UK Politics

Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders said Friday that he’s “going nowhere” until reports are investigated that he was a possible target of a suspected plot in Belgium to kill politicians using a drone carrying explosives.Three men were taken into custody on Thursday after searches of their homes in the port city of Antwerp by police using explosives sniffer dogs. A homemade bomb was found at one home, but it wasn’t operational at the time, prosecutors said.A bag of steel balls also was found there, while a 3D printer believed to be used to make parts for the planned attack was found at another residence. Prosecutors said it appeared “that the intention was to build a drone to attach a load.”Prosecutors said the police raids were part of an investigation into “attempted terrorist murder and participation in the activities of a terrorist group.” They didn’t identify the politicians who might have been targeted.But Belgian government ministers identified Prime Minister Bart De Wever as one target. On X, Wilders posted a Belgian news report that he and De Wever’s successor as Antwerp mayor, Els van Doesburg, were also on the hit list. All three are right-wing politicians.Wilders said that an investigation was underway into whether the reports are true and “until I know that, I’m going nowhere.” He canceled an appearance on Friday at an election debate with other political leaders before the Netherlands holds an early general election on Oct. 29.Flemish broadcaster VTM was the source of some of the reports, but it didn’t provide details on how it learned about the list. In an interview with VTM, Interior Minister Bernard Quintin said that both Belgian and foreign politicians were targets. He didn’t elaborate.World leaders often visit Belgium’s capital, Brussels, for European Union and NATO summits, among other events.De Wever hasn’t spoken publicly about the case, but he gave a thumbs-up to television cameras at a meeting of government ministers on Friday. The police raids were carried out close to his Antwerp home.One of the suspects was later released. The other two were due to face a judge, possibly to be formally charged.Wilders has been a target of extremists for years and lives with round-the-clock protection. His Party for Freedom is leading in polls before the election, which was called after he pulled out of the ruling four-party coalition in a dispute about a crackdown on migration.Belgian prosecutors said on Thursday that the intention of the suspects “was to carry out a jihadi-inspired terrorist attack targeting politicians.” They provided no details about how they had drawn those conclusions.___Mike Corder contributed to this report from The Hague, Netherlands. More

Nigel Farage has insisted that a former senior figure in his party convicted of taking pro-Russian bribes is a “bad apple”.Nathan Gill, who led Reform UK in Wales in 2021, admitted taking bribes to make statements in favour of Vladimir Putin’s Russia while he was a member of the European Parliament.His activities were said to include making pro-Russian statements about events in Ukraine in the European Parliament and in opinion pieces to news outlets.Speaking at a campaign visit in Caerphilly on Friday, Mr Farage said he was “shocked” by Gill’s admissions, but claimed Reform does everything it can to vet their candidates despite the party’s vetting process being beset by issues. Nigel Farage described Gill as a ‘bad apple’ More

Yvette Cooper has claimed that she wanted alleged Chinese spies prosecuted when she was home secretary in charge of MI5, but said her hands were tied.The case against 30-year-old Christopher Cash, a former parliamentary researcher, and 33-year-old Christopher Berry, a teacher, collapsed last month after the government did not provide evidence that Beijing was a threat to national security.But a row has exploded after shadow home secretary Chris Philp claimed that Sir Keir Starmer’s team had access to “multiple” documents that proved China was a national security risk before the collapse of a spying trial. The shadow home secretary claimed the government could have handed these papers over to prosecutors, but they “chose not to”, accusing ministers of having “destroyed the prosecution” of two men accused of spying for Beijing. Speaking on the BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, Ms Cooper, who is now foreign secretary but was in charge of MI5 at the time, said she wanted the case prosecuted and was “deeply frustrated” when it collapsed. But she added that ministers were “not involved in any of the evidence that was put to the Crown Prosecution Service … because this was a criminal case”. Yvette Cooper said she was ‘deeply frustrated’ when the case collapsed More

Yvette Cooper has defended the controversial expansion of digital ID plans to include children as young as 13, arguing that many teenagers already utilise similar forms of identification. The Foreign Secretary asserted that the “standardised” system was “the right way forward,” aiming to reassure the public amidst significant opposition to the proposals’ scope. Sir Keir Starmer is reportedly seeking to widen the technology’s application, initially intended for tackling illegal migration, to encompass the management of public services such as benefits and bill payments.In its response to a petition against the measures, which has been signed by more than 2.8 million people, the Government said the system would cover everyone aged 16 or over but “we will consider through consultation if this should be age 13 and over”.Sir Keir said the system had ‘huge benefits’ which his Government must ‘make the case for’ amid plummeting support in the polls (Leon Neal/PA)Speaking to broadcasters on Friday morning, Ms Cooper said similar forms of identification are already widely used and suggested the plans would offer consistency.“Everybody has forms of digital ID, don’t they, now?” she said on LBC.“I mean, we all have different ways of having to prove who we are.”“Lots of 13-year-olds already do (have a form of digital ID) and what the department is going to be consulting on is exactly how that should be taken forward.“I do think that this is the right way forward, to have this standardised process now, and it’s something that we had been already setting out for people who come to work from abroad.”During his trip to India this week, Sir Keir praised the country’s Aadhaar digital ID system, which is far more extensive than the plans initially announced for the UK and involves the storing of biometric data, as a “massive success”.He signalled Britain could use the technology for services like banking, pointing to New Delhi’s scheme as an example, and said ministers must “make the case” for the “huge benefits” the scheme could offer.No 10 said Britain’s system would not necessarily copy India’s biometric data usage and signalled the UK scheme would be run by the public sector. More

