• Andrew Sparrow with all today's politics news – including David Cameron's meeting with union chiefs
• Read Andrew Sparrow's lunchtime summary
Here's an afternoon summary.
• Michael Gove has announced that he has found £112m to fund school sport in England. The money will allow school sport partnerships to carry on until the end of the summer term 2011 and will pay for PE teachers to have the time to organise competitive sport with other schools after that. This represents a significant U-turn.
• Philip Hammond, the transport secretary, has unveiled plans for the £33bn high speed rail network from London to Birmingham and beyond. He published details of the government's preferred route, which will go out to public consultation in February.
• David Cameron told MPs that he wanted the European Union's budget to be frozen from 2014 to 2020. He said that he set out this demand at the weekend in a letter also signed by Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, and the prime ministers of Finland and the Netherlands. In a statement on the EU summit, he also secured an agreement that from 2013 Britain would not be involved in any eurozone bailout.
• Downing Street has rejected suggestions that the government is not doing enough to help travellers affected by the snow. "We are better placed than we were this time last year," said the prime minister's spokesman. "The fact of the matter is that the weather conditions have been exceptionally severe and we are seeing that impacting not just on this country but right across Europe." He also said that lots of trains were being cancelled in Malmo in Sweden "where they are used to cold weather".
• Union leaders have urged David Cameron to impose higher taxes on banks. "We urged him to do more to raise money from the banks as a sector that had done the most to take us into the current crisis and which had received enormous help from government," said Brendan Barber, the TUC general secretary, after a TUC meeting with Cameron at Number 10. It was the TUC's first meeting with a Conservative prime minister for 25 years. Beer and sandwiches were not on offer. Instead it was tea, coffee and mince, or "deficit mince pies", as one union figure described them, because they were so small. Cameron reportedly said it would be good for the two sides to meet two or three times a year.
Hammond is now giving a statement about the weather. My colleague Mark Tran is covering this on the snow live blog.
Here are some more details from Hammond's statement.
• HS2 to be built on two stages. The first stage will go from London to the West Midlands. The second will involve legs going from the West Midlands to Manchester and to Leeds, with connections to points further going along the West and East Coat main lines.
• HS2 to be linked to HS1 (the route to Europe) during the first phase. To link the two lines, a new tunnel will be built from Old Oak Common and to the North London line near Chalk Farm.
• A spur will be built to Heathrow. But this will be built in the second phase.
• Around 50% of the original preferred route published in March has been changed. The changes include: the tunnel at Primrose Hill being move north; part of the cutting between Amersham and Wendover to be covered and turned into a "green tunnel"; the line to be moved further away from Lichfield.
And Hammond has just said that the line will be made to look attractive.
Where we can hide the line, we will hide it. Where we cannot hide it, we will ensure that it is architecturally designed as something people are pleased to look at ... not an eyesore.
Philip Hammond says the government will not be ordering trains for HS2 until 2020.
The full text of Philip Hammond's statement is now on the department for transport's website.
Frank Dobson, the Labour MP for Holban and St Pancras, says the plans are "preposperous". They will involve the demolition of 350 flats in his constituency, he says.
Labour's Maria Eagle is responding. She says that Labour originally drew up plans for high speed rail.
Labour is still committed to investing in a first class rail system, she says. Hammond probably has more support on the Labour benches than on the Conservative benches. (HS2 will go through many Tory constituencies.) But Labour has embarked on a policy review, and it would be ridiculous not to include HS2 in this because of the cost.
The government's support for HS2 is "a figleaf" to disguise its lack of support for regional development in the north, she says.
Are the costs of the trains to run on HS2 included in the cost of the project?
Eagle also says there should be more investment in building up the resilience of the rail system.
Hammond says he is today publishing the proposed route of HS2 from London to the West Midlands. He says that around 50% of it has changed since the last government originally published its proposals in March. He mentions some of the changes.
