
Farage would appoint Reform UK cabinet ministers from outside House of Commons
Farage dismissed the idea that ministers must be politicians in the House of Commons as "nonsense," drawing comparisons to the US system where cabinet members often lack prior electoral experience.
He expressed his ambition to become Prime Minister, asserting that he is the only one with the courage to address the country's difficult issues and turn things around.
During a phone-in, Farage described same-sex marriage as a "settled issue" and found a recent Commons vote to decriminalise abortions after 24 weeks "disturbing."
Farage also called for US President Donald Trump to be permitted to address Parliament during his upcoming visit to the UK.
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Channel 4
9 minutes ago
- Channel 4
Trump threatens severe consequences if Putin doesn't end war
Today's virtual summit was the last chance for Europeans to sway Donald Trump before the showdown in Anchorage with the Russian President. But while Europe's leaders emerged from the meeting optimistically restating Ukraine's goals, it may amount to very little. None of them are set to be in the room when Trump and Putin go face to face.


Reuters
10 minutes ago
- Reuters
Trump wants to extend federal control over Washington police
WASHINGTON, Aug 13 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would ask congressional Republicans to extend federal control of Washington's city police force beyond 30 days, escalating his campaign to exert presidential power over the nation's capital. Trump also asserted that any congressional action could serve as a model for other U.S. cities. He has previously threatened to expand his efforts to other Democratic-run cities such as Chicago that he claims have failed to address crime. It was not clear how Trump's takeover of Washington's Metropolitan Police Department could be replicated elsewhere. In seizing control on Monday, Trump took advantage of a federal law, the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, that permits the president to do so under emergency circumstances for up to 30 days. Trump also announced on Monday that he was deploying 800 National Guard troops to the city, a tactic he employed in Los Angeles in June when he mobilized thousands of Guard soldiers and hundreds of U.S. Marines in response to protests over his administration's immigration raids. Separately, hundreds of federal officers and agents from more than a dozen agencies have fanned out across Washington in recent days. Trump's extraordinary moves in Washington are reflective of how he has approached his second term in office, shattering political norms and legal concerns to test the limits of his office's power. The Republican president has claimed the U.S. capital is gripped by a wave of violent crime and pervasive homelessness, despite both federal and city crime statistics showing that violent crime has declined precipitously since a spike in 2023. The office of Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, declined to respond on Trump's latest comments. Bowser has sought to strike a diplomatic tone, even as she has cited statistics showing the city's violent crime rate hit a 30-year low last year. More than 1,450 law enforcement personnel were on patrol in Washington on Tuesday night, a White House official said, including 30 National Guard troops and 750 city police officers assigned to the "anti-crime" operation. The official said the White House expects a "significantly higher" presence of Guard soldiers on Wednesday night. The effort has resulted in 103 arrests since Aug. 7, which includes 43 on Tuesday, the official said. The charges include one homicide charge, 33 firearms charges and 23 immigration charges, the official said, and have led to 24 seized firearms. During the same period in 2024, the Metropolitan Police Department arrested 364 people in total, police data shows, including traffic and liquor law violations as well as murder, prostitution, carjacking, assault, theft, burglary and robbery. The MPD data shows that police made 20,386 adult arrests in 2024, an average of 56 arrests a day. As of Tuesday, city officials said they were still in command of the department and had received no new orders from the administration, the Washington Post reported. The Metropolitan Police Department on Wednesday referred all questions about arrests involving federal agents to the White House. Asked for comment on Trump's call for congressional action, House Speaker Mike Johnson's office pointed to his social media response to the president's action on Monday: "President Trump is RIGHT. We can't allow crime to destroy our Nation's Capital." However, any legislation to extend Trump's control over the police department would likely fail in the Senate, where Democrats can use procedural rules to block most bills. Trump told reporters on Wednesday that if Congress fails to act, he can declare a "national emergency" to extend the 30-day limit, though legal experts expressed skepticism about that claim. "There's nothing about the president extending past 30 days unilaterally," Claire Finkelstein, a University of Pennsylvania law professor, said of the Home Rule Act. "If the 30 days are up, that's that." The president has used emergency declarations to justify numerous unprecedented executive actions, including historically high tariffs on foreign imports and his wide-ranging immigration crackdown. Many have drawn lawsuits challenging his authority. In both Washington and Los Angeles, Trump bypassed or ignored objections from elected local leaders. A federal trial on whether Trump violated the law in Los Angeles by calling up the National Guard over the objections of Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom is underway in San Francisco.


