UK News

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 ...

Britain warned Russia on Wednesday that it was ready to deal with any incursions into its territory after the spy ship Yantar was detected on the edge of UK waters north of Scotland, reports AP. Defense Secretary John Healey said the Russian vessel had directed lasers at pilots of surveillance aircraft monitoring its activities. He described it as part of ...

Britain will drastically reduce protections for refugees under plans to overhaul its asylum system, the Labour government said. The measures were announced on Saturday as Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces mounting pressure over irregular migration in the face of soaring support for the hard right. “I’ll end the UK’s golden ticket for asylum seekers,” Interior Minister Shabana Mahmood declared in ...

US President Donald Trump said on Friday he would likely sue the BBC next week for as much as $5 billion after the British broadcaster admitted it wrongly edited a video of a speech he gave but insisted there was no legal basis for his claim, reports Reuters. The British Broadcasting Corporation has been plunged into its biggest crisis in ...

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has decided against raising income tax rates at the Budget later this month. In recent weeks, Reeves had given strong indications she would increase the rates – a move that would have broken Labour’s election manifesto promise not to raise “the basic, higher or additional rates of income tax”. However, as first reported in the Financial Times, ...

Allies of the prime minister are making it clear he would fight any challenge to his leadership from Labour MPs. There are fears from those loyal to Sir Keir Starmer that his job might be under immediate threat, perhaps as soon as shortly after the Budget in a fortnight’s time. Critics say it is evidence that Downing Street is “in ...

Reform UK has said it will no longer co-operate with a BBC documentary about the party following a row over how a speech by US President Donald Trump was edited. The BBC had commissioned an outside production company, October Films, to make the programme, which was due to air in January. The company was involved in the Panorama documentary about ...