Morning briefing Tuesday 8th September

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0:35This is The Times morning briefing on Tuesday 8th September. Andy Burnham will announce a ban on UK trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank later today. The Times reports that he'll say his government will not stand back and accept the destruction of the two-state solution. The Prime Minister told President Donald Trump about the proposed ban in a phone call last night. The White House is expected to criticise the decision. Edmund Fitton-Brown is former British ambassador to Yemen and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies. Unfortunately, this comes as the latest in a sequence of Labour Party moves that seem to me to have been essentially appeasement of an Islamist constituency.

1:15That was certainly true of the British decision to recognise an independent state of Palestine. And in doing this, of course, the UK government is not only alienating the Israeli government, it's endangering our relationship with the US administration. The MP for Dover is calling on the Prime Minister to chair an emergency Cobra meeting about small boat crossings after recent anti-migrant protests. People dressed in black and wearing balaclavas blocked roads in a stand-off with police in Portsmouth on Sunday after a dinghy arrived with 120 people on board. There was a similar demonstration in Kent on Saturday.

1:53Tom Purseglove is a former immigration minister under the Conservatives. There are many millions of people as well in this country who are hugely concerned about the small boats issue. This government's policy seems to be one of trying to reduce the numbers rather than stopping the issue altogether, and it's frankly the case that the public's had enough, and that must be listened to, and I think it's sort of imperative that the government takes proper action. The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has said that the United States is looking to restart negotiations for a broader peace agreement with Russia, and that the war could be de-escalated over the winter.

2:29Keir Giles is Associate Fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Programme at the Chatham House think tank. A lot of the negotiations so far have been fruitless, but Zelensky is suggesting that Putin might want to make Trump a gift in order to make him look good before the midterm elections in the United States. That's a reasonable suggestion. After all, the longer Trump stays in the power, the better it is for Putin. Angela Rayner insists the government is not U-turning on local government reorganisation after MPs expressed disappointment at the cancellation, proposals to merge smaller councils to form larger authorities in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Hampshire have been withdrawn.

3:04Plans for 14 other areas will also be reviewed. The King has confirmed that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are private citizens who will not undertake official royal duties. In a letter that was sent to senior military and government officials, Charles outlined that there had been no change to Harry and Meghan's status and that they must not use their HRH titles. There's more on these stories throughout the day on Times Radio.

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