Lead News

British Steel has announced it is to cut 400 jobs from its worldwide operations.   The company, which employs 5,000 people, said the job losses were part of a “streamlining” process.   Most of the redundancies will be in managerial, professional and administrative roles across its businesses in the UK, Ireland, France and the Netherlands.   The Community trade union ...

London mayor Sadiq Khan has called for a second EU referendum, criticising the government’s handling of Brexit negotiations with the EU. Writing in the Observer, the Labour politician said that with the UK due to leave the EU in six months, it now faced either a “bad deal” or “no deal”.   The debate had also become “more about Boris ...

Neither Tories nor Labour offer a strong leader according to voters, Observer poll finds About two in five voters would be highly likely to vote for a new party in the political centre ground at a future election, a new poll for the Observer has revealed. Just over a third (35%) also say they felt unrepresented by the existing main ...

UK drivers may have to get an international driving permit if they want to drive in some European countries after a no-deal Brexit. The government says that after March 2019 “your driving licence may no longer be valid by itself” in the EU, in its latest no-deal planning papers. It also warns that Britons travelling to the EU may need ...

The Bank of England is set to keep interest rates on hold Thursday and will likely indicate that they won’t be raised again until the uncertainty surrounding Brexit has been resolved.   The bank, which last month lifted its benchmark rate by a quarter point to 0.75 percent to dampen down inflation, has been assuming that the country’s exit from ...

London, Sep 12 : Leading Brexit-supporting lawmakers insisted Wednesday that they aren’t about to topple Prime Minister Theresa May, despite strong opposition to her plan for taking Britain out of the European Union. A faction of May’s Conservative Party opposes her proposal to keep the U.K. aligned to EU rules after Brexit in return for free trade in goods. They ...

Labour leader wins parliamentary set-piece comfortably with peroration that was perhaps one of his best Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn start PMQs by congratulating cricketer Alastair Cook on his long career. Corbyn asks May what the National Farmers’ Union, the Federation of Small Businesses, the National Audit Office, the charity Gingerbread and the Royal Society of Arts have in common? ...

The two suspects in the poisoning of ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter are civilians, not criminals, Russian President Vladimir Putin says. The UK government named them as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, and said they were from Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU.   Mr Putin said his government had found the pair and he hoped they would ...

Labour calls government plans to reduce size of Commons undemocratic The government has laid out its final plans for redrawing House of Commonsconstituency boundaries under a new system that probably would have turned the hung parliament of the 2017 election into a safe Conservative majority, prompting claims from Labour of an “undemocratic power grab”. The plans from the separate boundary ...

Governments are failing to tackle the crisis that causes 1,000 early deaths a day, says damning EU report Air pollution is now “the biggest environmental risk” to public health in Europe but governments are failing to adequately deal with the crisis, the EU Court of Auditors has found. Europe’s air pollution limits are “much weaker” than WHO guidelines – and ...