Labour leadership: Starmer secures place on final ballot by getting Usdaw nomination – as it happened

• Boris Johnson has suffered his defeat defeat in parliament since the general election and peers voted to insert an amendment into the EU (withdrawal agreement) bill saying EU nationals should be given a physical document showing they have the right to be in the UK after Brexit. (See 4.41pm.) The defeat is likely to be overturned when the bill returns to the Commons on Wednesday.

• Usdaw, the shopworkers’ union, has nominated Sir Keir Starmer for Labour leader. With Unison and Sera, the Labour environment campaign, also backing him, this means that he has got enough affiliate nominations to be guaranteed a place on the final ballot. He is the first of the five candidates left in the contest to clear this hurdle.

In practice candidates can only clear the affiliates nominations hurdle with support from one of five big unions: Unite, Unison, GMB, Usdaw and CWU. Unite is expected to back Rebecca Long-Bailey.

• Gordon Brown, the Labour former prime minister, has said the UK could break up soon without radical devolution of power to nations and regions. (See 4.32pm.)

• The Northern Ireland assembly has voted to withhold legislative consent from the UK government’s EU (withdrawal agreement) bill. (See 3.51pm.)

• The European commission has said the EU will not be ready to open trade talks with the UK on a post-Brexit trade deal before the end of February. (See 12.27pm.)

• The bill for the HS2 high-speed rail link could soar to £106bn, according to a government-commissioned review that will raise further concerns about the project.
  
  
• Downing Street has hinted Boris Johnson could try to block a peerage for John Bercow if the former Speaker is nominated by Jeremy Corbyn.
  
  
• The Duke of Sussex has met Boris Johnson and other world leaders attending the UK-Africa Investment Summit in London during what is likely to be one of his few remaining engagements as an official royal.
  
  
• Owners of apartment blocks who refuse to strip dangerous combustible cladding will be named and shamed as part of new post-Grenfell safety measures, Robert Jenrick, the housing secretary, has told MPs.

That’s all from us for this evening. If you’d like to read more, my colleague Rajeev Syal has tonight’s main politics story:

Here’s some reaction from Labour MPs to the news that Usdaw has backed Starmer – as well as from his campaign chair, the former Labour MP Jenny Chapman:

Starmer has said:

I’m honoured to have received Usdaw’s endorsement for the Labour leadership. Our campaign is building unity across the labour movement, amongst trade unionists and members.

Usdaw represent over 400,000 workers and fights every day for its members and for a fairer society. If I’m elected leader, Labour will stand shoulder to shoulder with the trade union movement as we take on the Tories and rebuild trust with working people.

20 Jan 202012.46 EST

Starmer becomes first Labour leadership candidate to secure place on final ballot after winning Usdaw nomination

Andrew Sparrow

Usdaw, the shopworkers’ union, has nominated Sir Keir Starmer for Labour leader. With Unison and Sera, the Labour environment campaign, also backing him, this means that he has got enough affiliate nominations to be guaranteed a place on the final ballot. He is the first of the five candidates left in the contest to clear this hurdle.

In practice candidates can only clear the affiliates nominations hurdle with support from one of five big unions: Unite, Unison, GMB, Usdaw and CWU. Unite is expected to back Rebecca Long-Bailey, and the GMB is expected to back Lisa Nandy. If that does happen, that would mean Jess Phillips and Emily Thornberry (neither of whom are likely to get the backing of the leftwing CWU) would only be able to make it onto the final ballot by getting nominations from 5% of constituency Labour parties (33 of them) - something they may struggle to do.

Usdaw is also nominating Angela Rayner for the deputy leadership.

Commenting on the decision, Paddy Lillis, Usdaws’s general secretary, said:

Usdaw believes that Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner are the right leadership team to unite and rebuild Labour after a devastating election loss. Our members desperately need Labour in power, they cannot afford another decade of Conservative governments attacking workers’ rights, incomes and public services.

The Labour party must be led by someone who can persuade voters that they have what it takes to be a prime minister and we are a government in waiting. That is at the heart of Usdaw’s decision to make these nominations.

That’s all from me for today.

My colleague Kevin Rawlinson is taking over now.

In her webchat with Mumsnet earlier Jess Phillips, the Labour leadership candidate, was asked if she would get rid of Momentum from Labour on the grounds that it was acting as a party within a party. Phillips did not accept that description, and she praised some of its activists, but she also hinted that she had concerns about some of its activities. She said:

Would I get rid of Momentum? I get asked that a lot. The answer is … there are some brilliant Momentum activists in my constituency who are just interested in getting a Labour government. So a blanket approach is inappropriate. However, if there is evidence that any group in the Labour party is organising without inviting anyone who wished to be a member in, or are operating an organisation that is more interested in controlling the party than getting Labour into power then any leader would have to act. If everyone is pulling together in the same direction, then groupings within the party will have the same aim and there should be no problems. Anyone from any group who bullies, harasses, is racist or stops the functioning of any Labour meeting through malice, would have no place in the Labour party.

