Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Quarterly figures issued on Thursday showed just over 6.1m applications had been received for the scheme that gives EU citizens, EEA nationals and their families the right to live, work, study or retire in the UK if they were in the country at the time of the EU referendum in 2016.
Nuclear submarine deal with Australia draws criticism from allies and China amid fears of conflict
Britain and the US are battling to contain an international backlash over a nuclear submarine pact struck with Australia amid concerns that the alliance could provoke China and prompt conflict in the Pacific.
Boris Johnson told MPs that the Aukus defence agreement was “not intended to be adversarial” to China. But Beijing accused the three countries of adopting a “cold war mentality” and warned they would harm their own interests unless it was dropped.
Analysis: the western alliance is the main victim – and China will win out unless US can soothe Paris’s anger
Fury in Paris at Australia’s decision to tear up plans to buy a French-built fleet of submarines is not only a row about a defence contract, cost overruns and technical specifications. It throws into question the transatlantic alliance to confront China.
The Aukus deal has left the French political class seething at Joe Biden’s Trumpian unilateralism, Australian two-facedness and the usual British perfidy. “Nothing was done by sneaking behind anyone’s back,” assured the British defence minister, Ben Wallace, in an attempt to soothe the row. But that is not the view in Paris. “This is an enormous disappointment,” said Florence Parly, the French defence minister.
Minister reveals plans to change laws inherited from EU, with rules on medical devices also in crosshairs
Rules on genetically modified farming, medical devices and vehicle standards will be top of a bonfire of laws inherited from the EU as the government seeks to change legislation automatically transferred to the UK after Brexit.
Thousands of laws and regulations are to be reviewed, modified or repealed under a new programme aimed at cementing the UK’s independence and “Brexit opportunities”, David Frost has announced.
Whitehall sources said the casualties were intended to put his ministers on notice about the prime minister’s strength of position. Robert Buckland, the justice secretary, lost his job despite no discernible wrongdoing. Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, was unceremoniously fired despite fears he could be a threat on the backbenches. One government source said all ministers “would know they are dispensable”.
One Tory compared the reshuffle to Margaret Thatcher’s 1981 “purge of the wets” – a brutal show of authority after 18 months of rebellions and U-turns. “Boris has shown people he’s in charge,” they said. “People won’t mess around now. Anyone can get chopped.”
Rather, the performance of ministers shows up, by and large, in where the members place them. At any rate, the government’s spin on the shuffle this morning is that the new cabinet is stronger than the old one, and so better placed to build back better and level up Britain.
This is true as far as it goes. Michael Gove is a more formidable politician than Robert Jenrick; Nadhim Zahawi a more capable executive than Gavin Williamson, Oliver Dowden a more experienced manager than Amanda Milling.
While other changes may generate more headlines, the key move is the appointment of Michael Gove as communities and housing secretary with a particular focus on the levelling-up agenda. Whatever criticisms are made of Gove’s politics, he is seen by Johnson as an effective and forceful minister who is more likely than most to turn what has heretofore been a nebulous slogan into a detailed strategy. Gove has become Johnson’s go-to minister for major strategic challenges and his appointment signals the prime minister’s concern that the huge expectations he has stoked need to be turned into visible delivery.
What’s harder to divine is any one strong political ideology, or any radical guiding idea. Certainly, politicians popular with the Tory party like Truss seem to have prospered. Loyalty to the prime minister himself seems to have been rewarded.
But it’s not a Brexit cabinet, or a small-state cabinet, or to use Tory verbiage, a “one-nation” cabinet for those more in the middle.
This was a prime minister today who, in the words of one of his colleagues, was “cordial but clinical”. “It was a butcher’s yard.”
There’s no doubt his success in driving the health and social care tax levy through the backbenches has emboldened the prime minister but he knows all too well that shuffling the deck always carries risk as the swell of discontent grows.
Covid-19 has shown the effectiveness of local partners. If the sector is to respond and rebuild, it must redistribute power
The UK’s cut to its aid budget comes to about £4bn a year. Such a dramatic reduction is a blow to many, but most of all to the local organisations who perpetually find themselves last in line for funding.
New research by the Vodafone Foundation reveals that, too often, only a small proportion of philanthropic funding earmarked for African development reaches local, African-led civil society organisations. Instead, most development funding favours intermediaries in the global north and international organisations.
Government has prioritised rescue of current scholars but estimated 70 alumni are still in country
A group of former Chevening scholars have accused the British government of abandoning them in Afghanistan, where they say their lives are at grave risk from the Taliban.
The UK government has prioritised the rescue of 35 current Chevening scholars who were due to embark on their studies in the UK before the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, but an estimated 70 former scholars are also thought to still be in the country.
Gavin Williamson has been removed as education secretary as Boris Johnson kicks off a reshuffle of his top team.
