Michael Gove has promised the NHS an extra £100m a week by 2020 at the launch of his bid to be the next Tory leader and prime minister. The Vote Leave campaign, masterminded by Gove, had pledged an extra £350m a week for the NHS. Gove also said he would end free movement, introduce an Australian-style points-based system for immigration and bring numbers down. Gove said he was a reluctant candidate but that he was “the best person to lead Britain out of the European Union”. Only five Tory MPs were at the launch despite previous reports that there had been a stampede of Johnson supporters turning to Gove.
George Osborne has said Brexit means the government must abandon its plan for a budget surplus by 2020. The pledge to do so was a key lynchpin of his economic strategy. John McDonnell welcomed the move, which he and Jeremy Corbyn have been demanding for months, but said it should have been done sooner, condemning “failed Tory austerity”. Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said the chancellor’s announcement meant more austerity spending cuts and tax rises in the next parliament.
Arron Banks, the millionaire backer of Leave.EU, the campaign run by Ukip’s Nigel Farage, has backed Andrea Leadsom for Tory leader. Meanwhile, senior Tories Michael Fallon and Patrick McLoughlin have come out for Theresa May, who has also been backed by the Daily Mail. Ken Clarke attacked the “bizarre manoeuvrings” of Gove who he said “would do us all a favour if he were to stand down now”.
Emily Thornberry has apologised to the Israeli embassy following the row over Jeremy Corbyn’s comments at the launch of Labour’s antisemitism review, a spokesman for the ambassador said. At the launch of the report, Corbynappeared to many present to have compared Israel to Islamic extremists in prepared remarks. The text of the speech given by Corbyn had in fact referred to “Islamic states and organisations” but the remarks caused some offence.
The Department for Education has published a message about how the referendum result affects it, including these paragraphs:
There will be no immediate changes in the circumstances of European citizens living, studying or working in the UK – current arrangements will continue to apply to European pupils and their families, and to teachers, early years and social work professionals and all others who work with children.
All schools will continue to play an important role in promoting the fundamental British values of mutual respect and tolerance for those of all backgrounds and faiths. We are clear that no child should live in fear of racism or bullying, and by law all schools must have a behaviour policy with measures to tackle bullying.
Nigel Edwards, the chief executive of the Nuffield Trust health thinktank, says:
What are we to make of Michael Gove’s commitment? Given recent events we should scrutinise it closely. The £5.2bn a year he’s talking about is a context free number, and it raises some big questions. Does he mean £5.2bn on top of or instead of the £8bn extra by 2020 that the government has already pledged? Because if it’s £5.2bn instead of the £8bn then that obviously leaves us £2.8bn short of the £8bn we are expecting. Is it a real-terms increase or a cash increase?
And does he mean [the money is for] England or the UK? If he means the extra money to go only to England then it would cost a lot more to give the rest of the UK an equivalent increase? And does he mean that the money should go only into the NHS or into the wider health budget, which includes public health, the training of health professionals and other things?
In his pitch earlier for the leadership, Gove inferred – but did not say explicitly – that he saw his £5.2bn as additional to the £8bn David Cameron, George Osborne and Jeremy Hunt have already promised to give NHS England by 2020-21. He said: “I will take all the steps necessary to give the NHS at least another £100m per week by 2020.” It would be odd if he did not see the £5.2bn as genuinely extra funding, given what he said during the referendum campaign.
Johnson also makes an appearance on the cover of First news, the weekly newspaper for young readers, in which he promises that children will have a great future in Europe.
Interesting to see it in print this week. As Gaby Hinsliff was written, support for Johnson really started to fall away post Brexit vote away following his latest column for Monday’s Daily Telegraph, in which he “basically argued for a magical world of unicorns and rainbows.”
There’s no mention of the unicorns or rainbows in that First News piece. Whether it would have been enough to stay the executioner’s hand is another matter.
Worth a read for its placing of Brexit in a broader context: “A symptom of powerfully disruptive political forces that are far bigger than British politics.”
Boris Johnson’s supporters continue to feel sore about Michael Gove’s ambush of their man’s leadership ambitions, meanwhile. A tweet from the political journalist Isabel Oakeshott:
Boris aide re. Gove: "Never trust someone who has plastic grass in their garden."
— Isabel Oakeshott (@IsabelOakeshott) July 1, 2016
Perhaps a question arises: who in the Gove household bore ultimate responsibility for choosing the grass?
The chairman of the Treasury committee, the Tory MP Andrew Tyrie, has backed George Osborne’s abandonment of his policy of achieving a budget surplus by 2020.
Tyrie said: “Any rule which required the Chancellor to adjust public spending or taxation twice a year to take account of small changes in the OBR’s forecasts was always likely to be vulnerable. To be credible it needed to be put in a longer-term framework.”
“The Bank now has the crucial task of doing what it can to maintain stability – they may be at it for some time.”
The government has answered Jo Cox’s final questions in parliament – which focused on protecting children who live in a war zone.
Two days before her death, the Labour MP had pressed the Foreign Office to give its assessment of the United Nations’ decision to temporarily remove the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen’s civil war from its blacklist of children’s rights violators.
The Foreign Office minister Tobias Ellwood has since replied, with a government note on each answer stating: “This question was tabled before the sad death of the honourable lady but the subject remains important and the government’s response ought to be placed on the public record.”
Read his answer here, where Ellwood said that the UN secretary general’s announcement has been noted by the UK, adding: “A political solution remains the best way to bring this conflict and the suffering of the Yemeni people to an end.
“The UK government continues to support the work of the United Nations on children and armed conflict.”
Cox, who developed a reputation as a champion of the vulnerable in conflict zones, also tabled two questions about military intervention in Yemen on 14 June.
A post-Brexit UK government should respect a new EU deal designed to halve the number of premature deaths from air pollution, MEPs have said.
The Guardian’s Arthur Neslen reports:
The draft directive agreed on Thursday sets national limits for emissions from five pollutants by 2030: sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, non-methane volatile organic compounds, ammonia and fine particulate matter.
The Liberal Democrat MEP Catherine Bearder said: “This agreement to cut deadly air pollution will save thousands of lives throughout Europe every year.
“The UK government must still commit to meeting these targets no matter what happens in the coming years. Brexit cannot be used as an excuse to water down environmental laws and become the dirty man of Europe again.”
He insisted that Brexit cannot be cancelled or delayed, and that Britain will have to live with the consequences.
Hollande’s hardline comments came after a meeting with David Cameron in northern France at the Battle of the Somme centenary commemorations, where he told reporters:
The decision has been taken; it cannot be delayed and it cannot be cancelled. Now [the British] have to face the consequences.
“Being in the European Union has advantages,” added the president, alluding to voters who opted to leave but have since expressed regrets.
And that’s ... what the British are starting to understand. Those who were tempted by the Brexit are starting to think it over.
François Hollande, David Cameron and Britain’s Prince William walk during a ceremony marking the centenary of the Battle of the Somme. Photograph: Thibault Vandermersch/AFP/Getty Images
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