Justice Secretary Alex Norris visiting the HNP Welland Oaks site in Leicester, as part of the Government’s plans to expand prison places © PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo
One of the policies that troubled Keir Starmer is now causing a headache for his successor, as Andy Burnham returns from holiday next week facing controversy over the prisoner early release scheme. While the Government announced that those charged with ‘rape, serious child sex and other grooming offences’ would be excluded, the omission of manslaughter offences, including two men responsible for the death of PC Andrew Harper, has prompted proposed legal action, strong condemnation from police involved in the case, and a public petition signed by over 650,000 people. The Conservatives, who Labour blame for the need to ease prison overcrowding due to a failure to build prison places, have gone on the attack. They claim that 363 offenders convicted of manslaughter could be released early by 2029, while also arguing that as ‘indecent assault’ was not excluded, some guilty of grooming gang offences could still be released, leading to another ‘urgent’ review by Government.
It was blue vs turquoise this week as both Reform UK and the Conservatives announced some major immigration policies. Farage was up first, announcing on Monday that Reform UK would use the Navy to intercept boat crossings in the English Channel and return migrants to French ports, regardless of whether this had the backing of the French Government. The plans would deploy military-crewed inflatable boats from 10 Navy patrol vessels to "come alongside" migrant boats crossing the English Channel. On Wednesday, it was the turn of Reform’s Home Affairs Spokesperson, as Zia Yusuf unveiled a policy that would see Reform pay the general public if they provide a tip-off leading to a successful prosecution of a high street business employing illegal workers. The financial incentives paid under a "Turkish barbers tip line” would be funded using larger fines imposed on firms using illegal employees. Alongside these fines for businesses, which could be up to 10% of the company’s global revenue, Yusuf pledged to make the CEOs of companies employing illegal migrants personally liable for breaches. In turn, Kemi Badenoch pledged on Friday to end the provision of social housing for foreign nationals. The policy includes ending new tenancies for all foreign nationals, alongside current tenancies for couples where neither person is a British national, or single occupancy tenancies, with these people expected to move out in 6 months. With the PM on holiday, the Labour Party has hit back at all three policies, suggesting that Reform’s are “gimmicky” and that the Conservatives’ is “unserious and unworkable”.
As featured in the Politico London Playbook last week – Guessminster, our free MP recognition trainer, is back for the summer and, for the first time, you can now test your knowledge of our elected representatives in the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Parliament and Northern Ireland Assembly.
Heading to a party conference this autumn and want to quiz yourself on who you might meet? Need to get your team up to speed on the newly elected MSPs and MSs in Scotland and Wales this May? Or maybe Andy Burnham’s just appointed you to the Whips’ Office and you need a reminder who’s sat behind you… there’s a Guessminster for everyone. Head over to our website home page to play.
$567m – amount Meta has been fined by a US judge in New Mexico in the largest child safety ruling against the company.
34,002 – number of properties belonging to Ukrainian citizens in occupied Ukraine that have been seized or identified for seizure by Russian authorities since 2024, so they can be given to Russian passport holders.
34 – number of candidates fighting the Clacton by-election, with the ballot paper standing at 3ft long (the longest ballot paper in British political history).
6.5mm – amount of rainfall that England recorded in July, with Wales seeing 9.3mm.
93% – overall attendance rate at English state schools in 2025/26, a slight decrease from the previous year.
Over 1,900 – number of small high street businesses, including mini-marts, vape shops and car washes, which are licensed to sponsor foreign workers under a specialist scheme intended for high-earning individuals, despite visa rules being tightened.
9,957 – number of people who were referred to the government's anti-terrorism scheme, Prevent, in the year to September 2025
2 weeks – length of time Andy Burnham served as Prime Minister before going on holiday.
The Budget will take place on 28 October, the Chancellor announced. He pledged that it will be a ‘Budget that moves money and power out of Westminster, and into every postcode around Britain’, be ‘built on fiscal discipline’, meet the Government’s fiscal rules and give ‘businesses and families some of the stability they need to plan for the future.’ Despite his promised commitment to the fiscal rules, the Chancellor is reportedly already moving to bend them to allow an extra £9bn of borrowing, which will be spent on housing, infrastructure and British start-ups.
Andy Burnham jetted off on holiday to an undisclosed location. Kemi Badenoch declined to criticise him (and with the cost of international holidays these days, who can blame her), but repeated that he should have recalled Parliament after becoming PM.
Labour’s Bev Craig swept into power as mayor of Greater Manchester, beating Reform UK's Sian Astley by 309,525 to 157,178 after second-preference votes were added. It’s a marked turnaround from the days when Starmer blocked Burnham from standing in the Gorton and Denton by-election on the grounds that an election in Greater Manchester risked handing the mayoralty to Reform.
The PM has “concerns” about the planned reduction of jury trials and wants to closely examine them before proceeding. Alongside the controversial early release scheme, the proposals were the second pillar of the Starmer government’s approach to lessening the acute pressure on the criminal justice and prison system.
In a more concrete signal, Burnham ruled out launching a public inquiry into Jeffrey Epstein, despite Victims Minister Alex Davies-Jones previously suggesting the Prime Minister was "looking into" the idea. Burnham has, however, agreed to meet with Epstein’s victims.
Kemi Badenoch faced the heat over the Tories’ selection of a former neo-Nazi as local council candidate. Joshua Bonehill-Paine, who was convicted of racially harassing Jewish former Labour MP Luciana Berger while already serving a separate jail sentence for sharing antisemitic posts, has since pulled out, but only after Badenoch appointed him as an anti-extremism adviser.
