UK

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailRishi Sunak blew £50 of taxpayers’ cash on a custom stamp to film a gimmicky pre-election video boasting about his crackdown on student visas, The Independent can reveal.The prime minister sent a Downing Street staffer on the hunt in London for an ink-stamp in the shape of the word “stopped”, before slapping it on examples of visa applicants he was barring from Britain.Rishi Sunak said he wants to bring net migration to ‘sustainable levels’ (Justin Tallis/PA) More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailThe Tories have launched an astonishing attack on Labour today suggesting that a Keir Starmer led government would be the first in history to levy capital gains taxes on people when they sell their primary homes.Such a move could cause a crash in the housing market and was based on Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner failing to respond to Tory cabinet minister Penny Mordaunt’s claim on capital gains tax on primary residents last night.The allegations came in the Tory response to Labour’s manifesto launch yesterday. it was part of a wider document produced by the Tories alleging Labour was planning 18 new taxes secretatly to make up what the Conservatives claim is £38.5 billion black hole in their manifesto pledges.While Sir Keir and his shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves have ruled out raising taxes on the big three – VAT, income tax and national insurance – they have left the door open on other taxes but insisted “there are no plans” to increase them. Laura Trott headed the tax briefing More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailThe Green Party has removed an image of a coughing man from its online manifesto after a backlash over its depiction of people with HIV.The image appeared in an easy read version of the environmentalist party’s manifesto in the section describing its pledge to end HIV transmission by 2030.However, the left-wing party were accused of being “misleading” for using the image by social media users.One person said: “Not @TheGreenParty using this diagram in their easy read manifesto on their HIV commitment. Maybe a slight implication that people living with HIV are sick (and… dare I say, airborne contagious). Which would be incorrect.”Luke Robert Black, the chairman of LGBT+ Conservatives, posted on X, formerly Twitter: “Any implication that HIV+ people are “contagious” (esp. airborne) is wrong and misleading. So long as you are on effective treatment, you cannot pass HIV on.”Easy read documents are produced to help make text easier to understand and can be helpful for people with learning difficulties.In its manifesto launched on Wednesday, the Green Party pledged “no more HIV transmissions by 2030”.It said this will involve giving people access to the “HIV prevention pill online, in pharmacies and from GP services, and renewing successful opt-out HIV testing programmes in A&Es in all areas with a high prevalence of HIV”.On the easy-read version the image of the unwell man has now been replaced by a hand holding a pill.A spokesperson for the Green Party of England and Wales said: “Soon after publication we were alerted to how an image we used in our easy-read manifesto could be misinterpreted.“For clarity we temporarily took the manifesto down to replace this image with a more suitable image that better communicates our policy to work towards no more HIV transmissions by 2030.”According to HIV and sexual health charity Terrence Higgins Trust, the most recent UK-wide figures indicated around 106,890 people were living with HIV in the UK in 2019. In 2021, a further 2,692 people were diagnosed with HIV in England, 218 in Scotland, and 60 in Wales. More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailNigel Farage has said Adolf Hitler was “hypnotic in a very dangerous way” as a public speaker and spoke again of his admiration for Vladimir Putin as a “political operator”.The Reform UK leader was asked about the Nazi Germany dictator, his views on the Russian president and offered his opinion about the ongoing war in Ukraine.In 2014, Mr Farage said Mr Putin was the world leader he most admires and praised his his “brilliant” handling of the civil war in Syria.The Reform leader, challenged about his previous remarks admiring the Russian president as a “operator”, told BBC Radio 5 Live: “Yeah, but not as a human being.”Asked why, Mr Farage replied: “How many years has he been in power? He’s gone from prime minister, to president, he’s a clever political operator. He kills journalists, I don’t like him as a human being in any way at all.