Keir Starmer will today sign new agreements to intercept criminal gangs smuggling migrants through the Western Balkans as part of efforts to bring down small boat crossings, PA Media reports. PA says:

Starmer will announce the deals to boost intelligence sharing, expertise and co-operation with Serbia, North Macedonia and Kosovo at a meeting of the European Political Community in Budapest, Hungary.

He is expected to urge European partners to take action to reduce deaths in the Channel during small boat crossings and tell them that lawful, international co-operation will be key to efforts.

The Western Balkans is a key route used by migrants who end up in the EU or UK illegally. Almost 100,000 migrants travelled by that route last year.

The deals will boost intelligence sharing and co-operation to intercept the criminal gangs as they smuggle people through these countries. The aim is to arrest the gangs and break their business models at source.

The UK already works with Albania to target the illicit financial flows that underpin smuggling gang operations.

In a statement ahead of today’s meeting, Starmer said:

There is a criminal empire operating on our continent, exacting a horrendous human toll and undermining our national security.

Backed by our new Border Security Command, the UK will be at the heart of the efforts to end the scourge of organised immigration crime – but we cannot do it in isolation.

We need to go further and faster, alongside our international partners, and take the fight directly to the heart of these vile people smuggling networks. I will be making this the central feature of my discussions at the European Political Community meeting today.

Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has offered to help the Labour government establish a good relationship with the Trump administration. In an article for the Daily Telegraph, Farage says he believes that Trump’s victory is a sign that “politics, including our own, is moving rightwards”. He admits Trump’s tariff problems could cause problems for the UK, but he suggests Keir Starmer could mitigate the impact if he is willing to engage in some diplomatic schmoozing.

Farage, who counts Trump as a personal friend, says:

Perhaps the biggest worry that Sir Keir Stammer faces in policy terms is that Trump has announced a big tariff regime. Britain is, potentially, in a fortunate position. Such tariffs might be avoided – but only by direct negotiations with Team Trump, something of which Stammer’s friends in the European Union would not approve. Which way will Starmer jump?

Offering to help, Farage goes on:

Britain is really going to have to roll out the red carpet for Trump very quickly. If we don’t, a great opportunity will be squandered.

I’m overjoyed that this process has already begun, with our very sensible Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, making clear that Trump will be able to address parliament during his State visit next year.

However, there is no time to waste. If I can be helpful in any way when it comes to bridging the divide that exists between Starmer’s government and Trump, I will be glad to assist.

I might not agree with almost anything that Starmer and his cabinet stand for, but I do believe in something called the national interest.

Asked about Farage’s offer in an interview with Times Radio, Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, said the government did not need his help. “I think we’ll have our own relationships,” he said.

The number of potential victims of modern slavery reached a record level, PA Media reports. PA says:

A total of 4,758 potential victims were referred to the Home Office between July and September, the latest figures show.

This is up 10% compared to the previous three months and a rise of 15% on the same quarter in 2023.

The Home Office said the number of referrals for the latest three-month period is the highest since the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) began in 2009.

The previous record was 4,742 referrals between January and March 2023.

To access support and have recognition of their circumstances in the UK, victims of slavery and human trafficking have to be assessed under the NRM.

Almost a quarter (23% or 1,092) of referrals were of UK nationality, with the second most common being Albanian (11%; 523) and Vietnamese (11%; 514).

Some 74% of UK nationals referred into the system were children, while 91% of the Albanian nationals and 81% of Vietnamese nationals referred were adults.

In his interviews this morning Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, declined to criticise the way Kamala Harris ran her presidential election campaign, saying it was not for him to “lecture” another centre-left party on how it operated.

But he said the result did show the need for governments to act on living standards. He told LBC:

In the budget last week, you saw us raising the minimum wage, making sure the triple lock was kept for the next few years, keeping the freeze on fuel duty – issues which people care about on a month to month basis as they work out their budget.

And I think that was a big theme in the US election, and it’s something that was at the heart of our budget that was passed by the House of Commons last night.

Two people who will have been particularly horrified by the election of Donald Trump will have been the former Labour cabinet ministers David Miliband and Peter Mandelson. Karen Pierce, the current UK ambassador to Washington, is due to leave early next year and Keir Starmer decided to wait until he knew who the next president would be before appointing a successor.

If Kamala Harris had won, given the close links between the Democratic party and Labour, Starmer was expected to appoint a politician as ambassador, and Miliband, a former foreign secretary, and Mandelson, a former business secretary and European commissioner, were both reportedly high on the shortlist.

With Trump going to the White House next year, Starmer is now expected to follow normal practice and replace Pierce with another professional diplomat.

But Pierce herself has good links with the Trump team and, in his interview on Sky News this morning, Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, implied Pierce would have her term in office extended. Asked if she would be staying, he replied:

Karen Pierce is ambassador in the United States at the moment. She is doing an excellent job. She’s got the full confidence of the British government, and we want her to keep on doing the job that she’s doing. And I think she’s going to be a very important interlocutor and adviser for the UK government in this period of transition.

Asked if Pierce would stay in post at least for the whole of 2025, McFadden said:

I can’t say exactly when her term will end. She’s been doing it for a few years. She’s there for the moment, she’ll be there for a while, and she’s doing an absolutely fantastic job for her country.

