Good Thursday morning. This is Andrew McDonald in London and Sam Blewett on Playbook tour in Southport.
DRIVING THE DAY
DON’T STOP THINKING ABOUT TOMORROW: Volodymyr Zelenskyy will spend his morning in Downing Street with Keir Starmer, as they assess just how well Wednesday’s calls with Donald Trump really went ahead of Friday’s mid-season finale: the Trump-Putin sit-down in Alaska. The feeling in government and European capitals is that the virtual Teams action went about as well as could be hoped for, giving Ukraine’s allies the nervous feeling of some hope going into Friday. Will it last?
One last pre-Alaska chat: The Ukrainian president — still not invited to Friday’s showdown — is swinging by Downing Street on his way home from Germany. He’ll have a private meeting with Starmer this morning, and Playbook is told there are no plans for a press conference or any joint media action from the pair (or, indeed, from Starmer at all today). But we can expect the usual shots of Zelenskyy being greeted by Starmer at the black door.
tête-à-têteAs for the agenda … it’s pretty obvious, after the pair spent hours this week chatting about … tomorrow. Starmer will again seek to revive his role as a “bridge” between Europe and Ukraine on one side, and the U.S. on the other, and may well discuss next steps with Zelenskyy for responding to whatever emerges from Alaska. But if you hark back to their tête-à-tête in Downing Street back in March in the wake of the Oval Office shouting match, the vibes might be a bit more upbeat this morning with all involved agreeing things went well Wednesday.
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Smells like Teams spirit: “There was a strong sense of unity on the call,” a senior U.K. official tells Playbook. And pretty much every European leader involved took to X to wax lyrical about that rarest of things: a productive Teams meeting. “Exceptionally good,” Friedrich Merz … “Excellent,” Emmanuel Macron and Alexander Stubb … “Very good,” Ursula von der Leyen … and so on and so forth. Though he wasn’t on the call, U.K. ambo to the U.S. Peter Mandelson may well offer his own take when he speaks at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs from 11.30 p.m. tonight.
Importantly: Trump himself was pleased with the meeting, and in a rambling presser at the Kennedy Center said what Europe really wanted to hear: that Vladimir Putin will face “very severe consequences” if he judges the Russian leader ain’t serious about peace. He also said he hopes the meeting will lead to a sit-down that includes Zelenskyy, which is music to European and Ukrainian ears.
SCOOP — non-guaranteed security guarantees: But the most tangible development may have come on the much discussed security guarantees for Ukraine, after those involved came away believing the U.S. is willing to contribute. Three people tell my POLITICO colleagues Trump said the U.S. is willing to play some sort of role in providing Kyiv with the means to deter Russian aggression after a ceasefire. One person said Trump was clear this can’t involve NATO membership. But the (vague) openness from Trump toward something which was previously off the table explains the cautious optimism floating around the continent.
Cotswold diplomacy: The other unexpected reason for Ukraine’s allies to be cheerful is the key role JD Vance has played from British shores over the last few days. Two European officials tell my colleagues Esther Webber and Nette Nöstlinger that Vance has been increasingly engaged with a deeper understanding of the situation on the ground. We’ve come a long way from “have you even said thank you?”
But the obvious problem … is that Trump and Vance didn’t commit to anything specific on security guarantees or, well, anything. And for all Starmer and co. successfully got their thinking in Trump’s head before Friday, no one is confident enough to predict Trump will feel the same after a lengthy catch-up with his KGB-trained Russian pal, who isn’t showing signs of being in a hurry to end the war.
On which note: One person familiar with the calls told the POLITICO team in their great stock take on the vibes that “Trump, as always, talked a lot about what he would do, but in a way that no one could say what exactly he was going to do.”
Half-baked Alaska: Talking of what he could do, both the Times and Telegraph hear of some proposals floating around on the U.S. side which — if they came to pass — could make Europe feel a lot worse about things again. The Times reports that Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff supports a discussed plan which would see Russia allowed to take military and economic control of occupied Ukraine without actually formally ceding any territory — a scenario which would mirror Israeli occupation of the West Bank, which the ICJ has ruled illegal. The White House described this as “total fake news.”
