‘Alt-right’ agitator and former Trump backer deported from US is said also to be too extreme for Reform
As he arrives back in the UK after being deported from the US by the Trump administration, the far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos may be wondering what lies ahead for him in his native country.
The “alt-right” agitator, 41, made his name in the US by promoting Donald Trump and associating with his allies before the 2016 election.
Continue reading...Speech part of effort to strengthen National Rally party’s international ties before Marine Le Pen’s presidential bid
The French far-right leader Jordan Bardella is to give a speech at Reform UK’s party conference in Birmingham next week as he attempts to boost international ties before Marine Le Pen’s bid for the French presidency next spring.
Le Pen’s far-right, anti-immigration National Rally (RN) is high in the polls and she is predicted to reach the final round of the French presidential race in May.
Continue reading...Tory leader rules out coalition with Farage’s party and says ‘drama queens’ who left will not be welcomed back
Kemi Badenoch has called defectors who left for Reform “some of the most dishonest people” she has ever met, as she ruled out allowing “drama queens” to return to the party.
Speaking at the Edinburgh festival fringe, the Conservative party leader again ruled out any prospect of an election deal with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, insisting there would be no coalition between the parties.
Continue reading...Tory leader rules out coalition with Farage’s party and says ‘drama queens’ who left will not be welcomed back
Kemi Badenoch has called defectors who left for Reform “some of the most dishonest people” she has ever met, as she ruled out allowing “drama queens” to return to the party.
Speaking at the Edinburgh festival fringe, the Conservative party leader again ruled out any prospect of an election deal with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, insisting there would be no coalition between the parties.
Continue reading...The PM will be working alongside chancellor John Healey, Lou Haigh, Angela Rayner and Sally Jameson with regional mayors expected to be involved
The UK government ran a larger than expected £1.8bn deficit in July, underlining the challenges facing the chancellor, John Healey, as he draws up his first budget.
City economists had expected a shortfall of zero for July, a month when Treasury receipts tend to be swollen by self-assessment income tax payments.
Burnham said yesterday that fly-tippers will be forced to pay for the clean-up when they dump waste illegally. The prime minister laid out his plans to crackdown on waste crimes as he visited an illegal dump in West Yorkshire.
Racism and sexism have become normalised in Britain, the equalities minister has said, as she warned that young men were being sucked into violent misogyny by the “cesspit” of social media. Bridget Phillipson said she was increasingly worried about how commonplace misogyny and racism had become, fuelled by online interactions and statements by politicians she said would not have been acceptable a few years ago.
Phillipson suggested her sweeping reforms to special educational needs provision could be adapted to give parents greater protections if they are unhappy about the service being provided for their children. The former education secretary told the Guardian ministers were open to making changes to the plans, which were announced earlier this year but which have since been subject to consultation.
Education Lucy Powell on Thursday addressed the GCSE gender gap, which shrank to its narrowest point this century. Almost one in four boys in England received top grades in maths while results in English improved across the board. “The white working-class review that was recently done, that was one things it found, that more boys need to see the purpose of education, they need to see the line of sight into work,” Powell told the Press Association.
Meanwhile, Burnham told reporters that funding for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s security arrangements on their return to the UK was a “private matter”, the Press Association reports. Harry and Meghan are expected to return to live in Britain later this month. After six years in the US, they will be moving with their two children, Prince Archie, seven, and Princess Lilibet, five, to a non-royal residence outside London.
Continue reading...Bridget Phillipson writes to watchdog asking it to look into claims Tether.bet and Fispay operated without a licence
The Gambling Commission has been urged to investigate claims that companies linked to Reform UK donors and allies of Nigel Farage have been operating without a licence.
The Labour party’s chair, Bridget Phillipson, has written to the watchdog asking it to look into Tether.bet, a Montenegro-based gambling company, and Fispay, a UK company owned by Reform’s data protection officer, Mowbray Jackson.
Whether Tether.bet, and its operators, provided or advertised remote gambling facilities to consumers in UK without the required licence
Whether Fispay Ltd, or any other UK company, provided or supported gambling facilities or services to consumers in the UK without the required licence.”
