UK

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailThe former leader of the Green Party has sparked fury after quitting the London Assembly just three days after being re-elected to her seat.Sian Berry, who is standing to become an MP for the Greens in Brighton this year, passed the role to the party’s mayoral candidate, Zoe Garbett, instead.It means Ms Garbett, who received 9,646 votes in the London mayoral contest, will take Ms Berry’s place in the London Assembly without the need for a by-election.The Green Party’s Sian Berry quit the London Assembly three days after being elected More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailThe Prime Minister has declined to identify the “malign actor” behind a cyber attack on the Ministry of Defence (MoD) amid speculation China carried out the hack.The Government has confirmed that a third-party payroll system was hacked, potentially compromising the bank details of service personnel and veterans. A very small number of addresses may also have been accessed.Speaking to broadcasters in south-east London, Rishi Sunak said there were “indications that a malign actor” had compromised the database, but declined to attribute the attack to a specific state or “actor”.Grant Shapps, the Defence Secretary, will update MPs on the cyber attack later on Tuesday, but is also not expected to say who was behind it.Pressed on his stance on China, Mr Sunak said he had set out “a very robust policy” towards Beijing, taking the powers necessary “to protect ourselves against the risk that China and other countries pose to us”.He added that Britain was facing “an axis of authoritarian states, including Russia, Iran, North Korea and China” that “pose a risk to our values, our interests and, indeed, our country”.Mr Sunak sought to reassure the public that the MoD had already acted by taking the relevant network offline and offering support to personnel affected by the incident.Downing Street said the Government had also launched a security review of the contractor’s operations.The Government’s refreshed review of foreign and defence policy had cybersecurity “right at the heart of that, exactly these kinds of risks, particularly when it comes to state actors”.It is understood that initial investigations have found no evidence that data has been removed.But affected service personnel will be alerted as a precaution and provided with specialist advice. They will be able to use a personal data protection service to check whether their information is being used or an attempt is being made to use it.This is yet another example of why the UK Government must admit that China poses a systemic threat to the UK and change the integrated review to reflect thatSir Iain Duncan SmithAll salaries were paid at the last payday, with no issues expected at the next one at the end of this month, although there may be a slight delay in the payment of expenses in a small number of cases.The MoD confirmed Mr Shapps “will make a planned statement to the House of Commons this afternoon setting out the multi-point plan to support and protect personnel”.Ministers will blame hostile and malign actors, but will not name the country behind the hacking.The MoD has been working at speed to uncover the scale of the attack since it was discovered several days ago.Labour’s shadow defence secretary John Healey said: “So many serious questions for the Defence Secretary on this, especially from forces personnel whose details were targeted.”A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy said claims Beijing was behind the attack were “completely fabricated and malicious slanders”.Targeting the names of the payroll system and service personnel’s bank details, this does point to China because it can be as part of a plan, a strategy to see who might be coercedTobias EllwoodThey said: “China has always firmly fought all forms of cyber attacks according to law.“China does not encourage, support or condone cyber attacks. At the same time, we oppose the politicisation of cybersecurity issues and the baseless denigration of other countries without factual evidence.“China has always upheld the principle of non-interference in each other’s internal affairs. China has neither the interest nor the need to meddle in the internal affairs of the UK.“We urge the relevant parties in the UK to stop spreading false information, stop fabricating so-called China threat narratives, and stop their anti-China political farce.”The revelation comes after the UK and the US in March accused China of a global campaign of “malicious” cyber attacks in an unprecedented joint operation to reveal Beijing’s espionage.Britain blamed Beijing for targeting the Electoral Commission watchdog in 2021 and for being behind a campaign of online “reconnaissance” aimed at the email accounts of MPs and peers.China has always upheld the principle of non-interference in each other’s internal affairs. China has neither the interest nor the need to meddle in the internal affairs of the UKChinese embassy spokespersonIn response to the Beijing-linked hacks on the Electoral Commission and 43 individuals, a front company, Wuhan Xiaoruizhi Science and Technology Company, and two people linked to the APT31 hacking group were sanctioned.But some of the MPs targeted by the Chinese state said the response did not go far enough, urging the Government to toughen its stance on China by labelling it a “threat” to national security rather than an “epoch-defining challenge”.Conservative former leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith repeated those calls, telling Sky News: “This is yet another example of why the UK Government must admit that China poses a systemic threat to the UK and change the integrated review to reflect that.