So here I was, before the last General Election, with a number of MPs gathered around a big table at Shrivenham as the ‘scenario’ was explained to us – a deuced ticklish one. 

On the table, was a model of a harbour “in a non-aligned country” which other countries that were hostile to the United kingdom wished to make use of in an increasingly dangerous international situation. How did the MPs gathered round the table propose to prevent this happening without triggering an all-out third world war? There were questions we could ask and there were Monopoly-style cards containing “intelligence”. You could select and use these and, of course, over the horizon UK armed forces stood ready and waiting. 

Well if ever you’ve seen something to enthuse a cross party group of MPs then this was it. Like a torrent, armchair plans and strategies poured forth from the many men in the room – whose voices were unsurprisingly drowning out that of our female colleagues. Indeed, the real military strategists, our own UK military top brass, had to call for relative calm and requested that suggestions were made in an orderly fashion. 

“Ram the harbour gates with a cargo vessel loaded with explosives!”

“Could we land troops and armour to the landward side of the harbour?”

“No!” interrupted an RAF Group Captain. “You do not have air superiority and this would be one act that surely would provoke this non-aligned country.”

“Well let’s simply bomb the harbour!” suggested another MP – who had, himself, once gallantly served the colours. 

And so it went on… 

And then, from my left, spoke a rather measured voice.

“What if we were able to hack into the harbour’s central IT and find out if control could be taken of the main harbour gates that would normally be opened or closed, according to the rise and fall of the ocean’s tides?”

At this point I saw something I will never forget. Suddenly, all the macho of the bombers and blowers were silenced. The reaction of the defence big wigs amongst us was fascinating. In an instant, you could see that this MP was onto something and she was ultimately proved entirely correct. 

Take control of the harbour gates while the tide is at its highest and keep the gates open while the tide recedes again. And then, hey presto! Those ships in the harbour would suddenly be high and dry on the harbour floor and many of them would fall on their sides. Thus rendering – even when the tide came back in – the harbour entirely unusable. 

It was one of the cleverest things I have seen in my time as an MP – and in many ways, I was not at all surprised when that particular MP – Abena Oppong-Asare – was appointed by the then-incoming Prime Minister Keir Starmer to be his Parliamentary Private Secretary. I thought then and I think now that Keir chose very well. 

Although we have now moved on from the Starmer era, it is for this reason that I was particularly pleased to note last week that Abena has been elected by secret ballot by the entire House of Commons to Chair the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee. She will, I have no doubt, make an extremely good job of it. 

Is there a moral to this tale? I do suggest one. It’s not always the loudest voice that is the most sensible or the most intelligent. I have been a politician for many years now and I am now totally unsurprised by the way the brashest members of the House – the ones who present any argument or mistruth with arrogant confidence – are the ones who are taken more seriously (and often fail upwards as a consequence). It is, frankly, a crying shame that many members of the public have lost faith in politicians altogether because of these few. 

However, if you look beyond the front pages of the newspapers and media headlines which platform these individuals, you will find many politicians who are some of the most intelligent people I’ve had the privilege of meeting. Those who became MPs for the right reasons – who have succeeded through hard work, unwavering values and true competence. 

It is greatly encouraging to witness someone with Abena’s true ability rise in UK politics, and during these last days, rise again. As a Black woman in Parliament, her success gives me faith that talent and determination will still find their place in our political institutions – even in a political landscape that can feel dispiriting. Moments like this give us reason to believe that true merit will continue to find its way to the fore. 

I have no axe to grind either way. I am a member of a different political party and I represent the opposite end of the United Kingdom. But I’ll tell you what, after all these years I know a quality politician when I see one – and so did the military top brass that day in Shrivenham.

Jamie Stone is the Liberal Democrat MP for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross and the chair of the House of Commons Petitions Committee.

Image credit: UK Parliament – Creative Commons

The post Jamie Stone MP explains how to spot a quality politician appeared first on Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK's progressive debate.

And right now, you would be hard pushed to find anybody who didn’t think more money should be spent on doing just that.

Under the last Tory government defence spending was slashed by 22% between 2010 and 2017 before it began to tick upward again, both as a percentage of GDP and in real terms.  

