Britain is “sleepwalking into a food crisis” caused by extreme weather, inflation and the impacts of the Iran war – and the government is failing to take the threat seriously, food experts have said. Fiona Harvey has the story.

Today we are expected to get Andy Burnham’s considered response to Tony Blair’s critique of Labour published yesterday. Wes Streeting, the former health secretar who, like Burnham, is also pitching to be next Labour leader, published his rebuttal in a Guardian article last night.

Here’s an extract.

Labour succeeds when it combines dynamism with fairness, wealth creation with wealth distribution, enterprise with solidarity, ambition with security. The centre-left’s task is not simply to speak the language of markets more fluently than the Conservatives. It is to ensure markets serve society rather than dominate it.

This challenge is not only domestic. The international order itself is fragmenting. The institutions built after 1945 increasingly struggle to regulate a world defined by multinational technology firms, climate pressures and resurgent authoritarianism. It remains unclear whether democracy or tyranny will define the 21st century …

The future belongs to those prepared to harness change in the service of justice. That is the real dividing line in modern politics: between those who believe the future can still be shaped democratically for the common good – and those content to leave it to markets, monopolies and fate. The answers must be new, but they must also be Labour.

And here is the full article.

Good morning. For the second day in a row, the Westminster news is dominated by the thoughts of a leading Labour figure from the Tony Blair. But this time it’s an intervention commissioned, and welcomed, by Keir Starmer’s government. Alan Milburn, who has health secretary under Tony Blair, once seen as a future PM, and later chair of the Social Mobility Commisson, was asked last year to lead a review into why the number of young people not in education, employment or training (Neets) is rising. Today he is publishing his first “diagnostic” report, focusing on the causes of the problem. A second report, focusing on policy recommendations, is due in the autumn.

As Richard Partington reports, Milburn says Britain risks a 25% rise in the number of Neets, to 1.25 million by the early 2030s, without urgent government action to avoid a “lost generation”.

Milburn is publishing the full report, which runs to more than 200 pages and which is described by people who have read it as exceptionally thorough and hard-hitting, at a press conference this morning.

In the meantime, he has been giving interviews on the morning news shows. Inevitably, Milburn, who was a leading Blairite in the last Labour government (when the cabinet was factionally divided, and many ministers sided with Gordon Brown) was asked about his former boss’s essay published yesterday. Milburn did not get drawn into all the arguments in Blair’s essay, but he did say that he agreed with the former PM about the need to review some of the government policies that reduced the willingness of firms to hire young people.

In an interview on Times Radio, asked if he ageed with Blair that Labour had created a “climate of difficulty” for business to create entry-level jobs with an increase to the minimum wage and workers rights bill, Milburn replied:

Well, certainly every employer that we spoke to raised these issues as real concerns, the minimum wage. No employer really wants to be paying poverty wages to young people, that’s not what you come across.

But there is, particularly in low-margin sectors of the economy, like retail and hospitality, there is no doubt that these changes have had an impact. So that is something the government really needs to think about. If the priority is to create young people’s jobs, then it’s got to create the right conditions for employers to do so.

And, in an interview on the Today programme, Milburn was asked if he was willing to ask government to “think again” about the rise in employer national insurance, and the increase in the minimum wage. Milburn replied:

Yes, I am … Every employer that I talk to, they will say the same thing. There’s no doubt that the changes that were made a couple of years ago have had an impact on employers.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: The ONS publishes its latest figures on young people not in education, employment or trainining (Neets). It is also publishing figures on personal wellbeing.

11am: Alan Milburn holds a press conference to mark the publication of his report on young people and work.

Noon: John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, takes questions from MSPs.

Afternoon: Keir Starmer is on a visit meeting apprentices in London, where he is expected to speak to broadcasters.

Afternoon: Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester and Labour candidate in the Makerfield byelection, is expected to deliver a response to Tony Blair’s ‘Labour and the future’ essay.

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