Continue reading...Robert Jenrick takes aim at disabled people and foreign nationals after saying UK guilty of ‘suicidal empathy’
Reform UK has been accused of excluding the most vulnerable from society and punishing non-Britons living in the UK as it prepared to outline £50bn of cuts to benefits for disabled people and foreign nationals.
Robert Jenrick, Reform’s finance spokesperson, will detail the plans for £20bn of cuts to disability benefits overall, as well as another £21bn from stopping foreign nationals – including EU citizens with settled status – claiming almost any benefits, among other cuts.
Continue reading...Reform UK leader’s return to Clacton restarts inquiry into £5m gift from crypto-billionaire and support from fraudster
• UK politics live – latest updates
The suspended parliamentary standards investigation into Nigel Farage over accusations he failed to declare gifts and donations has resumed after the Reform UK leader’s re-election as the MP for Clacton.
The twofold investigation by Daniel Greenberg, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, was paused after Farage resigned from his seat and called a byelection in protest at what he said was unfair scrutiny of his finances.
Continue reading...Reform says it will free up space in jails in England and Wales by rapidly deporting all foreign offenders
With parts of Britain set to experience their fifth heatwave of the summer this week, Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, has accused the government of not recognising the severity of the crisis.
In a statement, he said:
We are now facing the fifth heatwave in months following the recent deaths of 3,000 people in our country from extreme weather conditions.
This is the greatest crisis this country has faced since the second world war and to complacently dismiss the demands for immediate action by saying everything is under control is gross negligence, blatantly untrue and misses the severity of the crisis.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Electoral Commission urged to look into donations made by mother of convicted fraudster
Labour has accused Reform UK of being “up to its neck in sleaze” as it called on the Electoral Commission to urgently investigate substantial donations made to the party by the mother of a convicted fraudster.
Bridget Phillipson, Labour’s new chair, called on the commission to examine whether any rules had been broken, after revelations in the Guardian that George Cottrell transferred more than $2m to his mother in the days before her donations to the party in 2024.
Continue reading...Green party said it was ‘obvious from the start’ that Polanski had not committed an offence
At his press conference Robert Jenrick has just finished his opening statement, which was a long speech about what he claimed was Andy Burnham’s plan for a “death tax”.
The first question came from a GB News reporter who pointed out that the “death tax” was just one option that Burnham was considering. She asked if it wouldn’t be better for Reform UK to attend the cross-party talks and make the case of its own plans.
Let’s say, for argument’s sake, I just said ‘yes, we will by 2030 meet 3%’.
The inevitable next question is how will you fund it? And the trap that I’ve seen so many previous, particularly Conservative, governments fall into is setting out what they would spend or the taxes they would cut, without at the same time, saying how they would pay for it.
Continue reading...Shadow minister says there was no warning and ‘it looked and sounded like deliberate intimidation’
It is not just the Russians firing on Brits in the English Channel; Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, has accused a French warship of firing “warning shots” near him while he was on a boat in the Channel monitoring small boat crossings.
In a post on social media, he says:
On the channel today monitoring illegal migrant crossings … as I was being interviewed by the BBC just now a French warship approached close and fired 17 live rounds behind us. There was no notice or training exercise in place. Felt like warning shots or attempted intimidation
On the crisis in prison places, this has been a long time coming. We did some things, as I said [see 10.11am], it wasn’t enough, and I’m sorry about that.
But I can’t fix the past, but what I can do is come up with solutions for now, and for tomorrow.
This was something which we were doing in government. We had plans to rent prison places, just like Sweden has done with Estonia, so that we didn’t have to just release these sorts of violent criminals early. We could have put them in other countries.
If everybody says ‘no prison near me’, we won’t get these [prison places] built, so this is something the public can help with … We cannot say ‘no’ to every potential site for a prison.
Continue reading...Labour’s 2024 manifesto did not include any specific commitments on council tax but two models are being floated
James Cleverly, the shadow housing secretary, has accused Andy Burnham of planning “more ways to tax Middle England”. Responding to reports that Burnham wants to change council tax (see 10.03am), Cleverly said:
Andy Burnham and Labour are just looking for more ways to tax Middle England, and raise taxes on people’s homes.
Replacing council tax and stamp duty with a new house price tax would not be a tax cut for hardworking families – quite the reverse: people across England would end up paying more.
