Greens’ ‘undeliverable’ promises will let voters down, says Labour minister

The Green party is offering “simple solutions to complex problems” and making “undeliverable” promises to voters ahead of the next election that could leave them disappointed, the prime minister’s chief secretary has said.Darren Jones, one of Keir Starmer’s most powerful ministers, said the resurgent Greens were “a bit like the populist left version of the populist right” of Reform UK, and that both were in danger of letting down voters.Labour has fallen to record lows in the polls, losing support to parties on its progressive wing as well as to Reform. A YouGov poll this week put it just four points ahead of the Greens, which were on 16%, more than double the 6.7% share the party won at the last election

Lammy promises ‘tough new release checks’ as missing prisoner arrested – as it happened

Justice secretary David Lammy has commented on the arrest of Brahim Kaddour-Cherif.“We inherited a prison system in crisis and I’m appalled at the rate of releases in error this is causing. That’s why I’ve ordered tough new release checks, launched an investigation, and started overhauling archaic prison systems,” he posted on X.Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick earlier tweeted a graph showing the increase in mistaken releases of violent and sexual offenders this year.In a reply to Lammy, Jenrick said: “That’s one down - where are the other 262 prisoners that have been accidentally released? And how many prisoners have been mistakenly released this year? Calamity Lammy is hiding an even bigger scandal

Nicola Sturgeon: I understand why people doubt my ignorance of alleged SNP embezzlement

Nicola Sturgeon has said she fully understands why many people find it hard to believe she had no idea about alleged embezzlement within the Scottish National party given the close links to her domestic life, but has insisted this is the case.Speaking to the Guardian’s Politics Weekly UK podcast, the former Scottish first minister said her relaxed demeanour in the period directly after she stepped down as first minister, weeks before police searched the home she shared with her then husband, Peter Murrell, would have been impossible if she had suspected things were amiss.Sturgeon announced her departure in February 2023. In April that year, Murrell was arrested, with police searching the Glasgow home the couple shared, as well as the SNP’s headquarters in Edinburgh. Officers also seized a motorhome parked outside Murrell’s mother’s house in Fife

Kemi Badenoch to relaunch exclusive ‘advisory board’ for high-value donors

Kemi Badenoch is relaunching the Conservative party’s “advisory board” for high-value donors in a different guise, the Guardian has learned.The Tory leader has drawn up plans to reinstate the exclusive group, which provided top donors with regular direct access to senior ministers, according to two people briefed on the plans.In 2021, the Conservative party’s advisory board found itself at the centre of a “cash for access” storm after it emerged that its members had regular meetings and calls with Boris Johnson, the prime minister at the time, and Rishi Sunak, the then chancellor.One donor, Mohamed Amersi, told the media that some members of the board had given the party upwards of £250,000 a year. It was quietly wound up in subsequent years after the controversy

Nandy breached code over appointment of donor to lead football regulator

Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, has apologised to Keir Starmer after an inquiry found she failed to say that her choice of nominee to lead a new football regulator had donated to her and to Labour before she nominated him for the role.Nandy said she regretted the errors highlighted in a report by William Shawcross, the commissioner for public appointments. Her apology comes a week after the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, made her own written apology to the prime minister for failing to obtain a licence before renting out her family home.In a letter to Nandy, Starmer said he accepted the apology, but noted that the process to appoint the media executive David Kogan “was not entirely up to the standard expected” and said her department could learn lessons from it.The reprimand does not affect the role of Kogan, whose long career in sport and media has included negotiating TV rights deals for the Premier League and the English Football League

Lucy Powell says Labour must stand by promise not to raise key taxes

Labour should stand by its manifesto commitment not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT, its deputy leader, Lucy Powell, has said in a challenge that will put pressure on Rachel Reeves.With the Treasury examining whether to raise income tax to plug a £30bn fiscal hole, Powell said it was “really important we stand by the promises we were elected on and do what we said we would do”.She said: “Trust in politics is a key part of that because if we’re to take the country with us then they’ve got to trust us and that’s really important too. We should be following through on our manifesto, of course. There’s no question about that

Why doesn’t Lammy just bring in a new policy of accidentally jailing people? | John Crace

It was a message of defiance. A show of strength from the justice department. The system may be in crisis but there was leadership at the very top. There was one prisoner who was most definitely not getting an accidental early release. And that was the justice secretary himself

Reform UK suspends another member of Kent county council

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has suspended another member of its “flagship” county council in Kent as it held its first full meeting since the party’s councillors were thrown into crisis by a leaked meeting revealing bitter internal tensions.The departure of Isabella Kemp, who had also worked as a data protection officer at Reform’s HQ, means the party has lost nine of the 57 councillors elected during the local elections in May.Kemp said she had started the process of taking Reform UK to a tribunal for unfair dismissal. She said she had contacted the conciliation service Acas and the whistleblowing charity Protect.The latest turmoil comes after the Guardian published a recording of an incendiary internal meeting in which the council leader, Linden Kemkaran, told dissenting Reform UK colleagues they had to “fucking suck it up” if they did not like her decisions

Lammy says he was not ‘equipped with the details’ when facing questions on mistaken prisoner release at PMQs – as it happened

David Lammy has recorded a pooled interview about the prisoner release mistakes reveaved after yesterday’s PMQs. There were three main lines in the excerpt available so far.Lammy, the deputy PM and justice secretary, defended his decision to dodge questions at PMQs yesterday about whether there had been another prisoner let out by mistake. The Conservatives have strongly criticised him for this, with Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, saying that Lammy’s non-answer was “dishonest”, and Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, saying Lammy’s PMQs performance was “a disgrace” and “a dereliction of duty”. (See 9