Political news

• Labour: 673 anti-Semitism complaints in 10 months

  11-02-2019 23:30 via bbc.co.uk
  The party's general secretary reveals the statistics behind the complaints after pressure from MPs.
  
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• Tech platforms face regulatory pressure after media review

  11-02-2019 23:00 via ft.com
  Intervention by state regulator ’needed’ to assess quality of news coverage
  
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• Online news needs ‘code of conduct’, says review

  11-02-2019 23:00 via ft.com
  Regulator should assess web coverage, finds Cairncross report, that also points to BBC
  
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• Hanging your hat on a late-year turnround

  11-02-2019 22:17 via ft.com
  Mike Mackenzie’s daily analysis of what’s moving global markets
  
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• May to plead for more time to overhaul Brexit deal

  11-02-2019 20:55 via ft.com
  Signs PM is starting to wear down opponents of her draft exit treaty
  
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• Amber Rudd links universal credit to rise in food bank use

  11-02-2019 20:30 via bbc.co.uk
  The work and pensions secretary said difficulty in accessing universal credit was "one of the causes".
  
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• Food and drink producers urge Gove to stall reforms

  11-02-2019 20:24 via ft.com
  Planning for no-deal Brexit seen as too important to focus on issues like recycling and forestation
  
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• Grayling ignores calls to resign over ferry fallout

  11-02-2019 20:07 via ft.com
  NAO says hiring Seaborne for emergency deliveries had been ‘high-risk proposition’
  
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• Hammond braced for more bad news as growth cools

  11-02-2019 19:43 via ft.com
  Chancellor tells colleagues he expects Brexit talks to go to the ‘11th hour’
  
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• Welfare reform linked to food bank use, admits Rudd

  11-02-2019 19:30 via ft.com
  Minister says slow payments may have been issue in forcing claimants to charities
  
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• Welfare reform ‘could have’ fuelled food bank use, admits Rudd

  11-02-2019 19:30 via ft.com
  Minister says slow payments may have been issue in forcing claimants to charities
  
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• Martin Rowson on May rejecting Corbyn’s Brexit compromise – cartoon

  11-02-2019 19:25
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• Vice-chancellor of De Montfort University resigns

  11-02-2019 19:24 via ft.com
  Departure raises fresh questions about higher education governance standards
  
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• Fiona Onasanya: Peterborough MP to appeal against conviction

  11-02-2019 18:21 via bbc.co.uk
  Fiona Onasanya was sentenced to three months in prison after lying about a speeding offence.
  
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• 'Pointless' GCSEs should be scrapped, says senior MP

  11-02-2019 18:16 via bbc.co.uk
  GCSEs should be scrapped and more vocational options offered, says education committee chairman.
  
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• Chris Grayling on ending Seaborne Freight ferry contract

  11-02-2019 18:01 via bbc.co.uk
  The transport secretary's handling of a contract to run a post-Brexit freight ferry service has descended from a "debacle" to a "Whitehall farce", says the shadow minister.
  
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• Blow to North’s hopes of transport boost from minister

  11-02-2019 17:56 via ft.com
  Proposed £70bn improvement plan might not be funded, Andrew Jones warns
  
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• Gavin Williamson: Drone 'swarm squadrons' to be deployed by military

  11-02-2019 17:35 via bbc.co.uk
  The defence secretary says the network enabled aircraft could be used to overwhelm the enemy.
  
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• Brexit delivers a shuddering blow to UK economic data

  11-02-2019 16:55 via ft.com
  Chancellor tries to put on brave face as ONS releases unexpectedly poor figures
  
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• UK growth slows amid Brexit uncertainty

  11-02-2019 16:38 via ft.com
  Economy expands just 0.2% in fourth quarter of 2018 with Brexit looming
  
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• Grayling symbolises what is going wrong in Britain

  11-02-2019 16:15 via ft.com
  The transport secretary has racked up a litany of failures and should resign
  
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• UK signs post-Brexit trade deal with Switzerland

  11-02-2019 15:51 via bbc.co.uk
  The "continuity agreement" will see the two countries continue to trade as they do now, after Brexit.
  
