Lengthy meeting heard grumbles about ‘blue wall’ policies and ‘Ming vase’ tactics but no real rancour

As political showdowns go, this week’s gathering of Liberal Democrat MPs, billed by some as a crunch moment for Ed Davey, was a touch underwhelming. “I had expected a damp squib,” one attender put it. “It was damper than I thought.”

Far from generating a mass of opposition to Davey’s leadership, let alone a formal challenge to his position, the lengthy gathering in a Commons committee room on Tuesday evening brought a few minor grumbles, but little else.

Change of council leadership hands reprieve to residents of architecturally celebrated developments in Lambeth

Two architecturally celebrated council estates in south London that have been under threat of demolition for more than a decade have been saved.

Residents of Cressingham Gardens and the Central Hill estate have campaigned tirelessly for their homes to be saved, saying the low-density 1960s developments are significant in design and popular with those living there.

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

Reform leader did not say who should be targeted but party figures have been critical of small boat rescues by RNLI

Charities and volunteers who help asylum seekers get to the UK should face potential criminal prosecution, Nigel Farage has said in an interview with a rightwing US podcaster.

While the Reform UK leader did not specify which organisations should be targeted, he and other senior Reform figures have been heavily critical of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), which has faced a campaign of intimidation for its work in rescuing asylum seekers in the Channel.

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.”

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%.

Zack Polanski has lost the Holborn and St Pancras byelection to Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali. Despite the Greens increasing their vote share from 2024, Polanski had the cloud of the ‘Zionism is racism’ row hanging over his head.

Now there are questions over his leadership and whether he can steer the party through the ongoing Zionism row. Will the Greens remain a fringe party?

Vivien Lichtenstein says party leader should stand down over ‘Zionism is racism’ policy

• UK politics live – latest updates

The leader of the Jewish Greens has called for Zack Polanski to step down as pressure increases on the Green leader to acknowledge anger within the party over a new policy that equates Zionism with racism and calls for the state of Israel to be abolished.

The comments by Vivien Lichtenstein come after Caroline Lucas, the Greens’ former leader and first MP, criticised Polanski for a lack of leadership in missing the debate and vote at the weekend that resulted in the policy being passed.

Exclusive: Badenoch’s flagship conference policy document cites £957bn estimate, twice the total in climate advisers’ data

Kemi Badenoch’s flagship party conference policy document overestimated the cost of net zero by nearly £500bn, seemingly after someone accidentally double-counted figures on a spreadsheet.

The apparent error appears in a chapter on net zero in The Right Way, a 100-page policy document produced for the Conservative conference in Birmingham. Badenoch repeatedly used the phrase in her main speech.

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.

Exclusive: Thinktank says Britain’s drive towards global commitments is symptom of ‘outdated foreign policy’

The UK’s military is too focused on global commitments at the expense of domestic defence, meaning the government’s planned increase in defence spending is likely to result in even greater waste, a thinktank report has warned.

According to an analysis by researchers at the Transition Security Project, Britain has the most overseas-oriented military among European nations, with almost a quarter of the defence budget spent on commitments across five continents.

At Conservative conference, some worry about becoming a one-woman party, while others say party should thank their lucky stars they have her

Kemi Badenoch has long said that the Conservatives were “under new management”, but in a TV interview to mark the end of a party conference at which she has been front and centre of more or less everything, she took the analogy further.

“Your viewers will know that sometimes you have a football team that’s disappointing,” the Tory leader told GB News. “There’s a new captain, there’s a new coach, there’s a new owner, effectively – which is all me.”

Minister says they could not see parties cooperating, while official says coalition should be formally ruled out

Senior Labour party figures said it was very unlikely their party would cooperate with the Greens in the future after they adopted a policy treating Zionism as a form of racism.

One Labour minister said they could not foresee how the two parties could work together, while a government official said Labour should formally rule out a future coalition or other arrangement.