UK

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 ThomasEditor Britain’s new left-leaning government said Sunday that the nation is “broke and broken,” blaming the situation on its predecessors ahead of a major speech on the state of the public finances that is widely expected to lay the groundwork for higher taxes.In a sweeping assessment three weeks after taking power, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office professed shock at the situation they inherited after 14 years of Conservative Party rule, while releasing a department-by-department analysis of the perceived failures of the previous government.The critique comes a day before Treasury chief Rachel Reeves is expected to outline a 20-billion-pound ($26 billion) shortfall in public finances during a speech to the House of Commons.“We will not shy away from being honest with the public about the reality of what we have inherited,’’ Pat McFadden, a senior member of the new Cabinet, said in a statement. “We are calling time on the false promises that British people have had to put up with and we will do what it takes to fix Britain.”Starmer’s Labour Party won a landslide election victory earlier this month following a campaign in which critics accused both major parties of a “conspiracy of silence” over the scale of the financial challenges facing the next government.Labour pledged during the campaign that it wouldn’t raise taxes on “working people,” saying its policies would deliver faster economic growth and generate the additional revenue needed by the government. The Conservatives, meanwhile, promised further tax cuts in the autumn if they were returned to office.As proof that the previous government wasn’t honest about the challenges facing the country, Starmer’s office pointed to recent comments from former Treasury chief Jeremy Hunt confirming that he wouldn’t have been able to cut taxes this year if the Conservatives had been returned to power.Those comments came in an interview with the BBC in which Hunt also accused Labour of exaggerating the situation to justify raising taxes now that they’ve won the election.“The reason we’re getting all this spin about this terrible economic inheritance is because Labour wants to raise taxes,” Hunt said on July 21. “If they wanted to raise taxes, all the numbers were crystal clear before the election. … They should have levelled with the British public.”The government on Sunday released an overview of the spending assessment Reeves commissioned shortly after taking office. She will deliver the complete report to Parliament on Monday. Those findings led the new government to accuse the Conservatives of making significant funding commitments for this financial year “without knowing where the money would come from.’’It argued that the military had been “hollowed out’’ at a time of increasing global threats and the National Health Service was “broken,’’ with some 7.6 million people waiting for care.And despite billions spent to house migrants and combat the criminal gangs ferrying migrants across the English Channel on dangerous inflatable boats, the number of people making the crossing is still rising, Starmer’s office said. Some 15,832 people have crossed the Channel on small boats already this year, 9% more than during the same period in 2023.“The assessment will show that Britain is broke and broken — revealing the mess that populist politics has made of the economy and public services,” Downing Street said in a statement.The quandary the government finds itself in should be no surprise, said Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, an independent think tank focused on Britain’s economic policies.At the start of the election campaign, the institute said that the U.K. was in a “parlous fiscal position” and the new government would have to either raise taxes, cut spending or relax the rules on public borrowing.“For a party to enter office and then declare that things are ‘worse than expected’ would be fundamentally dishonest,” the IFS said on May 25. “The next government does not need to enter office to ‘open the books.’ Those books are transparently published and available for all to inspect.” 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 ThomasEditorRachel Reeves is considering plans to raise capital gains tax in line with income tax to help plug a £20bn hole in the public finances, according to reports.The chancellor will be presented with proposals by Treasury officials ahead of a speech in which she will declare Britain “broke and broken” and reveal the scale of Labour’s dire financial inheritance from the Conservatives.Another option being considered by Ms Reeves is cutting pension tax relief for middle-class workers, The Sunday Telegraph reported.Chancellor Rachel Reeves is expected to make a speech on public finances on Monday. (Justin Tallis/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 ThomasEditorAngela Rayner will unveil an overhaul of planning rules next week as Labour seeks to clear a path to building 1.5 million homes in five years.The deputy prime minister and housing secretary said that “delivering social and affordable houses at scale” is her “number one priority”.But the planning system should be “a launchpad” rather than a “millstone” dragging down the housing market, she wrote in The Observer.Angela Rayner vowed to deliver more affordable housing as her ‘number one priority’ 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 ThomasEditorRachel Reeves is to lay bare the scale of Labour’s dire economic inheritance from the Conservatives on Monday, in a speech which could lay the ground for tax hikes and spending cuts in the chancellor’s first budget.She is expected to tell parliament that Rishi Sunak’s party left a £20bn black hole in the public finances, including making significant funding commitments this year with no idea how they would be paid for.The government said the assessment will show that “Britain is broke and broken” and will reveal “the mess that populist politics has made of the economy and public services”. It will set the stage for “difficult decisions” to be taken “to start to rebuild the country”.But former chancellor Jeremy Hunt said the books have been “wide open”, accusing Labour of “peddling fiction which is widely rejected by independent commentators”.He added: “Their motive is clear: having promised not to raise taxes 50 times before the election, they now need a pretext – but trying to scam the British people so soon after being elected is a high-risk strategy doomed to fail.”Chancellor Rachel Reeves is expected to make a speech on public finances on Monday 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 ThomasEditorDame Priti Patel is promising a revolution in the Conservative Party by offering to hand