Morning briefing Wednesday 12th November

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 Morning Briefing on Wednesday 12th November. Sir Keir Starmer has privately vowed to fight any challenge to his leadership from Labour MPs.

0:43The Prime Minister's allies think one might come just after the budget when it's thought the Chancellor will break the party's promise not to raise taxes for working people. The Times' chief political commentator Patrick Maguire has been speaking to them and has told the State of It podcast the PM is going on the attack. I'm told Keir Starmer will basically say to any Cabinet Minister who comes to see him and says Prime Minister this is really bad, I think you need to resign, he'll say, well, I'm sorry, I disagree. And if you really, really want to open this leadership question, what you should do is find 80 MPs to nominate you and you and I, we can all fight a leadership election.

1:20Now, do you really want that at a time when our economic situation is so finely poised, when the world is in such disarray? New figures show around half of people on Universal Credit aren't required to look for work. Four million people now fall into the category, which includes those in full-time education and those deemed too ill to work. That's a million more than a year ago, with ministers saying the phasing out of old benefits is to blame for the increase. Foreign Secretary of ECUPA is due to meet her US counterpart Marco Rubio at the G7 Foreign Ministerial Summit in Canada later. It comes just hours after it emerged, the UK has stopped sharing some intelligence with the US on suspected drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean, over fears American strikes on the vessels might not be lawful.

2:08Former British military intelligence officer Philip Ingram has told Times Radio he can understand the caution. Concerns will have been raised whenever the Americans have started to take military action directly against criminal boats having declared them narco-terrorists. And this is very difficult to define in law. And the Americans will be defining it and testing it under the US legal process. Of course, every sovereign nation that's collecting intelligence has to be certain that the way it has been used is in conjunction with the law of the land that has been behind collecting it. So in this case, the United Kingdom.

2:42It's claimed editors of a Panorama documentary weren't told two sections of a Donald Trump speech had been edited together. The chair of the BBC has admitted it made it look like the US president was inciting violence and has apologised. President Trump has threatened the corporation with legal action. But former US assistant attorney David Katz has told Times Radio he thinks the BBC should fight it. I don't think that this is actual malice. I think somebody edited it. They should have kept that one clip in. They didn't keep that one clip in. He's going to argue his reputational harm, which means he's got to present evidence, Trump, of his reputation and his financial harm.

3:18So he's going to have to come in with certified financial records. Trump does not like to do that. So that may be exactly when the lawsuit goes away. Protesters with signs saying our forests are not for sale have broken into the COP30 summit in Brazil Delegates from nearly 200 countries are at the climate talks in Belém which is on the edge of the Amazon rainforest Indigenous groups there are vocal critics of climate change You can follow the Times News Briefing on Spotify and listen live to Times Radio online This episode of the Times Radio News Briefing is sponsored by PwC AI is everywhere In the news, in our hands, but return on investment, not so much.

4:00So how do you get beyond the hype and deliver AI that powers reinvention and growth across your business? Strong foundations unlock AI's potential. That's why PwC takes you further with tech, strengthening the data quality, processes and workflows that shape how well AI performs. PwC turns innovation into implementation so you can accelerate from experiment to scale. Discover more at pwc.co.uk

4:54proves it worked. Don't fight for attention. Buy it with ACAST. Learn more by visiting acast.com slash advertise.