Political news

• Five Times Theresa May Was Burned By The Audience In SkyNews/Channel4 TV General Election Show

  29-05-2017 23:40
  
  Theresa May was laughed at, jeered and heckled over Tory cuts and manifesto U-turns in her first live TV grilling of the general election.
  Exactly a week after suffering a verbal mauling by the BBC’s Andrew Neil, the Prime Minister was subjected to a series of barbs from the audience on the SkyNews/Channel 4 special on Monday night.
  Here are the five times the voters burned the PM, with or without the help of Jeremy Paxman and Faisal Islam.
   
  1. Elderly fearsAn audience member says he
  
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• Five Times Theresa May Was Burned By The Audience In SkyNews/Channel 4 Leaders Debate

  29-05-2017 23:40
  
  Theresa May was laughed at, jeered and heckled over Tory cuts and manifesto U-turns in her first live TV grilling of the general election.
  Exactly a week after suffering a verbal mauling by the BBC’s Andrew Neil, the Prime Minister was subjected to a series of barbs from the audience on the SkyNews/Channel 4 special on Monday night.
  Here are the five times the voters burned the PM, with or without the help of Jeremy Paxman and Faisal Islam.
   
  1. Elderly fearsAn audience member says he
  
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• May seeks to switch UK election focus to ‘aggressive’ Brussels

  29-05-2017 23:31
  Attention turns to Brexit in push to re-energise campaign after social care reversal
  
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• May seeks to switch election focus on to ‘aggressive’ Brussels

  29-05-2017 23:31
  UK premier takes Brexit route in bid to re-energise campaign after social care U-turn
  
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• How Jeremy Corbyn Survived Jeremy Paxman's 'Over The Top' Interview

  29-05-2017 23:26
  
  Jeremy Corbyn survived - and even at times thrived - when coming under scrutiny from Jeremy Paxman, with many arguing the broadcaster’s abrasive style felt tone deaf and dated.
  The Labour leader, as expected, was given a tough time by the former Newsnight host when facing the journalist in the Sky News and Channel 4 head-to-head leader interviews.
  But observers felt Paxman’s confrontational style was too much, and meant he failed to quiz Corbyn properly.
  In particular, Paxman zeroed
  
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• Ben Jennings on Theresa May and the Tory party – cartoon

  29-05-2017 23:00 via theguardian.com
  
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• Charities say 'gag law' stops them speaking out on Tory social care plans

  29-05-2017 21:39 via theguardian.com
  
  Sector leaders say they feel muzzled by 2014 legislation despite believing policies would prove hugely damaging Charities have been silenced from speaking out about the Conservative social care plans despite believing they will be hugely damaging to elderly and disabled people across the country, it has been claimed.One chief executive of a major charity in the social care sector told the Guardian they felt “muzzled” by legislation, introduced in 2014, which heavily restricts organis
  
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• ‘Beast of Bolsover’ becomes unlikely quarry for buoyant Tories

  29-05-2017 20:39
  Even rock-solid majority of firebrand Dennis Skinner falls within scope of Conservatives
  
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• Whatever the result, this election has pushed the centre ground to the left | Steve Richards

  29-05-2017 20:25 via theguardian.com
  
  The Labour and Tory manifestos both accept the need for tax rises and market regulation. Even Blair at his peak didn’t achieve that consensusElectoral patterns in the UK are wild and unruly. Since the financial crash in 2008 the UK has elected a coalition, and delivered David Cameron a tiny majority only for the triumphant prime minister to resign a year later: a speedy departure without precedent. Related: What happens if nobody wins the election? 1974 is a warning | Steve RichardsContinu
  
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• UK Election Countdown: Is the past a foreign country?

  29-05-2017 20:11
  10 days to go: why Corbyn’s historic remarks matter
  
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• Tory candidate for Jo Cox seat apologises for gun joke at hustings

  29-05-2017 20:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Ann Myatt blames fatigue for telling Batley and Spen meeting: ‘We’ve not yet shot anybody so that’s wonderful’A Conservative candidate for the seat formerly held by the murdered MP Jo Cox has apologised and blamed fatigue for telling a hustings: “We’ve not yet shot anybody so that’s wonderful.”Ann Myatt made the comments while discussing the coming together of various communities in Batley and Spen, in West Yorkshire. Continue reading...
  
