Andy Burnham has accused critics of his proposed new trade deal with the EU of “misreading the public mood”.

As the Guardian reports, a deal to remove Brexit checks on imports and exports of food and animal products has now been agreed. At a summit in Brussels later this month, the EU and the UK will also be discussing deals covering emissions trading and youth mobility.

Speaking to reporters this morning, Kemi Badenoch said she could not say whether or not she would back the deal covering food products because she had not seen the detail. (See 10.38am.) And she said she was not opposed to a renegotiation per se, because she thought the EU-UK trade relationship needed “constant negotiating”.

But she also said she thought any proposal from Burnham was likely “to make things worse, not better”, and she said dynamic alignment with the EU on regulation was a “red line” that would be unacceptable to the Tories. As the Guardian report says, the deal that has been agreed does require dynamic alignment on sanitary and phytosanitary regulation.

Burnham said that the Treasury had confirmed in recent days that agreements under negotiation ahead of a summit later this month could raise GDP by 0.4% – up from the previous estimate of 0.3%.

And, in an interview with The Economist, he also hit back at Badenoch for criticising his attempts to forge a new relationship with the EU. He said:

I think it’s interesting because I sense, since conference, that there is an appetite to discuss it. And those who are making the argument over ‘Oh my goodness, don’t open up this psychodrama’ are misreading the public mood in my view.

Referring to the economic benefits of the deal being discussed at the summit later this month, he said:

A deal could add up to 0.4% to GDP. Now, that is a number that you cannot ignore.

Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.

MSPs at Holyrood have called on Scottish ministers to review a law which allowed the Indian-born student Q Manivannan to win a seat at Holyrood in May, claiming public confidence in parliament was “fragile”.

The standards, procedures and public appointments committee said in a report that the rationale for allowing people with limited rights to be in the UK was “simply not clear” and had “run ahead of what the public want”.

Under the Scottish Elections (Representation and Reform) Act 2025, overseas citizens with the legal right to live in Scotland can stand for Holyrood and local councils, even if their rights are temporary.

There was an outcry led by the Conservatives and Reform UK in May when Manivannan was elected as a Scottish Greens list MSP for Edinburgh and Lothians East. A successful PhD candidate at St Andrews, it emerged their student visa was due to expire at the end of 2026. They have since been granted a three-year graduate visa, giving them right to remain until the end of 2029.

Jenni Minto, the Scottish National party MSP who chairs the committee, and who voted in favour of the reforms last year, said public sentiment appears to have swung against the policy. She said:

It is vital that Scotland has elected representatives who look like the communities they represent. This diversity helps build trust in our elected institutions.

But we know that this trust is fragile, and so careful consideration needs to be given to all electoral reform that comes before us.

Reform UK was delighted by the committee’s recommendation, which follows proposals by ministers to extend the right to Commonwealth citizens, but the Scottish Greens said it was regressive. The Scottish Greens said:

There are thousands of people with limited leave to remain who live and work in Scotland and have made a home here, including Commonwealth citizens. They should be able to stand for our parliament and councils.

MSPs backed this change unanimously at the time, including the convenor and deputy convenor of the committee. It would be a regrettable backwards step for representation and democracy if Scotland was to roll back on this commitment.

Andy Burnham has said that he cares less about what the newspapers say about him than previous prime ministers did.

In one of his interviews with Daniel Hewitt for the ITV documentary being shown tonight about his first 100 days in office, Burnham was asked if he cared less about what papers like the Daily Mail and the Sun said about him than some of his predecessors did. Burnham replied: “Definitely.”

He said:

I left Westminster for a reason. I got fed up with commentators deciding things down there and then the whole world [being] meant to believe what they believe. Well, sorry, the world’s not like that anymore.

Burnham also defended prioritising social media more instead. He said:

People want more involvement, more understanding of the way politics is being done and that’s what I’m bringing. And hopefully it connects with people, particularly younger people, who may have felt quite distant from politics.

In another interview for the programme, Burnham rejected the suggestion that he was ruthless. Explaining why he did not like the description, he said:

Determined, I definitely would say that [I am] determined. I will come back and back and back at something. I’ve always been like that. Ruthless to me says you just have a disregard for everybody else. And that wouldn’t be me. But I am determined.

Burnham also revealed that, since becoming PM, he continues to go running regularly – and that this is often when his “best thoughts” occur. He explained:

If you’re asking me about what’s the thing that makes it work, I go running and I’ve not stopped my running. It’s when my mind goes a bit into neutral. And I feel then I get my best thoughts in those moments.

