UK

Fly-tippers will have their cars and vans seized and crushed under a new crackdown targeting so-called “waste cowboys”. Ministers warn the problem is “soaring” with more than 1.1 million fly-tipping incidents in England each year. Now drones and mobile CCTV vans will used to identify vehicles used to dump waste. ( More

The most popular political leader is “none of the above” a new poll shows just 36 hours before voters go to the polls in the local elections. It comes amid rising concerns that Reform UK is on the cusp of a major breakthrough, following “deep disillusionment” with Labour and the Tories. Nigel Farage’s party is expected to win a parliamentary by-election and two mayoral contests as well as take hundreds of seats across England on Thursday. The party’s success has triggered rising panic among left-wing campaigners and the Fire Brigades Union has launched a new leaflet warning voters that “firefighters do not trust Reform – neither should you”. The leaflets are targeting Runcorn and Helsby where a crucial by-election is being fought and Labour hope to hold off a Reform surge.Steve Wright, FBU general secretary, said: “Trade unions have a responsibility to take a leading role in countering the rise of the far right. Farage and Reform present a direct threat to workers’ rights in our country. Reform is a part of the establishment. We cannot allow their divisive anti-migrant politics to pit workers against each other.”Ahead of Thursday’s local elections, polling company More In Common asked voters who they thought would be most effective at governing the country with 41 per cent responding: ‘None of the above’.The second most popular choice was Mr Farage with 23 per cent, followed by Keir Starmer on 19 per cent, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch with 8 per cent, the Lib Dem’s Ed Davey on 6 per cent. The Green’s co-leaders, Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay, last with 2 per cent. Overall, the poll showed Labour on 18 per cent, behind Reform on 26 per cent and the Conservatives on 25 per cent, in the areas where elections are taking place.More In Common executive director UK Luke Tryl said: “The public mood going into these elections is one of deep disillusionment, voters are impatient for change but aren’t confident any party can deliver it. As results trickle in on Friday this polling suggests we will see that the fragmentation of the electorate in last year’s general election has only accelerated since then.“For many their vote on Thursday will be an expression of deep frustration with the status quo. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK look set to be the big winners of the night, leading in our polling, while the Conservatives on these numbers would lose scores of seats in elections being contested on normally solid turf – both to Reform UK and the Liberal Democrats.”The poll, which also suggests that Reform voters are the most keen to send a national message in the local elections, was commissioned as part of Channel 4 News live special ‘Election 2025: The Debate’. Tory, Lib Dem and Labour voters said they thought competence to run the council was the most important issue at stake on Thursday, a reason cited by 47 per cent of those voting Conservative. But among those intending to cast their ballot for Reform, the most important issue was national policies on immigration, with 67 per cent highlighting it as their main reason for backing the party.Some 1,641 council seats are up for grabs on May 1, across 23 local authorities, as well as six mayoralties and the chance to be the new MP for Runcorn and Helsby.More in Common also found that in the race to be the Hull and East Yorkshire mayor, Olympic boxer and Reform candidate Luke Campbell has a popularity that exceeds that of his party. Even those who were sceptical of Reform and Mr Farage were positive about the medal winner, they found. But overall Mr Tryl said: “I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say that the groups that we did over the past week are some of the most disillusioned, disappointed, disaffected that we’ve run.“There was a real sense that people keep demanding change from politics and they’re not getting that change, and that they are as a result not just thinking things are bad, but starting to lose faith in the inability of the system to change things.”Reform UK leader Nigel Farage (left) with the party’s mayoral candidate for Hull, Olympic boxer Luke Campbell MBE More

Fears have been raised that the sort of election interference with fake stories and narratives on polling day which marred the Brexit referendum is still a threat in the UK.The warning comes as voters in many parts of England prepare to go to the polls on Thursday to cast their ballots for county council and mayoral elections as well as the parliament by-election in Runcorn and Helsby.The elections could see Nigel Farage’s Reform propelled from a fringe party to one challenging for power but there are calls for an urgent change in the law to deal with misinformation going online when people go to the polls.The Vote Leave bus became symbolic of misinformation (Stefan Rousseau/PA) More

Local councillors are usually obscure figures, passionate local activists hoping to improve their areas or ambitious party loyalists wanting to climb the electoral ladder. But among the thousands of councillors standing across the country on Thursday, a few names stand out. From Olympians to ousted ex-MPs, The Independent looks at how the main parties are hoping star power will help their candidates over the line in one of the most unpredictable sets of local elections in British history. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is fielding several celebrity candidates More