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• Tory Candidate In Jo Cox’s Seat Jokes 'Nobody's Been Shot Yet' At Hustings

  29-05-2017 19:35
  
  The Tory candidate standing in Jo Cox’s former seat has been condemned for joking that “we have not yet shot anybody” during the election campaign.
  Dr Ann Myatt made the off-the-cuff remark during a hustings for the Batley and Spen constituency in Yorkshire.
  The Labour MP was murdered on the streets of the constituency on June 16 last year by far right extremist Thomas Mair. She was shot several times and then stabbed.
  At the hustings, Myatt praised the event and said:“We
  
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• Forget party loyalty, voters would rather flirt than marry | Anne McElvoy

  29-05-2017 19:27 via theguardian.com
  
  With a complex and contradictory electorate, Labour and the Tories are both struggling to remain broad churchesIt used to be so easy. There was Worcester woman and her public-sector cousin Holby City woman – malleable creatures for strategists hunting for swing voters. Alongside was their male avatar, Mondeo man (a coinage timed just ahead of a major Mondeo sales slump). All of these were demographic types that election planners reckoned could be pulled over the line from Tory to Labour, o
  
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• The Guardian view on higher education: trouble ahead | Editorial

  29-05-2017 19:24 via theguardian.com
  
  First the universities were treated as businesses. Then they were told to fight for export customers. But now Brexit threatens to cut their student numbers disastrouslyUniversities have been so transformed by 30 years of reform that the language around higher education can appear emptied of its traditional meaning. The inherited notion of universities as a protected space devoted to the development of the individual capacity for creativity and deeper understanding has been hollowed out. In a wor
  
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• Ukip braces for a tough election fight, even in its heartlands

  29-05-2017 19:09 via theguardian.com
  
  In Clacton, the only constituency it won in 2015, the party is currently trailing the Conservatives, despite hard manifesto stances on migration and terrorPaul Oakley, Ukip’s candidate for Clacton, is door-knocking down a street which should be as good as it gets for his party: a fervently pro-leave, long-neglected English seaside community packed with disaffected former Labour voters.If this wasn’t encouragement enough, it is within is the one constituency which returned a Ukip MP a
  
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• Legal challenge to Brexit in the Irish courts abandoned

  29-05-2017 19:07
  Case had raised questions about the effect of UK exit on citizens’ rights and other issues
  
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• Legal challenge to Brexit in Irish courts abandoned

  29-05-2017 19:07
  Case had raised questions about the effect of UK exit on citizens’ rights and other issues
  
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• Sayeeda Warsi: UK policy on radicalisation 'has been flawed for years'

  29-05-2017 18:55 via theguardian.com
  
  Speaking at Hay festival, Conservative peer says government is too focused on ideology as the sole cause of radicalisationThe British government’s decision making when it comes to catching homegrown radicals has been flawed for years, according to Sayeeda Warsi, who has said Britain “cannot afford to have sloppy, lazy, ideologically driven decision making” on national security.Speaking at Hay literary festival on Monday, Lady Warsi – the Conservative peer and first Muslim
  
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• The myth that voters have chosen to be poorer

  29-05-2017 18:11
  Politicians should not count on the public to suffer economic pain on the way to Brexit
  
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• Closer polls a boost to tactical voting | Letters

  29-05-2017 18:11 via theguardian.com
  
  Geoff Naylor and Colin Hines put the case for tactical votingThe trend of vote swapping (www.swapmyvote.uk) shows that our first past the post electoral system is unfair, makes some votes worthless and others critical in marginal seats, doesn’t allow the minor parties to establish, and is in long overdue need of reform. Vote swapping is one way to make change happen. It is much more likely now with the polls showing a narrowing of the gap between the wedded to the current system Labour and
  
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• Paul Nuttall: internment might be necessary to counter 'Islamist cancer'

  29-05-2017 18:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Ukip leader denies his party has become ‘extreme’ in focusing election campaign on terrorism in the wake of Manchester attackThe Ukip leader, Paul Nuttall, has said it might be necessary to introduce internment without trial for terrorism suspects, adding that he would prioritise people’s lives over “the human rights of any jihadi”.Speaking in the wake of Ukip’s move following the Manchester attack to focus its election approach more closely on Islamist terror
  
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• Theresa May Called A 'Glum Bucket' By Daily Mail's Quentin Letts

