UK Politics

The defence secretary will call for a 50-day drive to arm Ukraine when he chairs a meeting of Kyiv’s allies on Monday.John Healey is set to argue that the West should again boost its military support for Ukraine in an effort to bring Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table.Donald Trump has already threatened to impose “very severe” tariffs on Russia if it does not agree to a ceasefire by 2 September, 50 days on from the US president’s announcement that he would sell “top-of-the-line” weapons to Nato that could then be given to Ukraine.On Monday, Mr Healey will use a meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group (UDCG) to back Mr Trump’s proposal and pledge that the UK will “play our full part in its success to bolster Ukraine’s immediate fight”.Calling for more support from Western allies, he is expected to say: “Alongside this, the US has started the clock on a 50-day deadline for Putin to agree to peace or face crippling economic sanctions.“As members of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, we need to step up in turn with a ‘50-day drive’ to arm Ukraine on the battlefield and force Putin to the negotiating table.”US president Donald Trump and Russia’s president Vladimir Putin are seen during the G20 leaders summit in 2018 More

Steve Reed has said he is “not at all surprised” Reform UK is consistently beating Labour in the polls. The environment secretary said Nigel Farage’s party poll lead is a “reflection of people’s disenchantment with politics”. “ I am not at all surprised, because we just had 14 years where people were promised so much, and all of those promises were broken,” he told BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. Steve Reed said that ‘the British public will see the change they voted for over the coming months and years’ More

Rachel Reeves is eyeing up a £5bn pre-Budget windfall as the government considers selling off seized cryptocurrency to plug a hole in the public finances. The Home Office is reportedly working with police forces to offload at least £5bn worth of Bitcoin and other currencies taken from criminals.It is planning to develop a storage system for the currencies to handle their sale, it has emerged, as concerns about Labour’s spending plans mount ahead of the autumn Budget. Rachel Reeves needs to find billions to balance the books ahead of her Budget this autumn More

Labour will leave Britain with the cleanest rivers on record by cutting sewage pollution from water firms in half by 2030, the environment secretary will say. Steve Reed will promise on Sunday to make the UK’s rivers the cleanest since records began with a £104bn investment to rebuild the country’s crumbling sewage pipes.Mr Reed will also roll out a set of strict new rules to slash pollution and a “root and branch” overhaul of the way water companies are regulated. Environment secretary Steve Reed (right) and energy security and net zero secretary Ed Miliband (left) are joined by Jeremy Biggs of the Freshwater Habitats Trust during a visit to the Ock and Thame Farmers floodplain restoration project, in South Hinksey, Oxfordshire More

Rough sleeping has almost doubled since Covid, a damning report found, with Andy Burnham calling on Sir Keir Starmer to make tackling homelessness a “moral mission”.The Greater Manchester mayor piled pressure on the prime minister to follow the success of the region in offering housing to the homeless. “If you set people up to succeed – they largely do,” Mr Burnham said. He added: “Tackling homelessness is not just an economic imperative, but also a moral mission.” Andy Burnham said tackling homelessness must be a ‘moral mission’ More

Ministers “have their fingers in their ears” over the ongoing Birmingham bin strikes, the boss of one of Britain’s biggest unions has said. The prime minister and Angela Rayner must “get in the room, sort it out and stop letting this continue for no reason,” Sharon Graham warned. The outspoken Unite chief said she is not the prime minister’s “favourite trade union leader… probably because I call things out”. Sharon Graham said Unite members would vote to ditch Labour ‘without a shadow of a doubt’ More

On Wednesday afternoon, York Central MP Rachael Maskell like most MPs was winding down, getting ready for a long summer recess to recharge, take stock and come back refreshed.Many of her colleagues were hitting the summer drinks circuit in Westminster with dreams of the various beaches in different corners of the Mediterranean they will be heading to in the very near future.But Ms Maskell got a call out of the blue asking her to go and see the Labour chief whip Sir Alan Campbell immediately.Starmer strikes backShe was to discover that the prime minister – after discussion with his closest allies – had decided to strike. The talk of deputy prime minister Angela Rayner or possibly health secretary Wes Streeting replacing him had got too much.And it was clear after the welfare rebellion – which Ms Maskell had reluctantly in the end led – that he had lost control and needed to restore it.Sir Keir Starmer faces similar challenges to Harold Wilson in the late 1960s More

Rachel Reeves will freeze fuel duty again this autumn in a boost to drivers still struggling with the cost of living, it has eben reported. The chancellor reportedly feels vindicated by a freeze on the levy last October, despite calls from campaigners and economists to hike the tax. As she seeks to fill a multi-billion pound black hole in the public finances, she has faced fresh calls to end the long-running freeze on fuel duty, which has been in place since 2011. ( More