Labour said it would withdraw from local council administrations if the local Green group did not disown the motion.

The party’s deputy leader Bridget Philipson said: “This isn’t an issue of party politics; it’s about doing what is right and upholding the values anyone holding public office should share.

“The Labour party fought hard to root out antisemitism within our own party and ensure it had no place in our politics. Our action is a demonstration of how today’s Labour party will not shirk from the responsibility we have to uphold those same standards in our relationships with other parties.”

The full list of councils Labour has withdrawn from coalition with the Greens in is as follows:

• Arun District Council
• Derbyshire Dales District Council
• Havant Borough Council
• Lewes District Council
• Sheffield City Council
• Stafford Borough Council
• Warwick District Council
• Wealden District Council
• West Devon Borough Council
• West Suffolk Council

It remains unclear what will happen next in each of these councils. In some, Labour will seek to continue running the council as a minority administration. In others, the party will seek to work with groups other than the Green to continue in power. And in councils like Lewes, the Greens are the largest party, meaning it will likely be up to them to seek to cling on in administration.

There are six other councils where Labour and the Greens will continue to participate in joint administrations, as Labour has decided that the local Greens have sufficiently distanced themselves from the motion. These are:

• Broadland District Council
• Monmouthshire County Council
• North Somerset Council
• Rother District Council
• West Oxfordshire District Council
• West Sussex County Council

The Green Party has responded with heavy criticism of Labour’s decision. In a statement, the party said: “The Green party, and the Green group office, representing Green councillors across the country, have been hugely disappointed in moves designed by national parties to force local council leaders into jeopardising successful progressive partnerships that are delivering benefits for residents.

“Across the country, Green, Labour, independent and Liberal Democrat councillors have worked together to provide stable local government, protect services and deliver positive change. Leaders across these parties are rightly proud of what those partnerships have achieved.

“Those who issued ultimatums that destabilised power-sharing agreements have often ignored the judgements of their own local leaders, failed to respect the choices made by local voters, and are disrupting successful partnerships.”

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

Image credit – Public domain (Polanski), Lauren Hurley / Number 10 – Creative Commons (Burnham)

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The chancellor promised a Budget that would give families “breathing space”. After four years of a cost of living crisis, preceded by a pandemic and a decade of austerity, women needed far more than that. What we got was a Budget of small measures and incremental tweaks: a “picky bits” Budget, complete with a record number of policy announcements, but little sign of a coherent plan to tackle the economic pressures bearing down on women.

Women are still bearing the brunt of the cost of living crisis. Because women earn less than men on average, and continue to carry out around 50% more unpaid care and domestic work, they have less financial resilience when prices rise. More of their income is already spent on essentials, leaving less room to absorb higher costs.

Earlier this year, debt charity StepChange reported that 71% of its clients with energy arrears were women. Single-parent families, the vast majority headed by women, have energy arrears at three times the national average. With interest rates expected to rise again, the cost of servicing those debts will only increase.

Against that backdrop, action on household bills was particularly important. The Chancellor’s package on energy costs – the removal of VAT on energy bills and standing charges on gas bills, and a £100 council tax rebate – will undoubtedly help shield many from even steeper energy bills.

Yet a closer look reveals that the support is not particularly well targeted. According to the Resolution Foundation, higher-income households will benefit almost as much in cash terms as lower-income households. At a time when public finances remain tight, the government should have provided more meaningful support to those struggling most, rather than offering modest help to millions.

Housing is perhaps the clearest example of a missed opportunity.

The Chancellor announced several measures to help people onto the housing ladder. But for many women, the pressing question is how to pay next month’s rent. Our analysis showed that women now spend an average of 57% of their earnings on private rent, compared with 41% for men. For many, housing costs have become the single biggest pressure on household budgets.

That is why the decision not to unfreeze Local Housing Allowance (LHA) is so disappointing. More than 900,000 low-income private renting families now face a gap between the housing support they receive and the rent they are expected to pay.

