Politics

The UK government won’t find much in the latest dump of migration data to back up its claim that it is restoring order to a broken asylum system. In a competitive field, perhaps the most damaging stat is the rising number of small boat crossings – up 38% on 12 months previously and close to…

The number of asylum seekers housed in hotels has risen by 8% since Labour came to power, the latest government figures show. The Home Office data revealed there were 32,059 asylum seekers in hotels at the end of June – up from 29,585 in June 2024. However, the proportion of all asylum seekers staying in…

The shadow minister for safeguarding has written to the government demanding action on child sexual exploitation after being “alarmed” by a Sky News story revealing plans to exclude it from their Violence Against Women and Girls strategy. Last week, Sky News reported on a leaked Home Office document which stated that child sexual abuse and…

The Observer’s editor-in-chief has called for the BBC to be “put beyond the reach of politicians” – and has compared the fight for survival within television to the zombie fungus in The Last Of Us. Speaking to Sky News about his James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival on Wednesday, James Harding said…

TikTok and Instagram have been accused of targeting teenagers with suicide and self-harm content – at a higher rate than two years ago. The Molly Rose Foundation – set up by Ian Russell after his 14-year-old daughter took her own life after viewing harmful content on social media – commissioned analysis of hundreds of posts…

“It’s an interesting moment,” was how one government source described the High Court ruling that will force an Essex hotel to be emptied of asylum seekers within weeks. That may prove to be the understatement of the summer. For clues as to why, just take a glance at what the Home Office’s own lawyer told…

The UK government has dropped its demands to create a backdoor into Apple’s encryption, according to the US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard. In a post on X in the early hours of Tuesday, Ms Gabbard said the UK had withdrawn its demand to access global Apple users’ data if required. She wrote: “The UK has…

Party leaders in the UK’s devolved nations have called on Sir Keir Starmer to impose immediate sanctions on Israel and said waiting until September to recognise a Palestinian state is “far too late”. The leaders and senior politicians from parties in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales said they are “united in our deep concern and…

👉Listen to Politics at Sam and Anne’s on your podcast app👈        “Education, education, education” was how Tony Blair set out New Labour’s priorities in the early noughties. A quarter of a century on, what story is Sir Keir Starmer trying to tell about schools under his premiership? In this episode, Sam and Anne are joined…

If there’s one thing the past 24 hours has confirmed, it’s that it’s still Donald Trump’s world, and we’re all just living in it. In the aftermath of the Alaska meeting, the US president’s deal-making skills came under question when he seemingly walked away empty-handed. But it was clear he had retained his ability to…