UK

A campaign group has claimed that the impact assessment produced by the government on assisted dying legislation proves that there will be a financial incentive to end people’s lives early.The claim by the group Care Not Killing (CNK) came after the government identified at least £59.6m savings a year to be made by allowing assisted deaths. CNK believes the real amount is much bigger because savings in benefits cannot be quantified.However, the bill’s sponsor Labour MP Kim Leadbeater has warned: “The cost in human terms of failing to act would be immense.”She said: “It is difficult, if not impossible, to put a price on correcting injustice and providing dignity to our fellow citizens in their final weeks and months, but it is of course right that we look at what effect changing the law would have more widely.”Kim Leadbeater is the Labour MP behind the assisted dying Bill (Jordan Pettitt/PA) More

Labour is being rejected in its heartlands as disappointment among voters about the party’s first 10 months in office has opened the door to Reform, Professor Sir John Curtice has warned.The leading pollster says that the “devastating” local election results have shown Labour support is “in free fall” and voters lost to Reform and the Greens “are not likely to return to the party any time soon”.He also suggested that Labour MPs are now right to fear Reform and Nigel Farage more than Kemi Badenoch and the Tories, with the beleaguered Conservative Party leader already facing plots to have her removed.Sir John’s warning comes as Luke Tryl, executive director of polling organisation More in Common, has warned that the Tories have just 12 months to turn things around before being consigned to irrelevance.John Curtice’s analysis is bad news for Labour and the Tories More

The 2025 local elections have seen unprecedented success for Nigel Farage’s Reform party, which won 677 council seats across England. The Liberal Democrats nearly doubled their seats up to 370 overall, and winning majority control of three councils.But the third-party players’ success came at a price for the Conservatives and Labour, both of which lost two-thirds of the seats they had in 2021. This spells trouble for Sir Keir Starmer, whose newly-formed government are already facing protest votes. Yet most at risk is Kemi Badenoch, who failed to secure success for the floundering Conservative party in the face of its right-wing challenger.Here, the Independent looks at where Labour and the Conservatives received the least amount of votes in this year’s local elections. Reform UK is now in control of eight councils, while the Tories lost all 15 local authorities it controlled going into Thursday’s local elections. (Jacob King/PA) More

The dust has settled on this year’s local elections, with Nigel Farage’s Reform party seeing unprecedented success across the country. Some 1,650 local councillors were elected in 23 councils, with a further six mayoral races and one by-election in Runcorn and Helsby. From the unexpected scale of Reform’s success, to Labour winning no votes in some areas, The Independent looks at the most important figures from the 2025 local elections.See the results in full hereHundreds of seats for Reform Reform entered the local elections this year with zero seats to defend and went on to win 677 council seats. This easily exceeded expectations, with pollsters predicting around 400 to 450 seats for Mr Farage’s right-wing party. Both Labour and the Conservatives, on the other hand, lost hundreds of seats, amounting to two-thirds of their 2021 representation on local councils, far worse for both parties than expected. The Conservatives had the most to lose, winning some 996 seats in 2021, when these councils last held elections. Labour barely scraped ahead of Independent candidates and Greens, winning just shy of 100 seats. The third-party players – Reform and Lib Dems – both ousted Labour and the Conservatives to be the two leading parties in the local elections.Though their success was somewhat overshadowed, the Lib Dems nearly doubled their council seats from 2021; leading experts to suggest the UK is moving away from a two-party system to a four or five-party one.See where Reform performed best here. Labour failed to get any votes in dozens of wards Overall, Labour and the Conservatives both lost hundreds of local council seats. But Labour faces a further sting when looking at individual electoral wards, where it didn’t just lose the race – it got no votes at all.No single vote was recorded for Labour in 81 electoral wards, mostly within Cornwall and Wiltshire councils. Anti-Labour sentiment hit Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s party hard, with the least success of any major party in this year’s local elections. More

Andrea Jenkyns’ vow to get rid of council diversity officers as one of her first acts as the new Reform mayor for Lincolnshire has fallen flat after it emerged the council doesn’t employ any.Nigel Farage and Dame Andrea put getting rid of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) officers at the top of their agenda as they impose their own version of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting DOGE on the county.They doubled down on the promise at a rally in Kent last night where Dame Andrea and Mr Farage were among a line of leading speakers as part of Reform’s “war on woke”.Reform UK leader Nigel Farage attends a post-election event at the Staffordshire County Showground in Stafford More

