Zac Goldsmith resigns as minister, blaming Sunak for abandoning global leadership role on climate and nature – UK politics live | Politics

Good morning. Rishi Sunak is holding a press conference later to give details of his new NHS long-term workforce plan – one of the biggest policy initiatives of his premiership. He probably wasn’t expecting to be dealing with a resignation today. But Zac Goldsmith has just announced he is resigning as a minister at the Foreign Office, saying that he can no longer carry on because of the government’s “apathy” on issues relating to climate and the environment.

In his long resignation letter, posted on Twitter, he says he is “horrified” by how the government has abandoned commitments on animal welfare. He says the UK has “withdrawn our leadership on climate and nature”. And he says that Sunak personally is to blame.

The problem is not that the government is hostile to the environment, it is that you, our prime minister, are simply uninterested. That signal, or lack of it, has trickled down through Whitehall and caused a kind of paralysis.

Goldsmith is close to Carrie Johnson, the former PM’s wife, and his resignation could be seen as the departure of yet another member of the Johnson faction who have a grudge against Sunak for the role he played in bringing down Boris Johnson. But Goldsmith does not refer to this at all in his letter, which is all about environmental issues, his political passion.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9am: The government publishes its NHS long-term workforce plan

Morning: Rishi Sunak is on a visit in Cambridge.

10.30am: The high court hears the government’s legal challenge against the Covid inquiry over its demand to see unredacted WhatsApp messages that the government claims are irrelevant to the inquiry.

11.30am: Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, gives a speech to the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities.

12pm: Sunak holds a press conference at No 10 about the NHS long-term workforce plan with Amanda Pritchard, the NHS England chief executive, and Stephen Powis, NHS England’s national medical director.

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