Afternoon summary
For a full list of all the stories covered on the blog today, do scroll through the list of key event headlines near the top of the blog.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham says Reeves should be moved if she does not back multi-billion defence investment
Dan Sabbagh is the Guardian’s defence and security editor.
The head of Britain’s largest trade union demanded that Rachel Reeves be reshuffled or sacked from her job as chancellor if the Treasury continues to hold up a multi-billion defence investment plan.
Sharon Graham, the general secretary of Unite, warned that tens of thousands of jobs were at risk from political dithering and called on ministers to “back British industry,” by signing off on future defence contracts.
She said:
If Rachel Reeves can’t grasp that concept and doesn’t care where things are made, then she should go. Actually, you have to have a vision for Britain. You can’t just be in government, you can’t just say today’s a new day.
She also called on Keir Starmer “to do what he said he would do” in February last year he first promised to increase annual spending on military – to 2.5% of GDP by 2027. Subsequently Starmer promised to increase it further, to 3.5% by 2035 – an extra £30bn in real terms, but few new contracts have followed.
Concerns are most acute for the Leonardo helicopter factory at Yeovil, the sole bidder on a stalled £1bn manufacturing contract. It employs 3,300 people on an average wage of £58,000 a week, but its Italian owner has said it would have to close down unless it was awarded the work before 1 March.
Graham was speaking to the Guardian outside Downing Street where Unite had organised a protest in response to the government’s failure to publish the defence investment plan amid Treasury resistance to its high cost.
“Labour is supposed to be in for workers in the working class. I’m seeing very little evidence of that,” Graham said, arguing that was a problem not just in terms of creating defence jobs but across government.
The defence industrial plan was expected to be published in autumn, and then just before Christmas, but has been delayed to March or April. It is intended to set out funding for £67bn of commitments from last summer’s strategic defence review.
But the Treasury has raised concerns about the affordability of the overall package while the Ministry of Defence has indicated it needs an extra £28bn over the next four years to meet its forecast costs.
Scottish government announces its own grooming gangs inquiry
Libby Brooks is the Guardian’s Scotland correspondent.
The Scottish government has announced it will establish a Scotland-wide grooming gangs inquiry chaired by Prof Alexis Jay, who led the original Rotherham abuse inquiry, after ongoing pressure from opposition parties and survivors.
Justice secretary Angela Constance faced criticism last year for her handling of initial calls for an inquiry to mirror the one ordered by Keir Starmer for England and Wales. Ministers previously said they wanted to gather more evidence but it seems an initial review by Jay has identified sufficient material to merit a full inquiry.
Making the announcement to MSPs at Holyrood today, education secretary Jenny Gilruth said her government sharing the “sense of urgency” felt by survivors. She said:
Announcing an independent public inquiry today will not cure all which has come before, but it is a statement of intent from this government that we will leave no stone unturned in the pursuit of justice for survivors of child sexual abuse.
Reform UK’s Matt Goodwin will not face sanctions over byelection leaflet error
Matt Goodwin, Reform UK’s candidate in the Gorton and Denton byelection, will not face a sanction for leaflets that omitted the party’s imprint, after a high court judge accepted this was due to an inadvertent printing error. Matthew Weaver has the story.
Britain must prepare for militaru conflict within three to five years, defence minister says
Al Carns, the defence minister, has said Britain must prepare for military conflict within three to five years.
Speaking at a Chatham House event, he also said the lack of contact that most people have with the military was a potential problem. He said:
We have never seen a disconnect between the military and our population like we’ve seen today.
Indeed, you are more likely to know a veteran than you are someone serving and, actually, the knowledge about defence and why security matters is actually, I would say, limited.
It sometimes doesn’t resonate or percolate down to all sections of society and that’s quite unique in British history, and it’s for a variety of reasons.
Speaking about when the military would have to be “war-fighting ready”, Carns said:
My view would be three to five years for geographical constrained crisis and the best thing is, if we prepare for that and it doesn’t happen, then we have succeeded because we’ve effectively deterred.
