UK Politics

Your support helps us to tell the storyFrom reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.Your support makes all the difference.Read moreSir Keir Starmer faces a clash with Civil Service unions after vowing to reshape the “flabby” state and slash the cost of bureaucracy.The Prime Minister said the Civil Service had grown by 130,000 since the Brexit referendum but services had not improved and it was “overstretched, unfocussed and unable to deliver the security people need”.But union leaders accused Sir Keir of “using the language of blame” to attack officials and called on him to avoid the “incendiary rhetoric” of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) in the US.As well as vowing to cut the cost of regulation by 25%, Sir Keir will use a speech on Thursday to promise to refocus the state on his key missions and create “an active government that takes care of the big questions, so people can get on with their lives”.He will take aim at a “cottage industry of checkers and blockers slowing down delivery for working people”, stepping up his criticism of regulation in the UK.Sir Keir will announce plans for greater use of artificial intelligence (AI) and technology across the Civil Service, promising that one in 10 officials will work in tech and digital roles within the next five years.Before the speech setting out his plans, Sir Keir wrote in the Daily Telegraph: “In such uncertain times, people want a state that will take care of the big questions, not a bigger state that asks more from them. We need to be operating at maximum efficiency and strength.“I believe in the power of the state. I’m not interested in ideological arguments about whether it should be bigger or smaller. I simply want it to work.”At the moment businesses are having to deal with “an overcautious flabby state” that gets in the way, he added.Reducing the size of the Civil Service and increasing the proportion of officials working in digital and data roles could save taxpayers up to £45 billion, the Government believes.Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA union representing senior officials, said “many civil servants will be looking for the substance and feeling that, once again, the Prime Minister is using the language of blame rather than transformation”.He added: “Regulators are set up by ministers to regulate – if there’s a cottage industry at large then it’s because that’s what previous governments have wanted.“Blaming public servants for doing the job they were tasked with by ministers is just cheap politics and is increasingly following a pattern where the Government appears more interested in headlines than leadership.”Mike Clancy, general secretary of the Prospect union, said it was “right that the Government are pressing ahead with plans to make better use of new tech”, but added it would “find it challenging to compete for the skills needed” without increasing pay.He added: “Civil servants are not hostile to reforms but these must be undertaken in partnership with staff and unions.“I urge everyone in Government to avoid the incendiary rhetoric and tactics we are seeing in the United States, and to be clear that reforms are about enhancing and not undermining the Civil Service.”Technology Secretary Peter Kyle denied that the Government’s plans to reform the civil service were comparable to the Donald Trump administration’s Doge.He told LBC: “This is a disruptive programme. But it is a programme that will positively disrupt and we want to lead people through it.“We don’t want to scare people with the prospect of change, we want to excite people with the prospect of change.”Shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Alex Burghart said: “Labour is not serious about getting Britain growing.“The Prime Minister has no plan to reform the Civil Service or cut public spending.“Thanks to his budget the size of the state will reach a staggering 44% of GDP by 2030.”Liberal Democrats leader Sir Ed Davey dismissed Sir Keir’s proposals as “tinkering around the edges while our economy continues to stutter”, and called for an “ambitious new deal with the EU” to boost trade and grow the economy. More

Your support helps us to tell the storyFrom reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.Your support makes all the difference.Read moreKeir Starmer will put thousands of civil servants on job alert tomorrow as he hails a “£45bn jackpot” from digitalising government services.The prime minister will make the claim in a speech on Thursday linked to announcements over the weekend about reforming Whitehall to cut costs.In a worrying sign for many civil servants he will insist that jobs should not exist if artificial intelligence (AI) or computers can do them better.Sir Keir will hail a “new era” in government operations and while ministers have refused to set a target on how many jobs may be scrapped, his words suggest a potential major reduction.Keir Starmer More

Your support helps us to tell the storyFrom reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.Your support makes all the difference.Read moreThe poorest households in Britain are now poorer than the least well off in Slovenia after a decade and a half of stagnant income growth, a major report has revealed. Workers in Britain would be £4,300 per year better off had wages grown at the same pace as in the US after the 2009 financial crisis, according to research by the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR) think tank.And, as Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves prepare to slash the benefits bill by billions, the think tank warned tax and benefit changes have also exacerbated the decline in British living standards. The poorest parts of Britain are now worse off than those in SloveniaIn one of the report’s starkest findings, it said the poorest parts of the UK are now worse off than their counterparts in countries like Slovenia and Malta, with incomes growing in the majority of Europe faster than those in the UK. And, in what will serve as a stark warning to the chancellor, with discussions ongoing to finalise the shape of Labour’s planned welfare cuts, NIESR said Britain has one of the least generous welfare systems of any developed country. In a series of recommendations to Ms Reeves, it called on the government to scrap the two-child benefit cap, boost benefits so payments “always cover the cost of living” and boost public and private investment. Senior economist Max Mosley said NIESR had uncovered the “uncomfortable truth” that “economic stagnation over the past decade is now threatening the UK’s position as a place for a high standard of living”.“A combination of weak productivity growth driving near-zero growth in real wages and cuts to welfare has resulted in a situation where we are neither delivering prosperity through high wages nor security through welfare,” he said. NIESR called on Rachel Reeves to scrap the two-child benefit cap More

