UK Politics

Your support helps us to tell the storyFind out moreCloseAs your White House correspondent, I ask the tough questions and seek the answers that matter.Your support enables me to be in the room, pressing for transparency and accountability. Without your contributions, we wouldn’t have the resources to challenge those in power.Your donation makes it possible for us to keep doing this important work, keeping you informed every step of the way to the November electionAndrew FeinbergWhite House CorrespondentSir Keir Starmer accepted £20,000 worth of accommodation to help his 16-year-old son study for his GCSEs, it has emerged.The prime minister was asked by the BBC about a £20,437 donation from Labour peer Waheed Alli between May and July, confirming that the sum was for somewhere his son could study “peacefully”.He told the broadcaster: “At the beginning of the election, which we didn’t know when it was going to be called, my boy was in the middle of his GCSEs.Keir Starmer came under renewed pressure over donations from Lord Alli More

Your support helps us to tell the storyFind out moreCloseAs your White House correspondent, I ask the tough questions and seek the answers that matter.Your support enables me to be in the room, pressing for transparency and accountability. Without your contributions, we wouldn’t have the resources to challenge those in power.Your donation makes it possible for us to keep doing this important work, keeping you informed every step of the way to the November electionAndrew FeinbergWhite House CorrespondentSir Keir Starmer has said the “basic proposition” that long-term benefit claimants should look for work is right, after announcing new laws to crack down on welfare fraudsters.He said people dealing with long-term sickness “need to be back in the workplace where they can”, promising support to help people back into employment.As well as encouraging people back to work, the prime minister also announced new legislation to deal with welfare fraudsters more quickly, in a proposal Labour estimated would save the taxpayer £1.6 billion over the next five years.In his speech at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool on Tuesday, the prime minister promised to “leave no stone unturned” in his mission to “rebuild our public services”.The legislation, expected to come as part of a Fraud, Error and Debt Bill, would help the Department for Work and Pensions to recover money lost to fraud while protecting vulnerable claimants from mounting debts, the government said.( More

Your support helps us to tell the storyFind out moreCloseAs your White House correspondent, I ask the tough questions and seek the answers that matter.Your support enables me to be in the room, pressing for transparency and accountability. Without your contributions, we wouldn’t have the resources to challenge those in power.Your donation makes it possible for us to keep doing this important work, keeping you informed every step of the way to the November electionAndrew FeinbergWhite House CorrespondentSir Keir Starmer has warned that the Middle East is on the brink of all out war ahead of his United Nations debut as prime minister on Wednesday. It comes as Israel and Hezbollah exchange fire across the Lebanon border, with the UK sending around 700 troops to Cyprus in case an emergency evacuation is required.Asked on Wednesday morning whether he thinks the Middle East is on the brink of all out war, Sir Keir told the BBC: “I am deeply concerned about it and I have myself put it in those terms, that we are essentially at a brink point and we have to come back from the brink.”He will use his speech at the UN General Assembly, the annual gathering of world leaders, to set out how the UK will step up to play its part in a world increasingly dominated by conflict.Speaking in New York, the prime minister will promise to deliver “responsible global leadership” amid conflict in the Middle East and Ukraine.( More

Your support helps us to tell the storyFind out moreCloseAs your White House correspondent, I ask the tough questions and seek the answers that matter.Your support enables me to be in the room, pressing for transparency and accountability. Without your contributions, we wouldn’t have the resources to challenge those in power.Your donation makes it possible for us to keep doing this important work, keeping you informed every step of the way to the November electionAndrew FeinbergWhite House CorrespondentJustice secretary Shabana Mahmood has set out plans to slash the number of women going to jail and ultimately close women’s prisons amid an overcrowding crisis.She unveiled a new body, the women’s justice board, which will have the “ultimate ambition of having fewer women’s prisons” – potentially allowing them to be converted to male or mixed jails.The prison population in England and Wales hit a record new high a fortnight ago, with 88,521 people behind bars – but there are just 3,440 women in jail.More than half – 55 per cent – are victims of domestic abuse, while two-thirds have committed non-violent offences. Ministers want to improve services like community support and residential women’s centres to provide an alternative to prison.It comes after the government said thousands of inmates would be freed early in a bid to ease overcrowding.In her speech to the Labour conference in Liverpool, Ms Mahmood said that when she took over the ministerial role, the crisis had been just “one bad day from disaster”.“Within minutes, I was told our justice system was on the point of collapse,” she said. “Within weeks, our prisons would overflow. Had that happened, the consequences would have been apocalyptic.Ministers are battling a prisons crisis More

