Rolling coverage of all the day’s political developments as they happen
Frank Field’s Vote Leave speech - Summary
Gove overruling May by dismissing her call to leave ECHR
Lunchtime summary
Afternoon summary
4.33pm BST
When I heard about it I thought it was a joke.
Then when I read it knowing that Mr Gove is one of the very intelligent persons in the UK politics I thought it was kind of weird because why in the world Brits would have to follow a model we don’t want for ourselves. We think it’s the other way round.
There is a free trade zone stretching from Iceland to Turkey that all European nations have access to, regardless of whether they are in or out of the euro or EU.26 After we vote to leave we will remain in this zone. The suggestion that Bosnia, Serbia, Albania and the Ukraine would remain part of this free trade area - and Britain would be on the outside with just Belarus - is as credible as Jean-Claude Juncker joining Ukip.
Following Barack Obama’s intervention in the EU debate last week, the Remain campaign will have hoped for a boost in public support. During his three-day visit to London, Obama warned that the UK would lose influence if it were to leave the EU, and suggested that it could take up to 10 years to negotiate new trade deals with the US.
However, this week’s data does little to support this idea. Leave takes a narrow lead in ICM’s EU tracker, with 46% in favour of leaving compared to 44% who support remaining in the EU.
No 10 briefed anyone who would listen that they won #EUref last week - then polls swing against them - typical hubris. Long hard fight ahead
As per what I said yesterday, SW1 often misjudges things like Obama - 2 polls now out both showing swing to Leave: https://t.co/8LcXHLfAFg
If Corbyn wins in London next week, he is one step closer to carrying out his dangerous experiment on the country.
Everyone who cares about jobs, common-sense ideas and the future of our country has an interest in stopping Corbyn’s march.
3.51pm BST
Here are two more extracts from Alan Johnson’s speech earlier to the Usdaw conference in Blackpool.
On Labour’s 1945 government
It was here in this hall that the first post-war Labour party conference met after VE Day in 1945.
It was chaired by Ellen Wilkinson, a suffragette, socialist, leader of the Jarrow Crusade, and former organiser for your union. In May 1945, she sat where John Hannett is sitting right now, chairing the Labour conference.
Nostalgia can be a powerful force in politics.
I have to say, whenever I hear Ukip hanker after the sepia-tinted world of the 1950s, I’m reminded of the conditions that we of a certain age in this hall, grew up in. Living in slums which had been condemned years before as unfit for human habitation. The cards in shop-windows advertising rooms-to-let – “no Irish, no blacks and no dogs”.
3.23pm BST
Matthew Elliott, Vote Leave’s chief executive, has been criticised for ducking an invitation to give evidence to the Commons Treasury committee about the EU referendum.
Elliott was originally due to give evidence last week, alongside his colleague Dominic Cummings, but he pulled out at the last minute. According to the committee he said he could not be there “for understandable personal reasons”.
Mr Elliott’s decision is unacceptable, and does not reflect well on Vote Leave.
Vote Leave’s response to requests to give evidence is not making parliament’s job any easier.
3.09pm BST
Alistair Carmichael, the Lib Dem home affairs spokesman, has issued this statement after the urgent question on the European convention on human rights.
The home secretary first went rogue and then went missing after she failed to come before Parliament and defend her position.
The government’s policy in this area is now utterly incoherent.
3.03pm BST
Earlier the Labour MP David Hanson used a 10-minute rule bill to propose getting rid of the remaining hereditary peers from the House of Lords. In a very good speech he ridiculed the byelection system that allows hereditary peers currently in the Lords to elect a new hereditary peer from outside to join them when one of their number dies. Last week there was a byelection that led to Viscount Thurso, a former Lib Dem MP, being elected to the Lords in a contest with just three voters.
Here’s an extract from Hanson’s speech.
The electorate that held the power of electing the noble peer to the House of Lords was in this case just 3 people.
Now, this House will remember the very great fights on the 1832 Reform Act, an act that abolished, for example, the constituency of Old Sarum, that used to be able to send two members of parliament to this House. Now Old Sarum had 11 voters, positively huge, almost the Isle of Wight in comparison with the noble lord’s election last week.