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• HS2 is essential to northern prosperity

  11-02-2019 15:43 via ft.com
  The high-speed rail line will unlock jobs and opportunities
  
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• 40-60 Labour MPs could back Brexit bill - Nandy

  11-02-2019 15:31 via bbc.co.uk
  Lisa Nandy says the government needs to take further steps, including giving MPs more “power over what happens next”, if it wants to win their support.
  
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• UK to convert ferries into Royal Marine strike ships

  11-02-2019 15:03 via ft.com
  Williamson signals shift in Britain’s approach to purchasing military equipment
  
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• Corbyn and May letters — read between the lines

  11-02-2019 14:40 via ft.com
  PM and Labour leader send subtle messages to their own MPs
  
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• UK economic growth slowest since 2012

  11-02-2019 14:12 via bbc.co.uk
  Declines in construction and car manufacturing contributed to the slowdown, official figures show.
  
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• UK signs trade deal with Switzerland

  11-02-2019 13:33 via ft.com
  British government has yet to roll over most existing deals with ‘third party’ countries
  
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• Gavin Williamson enhances reputation for haplessness

  11-02-2019 12:47
  Defence secretary’s boast that Brexit could ‘enhance UK’s lethality’ is latest in series of misstepsGavin Williamson’s boast that Brexit could “enhance the UK’s lethality” is the latest in a string of naive forays by the 42-year-old defence secretary. He may have intended it as a boost to Britain’s global military standing but it is more likely to just confirm Williamson’s reputation as the cabinet’s Private Pike, the hapless yout
  
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• We're not lazy, we just need more sleep, say pupils

  11-02-2019 12:23 via bbc.co.uk
  As MPs prepare to debate later school start times, pupils explain why they need more sleep.
  
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• British ‘lethality’? Gavin Williamson’s brain has gone absent without leave | Simon Jenkins

  11-02-2019 12:22
  The defence secretary’s big talk about boosting the UK’s ‘global presence’ and ‘hard power’ prove he’s lost touch with realityThe defence secretary’s brain has gone absent without leave. Gavin Williamson is expected to say in a speech today that he intends to send his new aircraft carrier, the HMS Queen Elizabeth, round the world to frighten China. He will equip it with a squadron of F-35 fighter jets, borrowed from America. In addition he wants to
  
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• Trump offers socialism for the rich, capitalism for everyone else | Robert Reich

  11-02-2019 12:00
  Trump is promoting socialism for the rich and harsh capitalism for everyone else in other ways“America will never be a socialist country,” Donald Trump declared in his State of the Union address. Someone should alert Trump that America is now a hotbed of socialism. But it is socialism for the rich. Everyone else is treated to harsh capitalism.In the conservative mind, socialism means getting something for doing nothing. That pretty much describes the $21bn saved by the nation’s
  
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• Johnson downplays no deal Brexit risk

  11-02-2019 12:00 via bbc.co.uk
  The former foreign secretary says there would be challenges to a no deal Brexit.
  
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• Boris Johnson backs call for multibillion cut to UK aid budget

  11-02-2019 11:11
  Tory report says DfID could be folded into Foreign Office and aid spending redefinedCalls for a multibillion-pound cut in the UK’s overseas aid budget and closure of the Department for International Development (DfID) as a separate Whitehall entity are set out in a new Conservative vision for a post-Brexit “global Britain” backed by the former foreign secretary Boris Johnson.Current definitions of aid spending would be broadened to include peacekeeping, and the BBC’s Worl
  
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• UK growth cools sharply amid drop in industrial output

  11-02-2019 10:44 via ft.com
  Economy expands just 0.2% in fourth quarter of 2018 with Brexit looming
  
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• Hostile Environment: Hundreds of Commonwealth nationals evicted under anti-migrant 'right to rent' rule

  11-02-2019 10:33
  
  Figures obtained by Politics.co.uk reveal that almost 300 Commonwealth nationals have been evicted from their homes under the government's controversial 'right to rent' rules, raising concerns that members of the Windrush generation could have been affected.
  
