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Presented by Altana By ANDREW MCDONALD with ISABEL LOUBSER Good Monday morning . This is Andrew McDonald. DRIVING THE DAY MAKING PLANS FOR NIGEL: Westminster is entering the week in a flutter over the pair of mega-donations to Reform UK.
The combined £72 million from crypto billionaires Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne injected new urgency — and a hint of panic — into Labour’s ongoing debate on how to regulate political donations, with even the unions now looking like they’ll ease their resistance to a cap on individual donors. Given Andy Burnham backed a donations cap earlier this year, then declined to introduce one this month , will we now see that rare thing from a prime minister: a full 360-degree turn? For those checking back in after the weekend: In a thicket of proposals (more on which below) the idea of an annual cap on donations from a single, U.K.-based source is soaring back up the agenda.
When Stella Creasy and other MPs proposed a £100,000 cap in the elections bill earlier this month, the government didn’t accept it — and her amendment wasn’t put to a vote after Burnham said a task force would look at going further. But Angela Rayner, the Cabinet minister in charge of the bill, told the Sunday shows she wasn’t ruling out a cap on individual donations. And so ...
Last night it looked like things could move quickly on this sort of cap. Yet the process remains pretty opaque. While the Defending Democracy Taskforce has been around for years , a government official confirmed this particular iteration of a task force was only convened a fortnight ago and is expected to have its first meeting “soon.” As per the i Paper’s Caroline Wheeler , Labour politicians are already mobilizing to pile pressure on the government to go further. **A message from Altana: Altana is the AI network where businesses, logistics providers, and governments are rearchitecting global trade.
With Altana, businesses can prove compliance before goods ship and build more efficient, resilient, and secure supply chains. Logistics providers can automate the full brokerage workflow, and governments can promote economic security, manage borders, and enable the flow of trusted trade. ** Over in the Other Place: You can expect Labour peer Michael Wills, a long-standing proponent of a donations cap, to raise the issue when the elections bill arrives in the Lords for its second reading at around 3.15 p.m. At this stage, peers won’t be voting on specific amendments ... but it is an excellent chance for them to lay down a marker ahead of the bill’s committee stage next month.
Loads of peers are expected to speak, so we’ll likely get a sense of which ones would support any future amendment in the Lords. The minister will also give the government’s line at the despatch box, as will No. 10 at the Monday Lobby briefing, though we could of course just get the holding line. TUC yourselves in: Perhaps more significantly, the issue is on everyone’s lips at the Trades Union Congress — and the word in the bars is that opposition to a cap is softening, my colleague Dan Bloom emails from the annual get-together in Brighton.
It may well come up at the half-hour meeting of general secretaries at 9 a.m. That meeting is meant to just thrash out the day’s agenda but Reform’s windfall has handed the talk of a donations cap new urgency. The herd moves?
Labour-affiliated unions (who could be caught in the slipstream) have been lobbying for months against a U.K. donations cap — yet TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak called the £72 million “game-changing” Sunday and didn’t rule out changing his position. And Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham told Sky outright: “The government needs to act now to cap individual donations in a clear message that British democracy is not for sale.” Graham tends to be an outlier but various union types are making similar noises. One told Dan: “It’s clear as f*cking day that something has to happen.” The question is — what?
Watch out for ... Nowak’s speech at 11 a.m. and Angela Rayner’s around 3 p.m. Both were being redrafted last night to touch on the row, and Playbook was being told Rayner will address it pretty directly.
Nowak has a morning broadcast round — timings below — and the TUC’s General Council may come up with some kind of statement later in the week. The 11 affiliated unions are likely to thrash out a position in the coming days. Another union official predicted there will be a “softening” in their opposition to a donations cap.
CAPS ALL ROUND: It’s worth emphasizing that an annual cap on individual donors is only one proposal in play. It’s separate to a provision — which is already in the elections bill going through parliament — to cap donations from overseas sources at £100,000 a year. The important bit concerning Reform’s windfall lies in the government’s plan for it to apply retrospectively to March 25 this year, when Philip Rycroft’s review into foreign interference was published .