There will still be an impact on property values, he says. Officials have been asked to draw up a plan for compensation for people whose homes will lose value once the line is built.
A formal public consultation process will begin in February next year.
HS2 will deliver "a transformational change" to the way Britain works and competes in the 21st century, he says.
Philip Hammond, the transport secretary, is making his high speed rail statement now. He says the West Coast main line will be "full" by 2024. The government wants to build a Y-shaped high speed network. The first phase will go to the Midlands. Then it will split, going to Manchester and Leeds. The new network will bring Glasgow and Edinburgh to within three and a half hours from London, which will encourage far more people to make those journeys by rail.
The Cameron statement is starting to get a bit silly. Cameron has just invited Labour MPs to "join the love train" (ie, the Conservatives) if they are not getting enough affection from their frontbench. It's a gag that started when Ed Miliband said that Cameron was disappointing his Eurosceptic backbenchers. (See 4.04pm.) After that a series of Tory backbenchers made a point of saying how contented they were when they stood up to ask a question. One of them said he was particularly happy because he had just received a Christmas card from Cameron. Cameron suggested that it was Labour MPs who were miserable. This was a time of year, he said, when people should remember to "keep the receipt" unless they wanted to exchange what they got (ie, Miliband) for something bigger (ie, his brother).
The full text of Cameron's statement is now on the Number 10 website.
Ed Miliband is now responding. He says that David Cameron claimed not to be in favour of the European practice of "splitting the difference". But, on the EU's budget, this is exactly what happened. The EU's budget has gone up by 2.9%, when Britain wanted no increase and the European parliament wanted 6%.
Milband also accuses Cameron of breaking his promise to have a referendum on changes to the Lisbon treaty. The changes to the treaty that will establish a new bail-out mechanism will involve primary legislation in the UK. But Cameron will not put these changes to the voters in a referendum. That means he is betraying his Eurosceptic backbenchers, Miliband says.
Miliband also says Cameron should be promoting a growth strategy for the EU.
David Cameron is making his EU statement now. He says he had three objectives at the summit: ensuring the stability of the eurozone; making sure that Britain is not liable for any future eurozone bail-outs; and imposing a tougher budget settlement on the EU in years to come. He says this is what he achieved.
Did you know that Anthony Howard (left) was involved in the Suez campaign? I've just been reading Peter Wilby's obituary of him for the Guardian and, although I knew quite a lot about Howard's career, I didn't know this story.
His battalion was involved in Anthony Eden's ill-fated Suez adventure and Howard recalled that, during the invasion of Egypt, he fired two shots which, he ensured, didn't hit anybody. He made little secret of his opposition to the Suez campaign and, at one stage, his officers feared he might desert. He was briefly arrested and threatened with a court martial. When his Suez diary was later published in the New Statesman, in flagrant breach of regulations, a prosecution seemed likely until the War Office decided that it was wiser not to create a martyr.
The Guardian obituary also contains contributions from Simon Hoggart and Robin Lustig.
Damian Green has just delivered his statement. He said that the government lost on a technicality relating to the way the temporary immigration cap was introduced and that the court decision will not affect government policy. He also said that he would produce new regulations imposing the cap in a way compatible with the court's ruling.
We've got four questions and statements coming up in the Commons this afternoon. They are:
1. Damian Green, the immigration minister, responding to an urgent question about the government's immigration cap being ruled illegal.
2. David Cameron statement on the EU summit.
3. Philip Hammond statement on high-speed rail.
4. Hammond statement on snow.
Here's an afternoon reading list:
• Harry Hayfield at PoliticalBetting says Labour has been winning elections since May.
Since the election, there have been a total of 145 local byelections in which over 200,000 votes have been cast and, although I recognise that local byelections do not a general election make, they do give an indication of what the electorate make of the first six months of a coalition government. And the response can be summarised in one sentence: "We don't like coalitions!"
