Depute leader insists Graeme McCormick’s last-minute withdrawal proof party is united
The Scottish National party’s depute leader has denied that a party activist was “leaned on” to pull out of the leadership race against John Swinney.
The party’s depute leader, Keith Brown, said Graeme McCormick’s last-minute decision on Sunday night not to stand against Swinney was proof the party was united and focused on delivering independence.
Continue reading...In today’s newsletter: Rishi Sunak’s party were expecting a difficult contest – but the results were even more dire than predicted, as political correspondent Kiran Stacey explains
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A fraught situation is intensifying in Rafah, the city in southern Gaza where more than a million displaced people have been sheltering. Israel’s armed forces have this morning called for those in the “eastern neighbourhoods of Rafah” to “temporarily” evacuate to an expanded humanitarian area in Al-Mawasi. It comes after months of warnings that there would be a ground invasion of the beleaguered city as Israeli forces pursue Hamas militants. To keep a close eye on further developments, follow the Guardian’s live blog.
China | Xi Jinping has arrived in Paris for a rare visit against a backdrop of mounting trade disputes with the EU. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, is set to urge his Chinese counterpart to reduce trade imbalances and to use his influence with Russia over the war in Ukraine.
Israel-Gaza war | Israel used a US weapon in a March airstrike that killed seven volunteer paramedics in southern Lebanon, according to a Guardian analysis of shrapnel found at the site of the attack, which was described by Human Rights Watch as a violation of international law. In Jersualem, authorities shut down the local offices of Al Jazeera on Sunday, using newly approved laws. Critics called the move – which came amid faltering indirect ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas – a “dark day for the media”.
Immigration and asylum | Rwanda has admitted it cannot guarantee how many people it will take from the UK under Rishi Sunak’s deportation scheme. It did not give assurances that the estimated 52,000 asylum seekers eligible to be sent to Kigali would be accepted, instead saying it would be “thousands”.
Agriculture | The National Farmers’ Union warned that farmers’ confidence has hit its lowest level in at least 14 years, with extreme weather and the post-Brexit phasing-out of EU subsidies blamed for the drop. Most farms are expecting to reduce food production next year, with arable farming particularly badly hit.
Transport | Train drivers in the Aslef union are embarking on another round of industrial action, despite tentative attempts by the industry to restart talks. Drivers will strike for 24 hours at each of England’s national train operators from Tuesday until Thursday, while an overtime ban will apply nationwide from today until Saturday.
Continue reading...Union to roll out 24-hour strikes across England’s train operators for three days this week and six-day overtime ban from Monday
Rail passengers face a week of disruption as train drivers embark on another round of industrial action on Monday, despite tentative attempts by the industry to restart talks.
Drivers in the Aslef union will strike for 24 hours at each of England’s national train operators over the course of three days from Tuesday until Thursday, while an overtime ban will apply nationwide from Monday until Saturday.
Continue reading...Reports say Sir Keir Starmer may risk union support and bow to pressure from business to amend new deal
Watering down Labour’s plan to strengthen workers’ rights would be disastrous for the party’s relations with the unions and could cost votes at the general election, the president of the Trades Union Congress has warned.
Amid reports that Sir Keir Starmer may bow to pressure from business and amend important parts of his “new deal for workers”, Matt Wrack said the Labour leader risked causing “significant anger” among union members.
Continue reading...Union cites extreme wet weather and post-Brexit phasing-out of EU subsidies as main reasons for slump
Farmers’ confidence has hit its lowest level in at least 14 years, a long-running survey by the biggest farming union in Britain has found, with extreme weather and the post-Brexit phasing-out of EU subsidies blamed for the drop.
The National Farmers’ Union warned there had been a “collapse of confidence” and that the outlook was at its lowest since the annual poll of its members in England and Wales began in 2010.
Continue reading...Three men from Scotland and one from Colombia held in connection with discovery at Stags Head Inn, Lelley, East Yorkshire
Four men have been arrested after £40m worth of cocaine was found in the back of a van in a Yorkshire village pub car park.
