Lisa Nandy says government will introduce legislation after talks deadline ends without breakthrough
Apple and Google will be forced to block explicit images on children’s smartphones by law in the UK after talks failed to produce a breakthrough, the government has said.
The legislation commitment puts ministers on a collision course with two of the biggest players in Silicon Valley, months after the government announced a social media ban for under-16s.
Continue reading...In strongest condemnation ever by UK government, Ed Miliband announces sweeping sanctions on trade with Israeli settlements
Israeli “terrorists” are conducting ethnic cleansing in the West Bank with the tacit backing of the government, the UK foreign secretary, Ed Miliband has said, as he announced sweeping sanctions on trade with Israeli settlements.
In the strongest condemnation ever issued by the UK government, Miliband said the government would now take the official position that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank was unlawful in its entirety, saying such acknowledgment was “the least the people who face such suffering deserve. And it should be the prelude to justice.”
An import ban on goods from illegal settlements in the occupied territories.
A comprehensive sanctions regime against providing services such as construction or financing for Israeli settlements.
A ban on the advertising in the UK of illegal settlement properties.
Personal sanctions against key individuals accused of promoting settler violence.
A new ban for arms licences and other exports that “materially contribute to the occupation”.
Continue reading...Nearly half of respondents say spending on personal independence payments should be increased
There is little appetite for cuts to disability benefits even among Conservative and Reform voters, and proposals to reduce spending could prove politically risky, according to an authoritative national survey.
The British Social Attitudes (BSA) report found that while support for welfare spending as a whole had dipped sharply in recent years, just 7% of respondents backed cuts to disability benefits – and 49% said they should be increased.
Continue reading...Ed Miliband to reassert support for Palestinian rights and a two-state solution in move likely to draw fierce criticism from US and Israel
Ed Miliband will announce what he has described as a broad reset of the UK’s relations with Israel on Tuesday, promising the government will take a more active approach in supporting the Palestinian cause.
In an intervention that is expected to draw fierce criticism from the US and Israel, the foreign secretary will impose a UK ban on the trade in goods and some services from illegal Israeli settlements.
Continue reading...Hamza Chowdhury says most of his fellow Green Camden councillors back him to contest 8 October byelection
Zack Polanski is facing unexpected opposition from his own party in his attempt to fight the Holborn and St Pancras byelection for the Greens, with a local councillor saying he is also seeking the nomination, and that the seat does not need “a politician you’ll only see on a leaflet”.
The intervention by Hamza Chowdhury, a Green representative on Camden council in north London, came as the date for the byelection was confirmed for 8 October, after Keir Starmer’s formal resignation as an MP.
Continue reading...Angela Rayner to announce review into local government shake-up as decisions on four areas withdrawn and 16 paused
Plans for a major reorganisation of local government have been put on hold after the government received new legal advice that suggested they might not comply with the law.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) said the review is to ensure the process is robust and aligns with the new government’s aim to “rewire the state”, and follows “updated and privileged legal advice”.
Continue reading...Hamza Chowdhury says he will challenge party leader and has received nominations from other Green councillors
Healey says Andy Burnham set out in his statement to MPs last week what he thought had gone wrong
The fundamentals of our economy [were] hollowed out through a series of past policy decisions, political power was centralised, weakening the relationships between the people, the businesses and the institutions who can make things happen beyond Whitehall. The economic enablers were privatised and outsourced, leaving accountability to a thicket of arm’s length bodies and regulators, too often without the predictability or the pace that underpins a thriving market economy. And our country was deindustrialised as the cost to make anything, to build anything here soared, and our dependence on unreliable sources grew, including in areas critical to our national security and sovereignty.
Let me be clear, I recognise that the costs of business, its energy bills, regulation, burdens, planning constraints, labour costs, have grown since Covid and I want to draw the line.
And whether it is the cost of business or the cost of living, the only way we deal with these in the long term is growth.
Continue reading...Far-right linked group able to mobilise at scale due to police ‘inaction’, says founder of Hope Not Hate
The group of masked, black-clad vigilantes who blockaded roads in Dover could repeat the disruption unless police step up efforts to stop them, politicians and campaigners have said.
Responsibility for the demonstration has been claimed by Patriot Platform, an anti-immigration group with links to the far right, which styles itself as having a “fierce love for our homeland”.
Continue reading...The Reform UK leader is under pressure after senior aides appeared to plot how to bypass electoral laws on foreign donations
Sagal Abdi-Wali arrived in Camden as a child refugee from Somalia. She has worked for more than a decade as a volunteer and trustee for local charities and is a governor of two schools in the borough, according to Labour.
She was first elected as a councillor in 2022 and became the leader of the council in May, when she said: “Camden has been my home for 35 years. It is the place that gave my family sanctuary, that welcomed us, and that has shaped so much of who I am, what I stand for and what inspired my commitment to public service and to working for the community that welcomed us.”
Continue reading...Senior Reform UK figure has faced criticism within party after post about Sagal Abdi-Wali, a former child refugee
Labour has accused Reform’s Zia Yusuf of “straightforward racism” after he suggested the party’s frontrunner to replace Keir Starmer in the Holborn and St Pancras byelection was not British.
