‘This is not the country I moved to’: the British Indians showing support for Nigel Farage

Savitha Prakash, a first-generation immigrant running in local elections in Harrow, says Reform UK aims to ‘put Britain first’

Savitha Prakash, an NHS doctor living in the London borough of Harrow, believes there are similarities between the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, and India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. “He’s [Modi] one of those people, like Nigel, he walks the talk. He made [a] difference to the country,” said Prakash, who chairs Reform UK’s branch in Harrow.

In particular, the 47-year-old said Farage and Modi – who have each been accused by their critics of scapegoating marginalised communities – were focused on putting the needs of the majority first.

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Reform UK’s Richard Tice allegedly failed to pay £100,000 in corporation tax

Deputy leader ran shell companies that reportedly did not pay tax on profits from 2020 to 2022, during which time his firm donated £1.1m to party

Richard Tice allegedly failed to pay almost £100,000 in corporation tax to the benefit of his investment company, which in turn made donations to Reform UK, it has been reported.

In response to the report in the Sunday Times, the deputy leader of Reform UK posted a lengthy statement on X, in which he said: “A long career with multiple businesses is bound to feature some errors. Naturally I am always happy to put things right and if numbers need rechecking, of course I will pay what is owed – be that more or less.”

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Two more Reform local election candidates accused of offensive posts

Labour calls on Nigel Farage to sack candidates and says his party’s checks ‘clearly not fit for purpose’

Reform UK’s checks on candidates are “clearly not fit for purpose”, Labour has said after two more candidates in May’s local elections were accused of making offensive or potentially racist social media posts.

Meanwhile, it emerged that Restore Britain, the party set up by the MP Rupert Lowe after he left Reform, appeared to have accepted a donation from someone who has called publicly on social media for “another Hitler” to come to power.

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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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Orbán’s defeat threatens to halt Hungarian support of populist right

Individuals such as Matt Goodwin and Lord Frost benefited from largesse of self-styled ‘illiberal democracy’

The last 16 years of Viktor Orbán’s rule have been kind to a number of British political figures – from the Tory peer David Frost to Reform UK’s Matt Goodwin and James Orr.

All benefited from largesse extended by the self-styled “illiberal democracy” established by the Hungarian leader’s ruling Fidesz party, which took a particular liking for those on the harder right of British conservatism.

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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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How a £2m bitcoin order made Nigel Farage the political face of UK crypto

Promotion of ‘bitcoin treasury’ firm with Kwasi Kwarteng draws new attention to Reform leader’s relations with industry

A thumping electronic beat provides the soundtrack to the video as Nigel Farage appears in front of a bank of screens.

At first glance, it could be yet another of the Reform UK leader’s “second jobs” – whether promoting gold as a pension fallback or recording Cameo videos. And in a sense, it is: Farage is promoting a £2m cryptocurrency purchase by a company in which he has £215,000 invested, Stack BTC.

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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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British crypto billionaire Ben Delo says he has given £4m to Reform UK

Delo, pardoned by Trump after violating US banking law, describes himself as champion of free speech

A British billionaire convicted in the US for failing to implement adequate anti-money-laundering controls in his cryptocurrency business has given £4m to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

Ben Delo, 42, who is now based in Hong Kong, wrote in the Telegraph that he had made the donation since the start of the year, before the government’s cap on donations to political parties by British citizens living abroad.

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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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Reeves criticises Trump for starting Iran war with no ‘clear plan’ to get out of it – as it happened

This blog is now closed

Starmer says he understands why people are concerned about the cost of living.

He says he has already set out a five-point plan to deal with the crisis.

Just look at what’s happening today. Today your energy bills will be cut because of the action that we took at the budget. And whatever happens in Iran, that price is now fixed until July.

The most effective way we can support the cost of living in Britain is to push for de-escalation in the Middle East, and a reopening of the strait of Hormuz, which is such a vital route for energy.

To that end, we’re exploring each and every diplomatic avenue that is available to us.

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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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Reform insiders fear links to extreme figures such as Andrew Tate will scare off voters

Nigel Farage has called Tate an ‘important voice’ for young men and held back from criticising his misogynistic views

Reform insiders are becoming increasingly irritated by the party’s association with Andrew Tate and other extreme online celebrities whose views are too toxic for the mainstream voters Nigel Farage needs to win over.

Insiders have revealed that as Reform prepare for power they are trying to end their association with more controversial figures on the right such as Tate, whose extreme and misogynistic content could taint the party’s credibility.

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Reform candidate in Wales steps down after apparent Nazi salute

Party announces Corey Edwards’ decision to quit Senedd election campaign on grounds of mental health

A Reform UK candidate for the Welsh Senedd elections in May has announced he is standing down because of his mental health, after a photograph emerged of him apparently making a Nazi salute as an imitation of Adolf Hitler.

The announcement by Reform comes a day after Nigel Farage defended Corey Edwards, its lead candidate for the Pen-y-bont Bro Morgannwg constituency, saying he may have instead been impersonating the John Cleese character Basil Fawlty.

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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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Overseas political funding capped and crypto donations blocked in blow to Reform UK

Legislation subject to MPs’ approval but will be backdated due to urgency of threat to UK democracy, says minister

Keir Starmer is set to embark on a fundamental overhaul of the political finance system, starting with an emergency ban on cryptocurrency donations and £100,000 cap on donations from Britons living abroad in a blow to Reform UK.

In a hugely significant move, the government said it would bring in the annual cap as well as a moratorium on crypto donations from Wednesday as part of its new elections legislation.

Requiring third-party campaigners to declare donations all year round, not just election periods, and allowing funding only from permissible donors.

More stringent checks on the source of funds from political donors, bringing it more into line with know-your-customer checks in the financial services industry.

Preventing donations from shell companies by ensuring funding is from post-tax profits rather than revenue.

Requiring foreign consultant lobbyists to join the official register, from which they are currently exempt because they do not charge VAT.

Banning foreign-funded political adverts outright.

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Labour’s donations crackdown is a blow to Reform UK – and a highly political move

Reform’s ability to fundraise is hobbled in a move that draws attention to donations from an overseas billionaire

Reform UK are no doubt the biggest losers from the government’s emergency measures to overhaul political donations.

Labour MPs are absolutely delighted that No 10 is at last bringing in changes that will hobble Reform’s ability to raise money from its Thailand-based mega-donor, Christopher Harborne, at the same time as making the electoral system fairer in the eyes of the public.

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Reform accused of seeking to insert ‘toxic politics’ into English football

Suella Braverman presses the FA to scrap diversity and inclusion policies, which she claims are ‘racist’

Reform UK has been accused of seeking to insert “toxic politics” into football after the party pressed the Football Association in England to scrap diversity and inclusion policies.

Suella Braverman wrote to the FA on Tuesday to ask for a meeting to discuss the governing body’s diversity policies, which Reform’s equalities spokesperson described as “utter woke nonsense”.

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