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Lib Dems aim to turn election success into influence

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Lib Dems aim to turn election success into influence


 EPA Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey waves after delivering his keynote speech at Liberal Democrat Party Conference in Brighton, with confetti and rows of MPs clapping behind him. EPA

I don’t think I have ever seen such undiluted joy at a party conference.

The Liberal Democrat gathering in Brighton amounted to the party giving itself a four-day pat on the back.

And little wonder: they were crushed to near irrelevance numerically in Parliament for nearly a decade.

Now, there are more Lib Dem MPs than ever before and they can’t quite believe it.

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There are three things I reckon tell you a lot about the Liberal Democrat strategy for 2024 – before, during and now after the election.

Geography, tone and message.

Firstly, geography.

It was a ruthless geographical focus, rather than a boom in enthusiasm for the Lib Dems, that explained their bumper general election result.

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As the House of Commons Library has pointed out: “The Liberal Democrats won 72 seats with 12.2% of the vote. This was 61 seats more than in 2019, with an increased vote share of 0.7 percentage points.”

They did this by focusing on where they could win.

The mastermind behind the strategy was the party’s director of field campaigns, Dave McCobb.

It is not often backroom teams get public adulation and namechecks, but Mr McCobb did in Sir Ed Davey’s speech – so central was he to the party’s current standing.

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Secondly, tone.

The colourful stunts, which continued in Brighton with Sir Ed Davey arriving on a jet ski, are part of a strategy to be seen as the agents of hope and optimism in British politics, in contrast with what the party sees as the current gloomfest from the government.

It goes beyond the stunts too to Sir Ed’s choice of language.

And thirdly, messaging.

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They want to exude a message discipline – in other words talk over and over again – about a topic they seek to own: health and social care.

One senior figure said they’d had a call from a colleague worried that the focus of all three main three days of the conference was health and social care and fretted that perhaps there ought to be more variety.

No, came the answer, if the Lib Dems are seen as a one-issue party and that is the issue, so be it.

They conclude it is such a massive concern to so, so many people it is political turf they want to colonise.

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Incidentally, Lib Dems are claiming privately there are senior figures in the government who are delighted that Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran is the new chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee, because they hope she will put pressure on the Department of Health to move more quickly on social care changes, and that might contribute to heaping pressure on the Treasury to find the money to do it.

Let’s see.

Lib Dem leader Ed Davey arrives at the conference

The conference maintained its homespun feel, with yellow T-shirt wearing activists wandering around with yellow buckets hawking for loose change donations.

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In a nod to modernity, the buckets possessed a QR code on the outside – for digital donations – as well as coppers and some notes on the inside.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrat chief whip, Wendy Chamberlain, was handing out badges.

“72 in 24” they read, spelling out their numerical success.

But the balance of power in Parliament matters too, as well as the raw numbers.

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Yes, the Lib Dems have 72 MPs, but Labour have an enormous majority.

As things stand, the government can do what it wants and choose to ignore the protestations and suggestions coming from the opposition parties.

Turning their swelled numbers into influence won’t be easy.

But for the Liberal Democrats this is a nice problem to have, after years in the doldrums.

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Don’t expect those Lib Dem smiles to ease just yet.



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Kemi Badenoch begins appointing new Tory shadow cabinet

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Kemi Badenoch begins appointing new Tory shadow cabinet

New Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has started making the first appointments to her top team, ahead of her new shadow cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

Badenoch has appointed MP Nigel Huddleston and Lord Dominic Johnson as joint chairmen of the Conservative party, the BBC understands.

The pair replace Richard Fuller, who was appointed as interim chairman by Rishi Sunak after the party’s election defeat in July.

It follows the appointment of Castle Point MP Dame Rebecca Harris as Tory chief whip on Sunday evening.

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Badenoch was declared winner of the Conservative Party’s leadership election on Saturday, beating Robert Jenrick to the top job.

Huddleson, who is MP for Droitwich and Evesham in the West Midlands, previously worked under Badenoch as a minister when she was business secretary. He was most recently a treasury minister.

Lord Johnson also worked under Badenoch as a trade minister, after being appointed to the Lords by Liz Truss during her brief spell as prime minister. He had a previous spell as vice-chairman of the party under Theresa May between 2016 and 2019, and has donated more than £275,000 to Tories in the past decade.

He co-founded the investment firm Somerset Capital Management with former Conservative MP and minister Jacob Rees-Mogg in 2007.

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A formal announcement of the full shadow cabinet is expected before its first meeting on Tuesday.