Rayner made clear on Sunday ... that any donations which don’t comply with the incoming legislation will have to be returned. So the important question is when exactly Delo and Harborne moved back to the U.K. The answer to that ... is predictably fuzzy.
A Reform spokesperson has already said the party is “100% confident” the donations are legal and won’t have to be returned. Harborne had originally been based in Thailand but appears to have since changed his voter registration to Hampshire in June ( h/t the Sunday Times ). Delo wrote for the Telegraph , in April this year (i.e., after March), that he “will” move back to Britain so he can contribute more to Reform.
But a Reform official insisted last night that the pair moved back to the U.K. before the March cutoff. Perhaps Deputy Leader Richard Tice can clarify in his round of morning broadcast interviews (timings below). One way Burnham could avoid all of this ... is by calling an early general election.
The Guardian’s Jessica Elgot points out that election spending rules (roughly £34 million across Great Britain) apply for the 12 months before polling day. Which could leave Reform in something of a trap if it spends too much of its war chest too close to the six-week short campaign. One for MPs to contemplate in the tea room before conference recess kicks in tomorrow.
NATIONALISTS UNITE PAGING DONALD TRUMP: The leaders of Plaid Cymru, the SNP and Sinn Féin are gathering for a joint 11 a.m. press conference to demand constitutional change and the right to self-determination. They’ll sign a deal calling for Westminster to “prepare, plan and facilitate constitutional change in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland,” according to Plaid. But the Telegraph, which broke news of the summit first , hears it will amount to demands for the right to hold independence referendums.
Of course ... A joint declaration on self-determination won’t have any practical impact. The BBC reports, too, that the agreement may just be signed by the SNP’s John Swinney and Plaid’s Rhun Ap Iorwerth , given Northern Ireland already has a border poll trigger of sorts.
The other issue for Northern Irish FM Michelle O’Neill is that she isn’t supposed to sign anything in her role as FM without the consent of the DUP’s deputy FM (but effectively joint FM) Emma Little-Pengelly. ELP made it very clear O’Neill does not have her permission , naturally. But but but: All three parties have recent events of varying significance that help their cause.
Plaid — which is using the meeting to push for more powers for the Senedd on tax and spending — won May’s election and has, in Rhun ap Iorwerth, the first ever non-Labour first minister. Polling for a Yes vote in Scotland now holds a clear, if not substantial, lead in POLITICO’s Poll of Polls . And Andy Burnham’s unguarded comments at PMQs contradicting his own policy gave the SNP some ammo to toss in the direction of their impatient base.
And the wild card: Trump upended decades of White House neutrality on the modern Irish question on the Saturday by saying he’d “love to see [the island] unified.” The U.S. president then doubled down on Sunday. Best of luck to the PM’s spokesperson who will have to politely disavow that in the first Lobby briefing of the week at 11.30 a.m. New friends: The press conference will give Sinn Féin’s O’Neill and President Mary Lou McDonald their chance to lay out their newfound — and perhaps unlikely — approval of Trump.
Fair play to them if they can top this quip from the SDLP’s Claire Hanna . TODAY IN WESTMINSTER BURNHAM’S DAY ... will be spent hosting his favorite people (regional mayors), plus some entrepreneurs and business leaders. He’ll host a roundtable in No. 10 this afternoon with business types, including the founders of Octopus Energy and Revolut, before a reception tonight with CEOs from major companies and the mayors.
Prepare for a Shell-ing: Among the CEOs attending tonight are Wael Sawan, chief executive of Shell. Decisions are still pending on approval for the Jackdaw and Rosebank fields in the North Sea, both of which Shell is closely involved in. Jackdaw — which is expected to be approved, but after the Greens-Labour slugfest in Holborn and St.
Pancras — is wholly owned by a company that Shell owns, while the firm also has a decent stake in Rosebank. A decision on Rosebank has been pushed further down the road. Tonight seems like a decent opportunity for some private chat about those calls.
On the other side of stakeholder engagement: Team Burnham is going mob-handed to the TUC. Louise Haigh is the star speaker at tonight’s big (private) dinner ... Rayner is in the hall ...
