Economy on the agenda for Labour as autumn statement looms

Good morning. The Chancellor Jeremy Hunt will deliver his autumn statement on Wednesday, and so we can expect a week of chat about the economy, kicking off with remarks from Shadow Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds, set to be delivered to whatever’s left of the CBI later today. Reynolds will call on the government to raise business investment to the level of the last Labour government. TUC general secretary Paul Nowak will also speak and will call Labour’s workers’ rights agenda a “a gamechanger for productivity”.

Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves will address the weekly meeting of the PLP this evening, and the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall has given her first interview in the role to the Guardian this morning, in advance of expected announcements on benefits by Hunt in his statement. Kendall said Labour would treat work and health as “two sides of the same coin”.

Selections update

It’s Monday, so we have our weekly selections update. Over the weekend, we selected Katie White to fight Leeds North West (no, she hasn’t defeated Alex Sobel in the battle of ideas; the city’s constituencies have shifted due to boundary changes and Sobel will contest the new Headingley constituency), David Bainesin St Helens North and Rajesh Agrawal in Leicester East.

If you fancy a go, selections are now open in four seats: Aldershot, Brighton Pavilion, Cannock Chase and Burton. Brighton Pavilion closes on November 23rd, with all the others closing on Friday 24th.

An unusually starry line-up of prospective candidates is assembling in Brighton with the hopes of making a Labour gain out of the one Green seat in the country (Caroline Lucas has announced she is standing down at the next election; Sian Berry will fight the seat for the Greens). Comedian Eddie Izzard has announced she’s running, and musician Tom Gray, a founding member of the band Gomez, is also hoping to get himself selected.

In other Labour news…

SIOBHAIN MCDONAGH: The MP has written for LabourList about her sister Margaret, the former Labour Party general secretary, and their campaign to improve brain tumour outcomes.

BASINGSTOKE: Labour’s candidate in the seat, David Lawrence, has announced that he will be standing down for personal reasons. We can presumably expect a new candidate to be selected in the seat soon.

ARGENTINA: Far right candidate Javier Milei has become the president of Argentina. Very bad.

LOUISE HAIGH: The Shadow Transport Secretary told the i this weekend that she regretted nominating Jeremy Corbyn for leader in 2015, describing it as a “naive” thing to have done. (The i).