Downing Street delivered a rare rebuke to a senior member of Donald Trump’s administration

Asked why the Lib Dems were opposed to a third runway at Heathrow when they professed to be in favour of growth, Cooper said she did not accept that a third runway would produce all the benefits its supporters claimed.

She explained:

On Heathrow, it is clear from looking at all of the economic analysis of airport growth over the last few years that many of the promises made by all sorts of different airport companies simply haven’t come to bear.

The promise of higher wage jobs hasn’t been substantiated. Often it’s lower paid jobs, and often not as many as they’ve claimed.

We are accused of dumbing down, but that’s nonsense: this is levelling up. All the evidence shows helping children articulate improves their life chances

• Lucy Powell is UK education secretary and deputy leader of the Labour party

Private schools don’t leave confident communication to chance. They teach it. Debating, public speaking, presentations, interview preparation. It’s all part of the deal. And parents paying the fees would soon have something to say if it wasn’t. They know that being able to speak up, make your case and hold your own can open doors. I want that for every young person, wherever they grow up and whichever school they go to.

This matters now more than ever. Young people are more connected than they’ve ever been, yet too many feel isolated and unheard. Social media is transforming their friendships and relationships. Artificial intelligence is changing the world they will work in. And in an age dominated by screens and algorithms, the human ability to connect, communicate and make yourself heard has never been more important. But the ability to find your voice should never depend on your parents’ income or the school you attend.

Lucy Powell is education secretary and deputy leader of the Labour party

‘Sovereignty without the ability to act on it is not autonomy,’ paper by Institute for Public Policy Research says

Britain cannot deal effectively with geopolitical crises such as Russian aggression and political turmoil in the US without rejoining the EU, according to an influential thinktank.

The Institute for Public Policy Research has become the latest organisation close to the Labour party to call for the UK to re-enter the bloc, after Andy Burnham said he wanted to examine all possible options.

Passengers urged to ‘share the carriage, not the noise’ as guidance sets out £100 penalties for nuisance behaviour

Andy Burnham has announced a crackdown on “headphone dodgers” who play loud music on public transport, as he extends his promise to give voters “breathing space” in the confines of a train carriage.

The prime minister will unveil a campaign against nuisance behaviour on public transport on Monday, alongside guidance allowing local transport authorities to levy fines of up to £100 for non-compliance.

Exclusive: Former health secretary says upfront investment in support is needed ‘if we are going to end the Neet crisis’

Ministers should cut welfare spending to fund more employment support if it wants to end the youth Neet crisis, the author of a government-led review has said.

Alan Milburn, the Tony Blair-era health secretary, told the Guardian he believed ministers should reduce benefits payments to help pay for more employment support, opening a potentially contentious debate within the Labour party over welfare cuts.

The education secretary is right that her job is not to ‘polish the status quo’. Next, she must decide what to change first

There is a good case to be made for the increased importance of speaking skills in our new age of machines. With the UK economy’s stronger-than-expected recent performance widely linked to AI investment, it is vital that people are equipped for the kinds of in-person, public-facing jobs that are least likely to be automated. A concerning decline in children’s language development, both in the UK and internationally, has been linked to high screen use. There is a grim irony in a situation where tech companies both compete with humans for contracts and undermine our ability to talk to one other.

The Guardian has previously backed efforts to more strongly embed speaking skills, or oracy, in British schools. In a speech on Thursday, Lucy Powell promised to give them equal status to reading and writing in English (education is devolved, so her main responsibility is for England, but there are parallel initiatives in the other nations). Yet with promised updates to the national curriculum postponed, and plans for special educational needs reform causing deep anxiety to families, schools and councils, the hardest questions for the education secretary are about priorities. Following negative feedback from schools, she has also asked Ofsted to look again at its new inspection framework.