1.57pm BST
1.29pm BST
The Labour MP Naz Shah has resigned as John McDonnell’s parliamentary private secretary (PPS) in the light of the controversy about her 2014 “relocate Israel” Facebook post. (See 11.18am.) She issued this statement.
I deeply regret the hurt I have caused by comments made on social media before I was elected as an MP. I made these posts at the height of the Gaza conflict in 2014, when emotions were running high around the Middle East conflict. But that is no excuse for the offence I have given, for which I unreservedly apologise.
In recognition of that offence I have stepped down from my role as PPS to the shadow chancellor John McDonnell. I will be seeking to expand my existing engagement and dialogue with Jewish community organisations, and will be stepping up my efforts to combat all forms of racism, including anti-semitism.
1.21pm BST
Sylvia Hernon, the independent MP for North Down in Northern Ireland, says she was horrified when she heard Theresa May propose leaving the ECHR yesterday. What consideration did she give to the impact this would have in Northern Ireland?
Wright says May is aware of the Northern Ireland dimension.
1.19pm BST
In the Commons Peter Bone, the Conservative MP, asks Wright if it is possible to leave the ECHR and remain a member of the EU? What is the legal position?
Wright says the legal position is not clear.
1.18pm BST
This is from the legal commentator David Allen Green.
Without the Human Rights Act there would not have been this Hillsborough inquest.
Impact of Article 2 of ECHR on domestic law.
1.14pm BST
Yesterday Labour’s Lord Falconer claimed Theresa May was wrong to think Britain could stay in the EU while leaving the ECHR. As I reported at the time, this is a matter of dispute.
Today Nick Timothy, who used to work as May’s special adviser in the Home Office, says government legal advice says you can leave the ECHR without having to leave the EU. He has set out his views on Twitter.
1. I happen to take a different view to TM on the EU, and will vote to leave. But we should get facts straight about the ECHR.
2. Government legal advice has always been clear: you can leave the ECHR without leaving the EU.
3. There is no provision in EU law that says member states must sign up to ECHR.
4. The EU itself is not yet a signatory to the ECHR. If that happens it will affect EU institutions only and not member states.
5. It is highly unlikely the EU itself will actually sign up to ECHR, given an opinion already issued by the ECJ.
6. The UK has a veto over the EU becoming an ECHR signatory anyway.
7. If it was impossible to leave ECHR but not EU, why has the pro-EU PM refused to rule out leaving the ECHR?
8. Bill Cash, EU expert, told Pol Home on 6 March 2013 that “the UK could leave the Convention and stay within its EU treaty obligations”
9. Former Attorney Gen Dominic Grieve: Leaving the ECHR “would have not any bearing on our membership of the European Union.”
10. PM himself said in Bloomberg speech: "Some antipathy about Europe really relates to the European Court of Human Rights.”
11. I am baffled why people who want to leave the EU (like me) think we can’t leave the ECHR - a much simpler exercise.
1.04pm BST
Yvette Cooper, the former shadow home secretary, says Theresa May said clearly Britain should pull out of the ECHR. Is that government policy?
Wright says he has set out government policy. What May was doing yesterday was saying the status quo is unacceptable, he says.
1.02pm BST
Harriet Harman, Labour’s former deputy leader, says when Wright says the government won’t rule out ECHR withdrawal, that sounds like a “direction of travel”. She says that is chilling. She says the government wants to exempt itself from ECHR jurisprudence. That would me a mistake, she says. All governments need some sort of restraint on what they do.
Wright says he thinks there is no prospect of this government, or any other, moving away from human rights.
12.58pm BST
Joanna Cherry, the SNP justice spokeswoman, says Theresa May’s comments caused great concern in Scotland.
She says MSPs are opposed to withdrawal from the ECHR. The Human Rights Act is “hard-wired” into the Scottish parliament, she says. The Scottish parliament would never give legislative consent to withdrawal from the ECHR. Any attempt to do this would provoke a constitutional crisis, she says.
I think there is a risk in this discussion that we make a little too much of what happened yesterday.
