Starmer jokes Farage was ‘first through e-gates in France' after skipping Brexit deal debate for holiday abroad
Sir Keir Starmer made a jab at Nigel Farage during Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday (21 May), stating that the Reform UK leader, who is currently holidaying in France, was 'first through the e-gates'.
Mr Farage missed a parliamentary debate on a Brexit reset yesterday, where the prime minister presented his new UK-EU deal, with access to e-gates being a crucial part of the agreement.
Speaking to Reform UK MP Lee Anderson in the House of Commons, Sir Keir said it was 'very good' to see him standing in for the Clacton MP.
Sir Keir's joke on e-gates was met with cheers from the Commons, and he followed the jab with the pun: 'Nice work if you can get it.'
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Telegraph
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Public sector employment swells to highest level in 14 years
Public sector employment has surged to the highest level in 14 years as Rachel Reeves prepares to unveil a £300bn spending spree this week. Almost 6.2m people were employed in the public sector in March, official figures show, 35,000 more than a year earlier. This is the highest number of public sector employees since December 2011. The figures from the Office for National Statistics came ahead of Ms Reeves's spending review on Wednesday, which is expected to offer big increases to defence and health while squeezing other departments. The Chancellor has raised departmental spending by nearly £400bn since Labour won the election. It comes as economists have warned more tax rises are 'inevitable' in autumn. The figures from the ONS also show that the number of civil servants is the highest since 2006, at 550,000, rising by 6,000 from a year earlier. This helped to push the total figure of central government workers to a record high of 4m, up by 93,000 from a year ago. The ONS said the rise was driven by the NHS, the Civil Service and some local authority schools becoming academies, which changes how their staff are classified in the numbers. While public sector hiring surged, the jobs downturn across the economy deepened as firms grappled with big tax and minimum wage hikes. The number of vacancies fell from 760,000 on average across February to April to 736,000 for the three months to May.
Times
32 minutes ago
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Reeves forced into U-turn over pensioner fuel payments
The U-turn, when it came, was even bigger than expected. Rachel Reeves decided to clear the decks before the spending review by announcing that nine million pensioners would receive winter fuel payments this winter. It was a move born of political necessity and that has little fiscal logic. When the chancellor announced that she was stripping ten million pensioners of the winter fuel allowance next year, she argued that it was fundamental to restoring economic stability. 'This is not a decision I wanted to make,' she said. 'Nor is it one that I expected to make. But these are the necessary and urgent decisions I must make. It is the responsible thing to do to fix the foundations of our economy and bring back economic stability.' On Tuesday, economists point out that the fiscal circumstances are, if anything, significantly worse. The reversal means that a policy intended to save £1.5 billion will now save only £50 million this year, at the expense of huge reserves of public goodwill and political capital. It will only add to pressure on the already ailing public finances. Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said the decision meant there would have to be tax rises or more cuts to welfare in the autumn budget. 'To suggest the fiscal situation has got a lot better flies in the face of reality,' he said. 'If they are saying this means there will not be any additional borrowing then it follows, as sure as night follows day, that this will mean they will need to raise the equivalent of an additional amount of tax.' It also means that Reeves has crossed another line. She had insisted that she would never make an unfunded spending pledge, arguing that to do so would be 'desperate and reckless'. That is exactly what she has now done, and the detail of how the about-turn will be paid for will be confirmed in the autumn budget. After the announcement on Monday, Reeves found herself trying to argue that she had been right in scrapping the universal payments in the first place while simultaneously trying to justify the change in position. It was not an easy circle to square. The decision was the result of a recognition in both No 10 and No 11 that cutting the allowance had been a mistake, although Reeves would not acknowledge that on Monday. During the local elections in May, Labour activists found the issue of winter fuel coming up again and again on the doorstep. Polling found that the decision was one of the main reasons voters deserted the party, whether they moved to Reform UK or to the Greens. • What to expect in Rachel Reeves's spend, spend, spending review Discussion about a reversal began in No 10 almost immediately, but was denied for weeks by the government. By the time Sir Keir Starmer was confronted over the 'toxic' policy by a succession of angry MPs at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party three weeks ago, it was clear that the position was beginning to shift. However, concern that there was a lack of detail about what would replace the previous policy quickly made clear that the government could not wait long before setting out a replacement. Ministers were determined to introduce a means test to avoid paying 'a few hundred pounds to millionaires', and officials struggled to graft one on to ageing computer systems in the Department for Work and Pensions. Eventually, it became clear that HM Revenue & Customs would have to be used, clawing payments back from wealthier pensioners through the tax system. This meant that a wish to base payments on household incomes had to be abandoned, as the system assesses only individual incomes. 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The Herald Scotland
an hour ago
- The Herald Scotland
Starmer's time will be up if he fails to address two crucial issues
