Category Archives: Politics

Abbott denies Starmer privately defied Corbyn over antisemitism

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Corbyn ally says suggestions Starmer challenged handling of issue while in shadow cabinet are ‘nonsense’

A senior ally of Jeremy Corbyn has dismissed as “nonsense” suggestions Keir Starmer privately fought against the former leader’s handling of antisemitism while in his shadow cabinet.

Diane Abbott, who at the time was shadow home secretary, disputed the defence levied by Starmer supporters that he had spoken up about the issue at the time, given the criticism he has faced for serving in Corbyn’s top team as shadow Brexit secretary.

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SNP top leaders urge overhaul of Sturgeon independence plan

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Westminster chief and president say conference on outgoing leader’s strategy should be delayed

Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation could prompt a major rethink around her plans to fight the next UK general election as a de facto referendum on independence, the Scottish National party’s leader in Westminster has suggested.

After the shock announcement of the first minister’s departure on Wednesday, Stephen Flynn said the special conference due to be held next month on Sturgeon’s plan should be pushed back to give the new leader time to set out their intentions.

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Nicola Sturgeon denies ‘short-term pressures’ behind resignation as Scottish first minister – UK politics live

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Latest updates: Scotland’s first minister says she has ‘wrestled’ with decision for weeks

SNP MP Stewart McDonald described Nicola Sturgeon as “the finest public servant of the devolution age” amid reports of her expected departure as Scottish first minister.

“Nicola Sturgeon is the finest public servant of the devolution age,” the MP for Glasgow South tweeted, sharing a photograph of himself with Sturgeon.

Absolutely gutted about this. Nicola has been an incredible leader.

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Nicola Sturgeon resigns as first minister of Scotland

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Scottish National party leader says she no longer has stamina to carry on in pressured and demanding role

Nicola Sturgeon will stand down as first minister of Scotland, as she said she no longer had the stamina to continue in the highly pressured and demanding role.

In a shock decision, Scotland’s longest-serving first minister said she had instructed the Scottish National party (SNP) to begin the process of electing a new leader and would remain in office until her successor is chosen.

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UK rehearsing economic fallout scenarios if China invades Taiwan

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Exclusive: Whitehall officials planning strategy to tackle disruption to global supply chains in the aftermath of an attack

Whitehall officials have strategised a series of scenarios about the economic fallout that could follow if China were to invade Taiwan, sources have told the Guardian.

Concerns about the major disruption to global supply chains and consequences of any coordinated western response have been examined by civil servants as part of what is said to be routine “forward-scanning” exercises.

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Labour out of EHRC special measures after progress on tackling antisemitism

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Keir Starmer says party heading in right direction but there is still work to do, 18 months after watchdog’s report

Labour has been taken out of special measures by the equalities watchdog, with Keir Starmer hailing progress in tackling antisemitism as a watershed moment for the party.

In a speech on Wednesday, Starmer will herald the party’s progress while saying there is still significant work to be done.

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Deal on Northern Ireland protocol ‘could be struck next week’

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Negotiations are in crucial final phase with Rishi Sunak preparing to hold calls with EU leaders

Negotiations over the Northern Ireland protocol are in the crucial final phase with a deal possible as early as next week, according to multiple sources.

Rishi Sunak is expected to spend the latter half of the parliamentary recess this week looking at the shape of the deal, with calls pencilled in with EU leaders. However, UK sources stressed that talks were at a delicate phase and there was no guarantee of a final agreement.

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Rishi Sunak under pressure from backbench MPs to declare China a ‘threat’ – UK politics live

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Latest updates: amid concerns over suspected spy balloons and as part of review of global security, PM urged to deliver hawkish view

A former British ambassador to the US and national security adviser has questioned whether the UK has a “watertight capability” to deal with suspected Chinese spy balloons.

Asked if prime minister Rishi Sunak is right to suggest the UK has a “watertight rapid response to intercept these kind of things”, Lord Kim Darroch told Times Radio he is not totally confident this is the case.

I’m not, to be honest, but I wouldn’t want listeners to get very worried about that.

I’m not because I think we have under-invested in defence for the last couple of decades – one might argue ever since the end of the cold war – and we don’t have all the kit and equipment that we really need and there are gaps around in the technology our armed forces have.

It’s still, I think, unless we discover something new, it’s still well-known technology and it’s still basically surveillance, still basically spying, and the reality is an awful lot of that goes on everywhere.

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Liz Truss oversaw jump in credit card spending at Foreign Office

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Guardian analysis of data shows officials spent more under former PM than predecessor Dominic Raab

Liz Truss oversaw a major jump in spending on government credit cards at the Foreign Office when she took over, a Guardian analysis shows, with spending on restaurants, bars, leisure activities and hotels all rising sharply during her time in office.

An analysis of data collated by the Labour party shows officials spent far more on procurement cards under the former prime minister than they had under her predecessor, Dominic Raab.

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Sunak rejects calls for BBC chair, Richard Sharp, to stand down

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PM says he does not want to prejudge inquiry and that appointment was made after the ‘correct process’

Rishi Sunak has rejected calls for Richard Sharp to stand down as BBC chairman, despite the businessman failing to declare his role in arranging a secret £800,000 personal loan for Boris Johnson.

Sharp has been criticised by MPs for “significant errors of judgement” over his failure to mention his role in helping to arrange the loan for the former prime minister in early 2020. Johnson later appointed Sharp, a Conservative party donor, to oversee the BBC’s board.

