Lib Dems suspend Chris Rennard amid new inquiry into sexual harassment claims

The Liberal Democrat peer Chris Rennard has been suspended from the party amid a new investigation into sexual harassment allegations.The party said it had received advice that a 2013 inquiry into the claims made by four women against Lord Rennard was “flawed in several respects”.The Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey, believes Rennard, 65, should not be a member of the House of Lords, the party added.In turn, Rennard, a former chief executive of the party who was awarded a life peerage in 1999, pointed to a series of investigations by police and lawyers that had concluded the allegations against him could not be proved.He previously said he was sorry if he had “inadvertently encroached” upon anyone’s “personal space”

FCA urged to investigate Peter Mandelson over potential insider trading

The Liberal Democrats have urged the UK’s financial regulator to immediately investigate Peter Mandelson, saying his apparent decision to leak highly confidential government information to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein may have led to insider trading.In a letter to Nikhil Rathi, the chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Daisy Cooper, the MP for St Albans and the Lib Dems’ deputy leader, said it was “crucial” to determine whether Mandelson or those he shared information with had profited from accessing “market-sensitive and confidential material” in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.“The sharing of confidential information with a private financier could easily have provided an unfair and lucrative advantage in the financial markets, either by Epstein himself or by his associates,” Cooper said in the letter, seen by the Guardian. “Mandelson could also have personally profited from this arrangement.”She added: “He and others must face criminal prosecution if they are found to have abused trading laws for financial benefit

‘Am I at peak popularity? I hope not’: on the road with Zack Polanski, from protest to podcast to Heaven nightclub

17 JANUARY 2026“I’m dying for a wee,” Zack Polanski says as he gets off the train at Wakefield Westgate. Why didn’t you go on the train, I ask? “It was very busy and too many people recognised me on the way to the toilet. I knew I’d never get there for all the conversations, so I came back.” When did it become hard for him to go to the toilet on a train? “2 September,” he says. “The day I was elected

‘I’m British, English and British Asian’, says Rishi Sunak in riposte to racially charged debate over identity

Rishi Sunak has described himself as being “British, English and British Asian” in a riposte to increasing racially charged language used by figures on the right.The UK’s first British Asian prime minister was speaking after his identity was questioned in recent debate sparked by a claim by the podcaster Konstantin Kisin that Sunak was not English because he was a “brown-skinned Hindu”.Suella Braverman, the London-born Reform MP and former home secretary, later appeared to give credence to Kisin’s claims by saying that she was not English and questioning whether others born in the country could necessarily have that identity.More recently, Matthew Goodwin, Reform UK’s candidate in the upcoming Gorton and Denton byelection, refused to disown a claim that UK-born people from minority ethnic backgrounds were not necessarily British.Speaking out for the first time since those interventions, the Southampton-born former Conservative leader said the racism directed at him and his siblings was “seared in his memory” and warned against Britain “slipping back” to a time when racism was more overt

Minister commissioned investigation of journalists looking into Labour thinktank

A Labour minister commissioned and reviewed a report in 2023 on journalists investigating the thinktank that would help propel Keir Starmer to power, the Guardian has learned.The research was paid for and subsequently reviewed by Josh Simons, now a minister in the Cabinet Office, when he was director of Labour Together, according to sources and documents seen by the Guardian.Simons is close to the prime minister’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, who had previously run Labour Together and whose own role in the operation to gather material on journalists is under scrutiny.In an agreement addressed to Simons, drawn up by the PR firm APCO Worldwide, the firm agreed to “investigate the sourcing, funding and origins” of a November 2023 Sunday Times report about the thinktank, in addition to other journalistic investigations into the group.The agreement noted APCO would “establish who and what are behind the coordinated attacks on Labour Together”

Reform faces police investigation over ‘concerned neighbour’ byelection letters

Reform UK will face a police investigation in Gorton and Denton after admitting it sent out letters from a “concerned neighbour” which did not state they had been funded and distributed by the party.Greater Manchester police confirmed it had received a report about the breach of electoral law and said it would investigate. The Electoral Commission said the omission was a matter for the police, stressing that failing “to include an imprint in candidate election material is an offence”.Dozens of voters in the Gorton and Denton constituency reported receiving letters from a pensioner written in a handwriting-style font on Friday. The letters do not include an imprint saying who they have been funded and distributed by, as required by electoral law