Category Archives: England

Anti-immigrant Reform UK makes broad gains in English local elections

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Labour-Conservative dominance challenged by Nigel Farage’s Trump-aligned party, which has control of at least six county councils

Britain’s anti-immigrant and Trump-aligned Reform UK party has made sweeping gains in English local elections, challenging the traditional political dominance of the country’s two main parties, Labour and the Conservatives.

Nigel Farage, the Reform leader, claimed his party had overtaken the Tories as the UK’s main opposition after Reform won control of at least six county councils, one mayoralty, and narrowly defeated the governing Labour party in a parliamentary byelection in what had been considered a safe seat.

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Reform UK’s victories are just the latest chapter of political fragmentation

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Farage’s party has benefited this time as voters flee the main parties, but there are faultlines within its own coalition too

Fragmentation in British politics is not new. Disillusionment with the choices on offer is not new. The two-party share of the vote has been below 70% in four of the last six elections. Six months before the 2019 general election the Brexit party topped the EU election results with the Liberal Democrats in second. The 2024 general election had the lowest two-party share in the modern-party system.

What is driving this change? Political scientists talk about the demand and supply sides of electoral politics. The voters are the demand side, what types of parties and positions they want to vote for. They do not always get their wish. Who appears on the ballot paper is the supply side of the electoral equation. Increasingly, it is everyone.

Professor Paula Surridge is deputy director at UK in a Changing Europe and professor of political sociology at the University of Bristol

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Reform wins Runcorn byelection by just six votes in blow to Labour

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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.

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‘A win-win for farmers’: how flooding fields in north-west England could boost crops

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A ‘wetter farming’ project explores rehydrating peatland to help grow crops in boggier conditions while cutting CO2 emissions

“I really don’t like the word ‘paludiculture’ – most people have no idea what it means,” Sarah Johnson says. “I prefer the term ‘wetter farming’.”

The word might be baffling, but the concept is simple: paludiculture is the use of wet peatlands for agriculture, a practice that goes back centuries in the UK, including growing reeds for thatching roofs.

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Daily endometriosis pill approved for NHS could help 1,000 women a year

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Linzagolix hailed as a possible ‘gamechanger’ in tackling the painful condition for some patients in England

More than 1,000 women a year in England could benefit from a new pill for endometriosis.

The condition occurs when tissue similar to the womb lining grows elsewhere in the body, such as the pelvis, bladder and bowel. It can cause chronic pain, heavy periods, extreme tiredness and fertility problems.

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Cancer patients in England to be first in Europe to be offered immunotherapy jab

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Up to 15,000 could be given nivolumab in injectable form to treat 15 cancers including lung, bowel and skin cancer

Up to 15,000 cancer patients a year could be treated with a quick injection, NHS England has announced.

It is the first health service in Europe to offer patients the injectable form of the immunotherapy drug nivolumab.

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Labour’s pledge to hire 6,500 extra teachers in England will be a ‘challenge’, report says

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Secondary school pupil numbers also likely to outpace government’s recruitment goals, watchdog warns

A key government pledge to appoint 6,500 extra teachers in England by the end of this parliament will be difficult to achieve and is likely to fall short of demand, the UK’s public spending watchdog has warned.

The education secretary Bridget Phillipson’s promise to recruit thousands of extra teachers in state schools, which has been funded by adding VAT to private school fees, forms one of the cornerstones of the government’s education policy.

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Fly-tippers’ vehicles to be crushed in bid to save England from ‘avalanche of rubbish’

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The scheme, part of policy blitz for local elections, will encourage councils and police forces to work together

Councils will be encouraged to work with police forces to seize and crush vehicles used by fly-tippers, in the latest phase of a government policy blitz before Thursday’s local elections.

Under a scheme being led by the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), new legislation will impose jail sentences of up to five years for people who illicitly transport waste in England.

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Met police ‘maintain concerns’ about China super-embassy plan

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Exclusive: Force, which had dropped objection to plan, says protests of more than 500 people would impede traffic and require extra resources

China’s proposed “super-embassy” in London would require additional police officers to deal with any large protests involving thousands of people, the Metropolitan police have said before a decision by ministers.

Despite having dropped its official objection to the proposals, the Met “maintains concerns” that large protests of more than 500 people outside the embassy would impede traffic and “require additional police resource”, said the deputy assistant commissioner Jon Savell

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Reform UK challenged to give details on donations after £2m mailshot campaign

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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.

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Grenfell fire fridge maker accused of safety test failings in council lawsuit

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Kensington and Chelsea sues Hotpoint maker Beko Europe as part of wider action against firms it blames over blaze

The company that made the fridge-freezer blamed for starting the Grenfell Tower fire has been accused in a lawsuit lodged by the local council of failing to run adequate safety tests on that model of appliance.

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) has brought a lawsuit against the Hotpoint maker, Beko Europe, previously Whirlpool, as part of wider legal action against companies it believes were culpable for the fire eight years ago that killed more than 70 people.