In all the local byelections since May, Labour have polled 34% of the vote (which would suggest 352 seats in parliament and an overall majority). The Conservatives have polled 30% (enough to win 221 seats) and the Lib Dems on 19% (enough to win 47 seats) which compared to past polls suggesting that the Lib Dems would be wiped out of a future Parliament must come as a huge relief!
• James Forsyth at Coffee House says there will be sizeable Tory rebellion over the government's plans to give prisoners the vote.
Giving prisoners the vote is a repellent enough idea to most Tories but giving them the vote because the European court of human rights demands it particularly sticks in the craw. A lot of sensible Tory backbenchers think that the coalition could have responded far more robustly to the Strasbourg court's decision.
• Stephen Crone and Stuart Wilks-Heeg at the LSE's Policy and Politics blog say the Tories owe their financial survival to just 50 key "donor group" sources that account for 51% of their donor income.
We have been able to construct a far more detailed picture of the extent to which the Conservatives, currently the "wealthiest" of the three main parties, depend on a limited number of big donors. In the table below, the cash donations of some of the party's biggest donors are added to those of the donors' husbands, wives, family members, companies and business partners which we have been able to identify. It shows that £72m – over half of the party's declared cash donation income – has been donated to the Conservative party from just 50 such "donor groups" over the course of a decade. Perhaps more strikingly, £45.5m has been sourced from the "top 15" donor groups – amounting to just under one-third (31.9%) of all Conservative party donation income from January 2001 to June 2010.
• Anthony Wells at UK Polling Report says how the question is phrased explains why some polls about the electoral reform referendum are putting first-past-the-post ahead, while others are putting the alternative vote ahead.
Ed Miliband is urging a "yes" vote in next year's referendum on giving more powers to the Welsh assembly, the BBC reports. David Cameron is remaining neutral.
Andy Burnham, the shadow education secretary, says that Michael Gove has been overruled by David Cameron on school sport. (My colleague Denis Campbell has the full story here.)
David Cameron and Michael Gove have spent weeks seeking to justify a bad decision with dodgy statistics. Gove's overruling by the prime minister is a victory for thousands of young people, teachers and athletes, and is a warning to this Tory-led government that it cannot simply do what it likes. But this package from the Conservative-led government, after weeks of scrabbling round for funding to save something it branded a "complete failure", only raises one cheer at best.
So today, in conceding the success of Labour's school sports partnerships, the government has nevertheless failed to put in place a proper funding package that will allow us to capitalise on the excitement of the 2012 [Olympic] Games. We are still looking at the prospect of fewer children playing sport in the run up to the Olympics, and no answer on what will happen to school sport following the games.
Note the reference to the "Tory-led government". As Toby Helm reported in the Observer at the weekend, Ed Miliband has told his shadow cabinet not to use the term coalition. Miliband's team are certainly on message. Since Toby's story appeared, I've had three emails from Labour with "Tory-led government" in the title.
My colleague Jeevan Vasagar has filed a story about the university funding cuts. He says the number of places on degree courses in England will be cut by 10,000 by 2012.
At the lobby briefing this morning I asked the prime minister's spokesman if it would be fair to describe the announcement about school sports being made today as a U-turn. He sidestepped the question by saying that the announcement had not yet been made. The education department only released the details about half an hour ago. But, now that I have seen the substance, I can answer the question myself. It is a U-turn, or at least a partial one.
Michael Gove, the education secretary, was being criticised for axing the £162m school sports partnerships programme. Today he has announced two measures. (The full details should be on the education department's website soon, although they are not there yet.)
• Ministers will spend £47m funding school sports partnerships until the end of the summer term 2011. This means they will get a partial reprieve.
• A further £65m will be given to secondary schools to allow them to release one PE teacher for one day a week to allow them to spend time organising competitive sport with other schools. The £65m will be spent over three financial years, starting in 2011-12. Schools won't have to spend the money on releasing a PE teacher for one day a week, but this way the government will be able to say that the money is available for them to continue doing what school sports partnerships were doing.
