Your Party row erupts over hundreds of thousands of pounds in donations

The feud between Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana over the future of the leftwing Your Party has taken another twist with the two camps arguing publicly over hundreds of thousands of pounds in donations.Sultana offered to transfer £600,000 from a company the party’s founders set up earlier this year, only to be rebuffed by allies of Corbyn who accused her of playing “political games” with supporters’ money.The latest row comes after months of acrimony between the two former Labour MPs as they jostle to be the figurehead of what they hope will be a new force on the populist left. The tussle for power is likely to come to a head in the new year when the party holds a formal leadership contest.The latest row centres on hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of donations and fees received by MOU Operations Ltd, a company set up earlier this year while the details of Your Party were being thrashed out

Maybe the BBC can learn a thing or two about fake news from Trump | John Crace

You have to admire the chutzpah. The cheek of it. Donald Trump describing the BBC as “corrupt” while threatening to take legal action. Karoline Leavitt, The Donald’s White House mouthpiece, calling the BBC “100% fake news”. The man has never been known for his self-awareness so it’s safe to say the irony has almost certainly passed him by

Reeves suggests two-child benefit cap will fully go, saying children in big families should not be ‘penalised’ – as it happened

And this is what Rachel Reeves said about child poverty.I don’t think we can lose sight of the costs to our economy in allowing child poverty to go unchecked.And, in the end, a child should not be penalised because their parents don’t have very much money.Now in many cases you might have a mum and dad who were both in work, but perhaps one of them has developed a chronic illness. Perhaps one of them has passed away

MPs preparing to examine Chinese state influence at British universities

The foreign affairs select committee is drawing up plans to examine Chinese government interference in academia as part of its inquiry into the UK’s strategy towards Beijing.MPs are broadening the scope of their investigation into the China audit, an internal government review of UK-China relations that concluded in June, to look into Chinese state influence at British universities.Ministers are under pressure to take a more robust approach after the Guardian disclosed that Sheffield Hallam University had blocked the work of a professor whose work was critical of China’s human rights record.Sheffield Hallam banned one of its most prominent professors, Laura Murphy, from continuing with her work on China-linked supply chains, after years of pressure from the Chinese government.Murphy’s work focuses on Uyghurs, a persecuted Muslim minority in China, being co-opted into forced labour programmes

Billionaire Tory donor gives £200,000 to Reform UK

The company owned by the billionaire Conservative donor Lord Bamford has donated £200,000 to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.The JCB chair, who has given millions of pounds to the Tories and bankrolled Boris Johnson’s wedding celebrations, disclosed the donation at the weekend, alongside one of equal size to the Conservatives.The Staffordshire-based heavy machinery manufacturer said it had donated to the Tories and Reform because it wanted to support parties that “believe in small business”.JCB is the world’s third-largest construction equipment company, with 22 plants on four continents, employing 19,000 people worldwide. Its sales turnover in 2024 was £5

Lady Howells of St Davids obituary

Like so many thousands of other young people of her generation, Rosalind Howells, who has died aged 94, left the Caribbean in 1951 with her head and heart filled with plans and dreams and intent upon her own hopes of a future possible professional career as a lawyer in Britain. Having arrived in London and recognised the grim everyday realities of inequality and discrimination that faced black people, she dedicated the rest of her life to doing something about it.She spent nearly half a century in south London working to improve the housing, education, health services and lifestyle of her community and then, on official “retirement”, went to the House of Lords in 1999. Tthe next 20 years she spent expounding her demands for equality to a wider audience, at Westminster and on international platforms in China, the Middle East and the US, seeking still to transform society and open the doors for others.She was not interested in rhetoric without reality, even less in tokenism