United Kingdom

    The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has compared the language used by Donald Trump to rally his supporters to that of the fascists of the 20th century in an explosive intervention before the US president’s state visit to London that begins today. Writing in the Observer, Khan condemned the red-carpet treatment being afforded to Trump who, with his wife Melania, will be a guest of the Queen during his three-day stay, which is expected to provoke massive protests in the capital on Tuesday. Khan said: President Donald Trump is just one of the most egregious examples of a growing global threat. The far right is on the rise around the world, threatening our hard-won rights and freedoms and the values that have defined our liberal, democratic societies for more than 70 years...

  Britain should go for a no-deal Brexit with the EU and refuse to pay the agreed £39 billion divorce bill, US President Donald Trump has said on the eve of a visit to London. Donald Trump has called on Britain to leave the EU without a deal if Brussels refuses to meet its demands as he urged the Government to send in Nigel Farage to negotiate. In his second extraordinary intervention into British politics ahead of this week's state visit, the US president suggested the UK should "walk away" from talks and refuse to pay the £39 billion divorce bill if its requests are not met. He told the Sunday Times it was a "mistake" not to involve Brexit Party leader Mr Farage in negotiations, saying he has a "lot to offer" and is someone he likes "a lot". Mr Trump added: "He is a very ...

    Tory leadership contender Sajid Javid has ruled out a second referendum, a general election and revoking Article 50 should he win the keys to Number 10. The home secretary is one of a dozen Conservatives vying to become the next prime minister. Writing in the Daily Mail, he said the public had voted for Brexit "in good faith" and MPs and the government have "a duty to get on and deliver on the result". "The voters have been asked their opinion more than enough times. Never in this country's history have we asked people to go to the polls a second time without implementing their verdict from the first," he said. "Another vote before we leave would be disastrous for trust in politics, and cause the kind of chaos that risks handing Jeremy Corbyn and his hard-left sup...

    Islamic State bride Shamima Begum was "groomed and radicalised" due to a failure by UK authorities to protect her from the influence of extremists, the lawyer representing her family has said. The 19-year-old was a schoolgirl when she left her home in Bethnal Green, London, to join the terror cult in 2015, and made headlines when she resurfaced in a Syrian refugee camp earlier this year. Her bid to return to the UK following the birth of a baby boy in February failed to move Home Secretary Sajid Javid, who controversially stripped her of British citizenship. Mr Javid has now been accused of "human fly-tipping" by the lawyer representing the Begum family, who used a letter published in The Times to claim the Tory leadership hopeful used the case to further his caree...

    Jeremy Corbyn has pledged that Labour will back a second referendum on any Brexit deal put to parliament, but warned of a deliberately inflamed divide as he sought to calm tempers among senior party figures. The Labour leader, who is visiting Dublin to meet Irish taoiseach Leo Varadkar on Thursday, said his party would do whatever is necessary to stop a disastrous no-deal outcome and said Labour would work across party lines to block a new Brexiter prime minister who could crash the UK out of the EU. Faced with the threat of no deal and a prime minister with no mandate, the only way out of the Brexit crisis ripping our country apart is now to go back to the people, he said, speaking ahead of his visit to Ireland. Let the people decide the country’s future, either i...

    More than 750,000 applications from EU citizens wishing to continue living and working in the UK post-Brexit have been received by the Home Office. Home Secretary Sajid Javid said the first figures released on applications to the EU Settlement Scheme were hugely encouraging. The scheme allows millions of EU nationals in the UK to secure their right to stay in the country post-Brexit. More than three million people are eligible to apply to carry on living and working in the country. A report by the Home Office, also out today, found that two-thirds of people who were given their status by the end of April had received settled status, while a third were granted pre-settled status. Around 570,000 applications had been received from EU citizens in England, 30,000 from...

    Calling all frequent globe-trotters, have you ever wondered why flight attendants greet you with their hands behind their back? Perhaps some of you have never even questioned the cabin crew’s stance. It’s surely just a polite gesture, right? Well, it’s been revealed that there’s a clever reason behind their upright posture. As passengers board the plane, members of the cabin crew team are required to count each person using a clicker. In order to be discreet while they smile and welcome you onboard, the nifty little device is held behind their back. Eagle-eyed passengers on long-haul flights may have even noticed that sometimes the aircraft team walk up and down the aisle using the clicking device before take-off. When they perform a head count, it’s actually mo...

    The environment secretary, who threw his hat into the ring for the Tory leadership at the weekend, will make the offer to EU nationals who were living in the UK at the time of the June 2016 referendum. The £1,330 naturalisation fee would be waived as a gesture of goodwill, Michael Gove's aides confirmed to Sky News. There are understood to be three million EU citizens in the UK who would be eligible, once they have been resident for five years. The proposal to be formally unveiled next week is a victory for Conservative MP Alberto Costa who has been campaigning for the rights of EU citizens post-Brexit for many months. The Home Office's settled status scheme, under which EU citizens must prove they have lived in the UK for five years or they stand to lose their ri...

    Britain had voted to leave the European Union, and Nigel Farage was almost speechless with disbelief. For nearly 23 years, the founder of Britain’s fringe UK Independence Party (UKIP) had been pushing for a referendum on the country’s EU membership. Now, in June 2016, he had gotten that referendum, and the results were exactly what he’d hoped for. “The dawn is breaking on an independent United Kingdom,” Farage told UKIP members early on June 24. “This will be a victory for real people, a victory for ordinary people, a victory for decent people.” They had fought against big politics, multinationals, the world’s banks, and any number of detractors, he said—and they had won. But within a month, Farage would bow out of helping to make his dream a reality. On July 4, 2...

    Britain’s largest Muslim organisation has called for a formal investigation into Islamophobia in the Conservative Party. Since the Westminster attack in March 2017, 14 Islamist and five far-right terror plots have been foiled in the UK. Last week, the Home Affairs Committee was told that more than half of rising hate crime offences recorded by police in England and Wales are committed against Muslims. The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) sent more than 20 pages of evidence to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, in the wake of the government’s refusal to adopt a proposed definition on Islamophobia. Its complaint accused the Tories of ignoring calls for an independent inquiry on anti-Muslim hatred and failing to take action against Islamophobes in its ranks. B...