Category Archives: UK news

Four in five Labour members back Keir Starmer, polling shows

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Leader’s ejection of far-left members has changed composition of party since 2020, as belief in general election win grows

Four in five Labour members back Keir Starmer and believe he will win a majority at the next election, according to private polling that shows the transformation of the party’s grassroots.

Two polls shared with the Guardian demonstrate how the composition of Labour’s membership has changed since Starmer was elected leader in April 2020.

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Thames Water hires restructuring advisers amid fears of collapse

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Crunch talks expected after investors refuse to secure short-term cashflow and parent company due to repay £190m loan

Thames Water has assembled a team of City experts to lead urgent restructuring talks this week amid fears that its parent company may collapse by the end of the month.

The crunch talks are expected to take place days after Thames Water’s investors signalled they would not put further funds into the company to secure its short-term cashflow, according to a source.

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Scotland’s first minister defends Hate Crime Act amid barrage of criticism

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Police union chief says enforcing law will lessen public trust in policing, while JK Rowling dares force to arrest her

Scotland’s first minister has described his new hate crime law as “absolutely balanced” on the day the controversial legislation came into force amid a barrage of criticism.

Humza Yousaf’s comments came as David Kennedy, the general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, said enforcing the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 would reduce public trust in policing and the author JK Rowling, a prominent critic of the legislation, dared the police to arrest her for misgendering.

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National Trust defends vegan scone recipe after ‘wokery’ criticism

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Charity says plain and fruit scones have been dairy-free for years, but can be ‘enjoyed with butter or cream’

The National Trust has long prided itself on its famous scones. There is even a blog dedicated to them, along with a “scone of the month” feature.

And with more than 3m sold every year, including those served with cream teas at its 300-plus tearooms, they are seen as an integral part of the National Trust day out.

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Fast fashion retailer Shein doubles profits as it awaits IPO approval

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Company founded in China and promoted on social media is thought to be considering London listing

Shein, the online fast fashion retailer founded in China, has more than doubled its profits to more than $2bn (£1.6bn) as it awaits approval for a stock market listing in New York or London.

The company, which is growing rapidly around the world by using social media to promote its goods, recorded sales of about $45bn last year, according to a report in the Financial Times based on information from sources close to the company.

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Ukrainian sculptor who fled Kyiv accepted into Royal Society of British Artists

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Alex Lidagovsky was forced to leave Ukraine with his family when his studio was bombed during the Russian invasion

A Ukrainian sculptor who fled to the UK when his studio was destroyed has been accepted into the Royal Society of British Artists.

Alex Lidagovsky was forced to leave Kyiv with his wife, Dasha Nepochatova, and 16-year-old stepdaughter after the Russian invasion began on 24 February 2022.

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Three-quarters of children want more time in nature, says National Trust

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Charity publishes survey findings as it calls for youngsters to be no more than a 15-minute walk from green spaces

More than three-quarters of children want to spend more time in nature, the National Trust has found, as the conservation charity pushes ministers to ensure youngsters are no more than a 15-minute walk from green spaces.

Nearly two-thirds – 63% – of parents are able to take their children to nature spaces only once a week or less, citing accessibility as the main barrier, the survey of 1,000 children aged seven to 14 and 1,000 parents by the trust and the children’s newspaper First News found.

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Windrush victim says Home Office ‘waiting for us to die off’ before paying compensation

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Five years after payment scheme launched, a former soldier says delays mean plan should be run independently

A former soldier who was a victim of the Windrush scandal has said he fears the government is “waiting for us to die off” before it pays compensation.

Conroy Downie, 67, and his daughter Katie Wilson-Downie have helped advise thousands of people affected by the Windrush scandal and have called for the compensation scheme to be run independently instead of by the Home Office.

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Government’s ‘childcare chaos’ leaving families in England facing steep costs

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Labour says places have fallen by almost 40,000 since the Tories came to power in 2010, forcing parents to leave the workforce

Childcare places in England have fallen by nearly 40,000 since the Tories came to power in 2010, Labour research has found.

This includes a drop of 1,000 places between March and December last year, at a time when demand was anticipated to rise before new entitlements became available.

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Donaldson arrest followed complaint received this month, NI police say

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Police Service of Northern Ireland seeks to end ‘unhelpful speculation’ after DUP leader charged with alleged sexual offences

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has said it received a complaint in early March that led them to arrest and charge Sir Jeffrey Donaldson with alleged sexual offences.

In a statement aimed at ending what they described as “unhelpful speculation” over the case, the PSNI said it “immediately commenced an investigation into this matter” after the complaint was received.

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Tory plans to abolish non-dom status riddled with loopholes, Labour says

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Analysis suggests wealthiest would save millions and Sunak’s own family could benefit to tune of £250m

Conservative plans to abolish non-dom status are riddled with loopholes worth hundreds of millions of pounds for the wealthiest people in the country, Labour has claimed.

Analysis by the party found that the policy, announced by Jeremy Hunt in this month’s budget, could theoretically see Rishi Sunak’s family benefit from tax savings of nearly £250m.

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Photography bursary launched in memory of Guardian’s Eamonn McCabe

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Royal Photographic Society says award reflects the support and encouragement McCabe showed for aspiring photographers

A bursary focusing on the theme of sporting endeavour and designed to help talented young photographers has been launched in honour of the memory of the award-winning Guardian and Observer photographer Eamonn McCabe.