Your support helps us to tell the storyFind out moreCloseAs your White House correspondent, I ask the tough questions and seek the answers that matter.Your support enables me to be in the room, pressing for transparency and accountability. Without your contributions, we wouldn’t have the resources to challenge those in power.Your donation makes it possible for us to keep doing this important work, keeping you informed every step of the way to the November electionAndrew FeinbergWhite House Correspondent A former New York City official who helped coordinate the city’s response to the pandemic was fired from his private-sector job after a recording showed him talking about attending a sex party and other private gatherings when the city was urging people to practice social distancing.Dr. Jay Varma was terminated from his position as executive vice president and chief medical officer at SIGA Technologies, the New York-based pharmaceutical company disclosed in a filing Monday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.Varma served as a senior public health adviser to then-Mayor Bill de Blasio from April 2020 to May 2021. He regularly appeared with the Democratic mayor at press briefings discussing the city’s COVID-19 response and helped develop programs and strategies to combat the virus, including encouraging people to wear masks in public, get tested regularly and get vaccinated, once vaccines were available.A hidden-camera video posted last week by a conservative podcaster shows Varma speaking casually to a woman about attending gatherings even as he served as a face of the city’s pandemic response.“I did all this deviant, sexual stuff while I was on TV and people were like, ‘Aren’t you afraid? Aren’t you embarrassed?’” he said at one point in the edited recording. “And I was like, no, I really like being my authentic self.”Varma also acknowledged how disastrous his actions would have been to the city’s efforts had they been exposed at the time. “It would have been a big deal,” he said at another point in the video. “It would have been a real embarrassment.”Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigned in 2023 after a yearslong government inquiry revealed he and members of his administration attended parties in government offices in violation of COVID-19 lockdown rules at the time.Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom faced criticism for flouting his own pandemic rules when he attended a friend’s birthday party at the swanky French Laundry restaurant in Napa Valley in November 2020.Varma declined Tuesday to comment on his firing, but acknowledged the authenticity of the video in a statement provided by a spokesperson.“I take responsibility for not using the best judgment at the time,” he wrote, adding that the recordings were from private conversations that had been “secretly recorded, spliced, diced, and taken out of context.”Varma didn’t elaborate on the events he referenced in the video, but acknowledged attending at least three private gatherings during his City Hall tenure.Varma, in the video, said one party took place in a hotel room in August 2020 with about 8 to 10 people, including his wife, who were naked and taking the recreational drug molly, or ecstasy.By then, New York’s governor had begun easing restrictions, with indoor gatherings of up to 10 people permitted months earlier. Varma said he still took precautions to make sure he wasn’t caught. “I had to be kind of sneaky about it,” he said. “I was running the entire COVID response for the city.”He also attended a drug-fueled dance party with roughly 200 people in a space under a Wall Street bank in May or June of 2021, according to the recording. In mid-May, New York state had raised the limit on indoor gatherings to 250 people and by mid-June, it had lifted most pandemic restrictions.Varma, who left his City Hall position around that time but continued to serve as a part-time consultant, according to his LinkedIn bio, recalled being worried about being spotted at the party at the time.“This was not COVID-friendly,” he said in the video, which appears to have been stitched together from recordings made secretly during a number of different social encounters with an unidentified woman, who is off camera.A spokesperson for SIGA Technologies didn’t respond to emails seeking comment.Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, declined to wade into the controversy Tuesday during his regular City Hall briefing with reporters. Some local conservatives called for a government inquiry.“The hypocrisy is outrageous,” said City Council Member Robert Holden, a Queens Democrat, who applauded Varma’s firing. “Millions were impacted by their heavy-handed policies, and the public deserves accountability.”Varma in his statement defended his efforts to respond to the pandemic and denounced the video as part of “dangerous extremist efforts to undermine the public’s confidence” in vaccines.“Facing the greatest public health crisis in a century, our top priority was to save lives, and every decision made was based on the best available science to keep New Yorkers safe,” he wrote. ___Follow Philip Marcelo at twitter.com/philmarcelo. More

Your support helps us to tell the storyFind out moreCloseAs your White House correspondent, I ask the tough questions and seek the answers that matter.Your support enables me to be in the room, pressing for transparency and accountability. Without your contributions, we wouldn’t have the resources to challenge those in power.Your donation makes it possible for us to keep doing this important work, keeping you informed every step of the way to the November electionAndrew FeinbergWhite House CorrespondentSir Keir Starmer steadied his party on Tuesday after a turbulent week for Labour and his leadership, reminding activists they have a mandate to reshape Britain in a simple rallying message: “We won.”The prime minister pledged to “face the storm” from unpopular decisions and borrowed the Tory austerity language of David Cameron and George Osborne as he told the party’s annual conference in Liverpool – and the wider country – that “we’re all in this together”.Set against criticism over winter fuel payment cuts for pensioners, gifts for him, his wife and his ministers, and a civil war in Downing Street, Sir Keir sought to silence doubters with a long-term vision. It came as:He prepared to fly to the UN amid crises in Ukraine and the Middle EastHe promised “homes for heroes” to help veterans get a place to liveHis justice secretary pledged to cut the number of women in prisonHe unveiled a Hillsborough Law to end the scandal of cover-upsDespite an ovation from the crowd, Sir Keir was briefly interrupted by a pro-Palestinian protester angry about child deaths in Gaza – a timely reminder that he has not won over all of his critics.He will also be absent on Wednesday when a union-led motion on winter fuel payment cuts will be debated on the floor of the conference.But some senior ministers, led by Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden, have been urging Sir Keir to remind Labour it has earned the right to rule; it was advice the prime minister seems to have taken on board.Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria acknowledge cheers after his conference speech in Liverpool More