UK wants any transition of power in Iran to be peaceful, says minister

The UK wants any transition of power in Iran to be peaceful, a cabinet minister has said, after Donald Trump said he could support protesters with military force.As the US weighs the option of military strikes, Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, said she would not be drawn on America’s foreign policy towards Iran, where protests have been met with a violent police response.She told Sky News Iran was a hostile state that posed a security threat in the Middle East and repressed its own people, adding: “The priority, as of today, is to try and stem the violence that is happening in Iran at the moment.”Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, went further in saying she would “not have an issue” with seeing the Iranian regime removed and that it could be right for the US and its allies to be involved in that process.She told the BBC One’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme: “Iran would very happily wipe out the UK if it felt it could get away with it

Sir Patrick Duffy obituary

The former Labour minister Sir Patrick Duffy, who has died aged 105, was one of his party’s foremost experts on defence and disarmament during the cold war and its immediate aftermath. It was his misfortune that 19 years of his quarter of a century as a Labour MP were spent on the opposition benches, although he had the gratification of 13 years as a member of the Nato parliamentary assembly, of which he served as president for two years from 1988.Duffy first stood for parliament in Tiverton, Devon, in 1950, and was successfully elected as an MP on his fourth attempt at a byelection in the Colne Valley, West Yorkshire, in 1963.He was an economist by training and entered the House of Commons in midlife, after an eventful career during the second world war in the Royal Navy and subsequently as an academic in Britain and the US. His experience made him an Atlanticist and a fervent European for most of his life, although in 2016 he supported Brexit on the grounds that the eurozone had made the EU no longer practical

Zarah Sultana’s Your Party membership launch may be ‘criminal’ matter for police, ICO says

Zarah Sultana’s unauthorised launch of a Your Party membership portal may have been “serious criminal activity” and should be referred to the police, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has advised.Jeremy Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project (PJP), which referred Your Party to the information watchdog last September over a potential data breach, has been advised by the ICO that it should consider “taking further action” regarding the matter, after deciding it was not a matter for them.An extraordinary split opened up between Corbyn and Sultana in September after an email was sent to 800,000 people on Your Party’s mailing list, urging them to become paying members for £55. Sultana revealed the new membership portal on X, urging supporters to “be a part of history”, and reassured her followers that the membership site was “safe and secure”, encouraging them to keep trying to sign up despite “issues due to such high traffic”.Later the same day, Corbyn issued an “urgent message” telling his followers on X to ignore the “unauthorised” site and said “legal advice is being taken”

Reform UK accused of betraying election pledges after council tax rises

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has been accused of betraying election promises to cut council tax after several councils it controls said they planned to increase rates close to the maximum allowed.They include Kent county council – the party’s flagship local authority and one viewed by it as the “shop window” for what a Reform-led government would look like – which has proposed an increase of 3.99%.Four other county councils controlled by the party – Derbyshire, North Northamptonshire, West Northamptonshire and Leicestershire – have also all proposed 5% council tax rises, the maximum permitted by law.Derbyshire county council earlier this week confirmed the rise after predicting a £38m gap in its budget, with overspends in children’s social care and adult social care

It is Labour’s party machine that is out of touch | Letters

To combat rightwing populists, Chris Powell calls for “a local action network, a permanent organising infrastructure … to listen, act and communicate – identifying local problems, launching campaigns to fix them and publicising every small win” (What is Keir Starmer doing to push back the populists? Not nearly enough. We have a plan to take them on, 1 January).An organisation that could fill this role already exists: it’s called the Labour party. And, under Jeremy Corbyn, it had a Community Organising Unit to do just what Powell now asks for.That he overlooks this starkly illustrates how “analysts” and “advisers” such as himself have contributed to the party’s slide to the brink of oblivion

UK politics: Reform UK mayoral candidate apologises for Lammy ‘go home’ tweet – as it happened

Elon Musk’s social media platform X has responded to the sexualised deepfake controversy by turning off the Grok AI image creation function for the vast majority of users. Helena Horton, Dan Milmo and Amelia Gentleman have the story here.At the Downing Street lobby briefing today, the PM’s spokesperson described this as insulting to victims of misogyny because it was so weak.He said:[Today’s move] simply turns an AI feature that allows the creation of unlawful images into a premium service. It’s not a solution