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Badenoch apologises for native election ‘massacre’ in op-ed
Kemi Badenoch has apologised for the “massacre” of the native elections in an op-ed piece on Saturday for the Telegraph.
The Conservative celebration chief wote:
After final 12 months’s historic defeat, and with protest votes reducing throughout each poll field, we knew Thursday can be arduous. I’m deeply sorry to see so many succesful, hard-working Conservative councillors lose their seats. They didn’t deserve it – and so they weren’t the rationale we misplaced.
Within the piece, Badenoch defined that as celebration members have been voting within the remaining spherical of the Conservative celebration management contest, an unnamed male MP took her apart in parliament and warned “the Could 2025 locals are going to be a complete massacre”. She acknowledged that the prediction was proper: “The outcomes verify he was appropriate. However to be sincere, it wasn’t a controversial prediction to make.”
She added:
These native election outcomes present the dimensions of the work wanted to rebuild belief within the Conservative celebration and the significance of redoubling our efforts to indicate that this celebration is underneath new management and is doing issues in a different way.
Key occasions
Paula Surridge
Reform UK’s victories are simply the newest chapter of political fragmentation, writes Prof Paula Surridge, the deputy director at UK in a Altering Europe and professor of political sociology on the College of Bristol.
Nigel Farage’s celebration has benefited this time as voters flee the principle events, however there are faultlines inside its personal coalition too, Surridge provides. You’ll be able to learn Surridge’s full evaluation right here:
Helen Livingstone
Saturday papers within the UK have been dominated by the Reform celebration’s victory on the polls, wherein it gained an MP at Labour’s expense and gained a string of native councils.
A jubilant Nigel Farage mentioned his hard-right populist celebration had now supplanted the Conservatives and pledged that Reform-run councils and mayoralties would block asylum seeker lodging and dismantle equalities programmes.
The Guardian’s entrance web page led with “Reform wins ‘starting of finish for Tories’, says Farage”, including that it was a “sobering day” for prime minister Keir Starmer and Conservative chief Kemi Badenoch.
You’ll be able to see how different papers reported on the native elections right here:
Headteachers’ union takes authorized motion in opposition to Ofsted over inspection adjustments

Richard Adams
Headteachers are taking authorized motion in opposition to Ofsted, England’s faculties watchdog, over fears that its new inspection regime is “even worse than earlier than” and prone to hurt the psychological well being of college leaders.
The Nationwide Affiliation of Head Academics mentioned it had lodged a declare for a judicial overview in opposition to Ofsted “over the potential impression of their inspection proposals” and for insufficient session over its new system of grading faculties.
Ofsted’s inspection regime has been mired in controversy because the 2023 loss of life by suicide of the headteacher Ruth Perry, with a coroner discovering that Perry’s loss of life was “contributed to by an Ofsted inspection”.
Paul Whiteman, the NAHT’s basic secretary, mentioned:
By some means the give attention to college chief psychological well being and wellbeing has bought misplaced alongside the way in which throughout Ofsted’s session course of.
We should not neglect that the catalyst for these adjustments was the tragic loss of life of Ruth Perry and widespread acceptance that the inspection regime was inserting college leaders underneath insupportable strain. Nonetheless, there seems to have been little or no thought given to the impression on the wellbeing of college leaders within the drawing up of those plans and the session that adopted.
Faculty leaders are deeply involved that the brand new report playing cards might lead to a good worse system than earlier than, with doubtlessly disastrous impression on workload, wellbeing and retention.
We now have tried participating with Ofsted and explaining this, however thus far these issues have fallen largely on deaf ears. We now have been left with little alternative apart from to pursue this motion.
The Guardian has additionally simply launched a visible investigation into the Victorian prisons in England and Wales. It has been created by Ana Lucía González Paz and Rajeev Syal, with design and graphics by Garry Blight, Paul Scruton, Lucy Swan and Harvey Symons. You’ll be able to discover it through the hyperlink beneath:
Cramped Victorian prisons limiting rehabilitation, chief inspector says

Rajeev Syal
The cramped circumstances of Victorian prisons in England and Wales are limiting the rehabilitation alternatives for 1000’s of offenders, an official watchdog has mentioned.
Because the Guardian launches a visible investigation into the state of Victorian prisons in inside cities and cities, the chief inspector of prisons, Charlie Taylor, mentioned nineteenth century jails may be “extremely noisy and distressing” for autistic folks.
His phrases come after a sequence of warnings from the justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, that England and Wales’s Jail Service was in disaster, resulting in the early launch of 1000’s of prisoners this autumn.
Taylor’s annual report in September confirmed that many prisons have been severely overcrowded and understaffed, with 30 out of 32 closed prisons rated as poor or insufficiently good.
Many are overrun with rats and cockroaches and have been infiltrated by drug gangs.
Taylor, who has beforehand described Victorian prisons as “barely match for function”, mentioned that most of the older prisons – about 10% of 122 throughout England and Wales – struggled to rehabilitate offenders.
