Politics
Iran Has The ‘Upper Hand’ In War Against Trump, Ex-MI6 Chief Says
Donald Trump insisted overnight that Tehran wants a deal to end the conflict “so badly” after he declared a five-day ceasefire, but Iran has accused the US of “negotiating with itself”.
Meanwhile, Israel and Iran are still exchanging strikes – even though the US president claims to have wiped out the majority of Iran’s missile launchers – and the Pentagon is reportedly considering deploying some troops to the warzone.
Almost a month after the president attacked Iran without telling US allies, ex-secret intelligence chief Alex Younger said it was clear Iran have the “upper hand”.
Speaking to The Economist, Younger said: “I regret having come to this conclusion because like many MI6 officers of my generation, we faced the violence and brutality of the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] for most of our careers.
“There is no love lost between us and I shed no tears for [Iranian supreme leader] Ali Khamenei, who was killed at the beginning of this war.
“But the reality is the US underestimated the task and I think as of about two weeks ago, lost the initiative to Iran.
“In practice, the Iranian regime has been more resilient than I think anyone would have expected.
“They took some good decisions as early as last June about dispersing their military capability and delegating authority for the use of those weapons, which has given them significant extra resilience against this incredibly powerful air campaign.”
He said Tehran has embarked on “horizontal escalation”, meaning they’ve been firing rockets at anyone in range.
“At the time I thought it was nuts but in fact it has been a very good way of putting a direct price on the US – it sort of worked,” Younger said.
“And then they sort of understood the significance of the energy war and held the Straits at threat, and globalised ’[the conflict].”
Iran has effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz, which carries a fifth of the world’s oil supply, by targeting any ships using the waterway.
The move has damaged the global economy as it has led to a spike in the price of oil.
Younger claimed the regime has “played a weak hand pretty well”.
He also said Trump’s own remarks about “regime change” will confirm to Iran that they’re in a “civilisational war”, a “war of existence”.
“Whereas America has embarked on a war of choice,” Younger claimed. “In those terms I think that’s imbued them with more staying power than the US and certainly US counterparts.
“They know that now, and that really is giving them the whip-hand.”
Right before calling Iran’s response to the White House’s latest peace proposal “TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE,” President Donald Trump lashed out at his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, for settling the tab for a Carter-era arms deal with the nation that fell through decades ago.
Taking to Truth Social on Sunday afternoon, the commander in chief fumed that “Iran has been playing games with the United States, and the rest of the World” since the fall of American-aligned Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979.
“DELAY, DELAY, DELAY!” he described Iran’s strategy with the US, while also claiming Tehran will be “laughing no longer” if his administration has the final word.
In his post, the president said Iran “finally hit ‘pay dirt’” with Obama, who negotiated the now-defunct Iran Nuclear Deal alongside China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the European Union in 2015.
MANDEL NGAN via Getty Images
“He was not only good to them, he was great, actually going to their side, jettisoning Israel, and all other Allies, and giving Iran a major and very powerful new lease on life,” Trump wrote.
The president falsely claimed the Obama administration forked over billions of dollars “in green cash” to Tehran on a “silver platter” back in 2016, referring to a massive transfer of funds which was part settlement for a $400 million arms deal halted by the Iranian Revolution in the late 1970s and partially the release of Iranian-owned funds which were frozen due to international sanctions.
President Trump called the amounts so substantial “Iranian Thugs had no idea what to do with it” when it was offloaded from planes in “suitcases and satchels.”
Continuing to rail against Obama, he said Iran had “finally found the greatest SUCKER of them all, in the form of a weak and stupid American President.”
“He was a disaster as our ‘Leader,’ but not as bad as Sleepy Joe Biden!” Trump went on to add.
In his post, the president accused Iranian leaders of stringing the U.S. along for decades, “keeping us waiting, killing our people with their roadside bombs, destroying protests,” as well as “wiping out 42,000 innocent, unarmed protestors, and laughing at our now GREAT AGAIN Country.”
“They will be laughing no longer!” Trump concluded.
President Donald Trump made an outlandish claim about early childhood vaccine recommendations, lamenting that “beautiful little babies” were given a “vat … of stuff pumped into their bodies.”
