Category Archives: Politics

Starmer promises ‘project of hope’ in UK amid concern about rise of far right

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Prime minister says ‘progressives have to provide the better answer’ during visit to Germany

Keir Starmer has expressed concern that the UK could face a rise in mass far-right populism as seen in Germany and France, as he said it was his mission to “inject some hope” into the country.

Speaking to reporters in Germany, where the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) could come top in three state elections next month, Starmer said the increase in support for such groups was “something that occupies my time”, especially after UK riots partly inspired by far-right misinformation.

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Support planned for UK households struggling with winter energy bills

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Government discusses measures after criticism over cuts to winter fuel payments

Ministers have committed to help households struggling with their gas and electricity bills this winter after energy industry bosses warned that consumer debt had climbed to more than £3bn.

With Labour under fire for scrapping universal winter fuel payments to pensioners, ministers met energy industry bosses on Wednesday to discuss ways of supporting struggling households through the coming colder months.

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Starmer hails ‘once in a generation’ treaty with Germany – as it happened

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Prime minister says agreement will be a ‘boost to our trading relations’. This live blog is closed

Keir Starmer is due to hold a press conference with Olaf Scholz soon. You can watch via the live stream at the top of the page. You may need to refresh the page for it to come up.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has refused to rule out a rise in inheritance tax or capital gains tax, reports the PA news agency.

I’m not going to write a budget two months ahead of delivering it. We’re going to have to make difficult decisions in a range of areas.”

The UK economy is just emerging from the recession that we entered into last year, and two quarters of positive economic growth is not going to reverse more than a decade of economic stagnation.

Much work is needed to rebuild the foundations of our economy so we can rebuild Britain and make working people better off, and that is why growing our economy is absolutely essential.”

Unless we grow the economy, we’re going to continue to be in a situation where taxes are at too high a level and public spending is not sustainable.

We’ve got to break out of this doom loop, which is why growing the economy is the number one priority of this new government.”

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Labour hopes to deepen economic ties with Europe outside EU’s structures

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Finding new trade arrangements to boost growth will be hard given party has ruled out rejoining single market and customs union

Before a whistlestop European tour to Berlin and Paris, Keir Starmer promised to mend “the broken relationships left behind by the previous government” and drive forward UK economic growth.

Changing the tone with European leaders is the easy bit. Changing the substance – especially finding new arrangements to boost growth – is a much taller order.

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Starmer appears to leave door open for potential EU youth exchange scheme

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PM does not rule out setting up system in future after meeting with Olaf Scholz, who stressed desire for closer ties

Keir Starmer has held the door open for some form of youth mobility exchange with EU countries after talks in Germany with Olaf Scholz, who stressed to the British prime minister his wish for closer such ties.

While Starmer said at a press conference with the German chancellor that the UK did not have plans to join the EU’s youth mobility scheme – with No 10 having previously ruled out such a move – speaking to reporters later, he pointedly did not rule out setting up some sort of system for other link-ups, for example student exchanges.

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Liz Truss considered cutting NHS cancer care to pay for tax cuts, claims new book

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Truss at 10: How Not to Be Prime Minister also claims former Tory leader feared smears over cocaine use among team

Liz Truss considered cutting cancer care on the NHS in a desperate bid to find savings to pay for the tax cuts in her botched “mini budget”, according to a new book about her time in office.

The book, Truss at 10: How Not to Be Prime Minister by the renowned political biographer Anthony Seldon, is a 330-page long, largely excoriating account of Truss’ 45 days in Downing Street.

At that point, they were joined by fellow special adviser Alex Boyd, who was told that Truss and Kwarteng were thinking they could still sort out the black hole with severe cuts.

“We’ve been told that they’re looking at stopping cancer treatment on the NHS,’ they told him.