At the weekend, in response to a story in the Independent about an allegation that Kemi Badenoch made a joke about rape in a social media post in 2008, a spokesperson for the new Conservative leader said that Badenoch has been clear “she believes this sort of ‘offence archaeology’ has no place in political debate”.

But, when it comes to what Labour politicians have said about Donald Trump in the past, Badenoch is no slouch at offence archeology herself. She devoted her first ever question as Tory leader to Keir Starmer at PMQs to the subject yesterday.

As Peter Walker reports in a roundup of what politicians have said about Trump, Badenoch herself said she was “not a Trump fan” in a post on Twitter in 2017, when she was a member of the London assembly. Labour politicians have been much, much more critical. The Spectator has a fairly comprehensive list here.

It is entirely legitimate to query what impact all these comments will have on the government’s relationship with the incoming Trump administration. Asked about all these comments, in an interview on Sky News this morning Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, insisted they would not harm the UK-US relationship.

I think a lot of things that have been said over the years, but not just here in the UK, including in the US. If you look at what vice-president-elect JD Vance said about President Trump, he mused whether this was going to be another Richard Nixon or America’s Hitler, and it’s not held him back from being the running mate.

Elon Musk as well, advised Trump to walk off into the sunset a couple of years ago, and he’s become President Trump’s biggest backer in business.

I don’t think any of these things will interfere in what is such an important alliance for the world, based on defence, security, shared values, shared history.

It’s all more important than all of those things, and that is the footing we begin on, and that’s the footing that we’ll continue on.

Good morning. The election of Donald Trump as the next US president will create profound challenges for Labour, and for many governments around the world, and 24 hours on we are starting to get a better sense of how Labour will respond. Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister and Keir Starmer’s lead political “fixer” in government has just finished a media round where he has been talking about almost nothing else. And the strategy that is emerging? Be nice, and hope for the best.

Starmer has been working hard to establish a good relationship with Trump since he became PM and we saw more of this last night, when he had his first call with the president-elect. No 10 issues a readout when the PM has a call with a foreign leader, and normally these are among the most dry, boring and uninformative press releases to come out of Whitehall. But this is what Downing Street released last night.

The prime minister spoke to President-elect Donald Trump this evening to congratulate him on his historic victory.

The prime minister offered his hearty congratulations and said he looked forward to working closely with President-elect Trump across all areas of the special relationship.

From defence and security to growth and prosperity, the relationship between the UK and US was incredibly strong and would continue to thrive for many years to come, the leaders agreed.

The prime minister also reflected on the situation in the Middle East and underscored the importance of regional stability.

The leaders fondly recalled their meeting in September, and President-elect Trump’s close connections and affinity to the United Kingdom and looked forward to working with one another.

This might seem bland to people unfamiliar with the way these things are usually worded, but “fondly recalled their meeting in September” is not the sort of language you normally get in these statements. (It also doesn’t sound true; they just had dinner together – it wasn’t a stag night in Las Vegas, or a weekend hiking in the Rockies.) And “hearty congratulations” also sounds a bit excessive. Guardian readers will recall how they felt yesterday when they learned about Trump’s victory, but No 10 released a picture of Starmer speaking to Trump showing him beaming was if he was celebrating an Arsenal victory.

In his interviews this morning McFadden also insisted that the UK’s relationship with the US was strong, and that that would continue with Trump back in the White House. Inevitably he was asked about the long list of derogatory comments about Trump made by David Lammy, the foreign secretary, and many other Labour politicians in the past. He did not apologise for them, or even disown then, but he also made it clear that he was not keen to dwell on them either, and he implied that ultimately those comments would not matter much. In an interview with Sky News, asked if he would be able to forgive someone who called him a “woman-hating, neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath” (as Lammy called Trump), McFadden replied:

I think in the end the relationship between the two countries is just much deeper than stuff like that … One thing I know as a cabinet member in the British government is the friendship between the United States and the United Kingdom is really important, it’s beneficial for both countries, and it’s in our national interest to maintain that.

But McFadden also implied there was an element of ‘hope for the best’ in the UK’s approach. Asked about Trump’s plan to impose tariffs of at least 10% on British imports, which economists say could halve UK growth, McFadden replied:

I think you’ve got to understand that in an election, a lot of fiery things are said, and President-elect Trump says a lot of fiery things, and the important thing is what he actually does.

We obviously have interests as a trading nation. We want to protect and look after our interests, and we always want to have a dialogue with the US administration about those.

But for anyone speculating about what exactly will happen, I would advise let’s wait to see what he actually does, rather than take everything said in a campaign.

Labour itself offers a good example of how what a party does in government does not always correlate with what it said it was expecting to do during the election campaign that put it there.

Today parliament is having a short recess, which means there is no Downing Street lobby briefing. Keir Starmer is in Budapest for a meeting of the European Political Community. He is not due to hold a press conference, but we are expecting some broadcast clips from him in the afternoon. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is on a visit to Manchester, and it’s FMQs at Holyrood. Otherwise the diary looks light.

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