Kemi Badenoch has claimed that Reform UK could end up doing badly at the next general election because they are like the SDP.

In an interview with Matt Chorley on Radio 5 Live, she cited the SDP/Liberal alliance as an example of how parties with huge poll leads can go on to lose.

The SDP (Social Democratic party) was formed in 1981 by Labour party moderates. It formed an electoral alliance with the Liberal party and initially the alliance soared in the polls.

But Margaret Thatcher, the then PM, recovered in popularity, and at the 1983 election the alliance won just 23 seats, despite getting 25% of the vote.

Badenoch told Chorley:

The only thing that matters is what happens in a general election. I remember when the SDP/Liberal alliance was, you know, polling 50% and they went on to do extremely badly at the election.

Asked if she thought Reform were new SDP, Badenoch replied:

I strongly suspect so, but I can’t spend time worrying about what Nigel Farage is doing. I’m looking after my party. We are a stronger and more united team than ever before.

Like the SDP/Liberal alliance at one point, Reform has been doing well because of the unpopularity of its two main rivals. Since last summer, Reform has regularly had a lead of at least 10 points.

But, if the alliance analogy is accurate, it is not one that bodes well for Badenoch. The Conservatives won by a landslide in 1983. But the SDP/Liberal alliance took votes mainly from Labour, not the Conservative party, and although Labour only just beat the alliance in vote share, the creation of the SDP – a split on the left – helped to keep it out of power for a decade. There are plenty of Tories who fear Reform UK – a split on the right – is having a similar impact on them.

Overnight curfews and breaks to prevent “doomscrolling” will form part of the government’s consultation on social media for children, which will also consider an Australian-style ban for under-16s, Liz Kendall, the technology secretary, has told MPs. PA Media says:

Kendall said she is “determined” to give children the childhood they deserve, as she set out plans to consult on proposals to raise the digital age of consent and restrict potentially addictive app design features.

There have been growing calls for the Prime Minister to raise the minimum age for social media platforms, and No 10 has signalled it is open to the idea.

Kendall said Ofsted will examine schools’ mobile phone policies and how effectively they are implemented during inspections.

She also confirmed “evidence-based” guidance for parents on appropriate screen time for children aged five to 16 will be produced. Guidance for parents of under-fives is expected to be published in April.

In a statement to the Commons today, Kendall said: “We are determined to help parents, children and young people deal with these issues, with a lasting solution that gives children the childhood they deserve, enhances their wellbeing and prepares them for the future.

“We will bring forward a swift three-month consultation on further measures to keep children safe online.

“This will include the option of banning social media for children under 16, and raising the digital age of consent to stop companies using children’s data without their or their parents’ consent.

“The consultation will include a range of other options too, such as whether there should be curfews overnight, breaks to stop excessive use or doomscrolling, how we ensure more rigorous enforcement of existing laws around age verification and action to address concerns about the use of VPNs to get around important protections.”

Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the PM, says he is going to bust “the sludge” in Whitehall by bringing in risk-taking taskforces to deal with problems, and providing the ability to sack senior civil servants who do not deliver. Rowena Mason has the story.

The government of Mauritius has said (like Downing Street – see 2.12pm) that, despite President Trump’s reservations, the transfer of Chagos Islands sovereignty is going ahead. As the BBC reports, Gavin Glover, the Mauritian attorney general, said it was “important to remember” that the deal was “negotiated, concluded and signed exclusively between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Mauritius”. He went on:

The sovereignty of the Republic of Mauritius over the Chagos Archipelago is already unambiguously recognised by international law and should no longer be subject to debate.

We expect the treaty to be implemented as soon as possible, in accordance with the commitments made.

It is hard for members of the Trump administration to criticise the British deal with Mauritius over the Chagos Islands, given the administration approved it at the time. (See 2.12pm.) But, speaking on a panel at Davos, Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, endorsed (sort of) what Donald Trump said about it on Truth Social this morning. (See 8.52am.) He said the US has shared the Diego Garcia base with the UK for a long time and, referring to Greenland, he said he could see “why the president believes that, for US engagement, we do not want another Diego Garcia on our hands”.

Jakub Krupa has more on this on his Europe live blog.

The UK should consider expelling the US from British military bases, Zack Polanski, the leader of the Green party has said, as he advocated leaving Nato and spending less on American weapons as part of a wider dismantling of the two countries’ defence alliance. Polanski was speaking to Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey for the Guardian’s Politics Weekly podcast. Here is their story.