While additional funding to tackle rough sleeping is welcome, preventing homelessness is every bit as important as responding to it. Single mums already make up the majority of statutory homeless families. But keeping housing benefits frozen will put more families at risk of losing their home.

While the Chancellor did say extending paternity pay to self-employed fathers was a ‘downpayment’ on wider reforms to parental leave, he also needed to address the inadequacy of maternity pay. At less than half the minimum wage, it continues to put many mothers under severe financial pressure. Our analysis has shown that improving maternity pay would put more than £1bn in families’ pockets and deliver social and economic gains.

This highlights a wider persistent blind spot in British economic policymaking: the tendency to overlook the social infrastructure that makes economic participation possible. Investment in care, education and local government services is too often treated as secondary to traditional physical infrastructure spending. That comes at a significant cost. We estimate that the UK loses £113 billion in economic output because women’s skills and labour are underutilised. If the Chancellor wants to unlock growth in every postcode and boost living standards across the UK, women must be at the heart of economic policy.

And while a new fund to tackle misogyny is welcome, £5 million a year for three years is a drop in the ocean. It is, notably, just half the amount allocated to a single new parkway station in Cardiff. Violence against women and girls is a national emergency, and it needs to be treated as such. 1 in 4 women in England and Wales will experience domestic abuse in her lifetime and one woman is killed by an ex/partner every five days. 

The biggest question left unanswered at the dispatch box was what will happen to the spending envelopes for most departments including those covering justice, education and local government. While health and defence absorb the vast majority of spending growth, other departments face growing pressure on their existing budgets from inflation and rising costs. The Chancellor’s promise of efficiency savings may reassure the Treasury, but it will raise concerns for those who remember how similar language paved the way for austerity. Cutting waste is one thing; asking overstretched services to do more with less is another. Women are likely to bear the consequences most acutely, both as the majority of users of public services and as the majority of the workforce that delivers them. When public services are stretched beyond capacity, women are often the first to fill the gaps.

The forthcoming spending review is an opportunity to address current shortfalls, but without commitment to spending increases, we are looking at real-terms cuts. That is why it is disappointing that more ambitious revenue raising measures were left on the table. Doubling the bank levy was a welcome step and a recognition that sectors which have benefited from higher interest rates should contribute more. But the increase is temporary and remains below previous levels. Similarly, not raising capital gains tax rates to align with income tax rates is a huge missed opportunity to bring in much-needed tax revenue.

No one expected this Budget to dismantle 40 years of neoliberalism overnight. But it could have started shifting priorities.

So, while this Budget may have offered some breathing space, it did not deliver a convincing answer to the question of how women’s living standards will improve over the long term.

The Women’s Budget group is a feminist economics think tank that raises awareness of and provides evidence for a gender equal economy. We put feminism into economics and economics into feminism. www.wbg.org.uk 

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Until today, Sheffield was run by a joint administration of Labour and the Greens, with the former having 26 seats on the council and the latter 19.

In a statement, the Labour leader of Sheffield council – Fran Belbin – said: “Since the Greens passed the “Zionism is Racism” motion at their conference at the start of October, Sheffield Labour has been trying to find a way to address the concerns of many of our citizens about the motion and to enable us to continue to work together. However we now feel we are at the end of the road with the joint administration, and the people of Sheffield deserve to know why.”

Belbin went on to add: “The Greens that we formed a joint administration with feel like a very different organisation now – while many individual Green members/ex-members and administrations around the country have put out clear statements that address the problems with the motion, including most of their MPs, in Sheffield there has been no movement at all.”

The statement concluded: “Sheffield Labour will put Sheffield first, we will fight ALL forms of racism, and we will put all our focus on the issues that matter most to our citizens, including tackling poverty, improving our neighbourhoods and creating opportunities for young people. We will never stop calling for justice for Palestinians, that matters so much to so many of us.

