Category Archives: Conservatives

Farage claims doctors ‘massively over-diagnosing’ children with Send and mental health conditions – UK politics live

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Reform UK leader claims he is ‘not being heartless, I’m being frank’ as he states rising number of diagnoses is a ‘massive problem’

John Swinney, the first minister of Scotland, is attending the funeral of the Pope on Saturday, the Scottish government has announced. In a statement Swinney said:

His Holiness Pope Francis was a voice for peace, tolerance and reconciliation who had a natural ability to connect with people of all ages, nationalities and beliefs.

On behalf of the people of Scotland, I am deeply honoured to attend the funeral of Pope Francis in Rome to express my sorrow, thanks and deep respect for the compassion, assurance and hope that he brought to so many.

Eating the Tories for breakfast. @Keir_Starmer

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MPs should not do media work that ‘monetises’ their role, says government

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Labour sets out preferences as Commons standards committee looks at tightening rules on second jobs

The government has backed proposals to stop MPs taking second jobs they have been offered because of their role in parliament, and expressed concern that some paid media roles allow them to “monetise” their privileged positions.

It set out its detailed thinking on how the rules could be tightened on MPs’ outside interests in evidence to the House of Commons standards committee.

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Badenoch declines to criticise Jenrick over Reform coalition comments – as it happened

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Spokesperson for Tory leader says she agrees with colleague that ‘we need to bring centre-right voters together’. This blog is closed

Rosie Duffield, the independent MP who left Labour after the election in part because she felt her gender critical views made her unwelcome in the party (although her resignation letter focused on welfare issues), has claimed that Keir Starmer no longer arguing a trans woman is a woman shows he is a “manager rather than a leader”.

Speaking on LBC, Duffield said:

It’s just another sign of the prime minister’s lack of leadership skills. I’m bound to say that, he’s a manager rather than a leader. He responds and reacts rather than leads from the front, and this is what we’re seeing again from him.

Nigel Farage is peddling a dangerous fantasy by claiming the UK can be self-sufficient in gas.

After sixty years of drilling, the truth is the UK has already burned most of its gas. That’s down to geology, not politics, and no amount of hot air from Farage will change that.

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Welsh Tory to quit at next Senedd poll to fight general election betting charges

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Russell George, who is among 15 people under investigation, says he wants to focus on clearing his name

A Welsh politician who is among 15 people charged after bets were placed on the timing of the 2024 general election is to quit at the next Senedd election.

Russell George, the Conservative member for Montgomeryshire, said he was withdrawing his candidacy to stand in next year’s election to focus on clearing his name.

The Senedd member was one of a number of people linked to the Conservative party reported to have made bets on the election date, which was called by then-prime minister Rishi Sunak.

Senedd Conservative leader Darren Millar withdrew the whip from George last week after the Gambling Commission announced the charges, meaning he now sits as an independent within the Welsh parliament.

George, 50, said in a statement on Tuesday: “I was shocked and surprised to have been informed by the Gambling Commission that I am facing charges for cheating.

“To be clear, I have never cheated. However, given the Gambling Commission’s decision, and my understanding of what will follow, this is likely to be a lengthy process that may not be resolved by May 2026.

“In the circumstances, I feel I have no alternative but to withdraw my candidacy for next year’s Senedd elections so that I can focus on fighting to clear my name.

“I will of course continue to serve the people of Montgomeryshire to the very best of my ability.

“I am grateful for the many messages of support that I have received in recent days, particularly from constituents.”

Among others facing charges are: Craig Williams, the former MP for Montgomeryshire; Nick Mason, a former chief data officer for the party; Laura Saunders, the Conservative candidate for Bristol North West last July; and Tony Lee, the Conservatives’ campaigns director, who is married to Saunders.

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Badenoch says Labour’s claims to have always defended single-sex spaces are a ‘shameless work of fiction’ – UK politics live

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Minister for women and equality makes statement after supreme court ruling on gender recognition

Some MPs and peers are calling for President Trump not to be invited to address parliament when he visits the UK. In 2017, during Trump’s first presidency, the then Speaker, John Bercow, vetoed a proposal for Trump to address parliamentarians in Westminster Hall.

In an interview with Times Radio this morning, Stephen Morgan, an education minister, said Trump should be allowed to give a speech in parliament. Asked if Trump should be allowed to address MPs and peers, Morgan said:

I look forward to the US president addressing parliament in due course.