By the way, every time we guess it we get it wrong. But if you look at the some of the reports on what Europe is looking at, I think they are the type of timescales we need to we need to think about.
Carns also said cyberattacks were costing Britain £15bn year, including the targeting of Jaguar Land Rover attack in August which he said represented half the cost of the two-child benefit cap for a year. “That could be articulated as putting 225,000 children into poverty if you really want to monetise it”, he said.
Met apologises to Commons speaker for sharing tip-off with Mandelson’s lawyers
The Metropolitan police has apologised to the Commons speaker for giving Peter Mandelson’s lawyers information pointing to him as the source of a claim that the former UK ambassador planned to flee the country, Pippa Crerar reports.
Labour uses £350m slogan campaign bus in Gorton and Denton to accuse Farage of making 'false promises' during Brexit
Labour is attacking Reform UK in Gorton and Denton today on the basis that Nigel Farage sold “false promises” to voters during the Brexit referendum.
In a stunt which it has also filmed for social media, it has driven a red bus in the constituency with a slogan on its side saying: “Remember the £350m a week for our NHS? You can’t trust our Farage.”
You can’t trust Nigel Farage.
— The Labour Party (@UKLabour) February 25, 2026
He’s got a track record of selling the British people false promises. pic.twitter.com/NVjlQOMsjO
In one sense this is unfair; in 2016 it was Vote Leave that claimed (falsely) that the UK was giving £350m a week to the EU that could be spent on the NHS instead, and it had this slogan on the side of its campaign bus. Farage was not involved in the Vote Leave campaign, and after the referendum he claimed he had never approved of the £350m a week claim and regarded it as a “mistake”.
But Farage did as much as anyone to ensure that Britain did vote to leave the EU in 2016, and there were other claims that he did make about Brexit where the alleged benefits have failed to materialise. It is notable that now Farage does not speak much about that process at all, and he changed the name of his party from the Brexit party to Reform UK.
The Labour advert is also notable because, until recently, Labour has been reluctant to say anything critical of the Vote Leave campaign because it has been worried about offending pro-Brexit Labour supports.
When Morgan McSweeney was Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, he was one of the Labour figures more nervous about sounding anti-Brexit. Now that he has left, the party seems more confident about making the “false promises” argument.
Foreign Office insists Chagos Islands deal still on track, after minister tells MPs parliamentary process has been paused
Ben Quinn is a Guardian political correspondent.
Controversial plans to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius are still on track, the UK government has insisted, after a minister caused confusion by telling MPs that the deal was “paused”.
Hamish Falconer, a Foreign Office minister and former diplomat, was speaking on Wednesday as the deal came under increasing pressure from opposition parties in the UK and from Donald Trump.
In a bombshell intervention last month, the US president said that Keir Starmer was “making a big mistake” by handing sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius in exchange for continued use by the UK and US of their airbase on one of the islands, Diego Garcia.
Speaking in response to an urgent question put foward in the Commons by the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage (see 2.31pm), Falconer said:
We have a process going through parliament in relation to the treaty.
We will bring that back to parliament at the appropriate time. We are pausing for discussions with our American counterparts.
The government scrambled to contain the confusion created by Falconer’s comments, which were immediately reported by the BBC, with sources in the Foreign Office saying that he had “misspoke.”
A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “There is no pause. We have never set a deadline. Timings will be announced in the usual way.”
However, the intervention was immediately pounced on by Conservative shadow foreign secretary, Priti Patel, who is currently in the US meeting political figures there about the deal, which she described as “an appalling act of betrayal.”
She said:
I am in Washington lobbying senior administration figures on this issue and I am pleased the UK Government has been forced to pause the legislation.
But ministers must go further: now it is time for Keir Starmer to face reality and kill this shameful surrender once and for all before it does any more damage.
