Category Archives: UK news

Starmer prepares to reopen old Labour wounds over Brexit deal vote

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Leader planning to throw weight behind a deal if last-minute negotiations succeed in coming days

Keir Starmer is preparing to risk a party rift by throwing Labour’s weight behind a Brexit deal if last-minute negotiations succeed in the coming days.

In what he hopes will be a signal to red wall voters that the party has heard them, multiple Labour sources said Starmer, and Cabinet Office shadow minister Rachel Reeves – who has been liaising with backbenchers on the issue – are minded to impose a three-line whip in support of a deal, subject to the detail.

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Extremely vulnerable in UK given high priority for coronavirus vaccine

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Those with conditions such as blood, bone or lung cancer put in same category on interim guidance list as over-70s

People at very high risk of contracting coronavirus due to health problems, who were made to shield during the pandemic, have been given the same priority as the over-70s to receive a Covid-19 vaccine.

People aged 18 or older deemed “clinically extremely vulnerable” are in the same priority group as those aged 70 and over, according to the provisional vaccine priority list published by Public Health England.

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Kylie Moore-Gilbert faces long road back to normality, says fellow former hostage

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Ana Diamond, who was held for more than six months, says the Australian academic was subject to a ‘sophisticated’ hostage-taking operation

Back on Australian soil, and safe in the enforced quiet of Covid quarantine, Kylie Moore-Gilbert faces a long road to recovery, according to another victim of Iran’s practice of seizing foreign nationals as hostages.

Ana Diamond was just 19 when she was seized by the country’s Revolutionary Guards in 2016, held for 200 days in solitary confinement and forced to endure a mock execution over baseless allegations she was a foreign spy.

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Hospitals in England told to prepare for Covid vaccine rollout in 10 days’ time

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Exclusive: NHS could receive first deliveries of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine as soon as 7 December

Hospitals have been told to prepare for the rollout of a coronavirus vaccine in as little as 10 days’ time, with NHS workers expected to be at the front of the queue, the Guardian has learned.

NHS bosses said hospitals in England could expect to receive their first deliveries of a vaccine produced by Pfizer/BioNTech as soon as Monday 7 December, with regulatory approval anticipated within days.

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Slashing overseas aid reflects badly on Britain | Letters

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Readers respond after the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, cut international aid by a third in his spending review

Rishi Sunak has said he could not tell the country he was giving 0.7% of gross national income to foreign aid (Foreign Office minister resigns as Sunak cuts aid budget, 25 November). What kind of country does he think he lives in? Can he and the rest of the government not see that so many of the problems in the world come from the gross divide between countries like ours and ones where so many face starvation?

Has he not noticed that during the first lockdown, 10 million people volunteered to help people in their community? Did he not notice the thousands who volunteered to trial the vaccine? These are not people who would wish to ignore the rest of the world.

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Huge wealth of Rishi Sunak’s family not declared in ministerial register

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Akshata Murty, Sunak’s wife, holds multimillion-pound portfolio making her richer than the Queen

The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, is facing questions over the transparency of his financial affairs after a Guardian investigation established that his wife and her family hold a multimillion-pound portfolio of shareholdings and directorships that are not declared in the official register of ministers’ interests.

Akshata Murty, who married Sunak in 2009, is the daughter of one of India’s most successful entrepreneurs. Her father co-founded the technology giant Infosys, and her shares in the company are worth £430m, making her one of the wealthiest women in Britain, with a fortune larger than the Queen’s.

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UK coronavirus live: Tory backlash grows over England’s new tier restrictions

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MPs from tier 3 areas express concern about social and economic impact as communities secretary says rules may be eased in some areas before Christmas

Lord Frost, Boris Johnson’s Europe adviser, has insisted a Brexit deal “is still possible”.

He tweeted: “I look forward to welcoming michelbarnier and his team to London and to resuming face-to-face talks tomorrow. We are glad all are safe and well.

