Category Archives: Conservatives

Starmer beer claim ‘smears’ could drag on for weeks, top Labour figures warn

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Shadow cabinet reveal their frustration after elections as police
re-examine allegations of Covid rules breach

Frustration is mounting within the shadow cabinet over Durham police’s decision to re-examine lockdown breach allegations against Keir Starmer, amid claims it has robbed them of the chance to herald Labour’s progress at the local elections.

Senior figures have already been dragged into debates over the conduct of their leader as they attempted to argue that Labour’s gains signalled it was on the road to building an election-winning programme.

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Sinn Féin becomes largest party in Northern Ireland assembly – as it happened

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With Sinn Féin set to become the biggest party at Stormont for the first time, O’Neill says the results mark a ‘new era’ for ‘our politics and for our people’

The elections to the Northern Ireland assembly are quite different to most UK elections. Members of the assembly are elected to 18 multi-member constituencies by single transferable vote.

Each constituency has five representatives, totalling 90 overall. Voters assign preferences to candidates on a ballot slip. If a candidate gets enough first-preference votes, they win a seat, and if not, second and then third preferences – and so on – are counted until all seats are filled.

Because of this, multiple counts are needed in each constituency, which means results can take a while to compile. It is possible for the first count not to result in the award of a seat. Another consequence is that it is not clear whether a party has increased or decreased its total seats in a constituency or overall, until all seats have been awarded.

By the terms of the Good Friday agreement the government of Northern Ireland is shared between the two main communities: nationalists, who favour closer ties with the Republic of Ireland, and unionists, for whom Northern Ireland’s position in the UK is more important. The largest party in the assembly appoints the first minister, and the largest party from the other community appoints the deputy first minister.

Some parties with cross-community support or whose supporters do not identify strongly with either community think this arrangement perpetuates divisions, but in practice since 1998 the largest party has always been from the unionist community and the second-largest from the nationalist.

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Minister urges Tory MPs not to act against Boris Johnson after election results

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Nadhim Zahawi calls for party unity as colleagues speak out, and insists the prime minister is ‘a man of integrity’

A cabinet minister has urged Tory MPs not to act against Boris Johnson after the party’s bruising local election results, as a critic of the prime minister said questions over his leadership “had to be brought to a head”.

After the Conservatives lost almost 500 seats and the control of 11 councils, the education secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, called on Saturday for party unity, arguing that Johnson remained a vote-winner.

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Activists disrupt Priti Patel speech in protest against Rwanda refugee plan

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Green New Deal Rising campaigners were escorted from the dinner to chants of ‘out, out, out’

A speech by the home secretary, Priti Patel, was disrupted on Friday evening after pro-refugee activists infiltrated a Conservative party “spring dinner”.

Eight young social justice and climate campaigners from Green New Deal Rising disrupted the Bassetlaw Conservative Association Spring Dinner and demanded she drop controversial plans to offshore asylum seekers to Rwanda.

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Labour takes second place in Scottish elections as Tory vote plummets

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Party becomes closest challenger to SNP after gains including West Dunbartonshire and near-upset in Glasgow

Scottish Labour has become the closest challenger to Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP after the Scottish Conservatives plunged to their worst electoral result in a decade.

Labour enjoyed an unexpected win in West Dunbartonshire, taking overall control of the council, and won a swathe of seats elsewhere as it took the second largest share of the vote overall.

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Welsh Tories blame No 10 as they reel from disastrous losses across country

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Conservative leader at the Welsh parliament says candidates had to answer questions about Johnson on doorstep

The Conservatives suffered disastrous losses across Wales, with the party’s Welsh leadership blaming the crisis in No 10 for their woes, while there were encouraging gains for Labour, Plaid Cymru, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens.

One of the most striking results on Friday came in Denbighshire in the north-east where the Tories dropped from first to fourth place. They also lost control of their only council, Monmouthshire, in the south-east.