Speaking earlier, Falconer had made it clear that the UK government was taking notice of the intervention on social media by Trump, who went against the grain not just of what he had previously said but also against US government’ policy.
Trump accepted the deal last year, criticised it in January, subsequently described it as the “best” deal Starmer could make in the circumstances, and then described it as a “terrible deal” and a “big mistake” last week.
Falconer told MPs: “The view of the United States president may well have changed but the treaty has not.”
Farage used the UQ on Wednesday to force the issue onto the agenda on Wednesday after he had accused of “performing Maga stunts” with a claim that the British government stopped him from travelling to the Chagos Islands on a humanitarian mission.
The Reform UK leader said he had flown to the Maldives to join a delegation bringing aid to four Chagossians who are trying to establish a settlement on one of the archipelago’s islands to protest against Britain’s plans to transfer control of the territory to Mauritius.
In a video posted on X on Saturday, Farage claimed the UK government had blocked his trip to the territory, which cannot be entered without a valid permit.
Wearing a striped polo shirt and sunglasses around his neck, Farage said:
The British government are applying pressure on the president and the government of the Maldives to do everything within their power to stop me getting on that boat and going to the Chagos Islands.
Updated
Role of Scotland’s top law officer questioned after ‘bombshell’ over Peter Murrell charges
Serious doubts have been raised about the dual role of Scotland’s top law officer after it emerged that the first minister was informed of criminal charges against Peter Murrell nearly a year before they were made public. Libby Brooks and Severin Carrell have the story.
Farage claims Maldives about to make their own counter-claim at ICJ for Chagos Islands sovereignty
Nigel Farage has claimed that the Maldives are set to issue a counter-claim to the international court of justice over the Chagos Islands in “just a few days”, the Press Association reports. PA says:
The Reform UK leader visited the Maldives, an independent archipelagic nation in the Indian Ocean, over the weekend and posted a video on X, formerly Twitter, claiming the UK had stopped him going to the Chagos Islands.
He claimed during an urgent question in the Commons that the Maldives are “upset” about the UK government’s plans to hand over sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.
The deal, which the government argues secures operation of a joint UK-US base on the island of Diego Garcia for at least 99 years, will also allow Chagossians to return to the outer islands.
Farage said: “I can tell you this from my trip to the Maldives at the weekend – something I hadn’t realised, and I don’t know whether the government knows it either.
“It is the Maldives that has the historical links with the Chagos Islands, both in terms of trade, in terms of archaeology. In fact, the islands, all the French did was rename the islands from Maldivian language.
“There is no basis, historically, culturally, in any way, for Mauritius to have a claim on those islands.
“And the Maldives are upset for two reasons. One, there has been great stability in this region for decades, and what happens with this treaty, if it goes through, is you finish up with a turf war going on between India and China in the region, and that indeed has already started.
“And I wish to inform the government that we are just a few days away, in my opinion, from the Maldives issuing a counter-claim to the international court of justice to say, if anybody has the right to the sovereignty of those islands, it is the Maldives and not Mauritius.
“And I would urge you to pause all of this.”
No 10 declines to say when changes to student loan system might be announced
At the post-PMQs lobby briefing, the PM’s spokersperson declined to say when the government might be announcing changes to the student loan system. (See 12.07pm.) “I won’t get ahead of the spring statement,” he said, when asked if there might be an announcement in the statement, which is next week.
He said work on this was continuing, but declined to give any more details or a timeframe, saying “we’ll update when we have one”.
According to ITV’s Robert Peston, Peter Mandelson is adamant that he and his lawyers were told by the police that the lord speaker was the person who tipped them off about Mandelson being a flight risk, not the Commons speaker – who has admitted being the source (see 11.49am). Peston thinks there was simple misunderstanding. He says:
A source close to Mandelson says “police were emphatic it was the Lords’ speaker” and his “lawyers checked specifically”.
Presumably the arresting officers were told the tip-off came from “the speaker” and assumed it must be the Lords because Mandelson was a lord.
