UK

Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UKSign up to our Brexit email for the latest insightThe boss of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) has hit out at Conservative ministers for rushing Brexit and said the government “got wrong” some aspects of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU.Tom Bradshaw, who has replaced Minette Batters at the top of the NFU, which represents more than 46,000 farmers and growers across England and Wales, said ministers “should have taken some of our warnings [about Brexit] at face value”.The arable farmer from Essex, who took over from Ms Batters in February, said members are traditionally “big supporters” of the Tories.But he said “many are feeling let down” by post-Brexit trade deals and said the government “did not consult and did not listen” to farmers when leaving the EU.A group of farmers in tractors descended on London to protest in March More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailThe boss of a major charity on the frontline of Britain’s drug deaths crisis has challenged authorities by announcing that he plans to open potentially life-saving overdose prevention facilities in a matter of months – with or without their help.As drugs charities brace for a feared influx of lethally strong synthetic opioids to hit the UK, experts are urging Rishi Sunak’s government to end its longstanding opposition to facilities where people can consume illicit drugs in the presence of trained staff armed with the overdose reversal drug naloxone.While Scotland is now pushing ahead to create the UK’s first official facility in Glasgow, after a game-changing intervention by the country’s top legal authority put an end to a long-running Holyrood-Westminster dispute, hopes for similar services in England and Wales are yet to materialise.Exasperated by years of fruitless discussions while drug deaths mount, and bolstered by developments in Scotland, Martin Blakeborough, chief executive of the charity Kaleidoscope has now told The Independent that he plans to pilot several “micro” drug consumption spaces in south Wales as early as this summer – potentially even sooner than in Glasgow.“It’s an active debate we’re now having in Wales which I’ve basically forced onto the agenda, partly by saying, ‘We’re going to start this service with or without you,’” said Mr Blakeborough. “We’ve been discussing this in Wales for 10 years, and we’ve done nothing,” he added. “The Scottish one gave me the confidence to say, ‘I’m going to blow your cover now, I’m going to cause a fuss about this,’ and at long last it’s gone up the political agenda.”There are over 200 such overdose prevention services across 17 countries, including the US, Canada, France, Australia and Iceland. Some facilities have reversed thousands of overdoses, without a single death, while being proven to cause no increase in the number of people using drugs, generally reducing or having no impact on local crime levels, and often dramatically reducing drug-related litter and incidents of street injecting.Despite this, the facilities have long been rejected – and even mocked – by the current Westminster government. Meanwhile, drug deaths have risen for 11 consecutive years in England and Wales to break grim new records, having nearly doubled since 2012.But after activist Peter Krykant risked arrest in 2020 to offer such services out of a repurposed ambulance, Scotland’s lord advocate intervened last year to say such prosecutions “would not be in the public interest”. As a result, the UK government has now relented that it will not block such services in Scotland, potentially paving the way for others to follow suit in parts of England and Wales, dependent on the support of police and local leaders.Peter Krykant’s unsanctioned facility reversed nine overdoses among nearly 900 supervised injections over the space of nine months, a study found More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailThe deputy prime minister has opened the door to a possible January 2025 general election, despite Rishi Sunak insisting he will go to the polls later this year.Oliver Dowden said 2024 will “almost certainly” be a general election year, but did not rule out the prospect of a contest happening next year.The latest possible date for an election is 28 January 2025, meaning Mr Sunak could delay the vote for a further eight months. He was already accused of being a “chicken” and “squatting in Downing Street” after ruling out holding the general election on 2 May, when voters will go to the polls for local elections across the country.Deputy PM Oliver Dowden said there will ‘almost certainly’ be an election this year, leaving the door open to a January 2025 contest More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailNigel Farage’s Reform UK has dropped two more election candidates and suspended a third over a series of offensive remarks, reportedly including a slur about “brown babies”.The right-wing challenger party has suspended its South Shropshire candidate Pete Addis after a slew of comments posted online were exposed.Vulgar social media posts uncovered by the Mail on Sunday showed he had called for Sir David Attenborough to be “killed off” and made a racist joke about “brown babies”.Richard Tice is the leader of Reform UK, which was set up by Nigel Farage as the Brexit Party More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster email Voters across Poland are casting ballots in local elections Sunday in the first electoral test for the coalition government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk nearly four months since it took power.Voters will elect mayors as well as members of municipal councils and provincial assemblies, an important exercise in self-governance that is one of the great achievements of the democratic transformation that Poland made when it threw off communism 35 years ago.In all there are nearly 190,000 registered candidates running for local government positions in the central European nation of 38 million people.Runoff votes will must take place two weeks later, on April 21, in cases where mayoral candidates do not win at least 50% of the vote in Sunday’s first round.Opinion polls released in the days ahead of the vote showed the two largest political formations running neck-and-neck: Tusk’s Civic Coalition, an electoral coalition led by his centrist and pro-European Union Civic Platform party, and Law and Justice, a national conservative party that governed the country from 2015 until last year.Several other groups trail the two main groups, including the Third Way coalition, the Left and the radical right-wing Confederation party.Tusk’s coalition government, which includes the Third Way and the Left, together won the national election in October. The result amid record turnout spelled the end for eight bumpy years of rule by Law and Justice, which was accused by the European Union of violating democratic standards with its changes to the