Category Archives: Politics

Local elections 2019: May says results show voters want main parties to ‘deliver Brexit’ – live news

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Lib Dems and Greens surge as Tories and Labour suffer large losses in council elections in England

This is from Tony Robinson, the former Black Adder actor and longstanding Labour activist. It speaks for itself ...

I’ve left the Labour Party after nearly 45 years of service at Branch, Constituency and NEC levels,partly because of it’s continued duplicity on Brexit, partly because of it’s antisemitism, but also because its leadership is complete shit.

Here is a picture of Stuart Davies, the Tory activist who heckled Theresa May as she started speaking at the Welsh Conservative conference. “Why don’t you resign,” he shouted.

As the man shouted “we don’t want you here”, a small group of delegates at the Welsh Conservative conference at Llangollen Pavilion clapped and chanted “out”, in an apparent call for the heckler to be removed. As the Press Association reports, the prime minister then drew laughter and applause from a majority of the hall as she told the conference: “It’s great to be back in North Wales again - I have to say my experience of North Wales is that everybody I meet here is friendly.”

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In an age of extremes, most people are really pretty moderate

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A major YouGov survey shows that extremists are not as prevalent as you might think

It is not hard to scroll through a huge global opinion survey and find the outliers. They are many and compelling: vaccine-doubters, conspiracy theorists, arch-pessimists and even people who approve of Theresa May.

The danger however is that these newspoints can give us a certain impression about the world: that outliers are the norm, that eccentrics are far more prevalent than they actually are.

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Why cities could hold the key to many of the world’s problems

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From bike sharing to green energy, cities are often better at driving change than national governments

Who has the answers? The UN? Scientists? Entrepreneurs? Nation states? “Ordinary” people?

There is another subset of power, agency, ideas and progress that often gets overlooked in the search for solutions to the world’s problems.

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May faces Tory backlash over Williamson sacking as No 10 seeks to rule out police inquiry – live news

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Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen

This is from Newsnight’s Nicholas Watt.

View in Whitehall: the leak from the National Security Council is not being referred to the police because a judgment was made that a crime was not committed

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More than 600,000 EU citizens apply for UK settled status

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Home Office figures revealed as immigration inspector calls for scheme to be improved

More than 600,000 EU citizens have already applied to stay in the UK post-Brexit, Home Office figures reveal.

But the settled status scheme for EU citizens seeking to remain has room for improvement, the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration (ICIBI) in the UK has said.

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Rory Stewart defends UK aid target and vows to tackle climate ’emergency’

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New development minister mounts staunch defence of 0.7% commitment and says DfID will keep spending on climate change

Rory Stewart, the new secretary of state for international development, has reiterated his support for the government’s commitment to spend 0.7% of national income on overseas aid.

Stewart, the former prisons minister, who was appointed to his new role on Wednesday night after Penny Mordaunt replaced the sacked Gavin Williamson as defence minister, also pledged to put climate change at the heart of his work.

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Britons most positive in Europe on benefits of immigration

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Findings contradict assumption UK is more hostile than European neighbours

British people are more persuaded of the benefits of immigration than any other major European nation, according to a global survey, which has also found that almost half of Britons think immigrants are either positive or neutral for the country.

The YouGov–Cambridge Globalism survey found that 28% of Britons believed the benefits of immigration outweighed the costs, compared with 24% in Germany, 21% in France and 19% in Denmark. A further 20% of British people believed the costs and benefits were about equal, while 16% were not sure.

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Child trafficking victim wins £85,000 from UK government over rape attempt

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Court orders Home Office and Ministry of Justice to make payment to teenager attacked while being illegally detained at Morton Hall

A child trafficking victim has won £85,000 in compensation from the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice after he was sexually assaulted and illegally detained at Morton Hall immigration centre.

The Home Office must pay £82,000 to the Vietnamese national – known as H – after it admitted the teenager was being detained illegally when a fellow inmate attempted to rape him in his cell in 2016.

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Sajid Javid proposes legal protection for police who crash cars

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Police drivers would be held to different driving standards to public when in road chases

Police drivers will be held to different standards to the public if they are involved in a car crash while chasing a suspected criminal under changes put forward by the home secretary, Sajid Javid.

Officers are currently held to the same standards as members of the public when involved in a crash during a pursuit and the Home Office argues this overlooks the training they receive.

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Jeremy Hunt: Russian TV station a ‘weapon of disinformation’

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Foreign secretary’s press freedom day speech ramps up British assault on RT

Foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt will on Thursday declare the Russian government-owned TV station RT to be a “weapon of disinformation” in a speech to mark World Press Freedom Day.

The comments, to an audience in Ethiopia, mark an escalation of a British ministerial assault on the standards of the Russian broadcaster, originally known as Russia Today, which had faced repeated investigations into its output by the media regulator Ofcom.

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Cabinet ministers split over customs union Brexit deal with Labour

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Sceptics say it would not command majority among MPs or survive backbench changes

Cabinet ministers are bitterly divided over whether Brexit talks with Labour should broach the possibility of a customs union, with several sceptical that such a deal could even command a majority in parliament or survive hostile backbench amendments.

