Scottish Labour urges Keir Starmer to stay out of Holyrood campaign

Keir Starmer and senior ministers have been urged by Scottish Labour to “stay behind their doors” in Whitehall to avoid turning the next Holyrood election into a referendum on UK government failures.Anas Sarwar, the leader of Scottish Labour, said the prime minister’s policy failures and missteps had left voters “angry, frustrated and impatient”, leaving his party clear underdogs before May’s election.Asked during a speech in Edinburgh whether he wanted Starmer to campaign in Scotland, Sarwar said: “I would say the best thing that Keir Starmer and the UK Labour government can do is be behind their doors and in their departments getting things right and changing our outcomes.”Addressing a room packed with Labour parliamentarians, candidates and activists, Sarwar said the party had failed to communicate its achievements to voters – including raising wages and tackling NHS waiting lists – while making serious errors, such as cancelling the winter fuel payment.Scottish Labour’s leadership and strategists are privately furious about what they see as No 10’s policy and communication failures, believing they have squandered substantial polling leads, after resoundingly beating the Scottish National party in the 2024 general election and in two byelections

Venezuela attack could embolden China and Russia, says Emily Thornberry

The lack of western condemnation of the US military intervention in Venezuela could embolden China and Russia to take similar action against other countries, a senior Labour MP has warned.Emily Thornberry, who chairs the Commons foreign affairs committee, said that without a coherent and strong response to Donald Trump’s move at the weekend to remove the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, and bring him to the US, the norms of international law could break down.Keir Starmer and his ministers have not condemned the operation. Speaking on Monday, the home affairs minister Mike Tapp said it was for the US “to lay out its legal basis for the actions that it has taken” and that it was not yet possible for the UK to have a view.Thornberry said she was worried the US had not planned for what came next after Maduro was snatched on Saturday and flown to New York

British citizenship should never be conditional | Letters

Good as it is to know that the Home Office does not intend to take any action to remove Alaa Abd el-Fattah’s citizenship over “abhorrent” past social media posts, the fact that, in limited circumstances, it is an option ought to cause us real concern (Alaa Abd el-Fattah ‘will not be stripped of British citizenship’ over past tweets, 30 December).The recent Institute for Public Policy Research report that 36% of people now think you must be born British to be truly British (Report, 29 December) cannot be separated from the conduct of debates like those around Abd el-Fattah. If, for those who are not white and born in the UK, citizenship is a gift of the state that can be withdrawn, then it’s not citizenship at all but a form of limited leave like any other.Thus Shamima Begum is left to rot in a refugee camp, despite never having been tried for any crime, while the fascist nail bomber David Copeland is serving a sentence in a UK jail. If the Overton window is shifting on this issue, it’s being pushed by the fact that Keir Starmer is “tell[ing] a story about what Britain is and what he wants it to be” (Abd el-Fattah citizenship row shows shift on questions of national identity, 29 December), and it’s one that echoes the rhetoric of Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch

Starmer says closer ties with EU single market preferable to a customs union

Closer ties with the EU single market are preferable to a customs union, Keir Starmer has said, in his clearest sign yet that the government is seeking to further deepen links with Brussels.The prime minister said the UK should consider “even closer alignment” with the single market. “If it’s in our national interest … then we should consider that, we should go that far,” he told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.In a riposte to some cabinet colleagues who have suggested the UK should seek to form a customs union with the EU, Starmer said he did not think that was the answer. “We are better looking to the single market rather than the customs union for our further alignment,” he said

‘Durham’s other cathedral’: mining union hall reopens after £14m restoration

Outside the impressively grand, Edwardian baroque building in Durham are two wooden benches, each dedicated to men who died too young.They were, the inscription reads, both “sacked and victimised” during the 1984-85 miners’ strike. Yet they’re in grounds that look as if they might have been owned by rich, exploitative mine owners.The building is Redhills, the headquarters since 1915 of the Durham Miners’ Association, which has reopened after a £14m restoration with a hugely ambitious purpose that aligns with the original aims of the site.Redhills is considered one of the world’s finest trade union buildings

Reform UK says it would impose whole-life jail terms on child rapists

Child rapists would be jailed for life if Reform UK wins the next election, its head of policy has said.Under plans announced by Zia Yusuf on Saturday, the party would introduce mandatory whole-life orders for offenders convicted of the crime, making them ineligible for parole, as part of a crackdown on grooming gangs.Reform said its intention was for “mandatory minimums to apply to historic child sexual abuse to ensure that heinous historic crimes are also sentenced proportionally”.There were 677 convictions for rape of children under the age of 16 in 2024, according to Ministry of Justice data. These figures relate to the number of convictions rather than the number of people convicted