Starmers

PA Media

Taking aim at Reform UK

Hard truths on migration

PA Media

A focus on apprenticeships

Starmer’s version of patriotism

PA Media

Looking back – and ahead – to tough Budget decisions

A RECORD number of prisoners were freed in error last year.

There were 262 wrongly released in the 12 months to March, figures show.

1

It is a 128 per cent rise on the 115 between 2023 and 2024 — the biggest year-on-year increase.

Some were released as their crimes for breaching restraining orders were wrongly logged.

HM Prison and Probation Service said the total included some incorrectly let out under Labour’s early release scheme.

Thousands were freed after serving just 40 per cent of their time.

It led to farcical scenes of lags popping champagne corks.

Former Tory minister Sir Alec Shelbrooke said then-Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood should “take accountability” for the figures.

He fumed: “These figures are very alarming.

“There should be accountability when a prisoner is released early in error – and it has to go right to the top of the chain, including the Justice Secretary.

“Nobody wants to live in a lawless society. The idea that multiple people a week can be set free by mistake is scandalous.”

The Ministry of Justice said: “We’ve set up a specialist team to clamp down on those releases.”

IT may not be an imposing castle and there’s no Claudia Winkleman but Downing Street has become the stage for a real-life version of The Traitors.

Sir Keir Starmer set the scene for weeks of vicious plotting when he banished his faithful deputy from the Cabinet.

3

3

His gushing letter to Angela Rayner after she was forced out was true to the hit TV series.

It could be summed up as: “So sorry, Ange. I really like you and I really, really hope it isn’t you. But I’ve got to go with my gut.”

But it hasn’t washed with her admirers who now see her as a standard bearer for Labour’s Left.

The problem for the PM is whether his ousted sidekick will be recruited by The Traitors — a clique of MPs and activists hellbent on revenge.

They think Sir Keir is the real traitor — a class traitor — and are ready to unleash anger and resentment that has been building up over the past 14 months.

‘Knives are out’

When Ms Rayner quit as Deputy PM and Housing Secretary, she also stood down as Labour’s Deputy Leader — an elected position.

The search for her successor will become a divisive and bloody battle for the soul of the party.

One activist declared: “It’s going to be carnage. The knives are out already — and many of them are aimed at Starmer’s back.

“Most MPs can’t stand him or his politics, and over the past week their hatred has gone off the scale.”

Ms Rayner and her supporters are not the only people to harbour a grudge against the PM.

Her departure forced him into a hasty Cabinet reshuffle in which several of her colleagues were also thrown under the bus.

One minister dumped in Sir Keir’s shake-up even vowed privately: “I’m going to f*** him up.”

The deputy leadership race could now turn into a proxy war to destabilise the PM and find his successor.

There are whispers about a stalking horse to pave the way for Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham to steal the crown and, bizarrely, that Ed Miliband is pondering a bid for a leadership comeback.

The scandal has also exposed the Prime Minister’s indecision and weakness — flaws he once levelled at Boris Johnson.

Sir Keir allowed Ms Rayner to cling on to her job for eight days after it was revealed she had avoided paying £40,000 stamp duty on her swish new seaside property at Hove, East Sussex.

It was clear that at the very least she was guilty of rank hypocrisy and had to go.

One of his biggest tests will be the Budget on November 26

You’d think after being gifted £2,400 of free spectacles, Sir Keir would have seen what was coming.

But he left it to an ethics adviser to reach the inevitable conclusion — and even then, the PM didn’t sack her but let her resign.

Sir Keir knows he must fix the economy and stop the boats if he has any chance of winning the next General Election.

But the Left has been angered and emboldened, and their opening salvos are likely to be fired at the Labour Conference in Liverpool later this month.

One of his biggest tests will be the Budget on November 26, when drastic action is needed to plug the £50billion black hole in Britain’s finances.

Normally, all the pressure would be on Rachel Reeves to deliver. But the PM sidelined the Chancellor last week to take personal charge of economic policy.

He appointed his own economics guru and poached Ms Reeves’s geeky number two Darren Jones as well as the Chancellor’s chief tax adviser to join his No10 team.

One disgruntled source said: “Keir has made it clear he plans to own the next Budget.

“If that’s the case, he can shoulder all the blame when it goes down like a bag of cold sick.”

Cabinet heavyweight Pat McFadden has been put in charge of forcing through welfare reform, months after benefit cuts were ditched amid a backbench rebellion. His task just got a lot harder.

Time to get a grip

Another big mission — which eclipses any TV challenge Claudia could set — is to tackle the asylum crisis.

Voters are desperate to see this Government deliver on its promises soon

Sir Keir staged a clear-out of the Home Office at the weekend, removing Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and two of her ministers following their failure to stop the boats and close migrant hotels.

Hardly a surprise, as Sir Keir has had more success removing ministers than asylum seekers.

He has ushered in tough-talking former Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood — who supports chemical castration for serious sex offenders — to head up the dysfunctional department.

The PM knows that if she is unable to get a grip of the nation’s number one concern, he won’t be given time to send in a third team.

Voters are desperate to see this Government deliver on its promises soon.