George Graham of Save the Children UK says the government has a clear opportunity to act and ensure that victims of conflict are helped

Amid allegations about advisers dealing with Roman Abramovich’s business affairs (Roman Abramovich aides falsified paperwork to disguise assets and dodge tax, records suggest, 12 October), another issue demands urgent government action – the £2.5bn from the sale of Chelsea FC, which has remained stuck in a Barclays bank account since May 2022.

The money was originally pledged to help victims of the war in Ukraine, no matter where they are in the world. Yet for over four years this huge sum of money has sat in limbo, accruing interest while victims of conflict go without desperately needed support. At a time of global aid cuts, rising food insecurity and growing humanitarian needs, the £2.5bn could make a transformative difference to the children and families we serve around the world.

Westminster appears to be waking up to warnings over AI safety, with concerns over its use by extremist groups and bad actors

“I have this sense that, within a few months, AI is going to be all anyone is talking about,” said one cabinet minister, with an ominous stare.

It was Labour conference, with everyone from ministers to activists jubilant at Andy Burnham’s takeover and a bounce in the polls after the change of leader.

Exclusive: Ministers considering overhaul of apprenticeship funding scheme to tackle youth jobs crisis

Employers in England are to be forced to pay more to train an older worker than a youth apprentice under plans being drawn up by the government to tackle the youth jobs crisis.

The Guardian understands ministers plan to overhaul Labour’s apprenticeship funding scheme to increase the cost of training by 25% for a worker over the age of 25 in order to encourage businesses to train young people instead.

As Andy Burnham talks up closer alignment with the EU and a poll suggests half in UK would rejoin, the B-word is back on the agenda

In February 2016, days after David Cameron announced the UK would hold a referendum on leaving the EU, he told workers in Slough not to imagine they could change their minds a few years down the line if they did not like how things panned out. Voting to stay in or leave was a once in a generation thing, he said. “This is a decision that lasts for life.”

Well times change, as the last prime minister but five could testify. A decade after Britain told Brussels where to go, Brexit is back on the political agenda. After years in which many politicians avoided any mention of the B-word, Andy Burnham broke the omertà in his party conference speech last month, saying he would look again at Britain’s relationship with Europe.

Beijing warns against ‘discriminatory’ step after France drops opposition to British role in Made in Europe package

No 10 has left the door open to imposing tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles as part of the Made in Europe package, prompting a warning from Beijing that such a move would be “discriminatory”.

Downing Street said on Friday that it would “welcome the objective to have the UK included in the Industrial Accelerator Act” after France dropped its opposition to Britain joining the scheme.

Labour says idea is ‘tin-eared’ as report says fixing rate will cost low-paid workers almost £9,000 over five years

A shadow minister has called for the government to freeze the minimum wage for five years, a move that could cost low-paid workers almost £9,000.

The call came in a report from the Prosperity Institute thinktank, which carries an endorsement from Andrew Sharpe, the shadow business minister. Sharpe said in his endorsement that it was time to take action to address the low rate of young people in work.

The prime minister has a once-in-a-generation chance to reintroduce fairness to the system. He has to seize the moment

Back in 2009, months before the coalition government unleashed sweeping austerity, the then Conservative backbencher Iain Duncan Smith produced a study that would go on to lay the foundations for the rollout of universal credit. Now, nearly two decades later, Duncan Smith and his thinktank, the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), has published State of Dependency: a landmark report promising to expose “the full scale of Britain’s worklessness crisis”.

The study paints a picture of mass benefits reliance: it identifies 3,400 local areas where more than half the working-age population are on out-of-work benefits, or “economic opiates”, as the authors call them. They’ve even provided an interactive map (in the yellow and black colours of a road hazard sign, no less) so members of the public can type in their postcode to see if their neighbourhood is “a welfare hotspot”.

Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist

Shevaun Haviland argues PM is right to revisit Labour’s EU red lines as current trading relationship is bad for business

Repairing the economic damage of Brexit should be the top priority for Andy Burnham as he reconsiders Labour’s red lines on EU membership, the head of one of Britain’s leading business groups has said.

