UK politics: No 10 says Hamas won’t have ‘veto’ over UK recognition of Palestine – as it happened

A pro-Palestine protest in Whitehall earlier this year Photograph: Vuk Valcic/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

5.20pm BST

Afternoon summary

• Downing Street has urged people not to take part in a protest in support of the banned group Palestine Action as police warned they would arrest anyone breaking terrorism laws.

• Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has announced that the police and creim. e commissioner for Leicestershire and Rutland has defected to his party from the Conservatives. (See 11.15am.) At his latest summer news conference on the topic of crime, he also said the police should release information about the immigration status of people who are charged with crimes.

• Kate Forbes, Scotland’s deputy first minister, has said she will step down as an MSP at next year’s Holyrood elections. (See 10.56am.)

• The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, is not telling the truth about the “real failures of 14 years of Conservative government”, the former Conservative prime minister Liz Truss has said.

• Napier barracks, one of the first mass accommodation sites opened to house asylum seekers, will not be closing as planned in the coming weeks, as the government attempts to deal with an influx of small boats arrivals.

• The UK has been left behind in the cryptocurrency boom and is in danger of missing a second wave of demand, according to the former chancellor George Osborne.

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.

4.48pm BST

Farage is wrong, I'm not scared to walk in London after 9pm wearing jewellery, says reporter

Mhari Aurora from Sky News was the reporter who asked Nigel Farage at his press conference this morning the question that prompted him to reply with the claim that she would not dare to walk through London after 9pm wearing jewellery. (See 11.49m.)

In an article for Sky’s website, she says that he is wrong.

I am not afraid to walk in the West End of London after 9pm wearing jewellery.

I have done it many times before and will continue to do so … but perhaps that is because I do not own a Rolex.

But she says that does not mean she is not concerned about the risk of being a victim of crime, and she says that Farage is “tapping into” concerns that voters have.

According to police reports, thefts from a person in London are almost five times the national average, and they’ve been going up since the pandemic.

And the Office for National Statistics (ONS) also notes that thefts outside of the home, eg phone snatching, has increased.

However, possession of weapons has fallen in London by 29% over the last three years.

And according to the ONS, crime in England and Wales is 30% lower than in 2015, and 76% lower than 1995 …

In short, am I right to be more worried that snatch theft and knife crime in London is increasing? Yes, and no.

But Nigel Farage is tapping into voters’ emotions - their feelings that the country is broken …

And the more politicians of all colours tell voters that “the system is broken”, the more voters might start to believe them.