UK Politics

Support trulyindependent journalismFind out moreCloseOur mission is to deliver unbiased, fact-based reporting that holds power to account and exposes the truth.Whether $5 or $50, every contribution counts.Support us to deliver journalism without an agenda.Louise ThomasEditorSir Mohamed Mansour, the senior treasurer of the Conservative Party, announced on Saturday he was resigning from his post 10 days after Rishi Sunak’s election defeat.The Egyptian-born billionaire had donated £5m to the party and been a key player in raising other funds. His donation was the biggest for the Conservatives since 2001.He told The Independent: “I have been honoured to serve my country and party since December 2022 and it has been a privilege to do so.“Rishi Sunak has announced his intention to depart as party leader, and it makes sense for me to also step down at this time. A new leadership team will bring fresh talent and thinking to the task ahead: guiding the party on its path of renewal.”It adds to the growing list of vacancies for the Tories as they seek a new leader in the aftermath of the worst electoral defeat in its history. Key to their future after selecting an MP to lead them in opposition will be the need to refill their coffers.Mansour was given  a knighthood by Sunak in a surprise honours list in March last year alongside Demis Hassabis, founder of artificial intelligence company DeepMind, and by film-making couple Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas, who received a knighthood and a damehood. American businessman Ted Sarandos, the co-chief of Netflix, was also given an honorary knighthood.The 76-year-old billionaire is a naturalised British citizen who has donated to many charitable causes including the King’s Foundation and a memorial for the victims of Covid. His knighthood was awarded for services to “business, charity and political service”.Mr Mansour has previously spoken about the Prime Minister in glowing terms and has said he “understands how growth is generated in the modern economy”.He also served from 2006 to 2009 as a transport minister in Egypt under Hosni Mubarak, the late president who quit office during the 2011 Arab Spring. Mansour resigned to return to business life. He famously went from rags to riches, twice losing his fortune due to nationalisation by Egypt and also Sudan, each time rebuilding.Mubarak, who died in 2020, was considered an autocrat and was accused of maintaining his grip on office by cracking down on political opposition and stifling free speech.Mansour will continue to support the Tory party but not as an active member of party’s executive.He is also one of the biggest investors in football in the US on the brink buying a Major League Soccer franchise for a record $500m (£400m). The new franchise, based in San Diego, California, is the sixth biggest football deal in the world, behind Chelsea, AC Milan and Manchester United, but more than the £305m Saudi takeover of Newcastle in 2022.He is expected to create the club from scratch by recruiting a full set of players, staff and an academy, which sources suggest could add an extra $200m to the bill. More

Support trulyindependent journalismFind out moreCloseOur mission is to deliver unbiased, fact-based reporting that holds power to account and exposes the truth.Whether $5 or $50, every contribution counts.Support us to deliver journalism without an agenda.Louise ThomasEditorThe speaker of the House of Commons has warned that the safety of MPs keeps him “awake at night”, more than two years after an MP was murdered. Sir Lindsay Hoyle said threats and intimidation towards parliamentarians were currently at such a level that he had “never seen anything as bad”. The security of MPs was tightened after Sir David Amess was stabbed more than 20 times during a constituency surgery in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex on 15 October 2021.Ali Harbi Ali was later convicted of his murder but at his trial it emerged that he had also planned attacks on other MPs, including cabinet minister Michael Gove, who he believed was “a harm to Muslims”.Sir David’s murder was the second in five years, after Jo Cox was killed in her constituency in 2016. Speaker of the House of Commons Sir Lindsay Hoyle (Yui Mok/PA) More