You know, all of a sudden, “Oh, that, yeah, I’ll do that.’ Or a particularly intractable problem that you’ve been thinking and worrying about – all of a sudden, I’ve been out on a run sometimes, and you just think, ‘Ah, that’s the way I’ll go into that one.’

Reform UK’s leader on Hampshire county council has been charged with 12 counts of rape and one of distributing indecent images of a child, Peter Walker reports.

Charles says the need for the Commonwealth is “more compelling than ever”.

All around us, trust between nations is under critical strain as international norms and systems are tested to their limits.

Brutal conflict stalks our world, destroying lives and casting long shadows across the globe.

Technology is transforming our societies and our economies at dizzying speed, with little certainty about where it might lead us.

As I consistently tried to emphasise, climate change is no longer just a terrifying prospect, but a catastrophic reality which threatens our very way of life. Nature is under constant attack and critical natural systems are collapsing.

And in each of our countries, for too many people, the opportunity to fulfil their own potential lies far beyond their reach.

Each of these challenges, each of these, is a challenge of the highest order. Together, they comprise the crisis of our time.

The Commonwealth cannot provide all of the solutions. It does, however, offer an unparalleled opportunity to work together across our societies and our economies, through our businesses, our institutions and our communities.

It allows us to draw on the collective ingenuity of a third of humanity to address the challenges confronting us all.

Charles carries on with his remarks about history. (See 2.50pm.) Turning to the slave trade, he does not issue an apology – but he says slavery history “fills my heart with horror”, and he stresses the importance of addressing the “wrongs of the past”.

Our history inspires us, can appal us, yet it can always teach us. We cannot change the actions of those who came before us. We can, however, learn from the past.

The transatlantic trade in enslaved persons still casts a shadow over these islands, and other members of our Commonwealth.

As I have said before, that shameful chapter of history is one that fills my heart with horror and my soul with the most profound personal sorrow.

And yet, history also teaches us that evil need not have the last word, that character and courage can combine to overcome the most monstrous injustice, as they did with the determination to end the international trade in enslaved people, in which the Royal Navy played such a leading role.

The more I have furthered my own understanding of the issues through listening, learning and looking, the more committed I have become to finding ways for us to work in modern partnership to address the wrongs of the past – with action for the future through improving access to education, investing in jobs and opportunities, encouraging intra-commonwealth trade, and inspiring vital climate resilience measures across the world.

I have always felt that there is so much that can be done to help lift up those who struggle against hardship and disadvantage.

I have always tried to play my part in doing just that. For as any sailor navigating the seas knows, we cannot command the winds, least of all where the winds of yesterday have delivered us. But we can choose how we set our sails.

At Choghm, King Charles is now speaking.

He starts by saying he and the Queen are delighted to attend this 28th Chogm.

He says he has been attending these meetings for almost 30 years.

It is even more sobering to think that 30 years ago, most people had never bought anything online. Many had never sent an email, and connecting to the web involved a rather alarming series of screeches from a telephone line.

In fact, in those days, the internet was so new people referred to it as the information superhighway.

I suspect that 30 years later, many of those early users, some in this room perhaps, are still trying to remember their first passwords.

Kemi Badenoch has signalled that, if the Conservatives win the next election, they will remove the indefinite leave to remain concession for care workers announced by Shabana Mahmood yesterday. In a post on social media, she said:

Shabana has made a serious mistake surrendering to Labour MPs. So I’m putting people on notice - when we get into government we will scrap this weak policy.

Immigration is too high. Labour are making a bad situation much, much worse.

The policy announced yesterday actually significantly tightens ILR rules, compared to what they say now, but by “weak policy”, Badenoch is referring to the concessions. She makes this clear in a video she has posted setting out her policy.

Calvin Bailey, the veterans minister, committed a minor breach of Commons rules when he attempted to interfer with the investigation into James McMurdock (see 1.16pm), the standards committee has said. The Press Association reports:

In a report released today, the committee found that Bailey breached a rule prohibiting MPs from lobbying the standards commissioner “in a manner calculated or intended to influence” a probe.

Bailey had written to Daniel Greenberg about his investigation into McMurdock’s conduct in September 2025, saying: “I urge you to reject any attempt by Mr McMurdock to deny that he purposefully intended to initiate, and participate in, racist and intimidatory behaviour against a journalist.”