In an interview with journalist Sharyl Attkisson on the Sunday episode of her show “Full Measure,” Trump defended Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., saying, “People love him.”
Trump was then asked whether there should be a commission to scrutinise vaccine safety, as Kennedy has long advocated.
“I believe in vaccines, but I don’t believe that, you know, you have to have a mandate for all of them,” Trump said.
Then, he falsely claimed that children were required to receive more than 80 vaccines and argued for reducing the number of immunisations.
“I look at these beautiful little babies, and they get a vat, like a big glass, of stuff pumped into their bodies,” Trump said. “And I think it’s a very negative thing to do.”
As of early 2026, the CDC recommends, rather than mandates, that children under 10 be inoculated against 11 conditions, down from a previous recommendation of 17.
Trump also claimed that paring back the childhood vaccine schedule would lead to a “better result with the autism.”
Despite extensive scientific evidence debunking a link between childhood vaccines and autism spectrum disorder, Kennedy has continued to push the theory.
Last year, he personally directed the CDC to change its website to say that there was “not an evidence-based claim” to discredit the connection between vaccines and an autism diagnosis and that studies showing the contrary had been “ignored by health authorities.”
“The whole thing about ‘vaccines have been tested and there’s been this determination made’ is just a lie,” Kennedy told The New York Times in 2025.
Politics
Politics Home Article | Keir Starmer To Say “People Need Hope” As Calls For Resignation Grow
Prime Minister Keir Starmer will deliver a key speech tomorrow as he fights for his political survival amid growing calls from Labour MPs for his resignation. (Alamy)
3 min read
Prime Minister Keir Starmer is set to deliver a key speech tomorrow which he is widely expected to use as an attempt to push back against calls for his resignation from a growing number of Labour MPs.
Starmer, in what is likely to be one of the most important speeches of his political career, is expected to say “people need hope” – and that his government “will face up to the big challenges” and “will make the big arguments”, conceding “incremental change won’t cut it”.
At the heart of the speech will be Starmer’s bid to reset relations with the European Union, “by putting Britain at the heart of Europe” so that the UK is “stronger on the economy, on trade, on defence”.
Starmer is also expected to say a closer relationship with the EU will mean “standing shoulder to shoulder with the countries that most share our interests, our values and our enemies”.
However, despite Starmer’s hope for a better future on Monday, as well as his expected focus on “Labour values and Labour policies” to reconnect with the public, the speech will inevitably see the Prime Minister talk as much to his own party as to the public as he fights for his own political survival.
A devastating set of local election results for Labour, which saw the party lose the Senedd in Wales for the first time, as well as around 1,500 seats, means his speech will be delivered at the start of a challenging week – after a weekend which saw a growing number of Labour MPs express their desire for the Prime Minister to stand down.
Backbench Labour MP Catherine West on Saturday said she would challenge the Prime Minister on Monday if a cabinet minister did not do so, warning she had 10 MPs that would back her to do so.
“My preferred option is for the cabinet to do a reshuffle within itself, where there’s plenty of talent, and for Keir to be given a different role, which he might enjoy, perhaps an international role,” she told BBC Radio 4.
Labour MP Josh Simons, former boss of Labour Together, former Treasury minister and influential backbench MP also called on the Prime Minister to resign – writing in The Times on Sunday that Starmer “lost the country” and did not believe “the prime minister can rise to this moment”.
Meanwhile, former deputy prime minister and Labour deputy leader, Labour MP Angela Rayner stopped short of calling for Starmer to resign on Sunday – but criticised the direction of Labour’s government, warning what Labour had done so far “isn’t working” and that it may be the party’s “last chance” with the public.
Rayner said the party blocking Labour leadership hopeful Andy Burnham from standing as an MP “was a mistake”, alongside appointing Peter Mandelson as US ambassador and the party’s early attempt in government to cut Winter Fuel Allowance.
In his speech on Monday, Starmer is also expected to say the party will need to give a “bigger response than we anticipated in 2024 because these are not ordinary times”, as he attempts to persuade Labour MPs that Labour election losses were not a signal of terminal decline.
