Starmer to chair cabinet meeting as tensions grow after resignation of top aide — UK politics live | Politics

Good morning. Keir Starmer chairs cabinet this morning having lost his deputy PM, his ambassador to Washington and his strategy chief all within less than a fortnight.

The Commons starts a four-week recess this evening, which will provide some respite. (If MPs are out of Westminster, they are less likely to engage in dissident plotting.) But before they head off, MPs will spend three hours in a debate on Peter Mandelson, which is likely to focus on whether Starmer was right to appoint him in the first place and whether he has been fully candid about what he knew about the Mandelson emails to Jeffrey Epstein when he defended the ambassador at PMQs last week.

And there is more bad news for Starmer this morning. Survation has published a poll of Labour party members, in partnership with LabourList, that suggests:

• Lucy Powell, who was sacked by Starmer as leader of the Commons, has a clear lead over Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, in the contest to be deputy leader. Phillipson is viewed as the loyalist, pro-Starmer candidate, while Powell is seen as the choice for members who want to express some dissent.

All polling is potentially fallible, party membership polling is particularly difficult (because the relatively small number of members makes getting a weighted sample much harder than it is with normal polling), and in some respects the views of party members are fairly irrelevant at the moment. The chances of a leadership challenge anytime soon still look very slight, and even if Powell (seen, rightly or wrongly, as an Andy Burnham proxy), were to win the deputy leadership, the post carries almost no formal power within Labour. Just ask Tom Watson.

Still, the polling doesn’t look good.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Keir Starmer chairs cabinet.

Morning: Starmer meets relatives of people killed at Hillsborough to mark the publication today of the public office (accountablity) law, aka the Hillsborough law.

Morning: Kemi Badenoch is on a visit in London.

11.30am: David Lammy takes questions in the Commons for the first time in his new role as justice secretary.

11.55am: Sarah Jones, the policing minister, gives a speech to the Police Superintendents’ Association.

Noon: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

Lunchtime: Wes Streeting, the health secretary, visits the London Ambulance Service to publicise an NHS winter planning exercise.

After 12.30pm: MPs begin a three-hour emergency debate initiated by the Tory MP David Davis on the “appointment process and the circumstances leading to the dismissal of the former UK ambassador to the US, Lord Mandelson”.

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