UK

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailA Tory MP deselected at the eleventh hour to make way for Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross has hit back at his own party’s claims he is too sick to stand. Mr Ross is on the party’s management board, which ruled former minister David Duguid not well enough to contest the seat of Aberdeenshire North and Moray East. But Mr Duguid, who has been in hospital since April, said the claims are “simply incorrect” and a “factual inaccuracy”.He said the board decided to stand him down “although none of them had visited me”.David Duguid has not been selected to stand in the General Election (Chris McAndrew/UK Parliament/PA) More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailRishi Sunak is facing backlash after he admitted to skipping out early on a poignant D-Day 70th Anniversary memorial to fly back to the UK for an interview with ITV.The prime minister has made a string of gaffes since he announced the general election in the pouring rain without an umbrella last month and his latest setback has attracted even more mockery from the internet.After being widely criticised for cutting short his visit to France, Mr Sunak admitted on Friday he had blundered.He said: “It was a mistake and I apologise.”But it didn’t appear to be enough for the internet. Here are some of the best reactions:The Alan Partridge/ Rishi Sunak comparisons don’t appear to be going anywhere soon.Others pointed out the irony in Rishi Sunak wanting 18-year-olds to undertake national service as one of his key election pledges.Some X users weren’t impressed with Mr Sunak’s attempt at an apology.One parody account is trying to keep up with the latest gaffes by Mr Sunak.Others wondered what is next in the pipeline for the man trying to run the country for the next five years.Some commentators are already looking to the next Conservative leader.And finally, you don’t want to be getting the Paddington treatment this close to polling day.It came as Mr Sunak was told that he had “misjudged the mood of the nation” by deciding to return early.Asked whether it was a mistake for the prime minister to miss the event, Colonel Stuart Crawford who served for 20 years in the Royal Tank Regiment, said: “It’s a solemn occasion and sadly the last major anniversary of the landings which will feature many of the surviving veterans.“Campaigning for an election which everyone knows he’s going to lose anyway is a poor excuse.“He should be there with the others, and his absence and Starmer’s presence makes it look as if he’s passed the premiership to Sir Keir already.” More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailThe children’s minister has admitted he does not know how much child benefit payments are in the latest gaffe to rock the Tory campaign.David Jonhston was put up by the Conservatives on Friday morning to discuss the party’s latest election pledge, to let high earners keep more of their child benefit if Rishi Sunak is re-elected.But Mr Johnston, a parliamentary under secretary of state at the Department for Education, said he did not know what the child allowance was.Click here for our live coverage of the general election campaign.In an excruciating exchange with LBC’s Nick Ferrari, the veteran broadcaster asked him: “Just for my listeners who are not familiar, so they can get full details, how much is child allowance?”David Johnston, minister for children, families and wellbeing, said the Government cannot ‘compel’ nurseries and childminders to offer children ‘free’ hours in April when the first phase of its childcare expansion begins (UK Parliament/PA) More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailBritain’s economy will see faster-than-expected growth this year and next as the outlook brightens after a tough 2023, according to the CBI.The business group has upped its forecasts for UK growth to 1% in 2024 and 1.9% in 2025 thanks to an expected pick-up in consumer spending as inflation falls back and wages remain robust.It marks a upgrade on the CBI’s December predictions for expansion of 0.8% in 2024 and 1.6% in 2025 and comes after the UK eked out growth of a paltry 0.1% in 2023, having slipped into a technical recession at the end of last year.The forecast also sees the CBI giving a much rosier outlook than the Bank of England, which predicted growth of 0.5% for this year in its last set of quarterly forecasts in May.The CBI said: “Encouragingly, economic activity began to recover at the start of 2024.“Robust growth over the first quarter completely reversed the decline in gross domestic product (GDP) seen over the second half of last year, and business surveys report that underlying economic momentum has been improving into the second quarter.”The report also follows hot on the heels of an upgrade this week from fellow business group, the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), which is now predicting growth of 0.8% in 2024 and 1% in 2025.The CBI said the main driver of the improving picture is consumer spending, More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster email The last time federal elections were held in Belgium in 2019, it took nearly 18 months before a new prime minister could be sworn in to lead a seven-party coalition government.The wait was even longer after the 2010 vote when the country needed 541 days to form a government, still a world record.Belgian voters return to the national polls on Sunday, in conjunction with the European Union vote, amid a rise of both the far-right and the far-left in the country. The vote could mean complex negotiations ahead in a country of 11.5 million people who are divided by language and deep regional identities. Belgium is split along linguistic lines, with francophone Wallonia in the south and Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north, and governments are invariably formed by coalitions made of parties from both regions. The latest opinion polls suggest that a new headache is on the horizon.Two Flemish nationalist parties are poised to gather the largest shares of votes in Flanders, with the far-right Vlaams Belang, which backs independence for Flanders, is expected to win more than 25% of the vote. Just behind, the