Here is a longer quote from John Healey, the defence secretary, about the Russian submarine operation foiled by the Royal Navy.

On the operation I’m setting out today, this was over a month where we and allies tracked every mile of the Russian subs.

We recognised the Akula attack submarine as a likely decoy to distract us from the Gugi submarines. We watched the Gugi submarines as they spent time over critical infrastructure relevant to us and our allies in the North Atlantic.

We watched them. We were able to track them.

And because we were watching them, we wanted to ensure that we could warn them that their covert operation had been exposed and reduce the risk that they may attempt any action that could damage our pipelines or our cables.

And I’m confident, we have no evidence that there has been any damage, but with allies, were sure that this is now verifiable.

And here is an extract from the Ministry of Defence briefing about the operation, which does not seem to be available online. The MoD says the Russian vessels were engaged in “nefarious activity near critical underwater infrastructure”. It says:

Subsea fibre optic cables are essential for all digital communications, with over 99% of international data traffic, including voice calls and internet data, travelling through subsea cables. This underpins global banking, trade, and communications.

Conducted under the cover of events in the Middle East, the Russian attack submarine and multiple vessels from the Main Directorate of Deep Sea Research (known as GUGI) entered international waters in the High North.

The Royal Navy deployed a Type 23 frigate HMS St Albans, RFA Tidespring and Merlin helicopters to track the attack submarine as it operated near British territorial waters.

Working alongside RAF P8 aircraft, the submarine was tracked 24/7 in an operation carried out with allies.

As part of the operation, which saw British ships cover thousands of miles, the RAF and Navy deployed sonobuoys to track the Russian vessels.

While the Russian attack submarine has now headed back towards Russia, the UK has kept both naval vessels and aircraft ready to respond should Russian vessels return.

GUGI is Russia’s long-running military programme to develop capabilities to be deployed from specialist surface vessels and submarines, that are intended to survey underwater infrastructure during peacetime, but then damage or destroy infrastructure during a conflict.

British defences were previously tested by GUGI when the Russian spy ship Yantar sailed near UK waters last year. The ship was tracked by a Royal Navy frigate and RAF P8s, with lasers being directed at British pilots.

The Yantar is one the key vessels used by Russia to threaten the UK and our allies. Over the last two years, the UK has seen a 30% increase in Russian vessels threatening UK waters.

The MoD has also released these images of the GUGI base.

While Zack Polanski was speaking at the Green party’s launch, John Healey, the defence secretary, was holding a press conference. He announced that a British warship and aircraft tracked and monitored Russian submarines attempting to survey vital undersea infrastructure in the North Atlantic, ensuring they abandoned their mission.

Peter Walker has the story here.

Q: Are you finding it difficult vetting candidates because you have grown so quickly?

Polanski says this is a “real challenge” because the party has expanded so much.

He says he would not be surprised if “the odd candidate'” gets through who does not align with the party’s values, “where we have to distance ourselves from them”.

But the party is doing “due diligence”, he says.

Q: How can you push for rent controls when that is not something councils cannot deliver?

Polanski says people talk about rent controls as a “wild” idea. But in the UK the experiment has been not having rent controls, he says.

He goes on:

I think what’s wild is that we’ve spent over £70bn in the last five years on welfare, which has been money going straight from the government into the pockets of private landlords, as opposed to building social homes or council homes that could be rent capped or rent controlled straight away, whether controlled under local authorities.

Polanski is now taking questions.

Q: Do you want the Greens to review their policy on Nato, and for the UK to leave the alliance?

Polanski says Donald Trump is increasingly unreliable.

The UK should be working more with its European allies, he says.

Brexit was a catastrophic decision, he says.

He says Labour used to attack him for what he said about Nato and Donald Trump. But now he feels “vindicated” because Labour ministers are now agreeing with his assessment of Trump.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to look at this man and say, this is not someone we can rely on for the security of this country.

Ultimately, I also think we need to be looking at a proper strategic defence review to look at other threats to this nation, both in terms of pandemic resilience, cyber security and food resilience.

Polanski says the national Labour government has let people down.

What we have seen is a toxic combination of chaos and cowardice. A government that has no plans, no vision and no real change. A government that is not just been complicit in genocid; a government that has watered down its promises on workers rights, and a government that brought Peter Mandelson into the very heart of its administration.

And the reason why I talk about all of this now is because the hypocrisy, the cynicism we see in government – that’s filtered down to Labour-run councils.

Polanski cites housing as an example.