And here is the podcast.

Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, responded to Jarvis in the Commons.

He said China was a security threat to the UK, and that the government was failing to respond properly.

Despite everything China has done on our soil, China has been rewarded with exactly what they want – a super-embassy that will be a base to espionage, not just in the UK, but likely across Europe as well.

Philp claimed that the government approved the application after telling Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, he would assure the application moved forward.

He said the Telegraph recently reported that the embassy would have basement rooms very close to underground cables carrying vital City data.

He said that, in his decision notice, Steve Reed, the housing secretary, said he had not seen the unredacted plans.

He went on:

It gets worse because paragraph 8.63 onwards of the inspector’s report admits that China can legally refuse to allow UK authorities to inspect the building during or after construction. So we’re going to have no idea what they’re actually building in there.

Philp said Keir Starmer would soon be visiting China.

This planning consent appears linked to the prime minister’s imminent visit and linked to the economic deal. It seems clear to me that they are trading national security for economic links, and this is a shameless capitulation to China’s demands.

In the Commons Dan Jarvis, the security minister, is taking questions from MPs about the decision to approve the Chinese “super-embassy”.

He quoted from the letter written by Sir Ken McCallum, the MI5 director general, and Anne Keast-Butler, the GCHQ director, about this project, and put particular emphasis on this passage.

It is worth reiterating the new embassy will replace seven different diplomatically-accredited sites across London which China currently operates; this consolidation should bring clear security advantages.

Downing Street has said that the UK won’t go back on its deal with Mauritius giving it sovereignty of the Chagos Islands.

At the lobby briefing this morning, the PM’s spokesperson defended the deal, even though President Trump has described it as stupid. (See 8.52am.)

The spokesperson pointed out that in May last year Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, issued a statement saying he welcomed the deal. Rubio said:

We commend both the United Kingdom and Mauritius for their leadership, vision, and commitment to ensure that Diego Garcia remains fully operational for the duration of this agreement. We look forward to working closely with both governments to strengthen our collaboration in support of regional peace and stability.

Following a comprehensive interagency review, the Trump administration determined that this agreement secures the long-term, stable, and effective operation of the joint U.S.-UK military facility at Diego Garcia. This is a critical asset for regional and global security. President Trump expressed his support for this monumental achievement during his meeting with Prime Minister Starmer at the White House.

And the spokesperson also pointed out that Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary (although he now calls himself war secretary, also issued a statement defending the deal. In May Hegseth said:

Diego Garcia is a vital military base for the US.

The UK’s (very important) deal with Mauritius secures the operational capabilities of the base and key US national security interests in the region.

We are confident the base is protected for many years ahead.

Asked about Trump’s comments, the PM’s spokesperson suggested the PM agreed with what Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, said about this in an interview this morning. McFadden said:

I think what we saw last night was a series of posts criticising a number of world leaders. That may tell us that the president is frustrated right now.

I don’t really believe this is about Chagos, I think it’s about Greenland, and the best way to resolve that is through dialogue with the Danish government, and that’s what we’ve said all along.

Asked if there was the treaty is definitely going ahead, even though the legislation to implement it has not yet cleared parliament, the PM’s spokesperson replied: “Yes, categorically.”

Parliament’s intelligence and security committee (ISC) has issued a statement grudgingly accepting the decison to allow the Chinese to build a “super-embassy” in London.

But the ISC, which has been investigating the security implications of the application for the past six months, says it has concerns about the way the intelligence implications were considered.

In a statement issued on behalf of the committee, Lord Beamish (the former Labour MP and former defence minister Kevan Jones) said:

Overall, we recognise that there were a number of factors at play, and that either way the decision would give rise to concerns for some. However, our concern was solely from a national security perspective. Turning to the evidence that we have finally received, on balance we are content that the UK intelligence community had sufficient opportunity to feed in any security concerns and that ministers had the necessary information on which to base their decision.

Nevertheless, the process within government was not effectively coordinated, nor was it as robust as we would have expected for a matter of such consequence. We were surprised both at the lack of clarity as to the role that national security considerations play in planning decisions, and that advice was prepared without some of the key facts at hand. Key reports lacked the detail necessary, were dealt with piecemeal, and appeared not to have been kept up to date. We will be writing to the prime minister with our concerns.