“Strength through fairness. It’s a core Labour argument,” Starmer will say.
“And you will see those values writ large in the King’s Speech. And you will see hope, urgency and exactly whose side we are on.”
The speech will also come after Starmer announced the appointment of former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown as a special envoy, as well as senior Labour peer Harriet Harman as an adviser against tackling women and girls in the aftermath of Thursday’s election results.
The move, like Starmer’s expected speech on Monday, has been widely recieved as an attempt to signal to mutinous Labour MPs the government is taking a change of direction.
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VININGS, Ga. — Brad Raffensperger is fighting to save his political future as MAGA takes hold of the Georgia GOP.
The secretary of state rose to national prominence by defying President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, but he is carefully trying to avoid the anti-Trump lane while he runs for governor.
Instead, he’s running an old-school campaign aimed at an old-school Republican Party: He’s holding low-key events compared with his GOP opponents’ flashier rallies, and he’s focusing on bread-and-butter issues, rather than harping on election security. At one Atlanta-area rotary club gathering in April, Raffensperger was all too happy to tout his business background and his pledge to cap property taxes. Everywhere he goes, he drops the word conservative.
“I have my own lane, and I feel good where we are,” Raffensperger told POLITICO after the event. “It’s the lane about being a Christian conservative businessman who’s built a business from scratch.”
At its core, Raffensperger’s candidacy is a test of whether the party’s non-MAGA guard can hold on in one of the nation’s premiere battleground states. He’s defied expectations before, fending off a Trump-backed candidate in 2022 to keep his current position. But 2026 poses a new challenge, as Georgia’s GOP has increasingly shunned its small government roots in favor of aligning with the populist right.
Raffensperger maintains he has a path to victory. Asked whether Trump’s grip on the party is complicating it, he deflected: “I’m doing just fine. I’m going to be in the run-off.”
But the reality is Raffensperger is still struggling to break through in the governor’s race, polling at a consistent third place behind Trump-backed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and billionaire Rick Jackson ahead of the May 19 primary. Republican strategists and officials in the state were widely skeptical of Raffensperger’s chances of success.
“This is the party of Trump today — like it or not, it is — and I find it very difficult to see someone being able to be anti-Trump in a Republican primary and be successful,” said Casey Cagle, a Republican who served as lieutenant governor from 2007 to 2019. He’s experienced the rise of the MAGA base firsthand and has since tacked further to the right.
“The base has grown far, far greater to the right than what it was in my day,” said Cagle, who is supporting Jones in the governor’s race. “The core of the Republican Party has moved far away from the Chamber of Commerce mindset.”
Before February of this year, Raffensperger seemed poised to draw enough support in the primary to keep Jones under the 50 percent threshold he needed to trigger a run-off election. Then Jackson upended the race with his bombastic spending and MAGA pandering, pushing Raffensperger further down in the polls.
Even if the secretary of state were to make a run-off against either Jones or Jackson, his chances of actually winning the nomination are still slim, said GOP strategist Jeremy Brand, who has worked on Gov. Brian Kemp-aligned committees and is unaffiliated in the governor’s race.
“It’d be incredibly tough,” Brand said. “The edge in a run-off where voters are traditionally more conservative, that are willing to come back out again, I think the odds go to the more conservative candidate.”
2020 election woes
Raffensperger has been battling his own party on various fronts since he first stood up to Trump.
A faction of the Georgia GOP tried to bar him from seeking office again on the Republican ticket. And local party leaders recently broke with precedent to allow the RNC to eschew its neutrality and spend resources on backing Jones in the primary. The MAGA base that failed to oust Raffensperger in 2022 is trying again to end his political career — along with others deemed insufficiently loyal to the president.
Attorney General Chris Carr, like Raffensperger, is also mounting a bid for governor and previously defeated a Trump-backed challenger in 2022. But he’s polling even lower than the secretary of state. And Gabriel Sterling, a former top Raffensperger lieutenant, is locked in a noisy primary in his bid for secretary of state as he faces off against a former Democrat-turned-MAGA acolyte and a GOP state representative who once served as Kemp’s top aide.