Let’s start with the fact that we had a government that promised to ban section 21 evictions – no fault evictions.

But while they dithered and delayed for ages about doing it, Labour councils were still using loopholes to evict their own tenants around section 21, including in Lambeth, next door, where they were still proclaiming themselves to be the party of renters – yet they were investigated for maladministration, essential repairs weren’t being carried out, there were people living with no heating, no hot water, while [Labour] were still claiming to be the party of renters.

Polanski claims the situation is similar in Hackney.

Polanski moves on to the Iran war, and the ongoing Israeli attacks against Lebanon. He says:

It is outrageous that Israel are still enjoying diplomatic and trade privileges from the international community. As a Green party, we are calling on this government to make much more robust sanctions, to withdraw the UK-Israel trade agreement and to end the genocide.

And we know it’s not just Lebanon. We also see this going on in Iran. And the prime minister is not being entirely truthful with us all, with the country. He keeps saying that we are not involved with this war, but we still have UK soil and UK bases where US bombers are flying over to Iran. And what we need to do is disentangle the UK military and the US military, ban the US from using our air spaces, and do exactly what other European allies like Pedro Sánchez in Spain have done and say, this war is not in our name and we want nothing to do with it.

Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, is speaking now.

He says people ask him what a good result for the Greens would be.

In 2023, we had record breaking results as a Green party. We got over 241 new councillors.

Now, 2023 was an election where double the number of seats were in play than there are at this election.

Nevertheless, I am confident but not complacent in this election.

We are going to beat 241 councillors and we are heading for a new record breaking result for the Green party.

Zack Polanski will soon be speaking at the Green party’s local elections campaign launch.

But the first speaker is Lewisham Green councillor Liam Shrivastava, a Lewisham councillor. He starts by complaining about Labour having a stranglehold on London politics. At the last election every single councillor elected in Lewisham was Labour – “including me”, he adds, to laughter.

Two men and two women have died after a small boat sank in the Channel between France and Britain, French local authorities have said. Diane Taylor has the story.

Commenting on the deaths, a UK government spokesperson said:

We are deeply saddened to hear about the deaths in French waters today.

Every death in the Channel is a tragedy and a stark reminder of the dangers posed by criminal gangs exploiting vulnerable people for profit.

We will continue working relentlessly with the French and our partners overseas to prevent these perilous journeys.

The French authorities are leading the response to this incident and we are supporting their investigation.

Keir Starmer has held a meeting in the UAE this morning with defence officials from so-called Dragon Group partners in the Middle East, No 10 has said.

He thanked them for what they had done to protect British nationals in the region during the Iran war and discussed plans for the future, stressing the need to make the ceasefire permanent and not allowing Iran to hold the strait of Hormuz “to ransom”.

The meeting in Abu Dhabi was chaired by Sir Richard Knighton, the UK’s chief of defence staff, and it included defence representatives from: the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Iraq and Egypt.

Starmer told them that the UK had been pushing for de-escalation all along and therefore welcomed the ceasefire.

Some of those attending had participated in the virtual military planning meeting chaired by Yvette Cooper on Tuesday for around 40 nations to discuss how the strait of Hormuz could be kept open after fighting is over.

Starmer told them that work was not starting on detailed plans to restore freedom of navigation.

Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, will say more about the importance of keeping the strait of Hormuz open in her Mansion House speech in the City of London this evening.

According to an extract released in advance, she will say:

Fertiliser for Africa, liquid natural gas for Asia, jet fuel for the world; the trading route for Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Oman, all hijacked by Iran so they can hold the global economy hostage.

No country can close these routes – it goes against the fundamental principles of the law of the sea. In Britain, the importance of this runs deep through our history, our interests and our values. We are an island nation. A maritime economy. 95% of our trade is carried by sea. Around 40% of our food is imported.

It was Victorian Britain that pioneered the freedom of the seas, maritime law, and made piracy a crime of universal jurisdiction. And today, we know more than ever that freedom of navigation is the underpinning of global trade. It matters for every sea, ocean and strait. Every country has a stake in this. Every industry is affected by it.

We should start immediately to get international shipping moving again by supporting the International Maritime Organisation’s proposals to move the ships trapped in the strait, and the 20,000 stranded seafarers – a humanitarian as well as an economic first step. And then the full and unconditional reopening of the strait must be a central part not just of the current ceasefire but of the long-term future for the region.

Yvette Cooper has described Donald Trump’s threat to wipe out Iranian civilisation earlier this week as “completely wrong”.

