UK Politics

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailThe former justice secretary has called for an amnesty for more than 29,000 people convicted for breaking Covid rules.Sir Robert Buckland, who oversaw the courts during the pandemic, said the 29,383 people fined over Covid rule breaches should have their “slates wiped clean”.Among who received fines for breaching Covid regulations were prime minister Rishi Sunak and then-prime minister Boris Johnson in what became known as the Partygate scandal.But Sir Robert said the individuals risked seeing their career prospects being hampered by convictions during what was an “exceptional time”.Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, Sir Robert said: “It is not proportionate or necessary at a time when we want to encourage and support as many people back to work as possible. If it is not being recorded in the usual way as a previous conviction, I would wipe the slate clean.”His calls were backed by former cabinet ministers Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg and Sir David Davis.Sir Robert Buckland said those fined during the pandemic should have their ‘slates wiped clean’ More

Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UKSign up to our Brexit email for the latest insightIt won’t be long before the UK goes to the polls to decide who their next prime minister should be.In the build-up to July 4, we have seen vigorous campaigning from all parties as they vie for votes up and down the country.All the large parties have now released their election manifestos, laying out their vision for the future of Britain. Labour wants to add 20% VAT to private school fees, to pay for 6,500 extra teachers in England’s state schools. The party also aims to build 1.5 million new homes in the next five years and says it will restore plans to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030.Meanwhile, part of Rishi Sunak’s plan to get people onto the property ladder is a resurrection of the Help to Buy scheme, which would provide first-time buyers with an equity loan of up to 20% towards the cost of one of these new homes.The Conservative Party’s manifesto also pledges to abolish National Insurance for the self-employed, implement tougher sentences for offences including knife crime, grooming and assaults against retail workers, and underlines the plan to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda, saying there will be a “regular rhythm of flights every month.”Two of Reform UK’s core five pledges also involve migration. The party says it would freeze non-essential immigration, but concedes there would be exceptions with work in healthcare considered essential.The Liberal Democrats plan to introduce free personal care in England, similar to the system that operates in Scotland where people needing help with daily tasks do not have to pay. While each party passionately puts forth its case to the electorate, it is ultimately down to voters to decide what – and who – they think will take the country forward. We want to know the issues that matter the most to you in this general election campaign. Will you be swayed most by a party’s stance on Brexit? Or is an iron-clad plan to tackle the rising cost of living your number one priority?Share your thoughts by adding them in the comments — we’ll highlight the most insightful ones as they come in.All you have to do is sign up and register your details — then you can take part in the discussion. You can also sign up by clicking ‘log in’ on the top right-hand corner of the screen.Make sure you adhere to our community guidelines, which can be found here. For a full guide on how to comment click here.Join the conversation with other Independent readers below. More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailChildren who go to private school or a Russell Group university may have better health in mid-life, research suggests.A new study found that, by age 46, those who went to private school were more likely to be a healthy weight, have lower blood pressure and perform better on one cognitive task than those who went to state schools.Meanwhile, people who went to a Russell Group university – which includes Oxford, Cambridge, Birmingham, Bristol, Warwick, University College London and York – performed better on memory tests such as recalling words and naming animals, and tests designed to check attention and visual abilities.For example, attending private school was linked with a 14% lower body mass index than people in state schools, while attending a Russell Group university was linked to a 16% better memory recall and 10% better naming ability.The researchers said the findings back up previous studies, which have found a link between education and good health.They suggested several factors may explain the results, such as smaller class sizes and more activities at private schools; better job prospects leading to more money and improved health; peers at private schools and higher-level universities potentially displaying healthier behaviours; and more experienced teachers and high-achieving peers influencing people’s health throughout their life.The team, including from University College London, concluded that after adjusting for factors such as whether parents had degrees and were involved in their child’s education, “private school attendance was associated with better cardiometabolic outcomes than comprehensive school attendance.“After being fully adjusted, attending higher-status universities was associated with better cognitive function, while having no degree was linked to poorer health compared with normal status university attendance.”The study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, included 8,107 people born in 1970, of whom 570 attended private school and 554 went to a Russell Group university.The authors said the study was observational and things such as the influence of family income can be hard to fully capture.Children in the study also went to school in the 1980s and 1990s amid significant reforms in the UK education system, they said.Future policies aimed at reducing health inequalities could take education quality into account as well as attainmentStudy authorsThe authors said: “The generalisability of the results to the present day remains unclear, especially given the changes in the education system in recent years.”They added: “Our findings suggest that the type of education could potentially contribute to understanding the links between education and health. Moreover, if this association is causal, future policies aimed at reducing health inequalities could take education quality into account as well as attainment.“This is particularly important given the increases in university attendance, in which other aspects of the education experience may better distinguish health inequality.” More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailThe billionaire founder of Phones4U who donated £500,000 to the Tory party in 2019 has switched his support to Labour in a fresh blow to Rishi Sunak’s stuttering election campaign.John Caudwell has said he will be voting for Labour citing his amazement at Sir Keir Starmer’s transformation of the party.Mr Cauldwell was one of the biggest donors to the Tories ahead of the 2019 general election, when he gave half a million pounds to Boris Johnson’s campaign.Encouraging everybody to vote for Labour, Mr Caudwell said he was “amazed by how Keir Starmer brought it back from that Corbyn brink.”Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailNigel Farage is set to win in his constituency of Clacton, Essex, according to fresh predictions from pollster Ipsos. The projections show Mr Farage at 52 per cent, far ahead of the next candidate, Labour’s Jovan Owusu-Nepaul at 24 per cent.The model is the first research of its kind to be carried out entirely after Mr Farage announced that he would return to Reform UK as party leader, and run for candidate. Tory defector Lee Anderson is also estimated to hold his seat in Ashfield. The model also projects that Jeremy Corbyn may lose his seat in Islington North after 41 years of being an MP. Labour is estimated at 54 per cent of the vote in the constituency, with candidate Praful Nargund, while Mr Corbyn may be at just 13 per cent.Head of politics at Ipsos Gideon Skinner explained that projections can be affected by a variety of factors, and are riskier with high-profile candidates: “Is it the question of Jeremy Corbyn losing, or is it more a question of just Labour holding off in Islington? It may be that there is identity with Labour there, even if there is also support for Jeremy Corbyn as an individual candidate.”He added that the methodology he used “is good at making estimates based on the demographic characteristics of each individual constituency. But it’s not so good at picking up very unique political, local dynamics.”“We make some efforts in areas where we know there are high-profile independents, we’ve made some changes to the approach to take that into account a bit more, but even so, that’s not going to pick up the full picture of everything. This is the latest projection using multi-level regression and post-stratification (MRP) polling, a relatively new type of polling, to show that Labour will likely win a strong majority. Sir Keir Starmer’s party is on track to win an average of 453 seats, ranging between 439 and 462.The projections suggest that Labour will see the most substantial leaps in Scotland and the North East, as well as winning seats in Wales thanks to the declining Tory vote.Meanwhile, just 115 seats have been projected for the Tories; a loss of 225 constituencies for the party. This could go as low as 99 seats, or as high as just 123, with sharp drops in the East, South, and the Midlands. The large-scale survey is of 19,000 people, and population data on local constituency levels.Top Tory cabinet ministers are at high risk of losing their spots in parliament, with Grant Shapps, Penny Mordaunt and Jacob Rees-Mogg among those projected to lose on 4 July. Meanwhile Jeremy Hunt, who has poured £100,000 of his own money into his fight for re-election, still faces an uncertain future. The former chancellor is just 1 point ahead (34 per cent) of the Lib Dems (33 per cent) in his newly-formed constituency of Godalming and Ash.Reform is also leading by a small margin in North West Leicestershire, with candidate Noel Matthews projected at 35 per cent.The Conservative majority in the constituency has crumbled since former Tory MP Andrew Bridgen was expelled last year, after comparing Covid to the Holocaust. Mr Bridgen then joined Reclaim Party, before quitting at the end of 2023. The right-wing challenger party Reform is currently coming in second in 30 constituencies. At the highest end of the spectrum, Ipsos projects that the party could win up to 10 seats.Around 1 in 5 seats (117 overall) have been deemed “too close to call”, with a projected winning margin of under 5 per cent. These include Salisbury, North Devon, and Torbay.The Lib Dems are projected to win an average of 38 seats, which could increase to 48 seats on the highest estimates. This is s sharp increase from the 8 seats which they won in the 2019 general election. The party is set to gain at least 20 seats from the Tories. Though the Green Party are looking to make headwinds, winning party leader Carla Denyer’s constituency of Bristol Central, Ipsos projects that they may lose their only existing seat in Brighton Pavilion where Caroline Lucas has been elected since 2010.The current projections show musician Tom Gray leading by 17 points for Labour, at 54 per cent. However, there are more positives in sight for the party, which has historically struggled to translate national vote share into seats; the Greens are currently on track to win in North Herefordshire, and are neck-in-neck in Waveney. More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailJeremy Hunt’s re-election campaign is being bankrolled in part by a hedge fund manager who hosted a champagne reception on the day of Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget.Andrew Law, a financier worth £750 million, also helped to fund Ms Truss’s leadership campaign, before she lasted just 49 days as prime minister.And he is reported to have likely profited as “Trussonomics” crashed the value of the pound. New figures released by the Electoral Commission show Mr Hunt’s campaign in Godalming and Ash has received more than £14,000 from Mr Law. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is facing a battle to win his seat (Aaron Chown/PA) More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailMore than half of all voters believe that former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn should be allowed back into the party if he is re-elected as an MP in his constituency of Islington North.Exclusive polling for The Independent by Techne shows that while 56 per cent of all voters say he should be readmitted, the number is much higher among Labour voters, with eight in 10 saying that Mr Corbyn should be allowed to rejoin the Labour Party.Mr Corbyn was banished from the Labour Party in May this year, after announcing he would stand as an independent candidate for the general election on 4 July.He had previously held the seat of Islington North for Labour since 1983. Mr Corbyn had been suspended since 2020, over downplaying antisemitism reports, and was unable to run for Labour.Mr Corbyn’s decision to stand as a non-Labour candidate was particularly controversial since he held the post of party leader between 2015 and 2020.Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has repeatedly said he would not strike a deal with the Tories; nor is the idea popular on the other side, with former Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson saying he would be allowed into her party “over my cold, dead corpse”.Yet 46 per cent of all voters believe that Mr Farage should be allowed to join the Conservatives if he wins his seat in Clacton, Essex, next month.A sample of 1,624 UK adults were asked the question: “If they become MPs at this general election should Nigel Farage be allowed into the Conservatives and/or Jeremy Corbyn be allowed into Labour ?”Nearly half of voters said Nigel Farage should be allowed to join the Tories More