Business · NY Daily Wire
Presented by Intuit By ANDREW MCDONALD with MEGAN MCELROY Good Monday morning . This is Andrew McDonald. DRIVING THE DAY EMERGING FROM THE FOG: Andy Burnham’s focus is all domestic today — as he gears up for a week that will be dominated by matters elsewhere.
The PM is on the road to trumpet a funding package for GPs ahead of the annual winter crisis in the NHS, before his attention turns to preparing for a double whammy of international trips later in the week. In all honesty, though ... It’s hard to see the prime minister or domestic politics getting a big slice of the headlines today.
The eyes of the British press will be on Southwark Crown Court this morning, where Russell Brand will be sentenced from 10.30 a.m. Judge Joel Bennathan warned the convicted rapist to expect a “custodial sentence of some length.” Plus: The anonymous celebrity who lost a bid for an injunction to prevent news organizations from publishing his identity and allegations of sexual misconduct has until 4.30 p.m. today to lodge an appeal. If there isn’t an appeal, the temporary injunction and anonymity order would lapse and the allegations could finally be published. **A message from Intuit: Wider AI adoption could add up to £47 billion to small business revenues, according to the Social Market Foundation.
The research, supported by Intuit, highlights an opportunity in helping small and medium-sized businesses move beyond experimentation to realise AI’s full potential. Learn more. ** But never mind all that: This is a niche newsletter about politics. Burnham will head out this morning to an east of England hospital with Health Secretary Yvette Cooper to promote a new £40 million scheme aimed at keeping vulnerable patients out of hospital over the winter.
The cash will go toward helping GP surgeries identify and provide extra care to anyone they think is most at risk over the winter. Once he’s back at base, maybe he’ll even find some time to work on that 10-year plan of his. More on that in a tick.
Ask Me Andy: The PM will record a pool clip sometime after 11.30 a.m. Burnham may well be asked about the Brand sentencing, depending on whether it has happened yet ... or a health-related intervention from a No. 10 predecessor who he saw at the Cenotaph just yesterday. In comments which splash the Telegraph , David Cameron calls for breakthrough drugs that appear to slow the pace of Alzheimer’s to be made available on the NHS.
COP OUT? But a trickier question for Burnham could be about his commitment to Britain’s climate goals — ahead of his fleeting visit to the COP31 summit in Turkey later this week. Deputy PM Louise Haigh will finalize plans to make a steep cut to the government’s target for electric vehicle sales after a crunch Downing Street meeting this Wednesday, the Guardian’s Kiran Stacey reports.
This is a big deal: The current target is for manufacturers to ramp up the proportion of electric cars to 80% of all new sales by 2030, on the road to 100% by 2035. Watering down that 2030 figure would please parts of the industry in the short-term — but put car-makers in a more frantic race to hit the 2035 target, and dismay Labour MPs who are already concerned about the watering down of other green pledges. When a consultation launched in August , Playbook was assured that it didn’t necessarily mean the 2030 target would be watered down.
But Stacey hears that after a fierce behind-the-scenes battle among Cabinet members ... the car industry ... and green-fingered types, Haigh is expected to cut it by about a quarter. (A government spokesperson told Stacey: “No decisions have been taken.”) Interesting side note: The PM has had to recuse himself from the dispute and leave it to Haigh to litigate because of his wife’s connections to an electric vehicle charging network . Fair COP: The PM’s visit to the climate change talk-a-thon — he’ll head there after Wednesday’s PMQs — will be awkward for other domestic reasons. He’ll turn up having watched his chancellor deliver a new mantra of “first and foremost cheaper energy” at the budget.
We’re also still waiting for white smoke to emerge from DESNZ on the Rosebank oil field, with two Labour MPs going on the record in the Guardian to warn the government not to approve it. A decision on that is expected by the end of the year. All fodder for today’s No. 10 briefing for Lobby hacks at 11.30 a.m.