Badenoch is expected to give a job to her leadership rival Jenrick, after she said in her victory speech that he has a “key role to play in our party for many years to come”.

She said on Sunday that she would bring in people from all wings of the party to her team.

She said she wanted a “shadow cabinet that is meritocratic, that brings in a diverse field of experience, geographic diversity, background, the sort of work experience, professional experience that the MPs had before they came [into parliament]”.

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The current Labour government has 120 ministers, meaning the Tories may struggle to shadow all posts given they only have 121 MPs.

Former Home Secretary and defeated leadership candidate James Cleverly last week ruled out serving in the shadow cabinet, telling the FT he had been “liberated” from 16 years on the political front line and was now “not particularly in the mood to be boxed back into a narrow band again”.

Former Environment Secretary Steve Barclay confirmed he would also return to the backbenches over the weekend.

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‘Nail in the coffin’: family farmers respond to inheritance tax changes | Inheritance tax

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Gerallt Lloyd on his farm

For more than 100 years, the family of 56-year-old Andrew Smith has had a cattle farm on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. Smith, who now runs the farm, sees chancellor Rachel Reeves’s changes to inheritance tax rules as a grave betrayal of British farmers.

Working with his three sons, the farm produces about 2,000 sheep and 30 to 40 cows each year, yet makes “no profit”, he says. “We just pay the bills.”

Last Wednesday, Reeves announced that, from April 2026, farms and other business property, which had been passed on to heirs tax-free, will fall within inheritance tax (IHT). Inheritors will have to pay 20% of their value above £1m, half the headline inheritance tax rate of 40%.

“The boys have been in the business with me since they left school,” Smith says. “They have been bred to look after stock on the moors, which is a very difficult terrain to earn a living on. They were expecting to take it over from me, but this is the final nail in the coffin for family farms.”

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“Once my sons are gone, you can’t replace them, nobody else will have the experience on these hills, the food will just not get produced. It’s the end of the line.”

Smith believes that the fact that UK family farming today is by default asset-rich but cash-poor has been entirely ignored by the chancellor’s new rules.

“If my farm is worth £5m, my sons won’t be able to pay £800,000 in inheritance tax, of course, they’ll just have to sell half their land when I die. Then the farm will be unviable. Starmer has 100% broken a promise; they lied.”

Smith is one of scores of farmers who responded to a Guardian callout asking about the planned changes. They raised concerns that Labour’s policy will harm family farms, force them to stop food production, prevent investment in new technologies and break the chain between farming generations.

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Many said the policy would mean selling off land to larger, corporate agricultural businesses, or investors with limited interest in environmental concerns or communities and who would probably, as one farmer put it, “simply watch balance sheets”.

The National Farmers’ Union has labelled the plans “disastrous” for the industry. The government said the change will only affect about 2,000 estates a year.

‘Why do we bother to produce food?’

Jonathan Bell’s family has been involved with farming going back at least to his great-grandfather. In 2018, he began running the 250-acre Devon farm in partnership with his wife and parents.

“Rachel Reeves has destroyed our farm business and also our cold-pressed rapeseed oil business,” says Bell, 55.

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Jonathan Bell’s rapeseed crop. He says the changes could close his farm. Photograph: Jonathan Bell/Guardian Community

Bell estimates that the family could face a £400,000 inheritance tax bill. “On a business making £30,000 profit, there is no way I could service a debt of that magnitude,” he says. “We would have to sell part of the farm, making us even more uneconomical,” raising the “very sad” possibility of being forced to give up farming entirely.

“We work in one of the most dangerous professions in the country to produce food to feed everyone,” he says.

Bell says the changes hurt because farming is as much a service for the nation as an industry. “We look after the countryside and provide the food to keep people alive,” Bell says. If this is how the government treats farmers, he feels, “Why do we bother to produce food?”

‘Good in principle, but the threshold is too low’

Andrew Brown, from Rutland in the East Midlands, owns about 100 acres of land, but he is mainly a tenant farmer producing wheat.

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He feels more ambivalent about Reeves’s new rules. “I think this is ultimately a good idea, because some of the very, very rich landowners aren’t farmers, they’re people who just bought land to take advantage of the IHT rules.

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“So, if this stops very wealthy people from buying farmland to avoid taxes, then all the better, as those people could afford to pay the tax anyway,” he says.

Andrew Brown feels ambivalent about the chancellor’s new IHT rules for farmers. Photograph: Paul Tonge/Guardian Community

“I don’t disagree with the principle, but there were better ways of doing it. The threshold is too low, which will affect a lot of people, and it should be gradual, so 5%, say, for up to [a farm value of] £5m, then 10% until £10m, and so on, to a maximum inheritance tax rate of 50% for farms worth over £50m. That would have been fairer.”