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Black ex-prison officer says he has flashbacks after extreme racist abuse at Kent jail

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Exclusive: Uzo Mbonu describes being targeted and ‘completely isolated’ by colleagues at HMP Swaleside

A black former prison officer has said he suffers flashbacks and nightmares after colleagues in a high-security jail subjected him to extreme racist abuse and managers failed to support him.

Nigerian-born Uzo Mbonu said he felt he was picked on and ostracised by other officers at HMP Swaleside in Kent because he did not have a British accent, did not understand the jokes his colleagues made, and challenged things he felt were going wrong.

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Oranges are not the only fruit: Cumbrian marmalade awards offer unusual blends

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Winning Japanese preserve features pear and yuzu, while entry in ‘interesting additions’ includes peanut butter

Marmalade was never really my jam, but at the world marmalade awards at Dalemain house on the edge of the Lake District, I found myself a convert.

The experience has given weight to my theory that you might fall in love with any food if you try it at its finest. Hate tomatoes? Go to Italy. Not a fan of marmalade? Savour a spoonful in the presence of beaming marmalade fanatics who have spent their lives devoted to creating the tangiest, sweetest, jelly-ish version of the preserve.

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London councils yet to spend £130m in local climate funds

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Exclusive: Local authorities have spent less than £40m out of £170m collected since offsetting scheme began in 2016

London councils are sitting on more than £130m that should be funding local climate action, the Guardian can reveal.

More than £170m has been collected through the mayor of London’s carbon offset fund, which developers are required to pay into to mitigate emissions from new projects, since it was introduced in 2016. However, the capital’s 33 local authorities have spent less than £40m between them. Some have said they do not have the resources, expertise or time to decide how to spend it.

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Ambulance service and NHS trust admit failures over death of musician

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Ebow Graham died after falling out of a third-storey window in east London in April 2020 following a psychotic episode

An ambulance service and an NHS trust have admitted breaching their duty of care over the death of Ebow Graham, a founding member of the hip-hop group Foreign Beggars.

Graham, 40, died after falling out of a third-storey window in Clapton, east London in April 2020 following a psychotic episode. Hours earlier London ambulance paramedics had dismissed his friends’ concerns about his behaviour. And a crisis call handler from East London NHS trust also failed to properly assess his risk or arrange an urgent mental health assessment within the recommended time.

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Ambulance service and NHS trust admit failures over death of musician

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Ebow Graham died after falling out of a third-storey window in east London in April 2020 following a psychotic episode

An ambulance service and an NHS trust have admitted breaching their duty of care over the death of Ebow Graham, a founding member of the hip-hop group Foreign Beggars.

Graham, 40, died after falling out of a third-storey window in Clapton, east London in April 2020 following a psychotic episode. Hours earlier London ambulance paramedics had dismissed his friends’ concerns about his behaviour. And a crisis call handler from East London NHS trust also failed to properly assess his risk or arrange an urgent mental health assessment within the recommended time.

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UK woman accused of illegal abortion did not look pregnant, friend tells court

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Witness says nothing to indicate Nicola Packer was pregnant in weeks before she delivered foetus

There was “absolutely nothing” to indicate that a woman accused of taking abortion pills illegally was pregnant in the weeks before she delivered a foetus, a court has heard.

Nicola Packer, 44, is on trial at Isleworth crown court accused of administering poison with intent to procure a miscarriage in November 2020, during the second Covid lockdown.

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Man shot dead by police in Milton Keynes ‘called 999 himself’

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Police watchdog believes David Joyce, who had history of mental illness, wanted to die at hands of officers

A man shot dead by an armed officer at Milton Keynes railway station had called police shortly before he died to report there was a man armed with a gun and acting dangerously, the police watchdog has said.

It is believed that David Joyce, 38, was armed with a knife when he ran at police and was shot by an officer who will claim to have acted in self-defence.

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Historians dispute Bayeux tapestry penis tally after lengthy debate

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Two Bayeux scholars at loggerheads over whether dangling shape depicts dagger or the embroidery’s 94th phallus

In a historical spat that could be subtitled “1066 with knobs on”, two medieval experts are engaged in a battle over how many male genitalia are embroidered into the Bayeux tapestry.

The Oxford professor George Garnett drew worldwide interest six years ago when he announced he had totted up 93 penises stitched into the embroidered account of the Norman conquest of England.

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English schools left to subsidise infants’ free meals after 3p funding increase, say leaders

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Department for Education criticised over funding rise from £2.58 to £2.61 per child per meal in September

Primary schools in England will be forced to subsidise free school meals for infants from their own budgets after the government’s “pitiful” 3p increase in funding, according to school leaders.

The Department for Education announced that its funding for universal infant free school meals would rise from £2.58 to £2.61 per child in September, with the 3p rise well below expected inflation and wage increases facing schools.

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