Business secretary attacks ‘entitlement’ of Starmer leadership rivals

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

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

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

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’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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Badenoch calls Farage an ‘opportunist’ after he urges Scottish nationalists to back Reform

Tory leader criticises Farage for saying that holding another independence vote ‘probably quite reasonable’

Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative party, has accused Nigel Farage of being an opportunist who does not believe in unionism after he urged Scottish nationalists to back Reform.

Farage said earlier this week he believed “genuine nationalists” would not support the Scottish National party’s bid to rejoin the EU, and urged them to vote Reform in the Holyrood election on 7 May.

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Labour claims Reform UK won’t protect women, as poll suggests Farage’s party heading for ‘seismic’ wins in May – UK politics live

Poll projects major political earthquake across Britain with Labour losing Wales and England’s Red Wall

In the light of what George Robertson, who led the strategic defence review for Labour, said about defence spending in his speech last night, there’s a good chance Kemi Badenoch will choose to raise this at PMQs later.

She may well raise the Times’s splash, which says Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is proposing to raise defence spending by less than £10bn over the next four years.

The State of It political podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times has been told that Reeves is unwilling to break her fiscal rules or increase taxes to boost defence spending.

John Healey, the defence secretary, is pressing for a bigger increase as there are concerns that £10bn will not be enough, given the increasing likelihood that British forces will be deployed to Ukraine and the Middle East.

Lord Robertson produced his first SDR as Tony Blair’s defence secretary in 1998, and the historian David Edgerton noted then that Britain was committing itself “to acting primarily with the USA in a wide-ranging programme of global policing”. The structure of the armed forces is designed not for autonomous defence but because “the composition … is what allows Britain to be the USA’s principal partner”. Only 15% to 20% of spending, Prof Edgerton reckoned, related to purely national defence. In that sense, the model Lord Robertson now defends was never primarily about defending the UK at all. It was about plugging into a US system and piggybacking on its arms industry base.

The Treasury is right to question prioritising defence now. Cutting welfare would hit demand and weaken growth. As Khem Rogaly of the Common Wealth thinktank argues, defence spending provides a weak economic stimulus compared with public investment – and is even worse as a job creator. Moreover, the UK is not using higher defence spending to build its own independent military, but to reshape its armed forces around a US-style venture capital and tech ecosystem. With Mr Trump in office, there is no better time to ask: whose security are we funding – Britain’s or America’s?

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Starmer implies he didn’t tell Trump he was ‘fed up’ about his impact on rising UK energy bills – as it happened

Prime minister says conversation with US president on Thursday night focused on need for ‘practical plan’ to open strait of Hormuz

Tony Blair, the former Labour prime minister, has joined those saying the government should allow drilling for oil and gas in the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields in the North Sea.

Both applications were approved by the last Conservative government, but then overturned by a court ruling. Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, has to make a decision about the revised applications operating in a quasi-judicial capacity, which means he has to follow due process and can’t take the decision purely on political ground.

The current debate [on energy policy] is deadlocked between two incomplete responses. The government argues the answer is to accelerate Clean Power 2030, focusing on decarbonising the electricity system as quickly as possible. The opposition argues that the answer is to expand domestic oil and gas production. Both positions contain elements of truth, but neither addresses the core strategic problem: outside the power sector the UK economy remains overwhelmingly dependent on fossil fuels, and electricity is still too expensive to support mass electrification.

The UK is caught in a self-reinforcing high-cost, low-electrification trap. High electricity costs suppress demand, slowing the uptake of electric vehicles, heat pumps and industrial electrification. Weak demand growth, in turn, means that the fixed costs of the system – from networks to long-term contracts – are spread across a smaller base, keeping prices high. The result is a system that is too expensive to electrify and therefore remains dependent on fossil fuels and exposed to global shocks …

The first of these vital measures will ban anyone from possessing or publishing harmful pornography that shows incest between family members, and sex between step or foster relations where one person is pretending to be under 18.

A further amendment will criminalise the publication and possession of pornography where an adult is roleplaying as a child.

This government is uncompromising in our mission to protect women and girls online, and we have taken action to stop tech firms from publishing this abusive content.

In February, we told platforms that they must remove reported non-consensual intimate images within 48 hours.

