Politics

Rishi Sunak is undertaking a week-long blitz of activity and announcements at home and abroad in a bid to convince a sceptical party he has the ideas and drive to continue as prime minister. After weeks of criticism about an empty legislative agenda, an inability to set the agenda, and divisions in the Tory Party

An MP facing allegations of misusing campaign funds has quit the Conservative Party and says he won’t stand at the next general election. Claims surfaced earlier this week in The Times that Mark Menzies had used political donations to cover medical expenses and pay off “bad people” who had reportedly locked him in a flat

Liz Truss has acknowledged she and her government lost the confidence of financial markets following the mini-budget of October 2022 – but has refused to apologise to homeowners for higher interest rates. Talking to Sky News, the former prime minister blamed her downfall on the Bank of England, primarily governor Andrew Bailey. However, she said

A powersharing agreement between the SNP and the Greens at Holyrood is under threat after the Scottish government ditched a key climate change target. The Scottish Green Party has said a vote on the deal, to be held at a forthcoming extraordinary general meeting (EGM), would be binding. The date of the assembly and the

The Conservatives were warned ex-Tory MP Mark Menzies’s alleged misuse of party funds may have constituted fraud but the whistleblower was told there was no duty to report it Mr Menzies, the MP for Fylde in Lancashire, gave up the Tory whip in the wake of reports in The Times that he misused party funds.

Nicola Sturgeon has described her personal situation as “incredibly difficult” after her husband was charged in connection with the embezzlement of SNP funds. Peter Murrell, who was chief executive of the party until March 2023, was rearrested on Thursday amid a long-running Police Scotland investigation into the SNP’s finances, dubbed Operation Branchform. The 59-year-old remained

Nicola Sturgeon’s husband Peter Murrell has been charged by police after he was arrested amid an investigation into the SNP’s funding and finances. Police said he has been charged in connection with the embezzlement of funds from the party. The former SNP chief executive, 59, was questioned by detectives after being taken into Police Scotland

Nicola Sturgeon’s husband Peter Murrell, who is a former SNP chief executive, has been re-arrested amid a police investigation into the party’s funding and finances. It comes more than a year after Mr Murrell was first arrested and released without charge, which saw the couple’s home searched by police and a blue forensics tent erected

An MP has lost the Conservative Party whip while newspaper claims about alleged misuse of campaign funds are investigated. Mark Menzies, the MP for Fylde, disputes the allegations reported by The Times but the Conservative Party is looking into the claims. A spokesperson for Chief Whip Simon Hart said: “Following a call with the Chief

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has said that “better times are ahead” but that the fundamentals of the UK economy are “very strong”. Speaking to Sky News in Washington, Mr Hunt pointed to price rise data from today showing a drop in the rate of inflation as well as the latest jobs figures and IMF economic growth

It has been two years since Boris Johnson first proposed sending asylum seekers arriving in the UK to be sent to Rwanda to have their claims processed. Since then the government has spent £240m trying to get the scheme off the ground, argued – and lost – its case to send migrants to Kigali in

New defeats for the government’s Rwanda bill in the House of Lords have set up a parliamentary showdown on Wednesday – forcing MPs to consider changes to Rishi Sunak’s stop the boats plan. Downing Street wants to get the bill – which declares Rwanda a safe country and stops appeals from asylum seekers being sent

MPs have rejected a series of Lords’ amendments to the government’s Rwanda bill – as a week of parliamentary showdown on the legislation begins. The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill is currently in the middle of what is known as ping-pong, where the two houses propose, debate and vote on amendments. So far,

Lord David Cameron has urged Israel to “think with head as well as heart” and not retaliate to Iran’s missile attack. The foreign secretary said the nation needed to be “smart as well as tough” and think about the consequences of escalating violence in the region. UN warns of ‘devastating conflict’ – Middle East latest

At every level of the British diplomatic machine, the focus after Saturday night’s Iranian attack on Israel is now to do whatever possible to de-escalate tensions in the Middle East. The message from the UK government is twofold. First, that it stands with Israel and backs its right to self-defence – after all, this terrifying

UK jets shot down “a number of drones” launched by Iran in its unprecedented attack on Israel last night, Rishi Sunak has said. The prime minister called the assault by Tehran a “dangerous and unnecessary escalation” of conflict in the Middle East, warning the “the fallout for regional stability would be hard to overstate” had

As with most political scandals, the heat in the Angela Rayner housing row is less about the (alleged) crime and more about the (alleged) cover-up. Or, to put it another way, this is all about how honest and transparent the Labour deputy leader has been in responding to allegations about her living arrangements a decade

Liz Truss has revealed she considered abolishing the UK’s economic watchdog and replacing leaders at the Treasury and Bank of England, accusing the bodies of being “pro-China” and “pro-Remain”. The country’s shortest serving prime minister said she discussed scrapping the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) with her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng but concluded it would have

Angela Rayner has said she will “do the right thing and step down” if she is found to have committed a crime in the police investigation into her former living arrangements. Greater Manchester Police (GMP) confirmed earlier today that it was re-examining claims the deputy Labour leader may have broken electoral law over information she