Category Archives: UK news

Friday briefing: Labour suffers a huge loss as Galloway takes Rochdale

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In today’s newsletter: what victory for a veteran political disruptor means after a toxic byelection in Rochdale

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Good morning.

A dramatic night has come to an end. George Galloway, the leader of the Workers’ party of Britain, is back in Westminster after a decisive landslide win in the Rochdale byelection. At 12,335 votes, Galloway came away with a historic 41% swing against the Labour party, which abandoned its candidate Azhar Ali after he became embroiled in an anti-semitism scandal, though Ali appeared on the ballot as a Labour candidate.

Police | The official inquiry into the murder of Sarah Everard has found that her killer, Wayne Couzens, never should have been employed by the Metropolitan police. Lady Elish Angiolini’s report detailed missed opportunities to identify Couzens’ threats to women, including allegations of indecent exposure and sexual assault, leading to calls for urgent reforms of the police to restore trust.

Israel-Hamas war | More than a hundred Palestinians were killed in the early hours of Thursday morning, Gaza health officials said, when desperate crowds gathered around aid trucks and Israeli troops opened fire, in an incident that the US president, Joe Biden, warned was likely to complicate ceasefire talks.

UK news | Eleven people have been taken to hospital after a fire broke out at a converted terraced house in the upmarket London neighbourhood of South Kensington.

Protest | The government has been accused of exaggerated rhetoric to justify a crackdown on protest rights, amid a pushback by civil liberties groups, which accused Rishi Sunak of exaggerating the threat of “mob rule”.

Iran | A majority of Iran’s angry and disillusioned electorate are predicted to stay away from parliamentary elections today, viewing the process as a masquerade of democracy intended to give legitimacy to a regime that has failed to deliver on living standards, the environment and personal freedom.

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More than 100 evacuated and nearly a dozen injured after fire in South Kensington

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Eleven people treated for smoke inhalation after fire breaks out in residential building in London

Eleven people have been taken to hospital after a fire broke out at a converted terraced house in the upmarket London neighbourhood of South Kensington.

Fifteen fire engines and about 100 firefighters were called to the fire at a terraced house converted into apartments on Emperor’s Gate, in the south-west of London, close to the Natural History Museum.

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Wales warns Jeremy Hunt’s budget could force redraw of its own

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Cardiff’s finance minister says her 2023 budget could be redundant if the chancellor makes radical tax changes

The Welsh government has warned it could be forced to redraw its budget only one day after it is approved by the assembly should Jeremy Hunt make tax and spending policy changes that affect Wales in his budget in March.

Cardiff’s finance minister, Rebecca Evans, said she was concerned that her budget, which was published as a draft in 2023 for discussion and will be completed on 5 March, could become redundant if Hunt adopts radical measures in his budget the following day.

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Tories accused of hypocrisy for supporting farmers’ protests

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Campaigners and human rights experts point to crackdown on climate and Gaza protests

The Conservatives have been accused by human rights experts of hypocrisy after cracking down on climate and Gaza protests while celebrating and endorsing farmers’ protests in Wales.

Rishi Sunak joined a protest of farmers in Wales last Friday, after they had obstructed a road while campaigning against the Labour government’s new farming subsidies scheme. But this week he vowed to crack down on protests, referring to them as “mob rule”. On Wednesday, the Welsh Conservative leader, Andrew Davies, along with many of his colleagues greeted and posed for photographs with farmers who formed a large group outside the Senedd and blocked a main road with tractors.

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Museums Without Men: audio guides to celebrate dozens of female artists

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Project to run during Women’s History Month at institutions including Tate Britain and Met in New York

Five big museums, including Tate Britain and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, are launching audio guides dedicated to underserved female artists in their collection during Women’s History Month.

Museums Without Men, devised by the Guardian art critic Katy Hessel, will showcase dozens of female and gender non-conforming artists who at present are often in the shadow of their male contemporaries.