right-wing nationalist New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) could get around 20% of the vote.In French-speaking Wallonia, the Socialist Party is projected to garner as much as a quarter of the ballots ahead of liberals and the far-left Belgium’s Workers Party. Poorer Wallonia — whose decline started in the 1960’s while Flanders’ economy went up — traditionally leans in favor of national unity because the region would likely find it difficult to survive economically on its own. If the lokatest projections are confirmed, the making of a government will be extremely difficult, especially if the Flemish nationalists join forces with the extreme-right at regional level, a move that would likely exclude them from coalition talks with moderate parties. Belgian voters on Sunday not only elect a new federal parliament but also regional parliaments and members of the European Parliament. Sophie Wilmes, a former pro-business liberal caretaker prime minister, has already warned that she won’t get involved in possible coalition talks with either the far-right or the far-left. She also predicted “enormous problems” if an alliance between the N-VA and the Vlaams Belang takes shape something N-VA leader Bart De Wever has so far ruled out.“It would make the formation of a federal government almost impossible,” she was quoted in Belgian media. “Nobody wants to form a coalition with a party that allies itself with Vlaams Belang.”The surge of the anti-immigrant and separatist Vlaams Belang is reflecting a trend that has seen populist and far-right parties making gains across the EU in recent years. In Belgium, Vlaams Belang has however so far been blocked from entering governments as other Flemish parties vowed to exclude it from power.According to Laura Jacobs, a political scientist at the University of Antwerp, one of the main assets of Vlaams Belang is that it did not take part in the current government led by the liberal Alexander De Croo.“We are seeing a rise in discontent among voters, a lot of negative emotion, and the party is managing to channel this anger and embody a solution to the mistrust of the political class in Flanders,” she said in an article for the The Research and Studies Centre, at Robert Schuman Foundation.“Polls show that few voters feel represented by the political class in office, and Vlaams Belang plays on this feeling to a great extent,” she said.It’s also unclear whether the Socialists and the radical left could find a common ground and unite with the Greens after the elections notably because of the Workers Party’s ambiguous views on the Western support to Ukraine and NATO. More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster email An exit poll suggested Thursday that Geert Wilders’ far-right party and a center-left-alliance were neck-and-neck in Dutch elections for the European Union parliament.In a possible harbinger of strong electoral gains for the hard right in the Europe Union, the exit poll indicated that Wilders’ Party for Freedom had made the biggest gains — winning seven seats, up from just one in the last parliament.The poll of some 20,000 voters published by national broadcaster NOS predicted that the center left alliance would win eight of the 31 European Parliament seats up for grabs in the Netherlands.Having sent shockwaves around Europe six months ago by becoming the biggest party in the Dutch national parliament, Wilders now wants to build on that popularity and set the tone for much of the bloc, with calls to claw powers back to national capitals and away from the EU so member states have more autonomy on issues such as migration. More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailNigel Farage’s decision to stand as a candidate in the general election has given his party Reform UK a three point boost a new poll has suggested.The weekly tracker poll by Techne UK for The Independent has registered Reform’s support climbing from 12 points to 15 in the week since Farage made his dramatic announcement in the seaside town of Clacton.Meanwhile, following the television debate between Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer, the Tories and Labour both lost a point in support dropping to 44 percent and 20 percent respectively.The Lib Dems were down one to 10 percent and Greens remained the same on 6 percent.Loading….This is the third poll to suggest a surge in support for Reform UK on the right splitting the Tory vote. A Yougov poll last night put them within two points of the Conservatives on 17 percent and 19 percent while another today had them both even at 18 percent.Former Tory cabinet minister Nadine Dorries, a Boris Johnson loyalist who publicly fell out with Mr Sunak, predicted that Reform would go ahead of the Conservatives in a poll by the weekend as a result of Farage standing.It was revealed by The Independent that Mr Sunak had been offered a deal which could have prevented Farage from running but rejected it.The event will mark Mr Farage’s first debate appearance since his shock takeover as leader of Reform UK (James Manning/PA) More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailLabour’s manifesto will include a plan to officially recognise a Palestinian state “as part of the peace process”, The Independent can reveal.The bold new move also takes aim at Israel, saying that “neighbours should not be able to veto” the recognition of Palestine.The eye-catching commitment is aimed at resolving deep differences within Labour, which have given rise to huge splits between its left and centre and saw Muslim voters punish the party in the local elections last month.With thousands of Labour members involved in the weekly pro-Palestine marches, and concerns that Muslim voters are turning their backs on the party, Sir Keir Starmer has moved to try to reunify the warring factions ahead of the election.But it may be too late to convince those who have been angered by his support for Israel alongside what was seen as a purge of pro-Palestinian candidates including Faiza Shaheen, the candidate for Chingford and Woodford Green, who was replaced by a member of the Jewish Labour Movement. Details of Keir Starmer’s manifesto have been revealed – including a plan to recognise a Palestinian state More