judicial system and public media.Tusk won on promises to reverse many of those changes and is trying to implement that program, but it isn’t easy. His attempts to restore independence to the judicial system are a long process that will require the passage of new legislation. And a promise to liberalize the strict abortion law is being hampered by conservatives in Tusk’s own coalition.The vote is also a test for Law and Justice, which had a string of electoral victories and dominated the political scene for years, enjoying strong support in conservative rural areas. However, its hard-line policies on LGBTQ+ and its restriction of abortion rights were rejected by many of the young and female voters who turned out in October to vote.Local governments have played an important role in the two major crises of recent years, rolling out vaccinations against COVID-19 and helping the huge numbers of Ukrainian refugees who arrived in the country after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.Among those running is Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, a Tusk ally who is seeking a second term. He is favored to win, but it is not clear if he could win outright Sunday or would need to face a runoff in two weeks.The outgoing term of office for local officials was the longest since 1989 after Law and Justice extended it from four to five years, and then delayed the elections by half a year, worried that holding local elections along with those to the national parliament would hurt its chances. More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailThe Conservative Party has deleted a bizarre social media post that was widely derided after claiming that Britain is the second most powerful country in the world.In a post on X/Twitter on Thursday, the Tories said “don’t let the doomsters and naysayers trick you into talking down our country”, with an accompanying montage featuring prime minister Rishi Sunak, the England football team, King Charles III, a fighter jet, a cargo ship and an Aston Martin.Emblazoned over the graphic is the dubious assertion that “Britain is the second most powerful country in the world”, which combined with the poor quality montage, sparked ridicule online.The claim is based off the Brand Finance’s 2024 Global Soft Power Index, which ranks Britain second in the world after the United States for “soft power.”However, this didn’t stop people from mercilessly mocking the social media post, which was swiftly deleted by the Tory party after the backlash.One X user made reference to difficulties people face getting a GP appointment in the UK, he said: “God I would hate to know how long it takes to get a doctor’s appointment in the third most powerful country in the world.”And John Nicolson, SNP Shadow Culture Secretary, said: Oh no. The Tories have deleted their propaganda post. Was the King annoyed being used in this way?“Did the Tories notice they’d forgotten to put any women in it? Or did everyone just laugh at the absurd notion that the UK is the second most powerful country in the world?”The British Dental Association responded with their own edited montage of a man pulling out his own teeth with pliers.The post said: “Fixed that for you… If Britain really is the second most powerful country on Earth then why are its citizens resorting to ‘DIY’ dentistry for want of access to basic healthcare?” More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster email A rising challenger to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán mobilized tens of thousands of supporters in Hungary’s capital on Saturday, outlining a plan to unite the country and bring an end to the populist leader’s 14-year hold on power. At the center of the demonstration, the latest in a recent series of protests against Orbán’s right-wing nationalist government, was political newcomer Peter Magyar, a former insider within Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party who has shot to prominence in recent weeks through his allegations of entrenched corruption and cronyism among the country’s leaders. Magyar addressed a crowd that filled the sprawling square near the parliament building in Budapest, announcing his creation of a new political community aimed at uniting both conservative and liberal Hungarians disillusioned by Orbán’s governance and the fragmented, ineffectual political opposition. “Step by step, brick by brick, we are taking back our homeland and building a new country, a sovereign, modern, European Hungary,” Magyar said, adding that the protest was “the biggest political demonstration in years.” Magyar, 43, was once a member of Orbán’s political circle and is the ex-husband of former justice minister and Orbán ally Judit Varga. But he broke ranks in February in the wake of a political scandal that led to the resignation of his ex-wife and the president, and has amassed a large following with frequent media appearances where he portrays Hungary’s political life as having been taken over by a privileged group of oligarchs and anti-democratic elites. He has argued that Orbán’s government operates as a “mafia,” and advocated for a moral, political and economic transformation of the country that would rein in corruption and create a more pluralistic political system.“More than twenty years have passed as our elected leaders have incited the Hungarian people against each other. Whether the fate of our country went well or we were close to bankruptcy, we were pitted against each other instead of allowing us to band together,” Magyar said. “We will put an end to this now.”Hungary’s government has dismissed Magyar as an opportunist seeking to forge a new career after his divorce with Varga and his loss of positions in several state companies. But his rise has compounded political headaches for Orbán that have included the resignation of members of his government and a painful economic crisis.Last month, Magyar released an audio recording of a conversation between him and his ex-wife Varga that he said proved that top officials had conspired to manipulate court records in order to cover up their involvement in a corruption case. He has called on Orbán’s government to resign and for a restoration of fair elections. Orbán’s critics at home and in the European Union have long accused him of eroding Hungary’s democratic institutions, taking over large swaths of the media and altering the country’s election system to give his party an advantage. The EU has withheld billions in funding to Budapest over alleged democratic backsliding, misuse of EU funds and failure to guarantee minority rights. One demonstrator on Saturday, Zoltan Koszler, said he wanted a “complete change in the system, which is now completely unacceptable to me.”“I want to live in a normal rule-of-law state where the principles of the rule of law are really adhered to, not only on paper, but in reality,” he said. Magyar has said he will found a new party which will run in EU and municipal elections this summer. More