Shevaun Haviland, the director general of the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), said she welcomed the prime minister reopening the Brexit battle lines despite the uncertainty it could create, arguing that the UK’s current trading relationship with the EU was bad for business.

Though Burnham and Badenoch may still need the votes of Green and Reform supporters, both leaders have drawn clear lines in the sand

Ask a straight question, get a straight answer. It’s how politics is supposed to work but almost never does, which is why on the rare occasions it happens the result can be faintly chaotic. What did Andy Burnham mean when he said – in response to a question from the Tory MP Harriett Baldwin – that Labour couldn’t partner with the Green party while it remains wedded to the “Zionism is racism” motion its members have just endorsed? Were Green MPs now barred from a future coalition government? If so, what about councils where they are currently sharing power with Labour?

Though Burnham was only confirming what ministers have been arguing privately for days, at first nobody seemed to know: tellingly, it took almost 24 hours for the Labour party chair, Bridget Phillipson, to confirm that unless local Green groups disowned that idea sharpish, “Labour will bring any such local arrangement to an end”. So much for cuddly cross-party Andy, who always seemed so relaxed about rainbow coalitions. Now elected Greens in places such as Sheffield or Lewes must choose between power and members’ wrath, a useful rehearsal for what a hung parliament might feel like.

Party chair calls on Labour groups to end local deals if Green councillors do not reject motion attacked as ‘antisemitic’

• UK politics live – latest updates

Labour councils who share power with the Greens have been told to terminate agreements if their Green partners do not condemn the party’s new “Zionism is racism” policy.

Bridget Phillipson, the Labour chair, said groups working with Green party politicians must review their agreements and end them unless they reject the controversial motion, which Andy Burnham has called “antisemitic”.

Derbyshire Dales Lib Dem-led coalition

Broadland Lib Dem-led coalition

West Suffolk Labour-led coalition

Arun Lib Dem-led coalition

Havant Labour-led coalition

Lewes Green-led coalition

Rother Coalition led by local independent group

Runnymede Coalition with Lib Dems, Greens and local independent group

Wealden Green-led coalition

West Oxfordshire Lib Dem-led coalition

West Sussex Lib Dem-led coalition

North Somerset Lib Dem-led coalition

West Devon Independent-led coalition

Monmouthshire Labour minority-led coalition

Coventry Labour-led confidence and supply agreement with the Greens

Stafford Labour-led coalition

Warwick Green-led coalition

Sheffield Labour-led coalition

Speaking at IMF meeting, chancellor says he will stick to fiscal rules while recognising business and living costs

• UK politics live – latest updates

• Business live – latest updates

John Healey has promised to use his first budget in a fortnight’s time to offer consumers and businesses a “breathing space” while sticking to Labour’s fiscal rules.

Speaking to journalists in Bangkok, where he has been attending the International Monetary Fund annual meetings, the chancellor said he was conscious of rising costs.

Restaurants and pubs such as Nando’s and Fuller’s will create placements for 18- to 24-year-olds under DWP-backed scheme

Bars, clubs and restaurants will offer up to 100,000 jobs to young people not in employment, education or training (Neet) over the next three years in an effort to give them a first step on the ladder into work.

The move comes before the publication of a report on Neets by the former health secretary Alan Milburn, who has warned that the number of young people not in work or education in the UK could rise to 1.25 million over the next five years unless ministers intervene.

President Zelenskyy’s allies must show the Russian president that American perfidy won’t alter the course of a war the Kremlin is losing

When Donald Trump pledged to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of re-entering the White House last year, no one with any depth of insight into the conflict believed him. But Mr Trump took his own words seriously enough to feel the lack of a ceasefire as an affront to his self-image as a master dealmaker. After a period when it seemed that Kyiv’s European allies had steered the US president away from pro‑Kremlin partisanship, he has reverted to the grotesque view that Ukrainian capitulation is a necessary precondition for peace.

