That’s it from us
That’s all from the Politics Hub today.
You can catch up on all the day’s news by looking at the key points above – or scroll down through the post below to see how it all unfolded.
We’ll be back tomorrow morning. Goodbye!
France to recognise Palestine as a state – as Starmer says he will call Macron for ’emergency’ talks
Emmanuel Macron has said France will recognise Palestine as a state this September.
The French president has announced that his country will make the announcement at the UN General Assembly.
It comes amid growing pressure on Sir Keir Starmer to recognise Palestine immediately.
147 of the 193 member states of the UN recognise Palestine, and among them, half of the G20 also do – including Russia, China, India, Mexico and Turkey.
But the UK is joined by the US, France, Germany and other allies in not currently doing so.
In his post explaining the decision, Macron called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the release of the hostages and for much more humanitarian aid to reach those in the territory.
Starmer: ‘Statehood is an inalienable right of the Palestinian people’
It comes just hours after Starmer announced he will be holding an “emergency call” with Macron, as well as the German chancellor, tomorrow.
In his statement – which you can see in full in our earlier post here – the PM said the world is “witnessing a humanitarian catastrophe”.
He also said that the situation has “reached new depths and continues to worsen”.
Addressing whether he will recognise Palestine, Starmer added that he is “clear that statehood is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people”.
But he has repeatedly stated that he sees this as coming as part of a rebuilding of Palestine, and that it will not happen immediately.
“A ceasefire will put us on a path to the recognition of a Palestinian state,” he said a short while ago.
Macron and Starmer also discussed the recognition of Palestinian statehood during a news conference earlier this month – as the French president visited the UK.
The battle lines have been drawn ahead of the doctors’ strike tomorrow – but now it’s getting nasty
By Ashish Joshi, health correspondent
I was on Sophy Ridge’s show last week as negotiations between Wes Streeting and the BMA were underway to avert strike action. I was asked to stick my neck out and call it. I got it spectacularly wrong.
I looked at the dynamics: a Labour government, a health secretary who brought to an end two years of industrial action by (as they were then) junior doctors, an ambitious programme of NHS reform with a universally acclaimed 10-Year Plan. All positives.
And this 10-Year Plan relies heavily on the goodwill of the NHS workforce – including resident doctors, as they are now known. So surely, Streeting would do everything in his power to stop resident doctors walking out again, I gambled.
He says he did. The BMA says he did not.
But ultimately, Streeting does not have what the resident doctors want. Money.
The BMA is demanding a 26% pay restoration. They say resident doctors have been underpaid for 17 years, that these medics earn around £18 per hour, and they want that raised to £22 per hour.
Looking at it like that, it looks reasonable. But the health secretary says that they have already had a pay rise of nearly 29%. Put it like that and the optics don’t look good, and that could explain why there is considerably less support from the public for these strikes.
Expect the language to become more accusatory. Fingers are being jabbed. Each side blaming the other for putting patient lives at risk.
Streeting is determined to ensure these strikes do not have the same damaging impact that the last round did.
He is going to do this by allowing local NHS trust leaders to make local decisions. They know and understand their staff and patients better than central command. So, they will be able to decide which non-critical patients can still attend their appointments.
They will argue a cancer patient attending a pre-arranged appointment can be deemed urgent. So hopefully fewer patients will have their appointments cancelled.
This did not happen before. Almost all non-critical care was temporarily paused. A&E stayed open, but that was about it.
The BMA will argue that this approach is unsafe for patients. With resident doctors’ striking and senior colleagues back-filling, there is not enough staff to protect patients from harm.
So this gives us an idea of how deeply entrenched both sides are right now.
The BMA is trying to reverse what it says is 17 years of underpayment. Meanwhile, Streeting will be furious that his plans to fix a broken NHS are being undermined – and he will not want to be held to ransom.
‘People want to hear Britain’s voice on Gaza’
Alastair Campbell has said he believes that the UK government should recognise Palestine as a state and use its voice on the world stage to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza.
The former spokesperson to Sir Tony Blair said he “would like [ministers] to [recognise Palestine] and I think that they should”.
But he adds: “I’d like to see that along with other countries doing the same thing, and along with a credible peace plan being put together.”
147 of the 193 member states of the UN recognise Palestine, and among them, half of the G20 also do – including Russia, China, India, Mexico and Turkey.
But the UK is joined by the US, France, Germany and other allies in not currently doing so.
Sir Keir Starmer has said he would like to do so, as part of a two-state solution.
Speaking to the Politics Hub with Sophy Ridge, Campbell says there’s “so much focus” on Donald Trump, and that the US president “likes to cut other people out”.
He explains: “It’s almost as if the only power, it feels, in this debate is Israel itself – where I think it’s abusing that power to the point of genocide and certainly crimes against humanity – and Trump.
“Well, you know, the other countries are not powerless.”
Campbell says that countries such as the UK may be “less powerful” as the UN has been “sort of cut down”.
But he adds that he still believes Britain “has a voice and people want to hear that voice”.
Corbyn’s new party is a sign of politics ‘becoming more fragmented’
Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former spokesman, has claimed that a new party launched by Jeremy Corbyn may not be a significant political threat .
However, he tells the Politics Hub With Sophy Ridge it is a sign of politics becoming “more fragmented”.
The former press secretary says that the best way for Labour to manage both Reform and the new, as yet unnamed, party is “just to govern well and do the things that they said they were going to do”.
