Starmer rules out EU financial services alignment talks
Keir Starmer will exclude financial services from negotiations on closer alignment with the EU, prompting a sigh of relief from Brexit-weary City lobbyists.A government spokesperson said officials would continue to explore cooperation “where it is in our economy’s interest”, but it is understood there will be no push for City firms to return to the Brussels rulebook.The exclusion, first reported by the Financial Times, comes despite City bosses having largely backed EU membership in the run-up to the 2016 referendum and later warning of widespread disruption and job losses moving to the continent.Today, however, few are keen to face another period of uncertainty and potential unwinding of post-Brexit changes.UK regulators have been under pressure to dismantle a series of EU-era rules that politicians argue have hampered competitiveness and growth.
Subsequent changes have led to larger banker bonuses, lower capital levels and looser listing rules for companies seeking to float in London.Reversing those changes would risk derailing the recovery in London’s stock market listings, according to Steve Fine, the chief executive of Peel Hunt investment bank.“A huge amount of work and effort has gone into improving the landscape for financial services in the UK, which are essential for a viable domestic capital market,” he said.“The UK now has materially less friction than most other European jurisdictions as a venue for listing.If we want IPOs to come back, if we want the City to thrive, if we want public markets to be a key part of the overall financial markets landscape – this is all been really important.
So ripping it up and going back to where we were simply wouldn’t make any sense.We do not want to be choking that off through excessive regulation.”Miles Celic, the chief executive of the lobby group TheCityUK, which represents the wider financial and professional services industry, acknowledged that closer cooperation with the UK’s second-largest market for financial services made sense.“But rejoining the single market or a customs union would not be a simple upgrade,” he said.“As a non-member, the UK would risk trading flexibility for uniformity: less scope to shape its own rules and fewer chances to cut bespoke deals beyond Europe, in return for the benefits of a single EU framework.
As always, there’s a trade-off.”A government spokesperson said talks with Brussels at a crunch summit in spring 2025, had identified “several potential areas for strengthened cooperation.Financial services did not form part of this agreement.However, the EU is the UK’s second-largest trading partner for financial services, and we continue to explore areas of cooperation where it is in our economy’s interest.”
Lib Dems call on Reform MPs to donate income from X to charity amid Grok row
The Liberal Democrats have urged Reform UK MPs who receive payment from X for their posts to donate the money to charities working to combat sexual exploitation, after the site was flooded with AI-generated sexualised images of women and children.The Lib Dem spokesperson for science, innovation and technology, Victoria Collins, said Nigel Farage and other MPs paid by the Elon Musk-owned site were receiving “tainted money”.A series of MPs have called for the government to stop posting on X after the site’s inbuilt AI tool Grok started generating huge numbers of images of women and children in bikinis or other minimal attire, often in sexually provocative poses, in response to user prompts.The site has now limited the image creation function to paying subscribers, a move that Downing Street condemned as turning “an AI feature that allows the creation of unlawful images into a premium service”.X users who are verified earn money based on the amount of engagement they generate
Home Office tells Gaza academic his bid to bring family to UK not urgent
A Palestinian academic has failed in his latest attempt to be reunited with his family in the UK after the Home Office concluded their case was not urgent and it was more appropriate for his two children to remain with their mother in a tent in Gaza.Bassem Abudagga was also told in a letter from Home Office officials that no reason had been found that was “sufficiently compelling” to defer a requirement that his wife attend a visa application centre (VAC) in Gaza so she could provide fingerprints to satisfy the conditions for evacuation.No such facility remains in Gaza as a result of Israeli bombardments, which have continued despite the fragile ceasefire – a fact that Abudagga says the Home Office is well aware of.Abudagga last saw his wife, Marim, son Karim, six, and daughter Talya, 10, four weeks before the October 7 attack in 2023 when he returned for a visit to Gaza.He had won a scholarship to study for a PhD at York St John University in 2022 and is regarded by his tutors as a model student
The world is in chaos. So thank God for the UK’s lone fixed point: Liz Truss
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Labour’s swift pubs U-turn shows government learning – and repeating Treasury mistakes
Political U-turns come in various forms, and as news of the latest government reversal drifted out, this one connected to the plight of the pub trade, Labour MPs could take comfort in one thing: at least it happened quickly.While last summer’s change of stance on benefit reforms was forced on Downing Street by open rebellion, and those for pensioners’ winter fuel payments and inheritance tax for farmers followed months of dissent, the decision to revisit decisions on business rates took a matter of weeks.“It would have been better if we hadn’t done it at all, but at least it was reversed quickly,” said one MP about the promised new look at business rates valuations, which the hospitality trade say would have seen major increases for pubs and hotels.“Maybe they are learning. And to give the government credit, they have been in proper listening mode over this
Software tackling deepfakes to be piloted for Scottish and Welsh elections
Election officials are working “at speed” with the Home Office on a pilot project to combat the use of deepfakes to target candidates standing in this year’s Scottish and Welsh elections.Officials at the Electoral Commission in Scotland said they and the Home Office expected software capable of detecting AI-generated deepfake videos and images to be operational before election campaigns begin in late March.Sarah Mackie, the commission’s chief in Scotland, said that if the software detected a hoax video or image, officials would contact the police, the candidate concerned and inform the public, although she acknowledged it could not always provide 100% certainty.They would then urge the social media platform to take the content down, she said. However, because such action is currently voluntary, the commission also wants legally enforceable “takedown” powers that would require media platforms to remove hoax material
Badenoch claims forthcoming business rates U-turn for pubs ‘too little, too late’ – as it happened
We don’t yet know the extent of the government U-turn shortly to be announced related to business rates for pubs and other parts of the hospitality sector. (See 2.24pm.)But Kemi Badenoch is already saying it is “too little, too late”. In a post on social media, she says:Yesterday Keir Starmer told us Labour had ‘turned a corner
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