About 500kg of the drug was discovered in a Vauxhall Vivaro in the car park of the Stags Head Inn in Lelley, East Yorkshire, the National Crime Agency said.
Continue reading...PM and allies seemingly intent on staying the course in face of conflicting calls on how to avoid wipeout when country goes to polls
As the terrible council and mayoral results rolled in for the Conservatives on Friday night, was there any part of Rishi Sunak that regretted sealing Boris Johnson’s fate as prime minister by resigning as his chancellor less than two years ago?
This could have been Johnson’s defeat, hurtling towards a Labour landslide at a general election, with Sunak and his allies plotting how to replace him thereafter.
Continue reading...Pat McFadden says local election results give the party confidence it can win ‘blue wall’ seats that are ‘turning red’
Labour is planning to target the south of England heavily at the general election as the local election results show some “blue wall” seats are turning red, Keir Starmer’s election chief has said.
The shadow cabinet minister Pat McFadden said Labour was advancing in southern Tory heartlands and it was wrong to think the Lib Dems were the only challengers to the Conservatives in the south.
Continue reading...Analysis shows almost 18% drop in party’s vote in areas of England where more than a fifth are Muslim
A senior Labour official has insisted the party wants better lives for Palestinian people as it prepares to shift its campaigning to win back voters opposing its position on Gaza.
Pat McFadden, the party’s national election coordinator, said it would “work to get people’s support back” as analysis showed that despite huge gains in council seats, seizing the West Midlands mayoralty, and Sadiq Khan, the Muslim mayor of London, winning a third term, there was an almost 18% drop in the Labour vote in areas of England where more than a fifth of people identified as Muslim.
Continue reading...Southern Water says supplies coming back to St Leonards-on-Sea and Hastings now that rupture in woodland area has been fixed
Water has started to return to more than 30,000 homes in East Sussex after a main burst three days ago.
Southern Water said in an update on Sunday afternoon that supplies were “gradually being restored” to about 32,5000 properties in St Leonards-on-Sea and Hastings.
Continue reading...About 52,000 people are eligible under the scheme, but a government spokesperson said Kigali would accept ‘thousands’
Rwanda has admitted it cannot guarantee how many people it will take from the UK under Rishi Sunak’s deportation scheme.
The east African country did not give assurances that the estimated 52,000 asylum seekers in the UK who are eligible to be sent to Kigali would be accepted, instead saying it would be “thousands”.
Continue reading...Graeme McCormick claims he will gather requisite number of signatures to force contest instead of unopposed coronation
John Swinney could face a leadership contest before he becomes Scottish National party leader after an activist said he expected to win enough nominations to stand.
Graeme McCormick, a well-known party activist who stood to become SNP president in 2023, claimed he would gather the 100 signatures needed from 20 different party branches to mount a challenge for the leadership.
Continue reading...Pro-Palestine protesters hope encampments at universities will contribute to an ‘international student revolt’
Students across Britain have said they hope pro-Palestine protests will reach the same scale as those seen on US campuses as they call for universities to divest from companies supplying arms to Israel.
Protests have spread across university campuses in Sheffield, Bristol and Leeds, after a crackdown in the US on protests, which led to mass arrests of students and staff.
Continue reading...Charities say FoI disclosure that 369 such children were held over 21-month period is ‘hugely concerning’
More than 350 lone children were held in UK-run detention facilities in northern France over a 21-month period, according to documents disclosed under freedom of information laws.
The Home Office has admitted that it failed to keep data on how many properly trained staff looked after the children held in four short-term holding facilities near Calais and Dunkirk in 2022 and 2023.
Continue reading...Rapper says sport, music and gaming venture in south London is aimed at widening opportunities for young black community
Stormzy has won three Brit awards, headlined Glastonbury, persuaded Usain Bolt and José Mourinho to star in a music video, and bought AFC Croydon Athletic with the former Crystal Palace player Wilfried Zaha.
His skills on the pitch, however, are not up to much. “I’m shit at football. I was never going to be a footballer,” he said. “But maybe if I knew how to be a pundit [I’d have gone down that road]. Maybe if I knew how to be a data analyst or all the intricate jobs behind the scenes that people might not know about.”
