UK

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster email A British lawmaker who allegedly used campaign funds to pay off people who were holding him hostage said Sunday that he wouldn’t seek reelection after the governing Conservative Party found his behavior fell below the standard expected of members of Parliament.Mark Menzies’ downfall is the latest in a series of scandals to hit the Conservatives, undermining support for a party that has been in power for the past 14 years as it prepares for a general election later this year.The Times of London recently reported that Menzies called a 78-year-old aide at 3 a.m. in December asking for funds to pay off “bad people” who had locked him in an apartment and were demanding money for his release. Menzies’ office manager ultimately paid 6,500 pounds ($8,100) from her personal bank account, which was reimbursed from funds donated by political backers, the newspaper said.Menzies, who denies the allegations, has represented the seat of Fylde in northwest England since 2010.“Due to the pressures on myself and my elderly mother, I have decided to resign from the Conservative Party and will not stand at the forthcoming general election,” he said. “This has been a very difficult week for me, and I request that my family’s privacy is respected.”Menzies’ announcement came after the Conservatives announced the findings of an internal investigation into the matter.The inquiry concluded that the payment had been authorized by two members of a local donors group that sits outside the Conservative Party, and therefore Menzies hadn’t misused party funds. “However, we do believe that there has been a pattern of behavior that falls below the standards expected of MPs and individuals looking after donations to local campaign funds which lie outside the direct jurisdiction of the Conservative Party,” the party said.The opposition Labour Party has called for a police investigation into the matter. The Conservatives said they would share information with police if they decide to investigate.The Conservatives have been in power since 2010, but they are trailing in opinion polls amid crumbling public services, high prices that are squeezing consumers and the corrosive effect of ethics scandals.Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who led the party to a landslide victory in 2019, resigned from the House of Commons after an investigation found that he deliberately misled Parliament about parties held at his Downing Street offices during lockdowns imposed to control the spread of COVID-19.Other scandals include a lawmaker who was caught looking at porn in the House of Commons, another who reportedly offered to lobby on behalf of gambling firms and another alleged to have drunkenly groped strangers at a private club in London.But ethical questions are also being asked of opposition politicians as the country prepares for an election that must be called by the end of this year.Conservatives accuse Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, of dodging taxes on the sale of a house sale years ago by falsely claiming it was her primary residence. Police say they are investigating. Rayner denies wrongdoing and hasn’t been suspended by her party. More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailAn MP alleged to have made a call to a 78-year-old aide asking for help because he had been locked up by “bad people” demanding money has announced he will stand down as an MP at the next election.Mark Menzies, 52 , reportedly also spent thousands of pounds given by donors on medical expenses. The Conservatives had already suspended Mr Menzies over allegations he misused campaign funds.The party also announced that it had completed its investigation and “cannot conclude” there has been a misuse of Conservative Party funds. However, this appeared to be because the money was in a fund that “sits outside the remit” of the party and its local association. In a statement, Mr Menzies said: “It has been an enormous privilege representing the people of Fylde since 2010, but due to the pressures on myself and my elderly mother, I have decided to resign from the Conservative Party and will not stand at the forthcoming general election.“This has been a very difficult week for me and I request that my family’s privacy is respected.”The Ayrshire-born Tory MP for Fylde, Lancashire will continue to be a sitting MP on full salary until the next election.Mr Menzies won his seat at the 2010 general election after unsuccessfully standing for two seats in Glasgow and Yorkshire. He was considered to be on David Cameron’s so-called “A-List” of top tier parliamentary candidates.In 2014 Mr Menzies resigned as a ministerial aide to then international development minister Alan Duncan after a report he had paid a Brazilian male escort for sex.In December the MP, who is one of Rishi Sunak’s trade envoys, rang his former campaign manager claiming he was locked in a flat and needed £5,000 as a matter of “life and death”.The sum, which rose to £6,500, was eventually paid by his office manager from her personal bank account and subsequently reimbursed from funds raised from donors in an account named Fylde Westminster Group, it is alleged.In an