The AI Security Institute published a report which claimed that Anthropic's Mythos and OpenAI's Sol models engaged in ‘sustained, unsanctioned action directed at real people and organisations’, including a supply-chain attack on open-source software and an attempt to plant malicious code. The AISI said it was the first time it had seen ‘autonomy and deception manifest this clearly, without specific prompting, in the real-world.’
Reform UK's Richard Tice is under investigation by Parliament's standards watchdog over claims he failed to declare an interest, after not disclosing during a speech on 22 June that he went on a trip to Israel last September. The watchdog has also opened a separate investigation into DUP MP Sammy Wilson over an alleged failure to declare an interest.
Businesses bidding for government contracts will now be judged more heavily on the local benefits they deliver, with new procurement rules to double the weighting given to local benefits from 10% to 20% for contracts worth £5m or more. Companies will be assessed on their commitment to creating high-quality British jobs, tackling local skills shortages and supporting apprenticeships and work placements, with extra credit available for paying above the legal minimum and supporting groups including NEETs, care leavers and people with long-term health conditions.
Green Party leader Zack Polanski warned that extreme weather poses the "biggest threat to this country since the Second World War", using a speech this week to highlight the growing risks of heatwaves, wildfires and food and water shortages. He called for a network of free public cooling spaces, grants to help households heat-proof their homes, a fully funded wildfire prevention strategy including firefighting helicopters, and a renewed commitment from the Government not to issue any new oil and gas licences.
The Global Talent visa has been expanded to help leading UK R&D businesses recruit overseas scientists and engineers, with more than 100 research-intensive firms now able to support international researchers moving to Britain. The Government also plans to expand the Future Technology Research and Innovation scheme to allow more technology firms to host overseas researchers and specialists for up to two years.
Labour won last week’s election to decide Andy Burnham’s replacement in Greater Manchester, with Bev Craig soundly beating Reform UK’s Sian Astley with the addition of second-preference votes.
A new British Ambassador to Bahrain has been appointed, with Thomas Allan due to take up the role in January next year. In addition, Gill Lever has been selected to serve as Britain’s ambassador in Zimbabwe, while Rebecca Fabrizi has been appointed to South Sudan. Meanwhile, Mel Barlow will serve as High Commissioner to Brunei.
Julie Gaskell and Simon Patterson have been appointed to the board of the National Gallery, and Sunder Katwala and Michelle Mitchell have been appointed to the board of the National Lottery Community Fund.
It was acceptable for the new Prime Minister to take a one-week holiday with his family, according to 68% of people surveyed in a YouGov poll. Of these respondents, 45% said it was "completely acceptable", while 11% said it was "completely unacceptable" for Burnham to go. Opinion was balanced among men and women, but when broken down by age there was some slight variation, with 31% of 18 to 24-year-olds stating it was completely acceptable, rising to 43% among people aged 65 and over.
Andy Burnham must place climate adaptation at the centre of his policies, according to Chatham House. Amidst wildfires across Europe, people’s daily lives are being interrupted by the effects of climate change. Fires in Spain saw a national emergency declared and ‘nearly half of England is facing an exceptionally serious drought,’ which the article argues ‘expose a growing gap in climate policy.’ While recognising the importance of Government focus on reducing emissions, they have called for this summer to be the moment when ‘adaptation moves from the margins of environmental policy to the centre of economic planning and foreign policy.’ Chatham House urged the Government to treat climate adaptation as economic policy, not a ‘narrow environmental concern’ with closer attention required with regard to land management and urban resilience.
On average, going to university is a good financial investment, according to the latest podcast from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, however, for a large group of people, especially men, it does not pay off. The podcast discussed those subjects that do not translate into high financial earnings, noting that creative and performing arts and other subjects such as philosophy can translate into relatively low, or even negative financial returns, when factoring in the cost of their studies and the output gained. However, for women, there are greater financial returns from a university education, with graduate women “earning much more than non-graduate women aged 30” and this gap remaining relatively consistent across the next 20 years of their career. Largely, this points to a lack of external opportunities for women that exist for men, as well as the different paths that men and women take, with non-graduate men often working in traditional labour jobs.
After the French Government reacted rather negatively (shocker!) to Reform UK’s proposed plan to use the Royal Navy to take small boat migrants back to France, saying it would be a violation of French sovereignty and of both maritime and international law, one MP wasn’t having it, as Sarah Pochin responded that it was a ‘pity the French did not show the same resolve in defending their sovereignty in June 1940.’ Luckily for Sarah, this proved a great educational opportunity, as people jumped in to remind her of the French lives lost resisting invasion in 1940. Perhaps time to brush up on some WWII history…
Prime Ministers come and go, but one can always rely on Purr Minister – Battersea Dogs & Cats Home's annual feline face-off, where MPs and Peers submit their cats, along with their cats' Manifursto, to be elected Purr Minister. Fur-midable frontrunners include Adrian Ramsay’s cat, Bella, who would ensure cats retain supreme authority over dogs; Johanna Baxter’s duo, Clem and Mo, who would lead a national infrastructure project for premium, high-traction carpeting and sun-drenched ledges; the Lord Bishop of Newcastle's Ebba, who promises daily zoomies; and Scott Arthur’s Millie, who pledges unlimited naps and immediate snack distribution upon request. Remember to exercise your right to vote by 31 August!
