Key events
Show key events only
Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature
Tories urge Met police commissioner to reject report he commissioned saying culture of force leads to racial harm
At the end of last week the Metropolitan police published an independent report by Dr Shereen Daniels looking at how the force responded to complaints of racism. The report said:
Anti-black outcomes in policing are not random. They have been built in. And they have been named, again and again, by families in grief, frontline officers, unions, activists, whistleblowers, campaigners, and formal investigations.
Vikram Dodd wrote it up here.
And Sir Mark Rowley, the Met commissioner, praised the report, describing it as “powerful” and saying it showed that “further systemic, structural, cultural change is needed”.
Today the Conservative party has strongly condemned the report. In an open letter to Rowley, Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, objects to the suggestion in the report that stop and search should be scaled back, and he challenges its claim that black people are significantly more at risk of being tasered. But he particularly objects to its use of the term “whiteness”. He says:
The report talks about ‘whiteness’ which is an offensive, divisive and obviously racialised (and therefore racist) concept. Daniels writes: “Whiteness here is not a synonym for white racial identity. It is a way of thinking, organising and maintaining power. It is a logic. One that can be adopted, performed and enforced by anyone, irrespective of their racial identity. It centres white comfort, demands neutrality, and reacts defensively to Blackness and other challenges to its order.”
I think this terminology is completely inappropriate and should be expressly rejected by the Met Police. I urge you to disregard the many elements of this report which lack evidence, which are divisive or would, if implemented, lead to substantially more crime including against the black community themselves.
The way to restore trust in policing is to catch more criminals and make the streets safer. It is not by commissioning and apparently accepting (or at the very least failing to call out) an ideological and extreme report which is based on divisive identity politics and which in many places is not supported by any evidence – and in some cases directly contradicted by real databased evidence.
According to Dan Bloom and Bethany Dawson in their London Playbook briefing for Politico, Labour MPs have taking a keen interest in this article by Kitty Donaldson for the i at the end of last week about the Labour leadership. Donaldson said some Labour MPs were actively discussing replacing Keir Starmer, although she also concluded “for now at least, Starmer appears safe in post, despite the chuntering of backbenchers”.
In a report with multiple examples of chuntering, Donaldson said:
A fresh Labour MP said Starmer and his supporters are in denial about the peril they face as the PLP is “feral”, despite Starmer’s attempts to connect.
The MP added: “It’s a mix of everything. It’s the botched reshuffle. It’s all the poll ratings. It’s having to break the manifesto commitment to raise income tax in the Budget. It’s Peter Mandelson. It’s a belief among the PLP that the Prime Minister and Downing Street don’t really like them or respect them. Eventually, that feeling becomes mutual.”
A third Labour backbencher said: “There’s one question on the timing of when he’s replaced and there’s another question on the process. In the last couple of weeks, both conversations have stepped up again, so people are now talking about what the process might look like and what timings would be best, rather than it just being grumblings.”
Bloom and Dawson report:
Two frontbenchers told Playbook that MPs have been sharing Kitty Donaldson’s eye-watering Friday piece about leadership murmurings in WhatsApp groups, even though many of them think talk of a challenge before May is absurd and point out the soft left don’t have a clear candidate. The first frontbencher warned slashing the salary sacrifice tax break on pension contributions (as floated over the weekend) could alienate voters with young families: “They’re the last ones still f*cking voting for us.” The second frontbencher told Bethany Dawson they went door knocking over the weekend and found Starmer was “about as popular as cholera.”
Updated at 05.35 EST
The resignations of the BBC’s director general and its head of news over claims of bias were “a coup” orchestrated from the inside, David Yelland, a former editor of the Sun, has claimed. Kevin Rawlinson has the story.
