Keir Starmer UN speech - live: PM urges Middle East to ‘step back from the brink’ in address before Trump meet
Keir Starmer to meet Donald Trump after UN speech
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Sir Keir Starmer is set to meet Donald Trump in New York after he delivers a speech to world leaders at the UN General Assembly.
Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly, the prime minister urged Israel and Hezbollah to agree a ceasefire and for the two sides to “step back from the brink”.
In a speech to world leaders in New York, Sir Keir said: “I call on Israel and Hezbollah: Stop the violence, step back from the brink.”
The 79th UN summit comes as the Middle East teeters on the brink of all-out conflict and the bloody war in Ukraine grinds on.
It follows an intervention at the UN Security Council where he tore into Russia over its actions in Ukraine, saying Vladimir Putin was treating his own citizens as “bits of meat to fling into the grinder” in the conflict.
Sir Keir has been embroiled in a donations row after borrowing an £18m penthouse flat from Labour donor Lord Waheed Alli during the general election and to film a Covid video. But Downing Street claims he did not break the rules.
Can Keir Starmer simply ignore a vote of Labour’s annual conference?
Russia treating own citizens as ‘bits of meat to fling into grinder’, says Starmer in UN speech
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Starmer announces new investment to create Europe’s largest AI data centre
Non-doms tax crackdown may raise no money, Treasury officials warn
Rachel Reeves’ plan to crackdown on non-doms could raise no extra funds, leaving a £1billion hole in spending for schools and hospitals, The Guardian reports.
Labour had planned to use the money raised from the tax raid to invest in public services. But it has now emerged Treasury officials believe the policy will fall flat without raising any money because of wealthy non-domiciles leaving the country.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) initially predicted that axing the tax break for rich foreigners could raise around £3.2billion per year.
However, the estimates were deemed to be “highly uncertain” as wealthy individuals could leave the UK to avoid the clampdown.
Pensioners start legal battle against government over winter fuel payment cuts
Two pensioners are seeking to take the Scottish and UK governments to court over the cut to the winter fuel payment.
Peter and Florence Fanning, of Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, have raised proceedings with the help of the Govan Law Centre against the Scottish government and the UK Work and Pensions Secretary over the policy.
The judicial review – which has been raised at the Court of Session – now requires a judge’s approval to move to a hearing on the merits, with the Govan Law Centre seeking to expedite both the case and its application for legal aid to ensure a decision can be handed down before the winter.
The case asks the court to rule on whether the decision was unlawful, which would then allow the petitioners to ask the court to, in effect, set aside the policy and restore the winter fuel payment to all.
Speaking at a press conference in Edinburgh today, Mr Fanning, 73, said: “We intend to sue both the London and Scottish governments, since both are guilty through action and inaction, of damaging the welfare of pensioners.
“We are hoping to be successful, given the manifest injustice involved, however, my work as a trade unionist and shop steward has taught me that some battles are worth fighting regardless of the outcome – I believe this is one such battle.”
Pictured: Keir Starmer meets US investor ahead of UN speech
Tugendhat brands Afghan withdrawal ‘deeply insulting’
Tory leadership contender Tom Tugendhat has branded US President Joe Biden’s justification for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan “deeply insulting”.
In 2021 President Biden delivered a speech claiming tha Afghanistan’s political leaders “gave up and fled the country”.
In a video posted on X, Mr Tugendhat said: “I was furious about President Biden, who said that the reason the collapse had happened was because the Afghans had not fought for their freedom.”
Windrush report slams failure to address decades of racist policy
The UK government has published a previously suppressed report into the Windrush scandal’s origins that says laws were specifically designed to strip Black and Asian people of their rights to live in the UK.
The report, The Historical Roots Of The Windrush Scandal, concludes that the scandal was the culmination of three decades of racist immigration laws designed to reduce the UK’s non-white population and disenfranchise Black people.
Our race correspondent Nadine White has the full story:
Windrush scandal report slams failure to address decades of racist immigration policy
Government report was suppressed by the Conservative government in 2022 but has been published following a decision by a tribunal judge
Ex-Bank of England economist says winter fuel cuts ‘bad politics'
A former chief economist at the Bank of England has claimed Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to cut winter fuel allowance for pensioners was “bad politics and bad economics”.
Speaking to Nick Ferrari on LBC, Andy Haldane said: “It felt to me like it was bad politics and probably bad economics as well.
“The principle of means-testing benefits is not at all unreasonable – ultimately this is a failure of design”.
The move has caused strong backlash with unions rebelling against the prime minister by passing a non-binding motion to reverse the cuts at the Labour Party conference on Thursday.
Kemi Badenoch ‘huge fan’ of Elon Musk
We’ve just reported that Elon Musk has not been invited to an international investment summit organised by the Labour government.
The controversial billionaire attacked Sir Keir Starmer on his social media platform X over his handling of the far-right riots and posted inflammatory and conspiracy theories about the violence.
But Tory leadership contender Kemi Badenoch would be unimpressed as the former minister said she is a “huge fan” of the social media mogul.
She told The Spectator: “I think Elon Musk has been a fantastic thing for freedom of speech. I will hold my hand up and say, I’m a huge fan of Elon Musk.
“I look at Twitter before he took over and after: there is a lot more free speech. Yes, there are many, many more things that I see on X, as he calls it, that I don’t like.
“But I also know that views are not suppressed the way that they were, that there was a cultural establishment – that was very left – that controlled quite a lot of discourse on that platform.”
Elon Musk hits back at UK snub, says he doesn’t want to go anyway
Badenoch reveals reason she feels ‘sympathy’ for new Labour government
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