He described McMurdock’s actions as part of an “established pattern within the online far right which he is associated with”.

Leyton and Wanstead MP Mr Bailey was subsequently informed he was himself under investigation for potentially breaking a rule banning MPs from seeking to influence the watchdog’s consideration of whether another MP has breached the code of conduct.

Bailey, who was not a minister at the time, apologised in a reply to Greenberg and asked for his original letter to be withdrawn.

“Please accept my full apology for this serious error on my part, for which I am deeply sorry,” he wrote in October 2025.

Bailey said his objective had been to highlight the impact of McMurdock’s actions on ethnic minority MPs, rather than influence the outcome of the case.

The commissioner concluded that Bailey’s intervention could only be interpreted as an attempt to influence his decision and referred the matter to the committee.

The committee ruled that Bailey had committed a breach that was “minor and inadvertent”, and recommended no further action.

Rory Carroll is the Guardian’s Ireland correspondent.

The departure of Carla Lockhart from the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) has hollowed its Westminster team and exposed widening divisions in Northern Ireland unionism.

The Upper Bann MP resigned yesterday because the party refused to topple Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill as first minister at Stormont, a dispute that has become the latest fault line between moderate and hardline unionists.

Losing the party’s most popular MP walloped Gavin Robinson’s leadership, shrivelled its Westminster presence to four male MPs and fuelled expectation of a DUP hammering in local and assembly elections next May.

Lockhart’s departure was fallout from the Drumcree parade imbroglio when the Orange Order revived an attempt – this time with legal backing - to march down Garvaghy Road. O’Neill and other Sinn Féin leaders joined residents in an allegedly illegal protest to block the Orangemen, a spectacle that galvanised nationalists and infuriated many unionists.

Robinson censured O’Neill and promised repercussions but stopped short of ousting her by pulling the plug on power-sharing, calculating that voters would punish the party for a full-blown Stormont crisis.

Lockhart’s constituency includes Drumcree and she has shared platforms with Jim Allister’s Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV), which appeals to those who consider Stormont a sellout to nationalists.

The Ulster Unionist party (UUP) favours making Stormont work, leaving the DUP stuck in the middle, deemed either too soft on Sinn Féin or so combative it has crippled power-sharing and fomented dysfunction.

The legacy of slavery will dominate a meeting of Commonwealth leaders, with Andy Burnham beginning talks over a formal apology and the King set to speak about the issue with “unflinching honesty”, the Press Association reports. PA says:

The prime minister has ruled out offering reparations for the harm caused by the transatlantic slave trade but he will use the summit to set out plans for a “debt reset” aimed at helping poorer Commonwealth countries and allocate £40m for infrastructure improvements in the Caribbean.

The King is expected to talk with “sincere sorrow” about the slave trade as he formally opens the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (Chogm) in Antigua.

Burnham has been criticised by opponents who claim that by being open to talks about a formal slavery apology he has put the King under pressure – an accusation denied by the Prime Minister.

Charles will preside over the event in his role as head of the Commonwealth but is politically neutral and will not take part in discussions, unusually held informally without aides in the room.

His role is about “inspiring and convening, rather than policy making”, a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said.

He is not expected to offer an apology or reference the change in Government policy.

Charles is due to speak to the opening ceremony at about 2pm UK time.

A Commons committee has overruled a finding by the parliamentary commissioner for standards that former Reform UK MP James McMurdock broke Commons rules by posting the letter “N” online and starting a racial slur.

The Commons standards committee has decided that McMurdock will not be subject to any further action, even though it also rejected McMurdock’s claim that he was not responsible for the letter N being posted from his phone on the social media platform X.

The N appeared underneath a post containing a picture of Nigel Farage with a black journalist, and it led to what is known as an N-Tower – individuals each posting a single letter so as to get the N-word to appear on a social media platform without moderating tools blocking them.

The incident happened in August last year, and the report published today is the outcome of an investigation that commenced soon afterwards after the Tory MP Ben Obese-Jecty submitted a complaint to Daniel Greenberg, the parliamentary commissioner for standards.

Complaints about MPs breaking parliamentary rules are investigated by the commissioner who presents a report to the Commons standards committee. Normally the committee accepts the commissioner’s findings and decides on an appropriate punishment but – in a move that is unusual but not unprecedented – the committee said it disagreed with Greenberg.

Greenberg was investigating whether McMurdock was in breach of rule 11, which says MPs must not do anything that would cause “significant damage to the reputation” of the Commons.

