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Cost of green transition could be spread among UK taxpayers, energy secretary suggests

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‘They will bow’: energy secretary challenges Reform and Tories – podcast
Speaking to Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey at the Labour party conference in Liverpool, Miatta Fahnbulleh, the energy secretary, said a mark of her success or failure would be whether she could get bills down and said she would do so. She also challenged Reform UK and the Tories on their climate inaction, saying they would eventually ‘bow’ because they were on the ‘wrong side of history’ Continue reading...

Burnham to announce government-backed body to invest in electricity grid
Exclusive: Creation of GB Grid will be major step towards putting Britain’s utility companies into public control Andy Burnham will take his first major step to putting Britain’s utility companies into public control when, at the Labour conference, he announces a new government-backed body to invest in the electricity grid. The prime minister will use his first speech as party leader to announce the creation of GB Grid, which will use money previously allocated to Great British Energy to compete with privately owned companies such as National Grid. Continue reading...

Mahmood signals rethink on migrants' right to remain
The home secretary has been under pressure to water down the proposals from some Labour MPs, including Angela Rayner.

The Guardian view on the Drumcree parade: ghosts from the past have brought Stormont to the brink | Editorial
A reckless decision to authorise an Orange Order parade with a notorious history has deepened the political crisis in the Northern Ireland executive The last time that the Orange Order successfully marched from Drumcree parish church down the Garvaghy Road, a mainly Catholic part of Portadown, it required a British army presence and a lockdown of locals forced off their own streets. The 1997 parade was preceded by loyalist death threats and followed by nationalist riots, in which more than 160 people were injured. The lengthy track record of lethal violence and disorder associated with the march led the Parades Commission – established the following year as part of the peace process – to ban it. On Sunday, however, in scenes that rolled back the years in deeply unwelcome fashion, the old traumas and hostilities were recklessly allowed to resurface. Unfathomably, after a routine decision

The Guardian view on Britain’s new chancellor: his purpose must be to protect living standards | Editorial
John Healey has offered a vision, but an energy shock will mean households and businesses need to be offered help in the budget In his first speech to Labour party conference as chancellor, John Healey offered prudence with a purpose in a speech stylistically redolent of his former boss Gordon Brown. Mr Healey made fiscal credibility the condition for his goal of turbocharging apprenticeships for young people, funding for unions to reskill workers and spending on defence to create manufacturing jobs. The speech’s imagery was canny: miners, shipyards and submarines give “reindustrialisation” a recognisable Labour history. He also faced the future with a clever line about British workers “harnessing AI, not being outrun by it”. His message was that the “politics of hope” will be earned through “fiscal discipline, good work and through strong industries”. The new Labour chancellor sounded l

Reality pays a visit to the Labour party conference, but it’s the ‘Hope Again’ that kills you
Most MPs are clinging to this year’s Beckettian slogan, but the chancellor brought his own brand of despair UK politics live – latest updates It could be just me, but I’m beginning to find that all this “hope” stuff is getting me down. Everywhere you go at the Labour party conference, you are being urged to “Hope Again”. It’s on the screens in the main hall and on banners in the exhibition area. It’s on T-shirts, balloons and coffee mugs. It’s all just a bit much. Overkill. You now bump into Labour MPs who are visibly collapsing under the strain of having to walk around with an optimistic perma-grin. And the conference is only into its second day. Come Wednesday they will all be on intravenous Valium. What does “Hope Again” even mean? Is it an instruction? Have we all been hoping in a highly unsatisfactory way so far? Are we being sent back to hope school to learn how to be more upbeat?