‘If you sell the farm, you lose the home as well’

When Gerallt Lloyd was growing up on his parents’ dairy, sheep and beef farm near Aberystwyth, he remembers pouring out fresh cups of cow’s milk to drink.

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Decades later, Lloyd, now 47, still works for his 77-year-old father on the same land in west Wales, and hoped one day to pass it on to his children, aged 17 and 14. He owns 120 acres, but in addition rents 150, which he says “helps to make the farm viable”.

Gerallt Lloyd on his farm
Gerallt Lloyd says the value threshold of £1m is too low and will hit family farms. Photograph: Gerallt Lloyd/Guardian Community

But Lloyd fears the chancellor’s decision to change agricultural property relief will mean his children will be deprived of that opportunity.

“It feels awful,” says Lloyd, who estimates being hit with a tax bill of about £100,000 when he takes over from his father. “This could be the death knell for many family farms.”

Lloyd says it’s “a pity they’ve put this threshold at such a low point. I know £1m sounds like a lot,” but the proposals will mostly hit small farms and should have targeted assets upwards of £3m or £5m, he says.

Gerallt Lloyd’s cows, on his family’s farm in west Wales, coming in for milking. Photograph: Gerallt Lloyd/Guardian Community

The prospect for Lloyd, he says, is potentially selling parcels of the land he grew up on to account for the tax bills. “And farming is different to many other businesses, it’s also a home,” says Lloyd, whose wife and parents live on the farm. “They’re not big or expensive houses, but they’re a roof over our heads. If you have to sell the farm, or part of it, you lose the home as well.”

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Can Kemi Badenoch make the Tories electable again? – podcast | Kemi Badenoch

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Kemi Badenoch smiling and standing behind a lectern labelled 'Conservatives'

After almost four months, the Conservatives have finally elected a new leader – their sixth in nine years. Kemi Badenoch, a former software engineer who prides herself on “straight-talking”, said it was an “enormous honour to lead the party I love”. But the party she joined in her 20s was very different to the one she leads today, left with just 121 MPs after a historic defeat and an ageing membership. Yet Badenoch insists she can make the party win again – by the next election.

The Spectator columnist Isabel Hardman explains how Badenoch’s background has shaped her principles. From a childhood in Nigeria to university in the UK to working at the Spectator where, Hardman says, it was clear she was someone who had “huge ambition” and “clearly felt [she] had a lot to offer national politics”.

Helen Pidd hears how Badenoch’s reputation for not suffering fools gladly may cause problems when she has to soothe sensitive Tory MPs and how difficult it may be for her to appoint a shadow cabinet with so few MPs to choose from. “I think it is going to look like a very fresh frontbench,” says Hardman. But will it be enough to win back Tory voters?

Kemi Badenoch smiling and standing behind a lectern labelled 'Conservatives'
Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

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Government could miss cladding removal target date

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Is Reform UK's plan to get Farage into No 10 mission impossible?
Getty Images Image showing two workmen in white hardhats and hi-vis vests removing external cladding from Burnham Tower on the Chalcots Estate in Camden in 2017Getty Images

The National Audit Office (NAO) said up to 60% of buildings with dangerous cladding still haven’t been identified by the government

The government could miss its own cladding removal completion date if progress is not made to speed up the process, the UK’s spending watchdog has said.

In a new report, the National Audit Office (NAO) said up to 60% of buildings with dangerous cladding had still not been identified by the government, and at its current rate of progress it was due to miss its own estimated completion date of 2035 for the works.

The report follows the conclusion of the Grenfell Inquiry in September, which found risks had been ignored and there was “systematic dishonesty” from those who made and sold the cladding involved in the fire in west London in 2017, in which 72 people died.

The government has been contacted for a response.

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PA Media File photo from 2021 showing a covered Grenfell Tower with grey billboards  at the top featuring green hearts and the message 'Grenfell - forever in our hearts'PA Media

Cladding on Grenfell Tower was made of highly flammable polyethylene, which was added to the sides of the 1970s building in 2016

The report assessed how fast the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) was completing work to replace dangerous cladding from tower blocks in England, and aimed to provide an update to a previous NAO report in 2020.

It found there had been “a substantial increase in remediation activity” since then, with 4,771 buildings taller than 11 metres being brought under the government’s remedial works scheme as of August.

However, an estimated 7,200 more buildings in England with such cladding still had not been identified and some “may never”, the NAO continued.