In a statement in the press release Gove said:
I want competitive sport to be at the centre of a truly rounded education that all schools offer. But this must be led by schools and parents, not by top down policies from Whitehall. It's time to ensure what was best in school sport partnerships around the country is fully embedded and move forward to a system where schools and parents are delivering on sports with competition at the heart.
This will take some time and I'm pleased to be able to confirm some funding for school sports partnerships during this transition. But I'm looking to PE teachers to embed sport and put more emphasis on competitions for more pupils in their own schools, and to continue to help the teachers in local primary schools do the same.
Brendan Barber, the TUC's general secretary, has put out a statement about the TUC's meeting with David Cameron.
Today we warned the prime minister that next year promises to be even bleaker for millions of families and their communities as the spending cuts bite hard and hit jobs and services. We made clear to the prime minister our strong view that the spending cuts would both be socially divisive and economically dangerous.
We urged him to do more to raise money from the banks as a sector that had done the most to take us into the current crisis and which had received enormous help from government.
"During the meeting there were useful discussions across a range of topics including green growth and jobs, manufacturing and equality issues. We welcomed the prime minister's intention to continue this dialogue with similar meetings in the future, and for urgent contact to take place with ministers on Post Office privatisation and public sector pension changes in particular.
From that, it sounds as if the two sides didn't agree on much, but that at least they decided to be polite about each other.
And Boris Johnson was on the World at One too. He was complaining that more has not been done to get Heathrow back to normal.
It can't be beyond the wit of man surely to find the shovels, the diggers, the snow-ploughs or whatever it takes to clear the snow out from under the planes, to get the planes moving and to have more than one runway going.
Len McCluskey has just been on the World at One doing his best to play down his rift with Ed Miliband. (See 9.16am.) McCluskey said that his Guardian article was not intended to alienate members of the public and that Miliband's comments were not "disappointing" to him.
Ed has got a particular job to do. I didn't see it as slapping me down. He said it was unhelpful and he disagrees with me and I respect that ... I have no doubt that when we get an opportunity to talk he will listen to what I have to say and I will listen to what he has to say.
But McCluskey also said that both David Cameron and Miliband needed to "take on board" McCluskey's belief that there was an alternative approach to the debt crisis. The government did not have to pursue a cuts agenda, he said. Unite believed that "fair tax systems and economic growth" were a better alternative.
Here's a lunchtime summary.
• Mark Harper, the Cabinet Office minister, has announced that the government will legislate next year to give prisoners sentenced to less than four years in jail the right to vote. "It is plain that there are strong views across parliament and in the country on the question of whether convicted prisoners should be entitled to vote," he said in a written ministerial statement. "However, this is not a choice: it is a legal obligation." (See 12.40pm.)
• Ed Milband has reprimanded Len McCluskey, the new leader of Unite, for saying that unions should be "preparing for battle" with the government. "The language and tone of Len McCluskey's comments are wrong and unhelpful," said a spokesman for the Labour leader, in response to an article in the Guardian. The clash coincided with McCluskey and other senior TUC members meeting David Cameron in Downing Street. The prime minister's spokesman said the government wanted a "constructive dialogue" with the unions. (See 9.16am and 11.51am.)
• Labour has accused Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, of "allowing the NHS to slip backwards". Lansley published his NHS Outcomes Framework for 2011/12. He said it would "provide patients with a clear national indication of how the NHS is working to improve the quality of service it already gives, and address the inequalities seen in health outcomes". But John Healey, the shadow health secretary, complained about Lansley's decision to scrap treatment guarantees. "This is a licence to let the NHS run down," he said.
