Afternoon briefing Tuesday 9th September

0:00This episode of the Times Radio News Briefing is sponsored by PwCWC. Staying competitive means getting ahead, not just keeping up. So how do business leaders cut through the noise and focus on what really matters? PwC takes you further with tech, from optimising the systems that put your data to work, to scaling AI from proof of concept to competitive edge. PwC helps you meet tomorrow's tech demands so you can compete at a speed that rewrites the rules. Discover more at pwc.co.uk. This is The Times Afternoon Briefing on Tuesday 9th September. Dame Emily Thornberry has announced that she is running for the Labour deputy leadership.

0:43Her Islington South seat borders Sir Keir Starmer's in North London, but he overlooked her for a role in government last year, despite having had her in his shadow cabinet before the election. The Times' political editor Stephen Swinford says it could be a bad result for the Prime Minister. Sir Keir Starmer would like whoever gets it to be kind of Labour's foremost campaigner to go out and take the fight to reform. The reality is that there's a chance that he might not get that. If you look at Emily Thornberry's pitch that she's just put out, she said we've made mistakes and we must listen. Welfare, Gaza, wealth tax, changes to send.

1:16So you can see she is actually taking the fight to Starmer directly. And that is his nightmare scenario. The Education Secretary Bridget Philipson, whose seat is in Sunderland, has also thrown her hat in the ring this morning, along with the left-wing backbencher Bel Ribeiro Addy, whose seat is in London. The Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, told Times Radio having a Northern MP as Deputy Leader would help. Things still feel too London-centric to me, so I want a Deputy Leader who will be an authentic voice to challenge that, an independent voice to challenge that, but also will raise questions about the running of the Labour Party.

1:55This morning, Sir Keir Starmer has hosted the first meeting of his new Cabinet since Angela Rayner resigned. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky says more than 20 people have been killed in a Russian airstrike on a village in the east of the country. He says those killed in Dnetsk were civilians and is calling for a response from the US. Donald Trump's former national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, told Times Radio he expects a shift in American policy soon. I think we should remember that Donald Trump, in the first year of his administration, in 2017 to 2018, imposed more sanctions on Russian individuals and entities than the previous eight years of the Obama administration.

2:34So I think Trump is about to convince himself that it's time to put a heck of a lot more pressure on Putin and constrain further his ability to continue the onslaught against the Ukrainian people. Democrats in the US have released letters to Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday, which appear to include messages from Donald Trump and the British ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson. The cache of documents from 2003 includes the drawing of a woman's body allegedly signed by the president, which includes a message in which he says the two men have certain things in common. In his letter, Lord Mandelson calls Epstein his best pal.

3:12The president has denied signing the note. Lord Maddleton says he regrets ever having been introduced to Epstein. The Queen Elizabeth Hospital Trust in Kingslyn in Norfolk has been ranked the worst NHS hospital trust in England in a new government league table. Northumbria's hospitals were ranked best for a non-specialist trust. And the BBC's Director General says no presenter is irreplaceable as he insists the corporation does not have a toxic culture. Tim Davies been questioned by MPs on topics like Masterchef, the BBC's Glastonbury coverage and a controversial documentary about Gaza. Don't forget to subscribe to The Times News Briefing on Spotify or listen live to Times Radio Online.

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