Category Archives: Politics

Black-clad Dover vigilantes will return if police do not act, say campaigners

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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”.

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Undercover report on donations ‘looks bad’ for Reform, admits Nigel Farage – as it happened

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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.”

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Zia Yusuf’s post about Camden council leader is ‘straightforward racism’, says minister

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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.

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‘I wasn’t even listening,’ Farage says of donations scandal meeting

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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.

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Gaza refugee says sister-in-law ‘would be alive’ if Home Office had let her come to UK

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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.

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Reform officials ‘plotted to break law on foreign donations’ in undercover film

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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.

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Labour condemns Reform’s plan for £100bn in cuts as ‘half-baked’ and ‘incredibly reckless’ – UK politics live

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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.

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Bayeux tapestry loan symbolises ‘entente amicale’ between France and UK, says King Charles

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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.

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Burnham beware, the bond markets will demand proper answers in the budget | Nils Pratley

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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.

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Sadiq Khan fined over untaxed car falsely registered in his name

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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.

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Fund defence spending from tax rise on middle earners, thinktank tells Healey

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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.

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Farage faces questions over his claim of second standards investigation

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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.

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Burnham promises to bring ‘substantial change’ as he gives first Commons address as prime minister – UK politics live

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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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UK long-term borrowing costs could halve chancellor’s budget headroom

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Yield on 30-year gilts highest since 1998 as rout triggered by global factors underlines tricky backdrop John Healey faces

The chancellor’s headroom against Labour’s fiscal rules could be almost halved at his first budget if the current global bond sell-off persists into the autumn, economists say.

The UK’s long-term borrowing costs jumped to their highest level since early 1998 on Tuesday as investors dumped government bonds, betting on higher inflation.

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More public control is the way to grow UK economy, Burnham to tell MPs

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Exclusive: Prime minister wants to ‘bring back hope’ by tackling cost of living as MPs call for electoral reform

Andy Burnham will drive home his pledge to bring more essential services back into public control, telling MPs in the Commons on Tuesday that it will be the only way to improve growth across the country.

Burnham will address the house for the first time in 16 years from the frontbench, and six weeks since he became prime minister, after spending the summer recess announcing a slew of policies that will now be put before MPs.

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Andrew Griffith and Tom Tugendhat join Badenoch’s top team in Tory reshuffle

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Conservative leader sacks shadow chancellor Mel Stride and shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel

Kemi Badenoch sacked her shadow chancellor, Mel Stride, and the shadow foreign secretary, Priti Patel, in a sweeping Conservative reshuffle on Monday, replacing Stride with Andrew Griffith, and Patel with Tom Tugendhat.

Stride, who had been shadow chancellor since Badenoch became leader, was widely seen among Tories as failing to make an impression at a time when Labour had been under pressure over the economy.

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‘GB News wouldn’t touch him’: Milo Yiannopoulos will struggle to fit in with UK right wing

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‘Alt-right’ agitator and former Trump backer deported from US is said also to be too extreme for Reform

As he arrives back in the UK after being deported from the US by the Trump administration, the far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos may be wondering what lies ahead for him in his native country.

The “alt-right” agitator, 41, made his name in the US by promoting Donald Trump and associating with his allies before the 2016 election.

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Andy Burnham pledge to end indefinite jail terms ‘a step towards healing’

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Campaigners welcome plan to bring IPP sentences to a close but say the move is long overdue

Campaigners have hailed Andy Burnham’s pledge to bring an end to indefinite jail terms as “a day that thousands of families have spent years fighting for”.

The prime minister has said he will “end the injustice” of imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentences during this parliament, meaning people will no longer be trapped indefinitely under a sentence abolished more than a decade ago.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

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UK asks banks for feelgood stories about keeping out dirty money

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City firms tapped for case studies to try to convince global watchdog that London has cleaned up its act

The government is asking bankers and lawyers to provide feelgood stories about how they blocked dirty money from entering the UK, as ministers try to prove the UK’s money-laundering controls are working.

The Treasury’s call for evidence is meant to illustrate that the UK has upped its game when it comes to preventing financial crime, particularly since its last dismal assessment by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) global crime watchdog in 2018, which fuelled allegations that London had become a hub for “dirty money”.

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James Cleverly resigns from shadow cabinet to run for mayor of London

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Shadow minister for housing, communities and local government to resign with immediate effect

James Cleverly has resigned from the shadow cabinet to run for mayor of London.

The Tory heavyweight, who was once home and foreign secretary and is shadow minister for housing, communities and local government, told the Sunday Times he will resign with immediate effect.

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