Friday, October 03, 2025
Labour's leadership contest deferred
The Independent reports that a senior minister has stated that Keir Starmer and his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney would block Andy Burnham from getting on the shortlist of potential candidates for a parliamentary seat, scuppering any potential leadership challenge:
Keir Starmer and his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney would block Andy Burnham from getting on the shortlist of potential candidates for a parliamentary seat, scuppering any potential leadership challenge, a senior minister has claimed.
The Greater Manchester mayor has been accused privately by allies of “overplaying his hand” in positioning himself as a potential replacement for Sir Keir as leader of the Labour Party.
Despite a YouGov poll of Labour voters suggesting he would be a more popular prime minister than Sir Keir, by 33 points to 28, his hopes that the party conference in Liverpool would be a launchpad for any leadership bid fell flat this week.
He left before Sir Keir’s speech began, claiming he did not want to upstage the prime minister, and even withdrew from a fringe meeting where he was due to share a platform with rebel Labour MPs.
But, even if the groundswell of support had given him momentum, he would need to return to Westminster as an MP via a by-election in order to have a shot at the leadership.
However, knowing the risk and Mr Burnham’s plans, Sir Keir and Mr McSweeney – who control who gets on shortlists for by-election candidates – would act to stop him, it is being speculated.
The minister, who is an ally of Mr Burnham, told The Independent: “Keir and Morgan wouldn’t even let him get on the shortlist to be a candidate. They would block him. There’s no way he’s getting back into parliament.”
But the Manchester mayor’s manoeuvres have exposed discontent among senior figures in the government over whether Sir Keir and his inner circle, including Mr McSweeney, are the right people to beat Reform.
“The problem is that we are being run by technocrats when we need warriors,” one minister noted.
The elections in May – with the Scottish and Welsh parliaments and London councils all up for grabs – are now being regarded as “the hard deadline” for the prime minister to prove himself, and a bad set of results for Labour could see the prime minister facing serious challenges to his position.
There was also a feeling that politicians from outside the Westminster bubble, who represent regions, are “constantly being told to get back into your box”.
They added: “That breeds resentment, and Andy [Burnham] has very much tapped into that.”
This doesn't mean of course that the threat to Starmer's leadership has gone away. As the anonymous minister says: “Keir needs to be less worried about Andy [Burnham] and this conference and more what might happen to him in June or July next year.”
Thursday, October 02, 2025
The pandemic profiteer
The Independent reports that the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) had sued PPE Medpro at the High Court, claiming the company had breached the deal because the 25 million gowns it provided were “faulty” by not being sterile:
The company, a consortium led by Lady Mone’s husband, businessman Doug Barrowman, was awarded government contracts by the former Conservative administration to supply PPE during the pandemic, after she recommended it to ministers.
She then acted as the firm’s “big gun” in talks with officials to help get the contract over the line, High Court judge Mrs Justice Cockerill said on Wednesday.
In her 87-page ruling, Mrs Justice Cockerill said the gowns “were not, contractually speaking, sterile, or properly validated as being sterile” which meant they could not be used in the NHS.
The ruling was celebrated by ministers, including health secretary Wes Streeting, who said the government was “coming after every penny owed to our NHS” as part of a plan to claw back money lost during the pandemic.
Families bereaved in the pandemic also welcomed the judgement and called for Baroness Mone to be stripped of her peerage.
But Baroness Mone said the ruling was a win for the “establishment”, while Mr Barrowman said it was a “travesty of justice”.
Both denied wrongdoing and neither gave evidence at the trial in June, while lawyers for the DHSC said they were “not concerned with any profits made by anybody” and that the case was “simply about compliance”.
The government is now recovering the cost of the £121m contract, as well as the costs of transporting and storing the items, which amount to an additional £8.6m.
Court documents from May reveal the DHSC said the gowns were delivered to the UK in 72 shipments between August and October 2020, with £121,999,219.20 paid to PPE Medpro between July and August that year.
In December 2020, the gowns were rejected by DHSC and the company was told it would need to repay the money. But the company did not, and the gowns remained in storage unable to be used.
During the trial, Paul Stanley KC, for the DHSC, said 99.9999 per cent of the gowns should have been sterile under the terms of the contract.
The DHSC claims the contract also specified PPE Medpro had to sterilise the gowns using a “validated process”; this included a CE marking to show it met certain medical standards.
However, according to Mr Stanley, “none of this happened”, and out of the 140 gowns later tested for sterility, 103 failed the test.
Justice has at last been done, though I am still boggling a bit that a Tory peer, who was on the Tory government VIP list of suppliers, is claiming to be a victim of the 'establishment'.
Wednesday, October 01, 2025
Care in crisis
They have argued that Britain needs 350,000 more social care workers to hit international safe staffing levels to care for our elderly:
The GMB union has highlighted staff shortages after experts warned lack of formal social care is driving people to quit their jobs as the numbers providing over 35 hours of unpaid care a week have increased by 70%. Increasingly middle aged women are left filling the gaps to look after parents, spouses or their disabled adult children.
The UK currently has no legal minimum for care work but other countries - such as Japan and Finland – enforce as much as three service users for each employed carer.
For this country to hit this 3:1 ratio would require more than 350,000 new carers.
GMB will move a motion at Labour Party Conference on Tuesday calling for safe staffing levels in care homes to be enshrined in law.
Jo Pitchford, GMB Bolton Care Branch Secretary, will tell the conference in Liverpool: “The UK is still in the midst of a crushing care crisis, with a staffing vacancy black hole of more than 131,000 and care worker pay just pennies above the minimum wage. Two-thirds of care workers have told GMB they cannot continue working until retirement.
“Inadequate and poorly followed guidance on staffing levels leave overworked and underpaid carers suffering attacks and fatigue alone. For the UK not to have legal safe staffing levels in care is a scandalous dereliction of duty to both care workers and our loved ones they care for.”
The Mirror has launched the Fair Care for All campaign calling for social care to be properly staffed and funded. The Government has promised to establish a new “National Care Service” but this has been delayed pending a national review. It comes after successive governments ditched or delayed plans to reform the thorny issue of how to fund social care.
Analysis by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows full-time unpaid carers in England have increased from 1.1 million in 2003/04 to 1.9 million in 2023/24. At the same time applications for formal social care support for our aging population went up by 15% but this has only been met with a 2.5% increase in those receiving it.
There were 335,759 full-time equivalent care workers in care homes in England last year, according to Skills for Care. GMB estimates that this would need to increase by 252,000 up to 587,647 to meet the 3:1 benchmark.
This lack of investment in social care is directly impacting on the NHS and is one of the reasons the Liberal Democrats have called for it to be a government priority. The UK government needs to act much more quickly to address these issues.
