UK considers new Russia sanctions after Navalny frog toxin finding

The UK is mulling fresh sanctions against Moscow after pinning blame on the Kremlin for the poisoning of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Yvette Cooper has suggested.The Foreign Office and four of the UK’s allies – Sweden, France, Germany and the Netherlands – announced on Saturday they had determined that Navalny’s death was most likely the result of poisoning using dart frog toxin arranged by the Russian state.The Russian embassy in London has denied Moscow was involved in Navalny’s death two years ago in a Siberian penal colony and described the announcement as illustrating the “feeblemindedness of western fabulists”.In a rebuke on the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme, Cooper, the foreign secretary, said the accusation against Russia was “deeply serious” and a product of two years of evidence gathering.She said: “Only the Russian regime had the means, the motive and the opportunity to administer this poison while he was in a Russian prison

There’s no end in sight to Starmer’s struggles | Letters

What a great editorial (The Guardian view on Starmer’s trust crisis: it is unlikely to be managed away, 13 February). Your statement that the prime minister has “learned nothing and forgotten nothing” sums up much of his and our present situation. He was put where he is now by apparatchiks who failed to suggest that without any vision he would be at the mercy of people who would tug him to and fro – which they have. This weakness – which was shared by Boris Johnson, and why Dominic Cummings called Johnson “the Trolley” – means few people have any reason to trust him.That Starmer’s judgment is flawed is demonstrated by the number of U-turns that he has been forced to make

Jonathan Powell rejects overtures to replace McSweeney as Starmer’s chief of staff

Keir Starmer’s national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, has rejected overtures to become the prime minister’s chief of staff after the resignation of Morgan McSweeney, the Guardian has been told.Powell’s allies say his decision not to take forward discussions about the job – the same role he undertook under Tony Blair’s premiership from 1997 to 2007 – was largely motivated by an intention to return to the mediation consultancy that he set up in 2011, with little interest in returning to a job he has already done.He is said to be weighing up a departure from Downing Street at the end of the year, which would represent another significant departure from the prime minister’s senior team.Downing Street sources firmly denied that Powell had any plans to step down, saying he was not leaving Downing Street and would continue as national security adviser. They said any suggestion Powell had been offered the role of chief of staff was untrue

UK far right lines up behind Rupert Lowe in challenge to Reform

MP who fell out with Nigel Farage and has backing of Elon Musk launches anti-immigration party in Great YarmouthOn a cold night in a dilapidated theatre tucked away at the end of Great Yarmouth’s Britannia Pier, Rupert Lowe was launching a far-right revolution. “Millions will have to go,” the MP said as he pledged a policy of mass deportations to rapturous applause and foot stamping from the hundreds of people gathered for what had been billed as the launch of a local “Great Yarmouth First” party.But after introducing five councillors who will stand at the next Norfolk county council elections under that banner, the former Reform UK figure went further by announcing that his Restore Britain movement would become a national party.In an electoral battlefield littered with failed startups, Lowe’s new party is, for now, little more than a pebble in the shoe of Nigel Farage’s Reform, from which he parted ways last year after a bitter falling out.However, over the weekend other parties and figures to the right of Reform quickly rallied behind the new party

UK politics: Cooper defends Palestine Action ban despite court ruling it was unlawful – as it happened

Now to some UK news … In a significant blow to the Home Office, the High Court ruled last week that the ban of Palestine Action under terrorism legislation was unlawful and “disproportionate”, with most of their activities having not reached the level, scale and persistence to be defined as terrorism.The high court said the then home secretary Yvette Cooper had not followed her own policies when bringing in the controversial ban last summer.When asked about her decision making, Cooper told Sky News:Well, I followed the clear advice and recommendations, going through a serious process that the Home Office goes through, involving different agencies and police advice as well, which was very clear about the recommendation for proscription of this group.And the court has also concluded that this is not a normal protest group, that it has found that this group has committed acts of terrorism, that this group is not simply in line with democratic values, and has promoted violence.Cooper was pressed to reveal the advice she was given that informed her decision to pursue the ban, but did not, instead saying: “So I was given significant evidence and advice around risks of violence and risks from public safety, and that is what you take seriously

Reform and Greens undermining UK commitment to Nato, Cooper says

The foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, has accused Reform UK and the Green party of undermining Britain’s commitment to Nato.Cooper was speaking at the Munich Security Conference, where Keir Starmer used a speech at the weekend to claim that Labour’s populist rivals were “soft on Russia and weak on Nato”.“Our national security depends on us having partnerships abroad that make us strong and we have seen both Reform and the Greens undermine that commitment to the Nato alliance,” Cooper said in an interview with Sky News.In the case of Nigel Farage’s party, Cooper said this had led to Reform “not taking seriously the threat from Russia”.“They have refused to have an investigation into Russian interference in their own party despite the fact that their own Welsh leader was convicted of links to Russia,” she added, referring to the jailing of Nathan Gill, the former MEP and colleague of Farage, for taking bribes from a suspected Russian asset to repeat pro-Kremlin positions