Many of the voices at the time who defended those cuts, are the same voices now calling for £billions more in additional spending. Their hypocrisy would be rank if it wasn’t for one simple truth; in today’s uncertain, volatile and increasingly hostile world, their calls have justification.  

Defence spending peaked at the height of the cold-war in the early 1980’s when the spectre of nuclear war between the USA and Soviet Union, was at its height.

As US and Soviet relations began to thaw in the warmth of perestroika, a ‘peace dividend’ lured many a government to believe that the days of resolving conflicts with bullets and bombs were, if not truly over, less likely.  

Warfare, its devastating and destructive consequences forever indelibly stained in countless pages of history books, would not so often leave their stains in the history books of the future.

Negotiation and diplomacy were the order of the day. Words, not armies, would be sent to fight battles in diplomatic dispatch boxes and only verbal, not hand, grenades would be launched across negotiating tables.  

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and its illegal, unjustified and abominable war, brought any notion of a peace dividend, sorely tested after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, crashing firmly to the ground.

A war was now being prosecuted in a European country where four, of its seven borders, were with NATO member states.  

If the world feels less safe today than since the peak of the cold-war, that’s because it is and I haven’t even begun to talk about China, Iran or North Korea, all of whom regularly attempt to test the strength of our national security.

At the 2025 NATO Summit in The Hague, a commitment was made by all member states to invest 5% of their GDP annually on defence spending by 2035. This included 3.5% on core defence and 1.5% on resilience and security. 

To reach 3.5% of GDP by 2035 would mean the UK spending around an additional £35billion per year.  The ongoing political battle is not whether more should be spent, but how the money will be found.

Ultimately ‘the how’ will come down to two hard choices; either cuts to government expenditure or an increase in tax receipts.  

Reform have suggested funding additional defence spending by, amongst other measures, reducing the cost of welfare. This they say would be achieved by slashing £50billion from the benefits bill largely through cuts to disability payments.  

If enacted, this could potentially see 2.9 million people have disability payments removed, or modified. To put that another way, that’s around 4% of the entire UK population impacted.

The Tories have also talked of welfare reform to fund extra defence spending and have suggested making a £4billion start through cuts to housing benefit. Many have claimed, if enacted, that would lead to an increase in homelessness and hardship.

Welfare costs today are in the region of £334billion per annum. That is a huge number but what rarely gets mentioned is that as a percentage of GDP, welfare costs proportionately less now than it did more than twenty years ago.

Another thing rarely mentioned is that more than half of that amount, around £178billion, is spent on pensioners and I have yet to hear calls for the state pension bill to be slashed by £50billion. 

Andy Burnham was right to say national security cannot come at the expense of social security.  

He was also right to say that defence could be funded and the welfare bill reduced ‘the Labour Way’ by getting more people into work and through the provision of better mental health services.  

‘The Labour Way’ makes sense. For every 100,000 people placed into work, the Universal Credit bill reduces by around £700million per annum. Having more people in work is a positive thing but ‘ the Labour Way’ alone, unfortunately, won’t be enough to bridge the £35billion per year defence spending gap.

Here are some suggestions that might help:

• An annual 2% wealth tax on those with assets over £10million could raise £24billion per annum.  Even if the monies realised were half that, it would be a significant and sizeable chunk. 
• The estimated (provisional) overall UK tax gap (in fiscal year 2024/25) was £59billion. That figure surely has scope to be reduced by £billions.  Let’s assume a 10% improvement. That’s almost £6billion.
• Around £6billiion is lost to tax evasion each year. Reduce that by half and there’s another £3billion.
• Increasing the bank corporation tax surcharge to 8% would bring around an extra £8 billion by 2030 and imposing a windfall tax of 38% on profits, around another £19billion.
• Replacing a windfall tax on big energy with a price triggered mechanism could bring, on average, an additional £1.5billion in tax receipts per year for the next ten years.

Whilst funding additional defence spending by cutting the welfare bill might grab a headline, it would only serve to create a whole host of other, mostly unwelcome, consequences for the millions of people it would affect.