These are the perilous circumstances in which President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met Andy Burnham on Wednesday in Downing Street. In recent days, the US president has called for a change of government in Ukraine. He claimed that a partial ceasefire had been agreed, while Russia escalated its bombardments. According to Mr Zelenskyy, the latest missile strikes have come without the intelligence warnings from the US that have, in the past, facilitated self-defence. There have been reports of Ukrainian soldiers losing access to the Starlink satellite network, controlled by Elon Musk, the US tech oligarch. This raises suspicion of coordinated pressure to tip the scales in Russia’s favour after many months when Mr Putin’s forces have failed to deliver significant advances and his country’s economy has been suffering from the effect of Ukrainian missile and drone counterstrikes.

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Global human rights commitments adopted by government extend reach to enablers of unlawful activity

The UK is expanding its sanctions powers to freeze assets and target entities enabling illegal Israeli settlements, obstructing humanitarian aid or unlawfully holding prisoners.

The statutory instrument introducing the global human rights and international humanitarian law sanctions adds three new grounds to the 2020 regime: serious violations of international humanitarian law, obstruction of humanitarian assistance and serious violations of the right to liberty and security of person.

Kate Fleming says the government must look beyond the models it rewards today, while Jenny Haigh says unlocking potential means recognising that creativity and science are partners

Gordon Brown wants Britain to invent, invest in and own the future (British households would be £5,000 richer if we were more innovative. Let’s unleash our talents, 9 October). But invent what, and for whom? His hunt for “lost Einsteins” rests on a narrow vision: a lone genius invents, commercialisation scales, the problem is solved.

That may suit a cancer drug, but not the wicked problems of our time – social care, education, climate – which demand not silver bullets but new technologies and practices for collaboration, distributed ownership and collective innovation.

One good poll has convinced the Tory leader she is invincible. She was back in her happy place with a scattergun PMQs

Little things please little minds. And minds don’t come much smaller than some of those in Westminster. If a researcher had come up with a study that showed one element two points higher in value than countless other experiments, it would almost certainly be marked down either as an outlier or “within the margin of error”. At the very least, no conclusions would be drawn until many other experiments had been conducted which had produced similar results. Serious scientific journals would just laugh at you if you asked them to publish your findings.

And yet. In one – just one out of many – recent opinion poll, the Tories have increased their ratings by a couple of points and are now for the first time in years in second place, ahead of Reform. And all of a sudden, Kemi Badenoch is insisting this is incontrovertible proof that the Tories are back in business. All the sins of its 14 years in government have been wiped clean. All hail to Kemi, the new chief. She is the chosen one. And the Conservatives are a government-in-waiting.

Exclusive: Douglas Alexander, on trade delegation to India, talks up economic benefits of joint trading arrangements with Europe

Britain will benefit from much closer trading relations with the EU even if that means giving up its ability to negotiate free trade agreements, the Scotland secretary has said.

Douglas Alexander helped negotiate deals with India and the US when he was a trade minister under Keir Starmer.

Prime minister tells PMQs that the Green party motion was ‘wrong’ and says no way Labour would make a deal

PMQs is about to start.

Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.

After @genevieve_holl reported this last night, various sources in the Trump administration who are supportive of Farage said Badenoch was needlessly trying to cause a political row (per @katyballs @MrHarryCole) and accused her of undermining the Anglo-American relationship.

It is possible that these people are particularly sensitive about this topic because they are still considering buying the islands, as @connorstringer and I reported earlier in the year. Domestic opposition to the idea of the US running Chagos in the UK would be a problem for the White House.

Calamity Kemi Strikes Again.

Kemi Badenoch has risked causing a diplomatic row with Britain’s allies, all because she cannot control the Tory spin doctors around her that oversaw the disastrous premierships of Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, Theresa May, and even David Cameron.

Kemi and the Conservatives cannot be trusted by the Chagos people.

If they really have interest in the Chagos, why would you have started negotiating about things you already own?