earlier statement to The Times, Mr Menzies said: “I strongly dispute the allegations put to me. I have fully complied with all the rules for declarations. As there is an investigation ongoing I will not be commenting further.”This is a breaking news story… More to follow… More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailTony Blair has warned politics risks becoming a branch of celebrity populated by the “weird and the wealthy” as he called for a reset of Britain’s relationship with Europe. The former prime minister also suggested record net migration was a sign that the UK is still an attractive place to live and denounced identity politics as a “cul de sac”, in a wide-ranging interview. More than a decade and a half after he left frontline politics, he also joked he might “sit around and drink all day” if he did not keep working. Sir Tony and his Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, with its more than 800 staff, are widely expected to be influential if, as expected, Labour wins its first general election since he was prime minister later this year. In a significant change of tack from his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, Keir Starmer has openly praised the legacy of the last Labour government. But in an interview with The Sunday Times, Sir Tony expressed concern about a “loss of mission” within Western democracy. Despite a “really exciting world”, he said when he talked to people in politics “they’re a little depressed about the future”. He warned too many people think governments are limited in what they can achieve at the same time as a technological revolution is accelerating. “Politicians often look at me a bit curiously and think, ‘Well, maybe he’s been too long out of the front line of politics.’ But I say to them, no — [technology] is going to change everything!”, he said. However, while he argued that democracy “can deliver” he warned that the “left is struggling” as “one part of it has gone for identity politics, which is another cul-de-sac”. He also compared it to right-wing nationalism, describing both as “victim ideologies. You never build anything from victimhood”.On Europe, he called for a new approach to the UK’s relationship. He said: “It would be wise to reset it… There are too many things that affect us that are going on in Europe. That doesn’t mean to say [Starmer] will start trying to frame this as rejoining [the EU] or even the single market. In any event, we’ve got a trade negotiation coming up in 2025. But at the moment we’re outside the big political union on our own continent and we’ve got a disrupted trading relationship with our biggest trading partner, so you’ve got to fix this stuff.”Britain’s former prime minister Tony Blair speaks at a panel session during the World Government Summit in Dubai in February More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailBritain should install an Israeli-style “iron dome” missile defence system, Penny Mordaunt has suggested, in an unusual intervention highlighting concerns within the government about the increasingly unstable geopolitical landscape.Ms Mordaunt, the House of Commons leader and a former Royal Navy reservist, again called for an increase in defence spending, saying the government has a “duty to our citizens” to keep them protected as the world becomes less safe.The former defence secretary’s comments follow another precarious week in relations between Israel and Iran. On Friday, Israel launched strikes on Iran that hit close to military and nuclear targets deep inside the country, in retaliation for Tehran’s missile and drone attacks days earlier.With war still raging in Ukraine and no end in sight to the conflict in Gaza, defence figures have been increasing their calls for the UK to bolster its defences, with one senior Conservative MP describing Iran’s strikes as a “wake-up call” for the West.The UK currently spends just over 2 per cent of GDP on defence, but there are growing calls for this to be increased to at least 2.5 per cent, with some figures pushing for as much as 3 per cent.Writing for The Sunday Telegraph, in a piece that could be interpreted as a pitch for the future leadership of her party, Ms Mordaunt said the UK must be more ambitious about the amount of resources it puts into defence.Penny Mordaunt has again called for more money to be spent on defence More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster email Polish voters are casting ballots Sunday to chose mayors in hundreds of cities and towns where no candidate won outright in the first round of local election voting two weeks ago.Mayors will be chosen in a total of 748 places, including in the cities of Krakow, Poznan, Rzeszow and Wroclaw. Those are places where no single candidate won at least 50% of the vote during the first round on April 7.The local and regional elections are being viewed as a test for the pro-European Union government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk four months after it took power at the national level.Tusk’s party did well in big cities including Warsaw, where his party’s candidate, Rafał Trzaskowski, easily won reelection as mayor two weeks ago.However, Tusk failed to win a decisive victory overall. The