  29-05-2017 17:56
  
  Theresa May has been told by a Daily Mail journalist that she is coming off as a bit of “glum bucket” during the election campaign, and asked if she will inject a “bit more Boris” in the last two weeks before polling.
  Despite criticism of that the Conservative Party is running an overly stage-managed election campaign, the Prime Minister took a series of questions from journalists at the end of a rally in West London on Monday.
  She may now be regretting giving an opportun
  
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• We need a new defence strategy – Donald Trump has hung Europe out to dry | Paul Mason

  29-05-2017 17:22 via theguardian.com
  
  The rip in the global order may only last four years, but the US president’s latest speech leaves European powers with little choiceThe Polish army fields three divisions, as does Germany’s Bundeswehr. France has two, Romania two, the UK two and the Baltic states could just about scrape together one. As of last week, those are the only forces Vladimir Putin has to consider as he threatens, bullies and cajoles the western diplomatic order into disintegration.Because from the mouth of
  
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• This is not the time to diminish the Treasury

  29-05-2017 16:35
  Britain needs a strong chancellor with the power to kill off bad ideas
  
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• George Canning: The four-month pistol-packing PM

  29-05-2017 16:12 via bbc.co.uk
  
  George Canning may have been a shortlived prime minister, but he had plenty of impact on British politics.
  
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• Dominic Raab accused of 'stupid and offensive' food bank comments

  29-05-2017 15:51 via theguardian.com
  
  Tory former justice minister told TV show that a typical food bank user is ‘someone who has a cashflow problem episodically’A senior Conservative has been accused of making “stupid and deeply offensive” comments after saying people who use food banks typically do so not because of poverty but because they have an occasional “cashflow problem”.Dominic Raab, the former justice minister, said the claim came from the Trussell Trust, Britain’s largest provide
  
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• For disabled people like me, this election will be a life-changer | Luke Nash

  29-05-2017 14:58 via theguardian.com
  
  The progress of the past 50 years has stalled, and the government has stopped listening – that’s why we’re holding Tuesday’s disability hustingsNext year I’ll be leaving school and I don’t know what that will mean for my life. Obviously a lot of 18 year olds feel this way, but for me it’s different. I have profound physical disabilities and a learning disability.This is my first time voting and I know that, as a disabled person, my future will be greatly
  
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• Will the UK lose access to EU's crime-fighting database after Brexit?

  29-05-2017 14:52 via theguardian.com
  
  We examine whether Nick Clegg is right to claim Britain faces being locked out of the vast police information systemBritain will be barred from a “fantastically useful” EU crime-fighting database as a result of Theresa May’s “extreme approach to Brexit”, Nick Clegg has said. Unless the UK is prepared to accept a role for the European court of justice, which governs data for the bloc, the UK will be locked out of the EU police database, the former Liberal Democrat le
  
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• The state of the race – Election Daily podcast

  29-05-2017 14:51 via theguardian.com
  
  Ten days before the general election, Jonathan Freedland and Owen Jones discuss the state of a race in which the Conservatives’ poll lead has narrowed amid policy U-turns and a brief suspension of campaigningWith 10 days until polling day the Conservatives are attempting to reboot their election campaign after a U-turn on a key manifesto pledge, the prime minister’s uncertain appearance in a BBC interview and rumours of infighting among her staff. Meanwhile, as Labour closes the gap
  
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• Corbyn should be tougher on party trolls, says Harriet Harman

  29-05-2017 14:21 via theguardian.com
  
  Politician tells Hay festival it is not enough for Labour leader to say he does not condone abuse of female MPs by members Harriet Harman has called on Jeremy Corbyn to take a tougher stance on Labour members who abuse and troll the party’s MPs.
  The Labour candidate was speaking at the Hay festival about her political career and the many battles against sexism she has had to fight. Continue reading...
  
