‘Lots of bumps in the road’: Keir Starmer faces testing month before one-year milestone

As Keir Starmer approaches his first anniversary in Downing Street, there will be several things he wishes he had done differently. But before he can contemplate that July milestone, he faces a busy month strewn with political bear traps.June has proven a difficult time for successive prime ministers: Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak all had to contend with deeply unhappy parliamentary parties reeling from heavy local and European election losses.While the mood among Labour MPs is nowhere near as mutinous, they too are bruised from a difficult set of local election results in England in May and the surge of Reform UK. “There is more than the usual amount of grumbling and discontent,” a government source said

Tory proposal to leave ECHR would put peace in Northern Ireland at risk, Labour suggests – as it happened

Here is the full text of Kemi Badenoch’s speech this morning on the establishment of the party’s “lawfare commission” – the review that will consider the case for leaving the European convention on human rights.Labour has dismissed it as an attempt to appease Robert Jenrick and Reform UK, who are both unequivocally in favour of leaving the ECHR. During the Tory leadership contest last year Jenrick said the UK should definitely leave, while Badenoch said she was not ruling it out, but thought it was too simplistic to think leaving would just solve the problem. Some Tory leftwingers voted for Badenoch (who in other respects was more rightwing than Jenrick) just because of her stance on this issue. They regarded EHCR withdrawal as an unacceptable red line

Labour byelection win shows ‘SNP’s balloon has burst’, says Anas Sarwar

Scottish Labour’s surprise byelection win proves “the SNP’s balloon has burst”, a jubilant Anas Sarwar has said, after the popular local candidate, Davy Russell, defied predictions to beat the incumbent Scottish National party and fight off Reform UK’s “racist” campaigning in the central Scotland seat of Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse.The Scottish Labour leader told a victory rally in Hamilton town centre on Friday morning that his party had proved everyone wrong following speculation that Reform UK might push it into third place, as the rightwing populist party gained ground in Scotland for the first time.“The reality is we proved the pollsters, the pundits, the political commentators and the bookies all wrong, and they are not understanding what is happening on the ground,” Sarwar said. “On the ground, people believe the SNP are done. The balloon has burst, people think they are a busted flush and they want them out

Badenoch says US-style blanket travel bans could be ‘viable’ in UK

Donald Trump-style blanket travel bans on foreign citizens could be “viable” in the UK, Kemi Badenoch has said after giving a speech about law and immigration.The Conservative party leader said she had not seen Trump’s list of banned countries but said: “I think there are scenarios where that is viable.”Earlier this week the US president signed a travel ban on 12 countries, including Afghanistan, Iran, Myanmar and Haiti, citing national security risks. Nationals from those countries will not be allowed to enter the US unless they qualify for an exemption. Seven other countries will face partial restrictions

Tice defends Reform MP’s question on burqa ban after Zia Yusuf resignation

Reform UK was right to start a debate on banning the burqa even though it triggered the resignation of its chair, Richard Tice, the party’s deputy leader, has said.Tice, who is one of five Reform MPs, said he was “enormously sad” that Zia Yusuf had quit as chair as he was partly responsible for the party’s strong performance in May’s local elections.But Tice said politics could be brutal and defended Reform’s choice to raise the issue of a burqa ban, saying the discussion must not be “forced underground” when it was a policy in a number of European countries.Tice told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think it is right that we should have a debate about whether or not the burqa is appropriate for a nation that’s founded in Christianity, where women are equal citizens and should not be viewed as second-class citizens.”Asked whether he supported a ban, he said he was “pretty concerned” about whether the burqa was a “repressive item of clothing”, adding: “Let’s ask women who wear the burqa, is that genuinely their choice?”Tice also dismissed claims that Yusuf’s departure showed Nigel Farage struggles to retain senior figures after the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, said it demonstrated that Reform was a “fanclub” not a political party

Hamilton byelection win is vindication of Scottish Labour’s doorstep strategy

Labour’s victory in Hamilton is both a surprise and a vindication – a demonstration that in a byelection, shocks can take different forms.It is a surprise to those of us in the outside world who felt certain of a Scottish National party victory, who saw Labour support plummet in the Scottish opinion polls, and the same polls showing Reform’s steeply rising.The question became: would Labour scrape home in second, behind an experienced and personable SNP candidate, or even endure the humiliation of coming third behind a resurgent Reform. After all, it seemed Scottish Labour’s candidate, Davy Russell, was ill-equipped, so much so his party refused to put him up for a live television debate.But for Scottish Labour’s strategists this is vindication