UK Politics

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailRishi Sunak blocked veterans using their IDs at polling stations over fears it could “open the floodgates” to more students voting, a cabinet minister has revealed.Veterans minister Johnny Mercer complained he had tried “for months without success” to convince Downing Street to let veterans use their IDs to vote. But he said the prime minister’s special advisers blocked the plans over fears it would mean students could use their own ID cards too, according to The Times.The newspaper obtained photos of Mr Mercer sitting barefoot on a train typing a memo bemoaning the voter ID rules and Mr Sunak’s Downing Street team.Minister for Veterans’ Affairs Johnny Mercer with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (Stefan Rousseau/PA) More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailConservative MP Craig Mackinlay has spoken about having his hands and feet amputated after an episode of sepsis last year, and revealed he wants to be known as the “bionic MP” upon his return to Parliament.The South Thanet MP’s ordeal began on 27 September last year when he felt unwell and, despite testing negative for Covid-19, saw his condition rapidly worsen overnight. His wife, Kati, called for an ambulance and Mr Mackinlay was admitted to a hospital in septic shock and put into a 16-day induced coma.He told the BBC that he had a survival chance of just 5 per cent and was transferred to St Thomas’ Hospital in London, where he underwent amputations on 1 December.Mr Mackinlay said that he was “extremely lucky to be alive” and had had some “extreme surgery” as a result of the illness.He said he was “stoic” when he was informed of the decision by doctors to amputate his limbs. “I haven’t got a medical degree but I know what dead things look like. I was surprisingly stoic about it… I don’t know why I was. It might have been the various cocktail of drugs I was on.”The MP has now been fitted with prosthetic limbs, and described the challenging road to recovery that he went through following the traumatic episode.Mr Mackinlay spoke of the emotional toll and the significant adjustments required in life after the amputations, especially the loss of his hands. “You don’t realise how much you do with your hands… use your phone, hold the hand of your child, touch your wife, do the garden.”He says his prosthetic hands are “amazing… but it’s never going to be quite the same”.“So yeah, the hands are a real loss.”He also spoke of the sense of loss the amputations still gave him. “You do get a little one every morning because you’re in the land of nod having a nice dream, and then you wake up and it’s ‘I haven’t got any hands’.“That is the realisation every morning.“It’s very easy to say – and I do try and stick to it – there’s not much point moaning and complaining or getting down about the things you can’t do.“You’ve got to be cheerful and positive about things you can do and I find every day there’s something new that I can do.“None of this would be possible without my wife… I wouldn’t be where I am today without her.”However, he remains positive and now plans to advocate for early sepsis recognition in healthcare so the “the health service recognises sepsis at the earliest opportunity”.Before his illness, Mr Mackinlay was a chartered accountant and a former UK Independence Party member, elected as a Conservative MP in 2015. He intends to run in the next election and hopes to inspire others as the “bionic MP”.“When children come to parliament’s fantastic education centre, I want them to be pulling their parents’ jacket or skirts or their teacher and saying: ‘I want to see the bionic MP today’.” More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailMinisters could face an unlimited fine if they are found to have broken the law in their treatment of disabled people after a watchdog launched the first investigation of its kind into a government department. The probe, by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, follows the deaths of a number of vulnerable benefits claimants. Baroness Kishwer Falkner, the chair of the EHRC, said her organisation was “extremely worried” about the treatment of some disabled people by the Department for Work and Pensions. “We suspect the Secretary of State’s department may have broken equality law,” she added. She described the investigation as the “strongest possible action” they could take. The equalities watchdog is investigating the government’s treatment of disabled people More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailThe rate of inflation fell to 2.3 per cent in April from 3.2 per cent in March, the Office for National Statistics said, its lowet level since 2021. In a boost for Rishi Sunak, the rate of inflation is now just 0.3 per cent away from the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target, having skyrocketed in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. A Treasury spokesman said: “We rightly protected millions of jobs during Covid and paid half of people’s energy bills after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine sent bills skyrocketing – but it wouldn’t be fair to leave future generations to pick up the tab. “That’s why we must stick to the plan to get debt falling. The economy is turning a corner, with strong growth this quarter and inflation close to target, allowing us to cut taxes for the average worker by £900 a year.” More follows on this breaking story… More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailSpeculation is mounting that Labour is paving the way to open UK/US trade talks with a Donald Trump administration if he wins back the White House just as Sir Keir Starmer enters Downing Street.The Independent has learnt that senior Labour MPs, including shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock and shadow exports minister Tan Dhesi, were guests at the right-wing Heritage Foundation in Washington DC this week.The Heritage Foundation has earned a reputation for being at the heart of a shift to the right in the Republican Party. It has led Project 2025, the preparations for the next Republican administration in the White House including policy documents and staffing.The shadow ministers were joined by Tory Crewe MP Kieran Mullan and pro-Trump British think tank the Legatum Institute at the discussions in Washington.David Lammy has said Labour would seek to work with whoever is in the White House More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster email Politically motivated crime in Germany last year reached its highest level since the government started tracking it more than 20 years ago, with the greatest threat coming from people with far-right motivations, the country’s top security official said Tuesday.Overall, Germany registered 60,028 politically motivated crimes in 2023. The government considers numerous acts as political including intent to hinder democracy and crimes aimed at members of certain ethnic, religious or other groups.Right-wing politically motivated crimes increased by 23% in 2023 to 28,945 cases, of which 1,270 were violent. Left-wing crimes increased by 11% to 7,777, of which 916 were violent.