Who has the minerals? The Telegraph’s Connor Stringer and Joe Barnes, on the other hand, reckon Trump is getting ready to offer Putin access to rare earth minerals in occupied Ukraine to incentivize him to end the war. That would reportedly be offered as part of other financial incentives, including lifting some sanctions on Russia. The White House did not describe this as fake news, instead saying it wouldn’t comment on “conversations that may or may not be happening.”
And to be fair: Financial incentives could well be the way to whatever’s left of Putin’s heart. A well-timed Bloomberg investigation finds that Putin comes to the table Friday with his economy under severe pressure — according to current and former officials and a range of internal documents. Sweet, sweet leverage … maybe.
POSTCARD FROM SOUTHPORT
FADED VICTORIANA: Walk 100 paces up the boardwalk from the sign advertising the hall of mirrors and you’ll hit a poorly painted chipboard barricade. Danger, it says, Southport Pier is closed to the public. And so it has been for almost three years — an extra kilometer of Victorian grandeur just jutting out idly into the Irish Sea, the salty air that once attracted hordes of tourists now rusting its iron and chipping its paint. Labour desperately wants to show it is turning around faded towns like this, Sam Blewett writes in. But as things stand, Reform UK is some way ahead in the polls here.
Politically infested waters: In one of the more upbeat moments during her spring spending review, Rachel Reeves raised the prospect of completing the millions of pounds of repairs that the pier needs when she name-dropped the “iconic symbol of coastal heritage,” and pledged it would benefit from a fund to drive growth and restore community assets. The chancellor hopes splashy investments like these will resuscitate the dying pride in communities across the country — and fend off Nigel Farage’s circling sharks in the process.
High tide is ebbing: “It is to Southport, what the tower is to Blackpool,” says Patrick Hurley, who became the town’s first-ever Labour MP at the last election, as he talks up plans to get the pier that first opened in 1860 back up and running by the next one.
Seeing pink flamingoes: “Every town across the country has a totemic thing they can point to as the visible manifestation of austerity, and it just so happens that the pier is our totem,” he says from under his flat cap as we watch the flamingo pedalos on the busy boating lake. “As you can see it is standing idly by, with nobody on it when there’s hundreds of people around and about.”
Past glories: We walk past a couple of 21st century Mods with their Lambrettas and their leather jackets parked up outside the gaming arcade, then a huge mural of Red Rum running through the shore’s wash. (The legendary thoroughbred won the Grand National three times by supposedly training on the beach here.)
Un hommage: A plaque — backed up by everyone in town — claims Napoleon III so loved the tree-lined Lord Street (while staying in exile nearby in the 1830s) that he was inspired to rebuild Paris with wide boulevards. Now the glass awnings hanging over the shuttered shops exemplify the faded Victorian splendour of the city. They’ve not seen a window cleaner’s squeegee for many a season. A grand bank is long closed and the use of what should be a prime hotel as asylum-seeker housing in recent years has driven people further toward Reform.
Like a ghost town: Nearby a spectacular shopping arcade — all wrought iron railings, ornate tiles, glass ceilings and wooden window frames — slumps half empty. “It’s like Mary Celeste almost,” says Hurley. Despite the closures, by many measures this really isn’t the most deprived of places, and parts like Birkdale, with its upmarket stores and 80s footballing stars, are as upmarket as they get away from the great cities. However, as Hurley points out, everyone compares the Southport of today to the more prosperous and thriving one they remember from their youth.
Teal-tinted spectacles: It’s this sort of nostalgia — real and imagined — that Farage’s Reform capitalizes on so effectively. “I’ve no time for nostalgia, for nostalgia’s sake,” says Hurley. “We need to make sure we don’t just trade on our past, on our faded grandeur as a town. I’m very keen to ensure that the town’s best days lie ahead of it. But that can be done whilst paying homage and tipping the hat to the best of the past.” Not everyone buys Hurley’s argument, though.
