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In today’s newsletter: A good night for Keir Starmer and a bad one for Rishi Sunak – who now has more to worry about from Reform UK• Sign up here for our daily newsletter, First EditionGood morning. While you were sleeping, the Conservative party was having another meltdown. As was widely predicted, it lost two previously safe seats to Labour after yesterday’s byelections, with...

Labour leader under pressure over claims Rochdale candidate Azhar Ali’s remarks went unchallenged at eventUK politics live – latest developmentsKeir Starmer is under pressure to suspend councillors who attended a meeting in Hyndburn over claims that they failed call out antisemitic remarks by Azhar Ali, the former Labour candidate for the Rochdale byelection.On Tuesday Labour suspended Graham Jones, the candidate for Hyndburn in Lancashire,...

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,...

In today’s newsletter: The party has disowned candidate Azhar Ali following his remarks about Israel and Gaza, with accusations of hypocrisy over antisemitism levelled at Starmer’s door • Sign up here for our daily newsletter, First EditionGood morning. This week ought to be an excellent one for Keir Starmer, and a terrible one for Rishi Sunak: ONS figures just out which show no fall...

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...

In today’s newsletter: A year since Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation, the SNP’s new leader has been trying to navigate a series of scandals and a threat from Labour ahead of the next general election• Sign up here for our daily newsletter, First EditionGood morning.It has been almost a year since Nicola Sturgeon let Scotland know she was standing down as first minister. After eight years,...

Sajid Javid had wanted review process for international students who believed their visas had been wrongly cancelled‘It destroyed my life’: the students accused of cheating in English testsWhat is the Home Office English test scandal?Ministers were poised five years ago to offer a route to a reprieve for thousands of international students who may have been wrongly accused of cheating, but the plan was...

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...

Future of Wylfa site had been uncertain since Japanese firm pulled construction plans in 2020The UK government has said it is working to push forward a new nuclear power station at Wylfa in north Wales amid reported talks with the site’s owner.Hitachi owns the site on the island of Anglesey (Ynys Môn) but its future has been uncertain since 2020, when the Japanese company...

Rishi Sunak said legacy cases had been cleared, but torture victims and others fleeing persecution feel forgottenWhen Saba* converted to Christianity, she knew she could no longer stay in Iran. As a disabled woman and a victim of religious persecution, to remain would “mean being killed”, she told the Observer, her voice cracking with emotion. She fled in secret, claiming asylum in the UK...

Leaders pay respects to former taoiseach of 1990s ‘rainbow coalition’ as he is laid to rest in DunboyneThe former Irish taoiseach John Bruton has been described as a “humbling and unassuming” man at his state funeral, attended by senior political figures including the president, Michael D Higgins, and the taoiseach, Leo Varadkar.Ministers, TDs and parliamentary ushers were among those who attended the service at...

Entrepreneur Stuart Marks reportedly featured on – but was removed from – Boris Johnson’s resignation honours listA major donor to the Conservative party who reportedly featured on Boris Johnson’s original resignation honours list is among 13 new peers announced by the government on Friday evening, eight of them Conservatives.Stuart Marks, a technology entrepreneur who has served as a senior treasurer for the Conservatives, has...

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...

Charlotte Nichols says Brianna gave people someone to identify with and humanised discussion on gender issuesBrianna Ghey’s murder has “humanised the debate” around transgender people in her native Warrington, and stopped local Conservative politicians from using trans issues for “culture war” attacks, according to Brianna’s local Labour MP.“Most people haven’t necessarily met a trans person. And I think what happened to Brianna really gave...

Labour MP Barry Gardiner, former shadow climate change minister, criticised Starmer’s plan to scale back the £28bn plan Good morning. It will come as no surprise to anyone who has been following Westminster news in recent weeks, particularly if they have been reading the Guardian, to learn that Labour is no longer committed to spending £28bn a year on its green investment plan. The...

Official cites Ukraine war and China threat and raises concern over turnover of top government ministersBritish defence intelligence officials say the UK is closer to a large-scale conflict than at any recent point, as the Middle East crisis intensifies while Russia pursues an expansionist agenda and China develops advanced weapons.One senior official said the secretive 4,500-strong unit was the busiest it had been in...

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...

Families who suffered harmful effects of hormone pregnancy tests not included in Patient Safety Commissioner’s reviewUK ministers are facing a backlash after families affected by the hormone pregnancy test Primodos were excluded from a review about redress for victims of health scandals.A report by the Patient Safety Commissioner says there is a “clear case for redress” for thousands of women and children affected by...

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...

A business department report trumpeting the four-year benefits of leaving the EU does not match the reality faced by companiesOn the four-year anniversary of Brexit last Wednesday, business and trade secretary Kemi Badenoch trumpeted its successes. “The British people’s conviction that the UK would excel as masters of our own fate has paid dividends,” she said, launching a report detailing the benefits.Among the top...

Plans to reform social care and House of Lords are trimmed as Keir Starmer’s party opts for caution ahead of voteLabour is planning only limited first-term reforms of social care and the House of Lords and a smaller green investment plan as part of a stripped-down general election manifesto, as it seeks to make its policies “bombproof” to Tory attacks.Shadow cabinet ministers have been...

Countdown for republicans to potential Irish unification ticks louder as new first minister pledges to ‘serve everyone equally’ at StormontThe chamber’s ornate ceiling remained blue, red and gold, and Portland stone still held up the Stormont edifice, but the beaming Sinn Féin faces declared this was a historic moment for Irish nationalism.Michelle O’Neill became Northern Ireland’s first nationalist first minister in a day of...

Assembly members to gather at Stormont to restore power sharing under Sinn Féin first ministerNorthern Ireland’s devolved government is to reconvene on Saturday after a two-year boycott, with Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill making history as the first nationalist first minister.Assembly members (AMs) are to gather at Parliament Buildings at Stormont at 1pm to restore power-sharing institutions that collapsed exactly two years ago. Continue reading...