The 2020 election has continued to be a key litmus test in Georgia, especially as Trump continues to air his grievances over his loss. Several recounts and extensive litigation have only proven Raffensperger’s case that former President Joe Biden fairly defeated Trump in 2020. But many voters and candidates continue to question the truth of the results in a show of loyalty to the president, further isolating the secretary from the increasingly conservative Republican base.
“I voted for Trump. I wish he’d have won. I think he did win, I’m one of those people,” said Bruce Brooker, 72, outside a Jones campaign event in rural Atkinson County earlier this month.
An April POLITICO Poll found that most respondents who plan to vote for Republicans this midterm are still skeptical: Nearly 40 percent say the 2020 election was stolen, while 25 percent don’t believe it was but have questions about the election’s legitimacy. Just 25 percent say the election wasn’t stolen.
Raffensperger continues to defend his work and the integrity of Georgia’s elections at large — “I’m really proud because we made elections more secure” — and is quick to highlight the changes he and state Republicans made in their 2021 overhaul of how the state conducts elections, which drew ire from Democrats and the MLB alike.
Still, several Georgia Republicans say he’s struggling to play catch-up as the base shifts away from his technocratic approach to politics.
“Brad stands in stark conflict to a party that is at the activist level very much aligned with President Trump, when Raffensperger is anything but,” said one former longtime state GOP official, granted anonymity to speak openly about evolving party dynamics. “His candidacy will be and is a test to determine if that lane still exists in the Georgia Republican Party apparatus.”
Raffensperger’s path forward
On a recent afternoon, Raffensperger, clad in a navy suit and striped red tie, headlined the Vinings-Cumberland Rotary Club’s weekly meeting, shaking hands and chatting with voters before taking his place behind the lectern at the front of the room. The state’s legislative session had ended barely a week earlier.
“What I thought I’d do is tell you where we are right now. We just finished up my last session,” he told the audience, ticking through accomplishments: streamlining professional licensing processes, securing an agreement to have money returned to victims of a local Ponzi scheme, and improving systems to make Georgia elections “free, fair and fast.”
It wasn’t the kind of red meat fodder that Republican politics thrive on in the Trump era, but the type of accolades that resonate with the kind of voters at the meeting, held just over the border from Atlanta’s city limits in suburban Cobb County.
Cobb County is one of several former Republican bastions surrounding metro Atlanta that have flipped blue as the Trump-styled GOP turned off suburban voters. Once the homebase for conservative stalwart former Speaker Newt Gingrich, the county voted overwhelmingly for former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 despite her statewide loss to Trump.
It’s still home to plenty of business-focused Republican voters who are not keen on the president — then-Sen. Marco Rubio carried the county over Trump during the 2016 GOP primaries, and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley performed nearly twice as well in the county compared to her statewide returns against the president in 2024. These are the voters Raffensperger is focused on, content to let Jones and Jackson battle it out for the MAGA class.
Jason Shepherd, the former Cobb County Republican chair, said the low-key civic group events have “been the hallmark of Brad Raffensperger’s success” and an emblem of the party’s business-focused past. It’s in sharp contrast with the attention-grabbing rallies that have defined Trump’s dominance of Republican politics.
Raffensperger’s quieter approach has previously served him well, when he overcame a 2022 primary challenge from former Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.) who ran with the president’s endorsement. This time is different: Then, he held the power of incumbency and benefited from Trump’s influence waning temporarily in the aftermath of Jan. 6 and his 2020 election defeat.
Now, Trump, back in power, has reaffirmed his iron grip on the party and Raffensperger is up against two MAGA candidates pining for the base’s attention. Add to that the fact he’s being massively outspent: His $4 million has been dwarfed by Jackson’s whopping $61 million and Jones’ $26 million in expenditures, according to an AdImpact analysis.
The Jones and Carr campaigns were quick to dismiss claims that the secretary of state had a path to the run-off and an eventual win. A spokesperson for Jackson did not respond to a request for comment.
