Good morning and welcome to today’s live blog.
The Labour Party’s first annual conference since it came to power will begin on Sunday after Sir Keir Starmer promised he would protect public services from future austerity.
The Liverpool gathering was originally expected to be a victory lap for the party after its landslide success at the general election.
But Labour is now braced for a clash with the unions over its plans to limit winter fuel payments to only the poorest pensioners.
The embattled Prime Minister is meanwhile seeking to move on from rows about internal strife at No 10 and donors.
Speaking to Labour-friendly newspapers ahead of the conference, Sir Keir vowed his administration was not “going down the road of austerity” like that pursued by the Cameron-era government, in a move that may signal future investment in public services.
The Prime Minister was keen to counter suggestions he had only offered doom and gloom since coming to power, instead stressing Labour would deliver for voters.
“I want to answer the ‘why’ question as well as the ‘what’ question.
“We do need to say why and explain and set out and describe the better Britain that this ladders up to,” he told the Observer newspaper.
An early signal of this optimistic intent came as he told a Saturday night reception in Liverpool that he wanted his Government to be compared with Clement Attlee’s transformational post-war administration.
