Prime minister reiterates UK backing after the Ukrainian president’s latest round of difficulties with Donald Trump
Andy Burnham will host Volodymyr Zelenskyy at Downing Street on Wednesday as the UK seeks to further underline its support for the Ukrainian president, in contrast to his difficulties with Donald Trump.
The UK prime minister said his message to Zelenskyy and his country would be: “We are with you for as long as it takes.”
Annual update from MI5 chief highlighted a complex cocktail that could have real-life consequences for Britain
MI5’s annual threat update covers so much ground it is easy to feel anxious. The terror threat has become more diverse, with far-right anti-migrant threats on the rise; while Iran has now firmly emerged alongside Russia as a country seeking to undertake violent and deadly plots in the UK.
“There is no law of physics dictating that rising state threats will be accompanied by diminishing terrorist threats,” MI5’s director general, Ken McCallum, said, although one of his core messages was that people and the country at large needed to focus on being more resilient. “In this new world, we should expect to be tested.”
The prime minister is correct to judge the time is right to push for closer links with the EU. The political risk is far outweighed by the potential rewards
The German philosopher GWF Hegel famously evoked the owl of Minerva when discussing the historical wisdom that comes through hindsight. This autumn, she has flown tirelessly over the landscape of British politics. Party conference season was dominated by conflicting Labour and Conservative accounts of the 1970s and 80s. And a decade after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, Andy Burnham this week abandoned all equivocation over the damage – economic but also strategic – that resulted from that decision.
Having declared that it is time to “face up to the reality that Brexit has done more harm than good”, Mr Burnham told the House of Commons on Monday that it would be a “dereliction of duty” not to explore all options for closer relations with Brussels. Though he confirmed that in this parliament he will honour the red lines in Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour manifesto, all bets will subsequently be off.
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Abta advice comes as more than more than 150 websites offer service of securing entry to Schengen zone
Britons travelling to EU countries have been told not to apply for an Etias visa waiver, with more than 150 websites touting the service despite its introduction being delayed.
Non-EU citizens, including UK travellers and those from other visa-exempt countries including the US, Australia and Canada, will soon need to pay €20 (£17) for an electronic waiver to enter the Schengen zone under the European travel information and authorisation system (Etias).
Ken McCallum says Kremlin attempted to influence vote through social media and TV reports but had little impact
Russia did try to interfere in the Brexit referendum through social media and television reports, the head of MI5 said on Tuesday, but he added that did not mean the Kremlin had any impact on the result.
Ken McCallum endorsed comments by Andy Burnham, who raised the issue over the past two days, though he said continuing to debate it risked giving the Kremlin a needless propaganda victory.
The UK’s cost of living squeeze means fewer people plan to ringfence money for holidays abroad next year, the travel industry has warned.
Despite war, wildfires and EES border checks, the numbers of Britons taking holidays climbed back to pre-pandemic levels this year – but rising costs may mean the numbers have peaked, according to an annual travel industry report on Tuesday.
Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson, has said he does not agree with his colleague Suella Braverman’s assertion that black people cannot be English.
Asked about her views in an interview on Sky News, Yusuf said:
In my view Ashley Cole is the best English fullback in history, and I won’t take any other position. So in my view, Ashley Cole is English. I think the argument that he’s not English doesn’t hold water with me.
Nasser Hussain, who I grew up watching when I went to the cricket, the idea that those people aren’t English is an alien concept to me.
I would respectfully disagree with people, who make the opposite argument.
To say I’m English is to take a ‘laissez-faire, anything-goes’ attitude to ethnicity, citizenship and identity. It also denies me my Asian heritage. The liberals (many of them in today’s Conservative party) take this cosmopolitan approach to Englishness. They’re terrified of being called racist so they say that anyone, as long as they’re born here, can be English.
I take the conservative approach. Englishness is an ethnicity. There have been English people for centuries and we need to recognise this more if we are to start taking a more muscular approach to citizenship and nationality. And no, it’s not racist to say this.
PM hails next month’s ‘reset’ summit as first step to closer ties, but tensions over trade may prove problematic
Andy Burnham has promised a “serious dialogue” over the UK’s future place in Europe, saying the existing relationship is “not good enough” as he framed next month’s Brussels summit as a possible first step to EU membership.
The prime minister said Britain must take a “clear-eyed rational look” at its long-term relationship with the bloc to boost economic growth and control immigration, which needed to go beyond Labour’s existing red lines.
Prime minister has reopened the debate over whether Russia sought to influence the 2016 referendum
Andy Burnham unexpectedly reopened an old Brexit debate when he said he had been told after becoming prime minister that Russia had interfered in the 2016 EU referendum.
It was a contentious issue in the second half of the previous decade, but one that had largely been forgotten about as the UK finally adjusted to the reality of leaving the EU. Now Burnham’s comments have given the topic a fresh impetus.
Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson, is speaking now. He started his speech with an account of a 73-year-old woman dying in North Wales after having to wait 23 hours for an ambulance, and he sought to link this to immigration.
He said:
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine estimates that 15,000 people across Britain died last year due to excess wait times for emergency treatment. That’s 300 people a week, 300 lives destroyed, 300 families devastated.
And that number has increased tenfold over the last decade. This is a moral outrage, and it is a direct result of decisions made by Tory and Labour governments.
I don’t think that’s because he wants to have a fight over the European Union. I think that’s because he knows what we’re talking about today impacts hard in what is known as the red wall.
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