Category Archives: Conservatives

Kemi Badenoch ‘has to adapt’ her rhetoric to take on Andy Burnham

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Conservative leader is becoming more confident and forging a message for her party, but faces a new opponent

“So, Andy Burnham seems like a nice guy.” Those were the slightly unexpected opening words of Kemi Badenoch’s first speech since the change in prime minister. But make no mistake: she was there to bury her opponent.

Even Badenoch-sceptics inside the Conservative party and farther afield agree the Tory leader is becoming more confident, and has been able to forge an increasingly coherent message for her party, one based on a promise of economic competence.

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Starmer faces final PMQs before stepping down – PMQs live

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Andy Burnham nears Labour leadership finish line

Labour should ditch the triple-lock pensions promise to help tackle the UK’s straitened public finances, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has urged. Heather Stewart has the story.

I’m afraid we are not going to be able to open comments today for staffing reasons. If you want to contact me directly, it is probably best to get me on on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social.

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Labour, Tories and Lib Dems refuse to stand in byelection with Farage’s resignation labelled ‘desperate stunt’ – as it happened

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Reform UK leader to quit as MP but stand again, saying the people of Clacton ‘should be the judges of my actions’

Q: Do you think the parliamentary commissioner for standards should investigate Nigel Farage’s gifts from George Cottrell?

Badenoch said that was a matter for the commissioner.

[Farage is] hinting at press regulation. For all of the criticism and the attacks, and I would even say abuse that I’ve got from the press, I’ve never once recommended curbing our free press. I think this is one of the amazing things about this country.

I would be very worried about a Reform government using government power to control the press. I don’t think that that would be right.

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Labour MPs call on water firms to save Britain’s lost lidos

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Group, whose constituencies have derelict or at-risk pools, are campaigning to make outdoor swimming available for all

Cooling, blue expanses of water have been a lifesaver for many lucky enough to live near a lido during the recent UK heatwave.

Now, a group of 20 MPs, along with the Fabian Society, are calling for this relief to be made accessible for all by getting water companies to fund the reopening of the country’s lost lidos.

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Badenoch urges Burnham to condemn defence investment plan as Starmer says black hole will be addressed – UK politics live

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Minister and MPs have raised concerns that his ‘poisoned chalice’ plan will take cash from much-needed road projects

Dan Sabbagh is the Guardian’s defence and security editor.

Andy Burnham is a “true patriot” who will provide the money needed to maintain Britain’s security when he becomes prime minister, the new defence secretary, Dan Jarvis, said on a visit to a factory in Cambridge today.

I’ve known Andy Burnham for more than 15 years, he is a true patriot, and I absolutely believe that he will make sure that we have the resources that we need to field the kind of capabilities that are required given the nature of the world that we’re operating in.

I know what we need to do to keep Britain safe, and I’m absolutely confident that Andy Burnham, as the next prime minister, knows that as well, and we’ll make sure in the context of the next spending review that we’ve got the resources we need to keep the country safe.

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Darren Jones says bond markets should be ‘content’ with Burnham’s economic plans – UK politics live

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Chief secretary to PM rules out leadership bid as he says he has received reassurances from Burnham

London, Oldham, Bradford and Keighley are to be the first towns and cities investigated by the grooming gangs inquiry, the Press Association reports. PA says:

The £65m probe is investigating how grooming gangs operated and how police, councils, health services, social care services and schools responded.

The announcement confirmed which areas will first face so-called local investigations – where serious failures have been identified in response to child sexual exploitation by grooming gangs.

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Scottish Conservatives win Aberdeen South, ousting SNP

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Tories’ Douglas Lumsden says city has spoken ‘loud and clear’ in support of the North Sea oil and gas industry

The Scottish National party (SNP) has lost the formerly safe seat of Aberdeen South in a shock loss to the Scottish Conservatives.

The Scottish Conservatives’ Douglas Lumsden beat the SNP’s Richard Thomson by 6,050 votes, with a 14.69% swing away from the SNP. The Tories vote share was 49.51%. Lumsden’s vote tally was 14,308, with Thomson on 8,258.

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Labour MP pushes Burnham to launch leadership bid ‘really quickly’ after Makerfield byelection result – UK politics live

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Rachael Maskell said she hoped Andy Burnham could become prime minister before the Labour party conference in September

Andy Burnham may have trouble getting through to Keir Starmer if he tries ringing him after the Makerfield byelection to urge him to set a timetable for his departure. Burnham reportedly wants to call Starmer this weekend. (See 9.47am.) But, in his interview with Sky News, Starmer said: “I’m sure I’ll talk to Andy after the weekend.”

