No 10 believes it has done its homework for a Trump presidency

Keir Starmer’s team expected a Trump win and has long been building bridges despite political differences

While Kemi Badenoch was the first politician since the US presidential election result to publicly challenge Keir Starmer over Labour’s previously tense relationship with Donald Trump, she is unlikely to be the last.

Yet the UK prime minister, according to government sources, is less anxious about the return of the divisive populist to the White House than the new Tory leader, and many in his own party, might have assumed.

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Starmer and Badenoch congratulate Trump on ‘historic election victory’ – UK politics live

Both PM and leader of the opposition offer congratulations with more full-throated support from Tory rightwingers such as Truss and Braverman

Another Labour politician who has criticised Donald Trump strongly in the past is Emily Thornberry, shadow foreign secretary when Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader and now chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee. In an interview on the Today programme this morning she said Trump’s victory (or apparent victory – he still has not officially hit 270 electoral college votes) was “disappointing”, and that it made the world “unpredictable”.

When it was put to her that she described him as a “racist, sexual predator” when he visited the UK during his first term as president, she replied:

Well, he is. But he is the president of the United States, and we need to work with him.

I know that many Londoners will be anxious about the outcome of the US presidential election. Many will be fearful about what it will mean for democracy and for women’s rights, or how the result impacts the situation in the Middle East or the fate of Ukraine. Others will be worried about the future of NATO or tackling the climate crisis …

The lesson of today is that progress is not inevitable. But asserting our progressive values is more important than ever - re-committing to building a world where racism and hatred is rejected, the fundamental rights of women and girls are upheld, and where we continue to tackle the crisis of climate change head on.

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Wetherspoon’s boss warns of pub price rises as result of Labour budget

Tim Martin blamed increases to the minimum wage and employers’ national insurance contributions

Pubgoers should expect prices to go up as a result of Labour’s first budget in 14 years, the politically outspoken boss of Wetherspoon’s, Tim Martin, has said.

Speaking as the hospitality chain announced record quarterly sales, Martin pinned the blame for an expected increase in pubs’ costs on the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, whose economic “pedigree” he has previously praised.

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China blocking UK plans in Beijing amid east London mega-embassy dispute

Exclusive: UK rebuild of Beijing embassy held up as Angela Rayner faces fraught decision on Royal Mint Court site

China is blocking requests to rebuild the British embassy in Beijing while the fate of its controversial mega-embassy in east London is being decided, the Guardian can disclose.

Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister and housing secretary, faces a politically fraught decision over whether to approve plans for a new Chinese embassy at Royal Mint Court.

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Smoking to be banned outside schools and hospitals, but pubs get reprieve

Parliamentary bill will also ban the advertising of vapes and restrict their flavours, packaging and marketing

Smoking is set to be banned outside schools and hospitals as part of a crackdown on one of the UK’s biggest killers and its most common cause of cancer.

But the government has dropped plans to outlaw smoking outside pubs and restaurants, prompting health campaigners to complain about “vested interests” covertly influencing policy.

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Starmer says people smuggling should be seen as ‘global security threat similar to terrorism’ – UK politics live

PM gave speech at Glasgow’s Interpol general assembly as Kemi Badenoch works on shadow cabinet appointments

Starmer went on to say the government was “going to treat people smugglers like terrorists”. And he explained what that meant.

So we’re taking our approach to counter terrorism, which we know works, and apply it to the gangs with our new Border Security Command.

We’re ending the fragmentation between policing, Border Force and our intelligence agencies, recruiting hundreds of specialist investigators, the best of the best, from our National Crime Agency, Border Force, immigration enforcement and the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] and our intelligence agencies, all working together.

We have the powers to trace suspects’ movements using information from the intelligence services.

We can shut down their bank accounts, cut off their internet access, and arrest them for making preparations to act before an attack has taken place.

I will work with anyone serious who could offer solutions of this, anyone, because without coordinated global action, it will not go away.

And unless we bring all the powers we have to bear on this in much the same way as we do for terrorism, then we will struggle to bring these criminals to justice.