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Keir Starmer takes a political gamble with message of bad news

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Past Labour PMs – Blair, Wilson, Attlee – have tended to arrive in power accentuating the positive

Sir Keir Starmer could perhaps have timed it better. On the day that Oasis, the band that symbolised the mood of sunny optimism that swept Tony Blair to power in 1997, announced their reunion, the prime minister’s message to the nation was that things would get worse before they got better.

Politically, it is quite a gamble. There haven’t been all that many Labour governments in the past 125 years, but they have tended to arrive in power accentuating the positive. That was true of Blair in 1997 and true of Harold Wilson in 1964.

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Starmer to end £40m helicopter contract in break from Sunak era

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Former PM and ministers drew criticism for the VIP flights Labour says were ‘symbol of their government’

A £40m VIP helicopter contract used extensively by the former prime minister Rishi Sunak is to be cancelled as his successor, Keir Starmer, promises to undo “14 years of rot” under the Conservatives.

Starmer and his defence secretary, John Healey, have decided not to renew a contract for helicopter transport which is due to expire at the end of the year after it was extended in 2023 at Sunak’s personal insistence.

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Experts asked to assess strategic threat to UK as part of defence review

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Former Nato chief George Robertson sends 24-page survey to specialists asking for ideas on capability and funding

Members of the armed forces and government departments, manufacturers and academics have been asked to assess the strategic threat to the UK up to 2050 as part of the government’s root-and-branch review of defence policy.

George Robertson, a former Nato secretary general and defence secretary in Tony Blair’s first government, has written to dozens of interested parties with a 24-page questionnaire on the future of Britain’s defence.

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Foreign Office officials said Rishi Sunak should attend D-day event, book reveals

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Department twice provided written advice to No 10 before mistake that came to define Sunak’s election campaign

Senior officials at the Foreign Office repeatedly warned No 10 that Rishi Sunak should not leave June’s D-day commemoration in Normandy early, according to new revelations in a book about the Tories’ 14 years in power.

The department passed on two messages to Downing Street in the weeks leading up to the event, which were then ignored in what has gone down as the worst election campaign blunder of the last 14 years.

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Attorney general intervenes in Foreign Office review of weapons sales to Israel

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Exclusive: Richard Hermer tells officials he can’t approve decision to ban arms without knowing if their use would breach international law

Keir Starmer’s most senior legal adviser has intervened in the contentious decision over whether to ban UK arms sales to Israel, the Guardian has learned, as officials struggle to distinguish between “offensive” and “defensive” weapons.

Sources say Richard Hermer, the attorney general, has told Foreign Office officials he will not approve a decision to ban some weapons sales until they can say for sure which could be used to break international humanitarian law.

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Expect more economic pain to come, warns senior UK cabinet minister

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Starmer and Reeves unlikely to reverse winter fuel and two-child benefit cap decisions, says Pat McFadden

A senior cabinet minister has warned of more economic pain to come as the government prepares to restrict public spending in ways MPs and campaigners say could exacerbate the cost of living crisis.

Pat McFadden, the cabinet office minister, said on Sunday that voters should expect the government to take further difficult decisions, as Keir Starmer prepares to give a speech accusing the Conservatives of leaving the country in “rubble and ruin”.

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Government to seek global trade deals for UK at expense of formal EU re-entry

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Business secretary Jonathan Reynolds says joining Asia-Pacific CPTPP bloc is a ‘real win’ for exporters, even though it will preclude the UK from EU membership

The business and trade secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, has signalled a new twin-track approach to UK trade policy, in which the Labour government will pursue closer ties with the European Union while at the same time seeking new global partnerships further afield.

Writing for the Observer online, Reynolds welcomes the UK’s imminent entry into the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) as a “real win” for British exporters.

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Keir Starmer warns of tough times ahead to fix ‘Tory ruins’

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Labour leader tells working people rot left by Conservatives is so much worse than imagined and improvement won’t happen overnight

British people will have to endure even worse economic and social ­pressures in the months to come as the Labour government takes “unpopular decisions” to rebuild the country from “rubble and ruin” left by the Tories, Keir Starmer will warn this week.