“I do not want to lead an administration that is characterised by division and hatred. We are one Sheffield made up of many communities, and Sheffield Labour will keep working to bring communities together to overcome differences, not entrench them.”

Elsewhere in the statement, Belbin said Labour would seek to form a minority administration later this week. Labour is 16 seats short of a majority on the council and therefore would need the votes of other parties – either Liberal Democrats (who have 22 seats) or Reform and independents (who together have 17 seats) in order to take control of the council on their own without the Greens.

Labour’s decision to cease running Sheffield jointly with the Greens comes as a result of the party centrally instructing all local Labour groups to terminate joint-administrations where the local Green group has not publicly condemned the ‘Zionism is racism’ motion.

Sheffield Green Party has responded fiercely to Labour’s decision. In a statement, the Green councillor group said: “It is so sad to hear that Sheffield Labour have failed to stand up for Sheffield. They are throwing away our joint working agreement because of top-down demands from London.

“Labour’s ultimatum was never really about the conduct of Green Councillors in Sheffield, who are wholeheartedly committed to this city. It came from Labour HQ in London and is a really troubling attack on local democracy.

“Sheffield deserves so much better than a Labour council leadership decided by national party management who are happy to play political games with all our futures.

“Over the last few years, we have disagreed with many Labour policies, such as cutting vital support for disabled people and pensioners, their acts of climate vandalism and obsession with fossil fuels and airports, cutting funding for warm homes, arming Israel’s genocide in Gaza and jailing people for supporting Palestinians by protesting peacefully.

“Yet we have put our responsibilities to the people of Sheffield first – by working cross-party and having a positive influence on delivering local policy.”

The statement went on to read: “We have offered to work through this. We are willing to keep talking and, from our perspective, the door remains open. It seems clear, however, that the decision about Sheffield Council was not a decision the Sheffield Labour Leader was allowed to make in the interests of Sheffield residents.

“Local people have just been used as pawns in a cynical political game being played by Labour at a national level.

“Labour owns the consequences and they alone will have to explain to the people of Sheffield why they’ve put party politics over local residents.”

Sheffield Labour’s decision follows a similar move in Lewes, where the Labour and Green groups have ‘mutually’ ended their joint administration, citing ‘national context’ and ‘unnecessary pressures’ from outside the council.

The ‘Zionism is racism’ saw the Green Party argue: “The real, material manifestation of Zionism has been the historic and ongoing dehumanisation, displacement, dispossession, disenfranchisement and destruction of Palestinians. This is based upon European settler-colonial systems of domination and oppression, which has also created racial hierarchies between Jews of different ethnicities in Palestine.”

Alongside this, the motion committed the Green Party to supporting a ‘one-state solution’. The motion saw the Greens support: “the establishment of a single democratic Palestinian State in all of historic Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital, equal rights for all, and the right of return for Palestinians and their descendants.”

Labour is expected to soon announce which other local coalitions with the Greens it will end as a result of the motion.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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Jenrick appeared on LBC, where he was reminded that he had previously endorsed Donald Trump for President, to which Jenrick replied: “I didn’t”.

Presenter Ben Kentish replied: “I would be voting for Donald Trump, if that’s not an endorsement what is?”

Kentish went on to add: “You endorsed a U.S. President who has made almost everybody in this country poorer.”

The war in Iran has sent energy prices soaring, a point made by Chancellor John Healey too during the budget last week as he reminded Tory leader Kemi Badenoch that she had tried to get the UK to join the war.

Kentish continued: “I’m just wondering that given he has caused such damage to our economy, whether you reject him”.

Jenrick didn’t reject his endorsement of Trump but claimed that he had always opposed the war in Iran.

Last week, he endured a humiliating interview from Lewis Goodall on LBC on Sunday when he refused to condemn an ally of Nigel Farage for calling Kemi Badenoch a “Nigerian scammer”.

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The findings come at a time of growing concerns over national security, amid threats from a belligerent Russia and rising tensions in the Middle East. NATO has warned that member countries could be at war within five years.

