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Illegal immigration minister Michael Tomlinson repeatedly refused to explain Anderson’s comments in LBC interview Good morning. Yesterday Rishi Sunak spent all day in interviews describing Lee Anderson’s claim about the Labour mayor of London (“I don’t actually believe that the Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they’ve got control of [Sadiq] Khan, and they’ve got control of...

Tory suspended over comments about Sadiq Khan would be populist party’s first MP if he joinedLee Anderson has said he is not ruling out defecting to Reform UK, in a move that would give the rightwing populist party its first MP.Anderson, a former Conservative party deputy chair, who has been suspended from sitting as a Tory MP because of his comments about the mayor...

In today’s newsletter: As suspended backbencher Lee Anderson launches a fresh attack, a former Tory MEP explains how the party got here• Sign up here for our daily newsletter, First EditionGood morning. Your 7am Lee Anderson update: still not apologised. The reason, he said yesterday, is that “when you think you are right you should never apologise, because to do so would be a...

Rishi Sunak gave interviews to local stations in Yorkshire where he is chairing his cabinet meeting this morningRishi Sunak is now on BBC Radio Lincolnshire. Scott Dalton is interviewing him, and asks why it is taking so long for the HS2 money to go to transport projects in the north.Sunak says he thinks the money has been redirected quite quickly.I believe racism or prejudice...

PM says prejudice unacceptable but refuses to address anti-Muslim concerns after comments about London mayorUK politics live – latest updatesRishi Sunak has denied that the Conservative party has a problem with Islamophobia in the wake of Lee Anderson’s comments about Sadiq Khan, continuing to label them as “wrong” rather than prejudiced.Undertaking a round of BBC local radio interviews to promote spending moved from HS2...

Politicians from Conservative and Labour parties get close protection and chauffeur-driven vehicles Three female MPs have been given bodyguards and chauffeur-driven cars after concerns about their safety, it was reported. Representatives of the Conservative and Labour parties had their security upgraded after a risk assessment, according to the Sunday Times.The MPs, who have not been named, have been given close protection by private companies...

The business and trade secretary says Henry Staunton gave an interview ‘full of lies’Good morning. Yesterday Kemi Badenoch, the business and trade secretary, accused the former Post Office chair, Henry Staunton, of giving an interview “full of lies” about the conversation they had when she sacked him recently. Josh Halliday has the story here, and here is one of the tweets from a thread...

Henry Staunton claims request was made so government could ‘limp into’ the next general electionA former Post Office chair said he was told by a senior civil servant to stall compensation payouts to post office operators so the government could “limp into” the general election.Henry Staunton, who was sacked by the business secretary, Kemi Badenoch, last month amid anger over the Horizon scandal, said...

Despite victory in two Conservative safe seats, a Labour government is not a foregone conclusion, say party hawksFor the past few months, with Labour enjoying a stubbornly large double-digit lead in the polls, close allies of Keir Starmer remained obsessed with the notion that complacency will slip into the mindsets of MPs, advisers and activists.In a breathless week that saw Labour veer from having...

As fresh party infighting erupts after two byelection losses, the right are targeting public service funding to pay for tax cuts while others urge restraintRishi Sunak is being warned he risks taking his party further towards disaster by sanctioning a new public spending squeeze in a desperate pursuit of pre-election tax cuts, as more Tories said they feared an election wipeout.With more infighting erupting...

Formal rules to block relevant candidates will make it easier to ‘weed out the bad apples’, politicians sayRishi Sunak has been urged to push through new rules to block anyone convicted of a sexual offence from standing to be an MP before the next election.At least six MPs have lost their seats because of alleged sexual misconduct since the 2019 general election, and 10...

Keir Starmer says ‘people are ready to put their trust in a Labour government’, as wins in Wellingborough and Kingswood put further pressure on Rishi SunakLabour overturns 18,000 majority to win WellingboroughLabour win byelection in KingswoodSpeaking from the Kingswood election count, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg congratulated Damien Egan on winning.“Does it tell you anything about the general election? Almost certainly not,” he said.Conservative party...

