Echoing comments by Nigel Farage, Zia Yusuf says judicial reviews, injunctions and planning laws will be used
Reform UK has vowed to use “every instrument of power” to resist housing people seeking asylum in areas where it now controls councils, its chair has confirmed.
Zia Yusuf, the party chair and a major donor, acknowledged Reform may not be able to stop people seeking asylum being put up in hotels where the Home Office has contracts with accommodation providers.
Continue reading...The Reform UK leader has somehow dodged responsibility for the economic damage of Brexit and is winning over disaffected Labour voters
There was a time when any election campaign featuring the name Nigel Farage would have featured the word “Brexit” just as prominently.
And yet, almost a decade after Farage orchestrated Britain’s great EU schism, and with the Reform leader emerging as a bigger political threat than ever, at this week’s local elections Brexit was not a word on the lips of voters.
Continue reading...Slicker presentation, a shift away from two-party politics and now hundreds of new councillors mean Reform is likely here to stay
In May 2014, Nigel Farage stood in front of the television cameras and declared his party’s victory in the European elections was “about the most extraordinary result that has been seen in British politics for 100 years”.
A year later, the Conservatives won an unexpected majority at the general election, restricting Ukip to just a single seat, with Farage failing in his attempt to win South Thanet.
Continue reading...Runcorn win was much bigger than polls implied, suggesting overall effectiveness of ground campaign
For the last few months, Nigel Farage has been promising to professionalise his Reform UK party, saying its general election result of five seats had been hampered by the party’s “amateurism”.
Friday’s narrow victory in the Runcorn and Helsby byelection suggests his strategy is starting to bear fruit. Not only did the party win a seat in which it came a distant third less than a year ago, but it did so with a much bigger swing than implied by the national polls – demonstrating the effectiveness of the party’s ground campaign.
Continue reading...Result will heighten government’s fears it could lose scores of MPs to Nigel Farage’s party at next general election
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has dramatically won the Runcorn and Helsby byelection by just six votes in a blow to Keir Starmer’s premiership.
The hard-right party narrowly overturned Labour’s 14,700-vote majority in the first full-scale electoral test of Starmer’s government and set a new record for the smallest majority at a parliamentary by-election since the end of the second world war.
Continue reading...PM says supporters of both groups are being misled and a tie-up would be a ‘disaster’ for Britain. This live blog is closed
Downing Street has described the alleged comments by the band Kneecap in the ‘kill MP’ footage (see 12.10pm) as “completely unacceptable”.
At the morning lobby briefing, the PM’s spokesperson described the comments as “completely unacceptable”.
We do not think individuals expressing those views should be receiving government funding.
That’s up to the group, but clearly the PM rejects the views expressed … does not shy away from condemning them.
I don’t want to see strike action, I don’t think anybody wants to see strike action.
And certainly here we are in a healthcare environment with all the staff working really hard. The last thing they want to do is to go into dispute again.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Liberal Democrats say voters need to know sources of funding for Nigel Farage’s party before local elections
The Liberal Democrats have publicly challenged Nigel Farage to give details of his party’s donations after calculating that Reform UK spent more than £2m on personalised letters to postal voters before the local elections.
In a letter to Farage, Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dem deputy leader, said people needed to know the source of the money before Thursday’s elections, given that Reform received only £281,000 in donations in the last set of publicly available figures, for the final quarter of 2024.
Continue reading...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
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Whitehall sources say Starmer and Reeves aligned in seeing steel as of ‘huge strategic importance’
Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are actively considering nationalising British Steel in an escalation of plans first revealed in the Guardian last year.
The prime minister said all options were on the table to secure the future of the Scunthorpe plant, which is owned by the Chinese firm Jingye and employs about 3,500 people.
Defended the welfare cuts as being based on “dignity” and criticised the Office for Budget Responsibility for not taking into account possible behavioural changes of people affected by the cuts when assessing the consequences of the policy.
Said threats from foreign powers targeting people in the UK were “growing” and the issue was constantly being raised in international talks. He added: “I think we generally underestimate that threat, and it’s very important we’re alive to it.”
Stepped up his criticism of regulators, telling MPs he was “astonished” by how many there were and saying he was “frustrated” by the barriers they put up.
Called for an inquiry into the killing of 15 aid workers in Gaza and said international law “underpins everything we do bilaterally and multilaterally” when questioned about the conflict in the Middle East.
Said he would speak to the intelligence agencies and the Kyiv government after Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukraine president, said two Chinese citizens had been captured fighting as part of the Russian army.