The education secretary confirmed his departure in a tweet, saying: “It has been a privilege to serve as education secretary since 2019.” He did not specify whether he had been given another post, saying only: “I look forward to continuing to support the prime minister and the government.”
Twelve months ago, as a battle raged in Downing Street over whether to order a circuit-breaker lockdown, Prof Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance issued a stern public warning that England was headed for 200 deaths a day by November unless action was taken.
That was widely seen as a shocking and unacceptable figure. In the event, Boris Johnson finally caved in to the inevitable six weeks later, on 31 October, ordering a month-long lockdown.
Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor tells MPs proposed legislation could end up punishing those fleeing Taliban if travelling by illegal routes
The UN’s refugee chief in London has said the introduction of the new nationality and borders bill could criminalise Afghan people who manage to escape the Taliban.
Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor, the UNHCR’S representative in the UK, told MPs that the government could find itself in a situation where it is jailing Afghans who seek refuge in the UK because they travelled by illegal routes.
Boris Johnson has announced the government’s “autumn and winter plan” to combat an anticipated rise in Covid infection rates over the coming months, with a toolkit of restrictions that could be introduced in England if the NHS comes under significant pressure.
Move agreed by Speakers of Commons and Lords follows imposition of sanctions on British MPs by Beijing
The new Chinese ambassador to the UK has been barred from parliament by the Speakers in the Commons and Lords after the imposition of sanctions on British MPs by Beijing.
The new ambassador, Zheng Zeguang, was due to attend a meeting of the broadly pro-Chinese all-party group on China, but after a letter from MPs who were subjected to sanctions by China, including the former Conservative party leader Iain Duncan Smith, the Commons Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, has said the meeting is not appropriate.
Covid boosters will be offered to all over-50s and those at greatest risk of the disease as part of the “toolbox” of measures for controlling coronavirus over the autumn and winter following guidance from the government’s vaccine advisers.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said a third dose of vaccine would top up the immunity in those whose protection had likely waned since they completed their first round of shots earlier in the year.
Health secretary updates parliament on pandemic winter plans, including proposals for booster jabs for over-50s and the option for 12- to 15-year-olds to get the jab
Gulf states are having to reconsider their alliances and especially whether they can still trust the US, says senior source
The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan is a shattering earthquake that will shape the Middle East for many years, a senior Gulf official has said, warning that – despite the group’s promises of moderation – the militant group is “essentially the same” as last time it was in power.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the official also said that the rapid and chaotic US withdrawal also raises serious questions for Gulf states about the value of US promises of security over the next 20 years.
Brexit minister Lord Frost tells House of Lords that the European Commission must take renegotiation proposals seriously
The row over Brexit and Northern Ireland has escalated after the UK government issued a new warning to the EU that it will not shy away from unilaterally suspending the Northern Ireland protocol agreed by Boris Johnson last year.
Lord Frost, the Brexit minister, told the House of Lords on Monday night that the EU should take the UK’s proposals to renegotiate part of the protocol “seriously” if it wanted to avoid the protocol collapsing.
Motion will be seen as rebuke to party leader Nicola Sturgeon, who pledged to establish national firm in 2017
Scottish National party members backed a call for a state-run energy company to be set up on the second day of their autumn conference, four years after leader Nicola Sturgeon first pledged one. The move will be seen as a direct rebuke to the leadership’s failure to make good on the promise.
On Saturday activists overwhelmingly supported a motion demanding the creation of a Scottish national energy company, which first minister Nicola Sturgeon first promised in October 2017 at a previous conference.
‘Levelling up’ British society will take 10 years, the prime minister writes as Tories slip in polls
Reports that Boris Johnson has ambitions for another decade in power as he aims to outlast Margaret Thatcher’s 11-year tenure in No 10 have been met with consternation.
The Times reported that Johnson wanted to build a legacy. One cabinet member reportedly told the newspaper: “Boris will want to go on and on. The stuff Dom [Dominic Cummings] was saying about him going off into the sunset was nonsense. He’s very competitive. He wants to go on for longer than Thatcher.”
Partners and spouses are being kept apart by Home Office delays in processing revised versions of entry permits to Britain
A British woman has told how she had to separate her six-year-old son from his French father because post-Brexit rules prohibited her spouse from returning with her to the UK for a new job without prior Home Office approval.
After 11 years in France, the couple, who work in highly skilled jobs in the defence industry, decided to move back to the UK and thought it would be as simple as getting on a Eurostar train.
The most vulnerable people will bear the cost of sanctions, as services and the economy collapse
Watching Afghanistan’s unfolding trauma, I’ve thought a lot about Mumtaz Ahmed, a young teacher I met a few years ago. Her family fled Kabul during Taliban rule in the late 1990s.
Raised as a refugee in Pakistan, Ahmed had defied the odds and made it to university. Now, she was back in Afghanistan teaching maths in a rural girls’ school. “I came back because I believe in education and I love my country,” she told me. “These girls have a right to learn – without education, Afghanistan has no future.”