UK Politics

Kemi Badenoch’s spokesman refused to condemn proposals by Donald Trump to “take over” Gaza and expel its citizens to other countries in the region, saying that the Conservative party leader wanted to “see more details of what is being proposed”.

In a briefing with journalists, Badenoch’s spokesman refused repeated requests to distance the party from the President’s suggestion that the US would take a “long-term ownership position” of Gaza, after which Palestinians would have “no alternative” but to leave the country.

Pushed by Byline Times to reiterate the Conservative party’s longstanding support for a two-state solution in the Middle East, Badenoch’s spokesman refused, saying “I’m not going to get into that now”.

He also declined the opportunity to repeat UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s insistence that Palestinians “must be allowed home” to Gaza, saying that “I’m not going to get into the geopolitics of Israel”.

Speaking at an event hosted by Macmillan Cancer Support for World Cancer Day, Wes Streeting said there was a need for DEI policies, after they were criticised by public figures such as the US president, Donald Trump.

Streeting, in conversation with the journalist Nick Robinson, said: “We’ve got to deal with these challenges against the backdrop at the moment, let’s be honest, where equality, diversity and inclusion is under a lot of spotlight and discussion.

“Now, I could get quite a lot of plaudits from quite a lot of people across the country … [If I said:] ‘You know what? NHS, tough times, I’m going to scrap all of those equality, diversity and inclusion people. We’ll save loads of money doing that, and we’ll divert the money into actual patient care’.”

He added: “Except, ask black nurses about their experiences of being bullied in the workplace in an organisation that has had black people in it since it was founded pretty much … Empire Windrush, NHS foundation, same year – that generation built the NHS.

“You look at outcomes: prostate cancer, black men twice as likely to die of prostate cancer than white men, black women three times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. We’ve got some real racial inequalities here.”

Streeting went on to say he believed addressing those challenges was a political fight he was willing to take on, but added that he would “also need the profession to help”.

But he added: “Sometimes there are some really daft things being done in the name of equality, diversity and inclusion, which [have] undermined the cause. For example, there was one member of NHS staff who was merrily tweeting a job ad online and saying part of her practice was anti-whiteness.”

Streeting added: “I just thought: what the hell does that say to the bloke up in Wigan who’s more likely to die earlier than his more affluent white counterparts down in London? We’ve got real issues of inequality that affect white working-class people.”

His comments come after it was announced that NHS England had scrapped a number of pledges, including plans to expand maternal mental health support to at least 66,000 women.

Angela Rayner called Prince Andrew a “nonce” and tried to block him from ever standing in for King Charles, according to a tell-all book on Labour’s rise to power.

The deputy prime minister reportedly fought a behind-the-scenes battle to curb the Duke of York’s influence following his downfall over ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

The Sunday Times published an extract from Get In: The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer, a book by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund, set for release on February 13.

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Ms Rayner was said to be wanting to remove Andrew as one of the counsellors of the state.

She allegedly said: “I'm not going to vote to keep that nonce on… I can't go back to my constituency and say, 'Yeah, I support that'.”

Ms Rayner had also been critical of the duke while in opposition and while an aide said she is not “anti monarchist” she has called for a need for Andrew to not represent the country.

Keir Starmer has decided not to travel to Paris for next week’s international summit on artificial intelligence, despite the presence of other world leaders including Emmanuel Macron, Narendra Modi and JD Vance.

Sources have told the Guardian that the prime minister will not attend the summit, the latest in a series of international AI conferences started by the former prime minister Rishi Sunak last year at Bletchley Park.

Officials say the prime minister, who has been criticised in the past for taking too many foreign trips, will be concentrating on his domestic agenda instead.

But by missing the Paris conference, Starmer risks upsetting the French president and the Indian prime minister, who are co-hosting, and missing out on a chance to speak to some of those closest to the US president, Donald Trump. The US vice-president, JD Vance, is expected to represent the US, but industry sources believe Elon Musk may also attend in a business capacity as the founder of the AI company xAI.

In December, Jamaica tabled a bill to become a republic and oust King Charles III as head of state. Weeks later, Belize removed Queen Elizabeth II’s images from banknotes. These moves are only the latest in a growing trend: Barbados became a republic in 2022, and several other countries are signalling their intentions to follow suit. As Natricia says, these countries are seeking to “shrug off the vestiges of colonialism and establish their own identity as a nation – in terms of culture and history, while addressing the colonial overlays that remain in society”. The footprint of colonialism is evident in the region – including in “our money, the names of roads and some of the laws incorporated from the British legal system at the time”.