“These prisons are already overcrowded, and are typically on pretty small footprints. Once you take a look at prisons like Leicester or Bedford, they’re minute jails. There may be little or no workspace for schooling and coaching,” he mentioned. “If the jail inhabitants can also be double what it as soon as was, then that’s by no means excellent to have the ability to do something that is perhaps vaguely considered rehabilitative.”
A senior Tory MP has insisted Kemi Badenoch will nonetheless be the celebration’s chief in a 12 months’s time after the Conservatives misplaced greater than 600 councillors in native elections.
Shadow chief treasury secretary Richard Fuller additionally dominated out a future pact with Reform UK on a nationwide stage after the celebration made sweeping positive factors, experiences the PA information company.
Requested on BBC Radio 4’s As we speak programme how lengthy Badenoch has to provide you with solutions and if we’re going to see her in submit in a 12 months, he mentioned “after all we’re”.
On whether or not the Tories may have to take a look at a pact with Reform UK to get Keir Starmer out on the subsequent basic election, he mentioned:
There gained’t be pacts. Nigel Farage has been very clear that he desires to destroy the Conservative celebration.

Jessica Elgot
In every week of adverse native elections, there was a particular visitor in No 10 to offer a pep discuss to employees: Arsène Wenger, the previous supervisor of Arsenal, beloved of the prime minister. Keir Starmer has sought his recommendation earlier than, on the significance of constructing a crew. And so they have confronted some widespread challenges, rebuilding their golf equipment and events from low ebbs to extraordinary success.
Now Starmer might face the same problem – and criticism – to Wenger in his later years: whether or not he can adapt his tactical rigidity when outcomes begin to endure.
Up to now, a profitable technique has been to win again Conservative switchers and working-class voters whom the celebration was felt to have deserted. That has morphed into deep concern about the specter of Reform UK. In Runcorn and Helsby, misplaced by an agonising six votes having been certainly one of Labour’s most secure seats, Reform confirmed the way it might end up its machine.
However cupboard ministers have instructed the Guardian they’re involved that Labour’s personal pendulum has swung too far and is alienating their very own voters. In that very same seat, Labour retained simply 55% of its vote, suggesting lots of its personal voters didn’t end up. The Greens, nevertheless, clung on to their vote from final July.
Nigel Farage might loom giant as the largest menace in a few of Labour’s most weak seats within the north and the Midlands. However MPs and ministers worry the menace in these seats of Labour staying at residence and shedding votes to the Greens, Liberal Democrats and independents might simply as simply be the issue that might ship seats to Reform, as extra Conservative voters swap to Farage.
Badenoch apologises for native election ‘massacre’ in op-ed
Kemi Badenoch has apologised for the “massacre” of the native elections in an op-ed piece on Saturday for the Telegraph.
The Conservative celebration chief wote:
After final 12 months’s historic defeat, and with protest votes reducing throughout each poll field, we knew Thursday can be arduous. I’m deeply sorry to see so many succesful, hard-working Conservative councillors lose their seats. They didn’t deserve it – and so they weren’t the rationale we misplaced.
Within the piece, Badenoch defined that as celebration members have been voting within the remaining spherical of the Conservative celebration management contest, an unnamed male MP took her apart in parliament and warned “the Could 2025 locals are going to be a complete massacre”. She acknowledged that the prediction was proper: “The outcomes verify he was appropriate. However to be sincere, it wasn’t a controversial prediction to make.”
She added:
These native election outcomes present the dimensions of the work wanted to rebuild belief within the Conservative celebration and the significance of redoubling our efforts to indicate that this celebration is underneath new management and is doing issues in a different way.
Labour MP Rachael Maskell has urged her celebration to scrap winter gasoline and welfare insurance policies that she mentioned are pushing voters away, experiences the PA information company.
The York Central MP instructed BBC Breakfast that Labour has “particular tasks” to serve the wants of individuals.
She mentioned:
We’re not another political celebration, we have been created to serve the wants of individuals throughout working areas of our nation so that folks had an actual voice of the sort of change that they needed to see.
I believe it’s now time, if Labour are going to go additional sooner, to choose up that voice, to place our fingers on the heartbeat and to grasp that that accountability that the 1945 authorities set out placing that security internet in place on the welfare state is on our watch and is our accountability.
So, scrapping these proposals to push disabled folks into hardship is a fully essential a part of that change, exhibiting that we’re going to be listening to the nation and defending the folks at their time of want.
After all we need to get extra folks into work. After all the adjustments to the well being system is de facto essential … but additionally we’ve bought to assist folks and look after folks as we go on that journey.
She added:
Individuals went chilly final winter and that’s not what a Labour authorities needs to be doing.
We now have bought that mandate, I imagine, as a celebration to take a look at how we are able to higher redistribute wealth, versus taking out of the pockets of the poorest.
Starmer says he desires ‘nationwide renewal’ and that ‘change on that scale will take time’
Keir Starmer has mentioned he desires “nationwide renewal” and that “change on that scale will take time”, in a Saturday op-ed for the Instances.