PMQs - snap verdict
One of the rules of PMQs is that there is a correlation between the quality of the exchanges here (never high at the best of times) and at the imminence of an election. With the polling booths about to open, the crude sloganising gets even more extreme. Today was a good example.
Kemi Badenoch started quite well. At the weekend she announced a plan to cut the interest graduates pay on their student loans. She was responding to increasing media interest in student loans in recent weeks (triggered by the freeze in the loan repayment threshold coming into force in April). But ministers have noticed this too, and they are already looking at the issue, as Will Hazell explains in a story in the i today which includes this wonderful quote.
One source with knowledge of discussions said that Treasury officials were “beavering away trying to work out if there is a different combination of the interest rate and the threshold level that makes increasingly influential young graduates stop shouting at them”.
Badenoch got Starmer to concede that the government is considering changing the loan rules. She taunted him quite effectively over Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, saying before the general election “graduates, you will pay less under a Labour government.” And she was a bit more explicit than she has been in the past about disowning the policy failures of the past government. (See 12.14pm.) But her “paedo protection party” jibe was crude and excessive, and towards the end she had lapsed into low-grade insults. Another problem was that, in exchanges that were relatively routine and unmemorable, Starmer had the best line; this came when he responded to her boast about Tory MPs being under new leadership by making the point that some of them were – because they now have Nigel Farage as their boss.
Towards the end Starmer described Badenoch as “utterly irrelevant”. In some respects that is just regular abuse but, as the Gorton and Denton byelecton illustrates (see 9.11am), two-party politics in the UK has been upended and increasingly that sounds like a structural complaint about the way PMQs is organised.
All the focus is on the Starmer/Badenoch exchanges because she is the only MP who gets six questions. But today it was obvious that Starmer couldn’t wait to finish with Badenoch because he wanted to move on to what mattered to him much more, which was blasting Reform UK and the Greens – a particular concern because of the byelection, but also a fundmental Labour party strategic priority.
Updated
This is from Matt Goodwin, the Reform UK candidate in Gorton and Denton, responding to what Keir Starmer said about him at PMQs.
I see Keir Starmer is attacking me at PMQs for being “divisive”
A reminder
This by-election is being held because Keir Starmer’s MP slagged off the good people of Gorton & Denton and even joked about pensioners dying
Vote Reform
Get Starmer Out
Put Gorton & Denton First
Calvin Bailey (Lab) say the Greens want to break up Nato. Does the PM agree that they are betraying our security and “becoming Putin’s useful idiots”.
Starmer says the Greens want to pull out of Nato, and negotiate the nuclear deterrent with Putin. And Reform have a former leader in Wales who took Russian bribe. He says Reform and the Greens are both “weak on Nato and soft on Putin”.
Roger Gale (Con) says he asked the PM some months ago why, as DPP, he did not bring charges against Mohamed Al Fayed for rape. He says two dossiers were submitted to the CPS. When will people be charged for helping Fayd.
Starmer says hundreds of thousands of files go in to the CPS every year. He says he does not know when charging decisions will be taken.
Stephen Gethins (SNP) urges Starmer to campaign in Scotland on the government’s record.
Starmer says the SNP used to sit in the third party benches until the 2024. But they don’t now, because they lost so many seats.
Robbie Moore (Con) asks about a Labour councillor in Keighley who he says was responsible for a horrific assault.
Starmer says he will look into this straight away and give Moore an answer
Irene Campbell (Lab) asks about phasing out the use of animals for medical research. She says alternative research methods are increasingly available. She asks for an immediate ban on the use of dogs in these experiments.
Starmer says the government has a strategy to encourage the use of alternative methods.
Adam Dance (Lib Dem) says there has been a 250% increase in potholes in Somerset. He asks for fairer funding for rural areas so they can maintain their roads.
Starmer says the government wants to fix the crumbing roads it inherited from the Tories.
