Political news

• Council leader to give evidence over Maccabi ban

  30-12-2025 20:24 via bbc.com
  Councillor John Cotton will appear in front of Home Affairs Committee MPs on 6 January.
  
  Read more

• Ella Baron on Nigel Farage and Britishness – cartoon

  30-12-2025 18:39
  Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Grooming gang row 'could have been handled better' - Constance

  30-12-2025 18:18 via bbc.com
  Angela Constance's remarks about Prof Alexis Jay are to be independently investigated to determine if they breached the ministerial code.
  
  Read more

• British-Egyptian dissident appears to endorse 'smear campaign' claims

  30-12-2025 17:12 via bbc.com
  Alaa Abd El Fattah has faced backlash over old social media posts where he called for the killing of Zionists.
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Foreign Office under pressure over activist’s ‘abhorrent’ social media posts

  30-12-2025 16:33
  Official inquiry ordered into ‘serious information failures’ following historic comments by Alaa Abdel Fattah
  
  Read more

• Labour criticises Tory shadow minister for representing Abramovich

  30-12-2025 16:04 via bbc.com
  Labour says it is "indefensible" for Lord Wolfson to keep his role while acting as a lawyer for the Russian billionaire.
  
  Read more

• From Send to single-sex spaces: key tests facing Keir Starmer in 2026

  30-12-2025 15:49
  Moment of maximum danger will come in May’s local and regional elections and PM is already plotting his comebackKeir Starmer will begin his second full year in Downing Street as one of the least popular ever prime ministers – a spectacularly rapid reversal from his landslide election win of just 18 months ago.Yet Starmer believes this will be the year things start to improve for his beleaguered premiership and fractious Labour party. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• ‘We have to go’: longest-serving lord reflects on looming Labour eviction

  30-12-2025 15:00
  Hereditary peer David Trefgarne will be forced to end 64 years in House of Lords when reform bill is approvedAt the age of 84, David Trefgarne is not the oldest active peer in the House of Lords. But now well into his 64th year in the upper house, he is very much the longest serving. And in the next few months, it will all end.The 2nd Baron Trefgarne, to use his formal title, is one of the few hereditary peers still helping to make UK law, the tail end of a legislative chain dating back to the 1
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Papers reveal Blair said voters had no appetite for more Welsh powers

  30-12-2025 14:28 via bbc.com
  Records from 2004 show Tony Blair saying his government had 'lanced the boil of separatism'.
  
  Read more

• Politicians and the romance novel: a love affair

  30-12-2025 14:16
  The world of romantic fiction is a strange one — that of political erotica even more so
  
  Read more

• Psst: wanna buy a new year's honour? Once it was simple. And now? Well, don’t rule it out | Stephen Bates

  30-12-2025 13:00
  I’m fascinated by Maundy Gregory, who sold honours for Lloyd George. He wouldn’t be tolerated today, but don’t assume our system is flawlessAnd so the new year honours list is out. The people – some of them at least – have spoken: here comes a fresh tranche of the great and good.Many questions remain about this process of elevation, but it’s worth saying that in the past, there were many more. As we think about the probity of politics now, from PPE procurement
  
  Read more

• ‘Zack is a phenomenal leader’: Siân Berry on the Green party’s next steps as membership doubles

  30-12-2025 12:00
  Since Zack Polanski took over as leader, the party has doubled its membership and its four MPs want to take on Reform’s anger and build community spirit“Someone has to be out there making the narrative for social security. Someone has to fight the corrosive attitudes to people on benefits,” says Siân Berry, who has just finished her first year as a Green MP in the House of Commons.She is speaking to the Guardian in her Brighton constituency office, formerly occupied by th
  
  Read more

• UK civil service continues to grow despite pledge to ‘rewire state’

  30-12-2025 12:00
  Number of full-time equivalent roles grew by more than 4,000 in the year to September
  
  Read more

• Why I misread Labour on immigration

  30-12-2025 10:30
  Government’s measures were far tougher than the Conservatives’, plus my top films of 2025
  
  Read more

• Conditions may feel rife for a coup within Labour – but a change of leader alone isn’t going to fix things | Polly Toynbee

  30-12-2025 09:00
  For all the talk of coups, this much is clear: without a strong vision, Labour will face a fresh crisis of legitimacyWill he still be there to see in the next new year? Noise about Keir Starmer’s durability quietens with MPs being away from Westminster’s tearooms and murmuring corridors, but WhatsApps zing to and fro just as busily: should he stay or should he go?Any party that has fallen so far, so fast would doubt its leader. At minus 54%, Starmer has been declared the “most
  
  Read more

• Tuesday briefing: A surreal year in news gives our cartoonists endless material

  30-12-2025 07:45
  In today’s newsletter: Covering everything from Donald Trump to AI, and Gaza to Ukraine, award-winning cartoonist and illustrator Ben Jennings shares his favourite caricatures of 2025, and we share ours too.Good morning. It’s been one of those years where the news cycle felt almost too surreal to caricature. From Jeff Bezos commandeering Venice for his lavish wedding at a time of a growing backlash over inequality, to the spectacle of Donald Trump returning to office for a second ter
  
  Read more

• The deepening divisions reshaping London’s political landscape

  30-12-2025 06:00
  Local elections next May are expected to reflect major shifts in party allegiances
  
  Read more

• Alpacas, buses and pints: Five laws you may have missed in 2025

  30-12-2025 02:34 via bbc.com
  More than 30 new laws have been created this year, including these lesser-known bits of legislation.
  
  Read more

• Cabinet Office withdraws Andrew papers after 'error'

  30-12-2025 02:04 via bbc.com
  Documents mentioning Andrew were briefly released before being withdrawn from the National Archives.
  
  Read more

• Boost from joining euro would have covered cost of NHS, adviser told Blair

  30-12-2025 01:01
  Push to join the European single currency stoked tension between Labour PM and chancellor in 2003
  
  Read more

Follow @political_UKnws on Twitter!