UK politics

UK politics

James Evans has been removed from the shadow cabinet and had the whip withdrawn making him an independent, Tory Senedd leader Darren Millar has said. Millar said he did so on Tuesday morning "after being informed by James that he was continuing to engage with Reform representatives about the possibility of defecting to the party in spite of his personal assurances on Friday that he had rejected an approach they initiated last week".

Over recent decades ordinary homeowners have increasingly been charged high and escalating amounts of ground rent, leaving them in financial distress and often unable to sell or re-mortgage their homes. Labour made a promise to leaseholders that we would fix this injustice, but ministers are currently subjected to furious lobbying from wealthy investors trying to water this manifesto commitment down.

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

The UK government has delayed publication of its long-promised digital roadmap, a plan it says could eventually help save up to £45 billion of taxpayers' money by modernizing creaking public sector IT. Speaking to MPs last week, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) permanent secretary Emran Mian said the Government Digital and AI Roadmap - meant to improve data sharing across government - was due by the end of last year, but had hit stumbling blocks.

"embarrassing and potentially catastrophic"

Donald Trump's attempt to ransom us over the sovereignty of a Nato ally is an act of economic thuggery that cannot go unanswered. The prime minister's strategy of appeasement has failed. We must show the White House that the UK will not be bullied into submission while our industries are targeted and our sovereign allies are threatened. The government must immediately cancel the 3bn Trump tax' on our NHS.

I'm all for Trump taking out enemies of the West. Maduro, the Iranian regime. But if he falls out with his own allies and leaves America isolated, that, that would be a very bad place to be.

Sir Keir Starmer will hold an emergency press conference on Britain's response to Donald Trump's latest tariff threats, after warning the US president in a Sunday night phone call that the move was wrong. Trump announced on Saturday that the UK would be among eight countries charged a 10 per cent tariff on any and all goods sent to the US from February 1, increased to 25 per cent from June 1, until a deal is reached for Washington to purchase Greenland from Denmark.

West Midlands Police said it had classified the match as high risk based on current intelligence and previous incidents, including violent clashes and hate crime offences that occurred during the 2024 UEFA Europa League match between Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv in Amsterdam. Based on our professional judgement, we believe this measure will help mitigate risks to public safety, the police force said at the time.

Less than six months ago, the US and the EU agreed a deal that was supposed to stabilise transatlantic trade and provide certainty to businesses and consumers. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen came away from President Trump's golf course in Scotland with tariffs of 15% on everything the EU sells to the US - far better than the 30% America had threatened. Along the way, Brussels also prepared a package of tariffs that would come into force if it was unable to reach an agreement with the US.

The response to the 2024 riots in England and Northern Ireland failed to address its root causes and delinked the violence from racism, a thinktank has claimed. A paper by the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) reported that an obfuscation of the causes and consequences of the riots risks legitimising further far-right mobilisation and vigilante violence. It said that what happened has often been reduced to mindless thuggery or violence.

The prime minister was very clear last night that we believe that this decision on tariffs is completely wrong. The future of Greenland is for the people of Greenland and the people of the kingdom of Denmark to determine and for them alone. We've been consistent about that. That is a view that we've expressed to our friends and allies in the American administration.

I think perhaps there is some work to be done in supporting and helping our councils to understand what powers they do have. And how they might use them going forward in this new world - where we are beginning to look quite seriously at proper devolution down to parish council level.

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has insisted Britain is not broken after her former minister Robert Jenrick criticised the party for failing to campaign on that line. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, she said: "Ours is still one of the most successful, resilient and influential countries on Earth," adding that telling voters their "country is finished" only "drags them down". She also insisted that the Conservatives were stronger after Jenrick was sacked, ahead of his defection to Reform.

For Sam Smith, Thursday began as an ordinary day. The Conservative councillor was preparing for a budget scrutiny meeting at the Reform-led Nottinghamshire county council hall, where he is leader of the opposition, when he received a message from long-time friend Robert Jenrick. The MP's message to the Newark Conservative Association's group chat queried what local pubs they could visit to oppose Labour's hike on business rates.

He was secretary of state for international development when he launched an unsuccessful bid to become Tory leader in 2019. Later that year, he resigned from the party to stand as an independent in the London mayoral elections. He co-hosts the podcast The Rest Is Politics and is the author of prize-winning and bestselling books including The Places in Between and Politics on the Edge. His latest is Middleland.