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      Two MPs ‘astounded’ after being denied entry to Israel

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      Two Labour MPs who were denied entry to Israel have said they are “astounded” by the decision.Abtisam Mohamed and Yuan Yang have said it is “vital” that parliamentarians are able to “witness first-hand” the situation on the ground in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.The current war in Gaza began on 7 October 2023, when Hamas fighters launched an attack inside Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages back to Gaza. Since then, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says more than 50,000 people have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory military offensive.The MPs were refused entry because they intended to “spread hate speech” against Israel, the nation’s population and immigration authority claimed.Abtisam Mohamed More

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      Two Labour MPs denied entry and deported from Israel

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      Two Labour MPs have been denied entry to and deported from Israel in a move described as “deeply concerning” by the UK foreign secretary.Yuan Yang and Abtisam Mohamed were rejected at the Israeli border after being accused of planning to spread “anti-Israel hatred”.Ms Yang, who represents Earley and Woodley, and Ms Mohamed, the MP for Sheffield Central, had flown to the country from Luton airport on Saturday afternoon.Foreign secretary David Lammy hit out at the “unacceptable” Israeli decision and said it was “no way to treat British parliamentarians”.“It is unacceptable, counterproductive, and deeply concerning that two British MPs on a parliamentary delegation to Israel have been detained and refused entry by the Israeli authorities,” Mr Lammy said.Abtisam Mohamed, the MP for Sheffield Central, had flown to the country from Luton airport on Saturday More

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      Streeting defends Labour’s national insurance hike as health secretary urges Farage to ‘come clean’ over Reform’s NHS plans

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      Wes Streeting defended Labour’s controversial national insurance hike as the health secretary accused Reform UK and the Conservatives of plotting to pull billions of bounds of funding from the NHS.As the tax rise comes into effect today, Mr Streeting has challenged critics including Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch to explain how they would pay for a reversal of the policy change. The 2p increase to employer national insurance has been criticised by opposition parties, business chiefs and top economists, who have linked it to the stagnant economy, since it was unveiled by Rachel Reeves back in October. Wes Streeting is being rolled out by Labour as an anti-Reform attack dog More

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      Reform UK candidate accused late Queen of ‘scrounging’ and called for Royals to be jailed

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      One of Reform UK’s local election candidates accused Queen Elizabeth of “scrounging” and “sponging” and called for her to be jailed, The Independent can reveal.Mark Wade, council candidate in Chorley Rural West, marked Her Majesty becoming the longest-reigning British monarch with a post on Facebook saying she had spent “a long time scrounging”. He also commented on the late Queen’s visit to Crumlin Road Gaol in north Belfast: “The Queen has just entered an old jail in Belfast, let’s shut the gates and get the rest of her sponging family to join her.” Critics said the comments raise questions about Reform UK’s partiotism More

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      Jaguar Land Rover pauses US shipments as Starmer plots course over Trump’s 10% tariff

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      Jaguar Land Rover is pausing shipments to the US as it works to “address the new trading terms” of in the wake of Donald Trump‘s 10 per cent tariff on British goods coming into force.Sir Keir Starmer was expected to spend the weekend making back-to-back phone calls to world leaders about the tariffs, after talking with the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, and the Italian PM, Giorgia Meloni, on Friday. In those calls the leaders agreed that an “all-out trade war would be extremely damaging”.Sir Keir was “clear the UK’s response will be guided by the national interest” and officials would “calmly continue with our preparatory work, rather than rush to retaliate”, a No 10 spokesperson said.On Saturday afternoon, Jaguar said it was “taking some short-term actions including a shipment pause in April, as we develop our mid- to longer-term plans”. Jaguar Land Rover has paused shipments to the US (JLR/PA) More

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      Trump tariffs live: Jaguar Land Rover pauses shipments to US as 10% tariff kicks in for UK

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      Trump ally likens BBC host to a ‘kindergartener’ over tariffs before threatening to end interviewJaguar Land Rover will pause shipments of its Britain-made cars to the US for a month in light of president Donald Trump’s tariffs on the UK car industry. The British carmaker said it was suspending shipments while it considers how to mitigate the cost of Mr Trump’s 25 per cent tariff on UK cars. Mr Trump has said the impact of his tariffs plan “won’t be easy” and called for Americans to “hang tough” after a 10 per cent tariff took effect on Saturday. The initial 10 per cent “baseline” tariff, which the UK is subject to, took effect at US seaports, airports and customs warehouses at 12.01am ET (0401 GMT), with higher levies on goods from 57 larger trading partners due to start next week. The UK’s key FTSE-100 stock market suffered its worst one-day drop since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic on Friday, ending a week of havoc on global markets prompted by Mr Trump’s new tariffs war.Sir Keir Starmer will be holding talks with global leaders this weekend as countries consider how to respond.Pictured: Trump goes golfing as world reels from tariffsUS president Donald Trump has gone golfing for the third day in a row as the world reels from his tariffs on global imports.Mr Trump was seen reading a tabloid article with the headline “World War Fee,” and “China: Yeah?” as he arrived at Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida.Around the same time, Mr Trump posted to his Truth Social platform claiming China would come off worse in the trade war.“China has been hit much harder than the USA, not even close,” he said. “They, and many other nations, have treated us unsustainably badly.“This is an economic revolution, and we will win. Hang tough.” Mr Trump slapped a combined tariff of 54 per cent on Chinese goods earlier this week. Beijing responded by imposing a 34 per cent tariff on US exports to China.Trump reads a tabloid article about China’s response to US tariffs More