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Some British MPs spending equivalent of a day a week doing second jobs

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Guardian analysis finds seven MPs have worked at least 300 hours since July in outside employment

A total of seven MPs have spent on average one working day a week on second jobs since the start of the 2024 parliament, with additional gigs as TV presenters, lawyers and consultants.

A Guardian analysis of self-declared working hours found the seven had worked at least 300 hours since July – the equivalent of eight hours a week, in outside employment averaged across the parliament – totalling more than 3,000 hours between them. A further seven MPs had worked at least five hours a week on a second job.

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Miliband in blistering attack on Farage’s UK net zero ‘nonsense and lies’

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The energy secretary has accused Reform UK’s leader of peddling dangerous falsehoods about renewable power

• Tories and Reform use the steel crisis to knock clean energy. They’re wrong: it will secure all our futures

Ed Miliband has torn into Nigel Farage and the Tories for peddling dangerous “nonsense and lies” by suggesting the UK’s net zero target is responsible for destroying Britain’s businesses, including its steel industry.

Cabinet ministers are determined to fight back against the way Reform UK and the Conservatives have unceremoniously lambasted the climate crisis agenda for what they believe are nakedly political reasons before important local elections next month.

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GDP growth an ‘encouraging sign but we are not complacent’, says Reeves – UK politics live

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Chancellor says government ‘will remain pragmatic and cool-headed’ while seeking US trade deal

The care minister has defended the government’s cautious response to developments in global trade after the sweeping imposition of tariffs by the US administration in Washington.

Stephen Kinnock said “If we were to just jump in one direction or the other every time there’s a new development, we would be jumping around all over the place. I don’t think that that’s going to be in the interest of our economy or of our national security or of our business community.”

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Cooper says five grooming gang inquiries to go ahead after Tories claim they’ve been dropped in ‘cover up’ – as it happened

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This blog is now closed, you can read more on this story here

During her BBC Breakfast interview Kemi Badenoch claimed that the government has dropped the plans for five local inquiries into grooming gang, or child rape scandals, that were announced in January. As she was trying to fend of the questions about Adolescence, she said:

One of the things that I’m more bothered by is the fact that just yesterday, we had Labour telling us that they’re not going to be investigating the rape gang scandal, something which had happened all across the country. That’s real. That’s happening right now. We’re not talking about that.

I am absolutely astonished that Labour has dropped what it said it would do in January. And, as I said to Keir Starmer at prime minister’s questions, if he did not have a full national inquiry, people will start to think that there is a cover-up.

They are clearly uncomfortable with having inquiries that are looking into this issue.

As a rule I believe in mess ups rather than conspiracy.

But if true that Labour have shelved even the most limited public enquiries into grooming gangs, it does suggest that powerful Labour politicians have something to hide.

We are developing a new best practice framework to support local authorities that want to undertake victim-centred local inquiries or related work, drawing on the lessons from local independent inquiries such as those in Telford, Rotherham and Greater Manchester. We will publish the details next month.

Alongside that, we will set out the process through which local authorities can access the £5m national fund to support locally-led work on grooming gangs. Following feedback from local authorities, the fund will adopt a flexible approach to support both full independent local inquiries and more bespoke work, including local victims’ panels or locally led audits of the handling of historical cases.

There’s a huge information about this. This is completely wrong. We’re actually increasing, not reducing, the action being taken on this.

Child sexual exploitation, grooming gangs – these are some of the most vile crimes, things like rape or exploitation, coercion. We’re increasing the action against that.

I think that those are all important issues, and those were issues that I’ve been talking about for a long time.

But in the same way that I don’t need to watch Casualty to know what’s going on in the NHS, I don’t need to watch a specific Netflix drama to understand what’s going on. It’s a fictional series. It is not a documentary.

I’m saying very clearly that my job is not to watch lots of TV. My job is to get out there and make sure that I’m talking about the issues that are happening in the country right now.

Badenoch in the right. Stop basing public policy on telly

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Starmer rejects claim there are ‘strong arguments’ for suspending fiscal rules amid US tariffs – UK politics live

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The PM doubled down on his insistence the government won’t change its fiscal rules, describing them as ‘ironclad’ and ‘non-negotiable’

One person probably more enthusiastic than most about the prospect of Universal opening a theme park in the UK is the Lib Dem leader Ed Davey. He is a great fan of outdoor activity-related photocalls, and he’s been at it again today, and the Gloucester Ski and Snowboarding Centre in Matson, Gloucestershire.