Continue reading...West Midlands mayor had been expected to hold on but was defeated by Labour by 1,508 votes to cap awful results for Tories
Good morning. The local elections are over, all but three results (one council, and two police and crime commissioner posts) are now in, and they have been just about as dire for Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives as the national opinion poll figures implied they would be. On the plus side for Sunak, the rebels in his party who were hoping that terrible results would provide the springboard for a no confidence motion seem to have accepted that they don’t have the numbers, and the notional “coup” has been called off. But that won’t stop Tory MPs being pitched into a difficult debate about their future, and last night Andy Street made a defiant intervention, telling his party not to drift to the right.
Street had been expected to hold on as mayor of the West Midlands. He was defeated by Labour by just 1,508 votes, and in an interview with Sky News afterwards he said the message for his party from his campaign was that it should not give up on moderate conservatism. He said:
The thing everyone should take from Birmingham and the West Midlands tonight is this brand of moderative, inclusive, tolerant conservatism, that gets on and delivered, has come within an ace of beating the Labour party in what they considered to be their backyard - that’s the message from here tonight.
I would definitely not advise that drift.
The psychology here is really very straightforward isn’t it: this is the youngest, most diverse, one of the most urban places in Britain and we’ve done, many would say, extremely well over a consistent period.
The public are not rushing to vote for Sir Keir, though they feel sorely let down by us. They want a reason to vote Conservative, but we are failing to provide them with one. We need to be frank about this if we are to have any chance of fixing the problem.
On tax, migration, the small boats and law and order, we need to demonstrate strong leadership, not managerialism. Make a big and bold offer on tax cuts, rather than tweaking as we saw in the Budget. Place a cap on legal migration once and for all. Leave the ECHR to stop the boats. Tangible improvement to our NHS and tougher sentences for criminals. Start holding failing police chiefs to account so that antisocial behaviour, shoplifting and knife crime are actually sorted out. Take back control of our streets from the extremists. And instead of paying lip service in guidance on transgender ideology in schools, let’s actually change the law to ban the abuse of our children.
Continue reading...Longer sentences and court backlogs push 25% of prisoners in England and Wales into shared cells, adding to drug-use and violence
The scale of the prison overcrowding crisis has been laid bare by figures revealing that a quarter of prisoners in England and Wales have been sharing cells designed for one person with at least one other inmate.
According to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), 11,018 cells intended for single use were being shared by two prisoners, with a further 18 such cells shared by three inmates. The overall prison population – which has ballooned over recent decades because of longer sentences and court backlogs – stood at about 88,000 when the statistics were originally compiled in late February.
Continue reading...Lost documents prevented victims from finding out the truth, official inquiry told
Disastrous failures that caused the contaminated blood scandal were denied by ministers for decades after officials destroyed, lost and blocked access to key documents, memos submitted to the official inquiry reveal.
Several batches of files involving the work of a blood safety advisory committee were shredded as the government faced the threat of legal action, documents show. Patients who were given contaminated blood when they were children have also told the infected blood inquiry how their hospital medical files were destroyed or initially withheld.
Continue reading...Union leader Sharon Graham says Keir Starmer risks ‘limping into Downing Street’
Labour’s biggest union backer has warned it may divert election funding earmarked for the party, amid claims that Keir Starmer is diluting plans to overhaul workers’ rights.
In an interview with the Observer, Unite’s general secretary, Sharon Graham, said the Labour leader risked “limping into Downing Street” if he backed down in the face of intense lobbying from businesses.
Continue reading...The UK regulator has been criticised by grieving families and internet abuse survivors for failing to engage with them
Bereaved parents and abuse survivors who have endured years of “preventable, life-changing harm” linked to social media say they have been denied a voice in official discussions about holding tech firms to account.
Mariano Janin, whose daughter Mia, 14, killed herself after online bullying, and the parents of Oliver Stephens, 13, who was murdered after a dispute on social media, are among those who have accused Ofcom of excluding them from a consultation process for tackling online harms.
Continue reading...