12.53pm BST
Crispin Blunt, a Conservative former justice minister, says this illustrates what happens when you contract out policy to the tabloid press. He says the government reformed the way the European court of human rights worked in the last parliament. Now the government should work with it, he says.
12.51pm BST
Wright is responding to Slaughter.
He says all ministers agree that the status quo with the ECHR is not acceptable. That is why the government is bringing forward plans for reform.
12.50pm BST
Andrew Slaughter, the shadow justice minister, says we are certainly not short of government policy on the ECHR.
He says Theresa May should have replied to the UQ herself. Without her it is like “Hamlet without the prince”.
12.48pm BST
Wright is responding to Carmichael.
He says there is no confusion about the government’s position. He set it out, as did Dominic Raab earlier. (See 12.34pm.)
12.45pm BST
Alistair Carmichael is responding to Jeremy Wright.
He says Theresa May, the home secretary, should have been here today responding to the UQ.
12.41pm BST
Alistair Carmichael, the Lib Dem justice spokesman, asks for a statement about the European court of human rights. He asked for a statement from the home secretary, Theresa May, but Jeremy Wright, the attorney general, is replying.
He says the UK is a founder member of the European convention of human rights. The government has made clear it has no objection to the document. It is a “fine document”, he says.
12.34pm BST
Here is the full quote from Dominic Raab, responding to Alistair Carmichael.
On the ECHR the government’s position remains clear. We cannot rule out withdrawal forever, but our forthcoming proposals [for a British bill of rights] do not include withdrawal from the convention, not least because of the clear advice we have received that if we withdrew from the ECHR while remaining an EU member it would be an open invitation to the Luxembourg court [the European court of justice] to fill the gap which could have far worse consequences, and because the convention is written into the Good Friday Agreement.
We are confident that we can replace the Human Rights Act with a bill of rights and reform our relationship with the Strasbourg court. That is precisely what we intend to do.
12.23pm BST
In justice questions Alistair Carmichael, the Lib Dem MP, has just asked if the government plans to leave the European convention on human rights.,
Dominic Raab, a justice minister, said the government did not rule out leaving the ECHR “forever”. But he said the government’s forthcoming plans for a British bill of rights would not involve plans to leave the ECHC, not least because leaving would create a vacuum that would be filled by the European court of justice ruling more on human rights issues.
11.57am BST
Jeremy Wright, the attorney general, is responding to the UQ on the ECHR.
11.52am BST
There will be an urgent question in the Commons at 12.30pm about the European convention on human rights. The Lib Dem justice spokesperson Alistair Carmichael has tabled the question in the light of Theresa May’s speech yesterday, in which she said the UK should leave the ECHR, going well beyond government policy on this issue.
1 UQ at 12.30 - Alistair Carmichael MP to Home Secretary on the UK's membership to the European Convention of Human Rights.
11.42am BST
Alan Johnson is still speaking, but some extracts from his speech were released in advance. Here are the highlights.
And what about Michael Gove and Boris Johnson? Does anyone really believe they want to leave the EU because it will help working families?
No, their vision is a small state with few, if any, workplace rights, and the Thatcherite “supply side” economy that Nigel Lawson was eulogising the other day. They know the EU protects workers’ interests, and it’s one of the principal reasons why they want to leave the EU.
The rights of working people are protected by our EU membership and Labour and our union movement are united in campaigning for Britain to Remain in Europe.
To protect the jobs that depend on our EU membership and the protections at work guaranteed through our EU membership, it is vital that our Unions campaign for a Britain to Remain in Europe.
I believe the vote in the referendum on the EU on June 23 is every bit as important as that election in July 1945. Perhaps more so. It is a vote about whether we remain or leave the EU, and there will be immediate consequences to that decision for everyone here, and every family in the land. But it’s about more than that. For me, it’s about what kind of country we are, what kind of society we want to be.
11.32am BST
Alan Johnson, chair of Labour In for Britain, is speaking at the Usdaw conference in Blackpool now. There is live coverage here.
11.26am BST
Here is more from what Frank Field said when taking questions after his speech.
Field calls PM's renegotiation: "Pathetic", "judgment wrong"-Country would have been "most pleased to postpone ref" till a proper deal done.
