Category Archives: Politics

American severance may be averted, but Europe’s leaders must fear the worst

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Head-spinning speed of events leaves EU adapting at pace while trying to infer Trump’s possible geo-strategic aims

With a mixture of regret, laced with incredulity, European leaders gathered in Brussels to marshal their forces for a power struggle not with Russia, but with the US.

Even now, of course at the 11th hour, most of Europe hopes this coming battle of wills can be averted and the Trump administration can still be persuaded that forcing Ukraine to the negotiating table, disarmed and blinded, will not be the US’s long-term strategic interest.

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Liz Kendall says getting people into work is best way to cut benefits bill

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Chancellor is eyeing welfare system for potential cuts but pensions secretary says more support for jobseekers is key

The work and pensions secretary, Liz Kendall, has said helping more people back into a job is the best way to cut the benefits bill, as the chancellor looks for savings ahead of the 26 March spring statement.

With Rachel Reeves zeroing in on welfare as a source of potential cuts as she prepares to take action to meet her self-imposed fiscal rules, Kendall said the starting point must be getting people back into work – not numbers on a spreadsheet.

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Council tax in Scotland to reach record high with 15% rise in some areas

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Levies on tourists and cruise ships considered by some local authorities in attempt to plug funding gaps

Council tax costs in Scotland will hit record levels next month after local authorities agreed to raise rates by up to 15%, with some planning new levies on tourists and cruise ships.

All of Scotland’s 32 local authorities have announced council tax increases from April of at least 6%, with the majority raising them by about 10%, after years of successive cuts to their grant funding.

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Town hall leaders condemn ‘ill-thought-out’ plan to merge English councils

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Survey reveals senior officials think changes will do little to address local authorities’ dire financial crisis

Ministers’ plans to shake up the structure of English local government by merging councils are “ill-thought-out”, “insane” and a “bizarre diversion” that will fail to deliver savings, according to a survey of town hall leaders.

The depth of unhappiness with the plans is revealed in an annual poll of senior councillors and executives, most of whom said the changes would be costly, time-consuming and do little to address the dire financial crisis facing councils.

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‘I was devastated’: MP hopes her story will help improve maternity care for disabled women

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Exclusive: Marie Tidball tells of her experiences with NHS as report finds 44% higher risk of stillbirth for disabled women

When doctors tried to work out whether Marie Tidball would need a specially designed birth plan, one asked her to lie fully clothed on the bed and spread her legs in the air so they could see how far they could open.

The incident was one of several occasions when Tidball, now a Labour MP, felt neglected during her pregnancy and early motherhood because of the NHS’s failure to adapt on account of her physical disabilities. Tidball has physical impairments affecting all four of her limbs and had major surgeries on both her hips and legs as a child.

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European markets soar as Germany moves to lift ‘debt brake’ and raise defence spending

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Berlin’s ‘big bazooka’ proposal sends industrial stocks surging but fiscal sea change also hikes borrowing costs

European financial markets have rallied sharply and German borrowing costs have soared after the country’s prospective leaders announced a historic deal to loosen its “debt brake” rule to boost spending on defence.

The yield – in effect the interest rate – on 30-year German government bonds rose by about 25 basis points to 3.08% in its biggest daily increase since October 1998.

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UK, France and Germany say Gaza aid freeze could breach international law

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Ministers issue joint statement after Israel cuts off supplies in effort to push Hamas to accept change in ceasefire deal

Britain has joined Germany and France to warn that Israel could be in breach of international law by halting the entry of aid into Gaza, which is facing a “catastrophic” humanitarian crisis.

The foreign secretary, David Lammy, signed a joint statement with his French and German counterparts to urge Israel and Hamas to engage constructively to get ceasefire talks back on track.

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Conservative peer accused of using antisemitic tropes in Lords debate

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Archie Hamilton said Jewish community in Britain ‘has an awful lot of money’ and should pay for proposed Holocaust memorial

A Conservative peer has been accused of using antisemitic tropes after saying in a debate in the Lords that Jewish people should pay for a proposed Holocaust memorial in London because they have “an awful lot of money”.

Archie Hamilton, who served as a minister under Margaret Thatcher and John Major and was made a peer in 2005, was criticised after the debate, which was about whether to put the memorial and education centre in Victoria Tower Gardens, next to parliament.

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Starmer highlights UK’s war record in implicit rebuke to Vance as Lib Dems mock Badenoch for defending him – as it happened

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Interventions follow US vice president’s comments about ‘20,000 troops from some random country that has not fought a war in 40 years’. This live blog is closed

In response to a question about intelligence cooperation with the US, Sir David Manning, a former ambassador to Washington, said he thought this would become “more difficult” because there was a problem of trust. He explained:

If you have some of Trump’s appointees in these key jobs who have very strange track records, and have said very strange things about Nato allies, the Nato alliance and so on, and you have people in the administration who seem to be, let’s say, looking for ways of appeasing Russia, then you have a problem on the intelligence front, because these are not the values that we have.

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Starmer welcomes Zelenskyy’s offer to work with Trump on Ukraine peace deal – as it happened

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PM says any deal must be ‘lasting and secure’ following fiery Trump-Zelenskyy meeting last week and UK weekend summit. This live blog is closed

Lisa O’Carroll is the Guardian’s acting Ireland correspondent.

Michelle O’Neill, Northern Ireland’s first minister, has described a decision to build thousands of lightweight missiles for Ukraine in a Belfast factory as “incredulous”.

I find it really incredulous that at a time when public services are being cut left, right and centre.

At a time when we have endured 14 years of austerity ... I think at a time like that, rather than buying weapons of war, I would rather see the money invested in public services.

