Reform UK accused by minister of talking ‘utter nonsense’ after Zia Yusuf implies Starmer trying to get Farage killed – UK politics live

Good morning. The Labour conference is over, the Conservative party one starts on Sunday, but both of them have got significant policy announcements out today.

• For Labour, Keir Starmer is announcing government plans to tighten the conditions that apply to asylum seekers given the right to stay in the UK. Provocatively, he says: “There will be no golden ticket to settling in the UK, people will have to earn it.” Rajeev Syal has the story.

Related: Starmer to end asylum ‘golden ticket’ of resettlement and family reunion rights

• For the Conservatives, Kemi Badenoch has said the Conservatives will repeal the Climate Change Act if they win the next election. Here is our story, by Fiona Harvey and Helena Horton.

Related: Kemi Badenoch vows to repeal Climate Change Act

I will post more on these stories as the day goes on.

There is a clear link between the stories: both of them are Reform UK-flavoured, very strongly so in the Tory case (because Nigel Farage would also get rid of the Climate Change Act), but less so in the Labour case (because Farage does not want to tighten conditions for asylum seekers – he basically does not want any of them here at all.) But the Starmer announcement shows that, while the message from Labour conference was that Starmer is now willing to vigorously contest some aspects of Faragism, he is not rejecting it wholesale. He has set out a dividing line – but it is beyond the edge of the territory where migration liberals feel comfortable.

One consequence of the Labour conference is that ministers now feel a lot more confident about clobbering Farage’s party and this morning we saw that from Mike Tapp, the migration minister.

Yesterday Zia Yusuf, Reform’s head of policy, gave interviews arguing Starmer’s attack on Farage in his conference Tuesday put the Reform leader at risk. This was an odd claim from a party that invited the woman jailed for a tweet urging people to set fire to asylum hotels to address its party conference as a free speech martyr. Yusuf went even further, though. He implied that Starmer was deliberately trying to get Farage killed. This was an allegation so unhinged that the Guardian ended up covering it in John Crace’s sketch. This is what John wrote about Yusuf’s interview with Wilfred Frost on Sky News.

Yusuf was appalled by Starmer’s speech. It had been vicious, vindictive and inflammatory. An attempt to demonise Nige. As such it had been an incitement to violence. Here was the crux of it. Starmer knew that he couldn’t beat Farage at the ballot box so he was trying to have him assassinated.

“There’s a term known as ‘stochastic terrorism’,” Zia went on. It meant to whip up so much hatred that one supporter takes it on themselves to kill the target. And that was what Starmer had been doing. It was almost certainly the first time the prime minister has been called a terrorist on live news. Time and again, Frost invited Yusuf to back down. To qualify his language. But Zia wasn’t having any of it. Starmer was a terrorist. The one aim of his speech had been to incite someone to kill Farage. Everything else was a smokescreen. Yusuf alone knew the truth. You wonder what he makes of Nige’s speeches.

In an interview with Times Radio, Tapp was asked to respond. He said the claim that Starmer wanted to incite violence against Farage was “utter nonsense”. He went on:

Of course, we want all members of parliament to be safe, and that’s absolutely important, and no-one wants any harm to come to Nigel Farage.

But, look, if we want to say what we want to say, then we’re in our rights to do that, as are they. That’s freedom of speech.

This is utter snowflakery from Zia Yusuf, who claims that we’re diminishing freedom of speech whilst at the same time being allowed to say what he wants.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Keir Starmer is at the European Political Community summit in Copenhagen. Jakub Krupa is covering this on his Europe live blog.

Related: European leaders meet at Denmark summit to discuss security, defence and migration – Europe live

5pm: Kemi Badenoch is doing a round of regional radio and TV interviews, ahead of her conference. Most will be embargoed until 5pm.

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