THEN ON TO DUBLIN : Burnham’s trip to COP31 will merely be a fleeting visit before his second diplomatic trip of the week — a Thursday meeting of the European Political Community in Dublin. The PM will meet many European leaders there for the first time and it’s handy timing, given the stakes of the EU-U.K. summit the following week. Knowing EU, knowing me: Those leaders will no doubt be as keen as the rest of us to know Burnham’s ambitions for further integration, beyond the limits of the reset deal he’s trying to get over the line.
“This summit will show what we can achieve when we work together, but it doesn’t need to be the end of our ambition,” Burnham told the Sunday Mirror . Key questions for the private hobnobbing will include ... just how far, and soon, Burnham wants to move Britain closer ... his own instincts on the endgame ... and whether he can unite his Cabinet around any plan. And, of course, if Burnham is more up for “ circular arguments ” about Rejoin than some of his own Cabinet.
Helping out with the diplomacy biz: Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband is in Paris today for a meeting of G7 foreign ministers. He’ll take part in a session on international crises — and there are a few of those — from around 11 a.m. U.K. time.
Some early advice: Norwegian PM Jonas Gahr Støre has told POLITICO’s Tim Ross that Britain should absolutely not follow his country’s example by agreeing a Norway-style deal with the EU — free market access without being a full EU member. “After Brexit, British friends called me and said, tell us about the Norwegian way of doing it. And I said, if you left the EU because there was too much Brussels, don’t take the Norwegian version,” Støre said.
“Because here, you know, basically we are taking most of their decisions, we implement them.” More lines from Tim’s interview here . After all the summiting: Saturday’s Times reported that Burnham is likely to make a speech on Europe after the U.K.-EU summit in Brussels next week, to make the case for even further integration into the EU. The Guardian’s Pippa Crerar has a bit more detail , hearing from No. 10 sources that this will be an attempt to “frame the conversation” rather than any concrete detail on what he wants to do.
If you aren’t already, get used to reading that about big Burnham set-piece speeches. STILL TO COME: Work is continuing on the domestic front with barely six weeks to go before Christmas. First up: Alan Milburn’s NEETs review is due to be published next week, two people with knowledge tell Playbook.
And then ... some very, very limited scraps of detail are starting to trickle out from the 10-year plan, which is now due either in December or January. The Telegraph’s Tony Diver hears the PM might merge the DVLA with the DVSA . For those unfamiliar, one handles the records of drivers and the other manages driving tests and MOTs.
I guess if you’re planning to end 40 years of neoliberalism you have to start somewhere. Presented without comment: Burnham told the Economist last week that people “are underestimating [the plan’s] significance” ... while one person briefed on the process told the Times it was proving “complicated” to translate Burnham’s broad political philosophy into tangible pledges, with timelines. More advice for the PM: Former No. 10 director of strategy Paul Ovenden tells our own Anne McElvoy and Sky’s Sam Coates for their podcast that Burnham needs to find some “grit in the oyster” for the plan to feel real to people and cut through.
“It can’t just be Margaret Thatcher bad, what I’m doing good. It needs to say there will be winners and losers from this,” Ovenden says. Having worked with 10-year-plan guru Peter Hyman on Keir Starmer’s missions, he says they used to discuss whether their work was going to “dominate the radio phone-ins” — though Playbook is struggling to remember Nick Ferrari spending a lot of time on those missions.
Less helpful advice: The Greens are steaming about the involvement of the Boston Consulting Group in the drafting of Burnham’s plan, as first reported in the Times . The consultancy was most recently said to have been at the scene of mass redundancies at Telegraph following the takeover by Axel Springer (which owns POLITICO). More pertinently to the Greens, BCG was also involved in Donald Trump’s plan to take over Gaza and transform it into a resort — though it disavowed this work and said it wasn’t authorized.
