Good morning. John Healey, the chancellor, is the main speaker at the Labour conference. He was a surprise appointment to replace Rachel Reeves, he is unveiling his budget four weeks on Wednesday, and some of the pre-briefing suggests when the budget does come, it will be a relatively low-key affair, with a lot of decisions postponed until the spending review next year. And so we are definitely not expecting huge announcements at lunchtime today.
But there will be some striking language. Healey is going to promise a “new age of industrialisation”.
According to the overnight briefing from Labour, he will explain that in these terms.
My politics were shaped by the industrial heartlands of South Yorkshire. Today, on the site of the Orgreave pit, is Rotherham’s Advanced Manufacturing Park. Our coal mines are not coming back. But this is how Britain’s industrial past is being remade now for the modern world. This is the new age of industrialisation. A new confidence in Britain.
And he will also announce that the government is commissioning “three new floating docks for the Royal Navy’s submarine service at HM Naval Base Clyde” to provide maintenance for nuclear submarines.
Known as Programme Euston, plans for the new docks were first set out in 2023 and are expected to upgrade Faslane’s facilities for the next generation of British submarines, the Press Association reports. The Ministry of Defence has previously said they are expected to come into service in the early 2030s, and the docks form part of a wider £15bn upgrade programme for the Royal Navy’s shipyards.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10am: The Labour conference opens. The first main speaker is Wes Streeting, the defence secretary.
10.30am: Ed Miliband, the foreign secretary, addresses the conference.
11.10am: Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, speaks at the start of a debate on workers’ rights and reindustrialisation.
Noon: John Healey, the chancellor, gives his speech.
2pm: Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, addresses the conference, in a debate covering transport and insourcing.
2.30pm: Yvette Cooper, the health secretary, speaks at an IPPR fringe event. Other cabinet ministers speaking at fringe events include Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, at a Think Labour event; Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, at an IPPR event; Streeting at a BAE event; and Ed Miliband, the foreign secretary, recording a What’s Left? podcast.
After 3.20pm: Alex Norris, the justice secretary, and Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, speak at the conference in a debate covering crime.
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