Reform is yet to have a defence spokesperson despite the growing salience of the issue, with the party’s deputy leader Richard Tice claiming on GB News that Farage himself is the party’s defence spokesperson.

The Independent reports that new analysis shows Reform have taken little interest in defence issues.

It states: “Out of 210 defence debates and questions in parliament from the King’s Speech in July 2024 until 15 July 2026, Mr Farage only spoke in 10 of them, missing another four because he had stepped down as an MP to call a by-election in his Clacton constituency.

“Of the 10 defence-related interventions in parliament by Mr Farage, nine were on the Chagos Islands debate over Sir Keir Starmer’s controversial attempts to hand them over to Mauritius and lease back the crucial Diego Garcia base.

Out of a total of 210 defence debates, Reform’s MPs only participated in 63 of them, equating to 30%. They took no part in 147 defence debates.

Meanwhile, Labour, the Tories and Lib Dems took part in 100% of the debates.

So much for being staunch patriots defending Britain.

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Reform have been in second place in over half of the polls, with the Tories second in the remainder.

Since Burnham became prime minister, Labour has significantly improved its standing in the polls. Much of the ground gained by Labour has come at the expense of the Greens and the Lib Dems, with the former having lost substantial support since their peak around the Gorton and Denton earlier this year.

Reform has also seen its poll rating drop significantly. While under Keir Starmer’s leadership of the Labour Party, Reform were consistently polling in first place, support for Nigel Farage’s party has fallen from around 30 points to an average of around 22 points.

What this all means for the next general election remains unclear. Labour’s lead in the polls varies from between one and nine points. If a general election were to produce a result at the lower end of that, we’d be looking at a hung parliament. If it were at the higher end, Labour would be looking at a small majority.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

Image credit: Simon Dawson / Number 10 – Creative Commons

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The petition calls for an inquiry which specifically looks into the sale, supply or use of weapons that have been used in Gaza.

The petition reads: “We want the UK Government to launch an inquiry into any British involvement in Israeli operations in Gaza, including the sale, supply or use of weapons, surveillance aircraft and Royal Air Force bases. We believe the UK has played a vital role in Israeli military operations in Gaza.

“We call on the UK Government to launch a fully independent inquiry into the UK’s involvement since October 2023, which would have the power to question government ministers and officials involved in decision-making processes, particularly relating to: what arms have been supplied to Israel, what RAF bases have been used and why; what intelligence was collected during RAF flights; and what legal advice has the UK Government sought in assessing whether a genocide has taken place in Gaza.”

The petition was launched by Jennifer Forbes, the chair of Your Party on Friday 23 October. It comes after Andy Burnham’s government recently rejected Jeremy Corbyn’s call for a public inquiry in British complicity with Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. The government said it was not necessary as parliament is able to hold the government to account.

Speaking about the petition, Corbyn said: “The British public deserves answers about Britain’s role in Israel’s assault on Gaza — from arms sales and RAF bases to surveillance flights and legal advice on genocide.

“Politicians work for the public, not the other way around. It is shameful that more than 50,000 people have had to mobilise simply to demand an independent inquiry into their own government’s actions.

“If the Government has nothing to hide, why is it running away from accountability?”

As the petition is hosted on the official parliamentary petition platform, if it receives 100,000 signatures it will be considered for a debate in the House of Commons. As it has received more than 10,000 it will receive a formal response from the government.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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As first reported by the Daily Mail, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow has removed several ancient Egyptian human remains from display, citing a desire to treat the deceased with respect. Visitors are informed of the decision by a sign reading: “We have removed human remains from this display as a mark of respect.”

The decision reflects growing recognition within the museum sector that displaying human remains raises ethical questions, particularly when there is no evidence that the deceased consented to their bodies being exhibited.

But for the woke-bashing media, the move was an opportunity to wheel out a familiar culture-war bogeyman.

“Woke’ museum slammed after removing mummies due to ‘lack of consent’,” the Express’s headline declared.

