Badenoch apologises for native election outcomes as Reform warned there are ‘no easy solutions’ – UK politics dwell | Politics
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Badenoch apologises for native election ‘massacre’ in op-ed
Kemi Badenoch has apologised for the “massacre” of the native elections in an op-ed piece on Saturday for the Telegraph.
The Conservative occasion chief wote:
After final yr’s historic defeat, and with protest votes slicing throughout each poll field, we knew Thursday could be exhausting. I’m deeply sorry to see so many succesful, hard-working Conservative councillors lose their seats. They didn’t deserve it – and so they weren’t the explanation we misplaced.
Within the piece, Badenoch defined that as occasion members have been voting within the closing spherical of the Conservative occasion management contest, an unnamed male MP took her apart in parliament and warned “the Might 2025 locals are going to be a complete massacre”. She acknowledged that the prediction was proper: “The outcomes verify he was appropriate. However to be trustworthy, it wasn’t a controversial prediction to make.”
She added:
These native election outcomes present the size of the work wanted to rebuild belief within the Conservative occasion and the significance of redoubling our efforts to indicate that this occasion is below new management and is doing issues otherwise.
Key occasions
Paula Surridge
Reform UK’s victories are simply the most recent chapter of political fragmentation, writes Prof Paula Surridge, the deputy director at UK in a Altering Europe and professor of political sociology on the College of Bristol.
Nigel Farage’s occasion has benefited this time as voters flee the primary events, however there are faultlines inside its personal coalition too, Surridge provides. You may learn Surridge’s full evaluation right here:
Helen Livingstone
Saturday papers within the UK have been dominated by the Reform occasion’s victory on the polls, wherein it gained an MP at Labour’s expense and received a string of native councils.
A jubilant Nigel Farage stated his hard-right populist occasion had now supplanted the Conservatives and pledged that Reform-run councils and mayoralties would block asylum seeker lodging and dismantle equalities programmes.
The Guardian’s entrance web page led with “Reform wins ‘starting of finish for Tories’, says Farage”, including that it was a “sobering day” for prime minister Keir Starmer and Conservative chief Kemi Badenoch.
You may see how different papers reported on the native elections right here:
Headteachers’ union takes authorized motion in opposition to Ofsted over inspection adjustments
Richard Adams
Headteachers are taking authorized motion in opposition to Ofsted, England’s faculties watchdog, over fears that its new inspection regime is “even worse than earlier than” and prone to hurt the psychological well being of college leaders.
The Nationwide Affiliation of Head Lecturers stated it had lodged a declare for a judicial assessment in opposition to Ofsted “over the potential influence of their inspection proposals” and for insufficient session over its new system of grading faculties.
Ofsted’s inspection regime has been mired in controversy because the 2023 demise by suicide of the headteacher Ruth Perry, with a coroner discovering that Perry’s demise was “contributed to by an Ofsted inspection”.
Paul Whiteman, the NAHT’s basic secretary, stated:
In some way the deal with faculty chief psychological well being and wellbeing has bought misplaced alongside the way in which throughout Ofsted’s session course of.
We should not overlook that the catalyst for these adjustments was the tragic demise of Ruth Perry and widespread acceptance that the inspection regime was putting faculty leaders below insupportable stress. Nevertheless, there seems to have been little or no thought given to the influence on the wellbeing of college leaders within the drawing up of those plans and the session that adopted.
Faculty leaders are deeply involved that the brand new report playing cards might end in an excellent worse system than earlier than, with doubtlessly disastrous influence on workload, wellbeing and retention.
We’ve got tried participating with Ofsted and explaining this, however up to now these considerations have fallen largely on deaf ears. We’ve got been left with little selection apart from to pursue this motion.
The Guardian has additionally simply launched a visible investigation into the Victorian prisons in England and Wales. It has been created by Ana Lucía González Paz and Rajeev Syal, with design and graphics by Garry Blight, Paul Scruton, Lucy Swan and Harvey Symons. You may discover it by way of the hyperlink under:
Cramped Victorian prisons limiting rehabilitation, chief inspector says
Rajeev Syal
The cramped circumstances of Victorian prisons in England and Wales are limiting the rehabilitation alternatives for 1000’s of offenders, an official watchdog has stated.
Because the Guardian launches a visible investigation into the state of Victorian prisons in inside cities and cities, the chief inspector of prisons, Charlie Taylor, stated nineteenth century jails is also “extremely noisy and distressing” for autistic folks.
His phrases come after a sequence of warnings from the justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, that England and Wales’s Jail Service was in disaster, resulting in the early launch of 1000’s of prisoners this autumn.
Taylor’s annual report in September confirmed that many prisons have been severely overcrowded and understaffed, with 30 out of 32 closed prisons rated as poor or insufficiently good.
Many are overrun with rats and cockroaches and have been infiltrated by drug gangs.
Taylor, who has beforehand described Victorian prisons as “barely match for function”, stated that most of the older prisons – about 10% of 122 throughout England and Wales – struggled to rehabilitate offenders.