Frank Field welcomes Obama's EU intervention because it "increased the resolve" of Leave supporters. "I would love him to come every week."
Labour clash: Frank Field says Alan Johnson’s claim “remain” vote more important for workers than election of ‘45 Attlee govt is laughable.
Frank Field says Theresa May's speech yesterday shows she's "preparing for the Remain side's loss in the referendum"
Frank Field says Theresa May call to leave ECHR looked like a senior cabinet minister positioning for leadership after loss of referendum
11.18am BST
A Labour MP has apologised for any offence caused by a social media posting in which she appeared to endorse the relocation of Israelis to the US, the Press Association reports.
Bradford West MP Naz Shah shared a graphic which showed an image of Israel’s outline superimposed onto a map of the US under the headline “Solution for Israel-Palestine Conflict - Relocate Israel into United States”, with the comment “problem solved”.
The Facebook post - shared in 2014 before Shah became an MP - suggested the US has “plenty of land” to accommodate Israel as a 51st state, allowing Palestinians to “get their life and their land back”.
11.13am BST
Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, has welcomed Frank Field’s speech.
Labour's Frank Field right in saying EU membership has pushed down wages for British workers. Only by Leaving EU can we control immigration.
Labour voters who feel disappointed by Mr. Corbyn's support for the EU and open borders can help change his mind by voting UKIP on May 5th.
11.05am BST
Frank Field has delivered his Vote Leave speech, titled “How the referendum will determine the future of Europe but also the Labour party”. Here are the key points.
There’s no point in Labour MPs whingeing about Ukip. Ukip has only risen in support and become a deadly threat to Labour to the degree that a Labour leadership, supported by all too many Labour MPs, allowed the party to desert the bedrock of its long-term support and particularly over immigration.
As a very minimum we can say that over the past decade the Labour leadership has been the primary recruiting sergeant for what are now millions more Ukip voters.
It is important, however, to recall just how significant the Labour haemorrhage has been to Ukip. What began as a trickle is now a mighty flood. In the 2010 general election Ukip had only managed to recruit 138,000 voters who previously had voted Labour.
Long-term trends are at work here. A succession of Labour leaderships have appeared to have fallen increasingly out of love with representing traditional Labour voters, as they sought to ensure that Labour appealed to those parts of the electorate usually untouched by the party’s appeal. The process began under Mr Blair and continued under Gordon Brown. Triangulation, or as it turned out to be self-strangulation, was the order of the day as the views and interests of an emerging upper-middle class increasingly captured the Labour party.
The last thing Jeremy needs to do is to undermine further the traditional Labour vote, much of which wishes to leave the European Union. For the Party leader more actively to campaign for the Remain campaign will push even more Labour voters into the arms of Ukip.
We should have won the mayoral election last time in London. And on the 2015 general election results, poor as they were, we should win London handsomely. In 2015 the Tories won 34.9% of the London vote while Labour piled up 43.7%.
10.46am BST
Frank Field is delivering his speech now. I will post a summary shortly.
Frank Field warns that Jeremy Corbyn's "new pro-EU stance" will drive voters into the arms of UKIP pic.twitter.com/laTCdPhnxt
10.35am BST
Here are five of the most interesting EU referendum-related articles from the rest of today’s papers.
With turnout taken into account, Remain captures 51 per cent of all definite voters, down one point since last week, and Leave attracts 46 per cent, an increase of three points.
This increase in support for Leave, however, is not driven primarily by an increase in turnout by Leave voters. They are just as motivated to vote at this stage of the campaign as they were at the beginning of April. The proportion of those who will definitely come out to vote Leave on referendum day remains at 70 per cent - a figure that has held steadfast over the course of the past month. Meanwhile, motivation on the Remain side continues to grow, with turnout for those who want the UK to remain in the EU standing at 66 per cent, a slight uptick of one point since last week and a more significant increase of five points since the start of April.
David Cameron and Michael Gove’s best friend wives have spectacularly fallen out over the EU referendum, The Sun can reveal ...
The confrontation took place at Tory party chairman Lord Feldman’s 50th birthday party at the end of February, a few days after Mr Gove’s bombshell decision.
