Presented by Lloyds Banking Group
London Playbook
By SAM BLEWETT
with BETHANY DAWSON
Good Monday morning. This is Sam Blewett.
DRIVING THE DAY
I READ THE NEWS TODAY, OH BOY: There’s a massive week ahead for the prospect of peace in Ukraine … and conflict in the Labour Party, as Rachel Reeves’ ax-wielding spring statement looms. It’s the domestic front that is occupying Keir Starmer the most this morning. The prime minister is going out to pre-sell Wednesday’s not-a-budget — an uphill battle considering the list of Labour MPs’ woes has been growing by the day, and Cabinet tensions appear to be spilling into the open. Prepare for your re-education.
Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire: The prime minister is due on BBC Radio 5 Live at 8.30 a.m. to talk up plans to fix the “pothole plague” afflicting drivers and cyclists alike. Starmer is ordering councils that will start receiving a share of a £1.6 billion pot to patch up the roads to use it or lose it.
They had to count them all: Local authorities that fail to publish annual progress reports (in a very Morgan McSweeney play to demonstrate delivery) could see their portion of the final £125 million tranche of funding diverted to better-performing councils. “It’s about proving to people that change is happening,” as one official put it to Playbook. “We cannot have a situation where we spend billions on this and no one sees the difference.” Expect the PM to sell the scheme from a branch of Halfords, followed by a pooled broadcast interview.
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Just don’t mention … the woes in council funding, about which there’s yet another Local Government Association report out today.
And let’s face it: the PM knows full well he’s going to be peppered with questions about the holes in Whitehall funding that may loom into view this Wednesday. Reeves’ spring statement (ahead of June’s full spending review) will bring an Office for Budget Responsibility forecast expected to slash growth forecasts for the year by half to around 1 percent … and the impact assessment of planned welfare cuts that may add to a brewing Labour rebellion.
Paging Marcus Rashford: MPs’ ears will prick up again at the Times’ splash, which includes the claim that Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has suggested ending universal free meals for infants — to slash school spending by £500 million and help the Treasury find cuts of up to 11 percent across Whitehall. As well as means testing the meals, Aubrey Allegretti reports Phillipson has offered to cut funding for free period products in schools and to take the ax to music, dance and PE schemes. In another brutal briefing against a woman in the Cabinet, a Treasury insider tells him Phillipson and three other departments could be deploying a “bleeding stumps” strategy to creatively avoid cuts by presenting policies too difficult to cut.
But but but: “None of this is on the table,” one education official bewildered by the claims emanating from No. 11 insisted to Playbook. They said the Department for Education is instead making the case for those policies to survive the “zero-based” line-by-line review ordered by Reeves so she doesn’t have to breach (or further tinker with) her self-imposed fiscal rules. Lobby hacks will no doubt try to get to the bottom of this today. Whatever the truth, it doesn’t exactly signal glee around the Cabinet table.
Wrack and ruin: The i’s Will Hazell also hears from a Whitehall insider that “no part of the [DfE] has been looking happy” as it braces for cuts, while a senior figure in the schools sector tells him they’re bracing for the “worst financial situation for a generation.” It makes the paper’s splash. Proposed NASUWT General Secretary Matt Wrack will be gearing up to fight … and he’s not the only union leader who is unhappy.
Sour in a union: Cabinet Office supremo Pat McFadden is writing to departments this week to tell them to slash their administrative budgets by 15 percent to save a desired £2 billion a year by 2029-30. FDA union General Secretary Dave Penman reckons that could lead to 50,000 civil servants losing their jobs … though one Whitehall official dismissed this in a message as “made up numbers on headcount.” Public and Commercial Services union General Secretary Fran Heathcote said the “arbitrary” cuts will be met with “a lot of opposition” because they’ll hit frontline services from job centers to HMRC phone lines, and hinder efforts to cut the asylum backlog.
Talking of which: Asylum seekers will be housed in hotels and other temporary accommodation for years to come, according to a document from the Treasury’s new Office for Value for Money seen by the Times’s Matt Dathan. Accordingly, the Home Office has been ordered to find cheaper providers.