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• UK to sign trade deal with Switzerland

  11-02-2019 10:08 via ft.com
  British government has yet to roll over most existing deals with ‘third party’ countries
  
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• Austerity to continue unless Hammond spends, says IFS

  11-02-2019 09:06 via bbc.co.uk
  The chancellor is facing tricky spending decisions, says the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
  
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• The two-year hunt for the Brexit 'unicorn'

  11-02-2019 08:00
  EU officials are reeling at the resurgence of the idea that technology can solve the Irish border issueOn Monday evening, Michel Barnier will sit down to dinner in Brussels with his third Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay.The British cabinet minister will come fresh from meetings with the alternative arrangements working group, a group of Tory MPs from across the party who believe there is something to the idea of the Malthouse compromise, a resurrection of the idea that technology could solve t
  
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• The country I walked through deserves better than Brexit | Mike Carter

  11-02-2019 07:00
  A trip across England in 2016 revealed a nation broken by neoliberalism. For it to heal, this above all has to changeIn May 2016, a few weeks before the EU referendum, I walked 340 miles from Liverpool to London to see what was happening to my country. I was travelling in the footsteps of a 1981 march against unemployment that my late father had helped to organise. In that year, Tory policies had devastated industry and sent unemployment skyrocketing. In 2016, Tory austerity was putting the fina
  
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• Labour’s deputy leader urges PM to keep free TV licences for over-75s

  11-02-2019 07:00
  Tom Watson warns scrapping benefit would be ‘huge financial blow’ to pensioners Labour deputy leader Tom Watson is stepping up pressure on Theresa May to maintain free TV licences for the over-75s.In a letter to the prime minister, he warned that scrapping the benefit would represent a “huge financial blow” to millions of pensioners and breach a Conservative general election manifesto pledge. Continue reading...
  
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• Poland could be better by Radoslaw Sikorski

  11-02-2019 06:00 via ft.com
  The former foreign minister holds out hope that the country can change course
  
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• Monday, February 11

  11-02-2019 06:00 via ft.com
  The IMF's new chief economist backs the Fed on interest rates, Japanese business tak…
  
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• Campaigners call for Whitechapel Bell Foundry to re-open

  11-02-2019 04:18 via bbc.co.uk
  Developers want to turn the historic Whitechapel Bell Foundry in east London into a boutique hotel.
  
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• Williamson heats up UK defence rhetoric

  11-02-2019 01:01 via ft.com
  Britain cannot be seen as ‘paper tiger’, says minister, as MoD prepares to send carrier to Pacific
  
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• Replace GCSEs with baccalaureate, says Conservative MP

  11-02-2019 01:01
  Radical proposal to overhaul exams would allow greater focus on vocational skillsGCSE exams in England should be scrapped and replaced with a baccalaureate for school leavers that includes vocational skills and personal development, as part of a radical overhaul proposed by an influential Conservative MP.Robert Halfon, the MP for Harlow who chairs the House of Commons education select committee, is the first Conservative policymaker to break ranks over the future of GCSE exams, after the governm
  
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• Police fear loss of EU crime-fighting powers

  11-02-2019 01:01 via ft.com
  Absconding a ‘real possibility’, says officer in charge of Brexit planning
  
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• No-deal risks two more years of austerity, warns IFS

  11-02-2019 01:01 via ft.com
  Public borrowing likely to be £50bn higher than if Britain remained in EU
  
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• No-deal Brexit would make Britain less safe, says police chief

  11-02-2019 01:01
  Officer leading national preparations decries potential loss of EU crime-fighting toolsA no-deal Brexit would damage police powers to detain foreign suspects and leave British fugitives in Europe beyond the law, a police chief has said.Deputy assistant commissioner Richard Martin is leading national police preparations to cope with the loss of key crime-fighting measures if Britain leaves the EU on 29 March without a deal. Continue reading...
  
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• Immigration regime after Brexit 'risks new Windrush scandal'

  11-02-2019 01:01
  Thinktank says plans would also cost employers over £1bn in five years and harm higher educationThe government’s post-Brexit immigration system would cost employers more than £1bn in administration costs over five years, harm the higher education sector by putting off EU students and risk a new Windrush scandal, according to an analysis of the plans.The report by Global Future, a thinktank that supports more open immigration, says the NHS would also face almost £120m a ye
  
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