If Raffensperger were to lose the primary, his loss would become another nail in the coffin for an old-school GOP that continues to resist MAGA. But his insistence that his lane — and version of the Republican Party — still exists is, for his closest allies, a testament to his persistence.
“Brad Raffensperger never really stopped from 2022 on,” said Sterling, the Raffensperger ally who’s running for secretary of state and has also faced MAGA’s ire for refusing to overturn election results. “He could have set up a foundation, gone around the country and just talked about democracy and he would have been applauded. Instead he chose to go into the battle and fight.”
Keir Starmer, left, former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner and Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, April 2026 (Paul Ellis/Pool Photo via AP)
4 min read
Former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner has backed away from challenging Keir Starmer for the leadership herself – but called for Andy Burnham to be allowed back into the parliamentary party.
In a lengthy statement released on Sunday afternoon following a poor set of election results for Labour in England, Wales and Scotland, Rayner warned: “What we are doing isn’t working, and it needs to change. This may be our last chance.”
She added: “We are in danger of becoming a party of the well-off, not working people. The Peter Mandelson scandal showed a toxic culture of cronyism.”
Advising Labour to put “the common interest ahead of factionalism”, the Labour MP for Ashton-under-Lyne called on the leadership “to acknowledge that blocking Andy Burnham was a mistake”.
Rayner has not called directly for a leadership change, nor demanded that Starmer set out a timetable for his departure, as almost 40 Labour MPs have now done.
But her intervention is critical of the Prime Minister and will be interpreted by some as her rowing in behind a Burnham leadership bid.
“We must show we understand the scale of change the moment calls for – that means bringing our best players into Parliament – and embracing the type of agenda that has been successful at a local level, rather than reaching back to an agenda and politics that has failed people,” she said.
“These are the fights we need to have, and the change in direction we need to see. Policy tweaks will not fix the fundamental challenges facing our country. This government needs, at pace, to put measures in place that make people’s lives tangibly better, while fixing the foundations of a system rigged against them.
“The Prime Minister must now meet the moment and set out the change our country needs. Change our economic agenda to prioritise making people better off, change how we run our party so that all voices are listened to, and change how we do politics.
“Labour exists to make working people better off. That is not happening fast enough, and it needs to change – now.”
A Labour MP on the ‘soft left’ of the party told PoliticsHome: “She’s right but also wrong. The PM is a busted flush and needs to go. We need change but Keir Starmer cannot deliver it.”
They added: “I would read it like she is waiting for Burnham to come back.”
An MP on the Labour left said: “If Andy is blocked by the timetable, things will shift. The spanner is Ed Miliband and I’m unclear how that will play out. If Tribune back Ed, she’ll struggle.”
A different ‘soft left’ Labour MP, who backs Burnham, said: “She is keeping her powder dry at the moment. I suspect she will move if Wes does.”
They also described Starmer’s expressed desire in a new Observer interview to continue as PM for 10 years as “a sure sign that it’s over”, adding: “We’ve entered the delusional phase.”
Although Health Secretary Wes Streeting was reported by the Telegraph today as having told Starmer that he is preparing his case to be the next prime minister, a source close to Streeting told PoliticsHome that this relates to an old report about him making preparations in case Starmer’s premiership fell apart.
While neither Rayner nor Streeting have so far made their move, north London MP and former minister Catherine West has reiterated her willingness to launch a leadership challenge if the Cabinet does not take action on Monday.
She told the BBC on Sunday morning: “I will hear what the Prime Minister’s got to say tomorrow and, then if I’m still dissatisfied, I will put out my email to the Parliamentary Labour Party, asking for names.”
Starmer backers are pinning their hopes on a speech by the Prime Minister on Monday to turn things around. PoliticsHome understands that other outwardly loyal Labour MPs are waiting to see what is said and how it lands before voicing their own views on the future of the leadership.
On Sunday Josh Simons, a former minister who previously led Starmerite organisation Labour Together, added his name to the list of MPs calling on Starmer to be replaced.
“I do not believe the Prime Minister can rise to this moment. He has lost the country. He should take control of the situation by overseeing an orderly transition to a new prime minister,” Simons said.