Back to job losses: The Times’s Max Kendix hears that there will be “multiple thousands” of redundancies across the rail network as Great British Railways takes train-operating companies into public ownership and ministers start pruning back the “duplication” of teams.
Heidi, hi: That could add to the list of flashpoints with the unions that Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander is eager to face down. She’s out on the Halfords visit with the PM and is taking on the morning broadcast round for the government right now, including the 8.10 a.m. slot on Today.
Heidi, bye: Alexander will then dash back to the Commons. The government is expected to give a statement this afternoon about Friday’s power outage fiasco at Heathrow Airport, which is under investigation. National Grid Chief Executive John Pettigrew told the FT that while one substation was knocked out by the blaze, two others were capable of providing enough power to the airport — raising fresh questions about the near 24-hour shutdown on Friday that canceled more than 1,300 flights.
DOING X WHILE Y, PART I: There’s fresh Labour anger emanating from revelations that Reeves is considering reducing the £800 million digital services tax on tech giants, to get a (tariff-avoiding) trade deal done with the U.S. this month. Serial critic Rachael Maskell told the Guardian she’d be concerned if the broligarchy was “let … off the hook” while disabled people pay to fill a funding black hole. Fellow Labour backbencher Clive Lewis railed against the attempt to “appease” the White House. The row splashes the paper.
Doing X while Y, part II: The Mail goes big on criticism of Reeves for accepting a corporate box at a Sabrina Carpenter concert this month. The chancellor defended taking the tickets on security grounds on Sunday, but former NEC member Mish Rahman criticized “Scrounger Reeves” for taking the free tickets while her fiscal rules hit “the most vulnerable.” Maskell (her again) said it’d be “indefensible” to accept the freebie.
Taking the piste: The Tories were raging … but shadow Cabinet member Andrew Griffith was also revealed to have bagged discounted Davos ski passes and BAFTA tickets. Last night on the BBC’s Westminster Hour he tried to justify the time on the piste as necessary to get out of the “Westminster bubble” and engage with Swiss parliamentarians. He’s out on the morning round trying to make the claim stick that Wednesday will be an “emergency budget.”
So how about this? Labour MPs have suggested to the i’s Kitty Donaldson that the Treasury should go after the near-sacred triple lock on state pensions next. “I can’t see that it remains sacrosanct, it’s got to be looked at,” said one, while another questioned: “Why should disabled people bear the brunt of the cuts? They haven’t caused or contributed to any of the crises that we are in.”
WHAT THE TREASURY WILL BE WATCHING: Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey will give a lecture on growth in the U.K. economy at the University of Leicester. It’ll kick off at 6 p.m. and he’ll take questions after — details here.
What the Treasury won’t be watching: The Liz Truss-linked Growth Commission is unveiling a bunch of recommendations for the spring statement at a Westminster event from 10 a.m. The former PM popping back up to remind the public about her mini-budget omnishambles is the perfect excuse for Reeves to drive home to restless Labour MPs just why she doesn’t want to fiddle with her fiscal rules — not that she needs one.
MEANWHILE IN WAR
DEALING IN THE DESERT: Donald Trump’s negotiators hold talks with their Ukrainian and Russian counterparts in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh … while, very separately, British and French military chiefs are intensifying efforts to pull together a “coalition of the willing” peacekeeping force for Ukraine.
Who to trust? The U.S. is talking up the chances of “real progress” in the desert today, and the U.S. president wants to secure an initial 30-day ceasefire by Easter. But the Kremlin was dampening hopes by suggesting this is just the “beginning of this path,” as the BBC’s Frank Gardner writes in his top primer for the negotiations.
Meanwhile, marching down Whitehall: Top brass including Chief of the Defence Staff Tony Radakin are hosting their French counterparts at the Ministry of Defence today before further planning sessions get underway at the Northwood military headquarters.
