Britain on track to lose 'unprecedented' 16,500 millionaires in 2025 amid high taxes and non-dom crackdown
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Metro
13 minutes ago
- Metro
What's stopping Keir Starmer from recognising Palestine as a state?
Sir Keir Starmer is coming under a lot of pressure to recognise Palestinian statehood. He's under pressure from 221 MPs – more than a third of all the people who sit in the House of Commons – who collectively signed a letter urging recognition. He's under pressure from Jeremy Corbyn's newly announced left-wing party, which placed alleged UK complicity in the Gaza horror at the centre of its launch, and the significant number of supporters it has attracted. And he's under pressure from top Labour figures, ranging from London Mayor Sadiq Khan to members of his own cabinet, who are pushing him on the matter both publicly and privately. Those calls have grown in the past few days, as images of starving children have been beamed around the world and French President Emmanuel Macron has announced France will formally recognise Palestine as a state. But the Prime Minister has remained firm, insisting he will only press forward at the moment when the move would have the maximum impact. Craig Munro breaks down Westminster chaos into easy to follow insight, walking you through what the latest policies mean to you. Sent every Wednesday. Sign up here. In a statement released on Thursday night, Starmer said: 'We are clear that statehood is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people. 'A ceasefire will put us on a path to the recognition of a Palestinian state and a two-state solution which guarantees peace and security for Palestinians and Israelis.' The UK is deeply entwined in the history of the region currently occupied by Israel and Palestine. In 1916, the British claimed control of the region called Palestine amid the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and the following year, Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour said the UK would back a 'national home' for the Jewish people in the area. A little over three decades later, in 1948, David Ben-Gurion declared the independence of Israel. The UN admitted Israel as a member in 1949, but not Palestine. It was not until 1988 that Palestinian statehood was recognised by any UN member states, after the Palestinian National Council formally declared independence. Today, 147 of the UN's 193 member states recognise Palestine, including the vast majority of the countries in Asia, Africa and South America. The UK, US, Canada, Germany, Japan, Australia and New Zealand are among the nations that do not. In 2014, MPs in the House of Commons voted to 274 to 12 in favour of recognising Palestine as a state. But David Cameron's government responded with a line that remains familiar today – that recognition would wait until it was deemed most appropriate for the peace process. On the face of it, the British government appears to be closer than ever to announcing formal recognition of a Palestinian state. Among the high-profile cabinet members reportedly arguing in favour are Deputy PM Angela Rayner, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood. The UK has also been closely aligning with France on the issue, as part of the E3 group of nations alongside Germany. However, both Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy have insisted publicly that the move is only worth making when it would be most effective in the pursuit of peace. On Tuesday, Lammy told the BBC: 'We don't just want to recognise symbolically, we want to recognise as a way of getting to the two states that sadly many are trying to thwart at this point in time.' Labour's election manifesto last year said the party is 'committed to recognising a Palestinian state as a contribution to a renewed peace process which results in a two-state solution with a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state.' More Trending The letter signed by 221 MPs, organised by Labour's Sarah Champion, said the announcement of recognition should come at a UN conference co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia on Monday and Tuesday. It said: 'British recognition of Palestine would be particularly powerful given its role as the author of the Balfour Declaration and the former Mandatory Power in Palestine. Since 1980 we have backed a two-state solution. 'Such a recognition would give that position substance as well as living up to a historic responsibility we have to the people under that Mandate.' Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: Will there be a bank holiday and trophy parade if England win Women's Euro 2025? MORE: Empty shops to be turned into clubs and bars under new government plans MORE: Trump warns 'there'll be no Europe left' before immediately hitting golf course
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
New polling shows Reform is winning over Britain's Christians
When we look at how people vote in elections and why they choose certain parties, analysis often focuses on age, education, location or socioeconomic status. Less discussed in Britain is religion. But close to two-thirds of its adults are still religious – expressing either a religious identity, holding religious beliefs, or taking part in religious activities. For the one-in-three adults in Britain who are Christian, this identity remains an important influence on their political behaviour. New polling, published here for the first time, shows how Reform UK is disrupting our previous understanding of how Christians vote in British elections. The relationship between Britain's Christian communities and the major political parties goes back centuries. The Conservative party has been very close to English Anglicanism since its emergence in the mid-19th century. Catholics and free-church Protestants (such as Baptists and Methodists) have tended towards the Labour and Liberal/Liberal Democrat parties. Even as Britain has become more secular, these relationships have persisted. Anglicans, for example, have tended to vote Conservative even when the party was in dire straits. In the 2024 election, 39% of Anglicans voted Tory even as the party's national vote share fell to 24%. Since the 1980s and particularly in elections since 2015, however, we have started to see changes to the Christian vote. The traditional Catholic attachment to Labour has deteriorated, as has Labour's appeal to other Christian communities such as Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians. Instead, driven by the rising salience of social values (attitudes towards immigration, social change and national identity) as a determinant