Politics

Chancellor Reeves adamant she will ‘make sure the sums add up’ Rachel Reeves gave an interview with Laura Kuenssberg this morning in which she emphasised the ‘mess’ she says the Conservatives have left behind, and restated that Labour would not spend outside of its fiscal rules. Kuenssberg asked the Chancellor whether she would be prepared to ignore the recommendations of the independent pay review bodies, which have called for a public sector pay rise of 5.5 per cent. Reeves would not confirm the government’s position, but accepted that ‘there is a cost to not settling’ public sector pay disputes, implying she might be open to above-inflation pay increases. What is

It wasn’t so long ago that the German chancellor Olaf Scholz tried to convince fellow European leaders to do more to help Ukraine. Wherever he travelled in the spring, the message was the same: Vladimir Putin will only withdraw Russian troops ‘if he realises that he cannot win the war on the battlefield,’ Scholz told European social democrats at a meeting in April. Now his coalition has decided to cut German military aid to Ukraine by half, Reuters reported, based on a draft of the 2025 budget. Next year, Europe’s largest economy intends to spend just €4 billion on supporting Kyiv against Russian aggression. Germany’s finance minister Christian Lindner suggested at a press conference that this

Back to the Commons, where Kemi Badenoch has been making waves. The shadow housing secretary has been ruffling feathers in her own party as its attention turns to a looming leadership contest and Badenoch has not been making life easy for opposition politicians either – and this time it’s Angela Rayner in the firing line. In just 13 minutes, Badenoch managed to tear apart the new Deputy Prime Minister, her politics and her party. First congratulating her rival on being appointed to such an esteemed position, Badenoch was quick to point out to how Rayner had grown up with a Conservative government, telling the Commons that the Tories will indeed