Key events
UK schools minister promises to review Sats paper that left pupils ‘in tears’
Nick Gibb, the schools minister, has promised to review a controversial Sats paper, which is said to have left some pupils “in tears”, after teachers and parents expressed widespread concern about the difficulty of the test, Sally Weale reports.
Michael Gove claims Labour’s plan to extend voting rights would ‘downgrade ultimate privilege of British citizenship’
Good morning. Rishi Sunak is off to Iceland later, where he will be attending a rare meeting of leaders from Council of Europe countries (only the fourth of its kind since the Council of Europe was set up after the second world war) and where he will seek to internationalise his government’s “stop the boats” campaign, pushing for changes to the international legal system that might help countries like the UK.
But while Sunak is out of the country, the National Conservatism (NatCon) conference will continue. It is championing a brand of flag, faith and family conservatism that is quite different from the liberal Cameroon conservatism that was dominant in the party at least until Brexit, and quite where Sunak stands on all this is not entirely all clear. (He is a proper social conservative, but he may have qualms about some of the more Trumpian elements of all this, and No 10 strategists do not believe that that oddball culture warmongering is an election winning strategy.)
Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, was once the leading idealogue for Cameroon conservatism, but he is shifted in recent years and this afternoon he is the star turn at the NatCon shindig. Overnight, he has delighted the Daily Mail by launching an attack on the plan being floated by Labour to extend the right to vote to EU nationals and 16- and 17-year-olds. In a letter to Keir Starmer seen by the paper, Gove says:
Why do you think it’s right to downgrade the ultimate privilege of British citizenship – the right to vote in a general election?
What do you say to those who say that your approach is designed to undermine Brexit – and ‘rig’ the voting system for national elections and referendums?
Is it still your view that the ‘age of adulthood in most cases’ is 18, or is this another area where you have changed your approach?
Of course, as levelling up secretary Gove played a major role in the introduction of the Elections Act, which arguably restricted “the ultimate privilege of British citizenship” because it said people could not vote without photo ID. Yesterday Jacob Rees-Mogg told the NatCon conference that this amounted to gerrymandering. With luck, Gove will be asked to respond today.
In an LBC interview yesterday Keir Starmer stressed that the party has not taken a final decision about extending the franchise, but he explained why he could see the case for extending it to EU nationals who have been living in the UK for a long time, and to 16- and 17-year-olds.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Rishi Sunak chairs cabinet. He is also hosting a Farm to Fork summit on food security at No 10.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
11.30am: James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, gives evidence to the Lords protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland committee.
11.45am: Pat Cullen, the Royal College of Nursing general secretary, gives a speech to the RCN conference.
2pm: Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, speaks at the National Conservatism conference in London.
Afternoon: Sunak attends the Council of Europe summit in Iceland.
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