Closing summary
This blog will be closing shortly. Thank you for reading the updates. More of the Guardian’s UK politics coverage can be found here.
Below is a summary from today’s live blog:
Kemi Badenoch has apologised for the “bloodbath” of the local elections in an op-ed piece on Saturday for the Telegraph. The Conservative party leader wrote: “I’m deeply sorry to see so many capable, hard-working Conservative councillors lose their seats. They didn’t deserve it – and they weren’t the reason we lost.” She added that the local election results had shown “the scale of the work needed to rebuild trust in the Conservative party”.
Reform UK will find out there are “no simple answers” to local public finances and have to make “difficult choices” after the party surged in local elections, a senior Tory MP said. Speaking to GB News, Richard Fuller, shadow chief treasury secretary, said it was now up to Nigel Farage’s party to see if they could deliver in the areas where they had won council seats and mayoral polls.
Keir Starmer has said he wants “national renewal” and that “change on that scale will take time”, in a Saturday op-ed for the Times. The prime minister insisted there was “tangible proof that things are finally beginning to go in the right direction”, although he said he was not satisfied with where the country was. Starmer said he was “acutely aware that people aren’t yet feeling the benefits”.
Nigel Farage hailed his party’s “unprecedented” results in the local elections. In a post on X on Saturday, the Reform UK leader wrote: “In postwar Britain, no one has ever beaten both Labour and the Tories in a local election before. These results are unprecedented.”
Labour MP Rachael Maskell has urged her party to scrap winter fuel and welfare policies that she said are pushing voters away. Maskell suggested that voters shunned her party in local elections because it had failed to live up to the values the public expects from a Labour government. The York Central MP told BBC Breakfast: “People went cold last winter and that’s not what a Labour government should be doing.”
Assisted dying is about the “human cost” and not pounds and pence, Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP behind the bill, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. An impact assessment into the terminally ill adults (end of life) bill was published on Friday, exactly a fortnight before the next Commons debate on the proposed new law. It set out estimates for how many people might apply and go on to have an assisted death, as well as potential costs of the service and reduced end-of-life care costs. Leadbeater said the bill would provide the “most robust piece of legislation in this area in the world”.
The MSP behind the bill to legalise assisted dying is dropping proposals to allow 16 and 17-year-olds to end their lives with medical assistance. Liam McArthur said he would raise the minimum age in the assisted dying for terminally ill adults (Scotland) bill to 18.
Shadow chief treasury secretary Richard Fuller insisted Kemi Badenoch would still be the party’s leader in a year’s time after the Conservatives lost more than 600 councillors in local elections. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Fuller also ruled out a future pact with Reform UK on a national level.
Keir Starmer congratulated Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese on his election victory on Saturday. In a statement shared on X, Starmer said: “Congratulations to Anthony Albanese on your election win. The UK and Australia are as close as ever – which goes to show that long-distance friendships can be the strongest.”
A newly elected Reform UK councillor said Durham county council would be “getting the auditors in” right away to slash spending in areas like net zero and green initiatives. “We’re getting the auditors in to see … actually what those jobs are, and if they’re good value for money, and if they’re not, well, the answer is, ‘Yeah, goodbye’,” Darren Grimes, a Durham councillor and former GB News presenter told the BBC’s Today programme. It followed comments made yesterday by Farage in which he warned council staff working on diversity or climate change initiatives to seek “alternative careers”.
Ed Davey said that the Conservatives were “on their last innings”, as he joined Wiltshire Lib Dem group leader councillor Ian Thorn, local councillors and campaigners at the Harnham recreation ground in Salisbury to play cricket. The Lib Dem leader was celebrating his party becoming the largest on Wiltshire council in the local elections.
The cramped conditions of Victorian prisons in England and Wales are limiting the rehabilitation opportunities for thousands of offenders, an official watchdog has said. As the Guardian launches a visual investigation into the state of Victorian prisons in inner cities and towns, the chief inspector of prisons, Charlie Taylor, said 19th century jails could also be “incredibly noisy and distressing” for autistic people.
Football matches and concerts have better security than some jails, the national chair of the Prison Officers’ Association (POA) told the Times. Staff who are faced with inmates obtaining illicit items have to deal with prison bosses who are “not up for the fight”, Mark Fairhurst said. Overcrowding and violence were among his key concerns, he said.
