Boris Johnson chairs emergency meeting on floods

Boris Johnson has claimed the situation is “stabilising” for those affected by the flooding in northern England, as he spoke to broadcasters after chairing a meeting of the government’s Cobra emergency committee. He rejected claims that the government had been complacent. But No 10 announced the Cobra meeting only after Jeremy Corbyn publicly called for one (although Downing Street says it was scheduled anyway), and Corbyn and the Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson both made visits today to residents affected. Corbyn said Labour would spend £5.6bn over 10 years improving flood defences.

Corbyn spells out lifelong learning plans

The Labour leader has unveiled what he described as one of the party’s most transformative plans: a lifelong learning proposal that he said would give every adult an entitlement to six years of free education. At a launch in Blackpool, Corbyn said this was one of the plans he was “most excited about”.

Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary, said people taking up the offer would be able to get the same maintenance support available to students in higher education, and workers would have the right to paid time off for study. Rayner’s speech was powerful because she was able to recount how, as a teenage mother, her own life was transformed by adult education, and her performance will do nothing to quell speculation that, if she is not setting up a national education service after the election (and the polls continue to imply she won’t be), she might be running for the leadership instead.

Corbyn and Rayner: Heather Stewart’s snap verdict

Corbyn was given a standing ovation by the activists here in Blackpool, and his promise that the NHS is “not for sale” in a trade deal with the US was greeted with enthusiastic applause.

But the star turn was Rayner, who talked about the importance of adult education in her own life, after she left school at 16 to look after her son. Under Labour’s policy, she said, “whether you left school with no GCSEs or 10, your ability to pay or your willingness to take on debt will not determine whether you get the education you need”.

She skewered politicians’ habit of parroting the idea that vocational qualifications are as important as academic ones, or that the UK can simply copy Germany. And she had another nice line that “poverty is not just about being penniless, it is about being powerless”, because workers often don’t have the opportunity to train.

Just anecdotally, the atmosphere is warm here, but the audience doesn’t seem quite as big, as young or as lively as the most memorable Labour events I went to during the 2017 campaign. Back then, some Corbyn fans were coming from miles around just to get a glimpse of their man.

Labour campaigners I chatted to here said they were finding a lot of “undecideds” on the doorstep. Perhaps enthusiasm will build as we get closer to 12 December? We’ll see.

Meanwhile

Corbyn told reporters that British voters were now at risk from a Trump/Farage/Johnson alliance that would threaten the NHS, workers’ rights and safe food.

Labour has described a Tory claim that personal taxes would go up by £2,400 a head under a Corbyn government as “fake news”. It is. The costings on which the claim is based are flawed, making it even more dubious than these election projections normally are.

Nigel Farage has branded Conservative calls for the Brexit party to stand down in Labour marginals as “almost comical”, saying his party needs to get MPs into parliament to hold Johnson’s feet to the fire.

But Farage has also faced a backlash from some of the Brexit party candidates asked to stand down, with one saying he only learned the news when a passing driver asked him why he was still campaigning.

Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Corbyn have led tributes to Frank Dobson, the former Labour health secretary, who has died at the age of 79. An MP for 36 years, socialist, campaigner, loyalist, wit and raconteur, he was widely admired, and even more widely liked.

Labour’s Anna Turley, who is suing the union Unite, has told the high court that the party has moved too far to the left under Corbyn and has refused to apologise for insulting the union’s leader, Len McCluskey.

The Labour party has faced a second cyber-attack in two days, after experiencing what it called a “sophisticated and large-scale” attempt to disrupt its digital systems.

Labour has responded to a backlash among voters of Indian heritage in the UK by shifting its stance on the Kashmir dispute and insisting it is a bilateral matter between India and Pakistan in which Labour will not interfere.

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