Day: November 21, 2025

Damning analysis finds former PM failed to act with urgency and was disengaged in early stage of the pandemic ‘Too little, too late’: report condemns UK’s Covid response In office, Boris Johnson liked to see himself as a latter-day Winston Churchill. But the Covid report describing his toxic, chaotic and indecisive No 10 ought finally to put paid to any delusions that he had the qualities necessary to be a prime minister, let alone one guiding a country through a deadly national emergency. The claim among Johnson’s supporters that he could make a political comeback also now looks increasingly…

The changes could see funding boosts for Reform-led councils in the north with high levels of deprivation Deprived towns and cities in the Midlands and the north of England are the big winners in a shake-up of local authority funding that will redirect cash from affluent rural areas to urban councils hit hardest by austerity. Ministers said the changes put in place a fairer system that recognised the extra needs and weaker council tax-raising powers of councils in so-called “left behind” areas. It guarantees them real-terms funding increases for the next three years. Continue reading… Source link

Voters need to know if a party leader said racist things at school. Interviewers have a duty to keep pressing for fuller facts For one contemporary, it is the hectoring tone of today that evokes what it was like to be at school with Nigel Farage. “He would sidle up to me and growl: ‘Hitler was right’ or ‘Gas them’,” Peter Ettedgui recalls when asked about life at fee-paying Dulwich College in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Later, he adds: “I’d hear him calling other students ‘Paki’ or ‘Wog’ and urging them to ‘go home’.” For others, including some in the college’s…