Headteachers are taking legal action against Ofsted, England’s schools watchdog, over fears that its new inspection regime is “even worse than before” and likely to harm the mental health of school leaders. The National Association of Head Teachers said it had lodged a claim for a judicial review against Ofsted “over the potential impact of their inspection proposals” and for inadequate consultation over its new system of grading schools.
A Syrian grandmother who is dying of cancer has been given permission to come to the UK to spend her final days with the grandchildren she has never met, after a Home Office U-turn. The government had wanted to bar Soaad Al Shawa, who has liver cancer and has been given just weeks to live by doctors, from travelling to spend her last days with her daughter Ola Al Hamwi, son-in-law Mostafa Amonajid and their three children aged seven, five and one. Al Shawa has only been able to communicate with her grandchildren on video calls.
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For 13 years, Tell Mama has been the government-funded not-for-profit tasked with recording anti-Muslim hate crime and helping victims get justice.
For its pains, staff faced death threats from the far right, a risk so serious it necessitated an office change at the height of the hate. There have been critics too within Britain’s Muslim community, who, according to the Tell Mama leadership, were intolerant of the organisation’s tolerance.
“Throughout the 13 years, people have been kind of making up what Tell Mama does,” said Iman Atta, who has been the organisation’s director since 2016. “They claim that we’re Zionists because we work with Jewish communities, or we’re promoting pedophilia because we work with LGBT groups,” she added.
Most recently, questions have been raised about how the organisation spent public money, collated its data, and whether it had become too close to the previous Conservative government, which signed off on its funding.
This latest challenge has been existential.
On 1 April, Atta wrote to Wajid Khan, the new Labour minister for faith, to reject a further six months of funding from the government, citing a strained relationship with his department and the stress caused to staff by “malicious campaigns” some of which “emanated from individuals and organisations” chasing the funding that Tell Mama has enjoyed.
It means that, at a time of soaring bigotry, there is now no government-funded group carrying out anti-Muslim hate monitoring in the UK and this is expected to be the case into the summer.
Atta said Tell Mama would continue to do its work and look for funds from elsewhere but it fully expects to pare back its services.
'Never seen it so bad': National chair of Prison Officers’ Association voices concerns on prison overcrowding and violence
Football matches and concerts have better security than some jails, according to the national chair of the Prison Officers’ Association (POA), reports the PA news agency.
Staff who are faced with inmates obtaining illicit items have to deal with prison bosses who are “not up for the fight”, Mark Fairhurst said. With overcrowding and violence among his key concerns, he told the Times:
Why on earth we haven’t got body scanners at the gate to randomly put people through, like they do at an airport, I have no idea.
I’ve seen better security at concerts and football matches than I have going into prisons.
Unfortunately, drugs are rife within our prisons. Illicit items, mobile phones, drugs, weapons – they are rife within our prisons because managers are very reluctant to lock down prisoners in order for staff to search thoroughly each and every area of the prison.
Fairhurst said that night-time drone deliveries are routinely getting through and staff fear guns may soon get in.
Last year, the government released thousands of prisoners early in a move to tackle the overcrowding crisis.
In March, justice secretary Shabana Mahmood said “we simply cannot build our way out of the prisons capacity crisis” as she opened HMP Millsike that holds about 1,500 inmates. The category C prison in East Yorkshire, which is the size of 39 football pitches, is a step towards the government’s target to create 14,000 extra prison places by 2031.
Fairhurst also told the newspaper:
I’ve never seen it so bad. I’ve never seen it so overcrowded and I’ve never seen it so violent.
If we had to lock down a wing or an area day after day after day to get rid of mobile phones, weapons and drugs, the staff on the frontline are up for that.
At the moment, there’s a lot of people getting appeased because the people in charge of our prisons are not up for the fight.
Fairhurst also called for secure airspace around prisons, warning that “my biggest fear is (that) it’s only a matter of time before a firearm is delivered to a cell window”.
His comments come as the number of assaults on staff in adult prisons in England and Wales per year reached its highest level in a decade.
According to the PA news agency, a Ministry of Justice spokesperson said:
This government inherited prisons in crisis – overcrowded, with drugs and violence rife – but we are gripping the situation and taking action.
We are building 14,000 new places by 2031 and reforming sentencing so our prisons never run out of space again. We are also bolstering security to stop more contraband entering jails. And we have strengthened vetting – including for temporary staff – to root out those who fall below our high standards.
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John McDonnell is the independent MP for Hayes and Harlington. He was shadow chancellor for Labour from 2015 to 2020.