back some control of policy to ordinary party members and allow them to elect key officials.The leadership pitch by the former home secretary is an overt attempt to stop the flow of Tory members defecting to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and restore right-wing policies at the heart of her party.Dame Priti has the 10 MPs needed to nominate her on Monday for the first round of the contest, which is set to take four months until 2 November. Party members will be given a choice of a final two following the Tory conference in October.Democratisation of the party will include allowing members to directly elect the chair, rather than leaving the appointment in the hands of the leader. Members will also get a much greater say on the party board.Former home secretary Patel has the 10 MPs needed to nominate her for the first round of the leadership contest 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 ThomasEditorA senior US congressman has asked the new Labour government to rethink financial aid to Cuba due to concerns that the regime is supplying troops to Vladimir Putin to fight in Ukraine.Republican congressman Mario Díaz-Balart, who represents the 26th district in Florida and is the son of Cuban exiles, told The Independent he has seen security documents showing “a substantial number” of Cubans have been sent to fight for Russia.He wants the foreign secretary, David Lammy, to help change Britain’s policy and persuade EU allies to do the same.Previous reports suggested 200 Cubans had been sent to fight in the Russian army but this figure is understood to have increased.Vladimir Putin greets Cuba’s prime minister Manuel Marrero Cruz (centre) and Ricardo Cabrisas Ruiz, deputy chairman of Cuba’s council of ministers, to the Kremlin 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 ThomasEditor Hungary’s nationalist prime minister Viktor Orban said on Saturday that the European Union is sliding toward oblivion. It came in a rambling anti-Western speech in which he warned of a new, Asia-oriented “world order”, and expressed support for Donald Trump’s presidential bid.“Europe has given up defending its own interests,” Mr Orban said as he spoke in Baile Tusnad, a majority ethnic Hungarian town in central Romania. “All Europe is doing today is following the US’s pro-Democrat foreign policy unconditionally … even at the cost of self-destruction.“A change is coming that has not been seen for 500 years. What we are facing is in fact a world order change,” he added, saying China, India, Pakistan and Indonesia were becoming the “dominant centre” of the world.Mr Orban also alleged that the US was behind the 2022 explosions that damaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines built to carry gas from Russia to Germany, calling it “an act of terrorism carried out at the obvious direction of the Americans”. He didn’t offer any evidence to back up the claim.The far-right leader’s remarks come amid growing criticism from his European partners after he embarked on rogue “peace mission” trips to Moscow and Beijing earlier this month, aimed at brokering an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Mr Orban is widely considered to have the warmest relations with the Kremlin of all EU leaders.On Ukraine, Mr Orban cast doubt on the war-torn country becoming either a member of NATO or the EU. “We Europeans do not have the money for it. Ukraine will revert to the position of a buffer state,” he said, adding that international security guarantees “will be enshrined in an agreement between the US and Russia”.Throughout Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, Mr Orban has broken with other EU leaders by refusing to provide Kyiv with weapons to defend against Russian forces and has routinely delayed, watered down, or blocked efforts to send financial aid to Kyiv and impose sanctions on Moscow.Mr Orban typically uses the annual Tusvanyos Summer University platform in Romania to indicate the ideological direction of his national government and to deride the standards of the EU bloc, which Hungary joined in 2004.Hungary currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, during which Mr Orban has made a Trumpian vow to “Make Europe Great Again” and has openly endorsed Mr Trump’s candidacy in this year’s US presidential election. Mr Orban has visited Mr Trump twice this year at the former president’s beachside compound in Mar-a-Lago.Mr Orban said on Saturday that Mr Trump’s bid for re-election aims “to pull the American people back from a post-nationalist liberal state to a nation state” and rehashed a slew of conservative tropes that Mr Trump is being penalised unfairly to hamper his electoral bid.“That is why they want to put him in prison. That’s why they want to take away his assets. And if that doesn’t work, that’s why they want to kill him,” Mr Orban said, referring to an assassination attempt on Mr Trump at a Pennsylvania rally this month.Mr Orban’s remarks on Saturday aren’t the first time he’s used the festival in Transylvania to stir controversy. In 2014, Mr Orban declared for the first time his intentions of building an “illiberal state” in Hungary, and in 2022, he sparked international outrage after he railed against Europe becoming a “mixed race” society. He doubled down on his long-held anti-immigration stance on Saturday, saying it is not an answer to his country’s ageing population. “There can be no question of a shrinking population supplemented by migration,” he said in his Saturday address. “The Western experience is that if there are more guests than owners, then home is no longer home. This is a risk that should not be taken.”The EU’s longest-serving leader, Mr Orban has become an icon to some conservative populists for his firm opposition to immigration and LGBTQ+ rights. He has also cracked down on the press and judiciary in Hungary and been accused by the EU of violating rule-of-law and democracy standards.___McGrath reported from Sighisoara, Romania. 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 is set to meet other European leaders after the opening ceremony of the Olympics as he continues his bid to reset Britain’s relationship with the continent after Brexit.The prime minister will be in Paris on Friday as the Games get underway in the French capital and is expected to meet members of the Team GB squad on Saturday. But it is understood there is also the opportunity for meetings with other leaders after the event. Last week the Labour leader, who has said he wants a “reset” with the European Union, promised to fix Britain’s damaged relations with the bloc for the benefit of “generations to come”.And less than two weeks into his premiership, he scored his first major success as European leaders hailed his plan for a new era. Paris Olympics More