Imran Hussain (Lab) says the incident at Manchester Central mosque, where armed people entered last night, shows attacks on the Muslim community are becoming more frequent. He attacks “that lot over there”, apparently referrring to Reform UK, and says politicians and the media should stop flaming hate against Muslims.
Starmer says he agrees on the need not to relent in the fight against anti-Muslim hatred.
Paul Kohler (Lib Dem) calls for an inquiry into the sexual offences of Mohamed Al Fayed. He says that is the UK equivalent of Epstein.
Starmer says these offences must be propery investigated.
In response to a question from John Slinger (Lab), Starmer condemns the Green party’s policy on legalising drugs. That would lead to drug use “running rife”. He says, as the father of a 17-year-old, he finds the idea that in a few months’ time, when he turns 18, his son could be sold heroin “disgusting”.
Nigel Farage goes next, and he asks about the Chagos Islands.
Starmer says Farage “has neither the decency or the backbone” to condemn the death threat to an MP, and to sack the individual responsible. That shows Reform are just offering “grievance and division”. He says Matt Goodwin, the Reform candidate in Gorton and Denton, says people who are not white cannot be British. He urges voters to reject Goodwin.
UPDATE: Farage said:
For a government that is full of human rights lawyers, within and without, why do the opinions and human rights of indigenous Chagossians not matter to him at all?
And Starmer said:
[Farage] has neither the decency nor the backbone to condemn a death threat to a member of this house, whichever party they are in. He doesn’t have the decency or the backbone to condemn it or to sack the individual.
Updated
Fleur Anderson (Lab) asks if the government will protect the Equality Act.
Starmer says he is proud of the act. Reform UK want to rip it up, he says. They would take away the rights of workers. And it would even remove rights from bereaved parents.
And he says Reform UK must also condemn the Reform UK councillor who posted a message repeated a death threat to an MP. The councillor should be sacked.
Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, says Gordon Brown has highlighted how Jeffrey Epstein used UK airports to traffick women. He says he agrees there should be an inquiry. Does he agree flight logs should be released?
Starmer says the police inquiry must be allowed to conclude first.
Davey asks about William Blake house, a care home for adults with profound disability. It faces closure because a manager embezzled money. He says the families involved have put forward a rescue plan. Will the PM back that?
Starmer says he will organise a meeting on this.
UPDATE: Davey was referring to this story by Patrick Butler.
Updated
Starmer says next wave of Pride in Place funding will focus on smaller areas
Luke Akehurst (Lab) asks about the Pride in Place programme. He asks the government to consider an additonal wave for Pride in Place funding to help smaller deprived places.
Starmer says the next wave will invest in 169 places, focusing on smaller areas affected by deprivation.
Badenoch says youth unemployment is at its highest rate for year. Starmer is not governing because he cannot take decisions. She says the government is “useless”.
Starmer says Badenoch has shown why she is “utterly irrelevant”. All she does is carp from the sidelines, and talk the economy down, she says.
Badenoch says Starmer is doing nothing to help students. Starmer has 411 MPs and they have no imagination. She asks if Starmer will make another U-turn to fix the student loan system.
Starmer says interest rates are down and inflation is down.
Businesses have welcomes Labour’s plan, he says.
He says the Tories’ plan is “miserable”.
Badenoch suggests student loans one of 'old Tory policies that don't work' that she is ditching
Badenoch says Starmer is only talking about student loans because she has raised it.
She says she wants to ditch “old Tory policies that don’t work”, while Starmer wants to keep them.
She refers to the Bank of England, and says Rachel Reeves used to work there “in customer services” (which is not true).
Starmer says, if Badenoch wants to ditch failed Tory policies, it is a very long list. And she should start with the word sorry.
UPDATE: Badenoch said:
I’m willing to ditch old Conservative policies that don’t work, while he wants to keep them.
Updated
Badenoch says Labour is getting smaller too, and she says one Labour MP has left because he was arrested on child sex offences. It is no wonder some Labour says they are described as the “paedo protection party”.