The response from Labour spokespeople so far to the loss of Runcorn and Helsby – and to the election results as a whole – has been especially tin-eared. There doesn’t seem to be any understanding of the deep-seated emotion in the reaction of Labour supporters to the party’s behaviour in government over the past 10 months. There used to be talk of the need for emotional literacy in politics. What we are witnessing is a staggering level of emotional illiteracy.
Labour supporters feel deeply that their party has turned its back on them. It’s not just that they feel they are not being listened to. It’s that the Starmer and Reeves government is doing things that they believe no Labour government should ever do.
After 14 years of enduring year after year of austerity under the Conservatives, there was such a collective sigh of relief in getting rid of the incompetent, corrupt and brutal Tories. There might not have been much in the way of inspiring politics from Keir Starmer in the run-up to the election last July, but at least we had a Labour government.
The problem now is that, at times, the government is unrecognisable as a Labour government. This isn’t the traditional argument about whether the Starmer administration is behaving like old Labour or New Labour. It’s whether it’s Labour at all in the eyes of people who have supported us or would want to support us.
In case you were wondering (or missed) how the big parties fared in the local elections, then my colleague Peter Walker has a handy summary for you:
Kim Leadbeater said those behind the assisted dying bill for England and Wales are “checking for coercion at every level of this process”, reports the PA news agency.
The bill has undergone significant changes since it succeeded in an initial vote in the Commons in November. The high court safeguard has been dropped and replaced by expert panels, while the implementation period has been doubled to a maximum of four years for an assisted dying service to be in place, should the bill pass into law.
The proposed legislation would allow terminally ill adults in England and Wales, with fewer than six months to live, to apply for an assisted death, subject to approval by two doctors and a panel featuring a social worker, senior legal figure and psychiatrist.
The impact assessment published on Friday said the total number of assisted deaths is estimated to range from between 164 and 787 in the first year of the service to between 1,042 and 4,559 in year 10.
The establishment of a voluntary assisted dying commissioner and three-member expert panels would cost an estimated average of between £10.9m to £13.6m per year, the document said. But it said it had “not been possible” to estimate the overall implementation costs at this stage of the process, which could include IT, recruitment and training and could begin to kick in within 12 months of the bill getting royal assent.
MPs will gather for a debate on 16 May in the House of Commons for the bill’s report stage, during which members are expected to vote on further amendments. If time allows on that date, MPs could also vote on whether to approve the bill at third reading – its final stage in the Commons – and decide if it is then sent to the House of Lords for further scrutiny.
Voting is according to conscience, so MPs do not vote along party lines, and the government has said it is remaining neutral as a whole.
Health secretary Wes Streeting, who confirmed last month that he still plans to oppose the bill at the next vote, said last year that there were “choices and trade-offs”, adding “any new service comes at the expense of other competing pressures and priorities”.
It has been suggested some MPs who supported the bill last year could change their stance when it returns for a further vote, after the change to the high court safeguard.
Leadbeater did not concede that support for her bill was cooling, reports the PA news agency.
She said:
I’m actually having conversations with colleagues who voted against at second reading, and are now considering the new legislation that they’ll be presented, and thinking about potentially voting for this because of the additional safeguards that have been added. But it’s absolutely right that all colleagues are taking this extremely seriously.
Kim Leadbeater has said her assisted dying bill for England and Wales would provide the “most robust piece of legislation in this area in the world”. She added:
And that does come with a cost of setting it up, but also we know that there would be savings associated with having this model in place as well.
An impact assessment into the terminally ill adults (end of life) bill was published on Friday, exactly a fortnight before the next Commons debate on the proposed new law.
The assessment estimated that assisted dying could cut end-of-life care costs by as much as an estimated £10m in the first year and almost £60m after 10 years. It noted that reducing those costs “is not stated as an objective of the policy” but some have expressed concerns that this could put pressure on people to end their lives, reports the PA news agency.
Katherine Sleeman, a palliative care professor at King’s College, said the numbers are not a “precise prediction” of what will happen.
Speaking to the BBC’s Today programme, Sleeman said:
Of course, legalisation of assisted dying could lead to cost savings … because costs of care in the last months of life in particular are very, very high. And obviously, if someone isn’t living those last months of life, then costs will be lower.
But in terms of the precise figures, I think we just need to be aware that they are estimates and come with a range around them.
