Farage did not need to declare £5m donation as it was ‘private’, claims Braverman – UK politics live

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John Swinney criticised for 'stop Farage at border' comment

Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.

John Swinney with Highland cow Cairistiona at High Airyolland farm today. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Malcolm Offord, Reform’s Scottish leader, originally from Greenock on the Clyde, questioned Swinney’s choice of language. A substantial proportion of Reform’s Scottish candidates are Scottish; up to 20% of Scottish voters back the party. He said:

Glad that some of the media are now calling out his language because it works both ways. I don’t think that is in any way temperate language. The reality is that Reform UK is a good thing for Scotland.

Anas Sarwar at a campaign event at the Dynamic Earth steps, Holyrood. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

Eluned Morgan accidentally tells people to vote Plaid Cymru in Welsh language gaffe

Eluned Morgan, the Labour Welsh first minister, accidentally told members to “vote Plaid Cymru” in an election campaign gaffe, the Press Association reports. PA says:

Morgan, the leader of Welsh Labour, misspoke while addressing a crowd of supporters at a week-to-go campaign event in Barry Island.

Ending her speech, Morgan said: “One week to go, let’s open that new chapter for Wales, let’s have fairness you can feel, let’s vote Welsh Labour in the election next week.”

“Pleidleisiwch Plaid Cymru,” she added in Welsh, before quickly correcting herself to say “Plaid Lafur [Labour Party]”.

The error was met with laughter from her audience, who clapped and cheered at the end of her speech.

Speaking to ITV Wales, Morgan said: “We’re all a little bit exhausted, once you switch into Welsh the word ‘Cymru’ comes off your lips.

“Obviously I’m very, very keen for people to vote Welsh Labour in this election.

“You know where you stand, waiting lists are coming down, nine months in succession.

“The plan is working – don’t put it at risk.”

Eluned Morgan campaigning at Barry Island today. Photograph: Eleanor Barlow/PA

Yesterday, when parliament prorogued, it marked the final time that people would be sitting in the House of Lords just by virtue of having a hereditary peerage. There were 92 places left in the Lords for hereditary peers after most of them were removed in 1999 when Tony Blair was PM.

But some of those forced out yesterday will be coming back, Aubrey Allegretti reports for the Times. He says:

Keir Starmer set to announce dozens of peerages before the King’s Speech - in a deal to give a quarter of heredities back their spots in the Lords.

15 Tories who lost their hereditary status on Wednesday will return as lifers, along with two Labour peers and around 9 cross-benchers.

They’ve had to go through due diligence checks with HOLAC [House of Lords appointments commission]- and may have to take up new titles.

Some hereditary peers have already had an upgrade (or downgrade, depending on how you look at it) to additional life peerage status, allowing them to stay. Three of them were given life peerages in an honours list in December.

Reform UK claims it would renegotiate Brexit deal to stop resident foreign students accessing UK student loan system

Suella Braverman, Reform UK’s education spokesperson, was giving interviews this morning (see 11.57am) because she has a policy to announce. As she explains in this video, she says Reform UK would stop foreign students who are resident in the UK accessing student loans.

In recent years universities have become increasingly dependent on foreign students. They can charge them much higher fees, and the income from foreign students helps to fund the teaching for students from Britain, whose fees are capped.

The Reform UK policy would not affect these foreign students – because they cannot access the UK student loan system anyway.

Instead, the policy would apply to resident foreign students – including EU nationals with settled status (permission to live in the UK granted as part of the Brexit settlement, because they were here before) and foreigners with indefinite leave to remain in the UK.

Explaining the policy, Reform UK said:

Currently, 270,000 - 300,000 resident foreign nationals access £4bn worth of taxpayer-backed student loans each year, many of which are unlikely ever to be repaid. At the same time, British graduates face long-term debt and rising living costs. This measure will save approximately £2bn annually.

The party said resident foreign students from Hong Kong and Ukraine would not be covered by this policy.

Braverman said:

Too many of our universities are selling immigration, not education. That ends under Reform UK.

The university system has prioritised mass immigration and low standards over quality and the national interest and too many universities have become little more than visa factories. Too many offer lower entry requirements to foreign students and British students are penalised by the system.

British taxpayer funded student loans to foreign students end under Reform UK. This will save us £2bn per year. We will stop subsidising the rest of the world while young people in Britain struggle with debt and poor job prospects.