If Starmer declines to take Burnham’s call, he may be following Ed Miliband’s example. In a Times story today, Patrick Maguire and Steven Swinford report:

Sir Keir Starmer’s relationship with Ed Miliband has broken down to such an extent that the energy secretary has been accused of “ghosting” the prime minister in recent weeks.

Senior government sources claimed that Miliband declined to take calls from the prime minister during a tense stand-off over defence spending.

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Technology secretary says she wants regulator to design plans for online age verification by October – as it happened

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Liz Kendall also wants Ofcom to report to parliament every year on how effectively social media firms are keeping under-16s off their platforms

Starmer acknowledges some teenagers will get round these restrictons. But that does not make the rules pointless, he says.

Will it mean that no child ever looks at social media again? No.

But look, this might shock you, but it doesn’t shock parents of teenagers; they get around other laws too.

Some technology companies want us to think that social media is unchangeable, part of an almost natural order.

But we have to resist that kind of learned helplessness. We have agency, we can change it, and we will.

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Business secretary attacks ‘entitlement’ of Starmer leadership rivals

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Peter Kyle says British politics fails to reward political accomplishment and Labour risks aping Tory instability

The Labour party has not learned the right lessons from the Conservatives about changing leader, a senior cabinet minister has warned, saying in a swipe at potential challengers that “entitlement is not a qualification”.

Peter Kyle, the business secretary, said he was worried that British politics “rewards the wrong behaviour” and there was little credit for the work of his own department, including negotiating trade deals, rescue packages for companies and preserving British industry.

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No 10 braced for ‘excruciating’ revelations as messages between Mandelson and ministers to be released – UK politics live

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Sources predict ‘toe-curling’ revelations as more than 1,000 pages of documents relating to his appointment as US ambassador to be published

At the Downing Street lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson said the release of the Mandelson files today would be “an unprecedented piece of government transparency”.

He said that party political material would be included, despite precedent suggesting it should be included, and that some material had to be declassified to allow it to be published.

The broad scope of the [humble address motion – see 9.26am] has required the discovery, assessment, analysis and preparation of thousands of individual documents and messages.

This is a task that has involved every government department.

Yeah, I have changed what I would say. I wouldn’t say that phrase any more.

And I think that, you know, over the last few years, I think a lot of us, myself included, have thought about this question in quite some detail.

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Labour faces union backlash after minister says living wage extension to over-18s not certain before election – as it happened

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This blog is now closed

Ministers are proposing new laws to crack down on damage to undersea cables amid “hostile activity by Russia”, the Press Association reports. PA says:

Tougher penalties for ship owners and operators who recklessly damage underwater infrastructure will be set out in a white paper later this year, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said.

Acts of sabotage linked to a hostile state already carries life imprisonment for the most serious cases but undersea malicious activity sometimes operates in a “grey zone” which is difficult to prosecute, DSIT said.

It’s astonishing that Reform have admitted they knew about Kenyon’s social media accounts. Nigel Farage needs to urgently explain to the public why, if his party was aware of his online history, he was happy to put forward a candidate who has made vile degrading comments about women, multiple homophobic posts and spread dangerous false narratives about the Manchester Arena bombing.

I am rough around the edges. I have made mistakes in my life. I’m not perfect. Nobody is. Not a single person in the world is perfect. I think everybody does say things that eventually they regret.

It was a crude attempt at a joke to probably about 50 followers.

No offence was meant, and it’s not something I’d do now.

I think I’ve addressed the issue. I think that no offence was meant and it wasn’t a direct comment to her. If you go into any building site in the area or any public barracks, I think you’d hear a hundred times worse said.

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Minister defends Mandelson file redactions and says documents to be released in June – UK politics live

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Darren Jones says release will be ‘one of the largest government publications ever laid in this house’

On Friday parliament’s intelligence and security committee issued a damning statement about the government’s response to the humble address requiring the release of documents relating to the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US. It said the government was not fully complying with what is in effect an instruction from the Commons. For good measure, the committee also accuses the government of not keeping proper record of its decisions and of doing far too much business by WhatsApp. Here is our story, by Henry Dyer and Paul Lewis.

At 12.30pm Jeremy Wright, deputy chair of the committee and a former Tory attorney general, will ask a Commons urgent question about this. He is asking Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the PM, to reply.

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Elections 2026 live: ‘I’m not going to walk away,’ says Starmer as Farage hails ‘historic shift in British politics’

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The Reform UK leader said Labour is being ‘wiped out by Reform in many of their traditional areas’ as results paint a bleak picture for the prime minister

We’re getting statements from some of the political parties now as we wait for results.

For the Conservatives, party chairman Kevin Hollinrake said:

We have run an energetic and positive campaign, showcasing that we have a clear plan to get Britain working again and that we have the team to deliver it... We know that so soon after a historic general election defeat and contesting wards won during the Party’s polling highs, that this will be a difficult set of elections for us. But we will continue to rebuild and to show the public that we have changed, to demonstrate that only this new Conservative party is a credible alternative.

