Political news

• Why I changed my mind on the case for a net migration target

  28-11-2025 10:30
  Labour should explain why it wants a shrinking population and how it will affect choices on tax, spending and public services
  
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• When it’s developers v people, usually the money wins. I saw how one community came out on top | Jason Okundaye

  20-12-2025 09:00 via theguardian.com
  A social housing victory at the ‘luxury’ Battersea power station development shows the power of grassroots politics – and holds a lesson for all of our cities What happens when international capital arrives on your doorstep and threatens to devour your home? The residents of the housing estates surrounding Battersea power station in London, including the Patmore where I was raised, faced that prospect when, in 2012, a consortium of Malaysian investors bought the derelict power
  
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• UK aid cuts take 40% from funds to counter Russian threat in western Balkans

  20-12-2025 09:00 via theguardian.com
  Funding to tackle misinformation and cyber-attacks, and boost democracy, cut from £40m to £24mKeir Starmer’s raid on overseas aid has led to a 40% cut in funds for countering Russian aggression and misinformation in a region of Europe described by the prime minister as vital to the UK’s national security.British funding committed to bolstering the western Balkans, where Russia has been accused of sowing division and creating destabilisation, has been cut from £40m l
  
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• Shooting hares in England to be banned for most of the year

  20-12-2025 08:00 via theguardian.com
  Exclusive: Ministers also expected to announce trail-hunting ban in sweeping changes to animal welfare lawShooting hares in England will be banned for most of the year as part of sweeping changes to animal welfare law.At the moment, it is legal to shoot the animals during their breeding season, with pregnant hares left to bleed out, and leverets – their young – often orphaned as a result. Continue reading...
  
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• Pitting Nimbys against Yimbys is a bad idea

  20-12-2025 06:00
  Popular political assumptions misread the public by attacking nature as the block to building more housing
  
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• Alan Milburn to review rise in youth minimum wage

  19-12-2025 20:38 via theguardian.com
  Exclusive: Blair-era minister echoes concerns about young people being priced out of jobs, in intervention likely to dismay Labour MPsThe future of the youth minimum wage will come under review as part of a major inquiry into rising inactivity among Britain’s young people by the former health secretary Alan Milburn.The social mobility expert said that unless the government tackled some “uncomfortable truths” about the labour market there was a risk of creating a “lost gen
  
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• Quizmas special: Political Fix’s 2025 nerd-out!

  19-12-2025 20:20
  George Parker puts our panel to the test
  
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• New leader says Unison will end support for ‘destructive’ Labour right wing

  19-12-2025 20:00 via theguardian.com
  Blunt remarks indicate UK’s largest union may be on collision course with Wes Streeting and Labour more widelyAndrea Egan: My warning as the new head of UnisonThe new general secretary of Unison has declared the trade union will end its support for the “destructive right wing of the Labour party” and said any leadership election in 2026 should not swap Keir Starmer for Wes Streeting.Andrea Egan, who won a decisive victory as a leftwing challenger this week, hit out at Streeting
  
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• My warning as the new head of Unison: never again will we prop up politicians hostile to unions | Andrea Egan

  19-12-2025 20:00 via theguardian.com
  I have been appalled by Wes Streeting’s attacks on resident doctors. The destructive right wing of the Labour party should know that this is a new eraI started my working life as a low-paid children’s residential care worker supporting vulnerable children, and I am still a registered social worker today. I discovered the labour movement through the powerful women who mentored me and showed me that working-class people will only win the dignity we deserve if we join together in our wo
  
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• UK rules out using frozen Russian assets to aid Ukraine

  19-12-2025 19:58
  Britain had only been planning to deploy the plan in lockstep with Australia, Canada and the EU
  
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• The Guardian view on the Palestine Action hunger strikers: the government is trying to ignore this protest | Editorial

  19-12-2025 19:30 via theguardian.com
  Doctors have warned that the lives of these prisoners are now in danger. Pretending this is not happening is not good enoughIn 1981, IRA and other republican prisoners went on hunger strike in Northern Ireland, demanding the restoration of their political status. Ten would die; extraordinarily, their leader, Bobby Sands, had been elected as an MP by the time of his death. Margaret Thatcher took a hardline public stance. But by the end, behind the scenes, the government was looking for an exit, a
  
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• Disabled people in England ‘betrayed’ by cuts to new-build accessibility targets

  19-12-2025 18:57 via theguardian.com
  Campaigners decry plan to reduce requirement for improved standards from 100% down to 40% of new homesGovernment plans to make huge cuts to targets for accessible new-build homes in England have been labelled a “monumental reversal” by campaigners, who say disabled people have been left feeling “betrayed and excluded”.In its proposals for changes to the country’s planning system, the government said a minimum of 40% of new-build homes would be built to improved acce
  
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• Martin Rowson on the road ahead for Labour – cartoon

  19-12-2025 17:01 via theguardian.com
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• UK electoral commission slams delays to local elections

  19-12-2025 16:50
  Watchdog says polls should only be postponed in ‘exceptional circumstances’
  
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• ‘It’s rather rude’: Truss accused of trying to poach members of rival Tory club

