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Blair pays tribute following death of Tom Sawyer, saying former general secretary 'instrumental' in Labour's 1997 victory
Keir Starmer has led tributes after the death of former Labour party general secretary Tom Sawyer.
Tony Blair, who recruited Sawyer as Labour’s general secretary in 1994, said he was “instrumental” in helping the party to win in 1997. In his tribute Blair said:
Tom Sawyer was the embodiment of strong but serious trade unionism allied to a brilliant understanding of the aspirations and values of working class Britain. He was an outstanding National Union of Public Employees officer, a great member of the Labour party national executive and in 1994 upon becoming Labour leader I was able to persuade him to take on the role of general secretary of the party. He was instrumental both in making the changes which Labour desperately needed to transform itself and in the landslide 1997 election campaign.
He was loyal, tough and deeply committed to ensuring the Labour party could govern for a time long enough to change the country.
He was also one of the nicest people you could meet and stayed true to himself and humble all the way through a remarkable career.
And this is from Alastair Campbell, who was Blair’s communications chief in No 10.
Tom Sawyer RIP. Tom was a crucial part of the New Labour team from 94 through to the landslide win and beyond. It was not easy being general secretary when some in the party and many in the unions thought we were changing the party too much. But Tom never lost his nerve or his cool with anyone. He was a team player and a man whose judgement and character were strong. Really sad to hear of his passing. Love to Liz and the family.
Cooper declines to say how many people will be returned to France under 'one in, one out' treaty
In interview this morning Yvette Cooper declined to say how people arriving on small boats arriving in the UK would be removed every week under the “one in, one out” treaty with France. The government had not put numbers on this, she said. But she said she expected the numbers to “start lower and then build”.
On ITV’s Good Morning Britain, the presenter, Kate Garraway, asked if Cooper if she meant the numbers would start below 50 per week, and build up to that figure, or start at 50 per week, and build from there. Cooper replied:
Start lower than where they will finally end up.
Guidance on police disclosing suspects’ ethnicity should change, Cooper says
Official guidance should change to permit police to release the ethnicity or immigration status of criminal suspects, the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, has said. Jessica Elgot has the story.
Yvette Cooper says shallow water launches and overcrowding explain why small boat arrival numbers still rising
Good morning. Keir Starmer has invested a lot of effort in measures that will “smash the gangs” and today the government is announcing the start of one of his big achievements in this area – a returns agreement, of sorts, with France. It is only a pilot, and the numbers are likely to be small, but the Conservatives never negotiated a deal of this kind when they were trying to stop small boat arrivals. (In fact, as a result of Brexit, they achieved the opposite.) Here is Jessica Elgot’s story about the deal.
And here is the Home Office news release.
Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, has been speaking to broadcasters this morning. In media interviews, some politicians are keen to go on the offensive, by opening up new arguments or lines of attack. Cooper is the ultimate defensive player, smothering all awkward questions with splurge of officious, technocratic reasonableness. Journalists find it frustrating, because she tends to be a bit boring, but government spin doctors are happy because she never messes up.
When Starmer and Emmanuel Macron announced the “one in, one out” pilot last month, details about how it would work were sketchy. In her interviews this morning, Cooper did not reveal anything new about how the scheme would operate, arguing that, if she were to release this information, that might help the people smugglers evade the new regime. It has been widely reported that the scheme will start with about 50 people being removed per week, but Cooper would not even confirm this. On numbers, she told the Today programme:
We are not putting an overall figure on this programme. Of course, it will start will lower numbers and then build, but we want to be able to expand it. We want to be able to increase the number of people returned through this programme.
But Cooper did try to counter the key charge being thrown against the government – that all the “smash the gangs” measures it is announcing are failing, because small boat arrivals are at record numbers.
On the Today programme, when she was asked why arrival numbers have been soaring over the past year, Cooper cited two reasons. She said:
What we’ve seen in the course of this year has been the change in tactics by the criminal gangs, and they’ve been doing two things.
First of all, exploiting the French maritime rules, which have meant up until this summer that the French authorities just could not intervene in French waters. That’s why we’ve seen these disgraceful scenes of the loading of people into small boats in shallow waters, and then the French police unable to intervene according to their rules.
And that’s why it’s so important that, as part of this agreement with France, France is changing their maritime rules, and that will be starting later this summer.
The second reason is we’re seeing [a] big increase in the overcrowding of the boats, so far more people being crammed into the boats.
That is why we are seeking to change the law. We have the new border security bill going through parliament at the moment, bringing in the new offence of endangerment, so that people who are getting on overcrowded boats who are frankly putting other people’s lives at risks can themselves be prosecuted for getting on these overcrowded boats. Because it’s those two factors that are particularly driving this.
By citing these two factors as the explanation, and stressing that the government is addressing them, Cooper was implying that the government will be able to reduce arrival numbers.
The Conservatives claim that she is wrong because only a Rwanda-style deterrent policy would work. In an overnight press notice, the party descibed the UK-France deal as the “migrant surrender treaty” (using Boris Johnson’s inflammatory Brexit rhetoric) and Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said:
Returning just 50 illegal immigrants a week, and probably less, will make no difference whatsoever. This amounts to just 6% of illegal arrivals. Allowing 94% to stay in the UK will be no deterrent at all. This is a gimmick which won’t work.
The Rwanda removals deterrent, under which 100% of illegal arrivals would be removed, was ready to go last summer but Labour cancelled it just days before it was due to start with no proper replacement plan. As a result, this year so far has been the worst ever for illegal immigrants crossing the channel.
Only removing all illegal immigrants upon arrival will provide the necessary deterrent to stop the crossings. This is the Conservative plan, but Labour is too weak to implement it and as a result they have lost control of our borders.
It’s August, parliament is in recess, and there is almost nothing in the diary for today. This morning the Home Office will publish the text of the “one in, one out” returns treaty with France. And Kemi Badenoch is doing a visit in her North West Essex constituency, where she will be restating the Tories’ opposition to what they call Labour’s “family farm tax”.
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