Labour launches child poverty strategy but hints costly welfare system has to change

The UK welfare system is not helping enough people into work and has significantly rising costs, and no one should think the government is backing away from reforming it, the work and pensions secretary has said.Pat McFadden made the comments as the government published its new child poverty strategy on Friday.He said the aim of the strategy was to improve young lives for the long term and that those lifted out of hardship are likely to have improved prospects for employment in the future.“This is about more than the distribution of money. It’s an investment in the future of the children who are affected by poverty,” he said

John Swinney defends immigration as Scotland faces rise of Reform

Scotland needs immigration to bolster the size of its working-age population, the country’s first minister has said, mounting a forceful defence of diversity in the face of rising support for Reform ahead of next May’s Holyrood elections.John Swinney was speaking at the end of a year marked by a significant shift in Scottish public sentiment, with Nigel Farage’s party securing 26% of the vote in its first Holyrood byelection test.Farage now polls higher in popularity than Keir Starmer and Scotland has been forced to confront its prevailing self-image – heavily promoted by the Scottish National party government – as a welcoming country in the face of protests outside asylum hotels and flag raising across the country.“Of course I am concerned about it because I believe with every fibre of my body in the importance of inclusion within our society,” Swinney said. “During my lifetime Scotland has become a much more diverse country

‘The only idea around’: will Labour return to a customs union with the EU?

For much of the last week, Keir Starmer’s government has been suggesting that a closer relationship with Europe will be a more prominent part of his agenda in the future.But it was a little-noted personnel change that might prove the most telling shift: Nick Thomas Symonds, the minister in charge of EU negotiations, was promoted to full cabinet rank.The Welshman, a close ally of Starmer, will be an advocate of a closer relationship with the EU when ministers meet. But, a source close to the prime minister said, “he isn’t going to bang the cabinet table and say it’s customs union or bust. If that happens, it has to come from Keir himself

Reform UK revokes membership of council leader accused of racism

Nigel Farage has revoked the party membership of a Reform UK council leader accused of racially abusing Sadiq Khan, David Lammy and other public figures online.Ian Cooper, the leader of Staffordshire county council, allegedly called the London mayor a “narcissistic Pakistani” and said migrants were “intent on colonising the UK, destroying all that has gone before”.In a post this year attacking Lammy, the justice secretary, Cooper allegedly wrote: “No foreign national or first generation migrant should be allowed to sit in parliament.”He also allegedly abused the British-born lawyer and women’s rights activist Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, calling her “Dr Shaga Bing-Bong” and saying it was “time she F’d off back to Nigeria. She’d feel more at home there

Former Dulwich pupil says Farage told him: ‘That’s the way back to Africa’

A former Dulwich college pupil who claims a teenage Nigel Farage told him “that’s the way back to Africa” has said he felt compelled to speak out after the Reform leader’s attempt at “denying or dismissing” the hurt of his alleged targets.Yinka Bankole, who claims he had just started at the school when a 17-year-old Farage singled him out for abuse, said he had decided to tell his story in full after watching the Reform leader’s press conference on Thursday.Farage told reporters that he had never been racist or antisemitic with “malice”. Instead, he launched a tirade aimed at the BBC and ITV for questioning him about an ongoing Guardian investigation into allegations of past antisemitism and racism.Citing television shows including Are You Being Served? and It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, Farage accused the BBC, which he suggested he would boycott, of “double standards and hypocrisy”, and claimed ITV had a case to answer for airing the comedian Bernard Manning in the 1970s

How Farage’s response to racism claims is straight out of Trump’s populist playbook

When Nigel Farage angrily denounced the BBC and insulted one of its presenters for raising questions about his alleged schoolboy racism, those who have been studying the tactics of the right noted that his behaviour felt familiar.“Is it out of the Trump playbook? I think that’s exactly what’s going on,” said Steven Barnett, a professor of communications at the University of Westminster. “This is becoming his new modus operandi, turning defence into attack. It’s exactly the tactics White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, uses. There are a lot of journalists in this country who just aren’t used to it