Mandelson not given in-depth vetting before appointment, says Foreign Office

Peter Mandelson was not subject to in-depth security vetting prior to his appointment as ambassador to Washington, the government has said.The Cabinet Office conducted a due diligence process on Mandelson before he was chosen for the role but this was not a security check, the Foreign Office said in a letter to MPs.Mandelson went through the ambassadorial appointment process, including in-depth national security vetting, only after his appointment had been announced to the public.The disclosure, made by the foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, and the department’s top official, Oliver Robbins, raises further questions about the lack of rigour involved in Mandelson’s appointment to the top diplomatic post earlier this year.Cooper and Robbins were responding to a set of written questions from the foreign affairs select committee

Starmer urged to apologise to Epstein victims over Mandelson appointment — as it happened

Davey says MPs should consider the victims of Epstein.He asks what they would have felt about Donald Trump, a close friend of Epstein, becoming president of the US.Referring to his decision to boycott the Trump state banquet, he says even if he had gone he would not have had a chance to speak to Trump about this.But Keir Starmer will get the chance. Davey says Starmer should ask Trump about his relationship with Epstein

We must tackle rising tide of racism and homophobia claiming to be free speech, says Streeting

Wes Streeting has called it “laughable” that rising racism and homophobia is a sign of free speech in a strongly worded intervention suggesting Labour needed to step up its defence of minorities.The health secretary told the LGBT foundation on Monday he wanted to address “the elephant in the room” and said he understood why some were questioning “whether this government is really on our side”.He said the scenes of far-right protests over the weekend were “not the kind of country any of us want to live in”.He told an audience of healthcare workers: “Black and Asian members of our community have the added fear of an undercurrent, increasingly visible tide of racism in our country that cloaks itself in our country’s flag and laughably claims to be a champion of ‘free speech’.“Free speech, that is, unless that freedom includes the right to worship a different God, or the right to march through central London protesting atrocities in Gaza or the right just to walk down Oxford Street without being called the p-word, the n-word, or having your hijab ripped, ripped off

Maria Caulfield becomes latest senior Tory to defect to Reform UK

Another senior Conservative has defected to Reform UK, with the former health minister Maria Caulfield saying she signed up to Nigel Farage’s party a month ago.Although Caulfield is no longer an MP after losing her Lewes seat to the Liberal Democrats last year, it is another blow for the Tories, a day after Danny Kruger, a sitting Tory MP and the shadow work and pensions minister, announced he had moved to Reform.A series of senior Conservatives have shifted over in recent months, although Kruger is so far the only one still in parliament.Caulfield, who was an MP for nine years and served as a junior health minister, as well as a junior minister for women and a Tory party vice-chair, told GB News: “If you are Conservative right-minded, then the future is Reform. The country is going to change a lot

UK public has paid £200bn to shareholders of key industries since privatisation

The public has paid almost £200bn to the shareholders who own key British industries since they were privatised, research reveals.The transfer of tens of billions of pounds to the owners of the privatised water, rail, bus, energy and mail services comes as families face soaring bills, polluted rivers and seas, and expensive and unreliable trains and buses.As a result, citizens have been paying a “privatisation premium” of £250 per household per year since 2010 alone, the analysis found.Recent focus has been on the privatised water industry, which has run up long-term debts of £73bn and paid out dividends of £88.4bn in the past 34 years at the same time as overseeing record sewage spills, according to the latest figures

‘There’s a basic decency among British people’: Hope Not Hate’s Nick Lowles on how to defeat the far right

Lowles has spent his entire adult life organising against fascism, facing countless threats as a result. He discusses the street confrontations of the 80s, foiling a murder plot, Nazi satanists – and the urgent need for optimism and actionIn 1979, a 10-year-old Nick Lowles saw a hard-right party political broadcast. Born in Hounslow in London, he had moved to Shrewsbury when he was seven: “A very white town. There was a British Movement march soon after we moved up there.” Theirs was a “small-P political household”