Said changes to the social care system could come as soon as next year amid a review led by Lady Louise Casey.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...As Reform UK launched its English local elections campaign in Birmingham there were murmurs among activists about the fate of a ‘popular figure’
There was one name on the lips of many Reform supporters before their party’s local election campaign launch in Birmingham on Friday night, but it wasn’t Nigel Farage.
Instead, conversation turned to Rupert Lowe, one of five Reform MPs elected last year, who was suspended this month when allegations of bullying emerged, the day after he had described Farage as a “messianic” leader of a protest party.
Continue reading...Billboards in Birmingham cite party leader’s remarks about a new funding model as local elections campaigning begins
Labour has begun an all-out assault on Nigel Farage over his views on the NHS in the run-up to key elections in May, as the Reform UK leader prepared to host what is billed as his party’s biggest ever rally in Birmingham.
In a coordinated campaign before Farage spoke at a 10,000-person event in the city on Friday evening, Labour paid for nearly a dozen billboard posters around the city with messages about his talk about replacing the NHS with an insurance-based healthcare system.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Reform leader also says Andrew Tate has so many young male followers because society ‘feminises’ them too much
Nigel Farage has said men will more readily sacrifice their family lives to be successful in their business careers than women, and that young men are being too “feminised” by modern society.
The Reform UK leader set out his view on gender balance in the workplace in a conversation with journalists in Westminster, saying women made “different life choices” when it came to work. He went on to suggest that Reform attracts men because they are more impulsive than their female counterparts.
Lifted the lid further on his row with Elon Musk, saying the billionaire adviser to Donald Trump had tried to push him too much on supporting the far-right activist Tommy Robinson. “You can’t bully me,” he said. “I’ve got my principles, I stand by them good or bad.”
Said the idea of a $100m (£77m) donation from Musk had been “massively overexaggerated”, but insisted they were now on “perfectly reasonable terms” by text message.
Dismissed the idea of a pact with the Tories, saying Reform “despises” the party. He suggested its leader, Kemi Badenoch, was lazy and referred to her leadership rival Robert Jenrick as Robert “Generic”. Of Tory MPs, he said: “I’ve never met a more stuck up, arrogant, out of touch group of people. At least half of the Conservative MPs are stuffy, boring old bastards.”
Blamed net zero policies rather than the threat of Trump tariffs for the planned closure of Scunthorpe’s steel plant, and claimed the US president had wanted to do a trade deal during his previous term, but that the Tories had “blown it” by delaying Brexit.
Continue reading...Campaigners in gallery shout ‘Lords out, people in’ and drop leaflets into the chamber
Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has defended politicians who get involved in entertainment TV.
In an article for the Daily Telegraph, he hit back at Kemi Badenoch, who used an interview with the paper earlier this week to dismiss Farage as just a reality TV phenomenon.
Having appeal doesn’t mean that people want you running their lives. That’s one of the things that we need to make sure that we remind people.
This isn’t I’m A Celebrity or Strictly Come Dancing. You don’t vote for the person that you’re enjoying watching and then switch off when the show’s over.
Anyway, it’s not as though I’m the first politician to have been prominent in the media. Ronald Reagan combined his early political activities with a film and TV career for 20 years, until the 1960s. When he announced in the 1970s that he wanted to become the US President, everybody said he was a B-Movie actor who stood no chance. These days, American conservatives look back on this two-term leader with a slight sense of awe in terms of his achievements.
And what about Donald Trump? He was a well-known New York property developer from the 1970s onwards but it was his massive success with the reality to show The Apprentice from 2004 that put him in a position where he could win the nomination for the Republican Party.
Kemi Badenoch has a problem. Most members of the public have no opinion of her. Even fewer know what she stands for. I have an idea for her. She could appear on a reality TV show herself. A spell in the I’m a Celebrity… jungle would be perfect. I’ll gladly give her some tips if she wants to sign up for the next series.
Continue reading...Stephen Timms, social security and disability minister, says government is ‘fully supporting’ people who would always be unable to work
The Reform UK press conference is about to start. There is a live feed here.
Nigel Farage is going to announce that 29 councillors have defected to his party, according to the Guido Fawkes website.
Continue reading...Pair recently met to discuss Donald Trump, Elon Musk and other political matters, Sunday Times says
Nigel Farage has reportedly met Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s adviser turned nemesis, after the Vote Leave founder suggested voters should back Reform UK at the local elections.
Cummings, who was once a sworn enemy of Farage during the EU referendum as he battled to keep control of the leave campaign, is reported to have met the Reform leader to discuss Whitehall changes, which allies said was the strongest sign yet that Farage was taking seriously the idea of becoming prime minister.
Continue reading...