Updated at 05.00 EST
Around 300,000 households experienced acute homlessness in 2024, up 21% over 2 years, Crisis charity says
The homelessness charity Crisis is going to become a landlord for the first time in its 60-year history, saying the housing crisis in the UK has reached a “catastrophic scenario”, Jessica Murray reports,
As Jessica reports, Crisis has released research saying “almost 300,000 families and individuals across England are now experiencing the worst forms of homelessness”. The charity defines this as sleeping rough, or sleeping in temporary accommodation like a B&B.
The state of the nation report, commissioned by Crisis and led by Heriot-Watt University, shows that 299,100 households in England experienced acute homelessness in 2024. This is an increase of 21% since 2022 (when there were 246,900 households) and a 45% increase since 2012 (206,400 households).
The numbers of people having to sleep rough and households having to stay in unsuitable temporary accommodation increased by around 150% each since 2020 levels, with more than 15,000 people sleeping rough last year alone.
Updated at 05.20 EST
Labour could suffer Lib Dem-style election drubbing for breaking manifesto promise if they raise taxes, Reeves warned
Good morning. The news is dominated today by the repercussions from the resignation last night of the BBC’s director general, Tim Davie, and its head of news, Deborah Turness. This is far bigger than just a media personnel story; the BBC has been in the middle of the warzone in the battle between rightwing populism and liberalism, not just in the UK but beyond, and ousting Davie is a victory for the right. We are covering all the developments on a separate live blog.
It is also, in part, a victory for Donald Trump; even if he was not actively implicated in the manoeuvring that led to Davie’s resignation, those who were demanding “heads must roll” professed to be concerned about protecting the president’s reputation. Trump has already cowed much of the US media and last night he claimed the BBC was run by “corrupt” and “very dishonest” people who tried to stop him being elected.
Trump’s tweet Photograph: Truth (sic) Social
Our full coverage of this will be on the separate live blog, but lots of politicians are speaking out, and so there will be some mention of it here.
Otherwise, the focus is probably on the budget, which is now less than three weeks away. The Commons is not sitting, because of a mini-recess, but Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is due to give an interview to Matt Chorley on Radio 5 Live this afternoon.
Reeves is likely to be asked about the Labour backlash to the speech she gave last week, which implied it is all but certain that she will break the manifeso promise and raise income tax. (A 2p rise in income tax, offset by a 2p cut in national insurance, is “nailed on”, one source told the Observer.) Last night Catherine West, the Labour MP for Hornsey and Friern Barnet in north London, who was a Foreign Office minister until she was sacked in the September reshuffle, told Radio 4’s the Westminster Hour that, if Labour did break its manifesto promise, it could be punished by the voters just as the Liberal Democrats were over their tuition fees broken promise. She said:
If I were Rachel, I think I wouldn’t be breaking the manifesto promise …
I just think back to the Liberal Democrats and the university fees, because that was, you know, the big one for me that I remember and was very important for me. That’s how I won my seat, because I won that from the Liberal Democrats. So I think those big ones, they do come back to haunt you.
In 2010 the Lib Dems won 57 seats, after a campaign during which candidates signed a pledge not to vote for a rise in tuition fees. In coalition with the Tories, the party did back a tuition fee increase and some Lib Dem MPs (but not all) even voted for it. After the 2015 election they were left with just eight MPs.
In the Times Aubrey Allegretti says ministers are also making exactly the same point in private. He reports:
Cabinet ministers have privately warned Rachel Reeves that increasing income tax in the budget may spell electoral disaster for the Labour party …
One cabinet minister called for Reeves to set out an “off-ramp” for reducing taxes …
Another minister said: “My concern is there hasn’t been enough consideration of the consequences of breaking the manifesto commitment. This could do to us what happened to the Liberal Democrats after the 2015 election, given voters are already extremely despondent with us.”
Here is the agenda for the day.
11am: Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, holds a press conference.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
2.35pm: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is interviewed on Radio 5 Live.
And at some point today the Commons culture committee will publish a statement from Samir Shah, the BBC chair, responding to questions about the leaked Michael Prescott memo that led to Davie’s resignation.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (normally between 10am and 3pm BST at the moment), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
Updated at 04.52 EST