Belize not only removed images of the late monarch from its paper currency but it replaced them with pictures of national icons, specifically those who played a role in decolonisation. “Belizeans thought it was important in celebrating their history,” Natricia says. “The heroes they chose led independence from British rule.” There are broader cultural and linguistic shifts, too. Trinidad and Tobago announced a plan to remove a depiction of three ships used by Christopher Columbus from its coat of arms. And there is a push in Jamaica to make patois its official language instead of English, while St Lucia and Dominica have started to integrate Indigenous languages by adding them to the school curriculum.

‘We want to be seen as equals, not ex-colonies’

Archive link: https://archive.is/NjIkK

Suella Braverman has suggested that the UK could become “the first Islamist nation with nuclear weapons”.

The former home secretary said Britain could “fall into the hands of Muslim fundamentalism” and become like Iran.

She made the incendiary comments in a speech to the right-wing Heritage Foundation think-tank in Washington.

Braverman said: “Vice-president JD Vance said at the National Conservatism conference, at which I also spoke in the summer, that the UK was going to be the first Islamist nation with nuclear weapons. I don’t think he was joking.

“Is it an impossibility that 20 years from now it will be the UK, not China or Russia, that will emerge as the greatest strategic threat to the USA?

“Born out of a broken relationship and weak leadership. What happens if the UK falls into the hands of Muslim fundamentalism, our legal system gets substituted for Sharia Law and our nuclear capabilities vest in a regime not too dissimilar to that of Iran today?

“Regardless of whether one thinks that is a realistic outcome, which I do not, should we not have the courage to ask these questions?”

A right-wing priest has been defrocked after mimicking Elon Musk’s controversial salute while addressing a pro-life convention.

Father Calvin Robinson, 39, spoke at the National Pro-Life Summit in Washington D.C. last weekend where he claimed that the U.S. is the “only country fighting for life”.

Robinson concluded his speech by thumping his chest and raising his right hand to the sky. “My heart goes out to you,” he said with a wry smile as he exited the stage.

The priest’s actions – and remarks – appeared to emulate those made by Musk who, at Donald Trump’s post-inauguration rally on January 20, beat his chest and shot his right hand – twice – uttering the same phrase. Musk denies his gesture was a Sieg Heil, or had Nazi connotations.

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Robinson, from Nottinghamshire in England, belonged to the UK Anglican Catholic Church – before he was defrocked and had his license revoked.

“Mr. Robinson had been warned that online trolling and other such actions (whether in service of the left or right) are incompatible with a priestly vocation and was told to desist,” the church wrote in a notice on its website on Wednesday.

“Clearly, he has not, and as such, his license in this Church has been revoked. He is no longer serving as a priest in the ACC.”

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Robinson has been colloquially branded Britain’s conspiracy theorist cleric.

After studying theology at St Stephen’s House in Oxford, he hoped to become a deacon for the Church of England but his application was unsuccessful. He continues to trash the church as being weak, and cowardly.

Robinson become a firm fixture in the UK’s far-right movement and bills himself online as a lead spokesperson for the right-wing populist party UKIP, which was formerly led by Trump loyalist and Reform U.K. leader, Nigel Farage.

Robinson, who describes his background as “half Afro-Caribbean and half English”, previously derided the Black Lives Matter movement as “clearly a con”.

On his Substack, Robinson condemned same-sex marriage as “sacramental sodomy,” urging homosexuals to “repent!”

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Robinson is friends with incarcerated far-right agitator and founder of the now-defunct English Defence League, Tommy Robinson, whom he describes as “a patriot, persecuted for being a working-class hero”.

LONDON (AP) — The BBC has apologized to staff members who felt unable to complain about the conduct of actor and comedian Russell Brand because of his status after an internal review found that concerns about his behavior weren’t handled appropriately.

The investigation by Peter Johnston, the BBC’s director of editorial complaints, identified eight complaints about Brand, including allegations that he had sex on BBC premises and exposed himself in the studio. Only one of those complaints was formally made to management at the time, Johnston found.

“I am grateful to those who have come forward to talk to me and my team and I have apologized on behalf of the BBC to those most directly affected by what I have documented here,’’ Johnston said in a report released Thursday. “The culture of the time undoubtedly influenced what was acceptable/tolerated, but I have found that a number of individuals had concerns about Russell Brand’s behavior which they felt unable to raise then.’’

The BBC launched its investigation after British media published claims by four women that they were sexually assaulted by Brand between 2006 and 2013, at the height of his fame. Brand had two weekly radio shows on the BBC from 2006 to 2008 and worked periodically on a number of short-term projects.

Rwanda has put $1bn of global aid under threat by taking part in the invasion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, has said.

He made the direct warning in a phone call to the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, on Sunday after also speaking to the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, about the crisis.