Trump’s language about Iran became increasingly aggressive and barbaric ahead of the ceasefire, culminating with a Truth Social post on Tuesday saying “a whole civilisation will die tonight” if Iran did not comply with US demands.

While some opposition politicians, and backbench Labour MPs, denounced the president language very strongly, No 10 did not respond.

But, speaking to Sky News this morning, Cooper did condemn Trump’s comments. She said:

We take a different view from the US on issues, and it is possible for us to be strong, close partners on a whole range of issues, but also to take different decisions on issues.

I think that the rhetoric that we’ve seen used, I think, has been completely wrong. I think that sort of escalatory rhetoric can have escalatory consequences.

Cooper also said that it was important to distinguish between the oppressive Iranian regime and the Iranian people as a whole.

More significantly, we should always distinguish between this malign Iranian regime that we have seen threaten its neighbours over a long time, and the people of Iran, many of whom have been brutally repressed by this Iranian regime.

Keir Starmer met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, yesterday. Unlike, say, Donald Trump, MBS (as he is sometimes called) is not a man for press conferences. But No 10 did release a readout of the talks afterwards. It says Starmer declared Saudi Arabia to be a “steadfast ally”.

For the record, here is the full readout. A No 10 spokesperson said:

The prime minister began by welcoming the ceasefire and set out how efforts must now be focused on upholding it and turning it into a lasting peace.

He was clear that it was vital now to continue work to reopen the strait of Hormuz, and discussed the UK’s ongoing efforts to convene partners to agree and plan the practical steps required to give shipping the confidence to transit the strait.

Reflecting on the defensive operations which have taken place in the region since the conflict began, the prime minister thanked His Royal Highness for Saudi Arabia’s efforts to protect British nationals in the country.

The prime minister committed to continue to support Saudi Arabia as a steadfast ally including through the recent deployment of the Sky Sabre air defence system, having met UK personnel deployed to operate it earlier today.

The leaders then discussed how the UK and Saudi Arabia could further deepen their defence industrial cooperation to boost capability and mutual security for the long term, as well as continuing to grow their thriving trade and investment relationship.

The prime minister said he was pleased that the UK and Saudi Arabia would soon be marking 100 years of friendship under the Treaty of Jeddah and they looked forward to speaking again soon.

Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, told Sky News this morning that she was “deeply troubled” by Israel’s ongoing air strikes in Lebanon. She said:

I’m deeply troubled about the escalating attacks that we saw from Israel in Lebanon yesterday. We’ve seen the humanitarian consequences, the huge mass displacement of people in Lebanon.

Good morning. Keir Starmer is still in the Gulf, and Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, has been doing a round of interviews this morning, ahead of delivering a speech on foreign policy this evening.

As Jamie Grierson reports, Cooper has been arguing forcefully that Lebanon must be included in the US-Iran ceasefire.

But Cooper is also trying to quash suggestions that, as part of a permanent settlement, Iran might be allowed to carry on charging a $2m-a-ship toll for oil tankers wanting to pass through the strait of Hormuz. Rather alarminingly, Donald Trump has even suggested that the US might be part of this, as a “joint venture” with Iran.

In an interview on the Today programme, Cooper made it clear that charging a toll for passage through the strait would be unaccepable to the UK.

She said:

The starting point here is this is an international transit route. It’s international shipping that uses this. This is part of the international law of the sea. This is a a route between the high seas; it is a trading route.

When it was put to her that Iran takes the view that these are territorial waters, not international waters, Cooper said:

As part of the international maritime law, this is a transit route between the high seas.

And whether you talk about Dover or Gibraltar or other straits around the world, there may be territorial waters there, but there’s also an international shipping route and an international transit route, which means that freedom of navigation principles apply and that countries cannot simply hijack those kinds of international transit routes and unilaterally apply tolls. They cannot do that as part of the laws of the sea and the United Nations conventions.

Cooper said that protecting freedom of navigation throught the strait was “crucial for the global economy”.

I will post more from her interviews soon.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Keir Starmer is in the United Arab Emirates where he is expected to hold talks with the president, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Later in the day he has another bilateral planned, and he is recording an interview with ITV’s Robert Peston.

10.30am: Zack Polanski, the Green leader, launches his party’s local elections campaign at an event in London.

11am: Rhun ap Iorwerth, the Plaid Cymru leader, launches his party’s manifesto for the Senedd election at an event in Wrexham.

Morning: Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, is doing a campaign visit in Greater Manchester.

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