Yesterday Kemi Badenoch gave an interview to Sky News suggesting she would be happy to see Conservative councillors working with Reform UK councillors to deliver rightwing policies.In an interview with the Sun published today, Badenoch rowed back on this.She said there would not be any deals because Reform councillors weren’t “serious”.She told the paper:double quotation markWe’re not doing deals with Reform.I don’t want to see us helping Reform.

A lot of people in Reform are people we kicked out.Conservative councillors don’t want to work with Reform because they’re not serious.A 28-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of selling former Downing Street chief of staff Morgan McSweeney’s stolen phone, the Press Association reports.PA say:double quotation markScotland Yard took the man into police custody last Wednesday and he was later bailed.He is not suspected of involvement in the original theft on 20 October last year, the force said.

Concerns have been raised that the theft could result in important messages about Lord Peter Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador being lost,A Metropolitan police spokesperson said: “Officers investigating the theft of a mobile phone in Belgrave Road, Pimlico, on 20 October 2025 have arrested a 28-year-old man on suspicion of handling stolen goods,“The arrest took place on Wednesday 29 April at an address in Peckham,The man was taken into police custody and later bailed,“He is suspected of receiving the phone after it was stolen and then selling it on.

He is not suspected of any involvement in the original theft.“The phone has not been recovered.”Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, has voted.He is MP for Kingston and Surbiton, and Kingston is a rock-solid Lib Dem council.This is what Dave Hill and Lewis Baston say about it in their London Decides guide to voting in the capital.

double quotation markIt seems amazing that in 2014 the Tories took control of the council from the Liberal Democrats, winning an eight-seat majority,Eight years on, they were reduced to a three-seat opposition as the Lib Dems piled up 41 and a lone Independent made up the numbers,By November 2023, things had got even worse for the Conservatives: an earlier byelection win for another Independent had been at the Lib Dems’ expense, but when one of the Tories’ own councillors switched to the Independent cause, they found themselves outnumbered by three to two,The Kingston Independent Residents Group (KIRG) replaced them as Kingston’s principal opposition and has remained so,One other councillor, elected as a Lib Dem, left the party in August 2024 and has been sitting as an Independent separately.

It means the current party lineup is: Lib Dem 39; KIRG three; Conservatives two; Independents one,Can the big yellow balloon be deflated?In his new biography of the former Labour PM Gordon Brown, James Macintyre writes about Brown’s attitude to money, and politicians who accept gifts,Macintyre says Brown thought it was “completely unacceptable” for Keir Starmer to accept gifts of clothes and spectacles,Brown “accepted no gifts while in office, declined his prime ministerial pension, paid his own way with suits, spectacles and decorating through his time in Downing Street and left office in considerable debt as a result,” Macintyre writes,Nigel Farage, on the other hand, takes a rather different approach to personal enrichment.

As Helena Horton and Anna Isaac report today, his income since he was elected as an MP has now reached £2m on top of his parliamentary salary, analysis of the register of MPs has shown.Brown is remembered as an unpopular PM whose time in office did not last long.But his contribution to rescuing the world from the 2008 financial crisis was unrivalled, and he is the only living ex-PM who achieved as much, or more, before and after reaching No 10 as while they did while they were there.Macintyre’s authoritative and very readable book does justice to his achievements.Zack Polanski, the leader of the Green party of England and Wales, has been in Penarth supporting Anthony Slaughter, his Welsh leader.

Slaughter is the lead Green candidate for Caerdydd Penarth (Cardiff Penarth), and the latest YouGov MRP poll suggests the Greens are on course to win one of the six seats available here,Helen MacNamara used to be deputy cabinet secretary,Now, as is fairly standard for anyone leaving a frontline Westminster job, she hosts a podcast, which means she able to speak out in a way she couldn’t when she was bound by civil service omertà,She says Keir Starmer should have used his email to civil servants (see 10,05am) to announce that Olly Robbins (OR) was getting his job back.

double quotation markHad hoped there was a para here explaining OR had been reinstated and underlying principles of truth to power should be based on truth.Rather hollow without.The niceties of he should have said more afterwards entirely lost on basis of how No 10 and CO chose to play this.Remains unconscionable.Eluned Morgan, the first minister and Welsh Labour leader, has cast her vote at St Davids City Hall in St Davids, Pembrokeshire.