The bursary, established by The Royal Photographic Society (RPS), The Guardian and Observer and McCabe’s family will give £3,000 to a photographer aged 25 or under to produce a project.

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UK’s black children ‘face cultural barriers’ in accessing help for autism and ADHD

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Campaigner Marsha Martin says ‘there is a lot of stigma within black community’ that prevents issues being discussed

Cultural barriers are preventing black children with autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) from accessing the help they need, the founder of a UK campaign for better support has said.

Hundreds of children with special educational needs (Send) routinely wait for more than a year to get help, as local authorities across England struggle to meet unprecedented need in a dire financial climate. A Guardian investigation last month found more than 20,000 children were waiting longer than the 20-week limit to be issued with an education, health and care plan (EHCP) that details the support they require.

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Cleaners, builders, Primark shoppers: ads for London mayor hopeful Susan Hall reveal Tories’ targets

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Analysis shows content is aimed at working-class over-50s, and plays on fears of crime, stirs anger and pushes conspiracy theories

Are you a cleaner or builder who likes Primark, the pub or reality TV – but doesn’t care about the environment? If yes, the Conservative party wants your vote.

These are some of the interest categories used by the campaign team for the Tories’ candidate for London mayor, Susan Hall, to target audiences on social media.

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UK’s ever more expensive nuclear submarines will torpedo spending plans for years to come

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Whoever wins the next election, a reckoning is overdue on the costs of Britain’s nuclear deterrent

When Rishi Sunak visited Barrow-in-Furness on Monday he said the Cumbrian town was “mission critical for our country” because of its role building four new nuclear submarines to carry the UK’s nuclear weapons. If you believe Sunak’s erstwhile ally, Dominic Cummings, then that mission faces serious problems.

Cummings, once Boris Johnson’s most powerful adviser, said this month – in characteristically aggressive terms – that spiralling costs were making a mockery of the government’s budget plans. He wrote on X: “the nuclear enterprise is so fkd [sic] it’s further cannibalising the broken budgets and will for decades because it’s been highly classified to avoid MPs thinking about it.”

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Cold, damp, unsafe: record number of UK schools refused funding for repairs

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DfE allocates £450m to 826 building projects at 733 schools, a fall of almost 60% – in terms of total projects – compared with 2020-21

A record number of schools have had bids for building repairs turned down by the government, with experts warning that buckets on desks, freezing classrooms and power cuts are all becoming commonplace.

The Department for Education (DfE) announced on Tuesday that it had allocated £450m to 826 building repair projects at 733 schools through its annual condition improvement fund (CIF), which is designed to help academies and small academy trusts keep buildings “safe and in good working order”. But this is a fall of nearly 60% – in terms of total projects – compared with 2020-21, when the government awarded £563m to 2,104 repair projects.

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Cancer signs could be spotted years before symptoms, says new research institute

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Tests that can identify early changes in cells would give doctors more time to offer treatment, say Cambridge researchers

Scientists at a recently opened cancer institute at Cambridge University have begun work that is pinpointing changes in cells many years before they develop into tumours. The research should help design radically new ways to treat cancer, they say.

The Early Cancer Institute – which has just received £11m from an anonymous donor – is focused on finding ways to tackle tumours before they produce symptoms. The research will exploit recent discoveries which have shown that many people develop precancerous conditions that lie in abeyance for long periods.

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Tehran denies involvement in London attack on TV presenter

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Met police say investigation into stabbing of Iranian journalist near home in Wimbledon is being led by counter-terrorism officers

Iran’s most senior diplomat in Britain has denied claims that the Iranian government was behind a knife attack on a TV presenter in London amid growing fears over threats to dissidents.

The country’s charge d’affaires, Mehdi Hosseini Matin, said Iran “denies any link” to the stabbing of Pouria Zeraati, 36, a presenter at Iran International, outside his home in Wimbledon on Friday. He is in a stable condition and was looking forward to being discharged from hospital soon.

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Conservatives set for worst election result yet, research shows

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Survey of 15,000 people suggests even party leader Rishi Sunak’s North Yorkshire seat is at risk

The Conservatives are on course for their worst election result, winning fewer than 100 seats, according to a new poll.

The seat-by-seat analysis gives the Tories 98 constituencies compared with Labour’s 468, giving Sir Keir Starmer a 286-seat majority, the Sunday Times has reported.

The 15,000-person poll, conducted by agency Survation on behalf of Best for Britain, gives Labour a 45% vote share with a 19-point lead over the Conservatives.

Rishi Sunak’s party is on track to win 98 seats with none in Scotland or Wales, according to the research. It also suggests the prime minister is at risk of losing his own constituency, the new Richmond & Northallerton seat in North Yorkshire, to Labour with his lead less than 2.5 percentage points.

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UK government lawyers say Israel is breaking international law, claims top Tory in leaked recording

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Chair of foreign affairs select committee Alicia Kearns said at a Tory fundraiser that legal advice would mean the UK has to cease all arms sales to Israel without delay

• Analysis: scale of suffering will make war crimes harder to deny

The British government has received advice from its own lawyers stating that Israel has breached international humanitarian law in Gaza but has failed to make it public, according to a leaked recording obtained by the Observer.

The comments, made by the Conservative chair of the House of Commons select committee on foreign affairs, Alicia Kearns, at a Tory fundraising event on 13 March are at odds with repeated ministerial denials and evasion on the issue.

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