The Tory leader has glimpsed the future and it involves Labour putting every last UK citizen on benefits

If you’re worried about next week’s budget, then now is your time to chill out. Because Kemi Badenoch has all the answers. The chancellor, John Healey, has been living rent free in the leader of the opposition’s head for the past few weeks. Lucky man. More than that, she has been perched on his shoulder while he sits at his desk in the Treasury and tries to make the sums add up.

And – SPOILER ALERT – Kemi has now read the whole speech that hasn’t yet been written and is in a position to give her budget reply more than a week ahead of time. Opposition by telepathy. Or wish fulfilment. If things don’t work out for her in her current job she could apply to be the next Mystic Meg.

While the party’s MPs went into hiding, it was left to its failed byelection candidate Matt Goodwin to defend it

It was the dog that didn’t bark in the night. After Sunday night’s ITV exposé of widespread racism and misogyny within Reform, you might have expected one of its MPs to have taken to the airwaves on Monday morning to defend the party’s honour. To try to persuade viewers that the real problem lay with the journalists who couldn’t stop themselves from investigating Reform rather than the fact that the party’s bigotry was endemic.

Instead, we got nothing. Every Reform MP was otherwise engaged. Were too busy having breakfast. Nothing from Nigel Farage. Nothing even from Robert Jenrick. Maybe he realised he had crashed and burned a few days earlier by suggesting it was just one of those things. One of life’s little mysteries. The BBC was riddled with paedophiles and Reform was awash with racists, said Honest Bob. No big deal. Every organisation had its crosses to bear.

Exclusive: Undercover footage of Dan Jukes raises fresh questions about Reform leader’s statement that £5m gift was for security

Nigel Farage undermined his own claims that a £5m gift was for security when he referred to the money as a reward for Brexit, according to one of his closest aides.

The apparent admission came in undercover footage seen by the Guardian in which Dan Jukes says that it is “priced in” for Farage to profit from politics.

Jason Powell also backed concentration camps as Reform councillors talk of executing grooming gang members

An aspiring Reform UK MP who advocated the use of concentration camps and said “you cannot be Muslim and British” has been suspended from the party.

The activist is one of a number featured in an ITV documentary, which will be broadcast in full on Sunday night and has already resulted in fresh questions about Reform’s vetting process.

With his war in Iran and siding with Russia, it’s hard to think of someone who has done more to make the world a safer place

It might have been more, shall we say, diplomatic if Donald Trump had taken some deep breaths after finding out he had been overlooked for the Nobel peace prize for the second year running before virtually declaring war on Norway. But maybe we should just be grateful he refrained from rubbishing the South African human rights activist Navi Pillay, who picked up the award, and shelved his plans to livestream the execution of the Norwegian prize committee. There again, you can understand his frustration. It’s hard to think of someone who has done more to make the world a safer place. Where would we be had not The Donald started a war with Iran which he shows no sign of knowing how to finish and which has forced up the price of global energy? And it was so good to see him intervening so positively in Russia’s war with Ukraine by appearing to side with the aggressor. These are just the things everyone is looking for in a Nobel peace laureate. The president is also put out that no one has noticed he has personally ended eight global conflicts; though it would be helpful if he could let us know which ones. Are they ones he has personally started – Trump appears disappointed that Argentina hasn’t invaded the Falklands again – or ones that only he knows about. During a press conference at Chequers in 2025, he claimed to have brought about a lasting peace between Albania and Azerbaijan. Maybe there are other wars going on we just don’t know about. Perhaps Australia and New Zealand have been bombing each other for years with neither side noticing. And perhaps the border between France and Italy has been a no-go zone ever since the fight between Zinedine Zidane and Marco Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup final. Still, Trump looks a cert to retain Gianni Infantino’s Fifa peace prize – if only because it seems likely to be scrapped, making him the only winner.

Reform MP defends leader after ITV footage shows official warning Farage he is ‘protecting’ candidate over racist David Lammy comments

Robert Jenrick has sought to defend Reform UK against fresh allegations that it hosts extremists by claiming that Nigel Farage has “probably done more than almost anybody to stand against racism and the far right”.

The remarks came after Farage was berated by a Reform official for “protecting” a mayoral candidate who was accused of making racist remarks about the former Labour deputy prime minister David Lammy.

Exclusive: ITV investigation shows leader stood by mayoral candidate who said Labour MP should ‘go home to the Caribbean’

Nigel Farage was told by a senior Reform official that he was “protecting” a high-profile mayoral candidate accused of making racist comments about David Lammy, an undercover investigation has revealed.

The latest footage from an undercover investigation by ITV also shows Sarah Pochin, one of two female MPs for Reform, complaining that other party officials “are so fucking chauvinistic” and that “they just exclude you if you are a woman”.

How dare the channel reveal more racism and bigotry within Reform just as he was planning a press conference?

Sometimes the world can be very unfair. As though life is just one cruel joke. How else to make sense of everything? For when the history books come to be written, Nigel Farage will go down as one of the century’s unluckiest politicians.

Poor Nige. All he has ever wanted is a better Britain. A country united in a shared vision where everyone gets along with one another. Where people of all faiths and none look out for each other. Where men and women of all colours are treated as equals. Where Nige can teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.

