Police officer received death threats over Nowak murder case as Mahmood condemns ‘dangerous’ commentary – UK politics live

Home secretary says officer wrongly linked to case had to relocate after footage emerged of victim being handcuffed while dying

BBC Scotland has more details of the Peter Murrell hearing this morning on its live blog. And, on its live blog, Sky News has pictures of some of the items purchased by Murrell with stolen SNP funds.

Andy Burnham will not call an early election if he becomes prime minister after the Makerfield byelection, a spokesperson for the Greater Manchester mayor has said.

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Wildfires devastating richer areas but fewer hectares burned globally – study

‘Megafires’ in California, Canada, South Korea and Europe in 2025, but changes to farming slowed spread in parts of Africa

“Devastating” wildfires ripped across the wealthier parts of the world in 2025, a study has found, even as globally, the area ravaged by flames fell.

Catastrophic blazes claimed lives, homes and jobs last year in California, Canada, Europe and South Korea. But the 335m hectares burned was the second-lowest since 2002, the review found, largely owing to the expansion of African farms that have fragmented landscapes and hampered the spread of large savannah fires.

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‘Deep unease’ at BBC Radio Scotland as majority of axed presenters are women

Changes are part of sweeping shake-up by Victoria Easton Riley, BBC Scotland’s new head of audio and events

There is a “deep sense of unease” among staff at BBC Radio Scotland after a succession of respected arts presenters, more than half of them women, were dropped from schedules.

The changes have prompted questions about diversity of coverage amid an apparent shift to a “more commercial sensibility” for the public broadcaster.

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Starmer urged to intervene in ‘rigged’ Indian prosecution of British human rights activist

Senior lawyers call on prime minister to request Indian prosecutors drop charges that would breach double jeopardy rule

Four senior lawyers, including the former attorney general Dominic Grieve, have written to Keir Starmer urging him to request that Indian prosecutors drop charges against the British national Jagtar Singh Johal on the basis that continued prosecution would be in manifest breach of the double jeopardy rule which prevents someone being tried twice for the same offence.

Johal has been held in an Indian jail for eight years, and in March last year was acquitted of the terrorist charges laid against him in a court in Punjab. The court found the prosecutors had “miserably failed” to present any reliable evidence, despite having had seven years to do so.

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ChatGPT and other AI bots made huge errors before Scottish election, study finds

Exclusive: Electoral Commission calls for new controls, as Demos finds tools made up fake scandals, invented candidates or gave wrong date

The Electoral Commission has called for new legal controls over misinformation from AI chatbots, after a thinktank found they had made serious mistakes during the recent Scottish election.

The thinktank Demos said its investigation had found that AI services gave voters misinformation to 34% of the questions it posed, which it said raised worrying questions about the lack of regulation of AI platforms in the UK.

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Magnus the wandering walrus leaves Scotland for Norway

After drawing delighted crowds since first sighted in Orkney the young male has swum 400 miles across the North Sea

A peripatetic walrus who became a local celebrity as he toured the north-east coast of Scotland has now been spotted in Norway, bringing to an end his Celtic sojourn.

The young male was christened Magnus after he after first hauled his estimated 2.5-metre frame out of the sea on to Stronsay pier in Orkney on 16 April.

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John Swinney urges Starmer to show Scotland ‘greater respect’ after SNP victory

Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, concedes his party was comprehensively beaten in election as count puts his party on 17 seats, a tie with Reform

John Swinney, the Scottish National party leader, has challenged Keir Starmer to show “greater respect” to the Scottish government after winning the Holyrood elections by a comfortable margin.

The Scottish National party secured a record fifth term in office on Friday after securing 58 of Holyrood’s 129 seats.

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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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Next Scottish government faces ‘really difficult’ spending choices, economists say

Parties accused of ‘fiscal denial’ and failing to tell voters the scale of the challenge

The next Scottish government will need to make “really difficult” spending decisions soon after taking power, including tackling its large public sector pay bill, senior economists have said.

Economists with the Fraser of Allander Institute, at the University of Strathclyde, believe the manifestos published by Scotland’s political parties during the campaign failed to tell voters about the true scale of the challenge.