McMurdock told the commissioner that the original N must have been posted from his phone either by one of his children or as a result of a pocket post. Greenberg did not accept that, and concluded that McMurdock posted it himself.

But Greenberg concluded it was “impossible to establish Mr McMurdock’s intention when posting the letter ‘N’”. McMurdock said he deleted the post when he was made aware of it, about an hour after it went up.

However, Greenberg did criticise McMurdock for failing to take steps to disassociate himself from the post, or to explain that it had been put up in error. In his own report to the committee, he concluded:

It seems clear to me that the initiation of an N-Tower by a member of parliament is action that “would cause significant damage to the reputation and integrity of the House of Commons as a whole, or of its members generally”. The N-word is one of the most offensive terms in the English language. The use of an N-Tower is designed to encourage the use of a racist term in a manner intended to avoid moderation. To initiate an N-Tower on a public forum gives the impression that members of parliament are content to incite racist abuse. I have found that Mr McMurdock posted the “N” on X and therefore started the N-Tower. This is conduct that causes significant damage to the reputation of the house.

Mr McMurdock then took no steps to correct the public record and allowed the perception that he had deliberately started an N-Tower to continue. Mr McMurdock’s rationale for doing so is that he wished to protect himself from embarrassment. For a member to prioritise personal embarrassment over the ongoing perception that he had encouraged the use of a racist insult is extraordinary. I note that, even when my investigation was started, Mr McMurdock still did not deprecate such language or acknowledge the severity of the situation. That is not to his credit. Indeed, Mr McMurdock has tried to minimise the event, referring to it as “nonsense” …

In short, Mr McMurdock’s actions allowed a natural inference to be drawn that members of parliament condone and incite racist abuse.

But the standards committee, which is chaired by the Tory MP Alberto Costa who sits with six other MPs and seven lay members, decided that McMurdock had not broken rule 11. It said this was because it could not be sure that McMurdock posted the letter N with the intention of starting an N-Tower and that, even if he did, “we do not believe that unintentionally starting an N-Tower amounts to a breach of rule 11, however much we abhor the creation of a racial slur”.

Explaining the latter point, the committee said in its report:

Even if we had been able to conclude that Mr McMurdock had posted the letter “N” with the intention of initiating the creation of a racial slur, we do not consider that that bar [the test for a breach of rule 11] would have been met. The conduct would have undoubtedly been abhorrent, but the damage would have been done to Mr McMurdock’s own reputation, and not to that of MPs in general.

Unusually, one lay member of the committee, Mehmuda Mian, published a dissenting opinion saying she thought McMurdock had intended to start a N-Tower. She explained:

It is not clear for what reason Mr McMurdock would have made such a post, other than the reason alleged by the complainant. If it was in some way accidental, it would be an astonishing coincidence for that specific letter to appear by accident under that post. If there was another reason for an intentional post, then Mr McMurdock would surely have supplied it in evidence. I also believe that, had the letter N been posted accidentally or for some other purpose, Mr McMurdock would have acted differently once the offensive implications of his post were drawn to his attention. I therefore conclude that, on the balance of probabilities, Mr McMurdock made the post in order to start an “N tower”.

And three other lay members of the committee published a dissenting opinion saying they did not accept the majority view that McMurdock would not have broken rule 11 even if he had been intentionally starting an N-Tower.

McMurdock was a surprise Reform UK election winner in 2024 when he took the South Basildon and East Thurrock constituency with a majority of just 98. Reform UK was subsequently embarrassed when it emerged he had been detained as a teenager for repeatedly kicking his then girlfriend.

In July last year McMurdock resigned the Reform UK whip over allegations relating to his business conduct during Covid. But he was subsequently cleared, and today’s finding from the standards committee may revive speculation that he will be allowed to rejoin the party.

Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.

John Swinney has been urged to be much more open about the Scottish government’s attempts to close a near £5bn funding gap by a cross-party Holyrood committee.

MSPs on the Scottish parliament’s finance and public administration committee also warned the first minister faces “substantial risks” if his government’s plans to cut the public sector are not delivered on time and in full.

They said “much greater transparency” was needed about how Swinney plans to close the gap and called on his ministers to update the Scottish government’s public sector pay policy and tax strategy as soon as possible.

Its report in advance of this December’s Scottish budget said that within three years, Swinney’s minority government faces a £2.6bn shortfall in day-to-day spending and a £2.1bn spending shortfall for capital projects. In addition, there is a £720m shortfall in tax receipts next year, which exceeds its borrowing limits.