• The University and College Union has described the 6% cut in university teaching budgets for 2011-12 announced today as a "kick in the teeth" to the higher education sector. Sally Hunt, the union's general secretary, said: "The coalition's Christmas message to the sector is funding cuts, higher fees, fewer university places, a pay freeze and attacks on staff pensions. After weeks of attacks on students and universities through budget cuts and increased tuition fees the coalition has delivered a real Christmas kick in the teeth to the sector by announcing these cuts to funding and student places and attacks on pay and conditions." (See 12.20pm.)
• Philip Hammond, the transport secretary, has defended the government's handling of the snow chaos. He will make a statement to MPs about this later today.
• George Osborne has postponed a meeting with bankers to discuss bonus payments because his travel plans have been disrupted by the weather. (See 11.51am.)
There's going to be an urgent question in the Commons on the immigration cap being ruled illegal, according to Paul Waugh.
Mark Harper, the Cabinet Office minister, has just issued a written ministerial statement about giving prisoners the right to vote. We knew that the government was going to do this – it has to, to comply with a judgment from the European court of human rights – but we did not know the details. Harper has just set them out:
• Prisoners sentenced to less than four years in jail will get the right to vote. Those sentenced to more than four years won't. The ECHR judgment doesn't mean all prisoners have to be allowed to vote, and a four-year cut off has been chosen because that is regarded as the distinction between a short- and long-term jail sentence. Judges will also have the right to remove the right to vote from prisoners sentenced to less than four years if they consider that appropriate.
• Prisoners will only be able to vote in Westminster or European elections. They will not vote in local elections or referendums. This means they will not get to vote for elected police commissioners.
• They will not be registered to vote at the prison. They will be registered at their former address, and they will vote by post or by proxy. This means candidates do not have to worry about a block of 1,000-odd prisoners from one jail affecting the result of a constituency election.
• MPs will vote on these measures next year. The government has to change the law by August 2011 to meet a deadline set by the ECHR.
Universities in England face a 6% cut in their teaching budgets for 2011-12, the BBC is reporting. Its story is based on the announcement that Vince Cable, the business secretary, and David Willetts, the education secretary, have made today, in the form of the annual grant letter to the Higher Education Funding Council for England. The department has also issued a press notice.
The letter makes it clear that universities will be expected to share services and that staff should expect a pay freeze. Here's an extract.
It is right that the HE sector should secure comparable efficiencies and [we are] sure that the council will build on its constructive work to date with institutions to maximise the proportion of grant reductions which are achieved through efficiency savings, including those from sharing services. We are continuing to look at ways to incentivise greater use of such arrangements …
The action that the University Superannuation Scheme is proposing to control pension costs is a good first step. It is also essential that the sector exercises pay restraint, at a time when there is a pay freeze in place across other sectors in receipt of public funding.
Here's a summary of the No 10 lobby briefing.
• George Osborne and Vince Cable's meeting with the bankers today has been postponed. Osborne has been in New York, and there is some doubt as to whether he will get back in time.
• David Cameron wants to engage in "constructive dialogue" with the TUC. He is meeting the TUC delegation in Downing Street before lunch. The meeting was at the request of the TUC and it will cover the economy, public services and pensions. Although it is his first meeting with a TUC delegation, the prime minister's spokesman said that Cameron had already met Brendan Barber, the TUC general secretary, and other union leaders. Government departments meet the unions "all the time", the spokesman said. Len McCluskey, the new Unite general secretary, will be at today's meeting. Downing Street criticised the comments in McCluskey's Guardian article, but, interestingly, not as strongly as Ed Milband did. (See 9.16am.) "We don't want to see co-ordinated strike action," was about all the prime minister's spokesman would say when the issue was raised. The spokesman also said the government had "no plans" to change strike legislation.
