Although it has primarily cut into Scottish Conservative support in Scotland, Reform UK is also making inroads into Labour’s vote, adding to its difficulties. This byelection could become a classic protest vote against Starmer’s government: Scottish Labour’s support has slumped in parallel with the fall in Labour’s UK-wide popularity.
The SNP, which has seen its support flatline under current leader John Swinney, will focus heavily on Labour’s decision not to compensate the Waspi pensioners; its continuing two child benefits cap and the cuts to winter fuel payments.
A Reform UK spokesperson told the Herald it had already started canvassing:
Nigel is definitely coming. The team will be up here … I’m sure if there is an opportunity for Nigel to campaign in Hamilton Nigel will be looking to do that.
Jackie Baillie, Scottish Labour’s deputy leader, said the byelection was “a chance to vote for a new direction with Scottish Labour. People in this community and right across Scotland are being let down by this tired and out-of-touch SNP government.”
The SNP has already selected Katy Loudon, who lost to Labour in the Rutherglen byelection. She said:
Households across the constituency are benefiting from SNP decisions – including free prescriptions and social care, free university tuition or help for older people with heating bills.
In stark contrast, the UK Labour government is making life harder for ordinary people across Scotland.
the DWP has chosen to investigate just 50% of alerts on cost grounds – even though this has led to huge numbers of carers unknowingly accruing massive overpayments.
Campaigners are optimistic the move could, over time, significantly reduce the numbers of carers falling foul of the system – but warned thousands more will be unfairly hit by overpayments as huge backlogs of alerts are processed over the next few months.
Carers in England and Wales who breach carer’s allowance earnings limits of £196 a week must return the full £83.30 a week benefit payment, a “cliff edge” penalty that means going £1 a week over the limit for one year would result in the claimant being hit with a repayment demand not of £52, but £4,330.
in an earlier post that the National Education Union (NEU) indicated that it would launch a formal ballot on strike action if the government’s final pay offer for teachers “remains unacceptable”. We now have some more details from their annual conference, held in Harrogate in North Yorkshire this year.
A motion passed at the conference said the government’s recommended 2.8% pay rise for September was “inadequate and unfunded” and it would prevent the government achieving its target of recruiting 6,500 more teachers.
In its evidence to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) in December, the department for education (DfE) said a 2.8% pay rise for teachers in 2025/26 would be “appropriate” and would “maintain the competitiveness” of teachers’ pay despite the “challenging financial backdrop” the government is facing.
The government has yet to publish the recommendations of the teachers’ pay review body, or its decision on whether to accept them. Education secretary Bridget Phillipson has said “any move towards industrial action by teaching unions would be indefensible”.
An urgent motion, carried by conference delegates on Tuesday, called for a formal industrial action ballot to be launched if the final outcome of the STRB process “remains unacceptable” – or if the government does not announce real-terms funding increases in the spending review in June.
NEU members staged eight days of strike action in state schools in England in 2023 in a long-running pay dispute. In July 2023, the government agreed to implement the STRB’s recommendation of a 6.5% increase for teachers in England, and co-ordinated strike action by four unions was called off.
Teachers in England received a fully funded 5.5% pay rise in September last year.
an op-ed for the paper today.
Farage appeared to try to claim credit for the government’s rescue of British Steel, telling supporters at the event “I don’t believe there would have been a Saturday sitting in parliament if Richard Tice and I had not been up to Scunthorpe and been greeted the way we were by those workers, especially in the local ‘Spoons afterwards, they actually felt there was someone speaking up for them.”
Farage said it was Reform’s policy to “re-industrialise” Britain, and claimed that investments in oil and gas would provide tens of thousands of well paid jobs. He accused Ed Miliband of wanting to “despoil” the British coastline with windfarms, and suggested that the removal of inheritance tax perks from farms was partly because Miliband wanted to replace agricultural land with “Chinese slave-labour made solar farms.”
Farage also angrily attacked Daniel Kebede, president of the National Education Union (NEU) as someone he said was “poisoning the minds of our kids”, and said that if Reform won the next general election it would “go to war with the National Education union and all the left wing teaching unions.”
The Reform UK leader ended his speech by saying it was the party’s “historic mission” to change Britain’s culture. He said “It’s about understanding that Britain is broken, and that without the right leadership, without the right change of mentality, and I think most of us feel, within a decade, it frankly, won’t be a place worth living in. And we are damn determined to turn this round.”
The business secretary has said that he might accept offers of involvement with British Steel from Chinese companies, but would “look at a Chinese firm in a different way” from other bidders. He also said he would not rule out job losses, saying there might be a “different employment footprint” at Scunthorpe.
Speaking as raw materials were being delivered to the keep the blast furnaces running, Jonathan Reynolds said:
What we need for the long-term future of British Steel is that private sector partner to work with us as a government on a transformation programme.
That might be new technology, new facilities, that might have a different employment footprint. The staff here absolutely know that, they know they need a long-term future.
These blast furnaces have given this country nearly a century of service in one case, so they know they need the future and that might be a different model, different technology. What they didn’t want was the unplanned, uncontrolled shutdown of the blast furnaces with thousands of job losses and no plan in place for the future.
And by what we’ve been able to do, working with the brilliant team here at British Steel, is secure the possibility of that better future – and I for one am confident that we’ve made the right decision to support the people here.