A wealth tax however would affect around 0.04% of our citizens, that’s only about thirty thousand people.  Yet the money it would raise would help protect an entire population of sixty-nine million.

And in fulfilling its first duty, the government could do with all the help it can get.

Image credit: Lauren Hurley / Number 10 – Creative Commons

The post How Andy Burnham can fund defence spending without cutting welfare appeared first on Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK's progressive debate.

Chancellor John Healey is set to present his first budget. Like his recent predecessors, he wants to see sustained economic growth which has remained elusive. The UK economy grew by an annual average of 3% between 1993 and 2007. The growth rate shrank to 1.5% between 2009 and 2023, 1% in 2024; 1.3% in 2025, and is forecast to grow by 1.1% in 2026

Depleted Purchasing Power

Sustained economic growth can’t be achieved without a major boost to the purchasing power of the bottom 50% of the population. Economic statistics show that in the absence of state intervention wealth has not trickled-down. After 50-years of economic growth workers’ share of gross value added has declined from 71.9% in 1975, to 59.7%. The average real wage has hardly grown since 2008. In August 2026, the median gross pay of a payrolled employee was £31,884, resulting in take-home pay of £26,476 after paying income tax and national insurance. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that single working-age adult needs to earn £31,500 a year to reach a minimum income standard and live a life with dignity. A lone parent with 2 children needs £67,600 a year, while a couple with 2 children needs to earn £77,400 a year between them. Unsurprisingly, 25.3m people, including 14.9m working adults and 7.7m children, live below minimum income standards and are not in a position to play a significant role in economic revival.

A large proportion of the population can’t dip into a savings buffer to support consumption and economic growth. 1 in 6 UK adults (16% or 8.9m people) have no savings. 2 in 5 Brits (39%) have £1,000 or less in savings.

At the same time, the richest 1% of Britons owns more wealth than the bottom 70% of the population combined. Just 50 richest families hold more wealth than the poorest half of the population, comprising more than 34m people. The concentration of wealth in fewer hands has not provided the necessary economic stimulus.

The tax system should be used to boost the purchasing power of the bottom 50%, but it has done the reverse and hit the poorest the hardest. The poorest 20% pay a higher proportion of their income in direct and indirect taxes than the richest 20%. In 2021, the personal allowance was frozen at £12,570 a year and 26.6m people paid income tax at the basic rate of 20%. By 2026-27, due to the freeze, 31.4m people became liable to pay income tax at the basic rate. If personal allowance had risen in line with the rate of inflation, it would have been around £16,070 for 2026/27. Due to frozen income tax thresholds, a minimum wage earner in England will pay additional £980 in income tax and national insurance in 2026-27 alone. Without change, it will be worse in 2027-28.

Pensioners have been particularly hit hard. In 200-21, 6.47m pensioners paid income tax. In 2026-27, 9.58m pensioners became liable to income tax. Nearly 2m pensioners live in poverty.

Increasing Personal Allowance

A substantial increase in tax free income tax personal allowance is the quickest way to boost people’s purchasing power. The tax cost of each £1,000 increase in personal allowance is around £10bn a year though the real cost would be considerably less as higher household spending would increase government yield from VAT and other indirect taxes.

A, immediate £3,000 increase in personal allowance to £15,570 would cost around £30bn and boost gross domestic product by around 1.2%. Neoliberals don’t ask any questions about the resources for bank bailouts and corporate welfare programmes, but they always ask ‘how is it going to be paid’ whenever redistribution is mentioned.

The £30bn cost would be met by ending subsidies to highly profitable commercial banks. Since 2006, the Bank of England has paid interest on central bank reserve deposits to commercial banks. Central bank reserves are deposits held by commercial banks at the Bank of England (BoE) and are used to settle payments between banks. They are also used by the BoE to manage interest rates through tools such as quantitative easing. The interest payments accelerated in 2009 as quantitative easing took hold. As interest rates rose, payments to commercial banks increased. The EU had similar arrangements but in 2023 virtually eliminated the practice, saving about £5.2bn a year. The Swiss central bank also stopped paying interest on minimum reserves.  The UK continues to pay and has paid £100bn in the last three years alone, which is an average of more than £30bn a year. 

