Tory leadership candidate calls Musk’s comments ‘absurd’ but says he won’t quit X – UK politics live | Politics

Patrick Butler

Patrick Butler is the Guardian’s social policy editor, and he has this story of social media getting the RSPB into hot water:

The RSPB has been criticised by the English charities watchdog over social media posts in which it accused named government ministers of being “liars” for watering down environmental protections.

The Charity Commission said the tweets a year ago were “inappropriate” in “tone and nature”, they had not been signed off at the correct level and the RSPB could have done more to prevent them going out.

But it said it would take no further action against the charity, having been satisfied that the RSPB had taken sufficient remedial action internally to ensure it would not repeat what the regulator called “party political tweets”.

The posts, published on X, named the former prime minister Rishi Sunak, former environment secretary Thérèse Coffey and the former levelling up secretary Michael Gove, adding: “You said you wouldn’t weaken environmental protections. And yet that’s just what you are doing. You lie, and you lie, and you lie again.”

Read more here: RSPB criticised by watchdog for accusing politicians of being liars on X

Asked about his leadership campaign, Mel Stride said that one of the challenges facing the Conservative party was that the average age of its voters is 63, which he described as “untenable”.

He told listeners to Times Radio.

The fact that the average conservative voter is age 63 that is completely untenable. It is not something that you can solve by leaping on some magical ideological square. It is something you solve through deep, hard work over a sustained period of time, and I believe that I understand that, and I’m the right person to take that forward.

Speaking on Times Radio about the Conservative leadership contest, candidate Mel Stride said he was not surprised by a polling result which suggested that three in five British people asked didn’t care about who the next party leader would be, saying many people would have considered the way the party had been fighting itself “pretty selfish”.

He told listeners of Times Radio:

Not a huge amount of surprise, because I think, you know, we have been a party that has been fighting itself and been introspective in a way that most people from the outside would have found pretty selfish.

Without listing any, Stride said “We did some great things when we were in government, absolutely great things,” and then continued:

There are areas where we failed to deliver. And so we have a lot of work to do now to unite our party and to come forward with the right policy platform.

To reach out both to those that were drawn by Reform UK, but also never to forget that we lost people to Labour and the Liberal Democrats [too]. And now we’ve got five years basically in order to assess that policy platform and to get that right.

He said:

We’ve got to rebuild our party, and we’ve got to get a hearing with the British electorate, and we’re going to do that through unity, and we’re going to do that through a lot of listening and a lot of hard work and working out the answer to a lot of fundamental and difficult questions.

Mel Stride, shadow work and pensions secretary and candidate for the Conservative leadership election, has said that Labour’s approach to public sector pay showed there are “flashing red lights around the approach that they’re taking”, warning that pay settlements could drive future rises in inflation.

Figures published earlier today showed that UK inflation rose to 2.2% its first increase since December.

Speaking on Times Radio, and asked if the last government, that Stride was part of, were responsible for the rise, he told listeners:

The path of inflation is not a sort of nice, neat, linear line. So I think a sort of small uptick to 2.2% from 2%, when the market was expecting 2.3%, largely due to baseline effects around the way in which energy prices have moved today compared to about a year ago, is not a cause for alarm bells to be ringing.

Having said that, I think what is concerning is what is actually in the services elements of inflation, which fell from 5.7% to 5.2% which was welcome, but it is still high. And within that you’ve got wage inflation.

Now, what this Labour government has done is stepped in and very promptly started paying out lots of fairly hefty wage increases, including the junior doctors at 22% without any commensurate requirement for productivity improvements to go alongside that. And my fear would be that this in itself may drive that services component of inflation.

The implications of that could be inflation higher and longer than expected, and of course, interest rates, therefore perhaps having to stay higher for longer, with knock on effects with mortgage holders and businesses and so on.

So I don’t think we’re entirely out of the woods. It is in the government’s hands, and I think there are flashing red lights around the approach that they’re taking to pay in the economy.

Sarah Olney, Liberal Democrat MP for Richmond Park and the party’s treasury spokesperson, has said the inflation figures are “a stark reminder that the cost of living crisis is not over.”

