Labour says UK ‘nowhere near’ renegotiating EU trade deal as European leaders arrive for key summit – politics live

David Lammy has said he is already engaging with Donald Trump’s controversial running mate, JD Vance, and can identify with him because of their common working class and Christian backgrounds.

The British foreign secretary was speaking just hours after the possible future US vice-president reiterated his “America first” views, pledging to the Republican national convention (RNC) that he would not send US soldiers to war abroad unnecessarily.

“We will send our kids to war only if we must,” Vance said, signalling a significant policy shift for the US which has cemented its position as the defender of the world’s democracies ever since the second world war.

Vance has previous described Britain under Labour as the first “truly Islamist” country with a nuclear weapon.

Lammy told BBC Breakfast: “Let me just say on JD Vance that I’ve met him now on several occasions, we share a similar working-class background with addiction issues in our family. We’ve written books on that. We’ve talked about that.

“And we’re both Christians so I think I can find common ground with JD Vance.”

He was speaking from Blenheim Palace, in Oxfordshire, before the fourth meeting of the European political community, a conference of 44 EU and non-EU leaders in the biggest gathering of European leaders in the UK in a generation.

You can read the full report by Lisa O’Carroll and Kiran Stacey here:

UK wage growth slowed in May to the lowest level in two years amid a cooling jobs market, underscoring the challenge for the Bank of England as policymakers decide whether to cut interest rates.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show annual pay growth eased from 5.9% in the three months to April to 5.7% in the three months to May, matching City economists’ predictions.

Unemployment was unchanged from 4.4% in April, while the number of job vacancies fell by 30,000 led by dwindling demand in retail and hospitality amid a continued slowdown in hiring across the economy.

After a sharp fall in headline inflation over recent months, real wage growth taking into account the rising cost of living has strengthened. Total real pay, including bonuses, rose by 3% on the year in the three months to May. Growth was last higher in the three months to August 2021, when it was 4.5%.

You can read more on this story by Richard Partington, the Guardian’s economics correspondent, here:

My colleague Julia Kollewe is on the business live blog today. She has more on the above story too, plus other key business news developments:

Labour must ramp up renewable energy to meet 2030 climate vows, says watchdog

Fiona Harvey

The new Labour government must oversee a massive ramping up of renewable energy generation in this parliament or the UK will breach its international obligations under the Paris agreement, the government’s climate watchdog has said.

The Conservative government left the country drastically off track to meet its international commitments, despite setting the carbon-cutting target before hosting the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021, the Committee on Climate Change found in its most recent annual report.

In a damning verdict on the Tories, and Rishi Sunak’s tenure in particular, the CCC found that the policies that Labour inherited would result in only about a third of the emissions cuts necessary to reach the UK’s Paris agreement target of cutting carbon by 68% by 2030.

The report, compiled by scientists and experts, said the last government “signalled a slowing of pace and reversed or delayed key policies … gave inconsistent messages on its commitment to the actions needed to reach net zero, with cancellations of, and delays and exemptions to, important policies. It claimed to be acting in the long-term interests of the country but there was no evidence backing the claim that dialling back ambition would reduce costs to citizens.”

We mentioned this earlier but in case you missed it, here’s what we’re expecting today (all timings are BST):

10am: Opening session

11.30am: Family photo

Midday: Thematic roundtables

1pm: Opportunity for bilateral/multilateral meetings and lunch

2.45pm: Closing plenary

3.45pm: Reception with His Majesty King Charles III

4.45pm: Bilateral/multilateral meetings and departures

Many are viewing the new UK government’s enthusiasm for today’s summit as a sign it is keen to reset its relationship with the European Union after eight years of post-referendum bickering.

But UK foreign secretary David Lammy, who has been speaking to the media this morning, has said the UK is “nowhere near” negotiating agreements with the bloc.

The European Union and the European Commission will not be up and running until December following their elections, he said.

Lammy told BBC Breakfast:

Of course, we’re entering into discussions but we’re nowhere near a negotiation on the trade agreement – that paper thin trade agreement that Boris Johnson struck – the veterinary deal that we’ve said that we want to get, the mutual qualifications that we want to work on and the UK-EU security pact that we’re proposing to Europe that will enable us to discuss a whole range of issues across the European family.

He said security, Ukraine and migration would be key points of discussion at the summit.

In terms of future UK negotiations with the EU, he said:

I’m certainly not going to show my hand before negotiations have even begun.

He repeated that Labour has said it will not bring Britain back into the single market or EU customs union but that the Government does want a better trade agreement.

Proposed UK-EU security pact ‘will be welcomed in Brussels’, MEP says

Jennifer Rankin

Labour’s proposed foreign policy and security pact with the EU sounds “quite promising”, the head of the European parliament’s foreign affairs committee has said, adding that the British government should use the next weeks and months to come up with proposals that are “as concrete as possible”.

David McAllister, a veteran German MEP and close ally of European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said such a pact should cover economic, climate, health, cyber and energy security. His list overlaps with the sweeping set of ideas proposed by the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, who recently met his counterparts in Berlin, Stockholm and Bydgoszcz in northern Poland.

Speaking to the Guardian before the European Political Community (EPC) summit that will bring together leaders from about 45 European countries at Blenheim Palace on Thursday, McAllister said:

We have always wanted closer post-Brexit security cooperation. At the moment we have as the EU more structured ties with the US, Canada and Norway than we do with the UK. So if David Lammy and [the defence secretary] John Healey are calling for a security pact with the EU, I think that this will be welcomed in Brussels.

Starmer to focus on border security and immigration at summit

Lisa O’Carroll

Keir Starmer will put immigration and border security at the centre of his first summit with European leaders, as he races to agree changes to the asylum system to replace the defunct Rwanda scheme.

Starmer is expected to tell leaders at the summit he wants to “renew” Britain’s relations with Europe, with new border controls and an agreement on defence and security at the heart of any renegotiation.

He will introduce a plenary session in the morning during which Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, will also speak, amid growing concern among European leaders about what a second Donald Trump presidency might mean for the war in Ukraine.

In a statement released before the meeting, Starmer said:

We cannot let the challenges of the recent past define our relationships of the future. That is why European security will be at the forefront of this government’s foreign and defence priorities, and why I am focused on seizing this moment to renew our relationship with Europe.

The EPC will fire the starting gun on this government’s new approach to Europe, one that will not just benefit us now, but for generations to come, from dismantling the people-smuggling webs trafficking people across Europe, to standing up to Putin’s barbaric actions in Ukraine and destabilising activity across Europe.

He will make a direct plea to his fellow leaders not to block his attempts to agree new border controls, saying: “We will only be able to secure our borders, drive economic growth and defend our democracies if we work together.”