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Local elections 2022: Tories lose hundreds of seats to Labour and Lib Dems; Sinn Féin set to become largest party in NI elections – live

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PM insists ‘mixed’ results also included some ‘remarkable gains’ for Conservatives; Labour, Lib Dems and Greens celebrate key wins

One of the trickiest contests for Labour is in Sunderland, where it risks losing control of the council for the first time since it was founded in 1974, says the Guardian’s North Of England correspondent Josh Halliday.

Labour has a majority of only six councillors on the 75-seat authority, meaning it could easily fall into no overall control when ballots are counted.

There are enough clues on the doorstep and judging by the scale of the postal vote, that’s gone extremely well and we’re getting a big turnout. That said, neither party can be overly confident about which way many seats will go.

Partygate doesn’t come up as much as you’d think and for those who have brought it up they’ve said things like ‘You’re all as bad as each other’ or ‘that’s politics’.

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Elections 2022: live council results for England, Scotland and Wales

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As the final votes are counted, heavy Conservative losses are tempered by a mixed picture for Labour while Lib Dems and the Greens perform well. The SNP continues to dominate in Scotland and Plaid Cymru gain seats in their heartlands and beyond

Local elections: live coverage
Northern Ireland election: live results

On 5 May all councils in Scotland and Wales held elections for all of their councillors. In England, the picture is more complex. Many parts of England held no election at all. Others held elections for a third of seats as part of a four-yearly cycle in which a third of lower-tier seats are elected each year, with the upper-tier being chosen in the fourth year. In other areas there is a “unitary” council, being elected in its entirety.

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Conservatives brace for losses as votes counted in local elections

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Labour and Lib Dem sources say turnout appears to be low in possible sign of Tory voters staying away

The Conservatives are braced for a nerve-shredding 24 hours after voting closed in local elections across the UK, with Labour and the Liberal Democrats expecting to make gains.

Taking place against the backdrop of the cost of living crisis, the first nationwide polls since Partygate will be widely read as a test of whether Boris Johnson has become an electoral liability.

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Tories face test on cost of living and Partygate as people vote across the UK – as it happened

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Latest updates: elections take place in many areas across the UK with polling stations open from 7am to 10pm BST

Boris Johnson and the Japanese prime minister watched an RAF flypast together in Horse Guards Parade before their bilateral discussions in No 10, PA Media reports. PA says:

The pair stood on a dais as they witnessed a Voyager and two Typhoon fighter jets soar over St James’s Park and the parade ground.

Fumio Kishida was then invited in Japanese by the captain of the Nijmegen Company, Grenadier Guards, to inspect a guard of honour.

My forecast ... predicts that the Conservatives will lose more than 200 council seats across Great Britain on polling day (Thursday 5 May). They will suffer net losses of 63 in London, 38 across the rest of England, 83 in Scotland and 22 in Wales.

Labour, meanwhile, will make a net gain of 35 council seats in London but a net loss of 16 across the rest of England. That net loss, however, will be more than compensated for by net gains of 87 and 41 in Scotland and Wales respectively.

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Election leaflets distance ‘Local Conservatives’ from Boris Johnson

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Tory candidates ask voters not to punish them for ‘mistakes’ in Westminster in wake of Partygate

Hundreds of Tories are distancing themselves from Boris Johnson by standing as “Local Conservatives” in Thursday’s council elections, with rebel MPs saying they will gauge support over the weekend for a move against the prime minister.

Election leaflets seen by the Guardian show local candidates across England playing down their Tory affiliations, eschewing pictures of Johnson and styling themselves as “Local Conservative” on voting ballot papers.

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Local election leaflets show Tory candidates are ‘ashamed’ to be associated with Boris Johnson, Labour says – as it happened

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Angela Rayner says Tory candidates at the local elections ‘are trying to hide from their own government’s record’. This live blog is closed – please follow this one for updates on the war in Ukraine

Savanta ComRes has published some new polling on voting intention in Scottish parliaement elections. Here are the figures for the constituency section.

And here are the figures for the list section.

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Boris Johnson says police have not contacted him about Lee Cain party

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PM is reported to have given speech and poured drinks at leaving do for former spin doctor in November 2020 despite lockdown

Boris Johnson has said he has not been contacted by police about a leaving party held for his former spin doctor Lee Cain in November 2020.