Currently, the government hands subsidies to banks and then seeks to clawback a tiny portion by levying windfall taxes. 

A £3,000 increase in personal allowance would be worth £600 in cash to 31.4m basic rate income taxpayers. However, higher personal allowance would disproportionately boost the post-tax income of the higher rate (40%) taxpayers by £1,200 and even more for additional rate (45%) taxpayers. However, there are clawback arrangements. In general, currently personal allowance is reduced by £1 for every £2 of income above £100,000. The net effect is that personal allowance is zero for incomes of £125,140 or above. That said there would still be higher benefit to people in the 40% and 45% income tax bracket, which will increase inequalities. 

The government can tackle such effects by addressing tax anomalies mainly benefitting the wealthy, which in turn would generate even more resources for redistribution. For example, gains arising from the sale of second homes, buy-to-let properties, shares, art, antiques, businesses and cryptocurrencies, generally accrue to wealthy individuals. Capital gains are normally taxed at marginal rates of 18% to 24% (there is an additional rate of 32% for City fund managers who are exempt from paying income tax) and are not subjected to national insurance contributions. In contrast, wages are taxed at marginal rates of 20% to 45% and are subject to national insurance payments. By taxing capital gains at the same rates as wages, around £12bn – £14bn could be raised. More, if national insurance is levied. 

So who would be impacted? The capital gains tax regime benefits less than 1% of the population. In 2024-25, 584,000 people paid £24.2bn capital gains tax (CGT) on gains of £127.3bn, an effective rate of just over 19%. Most CGT comes from the small number of taxpayers who make the largest gains. In 2024-2025, 45% of CGT came from those who made gains of £5 million or more. This group represents less than 1% of CGT taxpayers each year. They paid ultra low rates of tax. According to HMRC, 52% of gains for CGT-liable individuals came from the 17% of individuals with taxable incomes above £125,140, the additional rate threshold for income Tax.

The benefit of lower CGT is spread unevenly. 234,000 individuals in London and the South East of England benefitted, compared to 33,000 in East Midlands, 34,000 in Yorkshire and 18,000 in Wales. Lower CGT rates widen regional inequalities. The alignment of capital gains rates with those applied to wages would also reduce regional inequalities.

There are also additional ways of clawing back gains from the rich. For example, dividends are taxed at marginal rates of 8.75% to 39.35%. Around £6 billion a year could be generated if dividends are taxed at the same rate as wages, and even more if national insurance is also charged. The wealthy are major recipients of dividends. The Institute for Fiscal studies (IFS) reported that the top 1% of income tax payers receive more of their income in the form of partnership income or dividends. Some self-employed and owner-managers pay themselves in dividends instead of a salary to take advantage of lower tax rates. The government states that over “90% of UK taxpayers do not receive taxable dividend income” and majority of pensioners do not receive dividends outside the tax-free ISA wrapper. 

Altogether, the Chancellor needs to make a political decision but can easily increase personal allowance by £3,000 a year by ending bank subsidies. This would lift millions out of poverty, increase spending power of the less well-off, lighten the cost-of-living crisis and boost economic growth. He can go further and restore the real value (since 2021) of personal allowance by aligning taxation of capital gains and dividends with wage rates. This change would also end tax avoidance schemes designed to convert incomes to capital gains. It would nullify strategies for concocting dividends to enable some to avoid income tax and national insurance contributions.

The above proposals transfer wealth from the wealthy to the less well-off. They do not require any increase in the rates of income tax, VAT or corporation tax. Unlike the Reform UK proposals, they do not call for cuts in spending on social security, public services or the state pension. 

Image credit: Simon Dawson / Number 10 – Creative Commons

The post This is how the Chancellor can increase the personal allowance and lift millions out of hardship appeared first on Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK's progressive debate.

On Good Morning Britain (GMB) this morning, presenters pressed Yusuf on a tweet he posted about Labour’s candidate in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, Sagal Abdi-Wali. 

On 2 September, Yusuf posted a tweet suggesting Abdi-Wali, who came to the UK as a child refugee, shouldn’t be able to become an MP because she was born in Somalia.

On 9 September, Abdi-Wali was confirmed as Labour’s by-election candidate.