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UK says it voted against UN nuclear war panel because consequences already known

Foreign Office argues scientific study into modern effects of nuclear war not needed

The UK was one of three countries to vote against creating a UN scientific panel on the effects of nuclear war because, the Foreign Office argued, the “devastating consequences” of such a conflict are already well known without the need for a new study.

The UK, France and Russia were the only countries to vote on Friday night against a UN general assembly committee resolution drafted by Ireland and New Zealand to set up an international scientific inquiry to take a fresh look at the multifaceted impact of nuclear weapons use.

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Senior Labour MPs frustrated at lack of Black officials in No 10

Exclusive: one frontbencher said the absence was a ‘serious embarrassment and a blind spot’ as Tories elect first Black leader

Senior Labour MPs have expressed their frustration at the lack of Black representation in No 10 as the Conservatives elected Kemi Badenoch as their new leader.

Labour sources said the WhatsApp group for Labour MPs of colour contained some furious messages from those who believe the party is not doing enough to represent Black, Asian and other minority ethnic groups at the top of government.

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Rachel Reeves ‘missed opportunity’ to raise £900m from online casinos

Labour’s links to gambling industry questioned again after decision not to raise tax rate for online gaming

Rachel Reeves has been criticised over a “missed opportunity” to raise £900m from online casinos in her first budget as chancellor, amid concerns about the Labour party’s ties to the £11bn-a-year gambling sector.

Both the Liberal Democrats and Derek Webb – one of Labour’s largest donors – questioned the chancellor’s rejection of proposals to double remote gaming duty (RGD), levied on online games of chance, from 21% to 42%.

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Kemi Badenoch says Partygate scandal was ‘overblown’

New Tory leader calls Boris Johnson a ‘great prime minister’ who fell into a ‘trap’ over Covid rules

The new Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, has said the Partygate scandal was “overblown” as she rejected the need to “churn over” everything that went wrong with previous Tory prime ministers.

Badenoch won the party leadership on Saturday and said she was going to be “honest” about what went wrong in the party under her predecessors.

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Labour challenges Badenoch to back billions for public services and tax rises

Rachel Reeves throws down budget gauntlet to new Tory chief as party’s first black leader is congratulated on win

Labour has thrown down an immediate challenge to the new Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, to back Rachel Reeves’s budget plans for big increases in tax, spending and borrowing, as a huge political divide threatened to open up over economic policy and the future of public services.

All the main party leaders congratulated Badenoch on Saturday on becoming the first black leader of a main UK party after she stormed to victory over former immigration minister Robert Jenrick with 56.5% of the vote among Conservative party members.

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Private schools to take legal action against planned VAT on fees

Independent Schools Council says its focus is on children and it is concerned about impact on specialist schools

The Independent Schools Council (ISC) has said it will launch legal action against the government’s decision to impose VAT on independent school fees.

The council, which represents more than 1,400 private schools in the UK and abroad, reached its decision after a board meeting held on Thursday.

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EU citizen who applied for pre-settled status is to be deported from Scotland

Greek Cypriot Costa Koushiappis to be removed from UK even though his application is pending with Home Office

An EU citizen caught up in a Home Office backlog of applications for post-Brexit residency status is to be deported by Border Force officials in Scotland.

Costa Koushiappis, 39, who is Greek Cypriot, has been told to show up at Edinburgh airport at 7am on Friday to be forcibly put on a flight to Amsterdam just weeks after he received an email from the Home Office to say it could take a further 24 months to process his application for status.

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Housing, social care and universities: who lost out in the UK budget?

Rachel Reeves made funding the NHS a priority but people working in other areas said they were disappointed

Rachel Reeves’s first budget emphasised raising taxes to help the NHS, as the health service tries to cope with huge waiting lists and an ageing population. Funding the NHS was a top priority but people in other sectors – from universities to social care – feel the budget was a missed opportunity to tackle impending crises or introduce desperately needed reforms in their areas.

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Reeves’s long-term spending figures almost as unrealistic as Tories’ were, IFS says – UK politics live

Institute for Fiscal Studies says budget ‘looks like the same silly games’ as seen under the Conservatives

Rachel Reeves is now being interview on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.