Sir Keir returned from his summer break to declare he had begun “phase two” of his plan to change Britain.

If it continues like this, there won’t be any time for a phase three.

Voters will ask Sir Keir to reveal whether he’s a Faithful or a Traitor.

Then banish him from Number 10.

REFORM MP Lee Anderson wants schoolkids to wave Union Flags and sing the National Anthem at morning assembly.

Not so much Cool ­Britannia as School Britannia.

WHILE the nation was entranced by the Angela Rayner scandal, the Green Party elected a former hypnotherapist as its new leader.

Zack Polanski once claimed he could help women who wanted larger breasts by unlocking the power of their minds.

3

Now he’s turned his attention to growing his membership before persuading the rest of us to reverse Brexit.

I can only imagine how he’ll do that.

Perhaps he’ll mesmerise us into a second referendum with an election speech which goes: “Look into my eyes, look into my eyes.

One, two, three . . . you’re back in the EU.”

MIGRANTS arriving in Britain by small boat were immediately detained yesterday under the new “one in, one out” deal with France.

The first to be held under the pilot scheme were picked up in Dover on Wednesday – just hours after the new treaty kicked in.

1

Photos showed arrivals in life jackets being led off Border Force vessels at the Western Jet Foil facility.

An unspecified number were held on the spot and taken to immigration removal centres — with swift deportation to France now expected.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: “Yesterday, under the terms of this groundbreaking new treaty, the first group of people to cross the Channel were detained after their arrival at Western Jet Foil and will now be held in detention until they can be returned to France.

“That sends a message to every migrant currently thinking of paying organised crime gangs to go to the UK that they will be risking their lives and throwing away their money if they get into a small boat.”

The Home Office says it will not be disclosing figures at this stage for fear it would be exploited by smugglers.

But just around 50 people a week are expected to be returned under the deal,  a tiny number compared to the 25,436 who have already crossed this year.

A commitment to international law “goes absolutely to the heart” of Sir Keir Starmer’s government and its approach to foreign policy, the attorney general has told the BBC.

In his first broadcast interview, Lord Richard Hermer, who is the Cabinet’s chief legal adviser, said that the government was determined to “lead on international law issues” globally.

He argued that this has enabled the UK to strike economic deals with the US, India and the EU in recent months.

The attorney general also defended Starmer’s decision to seek a “warm” relationship with President Trump even at the expense of “short-term political gain”.

Lord Hermer’s comments, which came in a full extended interview for an upcoming BBC Radio 4 programme Starmer’s Stormy Year, were made before recent speculation about his legal advice regarding the government’s approach to the conflict between Israel and Iran.

Nevertheless, they help to illuminate the approach being taken by one of the most powerful figures in government, as ministers navigate a perilous diplomatic moment.

On Monday, the government repeatedly declined to say whether it believed that America’s strikes on Iran were legal, arguing that this was not a question for British ministers to assess.

The approach to the law taken by Hermer, an old friend of the prime minister who had no political profile prior to his surprise appointment almost a year ago, has been a persistent controversy throughout Starmer’s premiership.

Asked whether international law was a “red line” for the prime minister in foreign policy, Hermer replied: “If you ask me what’s Keir’s kind of principal overriding interest, it is genuinely to make life better for the people of this country.”

He continued: “Is international law important to this government and to this prime minister? Of course it is.

“It’s important in and of itself, but it’s also important because it goes absolutely to the heart of what we’re trying to achieve, which is to make life better for people in this country.

“And so I am absolutely convinced, and I think the government is completely united on this, that actually by ensuring that we are complying with all forms of law – domestic law and international law – we serve the national interest.”

Hermer added: “Look, we’ve just entered trade deals with the United States, with India, with the EU, and we’re able to do that because we’re back on the world stage as a country whose word is their bond.

“No one wants to do deals with people they don’t trust. No one wants to sign international agreements with a country that’s got a government that’s saying, well, ‘we may comply with it, we may not’.

“We do. We succeed. We secure those trade deals, which are essential for making people’s lives better in this country.

“We secure deals on migration with France, with Germany, with Iraq, that are going to deal with some of the other fundamental problems that we face, and we can do that because we comply, and we’re seen to comply and indeed lead on international law issues.

“Being a good faith player in international law is overwhelmingly in the national interests of this country.”

Speaking about the UK’s relationship with the US more generally, Hermer said: “It’s a relationship that will no doubt at various points have various different pressures, but it is an absolutely vital one for us to have.

“I think the approach that Keir has taken, which is never to give in to that kind of Love Actually instinct for short-term political gain, but rather to ensure that our relationship with the United States remains warm, that channels of communication are always open, that there is mutual respect between us.

“I think that is overwhelmingly in this country’s interests.”

In the 2003 film Love Actually, a fictional prime minister contradicts a US president during a press conference.

Earlier this year, Hermer said he regretted “clumsy” remarks in which he compared calls for the UK to depart from international law and arguments made in 1930s Germany.

In a speech, he criticised politicians who argue the UK should abandon “the constraints of international law in favour of raw power”, saying similar claims had been made by legal theorists in Germany in the years before the Nazis came to power.

Some Conservatives and Reform UK have called for the UK to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).