“Politically motivated criminality has almost doubled within the last 10 years and continues to increase,” said Holger Münch, the president of the Federal Criminal Police Office. “Parts of the population are tending towards radicalization. These tendencies include attempts to delegitimize the state and its monopoly on violence.”Earlier this month, a candidate from Chancellor Olaf Scholz’ center-left Social Democrats was beaten up and seriously injured while campaigning for a seat in the European Parliament. Authorities believe that the four men arrested were motivated by right-wing beliefs. A few days later, a 74-year-old man with a history of mental illness assaulted Berlin’s top economic official, who sustained minor injuries.“We are a strong democracy, but our democracy is under pressure,” German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told reporters in Berlin.The threat of political violence in the European Union was clear last week when the prime minister of Slovakia was shot in what the government called an assassination attempt. Many politicians in Slovakia blamed the heated political division there for creating the environment that led to the shooting.Police in Germany also have recorded a drastic increase in crimes designated as antisemitic to the highest level since tracking began. They nearly doubled last year to 5,164. Münch said the increase is related to reactions to the Israel-Hamas war.Faeser and Münch also said hate crimes increased by about 48% last year to 17,000, and crimes against asylum seekers increased by 75%.Also on Tuesday, the trial of a right-wing group accused of planning to overthrow the German government in 2022 began in Frankfurt. The group includes a former lawmaker from the far-right Alternative for Germany party who allegedly planned to help members of the group gain access to the parliament building.Left-wing violence has also been prominent. In March, arsonists set fire to an electrical line to a Tesla plant outside Berlin to protest its expansion. A far-left entity called Volcano Group claimed responsibility.Germany’s government started tracking politically motivated crimes in 2001. More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailLabour and the Lib Dems have been warned by the Electoral Commission that they need to comply with electoral law after being fined for multiple offences.Four investigations carried out by the democratic watchdog concluded that Labour was guilty of five offences and one contravention of the rules and handed a fine of £400. Meanwhile, the Lib Dems were found guilty of four offences of late reporting of donations and fined £350.Labour was reprimanded for a failure to notify a change in accounting unit treasurer, and four late reported donations; and clate reporting of its Ipswich constituency party accounts.Starmer and Davey lead Labour and the Lib Dems respectively More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailThe increased international co-operation on AI safety sparked by UK-created AI safety summits will help the formation of domestic legislation, Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan has said.The UK is currently co-hosting the AI Seoul Summit with South Korea, where more than a dozen AI firms have agreed to create new safety standards, while 10 nations and the EU have agreed to form an international network of publicly backed safety institutes to further AI safety research and testing globally.The summit comes six months after the UK held the inaugural AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park, where world leaders and AI firms agreed to focus on the safe and responsible development of AI, and carry out further research on the potential risks around the technology.Ms Donelan said these regular gatherings and discussions were helping to place AI safety “at the top” of national agendas around the world, as many countries consider how to best legislate on the subject of the emerging technology.I think what we have done in the UK by setting up this long-term process of summits … is to create a long-term process to convene the world on the very topic of AI safety and innovation and inclusivityMichelle Donelan“What we’ve said is that legislation needs to be at the right time, but the legislation can’t be out of date by the time you actually publish it, and we have to know exactly what is going into that legislation – we have to have a grip on the risks – and that’s another thing that this summit process helps us to achieve,” she told the PA news agency.“I think what we have done in the UK by setting up this long-term process of summits – starting with Bletchley and now here in Seoul and then there’ll be the one in France – is to create a long-term process to convene the world on the very topic of AI safety and innovation and inclusivity, which are all intertwined together, so that we can really focus on and keep this at the top of other countries’ and nations’ agendas.”The Technology Secretary added that “AI doesn’t respect geographical boundaries” and it “isn’t enough” to work only on AI safety domestically, with the “interoperability” of the new network of international safety institutes and resulting shared knowledge helping the governments to be “much more strategic” at managing the risks of AI.“That said, of course we have a domestic track in this area, which revolves around adding to the resources and the skills and support of our existing regulators, as well as making sure that when the time comes we do actually legislate,” she said.The Technology Secretary added that the next step in discussions at the summit in Seoul, where she will co-chair a discussion with other technology ministers from around the world on Wednesday, would be on how to further embed safety into AI development.“How I see it is that phase one was basically Bletchley until Seoul, and what we managed to achieve there was the ‘Bletchley effect’ so that rocketed AI up the agenda in many different countries,” she said.“It also demonstrated the UK’s global leadership in this area, and we set up the framework as to how we can do (AI model) evaluations via the institutes.“Now in phase two – Seoul and beyond, to France – we need to also look at not just how can we make AI safe but how can we make safety embedded throughout our society, what I call systemic safety.” More