March of the motorists: Andrew Lynn, a lawyer who came third at the last election, blames Labour for making things even harder for small businesses, not least with the National Insurance hike on employers and “increasing regulation around employment.” Labour runs the council here too, and Lynn reckons an “anti-car” attitude in the form of parking costs and a scarcity driven by bike lanes is exacerbating the high street decline.
On your bike: “So in principle, it’s nice to have cycling — I think we have to reiterate that — just like in principle, it’s nice for employees to benefit from a whole range of different employee rights. All these things are very, very nice in principle. But if in practice, it ends up killing small business, it’s really a problem.” Lynn is also skeptical about whether the pier will actually reopen; a skepticism that wasn’t immediately shared by the shoppers and business owners on a sunny day.
But in fairness … Treasury funding has so far not materialized. The initial quote to repair the wooden slatting and the steelwork was £13 million, but with inflation there are concerns locally it could now be up to £20 million. The hope is it’ll be reopened by summer 2027, but there is still no confirmation of how much Reeves will be sending Southport’s way.
Looming over it all: Around town there are concerns the horrific murders of three young girls a year back, and the riots that erupted after them, have lodged the name Southport as a black mark in potential visitors’ consciousnesses. Traders were generally optimistic that backing the pier will help revive the place — but were still not convinced about backing Labour.
A nation of angry shopkeepers: Mike Hall, a 67-year-old watchmaker in the half-empty arcade, said he’s voted Labour all his life and very much has a “bring it on” attitude about the pier. “Opening the pier will not change my opinion,” he adds, before giving his verdict on the Starmer administration. “I’m so disillusioned, it’s not what I was expecting.” Chief among his own concerns are the NICs hike, but everyone has their own individual grievances at the challenging decisions Labour has had to make so far.
A warning from recent history: Not long before we start feeding coins into the 2p machines of Fun Land with only a few brief wins, we stop at the site where construction has started on the Marine Lake Events Center. What will become a slick new stop for touring artists is being built thanks to a £30 million grant from Boris Johnson’s “towns fund.” That leveling-up type fund did not stop the Conservative government being walloped at last year’s election, leaving the Tory party in an existential crisis.
Stand and deliver: The difference, says Hurley, will lie in whether Labour delivers on its promises. He argues the party’s “change” manifesto last year was a “very similar retail offering” to the one Boris Johnson won his landslide on back in 2019. Hurley says the Conservatives’ failure to deliver caused them to fail, and “if we don’t deliver our heads are on the chopping block too.”
Turf out the clowns: I ask whether the problem might instead be that the public have grown weary of deliverism and are crying out for something else, something more. Hurley says he’s happy with the approach of the Starmer administration cutting out the noise and trying to deliver for a restless public, adding: “People had the entertainment politician in Boris Johnson. They had the thing where people were given the showman of Boris Johnson, and behind the mask there wasn’t much substance there.”
Going out on a limb: But there are two things that Labour should chiefly be worried about. One, what if a restless public think there isn’t much behind the mask of a respectable bureaucrat that Starmer wears? And two … what if they really do want another entertainer to perform the old routines with a new twist?
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TODAY IN WESTMINSTER
STATS DROP: Monthly ONS GDP figures for June dropped here just as this email hit your inbox. Chancellor Rachel Reeves, on a visit in Doncaster, will respond to the figures in a pool clip at 8 a.m.
But but but: Reeves is also trying to get ahead of all the mounting speculation on tax rises — most recently the inheritance tax tweaks reported by the Guardian which sent anyone still struggling away in Westminster into a flurry. In an op-ed in the same paper today, the chancellor for the first time sets out her budget priority of trying to boost productivity.
Which is nice, but … harder to do in practice, obvs, given successive chancellors have tried to do so with limited success. On the specifics, Reeves says she wants to slash additional red tape in the planning system to speed up large infrastructure projects — projects which could well include a revival of Northern Powerhouse Rail for instance, which the Guardian (again) reported might be set for a comeback.
RESULTS DAY: News bulletins will be full of English, Welsh and Northern Irish students getting their A-levels. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has the morning round, while Skills Minister Jacqui Smith is also doing interviews (full times below).