main opposition party, Law and Justice, which held power at the national level from 2015-23, won a greater percentage of votes in the provincial assemblies.Tusk’s socially liberal Civic Coalition has strong support in cities while Law and Justice has a stronger base in conservative rural areas, particularly in eastern Poland.In the election of the provincial assemblies, Law and Justice obtained 34.3% of the votes nationwide and Tusks’ Civic Coalition got 30.6%. More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailRishi Sunak is “appalled” at the Metropolitan Police’s handling of a pro-Palestinian march at which officers threatened a man with arrest and told him he was “openly Jewish”. Downing Street said the prime minister expects the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Mark Rowley, to “account” for the events, which have led to calls for the Met boss to step down. Sir Mark has been summoned to a meeting with the policing minister Chris Philp this week after the incident prompted anger within the government. But No 10 stopped short of echoing former home secretary Suella Braverman’s call for the commissioner to resign. The row erupted after it emerged that the head of the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), Gideon Falter, was threatened with arrest near a pro-Palestine protest on 13 April, with one police officer describing him as “openly Jewish”.Another officer told Mr Falter he would be arrested if he did not leave the area, because he was “causing a breach of peace with all these other people” and his presence was “antagonising”.The CAA has since called on Sir Mark to resign or be removed from his post.A government source said: “The PM has seen the footage and is as appalled as everyone else by the officer calling Mr Falter ‘openly Jewish’. “He expects the Met commissioner to account for how it happened, and what he will do to ensure officers do more to make Jewish communities in London feel safe.”Gideon Falter speaks with a police officer during the march More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailLiz Truss has claimed she does not want to be prime minister again, a week after saying she had “unfinished business” with the Conservative Party.Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister, famously outlasted by a lettuce, previously declined to rule out standing to be Tory leader, saying it was “never wise to rule anything out in politics”.But in an interview with Sky News on Sunday, Ms Truss appeared to do just that, saying her new book was “not trying to reinstate myself as prime minister”.Asked directly whether she would like to return to Downing Street, she said: “No.”She also again refused to apologise for the banking crisis, which led to her being ousted from power by her own MPs after less than six weeks, saying that “mortgage rates have gone up across the world”. But she did apologise for an antisemitic quote that made its way into her book, saying she was “very sorry” about that. Defending her economic record, she reiterated her criticism of Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey, even as she admitted she had never met him in person. She said: “The issues that I faced in office were issues of not being able to deliver the agenda I’d set out because of a deep resistance within the British economic establishment.“I think it’s wrong to suggest that I’m responsible for British people paying higher mortgages.“That is something that has happened in every country in the free world.”Liz Truss claims she does not want to be prime minister again More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailLabour is plotting a new campaign to win over Tory-supporting pensioners in a move aimed at wiping out one of the government’s few remaining electoral strengths.It comes as evidence shows the Conservatives are currently performing as badly among the demographic as the party was under former prime minister Liz Truss, who lasted a mere 49 days in office before she was forced out.With local elections in England coming up in less than two weeks, The Observer reported Sir Keir Starmer’s top officials are understood to be refocusing their campaign after noticing pensioners’ growing concern over how a Tory tax-cutting pledge might hit pensions and the NHS.The change in approach – involving a national media and targeted digital advertising campaign from Sunday – comes after the chancellor signalled employee national insurance contributions would eventually be scrapped, with Labour claiming the decision would cost around £46bn per year.The results of a private focus group run by Sir Keir’s party this week led its most senior officials to believe Jeremy Hunt had made a mistake with his announcement, with older voters fearful of the impact of the removal of national insurance on the struggling health service. Insiders told The Observer that the move was being compared to Ms Truss’s doomed proposal for £45bn in unfunded tax cuts by “pensioner hero voters”, a group who previously supported the Tories but are considering a switch to Labour.Evidence shows the Conservatives are currently performing as badly among the demographic as the party was under former prime minister Liz Truss More