Lead News

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has accused Nigel Farage of “fakery” over Reform UK membership numbers, after his party said they had surpassed the Tories in signed-up members. A digital tracker on Reform’s website shows its membership numbers have overtaken the 131,680 figure declared by the Conservatives earlier this year. Badenoch said Reform’s counter was “coded to tick up automatically”. Farage ...

The UK economy had zero growth between July and September, revised official figures show. The revised data comes after a series of disappointing figures including inflation rising at its fastest pace for eight months and the economy unexpectedly shrinking in October. One of the UK’s leading business groups, the CBI, said its latest company survey suggested “the economy is headed ...

This year’s Christmas message from King Charles will be delivered from a former hospital chapel, in a year in which the King has been undergoing cancer treatment. The location for the traditional Christmas Day broadcast is the Fitzrovia Chapel in central London, which once served as the chapel of the Middlesex Hospital. It’s the first time in more than a ...

Tulip Siddiq, a UK Labour Minister and niece of ex-prime minister Sheikh Hasina, has been quizzed by the Cabinet Office propriety and ethics team over an allegation that she and her family members embezzled £4bn(around Tk 60,000 crore) from a power plant project in Bangladesh. The team questioned her on Sunday (December 22), reports The Telegraph. Tulip Siddiq, is facing ...

An estimated four million people in the UK are preparing to spend the Christmas and new year period overseas, according to a travel trade organisation. Abta said Sunday will be the busiest day for departures between Friday and January 2, with Christmas Day the quietest. It identified the most popular destinations for winter sun holidays as the Canary Islands, southern ...

The government has appointed 30 new Labour peers including a string of ex-MPs and Sir Keir Starmer loyalists. The prime minister’s former chief of staff Sue Gray has also been handed a seat in the House of Lords, confirming reports earlier in the week. It comes only two months after she left her role as the prime minister’s chief of ...

  A Labour minister has been named in an investigation into claims her family embezzled up to £3.9bn (Tk 590 billion) from infrastructure projects in Bangladesh. Tulip Siddiq, 42, who as the Treasury’s Economic Secretary is responsible for tackling corruption in UK financial markets, is alleged to have brokered a deal with Russia in 2013 that overinflated the price of ...

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has defended the decision to reject compensation for women hit by changes to the state pension age, arguing that the taxpayer “simply can’t afford the tens of billions of pounds” in payments. He added that “90% of those impacted knew about the changes that were taking place”. However, during Prime Minister’s Questions, Sir Keir was repeatedly ...

The Chinese embassy has told the UK to “stop creating trouble”, after a businessman accused of being a spy for China was banned from the country. The revelations about Yang Tengbo, who denies wrongdoing, and his links to Prince Andrew, have sparked renewed calls for the UK to designate China a threat to national security. The issue poses a dilemma ...

District councils could be abolished and more elected mayors introduced across England under new plans for a major redesign of local government. Ministers are set to publish a paper on Monday outlining plans for mergers in areas where there are currently two tiers of local authority – smaller district and larger county councils – in a bid to streamline services. ...