Labour party conference live: Keir Starmer’s speech to offer ‘light at end of tunnel’ as Reeves considers benefits cut

Polling guru Sir John Curtice has been speaking to Radio 4’s Today programme to offer his opinion about Sir Keir Starmer’s speech this afternoon.

The expert said the prime minister has “never been a popular leader” and has “two weaknesses”.

He said: “He’s never been very successful at doing what George Bush called the vision thing.

“What is the Labour Party for, what his government trying to achieve, what kid of Britain does he want that lack of narrative is being exposed.”

Mr Curtice also said the PM has “not always had a strong political antenna, and that’s been exposed in the last week or two”.

Despite the criticism, he said it is still too early to call off a second Labour term at the next general election. But insisted “what we’ve seen in the last few weeks is perhaps not surprising”.

Labour has been accused of censoring pro-Palestinian activists at its party conference after ordering a group to remove the words “genocide” and “apartheid” from the listing for an event about Israel’s war in Gaza.

The party was condemned by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) for refusing to promote its fringe event titled “Justice for Palestine: Confronting genocide and ending apartheid”.

The event has been listed in the brochure as simply “Justice for Palestine”.

Our political correspondent Archie Mitchell reports:

Shadow health secretary Victoria Atkins has been speaking to Kay Burley on Sky News as part of the media round this morning.

Unsurprisingly, the Tory MP has criticised Labour after nurses in England rejected the government’s 5.5 per cent pay offer.

She said: “The Labour government has lost control of the independent public sector pay process.”

Ms Atkins insisted she was warned about an “impact across the workforce” of awarding “inflation-busting pay rises” to one part of the health sector.

She added: “Is it any wonder that having given this inflation-busting pay rise with no reform, no productivity improvements, for junior doctors in the summer, that nurses and other health care professionals are now asking why they are not valued in the same way.”

Pat McFadden has said that everybody in the Middle East needs to be able to live in peace, after the death toll from Israeli strikes on Lebanon has risen to nearly 500 people.

The chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster told LBC: “What needs to happen in the long run is that everybody in this region can live in security. We tend to focus on the immediate hostilities, the immediate outbreak, and I understand in a news sense why we do that.

“But if you’re asking me about the longer term, we want everybody in that particular part where all this shelling is going on at the moment to be able to return home in peace.

“There’s 60,000 Israelis who have not been able to live in their homes for the best part of a year now because of this back and forth shelling from Hezbollah and southern Lebanon, but also the people in southern Lebanon to be able to live in peace without this threat of constant war back and forth over the border.”

He later added: “Right now it is the most dangerous situation that I can remember in the Middle East for a long, long time.”

Pat McFadden has denied that there are plans to change pub licensing rules to force them to shut early.

Speaking to Nick Ferrari on LBC’s Breakfast programme, he denied a report in the Telegraph that venues could be targeted under measures to cut down on harmful drinking.

Andrew Gwynne, the public health minister, had told a Labour Party fringe event that the government was considering “tightening up the hours of operation” of bars and pubs.

Mr McFadden, the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, said: “I don’t think there’s any plan to shut the pubs early. The pub is a great part of British life. I don’t have a drink during conference, partly so I can look forward to having a nice one when the conference is over and I hope that the pub will be open when I go in.”

He told Mr Ferrari that his drink of choice after the conference ends on Wednesday would be a pint of Guinness.

It comes as public health minister Andrew Gwynne said the government is considering “tightening up the hours of operation” of bars and pubs as part of an attempt to improve health and combat anti-social behaviour.

Pubs could be forced to call last orders early under new measures to target harmful drinking.

Public health minister Andrew Gwynne said the government is considering “tightening up the hours of operation” of bars and pubs as part of an attempt to improve health and combat anti-social behaviour.

But Mr Gwynne insisted Labour is “not the fun police” nor “supernanny”, instead saying the measures would be driven by both moral and economic arguments.

Our political correspondent Millie Cooke has the full story:

Ahead of Sir Keir Starmer’s speech, several prominent MPs are offering their opinions on what has been dubbed as a “really big historic moment”.

First to go is John McDonnell, who had his Labour whip removed for voting to scrap the two-child benefit cap.

The former shadow chancellor, who is now serving as an independent MP, is unimpressed by the narrative of the party and has compared the wording used during the conference by ministers to George Osborne.

Reacting to the government’s crachdown on benefit fraud, he told Radio 4’s Today programme: “I don’t say this lightly, but if you close your eyes and listen to he language being used, it’s almost like George Osborne speaking again in 2010.

“The rhetoric of ‘tough choices, painful decisions’ – it’s literally replica of a speech made by George Osborne.”