Labour conference: Andy McDonald resigns from shadow cabinet, saying party ‘more divided’ under Starmer – as it happened

• A shadow cabinet minister has quit Keir Starmer’s top team, citing the leadership’s failure to support a £15-an-hour minimum wage and saying Labour is “more divided than ever”.

• Labour would invest £28bn a year in climate measures to protect Britain from disaster, Rachel Reeves has announced in by far the party’s biggest spending pledge to date. In an analysis, my colleague Larry Elliott says Gordon Brown’s old motto, “prudence for a purpose”, provides a good summary of what Reeves was trying to achieve.

• An attempt by Labour activists to pass a motion committing the party to backing proportional representation for Westminster elections has been defeated. (See 6.43pm.) As my colleague Peter Walker reports, CLPs were about 80% in favour. But it failed because the unions were 95% against.

• The delegates did vote for a motion condemning the new Aukus pact as a “dangerous move that will undermine world peace” - even though Starmer told MPs that Labour supported the pact. (See 3.56pm.)

A party source has said the motion saying Labour should commit to PR has been defeated. Many activists were in favour but it seems it did not have the support of big unions.

Keir Starmer has responded to Andy McDonald’s resignation, the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg reports.

This is from Sky’s Sam Coates.

Emily Thornberry, the shadow international trade secretary, has told a fringe meeting that Labour would apply the same controls to the provision of military and police training to foreign governments as already apply to the export of arms to foreign regimes.

Addressing the New Statesman meeting on human rights and trade, she said that the British armed forces and police were rightly regarded as among the “most skilled and professional in the world” and that when they provided training to counterparts abroad it was good for relations with Britain’s partners. She went on:

But there is an inescapable problem. If all countries wish to learn from ours, we will inevitably face situations where some of the training being provided in Britain is used to abuse human rights overseas, ranging from the brutal repression of peaceful protesters to the indiscriminate targeting of civilians in war.

She said Labour would make it unlawful for ministers to authorise training like this “where there is a serious risk it will be used by the recipient forces to violate international law, or engage in acts of internal repression, or external aggression”.

She went on:

Like arms exports, the decisions made by ministers on training will be published on a quarterly basis, and like arms exports, those decisions will be subject to scrutiny by parliament and challenge in the courts.

And most importantly, when we conduct the root-and-branch reform of our arms export regime which I promised here in Brighton in 2017, whatever changes we make to that system will apply equally to our provision of training as well.

Charlie Falconer, the shadow attorney general and a leading Blairite, has told Sky News Andy McDonald’s resignation was intended to overshadow the moderate message in Rachel Reeves’ speech.

(Perhaps it was, but arguably you could say that it reinforces some of what Reeves was saying too, because it shows that Keir Starmer would rather lose a shadow cabinet minister than give in to a union demand on the minimum wage.)

These are from Sky’s Sam Coates, who has interviewed Andy McDonald.

Back in the conference, the motion on PR (see 1.53pm) has gone to a card vote because the result was not clear on a show of hands.

The conference is now winding up for the day. The result of the card vote should be available later this evening.

Here are extracts from Andy McDonald’s resignation letter.

• McDonald says Keir Starmer has made his position as shadow secretary of state for employment rights “untenable” because Starmer told him to oppose raising the minimum wage to £15 an hour. He says:

Yesterday, your office instructed me to go into a meeting to argue against a national minimum wage of £15 an hour and against statutory sick pay at the living wage. This is something I could not do.

Labour is committed to raising the national minimum wage to £10 an hour. Currently the national living wage for people age 23 and over is £8.91.

• McDonald argues that this shows the party does not appreciate the value of low-paid workers. He says:

We live in a time when the people of this country have a renewed awareness of how important the work done by millions of low-paid workers truly is. To have the Labour party, the party of working people, fail to realise that is a bitter blow.

• He claims this is just one of many examples of Starmer failing to stick to the socialist principles that he proclaimed when he was running for leader. And McDonald says the party is “more divided than ever”. He says:

I joined your frontbench team on the basis of the pledges that you made in the leadership campaign to bring about unity within the party and maintain our commitment to socialist policies.

After 18 months of your leadership, our movement is more divided than ever and the pledges that you made to the membership are not being honoured. This is just the latest of many.

The line about Starmer’s commitment to socialist policies refers principally to the 10 pledges he issued during the leadership contest.

McDonald is on the left of Labour, but he is not a hardline Corbynite, and in 2015 he backed Andy Burnham for leader. But he may have felt increasingly isolated in Starmer’s team. He was reportedly the only member of the shadow cabinet to argue against Starmer’s plan to change the leadership election rules when they were announced last week.

View image in fullscreen

Andy McDonald has resigned from his post as shadow secretary of state for employment rights in the shadow cabinet. He says he left because he was ordered to argue against lifting the national minimum wage to £15 an hour (a key GMB demand).

Here is his resignation letter.