During the Tory leadership contest the Brexiter Mark Francois said that he had decided to vote for Boris Johnson after Johnson looked him in the eye and said the UK would be leaving the EU on 31 October. The UK did not leave on 31 October.

Last week Johnson said in a BBC interview that he was working on a plan to allow people to crowdfund an appeal to cover the cost of Big Ben chiming on 31 January, when the UK does leave the EU. Again Francois seemed to take Johnson at his word and helped to get an appeal going, even pledging £1,000 himself. But Downing Street then ruled out the idea, saying the Commons authorities could not accept money raided in this manner.

According to the Telegraph’s Christopher Hope, Francois is still hoping that Johnson will help to make his wish come true. Experience suggests this is unlikely.

Angela Smith, the Labour leader in the Lords, has said that the government should not just rely on its majority in the House of Commons to overturn Lords defeats. She said:

I hope the prime minister and his colleagues will not think that they can get every detail of every bill right first time, and recognise that the second chamber is useful.

A large Commons majority means the government is guaranteed to get its legislation through but it would be supremely arrogant to dismiss all scrutiny.

Peers have voted for the Oates amendment by 270 votes to 229 - a majority of 41. This is an opposition amendment to the bill that would ensure that EU nationals living in the UK do get a physical document showing they have the right to be in the country.

It is Boris Johnson’s first defeat in parliament since the general election.

Ministers are likely to overturn the defeat when the bill returns to the Commons on Wednesday. If the defeat is reversed, peers will then have to decide whether to accept that, when the bill goes back to the Lords during “ping pong”, or whether to try again to pass the ‘physical document’ amendments. Peers have the power to ask the Commons to ‘think again’, but they almost always back down if the Commons insists on its version of the bill, and given the scale of Johnson’s general election victory last month, peers won’t feel that they have the authority to put up much of a fight.

The full text of Gordon Brown’s speech about the need for constitutional change is here, on his website. It is worth reading in full, but here are the main points.

• Brown called for radical devolution of decision-making to the nations and regions of the UK. He said:

The recent revolt of the regions shows us that dictates from the centre will not work and that complaints will not be allayed unless people’s voices themselves are heard and the outlying nations and regions gain new powers of initiative to become decision-making centres within the UK in their own right – given our history as a unitary state, nothing short of a constitutional revolution.

The best start would be a UK-wide constitutional convention that would bring together the regions and nations of the UK to formulate a new way forward for our constitution.

The convention should be preceded by region-by-region citizens’ assemblies that listen closely to what communities are saying and where common ground lies. Citizens’ assemblies – successfully organised in Ireland – can both encourage civilised debate and seek consensus where divisions have previously prevailed.

In an earlier draft he called for a council-led ‘Northern Exchequer board’ to take charge of government spending in the north. (See 1.26pm.)

• He said the UK could break up if Westminster does not devolve power. He said:

For after two divisive referendums in 2014 and 2016, and three bitter and tempestuous general elections in four years, we have to recognise the outcome of 2019 as a threat to the very existence of the United Kingdom.

Boris Johnson will soon discover that he has no choice – either we remake Britain or we risk losing it.

All parties need to present a positive alternative to nationalism that can reunite Britain and heal our deep divisions.

• He said the 2019 election was unusual because all major parties were campaigning for change. He said:

The crisis runs much deeper than Brexit. That is why, unlike previous elections when usually one major party campaigned on a safety-first, ‘no change’ agenda, all parties in 2019 could not begin to make progress if they defended the status quo and the result seems more like a plea for change than a positive and enthusiastic endorsement of any party.

• He said the old post-war social contract “seems broken”. That was because its four pillars were “near a state of collapse”, he said.

First, for millions, work no longer pays.

Second, no matter how hard you strive, opportunities for upward mobility seem limited and there appears to be less room at the top. Parents no longer feel confident that the next generation will do as well as the last.

Third, extremes of wealth cannot now be justified – as once they were – by claiming that the huge remuneration packages that the elites receive are the result of effort and merit. Excessive boardroom remuneration packages, the bankers’ bonus culture and shocking extremes of inequality have put paid to that.

Finally, our 75-year-old safety net looks threadbare, as in every town and city, child poverty and homelessness are on the increase and food banks, clothes banks, bedding banks, baby banks and charities generally substitute for the welfare state.

• He said artificial intelligence could make the regional divide even worse. He said:

The advance of A.I., whereby jobs are threatened and then displaced by technology, could make the regional divide between a new education-rich and a new education-poor even worse.