The Guardian
10 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Yvette Cooper solves one headache for justice system but may have caused another
By getting her way and allowing police to consider disclosing the ethnicity and nationality of suspects charged in high-profile cases, Yvette Cooper has solved one enormous headache for the criminal justice system. But she may have caused another, which could have consequences for race relations. The home secretary has encouraged senior police officers to free themselves of longstanding protocols so they can combat the prolific use of social media by far-right bloggers and organisations that have escalated disinformation around high-profile incidents. Last summer's national riots were fomented from an early stage by misinformation about the Southport killer – he was claimed, in posts recycled tens of thousands of times, to be a Muslim, foreign-born and an asylum seeker. All three statements turned out to be wrong. Until today, there was nothing in the College of Policing's guidance that actually prevented police giving information about the nationality, asylum status or even ethnicity of someone who has been charged. The police are restricted as to what they can say about suspects. But the guidance on media relations – and what would be released to the public – said that if someone was arrested, police should only give the suspect's gender and age. Once a suspect was charged, the guidance said police could give out the suspect's name, date of birth and address. Before 2012, police forces made decisions on what information to give to the media on a purely case-by-case basis, decisions often made depending on the force's relationship with individual journalists and media outlets. But it was Lord Leveson's damning 2012 report into press ethics that prompted police forces to become more cautious because of concerns that releasing the ethnicity of suspects could be used to feed false narratives. Leveson examined testimony from the National Union of Journalists claiming that some national newsrooms openly encouraged racist reporting. One reporter was told by the news editor to 'write a story about Britain being flooded by asylum-seeking bummers', another was told to 'make stories as rightwing as you can' and another was told to go out and find Muslim women to photograph, with the instruction: 'Just fucking do it. Wrap yourself around a group of women in burkas for a photo,' the testimony said. He examined numerous reports including a Daily Star article under the headline 'Asylum seekers eat our donkeys,' which claimed that donkey meat was a speciality in Somalia and eastern Europe and blamed asylum seekers, without any evidence. Leveson concluded that 'when assessed as a whole, the evidence of discriminatory, sensational or unbalanced reporting in relation to ethnic minorities, immigrants and/or asylum seekers, is concerning.' Fast-forward 12 years to Southport, and Merseyside police were left making decisions on whether to release information on the ethnicity and nationality of the killer of three young girls in order to dispel public anger that had spilled on to the streets. Senior officers had to deal with major criminal incidents and took days to dispel social media untruths. Such disinformation was at least partly responsible for last summer's riots. At the time, Merseyside police said they were not giving out more information because of the contempt of court rules. It is hoped that the new guidance will mean police will no longer be left flat-footed when responding to viral social media posts by extremists. Decisions on releasing such information will remain with police forces, with wider legal and ethical considerations also taken into account, the National Police Chiefs' Council said, but verifying a suspect's immigration status is up to the Home Office. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion There is concern among some former police and race campaigners that Cooper's change will undo the restrictions imposed after Leveson and fuel racist sentiments. The former Met chief superintendent Dal Babu has warned of the 'unintended consequences' of the new guidance, which he said could lead to more online speculation in cases where these details are not released. 'The danger is there will be an expectation for police to release information on every single occasion,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. The Home Office insists that it will not be encouraging the release of ethnicity and immigration status in all cases, and there are notable occasions when it has not. But a former race adviser to No 10 told the Guardian: 'Yvette has unwittingly opened a Pandora's box. After every charge, everyone with a union jack on their X bio will demand from the police the ethnicity of the suspect. 'The Home Office is going to to get even more demands for the asylum status of every black or brown suspect. It is going to be chaos, and has handed Nigel Farage another stick to beat Labour with.' There could well be a knock-on effect on mainstream reporting and community relations, campaigners believe. Enny Choudhury, from the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said: 'Releasing the ethnicity of everyone suspected of serious crimes will do nothing to help victims or secure justice – it will simply fuel mistrust, deepen divisions, and make Black and brown communities more vulnerable to prejudice and harm.'