Police officer received death threats over Nowak murder case as Mahmood condemns ‘dangerous’ commentary – UK politics live

Home secretary says officer wrongly linked to case had to relocate after footage emerged of victim being handcuffed while dying

BBC Scotland has more details of the Peter Murrell hearing this morning on its live blog. And, on its live blog, Sky News has pictures of some of the items purchased by Murrell with stolen SNP funds.

Andy Burnham will not call an early election if he becomes prime minister after the Makerfield byelection, a spokesperson for the Greater Manchester mayor has said.

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UK government has failed Palestinian people, says senior Labour MP

Emily Thornberry criticises Israel’s ‘staggering’ sense of impunity and rebukes Donald Trump for abandoning Gaza

The UK government has let down Palestinian people and failed to make it economically impossible for Israel to continue to act with impunity in the West Bank and Gaza, the Labour chair of the foreign affairs select committee, Emily Thornberry, has said.

She accused her own government of lacking ambition and wringing its hands on the Palestinian crisis, and she chastised Donald Trump for declaring a ceasefire in Gaza and then walking away, leaving Gazans to live in rubble.

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Brexiters peddled ‘nationalistic pish’, said Reform UK’s Makerfield candidate

Robert Kenyon castigated Brexit as an economically self-harming project on rugby league forum in 2016

Reform UK’s candidate for the Makerfield byelection has castigated Brexit as an economically self-harming project promoted by politicians who “peddled the nationalistic pish”, raising more doubts about his commitment to Nigel Farage’s signature achievement.

The comments by Robert Kenyon, unearthed on a defunct rugby league forum and first reported by the Telegraph, follow the emergence of another post in which he said people would be wrong to assume he had voted for Brexit.

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Starmer urged to intervene in ‘rigged’ Indian prosecution of British human rights activist

Senior lawyers call on prime minister to request Indian prosecutors drop charges that would breach double jeopardy rule

Four senior lawyers, including the former attorney general Dominic Grieve, have written to Keir Starmer urging him to request that Indian prosecutors drop charges against the British national Jagtar Singh Johal on the basis that continued prosecution would be in manifest breach of the double jeopardy rule which prevents someone being tried twice for the same offence.

Johal has been held in an Indian jail for eight years, and in March last year was acquitted of the terrorist charges laid against him in a court in Punjab. The court found the prosecutors had “miserably failed” to present any reliable evidence, despite having had seven years to do so.

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UK needs ‘national consensus’ over rejoining EU, David Miliband says

Ex-foreign secretary urges reset at ‘higher dosage’ after officials revealed to have pitched single market for goods

Britain needs a “national consensus” about rejoining the European Union, David Miliband has said, in response to revelations that the UK government pitched the creation of a single market for goods with the EU to the bloc.

The former foreign secretary, who is now president of the International Rescue Committee, said he thought the UK needed a reset of its relations with the EU at “a much higher dosage” than the government was planning.

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Soft power sell-off: anger as British Council announces sale of historic Madrid building

Backlash grows among European staff against radical cuts to pay off Covid-era debt, with some accusing council of ‘colonial attitude’

The historic Palacete building at 31 Paseo del General Martínez Campos in Madrid’s upmarket Chamberí district has been home to the British Council in Spain for about 70 years.

About 5,000 students each year pass through its 35 classrooms, learning English, attending exams, and forging cultural ties with the UK. Over the years that is hundreds of thousands of Madrileños (people from Madrid), while it also serves as a centre for the expat community.

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British Council staff in Italy to strike over proposed 80% workforce cut

Soft power institution faces funding crisis linked to Covid-era government loan due to be repaid by September

Staff at the British Council in Italy will go on strike over deep cuts that would slash about 80% of its workforce due to a funding crisis facing the organisation.

Out of 130 of its teaching staff across Rome, Milan and Naples, 108 are being targeted as teaching activities in Italy face the axe. The move would end 80 years of British Council English language teaching in Italy as part of the organisation’s global mission to promote British culture and education across the world, sources said.