Wes Streeting and Anneliese Midgley are expected to turn up ... and there’s the “senior Labour speaker” who will speak and take questions from union officials on Tuesday. With Burnham more favored than Starmer — for now — there is less talk about left-wing unions cutting their financial ties with Labour this year. Sharon Graham cooled on her previous calls to disaffiliate in a Sunday Mirror interview.
Her speech is due some time after 4 p.m. But but but: Not everything is so rosy under the surface. Nowak will press the government for “public ownership” of failing water companies, a hike in bank taxes and to follow through on the promise of guaranteed hours contracts, despite a hair-raising impact assessment last month (Nowak has pushed back on the figures ).
Public sector pay is a big issue that is yet to raise its head. Then ... there’s the budget; Graham has an i Paper op-ed pressing the government to unfreeze income tax thresholds. Finally there’s the biggest question of all — whether Burnham’s promises to “reindustrialize Britain” will match up with the policy demands from unions in heavy industries.
There’ll be more to come on all that this week. NARROW ESCAPE: Former PM Boris Johnson was caught up in a security scare on Sunday, after a Russian drone struck a passenger train behind the one he was traveling in near the Polish border. No casualties were reported and Johnson is fine — he has written about his experience and his trip to Ukraine in the Mail here .
The Times reports he was traveling with national security adviser Jonathan Powell . QUITTER FIGHTS ON: In more former PM news, Liz Truss said she was not “ruling out” standing for election again when asked by former Tory MP Steve Baker on his pod . She didn’t say who she would run for (or who would accept her).
DEATH OF ALL HUMANS LATEST: The Joint Committee on Human Rights has warned ministers to introduce an AI-specific legal framework to target all the risks we kept reading about. It urged the PM to use Britain’s G20 presidency to seek common safeguards. The Times writes it up and it’s leading the Today program.
ICYMI, the leaders of Anthropic, OpenAI and Google DeepMind all backed stronger outside scrutiny of AI systems over the weekend. WHAT THE GOVERNMENT WANTS TO TALK ABOUT: A school meals shakeup which will be talk of the school gates all week. Under rules coming in next year, schools will be told to serve vegetables with every main meal and to restrict pizzas, sausage rolls and cakes.
Or, as the Telegraph headline puts it: “ Compulsory lentils .” MARK THE DIARY: Canadian PM Mark Carney will travel to Europe later in the week, joining European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for her State of the Union speech in Strasbourg on Wednesday morning. Later in the day, he’ll visit Liverpool to meet Burnham for the first time. They’re both Everton fans, and expected to watch them play Wolves that night.
TEMPERATURE CHECK : Reform’s Richard Tice spent the summer telling people to be more cheerful about a summer of extreme heat. But voters disagree, exclusive polling conducted for POLITICO by Public First shows. My colleague Abby Wallace writes that the polling shows more than twice as many Brits believe the downsides of hotter weather (droughts, overheating) outweigh the upsides (sunnier summers, more British wine) as the other way around.
Even 2024 Reform voters are split on the pros and cons. COUNTRYSIDE CALLING: Two Davids — Cameron and Blunkett — will today call on the government to listen to people who live in rural areas, as part of the launch of the Countryside Alliance campaign . Labour peer Blunkett will argue for a relations “reset” after polling of more than 2,000 people for the campaign found that only 15% of those who live in rural communities think the Labour Party cares about them.
AID SPEECH: Development Minister Kirsty McNeil will make her first major speech in the role at the New Economics Foundation today, she tells the Guardian’s Heather Stewart . Speaking to the paper, McNeil reaffirmed Labour’s hope to get to 0.7% on aid spending without setting any timeline. HERE COMES THE SUMMIT: The government will today sign two new nuclear fusion agreements with the U.S. in London.
Ministers have been promising a fusion summit ever since Donald Trump’s state visit last September. BRITISH NUKES FOR EUROPE : Britain should step up as Europe’s nuclear backstop, creating new nuclear-sharing arrangements with countries including Germany and Poland, as Washington shifts more of its strategic attention towards China and the Indo-Pacific, a new report from the Council on Geostrategy argues . The authors say Britain and its European allies need a more flexible nuclear option below the level of the full power of the U.K.’s Trident deterrent.