“No more pretence, it is a malign actor, supporting Russia with money and military equipment, working with Iran and North Korea in a new axis of totalitarian states.”Former defence minister Tobias Ellwood told the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme: “Targeting the names of the payroll system and service personnel’s bank details, this does point to China because it can be as part of a plan, a strategy to see who might be coerced.” More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailA Muslim campaign group has issued Sir Keir Starmer with 18 demands in order to win back support lost due to his stance on Israel’s war in Gaza.The Muslim Vote, which aims to organise voters against MPs who did not back a ceasefire in the conflict, has called for the Labour leader to apologise for his early stance on Israel’s campaign against Hamas.And it has urged Sir Keir to promise to cut military ties with Israel and let Muslims pray in schools and for Labour figures to return “zionist money”.Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has lost voters over his stance on Gaza (Peter Byrne/PA) More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailDefence Secretary Grant Shapps will update MPs on a cyber attack on a database containing details of armed forces personnel amid reports China was behind the hack.A third-party payroll system has been hacked, potentially compromising the bank details of all serving personnel and some veterans. A very small number of addresses may also have been accessed.The Ministry of Defence (MoD) took immediate action when it discovered the breach, taking the external network – operated by a contractor – offline.Downing Street said the Government had also launched a security review of the contractor’s operations.But the Prime Minister’s official spokesman declined to comment on speculation about the origin of the attack ahead of a planned statement to the Commons on the incident by Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, saying only that the MoD had “acted immediately” to isolate the relevant network and support personnel affected by the incident.Mr Shapps is not expected to attribute the attack to a specific state or actor when he addresses MPs on Tuesday afternoon.Cabinet minister Mel Stride said the Government takes cybersecurity “extremely seriously” but also declined to place the blame on Beijing.He told Sky News, which first claimed China was behind the hack: “That is an assumption. We are not saying that at this precise moment.”But Mr Stride said the Government viewed Beijing’s government as an “epoch-defining challenge” and “our eyes are wide open when it comes to China”.Mr Stride confirmed the attack was on a third-party system rather than a MoD database but “nonetheless that’s still a very significant matter”.The Ministry of Defence acted “very swiftly” to take the database offline, he added.“We take cybersecurity extremely seriously. Our intelligence services do, our military does as well.”The Government’s refreshed review of foreign and defence policy had cybersecurity “right at the heart of that, exactly these kinds of risks, particularly when it comes to state actors”.It is understood that initial investigations have found no evidence that data has been removed.But affected service personnel will be alerted as a precaution and provided with specialist advice. They will be able to use a personal data protection service to check whether their information is being used or an attempt is being made to use it.This is yet another example of why the UK Government must admit that China poses a systemic threat to the UK and change the integrated review to reflect thatSir Iain Duncan SmithAll salaries were paid at the last payday, with no issues expected at the next one at the end of this month, although there may be a slight delay in the payment of expenses in a small number of cases.The MoD confirmed Mr Shapps “will make a planned statement to the House of Commons this afternoon setting out the multi-point plan to support and protect personnel”.Ministers will blame hostile and malign actors, but will not name the country behind the hacking.The MoD has been working at speed to uncover the scale of the attack since it was discovered several days ago.Labour’s shadow defence secretary John Healey said: “So many serious questions for the Defence Secretary on this, especially from Forces personnel whose details were targeted.”A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy said claims Beijing was behind the attack were “completely fabricated and malicious slanders”.Targeting the names of the payroll system and service personnel’s bank details, this does point to China because it can be as part of a plan, a strategy to see who might be coercedTobias EllwoodThey said: “China has always firmly fought all forms of cyber attacks according to law.