Lead News

The secretary for local government has written to all councils to warn that adopting a four-day week for staff puts them at risk of being declared a failing authority, according to reports. Twenty-five councils have discussed a four-day week policy and one, South Cambridgeshire district council, has already moved to the pattern. While councils are free to set their own ...

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has said nearly 10 million people could see their democratic right to vote “ripped away” if proposed delays to some local elections in England go ahead. Sir Ed has written to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to ask if it will investigate what he called “the government’s cavalier approach to our elections”. Last ...

Labour has granted six areas in and around London the power to make larger council tax hikes after reducing their share of government funding. Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster, Wandsworth, Hammersmith and Fulham, City of London, and Windsor and Maidenhead will be allowed to raise rates by more than 5% for two years without local voters needing to sign off the ...

The government has ordered an independent review into foreign financial interference in UK politics in response to what it called the “shocking” case of Nathan Gill, the former leader of Reform UK in Wales. Gill was jailed in November, after admitting to taking bribes for pro-Russian interviews and speeches when he was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP). Announcing ...

The former health minister Andrew Gwynne has dismissed as “idle speculation” reports he could resign his seat as part of an Andy Burnham “coup” against Keir Starmer. Allies of Burnham were reported on Sunday to have identified a shortlist of seats to allow the Greater Manchester mayor to return to Westminster in the new year. One of these seats is ...

The US government’s claims that Europe faces “civilisational erasure” because of mass migration are an attempt to score political points against Muslims, the home secretary has suggested. Shabana Mahmood dismissed the idea that European civilisation and national identities were under threat because of migration and said the UK had managed the challenges of multiculturalism “very well”. Her comments are the ...

Rachel Reeves’s attempts to overhaul Britain’s planning laws have been dealt a blow after a senior lawyer whom she appointed as an adviser decided to leave the government after just four months. Catherine Howard will leave the Treasury when her contract ends on 1 January, despite having been asked informally to stay on indefinitely. Howard is understood to have warned ...

It is a familiar pattern in news coverage of recent months: a horrific, often sexual, crime is committed by an asylum seeker or foreign national. A flurry of headlines and commentary follows, suggesting that men from the country, ethnic group or religion in question have a propensity to commit these types of offence. A common theme was crystallised by the ...

Keir Starmer has said it is “frankly beyond belief” that resident doctors would strike during the NHS’s worst moment since the pandemic, in remarks that risk inflaming tensions with medics. Writing for the Guardian, the prime minister made an outspoken attack on the strikes planned for 17-22 December for placing “the NHS and patients who need it in grave danger”. ...

Leading organisations have criticised the development of the government’s flagship violence against women and girls strategy, calling the process chaotic, haphazard and “worse than under the Tories”. Ministers are gearing up for a policy announcement blitz before the publication of the long-awaited plan next week. Important voices in the violence against women and girls (VAWG) sector have privately accused ministers ...