As the party acknowledges in its news release, stopping people with EU settled status from accessing the UK student loan system would require a renegotiation of the UK’s Brexit deal with the EU. The EU would not give up this concession lightly, and any attempt to renege on the agreement could lead to Brussels imposing retaliatory measures of its own.

Malcolm Offord defends 'six homes' boast, saying voters want to live in Scotland where people can make money

Libby Brooks is the Guardian’s Scotland correspondent.

Malcolm Offord, Reform UK’s leader in Scotland, has refused to confirm he’d publish his tax return after SNP leader John Swinney challenged all party leaders to do so ahead of the election.

Swinney’s challenge came yesterday as he dismissed the Reform leader as “tone deaf” after he boasted in a televised election debate about owning six houses, five cars and six boats.

Offord told journalists today that he would publish everything “I’m legally required to” if elected – which doesn’t include tax returns. But did confirm that he is a top-rate taxpayer.

He also denied he’d encountered any backlash since the remarks. He said.

All I’ve heard from people is ‘well done for raising this issue’. The question I’m challenging Scotland with is: do you want to be in a Scotland where people make money or not?

Labour mayor Kim McGuinness says Starmer could even survive losing 2,000 seats in local elections - but change would be essential

In an interview with Times Radio, Kim McGuinness, the Labour mayor for the north-east of England, was asked if it would be impossible for Keir Starmer to survive even if he lost as many as 2,000 seats in the local elections next week. Robert Hayward is saying he is likely to lose 1,850 seats (see 9.06am) and other projections for Labour losses are even higher (see 10.05am). As this Guardian analysis explains, losses on this scale would be the worst in modern times for any governing party.

McGuinness replied:

I don’t think it’s impossible [for Starmer to stay on], but I do think he has got to take it as a wake-up call, and the turnaround has to happen. There has to be a real recognition that people do not feel listened to, do not feel understood, [do not feel] like the government is delivering on their priorities, and that has to change. I think there’s that awareness, I think they know that, but now it has to happen.

McGuinness also said that she thought Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, would make “a great prime minister” but she said that, because he was not an MP, and because there was no contest, talk of supporting him for the job now was hypothetical.

There has been some speculation as to how many seats Labour would have to lose for Starmer’s position to be untenable. In truth, trying to work out in advance what the threshold is in a situation like this is a bit of a mug’s game – because politics is never quite that rational or predicatable – but nevertheless it is a big talking point in Westminster circles. In a much-quoted Sunday Times article at the weekend, Lara Spirit suggested 1,500 is the key number.

Just how steep the losses would need to be on 7 May for cabinet ministers to move against the prime minister – with any “magic number” having long been a source of mystery – is now coming into view. One cabinet minister said anywhere north of 1,500 losses in council seats would be the doomsday scenario which could trigger a cabinet revolt. “That would be the cutoff for a collective nervous breakdown among cabinet colleagues,” they said.

Suella Braverman claims Farage did not need to declare £5m donation because it was 'private'

Suella Braverman, the former Tory home secretary who is now Reform UK’s education spokesperson, has defended Nigel Farage’s decision not to declare the £5m donation that he received from Christopher Harborne.

In an interview with Sky News, Braverman said the donation did not need to be declared because it was a “private” matter. She explained:

There’s a very big distinction between what’s your public duty, your public role, and your private. And before he was an MP for many years, Nigel Farage has carried a high risk to his personal safety.

It’s entirely reasonable for him to take steps. It’s very regrettable, actually, that the state has not stepped in to protect him.

Under the Commons code of conduct, and the rules that go with it, donations do not have to be declared if they “could not reasonably be thought by others to be related to membership of the house or to the member’s parliamentary or political activities”.

But the rules also say:

Both the possible motive of the giver and the use to which the gift is to be put should be considered. If there is any doubt, the benefit should be registered.

Number of households in temporary accommodation falls for 1st time in three years, figures show

The number of households in temporary accommodation in England has fallen slightly for the first time in three years, the Press Association reports. PA says:

Temporary accommodation is a form of homelessness and can include hostels, refuges and bed and breakfasts.

There were 134,210 households in such accommodation at the end of December, down from 134,700 at the end of September 2025, according to official data.

Publishing the figures today, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, said: “While this shift is small, this is the first quarter that the number of households in temporary accommodation has fallen since 2022.”