  19-12-2025 16:34 via theguardian.com
  Former prime minister allegedly wandering 5 Hertford Street to find members for her Mayfair club a street awayFor Tory grandees licking their wounds and plotting their return after their disastrous 2024 general election performance, the opulent, fire-lit rooms of the exclusive club 5 Hertford Street are a sanctuary.But in recent weeks, their long lunches have been rudely interrupted by Liz Truss, who has been accused of wandering the premises in search of members to poach for her own rival opera
  
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• UK politics: ‘Not clear’ who was behind FCDO hack, says minister, amid reports of China link – as it happened

  19-12-2025 15:22 via theguardian.com
  Chris Bryant confirms October cyber-attack as the Sun names Storm 1849, a Chinese hacker group, as being responsible The BBC’s editing guidelines do not need to be altered in the wake of controversy surrounding the edit of a Donald Trump speech, a review has found.The US president is seeking up to $10bn (£7.5bn) in damages in response to the BBC’s editing of a speech he made before the 2021 attack on the Capitol.I was asked to look at the editorial guidelines on use of editing.
  
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• As Tory after Tory defects to Nigel Farage, I say this: be careful which turncoats you wish for | Simon Hart

  19-12-2025 15:00 via theguardian.com
  As a chief whip, I came to know a thing or two about those who flee their parties. Often they are more trouble than they are worthNigel Farage is storing up trouble by welcoming yet another tranche of Conservative defectors to Reform UK’s ranks. I should know. When I was chief whip, nothing united a party quite as much as a defection. Old enemies call a truce from their daily hostilities to turn all the available ire on the traitor in their midst. Ask Shaun Woodward, the former Conservativ
  
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• UK Foreign Office victim of cyber-attack in October, says Chris Bryant

  19-12-2025 13:59 via theguardian.com
  Minister says risk to ‘any individual’ from cyber-attack is low and that it is still unclear who is responsible The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office was hacked in October, a minister has said.Chris Bryant, a trade minister in Keir Starmer’s government, told Sky News there was a low risk to “any individual” from the cyber-attack. Continue reading...
  
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• China blamed for UK government cyber attack

  19-12-2025 11:12
  Foreign Office was hacked in October, ministers have revealed
  
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• Merry Christmas, Keir Starmer: despite everything, you’re still the best man for the job | Simon Jenkins

  19-12-2025 11:00 via theguardian.com
  Rumours of the prime minister’s demise are premature. Yes, the polls look bad – but these days they reflect little more than voters’ passing whimsMerry Christmas, Sir Keir, and a happy new year. Or as they say in Downing Street these days, make merry for tomorrow you may die. At your drinks for lobby correspondents last week there was reportedly one topic alone. How long had you to go: months, weeks, hours?We all know bad news sells. Political reporters cannot handle prime mini
  
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• Unpopular Labour is running out of opportunities to change its fate

  19-12-2025 10:30
  Nigel Farage and Zack Polanski have both had good years thanks to disastrous strategy from the two main parties
  
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• My lesson from 2025: Reform is much more vulnerable than it appears | Gaby Hinsliff

  19-12-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  The party’s astonishingly speedy growth disguised shallow roots – and its success has brought a level of scrutiny for which it simply isn’t readyImagine a classroom with almost nothing in it, save some hard wooden benches and a stack of Bibles. Imagine the school it is in has only one loo, no canteen, gets freezing cold in winter – oh, and the playground is full of gravestones.If this sounds to you like the perfect setting to teach the country’s most vulnerable chil
  
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• The Brexit implementation fiasco

  19-12-2025 06:00
  It is not too late to reverse bad policy but that requires good governance
  
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• Behemoth bills are causing hold-ups in the Lords

  19-12-2025 06:00
  Rambling, badly drafted government proposals are leading to late nights and endless scrutiny
  
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• Over-50s should work for longer to ease pressures of ageing society, say Lords

  19-12-2025 01:01
  Falling fertility rates and rising life expectancy will pose ‘significant economic and fiscal challenges’
  
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• Farage avoids police probe into election spending

  18-12-2025 20:48
  Essex force says complaint about alleged offence was made too late for an investigation to proceed
  
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• Trump family deal with fusion energy firm adds to complicated UK-US ties

  18-12-2025 20:31
  TAE Technologies has already agreed joint venture with UK government’s atomic laboratory
  
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• From Keir as Eliot Ness to Radon Liz on YouTube – the 2025 alternative politics awards

  18-12-2025 20:26 via theguardian.com
  With the Christmas recess slowing the political havoc, it’s time to hand out the Guardian’s parliamentarian of the year awardsYou can hear the sighs of relief. Not from the MPs who are packing up to slope back to their constituencies for the Christmas recess, but from the rest of the country. Finally, the year is coming to an end and there will be few chances for our politicians to do any further damage before they return to Westminster in January.The psychodrama is finally done. We
  
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• Farage will not face police inquiry into spending

  18-12-2025 19:55 via bbc.com
  It comes despite a former aide claiming Reform UK overspent on Farage's election campaign.
  
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• Elections face further delays over councils shake-up

  18-12-2025 18:57 via bbc.com
  The prospect of further suspensions to local polls has triggered a blame game between the parties.
  
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