Wes Streeting attacks centre-left for ‘excuses culture’ of blaming civil service

Wes Streeting has criticised the centre-left for an “excuses culture” that blames the UK’s slow pace of change on Whitehall officials and interest groups.As No 10 prepares to make a fresh attempt at civil service reform, the health secretary said politicians were not “simply at the mercy of forces outside of our control”.“Where there aren’t levers, we build them. Where there are barriers, we bulldoze them. Where there is poor performance, we challenge it,” he told the Institute for Government conference

China’s London super-embassy almost certain to get go-ahead next week

A vast new Chinese embassy complex in east London is almost certain to be formally approved next week despite renewed worries among Labour MPs about potential security risks and the effect on Hong Kong and Uyghur exiles in the capital.The green light for the super-embassy at Royal Mint Court near Tower Bridge would smooth relations before Keir Starmer’s visit to China, which is expected to take place at the end of January, but officials insist there has been no political input in the planning process.It would be a controversial move, with a series of Labour MPs expressing concern in the Commons on Tuesday over the plans for the complex, which spans 20,000 sq metres.Answering an urgent question from the shadow Home Office minister, Alicia Kearns, the planning minister, Matthew Pennycook, whose department is responsible for the process, said he could not comment on what was a “quasi-judicial” process.Kearns secured the question after a report in the Daily Telegraph that unredacted plans for the embassy showed a network of more than 200 subterranean rooms, one of them alongside communication cables taking information to the City of London

UK politics: Tories call for block on Chinese super-embassy amid claims of hidden chamber near sensitive cables – as it happened

Responding to Pennycook, Alicia Kearns, a shadow Home Office minister, said she was disappointed by the fact that she just got a “technocratic history lesson” from the minister.She went on:208 secret rooms and a hidden chamber just one metre from cable serving City of London and the British people. That is what the unredacted plans tell us that the Chinese Communist Party has planned for its new embassy if the government gives them the go ahead. Indeed, we now know they plan to demolish the wall between the cables and their embassy cables, in which our economy is dependent.Kearns said this would mean the Chinese could have access to “cables carrying millions of British people’s emails and financial data”, and she said this meant they would have “a launchpad for economic warfare against our nation”

Wes breaks cover to challenge Keir – without even mentioning him | John Crace

There must be a happy medium somewhere. Some ministers you can’t get to shut up, others refuse to say a word. On balance, Keir Starmer probably prefers it when they say next to nothing. On the grounds there is probably less that can go wrong. He likes it best when he is the one doing the talking as he is more in control of the message

End of western alliance means UK must be bolder, says Chatham House director

Donald Trump has ended the western alliance, requiring the UK to adopt a bolder, more independent foreign policy towards the US and China, the director of Britain’s most prestigious foreign policy thinktank has said.Delivering her analysis in her annual lecture, Bronwen Maddox, the director of Chatham House, said: “The risk of staying silent and not standing up for the principles that have underpinned the liberal international order is that those principles do indeed become an article of history and not the foundation of the world we want to live in.”She added: “The UK has performed a balancing act of some agility but to the point where it is hard to discern the policy.”Maddox described Trump’s impulsiveness, taste for military action and rejection of international law as amounting to a revolution. She said US allies “must now contemplate what was unthinkable: to defend themselves against the US, in both trade and security”

New proposed Ukip logo compared to iron cross used by Nazi regime

A proposed new Ukip logo likened to the black military cross associated with the German empire and later the Nazis is being considered by electoral authorities.A previous application by Ukip, which was once led by Nigel Farage, was rejected last November after the Electoral Commission deemed it as offensive.That application featured a black cross with a sword and a spear running through it. Ukip, which has increasingly shifted to the far right in recent years, has now submitted a new application, which appears similar but is without the sword. It includes the word Ukip, with “The New Right” underneath