Dr Gordon Macdonald, chief executive of Care Not Killing – which is opposed to a change in the law, said the document “confirms that changing the law will save money … exactly as we have seen in other jurisdictions which have introduced state assisted killing, placing pressure on vulnerable terminally ill people to end their lives”.
Bishop of London, Dame Sarah Mullally, said it was “chilling reading” and said any change in the law that would put vulnerable people at risk rather than working to improve access to palliative care must be opposed.
She said:
It is crude to see these cost savings set out in this way, and it is easy to see how numbers of this nature could contribute to someone feeling that they should pursue an assisted death rather than receive care.
Each human life is immeasurably more valuable than the money that may be saved through their premature death.
The MSP behind the bill to legalise assisted dying is dropping proposals to allow 16 and 17-year-olds to end their lives with medical assistance, reports the PA news agency.
Liam McArthur said he would raise the minimum age in the assisted dying for terminally ill adults (Scotland) bill to 18.
If it becomes law, it would give people at the advanced stage of a terminal illness the option of requesting help to end their life. As it stands, the bill would apply to those who are 16 years old or older and who have been resident in Scotland for at least a year.
However, McArthur has now said he would raise the minimum age requirement. He said:
I’ve considered this matter very carefully and reflected on both the evidence provided to the health committee and assisted dying legislation in place in other countries.
In other jurisdictions that have changed the law to allow dying people access to the choice of an assisted death, such as the US, Australia and New Zealand, 18 is the age from which terminally-ill adults become eligible.
On balance, I now feel that this would be most appropriate for Scotland.
I anticipate this being presented to my parliamentary colleagues at stage two and urge them to vote in favour of the general principles of the bill so we can begin the important work of refining the bill and making sure it’s the most compassionate, safe and suitable law for Scotland. Our dying people deserve no less.
First minister John Swinney said last year the age threshold of 16 was a “very significant issue in my mind” that would have to be “wrestled with”.
MSPs will vote on the bill on Tuesday 13 May. It will be the third time Holyrood has voted on whether assisted dying should be introduced, with previous bids to change the law having fallen at the first hurdle.
Similar legislation to legalise assisted dying in England and Wales is also being voted on by MPs at Westminster.
Last week, Holyrood’s health committee took a neutral stance over whether MSPs should vote for the general principles of the bill. However, it did say parts of the legislation would need“ further consideration” if the proposals pass and ultimately become law, reports the PA news agency.
“These include issues around human rights, coercion, eligibility criteria, provision of assistance, self-administration and conscientious objection for healthcare workers,” health committee convener Clare Haughey said.
In their report, MSPs said “safeguards” in the bill could be “strengthened” with independent oversight, such as by an independent review panel or by giving the chief medical officer a monitoring role.
Care Not Killing, a campaign group against the bill, said the “scrutiny process of the bill has been wholly inadequate”. Chief executive Gordon Macdonald said:
With seven of the 10 members of the health committee having signed up to support the bill when it was first proposed, it raises significant questions about the rigour of the scrutiny process.
Dr Miro Griffiths, spokesperson for the Better Way campaign, said:
Palliative care doctors, psychiatrists, disabled people’s organisations, experts in the care of older people and others have cautioned that a change in the law would inevitably lead to abuses against the most vulnerable.
No number of safeguards could rule out coercion of patients through subtle pressure applied behind closed doors.
He added:
When politicians have debated this issue in the past, they have always concluded that the risks of changing the law make it too dangerous to pursue. We’d urge MSPs to heed experts’ concerns and vote against Liam McArthur’s bill at stage one.
Thank you for all your comments below the line today. Just to let you know though, comments will be closing shortly at 2pm.
A Syrian grandmother who is dying of cancer has been given permission to come to the UK to spend her final days with the grandchildren she has never met, after a Home Office U-turn.
The government had wanted to bar Soaad Al Shawa, who has liver cancer and has been given just weeks to live by doctors, from travelling to spend her last days with her daughter Ola Al Hamwi, son-in-law Mostafa Amonajid and their three children aged seven, five and one. Al Shawa has only been able to communicate with her grandchildren on video calls.
The family, who now live in Glasgow, fled Syria in 2015. They had lost their baby after a bombing at their home in Damascus and were unable to take Al Hamwi’s mother with them.
The Home Office rejected an application for a refugee family reunion made after the terminal cancer diagnosis, which Al Shawa received towards the end of last year. The family appealed and a judge in the first-tier tribunal of the immigration court agreed in April.