The concern is that Moscow could threaten such a limited strike while calculating that NATO would be unwilling to answer with full-scale retaliation. ELECTION DAY: MPs will vote for chairs for the Housing, Justice and Women and Equalities Committees this afternoon. SW1 EVENTS: The Institute for Government hosts a panel on local government reorganization (12.30 p.m.) ... the Institute for Fiscal Studies launches a report on the justice system (2 p.m.).
REPORTS OUT TODAY: Celeb chefs Tom Kerridge and Heston Blumenthal are amongst hundreds of signatories to an open letter urging Burnham to reduce hospitality VAT ... local government is on track to face a £4 billion black hole in less than two years, according to a report by UNISON ... and the Electoral Commission warns that abuse and intimidation of candidates is a “serious” concern, as it reveals a surge in threats to those who stood in May’s elections. The Guardian writes that one up . HOUSE OF COMMONS: Sits from 2.30 p.m. with education questions ....
MPs consider all stages of the Sovereign Grant Bill ... Commons Leader Alan Campbell guides a debate on several procedure motions ... there’s a general debate on Israel and Palestine ... and Labour MP Apsana Begum gives an adjournment speech commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street. COMING LATER: The Department for Health and Social Care will respond to the Covid inquiry’s report on the impact of the pandemic on the NHS.
That will arrive via a written statement this afternoon. WESTMINSTER HALL: Debates from 4.30 p.m. on a referendum on public ownership of the water sector (Labour MP Paul Davies ). On Committee corridor: The Environmental Audit Committee questions Health Minister Diana Johnson , Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty , Transport Minister Simon Lightwood and Environment Minister Emma Hardy on air pollution (2 p.m.) ...
HS2 chief Mark Wild faces the Public Accounts Committee (3.30 p.m.). HOUSE OF LORDS: Sits from 2.30 p.m. with oral questions including on combating international fraud, criteria used to decide the subject of public inquiries, and the impact of the Employment Rights Act on young people in Scotland ... and a second reading of the Representation of the People Bill. **Do you work in public affairs or lobbying? The 1st Public Affairs Summit of Spain, organised by APRI, will take place on 8 October in Madrid.
Register now and join the sector’s leading gathering. ** BEYOND THE M25 MASK OFF: Police are making arrests after anti-immigration protests in Portsmouth over the weekend. One 76-year-old was arrested for concealing his identity by wearing a burkha, according to the Times , after he breached police restrictions on wearing face coverings. PRIVATE PATROLS: Private security guards hired by Essex County Council (where Reform is in charge) are this morning making their first patrols in town centers in Colchester, Braintree and Chelmsford.
Reform UK says the six-guard deployment is in response to local reports that asylum-seekers are gathering in those areas. AROUND THE WORLD ON A KNIFE EDGE : Sweden’s election was too close to call last night, with former PM Magdalena Andersson’s center-left bloc leading incumbent Ulf Kristersson’s right-wing alliance by just one seat after most results had been declared. The final outcome may not be known until Wednesday.
POLITICO’s Tim Ross has the latest . WASN’T ME: Donald Trump heaped the blame for soaring fuel prices onto Ukraine while strolling around his Irish golf course on Sunday, my colleague Shawn Pogatchnik reports . The U.S. president said the spike had nothing to do with the war in Iran, which has blocked traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.
Instead, he urged Ukraine to stop targeting Russian refineries. Parting gift: Trump also announced he’ll remove the 10% U.S. tariff on Irish whiskey as he presented the Irish Open trophy at his resort in Doonbeg, Shawn writes. **A message from Altana: The rules of global trade have changed. Tariffs are tools of statecraft.
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It will be won by those who build the deepest trust. Visit altana.ai to learn how Altana can support your trade and economic security objectives . ** MEDIA ROUND Schools Minister Georgia Gould broadcast round: Times Radio (7.05 a.m.) ... Sky Mornings (7.15 a.m.) ...
BBC Breakfast (7.30 a.m.) ... LBC (7.50 a.m.) ... Today (8.20 a.m.) ...
Good Morning Britain (8.35 a.m.) ... GB News (8.50 a.m.). Shadow Defence Secretary James Cartlidge broadcast round: Talk (7.30 a.m.) ...