“You can recognise the fact that some people are good at what they do even if they have evil intent.”Asked if Hitler was good at what he did, Mr Farage replied: “What, as a public speaker? What do you think? Clearly, hypnotic in a very dangerous way.”His comments about Hitler come after a Reform contender said that Britain should have “taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality” instead of fighting the Nazis in the Second World War.Ian Gribbin, the party’s candidate in Bexhill and Battle, also said praised Mr Putin, as reported by the BBC.The Reform leader tried to dismiss the concerns on Monday, saying that “every party will suffer” controversy triggered by its candidates in a snap election.At the BBC phone-in Mr Farage was also asked about the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. In 2022, he said the Russian invasion occurred because of Western provocation of Mr Putin.He said the attack was a consequence of Nato and the EU trying to “poke the Russian bear with a stick”.On Friday he suggested Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky should enter negotiations with Russia, although he acknowledged Kyiv’s Western allies will continue support to support them.Mr Farage said: “This war has been going on for years, it is likely to go on for many, many more years.“We’re looking at something like a million casualties between the two sides.”Mr Farage added: “I’m not saying we shouldn’t support Ukraine at all, not for one minute, but at the end of the day most wars end in negotiation and I fear, if we don’t find some way of at least sitting down and talking, that we’re going to finish up with a war that goes on for year after year after year.”He said he believed the “big difficulty would be Crimea”, adding: “Is it a bad idea to get people to sit around a table and talk?”Mr Farage was asked what he would say if he was in a position of influence and had a meeting with Mr Zelensky.He said: “I’d say to Zelensky, look, the West have been supporting you, they will go on supporting you but the percentage of your young manhood that you’re losing is so bad, isn’t it time we at least tried to have a negotiation – he couldn’t say no.”Additional reporting by PA More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailPanicking Tory members reacted angrily to Penny Mordaunt‘s performance in the seven-way election debate, flooding an online message board with furious comments.With the debate on ITV starting just hours after a YouGov poll put Nigel Farage’s Reform UK ahead of the Tories, morale was low among Conservative activists.Leaked messages from a Conservative members only Facebook group showed that activists took out their frustration on Ms Mordaunt as she battled with Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner, Mr Farage, Daisy Cooper from the Lib Dems and representatives of the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens.The Conservative Party Members Group, a private group for verified members, has over 3,000 Conservative members including MPs such as Andrew Rosindell, Joy Morrisey, John Penrose and Virginia Crosby. Penny Mordaunt on the debate More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailRishi Sunak has rejected suggestions the Conservatives will come in third place behind Reform UK at the general election, after a new demoralising poll. for the party.Speaking to reporters on the final day of the G7 summit in Italy, the prime minister said there was plenty of time for a “comeback” and the choice between the Tories and Labour will “crystallise for people between now and polling day”.His comments come after a devastating YouGov poll for the prime minister which has Nigel Farage’s party at 19 per cent and the Conservatives on 18 per cent in voting intention.Mr Sunak said: “We are only halfway through this election, so I’m still fighting very hard for every vote.“And what that poll shows is – the only poll that matters is the one on July 4 – but if that poll was replicated on July 4, it would be handing Labour a blank cheque to tax everyone, tax their home, their pension, their car, their family, and I’ll be fighting very hard to make sure that doesn’t happen.Mr Sunak claims Labour would raise the tax burden to the highest level in the country’s history More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailThe YouGov poll putting Reform ahead of the Tories for the first time has divided two of Britain’s leading polling experts over the real state of support for Nigel Farage’s party.Professor Sir John Curtice suggested on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning that while Reform’s average rating of 16 percent in the polls “may be slightly on the high side” he believes it is around 15 percent.The average 16 percent rating for polls was the finding of Techne UK fo The Independent yesterday.The polling guru put the rise in support for the rightwing party down to Nigel Farage’s decision to run in the general election as a candidate in Clacton and said that the results of surveys “fit the broad trends” of the election so far.John Curtice believes Labour and the Tories are going backwards More