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      Starmer under pressure from biggest backers to unpick Brexit after Trump tariffs

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      Labour’s biggest financial backers are among the loudest voices pressing Sir Keir Starmer to have a much more ambitious approach to his Brexit reset in the wake of Donald Trump unleashing an international trade war by imposing sweeping tariffs.Trade unions, who were previously divided over Brexit and still provide more than half of Labour’s campaign funding, are now at the forefront of a new push for much closer ties with the EU.Armed with a huge 5,000 voter survey by the pollster who has carried out strategic research for both Labour and the unions, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has joined with business groups and others to urge Sir Keir to rethink his Brexit red lines.While the prime minister has insisted he will resist what he calls “a false choice” between the EU and US the TUC’s public demands are being reflected in private by many in Labour as well.It follows President Trump imposing a 10 per cent base “reciprocal tariffs” on the UK, half of the 20 per cent slapped on the EU. Other countries such as China, South Korea, Japan and Cambodia faced tariffs of more than 30 per cent.But some specific tariffs including 25 per cent on automobile, steel and aluminium products have hit the UK as well putting at least 25,000 jobs at risk in the car-making sector alone.Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer (Eddie Mulholland/Daily Telegraph/PA) More

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      Global trade war intensifies and shares tumble as China hits back at Trump tariffs

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      Share prices tumbled around the world on Friday – with Britain’s FTSE 100 suffering its worst drop since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic – as the global trade war intensified with China’s retaliatory imposition of a 34 per cent tariff on imports of all US products.Trillions of dollars have been wiped from the markets since Donald Trump announced a range of import taxes on goods from other countries. British exports to the US face a blanket 10 per cent levy. Sir Keir Starmer is due to hold talks with world leaders over the weekend, as nations reel from the economic hit and decide whether to reciprocate with tariffs on Washington. The prime minister was yesterday urged not to retaliate by his predecessor Sir Tony Blair, who said that such a move would not be in the UK’s “best interests”.Economists warn that escalating the situation could generate a spike in inflation and weaken growth, even triggering recession.The collapse in share values creates a big dent in many British pension funds, and there are fears that China will respond to the US tariffs by flooding other countries with cheap exports, further harming British firms. Wall Street saw a second day of bruising losses on Friday, while London’s top stock market fell 4.95 per cent to a five-year low – its biggest single-day decline since March 2020.Downing Street rejected Mr Trump’s claim that the British government is “happy” about the 10 per cent rate, which is half of the 20 per cent levy being imposed on European Union members, and much lower than the rate imposed on many other nations.Aboard Air Force One, Trump told reporters he had had a “very good dialogue” with Sir Keir, adding: “I think he was very happy about how we treated them with tariffs.”But a spokesperson for No 10 was clear, saying “We are disappointed” – and added: “We’ll be engaging with international leaders over the weekend… It is a changing, shifting global economic landscape.”Analysts for AJ Bell estimate that about £3.8 trillion has been wiped off the value of the global stock market since Mr Trump’s announcement, which he billed as “Liberation Day” for the US economy.“It caps off a horrible week for financial markets and dragged share prices even lower,” said Dan Coatsworth, an investment analyst at AJ Bell. “It’s also bad for the world in general, as we now have a repeat of the heightened geopolitical tensions between the US and China that dominated Trump’s first term.” Mr Coatsworth added that the president’s “tactics have caused shockwaves in every corner of the world”.As well as share prices, the value of the US dollar and even gold fell on Friday.US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell described the tariffs, along with their likely economic and inflationary impacts, as “significantly larger than expected” and said they were “highly likely” to lead to “at least a temporary rise in inflation” in the US.In the stand-off between the US and China, Beijing imposed reciprocal tariffs and announced controls on exports of medium and heavy rare-earths, including samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium and yttrium, to the US.In Japan, prime minister Shigeru Ishiba said Mr Trump’s tariffs had created a “national crisis” as a plunge in banking shares set Tokyo’s stock market on course for its worst week in years.Investment bank JPMorgan said it now believes there is a 60 per cent chance of the global economy entering recession by the end of the year, up from 40 per cent previously.EU trade commissioner Maros Sefcovic said he would speak to his US counterparts before responding.“The EU will respond in a calm, carefully phased, and above all, unified way, as we calibrate our response,” he said on social media. “We will not shoot from the hip.”The prime minister has said he is reluctant to make a quick decision on tariffs.In the House of Commons this week, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey urged the prime minister to team up with European and Commonwealth countries to “stand against Trump’s tariffs and for free trade”.Sir Keir replied: “I really do think it is not sensible to say the first response should be to jump into a trade war with the US.” More