MEANWHILE, IN THE COTSWOLDS: The FT, Times and Telegraph all have great reporting on the last few days of JD Vance partying in the Cotswolds, after the FT first revealed that George Osborne — among the cast list — helped organize the whole thing for his friend Vance.
The cast list: As per the three reports, visitors to the Vance holiday home this week include … Reform’s Nigel Farage Wednesday morning… Shadow Cabinet Ministers Robert Jenrick, Chris Philp and Laura Trott, plus Tory MP Katie Lam, GB News/Spectator owner Paul Marshall and Osborne over tea Tuesday afternoon … and then Tory MP Danny Kruger, Cambridge academic James Orr and reality star Tom Skinner for a Monday night barbecue.
And ICYMI: The Sun’s Jack Elsom broke the most entertaining story of the summer Wednesday morning with the revelation Foreign Secretary David Lammy has had to turn himself into the environment watchdog for fishing with Vance without a “rod licence.”
EYING UP SEATS IN THE UPPER CHAMBER: Tory Leader Kemi Badenoch has nominated her picks for the upcoming round of House of Lords appointments. They include: Olympic medal-winning swimmer and gender-critical campaigner Sharron Davies … historian and columnist Simon Heffer, who supported Badenoch’s leadership bid and once claimed Jeremy Corbyn wants to reopen Auschwitz … and Tory Treasurer Graham Edwards, who has given the party more than half a million pounds since the election. The Times has a write-up.
WATERWORKS: U.S. senators are warning that selling Thames Water to a Chinese-owned infrastructure company would be a “national security threat,” the Times’ Oliver Wright and Katy Balls report.
BEEB VS. BOBBY: The BBC apologized to Robert Jenrick after a “Thought for the Day” commentator accused the shadow justice secretary of “xenophobia” for saying he wouldn’t want his daughters living near “men from backward countries who broke into Britain illegally and about whom you know next to nothing.” The row makes the Mail splash.
BUILD BABY BUILD: The government should aim to build 100,000 new “beautiful” council homes a year, says Policy Exchange.
FEELING BREEZY: Our very own Martin Alfonsin Larsen has taken a dip into the politics of air conditioning — and all the red tape that surrounds it. Conservative MP Jack Rankin blamed “enviro-loons” and “outdated nanny state rules” for it being “so hard” to install air con in homes.
BEYOND THE M25
JET SETTING: JD Vance has arrived in Scotland on the second leg of his U.K. holiday, staying in a swish country estate in Ayrshire.
MAYBE: Former SNP Westminster Leader Ian Blackford didn’t rule out standing in next year’s Holyrood election, but told the Spectator’s Lucy Dunn that it would be a “big push for me to get myself there.” Not a no, folks.
COURT CIRCULAR: Closing arguments begin in Hong Kong in the national security trial of 77-year-old Jimmy Lai, Chinese-British founder of the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily. Lai’s son Sebastien told Newsnight that even five year’ jail time would be a “death sentence” for his father. He also told the program that “releasing my father is the easiest thing that the Hong Kong government can do to show good faith to the United Kingdom if they want closer relationships. It will take them two hours.”
DAM IT: The Norwegian Police Security Service suspects pro-Russian hackers sabotaged a dam in southwestern Norway in April, which sent large amounts of water gushing forth until the valves could be shut. POLITICO write-up here.
GAZA LATEST: U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres is expected to say there is evidence Israeli forces use sexual violence against Palestinians. In a report due to be released today, seen early by Al Jazeera, the U.N. will say Israel’s army could be added to a list of parties suspected of using sexual-related violence in conflict.
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MEDIA ROUND
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson broadcast round: Sky News (7.05 a.m.) … BBC Breakfast (7.30 a.m.) … LBC (7.50 a.m.) … Today (8.10 a.m.) … 5Live (8.20 a.m.) … GMB (8.33 a.m.) … GB News (8.50 a.m.).