The prime minister said he had not yet received a questionnaire in relation to his alleged attendance at the party for Cain, his former director of communications, even though other people present are reported to have got them. Johnson is said to have given a speech and poured drinks at the event on 13 November, despite it being at the time of a stay-at-home lockdown.

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Boris Johnson’s ‘out of touch’ comments on cost of living crisis anger Tory MPs

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PM’s interview on Good Morning Britain causes concern about party’s performance in upcoming local elections

Boris Johnson’s fumbled defence of the government’s record on the cost of living has exasperated Conservative MPs and sharpened fears about the party’s performance in Thursday’s local elections.

Asked about a pensioner forced to travel around on buses to stay warm and keep heating bills down, the prime minister’s first response was to boast that he introduced free travel for older people. During the interview on Tuesday, he admitted that the government had failed to do enough to alleviate the pain of soaring costs.

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Scandals have left PM incapable of governing, says Starmer

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Labour leader attacks Tory tax rises and inability to tackle the cost of living crisis

Boris Johnson has been rendered “incapable of governing” by a series of scandals and rows that have left him unable or unwilling to tackle the cost of living crisis, Keir Starmer has warned.

In a final pitch before Thursday’s local elections, the Labour leader said that voters were hearing “the dying groans of a clapped-out government” that was attempting to use “desperate attacks and deflections” to distract from inaction over rising bills and tax increases.

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Disgraced Tory MP Neil Parish ‘broke law’ by watching porn in Commons

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Parish resigns over ‘moment of madness’, and claims ‘it was tractors I was looking at on the internet’

Disgraced Tory MP Neil Parish, who resigned his seat on Saturday after admitting he had twice watched pornography in the House of Commons chamber, appeared to have committed a criminal offence which carried a maximum two-year prison sentence, Labour said.

Parish, who had represented the safe west country seat of Tiverton and Honiton since 2010, said that on the first occasion he watched porn on his mobile phone next to other MPs, including women, he had done so by accident.

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Tory Neil Parish to resign as MP after porn ‘moment of madness’

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Parish says an initial incident was accidental while looking at tractors, but a second time was deliberate

The Conservative politician accused of watching porn on his phone in the House of Commons has announced he will step down as an MP after facing calls to resign.

Neil Parish, the MP for Tiverton and Honiton in Devon, had already had the Tory whip removed and suggested he had opened the porn “in error”. He previously said he would only resign if found guilty by an inquiry into his actions.

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Neil Parish says watching porn in Commons was ‘moment of madness’ as he resigns as MP – as it happened

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The MP for Tiverton and Honiton says he initially found the pornographic website while looking at tractors

The shadow education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, has said ministers should not micromanage the books pupils read in classrooms.

Speaking to the NAHT school leaders’ annual conference in Telford, she said there was an “irony” that the government is seeking to take politics out of the classroom but simultaneously telling teachers what books to teach.

I think we need a school curriculum that inspires and supports every young person... I think children should expect to see their lives, their communities, their experiences reflected in that,

I think it is not for secretaries of state to dictate which books should or shouldn’t be taught within a school. I think you all have expertise and professionalism that allows you to deliver that.

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UK faces childcare crisis as staff shortages force nurseries to close

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Early years providers can’t attract qualified workers and the crisis will put prices up, increasing the burden on struggling families

Nurseries across the UK are being forced to close or reduce their services at an alarming rate because they are struggling to recruit and retain staff, the National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA) has warned.

The crisis is only set to deepen as more childcare providers go out of business, increasing demand for places and pushing prices even higher for families struggling with the rising cost of living.

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Wife of Neil Parish says she first heard of porn claims from reporter

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Sue Parish claims she was unaware of Tory MP’s suspension until a journalist asked her for a quote

The wife of the Tory MP under investigation for allegedly watching porn on his phone in the House of Commons only found out when a reporter called her about the story.

Sue Parish, 66, said she first became aware of her husband Neil’s suspension from the Conservative party when a journalist got in touch looking for a comment.

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