Lord Maxton obituary

John Maxton, Lord Maxton, belonged to a generation of able Labour MPs who sustained the party through 18 hard years of opposition before its electoral success in 1997.He retired from the Commons at the following general election and became a respected working peer, serving on the science and technology committee, which reflected longstanding interests and expertise.His friend George Foulkes, with whom he shared a Westminster office for many years, is “pretty sure he was the first MP with a mobile phone”. Maxton maintained an enthusiasm for new technologies, alongside a conviction that the Palace of Westminster should be turned into a museum and replaced with a modern parliamentary home. He advocated electronic voting and supported ID cards as a means to that end

Nigel Farage is wrong – victims don’t forget bullying and abuse | Letters

Regarding Nigel Farage’s difficulty believing that people can remember schoolboy “banter” of more than four decades ago (Former Dulwich pupil says Farage told him: ‘That’s the way back to Africa’, 5 December), perhaps I can helpfully direct him to an African proverb: “The axe forgets, the tree never does.” This succinctly summarises the disparity in recollections of interactions between victims and perpetrators.Juliet WinstoneDorking, Surrey “Farage has suggested that it is simply inconceivable that anyone could recall such events of over four decades ago,” says Yinka Bankole in your article. Such events that hurt children or young people, whether words or actions, are remembered for the whole of a lifetime. I remember a similarly unpleasant event that happened to me at the age of 13 on 14 February 1964

Labour has ignored the ‘squeezed middle’ to its peril | Letters

John Harris’s stimulating article on the “squeezed middle” missed one area of concern for those of us trapped in it (The ‘squeezed middle’ is back – and this time it could be Labour’s undoing, 30 November). We knew that even if we’d paid our cheap mortgages off (lucky us), we would either have to downsize or have taken out our own pensions. We knew the state pension would never be enough.So we did. And if we were lucky, it covered the cracks

Police look into claims Reform UK broke electoral law in Farage campaign

Police are looking into allegations Reform UK breached electoral law during its campaign to win Nigel Farage’s Commons seat at last year’s general election.Political opponents have urged the party’s leader to “come clean” over a former aide’s claims that Reform falsely reported election expenses in the Clacton constituency he represents after his 2024 electoral win.Richard Everett, a former Reform councillor and member of Farage’s campaign team, reportedly submitted documents to police showing the party spent more than the £20,660 limit in the Essex constituency.On Monday, Essex police said they were assessing an allegation of misreported expenditure by a political party, understood to be Reform.The news comes as Farage faces increasing pressure to apologise over the racism allegations described to the Guardian by 28 of his peers at Dulwich college

UK will not be haven for dirty money, Lammy to say in corruption crackdown

The UK will no longer be a haven for dirty money and dictators’ laundered assets, David Lammy is to promise as he announces a new anti-corruption strategy also aimed at tackling bribery and other misconduct across government and public services.Setting out the plan in a speech in London on Monday, Lammy, the justice secretary and deputy prime minister, will announce a series of initiatives including extra funding for an elite anti-corruption police unit.While some elements of the strategy are still to be finalised, a global summit on countering illicit finance to be hosted by the UK, possibly next year, will focus on underhanded use of cryptocurrencies, gold and property, the Guardian understands.As part of the plan being launched by Lammy, the domestic corruption unit at the City of London police, which focuses on bribery and other misconduct in UK financial services and public bodies, will be expanded and given £15m in new funding.Other promised measures include more action to tackle “professional enablers” who help foreign autocrats and others shift and conceal illicit wealth, including more coordination by the National Crime Agency and the possibility of new sanctions

Three more Farage bloc MEPs alleged to have followed Russian asset’s script

Three more British MEPs from Nigel Farage’s bloc are alleged to have “followed the script” given to a colleague who was being bribed by an alleged Russian asset, according to prosecutors, as a police investigation into the affair continues.The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has named Jonathan Bullock, Julia Reid and Steven Woolfe, saying they followed the script provided to Nathan Gill by Oleg Voloshyn when giving interviews to 112 Ukraine, a pro-Russian TV channel in March 2019.In all, at least eight MEPs elected for either Ukip or the Brexit party are now known to have been the focus of efforts by Reform UK’s former Wales leader Gill to co-opt them into fulfilling tasks set for him by his Kremlin paymasters.The claims that the three followed Gill’s talking points – disclosed in CPS documents in Gill’s case – are among those which have raised fresh questions over the extent of Gill’s influence since his jailing last month. There is no suggestion that any of the three committed criminal acts or had been aware Gill took bribes to promote Russian interests