On the basis of the evidence we have received, and having carefully reviewed the nuanced national security considerations, the committee has concluded that, taken as a whole, the national security concerns that arise can be satisfactorily mitigated.

But Beamish also said his committee was concerned that the government has not fully absorbed the lessons of a report in published in 2023 about the security threat posed by China. He said:

That report detailed the committee’s concerns that government had been failing to think long term in its response: something China had historically been able to take advantage of.

We are not yet convinced that the government has managed to reconcile internally that China can be both an economic partner and a national security threat: these are not mutually exclusive, even if both require a dexterity not yet evident.

The heads of MI5 and GCHQ have said that measures put in place to deal with the security risks posed by the Chinese “super-embassy” approved for the centre of London are “professional and proportionate”.

In a joint letter to Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, and Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, submitted as part of the government’s consideration of the application, they say that it is not realistic to remove every risk.

But they suggest the level of risk is acceptable.

Sir Ken McCallum, the MI5 director general, and Anne Keast-Butler, the GCHQ director, say:

MI5 has over 100 years of experience managing national security risks associated with foreign diplomatic premises in London.

For the Royal Mint Court site, as with any foreign embassy on UK soil, it is not realistic to expect to be able wholly to eliminate each and every potential risk. (And even if this were a practicable goal, it would be irrational to drive ‘embassy-generated risk’ down to zero when numerous other threat vectors are so central to the national security risks we face in the present era.)

However, the collective work across UK intelligence agencies and HMG departments to formulate a package of national security mitigations for the site has been, in our view, expert, professional and proportionate.

Referring to the steps that have been taken to reduce the risks, McCallum and Keast-Butler say:

As detailed in classified briefings given to the intelligence and security committee of parliament, the package of mitigations deals acceptably with a wide range of sensitive national security issues, including cabling.

These mitigations will be subject to regular review through a cross-government process, led at senior level in the Home Office.

Further, it is worth reiterating the new embassy will replace seven different diplomatically-accredited sites across London which China currently operates; this consolidation should bring clear security advantages.

YouGov has done some polling about how Europe should respond if the US were to seize Greenland militarily. Around a third of Britons would favour economic retaliation, and 14% would back military retaliation, the poll suggests.

And here are the figures according to which party people support.

Josh Halliday is the Guardian’s North of England editor.

Andy Burnham has been speaking at an Institute for Fiscal Studies event on England’s regional inequalities.

The Greater Manchester mayor spoke largely about how his region had become the fastest growing part of the UK economy by using powers devolved by the previous Conservative governments and accelerated under Keir Starmer.

However, he also addressed one of his favourite topics: Britain’s broken – as he sees it – political system.

Burnham, who has not shied away from his Labour leadership ambitions, urged Starmer’s government and others on the left of British politics to take the fight to Reform UK about “who broke Britain and what will fix it”.

Responding to Reform UK’s repeated claim that Britain is “broken”, the former health secretary said his region was thriving and that Labour should “go out confidently and win the argument”. He said:

The arch-Thatcherites of Reform talk of taking back control but in fact they are the ones who gave that control away.

This is a decisive moment in our politics when the British left should go out confidently and win the argument as to who broke Britain and what will fix it. The lesson from Manchester is that we must build a new politics, more collaborative, so we can take the long-term, prudent approach to repairing the economy.

Burnham said the country had been left in a “low growth doom loop” due to “the four horsemen of Britain’s apocalypse”: deregulation, privatisation, austerity and Brexit.

He said there was an urgent need to “reshape the state completely” and de-centralise spending powers to give the UK’s countries and regions greater fiscal autonomy.

Burnham praised Labour ministers for speeding up English devolution but said there was a reluctance in some government departments to real change.

How much does Whitehall and Westminster actually want to empower this? Because there is still a sense of a wrestling match for the power in the sense that the power has to reside here [in London].

I would say that is a barrier to growth and it becomes increasingly incoherent to do that when you see the progress that we’re making so it implies, I’m afraid, massive change for the British state but … we can’t stay where we are. We are in a rut.

Other Labour figures from the Blair era, like Peter Mandelson (here) and Jack Straw (here), have congratulated Keir Starmer on the way he is handling Donald Trump. But, in a powerful article for the Guardian, the former PM Gordon Brown has taken a different approach.