Labour's by-election win wasn't a shock: it was a lottery. Davy Russell was, of course, elected under the first-past-the-post system, which works perfectly well when there are only two main candidates. But that's no longer the case and hasn't been for a long time. Westminster MPs are elected in the same way and our current Labour government has the benefit of a massive majority from only 34% of the vote on the second lowest turnout in almost 100 years. The Electoral Reform Society calculated that 28.8 million people voted and 27.5 million eligible to vote did not: almost the same amount. That in effect, is a 17% endorsement for Labour and certainly not representative. John Milne ("For many, politics isn't working") hits the nail on the head when he writes that 'politics in our country is not working for a significant element of our population' and warns of 'the inequalities and injustices in our society and economy'. UK politics isn't working, firstly, because the UK electoral system is so unrepresentative and, secondly, because of the widening gap between the wealthy and poor of our society that our politicians seem unable or. more likely, unwilling to correct. I should be a natural Labour supporter but the party led by Sir Keir Starmer and Anas Sarwar bears little resemblance to its founding principles. Evidently, many others feel the same and are turning to Reform UK in protest and, possibly, in the vain hope that its offer of change will work. Keir Starmer could fix the first problem by changing our undemocratic voting system. But if he continues to bury his head in the sand against the wishes of the majority of his party members, he might as well start writing his political obituary now. David Bruce, Troon. Read more letters: Why Labour should focus on the SNP Dr Gerald Edwards (letter, June 7) is mistaken that Reform were 'the real winners' and not Labour. who turned round a huge SNP majority and succeeded despite Reform splitting the vote. The winner is my old friend, Davy Russell, who heads off to Holyrood having fought a highly old-fashioned and much-derided campaign. He faced the public and convinced them that he could be trusted. He also made various so-called expert political commentators look very foolish. It was a disaster for the SNP by any measure, particularly since they marched into the count, chests out and totally confident of victory. It was a humiliation for the First Minister but Dr Edwards is correct to say that it was a very good result for Reform. However one major point is that both Unionist parties jointly polled over double the SNP vote. This was a very significant rejection of the SNP and their failures of the last 18 years. I've had various letters in the Herald forecasting the rise of Reform and the mistake of ridiculing them and disparaging Mr Farage. That won't help, and will only encourage people who are disillusioned to vote for them. Labour needs to focus on defeating SNP in Scotland and let Reform do their worst – best not to give them credibility. On a personal level I've known Davy for many years and can only pray that more genuine local candidates are pushed forward by Labour to ensure we can gain power at the Scottish elections next year. John Gilligan, Ayr. SNP's urgent priorities now The lesson from the Hamilton by-election result for the SNP is to let Labour and the Tories fight it out with Reform UK to represent the dwindling number of myopically indoctrinated supporters of the Union. The SNP must also focus on the critical argument that only independence can bring about a radical 'change in direction' for the UK through the constitutional change necessary to seriously address the fundamental problems confronting "broken Brexit Britain". The lesson for John Swinney is that it is now urgent that he arouse the passion and vigour for independence quietly dormant within him, or step aside, at least from the leadership of the SNP, and support an individual who can inspiringly lead the country to independence before the end of this decade. A majority of MSPs supporting independence in the next Scottish election must represent a mandate for the Scottish Parliament to hold a binding constitutional referendum which, if denied by the UK government, must legitimately underpin making the next General Election a 'de facto referendum' on independence. A majority of votes at the Scottish election must represent a mandate to commence independence negotiations should the UK government fail, over a maximum period of one year, to pass legislation enabling the Scottish Parliament to hold constitutional referenda. Manifestos of the SNP and the other independence parties should state both these commitments and the necessary actions that will follow should a resultant mandate be met with continued undemocratic intransigence by the UK government. Further procrastination by the UK government on implementing the democratically expressed wishes of the people of Scotland must not be accepted. To paraphrase the currently popular words of the Roman general, Vegetius, if you want true democracy, prepare to fight cynical totalitarianism. Stan Grodynski, Longniddry, East Lothian. No rest for the Hamilton voters I think it was Harold Wilson who said that a week is a long time in politics. He of course was right – and what a week we have seen in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse. First, we had the First Minister of Scotland claiming that only the SNP can beat Reform and stating that Labour cannot win here. Then we had Reform and Nigel Farage having to defend a campaign video condemned by rivals as 'blatantly racist', followed by Farage accusing Sarwar of introducing sectarianism into Scottish politics. Meanwhile, the voters who deliver the final verdict get on with their lives, thinking 'what have we done to deserve all of this?' The final verdict was delivered by the people who rejected Farage and Reform, rejected Swinney and the SNP and plumped for the local hero Davy Russell and Scottish Labour. I have to give huge credit to Anas Sarwar for his dignified response to Farage and Reform and his noble response to the SNP, which cosied up to Reform by attempting to give them credibility by describing the election as a two-horse race between them. The residents of Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse will be relieved that it is only a week that is a long time in politics as they get back to a bit of normality – forgetting it starts all over again in the first week of May 2026. Willie Young, Aberdeen. Time for Swinney to jack it in In his interview on BBC Scotland's The Sunday Show, John Swinney was still touchingly clinging to the independence panacea, citing polls claiming 54% support. That doesn't stack up with the Hamilton result. On a turnout of 44% the SNP got 30% of the votes – that's only 14% of the total electorate. Applying these numbers to the 4.3m voters of Scotland, their 2014 Indyref total of 1.6m votes plummets by one million to around 600,000. Come on John, you know it's over, so why not publicly announce you've jacked it in? Then Holyrood 2026 can be about which party has the best policies and candidates to halt the nosedive in our health, education, worklessness, Net Zero and public services. Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven. Sarwar was embarrassing Martin Geissler acquitted himself well in his Sunday Show interview with Labour's Anas Sarwar. But that is more than could be said for Sarwar, who was unsatisfactory. He rattled off criticisms of the SNP (not all of them undeserved) but when it came to defending Labour's record in office, its policies and its U-turns he spoke very quickly and without much in the way of conviction. Asked how Labour could put more money into people's pockets, he outlined, in the space of a few seconds, various measures but declined to elaborate and then quickly detoured into the NHS, Swinney and Farage. Geissler tried to pin him down but Sarwar didn't seem to listen to the questions that a hard-pressed electorate deserves serious responses to. Were I a Labour voter I would be embarrassed by Sarwar's painfully thin and cliched answers. S. McArthur, Glasgow.