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Future of UK lies in the EU after Brexit ‘failure’, say European Greens

Exclusive: Co-chair Vula Tsetsi says it is time to trigger debate, as statement is agreed at annual leadership meeting in Brussels

The European Green party has urged the UK to consider rejoining the EU and draw a line under the “political and economic failure” of Brexit.

A text declaring that “the United Kingdom’s future lies in the European Union” was adopted by a large majority of European green parties at the movement’s annual leadership meeting on Friday, the day before Europe Day.

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Reform UK plan to set up migrant detention centres in Green-voting areas condemned by other parties – as it happened

Nigel Farage’s party proposed to place detention centres in places that vote for Green council leaders or MPs

Keir Starmer has said that Europe has to face up to the fact that its alliance with the US is under strain.

He made the remark in public comments during the plenary session at the European Political Community summit in Yerevan in Armenia.

And both of those are impacting all of us in a very material way.

In the United Kingdom, if you look at the economic forecast now and compare it to the economic forecast just three or four months ago, they are in materially different places, and this is going to play out with our electorates in all of our countries.

Reform are now openly threatening voters and not only that they’re threatening them with a power they don’t actually have. This is absolutely pathetic. People across Scotland are proud of the fact that this is a welcoming country that shows solidarity to people who need it.

Reform are essentially saying ‘If you don’t vote the way we want you to, we will punish you’. I think the people of Scotland and voters across the UK are not going to take kindly to that kind of Donald Trumpesque threat.

Reform know that absolutely bombed last week. The only thing they’ve got to move on to are open threats, not against the Greens but against voters across the country. It’s really quite sinister. This is exactly the kind of politics you see in Donald Trump’s America. People across Scotland are going to reject that on Thursday.

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Starmer lauds £78bn EU loan for Ukraine amid increased Trump tensions

Prime minister uses European Political Community summit to begin negotiations for UK participation in scheme

Keir Starmer has said the benefit of joining the European Union’s £78bn loan scheme for Ukraine “outweighs the cost” as he argued the continent must move at pace to bolster its own defence.

The prime minister, who said the UK’s involvement in the recovery loan plan would also help create jobs at home, acknowledged that tensions were high between Donald Trump and Europe, particularly over military issues.

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Britain’s military dependence on US ‘no longer tenable’, says former Nato chief

George Robertson says diplomatic tone from White House is at ‘historic low’ and two allies are likely to keep diverging

Britain’s high military dependence on the US is “no longer tenable” and the UK has to become increasingly independent of the special relationship with Washington, a former Nato chief has said.

George Robertson, who last week accused British leaders of a “corrosive complacency” towards defence, said on Wednesday that the traditional allies were diverging over values – and that even after Donald Trump leaves the White House, the separation was likely to continue.

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Starmer will not be swayed by Trump’s ‘small and petty’ insults, says Lammy

Exclusive: deputy PM says UK will not join Iran conflict despite Trump’s sometimes ‘incomprehensible’ social-media barbs

Donald Trump’s insults towards Keir Starmer are “small and petty” and designed to put pressure on the prime minister to change his position on Iran, David Lammy has said, as he insisted the UK would not get dragged into the conflict.

The deputy prime minister argued the US president should be able to “disagree agreeably” with allies rather than publishing attacks on social media, and that US actions had “made things worse, not better” as far as global instability was concerned.

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Trump warns US-UK trade deal ‘can always be changed’ with relations in ‘sad state’

President says he gave Britain ‘better deal than I had to’ but ally was ‘not there when we needed them’ on Iran

Donald Trump has threatened to row back on the trade deal the US signed with the UK last year, in his latest salvo against the British government over sharp differences about the US’s approach to the Middle East.

The US president said the economic deal struck with the UK, which cut some of his tariffs on cars, aluminium and steel, was “better than I had to” and that it could “always be changed”.