• He said there was a danger of Boris Johnson becoming more extreme by the time of the next election. He said:

There is no doubt that Boris Johnson will find it difficult to reconcile – within his party’s neo-liberal economic framework – the demands from the north for higher spending and more government intervention with the demands of his suburban and shire south that want the opposite – less public spending, less government intervention and lower taxes.

And so to win the next election he may feel compelled to resort to uniting his very different constituencies around another bout of nationalism: to anti-Europeanism or to anti-immigrant gesturing or even to playing the anti-Scottish card, claiming – as his party did in 2015 and 2019 – that under a Labour-SNP coalition, Scotland – they will say with only eight per cent of the UK population – will run England, despite its 83 per cent of the population. Sadly the seeds have already been sewn for this, with the majority of Conservative anti-Europeans saying that the end of the Union is a price worth paying for Brexit.

In the Lords debate Lord Oates is responding to the government minister, Lady Williams of Trafford.

He says he was surprised by her argument. He says the Home Office can give EU nationals physical proof of their right to be in the UK while also keeping the details in a digital database. He says people like landlords will expect to be able to see a document showing someone has the right to be in the UK.

He is putting his amendment to a vote.

Peers are voting now.

In the Lords the Home Office minster Lady Williams of Trafford is responding to the debate on clause 7 - the Oates amendment about giving EU nationals a document proving their right to be in the UK. She claims there is a danger of “ID card creep”. She says if EU nationals get a physical document showing they have the right to be in the country, they will be asked to show this. So the Oates plan creates a risk of people being discriminated against for not having documentation in the way that happened to the Windrush generation, she claims.

Earlier in the debate the crossbencher Lord Kerslake, the former head of the civil service, who is backing the Oates amendment, said the Oates amendment would reduce the risk of Windrush-style injustices.

Williams says physical documents can be “lost, stolen or tampered with”. The government wants to use a digital system instead, she says.

The Northern Ireland assembly has passed a motion refusing to give legislative assent to the UK government’s EU (withdrawal agreement) bill. In effect, it has rejected Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal. After a debate lasting almost three hours the power-sharing assembly, which was only revived just over a week ago, the motion was passed without opposition.

Opening the debate Arlene Foster, the DUP first minister, said said the Brexit deal posed “significant challenges for Northern Ireland”. She urged MLAs to “take a stand” to show that the assembly was “back in business” and would not be overruled by the government.

The Alliance party Kellie Armstrong said there was no such thing as a good or sensible Brexit and that the assembly should “stand up and protect Northern Ireland”.

Michelle O’Neill, the Sinn Fein deputy first minster, said ahead of the debate:

There is no good to come from Brexit - it brings nothing, only jeopardy to our economy and to jobs, to future prospects, and I think that will be reflected in the debate we will have in Assembly chamber today.

And the SDLP leader Colum Eastwood said ahead of the debate.

We have always said people here did not give consent for Brexit and it’s important that this Assembly withholds consent for Brexit. We know this British Government will ignore us but when they are ignoring us they are ignoring the people of Northern Ireland, people of Scotland and the representatives of the people of Wales.

That shows you what kind of government is sitting now in London. They do not care about people here, they don’t care about people in Scotland, and they are determined to go on with the madness that is this Brexit.

The vote will have no practical impact on the government’s Brexit plans, but it is embarrassing for Johnson given his professed commitment to the union. In a similar vote the Scottish parliament refused to grant legislative consent to the EU (withdrawal agreement) will earlier this month.

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In the House of Lords peers have just started the report stage of the debate on the EU (withdrawal agreement) bill. There is likely to be at least one vote today, and more voting tomorrow, when peers will debate an amendment to effectively re-insert the Dubs provision on unaccompanied child migrants into the bill.

The Lib Dem peer Lord Oates is opening the debate. He is moving an amendment backed by the Lib Dems, Labour and crossbenchers that would ensure that EU nationals remaining in the UK after Brexit get a document providing physical proof that they have the right to be in the country.

Oates says EU nationals will want access to a physical document proving their right to be in the country. Otherwise there will be a risk that, at airports and elsewhere, they cannot prove their right to be in the country if an electronic database is not working. This measure will give them confidence, he says.

He urges ministers to “walk in the shoes” of EU nationals and consider the concerns they have about this.

In the House of Lords the Labour peer Lord Foulkes has just asked a private notice question about the report in yesterday’s Sunday Times claiming the government is considering moving the Lords to York. Earl Howe, the deputy leader of the Lords, gave a very non-committal answer. He said that the government would be announcing a commission on constitutional reform later this year, but that the government had not yet decided if this would cover the role of the House of Lords.

When Foulkes said Howe had not answered his question about whether this idea was being seriously considered, Howe said in the past a joint committee looked at the case for moving parliament outside London and decided against it. But he said there was “no reason” why this idea could not be revived. Options were being looked at, he says.

The former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown has told the BBC that he thinks the United Kingdom could soon break up unless its constituent nations and regions get more say in how they are governed.