Microsoft has hired former prime minister Rishi Sunak, but the role comes with one condition. Mr Sunak has joined the American tech giant as a part-time senior adviser. In the role, he will give company leaders “high-level strategic perspectives on macro-economic and geopolitical trends and how they intersect with innovation, regulation and digital transformation”. He will also speak at events.However, Sunak has been told he must not lobby the government on the firm’s behalf.He will also not be advising on UK policy matters, according to an Acoba (Advisory Committee on Business Appointments) report, and will donate his salary to his and his wife Akshata Murty’s numeracy skills charity The Richmond Project.Mr Sunak was prime minister between October 2022 and July 2024.Former prime minister Rishi Sunak with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates in 2023 More

Keir Starmer has ruled out any future government role for Lord Mandelson, weeks after he sacked him over his relationship with the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. The prime minister fired the Labour peer after the publication of emails which showed Lord Mandelson sent supportive messages to Epstein even as he faced jail for sex offences.No 10 said the emails revealed “materially different” information from what was known when he was appointed to the key role of the UK’s ambassador to the US earlier this year.The Labour grandee left the government less than a week after Sir Keir lost his deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, who resigned over a failure to pay enough tax on her new home. Lord Mandelson was sacked over the extent of his relationship with the late financier Jeffrey Epstein (Jonathan Brady/PA) More

Microsoft has hired former prime minister Rishi Sunak, but the role comes with one condition. Mr Sunak has joined the American tech giant as a part-time senior adviser. In the role, he will give company leaders “high-level strategic perspectives on macro-economic and geopolitical trends and how they intersect with innovation, regulation and digital transformation”. He will also speak at events.However, Sunak has been told he must not lobby the government on the firm’s behalf.He will also not be advising on UK policy matters, according to an Acoba (Advisory Committee on Business Appointments) report, and will donate his salary to his and his wife Akshata Murty’s numeracy skills charity The Richmond Project.Mr Sunak was prime minister between October 2022 and July 2024.Former prime minister Rishi Sunak with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates in 2023 More

Artificial intelligence (AI) will pain a “whole swathe” of the UK economy before ultimately providing a net benefit, the chief technology officer of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has said.The greatest under-appreciated AI-driven cyber threat on the horizon is models learning to find weak spots in digital spheres, Ollie Whitehouse added.Companies that cannot effectively use AI for cyber defence will “feel the brunt” of models revealing these vulnerabilities – and this will be “quite a painful correction”, he said at a cyber security start-up event at the National Theatre, central London, on Thursday.Meanwhile, the UK’s AI Security Institute (AISI) is focusing on the danger of advance AI creating “chemical and biological threats, cyber capabilities and autonomous systems that cause real widespread harm”, attendees heard.The CTO at NCSC, the UK’s cyber security authority, was asked on a panel for the “most under-appreciated AI-driven cyber threat on the horizon that we’re not preparing for today”.Mr Whitehouse told the event hosted by Harmonic Security: “It is the one where AI gets very effective at surfacing what our vulnerability truly is, and us simply not having the capacity to be able to triage and respond to that.“At the moment, there is… this beauty in us not knowing the true extent of that and being able to quantify it – that is going to rapidly change.“And then when we do know the true level of our vulnerability across digital states, across software, we are going to be left with some really hard decisions.”This threatens “good corporate governance, future profits and other wellbeing in the UK”, he said.NCSC staff are “AI optimists”, he told the room, “but I think the journey between where we are today and that sunny upland is going to be rocky and uneven.“There is definitely going to be the risk of the haves who are able to employ AI for effective cyber defence, but there’s going to be a whole swathe of the economy who are unable to, and are going to feel the brunt and the implications of that in quite a painful correction.“But we will net out in a far better situation”.Ben Dewar-Powell, the recently-appointed chief information security officer (CISO) at AISI, said: “At the institute we’re focused on the most serious emerging risks from advanced AI, so things like chemical and biological threats, cyber capabilities and autonomous systems that cause real widespread harm.”Last year the institute found that models can produce expert-level knowledge about biology and chemistry, with some providing answers equivalent to PhD-level experts. These could be used for positive or harmful purposes, it said.AISI, which is part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, prioritises what “could cause severe damage”, what is “uniquely enabled by cutting-edge AI capabilities”, and “where Government-backed research actually adds value that others can’t provide”, Mr Dewar-Powell said.“My take on the cyber piece is it’s really the automation of the entire kill chain, so not just bits and pieces at every stage running at pace.“So campaigns that have taken weeks can take hours running parallel, and completely change the economics.”A cyber kill chain outlines the stages an attacker must successfully complete to achieve an operation goal.The comments came after Alastair Paterson, chief executive and co-founder of Harmonic Security, said the UK “cannot afford to rely on other nations for the technologies that protect our infrastructure… our technology, our economy, really our way of life, but we are right now”.A raft of businesses have been hit by major cyber attacks in recent months, including British car maker Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), high street retailer Marks and Spencer and nursery group Kido Schools.Mr Paterson referenced JLR and said the attack cost taxpayers £1.5 billion in a loan guarantee.“Pretty much every week or every month we see the headlines here that just underline how important this sector is”, he said.However Britain is being “outpaced and out-competed all the time” by other nations, notably Israel, he said.“Israel has this incredible ecosystem that really turns their (cyber start-up) founders into serial winners, right? They go back, they help each other out again and again. And they built an incredible technology sector there, specifically around cyber security.”He added: “At the same time, the geopolitical environment around the UK is shifting pretty fast right now… you’ve got, obviously, the rise of China; you’ve got a really belligerent Russia that is expansionist right now (and) have their shadow war going on; and then unfortunately the US is more inward-looking than it’s been before as well.” More