Party faces fresh crisis as three councillors quit after ITV undercover filming exposed violence, misogyny and racist views

Reform UK has been rocked by a fresh crisis after councillors and election candidates for the party were caught on film making graphic threats of extreme violence and expressing racist and misogynistic views.

Three councillors have already stood down from the party, which said it was conducting an investigation over the first revelations from an ITV undercover investigation that aired on Wednesday.

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.

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.

Don’t be fooled by its bickering leaders. Their calibrated fake fighting will probably end in coalition

Kapow! In a warmly received conference speech, Kemi Badenoch turns her fire on Reform UK, describing it as “weird”, and ruling out an electoral pact. Slap! Not to be outdone, her former colleague Robert Jenrick derides Badenoch as a champion of the wealthy, which is quite rich for a guy who looks like he’s just accidentally ingested a bundle of £50 notes through his sphincter. Bosh! Reform’s Richard Tice and Restore’s Rupert Lowe clash online over the result of a council byelection in Derbyshire, in which the Greens profited from a split rightwing vote. “Vote Restore get Islamists,” Tice chides. “Vote Reform, get some random Bangladeshi bloke,” Lowe responds.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives are back. The Kemibounce is real. The Keminaissance is true. We’ve all got a severe case of the Kemirrhoids. And you may wonder why much of the media are talking about a Badenoch revival in a year where her party lost 563 councillors and 40% of its councils, remains about four points below its apparent nadir of 2024, and in which the leader herself appears incapable of doing a broadcast interview without looking like a restaurant diner who received exactly what she ordered and is inexplicably furious at it. The point is that the Conservatives are a serious party of government again, and the reason is that we all said so.

Russian meddling probably didn’t affect the referendum result – but the Kremlin’s motives for wanting to undermine the EU still matter

Russian territorial aggression against Ukraine didn’t feature much in the Brexit referendum campaign. It made headlines briefly when Boris Johnson blamed Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea on the European Union.

According to the Vote Leave frontman, Vladimir Putin’s land grab was a consequence of Brussels making foreign policy “on the hoof” and having “pretensions to running a defence policy”.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

Farage’s intervention comes as Reform chair Zia Yusuf criticises ‘everybody’ in former Tory government that included Jenrick and Suella Braverman

Nigel Farage has denied that a Reform UK government would authorise lethal force against small boat crossings in the Channel, hours after one of his MPs said the Royal Marines should be permitted to fire on the boats.

Farage overruled Robert Jenrick, a Reform UK MP who defected from the Conservatives, who had told TalkTV that the party would deploy the marines to take boats back to France.

Burnham was lying, Farage told a press conference on Monday. This was clearly just another plot to undermine him

Let’s face it. The very idea that Russia may have tried to interfere with the Brexit referendum is clearly absurd. I mean, what could a hostile state hope to gain from sowing division between the UK and the EU? We all know that Vladimir Putin has nothing but the best interests of European democracies at heart. That’s why he invaded Ukraine. To help it become a bit more democratic. The sort of democracy which is so highly prized that 99% of its citizens vote for its leader. If only others could be more like Russia.

If anything, Putin would have wanted the UK to remain within the EU and it was only his impartiality that prevented him from saying so. Besides which, why would the Russians want to get involved in anything so politically insignificant as the partial break-up of an organisation it considers an enemy. It just makes no sense. And it’s not as if Russia has any track record of clandestine foreign engagement. Next people will be suggesting Russia paid Reform’s former leader in Wales, Nathan Gill, at least £30,000 to make helpful speeches in the European parliament and recruit other MEPs.

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On the Today programme, his comments were disconnected, cliche-riddled and unremittingly stupid. But to clog the collective consciousness with nonsense is exactly the point

Had Reform merely announced its intention to suspend the asylum system for an entire parliamentary term, I’d have just ignored it. Even to dignify its policy platform with a response is to enter its alternate universe, in which it’s preparing for government. I prefer, if only fractionally, this universe we’re in, where the party hangs by a thread on the results of a parliamentary inquiry into Nigel Farage’s £5m gift from a disinterested well-wisher.

Had Zia Yusuf, the party’s home affairs spokesperson, gone on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme merely promising a British version of ICE, I still would have ignored it, not due to complacency, more due to a bone-penetrating despair that anyone, even he, would look at the US’s shadow militia, performing staged acts of unfettered violence and inhumanity, and think: “That looks cool – I bet I could get some political capital out of that.”

Exclusive: Chris Bruni-Lowe used Redfield & Wilton Strategies role to develop potential campaign tactics, sources say

A close adviser to Nigel Farage had an influential role at a national polling company despite not being publicly associated with the firm, the Guardian can reveal.

Chris Bruni-Lowe, Farage’s private pollster for many years, played an important role in the operations of Redfield & Wilton Strategies and used it to develop potential campaign strategies, according to several sources who have worked there.

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.

Tories said to be ready to fight in Clacton, with standards investigation rumoured to be nearing its end

Nigel Farage’s rivals are gearing up for a byelection in Clacton in the months ahead, amid speculation that the standards inquiry into his £5m gift is nearing a conclusion.

Conservative sources said the party was ready to fight in Farage’s seat, although senior figures in the shadow cabinet are divided about whether it would be winnable, given Farage’s victory in a byelection over the summer.

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