Lammy said Rwanda received more than $1bn of global aid every year, including about £32m of bilateral UK assistance.

“All of that is under threat when you attack your neighbours, and we are clear that we cannot have countries challenging the territorial integrity of other countries. Just as we will not tolerate it in the continent of Europe, we cannot tolerate it wherever in the world it happens. We have to be clear about that,” Lammy said.

Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF) has dispatched two surveillance planes towards Gaza since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas began, Declassified can reveal.

Zaki Sarraf, a legal officer at the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) told Declassified: “For months, the government has said that RAF planes flying around Gaza are used solely for locating hostages, so why are these flights still happening now that hostilities have paused?”

The first spy flight departed from RAF Akrotiri, Britain’s airbase in Cyprus, at 15:32 and returned at 20:59 local time on 19 January – the day the ceasefire went into effect.

The aircraft turned off its transponders over the eastern Mediterranean, raising questions about precisely what it was doing in the air while the last remaining British hostage, Emily Damari, was being released by Hamas.

The second flight departed from RAF Akrotiri on 25 January at 11:26 local time and returned to base at 17:44, once again turning off its transponders over the eastern Mediterranean as the second hostage exchange was taking place.

Rachel Reeves will say the so-called “Oxford-Cambridge growth corridor” has “the potential to be Europe’s Silicon Valley" in a major speech she will give in Oxfordshire today.

The Chancellor will claim the region offers “huge economic potential for our nation’s growth prospects”.

It comes after cabinet ministers were ordered to ditch policies that could stand in the way of growing the economy.

As part of the delivery of what Ms Reeves will call the “Oxford-Cambridge growth corridor”, she will also touch on funding for East West Rail, a railway line that would connect the cities, as well as a new railway station in Tempsford in Bedfordshire.

She will say the cities are “two of the least affordable in the UK” and existing transport options mean that to travel between them “by train takes two-and-a-half hours” while “there is no way to commute directly from towns like Bedford and Milton Keynes to Cambridge by rail”.

“Oxford and Cambridge offer huge economic potential for our nation’s growth prospects,” she is expected to say.

January 27, 2025

We wrongly said that a study on behalf of Thames Water showed “1 in 12 Londoners is an illegal migrant” (News, Jan 23). In fact the study covered only 7 million people in specific “water resource zones”, not the whole population of London, which is closer to 9 million. 1 in 12 was the highest of a range of estimates for the proportion of “irregular migrants”, but these estimates included some people who are not illegal immigrants, such as those given indefinite leave to remain, as well as some British-born children of migrants with irregular status.

They, of course, haven't corrected the actual article, which shows up in search results. The claim itself if from the Telegraph, who've yet to issue their own correction.

Do you think the UK should seek ties with Europe instead of with the US?

Title is stolen from this London Economic article, but I found the article itself to be pretty vapid so swapped the link for the Best for Britain publication they're referencing.

Best for Britain commissioned a massive new MRP poll which has revealed that every constituency in Britain thinks the Government should prioritise trade with the EU over the USA and other countries.

The poll and analysis of almost 15,000 people undertaken by YouGov on behalf of Best for Britain shows that across England, Scotland and Wales, almost one in two people (46%) would say the EU should be the Government’s top priority when it comes to trade whereas less than half this number (22%) would opt for the US. 4% would think the Government’s focus should be China while 6% would favour another country.
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Clacton, the seat of Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, provided the highest result (30%) for prioritising the UK's trading relations with the USA of any GB constituency. However, even in this constituency the top-placed result was the EU with 33%.

Boston and Skegness received the highest Reform UK vote share in the country at the 2024 election but again, constituents would still favour prioritising the UK's relationship with the EU by 37% compared to 24% for the USA.

US President Donald Trump has said Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has done a "very good job thus far" and that the pair have a "very good relationship".

Asked by the BBC on board Air Force One about his relationship with Sir Keir, Trump added that they would be having a call "over the next 24 hours".

Trump and the Labour leader have met on a number of occasions, including a visit by Sir Keir to Trump Tower in New York during the presidential campaign.

Tech billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk, however, has been strongly critical of Sir Keir and has repeatedly called for his removal from office.

"I get along with him well. I like him a lot," Trump said of Sir Keir.

"He's liberal, which is a bit different from me, but I think he's a very good person and I think he's done a very good job thus far.

"He's represented his country in terms of philosophy.

"I may not agree with his philosophy, but I have a very good relationship with him."

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[Foreign Secretary] Lammy has described his own criticism of the president, made when he was a backbencher, as "old news".

In 2018 he described Trump as a "tyrant" and "a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath" but the foreign secretary has since had dinner with him alongside the prime minister.