UK News

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer will give his backing to the chancellor’s Budget in a speech on Monday, and commit the government to going “further and faster” on pro-growth measures. He will say Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s statement will help to alleviate cost of living pressures, lower inflation and ensure economic stability. It comes as the Treasury faces questions over whether ...

Zarah Sultana has accused leading figures in the new party she is founding with Jeremy Corbyn of carrying out a “witch hunt” to purge left-wing activists. Sultana boycotted the first day of the founding conference of the project, currently operating under the name Your Party, after several members who also belonged to the Socialist Workers Party were expelled. Party officials ...

Asylum seekers will be banned from taking taxis to medical appointments after it was revealed the Home Office spends about £15.8m a year on the service. From February they will have to use alternative transport such as buses, no matter how urgent their medical needs. The government, however, has so far rejected pleas to give asylum seekers free access to ...

A low-paid carer from Ghana has cancelled all the benefits she is legally entitled to, including the disability allowance one of her children receives, owing to fears about her immigration status after the policy changes announced by the home secretary. The radical changes to legal migration announced by Shabana Mahmood on 20 November will penalise those who are living and ...

The leftwing party formed by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana has revealed a shortlist of names for its members to pick from: Your Party, Our Party, Popular Alliance and For The Many. Ahead of its first conference in Liverpool this weekend, the party is asking its 50,000 members to choose what it should be called, with the result to be ...

Labour MPs have said they believe Keir Starmer’s leadership is safe until at least the May elections, after a budget that avoided any major damaging measures but which few MPs believe will revive the party’s fortunes. More than a dozen previously loyal MPs told they did not believe the budget would shift the fundamentals required for the party to beat ...

Keir Starmer is facing backbench anger after ministers abandoned plans to give workers day-one protection against unfair dismissal, a U-turn that breaches the Labour manifesto. MPs including a former minister who spearheaded the employment rights bill with the former deputy leader Angela Rayner have voiced concerns over the climbdown announced by the government. Ministers have axed the proposal to remove ...

Labour leaders in Edinburgh and Cardiff sought credit for the most progressive measures in Rachel Reeves’ budget on Wednesday, pinning their hopes for next year’s critical elections on a package that increases funding for Scotland and Wales by nearly £2bn. That funding boost and the abolition of the two-child limit for universal credit recipients were seen as a relief in ...

Rachel Reeves targeted Britain’s wealthiest households with a £26bn tax-raising budget to fund scrapping the two-child benefit policy and cutting energy bills. On a chaotic day that involved key details of her budget accidentally being released early by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the chancellor defended the measures, saying she was “asking everyone to make a contribution to repair ...

Two peers are set to be suspended from the House of Lords for breaching rules, including providing parliamentary services in return for “payment or reward”. Former Army chief Lord Richard Dannatt and businessman Lord David Evans of Watford face suspensions of four and five months respectively. The House of Lords’ standards watchdog launched separate investigations into the two men following ...