With the prime minister under mounting pressure from within his own party to help people struggling with rising fuel payments and millions of families in poverty, Starmer will strike a defiant note against those demanding U-turns from his ministers, saying “tough choices” will have to be made before any recovery is possible.

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Victims of UK’s infected blood scandal to start receiving payouts by end of year

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Those affected by contaminated blood transfusions and products in 1970s and 80s to finally receive compensation

A new authority set up to properly compensate the victims and families of the infected blood scandal is due to start making payments by the end of this year.

The Infected Blood Compensation Authority (IBCA) was set up after the inquiry in May into the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS concluded that governments, the health service and doctors had repeatedly failed victims. Regulations enacting the compensation scheme were laid out on Friday.

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UK must curb rise in racist hate speech by politicians and public figures, UN says

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Review also highlights racial profiling in police practices, and failure to address legacies of colonialism and slavery

The UK must act to curb a sharp increase in the use of racist hate speech by British politicians and high-profile public figures, a UN body has said.

Ministers must “adopt comprehensive measures to discourage and combat racist hate speech and xenophobic discourse by political and public figures” and ensure that such cases are “effectively investigated and sanctioned”, the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination recommended in a report.

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Which benefits are available to vulnerable people under Labour?

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As the winter fuel allowance is scrapped for many pensioners, we outline some other key benefits

• Millions facing ‘cruel winter’ without fuel payments, Labour MPs warn

Labour backbenchers are warning that millions of vulnerable people will face a “cruel winter” amid rising energy prices and a reduction in benefits, including the removal of winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners.

Keir Starmer’s government has promised to improve conditions for those most in need, with a commitment to “reduce and alleviate” child poverty and end the “moral scar” of food banks. And while Labour sees economic growth and creating more reliable and well-paid jobs as crucial to achieving these aims, it cannot ignore a number of pressing and often interrelated problems in the social security and benefits system.

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Millions facing ‘cruel winter’ without fuel payments, Labour MPs warn

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Backbenchers say end to support schemes would be ‘wrong measure’ that ignores struggle of poorest households

• Which benefits are available to vulnerable people?

Millions of vulnerable people face a “cruel winter” owing to a combination of rising energy costs and government cuts to welfare schemes, Labour MPs and campaigners have warned, as Keir Starmer comes under pressure to extend key financial support programmes.

Labour backbenchers are calling on the prime minister to reverse or mitigate the government’s decision to end winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners and to extend the household support fund (HSF), which is due to run out in September.

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Metropolitan police end probe into election gambling scandal with no charges made – as it happened

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Force ends investigation into bets on 4 July election date and says bar to prove misconduct in public office has not been met

Newly released figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggest that UK households cut their real-terms spending on food and non-alcoholic drinks in the year to March 2023.

While nominal spending on the category increased over the period, there was a 7.5% real-terms drop when accounting for inflation, making it the area where households made the biggest cutbacks, the ONS said.

Puberty blockers work by suppressing the release of hormones and are often prescribed to children questioning their gender.

In May, the Conservative government tightened rules on the drugs, introducing an emergency ban on them being prescribed by private and European prescribers.

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Sunak’s decision to call early election one of ‘most stupid political misjudgments’ in history of politics, says Tory – UK politics live

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Former Tory party chairman Jake Berry says former prime minister ‘must have taken leave of his senses’ when he called election

The former home secretary James Cleverly has defended his record as he reacted to the latest Home Office figures which showed the outgoing Conservative government granted 286,382 work visas in the year to June 2024, 11% down on the previous year (see more details in post at 10.41)

Home Office data also showed the number of migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats fell by almost a third in Rishi Sunak’s last year as prime minister.

When I said I was going to cut migration, I meant it. Visas down, small boat arrivals down, cut the backlog & cut the asylum grant rate. It’s not about words, it’s about delivery.

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