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK made huge gains in this year’s local elections across England, in a series of stunning victories that have redrawn the political map with all council results finally in.The populist right-wing party won the Runcorn and Helsby by-election in dramatic circumstances with a majority of just six votes following a recount, overturning a Labour majority of 14,000.Meanwhile Conservative-turned-Reform candidate Dame Andrea Jenkyn won the race for mayor of Greater Lincolnshire, while the party secured another mayoralty with former boxer Luke Campbell in Hull and East Yorkshire.Overall, Reform won the most seats of any party — 677 out of some 1,650 — cinching majority control in ten councils, but gaining representation across all 23 councils.Polling guru Professor Sir John Curtice declared that the result showed British politics is “no longer a two-party system” – with the Liberal Democrats and Greens also making significant gains.Follow our live updates on the local elections here The Liberal Democrats took 370 seats, winning majorities in Cambridgeshire, Oxfordshire, and Shropshire, while the two major parties suffered defeat after defeat. Neither Labour or the Conservatives won a majority in any council, with the Tories losing all 15 councils it previously held.Both Labour and the Conservatives lost two thirds of their seats from the last election in 2021, winning just 99 and 317 seats respectively.The results have raised serious questions over Kemi Badenoch’s leadership if the Conservative Party is left with no real heartlands in the UK, with senior Tories already plotting to oust her.A rare silver lining for the party came as Paul Bristow was declared the narrow winner of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough mayoralty, taking 28 per cent of the vote and beating the Reform candidate Ryan Coogan, who took 23 per cent, into second place.Labour, meanwhile, won three mayoral contests in Doncaster, North Tyneside, and the West of England.The results also unleashed almost 10 months’ worth of pent-up frustration among senior Labour figures with prime minister Sir Keir Starmer, who has been blamed for the party’s disastrous showing in local councils.With turnouts often at less than 30 per cent, opponents of Reform were able to cling on to hope that disillusionment and apathy had opened the door for Mr Farage’s party and that the outcome would be different in a general election.Nevertheless, a jubilant Mr Farage said: “For the movement, for the party, it’s a very, very big moment indeed, absolutely, no question, and it’s happening right across England.”He said it was a sign that Sir Keir had “alienated so much of his traditional base, it’s just extraordinary”. However, Labour said that by-elections are “always difficult for the party in government”. They said the events surrounding the Runcorn and Helsby vote – the resignation of former Labour MP Mike Amesbury after his conviction for assaulting a constituent – had made it “even harder”.Asked about the results by Sky News, the Prime Minister said: “The message I take away from these results is we must deliver change even more quickly, we must go even further. I’ve believed for some time that’s the case, and [it’s been] reinforced in these results that that’s what we’ve got to do.”Labour Party chair Ellie Reeves acknowledged that voters are “impatient”, but insisted that “change takes time”. She suggested Reform would face greater scrutiny after its electoral gains. “We’ve had to stabilise the economy, but we’re starting that work. We’ve got our Plan for Change, we’re beginning to see the results of this, but we know we need to go further and faster,” she told Times Radio.But Doncaster’s victorious Labour mayor Ros Jones – who was re-elected with a majority of 698 after a battle with Reform – hit out at the prime minister’s administration. She criticised decisions to means-test the winter fuel allowance, hike employers’ national insurance contributions and squeeze welfare.Ms Jones told the BBC: “I think the results here tonight will demonstrate that they need to be listening to the man, woman and businesses on the street, and actually deliver for the people, with the people.”Anger over taking the winter fuel payment from 10 million pensioners, slashing benefits for the disabled and hiking taxes on businesses was blamed for the catastrophic results for Labour.Former Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell – now an independent MP after he was forced out for opposing the two-child benefit cap – described the party’s response to the results so far as “tin-eared”.Mr McDonnell said on social media: “Labour supporters feel Labour, their party, has turned its back on them citing Winter Fuel Allowance, NI tax on jobs & threat of disability cuts. Message to ministers is drop the plans to attack [the] disabled.”In her speech after winning Runcorn, Sarah Pochin, a former Conservative councillor, said voters had made clear that “enough is enough”.The Tories, meanwhile, were trying to limit the damage, and made it clear they would not be forced into a deal with Reform.Previously, shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick, who some believe is angling to be leader, had been recorded saying that a deal was inevitable.But as the results came in, Tory co-chair Nigel Huddleston insisted there could be no deal with a party “whose aim is to destroy the Conservative Party”.He went on: “Kemi’s position is certainly solid. She’s only been leader for six months, and she was out and about right across the country, and I can tell you this: everywhere we went, people wanted to see her more and hear more from her.”Meanwhile, Ms Badenoch has tried to play down the electoral catastrophe for her party as it lost hundreds of seats and now faces the onward march of Reform.In a statement, she said: “These were always going to be a very difficult set of elections, coming off the high of 2021 and our historic defeat last year – and so it’s proving. The renewal of our party has only just begun, and I’m determined to win back the trust of the public and the seats we’ve lost, in the years to come.”The Lib Dems made gains but failed in their bid to win Devon County Council, although they displaced the Tories there as the biggest party.Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey said: “Last year, the Liberal Democrats won a record number of MPs and became the largest third party in 100 years. Now we are on course for our seventh year of local election gains, making this our best ever winning streak.”Maps and results with input from Election Maps UK More