In his article Brown does not say anything directly critical about Keir Starmer, and he praises him for leading a “European-wide chorus of resistance” to Trump’s plan to buy Greenland, and for his support for the international legal order.

But, implicitly, Brown is saying Starmer, and other European leaders, should be going much further. Starmer and his ministers argue that the UK’s reasonable, non-confrontational approach to Trump is working, and that the UK-US alliance is still functioning in the national interest.

Brown disagrees. He argues that trying to reign in the Trump administration has failed.

In quick succession, the US has abandoned its longstanding championing of the rule of law, human rights, democracy and the territorial integrity of nation states. Gone is its erstwhile support for humanitarian aid and environmental stewardship. Gone, too, is the founding principle of the postwar settlement: that countries choose diplomacy and multilateral cooperation over aggression and unilateral action. We cannot doubt any longer that the president meant it when he said he doesn’t “need international law”, and that the only constraint on his exercise of power would be “my own morality, my own mind”.

Indeed, in the past few weeks, every single promise of the US-led Atlantic charter, authored by Franklin D Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, which foreshadowed the United Nations charter and which includes “freedom of the high seas”, free trade and freedom from colonial aggrandisement, has seemingly been cast aside. For Trump, as his political adviser Stephen Miller tells us, the world is to be “governed by strength … by force ... [and] by power”.

And Brown says now is the moment “for Europe and the democracies of the global south to lift their heads out of the sand”. He is proposing some sort of new alliance of democracies.

So how to proceed? The democracies of the world should draft a short values statement, echoing the UN charter’s starting point – “We the peoples …” – and this time showing we mean it. Its first section would assert our full support for self-determination and the mutual recognition of nation states; for the outlawing of war and coercion; and for the primacy of law, civil rights and democratic accountability as the essential means by which human dignity is advanced. A second section would outline the rules that govern the cooperation essential to guarantee food, water and security, economic opportunity and social justice, and climate resilience and health for all, including pandemic prevention.

Such a charter should make it clear that no one need apply for the vacant leadership of the global order for, in our new multipolar world, power has to be shared among countries, each with vastly different traditions, ethnicities and ideologies. But neither can the new world acquiesce in what the US, Russia and China now threaten: a return to the 19th-century arena of spheres of influence and great-power domination.

Quite how this would work, or how it would dovetail with the United Nations, is not clear. And Brown does not rule out the US being part of this. But he clearly implies that it can’t happen while Trump remains president.

A Welsh Conservative politician has been sacked over suspicions he was plotting to defect to Reform UK, PA Media reports. PA says:

James Evans, the member of the Senedd (Welsh parliament) for Brecon and Radnorshire, has been removed from the shadow cabinet and had the Conservative whip withdrawn.

In a statement on social media, Welsh Conservative leader Darren Millar said Evans was “continuing to engage” with Reform representatives about the possibility of defecting.

Evans was the shadow cabinet secretary for health and social care in the Senedd.

Millar said in his statement: “This morning, I took the decision to remove James Evans from the Welsh Conservative shadow cabinet and withdraw the Conservative whip.

“I did so after being informed by James that he was continuing to engage with Reform representatives about the possibility of defecting to the party, in spite of his personal assurances on Friday that he had rejected an approach they initiated last week.

“Understandably, I expect all Welsh Conservative MSs and candidates to be 100% committed to our party and our plan to fix Wales.

“Regrettably, James was unable to give me that commitment.”

Yesterday Kemi Badenoch wrote to Tory MPs at Westminster suggesting that, if they were minded to defect, they should go now. Anyone undermining the party would dealt with “firmly”, she said.

The government has approved plans for China’s new embassy in London despite criticism from MPs and campaigners over its security implications, PA Media reports.

Pippa Crerar says:

BREAKING: The construction of vast new Chinese embassy complex in east London has been approved, despite concerns about security and impact on political exiles in capital.

The decision brings to an end - for now at least - saga that has been running since 2018 over site at Royal Mint Court near Tower Bridge.

But residents of Royal Mint Court plan to mount legal challenge to decision within weeks, amid concerns they could be forced out of homes, potentially delaying project by months or years.

Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, has said that the reaction of the global financial markets to the Greenland crisis has so far been “more muted” than he feared. But the Bank is still “very alert” to the risks it poses.