She says on Monday the schools minister said the government froze the student loan repayment threshold because of pressures on the government.
She claims the govenrment is taking from students to give to “Benefit Street”.
Starmer says under the Tories student loan repayment thresholds were frozen for 10 years.
Badenoch used to like talking about the economy, he says. So he takes her back to that subject.
Updated
Badenoch says her party is under new leadership. Lots of Labour MPs wish the same was true in their party.
She says Starmer won the Labour leadership promising to get rid of tuition fees.
She asks if he agrees student costs have gone up.
Starmer says many Tory MPs are under new leadership – in Reform.
And she has made her party smaller, he says.
He says this government is tackling the cost of living.
Starmer says government will look at ways of making student loan system 'fairer'
Kemi Badenoch says student loans have become a debt trap. Will the PM cut interest rates on student loans?
Starmer says Badenoch is in effect admitting that the Tories “scammed the country”. He says the government will “look at ways to make it fairer”.
He says energy bills are coming down by £117.
UPDATE: Starmer said:
I have to say I was glad to learn that the leader of the opposition has finally admitted that they scammed the country on this, and that applies to everything they did in government.
We inherited their broken student loans system We’ve already introduced maintenance grants to improve the situation, which they scrapped, and we will look at ways to make it fairer, and we will do other things within the economy to help students.
Updated
Rachel Hopkins (Lab) asks the PM if he agrees that supporting a Palestinian-led government, and upholding international law in Gaza, is essential.
Starmer does agree, and says the government supports a two-state solution. Hamas must decommission their arms. And Israel’s block on aid supplies is “unconscionable”, he says.
Edward Argar (Con) says a former PM said U-turn if you want to, the lady’s not for turning. She was a leader of principle. This government is no stranger to the U-turn. So, he says, will the PM U-turn on business rates?
Starmer says it is good to see Argar back after his health scare. He says, as a health minister, Argar presided over record waiting lists. And he was economy minister under Liz Truss.
Keir Starmer starts by paying tribute to the courage of Ukrainians four years into the war. He says the UK’s support to Ukraine “will never falter”.
He congratulates Team GB for their performance in the Winter Olympics.
Commons speaker Lindsay Hoyle says he was responsible for tip-off to police that led to Mandelson being arrested
Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons speaker, has revealed that he was the person who told the police that he had heard Peter Mandelson was planning to leave the country. Mandelson says this tip-off, which he says was wrong, led to him being arrested by the police, rather than being allowed to attend an interview voluntarily.
Mandelson told friends that the tip-off to the police had come from the lord speaker, Hoyle’s opposite number in the Lords, Michael Forsyth.
Hoyle told MPs today:
Members will be aware of comments in the media regarding the arrest of Lord Mandelson.
To prevent any inaccurate speculation, I’d like to confirm that upon receipt of information, that I felt it was relevant I pass this on to the Metropolitan police in good faith, as is my duty and responsibility.
It is regrettable this rapidly ended in the media. As this is a live investigation, members will understand … it would not be appropriate to make any further comment, and I’d like to caution members from doing so.
UPDATE: Here is the clip.
Updated
Starmer faces Badenoch at PMQs
PMQs is starting soon. Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.
After PMQs there are two urgent questions: from the Reform UK leader Nigel Farage on the Chagos Islands, and from the Lib Dem MP Manuela Perteghella on the passport rules for dual citizens.
And then there will be two ministerial statements: from Steve Reed, the housing secretary, on the Grenfell annual report; and from Blair McDougall, a business minister, on the future of the Post Office.
Lib Dems call for waste crime to be National Crime Agency priority as figures show serious flytipping up 11% in past year
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has published figures showing that local authorities in England dealt with 1.26m flytipping incidents in 2024/25 – 9% increase on the previous year.