Swinney has already announced proposals to merge local authorities, cut the number of health boards and reduce civil service numbers in an effort to cut spending.

Economics think tanks have warned his government faces “a reckoning” over public spending, and the toughest budget in the history of devolution, after failing to control public sector pay rises and overspending.

A government spokesperson said ministers noted the committee’s comments, and that they expected a £650m real terms cut in Treasury funding next year, which made matters worse. They said:

This government has delivered a balanced budget every year and a comprehensive strategy and delivery plan has been published which sets out how we will close the gap between funding and spending by 2029-30.

Q: Do you think that a confident nation should be able to teach children about the bad things that the country has done in the past as well as the good things?

Badenoch replied:

If you start teaching a history about our country that tells young people that they should be ashamed, that tells young people that actually they don’t belong here for whatever reason, and tells young people that the wealth and prosperity of this country was built on the back of evil things like slavery and colonialism, you are lying to them.

You have to tell them the truth. The wealth of this country was built on property rights, freedom, free trade, freedom of speech, free markets, enlightenment values – the classic old school liberal values.

If you teach them that [wealth] just came from taking from elsewhere, we are selling them a lie. And then we start losing the understanding of what it is that makes countries wealthy.

We need to tell the good and the bad of our history. What’s happening is that we’re focusing only on the bad.

With lots of people, they’ve got books to sell about how terrible this country is. They’re making money out of splitting the country. The Conservative party wants to bring people together, whatever they look like …

If we keep pretending that this country has a unique history of evil and that we need to start paying everybody and apologising to everyone, we forget that we are actually one of the better countries, that a lot of this evil was happening all over the world, and we were the ones who fought to end so many of the terrible practices, including slavery, that were making lives a misery all around the globe.

Q: Do you regard China as a threat? And, if you were invited to China, would you got there and meet President Xi?

Badenoch said she had always been clear China was “an economic threat”. And it is a country spying on the UK, she said.

She went on:

What I am saying is that we need to take [China] seriously. I’m not saying we need to go to war with China, but what I’m saying is that what they want is economic dominance, and the more dominant they are, then the more susceptible we are to coercion.

So if I’m prime minister of this country and I get an invite, depending on what China has been doing recently, I might go, but not when it is holding dissidents, British citizens in its prisons, and not releasing them.

I would be going and getting those people released.

Keir Starmer went to China and got humiliated, got absolutely nothing. That would not be happening with me.

Badenoch may have been referring in particular to Jimmy Lai.

Q: What do you say to the argument that an apology for slavery could be good for British security and British interests, particularly in terms of relations with China?

Badenoch said China would not be impressed by the UK apologising. She went on:

China did all sorts of things. It’s not out there apologising.

The purpose of the apology is to make us look weak. It is to make this country look weak. And once we start looking weak, then we have every man and his dog making demands and sending us an invoice, which the British taxpayer has to pay.

We don’t have money for that anymore. We are running out of money. The little we have is being spent on welfare. Anyone who thinks that an apology is serious trade and economic policy … I’ve got a bridge to sell them, they don’t know how this stuff works.

Q: Would you support the food deal with the EU if it required dynamic alignment with EU regulations? Or is that a red line for you?

Badenoch replied:

Dynamic alignment is a red line because it gives away the biggest freedom that we have from leaving the European Union, which is to control our own laws. That’s why it doesn’t make any sense …

Look at AI, for example. We are doing so much better than them. Europe is going backwards, regulating a sector that doesn’t exist.

Q: Do you support the deal with the EU to end checks on food exports?

Badenoch said she did not know what the deal was.

She said she wanted to see Labour negotiating and improve the trade deal; the deal negotiated by the Tories was one that would need to be updated, she said.

But she said she was worried that Burnham’s deal with the EU would not make things better.

She said:

The reason why we left the EU was so we could make our own rules. But if what the government is signing up to is just following EU rules, then what was the point of leaving? They are too scared to actually use the Brexit freedoms that we have.

The free trade agreement that we have with the EU, like many others, is one that needs constant negotiating. So I want to see Labour negotiating and improving on deals with all countries. That’s what you do when you have your own trade policy. That’s what it means. It’s a never-ending process.

But she said she was worried Burnham was giving too much away.

[Burnham] doesn’t know how to negotiate. I say this as a former trade secretary. I’m very worried that what he is saying he’s going to do is actually going to make things worse, not better.

