Markus Andrews

It seems in bad taste to even contemplate such an idea, given the grievous loss of life, almost including his own, but it would seem that the Covid pandemic has – in purely political terms – served Boris Johnson well. While no doubt longer-term trends, long predating Covid-19, including the continuing aftershocks of Brexit, helped the Conservatives in the latest round of elections, it is still true that the Covid crisis was a special factor, and a lucky one for the PM.Imagine, for example, if many of the elections postponed from last year had somehow been held then, or, indeed, after Dominic Cummings affair. At that point, the government looked incompetent, hypocritical and worse, and Keir Starmer was starting to move steadily ahead of the prime minister in the polls. At least in some areas, there would have been an immediate protest vote, a gesture of no confidence in the government. Now, though, Johnson can take full advantage of the vaccine rollout, the relaxation of lockdown and a general feel-better factor.Second, the crisis allowed him to dismiss Labour attacks on “sleaze” and the SNP campaign for a second independence referendum as somehow trivial or irrelevant to the big task of dealing with Covid and returning life to normal. Again, this is not an argument that could have made by Tories with so much confidence last year, when they seemed to be anything but on top of things. More

All councils in England would have the same recycling rules for householders under a government shake-up of bin collections.Nationwide recycling standards would end the current confusion over which materials residents can put out for reprocessing.And all homes could be given a weekly food-waste collection, to cut the amount of waste going into landfill.Ministers are launching a public consultation on plans tostreamline recycling from 2023, involving giving local authorities and waste companies a list of specific materials they must collect from homes and businesses, such as plastic, paper and card, glass, metal and food waste.Free garden waste collections for every home are also being considered, a service for which householders currently pay £100m a year. Councils have the option of whether to provide garden waste collections.The proposals, set out in a consultation document, would help the government meet its target of eliminating all avoidable waste by 2050.At the moment, less than half – 45 per cent – of household waste is recycled, partly because rules vary from council to council, with insufficient detail given to householders.About 9.5 million tonnes of food a year in the UK are thrown away by households, manufacturers, retailers and others, according to anti-waste charity Wrap.The government says it will provide council with extra funding and support for recycling collections, partly through reforming the packaging industry, forcing firms to meet the full cost of managing their packaging waste. The idea is to reduce the amount of unnecessary packaging thrown away.Environment secretary George Eustice said: “Householders want more frequent recycling collections. Regular food and garden waste collections will ensure that they can get rid of their rubbish faster, at no additional cost to them.“Our proposals will boost recycling rates, and ensure that less rubbish is condemned to landfill.”In 2019, just over a third of England’s district councils and unitary authorities – 133 out of 309 – offered a separate food-waste collection service.The consultation, which runs until 4 July, also seeks to set new “minimum service standards” for bin collections on local authorities, forcing them to make standard rubbish collections at least once a fortnight, alongside the weekly collection of food waste.Ministers are already consulting on a deposit return scheme for drinks containers, whereby consumers would be given incentives to return and recycle bottles and cans. More

It is “too early” to say if London mayor Sadiq Khan has been re-elected for a second term, Labour has claimed.A party source said low turn out and voter complacency for Labour has left the race “uncertain”.Earlier on Friday reports emerged saying that Shaun Bailey’s camp believes it can win the contest.If the Conservative candidate was to win it would be a huge upset, with polls earlier this week showing Mr Khan with an apparently unassailable lead.According to Opinium, the Labour incumbent was on course to pick up 48 per cent of first-round votes, compared with Mr Bailey’s 29 per cent.When a candidate in the London contest gets 50 per cent of the votes they are elected mayor. Labour says voter complacency towards Mr Khan means the race could go down to the wire.“We always said it would be a close election,” the party source told The Independent.”There is no question we are seeing significant impact from turnout and voter complacency. “There are still half of London boroughs to count and it’s too early to say anything with any certainty at this stage.” Mr Bailey took an early lead as Tory strongholds began to declare first in London.But Mr Khan has since made up ground and as of 5pm he had 39 per cent of votes counted against Mr Bailey’s 37 per cent. There remains a long way to go in the election, with around half of boroughs yet to declare. Ballot counting will continue into Saturday, with a result expected in the evening at the earliest.If no candidate reaches the 50 per cent threshold in the first round of ballots, then the election will go to a two-person run-off with voters’ second preferences taken into account.The London mayoral race is among a whole series of elections that took place across the UK on Thursday.Around 48 million people were registered to vote, with local council contests taking place in England and elections to the devolved parliaments in Scotland and Wales. More

