Politics

The UK has raised the importance of complying with international law with the US government following their military action in Venezuela, the foreign secretary has told MPs. Speaking in the House of Commons on Monday, Yvette Cooper declined to say that the US had broken international law, despite calls from MPs of all parties for…

Scotland’s first minister has proposed a national bank holiday to mark the men’s football team playing in its first World Cup since 1998. Scotland’s opening game is against Haiti in Boston, with kick-off scheduled to take place at 2am UK time on Sunday 14 June. John Swinney has proposed that Monday 15 June be designated…

Mobile phones and SIM cards will be seized from migrants who have arrived in small boats from today, as part of efforts to tackle Channel crossings and people smugglers. Officers will begin taking electronic devices from people at Manston processing centre in Kent, where they will use on-site technology to download data from them in…

Sir Keir Starmer’s right-hand man refused to say whether the US has broken international law by striking Venezuela and capturing its president. Darren Jones, chief secretary to the prime minister, told Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips it was “for the Americans to set out the legal basis for their operation”. He also confirmed the UK…

A total of 41,472 migrants arrived in the UK in 2025 after crossing the Channel on a small boat – the second-highest annual figure on record. No migrants made the journey on New Year’s Eve, the Home Office confirmed on Thursday, with the last recorded crossing made on 22 December. It means the overall number…

Nigel Farage has vowed to go “double or quits” on May’s local elections with a spending blitz of £5m. The Reform UK leader has described the upcoming vote as “the single most important event between now and the general election”, expected in 2029, and acknowledged that “people would ask questions” about his leadership if the…

Sir Keir Starmer has been accused of diverting £3 billion of NHS funding a year to appease Donald Trump. Daisy Cooper, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader, said taxpayers’ money was being “rerouted at the request of Donald Trump” from frontline NHS services “into the pockets of big pharmaceutical companies”. At the beginning of December, the…

The government is launching a drive to recruit thousands of new volunteers to serve as magistrates in England and Wales, as it seeks to get a grip of the courts backlog. More than 2,000 magistrates have been trained since 2022, and ministers want to recruit the same number again over the next financial year, the…

Nigel Farage has said he is giving “serious thought” to scrapping the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) if his party wins the next general election and he becomes prime minister. The Reform UK leader said the budget watchdog leaves chancellors “beholden to it rather than doing their own thinking”, and said it is “effectively dictating…

The government’s woken up to quite the new year hangover with the publication of 2025’s small boat data – which reveals the number of migrants crossing the Channel increased by more than 4,500 people compared to 2024. For a prime minister who made “smashing the gangs” such a central pledge during the general election campaign,…