“These prisons are already overcrowded, and are typically on pretty small footprints. Once you have a look at prisons like Leicester or Bedford, they’re minute jails. There may be little or no workspace for training and coaching,” he stated. “If the jail inhabitants can also be double what it as soon as was, then that’s by no means best to have the ability to do something that could be vaguely considered rehabilitative.”
A senior Tory MP has insisted Kemi Badenoch will nonetheless be the occasion’s chief in a yr’s time after the Conservatives misplaced greater than 600 councillors in native elections.
Shadow chief treasury secretary Richard Fuller additionally dominated out a future pact with Reform UK on a nationwide stage after the occasion made sweeping features, reviews the PA information company.
Requested on BBC Radio 4’s In the present day programme how lengthy Badenoch has to provide you with solutions and if we’re going to see her in publish in a yr, he stated “after all we’re”.
On whether or not the Tories may have to have a look at a pact with Reform UK to get Keir Starmer out on the subsequent basic election, he stated:
There received’t be pacts. Nigel Farage has been very clear that he needs to destroy the Conservative occasion.
Jessica Elgot
In every week of inauspicious native elections, there was a particular visitor in No 10 to present a pep speak to workers: Arsène Wenger, the previous supervisor of Arsenal, beloved of the prime minister. Keir Starmer has sought his recommendation earlier than, on the significance of constructing a group. And so they have confronted some widespread challenges, rebuilding their golf equipment and events from low ebbs to extraordinary success.
Now Starmer could face an identical problem – and criticism – to Wenger in his later years: whether or not he can adapt his tactical rigidity when outcomes begin to endure.
To date, a profitable technique has been to win again Conservative switchers and working-class voters whom the occasion was felt to have deserted. That has morphed into deep concern about the specter of Reform UK. In Runcorn and Helsby, misplaced by an agonising six votes having been one among Labour’s most secure seats, Reform confirmed the way it might prove its machine.
However cupboard ministers have instructed the Guardian they’re involved that Labour’s personal pendulum has swung too far and is alienating their very own voters. In that very same seat, Labour retained simply 55% of its vote, suggesting lots of its personal voters didn’t prove. The Greens, nevertheless, clung on to their vote from final July.
Nigel Farage could loom massive as the largest risk in a few of Labour’s most susceptible seats within the north and the Midlands. However MPs and ministers concern the risk in these seats of Labour staying at residence and shedding votes to the Greens, Liberal Democrats and independents might simply as simply be the issue that might ship seats to Reform, as extra Conservative voters swap to Farage.
Badenoch apologises for native election ‘massacre’ in op-ed
Kemi Badenoch has apologised for the “massacre” of the native elections in an op-ed piece on Saturday for the Telegraph.
The Conservative occasion chief wote:
After final yr’s historic defeat, and with protest votes slicing throughout each poll field, we knew Thursday could be exhausting. I’m deeply sorry to see so many succesful, hard-working Conservative councillors lose their seats. They didn’t deserve it – and so they weren’t the explanation we misplaced.
Within the piece, Badenoch defined that as occasion members have been voting within the closing spherical of the Conservative occasion management contest, an unnamed male MP took her apart in parliament and warned “the Might 2025 locals are going to be a complete massacre”. She acknowledged that the prediction was proper: “The outcomes verify he was appropriate. However to be trustworthy, it wasn’t a controversial prediction to make.”
She added:
These native election outcomes present the size of the work wanted to rebuild belief within the Conservative occasion and the significance of redoubling our efforts to indicate that this occasion is below new management and is doing issues otherwise.
Labour MP Rachael Maskell has urged her occasion to scrap winter gasoline and welfare insurance policies that she stated are pushing voters away, reviews the PA information company.
The York Central MP instructed BBC Breakfast that Labour has “particular tasks” to serve the wants of individuals.
She stated:
We’re not another political occasion, we have been created to serve the wants of individuals throughout working areas of our nation so that individuals had an actual voice of the sort of change that they wished to see.
I believe it’s now time, if Labour are going to go additional quicker, to select up that voice, to place our fingers on the heartbeat and to grasp that that accountability that the 1945 authorities set out placing that security web in place on the welfare state is on our watch and is our accountability.
So, scrapping these proposals to push disabled folks into hardship is a fully essential a part of that change, displaying that we’re going to be listening to the nation and defending the folks at their time of want.
After all we wish to get extra folks into work. After all the adjustments to the well being system is de facto essential … but additionally we’ve bought to assist folks and take care of folks as we go on that journey.
She added:
Individuals went chilly final winter and that’s not what a Labour authorities must be doing.
We’ve got bought that mandate, I consider, as a celebration to have a look at how we will higher redistribute wealth, versus taking out of the pockets of the poorest.
Starmer says he needs ‘nationwide renewal’ and that ‘change on that scale will take time’
Keir Starmer has stated he needs “nationwide renewal” and that “change on that scale will take time”, in a Saturday op-ed for the Occasions.
