British Steel on a razor’s edge: inside Starmer’s Scunthorpe rescue mission

By next weekend, a cargo ship carrying more than 50,000 tonnes of coking coal from Australia will dock at Immingham. In other circumstances, its arrival would be unremarkable. But the moment Navios Alegria reaches the Lincolnshire port will be the culmination of the government’s high-wire act to keep the UK’s last steel furnaces running.MPs were recalled from their Easter recess last Saturday to pass emergency legislation handing the government control over British Steel, which operates Britain’s last two blast furnaces capable of producing steel from scratch using coke and iron ore.Long-running talks between the government and Jingye Group, the Chinese conglomerate that owns the Scunthorpe plant, broke down 10 days ago after executives declined an offer of £500m to keep the furnaces running

What to look for in May’s local elections: Tories on defensive and Reform hoping for gains

The English local council elections on 1 May are a big test for the three parties almost tied in the national polls: Labour, Reform and the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats will also be hoping to do well in areas where they are strong and have a big aim of displacing the Tories as the second largest party in local government.As the polls suggest, the contest is wide open. The Conservatives are in the worst position as they are defending the most seats in more than 900 wards, which they won at the high-water mark of Boris Johnson’s popularity in 2021. Of the 23 authorities holding elections, 19 are controlled by the Conservatives and just one by Labour, with the others under no overall control

Ken Burley obituary

My friend Ken Burley, who has died aged 80, was a town planner with a public service ethos. A member of the Royal Town Planning Institute, he worked professionally in local authorities and voluntarily in numerous capacities.From 1974 to 2004 he worked for Doncaster metropolitan borough council, progressing from assistant chief planner for development plans and research to retire as head of planning services and acting head of strategic development. His work helped steer the borough through significant land use and social changes as the local economy pivoted from coal mining towards alternatives.Ken led the team that wrote the borough’s unitary development plan, creating strategic and local planning policies

Ministers scramble to avoid Labour rebellion on disability benefit cuts

Ministers are scrambling to avoid a damaging rebellion this summer when MPs vote on controversial cuts to disability benefit payments, even offering potential rebels the chance to miss the vote altogether.The government is due to hold a vote in June and dozens of Labour MPs are worried it will hurt their constituents and could cost them their seats.Possible solutions include allowing backbenchers to abstain – a major climbdown from earlier votes, when rebels were disciplined or suspended from the party. Ministers are also looking for ways to mitigate the cuts with extra spending on measures to tackle child poverty, including extra benefits payments for poorer parents of children under five.One Labour MP said: “When people abstained on the winter fuel vote, they were warned that it had been taken by the leadership as voting against the government

UK politics: Badenoch calls for broader review of equality and gender recognition laws – as it happened

Opposition leader Kemi Badenoch has said she would support a broader review into equality and gender recognition laws in the wake of yesterday’s supreme court ruling.Speaking to broadcasters during a visit to Cambridgeshire, PA Media report Badenoch said:Biological sex is real. A gender recognition certificate is there to show that someone is now transgender, but that doesn’t change their biology.So we need to make sure that the law is clear and the public bodies follow the law, not guidance from organisations that don’t understand it.Asked if she thought gender recognition law should be rewritten, Badenoch, who was minister with women and equalities as her portfolio from October 2022 to July 2024, said:I think that a review of equality acts, and the Gender Recognition Act is a good idea

Ex-Reform MP Rupert Lowe to sue Nigel Farage for defamation

Rupert Lowe, the former Reform MP who lost the whip in March, has announced he will be suing Nigel Farage and two other senior party figures for defamation after they accused him of bullying staff and making verbal threats.Lowe, who now sits as an independent, said he was suing Farage, the Reform leader, along with Lee Anderson, its chief whip, and Zia Yusuf, the party chair, for comments he said had “caused serious harm to my reputation”.The Great Yarmouth MP was suspended after Anderson and Yusuf issued a joint statement saying the party had “received complaints from two female employees about serious bullying” in Lowe’s offices, and had at least twice made threats of violence against Yusuf.Lowe has vehemently rejected all the allegations, arguing that he was targeted after he used a media interview to call for changes to Reform so it was centred less around Farage’s “messianic” leadership.Later in March the Metropolitan police said they were investigating the alleged threats, which the force said took place between December 2024 and February 2025