Speaking on LBC news, she said:

A lot of this rise is being driven still by energy prices, and people are still seeing the impact of those increased prices in their monthly bills and at the checkout when they pay for their food shop.

And so many people are suffering from big increases in their mortgages as a result of the interest rate rises we saw off the back of the Liz Truss disastrous mini-budget.

She said the Liberal Democrats were demanding real action from the government.

We need to invest in our farmers to bring down food prices. We need to save families money by expanding free school meals to all children in poverty.

We want to see a one year freeze to rail fares, because we know that the inflation announcement today is going to feed through to rail fare increases in January, and that’s something that will concern a lot of people already paying eye-watering amounts to travel on the trains.

And we want to see, as well, a real commitment to insulating homes, because that, more than anything else, can help to bring down people’s monthly bills, their energy costs.

Olney’s line on Truss is likely to irk the former prime minister, who has been very strident in public in rejecting suggestions that her economic policy led to mortgage rises, even getting a reference to her mini-budget deleted from the King’s speech.

Darren Jones, Labour’s chief secretary to the Treasury, has responded to those inflation figures, saying “The new government is under no illusion as to the scale of the challenge we have inherited, with many families still struggling with the cost of living. That is why we are taking the tough decisions now to fix the foundations of our economy so we can rebuild Britain and make every part of the country better off.”

UK inflation rises to 2.2% in first increase since December

Larry Elliott

Britain’s annual inflation rate rose to 2.2% last month – its first increase since December last year – as domestic energy bills fell by less than in July 2023.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that the government’s preferred measure of the cost of living climbed again after two months at the Bank of England’s 2% target.

The increase – although expected by the Bank and the City – was slightly smaller than the rise to 2.3% anticipated.

Prices fell by 0.2% in July – helped by cheaper hotel stays – but this was smaller than the 0.4% decrease in prices in July 2023, when energy bills dropped sharply, meaning that the headline rate of inflation increased.

The ONS’s chief economist, Grant Fitzner, said: “Inflation ticked up a little in July as although domestic energy costs fell, they fell by less than a year ago. This was partially offset by hotel costs, which fell in July after strong growth in June.”

Read more here: UK inflation rises to 2.2% in first increase since December

Conservative leadership candidate Mel Stride has described Elon Musk’s interventions into British politics as “absurd and deeply, deeply unhelpful”, but said that he would continue to use the platform.

Citing Musk spreading a completely fake Telegraph story that rioters were to be dispatched to the Falkland Islands and the billionaire’s claim that civil war was inevitable in the UK, Stride said:

Elon Musk, look, I think you know his comments about us sending people to the Falklands, which was untrue, his comments suggesting that we’re on the brink of a civil war in this country is absurd and deeply, deeply unhelpful.

I have concerns about X generally, in terms of the fairly permissive way, permissive approach, should I say, to those that are able to further all sorts of views, including conspiracy theories, on that platform.

And I do think that one of the takeaways from the very, very unfortunate incidents that have happened in recent days and weeks is that we do need to look afresh at social media in terms of policing content, in terms of consequence for those platform providers that allow some of these ideas to percolate, because they do have real world consequences, as we saw in our streets.

Asked if he himself was considering quitting the social media platform on Times Radio, Stride ruled it out:

Me personally? No, certainly not. At the moment, I know some fellow colleagues across the House actually have been debating that, and I think some of them might have actually done that. In my case, I will stay on the site.

But I do think we do need to have a long and long, careful, measured look at the way in which sites like X are feeding into issues like conspiracy theories, misinformation and violence on our streets.

The shadow work and pensions secretary said the situation might be improved by the Online Safety Act introduced by the last government although, he conceded “the actual teeth of that don’t bite until next year.”

Welcome to our rolling coverage of UK politics for Wednesday. Here are your headlines …

It is Martin Belam with you today. You can email me if you spot typos, errors or omissions – martin.belam@theguardian.com.

Neither Labour or the Conservatives sent anybody out on the media round this morning, and we are very much becalmed in summer recess. I suspect “on diary” domestic news will be thin on the ground today, unless you are campaigning to be Tory leader. All I’ll say is if you are a backbench MP with a bee in your bonnet about something, it might turn out to be a great week to send out press releases about it.