UK government insists it is ‘taking time to get this right’ on single-sex spaces

The UK government has insisted it will take as much time as necessary to “get right” new rules on access to single-sex spaces after a leak of guidance submitted by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) raised concerns that its publication was being deliberately delayed.The equalities watchdog submitted its formal guidance on how public bodies, businesses and other service providers should respond to April’s landmark supreme court ruling on biological sex to the UK government in September. Since then, its outgoing chair, Kishwer Falkner, has urged the equalities minister, Bridget Phillipson, to approve it “as soon as possible”.Ministers are still considering the final guidance, which must be approved by Phillipson before being laid before parliament. Phillipson said on Thursday she was going through it “thoroughly and carefully”

Joy Crookes says UK and Ireland in ‘dark time’ amid rise of far-right politics

The UK and Ireland are entering a “dark time”, according to the singer Joy Crookes, who said the influence of far-right ideology on mainstream politics was comparable to the 1970s when the National Front was at its peak.Crookes, who has just played two sold-out shows at the O2 Academy in Brixton, said the recent wave of nationalism and the far-right march through central London in September made her feel unsafe in the UK.“I’m not blind to the political kind of landscape that we’re living in right now and I myself am a child of immigrants,” she said. “I travelled to central London to go shopping and ran into a bunch of St George’s flags. It doesn’t make me feel safe

Could you do better than Reeves as chancellor? Play our interactive budget game

On 26 November, Rachel Reeves will deliver this year’s budget to parliament. As in all years, the chancellor has to strike a balance between:Raising the money needed to fund the services that voters demand.Keeping taxes at levels that are acceptable to voters.Persuading the government’s creditors in the bond markets that it will continue to be able to pay its debts.In our game you get to try your hand at designing a successful budget

Reform’s Welsh hopes damaged after Senedd member suspended for ‘vile’ racial slur

Reform UK’s only member of the Welsh parliament has been suspended for two weeks over a racial slur she posted in an office WhatsApp group.Laura Anne Jones used an offensive Chinese slur in a discussion about the threat of the Chinese government utilising TikTok for espionage.On Wednesday evening, the Welsh parliament voted for Jones, who defected from the Tories to Reform in the summer, to be suspended for a fortnight without pay.Jones’s suspension is a blow for Reform, which has high hopes of making dramatic gains in next year’s Senedd elections.When Jones joined Reform, its leader, Nigel Farage, said the party was confident the allegations against her would “all go away”

No 10 calls on Farage to urgently address ‘disturbing allegations’ of past racist behaviour

Keir Starmer has called on Nigel Farage to urgently address multiple and detailed allegations of racist behaviour during his teenage years, as the Reform leader attempted to dismiss the claims as “one person’s word against another”.Pressure was put on Farage by the prime minister over what Downing Street said were “disturbing allegations” after the Guardian reported the testimony of more than a dozen school contemporaries, including an award-winning director who claimed to have been targeted with antisemitic abuse.In the face of concerns raised by Labour, the Liberal Democrats and an extremism adviser to the last Conservative government, Farage’s spokesperson on Wednesday appeared to question whether it would be possible to remember events from the 1970s and early 1980s.“If things like this happened a very, very long time ago, you can’t necessarily recollect what happened,” the spokesperson claimed.Speaking in the Commons after a question from the Reform MP Lee Anderson at prime minister’s questions, Starmer said Farage needed to personally explain himself in the light of the Guardian’s reporting

China’s power play: MI5 warns of relentless espionage attempts in Britain

An unexpected connection on LinkedIn. An offer of work from a headhunter, most likely a young woman, based in China. The chance to earn perhaps £20,000 part-time writing a handful of geopolitical reports for a Chinese company peppered with “non-public” or “insider” insights. Payment in cryptocurrency or cash preferred.It may seem obvious, on this telling, that something about this approach would be amiss