Lead News

Zack Polanski has been elected leader of the Green Party of England and Wales by a landslide, signalling a clear shift to the left for the party. The London Assembly member beat Green MPs Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns, who were standing on a joint ticket, by 20,411 votes to 3,705. In his victory speech, Polanski promised to build a ...

The government is changing the law to stop the Sentencing Council issuing new guidelines to courts in England and Wales without the explicit approval of the justice secretary. Under the new rules, Shabana Mahmood will have veto powers over any new sentencing guidance issued by the independent public body, the Ministry of Justice said. The change comes after a public ...

The UK government did not do its own analysis of the cost of the biggest reorganisation of councils in England for decades, the BBC has learned. Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said “a significant amount of money” could be saved by merging councils in 21 areas into single authorities. Rayner’s department, the ministry of local government, based its cost estimates ...

Sir Keir Starmer is replacing the top civil servant in his Downing Street office. Principal private secretary Nin Pandit runs the prime minister’s team at No 10 and has only been in the role for ten months. She is the third senior staff member the prime minister has appointed and later let go, after chief of staff Sue Gray left ...

The government is planning an overhaul of the asylum appeals system as it tries to cut the number of migrants staying in hotels while they await a ruling. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said she was taking practical steps to end unacceptable delays, with a new body, staffed by independent adjudicators, to be established. The government has been under increasing pressure ...

People convicted of crimes in England and Wales could find themselves barred from going to pubs, concerts and sports matches under changes to sentencing rules being planned by the government. The reforms would allow courts imposing non-custodial terms to have the power to hand out driving and travel bans too, and order offenders to remain in specific areas. Justice Secretary ...

London Office : Sultan Mahmud Sharif, president of the UK chapter of the Awami League and a key organiser of the Liberation War from abroad, has died in London. The 85-year-old passed away on Saturday at a hospital in the British capital. He is survived by two daughters and several grand children. Born on Jan 16, 1941, in Sarukhali village ...

Reform UK is pledging mass deportations of asylum seekers who arrive in the UK in small boats. The party’s leader – Nigel Farage – has told The Times that there is a “massive crisis” in the UK, which threatens national security and could lead to public disorder. Under the plans, people could be arrested on arrival, detained on disused RAF ...

Labour has lost almost 200,000 members in the past five years, according to the party’s latest annual accounts. The party’s membership has been steadily falling since Sir Keir Starmer became leader in April 2020, from a peak of 532,046 at the end of 2019. Despite the party’s landslide election victory last summer, it shed another 37,215 members over the course ...

More than half of the council areas with asylum seeker hotels are fully or partly controlled by Labour, according to BBC analysis of figures released by the government. On Tuesday, Conservative-controlled Epping Forest District Council won a temporary injunction in the courts to stop 140 asylum seekers living at the Bell Hotel in Epping. The ruling could hinder the government’s ...