We are confused at why @KemiBadenoch is attacking @Nigel_Farage …

We understood Nigel Farage’s comments to mean that we would get perpetual use of the base, which, frankly, we’ve always had.

Prime minister reiterates UK backing after the Ukrainian president’s latest round of difficulties with Donald Trump

Andy Burnham will host Volodymyr Zelenskyy at Downing Street on Wednesday as the UK seeks to further underline its support for the Ukrainian president, in contrast to his difficulties with Donald Trump.

The UK prime minister said his message to Zelenskyy and his country would be: “We are with you for as long as it takes.”

The prime minister is correct to judge the time is right to push for closer links with the EU. The political risk is far outweighed by the potential rewards

The German philosopher GWF Hegel famously evoked the owl of Minerva when discussing the historical wisdom that comes through hindsight. This autumn, she has flown tirelessly over the landscape of British politics. Party conference season was dominated by conflicting Labour and Conservative accounts of the 1970s and 80s. And a decade after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, Andy Burnham this week abandoned all equivocation over the damage – economic but also strategic – that resulted from that decision.

Having declared that it is time to “face up to the reality that Brexit has done more harm than good”, Mr Burnham told the House of Commons on Monday that it would be a “dereliction of duty” not to explore all options for closer relations with Brussels. Though he confirmed that in this parliament he will honour the red lines in Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour manifesto, all bets will subsequently be off.

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To win support for early releases, the government will have to show that community supervision works

The early release of thousands of prisoners was bound to be awkward for a new prime minister. Politically speaking, Andy Burnham’s decision to exclude those convicted of manslaughter and some other offences made sense. But with about 2,000 offenders being freed this month, the risk is that by cutting the numbers, he has added to overcrowding problems inside. With the prison and probation services under huge pressure, and a ballot on industrial action expected, there is an urgent need for moves from the government to strengthen both.

Shielded from view as prisons are, and despite the efforts of campaigners and writers such as Jimmy McGovern to draw attention to them, conditions have been allowed to deteriorate to a shocking extent. The latest annual report from the prisons watchdog drew a dismal picture of rampant drug use, organised crime and governors wasting time on form-filling. It warned that the Prison Service’s managers appear to favour crisis management over improvement.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Terry Peach responds to Kemi Badenoch’s conference speech, while Penelope Turton writes on her promise to cut inheritance tax

Kemi Badenoch’s conference speech rehearsed the argument that Andy Burnham’s economic policies were warped by his “nostalgia” for the 1970s, unlike her own forward-looking programme for “a better tomorrow” (Tories accused of prioritising rich voters as Badenoch lays out inheritance tax cut plan, 7 October).

She appears not to see that her preference for a lesser-regulated capitalist market economy, with lower public expenditure, taxes and national debt, coupled with “tough love” welfare policies, is itself harking back to arguments that have circulated for centuries.

PM hails next month’s ‘reset’ summit as first step to closer ties, but tensions over trade may prove problematic

Andy Burnham has promised a “serious dialogue” over the UK’s future place in Europe, saying the existing relationship is “not good enough” as he framed next month’s Brussels summit as a possible first step to EU membership.

The prime minister said Britain must take a “clear-eyed rational look” at its long-term relationship with the bloc to boost economic growth and control immigration, which needed to go beyond Labour’s existing red lines.

Ed Davey’s critics want headlines, but their leader’s strategy wins seats. Undermining him could help the rightwing parties into power

Will the first victim of the political conference season be the Liberal Democrats’ Sir Ed Davey? It might seem quixotic, given that he is the most successful liberal parliamentary leader in a century. Yet a meeting of Lib Dem MPs on Tuesday night could see them collect the 18 signatures needed for a confidence vote. It’s hard to see what a putsch would achieve, apart from giving the party’s opponents a stick to beat it with. That may be the point: weakening Sir Ed in an internal war of attrition so that he walks away would be easier than removing him via a no-confidence vote passed by a majority of all Lib Dem MPs.

