Reform UK leader banked £1.2m from role as presenter on GB News and payments from social media
Nigel Farage appears to have become the highest-earning MP, having made almost £1.2m a year from GB News.
In the first register of interests of the new parliament, the Reform UK MP declared that he was earning £97,900 a month as a presenter for GB News, the channel co-owned by the hedge fund billionaire Paul Marshall.
Continue reading...Tom Tugendhat accuses Reform leader of ‘amplifying false information’ about Southport killings
Nigel Farage was “irresponsible and dangerous” to suggest the police were withholding the truth about the Southport attack, Tory leadership contender Tom Tugendhat has said.
The Conservative hopeful, a former security minister, said Farage had been “amplifying false information” by spreading a theory first suggested by influencers like Andrew Tate, and then failed wholly to condemn the riots.
Universities “indulge in ideologies of grievance instead of transmitting knowledge” and “schools, museums and galleries apologise for our country’s history” instead of “celebrating it”.
That “equality of opportunity” had given way to “critical race theory” and the UK has seen the “politicisation of race” in recent years, which he claimed Labour would do nothing to reverse.
A new “national security police force” is needed to deal with counter-terrorism and to replace Scotland Yard’s “confused mix of national and local responsibilities and its reporting to the mayor and the home secretary, with each blaming the other”.
That defining Islamophobia in law was a bad idea, as it was blasphemy laws for one religion only.
Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, made “delusional” and simply false comments about the UK riots when stating that civil war was inevitable.
Continue reading...Yvette Cooper says government will work with police rather than ‘blaming them from afar’
Phillip Inman and Graeme Wearden report:
The UK should not be “seduced” into thinking the battle to calm inflation is over despite price rises easing to the Bank of England’s target, according to an interest rate setter at the central bank.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Zia Yusuf’s membership remained active until last week, when it was revoked after being pointed out by the Guardian
The chair of Reform UK, Zia Yusuf, was a member of the Conservatives until last week when party officials were approached by the Guardian.
Richard Fuller, the Conservative party chair, emailed Yusuf to tell him his membership had been revoked last Friday afternoon, after the Guardian asked the party whether it was still active.
Continue reading...Tory leadership candidate says Reform leader’s comments are deeply misleading as she urges parliament recall
The Conservative leadership candidate Priti Patel has criticised Nigel Farage’s response to the far-right riots, saying it was wrong to compare the violence to Black Lives Matter protests.
The former home secretary has also written to the prime minister and home secretary, urging them to recall parliament, drawing parallels with the 2011 riots when MPs returned for a government statement on civil disorder and to condemn the violence.
Continue reading...Some within Labour worry that PM is failing to challenge Nigel Farage’s anti-migrant insinuations head-on
Keir Starmer sounded uncharacteristically angry as he appeared in front of a podium in Downing Street on Sunday to condemn the violent mobs causing damage and spreading fear.
Just a few weeks into government, the prime minister has been confronted with an appalling triple murder of three young girls, followed by days of rioting whipped up by online disinformation that a migrant was responsible.
Continue reading...Shadow home secretary James Cleverly has urged the party to avoid descending into ‘bitter infighting and finger pointing’
Former education recovery commissioner Sir Kevan Collins, who resigned after Boris Johnson rejected his £15bn Covid catch-up plans, is to advise the new government on driving up school standards and finding solutions to teacher shortages and high absence rates.
The Department for Education confirmed on Tuesday that Collins, a widely respected figure in the sector, has been appointed a non-executive board member at the DfE. As such his role will be to support and challenge the department in its efforts to raise standards in England’s schools.
I’m delighted to be returning to the Department for Education. There are real challenges facing our schools and I am looking forward to being part of a renewed drive to ensure that we tackle these with bold and fresh new ideas, to deliver high and rising standards in every corner of the country.
Sir Kevan has been an outstanding force for good in schools, especially his work advocating for our teachers and children during the pandemic and he will play a crucial role in advising the department.
Continue reading...Labour’s election manifesto committed party to recognising Palestinian state as part of a process that results in a two-state solution with Israel
Reynolds says he is not supposed to pre-empt what will be in the king’s speech, but he says it is no secret that the government is going to prioritise its employment rights reforms.
Jonathan Reynolds is being interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg now.
I do want things in exchange for money we’ll co-invest with the private sector around jobs and technology.
I think that’s a reasonable way to make sure public money is being well spent and I believe there are things, capacities, the steel industry needs in future that could be part of that conversation and that’s what I’ll be having in the next few days …
Continue reading...Labour leader said he wanted to restore service and respect in politics and ‘end the era of noisy performance’
Clive Myrie is opening the BBC’s election night coverage. He is co-presenting with Laura Kuenssberg.
No 10 has also announced knightoods for four Tories in the dissolution honours – Oliver Dowden, the deputy PM; Julian Smith, the former chief whip and Northern Ireland secretary; Ben Wallace, the former defence secretary; and Alister Jack, the outgoing Scottish secretary – and one damehood, for Thérèse Coffey, the former deputy PM.
