Early evening summary
Keir Starmer and his Danish counterpart, Mette Frederiksen, have agreed that Nato should improve efforts to deter Russian aggression in the Arctic. They spoke by phone about Ukraine, and Greenland, and in its readout, No 10 said:
The prime minister thanked Prime Minister Frederiksen for her strong support at the Coalition of the Willing meeting in Paris on Tuesday.
Coalition partners had made good progress in Paris, the leaders agreed.
Turning to Denmark, the prime minister reiterated his position on Greenland. Both leaders agreed on the importance of deterring Russian aggression in the High North and that Nato should step up in the area to protect Euro-Atlantic interests.
The leaders looked forward to speaking again soon.
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.
Updated
Many councils given option to delay elections in May will let them go ahead, survey suggests
Shortly before Christmas the government announced that 63 councils in England where elections were due to be held in May will be given the option of delaying them. These are all council areas affected by local government reorganisation (new unitary councils are being set up in places where people still elect a county council to manage some services, and a district council to manage others) and the government is responding to claims that postponing the elections will free up resources needed for the reorganisations.
The Daily Telegraph has been calling round to find out which of the 63 councils will request a delay, and which won’t. The final decision will be taken by ministers, but they have said they will be minded to allow elections to be postponed if councils request that. And the Telegraph has produced this chart showing showing what the current plans are.
The results show that that councils are divided, with eight of them surveyed saying they will delay elections, but 19 saying they will let elections going ahead. The others have not decided yet.
But, highlighting the fact that Tory and Lib Dem-led councils seem more committed to elections going ahead than the Labour ones, the Telegraph has written up the story with the intro: “Labour is poised to postpone elections in 22 areas as Reform UK continues to ride high in the polls.”
