Dissatisfaction with government at near record levels, with 80% of people unhappy at how it"s running country, poll suggests Dissatisfaction with the the government is close to record levels, Ipsos, the polling firm, says. In its latest political monitor, it highlights figures showing that 80% of people are dissatisfied with the way the government is running the country (up from 76% in May) and only 12% are satisfied (down from 15% in May). That makes a net satisfaction score of -68 (down from -61 in May). Ipsos says this in effect puts Sunak in the same league as Liz Truss. Truss’s government achieved a net satisfaction rating of -69 shortly before she resigned. Since 1979 the only governments that have performed worse on this measure have been John Major’s between 1992 and 1995, and Theresa May’s in 2019 – also shortly before she resigned. Afternoon summary Struggling mortgage holders will be given a 12-month grace period before their repossession proceedings begin, in an agreement between Jeremy Hunt and Britain’s biggest lenders. Thousands of junior doctors are to go on strike across England for five days in the longest such industrial action in the history of the NHS. Seven years after the Brexit referendum, the proportion of Britons who want to rejoin the EU has climbed to its highest levels since 2016, according to a new survey. Four out of five Britons now want a closer relationship with the EU, another poll suggests, and a third of leave voters want the UK to at least rejoin the single market. (See 9.32am.) Dissatisfaction with the government is running at near record levels, with 80% of people unhappy with the way it is running the country, a poll suggests. (See 2pm.) Steve Brine becomes latest Conservative MP to announce he"s standing down at election The Conservative MP Steve Brine has announced that he is standing down at the next election. Brine, 49, has been a health minister and now chairs the Commons health committee. He was elected in 2010 as MP fo Winchester, where he had a majority of just 985 over the Liberal Democrats at the last election. In a letter to his local association chair posted on his website, Brine said he wanted to spent more time with his young family. He said: When I first entered parliament I had in my mind to serve for 20 years – or four general elections – whichever came first. This wasn’t a hard and fast rule, and I don’t think anyone could have predicted the events of the past thirteen years, but it feels like the right time now, for both myself and the family … My team and I have done tens of thousands of pieces of casework to-date and that quietly remains the bedrock of my work for the people I represent. But that has all come at a price; being away several nights every week, working at pace across this vast constituency when I am home plus every weekend and just the sheer intensity of this role in the modern age. We always think our children need us most when they’re little, and that is of course true in the most basic caring sense, but I’ve learnt they need us more as they get older. I hope, in time, to be around a little more; both for them but also for Susie [his wife] who has supported me every step of the way and without whom I could never have done any of this. According to a tally by the Spectator, Brine is the 42nd Conservative MP to say they are standing down. Brine and the others account for more than 10% of the 352-strong parliamentary party in the Commons. And these are from Keiran Pedley from Ipsos on the firm’s latest polling. (See 2pm.) These are from Luke Tryl, the UK director of More in Commons, on the latest Ipsos polling. (See 2pm.) More in Common is a non-profit organisation that promotes in initiatives to bring society together and it commissions a great deal of opinion research, which means Tryl can comment on polling with authority. David Warburton, the former Conservative MP who resigned from the Commons over an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment and cocaine use, has claimed the MeToo movement has “swung too far”. Warburton, the former MP for Somerton and Frome has recently admitted to taking cocaine but denies claims of harassment. He had been accused of taking drugs and making unwanted advances towards two women, after they and another woman spoke to the Sunday Times about his conduct last year. In his first broadcast interview since parliament’s independent complaints and grievance scheme (ICGS) launched its inquiry, the 57-year-old said he has quit parliament because he is now finally able to “say what a shambles (the investigation) has been”. Speaking to BBC Politics West, Warburton said he wanted the pendulum to “swing back” to a “fair place” in the wake of the MeToo movement. He said: The Me Too movement came about for a good reason. But, like many of these things, that pendulum can swing too far and I think in my case, I think it maybe, it’s a demonstration that it has swung too far. It wasn’t in a fair place years ago and now it’s in another unfair place. I think we need to be balanced and fair about all of these things. You can’t suddenly decide that everybody’s guilty because it’s better than deciding that no-one’s guilty. You have to look at facts and figures and reality. I have never done before and never will do again and for that I paid a very high price. Labour accuses government of "weak" response after mortgage summit with banks Here is our story about what was agreed at the mortgage summit Jeremy Hunt held with bank chiefs this morning. It’s by Alex Lawson, Rowena Mason and Anna Isaac. Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, has described this response as “weak”. In a statement she said: Today’s weak response from the government on a mortgage crisis they created shows just how little they understand what families are facing. Questions remain on how voluntary these measures are. The government must offer clarity and confidence to homeowners by putting in place requirements now to reassure households. Dissatisfaction with government at near record levels, with 80% of people unhappy at how it"s running country, poll suggests Dissatisfaction with the the government is close to record levels, Ipsos, the polling firm, says. In its latest political monitor, it highlights figures showing that 80% of people are dissatisfied with the way the government is running the country (up from 76% in May) and only 12% are satisfied (down from 15% in May). That makes a net satisfaction score of -68 (down from -61 in May). Ipsos says this in effect puts Sunak in the same league as Liz Truss. Truss’s government achieved a net satisfaction rating of -69 shortly before she resigned. Since 1979 the only governments that have performed worse on this measure have been John Major’s between 1992 and 1995, and Theresa May’s in 2019 – also shortly before she resigned. Mortgage holders to get 12-month grace period before repossessions, Hunt says The banks have also agreed that people should be given a 12-month grace period before repossession proceedings start, Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, said. Julia Kollewe has more details on the business live blog. Economic damage done by Brexit "undeniable", says thinktank Boris Johnson claims Brexit has delivered “all kinds of benefits”. (See 12.16pm.) But most economists argue that its economic impact has been negative, and there are three charts in today’s report from the Tony Blair Institute highlighting this. The report says the economic damage done by Brexit is “undeniable”. Growth Since Brexit, growth has slowed compared to other G7 countries, the report says. It says: When assessing the performance of the UK economy since the 2016 referendum, it is evident that it has done worse than any other G7 economy, including the EU27. Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in the UK has grown the slowest among G7 economies since 2016. While this grim performance cannot be fully attributed to the decision to leave the EU, Brexit is the only major factor that distinguishes the UK from other countries in this comparative set. Trade openness Trade has also suffered, the report says. It evaluates this by looking at “trade openness” – the ratio of trade relative to GDP. It says: Before Brexit, the UK had one of the most open economies among G7 countries but is now at the bottom of this group, having experienced a more significant drop in trade openness and recovered more slowly than other economies. As was the case in other countries, the Covid-19 pandemic has adversely affected trade and supply chains, but the magnitude of the UK’s drop suggests that higher trade barriers caused by the departure from the single market have been one of the main drivers of this underperformance. Investment And investment has also been hit, the report says. It says: Although business investment had been growing steadily since the 2008 financial crisis, this was abruptly knocked off course at the time of the 2016 referendum. Today, business investment in the UK is estimated to be 31 per cent below the pre-referendum trend. In the EU, by contrast, business investment is currently 2 per cent above its pre-2016 trend. However, the different ways in which investment has been hit in the UK and the EU cannot be solely attributed to Brexit, not least because the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic varied in severity. Hunt says banks will let customers temporarily renegotiate mortgage terms without credit scores being downgraded The banks have agreed that people who renegotiate the terms of their mortgage on a temporary basis will not have to worry about having their credit scores downgraded, Jeremy Hunt has said. Speaking about the outcome of his meeting this morning with lenders, the chancellor told broadcasters: We agreed some very important things for people who are worried about their rates going up, not just people who are in an extreme situations. The most significant thing is that they can pick up the phone to their bank or their mortgage lender and talk about their situation without any worry that it will impact their credit score. And if they decide to make their payments easier by extending the period of their mortgage, or by going to an interest-only package, they can go back to their original package without any questions, without any impact on their credit score, within six months. That’s the reassurance that people like Martin Lewis [the consumer champion] had been saying will make a big difference for families in those situations. Keir Starmer has said people want “action, not words” from ministers on rising mortgage rates. Speaking to broadcasters on a visit to RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, Starmer said there were going to be “many mortgage holders, many families, across the country who are now even more worried about paying their mortgage”. He went on: They know that the government’s been about for 13 years, they know the Government crashed the economy last year. What they want, I think, is a much stronger sense that the government is gripping this; action, not words. Labour says lenders should be forced to offer customers the option of temporarily switching to interest-only payments, or extending the repayment period, if they struggling to meet their monthly payments.