical tax simplification), and properly batshit crankery”.

As Peter Walker reports, Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, will give a speech this morning intended to disassociate the Conservatives from Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget – the event most often cited by Labour as evidence of why the Tories should not be in power.

Stride will say:

Mistakes were recognised and stability restored within weeks, with the full backing of our party. But the damage to our credibility is not so easily undone. That will take time. And it also requires contrition. So let me be clear: never again will the Conservative party undermine fiscal credibility by making promises we cannot afford.

Truss, who who become increasingly extreme since being voted out of parliament, has hit back. She posted this on social media this morning.

In attacking the Mini Budget, @MelJStride sides with the failed Treasury Orthodoxy.

Stride is a creature of the system.

When he served alongside me as Treasury Minister, he always went along with officials - including on the Loan Charge and IR35, damaging the self-employed and SMEs.

He backed Sunak’s huge spending, but not my tax cuts which were smaller in size and would have increased growth.

Britain’s system of government is broken.

Nothing will change with people like him in charge.

It is still less than three years since Truss was elected Tory leader and prime minister with the backing of 57% of Conservative party members who voted.

Lisa O’Carroll is a senior Guardian correspondent covering trade and Brexit.

In a sign that the Labour party is perhaps over its Brexit neuralgia, no fewer than three British ministers are in Brussels today with counterparts.

Trade secretary Jonathan Reynolds met European Commission vice president Stéfane Séjourné yesterday and he has been meeting trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič this morning.

Šefčovič joked that he meets Reynolds “everywhere” as they are both on intense travel schedules in the face of Donald Trump’s tariffs assault on former allies.

Also in Brussels is defence secretary John Healey who is at a Nato summit where ministers are set to approve plans to buy more weapons and military equipment to better defend Europe, the Arctic and North Atlantic.

Northern Ireland secretary Hilary Benn is also in town to meet Šefčovič to discuss the prospective elimination of sanitary and phytosanitary, or public health checks, on farm produce in Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland has had to observe EU laws since Brexit causing years of political crises and division, with unionists arguing they effectively cut NI off from the rest of United Kingdom.

Five years after the divorce from the EU, the border checks are now set to be removed, although it could take a year before the detail is agreed.

Labour is facing calls for action from a large group of its Muslim MPs, councillors and mayors, who believe Keir Starmer is mishandling the crisis in Gaza, Eleni Courea reports.

Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, has been giving interviews this morning about the free school meals announcement. She told Times Radio that schools would not be expected to fund the policy from their current budgets. “Schools will receive the funding that they need to make this happen,” she said.

She also said the government will review food standards in English schools.

We’re also going to review school food standards, I know lots of campaigners have raised concerns that they haven’t been looked at for some time and that’s something we’re also going to do as part of this reform.

Good morning. Normally child poverty is not at the centre of the national political debate (although it probably should be). But yesterday, at PMQs, Kemi Badenoch did make it a lead talking point by asking Keir Starmer if he would commit to keeping the two-child benefit cap, the Osborne-era benefit cut that is seen as a key driver of child poverty. She was doing this not because she wanted to promote the Tories as supporters of child poverty (although arguably that is one interpretation of her stance), but because she knows the policy is popular with voters who accept George Osborne’s argument that it is unfair for the state to pay very poor people to have more than two children when many other parents restrict the number of children they have depending on what they can afford. (Welfare experts say this is a grossly misleading caricature of why people with three or more children end up needing benefits, and that even if it was true it would be unfair to punish children, but in the court of public opinion, the Osborne argument still seems to be winning.) Badenoch was using as a classic ‘wedge issue’, and her question was designed to force Starmer to choose between siding with Labour MPs (who want the cap to go) and mainstream voters (who want to to stay, by almost two to one, according to some polling).

Badenoch did not get very far because Starmer just dodged the question. (That does not mean she was wrong to identify this as a dilemma for Labour; it just means Starmer avoided it becoming a problem yesterday.) It is still not clear what Starmer will do about the two-child benefit cap. But he told MPs at lunchtime yesterday: “I believe profoundly in driving down poverty and child poverty.”

And, overnight, the government has announced a policy that has been widely welcomed and that will reduce child poverty in England. It is going to extend access to free school meals for poorer children. In a news release the Department for Education says:

Over half a million more children will benefit from a free nutritious meal every school day, as the government puts £500 back into parents’ pockets every year by expanding eligibility for free school meals.

From the start of the 2026 school year, every pupil whose household is on universal credit will have a new entitlement to free school meals. This will make life easier and more affordable for parents who struggle the most, delivering on the government’s Plan for Change to break down barriers to opportunity and give children the best start in life.

The unprecedented expansion will lift 100,000 children across England completely out of poverty.

But not immediately. In an analysis, which is generally positive about the announcement, the Institute for Fiscal Studies says that, although eventually 100,000 children in England will lifted out of poverty by this measure, in the short term the figure will be much lower.

Christine Farquharson, associate director at IFS, explains:

Offering free school meals to all children whose families receive universal credit will, in the long term, mean free lunches for about 1.7 million additional children. But transitional protections introduced in 2018 have substantially increased the number of children receiving free school meals today - so in the short run, today’s announcement will both cost considerably less (around £250m a year) and benefit considerably fewer pupils (the government’s estimate is 500,000 children). This also means that today’s announcement will not see anything like 100,000 children lifted out of poverty next year.

It is the second big announcement this week linked to next week’s spending review with positive news for Labour MPs and supporters. (Yesterday’s was about a £15bn transport infrastructure programme.) Westminster sceptics think the Treasury is trying to buy some goodwill ahead of an actual announcement that will generate grim headlines about spending cuts.

It is also not clear whether today’s child poverty story is evidence that the governnment is moving towards the abolition of the two-child benefit cap, which would have a much bigger impact on child poverty reduction, or whether it is just a substitute for it.

The free school meals announcement just covers England. England often lags behind the devolved governments in welfare policy, and it is worth pointing out that they have more generous provision on free school meals anyway. In Scotland all children get them for their first five years in primary schools, in Wales all primary school children get them, and in Northern Ireland a means test applies, but it is more generous than the English one. In Labour-run London all primary school pupils also get free school meals.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Pat McFadden, Cabinet Office minister, takes questions in the Commons.

Morning: Keir Starmer is visiting a school in the south-east of England, where he is due to speak to broadcasters.

After 10.30am: Lucy Powell, leader of the Commons, takes questions from MPs on next week’s Commons business.

11am: Mel Stride, shadow chancellor, gives a speech at the RSA thinktank where he will say the Tories will “never again” risk the economy with unfunded tax cuts like those in Liz Truss’s mini-budget.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

And in Scotland people are voting in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse byelection, where the death of an SNP MSP has triggered a byelection.

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