Key takeaways from Labour’s general election manifestoSign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailNigel Farage has claimed the Conservative Party is “about to implode” as his Reform UK party overtook the Tories in the latest YouGov poll. In his closing speech of the seven-way ITV debate on Thursday night, the Reform leader said: “Britain is broken, everyone knows it and Britain needs Reform. “Rishi Sunak won’t do it, he’ll probably be in California by then anyway. And the Tory Party is split down the middle and about to implode in this election.” It comes as he declared that his Reform Party is “now the opposition to Labour” after a YouGov poll published by The Times showed them one per cent above the Conservatives. “Just before we came on air we overtook the Conservatives in the national opinion polls,” Mr Farage said, as he made his opening speech during an ITV debate. “We are now the opposition to Labour.”Immigration, education and taxes were the centrepiece topics for the seven-way debate with Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, taking the brunt of the other leaders’ questions. Show latest update 1718330400Labour manifesto admits Covid corruption tsar may raise no money at allFull report: Matt Mathers14 June 2024 03:001718327726From cats to dog whistlesTaking a question about immigration, Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth accused Nigel Farage of having been on “a dog-whistle tour of the UK for many, many years and exploiting the anxiety that people have”.The Plaid leader said: “We need to heed and listen to people who have genuine concerns about the impact of the movement of population, pressures on public services, but we have to put that in the context of public spending cuts by the Conservatives.”Angela Rayner had said: “What we need at the moment is a skills strategy. We have not had an industrial and skills strategy, so what we have is we’ve been over-reliant in our economy from overseas workers to fill our skills gap, and they’ve done a tremendous job in doing that and we have needed that, but what we really need is, as employment levels have gone higher again, is we need to really match those skills to give people opportunity to take those jobs.”Nigel Farage replied: “Well, it’s funny Angela Rayner says that because Labour today launched their six key priorities at the General Election and didn’t mention the single most important issue affecting the lives of everybody in this country, namely the population explosion caused directly by migration.”Tom Watling14 June 2024 02:151718326800The EU-sized hole in Starmer’s ‘growth, growth, growth’ manifesto…You wouldn’t know it from Keir Starmer’s speech at his manifesto launch, but transforming Britain’s relationship with Europe – just as it shifts further to the right – will be one of his biggest priorities in office, says Andrew Grice. Read Andrew’s piece in full here: Matt Mathers14 June 2024 02:001718323200Watch: Reform UK’s party election broadcast: Six words on a screen for four minutesReform UK’s party election broadcast: Six words on a screen for four minutes Reform UK unveiled their party political broadcast on Thursday night (13 June) with no audio and the same six words on-screen for four minutes. The text read: “Britain is Broken. Britain Needs Reform.” Reform leader Nigel Farage tweeted the same video, reassuring those who watched the broadcast that their “TV isn’t broken”. The message aired on the same evening that a new YouGov poll suggested the party has overtaken the Conservatives for the first time ahead of next month’s general election. In the survey, Reform were put on 19 per cent, ahead of the Tories on 18 per cent. Labour remained top on 37 per cent.Matt Mathers14 June 2024 01:001718319660ICYMI: Sunak’s Tories hit Truss level of all-time low support as Brexit voters turn to Farage’s ReformThe Tories have hit their joint lowest standing in the weekly tracker poll as Nigel Farage’s Reform takes its biggest share yet and the aftermath of Rishi Sunak’s D-Day gaffe takes effect.The prime minister apologised for skipping part of the commemorations to do an election interview for ITV last week but the first weekly tracker poll taken by Techne UK after the fiasco reveals the depth of public anger.Full report: Matt Mathers14 June 2024 00:011718319344A game of cat and mouseConservative Leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt urged her rivals to keep “dogma” out of public services, such as the NHS, during ITV’s seven-way debate. “Most of the public don’t care what colour the cat is, they just want some mice caught,” she told her six rivals.“They (the public) want results and in my experience, listening to people who are actually doing these jobs – police officers who have reduced crime by half over the time we’ve been in office, healthcare professionals who are coming up with amazing initiatives in our hospitals and in our GP surgeries, teachers who are responsible now have 90% of our schools good or outstanding. Listen to the professionals in those services, keep political dogma out of it.”Plaid Cymru’s Rhun ap Iorwerth hit back: “I have to draw attention to the analogy with the cats and the mice here. What we’ve seen under the Conservatives and 14 years is the fat cats getting rich and getting the cream. I fear that with privatisation of the NHS, we’re going to see the same under Labour.”Conservative Leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt urged her rivals to keep “dogma” out of public services, More