Progress with replacing the cladding was also slow, it found.

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Although the MHCLG spent £2.3bn carrying out work on identified buildings, the report said work had only been completed on roughly a third of them and was yet to start on half.

The government’s suggested end date for completing cladding works on these buildings was 2035 but it was not on course to meet this deadline and “there are significant challenges to overcome”, the report stated.

‘Financial and emotional stress’

The NAO recommended that if progress with identifying buildings with dangerous cladding did not improve by the end of 2024, the government should consider other measures.

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These include mandatory registration for medium-rise buildings – and as with high-rise buildings under the Building Safety Act 2022, tougher enforcement activity and action to help with disputes between residents and building owners.

“Many people still do not know when their buildings will be made safe, contributing to residents suffering significant financial and emotional distress,” the report said.

The watchdog also highlighted there were issues with keeping taxpayers’ contributions to the works capped at £5.1bn.

The MHCLG’s estimate for costs for all the works amounted to £16.6bn and the NAO said although the government planned to recoup about £3.4bn from a new Building Safety Levy, this was not expected to be introduced until autumn 2025 at the earliest.

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In London, more than £1bn has been paid out to take dangerous cladding off tower blocks in the past six years.

The Greater London Authority, which manages the schemes on behalf of government, said 58% were now either fully remediated, or work was under way.

Getty Images Image showing an apartment building which had its cladding removed in 2018 but was waiting for it to be replaced in July 2024. Brown boards and the internal struts and clips for the cladding are visible next to the black windows of the buildingGetty Images

Some buildings which had cladding removed, like this one in London, are still waiting for it to be replaced years later

The report findings come after Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced in the Budget that the government would invest more than £1bn for repairs to buildings with dangerous cladding in 2025-26, which includes new investment to speed up remediation of social housing.

Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: “There is a long way to go before all affected buildings are made safe, and risks MHCLG must address if its approach is to succeed.

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“To stick to its £5.1bn cap in the long run, MHCLG needs to ensure that it can recoup funds through successful implementation of the proposed Building Safety Levy.”

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the Commons’ Public Accounts Committee, who previously met survivors of the Grenfell fire, said “the programme is falling behind schedule and MHCLG needs to pick up the pace to get it back on track,” adding “the government must take steps to better protect the taxpayer”.

“It urgently needs to ensure its fraud controls are working and that developers contribute their fair share to the costs.”

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PM announces extra £75m to tackle people smuggling

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PM announces extra £75m to tackle people smuggling

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is to announce an extra £75m to tackle people-smuggling gangs.

The Interpol general assembly is being held in the UK for the first time in more than 50 years as Sir Keir seeks to reset the country’s approach to border security.

The cash boost takes funding for the UK’s new Border Security Command (BSC) to a total of £150m for new tech hubs, and expanding staffing for enforcement, intelligence and prosecution staff.

Sir Keir is expected to warn the Glasgow summit, which brings together senior police and ministers from nearly 200 Interpol member countries, that “the world needs to wake up to the severity of this challenge”.

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Sir Keir will set out how he plans to draw on his experience as Director of Public Prosecutions, bringing together agencies to tackle international terrorist and drug-smuggling gangs.

He will say: “I was elected to deliver security for the British people and strong borders are a part of that – but security doesn’t stop at our borders.

“There’s nothing progressive about turning a blind eye as men, women and children die in the Channel.

“This is a vile trade that must be stamped out – wherever it thrives.”

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The PM wants to apply a counter-terrorism approach to border security and end “fragmentation” between policing, Border Force and intelligence agencies.

The BSC, led by Martin Hewitt, will be provided with enhanced powers through a new Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill – to make it easier to detect, disrupt and deter those involved in organised immigration crime.

The BSC will also coordinate the work of intelligence agencies and law enforcement with European counterparts and will be getting extra funds for:

  • An extra 300 BSC staff to strengthen global partnerships and deliver new legislation
  • An extra 100 specialist investigators and intelligence officers for the National Crime Agency (NCA), to tackle criminals involved in people smuggling.
  • New NCA technology around advanced data exploitation, to boost collaboration with European partners investigating trafficking networks
  • Creating a new specialist intelligence unit examining information from key police forces.
  • Boosting the Crown Prosecution Service’s ability to deliver charging decisions more quickly on international organised crime cases.

Sir Keir will also announce that the UK government has increased its support for Interpol’s global operations with an extra £6m this year to tackle serious organised crime affecting the UK through drug crime.