1/4 I look forward to welcoming @michelbarnier and his team to London and to resuming face-to-face talks tomorrow. We are glad all are safe and well.

Around a quarter of adults in Great Britain believe it will take more than a year for their lives to return to normal following the Covid-19 pandemic, a survey suggests.

Some 17% of people think it could take between four to six months, while just under a fifth (18%) believe it may be between 10 and 12 months, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

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Will everyone in the world have access to a Covid vaccine? – video explainer

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The hunt for a coronavirus vaccine is showing promise but it is premature to say the end of the pandemic is nigh. Several rich countries have signed a 'frenzy of deals' that could prevent many poor nations from getting access to immunisation until at least 2024. Also, many drug firms are potentially refusing to waive patents and other intellectual property rights in order to secure exclusive rights to any cure.

Michael Safi, the Guardian's international correspondent, explains why 'vaccine nationalisation' could scupper global efforts to kill the virus and examines what is being done to tackle the issue

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Areas in England may go down a tier before Christmas, says Robert Jenrick

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Jenrick insists some areas can ‘de-escalate’, but scientists say 16 December is too soon to decide

The communities secretary, Robert Jenrick, has insisted there is a prospect of some areas in England “de-escalating” from a higher to a lower tier of coronavirus measures before Christmas, despite scientists warning that the 16 December review will be too soon to make changes.

Many Conservative MPs reacted with anger after the government announced that 99% of the population in England would be placed under the top two tightest levels of restriction – tiers 2 and 3 – when the nationwide lockdown ends next week.

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Overseas aid budget for education cut by a quarter this year, data shows

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Reduction came before this week’s move to slash UK spending on poorer nations to 0.5% of national income, with girls worst affected

The overseas aid budget for education was slashed by more than a quarter by the government this year, even before this week’s further axing of a third of aid spending, according to analysis seen by the Guardian.

As anger met the government’s announcement this week, it was revealed that it has already reneged on the Tory manifesto pledge by cutting primary and secondary education funding as part of £2.9bn of cuts made by Dominic Raab in July. On Wednesday in parliament, while announcing he would seek to legally cut the aid budget from 0.7% to 0.5% of gross national income, Raab reiterated a promise to prioritise girls’ education, which was immediately dismissed as “empty rhetoric” by the shadow international secretary.

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Barnier to travel to UK for Brexit talks despite lack of progress

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EU chief negotiator had told British counterpart he could not see any point in coming to London

Michel Barnier has backed down from his threat to pull out of planned Brexit negotiations in London, telling EU ambassadors that he will persist despite a lack of progress over the last week.

The bloc’s chief negotiator told representatives for member states that he would travel on Friday evening to try to break the logjam over the most contentious issues.

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Boris Johnson: ‘If we ease off now, we risk losing control of this virus’ – video

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Boris Johnson said he was sorry that most of England would exit lockdown into tiers 2 or 3 with the toughest restrictions. Johnson said the measures 'strike a balance' between limiting the spread of the virus and protecting freedoms. 'If we ease off now, we risk losing control of this virus,' Johnson added.

Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser, urged people to 'have sense' over the festive period, and bluntly warned against hugging and kissing elderly relatives at Christmas

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Largest number of Prevent referrals related to far-right extremism

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Of cases referred on to Channel, 43% were for rightwing and 30% for Islamist radicalisation

Just 11% of referrals to the government’s controversial Prevent programme were ultimately deemed to be at risk of radicalisation, with the largest number of referrals relating to far-right extremism.

The annual figures emerged as James Brokenshire, the security minister, warned that far-right terror posed “a growing threat” which had been accelerated by the amplification of conspiracy theories online during the pandemic.

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Jeremy Corbyn to start legal action over suspension of Labour whip

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Allies say he aims to prove there was a deal with Keir Starmer’s office to readmit him to party

Jeremy Corbyn is to start a formal legal claim against the Labour party for suspending the whip, in a case which allies of the former Labour leader say is intended to prove there was a deal with Keir Starmer’s office to readmit him to the party.