of political support, the socially conservative leanings of some Christians of all stripes has led to increased support for the Conservatives. And those who traditionally did so – the Anglicans – have become even more supportive. The result has been a steady coalescing of the Christian vote behind the Conservatives. But now, new polling by YouGov (on June 23-24 2025) for the University of Exeter reveals that this realignment is being disrupted by the growing popularity of Reform UK. Instead of asking who people would vote for tomorrow, a nationally representative sample of 2,284 adults was asked how likely they were to ever vote for each major party, on a scale from zero (very unlikely) to ten (very likely). While not the same as a direct question about how someone would vote in an election, the likelihood question provides a much richer measure of the strength of their support for all of the major parties. Among Anglicans, Labour remains deeply unpopular: over half gave the party a 0. In contrast, the Conservatives still enjoy strong support among Anglicans, with 35% giving them a vote likelihood of seven or higher – the kind of support associated with voting for the party in an election. Reform, however, has caught up. Despite only 15% of Anglicans voting Reform in 2024, 38% now rate their likelihood of voting for the party as high. That's the same as the proportion who are strongly opposed to Reform – showing that while the party polarises Anglicans more than the Conservatives, Reform could win as much Anglican support as the Tories in an election. Catholics show a similar trend. Labour's traditional support is eroding: 40% of Catholics said they had zero likelihood of voting Labour, while 29% are strong supporters. As with Conservatives for the Anglican vote, Reform is almost level-pegging with Labour for the Catholic vote at 28%. It has even supplanted the Conservatives, of whom 22% of Catholics are strong supporters. It is not yet clear why this is happening. The distinction of Christian (and non-Christian) voting patterns is not an artefact of age – there are many studies that prove this is the case. It may be that Reform's stances on issues such as immigration resonate with Christians' concerns to the extent that they are willing to set aside their historic party loyalties. Or it may be that Christians are as prone as other British voters to turn to Reform out of frustration with the performances of Labour and the Conservatives in office. Swing voters and party competition This data also shows the extent to which voters' support for parties overlaps or is exclusive. In other words, which voters have a high vote likelihood for only one party (and so are likely committed to backing that party in an election), which do not have such high likelihoods for any party (and so will probably not vote at all), and which have similarly high likelihoods for more than one party (effectively swing voters, persuadable one way or the other). Among the religiously unaffiliated, 29% aren't strong supporters of any party. For Catholics, it's 26%. Anglicans are more politically anchored, however, with only 20% in this category. While traditionally, we would have expected this to reflect Anglicans' greater tendency to support the Tories, only 17% of Anglicans are strong supporters of only that party, compared with 21% who are firmly behind Reform. These aren't swing voters; they've switched sides. A further 12% of Anglicans have high vote likelihoods for both the Tories and Reform. These are swing voters that the two parties could realistically expect to win over. Catholics are even more fragmented. Only 13% are strong supporters of Labour alone, along with 12% and 17% who are strong supporters of the Conservatives and Reform alone, respectively. Few Catholics are torn between Labour and the other parties, but 5% are swing voters between the Conservatives and Reform: the Tories' gradual winning over of Catholics over the last 50 years is also being challenged by the appeal of Reform. The party has provided a socially conservative alternative to the Conservatives, with the result that the Christian vote has become more fragmented. The Tories are no longer the main beneficiaries of Labour's loss of its traditional Catholic vote. In addition, Reform is as popular as the Conservatives among Anglicans, and as popular as Labour among Catholics. This suggests it is appealing across the traditional denominational divide more successfully than either of the major parties. If there is to be a single party that attracts the bulk of Britain's Christian support, at this point it is far more likely to be Reform than anyone else.
BBC News
2 hours ago
- BBC News
Former North Tyneside Mayor Dame Norma Redfearn granted Freedom of Borough
The former three-time mayor of North Tyneside has been granted the council's highest Norma Redfearn was nominated for the Freedom of the Borough in recognition of her "extraordinary leadership" and the "transformative change" brought to the area during her Karen Clark put forward the Labour veteran's nomination, which was unanimously agreed said: "Through her passion, dedication, and tireless efforts, Dame Norma Redfearn has left an indelible mark on North Tyneside." She said the former mayor "really did make North Tyneside a great place to live, work, and visit."The position of mayor is an elected role and is effectively the leader of the Norma announced her decision last year not to seek re-election, marking the beginning of the end of her 12 years in narrowly retained the mayoralty for Labour in May after beating Reform UK by a thin margin. Dame Norma's administration saw the regeneration of large parts of Whitley Bay including the re-opening of the long-disused Spanish City Dome. She also played a key role in regional devolution, which saw the creation of the North East Combined Authority and the North East elected to North Tyneside Council as a councillor for the Riverside ward in 2004, Dame Norma joined the cabinet and was responsible for the children and young people portfolio in was first elected as mayor in 2013, defeating the then Conservative incumbent Linda to her 20-year career in local politics, she spent 30 years as an educator, culminating as the head teacher of West Walker Primary the Conservative opposition supported the nomination, Tory councillor John Johnson lamented that the same honour was not bestowed to her late following clarification from the council's legal officer, it was determined the Freedom of the Borough could not be handed over posthumously, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service. Follow BBC North East on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram.