Times Radio (7.45 a.m.) ... GB News (8 a.m.) ... LBC (8.50 a.m.).
Reform UK Deputy Leader Richard Tice broadcast round: BBC breakfast (6.50 a.m.) ... GB News (7.05 a.m.) ... Good Morning Britain (7.35 a.m.) ...
Today (7.50 a.m.) ... Times Radio (8.10 a.m.) .... Talk (8.25 a.m.) ...
Sky Mornings (9.15 a.m.). TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak broadcast round: Today (7.10 a.m.) ... LBC (7.25 a.m.) ...
Times Radio (7.35 a.m.) ... Sky (8.15 a.m.) ... GB News (8.35 a.m.).
Also on Times Radio Breakfast: Labour peer David Blunkett (8.35 a.m.). Also on Sky Mornings: Northern Ireland First Minister Michelle O’Neill (8.30 a.m.). TODAY’S FRONT PAGES POLITICO UK : POLITICO Poll: Reform’s upbeat take on extreme heat falls flat with voters.
Daily Express : Labour tourist tax will hammer seaside B&Bs. Daily Mail : Did Putin drone target Boris and top security officials? Daily Mirror : Bitcon?
Daily Star : Souness: Today’s stars are big softies. Financial Times : Trump rejects industry calls for brake on AI over fears of losing race to China. Metro : Labour threat to Reform’s £72m windfall.
The Daily Telegraph : Hospitality chiefs urge PM to cut VAT. The Guardian : Revealed: true scale of Britain’s involvement in the slave trade. The Independent : We are running out of time on climate change.
The i Paper : Reform’s £72m crypto bonanza sparks Labour donations row. The Times : Reform hits out at bid to stop record donations. The Sun : Boris flees Vlad drone blitz.
LONDON CALLING WESTMINSTER WEATHER: High 25C, low 18C. Sunny intervals. SPAD SCOOP: Veteran Labour foreign affairs adviser Tom Raines is staying on to SpAd for European Relations Minister Hamish Falconer , leading on policy, my colleague Dan Bloom writes in.
Raines headed up the Europe program at Chatham House before advising Shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy in opposition and Labour’s first two foreign secretaries after the 2024 election, David Lammy and Yvette Cooper. NEW GIGS: Former House of Commons rep to the EU Kilian Bourke has launched a new advisory firm , La Manche. CONGRATS TO: Ipswich MP Jack Abbott on his engagement to Seahorse’s Jade Pallister ... and also to West Bromwich MP Sarah Coombes who tied the knot with Sajan Sabherwal .
CROSSING THE FINISH LINE: The PM won’t be the only Westminster figure limping back to work today after completing the Great North Run in Tyneside. Burnham SpAd Luke Sullivan might have some sore legs too after beating his boss with a time of 1hr 40mins. More (half) marathons: Economic Secretary to the Treasury Lucy Rigby completed the Amazing Northampton Run in aid of the Lewis Foundation.
JOB ADS: Lib Dem MP Clive Jones is hiring a senior caseworker ... Labour MP Jen Craft is hunting for a senior parliamentary assistant ... and Labour MP Stella Creasy is looking for a comms manager . MONDAY’S POD PICK: Former Finland Prime Minister Sanna Marin — who was just 34 when she became PM — talks to Leading hosts about the threat from Russia and how her country came to join NATO.
WRITING PLAYBOOK PM: Emilio Casalicchio. WRITING PLAYBOOK TUESDAY MORNING: Andrew McDonald. BIRTHDAYS: Hornsey and Friern Barnet MP Catherine West ... former Defence Secretary Grant Shapps ... former Brighton Kemptown MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle ...
POLITICO’s Christina Gennet ... former Prime Minister of Greece Kostas Karamanlis . PLAYBOOK COULDN’T HAPPEN WITHOUT: My editors Dan Bloom and Alex Spence , reporter Isabel Loubser and producers Dean Southwell and Hugh Kapernaros . SUBSCRIBE to the POLITICO newsletter family: Brussels Playbook | London Playbook | London Playbook PM | Playbook Paris | Berlin Playbook | Sunday Crunch | EU Influence | London Influence | D.C.
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Source: politico.eu