The article explains that the exhibits removed include a mummified male head and right foot, a mummified right hand recovered from the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, and a painted coffin containing the remains of a priest.

It also reports Glasgow Life, the charity that runs the museum with funding from Glasgow City Council, says the decision reflects contemporary museum practice.

Nevertheless, the article gives prominent space to critics eager to portray the move as absurd.

Scottish Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser branded it “woke madness at its most ridiculous.”

“Even Egyptian mummies are now being cancelled by a society so obsessed with modern sensibilities that it has lost all sense of perspective,” he said.

Chris McGovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education and a former adviser to the Policy Unit at 10 Downing Street, similarly dismissed the decision as “more virtue-signalling, woke nonsense.”

He argued that it was impossible to seek permission from people who died thousands of years ago.

Yet this misses the point. The absence of consent is precisely the ethical dilemma, not a reason to dismiss it. The question is whether the fact that human remains can be displayed means they necessarily should be.

Glasgow Life has offered a clear explanation for its decision, pointing to the International Council of Museums’ revised Code of Ethics, published in June 2026, which states that museums should uphold the inherent dignity of human remains and respect their significance.

The charity also cited the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Afrikan Reparations’ 2025 report, Laying Ancestors to Rest, which raises concerns about displaying ancient Egyptian remains without sufficient regard for the wishes of the deceased or the communities that laid them to rest.

Glasgow Life’s draft Human Remains Policy proposes that such remains should only be displayed where documented, informed consent exists from the deceased or, where appropriate, their descendants.

“In the absence of such consent, we believe removing ancient Egyptian human remains from display is more respectful to the deceased individuals,” a spokesperson said.

That’s a considered ethical position, not an attempt to erase history. The remains have not ceased to exist, nor has the history of ancient Egypt been rewritten. The museum has simply decided that displaying human bodies is not the only way to educate visitors about the past.

Of course, museums must balance educational value, historical preservation and public access with respect for the dead.

Reasonable people can disagree about where that balance should lie. But dismissing the issue as ‘woke’ does little to engage with those competing responsibilities.

The Express and other critics also give little attention to those who welcome the decision.

Writing for Vice in an article entitled Why This Museum Is Removing Egyptian Mummies From Its Exhibits, journalist Jillian Drachman argues the move was entirely sensible, questioning why the remains of people who had been carefully mummified in accordance with their beliefs should be displayed for public consumption.

“If the ancient Egyptians took great pains to mummify the body so that it might rise again,” the writer asks, “why are we figuratively spitting on their belief systems under the guise of ‘education’?”

It’s a question worth considering.

But reducing that debate to a sneering headline and predictable denunciations of ‘wokeness’ is not an argument; it’s a way of avoiding one.

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New figures shared by the Metropolitan Police show phone theft and robbery offences fell to their lowest August level since 2022. In the West End, where nearly half of all phone thefts in London take place, offences have fallen sharply, with over 9,000 fewer thefts recorded in the last 12 months.

Commander Andy Featherstone, the Met’s lead for tackling phone theft, noted how phone theft offences are now at a four-year low “because of the Met’s relentless campaign to crack down on these criminals’’.

“This was our biggest operation yet, with officers targeting every stage of the organised criminal chain, including street thieves, handlers and exporters.”

London Mayor Sadiq Khan welcomed the progress, saying the “tide is definitely turning” on mobile phone crime in London with 16,000 fewer mobile phones stolen in the past year and neighbourhood crime falling further too.

“Record funding from City Hall is empowering the Met to go after every single part of the £50million-a-year trade in stolen phones.”

Yet this is precisely the sort of development that has struggled to attract the attention lavished on stories portraying London as a crime-ridden dystopia.

One of the few outlets to give the issue attention was LBC, which published an article by Khan, arguing that progress on phone theft and other crime “has not happened by chance.”

“Backed by massive investment and support from City Hall, the Met has launched the largest anti-phone theft operation in the history of the UK,” he wrote.