She is the first Labour candidate on the list for Ceredigion Penfro (Ceredigion Pembrokeshire).But she is at risk of not even being elected.In Wales there are now 16 constituencies each electing six MSs, but the latest YouGov MRP poll suggests that Plaid Cymru is on course to win four of the seats in Ceredigion Penfro, and Reform the other two.Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has voted in his Clacton constituency.Clacton is in Essex and, in his preview of the English elections in this post on his Comment is Freed Substack blog, the commentator Sam Freedman confidently predicts a Reform win here.

He says:double quotation markThere are six county councils up for election, all delayed from 2021.The Tories currently control five but will lose all of them.The Lib Dems will end the Tories’ 30 year majorities on Hampshire and West Sussex county councils, which will go into no overall control.East Sussex is already in no overall control and will stay so, with both Lib Dems and Reform gaining seats.In the other three, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk, no party other than the Conservatives has ever had a majority but they will all go the same way as Kent did last year, with Reform essentially replacing the Tories.

Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, has voted in Pollokshields in Glasgow.He is a candidate for the Glasgow Cathcart and Pollok and is in first place on the Labour list for Glasgow.Last night Sarwar posted this on social media.double quotation markAfter 20 years of SNP failure, Scotland needs change.Vote @ScottishLabour!He was commenting on a tweet from the Scottish Sun showing its splash today.

Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.The Scottish and Welsh parliamentary elections today are being monitored for the first time by delegates from the Council of Europe, the charter-based alliance of 46 European nations set up in 1949 to promote human rights, civic society and democracy.The 17-strong delegation, which is also observing England’s council elections, has been split into teams in London, Edinburgh and Cardiff this week and are today visiting polling stations across Britain to watch the UK’s voting procedures.Delegates from the Council of Europe’s Congress of Local and Regional Authorities have come from nations including Moldova, Switzerland, Poland, Albania, Ireland and Germany.The congress has been scrutinising local council elections since 1990, carrying out close to 115 missions to date – including across the UK.

Congress officials said the decision to expand their scope to include devolved elections to Holyrood and Cardiff Bay was taken in 2023,After the visit, a rapporteur will report on the election’s procedures “but also with the general political situation in the country, including the state of fundamental rights and freedoms, the atmosphere which prevailed during the election campaign and any progress noted on the democracy front,”Yesterday Kemi Badenoch gave an interview to Sky News suggesting she would be happy to see Conservative councillors working with Reform UK councillors to deliver rightwing policies,In an interview with the Sun published today, Badenoch rowed back on this,She said there would not be any deals because Reform councillors weren’t “serious”.

She told the paper:double quotation markWe’re not doing deals with Reform.I don’t want to see us helping Reform.A lot of people in Reform are people we kicked out.Conservative councillors don’t want to work with Reform because they’re not serious.We have just opened comments below the line.

Do tell us what you think about the elections, but please don’t tell us how you have voted,If you do, your comment will be removed,That is because, under the Representation of the People Act 1983, it is an offence to publish information about how people have voted before the polls have closed,The law was designed to stop people publishing exit poll information on the day in a manner that might sway a result,Obviously, online comments did not even exist in 1983, but there is no exemption for BTL commentary and so we can’t allow comments about how you voted to be published.

As the results of the elections come in tomorrow, Keir Starmer may feel that he needs all the allies he can get,With that in mind perhaps, he released an email to all civil servants yesterday stressing how much he valued their work,Referring to the sacking of Olly Robbins, he said the events of the last few weeks that they might find “unsettling” should not define the civil service,He also said he wanted civil servants to speak truth to power,double quotation markTo those who feel exposed by recent scrutiny, let me say this: I value the ‘speaking truth to power’ that is the hallmark of our system.

I want a culture where information flows freely, where risks are flagged early, and where we work together to solve problems before they become crises.Ben Bloch from Sky News has the full text of the email here.Here are some more pictures marking the glorious ritual of going to the polling station for an election in Britain.Rhun ap Iorwerth, the Plaid Cymru leader, has voted in Llangristiolus, in Anglesey, where he is a candidate for the Bangor Conwy Môn constituency.