The family were overjoyed and relayed the news to Al Shawa, who began to make preparations to come to the UK. But they were devastated when the Home Office sought permission to appeal against the judge’s ruling; a move Al Hamwi said was “breaking my heart”. The further appeal may have taken about eight months – time doctors do not expect Al Shawa to have.
But now the Home Office has told the family’s lawyer it is withdrawing its application, that the grandmother can come to the UK, and that it will expedite the issuing of a visa. The family are hoping it will be processed at a centre in neighbouring Jordan this weekend and then Amonajid will collect Al Shawa her from there. Refugees are not permitted to return to the country they fled, so Al Hamwi and Amonajid cannot re-enter Syria to be with Al Shawa there.
Keir Starmer has congratulated Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese on his election victory.
In a statement shared on X, Starmer said:
Congratulations to Anthony Albanese on your election win. The UK and Australia are as close as ever – which goes to show that long-distance friendships can be the strongest.
I know that we will continue to work together on our shared ambitions, including on trade, investment and energy, working towards a better life for working people in the UK and Australia.
Our collaboration on defence, especially the Aukus programme, will continue to grow, and as fellow steadfast supporters of Ukraine we will continue to stand together against Putin’s illegal war for as long as it takes.
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Not one to miss a photo opportunity and a pun, Ed Davey has been out playing cricket today while claiming that the Conservatives are “on their last innings”.
The Liberal Democrat leader joined Wiltshire Lib Dem group leader councillor Ian Thorn, local councillors and campaigners at the Harnham recreation ground in Salisbury.
Davey said:
The Conservatives are on their last innings and we’re on track to overtake them at the next general election. Middle England put its faith in us because they are appalled by Kemi Badenoch’s lurch to the right and pandering to Farage. I’m calling on everyone who is alarmed about the future of our country to join us.
In Wiltshire we kicked the Conservatives out of control and are now the largest party, just like we have done in so many other parts of the country, from Devon to Gloucestershire.
The Liberal Democrats are now the second largest party of local government, and we’re on track to overtake the Conservatives at the next general election.
Kemi Badenoch doesn’t understand what was wrong with her sneering remarks about us being the party who would fix your church roof. Across the country, voters have chosen our community politics over the Conservatives’ division and disdain.
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As the Tories faced the Reform UK surge in the north and parts of the Midlands, the Liberal Democrats put the squeeze on their vote farther south, gaining more than 100 councillors, PA reports.
The Lib Dems gained 163 councillors across the 23 councils in this election.
“If you’re appalled by lurch to the right by Reform and the others, come and join the Liberal Democrats because we’re the ones taking the challenge to Reform,” Lib Dem MP Munira Wilson told the BBC.
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Reform UK have captured the headlines, but the Green party made some gains in these local elections too. The Greens gained 44 councillors across the 23 councils in this election.
“Following Thursday’s election we’ve reached a new record high 859 councillors on 181 councils! The Green party is the only party offering a real alternative to the tired old parties,” the party’s official X account said.
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Kim Leadbeater: Assisted dying is about 'human cost' not 'pounds and pence'
Assisted dying is about the “human cost” and not pounds and pence, the MP behind the proposed legislation has said after an assessment of the potential costs, PA reports.
An impact assessment into the terminally ill adults (end of life) bill was published on Friday, exactly a fortnight before the next Commons debate on the proposed new law. It set out estimates for how many people might apply and go on to have an assisted death, as well as potential costs of the service and reduced end-of-life care costs.
“It’s a very uneasy sort of conversation to have,” Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP behind the bill, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
She added:
Because for me, assisted dying and giving people the choice at the end of their life when they’re facing a terminal illness is about the human cost. It’s not about pounds and pence.
The assessment estimated that assisted dying could cut end-of-life care costs by as much as an estimated £10m in the first year and almost £60m after 10 years. It noted that reducing those costs “is not stated as an objective of the policy” but some have expressed concerns that this could put pressure on people to end their lives.
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Writing in the Times on Saturday, the prime minister insisted there was “tangible proof that things are finally beginning to go in the right direction”, although he said he was not satisfied with where the country was.
Keir Starmer wote:
I am acutely aware that people aren’t yet feeling the benefits. That’s what they told us last night. Until they do, I will wake up every morning determined to go further and faster.
Starmer signalled his priorities as he pledged to deliver “more money in your pocket, lower NHS waiting lists, lower immigration numbers”.
Nigel Farage has hailed his party’s “unprecedented” results in the local elections.