She is being interviewed by Ed Balls, the former Labour shadow chancellor who is now a TV presenter. He asks her to confirm that workers will end up losing out because of the employers’ national insurance contributions (NICs) increase.

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Ed Davey: care sector will be ‘pushed to brink’ by national insurance hike and should be exempt

Lib Dem leader says rise in employer’s contribution risks worsening NHS crisis

The Liberal Democrats have called on the government to exempt the social care sector from the increase in national insurance in Labour’s budget, as an organisation representing many smaller care providers warned that the impact would be substantial.

In the biggest fiscal measures of Wednesday’s budget, raising an additional £25bn a year by the end of the parliament, Rachel Reeves announced an increase of 1.2 percentage points on the national insurance paid by employers, with the salary threshold at which this begins falling from £9,100 a year to £5,000.

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The budget: Labour returns to tax and spend – Politics Weekly UK

Rachel Reeves has finally laid out Labour’s spending plans in the party’s first budget in almost 15 years. The Guardian’s John Harris is joined by political editor Pippa Crerar and political correspondent Kiran Stacey to discuss the fallout

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OBR says budget unlikely to lift economic growth over next five years

Forecaster says extra spending revealed by Rachel Reeves will give only a short-term lift to economy

Labour has embarked on a “large, sustained increase in spending, tax and borrowing”, according to the government’s economic forecaster, as it judged that Labour’s first budget for 15 years is unlikely to increase economic growth over the next five years.

Assessing Rachel Reeves’s policies, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said the economy would expand at the same rate as predicted in March by the end of the parliament, despite a £70bn-a-year rise in spending.

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Labour wants to reverse decline – but with a big budget comes a big risk

The government knows cynical voters will need to see tangible change in public services and to feel better off

At the final political cabinet before Rachel Reeves delivered her first budget this week, ministers were presented with internal party research on what the public was expecting.

In the months since the general election, they had been fed a regular diet of gloomy warnings about the state of the economic inheritance and, more recently, high levels of pre-budget news coverage, so it was firmly on their horizon.

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Wednesday briefing: Five key messages that will define the budget

In today’s newsletter: Labour has told two stories about Rachel Reeves’ budget. Will it be an end to austerity – or an acceptance of “the harsh light of fiscal reality”?

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Good morning. There will be no triumphalism, no big giveaways and certainly no rabbits out of hats: this, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have been at pains to tell us, is going to be a very grownup budget. And even though Reeves will promise today that “the prize on offer is immense”, we might also therefore expect it to be a painful one. Since the entire thing appears to have been briefed out in advance over the last few weeks, nobody can say they haven’t been warned.

In a way, it feels like two budgets: the optimism and ambition of a minimum wage rise, a major boost for the NHS, and significant new investment in infrastructure; and a bleaker story about misleading pledges, limited ambitions, and the biggest set of tax increases in budget history.

UK news | The suspect charged with the murder of three girls in Southport is to be separately prosecuted on suspicion of possessing terrorist material and producing ricin, a powerful poison, police have said. Axel Rudakubana is due to appear in court on Wednesday.

US election | Kamala Harris urged American voters to elect a “new generation of leadership” in a speech at the same place Donald Trump spoke on January 6 almost four years ago. Likening her opponent to a “petty tyrant”, Harris told the crowd: “Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list … I will walk in with a to-do list.”

Middle East | Israel is not addressing the “catastrophic humanitarian crisis” in Gaza, the US envoy to the UN has said, ahead of a deadline for the Israelis to improve the situation or face potential restrictions on US military aid. The warning came as Gaza’s civil defence agency said 93 people had been killed in an airstrike on a crowded block of flats.

Conservatives | Britain’s former colonies should be thankful for the legacy of empire, Conservative leadership candidate Robert Jenrick has said. Jenrick’s comments, which follow an agreement among Commonwealth leaders that “the time has come” to discuss reparations, were condemned as “an obnoxious distortion of history”.

Mexico | A team of researchers have stumbled on a lost Maya city of temple pyramids, enclosed plazas and a reservoir, all hidden for centuries by the Mexican jungle. The discovery was made possible by the use of laser mapping techniques in an area previously ignored by archaeologists.

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