The last quarterly fall was at the end of March 2022 when the number of households stood at 95,000, down from 96,280 at the end of December 2021.

Since then the figure has increased every quarter.

But while the latest number has dropped slightly below the previous record levels, it is still 5.0% higher than the figure for the end of December 2024 which was 127,820.

The number of children in temporary accommodation has however continued to rise, standing at 176,130 at the end of December, up from 175,930 at the end of September.

The number is up 6% year on year, from 165,450 at the end of December 2024.

Of all households in temporary accommodation at the end of December, 12,550 were living in bed and breakfasts (B&Bs).

Badenoch claims Farage getting £5m gift from donor shows he can't claim to be in touch with ordinary people

On BBC Radio Merseyside the presenter, Tony Snell, put it to Kemi Badenoch that Merseyside was a lost cause for the Tories. He said that Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, had been on the programme yesterday. He said that Farage argued that Scousers were down to earth and the Tories they were seen as “aloof and remote”.

Badenoch said no one had ever described her as aloof and remote. When it was put to her that Farage was talking about the party, she said the Tories were the party of working people. Labour were only interested in welfare, she claimed.

She also claimed that the revelation yesterday that Nigel Farage had received a £5m gift showed that he was not down to earth.

Nigel Farage can say as much as he wants that he’s the one who’s down to earth. Someone just gave him a £5m gift to the other day. I don’t know what’s down to earth about that.

Who gets £5m is a gift. If I got £50,000 as a gift, I think people would raise their eyebrows. That’s a hundred times that. And he forgot to register it. He forgot that he’d been given £5m. I don’t think that’s down to earth. So I’m not going to be taking any lessons from Nigel Farage.

On BBC Radio Sussex, the presenter, Sarah Gorrell, put it to Kemi Badenoch that councils were struggling because of the funding record left by the last Conservative government. Badenoch refused to engage with this point, and instead argued that Conservative-run councils were better managed than councils run by other parties.

Gorrell reminded Badenoch that she was a student at the University of Sussex, and said the leftwing students she encountered there helped to make her a rightwinger. She said Badenoch had described students there as “spoilt, entitled, privileged, metropolitan elite in training”. Would that apply to the ones there now, Gorrell asked.

Badenoch said she did not know the students there now. But she said the “silly things” she had encountered in student politics she was now seeing in the Labour government.

Badenoch told BBC Radio London that the Conservatives were committed to keeping council tax “as low as possible”. She said, unlike Reform UK, the Tories were not promising to cut council tax. Reform did that, but could not deliver, she said.

In an interview on BBC Radio London, asked what would be a good result for the Conservatives in London, Kemi Badenoch said she wanted to win as many seats as possible. And she said she would like to win back councils the party had lost, citing Westminster as an example. But she refused to set a target for how many seats she expected to win.

Kemi Badenoch is doing a round of interviews on local radio this morning. She started on BBC Radio Leeds where, at one point, she said that people should vote for Conservative councillors because they were “not drama queens” and “not playing games”. At that point the presenter, Gayle Lofthouse, put it to her that that was exactly what she had been doing in Westminster this week, with the vote on the privileges committee inquiry. Lofthouse also said that BBC reporters were being told the voters in West Yorkshire weren’t interested in this.

In response, Badenoch said she had spent much of the past month focusing on energy policy and petrol prices. But she quickly reverted to defending the vote on Tuesday. She said:

It’s not a TV show, this is real life. Having a prime minister who appointed someone who is a national security risk affects your residents, your listeners.

It is a problem if we cannot defend our country because someone who had links to Russian companies that were closely linked to the Kremlin was appointed American ambassador.

Although Badenoch has repeatedly claimed that Peter Mandelson was a national security risk when he was ambassador, not a shred of evidence has emerged to show that he did anything while he was in that job to jeopardise national security. He was sacked because Keir Starmer concluded he had lied to No 10 about the depth of his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, and because the extent of that relationship made it impossible to defend Mandelson having an ongoing role in public life.

Robert Hayward’s forecasts for the English local elections (see 9.06am) are broadly in line with the equivalent figures produced by other experts.

Here are projections from Stephen Fisher, an Oxford politics professor who is part of the team led by John Curtice that produces general election exit polls for the BBC and others. He published this in a post on his Elections Etc blog last month.

Seat projections Photograph: Elections Etc

And here are projections from Sam Freedman, the political commentator, in a post on his Comment is Freed Substack blog.

