Reform frontbench promotes JCB’s pothole machine after firm’s £200,000 donation

Reform UK’s leading figures have repeatedly promoted a new pothole-fixing machine by the construction company JCB, while the party received £200,000 from the British digger maker, the Guardian can reveal.Several Reform politicians including Nigel Farage, Lee Anderson, Robert Jenrick, Zia Yusuf and Richard Tice have sung the praises of the JCB PotHole Pro machine.At a rally last year in Birmingham, Farage entered the stage on one of the repair vehicles and suggested it would be used in Reform-run councils when the party had taken control at local elections.Describing JCB as “one of the most incredible companies in the world” in March 2025, he said: “This machine can mend potholes at half the cost that currently is being charged by other commercial operators, and aren’t potholes just the perfect symbol of broken Britain?“So I thought I’d come in on a JCB, with a machine that actually works, and that county council should use, if they weren’t tied in, to five and 10-year contracts with inferior providers. But we’ll fix that, won’t we, when we control those county councils?”After Farage lavished praise on the business, JCB gave a donation of £200,000 to Reform in November last year

Polanski takes combative approach as Greens enter media spotlight

It is the lot of smaller parties that grow rapidly that they tend to endure something of a trial by the media in the UK. The attention from some of the newspapers and broadcasters to the Green party before this week’s elections has occasionally borne a resemblance to the height of Clegg-mania in the spring of 2010, when the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, was rewarded for his positive polling with the unlikely Daily Mail headline “Clegg in Nazi slur on Britain”.All manner of colourful tales have emerged about Green policies and personnel as the party has risen up the national opinion polls, making them something of a target for news editors and reporters. That attention has ranged from legitimate questions over the views of members to more eccentric warnings of a dire future for everyone in Britain from exotic animals to members of the clergy.“Woke Greens slammed as ‘barking mad’ over plans to license dog owners and ban zoos”, read one recent headline in the Sun

Badenoch apologises after Bloody Sunday footage used in post defending UK veterans

Kemi Badenoch has apologised after footage from Bloody Sunday was used in social media posts criticising a bill on legacy issues in Northern Ireland.The Conservative leader said on Saturday that she did not sign off on the use of a clip from the massacre, in which British soldiers opened fire on unarmed civil rights demonstrators in Derry, and that it was distributed by “very young people”.The video was posted on Badenoch’s social media channels on Tuesday, claiming Labour’s proposed changes would “drag” British Troubles veterans back to court.Colum Eastwood, the SDLP MP for the Foyle constituency that covers Derry, said he was “shocked” to see Badenoch “trumpeting the service of British soldiers in Northern Ireland using footage from Bloody Sunday”.Bloody Sunday, on 30 January 1972, is widely seen as one of the most significant points in the Troubles and is regarded as the worst mass shooting in Northern Ireland’s history

Some pro-Palestinian protests could be banned amid attacks on British Jews

Some pro-Palestinian demonstrations could be stopped, the prime minister has warned, as the UK’s most senior police officer said the threat to the Jewish ­community was greater than it had ever been.Keir Starmer indicated he wanted the language expressed on some protest marches to be subjected to “tougher action” as he sought to allay the fears of British Jews after a series of attacks on their communities in recent weeks.“When you see, when you hear some of those chants – ‘globalise the intifada’ the one that I would pick out – then clearly there should be tougher action in relation to that,” Starmer told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.While he said he would not interfere in day-to-day policing, he said “there are instances” in which he would support stopping some protests altogether.The prime minister’s comments came as Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said a “dangerous and troubling” mix of hate crimes, terrorism and the involvement of hostile states was coming together in the UK to create a terrifying atmosphere for British Jews