Support trulyindependent journalismFind out moreCloseOur mission is to deliver unbiased, fact-based reporting that holds power to account and exposes the truth.Whether $5 or $50, every contribution counts.Support us to deliver journalism without an agenda.Louise ThomasEditorSir Keir Starmer said that Joe Biden “deserves credit” for the success of the Nato summit and that the president was “on good form” during their recent in-person conversation.The prime minister was asked about Biden’s mental capability in a new interview with CNN, in which also discussed the possibility of working with Donald Trump and his weekly meetings with King Charles III.Starmer recently attended the Nato summit in Washington DC alongside other world leaders including Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky – his first major outing on the world diplomacy stage.In an interview with CNN on Friday, he was asked about the continuing concern over Biden’s mental acuity, following a string of serious gaffes and his disastrous debate performance last month.“I yesterday spent 45 minutes with the President,” he told the news network’s Jake Tapper. “We’d spoken on the phone, as you can imagine, but this was an opportunity to discuss a number of issues.The prime minister sat down with CNN’s Jake Tapper, for an interview that aired on Friday More

Support trulyindependent journalismFind out moreCloseOur mission is to deliver unbiased, fact-based reporting that holds power to account and exposes the truth.Whether $5 or $50, every contribution counts.Support us to deliver journalism without an agenda.Louise ThomasEditorSuella Braverman launched a bizarre attack on her own party’s policies, urging the Conservatives to admit they “shamefully” did not build enough prisons while in office.As Labour announced a series of measures to ease the overcrowding crisis facing UK jails, the ex-home secretary said the Tories needed to “take responsibility for what we left undone”.Sir Keir Starmer’s newly appointed justice secretary Shabana Mahmood warned on Friday that without immediate action to address overcrowding, prisons would run out of space within weeks leading to “a total breakdown of law and order”.Suella Braverman said the Tories had “shamefully” failed to build enough prisons More

Tory MP blasts own party and reveals biggest downfall in Question Time rantSupport trulyindependent journalismFind out moreCloseOur mission is to deliver unbiased, fact-based reporting that holds power to account and exposes the truth.Whether $5 or $50, every contribution counts.Support us to deliver journalism without an agenda.Louise ThomasEditorThe justice secretary has unveiled new plans to tackle the overcrowding crisis that has engulfed jails across the country.In a speech at HMP Five Wells in Northamptonshire, Shabana Mahmood said failing to ease pressure on prisons could cause a “total breakdown of law and order”.Thousands of prisoners are to be released earlier than planned as the government attempts to avert the “collapse” of the prisons system.The plans would see a temporary reduction in the proportion of their sentence many prisoners must serve in jail from 50 per cent to 44 per cent.This would not apply to violent offenders serving more than four years, sex offenders or those in prison for crimes connected to domestic abuse.The change is expected to come into force in September, with the Justice Secretary also announcing the recruitment of 1,000 additional trainee probation officers by March.Ms Mahmood added there was now “only one way to avert disaster”, adding that the measures would “give us the time we need to address the prisons crisis”.It comes as Nigel Farage is set to return to GB News next week after being elected as an MP on his eighth attempt, the channel has confirmed.Ofcom repeatedly found that the broadcaster breached rules on impartiality, which allow politicians to present current affairs programmes but not act as newsreaders.Show latest update 1720796106Probation chief raises concerns about released prisoners’ risk to publicChief inspector of probation Martin Jones questioned whether there is “enough time” to get probation processes “right” ahead of the early release of some prisoners under Government plans.He told Times Radio: “The probation service has a caseload nearly three times the number of those in prison.“Now, they need to ensure that they identify the risk that those people represent and that they identify what their needs are when they leave prison. Do they have accommodation? Do they have jobs to go to? Do they have, for example, drugs and mental health support in the community?“Now, my concern is, is there enough time to get that right, to ensure they get the right information and that they can then deal with those people effectively when they leave prison.“Our recent inspection programme has found that there’s some real problems at the front line with the probation service at the moment, particularly in relation to staffing. Some areas that we inspect have fewer than 50% of the probation officers they need. So how are they going to have the capacity to ensure that they safeguard the public when they’re being released from custody?”Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood, with Governor Sarah Bott, during a visit to HMP Bedford in Harpur, Bedfordshire, ahead of announcing plans to address prison overcrowding amid fears jails will run out of space within weeks. Ms Mahmood is expected to set out emergency measures that could include reducing the time before some prisoners are automatically released. The emergency measures are a bid to prevent the situation from becoming so bad that it leads to a breakdown in law and order More