Zack Polanski said: “Aside from an obvious point that you don’t appoint companies like the Boston Consulting Group if you have any actual intention of ending 40 years of neoliberalism, Trump’s ‘Gaza Riviera’ blueprint is clear ethnic cleansing and the idea that Andy Burnham has invited these people into the heart of Downing Street shows contempt for the victims of the genocide. They must be removed from this project.” The government said BCG is providing a single consultant only and their support is limited to “specific specialist advice.” **Every political capital. One destination.
Meet the new POLITICO app, bringing reporting from Westminster and 13 other centres of power together in one place. Follow your newsletters, listen to our podcasts and get breaking alerts on the stories that matter to your work. Search nearly 20 years of POLITICO journalism in seconds.
And each morning, find the stories shaping your day as soon as you open the app. Free to download. POLITICO Pro subscribers can access to people pages and full Pro coverage.
Get the new app. ** TODAY IN WESTMINSTER DEFENSE OF THE REALM NEWS: Troops are being dispatched to stop cyber operations early before they escalate into large scale attacks, the commander of the Defence Cyber and Electromagnetic Force tells the Times’ Larisa Brown. Major General Mike Fayers said his unit is now “trying to hunt for our adversaries in places where they prepare before they target U.K. military systems.” He said they’re called “hunt forces.” Meanwhile, in the Royal Navy: Britain’s most expensive warship, the HMS Prince of Wales aircraft carrier, wasn’t able to set sail and was late to arrive at a security conference because of the fog over the weekend , the Sun’s Stephen Moyes reports. One embarrassed Navy observer told the paper: “We will go anywhere, except if it is a little misty.” To be fair, the navy argues it could have steered through the fog if needed but it wasn’t an urgent operation.
And in case the trains aren’t already bad enough ... the i Paper team has obtained DfT documents setting out plans to bolster the railway network’s resilience against cyberattacks, amid fears a major attack could disrupt train journeys for a week. BRAIN DRAIN: In hopefully unrelated news, Whitehall is facing a critical shortage of senior China specialists after a string of recent departures, the FT’s Peter Foster and Lucy Fisher report . LESSONS NOT LEARNED?
Labour MP David Lammy is among those raising concerns over a sharp rise in Turkish nationals facing removal from the U.K., following alleged errors in their residency applications. The Guardian reports the Home Office is facing accusations it has failed to learn the lessons of the Windrush scandal, with successful applications under a longstanding visa scheme falling by 78% in the first half of 2026. Some refusals apparently contain basic errors and nonexistent requirements.
The Home Office told the Guardian that there has been no change to its rules or guidance. CLOSING THE GAP: The Independent Inquiry into White Working Class Educational Outcomes is launching a second phase of research into the barriers facing white working-class children. It will also launch a partnership program to help organizations act on recommendations from its first report.
Education Secretary Lucy Powell has backed the initiative. WHAT THE TORIES WANT TO TALK ABOUT: Andy Burnham’s EU reset, which they claim could add £281 a year to household energy and fuel bills. The Conservatives argue the deal would expose Britain to higher EU carbon prices and force it to adopt the EU’s carbon tax.
They say they would scrap the carbon tax altogether, claiming it would save households £200 a year. WHAT THE LIB DEMS WANT TO TALK ABOUT: They’ve set PM Andy Burnham an end-of-year deadline to publish a full plan for the water industry, accusing Environment Secretary Angela Eagle of making “little progress” in more than 100 days in post. If no plan materializes, they want him to come to Parliament to explain why.
WHAT THE GREENS LEADERSHIP DOESN’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT: The internal soul-searching and ongoing heat from the Zionism is Racism motion. My colleague Isabel Loubser has been speaking to Green insiders about where the party is at . GENERATION GAP: Eighty percent of young people say the government isn’t doing enough for their wellbeing, according to research published alongside the launch of the “Back Young People Now” campaign.