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UK ban on zero-hours contracts ‘to include agency workers’

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Government to expand coverage of employment rights bill, according to report

Agency workers will reportedly be included in a ban on “exploitative” zero-hours contracts as part of changes to the UK government’s employment bill.

Under the new rules, employers will have to offer agency workers a contract that guarantees a minimum number of hours every week, the BBC reported.

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Britain is back: did Ukraine crisis talks create a post-Brexit turning point?

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Keir Starmer won praise for taking the UK ‘back to the heart of Europe’ at the weekend, but will it be a long-term move?

Britain is back. That was the concise verdict of Eléonore Caroit, the vice-chair of the French national assembly’s foreign affairs committee. And the optics of Sunday’s crisis talks on Ukraine bore this out, with Keir Starmer at the very centre of the leaders’ joint photo.

“You are back on the scene, of the leadership in Europe,” Caroit told the BBC on Monday morning. James MacClearly, the Liberal Democrat MP who speaks for the party on Europe, was equally adamant, praising the prime minister for taking this chance “to bring us back to the heart of Europe where we belong”.

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Trump commitment to peace in Ukraine sincere, Starmer says, but minerals deal not enough to provide US security guarantee – live

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Prime minister says UK must strengthen relationship with US for security

As Jakub Krupa and Martin Belam report on our Europe live blog, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, is floating proposals for a month-long ceasefire in Ukraine covering air, sea and attacks on critical infrastructure.

In interviews this morning, Luke Pollard, the defence minister, played down reports that this is a plan that Britain is formally backing. Asked about French government claims to this effect, he replied:

No agreement has been made on what a truce looks like, and so I don’t recognise the precise part you mentioned there. But we are working together with France and our European allies to look at what is the path to how … we create a lasting and durable peace in Ukraine.

You wouldn’t expect me to get into the details of what that plan looks like, because at the moment, the only person that would benefit from those details being put in the public domain before any plan is agreed would be President Putin.

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Tories compare Nigel Farage to Jeremy Corbyn over Ukraine war

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Reform leader accused of ‘equivocating over Russia’s illegal war’ after criticising Volodymyr Zelenskyy

The Conservatives have compared Nigel Farage to Jeremy Corbyn after the Reform UK leader said Volodymyr Zelenskyy had been “rude” to Donald Trump, as well as criticising the Ukrainian president for not wearing a suit to the Oval Office.

The Liberal Democrats accused Farage of parroting White House talking points after Farage denied that Elon Musk and Steve Bannon had given Nazi salutes, saying their gestures were “out to the side and not in front”.

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‘Ticking timebomb’: how Send spending could bankrupt English councils

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Guardian analysis lays bare a neglected system that is ruinously expensive, and often fails children and parents

The alarming details of the special educational needs financial crisis in English local authorities are buried deep in internal council papers but the reality of the situation is crystal-clear to those close to it. “It’s a ticking timebomb,” one town hall boss told the Guardian. “It’s what keeps me awake at night.”

Budget reports, schools forum minutes and financial planning documents help tell a story of a system woefully unprepared for the explosion in numbers of children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) in recent years, chronically underfunded to meet the growing demand, and now struggling to keep afloat.

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Labour unveils sick-pay guarantee for 1.3m lowest-paid workers

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Workers earning under £123 a week to get 80% of salary in sick pay, keeping more people off benefits

More than 1 million of the lowest-paid UK workers are to be guaranteed sick pay worth up to 80% of their weekly salary from the first day of sickness, under changes intended to boost living standards.

The UK has one of the stingiest rates of statutory sick pay in the developed world, according to the Resolution Foundation, with those earning less than £123 a week not entitled to anything. For the rest, the rate is set at just £116.75 a week at present, rising to £118.75 – or £3 an hour – for full-time workers from April, but that only kicks in after three days of sickness.

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One in three NHS doctors so tired their ability to treat patients is affected, survey finds

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Exclusive: Medics more sleep deprived now than during Covid crisis amid staff shortages and surging demand

One in three doctors in the NHS are so tired that their ability to treat patients is impaired, according to a report that reveals medics are more sleep deprived now than during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Longer hours, staff shortages and soaring demand for care on top of the backlog that worsened during the Covid crisis are causing extreme tiredness among doctors, leading to memory blanks, problems concentrating and patient harm.

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UK risks becoming dumping ground for goods from exploited workers, MPs say

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Committee says firms should be required to say how they will tackle modern slavery in supply chains

The government must close loopholes that enable firms exploiting workers to undercut British businesses or risk the UK becoming a “dumping ground” for goods made in poor conditions, MPs have said.

In a report published on Monday, the business and trade select committee calls on the government to make it mandatory for companies to say how they will tackle modern slavery in their supply chain and to introduce bigger penalties for firms that do not comply, including “naming and shaming” businesses.

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Europe has a lot to do before it can exert real influence on a Ukraine peace deal

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The continent’s role in any ceasefire will be limited unless countries commit more to Kiev and the Zelenskyy-Trump relationship is repaired

Europe and the UK are hoping they are on the brink of assembling a credible military coalition that Donald Trump can only refuse to support at risk of appearing openly to ally with Vladimir Putin – an alliance many grassroots Republicans reject.

The plan is a long shot since it requires enough countries inside Nato to offer practical support to such a coalition of the willing, and also needs Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, to patch up his relations with Donald Trump following Friday’s Oval Office meeting.

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‘Worse than the Tories’: cultural figures question Labour plans for arts in schools

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Government must scrap English baccalaureate to make arts more accessible to working-class children, critics say

Leading cultural figures have expressed doubts about the government’s commitment to restoring the creative arts in English schools, with one warning that Labour has “lost the plot” and “the current signs are they are worse than the Tories”.

When Labour won the election, it promised to expand opportunities for working-class children by broadening the school curriculum to include more drama, art, music and sport alongside the core academic subjects.

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