Votes for populist parties in May elections will put NHS at risk, Streeting says

Voters in May’s local and devolved elections risk putting the NHS in jeopardy if they vote for populist parties, Wes Streeting has said, as he sought to make the health service a key battleground.“The founding principles of the NHS are at greater threat than at any time since the NHS was founded in 1948,” the health secretary said.He warned that there was “a particular jeopardy” for the NHS in Wales, where Labour faces electoral wipeout at the hands of Reform UK and Plaid Cymru, with the latter pitching itself to voters as the best “stop Reform” option.Streeting called Labour’s progressive rivals “rookies” and said he “refuse[d] to believe that many people in Wales would vote for Reform if they knew where Nigel Farage stood on the NHS”.Streeting argued that the NHS in Scotland was weaker after almost two decades of SNP governance, while in England Labour-run councils would work more efficiently with Labour in government

Tories would reinstate two-child benefit cap to fund defence, says Badenoch

The Conservatives would reinstate the two-child benefit cap and use the savings for a wide-ranging spending splurge on defence in what Kemi Badenoch said would be “the biggest peacetime programme of rearmament in our country’s history”.Speaking at a defence conference in London, the Tory leader criticised the government for Britain’s “lack of readiness” for war, which has been exposed by recent world events.Badenoch said the UK needed to “reassert” itself as a global power and committed the Tories to “the largest net increase in British troops under any government since the second world war” if they returned to power at the next general election.The pledge would involve recruiting 6,000 full-time soldiers and 14,000 reservists. The Tories say they could raise £20bn towards the venture by reinstating the two-child benefit cap and reallocating money earmarked for net zero projects

UK starts crackdown on EU citizens’ post-Brexit rights

UK ministers are to start removing post-Brexit residency rights from EU citizens who are no longer “continuously” living in the country.The initiative is legal under the 2020 Brexit withdrawal agreement, but the decision to use travel data to partly determine absences has raised concerns after the HMRC fiasco in which almost 20,000 parents were stripped of child benefits because of inaccurate Home Office border data.The Home Office said the crackdown was aimed at those who had received “pre-settled status” to remain in the UK before Brexit, a status that applied to anyone who had been in the UK for less than five years.Officials will start with those believed to have left the country more than five years ago and there will be safeguards including consideration of reasons for prolonged absences.The Home Office said the crackdown protected public services and was aimed at preventing unlawful immigration by abuse of the system

Reform UK local election candidate was twice disciplined by Tories over ‘racist comments’

A Reform UK candidate for next month’s council elections was twice disciplined by the Conservatives over alleged offensive or racist comments, while another shared conspiracy theories about Covid, it has emerged, as the full slate of candidates was confirmed.More than 5,000 council places in England are being contested on 7 May, along with several mayoralties, and elections for the Scottish and Welsh parliaments, in a significant test for all the major parties.Councils began publishing lists of confirmed candidates on Friday, after the closure of nominations at 4pm on Thursday. Reform says it is standing candidates in just over 95% of seats, around as many as Labour. Nigel Farage, Reform UK’s leader, has said the party’s vetting procedures have been beefed up

Starmer implies he didn’t tell Trump he was ‘fed up’ about his impact on rising UK energy bills – as it happened

Keir Starmer has recorded a short pooled TV interview in Qatar this morning. It did not really add much to what we have heard him say before but, for the record, here are the main lines.Starmer implied that he declined the opportunity to tell Donald Trump in person how “fed up” he is about the president’s impact on UK energy bills (see 9.01am) when they spoke last night. He said their focus in the call was on the need for a “practical plan” to open the strait of Hormuz

Not just about Gaza: the Muslim voters turning from Labour to the Greens

Campaigning in Newcastle before next month’s local elections shows the rise of the far right, the climate and cost of living are concerning voters as much as the Middle EastMohammed Suleman, a self-described “straight-talking Geordie”, doesn’t love politics. The taxi driver and businessman prefers to focus on community initiatives. But when the time came, he voted Labour as the lesser of two evils.Then came the war in Gaza.A month into the war, which a UN committee would later describe as a genocide, Suleman, and others at his local mosque, began a petition calling on their Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West Labour MP, Chi Onwurah, to vote for a ceasefire