Almost 40 MPs and peers have signed a letter organised by Jeremy Corbyn calling for an independent inquiry into the government’s role in the war in Gaza.

Many people believe the government has taken decisions that have implicated officials in the gravest breaches of international law.

These charges will not go away until there is a comprehensive, public, independent inquiry with the legal power to establish the truth.

Last month, I wrote to the Prime Minister calling for an independent inquiry into the UK’s involvement in Israel’s assault on Gaza.

Today, more than 30 MPs have supported that call.

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Rachel Reeves rejects calls for a ‘Buy British’ campaign amid tariffs crisis – UK politics live

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Chancellor also says fiscal rules will not be changed, saying ‘we saw what happened when the previous government lost control of the public finances’

Half of Britons (51%) think the government should impose retaliatory tariffs on imports from the US, according to polling by More in Common, a campaign group. Last week, just before the Trump tariffs were announced, YouGov published figures suggesting 71% of Britons would favour retaliatory tariffs against the US.

Yesterday YouGov also released polling suggesting that only around a third of voters think Keir Starmer and the government played a significant role in ensuring the US tariffs imposed on the UK are relatively low.

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UK politics: Starmer sticks by manifesto pledge not to raise taxes amid tariff turmoil – as it happened

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Prime minister says ‘no one is pretending tariffs are good news’ during speech on car industry

In his Times article Keir Starmer describes the Trump tariffs as “the beginning of a new era”. He has been saying this at least since last Thursday, when he spoke about the tariffs at a Q&A with journalists at Labour’s local elections campaign launch. The speech this afternoon is being described as the PM’s most considered response so far to the global economic turmoil generated by the tariffs, but we have already heard quite a lot from Starmer on this topic already, in a Sunday Telegraph article yesterday and in No 10 briefings on the calls he had with world leaders about the situation over the weekend.

Is there a coherent strategy? On the basis of what he has said so far, there are at least five elements in the mix at the moment.

John Ryan is a local hero and we are truly humbled that he has publicly endorsed Reform UK ahead of May’s elections in Doncaster.

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Tories lose one of their biggest donors in major blow to Kemi Badenoch

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Exclusive: Richard Harpin pauses donations in move insiders say will result in closure of party’s northern HQ

One of the Conservatives’ biggest donors has stopped funding the party in a move insiders believe will result in the closure of its northern HQ, the Guardian can reveal.

Richard Harpin, the founder of the home repairs business HomeServe, has ended his donations to the Conservatives, according to two Tory sources.

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Over 60 Reform UK candidates in local elections are Tory defectors, study finds

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Labour accuses Nigel Farage’s party of ‘mass rebrand’ after research into nominations of former Conservatives

More than 60 of Reform UK’s council candidates standing in this year’s elections are defectors from the Conservative party, according to research from the Labour party.

Reform has also selected an ex-Conservative for its candidate in the upcoming Runcorn and Helsby byelection, while the party’s mayoral candidate for Greater Lincolnshire is the former Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns, who lost her parliamentary seat in West Yorkshire last July.

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Starmer to hold talks with other global leaders to discuss response to Trump tariffs, says No 10 – UK politics live

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UK prime minister to speak to international leaders this weekend to ‘maintain stability and strengthen our partnerships abroad’

Trump claims Starmer ‘very happy’ about tariffs

Downing Street has refused to confirm President Trump’s claim that Keir Starmer was “very happy” about the treatment the UK is getting under the new US global tariff regime. (See 9.32am.) Asked about the president’s words at the morning lobby briefing, the PM’s spokesperson said that the government had already set out its position yesterday and that it was “disappointed” by the US tariff policy.

Livia Tossici-Bolt has been sentenced at Poole magistrates’ court to a conditional discharge for two years for two charges of breaching a “buffer zone” outside an abortion clinic in Bournemouth, PA Media reports. See 11.22am.

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Starmer sails through PMQs as Badenoch fails to get out of the blocks again | John Crace

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It’s almost as if KemiKaze herself believes Labour’s mantra that the Tories are the source of all hopelessness

There will come a moment when the Labour claim that the Tories are to blame for everything will no longer stick. People will start shaking their heads and reckon that Labour have something to answer for. But we’re not quite there yet. At least not at prime minister’s questions. For half an hour in the Commons every Wednesday the Conservatives remain the villains of the piece.