Skills Minister Jacqui Smith broadcast round: LBC News (9.40 a.m.) … BBC Hereford and Worcester (10.08 a.m.) … Nottingham Live (10.15 a.m.) … Newcastle Live (10.22 a.m.) … Merseyside Live (10.45 a.m.) … Wiltshire Live (10.52 a.m.) … Greatest Hits Radio (11.10 a.m.).
Shadow Business Minister Andrew Griffith broadcast round: Talk (7.20 a.m.) … Sky News (7.30 a.m.) … Times Radio (7.45 a.m.) … GB News (8 a.m.) … LBC News (8.45 a.m.).
Also on Times Radio Breakfast: Former CNN Moscow bureau chief Jill Dougherty (7.30 a.m.) … former Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army Daniel Davis (8 a.m.) … Gaza Humanitarian Foundation spokesperson Chapin Fay (8.20 a.m.) … UCAS CEO Jo Saxton (8.30 a.m.).
Also on Sky News Breakfast: Universities UK Director of Policy Steph Harris (7.45 a.m.) … Jo Saxton (8.15 a.m.) … Ukrainian MP Oleksandr Merezhko (8.30 a.m.).
TODAY’S FRONT PAGES
POLITICO UK: The emerging politics of air conditioning in Britain.
Daily Express: Don’t put high value goods at front of stores.
Daily Mail: BBC climbs down over ‘xenophobe’ slur on top Tory.
Daily Mirror: Arena bomber’s brother on 3 murder bid charges.
Daily Star: The Fight House.
Financial Times: Trump warns ‘severe consequences’ will follow if Putin refuses to end war.
The i Paper: Protect Ukraine from ‘bluffing’ Putin, Zelensky urges Trump.
Metro: There will be no surrender.
The Daily Telegraph: Trump to offer Putin minerals for peace.
The Guardian: Trump warns Putin faces ‘severe consequences’ if no truce agreed.
The Independent: Zelensky: Putin is bluffing — he does not want peace.
The Sun: Gun plot link to £64m Arsenal deal.
The Times: Trump in warning to Putin on eve of talks.
TODAY’S NEWS MAG
The Spectator: Border lands.
LONDON CALLING
WESTMINSTER WEATHER: Sunny intervals with a few clouds. High 29C, low 18C.
TROUBLE IN PARADISE: Former Conservative Minister Paul Scully last week married Maxine, but their mini-moon — a tour of the Cotswolds — has been slightly derailed. They bumped into JD Vance, (who is in a lovey-dovey mood), had a motor breakdown outside Jeremy Clarkson’s pub, and even have the vicar who married them along for the ride. Here’s to the happy couple.
NEW GIG 1: Former No. 10 comms director Matthew Doyle is joining the Malta Film Commission as a paid strategic adviser (h/t James Heale).
NEW GIG 2: The Telegraph’s Ethan Croft is joining the New Statesman as a political correspondent in September.
JOB AD: The Henry Jackson Society is looking for a director of comms.
TRIBUTES PAID: Welsh Labour MS Hefin David died suddenly aged 47. Keir Starmer said he is “grieving the loss,” describing David as a “powerful voice for the people of Wales” who “dedicated his life to making sure every person and community in Wales had the opportunities and support they deserve.”
IN MEMORIAM: Former Holyrood Presiding Officer George Reid died aged 86. The BBC has an obit on his long and colorful career.
NOW READ: Former Green MSP — and Salmond investigation committee member — Andy Wightman examines one of the most controversial claims in Nicola Sturgeon’s book: that Alex Salmond might have been the source of the original leak to the Daily Record on the complaints against him.
WRITING PLAYBOOK FRIDAY MORNING: Andrew McDonald.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO: Heywood and Middleton North MP Elsie Blundell … Rayleigh and Wickford MP Mark Francois … Woking MP Will Forster … former Ludlow MP Philip Dunne … Tory peer Jonathan Marland … Tony Blair’s former chief of staff Jonathan Powell … Bates Wells partner Erica Crump … the Times’ Stefan Boscia.
PLAYBOOK COULDN’T HAPPEN WITHOUT: My editors Zoya Sheftalovich and Dan Bloom, diary reporter Bethany Dawson and producer Catherine Bouris.
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