Seat projections Photograph: Comment is Freed

More Send inclusive schools ‘actively penalised in Ofsted grades’, union says

Lower grades in parts of a watchdog’s new report cards “actively penalise” schools more inclusive to pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (Send), a headteachers’ union has said. The Press Association reports:

Analysis by the NAHT headteachers’ union of Ofsted inspections under the report card system found one in five (20%) schools with above average numbers of pupils with Send were judged “needs attention” – the second lowest grade – in the report card’s attendance and behaviour area.

This is compared with one in 10 (9%) schools with below average numbers of pupils with Send, the NAHT said.

It comes after the Government unveiled sweeping reforms to the Send system intended to make the system and schools more inclusive.

NAHT general secretary Paul Whiteman said the findings should “ring serious alarm bells” for the government’s ambitions for more pupils with Send to learn in mainstream schools.

The Guardian’s data experts have also been looking at Labour’s prospects in the elections, and they say Labour’s vote-share could fall to historic lows across elections for councils in England and devolved parliaments in Wales and Scotland on 7 May, with big gains for Reform, the Greens and nationalist parties, according to recent polling. This is from Alex Clark and Ashley Kirk.

Robert Hayward has also given his predictions for the Scottish parliament and Welsh Senedd elections. He says:

Scotland- SNP to be just short of a majority

Wales- Plaid to be the largest party in terms of both votes and seats

But there is much more interest in what Hayward, and other psephologists, are forecasting for the English local elections because they are hard to poll. By contrast, there is a lot polling available for the Holyrood and Senedd elections. One source of seat projections based on this polling is Nowcast UK.

Local election campaigning enters final week as forecaster warns Labour could lose 1,850 English seats

Good morning. We are now into the final week of campaigning for the Scottish parliament, Welsh Senedd and English local elections. Keir Starmer had been planning a big speech today, but he, and other political leaders, are today focusing on their response to the Golders Green stabbing and the antisemitism threat facing Britain’s Jewish community – described as a “national security emergency” by Jonathan Hall KC, the government’s independent reviewer of terror legislation. Here is our overnight story. And here is our live blog by Taz Ali.

Taz will be covering most of the political reaction to that story, and so that won’t be something I will be covering here. (And because criminal proceedings are active, comments relating to the attack won’t be allowed below the line, I’m afraid.)

Instead, let’s start with the elections, and a member of the House of Lords called Robert Hayward. Hayward is a Conservative and former MP but at Westminster he is best known as an elections specialist who produces detailed forecasts ahead of elections. They are not always perfect – no forecast is – but they are well-informed, and politically neutral, and Hayward is one of the very few people doing forecasting of this kind whose views are taken seriously by the main political parties. He won’t necessarily tell you exactly what will happen; but he is worth reading if you want to know what the politicos expect to happen (which is useful intelligence because often election results are assessed by how they match up against expectations).

Last night Hayward revealed his forecast for the English local elections on ITV’s Peston.

Robert Hayward’s forecast for English local elections Photograph: ITV’s Peston

And this is how Hayward explains it in his summary.

England all figures given are net losses and gains

Labour will lose 1850 seats

The losses will be nationwide

What impact on Sir Keir’s role? Given S Times comment re 1500 losses and ‘nervous breakdown’ this is bad news for Sir Keir and Labour.

Reform will be biggest gainer from both Labour and Conservatives, overwhelmingly outside London. They will gain 1550 seats

Will their national equivalent vote be lower than last year? I believe it will be

Conservatives will lose 600 seats many in councils deferred from last year. These seats were previously contested in the vaccine bounce year of 2021.

Do they gain any notable councils or stop Reform from taking control of target councils? Yes

Have they improved on the national equivalent vote last year? About static

Greens will gain 500 seats in London and middle class areas of other cities

Can they take any mayoralties or control any councils? Yes definitely mayoralty possibly a council or two

Lib Dems will gain 150 seats but will need to gain councils to be involved ‘in the conversation’.

Will national equivalent vote share reflect decline in poll position. Yes

Have they lost their position as part of the protest parties? Up to a point.

Independents will gain 250 seats

Many of these will be in east London, Birmingham and Lancs

Other forecasts are available too. I will post more on those soon.

Parliament is not sitting today, and there is not much in the diary. But we won’t be short of politics.

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