Partly it’s the size of the Labour majority. The sheer volume of half-witted Labour MPs who are happy to bounce up and down to ask Keir Starmer whether he agrees with them that the Tories left the country in a shocking mess and only the prime minister can save their constituents. The Lib Dems and the SNP are only slightly fiercer critics of the present government. They too hate the Tories more than anyone else.

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Starmer dismisses claims he’s been ‘played’ by Trump, and says future trade deal could lessen impact of tariffs – UK politics live

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Starmer said that a future trade deal with the US might lead to the UK getting some exemptions from the tariffs

Richard Hughes, chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility, is giving evidence to the Treasury committee. There is a live feed here.

Hughes started by telling the committee that he wrote to the chancellor earlier this year to say that, when his five-year term ends later this year, he would like to have a second term in office.

We are of course negotiating an economic deal which will, I hope … mitigate the tariffs.

The US is our closest ally. Our defence, our security, our intelligence are bound up in a way that no two other countries are.

So it’s obviously in our national interest to have a close working relationship with the US, which we’ve had for decades, and I want to ensure we have for decades to come.

We are obviously working with the sectors most impacted at pace on that.

Nobody wants to see a trade war but I have to act in the national interests.

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Farage confirms he wants new NHS funding model but Labour says plan would lead to huge patient bills – UK politics live

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Nigel Farage has tried to fend off claims that Reform UK would force people to pay to see a doctor

Nigel Farage has tried to fend off claims that Reform UK would force people to pay to see a doctor.

In an interview this morning ahead of big rally the party is holding in Birmingham later, Farage claimed that he had always been committed to healthcare being “free at the point of delivery” – even though in the past he has said he would be “open to anything” in terms of reforming the NHS funding model.

The NHS is something we believe in, or we used to believe in, but now doesn’t work, and everyone knows that.

Well, they’re paying already. They pay through tax.

They’re two different things. I’m not asking people to pay to go to the doctor. We’ve never said anything other than healthcare should be provided free at the point of delivery.

Only if they can afford it. That’s the point. Only if they can afford it.

At the moment, they pay for their healthcare through taxes. Is there a better way of doing this?

The French do it much better with less funding. There is a lesson there. If you can afford it, you pay; if you can’t, you don’t. It works incredibly well.

Nigel Farage’s plan to make hard-working families pay eye-watering sums to get treatment when they’re sick is enough to send a shiver down the spine of the nation. Everyone deserves a world-class health service, not just the wealthy.

Labour is investing in the NHS, Farage would cut it and give the money to the wealthiest. Labour is bringing waiting lists down, Farage would send them soaring. Labour is giving people their NHS back, Farage would give them a bill.

If Reform brought in an insurance-based system, comparable international systems show that patients could be left paying over £120 for a GP appointment, with an A&E visit potentially setting people back by upwards of £1,300. Routine operations like hip replacements could cost an eyewatering £23,000.

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Starmer confirms he wants to ‘take some money out of government’ as part of efficiency drive – UK politics live

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PM also claims government is spending record amount on pothole repairs amid criticism of spring statement plans

Well, that did not really get us very far. Apologies to anyone who feels misled by “grilling” in the headline. We learned very little. After the interview was over, Rachel Burden, the Radio 5 Live presenter, read out some listener reaction, including a message from someone who said: “The country is literally falling apart and Sir Keir is fixated on potholes. I give up.”

But in the interview Keir Starmer did not challenge the claim that some government departments will have to reduce spending. This is what he said when it was put to him that unprotected deparments would face cuts.

We’re looking across the board. We made a budget last year, we made some record investments, and we’re not going to undo that.

So, for example, we’ve got a record amount into the NHS. That’s just delivered five months’ worth of waiting lists coming down – five months in a row during the winter, that’s really good. So we’re not going to alter the basics.

I do think this is something that we have to take seriously. We have to address. We can’t shrug our shoulders at it.

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Labour mayoral candidate on race to stop Reform – and ‘Doge Lincolnshire’

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Jason Stockwood, ex-chair of Grimsby Town FC, has plan for keeping rival Andrea Jenkyns from implementing US-style cuts

Labour can beat Reform UK by focusing relentlessly on the cost of living, the party’s mayoral candidate for Greater Lincolnshire, who is taking on the Conservative defector Andrea Jenkyns, has said.

Jason Stockwood, the former chair of Grimsby Town football club, is standing for Labour in the most high-profile mayoral race of the local elections.

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