Ed Miliband has hit back over Tony Blair’s assault on his net zero policies as the former prime minister went to war Keir Starmer’s government over climate change.The ex-PM has publicly warned the energy secretary and other western governments of the “inconvenient facts” that their eco policies are wrong because voters know their sacrifices will not have virtually no impact on climate change.In a foreword to a report by the Tony Blair Institute (TBI), the ex-PM claimed voters “feel they’re being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle when they know the impact of global emissions is minimal”.The major intervention has been condemned by climate change activists but given succour to those who have been calling for a Donald Trump-style ditching of the agenda in favour of fossil fuels.Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband (PA) More

Kemi Badenoch has called for Donald Trump-style mass deportations and the building of a statue of Margaret Thatcher in Parliament Square, in what appears to be a last ditch attempt to win over Reform voters ahead of the local elections. The Tory leader said she “absolutely” would support mass deportations of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, adding: “It’s not going to be easy, but you’ve got to start from somewhere”.It comes after Tory peer and pollster Lord Hayward predicted a devastating night for his own party at the local elections, taking place on Thursday. Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch More

Online safety regulator Ofcom has been accused of having a “muddled and confused” response to regulating the dangers of AI chatbots which could pose a “clear risk” to the public.Andy Burrows, chief executive of online safety and suicide prevention charity, the Molly Rose Foundation, said too many AI chatbots were being rushed out by tech firms in a battle for market share in the new, but rapidly growing space of generative AI (Gen AI).Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that it had found Meta’s AI chatbots and virtual personas will take part in romantic and even sexual role-plays with users, including children.The report said Meta had called the testing manipulative and unrepresentative of how most users would engage with chatbots, but made changes to its products after seeing the findings.Mr Burrows said this latest report should prompt greater action from Ofcom to more tightly regulate AI chatbots under the Online Safety Act, a subject he said the regulator has not been clear enough on.“Every week brings fresh evidence of the lack of basic safeguarding protections in AI generated chatbots that are being hurriedly rushed out by tech companies in an all too familiar battle for market share,” he said.“Despite this, Ofcom’s response to the risks remains muddled and confused.“The regulator has repeatedly declined to state whether chatbots can even trigger the illegal safety duties set out in the Act.”If there are loopholes in the Act, Ofcom should stop dodging the question and start providing clarity on how we need to plug them.“From child sex abuse to inciting acts of violence and even suicide, poorly regulated chatbots are a clear risk to the safety of individuals and the public.”Asked about the subject during an evidence session of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee on Tuesday, Ofcom’s director for online safety strategy delivery, Mark Bunting, acknowledged that the “legal position” was “not entirely clear” and “complex”.“The first thing to say is that Gen AI content that meets the definitions of illegal content, or content that is harmful to children is treated in the Act exactly the same way as any other type of content,” he told MPs.“The Act is deliberately drawn in a way that’s technology neutral.“There are areas of the technology where we think the legal position is not entirely clear or it’s complex.“So, for example, chatbots and the character services that we’ve seen linked with harm in the last few months, we think they are caught by the Act in some circumstances, but not necessarily all circumstances.“The mere fact of chatting with a chatbot is probably not a form of interaction which is captured by the Act, so there will be things there that we’ll want to continue to monitor.“We’ll want to talk to industry about those things where we think that there’s more that could be done – we’d be very happy to work with Government and parliament to try to build on the legislation that’s already in place.”Online safety groups have raised a number of concerns around AI chatbots, including that they can easily and quickly spread misinformation because of flawed training data or through AI hallucinations, as well as through AI-image generation tools being used to create child sexual abuse material.Earlier this month, the safety organisation the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) reported finding record levels of web pages hosting child sexual abuse material in 2024, and warned that AI-generated content were a key factor in that rise. More

French police will intervene to stop migrants getting on to small boats when they’re in the water after the UK “persuaded France to change its rules”, the home secretary has said. Small boat smugglers have been picking up migrants from the sea rather than French beaches in the latest attempt to evade police.Yvette Cooper said on Tuesday that smugglers are using the dinghies as “taxies”, launching much further up the French coast and then travelling down to beaches closer to the UK to pick up migrants. Migrants are then wading or swimming out to clamber aboard the small boats in the water, rather than getting on the dinghy from the beach. These tactics have been particularly effective at evading the French police, as the authorities currently don’t intervene once migrants are in the water, Ms Cooper explained. The home secretary told the BBC Today programme that the UK has recently “persuaded France to change its rules”. The French have agreed to intervene once migrants are in the water to stop the crossings, but the plan has yet to be put into action, Ms Cooper added. Yvette Cooper said that smugglers were using dinghies like taxis to evade French police More