A senior cabinet minister suggested a deal involving a customs union could be backed by as few as 90 Tory MPs and would mean a slew of resignations from the government payroll.

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Gavin Williamson: ‘I was tried by kangaroo court – then sacked’

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Defence secretary was fired by prime minister after investigation into Huawei leak

Gavin Williamson has claimed that he is the victim of a “kangaroo court” after being dramatically sacked by Theresa May over the leak from the National Security Council of Huawei’s involvement in the UK’s 5G network.

May was told of what she called “compelling” evidence of Williamson’s involvement before she was due to face a grilling from the backbench liaison committee. The defence secretary was later summoned to May’s House of Commons office, where she confronted him with the evidence, offered him the opportunity to resign – and when he refused, immediately fired him.

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Will the UK commitment to development become another casualty of Brexit? | Preet Kaur Gill

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Uncertainty and the falling pound are jeopardising aid that millions of people worldwide rely on, says the shadow development minister

Since the 2016 referendum we have all learned a lot more about the depth of the relationship between the UK and the EU; whether it’s joint cooperation on research, or the potential impact of leaving the EU on agriculture exports.

When considering the effects of Brexit, parliamentarians have focused their attention on our constituencies and the country as a whole. International development has only raised its head in discussions of post-Brexit trade deals.

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Anger as Corbyn faces down calls for Labour to back new Brexit vote

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Labour NEC resists pressure to unequivocally support second referendum in EU election manifesto

Jeremy Corbyn has faced down a challenge spearheaded by his deputy, Tom Watson, for Labour to signal its unequivocal backing for a second Brexit referendum in the forthcoming European election campaign.

In a move that sparked an immediate backlash among remain-supporters, Labour’s ruling national executive committee (NEC), announced that its manifesto for the election would be “fully in line” with its longstanding policy.

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Goodbye, Jakarta? Indonesia’s president suggests new capital

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Idea of unhitching country’s administrative centre from its megacity has a long history – but experts are sceptical

Not only is the megacity of Jakarta besieged by a confluence of modern ills – including pollution, overpopulation and soul-destroying traffic – it is also one of the fastest-sinking capitals in the world.

So when Indonesia’s president, Joko Widodo, known as Jokowi, this week suggested making somewhere else the capital, it did not come as a shock. Indeed, the idea of relocating the country’s administrative centre is almost as old as the republic itself – it was floated by Indonesia’s first president, Sukarno, in 1957 and has been brought up again by several presidents since.

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Hunt: Brexit customs union deal could cost key Tory votes

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Plan could lose support of more Tory MPs than it gains from Labour, says foreign secretary

A Brexit deal with Labour to enter a customs union could cost the Conservatives the support of as many of their own MPs as they would gain from Labour, Jeremy Hunt has said as pressure mounts on Theresa May’s leadership over the cross-party talks.

Related: Brexit: Tory MPs won't accept cross-party compromise involving customs union, says Hunt - live news

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Huawei tech would put UK-US intelligence ties at risk, official says

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Chinese firm’s technology is security risk, says Strayer after council gives partial go-ahead

A US official has warned that the UK’s leaked proposal to adopt Huawei technology for 5G mobile phone networks risks affecting intelligence cooperation with the United States, prompting further criticism from Conservatives opposed to the plan.

Robert Strayer, a deputy assistant secretary at the US state department, said on Monday that Huawei “was not a trusted vendor” and any use of its technology in 5G networks was a risk, contradicting the British stance.

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MPs could vote again on Brexit options if talks break down

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PM raises prospect of more indicative votes as Labour and Tories disagree on customs union

The government is unlikely to try to force through the Brexit deal using the withdrawal agreement bill and will instead try to devise a way to forge a compromise through new indicative votes if talks with Labour break down.

Theresa May’s spokesman said cross-party talks would continue as long as there was “still a prospect of reaching a single position to put to parliament”, but added that the prime minister would then look to bring forward “a small number of votes to try and find a way through parliament”.

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Jeremy Hunt hopes to burnish his and UK’s credentials in Africa

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Trip gives foreign secretary chance to push Tory leadership claims and speak up for Brexit

Jeremy Hunt is to start a five-day, five-nation tour of Africa that will give the foreign secretary a chance both to push his personal agenda ahead of an expected Conservative leadership election and try to convince Africa that Brexit will bring trade benefits.

Hunt will begin his tour on Monday in Senegal before travelling to Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Kenya, which have five of the fastest-growing economies on the continent.

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Tories should expect to lose 800 seats in local elections, says analyst

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Voters are predicted to punish the party for its failure to pass a Brexit deal

The Conservatives can expect to lose 800 or more seats at the local elections this week, as voters punish Theresa May’s administration for failing to pass a Brexit deal, a leading Conservative analyst has said.

In his latest projection for Thursday’s polls, in which more than 8,000 council seats in England are being contested, the Tory peer Robert Hayward suggested his party could lose about 500 to the Liberal Democrats, and 300 to Labour.

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