UK Politics

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailLabour will not impose VAT on private school fees until at least 2025 if it wins the general election, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves has suggested.Sir Keir Starmer’s party believes it can raise some £1.6bn a year by ending the 20 per cent VAT exemption as part of its plans to recruit around 6,500 specialist state school teachers in England.The policy is among the most-discussed in Labour’s manifesto, and has raised concerns of local authority schools being strained by a sudden influx of pupils taken out of private schools due to rising fees.Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves speaking during the Times CEO Summit in London More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailNigel Farage has been condemned for saying Andrew Tate is an “important voice for men”.The Reform UK leader claimed the online influencer had raised awareness of “men becoming feminine” and stood up for their ability to “be a bloke”. Tate has been facing charges since December 2022 of rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women, all of which he denies.Click here for our live coverage of the general election campaign.Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has spoken out in support of Andrew Tate More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailRishi Sunak confessed to being “incredibly angry” over members of his inner circle being caught up in a gambling scandal over bets on the date of the election.But, as the prime minister faced a BBC Question Time audience with just two weeks of the election to go, he refused to suspend two candidates currently being investigated by the Gambling Commission.With polls still pointing to a massive Labour majority and a Tory wipeout with many voters defecting to Reform, Mr Sunak needed his half-hour slot in the debate to be a platform to turn things around in the closing stages of the election campaign.Instead he was confronted by the betting scandal which saw his director of campaigning Tony Lee “take a leave of absence”. Meanwhile, Mr Lee’s wife Laura Saunders, a candidate in Bristol who has worked for the party since 2015, and Craig Williams, his parliamentary private secretary, are all being investigated for placing bets just before Mr Sunak called his surprise snap election.Keir Starmer was asked about his previous comments on Jeremy Corbyn More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailTerror attack survivors who have accused politicians of missing opportunities to act on the threat of terrorism are calling for commitments from all parties ahead of the election.More than one hundred and twenty survivors wrote an open letter to all party leaders on Thursday, urging them to make clear pledges to terror victims, their families and the wider public before the upcoming general election.The survivors, who are part of the charity Survivors Against Terror, said they “lament the missed opportunities to act” and politicians’ broken promises, which has led them to feel no safer or better supported than they were at the last general election nearly five years ago.The group’s letter reads: “Days ahead of the last election, a terror attack struck at Fishmongers Hall. In the aftermath, we were promised that Martyn’s Law (a law focused on improving security at public venues) would be enacted and a Survivor’s Charter (guaranteeing the rights of survivors of terror attacks) would be brought forward.Tributes to the two victims of the terror attack that struck at Fishmongers Hall in 2019 More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailTikTok is launching a media literacy hub to help its users recognise fake news and misinformation online ahead of the General Election.The social media giant said the hub had been created alongside fact-checking organisation Logically Facts.The new in-app space will focus on critical thinking and news literacy, TikTok said, covering topics such as how to spot fake news online and tips for consuming a balanced range of news.“With misinformation and disinformation being found on every corner of the internet, the hub contains guidelines which have been designed to help critique and judge the trustworthiness of the information we find online,” TikTok said in blog post on the new tool.“Whenever or wherever they engage in content, we encourage our community to stop, think and check the resources.”The move follows the rollout of a dedicated General Election Centre on the platform in the UK, which directs users to official information from the Electoral Commission.Prompts for the centre appear on election-related content and when users make election-related searches.“As the United Kingdom prepares to go to the polls for the General Election, we are committed to ensuring that our TikTok community has the skills to assess whether the information that they read, see or hear during this busy time is reliable and accurate,” TikTok said. More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailJeremy Corbyn would have made a better prime minister than Boris Johnson had he been elected in 2019, Sir Keir Starmer said.Sir Keir dodged a series of questions during a BBC Question Time debate on Thursday night over whether he truly believed his predecessor would have made a “great” prime minister, as he said five years ago.Host Fiona Bruce repeatedly challenged him over his one-time statement, with Sir Keir insisting: “It wasn’t a question that really arose because I didn’t think we were going to win the election.”Follow live updates hereBut when Bruce asked for a “yes” or “no” answer to whether he meant it, Sir Keir insisted that Mr Corbyn would have made a better prime minister than Mr Johnson.Sir Keir Starmer said he believed Jeremy Corbyn would have made a better PM than Boris Johnson (Stefan Rousseau/PA) More