He wrote: “The front runner being foisted on the people of Holborn by Labour to replace the former Prime Minister Keir Starmer in our Parliament was born in Somalia.

“Do you understand what’s happening?”.

GMB’s political editor, Ranvir Singh, said the tweet had been “roundly condemned as racist”, and gave Yusuf the opportunity to explain his remarks. 

Yusuf claimed the accusation of racism was “absurd on its face” and said it amounted to “shutting down legitimate concerns from British people by calling them names.. It’s just not going to work anymore.”

Singh put it to Yusuf that his colleague Nadhim Zahawi was born in Iraq, “Are you saying that he doesn’t have a right to run in politics? Because he has.”

Yusuf did not answer the question, and instead said: “Are you aware that we have more foreign nationals living in Britain than at any other point in our history? Are you aware that we have more people that were born abroad in this country than ever before? 

“And are you aware that we have more members of parliament from abroad than at any point in modern British history?”. 

Yusuf added: “It is not to say you can’t be a patriotic British person if you were born abroad. It’s not to say you can’t serve our country if you were born abroad.”

However, he said: “There are a lot of people deeply concerned when they see things […] a group of Pakistani heritage MPs getting together and writing a letter to lobby the Pakistani government about an airport in Mirpur.“

Singh pointed out that that wasn’t what Yusuf had tweeted. 

Presenter Kate Garraway pressed Yusuf, saying: “Could you explain your tweet, please, so that we all understand it?”.

Yusuf continued to talk about how British people were wondering “why is my MP lobbying for an airport in Pakistan?”.

He said they were “legitimate concerns” to be raised and that he wouldn’t be “bullied or tone policed and called names for raising the concerns of millions of hardworking British people”. 

Singh responded: “That isn’t what you said, that’s a deflection.”

Garraway gave Yusuf another opportunity to clarify what his post meant, but Yusuf tried to repeat the same point he had already made about there being more “foreign nationals” than ever before in the UK.

Singh then ended the interview while Yusuf was still talking, stating: “Zia Yusuf, you had your chance to respond to the tweet but you chose to deflect by talking about another issue. Thanks for joining us on the programme.”

The programme then cut to a full list of candidates in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election. 

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

The post Journalists end interview with Reform’s Zia Yusuf after he repeatedly refuses to answer questions about racist tweet appeared first on Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK's progressive debate.

The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed yesterday that it has enough evidence to prosecute Thomas, and that he has been charged with criminal damage with intent to endanger life.

Thomas, who also refers to himself as Danny Tommo, filmed himself tracking two inflatable dinghies which were transporting asylum seekers from France on Tuesday afternoon.

In the footage, he approaches the dinghy, which is full of life jackets left by passengers, and uses his blade to repeatedly stab holes in the side of the vessel.

There were no migrants on board, but there was a French official from the coastguard vessel Abeille Liberté on the boat.

Thomas can be heard shouting at a rescue worker onboard to “get off” while escaping air from the dinghy can be audibly heard.

The Joint Council for Welfare of Immigrants called Thomas’ actions “violent and dangerous”. 

Following the CPS’ announcement that Thomas has been charged, Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice defended the far-right figure, claiming that he was “doing the job the police and border force should be doing”. 

Tice wrote on X: “Please confirm why it is a crime to try to stop such illegality by doing the job the police & Border Force should be doing?”.

He also said: “Please confirm if you have charged the 80,000+ illegals who have invaded our country since the general election?”.

The Reform MP also suggested that Thomas’ prosecution had been “rushed through”.

He wrote: “Weird how you took many months to charge the Manchester Airport thugs for assault against police officers. (Only after I started a private criminal prosecution) 

“Yet you rush this through in days? Seriously?”. 

Tice’s comment defending Thomas sharply contrasts with his condemnation of the masked Dover protests that Thomas, founder of anti-migrant group Patriot Platform, organised at the beginning of September. 

Thomas also organised protests in Portsmouth. 

On 5 September, Tice said: “This is not lawful protest, it is militia style intimidation.

“Regardless of politics, left or right, this must be stopped urgently or thugs will feel emboldened.”

