Starmer pleads for government to unite in fightback after difficult week
Keir Starmer has warned senior ministers and officials to stop briefing against one another and leaking details of the budget as he pleaded for his embattled government to unite.The prime minister told his weekly cabinet meeting that last week’s political turmoil had distracted from voters’ priorities, and ministers needed to work together and start delivering rather than talking about the government itself.His warning came after a turbulent week during which his government was engulfed by accusations of briefing against the health secretary, Wes Streeting, and reports of a major pre-budget U-turn.The prime minister’s spokesperson said on Tuesday: “He said distractions meant our focus shifted from where it mattered most, working every day in the service of the British people.“The prime minister said next week’s budget would prioritise rebuilding the economy, showing what the government stands for.
[He] said people were rightly impatient for change, and we had to deliver that rather than talk about ourselves.“That meant working as one team, delivering opportunity and security and delivering on our mandate.”The comments form the second part of a fightback by Starmer after one of the most difficult weeks of his premiership, which was consumed by stories about infighting and budget leaks rather than NHS changes and new rights for renters.The first part came on Tuesday morning, when the Mirror published an interview with the prime minister in which he promised to fight the next election as Labour leader, despite growing speculation about his political future.He told the newspaper: “Let me be really clear – every minute that’s not spent talking about and dealing with the cost of living is a minute wasted of the political work of this government.
”Sign up to Headlines UKGet the day’s headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morningafter newsletter promotionStarmer spent the middle of last week defending his leadership after allies of his were quoted talking about the prospect of a challenge by Streeting, whom some close to the prime minister believed was preparing to move against him after the budget.The prime minister insisted No 10 had not been behind the briefings, which were widely seen as an attempt to put Streeting on the back foot.In the end, Streeting gave an assured round of interviews on Wednesday in which he backed Starmer but also burnished his own leadership credentials by dealing with the rumours with a relaxed humour.Just as talk about Starmer’s position was dying down, Downing Street and the Treasury were rocked by stories on Thursday night revealing that he and the chancellor had decided not to raise income taxes as previously planned.Officials had been drawing up plans for weeks for a controversial rise in income tax rates, despite Labour having promised in its manifesto not to do so.
On Wednesday Starmer and Reeves decided not to pursue this course, choosing instead to raise a number of smaller taxes in an approach some have called a ‘“smorgasbord”,They had hoped to communicate that in a gradual way over the week before the budget but were blindsided by a story in the Financial Times revealing the decision on Thursday,Starmer’s allies hope his promise to remain in place into the next election will dampen speculation over potential successors,However, with Labour on 19% in the polls – eight points behind Reform UK – many in his party think he could face a contest after the local elections in May,
Ocado’s share price is back where it started. Are its robots just too fancy?
That’s quite a stock market journey: from 180p at listing 15 years ago to the mighty heights of £29 during the locked-down Covid year of 2020 and now – oh dear – all the way back down to 180p. Welcome to Ocado, which looked like the future of grocery retailing once upon a time but now seems to be struggling to convince its most important customer of the virtues of robots and automation.There is no positive gloss to put on news that Kroger, the US supermarket chain, is closing three of its eight warehouses that use Ocado’s technology. Kroger was the client that put a rocket under the UK group’s share price in the first place in 2018 by signing a partnership deal. If Ocado could prove the worth of its kit in the world’s largest consumer market, went the bulls’ argument, valuation doubts would disappear
Visma approaches City grandee to act as chair if €20bn London listing goes ahead
Visma, one of Europe’s biggest software companies, has approached a leading City grandee to become its chair if it goes ahead with a blockbuster €20bn (£17.6bn) listing in London next spring.Sir Ron Kalifa, a former boss of payments group Worldpay and a director of the Bank of England, is considered the leading candidate for the potential role after a round of interviews in recent weeks, the Guardian understands.However, sources close to the process cautioned that London was not yet certain to land the sought-after listing of the Norwegian company, which has been backed by the UK-based private equity company Hg Capital for almost two decades.Stockholm has emerged as a rival because Visma is better known in Scandinavian markets, and because the Swedish bourse last month hosted the successful €13
What is Cloudflare – and why did its outage take down so many websites?
The internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare suffered an outage on Tuesday, making many websites inaccessible for about three hours.Cloudflare is a global cloud services and cybersecurity firm. It provides datacentres, website and email security, protection from data loss and defences against cyber threats, among other things. It describes itself as providing an “immune system for the internet”, with technology that sits between its clients and the wider world that blocks billions of cyber threats daily. It also uses its global infrastructure to speed up internet traffic
Cloudflare says ‘incident now resolved’ after outage causes error messages across the internet – as it happened
The firm has just issued an update saying it believes the incident over.A fix has been implemented and we believe the incident is now resolved. We are continuing to monitor for errors to ensure all services are back to normal.I’ve just quickly tested several key sites which are loading again.Key sites around the world went down, some for a few hours, after a widely relied-upon Internet infrastructure company suffered an unknown issueThe outages took place in the early hours of US morning and during UK business hoursIt affected users of everything from Spotify, ChatGPT, X, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Canva to retail websites of Visa, Vodafone and Vinted and UK grocery chains Asda and M&S
England turn to Noah Caluori for Argentina Test after triple injury blow
England have been hit by a triple injury blow before their final autumn Test against Argentina with Ollie Lawrence, Jamie George and Tom Roebuck all ruled out of Sunday’s clash. The 19-year-old uncapped wing Noah Caluori has been called into the squad and could profit from Roebuck’s absence.All three injured players started England’s 33-19 statement win against the All Blacks last weekend, forcing Steve Borthwick into a significant reshuffle as his side target an 11th straight victory and a clean sweep of four November Tests for the first time since Eddie Jones’s first autumn in charge in 2016.As revealed by the Guardian, Lawrence’s participation to face the Pumas was in grave doubt after he picked up a hamstring injury in the closing stages of last weekend’s win. His absence is a cruel blow to Borthwick given how his centre partnership with Fraser Dingwall has blossomed
I can’t remember ever being so confident at the start of an away Ashes series | Mark Ramprakash
It’s the Ashes in Australia and that is a series England have become used to losing, so much so that even Jimmy Anderson, the greatest English Test wicket‑taker of all time, has the home side as favourites. But if Australia have ever been there for the taking, it is now. Looking at how the two sides are shaping up before the opening game I feel punchy about England’s chances: the team are strong, settled, and I think that if Ben Stokes plays all five Tests they will win the Ashes and win them comfortably. I can’t remember ever being so confident before an away Ashes.That confidence is based on a strong group of seamers and a top seven that have now played a lot of Test cricket and have a lot of runs under their belt
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