The campaign is spearheaded by figures including podcaster Alastair Campbell and former Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell, who want political parties to adopt six guarantees aimed at improving young people’s wellbeing. SW1 EVENTS: More in Common presents research on COP31 and what Brits want from Burnham on climate policy (1 p.m.) ... Bright Blue is hosting a Ludgate Lecture with professor Tony Travers (1 p.m.) ... the Jobs Foundation charity launches its jobs pledge with an event in parliament featuring Skills Minister Jacqui Smith and Keep Britain Working review lead Charlie Mayfield (3.30 p.m.) ... and former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott is in convo with Policy Exchange (6 p.m.).
HOUSE OF COMMONS: Still in recess, back tomorrow. HOUSE OF LORDS: Sits from 2.30 p.m. with questions on the World Trade Organization, reservoirs and Interpol red notices ... and the Health Bill’s third day at committee stage. BEYOND THE M25 NICE WEEKEND?
The Guardian reports Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson, was present at a boxing event in Ireland that descended into a riot, with two people arrested. He’s on bail after being found guilty of harassing two journalists and is due back in court on Dec. 16 for a sentencing hearing. The event was organized by Ed Matthews and Harrison Sullivan, two of the rising stars of Louis Theroux’s “Inside the Manosphere” documentary .
BONFIRE HANGOVER: The Express has flagged that DEFRA updated its UK AIR map to show several areas of the U.K. are experiencing extreme air toxin levels, following days of fireworks and bonfires. AROUND THE WORLD WTF STORY OF THE DAY: Tech giant Nvidia says it’s investigating its CEO Jensen Huang after he admitted he had an affair with a business executive — who U.S. intelligence considered to be a Chinese spy feeding information directly to Beijing. Huang apologized in a company message, writing: “I was unfaithful to my wife.
My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.” The New York Times has the extraordinary tale and it’s leading the Today program.
MOST IMPORTANT THING HAPPENING THIS WEEK: Talks between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in Abu Dhabi alongside Donald Trump’s envoys, beginning tomorrow. My colleague Tim Ross has lines from his interview with Jonas Gahr Støre about the Norwegian leader’s call with Vladimir Putin to try to influence the talks. TAPPING OUT: Following CNN’s report that UFC Chief Dana White declined Trump’s job offer of press secretary, the pair will meet today at the White House.
When reporters asked if he could balance multiple jobs at once, White said he has “a lot of jobs already,” and promised he’d have more to talk about after the meeting, according to The Hill. Trump later told reporters he was just kidding about the appointment. DEAL OR NO DEAL: Benjamin Netanyahu’s strongest rival Gadi Eisenkot is trying to form a new government in Israel and will spend coming days locked in negotiations with allies and leaders of smaller parties to see if he can build a coalition.
Jan Philipp Burgard of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network told POLITICO’s Forecast that the thing to watch this week is the role of the two ultra-Orthodox parties. **A message from Intuit: The Social Market Foundation’s recent report found that 79% of UK SMEs already use AI in some form but aren't using it to its full potential. Many still haven't built it into everyday workflows, especially across finance, marketing, sales, and HR. The research, supported by Intuit, estimates that increasing AI adoption across SMEs could unlock up to £47 billion in additional revenue across Great Britain.
Intuit is committed to helping businesses get there, and is proud to partner with HM Government to boost AI skills for 10 million UK workers—including partnering with the British Chambers of Commerce to provide free AI workshops for small and medium-sized businesses across the country through the Intuit More with AI Tour . The next stop is Barnsley this Friday. Learn more. ** MEDIA ROUND Health Minister Karin Smyth broadcast round: Times Radio (7.05 a.m.) ...
Sky Mornings (7.15 a.m.) ... BBC Breakfast (7.30 a.m.) ... LBC (7.50 a.m.) ...
Good Morning Britain (8.35 a.m.) ... GB News (8.45 a.m.). Shadow Business Secretary Julia Lopez broadcast round: Times Radio (7.45 a.m.) ...