Leader of Restore Britain, Rupert Lowe, questioned the prosecution process.

Referring to the fact that Thomas has been charged and will appear in court today, Lowe wrote on X that “the speed of this process is absolutely astonishing”.

Lowe added: “All individuals are entitled to the same treatment before the law, regardless of what the establishment may think of said individual.

“The pace of incident to arrest to charge to court for Danny Tommo is rapid, to say the least. I will be watching very closely.”

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

The post Reform and Restore Britain defend far-right activist ‘Danny Tommo’ over arrest for slashing dinghy appeared first on Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK's progressive debate.

On Wednesday, Bradley Thompson was suspended. Thompson is a councillor for Clacton West and St Osyth ward on Essex County Council, as well as for West Clacton and Jaywick Sands for Tendring District Council.

Reform says he was suspended “following several serious and well-documented allegations of misconduct”, but has not provided any details of the allegations.

On 17 September,  Reform issued a blanket statement saying councillor Chris Perera had been suspended after a party investigation found “he damaged the party’s interests”. 

Perera is a councillor for Mersea and Pyefleet ward on Essex County Council.

Thompson and Perera both won their council seats in Farage’s constituency on 7 May this year.

In Lichfield, councillor Dean Robertson was suspended from Reform pending an investigation earlier this week. 

Matthew Wallens, a Lichfield District and Staffordshire County Councillor, was also suspended by Reform pending investigation this week. 

In Durham, three Reform councillors –  Lyndsey Fox, Nicole Brown and Paul Sexton – quit the party last week after Sky News did an investigation into political chaos and bullying allegations at the Reform-led local authority.

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

The post Reform suspends two councillors over misconduct in Nigel Farage’s constituency appeared first on Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK's progressive debate.

It’s been revealed that South Tyneside Council, which is run by Reform, confirmed this week that it will close the publicly-run South Tyneside Accredited Network for Learning in the Early Years (Stanley’s) nurseries.

The BBC reports that the decision was made by councillors during a cabinet meeting at South Shields Town Hall during which shouts of “shame” were heard from the public gallery, where a number of nursery workers and parents had gathered.

“It’s really hard for working parents to get back to work and this just makes it even harder – it’s just devastating,” one parent told the BBC.

The closure of the 10 publicly run nurseries comes after a review was carried out by the council into local childcare services and it was recommended that the Stanley’s close by July 2027 because they were ‘no longer financially viable’ for the council.

South Tyneside Council’s lead member for children’s services, Michelle Fascione, said it had been a “horrendous” situation for decision-makers involved, but that the closures were the best option.

“The council unfortunately doesn’t have a statutory obligation to provide these nurseries and it’s been costing us £1.1m a year to subsidise and it’s not viable for the future,” she told the BBC.

Nonetheless that has left many parents disappointed and angry at the closures.

Rather than delivering for working families, Reform are making their lives harder.

The post Reform councillors heckled by furious parents for shutting local nurseries appeared first on Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK's progressive debate.

The Reform cabinet voted to close all of the South Tyneside Accredited Network for Learning in the Early Years (Stanley’s) nurseries yesterday. 

A total of 116 people are employed across the 10 nurseries.

The Reform council said it was “not viable” to keep the facilities open, as they require a subsidy of £1.1 million per year. 

The authority needs to make £11.6 million in savings for 2026/27. 

South Tyneside Council’s lead member for children’s services, Michelle Fascione, said: “The council unfortunately doesn’t have a statutory obligation to provide these nurseries and it’s been costing us £1.1m a year to subsidise and it’s not viable for the future.

“As a new administration within South Tyneside, it would have been great for us if we could have kept them open, but in reality there was just no way it could be done.”

A review of the future of these nurseries was launched under the then Labour administration in February this year. When Reform took control of the authority in May, the party said it would continue the review.

Leader of the opposition on the council, Green councillor Rachael Taylor, wrote a statement on Facebook saying she was “deeply disappointed that Cabinet has voted to close all 10 STANLEY’s nurseries within 10 minutes of the meeting starting despite significant questions that still require proper answers”.

She said “concerns remain around SEND, children’s services, alternative childcare capacity and the financial implications including what funding will actually be available to deliver the proposed mitigation and action points”.