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• Angela Merkel’s blunder, Donald Trump and the end of the west

  29-05-2017 14:12
  Chancellor’s speech was irresponsible and risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy
  
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• Angela Merkel, Donald Trump and the end of the west

  29-05-2017 14:12
  The German leader’s speech was a blunder and risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy
  
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• Harrow West: 'people think saying they will vote Tory makes them look bad'

  29-05-2017 14:00 via theguardian.com
  
  In the run-up to the general election, six Guardian reporters are writing from constituencies across the country to find out what matters to you and your area. In their third dispatch, Gary Younge and photographer Graeme Robertson listen in as seven undecided voters talk about their intentionsSarah had driven down from Edinburgh listening to the radio, the day seven Harrow West voters were brought together in a Wembley hotel room for a focus group. On air, all the talk had been of the Labour man
  
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• David Squires on … the narrowing Tory poll lead, national security and Trump's vacation

  29-05-2017 13:40 via theguardian.com
  
  Our resident cartoonist trades football for the general election in a new weekly campaign stripAll David Squires’ football cartoons in one place
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• Can Theresa May’s secret weapon save her faltering campaign? | Mark Wallace

  29-05-2017 13:33 via theguardian.com
  
  Before the social care fiasco, May was lucky: her vision of renewed working-class conservatism seemed the perfect fit for the times. It could still workPolitics at the top demands trade-offs. Every prime minister does the things that they have to do, in order to buy the right to do the things they want to do.That is more difficult for some than for others. David Cameron had a tough time: he never wanted to be Mr Austerity, but circumstances forced him to be much more flinty and less cuddly than
  
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• Why ‘keep the Tories out’ won’t work in Scotland this election | Ruth Wishart

  29-05-2017 13:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Old tribal rivalries have come to the fore in England, but north of the border, Brexit and independence are what people really care aboutIn the BBC’s Scottish leaders debate last week a frustrated Nicola Sturgeon turned on Tory leader Ruth Davidson when the latter accused her of obsessing about independence. “She’s the one going on about independence all the time,” suggested the first minister. “I can’t get a word in edgeways.” Related: Ruth Davidson bra
  
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• Manchester attack will not affect election, focus groups suggest

  29-05-2017 09:58 via theguardian.com
  
  Undecided voters in six constituencies say they do not believe attack will change how they cast their ballotSwing voters do not think the Manchester terror attack will affect how they cast their ballot on 8 June but Theresa May’s response was seen generally as reassuring, according to focus groups in six seats.Undecided voters in Hartlepool, Birmingham, Cambridge, Glasgow, Wells and Harrow were asked for their views on how the parties responded to the attack as part of a project by Britain
  
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• May v Corbyn: debate tactics explained by former top Tory aides

  29-05-2017 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  As prime minister and Labour leader get ready to face a TV grilling, a Conservative former spin doctor and special adviser lay out what’s at stakeOn the evening of the 2 April 2015, you could have cut the tension with a knife in the Thatcher room at Conservative campaign headquarters. That was where we had assembled the “war room”, packed full of Tory spinners and several cabinet ministers for the first TV election debate.The stakes could not have been higher. We were neck and
  
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• Look at all the advice from white people. It must be Reconciliation Week! | First Dog on the Moon

  29-05-2017 08:43 via theguardian.com
  
  Recently I discovered my childhood home has been knocked down and turned into townhouses. I was having feelings and it got me thinking Sign up here to get an email whenever First Dog cartoons are published
  Get all your needs met at the First Dog shop if what you need is First Dog merchandise and printsContinue reading...
  
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• The Snap: May and Corbyn take on Jeremy Paxman – separately

  29-05-2017 07:35 via theguardian.com
  
  Leaders face TV questions but won’t go head-to-head … security dominates party campaigns … and Conservatives keep quiet on that social care capThe Snap: sign up for our daily election email
  It’s a bank holiday across the UK today, in a week where politics will begin to look more like normal in the wake of last Monday’s terror attack in Manchester. Continue reading...
  
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• Steve Bell’s If ... Theresa May, free-lunch snatcher

  29-05-2017 07:10 via theguardian.com
  
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• Scots voter disillusion as gloss comes off the SNP

  29-05-2017 05:00
  Gap between ruling party’s aspiration and achievement clear in schools and hospitals
  
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• Tom Watson hits out at Conservatives over attacks on Corbyn

  29-05-2017 01:10 via theguardian.com
  
  Labour’s deputy leader blasts Tory tactics as a sign that Theresa May is ‘not up to the job’, on eve of first debate programme between senior party figuresLabour’s deputy leader has accused the Conservatives of being “hell bent on viciously attacking Jeremy Corbyn” as Theresa May’s party relaunches its campaign with a focus on leadership and Brexit.On the eve of the first major election television programme featuring the Tory and Labour leaders, Tom Wats
  
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