Liverpool has elected its first black female mayor, as Labour retained the mayoralty despite a storm of corruption allegations surrounding the previous incumbent.Joanne Anderson, a self-professed Corbynista, succeeded Joe Anderson – no relation – who chose not to stand following his arrest in a Merseyside Police fraud investigation.After her victory, Ms Anderson apologised for the previous administration, referring to a report by local government inspector Max Caller that outlined a culture of bullying, intimidation, “dubious” deals, patchy scrutiny and “jobs for the boys”.“The first thing I want to do is apologise to the city for what’s happened in terms of the Caller investigation and what’s happened under the previous administration,” Ms Anderson said.“I’ve stood up because I want to make this right and I will do everything in my power to make it right.”She pledged to give the city an “accountable and transparent” authority that the “people of Liverpool deserve”.The first woman of colour to ever lead a large British city, Ms Anderson told The Independent earlier this week: “I do think this will impact on girls thinking about what they can and cannot achieve… And just by being in the room, as a black woman, it will make a difference to the tone and culture here.”An equality and diversity consultant by profession, she had previously promised annual citizens’ audits, increased scrutiny and an excess of transparency to prevent future suspicions of wrongdoing.She has also said she wants to get rid of the position of elected mayor, and has promised a shake-up to ditch councillors involved in the scandal.Commissioners appointed by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government are taking over some of the city council’s functions for the next three years following the Caller report.Independent candidate Stephen Yip, founder of children’s charity Kind Liverpool, came second in the mayoral race, with 32,079 votes to Ms Anderson’s 46,493.Additional reporting by PA More

Nicola Sturgeon has said it was always going to be a “very, very long shot” for the SNP to win a majority at Holyrood, as early election results suggested swings to Labour and the Conservatives in key Scottish seats.Scotland’s first minister said she was “extremely happy” that her party was on course for a fourth government term, however.Her deputy also said the SNP would be the “largest party” after the elections, but refused to be drawn on the chances of his party securing an outright majority.The SNP argues that winning most seats in the Scottish Parliament would bolster its mandate for another independence referendum.John Swinney, who is also the Scottish Government’s education secretary, comfortably held his own Perthshire North seat, increasing his majority over the Tories.But the SNP only narrowly held on to Banffshire and Buchan Coast, where the candidate Karen Adam won with 14,920 votes, just ahead of the Tories’ Mark Findlater on 14,148.The SNP had previously had a majority of 6,683 in the seat, but that was cut to just 772.The SNP also held Clydebank and Milngavie, as the Labour vote in the seat increased by almost 10 per cent. Although it is early days, the mixed bag of early results could suggest pro-UK voters are lending other parties their votes in a bid to deny the SNP a majority.Mr Swinney said: “It is an enormous pleasure to see the prospects of the return of an SNP government for a fourth historic term, given the scale of the vote that my party is experiencing the length and breadth of the country.”On the issue of a second independence referendum, Mr Swinney vowed he would “do all that I can” to “ensure that the people of Scotland have a choice on their future as they should have”.He added: “That is an absolutely gigantic feat for the Scottish National Party to have achieved, to be on the brink of a fourth continuous term.”The first seat to be declared in the race for Holyrood was Orkney, a long time Liberal Democrat stronghold, where the party’s candidate Liam McArthur was re-elected.The SNP also held Aberdeen Donside, a seat previously filled by Mark McDonald, who resigned from the party after allegations of inappropriate behaviour.Early results suggest turnout among voters was up on the last election in 2016. More

The EU has rejected a push by Boris Johnson to relax rules on food safety as a way of easing Brexit disruption at Northern Ireland’s ports.UK negotiators have been pushing for the bloc to take a more flexible approach on food import and animal health regulations that would reduce the need for disruptive new controls.But the European Commission signalled on Friday that it could not adopt the compromise plan.The UK had wanted the EU to take a “risk assessment-based” approach to animal safety that would have taken into account that the UK currently has very similar rules to the EU.But the Commission believes this would undermine EU food safety rules and the bloc’s “zero risk” approach. Instead, the EU says the UK would have to formally align with EU food rules if it wants reduce border checks and controls.The UK government has ruled this out and says it must have the freedom to diverge from EU rules.Since 1 January Northern Ireland has effectively had a customs and regulatory border with the rest of the UK, which has caused significant disruption to trade and shortages of some goods.But the situation is set to worsen later this year when grace periods exempting supermarket suppliers expire.The EU and UK have been locked in new Brexit talks since February in a bid to come to a compromise before the grade periods expire. The UK has unilaterally extended the deadline for the even stricker controls – a move the EU says is unlawful.But meanwhile both sides are far from an agreement, with significant differences remaining and no landing zone in sight.Officials in Brussels told The Independent that negotiators from both sides are constantly in touch about the issue.Ireland’s public broadcaster RTE News reports that Lord Frost, the UK’s chief Brexit negotiator, and EU vice president Maroš Šefčovič are expected to meet business leaders in Northern Ireland as early as next week to discuss the issue. More