And there was an 11% increase in incidents involving a “tipper lorry load” amount of rubbish. There were 52,000 of these, up from 47,000 in 2023/24. Defra said these alone cost councils £19.3m.
The Liberal Democrats have said the figures show why serious waste crime should be made a strategic priority for the National Crime Agency
Tim Farron, the Lib Dem environment spokesperson, said:
These figures show the equivalent of 142 monster landfills a day took place, confirming what communities across the country know all too well – our beautiful countryside is being used by criminal gangs as their personal landfill.
For far too long, waste gangs have pocketed millions in illegal earning, poisoning our environment and our health without consequence. The Liberal Democrats are demanding an end to this environmental vandalism.
We want serious waste crime to become a strategic priority for the National Crime Agency. It’s the NCA who should take over investigations from the Environment Agency in the most serious cases and stop these criminal waste gangs in their tracks.
The Lib Dems have tabled an amendment to the crime and policing bill in the Lords to make waste crime an NCA priority. Farron said Labour and the Tories should support it.
Updated
I’m afraid we are not able to have comments open today. I’m sorry about that.
Chagos Islands deal 'best placed on ice for moment', former Labour aide Ben Judah says
Ben Judah, a former aide to David Lammy when he was foreign secretary who has been vocal in the media recently defending the Chagos Islands deal, told Sky News this morning that he thought the treaty was “best placed on ice for the moment” because of President Trump’s recent comments criticising it. But he said “all logic” led to it being approved eventually.
He said:
The Labour government wanted to make sure that the Trump administration backed the deal, waited to proceed until it had taken the deal through a highly, highly extensive interagency process … getting everybody behind it.
And those big institutions of American power backed it. And they felt that they had a deal with Donald Trump.
What’s happened since is that the global right has been playing politics and has mounted a highly emotional campaign against, losing territory, handing over territory. And it’s got President Trump, who sees himself as the leader of the global right, and he’s very sensitive to that.
Ben Walker is a New Statesman data journalist who runs an election forecasting model Britain Predicts and he has had a go at forecasting the result in Gorton and Denton. The model is not a poll; it uses polling data, but then adjusts the figures on a constituency by constituency basis taking into account a range of factors. It has performed well in the past but, in his write-up of his final forecast, Walker says the result here is “anyone’s guess” because the Greens, Reform UK and Labour are so close.
Walker thinks there could be just a few hundred votes between the party coming first an the party coming last.
Under the bonnet there are also turnout assumptions. The model expects 37,300 votes to be cast, up from 36,600 in 2024. In practice that puts the Greens on course for 11,500 votes, Reform 11,300, and Labour 10,900. A few hundred votes separate first from third.
There have actually been three polls published from Gorton and Denton but the first one, a Find Out Now one, has been mostly ignored because it only had a sample size of 143 (too small to take seriously) and the company says it was not involved in the decision to release the figures to the media. But, for the record, here is a chart with all three sets of polling results.
In the light of today’s Gorton and Denton polling (see 9.11am), it is worth remembering what Philip Cowley, another politics professor, describes as his law of byelection analysis.
I feel Thursday could be a test of Cowley’s Law of By-Election Analysis: that too much attention is paid to who wins.
Also, Cowley’s rarely used Supplementary Law of By-Election Analysis: too much attention can be paid to who comes third.
Next EU-UK summit likely to happen in July, later than expected, EU commissioner says
Lisa O’Carroll is a Guardian correspondent covering trade.
The next EU-UK summit will probably not happen until July, Maroš Šefčovič has said.
It means the summit will take place two months after it was expected and could indicate that negotiations over a new farm food agreement involving sanitary and phytosanitary checks, along with negotiations of the carbon border mechanism, are taking longer than expected.
Speaking to the European parliament, Šefčovič, the EU commissioner for trade, also confirmed that the UK and EU are intensifying engagement with calls expected between the commissioner and Europe minister Nick Thomas-Symonds every fortnight.
Sources said this was to allow political resolution to avert any looming roadblocks that emerge at official level.