The Home Office will also invest £24m in the new financial year to tackle international organised crime affecting the UK including drugs and firearms, fraud, trafficking and exploitation.

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Funds will in part be used to bolster work done by special prosecutors and operational partners in the Western Balkans.

There were 5,448 deaths related to drug poisoning registered in 2023, marking an 11% rise on a year earlier, and the highest level since records began in 1993.

NCA director General Graeme Biggar said there are currently 70 investigations into the gangs or individuals.

“Serious and organised crime causes more harm, to more people, more often than any other national security threat,” he said.

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“Distance, borders and languages are meaningless to criminals. This is why collaborations with Interpol have never been as important as they are today.”

The Conservatives have been contacted for comment.

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Slavery reparations not about transfer of cash

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Is Reform UK's plan to get Farage into No 10 mission impossible?
BBC David Lammy in a suit with a red Remembrance poppy on his lapel. He is talking and moving his hands as he talks.BBC

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy has said the concept of reparations for former colonial nations affected by slavery “is not about the transfer of cash”.

In his first comments since 56 Commonwealth leaders in October signed a joint letter saying “the time has come” for a conversation about reparations, Lammy told the BBC that was not “the debate people are wanting to have”.

“I’m keen to emphasise that there’s a sort of simplistic press debate in part of the media that thinks this is about the transfer of cash,” he said.

Speaking in Nigeria, Lammy said instead the UK wanted to look to developing relations with the continent based on the sharing of skills and science.

“It’s not about the transfer of cash, particularly at a time of a cost of living crisis around much of the globe, and certainly in the UK,” Lammy said.

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“That is not the debate I think that people are wanting to have. They’re wanting to think about the future.”

Speaking in Lagos, a Nigerian port city once central to the transatlantic slave trade, during his first visit to Africa as foreign secretary, Lammy said it was right the UK had previously apologised for its role in slavery.

He said: “When we look back on that period, there were many horrors. It was horrific and horrendous in many, many ways. And there are scars that were left, and let’s be clear – I am the descendant of enslaved people, so I recognise that.

“When we were last in government, we said sorry, and we commemorated the abolition of the slave trade.”

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Lammy acknowledged that Caribbean nations had made a 10-point plan for reparatory justice.

But he said he believed developing nations would benefit as part of that through things such as the transfer of technical skills and science expertise from the UK.

The foreign secretary’s remarks on reparations follow the issue’s discussion last month at CHOGM in Samoa.

The UK has faced growing calls from Commonwealth leaders to pay reparations for the country’s role in the slave trade.

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Before the Samoa summit, Downing Street had said the issue was not due for discussion but Sir Keir Starmer later signed a document calling for talks on “reparatory justice” alongside other Commonwealth leaders.

FCDO Foreign Secretary David Lammy meets with Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata'afa of Samoa at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in SamoaFCDO

David Lammy with Samoa PM Fiame Naomi Mata’afa at the recent CHOGM summit at which some Commonwealth leaders called for a conversation about reparations

Lammy spoke to the BBC at the beginning of a trip in which he will visit Nigeria and South Africa – among the continent’s biggest economies.

He said he wanted to launch a five-month consultation period with African nations.

“I think the UK needs a new approach to Africa,” the foreign secretary said.

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“Much has changed since the last time my party was in government under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, where there was a huge commitment to the continent but it was largely based on development.

“The dynamism, the energy here in Lagos. The potential for growth and opportunity in a range of areas. There is so much potential.

“What I hope over the coming months and years is that the UK can partner more, here in Nigeria and on the continent.

“And that the UK is present once more, because what I’ve heard is that the UK has stepped back somewhat over the last few years, it reflects on our trading figures.

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“There’s much that I think we can do together over the coming months and years.”

Asked about other issues relating to Africa, Lammy said the conflict in Sudan was of “tremendous concern” and said the UK planned to make that a priority during November, when it has the rotational presidency of the United Nations Security Council.

He said: “The loss of life is unbelievable and outstrips other conflicts around the world.

“The humanitarian catastrophe that has now been unfolding for many months is something of tremendous concern.

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“We have just become the chair of the UN Security Council and I intend to make Sudan my priority over the course of this next month.

“I will be in New York raising the issues – both the humanitarian issues, but also how we bring the parties together to try and reach a peaceful outcome.

“It’s been a subject of huge concern that Sudan has not commanded the international attention that it requires, given the way that it’s not just the suffering involved, but the way that it is frankly unpicking stability in the wider region, and will have huge implications potentially if Sudan is to be a a totally failed state.

“Huge implications not just for east Africa and the African continent, but of course for Europe as well.”

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