Author: MoorningTimes

Datacentre developers are facing pressure to reveal whether their projects will increase the UK’s net greenhouse gas emissions, amid concerns the sites could double national electricity demand.Campaign groups have written to the UK technology secretary, Liz Kendall, warning that the energy required by new AI infrastructure poses a “serious threat to efforts to decarbonise the electricity grid”.Developers should demonstrate that their projects will not cause an increase in the UK’s overall CO2 emissions or local water scarcity, as part of a forthcoming national policy statement (NPS) on datacentres, the letter says.“Without these commitments, such vast electricity use will inevitably generate…

Politicians tend to hate being boring but Rachel Reeves will be delighted if Tuesday’s spring forecast is judged by voters and financial markets to be reassuringly dull.After Labour’s catastrophic Gorton and Denton byelection result, the chancellor’s future, along with that of the prime minister, is on the line, as backbench MPs fret about the party’s electoral prospects.As Mujtaba Rahman of the consultancy Eurasia Group put it on Friday: “Like [Keir] Starmer, the chancellor is also fighting for her political life” – whether because the prime minister himself falls, or chooses to move his chancellor in a reset reshuffle.Against that backdrop,…

The home secretary’s decision to double down on hardline immigration reforms in light of Labour’s byelection defeat to the Green party is “disappointing”, according to the Labour peer Alf Dubs.Lord Dubs, a child refugee who fled Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia on the Kindertransport in 1939, had previously accused Shabana Mahmood of “pulling up the drawbridge” on child migrants.Hannah Spencer, a plumber and Green councillor, won the previously safe Labour seat of Gorton and Denton in east Manchester on Thursday, overturning a majority of 13,000. The Labour candidate, Angeliki Stogia, came third, behind Reform UK’s Matt Goodwin.Labour has been accused of alienating voters…

The leader of Plaid Cymru has described the prospect of leading the next government in Wales as “a heck of a task” but that he senses voters are increasingly driven by their Welsh identity and may be ready for Britain to be “redesigned”.Speaking to the Guardian as he published a glossy 60-page “roadmap” for his party’s first 100 days in government, if it takes power in May, Rhun ap Iorwerth said he was ready to lead the devolved administration in Cardiff but would work with other parties if he did not win a majority.Ap Iorwerth said publishing the document at…

Andy Burnham would have won the Gorton and Denton byelection, Labour’s deputy leader said as she called for the party to make more use of the Greater Manchester mayor.Overturning a 13,000 Labour majority from the general election, Hannah Spencer, a local plumber and Green councillor, became the party’s fifth MP on Friday in an area that had returned Labour MPs for nearly a century.Reform UK’s Matt Goodwin was second, just ahead of the Labour candidate, Angeliki Stogia.The result has prompted renewed questioning of the party’s decision to block Burnham from contesting the seat last month.Speaking to the BBC’s Newscast podcast,…

The Labour minister Josh Simons has resigned from the government after the Guardian revealed that he falsely linked reporters to a “pro-Kremlin” network in emails to GCHQ despite having claimed to be “surprised” and “furious” about a PR firm’s investigation into their journalism.Simons, who had been a Cabinet Office minister, previously ran the thinktank Labour Together. He quit on Saturday, saying his position in office had become “a distraction from this government’s important work.”The Makerfield MP had faced mounting pressure over his role in Labour Together’s commissioning of the lobbying and public affairs agency APCO to investigate journalists reporting on…

For anyone who attended university in England in the last 15 or so years, the idea of student loans feeling like some sort of debt trap is hardly news. But three weeks ago, when the journalist Oli Dugmore discussed this on the BBC’s Question Time, it felt like a moment.It was less the size of the initial debt, he explained, than the way above-inflation interest rates meant the interest charged alone was now almost as much as the original sum. “So was it mis-sold to me?” he asked, rhetorically. “Yes, I’d say so.”Dugmore’s story is far from unique. Last month,…

Keir Starmer is chairing a meeting of the UK government’s Cobra emergency committee as Britain decides how to respond to the US-Israeli bombing of Iran, and Tehran’s retaliation against bases in the Gulf.The UK did not participate in the first wave of strikes early on Saturday but had deployed RAF Typhoons to Qatar to protect the al-Udeid airbase in the country and other allied military facilities in the region.Smoke rises in Tehran after US and Israel launch joint attack on Iran – videoBritish nationals in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates were advised to immediately shelter in place…

The Green party’s success at winning Muslim votes in Gorton and Denton has sent tremors through Westminster, prompting recriminations and accusations from opposition parties, who sense another major realignment in British politics.Experts say Hannah Spencer’s unexpectedly wide margin of victory was delivered in part by a significant shift of Muslim voters from Labour to the Greens.Labour and Reform UK have accused the Greens of playing sectarian politics, highlighting the party’s use of the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, in campaign materials, its endorsement by George Galloway and accusations of voter manipulation.Keir Starmer wrote to Labour MPs on Friday telling them:…

The Greens have every reason to celebrate their victory in the Gorton and Denton byelection. From a standing start in a Manchester constituency, Zack Polanski’s team tripled his party’s vote to capture a seat that had effectively voted Labour in every election but one since 1906 – the year Labour was born. Labour coming third behind Reform UK is not routine midterm turbulence. A 20-point collapse in the party’s vote is extraordinary.Sir Keir Starmer was abandoned by a coalition of young progressives, working-class former Labour voters and Muslims. May’s Scottish and Welsh parliamentary as well as English council elections will paint the…