Reynolds said he believed the government “can improve on the financial performance that we have seen” but that the support that has been put in place is “better value for the taxpayer” than if jobs had been lost.
On the issue of potential future partners, Reynolds told broadcasters “I think we’ve got to recognise that steel is a sensitive sector. It’s a sensitive sector around the world, and a lot of the issues in the global economy with steel come from over-production and dumping of steel products, and that does come from China.
“So I think you would look at a Chinese firm in a different way but I’m really keen to stress the action we’ve taken here was to step in, because it was one specific company that I thought wasn’t acting in the UK’s national interest, and we had to take the action we did.”
The Liberal Democrats have urged the government to rule out any involvement from Chinese firms in the future domestic production of steel. Foreign affairs spokesperson Calum Miller said that would put national security at risk and be “completely unacceptable.”
Earlier Reform UK leader Nigel Farage appeared to try to take credit for the rescue operation, claiming Labour had only moved the way it did because of the warm reception Farage and Richard Tice received when they visited the plant last week.
Some pictures have just dropped on the news wires of coking coal being unloaded at Immingham Port in Lincolnshire, destined for British Steel at Scunthorpe. Business secretary Jonathan Reynolds was expected to visit there today.
GMB national officer for steel Charlotte Brumpton has been speaking to the media. She told reporters that she felt Chinese owners Jingye had “deliberately frustrated the situation in the end.”
She said “They cancelled orders that they’d had and they also sold some of the raw materials that they had already procured. We cannot read that any other way than deliberately trying to run down the blast furnaces in the middle of a legal redundancy consultation which is, firstly, unprecedented and, also, hugely immoral to their workforce.”
She added that the Scunthorpe workforce is “breathing a huge sigh of relief” that the raw materials have been secured to continue operations.
Speaking outside the plant she said: “It’s a huge step. When we were stood here talking last week, there was real uncertainty about whether we would be able to maintain the blast furnaces beyond May.”
called on the foreign secretary to summon the Chinese ambassador for an explanation.
Nigel Farage has appeared to have claimed credit for the government moving to rescue British Steel. The Reform UK leader told supporters at a campaign event in Newton Aycliffe in County Durham that “I don’t believe there would have been a Saturday sitting at parliament if Richard Tice and I had not been up to Scunthorpe and been greeted the way we were, by those workers, especially in the local [Wether]spoons afterwards. They actually felt there was someone speaking up for them. They actually felt there was somebody on their side. And that, I think, is why Labour did what they did.”
Farage claimed “we are witnessing an industrial massacre” in the UK. He said “It’s going on in chemicals, it’s going on in refining. We no longer produce aluminum in this country. We should be self sufficient in oil. We should be absolutely self sufficient in gas. We need to produce more energy and cheaper energy. 21st century living demands absolutely nothing less, and this is part of our strategy. Reform will re industrialize Britain.”
He said “We’re living through a period of net zero lunacy” and said that Ed Miliband’s ambition was to “despoil as much of our coastline as he possibly can.”
Nigel Farage had billed this Reform UK speech as a major announcement, and it appears that it is him saying “Reform are parking their tanks on the lawns of the “red wall”. Today is the first day I’ve said that. But I absolutely mean it, and we’re here, and we’re here to stay.”
Farage chooses the anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster to pose with a giant print out of the Sun’s front page saying “Britain is broken”. He has also claimed you wouldn’t know it was Easter coming up, due to what he said was “social and cultural decline”.
His message appears to boil down to, at these council elections in May, a vote for the Conservatives in the so-called red wall areas is wasted, and that to vote against Labour people should back Reform UK candidates. He accused what he described as “the Labour lie machine” of being “in full groove”.
Nigel Farage has been introduced at a Reform UK event in Newton Aycliffe in County Durham by Lee Anderson. In his introductory speech Anderson described Labour MPs as “a clueless bunch of people … [who’ve] never had a real job in their life”.
He claimed that in the north-east many Labour MPs could “could walk down the street and nobody would actually recognise them”.
Farage has begun his talk with a list of recent council byelection victories for Reform UK at the expense of the Labour party. I’ll bring you any key lines that emerge.
The largest education union in the country will launch a formal ballot on strike action if the government’s final pay offer for teachers “remains unacceptable”, PA Media reports.
Delegates at the annual conference of the National Education Union (NEU) have voted for districts, branches and school groups to “immediately prepare” for a formal industrial action ballot over the pay and funding offer for 2025/26.
More details soon …
The Liberal Democrats have called on the government to rule out any future Chinese involvement with British Steel.
Foreign affairs spokesperson Calum Miller said:
Giving another Chinese firm ownership of British Steel would be like coming home to find your house ransacked and then leaving your doors unlocked.
Domestic steel production is absolutely vital to our national security and to put that at risk again would be completely unacceptable.
The government should rule out any Chinese firms’ future involvement in the ownership of British Steel – and certainly until it has completed and published its China audit. The stakes are simply too high.
Earlier today business and trade minister Sarah Jones said the government’s preference for the future of the blast furnaces in Scunthorpe was for “a private sector partner to come in”. Pressed on Sky News if that could be another Chinese firm, she said “At the moment, I’m not going to say yes or no to anything that isn’t at the moment on the table or being looked at.”
Source: theguardian.com