Polling and focus groups among swing voters has convinced the Leave campaign that raising the threat to public services is by far the most persuasive argument in favour of Brexit. It turns a dry constitutional debate about Brussels into an accessible “kitchen table” issue that affects people’s everyday lives ...
Having tested the approach with the health service, the strategy will soon be extended to schools and housing, with the campaign stepped up after the local elections on May 5. People who work in the public services such as doctors and teachers will be recruited to make the case for Brexit along with business people and politicians. One insider explains: “The public services angle connects money and immigration. It cuts through in a very powerful way” ...
EU membership, and even Swiss-style semi-detachment, imposes an extreme openness on labour markets that most people resent. Remainers can only argue that it is worth it. Voters secretly agree, judging by their revealed preferences: migration was absent from last year’s general election campaign and the government routinely flunks its own net-inflow target without incurring a political cost. But here is a chance to test that forbearance: a referendum that can be framed as a direct vote on our porous labour market.
If Leavers frame it as anything else, they are done for. Other allied countries will voice variations of Mr Obama’s line. More and more employers will weigh in. Albania might remind us that it wants to join the EU. There is only one case for exit that cannot be laughed out of town by relevant third parties. Leavers’ path to victory — or respectable defeat — is monomania.
For 40 years, now, we’ve been lied to about the EU. And I’ve had enough.
Ever since we were first conned into voting for the EU by Harold Wilson, the steady pursuit of and progress towards ever-closer union and ultimately the achievement of complete integration has meant a grinding erosion of our hard-won freedoms and rights and in the process a damaging corrosion of our democracy.
9.46am BST
Frank Field may be overstating the proportion of Labour voters who are in favour of Brexit. He is saying 40% of the party’s supporters are in this category. But this recent YouGov poll (pdf) has just 23% of Labour voters backing Leave, 59% backing Remain, and the rest not knowing or not saying.
9.37am BST
As promised, here is more from Frank Field’s interview on the Today programme.
Since we had Tony Blair’s mega election victory in 1997 we have lost 4.2m voters. Many of those - maybe a million at the last election - went to Ukip.
They went because they thought we had a leadership which didn’t represent their views about the nature of the country they wished to live in, the country they were born in. I think therefore the question about borders, and control over borders, is crucial to this referendum vote.
Every key vote that we’ve had on Europe since I’ve been in House of Commons and since Jeremy joined the House of Commons, we’ve actually been in the same lobby together, critical of Europe ...
I can’t tell you the number of times we’ve been in the same lobby, critical of what the EU does, both to the way of life in this country and also because it has resulted in uncontrolled immigration, it is Labour voters who have actually born the cost of that, with wages being pushed down, house prices rising, not being able to get the place in a school of your choice. I thought that Jeremy agreed on that and that come this referendum fight we would have a leader saying ‘These are my views, the majority of the parliamentary party may disagree with me, but I’m making sure that those core voters that we have, which have bled in the past to Ukip, should remain.’
The truth is there is no threat to Jeremy’s leadership because there is no alternative candidate. Therefore if it was done for that reason, it was done for very poor political reasons.
9.06am BST
Frank Field is the Cassandra of the House of Commons and today he is delivering a fresh prophecy. It should be an interesting speech.
Cassandra was the figure from Greek mythology who was blessed with the power of prophecy, but cursed so as to ensure that, when she made a prediction, no one believed her. The parallel is not exact but Field, a lonely Labour backbencher whose brief record as a welfare minister was not a success, does have a habit of speaking uncomfortable truths. He was an early critic of Gordon Brown’s plans for a massive expansion of means-tested benefits, and some of his concerns were vindicated. In an unusual alliance with Sir Nicholas Soames he started warning about the dangers of mass immigration when many in the political mainstream were reluctant to admit it was a problem. He correctly forecast that Brown’s decision to get rid of the 10p starting rate of tax would be a disaster. And he was similarly prescient about George Osborne proposed tax credit cuts last year. Osborne, like Brown, ended up eventually having to admit Field was right and U-turn.
Related: Corbyn must address working-class EU concerns, warns Frank Field
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