Continue reading...Voters turned away from a deeply unpopular party but the true story of this election is more complex
The story of the 2024 general election is of voters turning away from a deeply unpopular governing party. What parties they turned to and how that interacted with the electoral system is a more complex story that may take some time to fully grasp.
Paula Surridge is a professor of political sociology at the University of Bristol
Continue reading...Polling stations opened at 7am, with voting taking place until 10pm on Thursday night
It is the King’s duty as head of state to appoint a prime minister, and he is travelling from Scotland to Windsor Castle, ready to be on stand-by after being in Edinburgh for Holyrood Week.
The role is one of the few remaining personal prerogatives of the sovereign, because Charles does not act on advice nor need to consult anyone before doing so.
But the overriding requirement is to appoint someone who can command the confidence of the House of Commons – usually the leader of the party with an overall majority of seats in the Commons – to form a government.
Final polls predict unprecedented Labour victory, with Starmer declaring Britain a ‘great nation, with boundless potential’
Keir Starmer has hailed a “new age of hope and opportunity” as millions of people prepare to vote in a general election that could deliver the biggest shake-up of British politics in a generation.
The Labour leader said he was “ready for government” and that his intended cabinet would “hit the ground running” if it wins Thursday’s election.
Continue reading...Activists forecast margins of less than 2,000 votes separating them from Farage’s party – or even a shock defeat
• How boundary changes may affect key constituencies
Labour candidates and activists are privately braced for a surge in support for Nigel Farage’s hard-right Reform UK in north-west England and the Midlands, with some forecasting a margin of less than 2,000 votes between the two parties in some seats in Thursday’s general election.
In certain Conservative-held seats, campaigners told the Guardian that the Tories were likely to be pushed into third place by Reform, with one citing the phenomenon of “shy Reformers” affecting the results.
Continue reading...Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer out campaigning after Mel Stride says Labour likely to win a large majority
It has just gone 7am: let’s look at today’s stop stories. With 24 hours to go until polls open, the Guardian leads with Keir Starmer accusing the Conservatives of desperate tactics amid claims that Tory criticism of his defence of family time was insensitive and had antisemitic undertones.
The Times has Boris Johnson saying a Labour landslide would be “pregnant with horrors”:
Continue reading...Deputy PM says Victoria Atkins is ‘star’ and is one of only people he could see leading Tory party
Meanwhile Rishi Sunak is expected to tell voters today that “If just 130,000 people switch their vote and lend us their support, we can deny Starmer that supermajority,” PA reports.
Keir Starmer has said a big majority would be “better for the country”, as the Tories continue to urge voters to proceed with caution and not hand Labour a “blank cheque”.
Continue reading...As the election nears, we scrutinise how each of the main contenders would deal with problems around the world
Conflicts and environmental disasters are stretching humanitarian resources, and a new UK government will have to decide what role it will play on the world stage in dealing with global problems, especially after budget cuts and closure of the Department for International Development by the Conservatives, and with priorities so focused on Ukraine. We’ve talked to the main parties and looked at their manifestos to see what their plans are.
Continue reading...PM says he ‘loves this party dearly’ and would always put himself at the service of it’
Rishi Sunak is speaking at a campaign event in Staffordshire. As the advance briefing predicted, he has just told his audience.
I tell you this: once you have handed Keir Starmer and Labour a blank cheque, you won’t be able to get it back.
We’ve had a strategy in place and we’ll try to keep to it, which is to carve out really protected time for the kids, so on a Friday – I’ve been doing this for years – I will not do a work-related thing after six o’clock, pretty well come what may.
There are a few exceptions, but that’s what we do.
[In politics] some people think, if you fill your diary 24/7 and don’t do anything else, that makes you a much better decision maker. I don’t agree with that, I think you’ve got to make space, so we do it …
Actually, it helps me, it takes me away from the pressure, it relaxes me, and I think, actually, not only is it what I want to do as a dad, it is better.
Continue reading...Reform UK leader echoes Donald Trump in response to claim hostile state actors are backing his party
Nigel Farage has angrily denied he is “fanning the flames of prejudice” to further his political ambitions, as he doubled down on claims Reform UK had been “set up” by an exposé of racism and prejudice among activists.
He was also confronted about a report in the Sunday Times – which the deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, said he was “gravely” concerned about – that there is a threat to the general election from hostile actors such as Russia seeking to influence the democratic process.
Continue reading...The Reform leader complained of a ‘dishonest Question Time audience’, while his party also reported Channel 4 to the Electoral Commission
The Conservative party deputy chair Angela Richardson called the sewage crisis a “political football” and claimed opposition parties and activists had put Tory MPs in physical danger by campaigning on the issue.
Richardson, who is standing for re-election in Guildford, where the River Wey was recently found to have 10 times the safe limit of E coli, also suggested the only reason people were talking about the problem was “because the Conservatives let everyone know it was happening”.
Continue reading...PM responds to comments by Reform activists, who were filmed by Channel 4 reporter while canvassing in Clacton
Here’s the latest in the Guardian’s series on The broken years: Tory Britain 2010-24:
Unless the polls are wildly inaccurate, the Conservative party is heading towards a catastrophic defeat in the coming election.
Continue reading...