Q: Do you see any benefits in a closer relationship with the EU?

Badenoch replied:

We need to start having a closer relationship with all our allies. What we need to stop pretending that the only way to do that is to be inside the EU. It is a false conversation. The debate has been settled. It’s time for us to move on.

This is what Shabana Mahmood said in her interview with the BBC’s Iain Watson when he put it to her that the care worker U-turn in her ILR announcement yesterday (see 9.11am) would mean the government saying £7.5bn less than under the original plans. This figure seems to be based on Mahmood saying earlier this year the original plans would save £10bn, and her estimate that three-quarters of workers who would have been covered are now included in the exemption announced yesterday.

Look, I’m not going to just give you a number. It will be laid out properly in an impact assessment.

But we do already know that the changes that I have announced today, including the changes for the cohort that will now not get settlement at five years, including care workers not working in care who are most likely to fall upon the state once they got settlement, they will now be waiting longer, and that does represent billions in savings to the DWP.

If you are interested in where the £10bn figure came from in the first place, what it means and whether it is fair, there is a lot more on that in an analysis here.

The EU and the UK have completed their deal to remove Brexit checks on imports and exports of food and animal products ranging from sausages and cheese to leather goods and flowers, Lisa O’Carroll reports.

Good morning. In a Today programme interview broadcast this morning at 8.10am, Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, ended by saying this about her plans to tighten the rules that determine when foreign workers and their dependants can get settlement.

As a result of these changes, roughly half a million people who were going to settle at five years are not now going to settle. So on any measure, these are still very significant changes.

She is right, as Libby Brooks explains in her First Edition briefing on the story this morning.

But that does not mean it has not been awkward for Mahmood, who recorded the Today interview, and other interviews, last night. Although her plans amount to a very significant tightening of the indefinite leave to remain (ILR) rules, they are notably less strict than the version she announced last November, which is why they are reasonably being described as a U-turn. In her interviews she had to make two significant concessions.

• Mahmood appeared to accept that her U-turn could cost billions. She insisted that, compared with doing nothing, her plans will lead to significant savings. But she would not dispute claims that the savings would have been far higher if she had stuck to the 2025 plans. When the BBC’s Iain Watson put it to her that the concessions would in effect cost about £7.5bn, Mahmood just said an impact assessment would be published in due course.

• Mahmood refused to deny that she was in effect ordered to change her plans by Andy Burnham.

I will post more from these interviews soon.

Mahmood was also quite interesting on freedom of movement, an issue which has been yanked into the headlines again by an interview that Burnham gave to ITV for a documentary being broadcast tonight. Burnham said:

I have not proposed freedom of movement coming back.

I do believe that we should have an honest discussion with people about how immigration has changed since the Brexit vote because the shorter-term migration of people coming from Europe and then going back has been replaced with long-term settlement in bigger numbers, and that was the Boriswave …

I think public opinion has changed nationally.

But I want to be really clear on this issue. I will not run ahead of public opinion. The public need to be the boss when it comes to whatever happens with Brexit.

This is true, and in some respects just old news. Burnham has not made any specific proposals for a new relationship with the EU; he has just opened a debate on this.

But, in opening that debate, Burnham clearly implied that there would be a strong case for fighting the next election on a pledge to take the UK back into the single market, which would involve accepting freedom of movement rules. And Burnham has said that he would like the UK to rejoin the EU in his lifetime, which of course would also mean embracing freedom of movement. The language in the ITV interview implies Burnham is a bit nervous about being seen to have pre-judged where the debate might end up.

Freedom of movement also came up in Mahmood’s interviews. On Sky News, she refused to say what she felt about the UK rejoining the freedom of movement system. And, on the Today programme, she implied that she had not had much warning about Burnham’s decision to open up a debate on this in his speech to Labour’s conference. She also stressed that Labour was “absolutely bound by the terms of our manifesto”, which ruled out single market membership before the next election. She gave the impression that, like John Healey and Jonathan Reynolds, she is not 100% aligned with Burnham’s pro-EU aspirations.

Here is the agenda for the day.

10am: Kemi Badenoch gives a speech on defence at a rally in London.

11.30am: John Healey, the chancellor, takes questions in the Commons.

Noon: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

After 12.30pm: MPs resume their debate on the budget.

2pm (UK time): Andy Burnham and King Charles attend the opening ceremony for the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (Chogm) in Antigua. Later Burnham will be attending a heads of government meeting.

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