Support trulyindependent journalismFind out moreCloseOur mission is to deliver unbiased, fact-based reporting that holds power to account and exposes the truth.Whether $5 or $50, every contribution counts.Support us to deliver journalism without an agenda.Louise ThomasEditorThe prospect of hundreds of thousands of voters suffering a steep rise in their mortgage bills drove Rishi Sunak’s decision to call a snap general election.The former prime minister feared the wrath of homeowners forced to pay an average of £240 more a month.Households would have to pay even more eye-watering sums in many of the so-called “blue wall” Conservative seats in the south of England Mr Sunak was desperate to save.But the early poll failed to avoid disaster– as the Tories crashed to the worst general election defeat in their history.Rishi Sunak (Temilade Adelaja/PA) More

Support trulyindependent journalismFind out moreCloseOur mission is to deliver unbiased, fact-based reporting that holds power to account and exposes the truth.Whether $5 or $50, every contribution counts.Support us to deliver journalism without an agenda.Louise ThomasEditorJames Cleverly has jokingly sought to dispel a rumour he says has been making its way around Westminster for years, by admitting he is fan of the game Warhammer.The Conservative MP and former foreign secretary posted a selfie on X, formerly Twitter, with a freshly painted Warhammer 40k figurine much to the amusement of many social media users. “There have been some rumours about me floating around Westminster for some time. There is no point in trying to hide this any longer. It’s true”, the Lewisham-born father-of-two and MP for Braintree in Essex wrote. Hundreds of fellow Warhammer players replied with photos of their figurines. One, named Grace, wrote: “Honestly, of all the MPs to say this I was not expecting this.” And another said: “Regardless of politics. Happy wargaming.”Warhammer 40K is a game of fantasy battles in which players collect mini-figurines of heroic humans, elves, orcs and other mythical creatures to act out clashes on a tabletop battlefield. While playing the battles is a huge part of the game, arguably a bigger part is the hours spent building and painting the miniatures. Eagle-eyed followers previously had their suspicions about Mr Cleverly when they unearthed a 2012 tweet on his account showing that he’d liked a YouTube video titled: ‘How to paint Astorath The Grim? Warhammer 40000 | Blood Angels’. An X user called Ben wrote last year: “A huge day for nerds everywhere. James Cleverly is the first openly Warhammer-painting person to hold one of the great offices of state.” Another fan noticed Warhammer boxes behind him during an interview with the BBC in 2021 and posted a picture of it on X. The user noted Mr Cleverly’s boxes were for Battle Sisters, Warhammer’s version of the warrior nun trope. Mr Cleverly was raised in Chelmsford in Essex to Evelyn Suna Cleverly, a midwife from Sierra Leone and James Philip Cleverly, a British-born surveyor. The former army officer rose through the ranks of the Conservative party serving as home secretary, foreign secretary and education secretary. More

Support trulyindependent journalismFind out moreCloseOur mission is to deliver unbiased, fact-based reporting that holds power to account and exposes the truth.Whether $5 or $50, every contribution counts.Support us to deliver journalism without an agenda.Louise ThomasEditorNigel Farage is set to return to GB News next week after being elected as an MP on his eighth attempt, the channel has confirmed.The Reform UK leader, 60, formally took his seat in the House of Commons as the representative for the Essex seaside constituency of Clacton after he was sworn in on Thursday.He cancelled his GB News show, which he hosted Monday to Thursday each week, in May to free up time to help with the general election campaigning for Reform UK.Nigel Farage will return to the right-wing channel after being elected to the House of Commons More