Closing summary
This live blog will be closing shortly. Thank you for reading the updates and commenting below the line.
You can keep up to date with the Guardian’s UK politics coverage here.
Here is a summary from today’s blog:
The Conservatives are “sliding into the abyss”, Keir Starmer has said, as he described Nigel Farage and Reform as the main challengers to his Labour government. “I do think that the Conservative party has run out of road,” Starmer said. “Their project is faltering. They’re in the decline. They’re sliding into the abyss. It’s very important, therefore, that we say that and identify that.”
During a hastily arranged visit to a glass factory in St Helens, the prime minister castigated Farage as a fake defender of working people and compared him to Liz Truss as someone whose fiscal plans would crash the economy. Reform’s commitment to “completely unfunded spending” was, Starmer said, “Liz Truss all over again” and “Liz Truss 2.0”. Starmer’s series of attacks on Farage included telling the public they cannot trust the Reform UK leader.
Starmer also took personal aim at Farage for arguing that he spoke for working people, contrasting the public school-educated Reform leader’s upbringing with his own background. “Unlike Nigel Farage, I know what it’s like growing up in a cost of living crisis,” Starmer said. “I know what it’s like when your family can’t pay the bills, when you fear the postman, the bills that may be brought.”
He also condemned Farage for saying Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) “deserved” to go bust after a controversial marketing rebrand. He said: “I would challenge him to go to JLR, stand in front of the workforce and tell them that his policy for JLR is they should go bust. I [would] very much like to see the reaction.”
When Starmer was asked about whether he would back moves to end the two-child limit on some benefits, reportedly being considered, he avoided the question twice before giving a slightly non-committal answer. He said: “I think there are a number of components. There isn’t a single bullet, but I’m absolutely determined that we will drive this down, and that’s why we’ll look at all options, always, of driving down child poverty.”
Asked about Starmer’s comments, Zia Yusuf, the Reform chair, said Starmer’s speech showed it was “panic stations at Labour”. He told Sky News: “Look, Keir Starmer is panicking because his awful government is now trailing Reform by a staggering eight points in the latest YouGov poll.” He also accused Labour of resorting to “their magic money tree” to increase spending beyond manifesto commitments.
A second Liberal Democrat MP has said they have changed their mind over the assisted dying bill and will vote against it at the next Commons stage, in another sign of a wider, if so far slight, ebbing away of support for the measure. In an email to constituents, Brian Mathew, the Melksham and Devizes MP, said that while he had backed the bill at its second reading vote, in April, scrutiny of the plans had left “several concerns I feel have been inadequately answered”.
Jobcentres will no longer force people into “any job” available, the employment minister has said, promising there will be long-term, personalised career support for those losing out due to welfare cuts. Alison McGovern said she was ending the Conservative policy under which jobseekers were obliged to take any low-paid, insecure work and that the service would now be focused on helping people to build rewarding careers.
The government is “serious” about the rules which water companies must follow, Emma Hardy has said in response to fines imposed on Thames Water of £122.7m, Speaking at a reservoir, the water minister told Times Radio the penalty was the “largest fine there ever has been on record” in the sector. She said: “This is a government that is serious about enforcement. For years, water companies have been allowed to get away with poor behaviour, and we’ve said under this government that is not going to happen.”
Twenty-two new settlements in the occupied West Bank represent “a deliberate obstacle to Palestinian statehood” by Israel, a Foreign Office minister has warned. Hamish Falconer said the UK “condemns” the decision, which Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz described as “a strategic move that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel”.
The UK has said it wants to accelerate negotiations to conclude a trade deal with Donald Trump in the wake of the US court ruling that the sweeping tariffs he imposed on imports from more than 60 countries were illegal. A UK government spokesperson played down the US court ruling on Thursday plainly indicating it would continue to negotiate despite a technical opening to walk away from the deal.
The health secretary, Wes Streeting, has urged doctors in England to vote against industrial action as the British Medical Association (BMA) ballots resident doctors, formerly known as junior doctors, for strike action that could last for six months. Writing in the Times on Thursday, Streeting said: “We can’t afford to return to a continuous cycle of standoffs, strikes, and cancellations … Strikes should always be a last resort, and I don’t think they are in anyone’s interest today.”
The Hamilton byelection campaign is rapidly evolving into a head to head battle between Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, and Nigel Farage – at least in the proxy war being fought on social media. Sarwar has posted increasingly combative videos challenging the Reform leader to a debate while Farage, who is due to make a very rare appearance in Scotland next week, has shot back by again suggesting Sarwar is biased against white people.