“China does not encourage, support or condone cyber attacks. At the same time, we oppose the politicisation of cybersecurity issues and the baseless denigration of other countries without factual evidence.“China has always upheld the principle of non-interference in each other’s internal affairs. China has neither the interest nor the need to meddle in the internal affairs of the UK.“We urge the relevant parties in the UK to stop spreading false information, stop fabricating so-called China threat narratives, and stop their anti-China political farce.”The revelation comes after the UK and the US in March accused China of a global campaign of “malicious” cyber attacks in an unprecedented joint operation to reveal Beijing’s espionage.Britain blamed Beijing for targeting the Electoral Commission watchdog in 2021 and for being behind a campaign of online “reconnaissance” aimed at the email accounts of MPs and peers.China has always upheld the principle of non-interference in each other’s internal affairs. China has neither the interest nor the need to meddle in the internal affairs of the UKChinese embassy spokespersonIn response to the Beijing-linked hacks on the Electoral Commission and 43 individuals, a front company, Wuhan Xiaoruizhi Science and Technology Company, and two people linked to the APT31 hacking group were sanctioned.But some of the MPs targeted by the Chinese state said the response did not go far enough, urging the Government to toughen its stance on China by labelling it a “threat” to national security rather than an “epoch-defining challenge”.Conservative former leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith repeated those calls, telling Sky News: “This is yet another example of why the UK Government must admit that China poses a systemic threat to the UK and change the integrated review to reflect that.“No more pretence, it is a malign actor, supporting Russia with money and military equipment, working with Iran and North Korea in a new axis of totalitarian states.”Former defence minister Tobias Ellwood told the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme: “Targeting the names of the payroll system and service personnel’s bank details, this does point to China because it can be as part of a plan, a strategy to see who might be coerced.” More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailShadow chancellor Rachel Reeves will accuse the government of “gaslighting” the public about the economy, saying ministers’ over-optimistic statements are “out of touch” with Britons still struggling with the cost of living.The Labour frontbencher will seek to get ahead of the Tories’ response to a raft of economic data this week, arguing that Jeremy Hunt and Rishi Sunak’s likely message of an improving economy is “deluded”.In a speech in the City of London on Tuesday, she will say voters at the general election have a choice between “five more years of chaos” with the Tories or “stability” with Sir Keir Starmer’s party.As Labour celebrates a string of victories in regional mayoral contests, local elections and a by-election in Blackpool South, Ms Reeves will say the results showed that people “voted for change”.Her intervention comes ahead of the Bank of England’s latest interest rates decision on Thursday and figures covering the economy’s performance over the first three months of this year on Friday.Economists are widely expecting the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee to keep rates at the current level of 5.25 per cent, despite political pressure from the government to start lowering rates before the election.Ministers may be more cheered by the Office for National Statistics’ quarterly GDP data, which is expected to show the UK has exited its recession.Ms Reeves will tell business leaders: “By the time of the next election, we can, and should, expect interest rates to be cut, Britain to be out of recession and inflation to have returned to the Bank of England’s target.”“Indeed, these things could happen this month. I already know what the chancellor will say in response to one or all these events happening. He has been saying it for months now: ‘The economy is turning a corner,’ ‘our plan is working,’ ‘stick with us.’ I want to take those arguments head on because they do not speak to the economic reality.”She will continue: “During the local elections I travelled across the country. I spoke to hundreds of people. I listened to their stories. And when they hear Government ministers telling them that they have never had it so good, that they should look out for the ‘feelgood factor,’ all they hear is a Government that is deluded and completely out of touch with the realities on the ground.”