Sadiq Khan accuses Lee Anderson of stoking hate with ‘back to France’ anti-migrant comment – as it happened

Key events

Show key events only

Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature

Afternoon summary

Lee Anderson speaking in the House of Commons in July. Photograph: Jessica Taylor/PA

Updated at 12.20 EDT

Irish PM says breakthrough needed within next two months to ensure NI executive revives before general election

Leo Varadkar, the taoiseach (Irish prime minister), has said Northern Ireland could remain without a power-sharing executive until after the next general election if the deadlock is not broken within the next couple of months.

Power sharing has been suspended for 18 months because the Democratic Unionist party is boycotting the executive until it secures changes to the Northern Ireland protocol, the post-Brexit trading deal that creates some new rules for goods being traded between Britain and Northern Ireland.

The Windsor framework, the new version of the protocol that Rishi Sunak negotiated with the EU, was supposed to assuage DUP concerns.

But the DUP has still not endorsed it and Northern Ireland has gone from thinking power sharing would return after the May local elections, to thinking it would happen in the autumn, to thinking, now, it may not even happen then.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Varadkar said he still hoped the executive would revive in the autumn. But he went on:

It is more hope than expectation at this stage, to be frank.

If we don’t seize this window of opportunity in the next couple of months, talk will turn both in Belfast and in London to the next Westminster elections and it might be after that before we can get things going again.

Varadkar said he thought the Irish and UK governments should “work hand-in-glove and apply both pressure and support  …  in a co-ordinated way” to get the executive restored.

But Rishi Sunak did not favour this approach, he said.

There has been a reluctance, I suppose, in Downing Street, to go down that route.

The FT report quotes a UK government official saying involving the Irish government in efforts to restore power sharing would cause problems with unionists.

Leo Varadkar. Photograph: Johanna Geron/Reuters

Updated at 12.23 EDT

Painting over murals for children at asylum centre cost Home Office £1,550

The Home Office spent more than £1,500 of public money painting over cartoon murals that were meant to welcome children to a controversial asylum reception centre, Rajeev Syal reports.

Luke McGee, European policy editor at CNN, says comments like those from Lee Anderson today (see 10.18am) affect how the UK is seen abroad. He does not mean for the better.

According to the Daily Telegraph, the latest green measure being targeted by Conservative MPs is the plan to ban the installation of new oil boilers in off-grid homes from 2026. The paper says “more than 30 Tory MPs have already written to the prime minister to raise the issue, amid concern it could disproportionately affect rural Conservative communities”.

One of the MPs concerned is George Eustice, the former environment secretary, who represents Camborne and Redruth in Cornwall. He told the paper:

Rural communities are about to have their own version of the Ulez [ultra low emissions zone] dumped on them …

They should call off the ban on the sale of boilers and pursue a different strategy which would be to properly incentivise renewable fuels in those boilers.

The Sun says it has spoken to an Iranian asylum seeker who was taken to the Bibby Stockholm barge yesterday who told the paper: “It’s OK, I like it.”

Updated at 12.24 EDT

Suella Braverman has tweeted a picture of the meeting she chaired today as part what the government calls its “clampdown on crooked lawyers who coach illegal migrants to lie”.

Tory peer urges Sunak to block Liz Truss’s resignation honours list, saying letting her have one would be ‘insult to nation’

Yesterday it was reported that at least two people had reportedly turned down honours nominations from Liz Truss, with one apparently being too “humiliated” to accept one from the UK’s shortest-serving prime minister. But 14 names remain on the list, according to a report in the Times.

Today the Conservative peer Lord Cormack said it was “absurd” to let Truss have a resignation honours list given how little time she served as prime minister. Cormack told the World at One.

It’s absurd to think that somebody who was in office for such a short space of time, and who was not only the shortest-serving British prime minister in our history, but also the most expensive – to think that she should be able to dole out honours to people. What can they have done in the 40 days and 40 nights that she was in No 10 to be worthy of honours?

I think it brings the whole system into disrepute.

I know it places the prime minister in an awkward situation, and I’m very sorry for him … But I think he should say no, and he could easily say that he’s not going to have one either, however long he serves.

I just think it is not necessary. [Not all prime ministers have one]. It’s been fairly abused by her predecessor [Boris Johnson] and it would be complete nonsense – and, frankly, an insult to the nation – for her to have a list after such an ignominious period in No 10.

Updated at 10.06 EDT

Suella Braverman, the home secretary, has said that at the start of July there were 218 unaccompanied child asylum seekers being housed in hotels. The Home Office tries to place child asylum seekers who are on their own with foster parents, but it uses hotels when foster placements are not available.