• Cameron thinks Philip Hammond is doing an effective job as transport secretary. And Hammond hasn't offered to resign. A colleague asked the resignation question, which may sound farfetched until you remember that a transport minister in Scotland has already lost his job as a consequence of the snow chaos. Colleagues asked a series of questions designed to elicit a "Cameron chairs emergency Cobra meeting to deal with the snow chaos" story, but the spokesman wouldn't quite play ball. Cameron did speak to Hammond on Saturday and Sunday about the snow, and he has also spoken to the leaders of the devolved administrations. And there is a cross-ministerial meeting on the issue this afternoon. But the spokesman would not say whether Cameron would be attending, or whether it would be held in the Cabinet Office briefing room A ("Cobra"), the venue used when ministers are meeting to respond to an emergency.
Philip Hammond is going to be busy this afternoon. He's going to make a statement in the Commons about the weather, and then a second one about high speed rail. He will start at around 4.15pm, after David Cameron's statement about the EU summit.
I'm off to the Downing Street lobby briefing. I'll post again after 11.30am.
You can read all today's Guardian politics stories here. And all the politics stories filed yesterday, including some in today's paper, are here.
As for the rest of the papers, here are the highlights:
• Sir David Manning, the former British ambassador to the US and to Nato and Tony Blair's former foreign policy adviser, says Britain should share its second aircraft carrier, either with Nato, France or America, in an article in the Financial Times (subscription) jointly written with Franklin Miller, a former US national security adviser.
The huge budget deficit confronting the Obama administration makes cuts to the US defence budget all but inevitable. The US navy's carrier fleet is a likely target. One way of easing the strain on both US and UK naval budgets would be to share the second carrier, perhaps for a year at a time; perhaps with a UK starboard crew and a US port one. This would be a bi-national variation of the two-crew system currently used by each nation when deploying Trident submarines.
• Christian Wolmar in the Times (paywall) says that he is not convinced that there is a case for high-speed rail, either in terms of the economics or the environment.
Supporters of HS2 privately agree that the economics are a bit dodgy and have started pointing to the regeneration benefits of the scheme, suggesting it is the key to reviving the fortunes of the north. But the benefits, if any, may well flow south rather than north. Worse still, there is no evidence that high-speed railways deliver economic growth. Japan built the world's first high-speed line in the 60s but has struggled economically for decades, while the United States and Australia have prospered without them. Moreover, the French experience shows that focusing on a high-speed network can suck investment out of the lignes classiques – the local, commuter services.
The promoters of the scheme have, too, dropped their argument that it is a green project. The HS2 report showed it was pretty much carbon neutral. So what would be Britain's biggest and most expensive engineering project is being put forward on evidence as flimsy as a paper hat from a cracker.
• And Andrew Gilligan in the Daily Telegraph says the government's own report on HS2 shows "virtually every argument you will hear for high-speed rail, today and in the months of argument to come, is either based on deeply shaky assumptions, or is just plain wrong".
Nor will HS2 serve New Street, the current main station in the heart of Birmingham city centre. It will dump you at a new-build terminus on the edge of the centre. So even those only going to central Birmingham will have to walk further, or take a bus or taxi. That takes the saving over the current journey down to perhaps 5-10 minutes, or even less.
• James Chapman in the Daily Mail claims that David Cameron is preparing to clear out the Ministry of Justice in a new year reshuffle, paving the way for David Laws to return to the government.
Government sources expect [Kenneth Clarke, the justice secretary], whose attempts to liberalise the criminal justice system have triggered controversy, to lose almost his entire ministerial team in a new year reshuffle ...
Suggestions that the justice secretary will be sacked are understood to be wide of the mark.
But David Cameron is increasingly irritated by the performance of Mr Clarke's department and is considering installing at least one Tory law-and-order hardliner and a rightwing Liberal Democrat.
Out would go Tories Crispin Blunt and Jonathan Djanogly, and Lib Dem Lord McNally.
Government sources say the shake-up could offer the opportunity of a recall to the political front line for Mr Laws, a right-of-centre Lib Dem.
Ed Miliband didn't like Len McCluskey's Guardian article, but Bob Crow certainly did. Here's what the RMT general secretary is saying:
Len McClusky is spot on: we need co-ordinated action, and a social and political movement that mirrors the anti-poll tax campaign, if we are to turn the tide on the fiscal fascism of this ConDem government.