In the statement, Rayner set out her priorities for government, including immediate action to cut costs for households, more sectoral bargaining, a plan to end freehold for good, enhanced devolution and further planning reforms.
Angela Rayner has criticised what she calls a “toxic culture of cronyism” in a 1000-word statement issued after this week’s local elections.
Rayner, who resigned as deputy prime minister in September 2025, has called on the Labour Party to “live up to our name: we must be the party of working people.”
She further warned that Labour was in danger of “becoming a party of the well-off, not working people.”
Rayner argued that the Peter Mandelson vetting debacle had exposed a “toxic culture of cronyism”.
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She called on the prime minister to “meet the moment and set out the change our country needs.”
The former deputy prime minister also described the decision to block Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, from standing in the Gorton and Denton by-election as a “mistake.”
Read Rayner’s statement in full below.
Our party has suffered a historic defeat.
Many good Labour colleagues have lost their seats despite working hard for those they represented. We have lost good Labour administrations and lost the chance for more.
What we are doing isn’t working, and it needs to change. This may be our last chance.
The Labour Party must now live up to our name: we must be the party of working people.
We’ve heard the same on the doorstep as we’ve seen in the polls – the cost of living is the top issue for voters of all parties. People have turned to populists and nationalists because we have not done enough to fix it.
Living standards are barely higher than they were a decade and a half ago. People feel hopeless – that the cost of living crisis will never end, and now they see oil and gas companies use global instability to post record profits.
Once again, ordinary people are paying the price for decisions they didn’t make. It’s no wonder that across the UK, working people feel the system is rigged against them.
Things can be so much better than this. Countries including Spain and Canada have shown that economies can grow and people can thrive when governments stay true to labour and social democratic values and put people first. We need to learn from that.
In London, we lost young people who fear they will never afford a home. In my patch and across the north, we lost working people whose wages are too low and costs too high. In Scotland and Wales, people do not currently see Labour as the answer.
We are in danger of becoming a party of the well-off, not working people.
The Peter Mandelson scandal showed a toxic culture of cronyism.
Decisions like cutting winter fuel allowance just weren’t what people expected from a Labour government.
For too long, successive governments have allowed wealth and power to concentrate at the top without a plan to ensure the benefits of economic growth are shared fairly. The result is an economy that does not work for the majority, with wealth concentrated in too few hands. This level of inequality, alongside squeezed living standards, is the outcome of a model built on deregulation, privatisation, and trickle-down economics.
But we have the chance to fix this.
We need immediate action to cut costs for households and put money back into the everyday economy. This can be done within the current fiscal rules, by ensuring those who benefit from the crisis contribute more so that everyone can thrive.
Our Employment Rights Act was just the first step in our plan to Make Work Pay. Now is the time to take the next steps, starting with a Fair Pay Agreement in social care – but not ending there. A rising minimum wage must go alongside our programme to get young people into work.
The investment we secured in social and affordable housing should now unleash a building boom that benefits British business and workers. We must double down on renters’ reform and show leaseholders our action on tackling ground rents and charges was just a first step to ending freehold for good.
Our devolution revolution has begun, but is nowhere near done.
Giving mayors powers to transform planning and licensing can boost local business and good growth, in the interests of local people. They must go alongside economic powers and public services.
Boosting community ownership and stopping the sell-off of local assets from pubs to playgrounds will put power back in local hands, helping restore the pride they feel in the places they live.
We must go further on planning reforms, to build the schools, hospitals, roads and infrastructure the country needs to grow.
We should be unafraid to promote new forms of public, community and cooperative ownership across the board. Buses and trains being brought back into public hands can now operate for the public good, at prices passengers can afford.
Thames Water is an iconic failure of privatisation, which resonates for the same reasons. People are rightly sick of bonuses for bosses who deliver nothing but higher bills. We must face down demands that the public pay the price of private failure.
We must create good jobs that pay decent wages by ensuring defence investment includes a secure manufacturing base. Use our house building programme to boost construction, invest in the green economy, backing SMEs by reforming business rates and increasing support to revive our high streets and local economies, raise the minimum wage and get young people into work.