After the Reform cabinet announced the decision, members of the public in the gallery spoke out in outrage.

One woman could be heard saying: “You should be absolutely ashamed of yourselves. Absolutely disgusting.”

She added that at a scrutiny meeting the day before council officers “could not provide one single piece of evidence to back that [the decision] up”. 

Another said: “Where are your PROUD values now?”, in reference to the council’s commitment to being professional, respectful, open and honest, understanding and engaging and “delivering what we say we will”. 

In a post on X, journalist Kevin Maguire wrote: “The Hard Right party’s South Tyneside councillors had the public gallery cleared after angry parents shouted “shame”.”

He added: “You can’t blame migrants for this, Farage.”

Geraldine Kilgour, a Labour councillor for Fellgate and Hedworth ward in South Tyneside, told Left Foot Forward that while the previous Labour administration was reviewing childcare provision, the idea of closing the nurseries “wasn’t even on the lips of anyone on the Labour group”.

“Review of day care centres was, as we were advised, part and parcel of good practice and doing due diligence,” Kilgour said.

The Labour councillor said that “what they [Reform] should have done was review the service, as we said and look to maximising its capabilities”. She said that the decision to close the 10 nurseries was avoidable “without a doubt” and called the move “callous and heartless”.

She added that childcare will now cost parents “a lot more”, with one resident saying they are currently paying £400 per month, but that they could now pay around £1,000 per month at a Private, Voluntary or Independent nursery.

Kilgour also said that Reform is now reviewing milk provision for under 5s, which is a statutory service. “There’s something amiss, I think they’re targeting the most vulnerable,” Kilgour said.

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

The post Outrage as Reform-run council votes to shut 10 nurseries appeared first on Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK's progressive debate.

The MRP poll by YouGov for the pro-Europe group, Best for Britain, has predicted Andy Burnham would likely win 321 seats in the Commons if he promised to reverse Brexit.

Although that would amount to being five seats short of an absolute majority it would still make Labour the largest party by a comfortable margin.

It comes after a number of opinion polls have shown a desire amongst a majority of the public to rejoin the EU, with one YouGov poll earlier this month finding that 99% of constituencies would vote to rejoin the EU.

The latest MRP poll was based on asking almost 14,000 people during the summer before Burnham became Prime Minister about how they would vote based on certain policies on the EU.

While the Labour government is currently committed to its EU red lines, ruling out rejoining the customs union, the single market or bringing back freedom of movement, if it pledged to rejoin the single market it would win 257 seats.

If the party pledged to rejoin the customs union it would secure 256 seats.

Chief executive of Best for Britain, Naomi Smith, said: “These numbers are a wake-up call for both the prime minister and Labour backbenchers in previously Leave-voting constituencies.

“EU membership is the only policy lever that Labour close to a majority at the next election and keeps the architects of Brexit out of power.”

The post If Labour pledges to Rejoin the EU it would win the next General Election, poll finds appeared first on Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK's progressive debate.

The poll puts Labour on 241 seats, down from the 411 the party won in the 2024 election and 85 seats short of the 326 required for an overall majority.

The figures mark a significant recovery for Labour compared to this time last year, when a YouGov poll indicated that Keir Starmer’s Labour was leading in just 144 seats. 

It does however mean Labour would have to form a coalition with other parties, such as the Lib Dems, SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens. 

The projection puts the Lib Dems on track to win 71 seats, the SNP on 40, Plaid Cymru on 15, and the Greens on nine. 

In a blow to Nigel Farage, the poll shows a sharp decline in support for Reform over the last year.

The median estimate of today’s Multilevel Regression and Poststratification (MRP) poll shows Nigel Farage’s party winning in 123 constituencies.

In last year’s MRP, YouGov projected that Reform would win 311 seats, putting the party in first place and 15 seats shy of a majority.

The poll puts the Conservatives in second place on 130 seats, meaning that even if Kemi Badenoch’s party joined forces with Reform, the parties would still be 73 seats short of a majority. 

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

The post Reform to win less seats than Labour or Conservatives in bombshell poll appeared first on Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK's progressive debate.