Author: MoorningTimes

Introduction: Reeves to respond to spring forecast after oil and gas prices surgeGood morning.“Events, dear boy, events”. Rachel Reeves may have the (probably apocryphal, oft-quoted) wisdom of Harold Macmillan in mind today, as she responds to the latest official assessment of the UK economy.The Office for Budget Responsibility’s new Spring Forecast could, in happier times, have brought the chancellor good news this afternoon.Economists predict they will show that the UK is still keeping within the OBR’s fiscal forecasts – helped by a record budget surplus in January – and that inflation is heading down towards target.However, the Middle East crisis…

Soaring global energy prices as a result of the widening Middle East conflict will jeopardise Rachel Reeves’s plan to conquer inflation and rekindle growth, economists have warned as she prepares to deliver her spring forecast later today.Responding to the latest projections from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the chancellor will insist she has “the right economic plan for our country, in a world that has become more uncertain”.The new forecasts are expected to show the public finances moving in the right direction, with the £22bn fiscal buffer she left herself against her fiscal rules in the November budget…

Shabana Mahmood’s decision to tell every person applying for asylum from Monday that their status is temporary could undermine the refugee convention, the Law Society has said.The body representing solicitors in England and Wales said the home secretary’s move to review every refugee’s status after 30 months was “in tension” with the UK’s legal obligations.Keir Starmer’s government is preparing to announce a series of hardline policies that are meant to deter people from travelling to the UK to claim asylum.Mahmood, who is closely associated with the Blue Labour wing of her party, has faced a backlash from MPs, peers and…

Tony Blair’s support for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 has long loomed like a spectre over the Labour party.It was present in 2013 when Ed Miliband as opposition leader voted to block UK military action against the Syrian regime.And it was there again on Monday when Keir Starmer assured MPs that the government remembered the “mistakes of Iraq” and would always operate on a “lawful basis” and with a “viable thought-through plan”to the crisis erupting in the Middle East.The implication from the prime minister was clear: he does not think the initial US and Israeli strikes against Iran…

The basic annual salary of MPs will soon rise to £110,000, the expenses watchdog has said, on the grounds of increased abuse and intimidation as well as growing constituency workloads.This April, MPs’ basic pay will rise by almost £5,000 to £98,599, a jump of 5% – and it is expected to reach £110,000 by the end of the parliament.The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) said the pay had been benchmarked against other similar roles in the public sector as well as parliamentarians around the world in similar democracies.It awarded an increase that was significantly above inflation – a 3.5% increase…

RAF airbase in Cyprus hit as Cooper defends decision to allow US to use UK bases for Iran strikesGood morning and welcome to today’s live coverage.Just hours after Keir Starmer said that the UK has allowed the US use British military bases to attack Iranian missile sites, the RAF Akrotiri base in Cyprus was hit by a suspected drone strike.Foreign secretary Yvette Cooper, who has been making the rounds on the morning shows, confirmed the strike on the Akrotiri base but did not provide any more details. Cypriot authorities and the Ministry of Defence have said that there were no…

It is “simply not true” that the UK is being dragged into another Iraq-style conflict in the Middle East, Yvette Cooper has said, after an RAF base in Cyprus was struck by an Iranian drone.The attack was part of a barrage of strikes by Tehran around the Middle East following a US-Israeli attack on Saturday that killed the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The UK foreign secretary confirmed ministers were considering possible plans to evacuate about 300,000 Britons from the region.Britain had no involvement in the initial attack but in a statement late on Sunday, Keir Starmer said he…

The UK has agreed to let the US use British military bases to attack Iranian missile sites, Keir Starmer has said.The UK has so far not been involved in the US-Israeli strikes on Iran, but in a recorded statement on Sunday evening, the prime minister said that Iran’s approach was becoming more reckless and putting British lives at risk, leading to the decision to allow the US to use two of its military bases.Within hours of the prime minister’s statement, the UK’s Akrotiri air force base in Cyprus was reportedly hit by a drone, with reportedly only “minor damage” and…

Hundreds of teenagers will be enlisted to trial social media bans in the coming months with overnight digital curfews and daily screen time limits also tested as part of Keir Starmer’s plan to crack down on the negative effects of smartphone use.The trials will be part of a three-month consultation launched this week that could lead to an outright ban on social media for under-16s similar to that introduced in Australia. Ministers have said they are ready to toughen laws just six months after the introduction of child protection measures in the Online Safety Act.“There is growing agreement that more…

Rachel Reeves must reform the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to open the way to more public investment, an alliance of thinktanks has argued ahead of the chancellor’s spring forecast on Tuesday.With Keir Starmer’s government under intense pressure after Labour’s defeat by the Greens in Thursday’s Gorton and Denton byelection, the thinktanks called on Reeves to review the watchdog’s remit.The coalition includes the Labour group Progress, usually considered on the right of the party, the leftwing thinktanks the New Economics Foundation (NEF) and Common Wealth, and the feminist Women’s Budget Group.They said: “It has become increasingly clear that our current…