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Reform UK plan to set up migrant detention centres in Green-voting areas condemned by other parties – as it happened

Nigel Farage’s party proposed to place detention centres in places that vote for Green council leaders or MPs

Keir Starmer has said that Europe has to face up to the fact that its alliance with the US is under strain.

He made the remark in public comments during the plenary session at the European Political Community summit in Yerevan in Armenia.

And both of those are impacting all of us in a very material way.

In the United Kingdom, if you look at the economic forecast now and compare it to the economic forecast just three or four months ago, they are in materially different places, and this is going to play out with our electorates in all of our countries.

Reform are now openly threatening voters and not only that they’re threatening them with a power they don’t actually have. This is absolutely pathetic. People across Scotland are proud of the fact that this is a welcoming country that shows solidarity to people who need it.

Reform are essentially saying ‘If you don’t vote the way we want you to, we will punish you’. I think the people of Scotland and voters across the UK are not going to take kindly to that kind of Donald Trumpesque threat.

Reform know that absolutely bombed last week. The only thing they’ve got to move on to are open threats, not against the Greens but against voters across the country. It’s really quite sinister. This is exactly the kind of politics you see in Donald Trump’s America. People across Scotland are going to reject that on Thursday.

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Two drivers killed in motorway crash in Perth and Kinross

Two men died at the scene after head-on motorway collision near Kincross, Police Scotland say

Two drivers have died in a motorway crash in Scotland involving a car apparently travelling in the wrong direction on the carriageway, police have said.

The two men died at the scene of the collision on the M90 near Kinross, a town in Perth and Kinross, at 10.30pm on Friday.

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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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Scottish ultrarunning champion dies during Highlands record attempt

David Parrish, who won Cape Wrath Ultra in 2023, had been attempting gruelling route again as fundraising challenge

A 35-year-old ultramarathon champion from Dumfries has died while attempting to beat the record for a race to the most north-westerly point on mainland Britain.

David Parrish, a former Royal Marine, was trying to become the fastest man to complete the Cape Wrath trail, one of Britain’s most gruelling race routes.

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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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Doug Allan, cameraman on David Attenborough’s Planet series, dies trekking in Nepal

Wildlife film pioneer has died aged 74 ‘immersed in nature and surrounded by friends’, his representatives have said

An award-winning wildlife cameraman renowned for his work with David Attenborough has died aged 74 while trekking in Nepal.

Doug Allan, described as a “true pioneer” of wildlife film-making, won several Bafta and Emmy awards and was principal camera operator on a number of BBC series including Planet Earth, Frozen Planet and The Blue Planet.

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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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New North Sea drilling would barely reduce UK gas imports at all, data shows

Exclusive: research finds Jackdaw field would provide only about 2% of current demand, and Rosebank only 1%

Opening major new fields in the North Sea would make almost no difference to the UK’s reliance on gas imports, research has shown.

The Jackdaw field, one of the largest unexploited gasfields in the North Sea, would displace only 2% of the UK’s current imports of gas, which would leave the UK still almost entirely dependent on supplies from Norway and a few other sources.

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UK braces for Storm Dave over Easter with winds up to 90mph

Met Office names fourth storm of the year, with weather warnings for parts of Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and north of England

The Met Office has named its fourth storm of the year, which will bring very strong winds in the north of the UK on Saturday evening into Easter Sunday.

Storm Dave will bring wind gusts of 60 to 70mph in parts of Scotland, Northern Ireland, north Wales and parts of Northern England, with a possibility of gusts of up to 90mph in some areas.

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Gale-force winds forecast across northern UK over Easter weekend

Meteorologists issue yellow weather warning, with gusts of up to 90mph expected in some areas

The northern half of the UK is expected to face gale-force winds over the Easter weekend, with forecasters warning of possible travel disruption and power cuts, stemming from a “significant cold plunge from Canada into the North Atlantic”.

The Met Office issued a yellow weather warning for very strong winds in Scotland, Northern Ireland and parts of north Wales and northern England from 6pm on Saturday until midday on Sunday.

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