Philip Barton gives evidence to foreign affairs committe, with Morgan McSweeney due later this morning, ahead of vote this afternoon
Good morning. The former US president Lyndon Johnson is credited with saying the most important skill in politics is knowing how to count, meaning that ultimately what matters is being able to win a vote. But sometimes in politics what matters just as much, or even more, is the ability to win the argument. Today Keir Starmer will be tested on both these measures.
Winning the vote should be easy. Here is our overnight preview story by Pippa Crerar on the events setting up today’s vote on a motion tabled by Kemi Badenoch, as well as MPs from five other opposition parties (the Lib Dems, the SNP, the DUP, Restore Britain, TUV) and a string of independents, referring Starmer to the privileges committee.
Labour MPs are on a three-line whip to vote against the motion, and the government should win easily. “We’ll vote it down,” Jonathan Reynolds, the chief whip, told Sky News last night.
Badenoch, who will be opening the debate, is hoping to persuade MPs, and the public, that Starmer lied to the Commons over the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US, just as Boris Johnson lied to MPs about Partygate. That will be quite a challenge; the case for Starmer deliberately misleading MPs is flimsy, and the comparison to Johnson is wide of the mark. Labour is saying the vote today is just a stunt ahead of next week’s local elections. On the Today programme this morning Alex Burghart, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, dismissed this claim, saying: “There aren’t any political games going on here.” He is lucky MPs can’t get referred to the privileges committee for lying to Radio 4.