And then there is politics itself, putting power back into people’s hands so that they are shaping the decisions that impact them. We must tackle the inflow of dodgy money in our politics – something that Nigel Farage, who took 5 million pounds in a secret personal gift from an offshore crypto baron, will never do. We must make politics work for ordinary people.
We can only prove we mean it by putting the common interest ahead of factionalism.
This is bigger than personalities, but it is time to acknowledge that blocking Andy Burnham was a mistake. We must show we understand the scale of change the moment calls for – that means bringing our best players into Parliament – and embracing the type of agenda that has been successful at a local level, rather than reaching back to an agenda and politics that has failed people.
These are the fights we need to have, and the change in direction we need to see. Policy tweaks will not fix the fundamental challenges facing our country. This government needs, at pace, to put measures in place that make people’s lives tangibly better, while fixing the foundations of a system rigged against them.
The Prime Minister must now meet the moment and set out the change our country needs.
Change our economic agenda to prioritise making people better off, change how we run our party so that all voices are listened to, and change how we do politics.
Labour exists to make working people better off. That is not happening fast enough, and it needs to change — now.
Angela Rayner has told Keir Starmer to “change now” as the prime minister faces the prospect of a leadership challenge within the next 24 hours.
In her first public comments since Labour’s catastrophic performance in last Thursday’s elections, Rayner also threw her weight behind Andy Burnham’s attempt to become an MP again.
She said: “What we are doing isn’t working, and it needs to change. This may be our last chance.”
Rayner, who was forced to resign last September over a tax scandal, condemned Starmer’s handling of the Peter Mandelson row, which she said “showed a toxic culture of cronyism” in the party.
She also said it had been “a mistake” to block Burnham from standing in February’s by-election in Gorton and Denton, which saw Labour lose to the Greens.
Rayner said the Greater Manchester mayor should be allowed to return to Westminster.
“This is bigger than personalities, but it is time to acknowledge that blocking Andy Burnham was a mistake,” she said.
“We must show we understand the scale of change the moment calls for – that means bringing our best players into parliament – and embracing the type of agenda that has been successful at a local level, rather than reaching back to an agenda and politics that has failed people.
“These are the fights we need to have, and the change in direction we need to see. Policy tweaks will not fix the fundamental challenges facing our country.
“This government needs, at pace, to put measures in place that make people’s lives tangibly better, while fixing the foundations of a system rigged against them.
“The prime minister must now meet the moment and set out the change our country needs.
“Change our economic agenda to prioritise making people better off, change how we run our party so that all voices are listened to, and change how we do politics.
“Labour exists to make working people better off. That is not happening fast enough, and it needs to change — now.”
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Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice is facing a mounting backlash after he failed to condemn one of the party’s new councillors who said Nigerans should be melted down to fill potholes”.
Tice was asked repeatedly in a series of interviews to disown the remarks by Glenn Gibbins, who was elected in the Hylton Castle ward in Sunderland in Thursday council elections.
In a post on social media in 2024, he said: “Can’t believe amount of Nigerians in town … should melt them all down and fill in the potholes.”
Reform has launched an investigation into Gibbins, but Tice dismissed the criticism of him as “smearing and sneering”.
On the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, Tice said: “I’m going later to a campaign against the scourge of anti-semitism, which is the greatest threat facing us, particularly in London but elsewhere across the UK. That’s what people are really concerned about. If people have said daft things, of course it’ll be looked at.”
Pressed on Gibbins’ remarks, he said: “Laura, this weekend we are celebrating our incredible successes. Like any party, you have internal processes to look at where people have said or done the wrong thing.”
Asked if he condemned them, Tice said: “I condemn anything that is wrong or inappropriate.”
But when asked if he condemned the councillor’s specific comments, he dodged the question and said: “The key thing is voters have heard all of this smearing and this sneering against all of us and they voted for more Reform because they want action, they want delivery. They’re sick of the failures of the Tories and Labour.”
A Labour spokesman said: “It’s utterly grotesque that Reform can’t even call out clear racism.
