Markus Andrews

Nigel Farage has announced he is quitting politics after resigning as leader of the Reform UK party.The former MEP claimed that he would not come back again – as he did after two previous resignations – because Brexit “won’t be reversed”.In a video message to his followers on Twitter, he said: “We’ve done it, we’ve achieved it. For me, I feel my political career, in the sense of actively leading a political party, fighting election campaigns… I think now’s the moment to say I have done it.”He said he would continue to support Reform UK after handing over leadership to the party’s chairman Richard Tice.However Mr Farage warned that he was “not going away” as he was going to continue with his media career.He also said he wanted to campaign against “the increasing influence of the Chinese communist party over our whole way of life” and “the indoctrination of children at school”, which he claimed meant many pupils were “encouraged to hate this country”.Mr Farage also claimed he cared strongly about environmental causes such as the health of our oceans, adding: “Let’s get planting trees!”Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayHe said: “I’m still going to fight for change, but for me after 30 years, that’s enough of active politics. I have actually achieved what I set out to do, and I don’t think there are many people in politics that can say that… At the end of the day it really was worth it.”Paying tribute to the people who voted for him and supported his parties over the last 30 years, he said: “That is what completely changed British politics, that is what got us our independence. It took a long time but we did deliver.”Mr Farage was originally a member of the Conservative Party but left after John Major signed the Maastricht Treaty in 1992.He first became leader of the UK Independence party in 2006, only to quit in 2009 in a failed bid to be elected as an MP. After returning as leader in 2010, he resigned a second time after the Brexit referendum in 2016, only to become leader of the Brexit Party in 2019. It changed its name to Reform UK in January 2020. More

The former Brexit negotiator Lord Frost has called on the EU to “shake off any remaining ill will” over the UK’s decision to leave.The peer, who was appointed to Boris Johnson’s cabinet last month, said in an article for the Sunday Telegraph he wanted Brussels to “build a friendly relationship, between sovereign equals”. However, he also blamed the EU for undermining the Northern Ireland protocol by threatening to override the Brexit deal to restrict exports of Covid-19 vaccines.Lord Frost claimed that the move created a “fragile” situation which led to the government extending the grace period on checks on the movement of goods between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.”We have had to take some temporary operational steps to minimise disruption in Northern Ireland,” he wrote.”They are lawful and are consistent with a progressive and good faith implementation of the protocol. They are about protecting the everyday lives of people in Northern Ireland, making sure they can receive parcels and buy the usual groceries from the supermarket.”Without this threat of disruption, we can continue our discussions with the EU to resolve difficulties arising from the protocol constructively – and we aim to do so.”Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayThe European Commission described the extension of the grace period as a “violation” of the Brexit agreement and pledged legal action.Lord Frost, who is taking over from Michael Gove as London’s representative on the Joint Committee with Brussels on implementation of the Brexit divorce agreement, also highlighted the UK’s vaccine rollout as one of the benefits of leaving the EU, along with the ability to “enact independent national sanctions”.And he rejected criticism of his Brexit deal as prioritising sovereignty over the economy. “This is a false choice,” he wrote. “Sovereignty and democracy are vital to economic success. Sovereignty is meaningful because it enables us to set our own rules democratically for our own benefit, and thereby become more prosperous.”It is a conviction that we, the British people, will make better decisions for ourselves than others will on our behalf.”Lord Frost concluded: “With Boris Johnson as prime minister, our agenda is one of an outward-looking country, confident we can work with others towards common goals.”That is our hope for our ties with our European friends and allies too. I hope they will shake off any remaining ill will towards us for leaving, and instead build a friendly relationship, between sovereign equals.”That is what I will be working towards, acting constructively when we can, standing up for our interests when we must – as a sovereign country in full control of our own destiny.” More

Just after 3pm last Friday marked a milestone that will remain in the memories of millions of parents long after the coronavirus pandemic is over.Some celebrated the end of an arduous two months of home schooling with an early afternoon gin and tonic.Others, perhaps fearing the momentous occasion was just too good to be true, have postponed a celebratory glass or two until Monday, when classrooms are finally due to reopen.Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekday More