The Guardian has seen evidence of exchanges between key members of Starmer’s office and Corbyn’s representatives, suggesting there were private meetings in the run-up to the party’s decision to lift his suspension from the party.

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Fears of bleak winter unites those across England’s tiers

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People in tiers 2 and 3 face tight restrictions while those in tier 1 worry of influx from outside

While there was welcome relief at the news that England’s second national lockdown would finally end, Thursday’s announcement that it was to be replaced with only slightly milder restrictions across much of the country left many fearing a bleak winter in tiers 2 and 3.

Only three areas received a relative reprieve in tier 1, but, for many, happiness was tempered by a fear that an influx of visitor from riskier areas could leave them facing tougher restrictions too.

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Kylie Moore-Gilbert’s release shows dangers of making deals with Iran

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Talks over other dual-national detainees risk encouraging Tehran to see hostage-taking as a winning strategy

The release of Kylie Moore-Gilbert, the British Australian academic, is a bittersweet moment for the relatives across the globe of other Iranian dual nationals still trapped in Iranian jails. Many families celebrated her release, but also asked themselves again whether their own governments are doing all they can to bring their loved ones home.

Sherry Izadi, the wife of a 66-year-old British-Iranian construction engineer, Anoosheh Ashoori, jailed for 10 years, told the Guardian: “It is extraordinary the lengths the Australian government was prepared to go to secure her release. They seem to have persuaded the Thai government to exchange three Iranians accused of terrorism in return for her release.” The three-way negotiations between the governments took six months.

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A tale of two cities: Manchester, Liverpool and the journey of Covid tiers

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Analysis: the two regions have emerged with contrasting fortunes from their dealings with Westminster

As Matt Hancock put the final touches to England’s new lockdown regime on Wednesday night, the mood of leaders in Manchester and Liverpool could not have been more different.

On Merseyside the leaders felt they had done all they could to have become the first English region to leave the strictest coronavirus measures introduced six weeks ago. The Liverpool city region has now been moved down to tier 2.

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Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine results face growing scrutiny

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Share price drops as critics question claim vaccine could protect up to 90% of people

The Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine is coming under increasing scrutiny, with critics questioning the claim that trials showed it could protect up to 90% of people against coronavirus.

On Thursday Sir John Bell, Oxford’s regius professor of medicine and the UK government’s life sciences adviser, dismissed suggestions the trial had not been properly set up or reported. “We weren’t cooking this up as we went along,” he said, adding that he hoped the full, peer-reviewed data would be published in the Lancet medical journal at the weekend.

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Dominic Raab says legislation is needed to cut UK aid spending

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Foreign secretary says it is not known when 0.7% target, set in law, will be restored

The foreign secretary has decided legislation is required to cut the aid budget since the current fiscal uncertainty means the government may feel obliged to miss the commitment to spend 0.7% on gross national income on overseas aid for longer than a year.

Legislation would be laid, Dominic Raab told MPs in an oral statement, but he did not give a date for doing so. The Foreign Office has indicated it is unlikely to be introduced until the second half of next year.

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UK aid cuts ‘unprincipled, unjustified and harmful’, say experts and MPs

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Cuts announced by Rishi Sunak will hit girls and women in poorest countries hardest, with charities predicting huge numbers of deaths

The UK aid cuts announced by chancellor Rishi Sunak could see a million girls lose out on schooling, nearly three million women and children go without life-saving nutrition and 5.6 million children left unvaccinated, causing up to 100,000 deaths, charities, aid experts and MPs have said.

They described the slash in funding to overseas aid, from 0.7% to 0.5% of Britain’s gross national income, as “unprincipled, unjustified and harmful” just as a global health crisis is throwing decades of progress on poverty, healthcare and education into reverse.

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