Giving evidence to the Commons Treasury committee this morning, Bailey said:

The level of geopolitical uncertainty and geopolitical issues is a big consideration, because they can have financial stability consequences.

Let me put that in a bit of context in two respects. One, having said that, growth in the world economy was a lot more stable than we thought it would be.

The second point is about financial markets and is a fairly similar point, that we worry considerably about how markets react to those things.

Market reactions have actually been more muted than we would have feared and expected.

Overriding those points, I take neither of those as a point of assurance. We have to be very alert to these things.

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, says that Donald Trump’s comments about the Chagos Islands deal show that Keir Starmer’s approach to handling the US president has failed.

This shows Starmer’s approach to Trump has failed. The Chagos Deal was sold as proof the government could work with him, now it’s falling apart.

It’s time for the government to stand up to Trump; appeasing a bully never works.

In his Today programme interview Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the PM, was also asked about Donald Trump’s decision to Vladimir Putin to join his proposed “board of peace” for Gaza

Jones said:

The idea that President Putin is a man of peace is clearly not true, and for the birds.

Asked if the UK would join, Jones said the UK had received an invitation to join and was talking to US officials about how it might operate.

Asked if the UK would join a “board of peace” including Putin, Jones said:

I agreed that President Putin is not a man of peace and it would be absurd for him to be on the “board of peace”.

Asked if that meant it would be absurd for the UK or Keir Starmer to be on it if Putin were there too, Jones did not firmly rule this out. But he did say this was why British officials were looking into the idea carefully – hinting strongly that the UK would not join up in those circumstances.

The Liberal Democrats have described Donald Trump’s latest comments about the Chagos Islands deal as “silly nonsense”. Asked about them in an interview on Sky News, Tim Farron, a former Lib Dem leader, said:

We have real concerns about the [Chagos Islands] proposals, and we’ve been challenged them in both the Commons and the Lords.

But Donald Trump was in favour of all that.

This is just all silly nonsense from him, because he’s feeling aggrieved that people are not rolling over when it comes to Greenland.

Farron also said he wanted Keir Starmer to be more robust in his handling of Trump.

The problem I have with Keir Starmer is that he’s still being too weak when it comes to Donald Trump.

Our friends across the Channel are being much stronger. They’re saying they would reciprocate with tariffs.

We know the way to deal with bullies is not to appease them. It’s to stand up to them. Otherwise, you end up being their victims.

Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the PM and Cabinet Office minister, has said that it is too late to undo the Chagos Islands deal.

In a tweet this morning Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, claimed that Donald Trump is now vetoing it. (See 9.28am.)

In an interview with Times Radio, Jones said it was a done deal. He explained:

The treaty has been signed with the Mauritian government. So I can’t reverse the clock on that. The treaty has been signed. Parliament has a kind of enabling function on treaties. It’s not like a traditional piece of legislation. So it can’t unwind the treaty having been signed.

Johnson says he met Keir Starmer yesterday, after Starmer’s speech and press conference about Greenland and the Trump tariffs threat. Johnson says:

When I met with prime minister Starmer at Downing Street yesterday, I told him that I thought his national address a few hours earlier was well done.

He noted, of course, that the UK and the US are close allies and that our strong, constructive partnership all these years has been built on mutual respect and focussed on results. I thought that was exactly the right message and the right tone, and because of that we’ve always been able to work through our differences calmly, as friends. We will continue to do that.

Johnson, a Republican, also says he spoke to Donald Trump at length yesterday.

I told the president that I felt that my mission here today was to encourage our friends and help to calm the waters, so to speak, and I hope to do so.

As the prime minister said yesterday, let us look to agreement, continue our dialogue and find a resolution, just as we always have in the past.

And, in that process, I am confident that we can and will maintain and strengthen our special relationship between these two nations, send a message of unity and resolve to our allies around the world, and remind our adversaries and the terrorists and tyrants everywhere that our nations, that are dedicated to freedom and justice … are stronger and more resolved now than ever before.

Johnson, who is on a visit to mark the 250th anniversary of the US declaration of independence, is now talking about freedom, and the values that inspired the founding fathers.

The Conservative party has consistently opposed the Chagos Islands deal (even though the negotiations with Mauritius that led to the treaty agreed by Labour first started when the Tories were in office) and Kemi Badenoch has warmly welcomed Donald Trump’s comments. She posted this on social media.

Paying to surrender the Chagos Islands is not just an act of stupidity, but of complete self sabotage.