GB News (8 a.m.) ... Talk (8.20 a.m.) ... Sky Mornings (8.40 a.m.).
Also on Nick Ferrari at Breakfast: Former Defence Secretary Ben Wallace (7.07 a.m.) ... broadcaster Alastair Campbell (8.35 a.m.). Also on Good Morning Britain: Labour MP Jess Phillips and former head of Channel 4 News Dorothy Byrne (7.20 a.m.). Also on Times Radio Breakfast: TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak (7.25 a.m.) ...
Deputy Commissioner of the Met Police Matt Jukes (8.35 a.m.) ... Tax Policy Associates founder Dan Neidle (9.45 a.m.). Also on LBC News: Lib Dem MP Chris Coghlan (9.20 a.m.).
On Politics Live (BBC Two, 12.15 p.m.): Labour MP Nesil Caliskan ... Conservative peer Craig Mackinlay ... ‘Pod Save the UK’ host Coco Khan ... broadcaster Alastair Campbell . ** COP31 opens under pressure as energy demand surges and climate ambitions slip.
Join POLITICO’s reporters for a live Pro Briefing on November 9 at 5 p.m. CET to understand the biggest stories shaping negotiations. Register now. ** TODAY’S FRONT PAGES POLITICO UK : Polanski will struggle to end the Greens’ bitter Zionism fight.
Daily Express : ‘Ghost bosses’ behind vape shop blight. Daily Mail : Dementia carers’ postcode lottery. Daily Mirror : There are more like Brand.
Daily Star : More ‘Russell Brands’ in telly. Financial Times : Democrats pledge to impeach Trump aides as infighting grips Republicans. Metro : Brand’s £5 million house switch.
The Daily Telegraph : Cameron: End NHS dementia drug block. The Guardian : Ministers set to agree steep cuts to electric vehicle targets. The Independent : ‘Climate crisis is here’ — UK makes case for COP.
The i Paper : UK rail network at risk from grey war cyber attack. The Times : ‘Hunt forces’ target cyber plot against UK military. The Sun : Brand hides £9 million stash.
LONDON CALLING WESTMINSTER WEATHER: A yellow warning for fog, with a high of 11C and a low of 6C. STARTING TODAY: Vashti Miller , formerly of Portland, starts today as the new comms special adviser in the Home Office. NOW READ: Former Andy Burnham adviser Sacha Lord ’s nightlife lobbying group has withdrawn from a £35,000 government grant scheme after an investigation from The Mill found apparent false claims in its application.
It’s the second grant controversy involving Lord uncovered by the publication. Read the story in full here . MONDAY’S POD PICK : Are there more Russell Brands in the media industry?
The BBC’s Newscast unpacks. WRITING PLAYBOOK PM: Emilio Casalicchio. WRITING PLAYBOOK TUESDAY MORNING: Andrew McDonald.
BIRTHDAYS: Government Whip Christian Wakeford ... Shadow Development Minister Wendy Morton ... Cambridge MP Daniel Zeichner ...
Treasury SpAd Tom Hughes ... The House Editor Francis Elliott ... FT economics commentator Chris Giles ...
Labour peer and former TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady ... Conservative peer Dido Harding ...Labour peer and Lords Chief Whip Roy Kennedy . PLAYBOOK COULDN’T HAPPEN WITHOUT: My editors Dan Bloom , Alex Spence and James Panichi , reporter Megan McElroy and producers Dean Southwell and Hugh Kapernaros .
SUBSCRIBE to the POLITICO newsletter family: Brussels Playbook | Brussels Playbook Capitals | London Playbook | London Playbook PM | Playbook Paris | Berlin Playbook | Madrid Playbook | Sunday Crunch | EU Influence | London Influence | D.C. Playbook | D.C. Influence | Decoded | Canada Playbook | POLITICO Forecast | Canberra Playbook | All our POLITICO Pro policy morning newsletters
Source: politico.eu