In a post on X on Saturday, the Reform UK leader wrote:
In postwar Britain, no one has ever beaten both Labour and the Tories in a local election before.
These results are unprecedented.
In case you want to see the full mayoral and council results from Thursday’s elections, you can find them in the Guardian’s tracker here:
Yesterday, Nigel Farage warned council staff working on diversity or climate change initiatives to seek “alternative careers”.
Today, a newly elected Reform UK councillor said Durham county council would be “getting the auditors in” right away to slash spending in areas like net zero and green initiatives.
“We’re getting the auditors in to see … actually what those jobs are, and if they’re good value for money, and if they’re not, well, the answer is, ‘Yeah, goodbye’,” Darren Grimes, a Durham councillor and former GB News presenter told the BBC’s Today programme.
Cash spent on such programmes is “vanishingly small” and discretionary spending for councils is mostly spent on social care, libraries and filling in potholes, Tony Travers, a professor of public policy at the LSE, told the programme, according to the PA news agency.
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Reform UK’s victories are just the latest chapter of political fragmentation, writes Prof Paula Surridge, the deputy director at UK in a Changing Europe and professor of political sociology at the University of Bristol.
Nigel Farage’s party has benefited this time as voters flee the main parties, but there are faultlines within its own coalition too, Surridge adds. You can read Surridge’s full analysis here:
Saturday papers in the UK were dominated by the Reform party’s victory at the polls, in which it gained an MP at Labour’s expense and won a string of local councils.
A jubilant Nigel Farage said his hard-right populist party had now supplanted the Conservatives and pledged that Reform-run councils and mayoralties would block asylum seeker accommodation and dismantle equalities programmes.
The Guardian’s front page led with “Reform wins ‘beginning of end for Tories’, says Farage”, adding that it was a “sobering day” for prime minister Keir Starmer and Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch.
You can see how other papers reported on the local elections here:
Headteachers’ union takes legal action against Ofsted over inspection changes
Headteachers are taking legal action against Ofsted, England’s schools watchdog, over fears that its new inspection regime is “even worse than before” and likely to harm the mental health of school leaders.
The National Association of Head Teachers said it had lodged a claim for a judicial review against Ofsted “over the potential impact of their inspection proposals” and for inadequate consultation over its new system of grading schools.
Ofsted’s inspection regime has been mired in controversy since the 2023 death by suicide of the headteacher Ruth Perry, with a coroner finding that Perry’s death was “contributed to by an Ofsted inspection”.
Paul Whiteman, the NAHT’s general secretary, said:
Somehow the focus on school leader mental health and wellbeing has got lost along the way during Ofsted’s consultation process.
We must not forget that the catalyst for these changes was the tragic death of Ruth Perry and widespread acceptance that the inspection regime was placing school leaders under intolerable pressure. However, there appears to have been very little thought given to the impact on the wellbeing of school leaders in the drawing up of these plans and the consultation that followed.
School leaders are deeply concerned that the new report cards could result in an even worse system than before, with potentially disastrous impact on workload, wellbeing and retention.
We have tried engaging with Ofsted and explaining this, but so far these concerns have fallen largely on deaf ears. We have been left with little choice other than to pursue this action.
The Guardian has also just launched a visual investigation into the Victorian prisons in England and Wales. It has been created by Ana Lucía González Paz and Rajeev Syal, with design and graphics by Garry Blight, Paul Scruton, Lucy Swan and Harvey Symons. You can explore it via the link below:
Cramped Victorian prisons limiting rehabilitation, chief inspector says
The cramped conditions of Victorian prisons in England and Wales are limiting the rehabilitation opportunities for thousands of offenders, an official watchdog has said.
As the Guardian launches a visual investigation into the state of Victorian prisons in inner cities and towns, the chief inspector of prisons, Charlie Taylor, said 19th century jails could also be “incredibly noisy and distressing” for autistic people.
His words come after a series of warnings from the justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, that England and Wales’s Prison Service was in crisis, leading to the early release of thousands of prisoners this autumn.
Taylor’s annual report in September showed that many prisons were severely overcrowded and understaffed, with 30 out of 32 closed prisons rated as poor or insufficiently good.
Many are overrun with rats and cockroaches and have been infiltrated by drug gangs.
Taylor, who has previously described Victorian prisons as “barely fit for purpose”, said that many of the older prisons – about 10% of 122 across England and Wales – struggled to rehabilitate offenders.