Predictably, the article’s comments section became a platform for racist abuse and hostility towards the London Mayor, with some contributors seeming more interested in attacking the mayor than engaging with the figures.

“Loving the comments on this thread, denying the facts and angrily stating their hate,” one commenter observed.

The reaction reflects a wider pattern in the political campaign against Khan, from the hostility directed at his Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) expansion to the relentless attempts to discredit his record as mayor.

As we have previously explored, Khan has become a convenient whipping boy for the right, with opposition to ULEZ often descending into a campaign of personal attacks. The irony is that the policy was originally conceived under Boris Johnson when he was London mayor.

And this selective approach to London’s record on crime is nothing new.

Figures released earlier this year by City Hall and the Metropolitan Police showed that neighbourhood crime had fallen by around 14 percent over the preceding 12 months, equivalent to roughly 35,000 fewer offences across the capital.

Several outlets, including the BBC, LBC and the Independent, reported the figures prominently. Yet, much of the right-wing press showed considerably less enthusiasm for reporting evidence that challenged its preferred narrative.

The Daily Mail, the Sun and the Daily Express have all found plenty of column inches for stories depicting London as a city in decline. Evidence of falling crime, however, has proved far less enticing.

Consider the Daily Express’s coverage of the previous year’s crime figures, when it declared that Khan had been “humiliated” by supposedly “buried” statistics exposing the “true extent of lawless London.”

Rather than offering a balanced assessment of crime trends, the paper presented the figures as ammunition against the mayor.
When crime figures worsen, the public deserves to know. When they improve, the public deserves to know that, too.

Yet the disparity in coverage suggests that, for much of the press, crime is newsworthy primarily when it reinforces an established political narrative. Stories that portray London as a lawless mess are useful weapons against a Labour mayor; evidence of progress is considerably less convenient.

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Launched by the Good Law Project, the petition urges London Mayor Sadiq Khan to intervene over the planned display on Oxford Street, questioning why the capital is celebrating the work of one of the world’s most prominent critics of transgender rights.

“Sadiq Khan says he’s an ally of the trans community, declaring that trans rights are human rights, and that London will remain a safe, welcoming space for trans people,” the petition states, adding:

“So why is he allowing one of the most famous anti-trans people in the world to take over Oxford Street?”

The campaign argues that a Harry Potter-themed spectacle in one of London’s busiest shopping streets risks making trans people feel unwelcome rather than included in the city’s Christmas celebrations.

Rowling has pledged to use the money she makes from the new Harry Potter television series to support the fight against trans rights.

“This will only make her more money,” the petition warns, highlighting how the commercial success of the Harry Potter franchise could help bankroll Rowling’s political campaigning.

The Telegraph was quick to cover the controversy, running the headline: “Trans campaigners launch petition against Harry Potter Christmas lights.”

Its report cites the Good Law Project’s involvement and noted that the organisation lost a High Court challenge this year concerning Equality and Human Rights Commission guidance on the exclusion of transgender women from female-only spaces.

“Trans activists have launched a petition against Harry Potter-themed Christmas lights because they will make JK Rowling ‘more money’,” the article continued.

Rather than dwelling on the substantive issue behind the protest, namely Rowling’s stated intention to channel the proceeds of her work into anti-trans campaigning, the report shifts attention towards the campaigners and the Good Law Project’s legal record.

The display is due to coincide with the opening of a new Harry Potter shop on the newly pedestrianised Oxford Street on November 4.

Khan’s office has clarified that the mayor is not responsible for arranging the Oxford Street Christmas lights. That responsibility rests with the New West End Company, which is pressing ahead with its plans.

For the Good Law Project and its supporters, however, the issue is about more than festive decorations. It’s about whether a major public shopping destination should become a showcase for a hugely profitable franchise when its creator has pledged to use the wealth it generates to advance a political cause that many trans people see as threatening their rights and dignity.

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