#labour-party

#labour-party

When Shabana Mahmood joins us on the show on Sunday she'll demonstrate why No 10 picked her for the post of home secretary - the expectation she'd take a tougher line than her predecessor on immigration and that, as her backers want her to be seen, she is a "woman in a hurry". Her plans have already been met with dismay by refugee groups, and taking support away from asylum seekers is not exactly comfortable territory for many in the Labour Party.

"It's not been our finest 24 hours in government," one senior figure in government acknowledged to me, after mudslinging one way and another, some in public, plenty more in private. I have been making loads of phone calls to patch together the anatomy of another bumpy few days for Downing Street: what those close to the Prime Minister hoped to achieve, what ended up happening and where all this leaves them.

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. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground.

The thinktank argues that scrapping youth minimum wage tiers could risk "pricing out" young people from entry-level roles at a time when employers are already scaling back hiring due to rising labour costs.

If we are to succeed in our mission to transform Britain and fight back against Reform, we must be bold and embrace new ideas that put more money back into the pockets of working people. One place we can start is by looking at ways we can abolish the outdated, deeply regressive, and increasingly indefensible council tax system. Created in the early 1990s and still based on property valuations from 1991, it bears little resemblance to the realities of today's housing market.

Crises can liberate governments. Collapses in popularity, huge dilemmas about public spending, foreign policy emergencies, poll surges by opponents and the prospect of losing office: all can persuade even previously cautious administrations to change their direction and rhetoric or simply say more clearly why they are in power. Politicians sometimes enjoy being bolder. Commonly seen as always calculating and never spontaneous, some are in fact relieved to stop filtering their public words and finally speak their minds.

Workers could be charged a fee to take their bosses to court under plans being explored by Labour as it faces pressure from businesses lobbying to water down its landmark changes to employment rights. In a development described by unions as a disaster, sources in Westminster said ministers were looking at reviving a proposal made by the last Conservative government to impose fees on employment tribunal claims.