“These prisons are already overcrowded, and tend to be on fairly small footprints. When you look at prisons like Leicester or Bedford, they’re minute jails. There is very little workspace for education and training,” he said. “If the prison population is also double what it once was, then that’s not at all ideal to be able to do anything that might be vaguely thought to be rehabilitative.”
A senior Tory MP has insisted Kemi Badenoch will still be the party’s leader in a year’s time after the Conservatives lost more than 600 councillors in local elections.
Shadow chief treasury secretary Richard Fuller also ruled out a future pact with Reform UK on a national level after the party made sweeping gains, reports the PA news agency.
Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme how long Badenoch has to come up with answers and if we are going to see her in post in a year, he said “of course we are”.
On whether the Tories may need to look at a pact with Reform UK to get Keir Starmer out at the next general election, he said:
There won’t be pacts. Nigel Farage has been very clear that he wants to destroy the Conservative party.
In a week of difficult local elections, there was a special guest in No 10 to give a pep talk to staff: Arsène Wenger, the former manager of Arsenal, beloved of the prime minister. Keir Starmer has sought his advice before, on the importance of building a team. And they have faced some common challenges, rebuilding their clubs and parties from low ebbs to extraordinary success.
Now Starmer may face a similar challenge – and criticism – to Wenger in his later years: whether he can adapt his tactical rigidity when results start to suffer.
So far, a successful strategy has been to win back Conservative switchers and working-class voters whom the party was felt to have abandoned. That has morphed into deep concern about the threat of Reform UK. In Runcorn and Helsby, lost by an agonising six votes having been one of Labour’s safest seats, Reform showed how it could turn out its machine.
But cabinet ministers have told the Guardian they are concerned that Labour’s own pendulum has swung too far and is alienating their own voters. In that same seat, Labour retained just 55% of its vote, suggesting many of its own voters did not turn out. The Greens, however, clung on to their vote from last July.
Nigel Farage may loom large as the biggest threat in some of Labour’s most vulnerable seats in the north and the Midlands. But MPs and ministers fear the threat in those seats of Labour staying at home and losing votes to the Greens, Liberal Democrats and independents could just as easily be the factor that would deliver seats to Reform, as more Conservative voters switch to Farage.
Badenoch apologises for local election 'bloodbath' in op-ed
Kemi Badenoch has apologised for the “bloodbath” of the local elections in an op-ed piece on Saturday for the Telegraph.
The Conservative party leader wote:
After last year’s historic defeat, and with protest votes cutting across every ballot box, we knew Thursday would be hard. I’m deeply sorry to see so many capable, hard-working Conservative councillors lose their seats. They didn’t deserve it – and they weren’t the reason we lost.
In the piece, Badenoch explained that as party members were voting in the final round of the Conservative party leadership contest, an unnamed male MP took her aside in parliament and warned “the May 2025 locals are going to be a total bloodbath”. She acknowledged that the prediction was right: “The results confirm he was correct. But to be honest, it wasn’t a controversial prediction to make.”
She added:
These local election results show the scale of the work needed to rebuild trust in the Conservative party and the importance of redoubling our efforts to show that this party is under new leadership and is doing things differently.
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Labour MP Rachael Maskell has urged her party to scrap winter fuel and welfare policies that she said are pushing voters away, reports the PA news agency.
The York Central MP told BBC Breakfast that Labour has “special responsibilities” to serve the needs of people.
She said:
We’re not any other political party, we were created to serve the needs of people across working areas of our country so that people had a real voice of the kind of change that they wanted to see.
I think it’s now time, if Labour are going to go further faster, to pick up that voice, to put our fingers on the pulse and to understand that that responsibility that the 1945 government set out putting that safety net in place at the welfare state is on our watch and is our responsibility.
So, scrapping these proposals to push disabled people into hardship is an absolutely crucial part of that change, showing that we’re going to be listening to the country and protecting the people at their time of need.
Of course we want to get more people into work. Of course the changes to the health system is really crucial … but also we’ve got to help people and care for people as we go on that journey.
She added:
People went cold last winter and that’s not what a Labour government should be doing.
We have got that mandate, I believe, as a party to look at how we can better redistribute wealth, as opposed to taking out of the pockets of the poorest.
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Starmer says he wants 'national renewal' and that 'change on that scale will take time'
Keir Starmer has said he wants “national renewal” and that “change on that scale will take time”, in a Saturday op-ed for the Times.
