‘Go back home’: Farage schoolmate accounts bring total alleging racist behaviour to 34

Thirty-four school contemporaries of Nigel Farage have now come forward to claim they saw him behave in a racist or antisemitic manner, raising fresh questions over the Reform leader’s evolving denials.One of those with new allegations is Jason Meredith, who was three years below Farage at Dulwich college, a private school in south-east London. He claims that Farage called him a “paki” and would use taunts such as “go back home”.Meredith, 58, who is of Anglo-Indian heritage and has lived in Switzerland where he works as a product manager since 1999, said it was support for anti-racism that motivated him to come forward.He told the Guardian: “What really irked me was the denial [by Farage] of being racist

Farage accused of ‘parroting Kremlin lines’ after remarks on UK troops in Ukraine

Nigel Farage has been accused of “parroting Kremlin lines” after saying that he would vote against any UK government plans to deploy the military in Ukraine.On Tuesday, Britain and France said they would be ready to send troops to Ukraine after a peace deal, but the Reform UK leader said he would vote against any such move to put boots on the ground.Farage’s comments cast doubt on his commitment to the UK’s national security, the cabinet minister Pat McFadden said. He accused the politician of taking a pro-Russia stance on the issue, which he said should give voters “pause for thought”.“This guarantee is not just for Ukraine, it’s for the whole of Europe,” he said

Mandelson accuses European leaders of ‘histrionic’ reaction to Trump’s Greenland stance

Peter Mandelson has accused European leaders including Keir Starmer of a “histrionic” reaction to Donald Trump’s plan to take over Greenland, arguing that without “hard power and hard cash” they will continue to slide into unimportance in the “age of Trump”.In his first political comments since being sacked as Britain’s ambassador to Washington last year, Lord Mandelson said Trump had achieved “more in a day than orthodox diplomacy was able to achieve in the past decade” when he captured the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro.The intervention is likely to be seen as a criticism of the British prime minister, who has attempted to walk a diplomatic tightrope since the US captured Maduro. This week he signed a statement calling on the US president to respect Danish sovereignty over Greenland after a White House statement said the US was looking into “a range of options” in an effort to acquire Greenland, adding that using the US military to do so was “always an option”.On Wednesday evening, Starmer “set out his position on Greenland” in a phone conversation with Trump, Downing Street said without giving further details of the call

Reeves condemns Farage opposition to lifting two-child benefit cap

Rachel Reeves has said she was angered by Nigel Farage’s suggestion that only British-born families should have the two-child benefit cap lifted, saying the Reform UK leader would keep children in poverty based on their skin colour.The chancellor, who will introduce legislation to lift the cap on Thursday, said it had been a burden for her not to be able to do so sooner, but it had been vital to do it at a moment of market stability.Farage told a press conference on Wednesday that his party would vote against the scrapping of the two-child limit, having previously suggested he could back the change. He said he was concerned it would “benefit huge numbers of foreign-born people”.Reeves said those comments were akin to saying some families deserved to have children in poverty

Marinera oil tanker changed flags ‘five times in five years’, says defence secretary – as it happened

The defence secretary, John Healey, told the Commons that the UK, at the request of the US, supported efforts to intercept an Russian-flagged tanker in the North Atlantic. Healey said: “The vessel refused to comply with the US’s exercise of its sanctions jurisdiction on 20 December, after which the US Coast Guard vessel Monroe pursued the ship across the Atlantic. This is a sanctioned, stateless vessel which carries a long history of nefarious activity and shares close links with both Iran and Russia.” Healey said there was a deployment of Royal Navy and RAF assets including airborne surveillance and RFA Tideforce and no UK personnel took part in the operation.Healey said he is visiting Kyiv “soon” to continue discussions on supporting Ukraine’s long term armaments and policing of any ceasefire

It’s unwise for Labour to attack the Green party and its wealth tax proposal | Letters

The Fabian Society’s Joe Dromey could not be more wrong in arguing that the Labour leadership should attack the Greens and Reform UK as representing “twin populisms” (Zack Polanski offering voters fantasy solutions, says head of Fabian Society, 31 December). Dromey dismisses the Green party’s support for a wealth tax as a “fantasy” policy. Yet this is a policy that eight in 10 Labour voters support. I have been campaigning for wealth taxes for years, and large numbers of Labour MPs now back such a measure.Dromey argues that a wealth tax could not fund all the investment we need in our communities