One story dominates the elections held on May 1 in England: the dramatic Reform surge. The Runcorn and Helsby by-election was a stunning win for Nigel Farage’s party.Labour’s 49th safest seat – supposedly safer than the prime minister’s – was hardly natural Farage territory. The town of Runcorn – Liverpool overspill mainly – makes up 60 per cent of the constituency. Labour won more votes than all other parties combined in the general election of July 2024. Yet less than a year later, Reform has captured the seat, overturning a majority of 14,700 – albeit with the smallest ever by-election majority, beating Labour by just six votes.This has delivered Reform its first woman MP, former Conservative councillor Sarah Pochin. Her arrival brings the party up to five MPs (a sixth having been suspended from the party earlier this year).Do early by-elections matter, with the general election so distant? They can be a signal of what is to come. Since the second world war, Labour has only once retained office at the next general election after losing a seat at a by-election less than one year after forming a government. A narrow loss to the Conservatives in Leyton in 1965 was sandwiched between 1964 and 1966 general election triumphs, but that was the exception to the rule.Reform UK’s Sarah Pochin and party leader Nigel Farage talk to the media after the party won the seat in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election More

A wave of cyber attacks should be “a wake-up call” for every business in the country, a senior minister will say.Harrods became the latest high-profile UK retailer to fall victim to hacking in recent days, after a serious ransomware attack on Marks & Spencer forced the company to suspend online orders and halt recruitment.Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden will use a keynote speech to urge companies to treat cyber security “as an absolute priority”.Speaking at the CyberUK conference in Manchester next week, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Mr McFadden will say: “These attacks need to be a wake-up call for every business in the UK.“In a world where the cybercriminals targeting us are relentless in their pursuit of profit – with attempts being made every hour of every day – companies must treat cybersecurity as an absolute priority.“We’ve watched in real time the disruption these attacks have caused, including to working families going about their everyday lives.“It serves as a powerful reminder that just as you would never leave your car or your house unlocked on your way to work, we have to treat our digital shop fronts the same way.”The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is working closely with affected organisations to fully understand the nature of the attacks, the Government said.M&S confirmed on Thursday it had taken down all job adverts from its careers website while it dealt with the fallout.A message on the site told prospective applicants: “Sorry you can’t search or apply for roles right now, we’re working hard to be back online as soon as possible.”The London-based retailer employs about 65,000 people and has seen its operations disrupted since the Easter weekend.Contactless payments were affected, and click-and-collect services halted, though contactless has since been restored.Meanwhile, the Co-op Group has also been affected by an attempted hack, prompting it to shut down parts of its IT infrastructure.While its shops and funeral services continue to trade, staff have reportedly been instructed to keep cameras on and verify identities during all remote meetings.The Metropolitan Police has launched an investigation into the attack on M&S.Mr McFadden, who led a briefing with national security officials and the NCSC on Friday, will set out the action the Government is taking to boost the country’s cyber protections in his speech.He will say: “We’re modernising the way the state approaches cyber, through the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill. That legislation will bolster our national defences.“It will grant new powers for the Technology Secretary to direct regulated organisations to reinforce their cyber defences. It will require over 1,000 private IT providers to improve their data and network security.“It will require companies to report a wider array of cyber incidents to the NCSC in the future – to help us build a clearer picture of who, and what, hostile actors are targeting.” More