Health workers are the latest group of staff to be told that they should put up with a pay freeze with their standard of living hammered down for at least two years. Millions of other workers face continuing attacks on jobs, wages and pensions. It is clear that the government strategy is to hit early and we need a rapid response across the trade union movement to stop them dead in their tracks.
Industrial action, civil disobedience and millions on the streets are all elements that we need to weld into the anti-cuts campaign and the government should be left in no doubt as to the angry and determined mood brewing up across the country.
Philip Hammond, the transport secretary, has been giving interviews this morning about the weather and high speed rail. The Press Association news agency and PoliticsHome have been monitoring them. Here are the key points.
• He said there would be an inquiry into what went wrong at Heathrow at the weekend.
Once we have got through the problem, once we have got things moving again, then we will have to have that discussion and find out exactly what went wrong and, most importantly, what went wrong in handling passengers who were stranded. I think whilst people are obviously deeply upset about the inconvenience, particularly at this time of year, of having their travel plans disrupted, most of what I am hearing is a sense of outrage about the way they were then treated when they were stranded at Heathrow airport.
• He rejected suggestions that the government was to blame for the travel disruption.
The railway networks are broadly operating, the strategic road network is open and operating, the big problems have been at the airports and in the air.
We don't own the airports and we don't own the airlines but we do liaise with them. Both Heathrow and Gatwick airports had full stocks of de-icing fluid. They had all the equipment in place that they planned to have so it wasn't that they didn't have the stuff there.
What went wrong is that we've had very extreme weather conditions and aviation quite rightly is a safety first business. If there is any danger aircraft don't move.
• He said high-speed rail was a "strategic" investment in Britain's future.
It is not just about high speed, it is also about capacity. Network Rail's report the week before last showed that we will be absolutely out of capacity on the West Coast Main Line by 2020, the early 2020s. We need a significant additional capacity. We would have to build a new railway line, even if it wasn't high speed and our judgment is that if you are going to build a new railway line, you should take the opportunity to get the benefits of high speed and greater connectivity between our urban conurbations.
For more on the travel chaos, do take a look at my colleague Matthew Weaver's snow and ice live blog.
Ed Miliband has criticised the incoming leader of Unite, one of the unions that played a crucial role in his election as Labour leader. Commenting on Len McCluskey's article in the Guardian today saying that the unions should be "preparing for battle" and warning about the prospect of widespread strike action next year, Miliband said the tone of McCluskey's comments was "wrong" and "unhelpful". Here's the full comment from a spokesperson for Miliband:
Ed warned about using overblown rhetoric about strikes in his conference speech and this is a case in point. The language and tone of Len McCluskey's comments are wrong and unhelpful and Ed Miliband will be making that clear when he meets him in the near future.
It's a quiet day in the Commons. David Cameron is making a statement about the EU summit at 3.30pm, but after that there's just a debate on firearms. There are no votes and many MPs will probably stay away. But over the course of the day we're expecting quite a few government announcements, including: cuts to university budgets; the route of the HS2 high speed rail line; new plans to fund school sports (which will represent a partial U-turn, because Michael Gove wanted to scrap school sports partnerships); and "voting entitlement" (which I think is about prisoners getting the right to vote).
There are also a couple of meetings that may turn out to be interesting, if the participants are actually willing to tell us what happened. George Osborne and Vince Cable are meeting bank bosses to discuss bonuses. And David Cameron is meeting the TUC, in what is apparently the first meeting between a Conservative prime minister minister and TUC leaders for 25 years. The TUC delegation is expected to included Len McCluskey, the incoming Unite leader who, in an article in the Guardian today, is calling for widespread and co-ordinated strike action next year.
As usual, I'll be covering all the breaking political news, as well as looking at the papers and bringing you the best politics from the web.