Sagal Abdi-Wali, a former child refugee from Somalia and the leader of Camden council, has been tipped as an early favourite to contest the London seat for Labour after the former prime minister’s resignation.
Continue reading...Reform UK leader maintains innocence in overseas funding controversy on last day of party conference
Nigel Farage has claimed that he “wasn’t even listening” during a meeting at the centre of a controversy about whether his party considered evading the law on accepting donations from overseas.
The Reform UK leader also claimed he knew donation law “better than anybody” during interviews as he sought to salvage the final day of his party conference from the fallout that has already cost him two of his closest aides.
Continue reading...Anwar, who lives in Glasgow, says Home Office refused visa application despite Maryam having cancer
A man living in the UK has said he believes his sister-in-law who died from cancer in Gaza would still be alive today if the Home Office had agreed to bring her and her family to Britain.
Anwar, who lives in Glasgow, fled Gaza in 2020 and was granted refugee status in the UK in 2021. After the destruction of large areas of Gaza by Israeli forces following the Hamas attacks on Israel in October 2023, he applied to bring his brother Hassan, Hassan’s wife, Maryam, their two young children and other family members to the UK in October 2025. He said the Home Office rejected their application.
Continue reading...Investigation broadcast by Channel 4 News shows man posing as ‘impermissible donor’ paying for polling that helped Reform
Nigel Farage is facing fresh criticism on the eve of the Reform UK party conference after some of his team were filmed appearing to plot to avoid electoral laws on foreign donations in an undercover investigation broadcast by Channel 4 News.
A group of investigative journalists called Verbatim, founded by the Centre for Climate Reporting, posed as a potential Reform supporter and his wealthy American father, an impermissible donor, who paid for £30,000 of polling commissioned by Reform and which benefited the party.
Continue reading...Labour chair says uch cuts ‘could mean vital public services like hospitals, schools and law enforcement are put at risk’
The Electoral Commission has released political donation figures for the second quarter of 2026. They show that Reform UK continues to rake in far more than other parties. Nigel Farage’’s party had declared donations worth £5.3m. Labour got £3.6m, and the Conservatives £2.8m.
Most of Reform UK’s money came from Ben Delo, who gave £4m. As Rowena Mason reported earlier this year, Delo is a British billionaire convicted in the US for failing to implement adequate anti-money-laundering controls in his cryptocurrency business.
Continue reading...Monarch tells Emmanuel Macron at the British Museum in London that the two nations will share a future ‘woven together’ by history and shared values
The loan of the Bayeux tapestry was “the best possible symbol” of the “entente amicale” between France and the UK, King Charles said, as he visited the famous embroidered masterpiece at the British Museum in London.
Though the tapestry recounts a conflict, “here it is today, nearly 1,000 years later, as a precious symbol of trust, at a time when trust seems sadly to be in short supply between nations,” he said.
Continue reading...Fair to say the current sell-off is international, but the PM has said little yet to make investors rethink the UK’s status
It’s too soon to say the bond markets have turned on Andy Burnham. Tuesday’s spike in gilt yields, taking the UK’s 30-year borrowing costs to their highest level since 1998, was part of an international sell-off of government debt.
The main contributors are well known. The Iran war, by increasing the cost of energy, has overturned the comforting start-of-the-year thesis of falling global inflation and interest rates. A plunging Japanese yen has kicked away another assumed source of financial stability. The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, hasn’t calmed nerves with his solo, and so far futile, attempt to bring down US yields. Meanwhile, the early stage of the AI revolution is an exercise in issuing squillions of debt before long-term returns on capital can possibly be assessed meaningfully.
Continue reading...London mayor’s office says he is ‘victim of a scam’ after conviction under fast-track system where magistrates can decide outcomes in seconds
Sadiq Khan’s office has revealed he was the victim of a scam that led to him being fined for failing to tax a car that did not belong to him.
The London mayor was found guilty last month under a system of “conveyor-belt justice”, in which magistrates decide on hundreds of cases a day, sometimes spending less than a minute on each.
Continue reading...Resolution Foundation argues that UK’s internationally low ‘tax wedge’ must rise to pay for defence ambitions
The chancellor, John Healey, must be prepared to raise taxes for middle earners if he wants to fund significantly higher defence spending, the Resolution Foundation thinktank has said.
Healey resigned from Keir Starmer’s government in June, protesting against what he argued was the then prime minister’s failure to adequately fund defence.
Continue reading...Reform leader said inquiry had been widened but watchdog is not believed to have decided whether to do so
Nigel Farage is facing questions about why he claimed his finances were the subject of a second standards investigation, as he was sworn in again as Clacton’s MP.
The Reform UK leader said when he resigned in July that the standards system had become a “political tool” because “yet another standards investigation is under way” into his finances.
Continue reading...PM says he has a ‘clear diagnosis of what has gone wrong’ with UK, and pays tribute to Keir Starmer after his predecessor quit parliament
My colleague Richard Partington, the Guardian’s senior economics correspondent, grew up, like Andy Burnham, in the Warrington suburb of Culcheth. He has been home to find out what people there are saying about the new PM.
Yesterday, Kemi Badenoch announced a reshuffle, replacing Mel Stride with Andrew Griffith as shadow chancellor and Priti Patel with Tom Tugendhat as shadow foreign secretary.
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