The prime minister wrote:
In short I want national renewal. But that can only be built if people across the country have security in their lives and that will only happen if we have a secure economy, a secure health service and secure borders. Change on that scale will take time. But it is my focus, now and every day ahead.
He added:
The lesson of these elections isn’t that the country needs more politicians’ promises or ideological zealotry. It isn’t that there is some easy solution, as promised by our opponents. It’s that now is the time to crank up the pace on giving people the country they are crying out for.
A Labour MP has suggested that voters shunned her party in local elections because it has failed to live up to the values the public expects from a Labour government.
York Central MP Rachael Maskell said Labour needs to be driven by “a framework of values, which is about protecting people, helping people to move forward in their lives and ensuring you’ve got those public services ready and working so that people can have that support when they need it”.
“That is what Labour governments do,” she told BBC Breakfast. She added:
I believe that when Labour does not meet that sweet spot, that expectation that people have of a Labour government, then they start to look in less favourable places for where that help comes from.
Yesterday, many people were searching for that response, to find that protection, to get that support. But, sadly, if Labour were not offering that, they would look in other places.
That’s why Labour have got to learn from the results yesterday and ensure that we do meet the needs of people in this country in very, very trying times.
'No simple answers' for Reform UK, says senior Tory
Reform UK will find out there are “no simple answers” to local public finances and have to make “difficult choices” after the party surged in local elections, a senior Tory MP has said.
Richard Fuller, shadow chief treasury secretary, said it was now up to Nigel Farage’s party to see if they can deliver in the areas where they have won council seats and mayoral polls.
According to the PA news agency, Fuller told GB News:
We have to acknowledge Reform did very well yesterday.
They won the Runcorn byelection off Labour. They’ve won some mayoralties and now they will get the chance to show what they can actually do when they give them power.
So, no longer pointing at problems, but actually there to try and find solutions, albeit on a local level, to help the people in Lincolnshire or Hull, where they have taken over the mayoralties.
And other areas where they have taken control of the council.
They’ll find out, Reform will find out, I think, that there are no simple answers locally to public finances at local government level, they’ll have to make some difficult choices and the local public will … hold them to account for the decisions they make.
Farage has previously suggested every county council “needs a Doge” – a reference to Elon Musk’s cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) in the US.
Speaking on the BBC’s Today programme on Saturday, ex-GB news host Darren Grimes, who won a seat on Durham county council for Reform UK, said: “On day one of being in control, we’re get the auditors in.” More on this story in a moment, but first, here is a summary of the latest updates:
Nigel Farage hailed Friday’s local election results as “the end of two-party politics” and “the death of the Conservative party” as Reform UK picked up 10 councils and more than 600 seats in Thursday’s poll.
Kemi Badenoch apologised to defeated Conservative councillors after the Tories lost more than 600 councillors and all 15 of the councils it controlled going into the election, among the worst results in the party’s history. Conservative figures have sought to deny that the results are “existential” for the party.
Several Labour figures have called on the prime minister to change course after Reform UK won the Runcorn and Helsby byelection by six votes and took control of the previously Labour-run Doncaster Council. Backbench MP Emma Lewell, who has represented South Shields since 2013, said it was “tone deaf to keep repeating we will move further and faster on our plan for change. What is needed is a change of plan.”
Keir Starmer warned against parties offering “some simple, ideological fix”. In a Saturday op-ed for the Times, Starmer wrote that he wanted “national renewal”. He added: “But that can only be built if people across the country have security in their lives and that will only happen if we have a secure economy, a secure health service and secure borders. Change on that scale will take time.”
In further signs of fracturing political loyalties, a BBC projection of how the voting would have looked in a UK-wide election put Reform first on 30%, Labour on 20%, the Liberal Democrats on 17%, the Conservatives fourth with 15% and the Greens on 11%.
After losing his legal challenge over personal security, the Duke of Sussex, has appealed to the prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the home secretary, Yvette Cooper. Asked whether Starmer should “step in”, he replied: “Yes, I would ask the prime minister to step in.” He then said: “I would ask Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, to look at this very, very carefully and I would ask her to review Ravec [Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures] and its members.”
The cramped conditions of Victorian prisons in England and Wales are limiting the rehabilitation opportunities for thousands of offenders, an official watchdog has said. As the Guardian launches a visual investigation into the state of Victorian prisons in inner cities and towns, the chief inspector of prisons, Charlie Taylor, said 19th century jails could also be “incredibly noisy and distressing” for autistic people.
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