People are deeply disappointed with a Labour government that has been too timid to fix the country, but they are also appalled by the rise of Reform and Nigel Farage’s Trump-style politics. While those on the extremes of the right and the left want to burn everything down, Liberal Democrats want to fix what’s broken. Every Liberal Democrat local champion elected today will fight tirelessly for the communities they serve.

I’ve travelled across England and Wales and I’m hearing the same everywhere I go – confidence that we will win more councillors than ever before. The news from the doorstep is that we will be taking seats from not just Labour but the Tories and Lib Dems too, from all across the country. Voters are responding to the fact that Greens are the only party taking the cost-of-living crisis seriously, with real plans to cut bills, reduce rents and provide genuinely affordable homes, as well as tackling the climate and nature crisis.

Throughout this election, we have heard a clear appetite for change. People want a government that will stand up for Wales and focus relentlessly on the key issues affecting their lives. People have told us they have been inspired by Rhun ap Iorwerth’s leadership and driven by a desire for a positive alternative to Reform UK’s chaos and division.

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Polanski says he is not ready to be PM, but might be in two years’ time – UK politics live

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Green leader also apologised for misrepresenting his work with the Red Cross, and defended party policy on drugs

Labour has criticised Zack Polanski for saying he was concerned about how the suspect in the Golders Green stabbings was treated when he was arrested by the police.

Referring to what Polanski said about this in his Today interview this morning (see 9.33am), a Labour party spokesperson said:

Our brave police ran towards a suspected terrorist and tackled him while he was still carrying a knife and before they could handcuff him.

The fact that Zack Polanski is still sympathising with this individual is utterly astounding. For the Green party leader to be litigating the case for the defence against the police shows whose side he is truly on.

The latest unemployment figures for February showed a fall, interest rates were expected to come down, the markets were pricing in a couple of cuts during the course of the year.

The truth is, with the effect of the Iran war, we can’t count on any of that at the moment. There is likely to be an effect on prices, which feeds through from energy costs, and there may well be labour market implications.

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Dig deep! Reform frontbench promotes JCBs after £200,000 donation from firm

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Nigel Farage, Lee Anderson and Robert Jenrick, among others, have sung the praises of the JCB PotHole Pro

Reform UK’s leading figures have repeatedly promoted a new pothole-fixing machine by the construction company JCB, while the party received £200,000 from the British digger maker, the Guardian can reveal.

Several Reform politicians including Nigel Farage, Lee Anderson, Robert Jenrick, Zia Yusuf and Richard Tice have sung the praises of the JCB PotHole Pro machine.

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Starmer and Badenoch clash over welfare and defence spending at PMQs – UK politics live

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PM took questions from leader of the opposition and other MPs in final PMQs before recess

Here is the running order for PMQs.

Nigel Farage was given £5m by the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne shortly before announcing he would stand in the 2024 British general election, Anna Isaac reports.

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Labour MP calls for Starmer’s resignation to end ‘psychodrama’ – UK politics live

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Jonathan Brash says ‘own goals’ are distracting from Labour’s achievements

UK inflation accelerated to 3.3% in March after the Iran war triggered the biggest jump in fuel prices for more than three years, Richard Partington reports.

Today the Liberal Democrats staged a photocall to publicise their line about this being “Trumpflation”. Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dem deputy leader and Treasury spokesperson, said:

People across our country have been struggling for years with a devastating cost-of-living crisis and Donald Trump’s idiotic war in Iran has added to it. The cost of fuel is soaring, mortgage rates are rising and fixed energy deals are already going up by hundreds of pounds.

But what is utterly inexcusable is that there are politicians in this country - Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch - who are happy to cheerlead Donald Trump as he hikes people’s bills. All the while this Labour government promised to fix the country but instead we’ve got political Groundhog Day: yet more sleaze and scandal.

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Cabinet Office suggested Mandelson did not need security vetting, says Robbins as he describes ‘pressure’ from No 10 – UK politics live

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Olly Robbins was forced out as Foreign Office permanent secretary over the Peter Mandelson security vetting revelations in the Guardian

The hearing has started.

Emily Thornberry, the chair, started by saying that Robbins did not tell the whole truth about this process when he gave evidence to it in November.

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Mobile phones to be banned in schools in England under new plans

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Government amendment to children’s wellbeing and schools bill to replace existing guidance with statutory ban

A ban on mobile phones in schools in England is to be introduced by the government to ensure that “critical safeguarding legislation” is passed.

The government will table an amendment to the children’s wellbeing and schools bill in the House of Lords after the bill was held up by peers on opposition benches.

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