A linguistic own goal from Starmer’s critics | Letters

Jonathan Liew links rude football chants to the unmerited personal abuse which Keir Starmer is currently receiving (When crowds direct offensive chants at Keir Starmer, who’s to blame? I’m afraid he is, 13 January).Football managers are frequently the target for similar treatment. Like them, Starmer has to set his team’s strategy and tactics and produce results that please supporters.No matter that he saved his side from relegation and gained promotion last season, things are not going as well as expected – hence the abuse. In style and charisma, he may be more Sean Dyche than Carlo Ancelotti, and as an Arsenal fan, he should get some tips from Mikel Arteta

Reform UK’s London mayor candidate condemned for burqa stop and search remarks

Reform UK’s mayoral candidate for London has been accused of endangering Muslims after she said women wearing the burqa should be subject to stop and search.Laila Cunningham, who was announced as Reform’s candidate for the 2028 mayoral elections last week, said no one should cover their face “in an open society”, adding: “It has to be assumed that if you’re hiding your face, you’re hiding it for a criminal reason.”Cunningham told the Standard podcast: “If you go to parts of London, it does feel like a Muslim city. The signs are written in a different language. You’ve got burqas being sold in markets

Jenrick says he hopes his defection to Reform UK will ‘unite the right’ after Badenoch says he ‘tells a lot of lies’ – as it happened

Robert Jenrick is now speaking exclusively to Laura Kuenssberg at BBC News and says he hopes his defection will “unite the right”.He said:This is uniting the right. My message for millions of people in the country who stuck with the Conservative party, often through gritted teeth because like me they were deeply frustrated, angry even, about what happened.They voted again in 2024 and many of those voters have now come to Reform over the course of the last year or so – but there are still people sticking with the party.If you want to get rid of this Labour government and have a strong reforming government to fix the country, there is frankly only one way to do that … that is to vote for Nigel and rally behind him and Reform

Tory ‘arsonists’ still in charge of party, says Jenrick as he hits back at Badenoch

The “arsonists” who tanked the reputation of the Conservatives are still in charge of the party, Robert Jenrick has said as he and the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, trade blows a day after his dramatic defection to Reform UK.Giving his first interview since his announcement on Thursday, the former shadow justice secretary said the Conservatives had not changed since the election, while defending himself against allegations of lying from his former party leader.He told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Friday: “I came to the conclusion over the course of the last year or so that … the party hadn’t changed, that the people who’d made those mistakes were still sat around the shadow cabinet table, the arsonists were still in control of the party, and that this was not a party that was capable of even understanding what it had got wrong, let alone fixing it.”Jenrick insisted “I could not have been franker” about his intentions, despite telling the Conservative chief whip on Thursday he would never defect – an act that Badenoch said showed he “tells a lot of lies”.In her own set of broadcast interviews hours earlier, Badenoch said: “You can’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth

Nigel Farage tricked into paying tribute to Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins

Nigel Farage has been targeted with another prank on the paid video service Cameo, this time paying tribute to the child sexual abuse offender Ian Watkins.Cameo allows fans to pay celebrities to make personalised video messages, with the Reform party leader offering his services from £78.45.In a 27-second video posted online by John Smith, who requested the clip, Farage called the former Lostprophets singer, who was killed in prison last year, “a good man, a really good guy” who “loved his children”.He pretended to know Watkins, whose victims included a baby boy, and said he was “very much in contact with me”

‘Enough already’: Jenrick’s defection gets mixed reception from Reform members

If Reform UK was officially celebrating Robert Jenrick’s defection to Nigel Farage’s party, the reaction of the rank-and-file was an altogether more complicated one – ranging from jubilation to despair that yet another Tory was coming onboard.“Enough already! Reform uk please take note, you are going to lose members and voters if you don’t cap this craziness … We don’t want a Tory party Pt II,” was the early response from James Scott, one of a number of members expressing their unhappiness on one of the largest private Reform Facebook groups.After the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, broke the news that she was sacking her long-term rival from the frontbench and taking away the party whip for “plotting”, another Reform member commented: “Don’t do it, Nigel. If Jenrick joins Reform I’m done I am a member of the party but will leave immediately.”Yet such hostility to Jenrick from Reform members appeared still to be in the minority, with the bulk of contributors to the same group and others rubbing their hands at the prospect of Reform chalking up its most senior Tory recruit yet