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UK to call for end to Sudan bloodshed at Berlin talks on third anniversary of war

British aid to double as 19m people face acute hunger, but summit unlikely to end conflict amid Saudi-UAE tensions

The British foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, will urge Sudan’s warring parties to “cease bloodshed” during a major conference on Wednesday, which analysts believe is unlikely to deliver a significant step towards peace.

The talks in Berlin – held on the third anniversary of the start of Sudan’s ruinous war – are expected to help address a catastrophic funding shortfall that is compounding the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

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Chagos Islands treaty is now ‘impossible to agree at political level’, UK minister says

Stephen Doughty says US withdrawal of support means bill cannot complete passage through parliament

A treaty over ceding sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius has become “impossible to agree at political level” and the corresponding bill will not complete its passage through parliament, a Foreign Office minister has said.

Stephen Doughty told the Commons that the agreement with Mauritius was initially negotiated in close coordination with the US, but Donald Trump’s position “appears to have changed”.

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UK forced to shelve Chagos Islands legislation after US dropped support

Officials accept that time has run out to pass law to allow transfer of islands to Mauritius

The UK government has been forced to shelve its legislation to hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, after the US dropped its support for the agreement.

On Friday, UK government officials acknowledged that they had run out of time to pass legislation within the current parliamentary session, which ends in the coming weeks.

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Israel’s attacks on Lebanon should not be happening, says Keir Starmer

In article for Guardian, PM also calls for Iran conflict to become watershed moment for future UK security

Israel’s continued attacks on Lebanon “shouldn’t be happening”, Keir Starmer has said on his visit to the Middle East, as he called for the Iran conflict to become a watershed moment for the future security of the UK.

In an article for the Guardian, the prime minister said the UK’s response to the crisis must involve a fundamental reset in terms of making the country more resilient, including by boosting defence and having closer links to Europe.

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Starmer says UK wants to help with opening of Hormuz strait on Gulf visit

PM meets Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia before further visits to regional allies, who may see him as more reliable than Trump

The UK has a “job” to help reopen the strait of Hormuz, Keir Starmer has said, as Iranian reports said the key shipping route was closed again just hours after a supposed ceasefire.

The prime minister met British and local military personnel at an airbase in Taif, Saudi Arabia, at the start of what is expected to be a wider trip to Gulf allies, one billed as a mirror to his efforts to pull together a plan for how a ceasefire might operate in Ukraine.

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Farage says Trump’s Iranian ‘civilisation will die’ threats went ‘way too far’– UK politics live

The Reform UK leader says he is ‘shocked’ by the remarks which were ‘over the top in every single way’

The Green party is backing resident doctors who are on strike. This morning the party issued a statement on the dispute from its co-deputy leader, Mothin Ali, saying:

Rather than shifting goalposts or arm twisting resident doctors with threats over training places, Wes Streeting needs to get serious about resolving resident doctors long term concerns over pay, training and working conditions. The government’s 10-year plan for the NHS will go nowhere if the workforce feels unappreciated, devalued and demotivated.

I think I’m going to stay out of the selection of music by different bands. We live in a free country; people are going to say things. Let’s just let people listen to the music they want to.

People should choose their music and they don’t really they need advice from John Swinney unless they want to listen to The Jam or Amy McDonald.

Well, the government should go on and take their decisions within their powers, but I’m not going to give a running commentary on music taste.

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Trump claims Starmer is weak as he mocks PM and UK aircraft carriers

Footage shows US president saying UK ‘should be our best’ ally and accusing PM of prevarication over sending ships

Footage has emerged of Donald Trump mocking Keir Starmer by claiming the prime minister said he would have to consult his team before deciding whether to send UK aircraft carriers to the Middle East.

In a new low for UK-US relations, Trump appeared to impersonate Starmer during an Easter lunch speech at the White House.

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