Leading British Muslims accuse Reform UK of stoking hostile sentiment

Leading British Muslims are warning that Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is increasingly inflaming hostile sentiment towards Muslims after chair Zia Yusuf resigned over a row about banning the burqa.His departure was described by the co-chair of the British Muslim Network, a new civil group representing the community, as a “stark illustration” that many in Reform do not view British Muslims as valued equal members of society.Yusuf, who describes himself as a “British Muslim patriot” and chaired the party for less than a year, quit on Thursday, saying his work for Reform was no longer the best use of his time.Hours earlier, he had said it was “dumb” for the party’s newest MP, Sarah Pochin, to press Keir Starmer for a burqa ban when it was not Reform’s own policy.However, Farage did not weigh in behind Yusuf and called for a debate on the issue

Russia is at war with Britain and US is no longer a reliable ally, UK adviser says

Russia is at war with Britain, the US is no longer a reliable ally and the UK has to respond by becoming more cohesive and more resilient, according to one of the three authors of the strategic defence review.Fiona Hill, from County Durham, became the White House’s chief Russia adviser during Donald Trump’s first term and contributed to the British government’s strategy. She made the remarks in an interview with the Guardian.“We’re in pretty big trouble,” Hill said, describing the UK’s geopolitical situation as caught between “the rock” of Vladimir Putin’s Russia and “the hard place” of Donald Trump’s increasingly unpredictable US.Hill, 59, is perhaps the best known of the reviewers appointed by Labour, alongside Lord Robertson, a former Nato secretary general, and the retired general Sir Richard Barrons

Robert Jenrick is no kind of role model for Labour | Letters

Robert Jenrick isn’t diagnosing disorder. He’s manufacturing it (It’s easy to dismiss Robert Jenrick’s fare-dodging stunt. But he understands something Keir Starmer doesn’t, 30 May). The issue isn’t whether people are annoyed by fare-dodgers or spooked by barber shops that stay open late. It’s why that resentment gets more political airtime than landlords hiking rents, billionaires dodging taxes, or private equity firms bleeding the NHS dry

Without Yusuf, Farage will find it even harder to increase Reform’s popularity

At Reform UK’s conference last September, Nigel Farage could not have been more clear: his party had to “model ourselves on the Liberal Democrats” and painstakingly build an election-winning machine. This was always a tough ask and with Zia Yusuf gone it becomes harder still.At the time of the speech in Birmingham, Yusuf had been Reform’s chair for slightly over two months, and Farage was at pains to praise the millionaire entrepreneur for having “already made a massive difference to our level of professionalisation”.While the catalyst for Yusuf’s sudden resignation appears to have been his disquiet over some Reform MPs pushing to ban the burqa, there had long been rumours of tensions as the businessman tried to get an organisational grip on the party.Rightwing populists and political mavericks seem to be falling out regularly at the moment

‘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