But the questions are many: Just how the peacekeeping force being touted by Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron would work is still very far from clear — and will no doubt be another key line of questioning for the prime minister this morning.
Not least because … Trump’s special envoy for Russia Steve Witkoff panned Starmer’s proposals as “a posture and a pose” over the weekend, accusing the PM and allies of trying to impersonate Winston Churchill by claiming Vladimir Putin’s forces are going to march across Europe. As covered by Sunday Crunch, Witkoff called that notion “preposterous,” said the Russian president wasn’t a “bad guy” and aped a load of dodgy Kremlin claims in the interview with pro-Trump commentator Tucker Carlson.
Don’t expect much criticism: Starmer is in full-on Trump-praising mode as he tries to thwart the next, much larger round of tariffs due to bite on April 2. “I like and respect him. I understand what he’s trying to achieve,” the PM told the New York Times. As the Sun’s Harry Cole points out, the choice of outlet for that interview was an attempt to get further onto the president’s radar and into his good books. “He hate-reads all the New York papers first thing,” one person in the know told Cole.
Expect much more criticism … from Canada, where Prime Minister Mark Carney has called a snap election for April 28, saying he needs a mandate to take on Trump. The Liberal Party was staring down the barrel of a heavy defeat at the start of the year, but Trump’s threats to turn Canada into the “51st state” have damaged the Conservatives and given the governing party another lease of life.
TODAY IN WESTMINSTER
NOT WESTMINSTER BUT … Nigel Farage is preparing to unveil his candidate for the Runcorn and Helsby by-election, triggered by fist-swinging former Labour MP Mike Amesbury’s assault conviction. The Reform UK leader sees a chance to further his narrative that he’s on the march to power — and to top up his numbers, having lost a fifth of his parliamentary party with Rupert Lowe’s suspension. Farage will be cutting the ribbon of the new Runcorn HQ and showing off his pick at a press conference from 1 p.m.
CHINA SHOP: A row is brewing in the Commons on Tuesday, when the Great British Energy Bill returns from the Lords. Government whips are working to prevent any rebels from backing a Lords amendment that would stop forced labor being used in any part of Great British Energy’s supply chain. There are concerns that the state-owned investment firm could buy solar panels made using Uyghur slave labor in China (where Energy Secretary Ed Miliband visited just last week). Labour MP Alex Sobel is considering moving an amendment to buttress the anti-slavery measure, the Guardian’s Patrick Wintour reports.
THE ROCK IS A HARD PLACE: in London, Foreign Office minister Stephen Doughty will host the latest round of long-stuck talks today on a U.K.-EU Treaty on Gibraltar with Gibraltar’s Chief Minister Fabian Picardo, European Commission Principal Adviser Clara Martinez Alberola and Spanish State Secretary for the European Union Fernando Sampedro.
SCOOP — ANOTHER BREXIT DIVIDEND: The U.K. government is considering pulling the plug on a £180m Brexit trade system after years of delays and setbacks, my colleague Sophie Inge reports. The “Single Trade Window” platform — which would allow importers and exporters to file all their paperwork digitally in a single place — was paused until 2026 “in the context of financial challenges.” But now it may never see the light of day, as the government seeks savings ahead of the spending review, with four options currently on the table.
ON LOANS: Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson is expected to give a statement to the House on the claims (in a Sunday Times investigation) that thousands of fake students are suspected of fraudulently claiming hundreds of millions of pounds from the student loan system. Phillipson has already ordered an investigation by counter-fraud experts into what she called “one of the biggest financial scandals in the history of our universities sector.”
SAFARI SPIKED: Deputy PM Angela Rayner asked to go on a personal safari trip during a diplomatic visit to Ethiopia last month, the Times’ Max Kendix and Kate McCann report. She was told that wouldn’t be possible on an official visit. Her office didn’t deny the claim, according to the Times, saying instead that “the itinerary was agreed in advance and this was not part of it.”