Tension and dissent: inside the Green party’s antisemitism struggle

A Green party member for more than 30 years, Elise Benjamin admits to bittersweet feelings even as fellow activists anticipate a historic breakthrough in next week’s elections.Benjamin was involved in drawing up the party’s guidance on antisemitism, which she describes as comprehensive. But the former Green councillor in Oxford now wonders whether further guidance is needed: “Now that we have such a large membership, I think there needs to be an urgent review of how to make our complaints process fit for purpose.”On the brink of power in some councils, particularly in London, and with ambitions to eclipse Labour in the long term, the Greens have been wrestling for months with charges that antisemitism has taken root in their ranks.The level of scrutiny of comments by candidates and activists has increased since Zack Polanski, who is Jewish, took over as leader of the Greens in England and Wales in September, with the party’s membership almost quadrupling since then

Starmer says Polanski ‘is not fit to lead a political party’ after Golders Green police criticism

Keir Starmer has condemned Zack Polanski as “disgraceful” and unfit to head a political party after the Greens’ leader shared a social media post critical of the way police tackled the suspect in the Golders Green stabbings.The prime minister said any criticism of the police involved in the arrest was unfair on officers having to make split-second decisions in a moment of potentially grave danger.Police were filmed detaining the suspect after two Jewish people were stabbed in the north-west London suburb on Wednesday. Footage of the arrest shared on social media shows two officers appearing to kick the man on or near his head.Polanski retweeted, without comment, a post on X alleging that officers were “repeatedly and violently kicking a mentally ill man in the head” when he was already incapacitated by a stun gun

‘No other plan comes close’: how Labour MPs turned to Burnham with Starmer on the brink

When the eyes of Westminster were on the committee rooms and voting lobbies of parliament this week, Keir Starmer’s political future was being decided elsewhere.Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner were buttering up Labour MPs in the Strangers’ Bar in parliament as colleagues spoke of their “existential” fear about the crucial elections next week.Starmer, meanwhile, tried to calm backbenchers’ nerves as he did the rounds in the members-only smoking room and his private office behind the Commons chamber. One former minister said the mood was so dark that several MPs refused to meet the leader, saying: “We don’t want to be seen with him.”Andy Burnham was 800 miles away in Madrid as Starmer’s future dominated Westminster

Andy Burnham has plan to return to Westminster ‘within weeks’, allies say

Andy Burnham has a credible plan to return to Westminster “within weeks”, his allies have said, with the Greater Manchester mayor expected to use a byelection fight to set out a new agenda for government.Burnham, who was blocked by Labour’s ruling body from running in February’s Gorton and Denton byelection, has identified several seats where MPs are prepared to step aside for his leadership bid.In a sign that his campaign is more progressed than previously thought, Burnham’s team is understood to have lined up an “impressive” candidate to replace him as Greater Manchester mayor.Allies said he planned to outline a “radical rewiring” of the state in the coming weeks – including sweeping changes to the electoral system and a 10-year growth plan – after a potentially devastating set of elections on 7 May that could end Keir Starmer’s premiership.After a fortnight that left Starmer fighting for his political future over the appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador, the number of MPs backing Burnham is understood to have grown to far more than the 80 required to challenge the prime minister

Foreign Office cuts will weaken oversight of international law, MPs warn

MPs have expressed alarm at the closure of the Foreign Office’s international humanitarian law unit, warning it “will impair the UK’s ability to anticipate, assess and respond to serious violations of international law across multiple contexts”.News of the closure, revealed by the Guardian, was raised with Keir Starmer at prime minister’s questions this week by the independent MP for Dewsbury and Batley, Iqbal Mohamed. Starmer said the work would be undertaken by another team as part of a restructuring.However, he made no reference to the ending of the Foreign Office contract with the Conflict and Security Monitoring Project, run by the Centre forInformation Resilience, which monitors incidents of concern in Gaza, the West Bank and, more recently, Lebanon.In a letter to the foreign secretary, Yvettte Cooper, the cross-party group of MPs asked how the closure aligned with the government’s stated commitment to upholding international law and ensuring rigorous compliance with the UK’s arms export licensing criteria