“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake,” said Napoleon Bonaparte. With populists slipping in the polls, Lib Dem plotters should remember this, especially as Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives are looking to advance at the Lib Dems’ expense. The Tory economic pitch is to end the 60% marginal tax rate on earnings between £100,000 and £125,000, and let couples pass on the family home plus another £1m tax-free. It’s a clear bid to win back affluent southern voters in England’s “yellow wall”.

Readers respond to John Harris’s article on the need to consider disabled people of working age when reforming the care system

I found myself nodding in agreement at John Harris’s worries about his son’s future as he leaves full-time education to enter the world of adult social services (Social care for disabled adults is in as much crisis as support for elderly people – so why is the government silent about it?, 5 October). John’s concerns were shared by my wife and I as our disabled daughter moved from her specialist residential further-education setting 17 years ago.

However, with her gutsy approach and strong financial support by way of 24-hour care from our local council, she is able to say, “I love my life”, and has expressed this in a little book, How I Flourished, published by Lewisham Adult Learning. This despite being quadriplegic, having no speech and being dependent on her personal assistants for all the necessaries of life.
I could wax at length about her wheelchair dancing, the “proper job” she secured with a wonderful charity (the Deptford-based Entelechy Arts), her painting, thirst for maintaining social relationships involving long and tiring overseas travel, and so on. The blunt truth, however, is that we, as her parents, have always needed to be closely involved in managing her care and safety, and for taking up the opportunities to broaden her landscape. We are aware that she has had a much better deal than so many people in adult care institutions.

The prime minister tells MPs the next summit with the EU will be held on 20 November

Burnham to urge MPs to embrace closer ties with EU

Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson, is speaking now. He started his speech with an account of a 73-year-old woman dying in North Wales after having to wait 23 hours for an ambulance, and he sought to link this to immigration.

He said:

The Royal College of Emergency Medicine estimates that 15,000 people across Britain died last year due to excess wait times for emergency treatment. That’s 300 people a week, 300 lives destroyed, 300 families devastated.

And that number has increased tenfold over the last decade. This is a moral outrage, and it is a direct result of decisions made by Tory and Labour governments.

I don’t think that’s because he wants to have a fight over the European Union. I think that’s because he knows what we’re talking about today impacts hard in what is known as the red wall.

Exclusive: Some of £2bn savings needed from energy budget expected to come from boiler upgrade scheme, sources say

Ministers are preparing to slash the amount of money available to subsidise heat pumps as they look for ways to fund higher defence spending, sources have told the Guardian.

Miatta Fahnbulleh, the energy secretary, has been tasked with finding more than £2bn in savings from her budget to help pay for defence investment under a plan drawn up by the previous government.

Move comes after criticism of remarks in support of football club’s owners following financial regulations breach ruling

Andy Burnham has said he will publish all details of his dealings with Manchester City in his previous mayoral role after his intervention in support of the football club’s owners raised eyebrows.

Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative party leader, had urged the prime minister to publish everything related to his work with the club as Greater Manchester mayor and the Liberal Democrats wrote to him asking him to release minutes of meetings and declare all hospitality gifts received from owners of Manchester City.

PM says he asked question upon entering No 10 but does not reveal who gave him ‘clear answer’ Russia meddled

Andy Burnham has said it is clear Russia interfered in the Brexit referendum, after seeking answers on the Kremlin’s involvement in the 2016 vote when he entered Downing Street.

Burnham said he had asked whether Moscow had attempted to influence the referendum and received a confirmation that it had.

We must now have unity and a discussion about party democracy. And let me be clear: as leader, I will never tolerate antisemitism

When I stood for leader of the Greens in 2025, our party was at a crossroads. The transformative leadership of Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay had taken us to an electoral success we’d never seen before. I knew we had even greater potential – and that the country was crying out for the bold politics we could offer.

We have seen unprecedented wins this year – from our first ever parliamentary byelection win to our landslide council and mayoral victories in former Labour strongholds.