“It speaks volumes that Richard Tice tried to brush off these comments. And it speaks volumes that Nigel Farage refused to sack him as a candidate and is now happy to have him represent Reform as a councillor. They’re both a disgrace.
“Labour is the only party that will stand up to the division of Reform.”
Tice also faced a mounting backlash on social media, including from London mayor Sadiq Khan.
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Dreading the return to work after a relaxing weekend is so common it has a name: the Sunday scaries.
And even if it’s not the start of a new working week, feeling less-than-delighted to head to work in the morning isn’t exactly uncommon.
But according to Jackson Parsons, work culture expert and founder of the Duvet Flip, sometimes it can be a red flag.
He explained: “There’s a huge difference between feeling physically tired and emotionally resistant to the life you’re waking up to. Many people mistake burnout, disengagement or emotional exhaustion for laziness because the symptoms often show up first thing in the morning.”
Here, he shared seven signs to look out for:
1) You feel anxious before work has even begun
This, the expert said, might be a sign your body associates your workplace with stress.
“This is very overlooked as people only think anxiety matters once it becomes extreme such as having a breakdown. But low-level dread every morning is still your body sending a warning,” he shared.
2) You constantly fantasise about escaping
“Whether it’s checking job sites during lunch, imagining moving abroad or fantasising about quitting dramatically, escapism usually reveals emotional dissatisfaction early on,” Parsons said.
“Most people don’t daydream about disappearing from their own life if they feel genuinely fulfilled in it. It doesn’t always mean you need to quit immediately, but it often means something important isn’t being met anymore.”
3) You’re always exhausted on weekdays, but perk up on the weekends
Parsons said our bodies are pretty good at telling us what we need, if only we can bring ourselves to listen. And part of that communication system can involve fatigue.
“A major sign your exhaustion is emotional rather than physical is when your energy suddenly returns outside work. If you feel more alive on weekends or holidays, that’s useful information,” he said.
4) Small tasks start to feel overwhelming
A healthy workplace will leave you resilient. But when your job isn’t quite right, replying to emails begins to feel impossible, small requests irritate you, and meetings feel exhausting before they’ve even started, the expert said,
“This often happens when people lose emotional connection to their work.”
5) Feeling guilty for hating your job
If you spent a long time working up to your career, you might feel guilty for hating it now. “A lot of people stay stuck because they feel guilty. Careers often become tied to identity, making dissatisfaction emotionally hard to admit,” Parsons said.
But if a role isn’t right for you, that’s OK; honesty is the first step.
6) Noticing a huge personality shift when you’re out of the office
It’s rare that your “weekend drinks” self is the same as your “replying to emails” self. Still, Parsons told us, if you feel much lighter out of work than you do in it, that might be worth paying attention to.
“Some become quieter, more annoyed, or emotionally flat without even knowing it. When your work environment consistently pulls you away from who you naturally are, your mornings start feeling heavier as your brain already knows it’s about to enter survival mode again.”
7) You feel “lazy” all the time
“One of the most damaging things people do is mistake emotional exhaustion for personal failure. People can be incredibly harsh on themselves. They’ll call themselves lazy or unmotivated instead of asking whether their environment is actually healthy for them anymore,” the work culture expert said.
“Overworking has become so normalised that people ignore warning signs for far too long. We live in a culture where exhaustion is almost treated like a personality trait now.”
What can I do if I have these signs?
Parsons recommended the following steps:
- Stop checking work off the clock. Giving yourself 20 minutes before checking work can help to create healthier boundaries, he said, and avoid late-night email refreshes if you can.
- Get specific about your feelings. “Many people call it ‘work stress’ without identifying the real issues behind it. Targeting whether it is from workload, lack of purpose, burnout or poor management makes the feeling easier to address,” he added.
- Create one part of the day that feels yours. Something as small as a workout can keep you grounded. “You need a moment in your day that reminds you you’re a person, before you’re an employee.”
- Stop normalising exhaustion. “Many people treat burnout like a normal part of success. Constant exhaustion shouldn’t feel like a personality trait or something you simply just have to ‘deal’ with.”
- Get real about what needs to change. Whether that’s better boundaries, more rest or admitting you’ve outgrown your current role.
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