Boris Johnson has said that the Conservative victory in Hartlepool amounts to a “mandate” for his administration’s agenda.Visiting the north-eastern seaside town to celebrate with new Tory MP Jill Mortimer, Mr Johnson said that the message of Thursday’s election was that voters wanted politicians to focus on their priorities, like delivering Brexit and rolling out coronavirus vaccines.He claimed that EU withdrawal had enabled the government to take steps like approving a freeport in Teesside, controlling the UK’s borders, accelerating the vaccine programme and helping prevent the creation of a breakaway tournament by football’s elite clubs.Labour’s choice of a remain-backing candidate has been identified as a key factor behind last night’s defeat in Hartlepool, which had been red since the 1960s but voted 70 per cent for Brexit in the 2016 referendum.Speaking alongside Ms Mortimer on Hartlepool’s quayside, Mr Johnson said: “This is a place that voted for Brexit. We got Brexit done and then we are able to do other things thanks to that. “It’s thanks to Brexit that we have been able to go ahead with the freeport in the whole of Teesside, do things like take back control of our borders. “We are able to deal with things like the European Super League and, of course, we are able to do things a bit differently when it comes to the vaccine rollout that has been so important and enabled (us) to deliver that faster than other European countries.”Mr Johnson said the Hartlepool result – which saw a Labour majority of 3,595 in 2019 converted into an overwhelming 6,940 advantage for Tories – represented “a mandate for us to continue to deliver, not just for the people of Hartlepool and the fantastic people of the north-east, but for the whole of the country”.He said: “If there is a lesson out of this whole election campaign across the whole of the UK, it is that the public want us to get on with focusing on their needs and their priorities, coming through the pandemic and making sure we build back better.”And he added: “What has happened is that they can see we did get Brexit done and, to a certain extent, they can see that we delivered on that.“What people want us to do now is to get on with delivering on everything else. “Number one is continuing the vaccine rollout, making sure that we go from jab, jab, jab to jobs, jobs, jobs.” Mr Johnson said the government has embarked on a “massive project” of “uniting and levelling up” the country. “Every government has tried it to some extent but I don’t think any government has tried it as wholeheartedly as this government is trying,” he said. More

Britain’s governing Conservative Party made further inroads in the north of England on Friday, winning a special election in the post-industrial town of Hartlepool for a parliamentary seat that the main opposition Labour Party had held since its creation in 1974.Managing to present themselves as the party of change despite having led the U.K. for 11 years, Prime Minister Boris Johnson s Conservatives extended their grip on parts of the country that had been Labour strongholds for decades, if not a century, and which voted heavily for Britain’s departure from the European Union in 2016.“What has happened is that they can see we did get Brexit done,” Johnson said during a flying visit to Hartlepool where he posed next to an inflatable blimp of himself. “What people want us to do now is to get on with delivering on everything else. Number one is continuing the vaccine rollout, making sure that we go from jab to jab, to jab to jobs, jobs, jobs.”The Conservatives appeared to be headed for a series of victories a day after millions of voters cast ballots in an array of local and regional elections in England, Scotland and Wales. The party has already picked up a host of local council seats in towns across England in addition to the victory in Hartlepool. On what was dubbed Super Thursday, around 50 million voters were eligible to take part in scores of elections, some of which had been postponed a year because of the pandemic that has left the U.K. with Europe’s largest coronavirus death toll.The results of Thursday’s election in Hartlepool, one of the poorest towns in England, showed Conservative candidate Jill Mortimer secured nearly 52% of the vote. The Labour candidate, Paul Williams, only received around 29%.“Labour have taken people in Hartlepool for granted for too long,” Mortimer said in her victory speech.In the 2019 general election, the Conservative Party made big inroads into Labour’s “red wall” in northern England on a combination of factors, notably Johnson’s insistence that he would deliver Brexit after years of parliamentary haggling. The recent success of Britain’s coronavirus vaccine rollout also appears to have given the Conservatives a shot in the arm.Whatever lay behind the result, the loss of Hartlepool represents a big blow for the Labour Party and its leader, Keir Starmer. Hopes were high that Starmer would help Labour reconnect with its lost voters in the north of England when he took the helm a little more than a year ago after succeeding the more left-wing Jeremy Corbyn, who led the party in 2019 to its worst election performance since 1935.Steve Reed, Labour’s communities spokesman, said it was “absolutely shattering” to see a Conservative candidate win in a place like Hartlepool.Though Starmer has already faced a backlash from the left wing of Labour in the wake of the Hartlepool result, the party should have some results to cheer over the coming couple of days, with Sadiq Khan and Andy Burnham expected to win second terms as the mayors of London and Manchester, respectively. The Labour government in Wales is also expected to hold onto power.The result that could have the biggest U.K-wide implications is the Scotland election, where the governing Scottish National Party is looking for a renewed mandate that could speed up the prospect of a second independence referendum.The SNP’s leader, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, says she’s is looking to push for another referendum if her party wins a majority in the parliament in Edinburgh, but only after the pandemic has been dealt with and the economic recovery from it is on track.Scotland has been part of the U.K. since 1707 and the issue of Scottish independence appeared settled when Scottish voters rejected secession by 55%-45% in a 2014 referendum. But the U.K.-wide decision in 2016 to leave the European Union ran against the wishes of most Scots: 62% voted in favor of staying within the bloc, while most voters in England and Wales wanted to leave. That gave the Scottish nationalist cause fresh legs. The first results from Scotland show that the SNP is on course to come first in the election, but it remains unclear whether it will win a majority. Further results are expected later Friday but many may not come until the weekend. More