Farage is “introducing poison into politics”, the prime minister said, as he suggested a campaign video produced by Reform UK for the Hamilton byelection was divisive. The ad – which the SNP and Labour have demanded be removed by Meta – shows clips of Sarwar calling for more representation of Scots with south Asian heritage, although he did not say he would prioritise any group.
The UK faces “disintegration” and will become “less prosperous and secure” if it takes a pick-and-mix approach to international law, the attorney general has said. In a speech on Thursday, Richard Hermer launched a defence of international law and multilateral frameworks which “have kept us safe since 1945”.
The British arm of a US contractor that profits from testing whether some people in the UK should receive disability benefits has paid £10m in dividends to its investors. Maximus, a Virginia-based business, reported a 23% rise in pre-tax profit for its UK arm, from £23.6m to £29.1m, in its financial year to the end of September, accounts lodged at Companies House show. Its revenue rose 2%, from £294m to £300m.
The Scottish Conservatives have accused Holyrood’s presiding officer of “blatant bias” after she evicted Douglas Ross, the party’s former Scottish leader, from the chamber for disrupting first minister’s questions (FMQs). Alison Johnstone, who was a Scottish Greens MSP before her election as presiding officer, told Ross to leave the chamber, and banned him from Thursday’s parliamentary proceedings, after he barracked John Swinney during FMQs.
The House of Lords watchdog has launched an investigation into a Conservative hereditary peer who admitted he “erroneously” made claims last year for travel expenses he did not incur. He is the fifth peer to face an inquiry after Guardian reporting into the upper house.
Shadow local government secretary Kevin Hollinrake added that he “can understand” why Keir Starmer is “trying to basically aim his fire all around him”. Hollinrake told Sky News on Thursday: “The other danger the prime minister’s got is from his own backbenchers – there’s hundreds of his own backbenchers who’re very dissatisfied in that he’s doing right now. So I can understand, he’s trying to basically aim his fire all around him.”
A former British ambassador to Egypt has called for the Foreign Office to caution against travel to the country amid fears British nationals face an increased risk of arrest. John Casson, who was British ambassador to Egypt between 2014 and 2018, described the country as a “police state” which is “violent and vindictive”, when he spoke on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday.
Former military leaders are urging the UK government to widen its definition of national security to include climate, food and energy measures in advance of a planned multibillion-pound boost in defence spending. There are also calls to counter the possible “weaponisation of geoengineering” – hostile actors using geoengineering techniques to manipulate weather patterns to cause extreme conditions.
A French court has ordered electoral officials to restore a British woman’s pre-Brexit right to vote in local elections, triggering calls for a renewed push for a bilateral treaty on electoral enfranchisement in each other’s countries.
A drought has been declared in north-west England as reservoir levels dwindle. Hosepipe bans could follow, the Environment Agency said, though this is a matter for water companies, which have been directed to follow their drought plans.
The government has ordered the building of two reservoirs, the first to be built in England for more than 30 years. The environment minister, Steve Reed, has awarded the status of “nationally significant” to two new reservoir projects in East Anglia and Lincolnshire and ordered that they go ahead. These will be the first to be built since 1992.
Updated
The Scottish Conservatives have accused Holyrood’s presiding officer of “blatant bias” after she evicted Douglas Ross, the party’s former Scottish leader, from the chamber for disrupting first minister’s questions (FMQs).
Alison Johnstone, who was a Scottish Greens MSP before her election as presiding officer, told Ross to leave the chamber, and banned him from Thursday’s parliamentary proceedings, after he barracked John Swinney during FMQs (see 1.01pm BST).
After a party spokesperson accused her of “blatant bias” and favouritism to other parties, Ross told BBC Scotland he “struggle(d) to accept she is being neutral” and claimed Scottish National party and Green MSPs were treated differently.
It was “unprecedented”, Ross said, for someone to be sent out without a prior warning, and said he want to meet Johnstone to discuss the incident. He added:
I have serious questions about the conduct of the presiding officer.
Johnstone has repeatedly warned Ross in particular about his interjections during previous FMQs that he was breaching parliamentary rules. Her order to him to leave seemed carefully prepared. She also named two other Scottish Tory MSPs for sedentary barracking during an at times rowdy session.
Updated
.png?w=600)