One source said it was to ensure there was no repeat of last November’s “embarrassing” collapse of talks between the UK and the EU over joining the EU’s Safe defence programme.
European parliament president Roberta Metsola is in London today while business secretary Peter Kyle is in Brussels
Byelection coverage in the UK would probably be much improved if MPs were only allowed to resign, or die, in constituencies with a politics professor active on social media living nearby. Fortunately, in Gorton and Denton, there is one on hand. Prof Rob Ford, one of the nation’s leading psephologists, lives in the constituency next door, he once wrote a book with the Reform UK candidate (they have since fallen out), and he has been writing at length about the contest on his Substack account.
His latest post was published last night, and it includes analysis of the latest poll. (See 9.11am.) It is well worth reading in full, but here is an extract from his conclusion.
Whoever wins on Friday, the result is likely to confirm a number of trends. Labour are sinking, populist parties are rising on the right and on the left, and as those parties are becoming viable and competitive in ever more seats, elections are becoming even more unpredictable. Prospects have never looked bleaker for the mainstream parties who have dominated British politics for so long - both may soon fall out of the top two in national polling, both face annihilation in the May local and devolved elections, and as the tide of revolt rises everywhere there are no safe seats left for either party’s MPs or local councillors ….
Whichever party emerges victorious on Friday, we may come to see this as the day Labour’s electoral Tinkerbell dies. And if voters’ beliefs about who can and cannot win are changed by this weeks events, then the pace of change may be about to accelerate once again. Hold on to your hats.
Energy bills will fall by £117 for millions of households in Great Britain from April
Annual energy bills will fall by £117 for millions of households from April after Rachel Reeves’s plan to cut £150 a year from bills was partly foiled by rising costs, Jillian Ambrose reports.
Gorton and Denton campaign hits final day with new poll suggesting Greens, Labour and Reform UK all possible winners
Good morning. It is the last full day of campaigning in the Gorton and Denton byelection and a new poll is out which suggests – that it is too close to call, and that the Green party, Labour and Reform UK all have a credible chance of winning.
The data is a bit more specific than that. Opinium has done the poll for Byline Times and Forward Democracy and the figures show a dead heat amongst all voters (the Greens and Labour on 28%, Reform UK on 27%), but the Greens (30%) marginally ahead of Labour and Reform UK (both on 28%) amongst people likely to vote.
This is the second poll suggesting the Greens are marginally ahead. An Omnisis poll at the end of last week had the Greens on 33%, Reform UK on 29% and Labour on 26%. But constituency polling can be very erratic, and most of these leads are within the margin of error, and so the only reliable takeaway with regard to the result is – it’s too close to call.
But there is another takeaway that is reliable. In what traditionally has been a safe Labour seat, there are two insurgent, challenger parties that are competitive. We are used to byelections where one outsider party is doing well, but here Reform UK and the Greens are both potential winners. This is further confirmation that the two-party system has completely broken down, and we are now in an era of multi-party politics.
There is also another, apparently solid finding in the Opinium polling. Adam Bienkov reports in his write-up for Byline Times:
The poll suggests that tactical voting could easily swing the contest, with anti-Reform voters significantly more likely to switch to the Greens than to Labour.
Around two thirds (66%) of those Labour and Liberal Democrat voters surveyed said they would be prepared to switch to the Greens if they were the party most likely to beat Reform, compared to just 41% of Green and Lib Dem voters who said they would switch to Labour to defeat Farage’s party.
Commenting on the poll, James Crouch, head of policy and public affairs at Opinium, said:
The Gorton & Denton by-election is shaping up to be an incredibly tight and unpredictable three-way race, with this latest poll also suggesting the Greens could benefit more than Labour from tactical voting in the final days of the campaign.
We will hear more about this at PMQs.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.
Afternoon: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is on a visit where she is talking about the Ofgem price cap announcement.
And the government is publishing its courts and tribunals bill today.
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