Continue reading...Reform leader says support from fraudster before last election is ‘totally undeclarable in every single way’
Nigel Farage has admitted his close friend the fraudster George Cottrell let him use one of his London homes and paid for social media filming before the last election but insisted it was “totally undeclarable in every single way”.
The Reform UK leader spoke in depth for the first time about his support from Cottrell and the £5m gift from the Thailand-based businessman Christopher Harborne in an interview with the anti-woke Triggernometry podcast.
Continue reading...Andy Burnham nears Labour leadership finish line
Labour should ditch the triple-lock pensions promise to help tackle the UK’s straitened public finances, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has urged. Heather Stewart has the story.
I’m afraid we are not going to be able to open comments today for staffing reasons. If you want to contact me directly, it is probably best to get me on on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Andrew Bailey says he does not regret meeting Reform UK leader to discuss cryptocurrency regulation
The Bank of England governor has said he would have put off a meeting with Nigel Farage last autumn had the Reform UK leader’s £5m gift from a crypto billionaire been under investigation at the time.
Andrew Bailey said he did not regret meeting Farage to discuss the Bank’s plans for cryptocurrency regulation last September, months before the controversial donation from the Thailand-based investor Christopher Harborne was revealed by the Guardian in April.
Continue reading...Outgoing prime minister opens third reading debate on the Hillsborough law bill
In response to a question from Alec Shelbrooke (Con), Campbell said he was “totally unaware” not just of the wording of the Tory opposition day motion planned for tomorrow (see 1.04pm), but of the topic that it was going to cover. In a bid to convince MPs that this was not a lie, he said that he was standing at the despatch box and that MPs knew the importance of a minister “telling the absolute truth when they stand here”.
In the Commons, Alan Campbell, the leader of the house, has just announced there will be a change in parliamentary business tomorrow. Wednesday was set aside for an opposition day debate – a debate on a motion tabled by the Tories. Instead, there will be a general debate on the situation in Iran. There will also be a vote on the regulations banning support for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The government has a majority of more than 150 and it could not trust its MPs to vote the right way on that motion [delaying the recess], and it could not bear the idea of a new prime minister facing any scrutiny before September.
A prime minister, let me remind us all, who has been chosen by a coronation not a contest, with no known platform, almost no known policies, and no idea of his priorities or indeed his cabinet team.
Continue reading...Home secretary insists all MPs treated equally but that security of former MPs and non-Westminster politicians is a concern
Shabana Mahmood has offered Nigel Farage a personal meeting with the Home Office unit that works on security for high-profile politicians, insisting all MPs are treated equally in how they are offered protection.
Addressing the Commons after the death of Ann Widdecombe, the Reform spokesperson whose body was found with serious injuries by the ambulance service at her home in Devon, the home secretary said the incident raised questions about the security of former MPs and politicians from smaller parties, including those not in parliament.
Continue reading...George Cottrell’s mother, Fiona, at centre of criminal inquiry over potential evasion of restrictions on donations
Police are investigating donations worth £500,000 made to Reform UK by the mother of a convicted fraudster and ally of Nigel Farage.
The investigation concerns two donations of £250,000 made by Fiona Cottrell, whose son George has often accompanied Farage to Reform events and media appearances. The May 2024 donations are under investigation over whether they were intended to conceal a donation by an impermissible donor.
Continue reading...Count Binface to be one of few challengers to Nigel Farage as major parties boycott contest
For anyone involved in British politics, an invitation to be interviewed on Radio 4’s Today programme is the ultimate badge of seriousness. There are probably hundreds of MPs who have never made it onto the programme because they have not been deemed important enough.
But, as if to prove the point that the Clacton byelection really is a “farce” (see 7.59am), this morning Today had an interview with Count Binface, the serial joke byelection candidate who may turn out to be Nigel Farage’s main opposition in Clacton.
Probably not, but then you know my job is to celebrate and defend the wonders of British democracy.
And look at this, eh? The fact that you are interviewing me on the Today Programme, because all the other parties aren’t standing, says more about them than it does about me.
I don’t believe that single-handedly will tackle homophobia, racism or indeed any hate crime. But I do strongly believe that returning power back to people’s hands is a huge part of the role we should all be playing as elected public servants – and it’s how we build trust again.
Continue reading...