When Darlington was announced this week as the location for the government’s new Treasury North campus, even the local newspaper – the great Northern Echo – appeared surprised.In a guide to the north-east market town for London-based civil servants suddenly facing the prospect of relocation, the paper attempted to list what the place was best known for.Railway heritage, Quakers and Vic Reeves were on its list before the sound of straws being clutched could perhaps be heard. “In 1939,” the article told any reading mandarins, “Darlington had the most cinema seats per head of population in the United Kingdom.”Safe to say, not all officials are understood to be relishing the shift in which 750 jobs will move here as part of Boris Johnson’s plan to ultimately move 22,000 government roles out of the capital.But in Darlington itself, such potential reluctance can do nothing to dampen enthusiasm. Even on a wet and windy locked-down Thursday, the excitement that this Tees Valley town – population 92,000 – is set to become home to one of the major offices of state is palpable.“It’s the best thing to happen to the town since I got into politics,” says council leader Heather Scott OBE. “And that was 45 years ago.”Why so brilliant? Because the move – announced as part of the budget and a symbolic plank of the Conservatives’ levelling up agenda – will result in investment, regeneration and economic growth here on a scale not seen in generations, she reckons. Where the government leads, others will now follow.“It’s been a tough year so this was just the news we needed,” says Scott, herself a Tory whose party won control of the authority in 2019 for the first time since the Seventies. “Now, we just want to make it happen as quickly as possible.”Is she worried by those rumours that civil servants are not necessarily keen to move? A look of complete bafflement. “Why would anyone not want to come and live in Darlington?” asks the 81-year-old.The correct answer, of course, is no reason at all.This corner of north-east England may have suffered savagely at the hands of both deindustrialisation and austerity over the past half century but Darlington undoubtedly has much to offer.There are good schools, streets crammed with independent businesses and Victorian market hall currently undergoing a £2 million redevelopment that (so the pitch goes) will turn it into a foodie paradise. There are three theatres, an expanding university campus and – perhaps the true sign of any up-and-coming area – an independent gin distillery. That’s called Little Quaker and is located down a cobbled yard, a stone’s throw from both a coffee roastery and a Syrian restaurant. More

Many millions of pounds are being swiped from England’s poorest schools, in a funding switch triggering fresh accusations of bias towards Tory-held areas.The date for calculating how many children are eligible for extra ‘pupil premium’ cash has been quietly shifted to last October – before schools were able to register many of them.One of London’s poorest boroughs, Barking and Dagenham, is set lose more than £1m alone and the amount lost by schools in similarly-deprived areas could run to tens of millions.One head teacher – whose school will lose £40,000 – said the sum was the equivalent of an extra teacher, or two support staff, leaving it with “very challenging” decisions to make.“It is our youngest pupils who will be disadvantaged the most – and all the research shows that the earlier you provide help the better,” Scott Halliwell, of Southwood Primary School in Dagenham, told The Independent.Anger has been fuelled by the switch being announced too late for schools to encourage parents to register for the pupil premium scheme, which is meant to benefit the poorest children.Margaret Hodge, the local Labour MP, said she believed the allocations were being manipulated to favour Conservative areas, the latest in a series of similar allegations.Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekday“I am sure the Department for Education (DfE) looked at the way the distribution of this money would fall and saw it benefitted the constituencies of Tory MPs,” Ms Hodge said.“This is all about politics rather than need. This will take more than £1m from my borough’s schools which is not fair – and, if the government is serious about levelling up, it’s not fair.”Mr Halliwell protested that the decision came too late to act. The youngest pupils receive free school meals anyway – leaving parents with no incentive to register for pupil premium cash, unless encouraged to do so.“We were only informed in December, about a change that was being introduced two months earlier,” he said, explaining that 30 of 171 eligible pupils had been missed, of which 20 are in the youngest year groups.Asked why the DfE had made the change, the head teacher added: “I could not possibly comment. I don’t know whether they realise the impact this will have on us.”“The economic situation caused by the pandemic means schools are likely to have seen more pupils become eligible for the pupil premium towards the end of last year,” said Jon Andrews, its head of analysis.“This means that we could now see a rise in the number of pupils classed as ‘disadvantaged’, but without the funding to support these extra pupils arriving for a whole year.”The pupil premium, introduced by the Cameron-Clegg government, hands over £1,345 for every primary age pupil who claims a free school meal, or £955 for a secondary student.Allocations have always been based on numbers registered by each January – but was suddenly switched to “the number of eligible pupils recorded by schools in their census in October 2020”.That was just a few weeks after the new school year started. There has long been criticism of the failure to introduce automatic registration, requiring parents to be badgered. A Barking and Dagenham Council survey found that 40 of its 60 schools had collectively lost £862,000 – suggesting the overall loss will top £1m.That would “more than offset” the money they would receive from a promised £700m ‘catch-up’ fund to compensate for learning lost because of the pandemic.But the DfE insisted using data from October allowed schools to “know their budget earlier in the year, helping them to plan ahead”.“We also recently announced £302m for a Recovery Premium, building on the pupil premium, which will be targeted towards the most deprived schools to support disadvantaged students’ attainment,” a spokesperson said. More