Braverman gave the figure in a letter to the Commons home affairs committee responding to questions raised by the committee at a hearing in June. In her letter, which has been published by the committee today, she also said:

Downing Street has said that Alex Chalk was speaking on behalf of the government when he defended Lee Anderson’s “fuck off back to France” comment about migrants unhappy with being asked to live on a barge (see 10.18am), Liz Bates from Sky News reports.

Updated at 09.19 EDT

Labour’s Sadiq Khan accuses Lee Anderson of ‘stoking up division and hate’ with anti-migrants comment

Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, has accused Lee Anderson, the Conservative party deputy chair, of “stoking up more division and hate” with his comment about asylum seekers published this morning. (See 10.18am.) He posted this on what most of us still call Twitter.

Language matters. This lot have been in Government for 13 years. After their abject failure all that’s left is stoking up more division and hate. We deserve so much better.

Registers of UK Electoral Commission hacked by ‘hostile actors’

The Electoral Commission, the UK’s elections watchdog, has been targeted by a cyber-attack that enabled “hostile actors” to access electoral registers. The full story is here.

Lee Anderson doubles down on anti-migrant comment

Lee Anderson, the Conservative party deputy chairman, has been tweeting this morning in the light of the controversy generated by his “fuck off back to France” remark. (See 10.18am.) Both tweets feature dubious claims.

The first is directed at the left in general.

Note to the Left.

Every illegal migrant that crosses the Channel from France is taking the place of someone genuinely in danger in a refugee camp.

Why can’t you see that these fit healthy young men are actually preventing help reaching those desperate people who really need it?

This comment reflects Rishi Sunak’s argument that stopping small boats is justified on the grounds of “fairness” because people who claim asylum after arriving in the UK illegally are cheating because they are in effect jumping the queue, and taking up asylum places that should go to people who apply through the legitimate asylum routes.

But the problem with this argument is that most people from countries where they are at risk of war or persecution do not have what Sunak or Anderson would describe as a legitimate route to claiming asylum in the UK. A Tory MP made this point very effectively last year when he left Suella Braverman, the home secretary, floundering at a home affairs committee hearing because she could not say what her “safe and legal” asylum routes were for a hypothetical refugee.

Anderson also responded to a critcal tweet from Diane Abbott. (See 11.19am.)

Wrong again @HackneyAbbott

I told illegal migrants to go back to France not genuine asylum seekers.

Btw not seen you in Parliament for a few months. Are you on leave or have you said something daft again?

This tweet implies that asylum seekers unhappy about being housed on a barge (the ones he said should return to France – see 10.18am) are not genuine asylum seekers. Since their applications have not been decided, it is impossible to know for sure. But there is no evidence to back Anderson’s assertion that all their claims will be bogus, and the latest Home Office data suggests that most of them are genuine. In 2022 76% of initial asylum applications that were processed were accepted – “a substantially higher grant rate than in pre-pandemic years and the highest yearly grant rate since 82% in 1990”, the Home Office said.

The Home Office added:

Of the top 10 nationalities applying for asylum, half have a grant rate above 80% (Afghanistan 98%, Iran 80%, Syria 99%, Eritrea 98%, and Sudan 84%).

Updated at 08.14 EDT

80% of Britons have little or no confidence Sunak will cut number of small boat crossings, poll suggests

Rishi Sunak has said that one of his five priorities for this year will be stopping the small boats crossing the Channel. No 10 presents this an absolute pledge to “stop the boats”, not just as a promise to implement measures that might reduce small boat crossings, although Sunak himself has been evasive as to what counts as the pledge being met.

According to new polling from YouGov, 80% of Britons have little or no confidence that Sunak will reduce the number of asylum seekers crossing the Channel in small boats. The overall figures are similar for Conservative voters and Labour voters, although Tories are more likely to say they are “not very” confident the promise will be kept, while Labour supporters are more likely to say they are “not at all” confident.

While these numbers look dreadful for the government, if 80% of people suspect there will be no reduction in the number of people crossing the Channel in small boats this year, Sunak would at least be exceeding expectations if he achieved even a modest reduction. According to the tracker run by Migration Watch UK, a thinktank that campaigns for tighter controls on migration, small boat crossings are currently 17% lower than the figure for the same point in 2022.

YouGov also found that three-quarters of Britons think the government’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda is unlikely to go ahead.

Updated at 08.00 EDT