Keir Starmer lays down Ukraine peace demand ahead of Trump talks

Keir Starmer has raised the stakes before a crucial meeting in Washington with the US president, Donald Trump this week, by insisting that Ukraine must be “at the heart of any negotiations” on a peace deal with Russia.The prime minister made the remarks – which run directly contrary to comments by the US president last week – in a phone call on Saturdaywith Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in which he also said that “safeguarding Ukraine’s sovereignty was essential to deter future aggression from Russia”.Downing Street made clear that the prime minister would carry the same tough messages into his meeting with Trump in the White House on Thursday.Starmer is likely to tell the US president that the UK will raise its defence spending to 2.5% of gross domestic product, in line with Labour’s election manifesto commitment

Open-mouthed Farage struggles to find his voice as GB News is caught between Trump, its viewers and reality

Finding a way to keep two groups with opposing interests happy is the sort of tediously mainstream ­manoeuvre that Nigel Farage has managed to avoid in his political career so far.But Reform UK’s leader and, until last week, majority shareholder had to deal with this unfamiliar dilemma on his platform of choice, GB News, after Donald Trump’s outburst about Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week.Most of the British public think that, in the cold-eyed dictator stakes, the Ukrainian president is ­probably more Larry the Cat than Vladimir Putin, and about 80% of voters who back the three other mainstream parties believe the UK should at least maintain its support for Zelenskyy.Yet less than half of Reform UK ­voters agree, and one in 10 of Farage’s strongest supporters wants Russia to win. Appealing to the silent majority and the far right is no easy task

Konstantin Kisin: anti-woke libertarian who reluctantly calls himself ‘right wing’

Konstantin Kisin has until this week been best known as a libertarian, pro-free speech independent podcaster, and for a viral appearance at the Oxford Union arguing that “woke culture has gone too far”.His profile has suddenly risen, however, after hosting the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, on his podcast, and arguing in an episode with Fraser Nelson, the former editor of the Spectator, that Rishi Sunak was not English owing to his “brown Hindu” background – triggering criticism on social media.Kisin has rounded off the week by giving a keynote speech at the hard-right Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (Arc) conference where he delivered one of his often-repeated jokes: “I love this country and I say so publicly, which is how you know I still haven’t integrated into British culture.”In a speech covering anti-woke themes, he argued “identity politics and multiculturalism … are two failed experiments” and railed against diversity, equality and inclusion as “anti-meritocratic discrimination”.Kisin did not directly address the controversy about his Sunak comments in his speech, but responded to a journalist challenging him on X, saying: “The Moron Industrial Complex is desperately trying to fabricate outrage over the fact that I said there is a difference between being British, an umbrella imperial identity into which we can all integrate, as I have done, and being English which is a group that, at the very least, has an ethnicity dimension

UK populists mix faith and politics with parroting of ‘Judeo-Christian values’

The splendours of the Parthenon, Colosseum and Great Pyramid of Giza were in stark contrast to the utilitarian conference centre in London’s Docklands, but they were there to make a point.As 4,000 people from dozens of countries filed in for a three-day jamboree of rightwing discourse this week, the images were a reminder that great civilisations of the past had risen, declined and fallen. A commentary warned that western civilisation was at a tipping point, in crisis because it had lost touch with its “Judeo-Christian foundations”.The message greeted those attending a sold-out conference for politicians, policymakers, businesspeople and “culture formers” organised by the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (Arc) at the ExCeL centre in east London, where non-discounted tickets cost £1,500.The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, and the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, addressed the gathering in person

Starmer will not challenge Trump on his attack on Zelenskyy when the pair meet

Keir Starmer will not risk riling Donald Trump by challenging him over his attack on Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, when the pair finally meet next week, as the prime minister seeks to cool an escalating transatlantic row.Starmer will fly to the US in the coming days for what could be a defining moment for his leadership, as Europe and the US trade accusations and insults about the origins of the war in Ukraine and the best way to end it.Trump added to the tensions on Friday when he accused Starmer and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, of having done nothing to help end the war.“They haven’t done anything. Macron is a friend of mine, and I’ve met with the prime minister, he’s a very nice guy … [but] nobody’s done anything,” he told Fox News

Watchdog reopens investigation into Jonathan Reynolds’ legal career claims

The solicitors’ regulator has reopened an investigation into the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, over accusations he misrepresented his legal career.The Solicitors Regulation Authority said on Friday it would look into allegations that Reynolds had incorrectly claimed to have worked as a solicitor even though he did not finish his legal training.The confirmation comes after the website Guido Fawkes revealed Reynolds had not qualified, despite his LinkedIn profile listing one of his previous jobs as “solicitor”.The SRA wrote to Reynolds in January after becoming aware of the error on his LinkedIn profile but decided not to take further action after it was corrected.On Friday, however, a spokesperson for the regulator said: “We looked at that issue at the time we became aware of it and contacted Mr Reynolds about the profiles