Shadow chancellor distances himself from words after Robert Jenrick accused of racism in comments he made about Handsworth
Asked about the Jenrick story, Badenoch again suggests Guardian reporting is reliable.
Q: Jenrick was making a distinction between white faces and brown faces.
Continue reading...Mel Stride outlines plans to slash £47bn a year from public spending, including £23bn welfare cut
Overseas nationals denied benefits under a Conservative plan to limit social security to UK citizens would have the option to return to their own countries, the shadow chancellor, Mel Stride, has said.
Before his speech to the Conservative conference on Monday, Stride set out Tory proposals to cut £47bn a year from public spending, with the biggest chunk, £23bn coming from reductions in welfare.
Continue reading...Party leader uses conference speech to outline proposal for UK to exit ECHR as part of wider bonfire of protections
A future Tory government would be open to dismantling more treaties as a means to deport people from the UK, Kemi Badenoch has said at the start of a Conservative party conference focused almost exclusively on immigration policy.
Making the first of two addresses to the gathering in Manchester, the Tory leader formally set out her proposal for the UK to quit the European convention on human rights (ECHR) as part of a wider bonfire of protections including an end to legal aid in immigration and asylum cases and the right to take migration decisions to tribunals or judicial review.
Continue reading...Conservative leader grilled over her removals proposal ahead of party conference opening later today
The polling firm Opinium has released some research this morning suggesting that some Conservative party policies are popular with voters – but that, if people are explicitly told that they are Kemi Badenoch policies, their popularity goes down.
There is some evidence that Keir Starmer’s unpopularity has the same effect – and that, once a policy is associated with him, voters are less inclined to back it.
Continue reading...Leader says move is is necessary ‘to protect our borders, our veterans and our citizens’
Kemi Badenoch has announced that a Conservative government under her leadership would pull the UK out of the European convention on human rights.
The move marks a lurch to the right for the Tories, who are attempting to stem a loss of support to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. Farage has long been a critic of the ECHR and has pledged to leave it if he becomes prime minister.
Continue reading...People granted asylum will have to earn right to invite family in plan charities call ‘straight from populist playbook’
People granted asylum will no longer be given “the golden ticket” of resettlement and family reunion rights, Keir Starmer said, amid deepening concerns from charities that his words are demonising refugees.
As the prime minister prepared to discuss illegal migration with European leaders, No 10 outlined plans to strip successful claimants of the right to automatically invite spouses and children to join them.
Continue reading...Cherry Brown, 69, a British overseas territory citizen, was left sleeping rough after being sent to England for treatment
The UK has been accused of a “stark injustice” for failing to provide health services and humanitarian support to citizens of British overseas territories after a woman from the Caribbean island of Montserrat was refused free NHS care and left homeless.
Council officials found Cherry Brown, 69, sleeping rough in a park in Swanley, Kent, in April. Brown had been funded by the Montserratian government – whose budget is largely subsidised by the UK – to travel to England to receive treatment from the NHS that was not available at home.
Continue reading...Mayor of Greater Manchester says he would have to be ‘wrenched’ out of city and says he wants UK to rejoin EU. This live blog is closed
In her Today interview Rachel Reeves was asked about a FT report saying she will urge business leaders to highlight the risks of a Reform UK government in her speech later.
The FT say Reeves will tell the Labour conference.
Who is standing up for Britain’s stability. A Labour government that is resolute in cutting interest rates and borrowing or a Reform party that cheered on Liz Truss’ mini-budget?
Who is standing up for Britain’s businesses? A Labour government that is forging a closer relationship with our nearest trading partners or a Reform party that talks Britain down and is hungry to cut us off from the world?
Continue reading...Home secretary to set out proposed tougher conditions including not taking benefits and ‘spotless’ criminal record
Criminals and people who cannot speak English to “a high standard” will be denied permission to settle in the UK, Shabana Mahmood will announce on Monday, in proposals intended to contain the growing electoral threat from Reform UK.
In a speech framing herself as a “tough home secretary”, Mahmood will say people seeking indefinite leave to remain (ILR) will have to demonstrate they have integrated and “contributed” to society through national insurance payments and voluntary work, and not relied on benefits.
Continue reading...PM says immigration proposals could tear country apart as Labour delegates gather for first day of party conference
Keir Starmer has decried Reform UK’s “racist” plans to revoke the rights of thousands of people to live in Britain, as a number of cabinet ministers escalated attacks on Nigel Farage on the first day of the Labour party conference.
The prime minister said Farage’s plans to revoke indefinite leave to remain for families who may have spent years working in Britain could “tear this country apart”, though he said he understood that many people tempted to vote for Reform were frustrated at the slow pace of change.
Continue reading...PM says immigration proposals could tear country apart as Labour delegates gather for first day of party conference
Keir Starmer has decried Reform UK’s “racist” plans to revoke the rights of thousands of people to live in Britain, as a number of cabinet ministers escalated attacks on Nigel Farage on the first day of the Labour party conference.
The prime minister said Farage’s plans to revoke indefinite leave to remain for families who may have spent years working in Britain could “tear this country apart”, though he said he understood that many people tempted to vote for Reform were frustrated at the slow pace of change.