“The Conservatives are gaslighting the British public.”The shadow chancellor will describe the Conservatives’ record on the economy as having “crashed the car and left it by the side of the road”, and say that all they offer is “more of the same: low growth, higher taxes, and public services in deep decline”.Labour will fight the election, expected later this year, on the economy, Ms Reeves will say, vowing to put forward her party’s plan to boost growth and “raise living standards, resource public services, and let Britain compete in the world once again”.She will point to plans to establish a national wealth fund to deliver private and public investment, reform planning laws to build 1.5 million homes, and create 650,000 jobs in the UK’s industrial heartlands.The shadow chancellor, who has been careful to balance caution with a big ambitions for the economy, will say: “I know – warm words are not enough. I do not underestimate the challenges we face.”But, she will say, the constraints holding back Britain’s potential “are not immutable forces” and can be overcome with “vision, courage, and responsible government”.While the Conservative Party is historically more trusted on the economy and stewardship of public finances, polls suggest Labour’s approach of stressing the need for stability and sticking rigidly within balanced tax and spending rules is working.The party has heightened its attacks on what it calls “chaos and decline” under the Tories by launching a video series on a website dubbed “Conflix”.Conservative Party chairman Richard Holden said: “The personnel may change but the Labour Party hasn’t. Rachel Reeves still hero-worships Gordon Brown, who sold off our gold reserves and whose hubris took Britain to the brink of financial collapse.”“Labour have no plan and would take us back to square one with higher taxes, higher unemployment, an illegal amnesty on immigration and a plot to betray pensioners, just like Gordon Brown did.” More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster email Voters in Northern Macedonia go to the polls Wednesday for a double election — parliamentary and presidential — following a campaign in which the country’s aspirations to join the European Union have played a central role. The office of prime minister wields the real power, and the president is largely ceremonial, so the parliamentary election is the more important of the two contests. The opposition center-right coalition, which is pushing back against neighboring Bulgaria’s conditions for the country’s EU candidacy, is favored to win both elections.The election for the unicameral parliament takes place in a single round, while the presidential election is the runoff of a two-round contest that began in April with the center-right candidate scoring a large lead over the center-left incumbent. More than 1,700 candidates are competing for the unicameral parliament’s 120 seats. There are also three seats reserved for expatriates, but in the last election, in 2020, turnout was too low to fill those seats. WHAT IS AT STAKE? The month-long campaign has focused on fighting corruption, improving the slugging economy and alleviating poverty, but the main hot-button issue has been over North Macedonia’s struggle to join the European Union.Demands by neighboring Bulgaria that North Macedonia’s Bulgarian minority be official recognized in the country’s constitution have been supported by the ruling center-left, but blasted by the center-right opposition as capitulation to Bulgaria.Only a tiny fraction of the country’s 1.84 million people — just over 3,500 — described themselves as Bulgarians in the last census in 2021.North Macedonia has been a candidate to join the European bloc since 2005, but was blocked for years by a dispute with neighboring Greece, which objected to the country calling itself Macedonia, arguing that it conflicted with Greece’s region of Macedonia.That dispute was resolved in 2018 with the country calling itself North Macedonia. But Bulgaria has since been blocking the country’s EU bid, saying it will lift its veto only when North Macedonia amends its constitution.Formal EU membership negotiations with North Macedonia — and fellow-candidate Albania — began in 2022 and the process is expected to take years.VMRO-DPMNE, the party the leads the center-right opposition, had once threatened to scupper the agreement with Greece over using the Macedonia name, but it has since toned down its rhetoric. Observers point to its membership in the European People’s Party and its friendly relations with the German Christian Democrats as evidence that the party will not seek to back out of the agreement. CORRUPTION North Macedonia has been cited by both the European Commission and the U.S. government as having a corruption problem, and the opposition has seized on the issue during the campaign.VMRO-DPMNE leader and election favorite Hristijan Mickoski has accused the ruling center-left coalition of presiding over a “pandemic” of corruption, though his own party’s record is far from clean. The VMRO-DPMNE’s last prime minister, Nikola Gruevski, is a fugitive from justice in Hungary.Dimitar Kovachevski, leader of the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia, or SDSM, party that heads the ruling coalition, said he is aware that people are dissatisfied and has acknowledged that more could have been done to fight corruption. He has backed measures to confiscate illegally acquired property from corrupt officials.A 2023 European Commission report said corruption “remains prevalent in many areas” of North Macedonia. In December, the U.S. Ambassador to North Macedonia, Angela Aggeler, said there was “an epidemic of corruption in this country that has affected every sector, every organization, and only by exposing the corrupt actors can we begin to help the country address these issues.” WHO IS RUNNING The main two blocs are multi-party coalitions: The center-left coalition led by the