Badenoch calls Farage an ‘opportunist’ after he urges Scottish nationalists to back Reform
Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative party, has accused Nigel Farage of being an opportunist who does not believe in unionism after he urged Scottish nationalists to back Reform.Farage said earlier this week he believed “genuine nationalists” would not support the Scottish National party’s bid to rejoin the EU, and urged them to vote Reform in the Holyrood election on 7 May.He also told the Scotsman that while he believed in the UK, it was “probably quite reasonable” to hold a second independence referendum in the future, “if this issue came back”.Badenoch, speaking to reporters in Edinburgh on Thursday, said only her party was truly centre-right and unionist.“Nigel Farage doesn’t really believe in anything except Nigel Farage.
He tells everybody what they want to hear,” she said,“If he’s speaking to a unionist, he’s a unionist,If he’s speaking to a nationalist, he’s a nationalist,This is how Reform managed to vote for and against the two-child benefit cap on the same day in the same vote,“They don’t know what they stand for, except that they are against everything and everybody that is part of the system.
They can see problems, but they don’t have the solutions.”The Conservatives are fighting a desperate battle to prevent Reform taking tens of thousands of votes from them at the election.The Conservative party is Holyrood’s second-largest party, but opinion polls consistently show it lagging behind Labour, Reform and the Scottish Greens, and level with the Lib Dems, on about 8-13% of the vote.Malcolm Offord, Reform UK’s Scottish leader, fuelled Badenoch’s allegations that Reform intend only to disrupt British politics after he confirmed his party would not block the Scottish National party leader, John Swinney, from being voted in as first minister if it came down to a knife-edge vote in Holyrood.The SNP is widely expected to comfortably win the election, with some polls suggesting they could win a majority.
If the party does, Swinney confirmed on Thursday that he intended to demand a second independence referendum by 2028, despite the UK Labour government stating it would not authorise that,It is known that Scottish Labour and the Lib Dems hope that after the election anti-SNP parties could command enough votes at Holyrood to get Anas Sarwar elected as first minister instead, backed by the Tories, even if the SNP were the largest party,But if Reform UK succeeds in winning 10 or more seats, as the polls suggest, its votes could be crucial,When Offord was asked on Wednesday whether the he would work with Labour to keep the SNP out, he said: “No,Because we are the challenger party.
”In a sign of a concerted anti-SNP sentiment, some senior Tories are urging anti-independence voters to vote tactically to block the SNP from winning seats at Holyrood, in defiance of Badenoch’s insistence that Tory voters needed to vote Conservative at all times.David Mundell, who was Westminster’s Scottish secretary from 2015 to 2019, urged people to vote tactically in a social media post.He told the Commons on Wednesday that “anybody in Scotland who doesn’t want to see Scotland spend the next five years in a constitutional cul-de-sac should use their votes wisely to stop an SNP majority”.
Sexual harassment is rife on comedy circuit and women lack protections, MPs told
Sexual harassment and abuse on the comedy circuit is persistent and under-reported, with protections available to women often limited or absent, a comedian has told MPs.Performers and campaigners said many female comedians are left to rely on informal warning systems to try to keep themselves safe but added that these systems can expose women to further risks.“Female comedians rely on so-called ‘whisper networks’, a shadow safeguarding system where warnings and experiences are shared on private WhatsApp threads,” Nina Gilligan, a comedian and the co-founder of the industry body Get Off Live Comedy, which provides HR support to those working in the industry, told the cross-party women and equalities committee on Wednesday.Chaired by the Labour MP Sarah Owen, the committee explored the experiences of women in live comedy, the representation of women across the sector and the barriers they face in building a career.The committee has been examining how employment protections apply in freelance and gig-economy sectors, where traditional safeguards are harder to enforce
Strike is harming the NHS and dividing doctors | Letters
Polly Toynbee is right that it is time to stop the doctors’ strikes (Both doctors and the government are handling this strike badly – that’s why there is no end in sight, 10 April). She suggests that doctors are not feeling the pain of industrial action, but this is far from true. We are anxious about our patients and their cancelled appointments and procedures; we are exhausted covering work that we are not familiar with; and those being paid overtime for shifts they don’t want to do are uncomfortable about the financial impact on the NHS.Many of us reluctantly supported industrial action at the beginning, with a government that wasn’t listening – wanting to support junior colleagues whose pay had fallen far behind contemporaries. Now we see how divided and conflicted resident doctors are too, and we long for a resolution
Why we washed our hands of Izal | Brief letters
In the 1970s, to save money, a London psychiatric hospital replaced soft toilet tissue with Izal medicated toilet roll (Letters, 13 April). Therapists conducting successful sessions for outpatients with compulsive disorders were surprised by a sudden increase in relapse rates, until they realised that each sheet contained the exhortation “Now wash your hands”. Its use was discontinued. Prof David C SandersMortain, France Izal toilet paper made excellent tracing paper, but it also made a superb sound in a comb and paper. One member of a jokey interval band at the original Concorde Jazz Club in Southampton played an Izal bumphone to great effect!David WittMalmesbury, Wiltshire It’s not all doom and gloom when products are discontinued
Government’s 1.5m housebuilding target in England is suffering from subsidence | Nils Pratley
This is what the government didn’t want to hear when its target to build 1.5m homes in England during this parliament already looked out of reach. The country’s biggest housebuilder is trimming its purchases of new land because the Iran war has created “a less certain backdrop”.Barratt Redrow’s “disciplined approach” isn’t a downing of tools, it should be said. The company had previously expected to buy between 10,000 and 12,000 plots; now it will acquire between 7,000 and 9,000
One year on: how landmark ruling on single-sex spaces has changed lives
A year ago, the supreme court made its landmark judgment on single-sex spaces. In a long-running case against the Scottish government brought by gender-critical campaigners For Women Scotland (FWS), the court ruled that, for the purposes of the Equality Act, the legal definition of a woman was based on biological sex.The judgment has significant ramifications for who can access women-only services and spaces, such as refuges or toilets. But most service providers are still awaiting practical guidance on how to apply the ruling.Guidance exists – contained in an updated code of practice from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) – and on Tuesday it emerged that the commission has resubmitted this guidance for government approval
Nonnamaxxing: do Italian grandmothers hold the secret to a long and happy life?
Gen Z are turning to nonnas for inspiration on how to live to be 100. Will donning a flowery dress and making their own pasta sauce do the trick?Name: Nonnamaxxing.Age: 70 to 100, and beyond.Appearance: Elderly, lively, Italian.Like an archetypal Italian grandmother? Yes, but doing it to the max
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José Pizarro’s recipe for nettle (or wild garlic) and goat’s cheese tortilla
Gone from shop shelves, but not forgotten | Letters
Cornichon shortage leaves British sandwich shops in a pickle