I greatly welcome the government’s plans to fully address harmful pornographic content such as incest, step-incest and the mimicking of child sexual abuse. This content that is freely and widely available online is deeply harmful, normalising child sexual abuse and abusive relationships within families …

Today the government has answered our calls for change, and I am delighted that once again the UK is leading the way on regulating this high harm industry.

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Charity cleared after false claims online over migrant welcome project

Watchdog finds allegations against City of Sanctuary UK were misleading after complaint from Tory MP

A refugee charity subjected to vicious social media attacks over a migrant welcome project in schools has been cleared of wrongdoing after watchdogs found allegations it encouraged pupils to send Valentine’s Day cards to asylum seekers were misleading and false.

City of Sanctuary UK came under fire last year after rumours spread online that under its schools programme, children were being “forced” to write heart-shaped welcome cards to adult migrants, including cards addressed to “my fiance”.

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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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Reform promises huge cuts to benefits but would keep pensions triple lock – UK politics live

Reform UK would impose ‘biggest cuts to benefits bill ever seen in history of this country’ if they came to power, says Farage

Q: Do you agree with the Tories about wanting more oil and gas drilling from the North Sea?

Davey says Kemi Badenoch claims she can get an extra £2.5bn in tax revenue by allowing more exploration in the North Sea. He says she is “just lying”. He says everyone knows that that is not realistic.

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Zack Polanski tells NEU teachers’ union that Greens would abolish ‘toxic’ Ofsted – UK politics live

The Green party leader said Ofsted is a ‘failed institution’ and that teaching should move ‘toward a genuinely collaborative model’

Starmer complained about other parties whipping up division, and he specifically criticised Nick Timothy, the shadow justice secretary, for “complaining about Muslims praying in public”.

Labour, by contrast, values bringing people together, he said.

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Trump says UK’s aircraft carriers are just ‘toys’, repeating complaint about lack of support for US in Iran – UK politics live

The comments were part of a broader address in which he condemned Nato allies

Yesterday the Conservative party said that it wanted to ban political parties from distributing campaign literature in a foreign language. Announcing a plan to propose an amendement to the representation of the people bill to make this law, the shadow communities minister Paul Holmes said:

Campaigning in a foreign language as the Greens did in Gorton and Denton only fosters greater division. A coherent national culture relies on shared values, and an inclusive electoral process relies on a common tongue.

I think it’s for political parties to choose how they campaign and communicate with British voters. If they’re using British money that is funding their campaigns and they’re speaking to people who have the right to vote, then why would you not show those voters the respect of communication?

What fuels division is Nick Timothy standing up and singling out Muslim forms of worship for a ban when he’s not applying that to forms of worship that other religions are talking about.

It just doesn’t compute, does it? I worked in Number 10. Briefly, I had a Number 10 phone. There was a paranoia about devices like that falling into other people’s hands.

And so whether it was the Met Police, whether it was Morgan McSweeney, and what sounds like pretty evasive set of reporting, even when you look at that transcript, or whether it was the Number 10 security team following up something that at the time they could not have been sure had not been taken by a state actor, a phone with all sorts of government secrets potentially in it, that’s precisely why people in government have two separate phones.

I don’t believe McSwindle had his iPhone stolen

Honest believe, Matt. It’s smacks of the liar Johnson defence of ‘lost all my WhatsApp messages’. We mustn’t take the public for fools. And I am afraid this smacks of too convenient by far. I won’t do it. I will say what I actually think. And I don’t believe it. End of!

I believe the report was made. McSwindle didn’t mention that he was the chief of staff to the PM. A significant omission of he’d wanted the police to prioritise the offence.

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Parties launch Holyrood campaigns against backdrop of voter indecision

Change is on offer across the political spectrum, but no one knows whether apathy or tactical voting will prevail

Hope, change, progressive change, change with fairness at its heart – from a harbour north of Edinburgh to a hipster arts venue in Glasgow’s Barras Market, Scotland’s political parties spent the first official day of the Holyrood election campaign reaching for the phrase that best encapsulates what people will get if they vote for them on 7 May.

Only one of the main parties did not hold an event to set out their stall on Thursday: possibly Reform UK was too busy firefighting after another of their Scottish parliament candidates quit, bringing to four the number who have stepped down or been suspended since they stood with party leader Nigel Farage under a storm of turquoise confetti last week.

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