Campbell acknowledges that he has “no doubt Jeremy Corbyn has a following… a certain appeal to a certain demographic”.
He says he thinks the former Labour leader has chosen to launch his new party now because Gaza “is really back in the news”.
But he repeats the best way to avoid this becoming a problem for Sir Keir Starmer is to “govern well and have the British people understand that they’re governing for them”.
He concludes: “Jeremy Corbyn will do what Jeremy Corbyn does.”
YouGov: ‘There is an opening for Corbyn’s party – but it’s congested’
“There is a space” for Jeremy Corbyn’s new party to fill in British politics – but it’s “congested”, the director of political analysis for YouGov has said.
Patrick English told the Politics Hub with Sophy Ridge that “there is a lot of frustration among the left block of voters in British politics right now, many of whom voted for Labour at the last election, but many of whom also voted for the Green Party”.
He says this frustration comes from the Labour Party’s position in government on things such as the winter fuel payment, disability payments and the situation in Gaza.
“There is an opening for a party like this, but the Green Party have been occupying that sort of political space quite well until now,” he adds.
English also says a new Corbyn party would be taking votes both from Labour and the Greens and “that’s an important thing”.
YouGov carried out at the start of the month – around the time Zarah Sultana announced she would be founding a new party – shows that there is substantial support for a new political group.
You can see the findings of that poll in full below…
Corbyn-led party would be popular with young voters
English says this 18% figure “is significant” and that when the pollster dug into this figure, it found a third of those who said they would back a new Corbyn party had voted Labour at the last election.
Touching on the Labour government’s plans to lower the voting age to 16, English explains that he would expect Labour to be ahead, but that “a Corbyn party would do quite well among that demographic”.
Among 18 to 24-year-olds, support for a Corbyn-led party is around 36%, while it is a much lower 10% among those aged 65 and older.
He also explains that there “are important geographical differences”.
Around 30% of people in London would be open to voting for a Corbyn-led party, but this falls to around 16% for those in Wales.
‘It is hard to see a hopeful future in such dark times’
Sir Keir Starmer has said he will hold an “emergency call” with the leaders of France and Germany tomorrow to discuss the situation in Gaza.
The prime minister has just released a statement in which he said the “suffering and starvation unfolding in Gaza is unspeakable and indefensible”.
He went on to say that it has been “grave for some time”, but that it has now “reached new depths and continues to worsen”.
The PM said: “We are witnessing a humanitarian catastrophe.
“I will hold an emergency call with E3 partners tomorrow, where we will discuss what we can do urgently to stop the killing and get people the food they desperately need while pulling together all the steps necessary to build a lasting peace.”
He said that “we all agree” on the need for Israel to “change course and allow aid that is desperately needed to enter Gaza without delay”.
Starmer went on: “It is hard to see a hopeful future in such dark times. But I must reiterate my call for all sides to engage in good faith, and at pace, to bring about an immediate ceasefire and for Hamas to unconditionally release all hostages.”
Turning to the issue of Palestinian statehood – and the calls for Starmer to recognise this immediately, the PM said: “We are clear that statehood is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people.
“A ceasefire will put us on a path to the recognition of a Palestinian state and a two-state solution which guarantees peace and security for Palestinians and Israelis.”
The left has mobilised – and we should take them seriously
It’s happening. A new party on the left – fronted by Jeremy Corbyn and Zara Sultana.
Today does feel like a significant moment. The left has mobilised.
And we should take them seriously – not just because Jeremy Corbyn is one of the most recognisable faces in British politics.
We speak a lot about Reform taking votes on the right… but polling by More in Common shows a Corbyn-led party could win 10% of the vote, which could really hurt Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.
But if this new party is going to be the disruptive force that it wants to be, it won’t be easy.
Because setting up a new party from scratch, is tough. Just ask Change UK.
Even Nigel Farage went through UKIP and the Brexit Party before managing to win a handful of seats with Reform UK.
They haven’t registered the party yet. They haven’t come up with a name.
That will apparently be decided at their first ever party conference… which they don’t yet have a date for either.
And with a mix of former Labour MPs and the Gaza Independents sitting for the new party in Parliament – what will their whipping arrangements be?
Support for Palestine is something that unites them… but they’ll need a policy platform too. Getting all of this right won’t be easy… and it’s been a bumpy launch.
But if the more established parties face insurgents on the right AND the left, well, that could really shake things up.
Politics Hub With Sophy Ridge is live
Our weeknight politics show is now live on Sky News.
Joining the show tonight is Alastair Campbell, the former spokesperson for Labour prime minister Tony Blair.
Sophy will also speak to Patrick English, the director of political analytics at YouGov.
And on our panel tonight are Rhun ap Iorwerth, the leader of Plaid Cymru, and former government adviser Mercy Muroki.
You can watch live in the stream at the top of this page.
Corbyn claims 80,000 people signed up to ‘help build’ new political party in five hours
As we’ve been reporting, Jeremy Corbyn has today launched his new political party – which remains nameless.
In a website called ‘Your Party’, he and co-founder Zarah Sultana offered people the opportunity to sign up for updates on the group.
He now claims more than 80,000 people have signed up in five hours.
Corbyn said: “In just over five hours, more than 80,000 people have signed up to help build a new kind of political party.
“We believe in democracy — and the establishment are running scared.
“We’re offering people something very precious: hope.”