SDSM, “For a European Future,” consists of 14 parties. The center-right opposition led by VMRO-DPMNE, “Your Macedonia,” has 22. For the presidency, incumbent Stevo Pendarovski of the SDSM is the clear underdog to Gordana Siljanovska Davkova of VMRO-DPMNE, who won 41.2% of the vote in the first round on April 24 to Pendarovski’s 20.5%. The two had also squared off in the last presidential election in 2019, with Pendarovski winning 53.8% to 46.2% in the runoff.Both big coalitions represent mostly ethnic Macedonians and other, small minorities. Two separate coalitions, “European Front” and VLEN (“Worth”) are contesting to represent the country’s largest minority, the Albanians, who represent about a quarter of the 1.84 million population.The “European Front,” a coalition of nine parties, is dominated by the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI). DUI, founded by people who took part in the 2001 secessionist rebellion, has been the coalition partner of every government for the past two decades. However, the VMRO-DPMNE leader Mickoski has declared he would prefer to form a government with VLEN, itself a coalition of four parties, which has positioned itself to the right of DUI.Polling has consistently been showing Mickoski’s coalition ahead of the SDSM-led coalition by a double-digit margin. A splinter Social Democrat Party, ZNAM (“For Our Macedonia”) whose leader, Maksim Dimitriavski, won 9.5% of the vote in the first round of the presidential election, could play kingmaker. More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailThe Ministry of Defence has been the target of a large-scale data breach, it is understood.Sky News reported that China was behind the cyber attack.A third-party payroll system has been hacked, potentially compromising the bank details of all serving armed forces personnel and some veterans. A very small number of addresses may also have been accessed.So many serious questions for the Defence Secretary on this, especially from Forces personnel whose details were targetedShadow defence secretary John HealeyThe department took immediate action when it discovered the breach, taking the external network – operated by a contractor – offline.It is understood that initial investigations have found no evidence that data has been removed.But affected service personnel will be alerted as a precaution and provided with specialist advice. They will be able to use a personal data protection service to check whether their information is being used or an attempt is being made to use it.All salaries were paid at the last payday, with no issues expected at the next one at the end of this month, although there may be a slight delay in the payment of expenses in a small number of cases.The Government will inform MPs of the breach when Parliament returns on Tuesday, with Defence Secretary Grant Shapps expected to make a Commons statement in the afternoon.Ministers will blame hostile and malign actors, but will not name the country behind the hacking.The MoD has been working at speed to uncover the scale of the attack since it was discovered several days ago.The revelation comes after the UK and the United States in March accused China of a global campaign of “malicious” cyber attacks in an unprecedented joint operation to reveal Beijing’s espionage.Britain blamed Beijing for targeting the Electoral Commission watchdog in 2021 and for being behind a campaign of online “reconnaissance” aimed at the email accounts of MPs and peers.Labour’s shadow defence secretary John Healey said: “So many serious questions for the Defence Secretary on this, especially from Forces personnel whose details were targeted.“Any such hostile action is utterly unacceptable. Parliament will expect a full Commons statement tomorrow.”In response to the Beijing-linked hacks on the Electoral Commission and 43 individuals, a front company, Wuhan Xiaoruizhi Science and Technology Company, and two people linked to the APT31 hacking group were sanctioned.But some of the MPs targeted by the Chinese state said the response did not go far enough, urging the Government to toughen its stance on China by labelling it a “threat” to national security rather than an “epoch-defining challenge”.Conservative former leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith repeated those calls, telling Sky News: “This is yet another example of why the UK government must admit that China poses a systemic threat to the UK and change the integrated review to reflect that.“No more pretence, it is a malign actor, supporting Russia with money and military equipment, working with Iran and North Korea in a new axis of totalitarian states.”The Metropolitan Police said it is not involved in any investigation at this stage. More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailRishi Sunak has defended his claim that there will be a hung parliament after the general election, despite Tory MPs and polling experts describing it as “wishful thinking”.The prime minister said the result was not a “foregone conclusion”, and repeated his insistence that the result would be closer than current opinion polls suggest.Those current opinion polls point to a Labour landslide, with the Tories on average 20 points behind.Rishi Sunak defended the claim the general election will lead to a hung parliament More