Zack Polanski is the leader of the Green party of England and Wales and a member of the London assembly

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Just as Brown and Blair did in 2005, Andy Burnham aims to champion debt relief to help developing countries

• Developing nations face triple shock, UN warns

From Washington to Paris, London to Tokyo, policymakers in every large economy have been counting the costs of bond market turmoil in recent weeks. But the brunt of the pain is being borne by heavily indebted developing countries that have little hope of influencing the whims of global investors, but pay the price regardless.

Markets have responded to the war in the Middle East, and a spendthrift White House, by dumping government bonds – driving up borrowing costs just about everywhere.

Tories plan to scrap low-carbon housebuilding, Greens back new nuclear reactors, and Labour put oil-drilling decisions on hold

New homes could be built without solar panels, heat pumps and high-grade insulation, leading to higher household bills if the Conservative party wins the next general election.

Kemi Badenoch made scrapping the future homes standard (FHS) one of the central planks of her bid to become the next prime minister at the Tory party conference this week.

Some say party risks ‘looking twee’ by focusing on small fixes amid growing nervousness that budget lacks ambition

In the days since Labour’s annual conference, party insiders have been sharing a word cloud produced by the pollsters More in Common, which shows the phrases voters most associate with Andy Burnham.

Such polling is rarely flattering for politicians, and the prime minister’s version had its fair share of negatives. But one of the most prominent words in the cloud – and the one that has caught the imagination of Labour strategists – was “trying”.

Only ‘very small number’ of people already in Lebanon or Jordan will be referred, says organisation running scheme

The Home Office is facing claims it gave false hope to the people of Gaza after it emerged that a new safe route for Palestinian refugees will only be open to those who have already escaped to Lebanon or Jordan.

Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, announced the reopening of a resettlement scheme for refugees at Labour’s annual conference last month. A statement from her department said: “Around one in four referrals will be for Afghan women and girls and Palestinian refugees, fleeing war and persecution.”

Party now polling 15 points above Greens, who had been ahead of Labour before Keir Starmer resigned as PM

Labour is starting to win back voters on the left who became disillusioned under Keir Starmer’s leadership, the party’s deputy leader has claimed after it saw off Zack Polanski and the Greens to win the Holborn and St Pancras byelection.

Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali took 45% of a relatively low turnout to keep Starmer’s old north London seat for the party, pushing Polanski, who had stood for the party he leads, into second place on 33%.

Everywhere the PM turns, he finds generous adversaries. They have made his early days in No 10 so much easier

I don’t know where Andy Burnham found his magic lamp, but I hope he’s taking good care of it. In the early hours of Friday morning, the genie that’s looked so kindly on him these past few months granted him yet another wish, with a byelection win in Holborn and St Pancras. It was just the latest gift for a prime minister for whom things keep going right – and who is especially blessed in his choice of opponents.

Let’s start with that win in London, where Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali defeated the Green party leader, Zack Polanski. It’s easy to miss how rare such a victory is. As the veteran psephologist Peter Kellner pointed out, this was a win that “defied history”. If the past half-century were any guide, Labour should have lost, thanks to a “truly dreadful record” defending its own seats when in government and facing a byelection challenge from the left or centre-left, the likes of the Greens or the Lib Dems. The average swing against Labour in such contests had been 24%. “On those figures,” wrote Kellner, “Polanski should have won at a canter.” But he lost.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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A byelection win is a fillip for Andy Burnham and shows Zack Polanski must confront the failures damaging his party’s credibility and appeal

By holding Holborn and St Pancras, Andy Burnham’s Labour has shown it can attract liberal and left-leaning voters. The seat has substantial numbers of young adults, students, professionals and Muslims – offering fertile ground for the Greens’ ecopopulism. However, Labour prevailed. Having won leave-voting Makerfield in June, Mr Burnham can now claim an appeal that bridges Labour’s divided electorate. It’s worth noting that turnout in London was low and Labour’s vote share fell 3.7 points. But that compares with an average 19.3-point fall in four byelections under Mr Burnham’s predecessor. The new leader clearly has bought Labour breathing space and checked the Green advance.