The prime minister wrote:
Briefly I would like nationwide renewal. However that may solely be constructed if folks throughout the nation have safety of their lives and that can solely occur if we have now a safe economic system, a safe well being service and safe borders. Change on that scale will take time. However it’s my focus, now and every single day forward.
He added:
The lesson of those elections isn’t that the nation wants extra politicians’ guarantees or ideological zealotry. It isn’t that there’s some straightforward resolution, as promised by our opponents. It’s that now could be the time to crank up the tempo on giving folks the nation they’re crying out for.
A Labour MP has advised that voters shunned her occasion in native elections as a result of it has did not dwell as much as the values the general public expects from a Labour authorities.
York Central MP Rachael Maskell stated Labour must be pushed by “a framework of values, which is about defending folks, serving to folks to maneuver ahead of their lives and guaranteeing you’ve bought these public companies prepared and dealing so that individuals can have that assist after they want it”.
“That’s what Labour governments do,” she instructed BBC Breakfast. She added:
I consider that when Labour doesn’t meet that candy spot, that expectation that individuals have of a Labour authorities, then they begin to look in much less beneficial locations for the place that assist comes from.
Yesterday, many individuals have been trying to find that response, to search out that safety, to get that assist. However, sadly, if Labour weren’t providing that, they’d look elsewhere.
That’s why Labour have gotten to be taught from the outcomes yesterday and be sure that we do meet the wants of individuals on this nation in very, very making an attempt instances.
‘No easy solutions’ for Reform UK, says senior Tory
Reform UK will discover on the market are “no easy solutions” to native public funds and must make “troublesome decisions” after the occasion surged in native elections, a senior Tory MP has stated.
Richard Fuller, shadow chief treasury secretary, stated it was now as much as Nigel Farage’s occasion to see if they will ship within the areas the place they’ve received council seats and mayoral polls.
In line with the PA information company, Fuller instructed GB Information:
We’ve got to acknowledge Reform did very nicely yesterday.
They received the Runcorn byelection off Labour. They’ve received some mayoralties and now they are going to get the prospect to indicate what they will truly do after they give them energy.
So, now not pointing at issues, however truly there to try to discover options, albeit on a neighborhood stage, to assist the folks in Lincolnshire or Hull, the place they’ve taken over the mayoralties.
And different areas the place they’ve taken management of the council.
They’ll discover out, Reform will discover out, I believe, that there are not any easy solutions regionally to public funds at native authorities stage, they’ll must make some troublesome decisions and the native public will … maintain them to account for the choices they make.
Farage has beforehand advised each county council “wants a Doge” – a reference to Elon Musk’s cost-cutting Division of Authorities Effectivity (Doge) within the US.
Talking on the BBC’s In the present day programme on Saturday, ex-GB information host Darren Grimes, who received a seat on Durham county council for Reform UK, stated: “On day one among being in management, we’re get the auditors in.” Extra on this story in a second, however first, here’s a abstract of the most recent updates:
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Nigel Farage hailed Friday’s native election outcomes as “the top of two-party politics” and “the demise of the Conservative occasion” as Reform UK picked up 10 councils and greater than 600 seats in Thursday’s ballot.
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Kemi Badenoch apologised to defeated Conservative councillors after the Tories misplaced greater than 600 councillors and all 15 of the councils it managed going into the election, among the many worst ends in the occasion’s historical past. Conservative figures have sought to disclaim that the outcomes are “existential” for the occasion.
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A number of Labour figures have known as on the prime minister to alter course after Reform UK received the Runcorn and Helsby byelection by six votes and took management of the beforehand Labour-run Doncaster Council. Backbench MP Emma Lewell, who has represented South Shields since 2013, stated it was “tone deaf to maintain repeating we are going to transfer additional and quicker on our plan for change. What is required is a change of plan.”
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Keir Starmer warned in opposition to events providing “some easy, ideological repair”. In a Saturday op-ed for the Occasions, Starmer wrote that he wished “nationwide renewal”. He added: “However that may solely be constructed if folks throughout the nation have safety of their lives and that can solely occur if we have now a safe economic system, a safe well being service and safe borders. Change on that scale will take time.”
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In additional indicators of fracturing political loyalties, a BBC projection of how the voting would have seemed in a UK-wide election put Reform first on 30%, Labour on 20%, the Liberal Democrats on 17%, the Conservatives fourth with 15% and the Greens on 11%.
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After shedding his authorized problem over private safety, the Duke of Sussex, has appealed to the prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the house secretary, Yvette Cooper. Requested whether or not Starmer ought to “step in”, he replied: “Sure, I might ask the prime minister to step in.” He then stated: “I might ask Yvette Cooper, the house secretary, to have a look at this very, very fastidiously and I might ask her to assessment Ravec [Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures] and its members.”
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The cramped circumstances of Victorian prisons in England and Wales are limiting the rehabilitation alternatives for 1000’s of offenders, an official watchdog has stated. Because the Guardian launches a visible investigation into the state of Victorian prisons in inside cities and cities, the chief inspector of prisons, Charlie Taylor, stated nineteenth century jails is also “extremely noisy and distressing” for autistic folks.
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