No to the NIMBYS: Rayner’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill to boost building gets its second reading this afternoon. Major construction firms including Balfour Beatty have written to MPs to warn them not to let their NIMBY tendencies get in the way of the urgent legislation, the i’s Ben Gartside reports. Some 25 MPs from the Labour growth group are also holding an “investor forum” with finance firms including Goldman Sachs to hear how they can make their patches more attractive to private capital.
LIFE AND DEATH: Kim Leadbeater’s Assisted Dying Bill has entered the last week of its committee stage and the lobbying against it will start ramping up again. Activists including Liz Carr and Tanni Grey-Thompson are expected to gather on College Green from noon to demand the voices of disabled people are considered in the legislation.
WHAT THE LIB DEMS WANT TO TALK ABOUT: The Lib Dems are urging the Conservatives to “do the right thing for democracy” and support their “fatal motion” in the House of Lords to reinstate delayed local elections. Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey said the Conservatives were “running scared” and the Labour government had colluded in a “disgraceful stitch up.”
PHONE BAN LATEST: Esther Ghey, mother of murdered teenager Brianna Ghey, described social media as an “absolute cesspit” and said it should be banned for under-16s. Her comments came at a screening of a documentary on her daughter’s death, “Brianna: A Mother’s Story,” which will air on ITV on March 27.
PJ WORKING: Workers in the U.K. are now in the office an average of two days per week but would like to be in less, according to a study by JLL. These stats make the U.K. the second most office-shy in the world, behind the Philippines. The Times has the story.
SW1 EVENTS: Electoral Commission Director of Electoral Administration and Regulation Jackie Killeen and Lib Dem President Mark Pack discuss party funding regulations with the UCL Constitution Unit at 1 p.m. (details here) … Speaker Lindsay Hoyle hosts the annual Kurdish New Year celebration from 6 p.m. (invite only).
REPORTS OUT TODAY: Sixty-three percent of Brits believe Caribbean nations and descendants of enslaved people should receive a formal apology for Britain’s involvement in the slave trade, according to a Walnut survey carried out for the Repair Campaign … The government’s approach to education could raise overall attainment levels, but may widen the opportunity gap, says the IFG … NHS England’s three elective care transformation programs did not fully meet their goals to help reduce waiting lists for elective care, according to the NAO.
HOUSE OF COMMONS: Sits from 2.30 p.m. with defense questions … second reading of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill … motions on the committee on standards and committee on privileges … and a motion on behalf of the International Development Committee. Labour MP Jake Richards has the adjournment debate on male suicide in Rotherham.
WESTMINSTER HALL: Debates from 4.30 p.m. on an e-petition relating to the U.K. joining the EU (led by Labour MP Paul Davies).
On committee corridor: Environment Secretary Steve Reed is grilled on his environmental protection policies by the Environmental Audit Committee (4.30 p.m.).
HOUSE OF LORDS: Sits from 2.30 p.m. with questions on the impact of plans to decarbonize the grid by 2030, remediation of high-rise buildings with safety defects and the number of people currently imprisoned for public protection sentences … committee and all remaining stages on the Church of Scotland (Lord High Commissioner) Bill … third reading of the Non-Domestic Ratings (Multipliers and Private Schools) Bill … consideration of Commons reasons and amendments for the National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill … and motions to annul and motion to regret Local Authorities (Changes to Years of Ordinary Elections) (England) Order 2025.
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BEYOND THE M25
ISRAELI PROTESTS: The Israeli Cabinet passed a no-confidence motion against Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara Sunday, beginning the process of dismissing her. Street protests have resumed and critics of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu say the move is part of an effort to curb the independence of the judiciary, the New York Times reports. Last week, Netanyahu announced he was firing Ronen Bar, the head of the Shin Bet internal security service, because of failings that led to the Oct. 7 attacks.
LURCH TOWARD AUTOCRACY: Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s main political rival, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, has been jailed amid a major government crackdown on the opposition. İmamoğlu responded with an impassioned call for mass demonstrations. “The judicial process being carried out is not a judicial procedure. It is a complete extrajudicial execution,” İmamoğlu said on his X account. Read more on POLITICO.