I’ve been clear and unfortunately on this issue President Trump is right. Keir Starmer’s plan to give away the Chagos Islands is a terrible policy that weakens UK security and hands away our sovereign territory. And to top it off, makes us and our NATO allies weaker in face of our enemies.

Last night I met Speaker Johnson and we are united in that view. Britain’s and America’s interests align. Keir Starmer has the chance to change course on Chagos. Conservatives call on President Trump to reconsider Greenland too.

She also posted a picture of her meeting with Mike Johnson, the US speaker.

The government has issued a statement defending the Chagos Islands deal in the light of the condemnation of it from Donald Trump. (See 8.52am.) A government spokesperson said:

The UK will never compromise on our national security. We acted because the base on Diego Garcia was under threat after court decisions undermined our position and would have prevented it operating as intended in future.

This deal secures the operations of the joint US-UK base on Diego Garcia for generations, with robust provisions for keeping its unique capabilities intact and our adversaries out.

It has been publicly welcomed by the US, Australia and all other Five Eyes allies, as well as key international partners including India, Japan and South Korea.

Good morning. Yesterday, at his press conference in Downing Street, Keir Starmer said he wanted to restrict the amount of time that toddlers spend with their screens. He probably was not thinking of Donald Trump, but Trump’s egotism, greed and lack of self control mean that he is regularly compared to a young child and, within the last couple of hours, on a flight, he has been glued to his screen, firing off inflammatory posts on his Truth Social network.

For Starmer, the most embarrassing is one criticising the UK’s decision to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius (in return for an agreement that the UK and the US will still be able to use the Diego Garcia military base for at least another 99 years). The Trump administation approved the deal when it was negotiated, accepting the Downing Street argument that this would remove the risk of the UK and the US losing access to Diego Garcia under interntational law. Trump now says this is a sign of “total weakness” and “great stupidity”.

Trump has also been trolling Starmer and other Europeans with renewed calls for the US to annex Greenland.

Here is Jessica Elgot’s story about this.

And there is more coverage of the breakdown of US-Europe relations on our Europe live blog.

Darren Jones, the Cabinet Office minister and chief secretary to the PM, has been giving interviews this morning. Asked about Trump’s Chagos Islands tweet, he played down the significance of it, and insisted that British diplomacy with the US was still “working”.

In an interview with BBC Breakfast, he defended the Chagos Islands deal. He said:

This is the right way to secure the future of the island and I wouldn’t for a second suggest that Britain should be embarrassed or humiliated by any of those decisions.

And, in an interview on the Today programme, asked if Starmer was feeling calm about Trump accusing him of an act of “great stupidity”, Jones replied:

Yes, he is, because the prime minister’s primary duty is to protect British interests. And, as he’s shown repeatedly, he does a pretty good job at doing that, including with President Trump.

Asked if Starmer would just ignore what Trump was saying about issues like Greenland, Jones said the UK disagreed with Trump about Greenland. Asked if Starmer would behave differently in his dealings with Trump in future, Jones replied:

As I say, in the past the prime minister has shown that private, proper British diplomacy can work. We’ve been able to secure deals that protected medicine production in the UK, car manufacturing, we’ve got a trade deal across the line. This put us in the best position of any other country in the world.

And we’ve made progress on military aspects, including in Ukraine.

So the prime minister,has a good track record of this. It’s noisy, I understand that. It’s challenging. It is not normal for geopolitical discussions to be handled in this way. But British diplomacy is working, the prime minister’s relationship is working, and we will continue to do that.

I will post more from the Jones interviews soon.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Keir Starmer chairs cabinet.

9.30am: Mike Johnson, speaker of the US House of Representatives, gives a speech to MPs and peers in parliament.

10.50am: Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, gives a speech to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

11am: Darren Jones, the Cabinet Office minister and chief secretary to the PM, gives a speech the Institute for Government.

Morning: Kemi Badenoch is on a visit in south-west London.

11.30am: Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

Noon: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

After 12.30pm: Dan Jarvis, the security minister, is expected to make a statement to MPs about the proposed Chinese “super-embassy” in London, which is expected to be approved this morning.

Afternoon: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, takes speaks at two events at Davos.

Late afternoon: MPs debate Lords amendment to the bill Diego Garcia military base and British Indian Ocean Territory bill, which gives sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.

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