The Greens more than tripled their vote share in the constituency to 33%. But they were beaten. Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali took 45% in Sir Keir Starmer’s former seat, leaving Zack Polanski’s ambition of entering parliament unfulfilled. For a party that began the year promising to turn voters’ hunger for change into a serious challenge to Labour, this was a sobering moment. The passing of a motion declaring “Zionism is racism” at its conference probably cost the party support – though the result in central London alone cannot definitively say that. There is a separate question of leadership. Mr Polanski now says he would have voted against the motion. Why, then, did he not make his opposition clear when it mattered last weekend?

While the Labour and Conservative leaders will be delighted with their showing, Nigel Farage, Ed Davey and Zack Polanski have less reason for cheer

Andy Burnham

Sagal Abdi-Wali defeats Green party leader Zack Polanski to retain the Holborn and St Pancras seat for Labour

• Labour fends off Green party to win Holborn and St Pancras byelection

Activists in Camden have suggested the Greens’ decision to back the anti-Zionism motion has cost them votes in the byelection.

Councillors for both Labour the Liberal Democrats told the Press Association that voters had informed them they would not be backing the Green party after it passed the motion last weekend calling Zionism racism.

It is clear now we will come a close second in this by-election. Taking the fight to Labour in one of its safest seats shows just how far the Greens have come.

Voters want us to keep Labour’s feet to the fire on affordable housing, public ownership of water and the climate crisis. Greens will be there every single day, holding Labour to account and demanding the change people voted for.

More research into the troubling rise in early onset cancers is needed. But we already know that food is among the culprits

The latest findings about the rise in cancers in people under 50, from the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF), are extremely concerning. While a cancer diagnosis is bad news at any time, it is a particular blow for those in younger age groups where most people are in good health. Overlapping trends observed in England, the Netherlands and the US include a troubling rise in the incidence of colorectal (or bowel) cancer. Other diseases that have increased in England include uterine and kidney cancers.

These diseases are still rare in young people: 10 times more adults in their 50s, 60s and 70s are diagnosed than those in their 20s, 30s and 40s. Earlier detection is thought to be one factor behind the rise in younger patients. Diagnosing more cancers sooner is an explicit policy goal in England, where late diagnosis and lower uptake of screening are two reasons for mortality rates that are higher than elsewhere in Europe.

Campaigners and Send parents including Chris Packham, Carrie Grant and Sally Phillips urge ministers to work with families and organisations to preserve individual provision and improve accountability in the system

The legal rights of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) are still under threat. The government’s proposed Send and education otherwise than at school (Eotas) reforms would significantly reduce existing legal rights to enforceable education, health and care plans (EHCPs), parental choice of educational settings and independent routes of appeal.

We support the government’s ambitions for a more inclusive education system. Better teacher training, earlier identification of need, greater specialist expertise and a properly staffed workforce are all necessary. But none of these initiatives require children and families to surrender the legal protections they currently have.

Court hears former justice minister Shahid Malik had only ‘very limited’ role in business that made £6.67m in three weeks

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A former Labour MP and justice minister has been found not guilty of charges around his role in a fraudulent Covid-19 testing company.

Shahid Malik, 58, was MP for Dewsbury between 2005 and 2010 and served as a minister in three departments in Gordon Brown’s government.

Zack Polanski has led energetic campaign for the Greens, while Labour will hope to hold on to Starmer’s old seat

Voting has opened in the Holborn and St Pancras byelection, a contest seen as a key gauge of Andy Burnham’s ability to energise voters and whether Zack Polanski’s Greens can still peel off support from Labour’s left.

Polanski, who leads the Greens in England and Wales, is standing for his party in the north London constituency, previously held by Keir Starmer before he stood down as an MP shortly after resigning as prime minister.