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UK fighter jets always on standby, Sunak says after US shoots down objects

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Prime minister will do ‘everything it takes’ to keep country safe as Britain conducts security review

UK fighter jets are on standby to shoot down Chinese spy balloons if any are spotted in British air space, the prime minister has said.

Rishi Sunak said Typhoon planes were ready at all times in case the UK came under threat from balloons such as the one US officials said they shot down last week.

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Labour condemns ‘catalogue of waste’ on government ‘credit cards’

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Analysis of civil service spending includes Rishi Sunak’s Treasury department spending £3,000 on Tate photographs

Spending on government-issued “credit cards” has risen 70% since 2010, when the Conservatives first warned they were generating “hideous waste”, according to a Labour analysis of civil service spending.

Civil servants at 14 of the 15 main government departments spent nearly £150m on government procurement cards (GPCs) in 2021, the figures show, a steep rise since 2010-11, when David Cameron warned about the lax rules and oversight governing their use.

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Whitehall procurement cards serve a purpose but oversight is patchy

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Labour analysis shows use of GPCs has risen under Tory government despite David Cameron decrying ‘hideous’ spending levels in 2010

Nestled inside a shaded courtyard, Plataran in south Jakarta offers diners the promise of authentic Indonesian food “with the atmosphere of Javanese royalty”. Five miles to the north, Kaum gives guests a taste of tribal Indonesian cooking with modern inflections.

Together, these are two of the city’s finest restaurants, and they are where Liz Truss and her team decamped, first for lunch and then for dinner, during a whistle-stop trip to the Indonesian capital in 2021. The two meals cost the taxpayer £1,443 – all paid for conveniently by handing over one of the thousands of government procurement cards (GPCs) that officials can use to pay for anything under £20,000.

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Nurses’ union in UK warns of exodus of young staff

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RCN says nearly 43,000 nurses in UK have quit early in their careers over past five years

The UK’s largest nursing union warned of a workforce “exodus” with tens of thousands of young staff leaving the profession, as NHS bosses backed calls for ministers to meet unions to agree on a pay deal and avoid further strike action.

Nearly 43,000 nurses across the UK in the early stages of their careers have quit over the past five years, figures from the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) show – almost equal to the record 47,000 nursing posts now vacant in NHS England.

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Brexiters claim ‘sellout’ after Tories discuss rapprochement with EU

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Nigel Farage, John Redwood and Lord Frost rail against news of senior Tories joining cross-party summit to tackle failings of Brexit

Prominent Brexit supporters have hit out at senior Conservative figures after the Observer revealed they had taken part in a private cross-party summit entitled: “How can we make Brexit work better with our neighbours in Europe?”

John Redwood, the prominent Brexit-supporting Tory MP, and Nigel Farage, the former leader of the UK Independence party, criticised those attending the summit at Oxfordshire’s Ditchley Park retreat, including the cabinet minister Michael Gove.

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‘He’s a bit of a prat’: voters in Ashfield turn on Lee Anderson

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The Tories’ new deputy chairman thinks he has the support of his constituency. But a tour around the market town says otherwise

Depending on your political instincts he’s a prime candidate for the “worst man in Britain”, no-nonsense voice of the people, or pugnacious darling of the Tory right.

Lee Anderson defends his inability to swerve controversy by claiming that what might make parliamentarians blanch, the people of Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, unequivocally back.

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Brexit is a self-inflicted wound of unparalleled severity | Phillip Inman

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Quitting the EU has stalled business investment, making us reliant on workers who are now scarce. Hence rising wages, high inflation and increased interest rates. Result? A looming recession

Whenever Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, talks about the economy, he is forced to mention the toll taken by Brexit.

Business leaders, initially reluctant to criticise the Tory decision to quit the EU, have begun to find their voice. Most recently, leading City figure Guy Hands called Brexit a “complete disaster” and a “bunch of total lies” that has harmed large parts of the economy.

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UK counter-terrorism report author accused of basing conclusions on ‘handful of cases’

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William Shawcross analysed just six Channel cases before calling for more focus on Islamist extremism, say critics

The author of a controversial review into Britain’s counter-terrorism strategy has been accused of failing to do his job properly because he attended only a handful of the thousands of meetings of its key deradicalisation programme.

William Shawcross was appointed to review Prevent, the government’s counter-extremism programme, in January 2021. Last week his controversial conclusion that the programme had concentrated too much on the far right and not enough on Islamist extremism was met with widespread condemnation.

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Revealed: farmers received less than 0.5% of post-Brexit money last year

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Agricultural businesses risk closure as figures show government paid only tiny fraction of slashed EU farming subsidies

Cuts to post-Brexit farming payments mean farms risk “going out of business” as new figures reveal only a tiny fraction of slashed EU subsidies went to agriculture businesses last year.

The government is replacing the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which paid subsidies to farmers to keep them in business, with “payments for public goods”, meaning land managers get paid for improving nature.

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Nurses set to withdraw from A&E and intensive care units as strike intensifies

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UK’s biggest nursing union prompts alarm among senior officials by calling on intensive care workers to join walkouts

The UK’s biggest nursing union is preparing an escalation of its pay dispute with the government that will see members working in emergency departments, intensive care units and cancer care services being asked to join the next round of strikes.

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is also planning to announce the first continuous 48-hour strikes running through two days and two nights, rather than limiting walkouts to the 12 hours from 8am to 8pm, as they have done to date.

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