Continue reading...PM calls Reform’s policy immoral but says people who want to vote for them are not racist but frustrated
Kuenssberg ended her interview by asking about Andy Burnham, and the leadership.
Starmer said Burnham was doing a very good job as mayor of Greater Manchester.
Comments about leaders and leadership are part and parcel of being in politics.
It is the bread and butter of politics, every leader get its, it always comes up, particularly at conference. It’s in the job description.
People are entitled to their views and I’m not sticking my fingers in my ear in the slightest.
What I am saying is that it is important to keep focusing on what it is that we are delivering, and saying, absolutely in clear terms, the difference it makes to people’s lives.
One, have we improved living standards? Do people genuinly feel better off? Two, have we improved public services? Is the NHS in a better place, and people can feel it. And, three, do people feel safe and secure in their home, in their neighbourhood, and that their country is secure.
It’s a five-year mandate, and I will be judged at the end of that five years, and quite right too.
I just need the space and get on and do what we need to do, and do those three things above all else.
I am saying we have got the fight of our lives ahead of us because we’ve got to take on Reform and we’ve got to beat them. So now is not the time for introspection or navel-gazing.
There is a fight that we are all in together, and every single member of our party and our movement – actually, everyone who cares about what this country is, whether they vote Labour or otherwise - it’s the fight of our lives for who we are as a country. We need to be in that fight, united not navel-gazing. I’m absolutely clear in my mind about that, and that’s what I will be talking about at conference.
Sir Keir Starmer gave land to his parents via a trust that meant their estates would never pay inheritance tax on the asset whatever its eventual value, according to legal experts.
The prime minister’s decision to place a seven-acre field within the structure meant its value was excluded from his parents’ estate, of which he was a beneficiary, when they died.
Continue reading...Prime minister says Reform proposal to abolish indefinite leave to remain could ‘tear this country apart’
Keir Starmer has attacked Reform UK’s plan to deport thousands of people already legally living in the UK as “racist” and “immoral”, as he said that Labour had a generational struggle ahead with the populist right.
The prime minister, in Liverpool for his party conference, said he did not think that Nigel Farage’s party was trying to appeal to racists, and that he understood people tempted to vote for Reform were frustrated and wanted change.
Continue reading...PM to set out plans for compulsory ‘Brit card’ but faces opposition from civil liberty groups over privacy concerns
Digital ID cards present “an enormous opportunity” for the UK, Keir Starmer has said, as the government braces for a civil liberties row over the proposals.
The prime minister will set out the measures on Friday morning at a conference on how progressive politicians can tackle the problems facing the UK, including addressing voter concerns around immigration.
Continue reading...Manchester mayor urges Keir Starmer to reveal plans to deliver reform but denies he is plotting to replace PM
Wes Streeting, the health secretary, has described Nigel Farage over his comment implying Donald Trump might be right about paracetamol posing a risk to pregnant women. (See 10.23am.)
Dangerous and irresponsible.
This man is a snake oil salesman and it’s time people stopped buying.
Appeal court rejects home secretary’s attempt to appeal against blocking of return of man to France under ‘one in, one out’ deal
Shabana Mahmood has announced plans to change modern slavery laws to prevent migrants from making last minute attempts to “frustrate a removal” after her bid to appeal in a trafficking case was thrown out by the court of appeal.
The home secretary had applied for permission to appeal against a high court ruling temporarily blocking the removal of an Eritrean asylum seeker to France under Labour’s “one in, one out” scheme so that he had more time to gather evidence in support of his trafficking claim. Three appeal court judges rejected her application.
Continue reading...Anthony Olubunmi George, who arrived in 1986 and has no criminal convictions, given right to remain
A disabled Nigerian man who has lived in the UK for almost 40 years has won an appeal to stay in the country despite the Home Office wanting to deport him.
Anthony Olubunmi George, 63, came to the UK at the age of 24 in 1986. He has not left the UK since and has no criminal convictions. He had two strokes in 2019 that left him with speech and mobility issues.
Continue reading...Nigel Farage says Reform UK would scrap the main route that migrants take to gain British citizenship
Farage and Yusuf are now taking questions.
Q: [From the BBC’s Iain Watson] Will you withdraw the £230bn figure, because it has been withdrawn by the thinktank that produced it?
What we are attempting to do today is to make people realise that large-scale migration into Britain, where 50% at least of those that come, will never work and live off the British state, is actually making this country substantially poorer.
Continue reading...Reform UK plans to force non-citizens to apply for visas with high salary thresholds and no access to NHS services
Nigel Farage has said Reform UK would scrap the main route that migrants take to gain British citizenship, leaving tens of thousands of legally settled people facing deportation unless they met strict rules.
Farage said the plans would tackle the “Boriswave” – the increase in the number of legal migrants who came to work in the UK under post-Brexit migration rules established under Boris Johnson. Much of that increase was because of schemes from Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan to settle refugees.
Continue reading...Home Office figures for Friday end a spell of more than a week with no new arrivals in Dover due to poor weather
More than 1,000 people crossed the Channel in small boats on Friday, according to Home Office figures, ending a spell of more than a week with no new arrivals.
Thirteen boats carrying 1,072 individuals made the crossing on Friday, which averages more than 80 people a boat. It is the third time this year the figure for a single day has surpassed 1,000 and brings the total number this year to a record 32,103.
Continue reading...