The prime minister wrote:
In brief I would like nationwide renewal. However that may solely be constructed if folks throughout the nation have safety of their lives and that can solely occur if we’ve a safe economic system, a safe well being service and safe borders. Change on that scale will take time. However it’s my focus, now and day-after-day forward.
He added:
The lesson of those elections isn’t that the nation wants extra politicians’ guarantees or ideological zealotry. It isn’t that there’s some simple resolution, as promised by our opponents. It’s that now could be the time to crank up the tempo on giving folks the nation they’re crying out for.
A Labour MP has recommended that voters shunned her celebration in native elections as a result of it has didn’t dwell as much as the values the general public expects from a Labour authorities.
York Central MP Rachael Maskell mentioned Labour must be pushed by “a framework of values, which is about defending folks, serving to folks to maneuver ahead of their lives and guaranteeing you’ve bought these public providers prepared and dealing so that folks can have that help after they want it”.
“That’s what Labour governments do,” she instructed BBC Breakfast. She added:
I imagine that when Labour doesn’t meet that candy spot, that expectation that folks have of a Labour authorities, then they begin to look in much less beneficial locations for the place that assist comes from.
Yesterday, many individuals have been trying to find that response, to seek out that safety, to get that help. However, sadly, if Labour weren’t providing that, they’d look somewhere else.
That’s why Labour have gotten to study from the outcomes yesterday and be certain that we do meet the wants of individuals on this nation in very, very attempting instances.
‘No easy solutions’ for Reform UK, says senior Tory
Reform UK will discover on the market are “no easy solutions” to native public funds and need to make “troublesome decisions” after the celebration surged in native elections, a senior Tory MP has mentioned.
Richard Fuller, shadow chief treasury secretary, mentioned it was now as much as Nigel Farage’s celebration to see if they will ship within the areas the place they’ve gained council seats and mayoral polls.
In response to the PA information company, Fuller instructed GB Information:
We now have to acknowledge Reform did very properly yesterday.
They gained the Runcorn byelection off Labour. They’ve gained some mayoralties and now they are going to get the possibility to indicate what they will really do after they give them energy.
So, now not pointing at issues, however really there to attempt to discover options, albeit on a neighborhood stage, to assist the folks in Lincolnshire or Hull, the place they’ve taken over the mayoralties.
And different areas the place they’ve taken management of the council.
They’ll discover out, Reform will discover out, I believe, that there are not any easy solutions domestically to public funds at native authorities stage, they’ll need to make some troublesome decisions and the native public will … maintain them to account for the choices they make.
Farage has beforehand recommended each county council “wants a Doge” – a reference to Elon Musk’s cost-cutting Division of Authorities Effectivity (Doge) within the US.
Talking on the BBC’s As we speak programme on Saturday, ex-GB information host Darren Grimes, who gained a seat on Durham county council for Reform UK, mentioned: “On day certainly one of being in management, we’re get the auditors in.” Extra on this story in a second, however first, here’s a abstract of the newest updates:
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Nigel Farage hailed Friday’s native election outcomes as “the top of two-party politics” and “the loss of life of the Conservative celebration” as Reform UK picked up 10 councils and greater than 600 seats in Thursday’s ballot.
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Kemi Badenoch apologised to defeated Conservative councillors after the Tories misplaced greater than 600 councillors and all 15 of the councils it managed going into the election, among the many worst leads to the celebration’s historical past. Conservative figures have sought to disclaim that the outcomes are “existential” for the celebration.
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A number of Labour figures have referred to as on the prime minister to alter course after Reform UK gained the Runcorn and Helsby byelection by six votes and took management of the beforehand Labour-run Doncaster Council. Backbench MP Emma Lewell, who has represented South Shields since 2013, mentioned it was “tone deaf to maintain repeating we’ll transfer additional and sooner on our plan for change. What is required is a change of plan.”
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Keir Starmer warned in opposition to events providing “some easy, ideological repair”. In a Saturday op-ed for the Instances, Starmer wrote that he needed “nationwide renewal”. He added: “However that may solely be constructed if folks throughout the nation have safety of their lives and that can solely occur if we’ve a safe economic system, a safe well being service and safe borders. Change on that scale will take time.”
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In additional indicators of fracturing political loyalties, a BBC projection of how the voting would have seemed in a UK-wide election put Reform first on 30%, Labour on 20%, the Liberal Democrats on 17%, the Conservatives fourth with 15% and the Greens on 11%.
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After shedding his authorized problem over private safety, the Duke of Sussex, has appealed to the prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the house secretary, Yvette Cooper. Requested whether or not Starmer ought to “step in”, he replied: “Sure, I’d ask the prime minister to step in.” He then mentioned: “I’d ask Yvette Cooper, the house secretary, to take a look at this very, very fastidiously and I’d ask her to overview Ravec [Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures] and its members.”
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The cramped circumstances of Victorian prisons in England and Wales are limiting the rehabilitation alternatives for 1000’s of offenders, an official watchdog has mentioned. Because the Guardian launches a visible investigation into the state of Victorian prisons in inside cities and cities, the chief inspector of prisons, Charlie Taylor, mentioned nineteenth century jails may be “extremely noisy and distressing” for autistic folks.