Closing summary
Downing Street has denied there has been a U-turn on UK government policy on Iran after Britain’s deputy prime minister suggested this morning that the UK could take part on strikes on Iranian targets. Royal Air Force jets could legally strike Iranian missile sites being used to attack British interests in the Middle East, David Lammy said in a BBC interview earlier today.
David Lammy has said it is an “absolute travesty” that details were leaked from a top secret national security meeting on the US-Israel attacks on Iran and has called for an investigation. There were reports last weekend of cabinet splits at a national security council meeting, which is protected by the Official Secrets Act, over allowing the US to use British bases for the strikes against Iran.
Royal Air Force jets could legally strike Iranian missile sites being used to attack British interests in the Middle East, Lammy also said this morning. The deputy prime minister stressed that F-35 and Typhoon jets were currently only shooting down missiles and drones fired by Iran at allies in the region.
The Foreign Office said a second charter flight bringing stranded Britons back from Oman had taken off. Further flights are expected in the coming days and more than 160,000 British nationals have now registered their presence with the Foreign Office in the region.
Keir Starmer has held a call with the king of Bahrain in which the prime minister had agreed that operational teams would would together on plans for jets in the coming days. Reuters reports that Starmer told the king of Bahrain that four jets the UK is deploying to Qatar could be used to help defend the kingdom from Iranian missile and drone strikes against Gulf states.
Police have released Peter Mandelson from his bail conditions after deciding he was not a flight risk, the Guardian has learned. Sources say the Metropolitan police have decided to drop the conditions they applied after arresting the former cabinet minister on suspicion of misconduct in public office last month, though he remains under investigation.
Nigel Farage is to meet Donald Trump for dinner at Mar-a-Lago tonight, where he says he will discuss the Chagos Islands deal. Attending a ‘Save Chagos Boat Party’ yesterday, the Reform UK leader said he would be flying to Florida to dine with the US president on Friday, GB News reported.
The UK won’t pay compensation to Mauritius in the event the deal to hand over sovereignty of the Chagos Islands fails, the Mauritian prime minister has said. In an interview with a local newspaper, and first picked up by Sky News, PM Navin Ramgoolam said that he was considering legal action to ensure the deal is ratified, saying the delay had already blown a hole in his country’s budget.
Malcolm Offord, the multimillionaire leader of Reform UK in Scotland, has confirmed he will contest the Scottish parliament seat of Greenock and Inverclyde in May’s Scottish parliament elections. A competition yachtsman and a former Conservative peer and junior minister, Offord said he was born in Greenock, the largest town in the seat, and believed it was a microcosm of Scotland and of the problems Reform UK wanted to tackle.
The Green Party has today announced that their membership has grown by more than 2,000 a day, over 15,000 in a week, since their historic byelection victory in Gorton and Denton going from 200,000 members to over 215,000. The increase in membership comes on the back of a good week for the party. In a YouGov poll earlier this week, the party overtook Labour and only two points off Reform UK.
Tory peer Lord Chadlington said he will retire from the House of Lords and quit the Conservatives after a report recommended he should be suspended from the upper chamber for 12 months over a Covid-era PPE deal. The House of Lords Commissioner for Standards found the peer breached the code of conduct over his role in assisting a subsidiary of a company called SGHL, of which he was non-executive chairman and a shareholder, to secure PPE contracts.
The home secretary has defended her plans for asylum reform after one backbencher said she was mimicking Donald Trump and another claimed it could lead to a Windrush-style scandal. Shabana Mahmood announced her plans on Thursday, including an end to permanent refugee status and the removal of government support from asylum seekers who are deemed not to need it or who break the law.
Children may be forcibly removed from the UK in handcuffs to “overcome noncompliance” as part of new proposals Home Office is considering to send more asylum seeker families back to their home countries. Since coming into office, the government has pledged to deport more migrants and has increased both voluntary and enforced returns, although some of those who have left the UK voluntarily did so without informing the Home Office.
Axel Springer, the owner of Politico and Business Insider, is to acquire the Telegraph after tabling a £575m deal that has scuppered a rival deal from the owner of the Daily Mail. Springer, which also owns Europe’s biggest newspaper, Bild, and the daily Die Welt, has agreed an all-cash deal for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph.
Former Labour deputy prime minister John Prescott’s son has joined the Green party, according to Sky News. David Prescott is understood to have joined the Greens in October 2025, a year after his dad died.
Police have released Peter Mandelson from his bail conditions after deciding he was not a flight risk, the Guardian has learned.
Sources say the Metropolitan police have decided to drop the conditions they applied after arresting the former cabinet minister on suspicion of misconduct in public office last month, though he remains under investigation.
Mandelson was arrested at his London home in late February as part of an investigation into whether he leaked Downing Street emails and market-sensitive information to Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and child sex offender. Mandelson has denied any wrongdoing.
He was arrested after a tipoff from the Commons speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, that he was planning to flee to the British Virgin Islands.