Your support helps us to tell the storyFrom reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.Your support makes all the difference.Read moreThe Conservatives are trying to exempt pubs, restaurants and sports stadiums from a ban on the harassment of staff. In an amendment to Labour’s employment rights bill, currently passing through the Commons, shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith has called for the government to “exclude hospitality providers and sports venues from the Bill’s duties for employers not to permit harassment of their employees”.Labour figures have dubbed it the “Chris Pincher amendment”, after the disgraced ex-Tory MP who was found to have groped two men at London’s exclusive Carlton Club while serving as the party’s deputy chief whip. Shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith called Labour’s clause a ‘banter ban’ More

Your support helps us to tell the storyFrom reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.Your support makes all the difference.Read more A court in Georgia on Wednesday convicted imprisoned former president Mikheil Saakashvili on embezzlement charges and handed him another prison term of nine years. Saakashvili, who served as Georgia’s president in 2004-13, is already serving a six-year prison term for abuse of power. He was convicted in absentia in 2018, and arrested in 2021 upon his return to Georgia. In the new case against Saakashvili, Georgia’s prosecutors accused him of embezzling and spending 9 million Georgian lari (roughly $3.2 million) worth of state funds funneled through Georgia’s State Security Service on various personal expenses, including luxury services and his sons’ education. Saakashvili’s defense has denied the charges and insisted they were politically motivated. The new sentence, handed down by the Tbilisi City Court in the Georgian capital, means that Saakashvili, 57, will likely remain incarcerated until 2030. Wednesday’s ruling also ordered Teimuraz Janashia, the former head of the State Security Service, to pay a fine of 300,000 Georgian lari (about $108,000). Saakashvili rose to fame after he led the so-called Rose Revolution protests in 2003 that drove his predecessor out of office. As president, he enacted a serious of ambitious reforms tacking official corruption in Georgia, a South Caucasus nation of 3.7 million. He also presided over a short but fierce war with Russia in 2008 that ended with the humiliating loss of its last footholds in two separatist territories, and he cracked down on protesters who charged that his zeal had mutated into autocracy.In 2012, Saakashvili’s United National Movement party lost the election to the Georgian Dream party established by Bidzina Ivanishvili, a shadowy billionaire who made his fortune in Russia. Georgian Dream has remained in power ever since, tightening its grip on democratic freedoms and drawing accusations from the opposition of steering the country away from the path toward European Union membership and back into Russia’s sphere of influence. Saakashvili left for Ukraine in 2013, obtained Ukrainian citizenship and served as a governor of the country’s southern Odesa region in 2015-16. He returned to Georgia in October 2021 to try to bolster opposition forces before nationwide municipal elections and was quickly arrested. The former president spent much of his time behind bars in a prison hospital after going on a hunger strikes and later claiming that he had been poisoned. He is currently receiving medical treatment at the Vivamedi Clinic, where he is being monitored for several chronic conditions, and his health reportedly worsens periodically, according to the clinic.Saakashvili was not present at the Wednesday’s court hearing for health reasons. The verdict elicited protests from his supporters in the courtroom, who shouted “Bidzina’s slave” at the judge, referring to Ivanishvili. In a statement posted on his social media pages, Saakashvili sarcastically called the verdict “a huge surprise” and “the will of the oppressor.” He has argued that the authorities “have practically sentenced me to life imprisonment for official presidential office expenses.”Tina Bokuchava, chairman of the United National Movement, said that the verdict “shows that Ivanishvili’s Russian regime sees the Georgian state and the idea of the Georgian state as its enemy.”“They are fighting against president Mikheil Saakashvili, who dedicated his whole life to the Georgian state,” she said. “They will not frighten anyone with this verdict, nor will they stop anyone. On the contrary, we will fight till the end.” More

Your support helps us to tell the storyFrom reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.Your support makes all the difference.Read moreSir Keir Starmer has said “all options are on the table” as Britain plans its response to Donald Trump imposing global tariffs on steel and aluminium. While the European Union has already announced it will introduce counter-measures on American goods, Britain has resisted imposing immediate retaliatory action against the move.But while the prime minister suggested Britain wants to seek a carve out from the tariffs without engaging in a tit for tat trade war with the US, Sir Keir indicated retaliatory tariffs are being considered. At prime minister’s questions, Sir Keir said: “I’m disappointed to see global tariffs in relation to steel and aluminium.Keir Starmer said all options are on the table in responding to the US More