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Rwanda plan to cost UK £1.8m for each asylum seeker, figures show

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Disclosure, calculated on basis of 300 deportations, called ‘staggering’ by chair of home affairs committee

Rishi Sunak’s flagship plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda will cost taxpayers £1.8m for each of the first 300 people the government deports to Kigali, Whitehall’s official spending watchdog has disclosed.

The overall cost of the scheme stands at more than half a billion pounds, according to the figures released to the National Audit Office. Even if the UK sends nobody to the central African state, Sunak has signed up to pay £370m from the public purse over the five-year deal.

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Sarah Everard report sparks demand for urgent action to restore trust in police

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Inquiry chair says there is ‘nothing to stop another Couzens operating in plain sight’ and radical overhaul is needed

Sarah Everard’s “devastating” murder was “entirely preventable”, campaigners have said, as they called for urgent reform of policing to restore women’s trust.

The Angiolini inquiry found that Wayne Couzens should never have been given a job as a police officer and that chances to stop him were repeatedly ignored and missed.

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Food trade bodies consider legal action over post-Brexit ‘not for EU’ labelling

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Producers say the labelling could add £250m a year to their costs, further fuelling inflation

Food industry trade bodies are discussing whether to take legal action against the government over post-Brexit plans that will require all meat and dairy products sold in the UK to be labelled as “not for EU”.

Food producers say the labelling could add £250m a year to their costs, further fuelling inflation, and they are discussing a legal challenge as a viable option if a solution with the government is not found.

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Clare Lombardelli named deputy governor of Bank of England

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Ex-Treasury official and adviser to David Cameron will replace Ben Broadbent, making MPC majority female for first time

The Bank of England’s interest-rate-setting committee is set to become majority female for the first time, after the appointment of a former key adviser to David Cameron and George Osborne as one of its deputy governors.

Clare Lombardelli, the chief economist at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), will sit on the nine-member monetary policy committee (MPC) when she joins as the Bank’s next deputy governor for monetary policy.

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Police ‘could and should have’ stopped him: key points from Wayne Couzens report

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Former firearms officer’s history of alleged sexual offending dated back to 1995, 347-page report finds

Wayne Couzens should never have been a police officer and three separate forces “could and should have” stopped him, a damning report by Lady Elish Angiolini has found.

The 51-year-old former firearms officer’s history of alleged sexual offending and predilection for violent and extreme pornography dated back to 1995, it said. Couzens allegedly sexually assaulted a child and attempted to kidnap a woman at knife-point in the years before he abducted, raped and murdered Sarah Everard on 3 March 2021.

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Hundreds to be rehoused in Aberdeen after Raac concrete found

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About 500 council and private properties in Balnagask were identified as having Raac panels in an inspection in 2023

Hundreds of people are being moved out of their homes in Aberdeen after the discovery of potentially collapse-risk concrete.

Panels made from reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) were found in about 500 homes in the Balnagask area of Aberdeen, including 364 council properties, in 2023.

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Hunt scrambles to raise revenue as OBR slashes scope for tax cuts in budget

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Chancellor considers unexpected tax rises such as abolishing non-dom status after latest forecast

Jeremy Hunt’s scope to make tax cuts in next week’s budget has been reduced further this week, according to Treasury insiders, leaving the chancellor considering emergency measures to raise revenue.

Recent forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) are said to have given the chancellor less fiscal headroom than hoped, pushing him to consider unexpected tax rises such as abolishing the non-dom tax status.

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Jeremy Hunt ‘could adopt Labour tax-raising plans’ – as it happened

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Chancellor reportedly considering energy windfall levy as well as scrapping the non-dom status

The Conservative peer and former MP Stewart Jackson has also made the point about Rishi Sunak’s comments yesterday echoing what Suella Braverman has been saying. (See 9.25am.) He suggests Sunak is a weathercock, “buffeted by events”.

Rishi Sunak is now saying what #SuellaBraverman rightly said four months ago, and for which she was sacked. Tony Benn astutely divided politicians as between signposts and weathercocks. One can think ahead, the other is buffeted by events. We know which one is which, don’t we?

