UK politics

UK politics

"working people"

Badenoch said she inherited a party facing internal problems, with donors considering pulling funding after the loss of 250 seats in last year's general election - the worst result in Conservative history. Speaking to the BBC's Newscast to mark her first year as Conservative Party leader, Badenoch said she spent her first months "working furiously behind the scenes", leading to some thinking her team "were not doing anything".

PA Media Ex-Labour councillor Oliver Steadman has appeared in court facing a charge of blackmail in connection with the alleged 'honeytrap' plot targeting men involved in Westminster politics last year. Mr Steadman, 28, was arrested in June 2024 and later charged with one count of blackmailing then Conservative MP William Wragg in order to get the telephone numbers of up to 12 individuals.

The prime minister has said Chancellor Rachel Reeves will face no further action over the failure to obtain the correct licence when renting out her family home. However, Sir Keir Starmer said it was "regrettable" Reeves did not share all the relevant emails when she first told him about the issue on Wednesday evening. The chancellor initially said neither she nor her husband were aware a licence was needed

The head of British luxury brand Mulberry has called on the government to reinstate VAT-free shopping for international tourists, warning that the "unfair" tax burden is stifling investment and driving wealthy shoppers away from the UK. Chief executive Andrea Baldo said the move would help revitalise Britain's luxury and retail sectors - which have been hit hard by declining visitor spending since the 2021 abolition of the VAT rebate for overseas visitors - while boosting UK manufacturing and tourism revenues.

The council defended the posts, saying they had been viewed by thousands and that nobody else had complained. The posts came after the south-east London authority announced it would be investing 5m to tackle fly-tipping, including the installation of new CCTV cameras, a public reward scheme and tougher sanctions. The council's X and Facebook pages both had a picture of a refuse worker throwing a bag of rubbish into a compactor, with the statement: "We're not putting up with this s*** anymore."

The attack, which began on 1 September, paralysed JLR's key computer systems and halted production across its UK operations. The company was only able to restart limited manufacturing in early October and expects full output to resume by early December. Liam Byrne, chair of parliament's business select committee, has written to Business Secretary Peter Kyle seeking clarification on whether JLR ever requested to use the funds and whether any of the money has reached suppliers. Suppliers have privately voiced frustration at the government's messaging, which appeared to suggest ministers had provided emergency cashflow assistance.

(Image credit: Monmouthshire County Council) A Monmouth couple has been told to install a privacy fence after neighbours complained their "luxury shed" was too large and intrusive. Llinos Ndlovu and her husband built the glass-fronted garden room and decking at the end of their home without planning permission in 2023. Monmouthshire County Council has now approved the structure retrospectively, but only after imposing strict conditions on privacy, lighting and wildlife protection.

Michael O'Leary, the chief executive of the budget airline, hit out at Rachel Reeves, accusing the chancellor of failing to deliver on her programme of economic growth. The UK economy under the current leadership is doomed, he said. The UK badly needs growth, but the way to deliver growth is through selective tax cuts you are not going to grow the UK economy by taxing wealth or by taxing air travel.

systemic weaknesses

Betfred has said it would close all 1,287 of its high street betting shops if Rachel Reeves raises taxes on the industry (Betfred says gambling tax rise in budget will force it to shut all its UK shops, 19 October). What further encouragement can she need? John Saxbee Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire As great as Prunella Scales's character was, I never really cared for Fawlty Towers (Obituary, 28 October).

By electing a Plaid Cymru government able to forge a strong relationship with an SNP Scottish government, we can make our nations' voices heard in Westminster and demand that Wales gets parity of funding and powers with Scotland as the first step towards taking our future into our own hands.

Am I after her job? Am I going to stick the knife between her shoulder blades and steal the crown? No, of course I'm not, the veteran Tory cabinet minister told the laughing audience as he opened the awards ceremony. You know that I'm not. Have I had a snazzy new haircut and lost loads of puppy fat? No. Have I stopped saying aask' and started saying assk'? Am I producing viral vigilante videos? If I was, maybe you would suspect I'm on manoeuvres.

There is discrimination against older people. The big beef Carl Of course the boats should stop. People are dying in the Channel, that's not a good thing. They should have safe, legal routes and be assessed to see if they have a genuine claim. The current debate has been massively overheated by a vocal, well-funded minority position, and it's taken all the compassion out of it.

Almost a million young people are not in education, employment or training. Employers are freezing their hiring plans. Unemployment is at a four-year high. Not all is right in the UK's jobs market, and the outlook is getting worse. Typically it takes a full-blown recession to trigger the type of growth in unemployment that Britain is witnessing today. About 100,000 jobs have been lost from company payrolls in the past year, and the official jobless rate has hit 4.8%, up from 4.1% a year earlier.

The Employment Rights Bill will ensure workers are protected from being sacked unfairly from day one in the job. It will also ban exploitative zero-hours contracts by giving workers a right to a contract which reflects their regular hours.

"You might think this is about Andrew," a senior Whitehall figure wonders out loud. "But put this in your diary as a pivot point in the relationship between Palace and Parliament." Will this royal mess usher in a new era? And despite their conventional refusal to comment, could politicians become quicker to point out the monarchy's flaws, and more willing to speak out?

Research submitted to the UK Parliament has revealed explicit threats to life and the deaths of family members and colleagues directly linked to the Ministry of Defence's 2022 Afghan relocation scheme data breach. Led by charity Refugee Legal Support and assisted by academics from Lancaster and York universities, of the 231 individuals affected by what may be one of the UK's most damaging data protection failures, 49 of them said family or colleagues had been killed in Afghanistan.

The mother of Stephen Lawrence is pressing for the cowardly undercover police officer who spied on her family's campaign for justice to be questioned at a public inquiry. The spycops inquiry has previously ruled that the undercover officer, David Hagan, was too ill to give live evidence, after submissions by his lawyers. But this ruling is to be challenged on Monday by Doreen Lawrence and many victims of covert surveillance who argue that Hagan is a key witness in a crucial issue that is being examined by the inquiry.

The Ministry of Defence's new housing strategy will see improvements made to almost all of its 47,700 homes for military families in what Defence Secretary John Healey said will be the "biggest renewal of Armed Forces housing in more than 50 years". The plan is in response to consistent complaints from serving personnel about the state of their accommodation. In 2022, dozens of members and their families told the BBC they were having to live in damp, mould-infested housing without heating.

There are hundreds of thousands of families in the UK, if not more, with estates worth more than the IHT threshold of £650,000 thanks to accumulated savings, investments, pensions, raises in asset values, such as property, with many owning businesses as well which have significant value.