WOULDN’T EXPECT A WARM WELCOME: The wife of U.S. Vice President JD Vance, Usha Vance, will join an American delegation to Greenland later this week that will aggravate tensions caused by President Trump’s ambition to gain control of the territory. She will go with her son and U.S. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, the Financial Times reports. Unsurprisingly, Greenlanders aren’t impressed.
**A message from Lloyds Banking Group: Tonight over, 164,000 children will go to bed in temporary accommodation. They will face real consequences over the course of their lives such as poorer health, lower wages and fewer opportunities. At Lloyds Banking Group, we are continuing to champion social housing and that’s why we have supported £19.5 billion in funding to the sector since 2018. We are going further – converting decommissioned data centers and former office sites into social housing, providing £200 million of funding for local projects, and working with the Government to unlock investment. Together with Crisis, we are calling for one million more homes at social rent over the next decade. Find out what's ahead.**
MEDIA ROUND
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander broadcast round: Times Radio (7.05 a.m.) … Sky News (7.15 a.m.) … BBC Breakfast (7.30 a.m.) … LBC (7.50 a.m.) … Today (8.10 a.m.) … GMB (8.30 a.m.).
Shadow Business Secretary Andrew Griffith broadcast round: BBC Breakfast (7.15 a.m.) … GB News (7.30 a.m.) … Times Radio (7.45 a.m.) … LBC News (8 a.m.) … Sky News (8.15 a.m.) … Talk (9.05 a.m.)
Also on Nick Ferrari at Breakfast: Build UK CEO Suzannah Nichol (7.05 a.m.).
Also on Good Morning Britain: Former Labour MP Mike Amesbury (7.10 a.m.) … former subpostmaster Lee Castleton (7.35 a.m.).
Also on Times Radio Breakfast: Kremlin critic Bill Browder (7.45 a.m.) … Labour MP Preet Gill (8.35 a.m.) … Disability campaigner and journalist Melanie Reid (9.45 a.m.).
Politics Live (BBC Two 12.15 p.m.): Labour MP Rachel Taylor … Conservative peer David Frost … Lib Dem MP Munira Wilson … the Telegraph’s Tim Stanley.
TODAY’S FRONT PAGES
POLITICO UK: UK considers pulling the plug on £180M Brexit trade system.
Daily Express: ‘Reeves must take action’ to stop OAP bill hike.
Daily Mail: How about cutting your freebies, chancellor.
Daily Mirror: I won’t give up the fight to clear my mum’s name.
Daily Star: Mad March.
Financial Times: Trump tariff tremors shatter Wall St. faith in ‘American exceptionalism.’
i: Education braces for ‘worst squeeze in a generation’ — as Reeves admits cuts are coming.
Metro: Starmer’s £1.6 billion pothole ultimatum.
The Daily Telegraph: Heathrow ‘had enough power to stay open.’
The Guardian: Starmer is warned against ‘appeasing’ Trump on tax.
The Independent: Reeves wields axe over 10,000 civil service jobs.
The Sun: Maddie suspect could be free in days.
The Times: Chancellor risks war with unions over spending cuts.
LONDON CALLING
WESTMINSTER WEATHER: The sun will pop through the clouds mid-morning. High 16C, low 7C.
(NOT) NEW GIG: Tony Juniper has been reappointed as chair of Natural England for a third term.
JOB ADS: The Centre for Policy Studies needs a researcher.
WRITING PLAYBOOK PM: Emilio Casalicchio.
WRITING PLAYBOOK TUESDAY MORNING: Sam Blewett.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO: Former Attorney General Victoria Prentis … crossbench peer and TV entrepreneur Alan Sugar … The Times’s Aubrey Allegretti … former President of Sri Lanka Ranil Wickremesinghe …. former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.
PLAYBOOK COULDN’T HAPPEN WITHOUT: My editors Zoya Sheftalovich, Dan Bloom and Alex Spence, diary reporter Bethany Dawson and producer Dean Southwell.
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