We commend the prime minister on his powerful speech at the CST dinner last night, pledging more funding to protect the Jewish community, outlining a new protocol to safeguard our elected representatives and effectively police protests, and drawing a clear line between democratic dissent and mob intimidation.

The last few months have seen an extreme rise in antisemitic hate in the UK, which has had a significant effect on British Jews. The prime minister’s announcement has made it clear - those bringing chaos to our streets and academic institutions will no longer be allowed to act with impunity.

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UK gives £600m backing to Jim Ratcliffe’s ‘carbon bomb’ petrochemical plant

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Campaigners say Ineos project in Antwerp will turbocharge plastic production on a scale not seen before in Europe

The UK government is providing a €700m (£600m) guarantee for the billionaire Jim Ratcliffe to build the biggest petrochemical plant in Europe in 30 years that will turbocharge plastic production.

The huge petrochemical plant has been described as a “carbon bomb” by campaigners. Being constructed in the Belgian city of Antwerp by Ratcliffe’s company Ineos, it will bring plastic production to Europe on a scale not seen before, just as countries are trying to negotiate a binding global treaty to tackle the growing problem of plastic pollution.

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MPs open inquiry into success of UK Treasury sanctions on Russia

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Treasury committee to consider case for targeting buyers of Russian oil and gas as Moscow weathers penalties

The Treasury committee on Thursday opened an investigation looking at the effectiveness of the UK’s economic sanctions on Russia, including whether the measures need to be widened to cover the buyers of Russian oil and gas.

The MPs will take evidence on the work of the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI), part of the Treasury, which implements and enforces the sanctions in the UK, including on implementation within the insurance and shipping sectors.

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UK should impose sanctions on two far-right Israeli ministers, says Ed Davey

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Lib Dem leader fears war will spread to West Bank if those pushing for more settlements are not penalised

The UK should impose sanctions on two far-right Israeli ministers who have pushed for more settlements on Palestinian land, Ed Davey has argued, saying this is vital to stop the fighting in Gaza spreading to the West Bank.

The Liberal Democrat leader, who returned on Wednesday morning from a visit to Israel where he had spoken to charities, politicians and relatives of Israeli hostages held by Hamas, said there was a risk of the prospect of a two-state solution collapsing.

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Norway’s King Harald V hospitalised in Malaysia with infection

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The 87-year-old, Europe’s oldest ruling monarch, has suffered from ill health in recent years, and it is unclear when he will return home

Norway’s King Harald V, aged 87 and in poor health, is “improving” from an infection that forced him to be hospitalised while on holiday in Malaysia, his office has said.

The king will remain in hospital on the island of Langkawi and it is not yet known when he will return home, the Royal House of Norway said in a statement on Wednesday.

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Assisted dying law may soon diverge across British Isles, MPs warn

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Parliamentary inquiry highlights likelihood of Scotland, Jersey or Isle of Man passing new laws

Laws to allow assisted dying may pass in Scotland, Jersey and the Isle of Man in the next few years, leading to a divergence between different parts of the UK and British Isles, MPs have warned.

The government must consider the repercussions of this, a parliamentary inquiry into assisted dying has said.

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NHS waiting lists falling but will stay above pre-Covid levels until 2030, IFS says

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Length of time patients must wait for A&E care, diagnostic tests, cancer care and surgery will remain high, report predicts

The NHS hospital waiting list will be falling “consistently” by the time of the general election but will remain even larger than it was before Covid until 2030, a new report predicts.

In potentially good news for Rishi Sunak, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said the waiting list for operations in England is expected to “start to fall consistently but slowly from the middle of 2024”, during the months leading up to the election, which is widely expected in November.

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Fines for unauthorised absence from school in England to rise by 33%

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Daily registers will also be shared online with DfE as part of government drive to improve attendance

Taking an unauthorised family holiday is about to get more expensive, with the government announcing that fines for children in England missing school are to rise by 33%.

The education secretary, Gillian Keegan, is to overhaul the way local authorities fine parents for unauthorised school absences by bringing penalties “under a national framework to help tackle inconsistencies”.

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