Swing in both seats would easily secure a majority at national level, but disillusion among voters is clearUK politics live – latest updatesThe records continue to fall for Labour. The result in the Wellingborough byelection, in which the party achieved a 28.5% swing from the Conservatives, was the biggest Labour victory over the Tories since 1994 and the second biggest since the war.Along with...

Labour seeking to take two seats from Tories on Thursday amid fraught week of candidate suspensionsMy colleague Phillip Inman has this analysis on this morning’s inflation figures:Good news came from the food industry, where inflation fell from December to January, but the annual rate remains high at 7% and food and non-alcoholic beverage prices are about 25% higher than they were two years ago,...

Exclusive: Cameron urged to raise human rights and security concerns in first meeting with Wang Yi since Sunak made him foreign secretaryDavid Cameron is expected to meet his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, this weekend for the first time since becoming British foreign secretary.The Foreign Office has pencilled in a meeting between Cameron and Wang at the Munich security conference, according to two government sources....

Party criticised for delay in acting over comments in which Azhar Ali suggested Israel had allowed 7 October attack to happenHousing minister Lee Rowley was on the media round for the government this morning, hoping to push their new housebuilding plans. He refused, however, to say how many more homes the government hopes will be built, telling the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he...

Candidate Azhar Ali issues apology after comments emerge in which he suggested Israel allowed Hamas attack to happenA quick scoot around the newspaper front pages. For the Daily Mail, the Labour Rochdale story leads, with the paper asking “So has Labour really changed?”That story also made the front of the Times, with the bonus ban at water companies being the lead item. Our Helena...

Shadow chancellor says Labour will receive a ‘bleak inheritance’ from Tories and has had to make changes as a resultRachel Reeves has defended Labour’s U-turn on its pledge to spend £28 billion a year on green projects.The shadow chancellor blamed the Tories and the economic impact of Liz Truss’s mini-budget, as she told BBC Breakfast she would not “make any apologies” for fiscal responsibility.I’ll...

Health secretary defends Conservative NHS dental recovery plan after scathing response from the British Dental Association Good morning. Labour has been campaigning hard recently on the dire state of NHS dentistry, which is near-impossible to access to many places, and today the government is responding by publicising its own NHS dental recovery plan. The British Dental Association has been scathing about it. It is...

PM says he is ‘not a betting person’ after making £1,000 bet during an interview with Piers MorganGood morning. Rishi Sunak gave an interview to Rachel Burden on Radio 5 Live this morning and he was asked about £1,000 bet he appeared to accept from Piers Morgan about the success of his Rwanda policy. The move has been widely condemned as distasteful. Sunak did...

PM also criticised for saying ‘the facts speak for themselves’ when asked if Keir Starmer was a terrorist sympathiserRishi Sunak has been called “out of touch” after taking a £1,000 bet with Piers Morgan on whether deportation flights to Rwanda will take off before the general election.Morgan said to the prime minister on TalkTV: “I’ll bet you £1,000 to a refugee charity you don’t...

The man who reportedly once organised sex parties for the wealthy is alleged to be involved in a plot to replace Rishi Sunak“Advisers advise, ministers decide,” goes Margaret Thatcher’s aphorism. But if Nadine Dorries is right, one Conservative adviser has the power to elevate and overthrow prime ministers and has been exercising it for two decades.Some might accuse Dorries of hyperbole. But even to...

The chancellor said he wanted to manage people’s expectations ahead of the spring budget In his interview with the BBC’s Nick Robinson, Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, criticised Richard Hughes, head of the Office for Budget Responsibility, for calling the Treasury’s long-term public spending forecasts worse than “a work of fiction”.Hughes told a Lords committee last month:Some people call [the projections] a work of fiction,...

The DUP has endorsed a deal with the UK government to restore power sharing in NI, paving an end to two years of political deadlockGood morning. Rail strikes are still going on in England, but in one part of the UK a long-running “strike” by key public sector workers seems about to come to an end. DUP MLAs (members of the legislative assembly) have...