Most of the recent fall in Covid-19 rates can be linked to lockdown not vaccines, a leading expert has said, amid warnings that England should not “blow it” when schools reopen next week.Millions of pupils will return to the classroom on Monday for the first time since January, in the initial stage of the government’s ‘roadmap’ back to normality.But experts have warned reopening schools will cause a rise in the reproductive number – or R value – of the virus, causing the number of infections to increase. Dr Mike Tildesley, a member of the SPI-M group which advises the government, said the next few weeks would be “crucial” in the battle against the global pandemic. “We do need to get this balancing act correct and we need to open up at the rate of vaccinations and keep the R number in check, as it were,” he told Times Radio.”Definitely things are moving in the right direction but the next few weeks are going to be crucial for us to monitor what happens when schools open.”Hopefully we can keep everything down and most importantly we can prevent seeing a rise in hospitalisations.”Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayParents should maintain social distancing and other rules while dropping their children off at school, he added.”Just because you’re not in the home with your young children don’t use it as an excuse to go out and mix with other people that you otherwise wouldn’t have done,” he said.”It’s possible with schools open we can keep the R number below one but if we are going to achieve that we all need to keep following all the other rules.”Falling Covid-19 rates are most likely due to the current lockdown measures, and the impact of millions of vaccinations “hopefully is yet to come”, he added.He said: “I think most of the reason the numbers are going in the right direction now is still due to lockdown.”I think we haven’t quite seen the impact of vaccinations, probably start to come in round about now and having a little bit of an effect, but most of the effect thus far actually is probably the fact we have been under severe restrictions since the start of January.”Professor Sir Ian Diamond, head of the Office for National Statistics, warned that while lockdown had been a “success” the UK was “still not out of the woods”.”While we have seen major reductions, we are still relatively high,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.”I’m in very much the view that we should do everything we can not to blow it nationally.”We have done fantastically well in the last couple of months but we are not completely out of the woods yet.”He added that it was “very difficult” to separate the effect of the lockdown from the impact of the government’s mass vaccination programme, but it was clear both were playing a role.Earlier Mr Hancock tweeted “thanks to the vaccine, we’re making progress”, as he urged everyone eligible to get a jab. More

The Welsh government has not attempted to set a “ceiling” on any NHS staff pay rise, its health minister has said.It comes after the UK government recommended a one per cent pay rise for NHS workers in England in a move which has been met by fierce backlash and the threat of industrial action.Vaughan Gething, the Welsh health minister, said on Friday he understood why staff were “hurt and upset” by the 1 per cent pay rise put forward by the UK government.He said ministers in Wales were waiting to see the outcome of the NHS Pay Review Body, which advises on the pay of NHS staff, and the government had put evidence to the body.”We certainly have not done what the UK government has done and tried to set an artificial ceiling on the pay rise that should be provided,” he told reporters. “We think that our staff do deserve a pay rise.”Mr Gething said the Welsh government wanted to ensure that the UK government was in a position to “properly fund” such a pay rise.Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayThe BMA Cymru Wales – part of the British Medical Association (BMA) union for doctors – said it had met with Mr Gething to discuss the issue on Friday.Dr David Bailey, chair of the Welsh council, said the union “could not have been clearer” the recommended one per cent increase for doctors was “nothing short of an insult to a profession which has gone above and beyond during the pandemic”. Mr Gething told reporters on Friday: “I understand why so many staff across our NHS will be feeling hurt and upset and a little angry at the evidence that the Department forHealth and Social Care at the UK level have provided.” He added: “As I say, when our evidence is published, you’ll see we have not taken that approach.”The UK government has continued to defend its controversial proposed pay rise for NHS workers despite growing anger.Matt Hancock, the UK health secretary, said NHS staff had been “carved out” of a pay freeze affecting other public sector employees. He told a news conference on Friday evening the government had to take affordability into account when considering pay.”We have set out what is affordable given the very significant challenges in public finances,” he said.Meanwhile, Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer said on Friday the proposed one per cent increase was “nothing short of an insult” after national clapping for carers and “all we’ve been through together”. Also on Friday, health minister Nadine Dorries told Sky News the one per cent offer is “the most” the government thinks it can afford. Additional reporting by Press Association More

The public overwhelmingly believe the government’s privately run Covid test-and-trace system has been a failure, a new poll has found.Research by Survation seen by The Independent shows that just 29 per cent of the public think the system has been successful compared to 60 per cent who say it is going badly.The findings come as the small print of Rishi Sunak’s budget show the system is to get another £15 billion cash injection, bringing its total cost to £37 billion.Campaigners said the results showed that handing “huge chunks” of the Covid response to the private sector had been a “catastrophic mistake”.The highly negative view of the contact tracing system contrasts with the widespread positive impression of the NHS’s own vaccine roll-out – which was largely conducted in-house.80 per cent of people say the NHS vaccine drive is going well, compared to just 13 who say it is going badly, the Survation poll, commissioned by Keep Our NHS Public and We Own It found.The poll found similarly low regard for the sourcing of PPE, which has been dogged with controversy over contracts. 57 per cent of people said this was going badly, and just 33 per cent well. Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekday“This result just goes to show that it is the work of the NHS that is rightly favoured by the British public, and indeed, it is here where the public have seen the most benefit by far,” said Dr John Puntis, Co-Chair of campaign group Keep Our NHS Public.”Both the sourcing of PPE and the process of delivering contact tracing have spectacularly failed, with absolutely tragic results. “Lives have been needlessly lost due to a desire to reward the friends of those in government, or by relying on the private sector instead of the NHS to deliver public health initiatives.”The test-and-trace system has received frequent criticism since its launch in April 2020 – with attention focused on outsourcing to firms like Serco and the use of £1,000-a-day private consultants.In each new wave of Covid-19 the national system failed to produce the level of contact tracing required to stop the infection from spreading. Experts said local public health teams working with councils had significantly better results than the call-centre based system. More