Adrian Ramsay, a former Green party co-leader, has said that, if he had been in Zack Polanski’s position, he would have apologised for accidentally sharing a picture of a man wearing a T-shirt with a guillotine joke about Nigel Farage.

Speaking to Times Radio, Ramsay said:

 That T-shirt was completely unacceptable, and we need to be absolutely clear about that … All of us in public life have to be absolutely clear that political violence and even suggestions of political violence are in no way acceptable.

Ramsay said, if he had been in Polanski’s position, he would have apologised.

The straightforward thing would have been to say, ‘Look, this was a mistake. I apologise for that mistake, and it’s different to the way we need to see politics done.’

Ramsay also said that Ellie Chowns, the Green party’s parliamentary leader (Polanski is not an MP), agreed with him about Polanski’s response.

Explaining why he did not apologise, Polanski told Newsnight on Tuesday:

If I’d done it deliberately, I’d be apologising.

But because this was a mistake, I think the important thing is that I point out it’s a mistake, that I also make sure that I condemn political violence, and also crucially, I make a commitment to be better on my social media.

Yesterday, in an impressive speech and Q&A with journalists, Andy Burnham opened his campaign for social care reform and urged politicians, the media, and the public at large, to engage in a “factual” debate on the best way forward. He was chosen by his party on the basis that he was a charismatic communicator and yesterday he showed why this judgment was sound. He was passionate (talking about his father, in care with dementia), committed, determined, interesting, but also reasonable (stressing his willingness to compromise). He also sounded confident of his ability to shift the public debate through persuasion – which is rarer than you would think in politics, and normally a sign of first-rate leadership.

This morning we got a response Reform UK’s Robert Jenrick. He was also exceptional – but in a less admirable way. Generally politicians do best when they engage with what their opponents are doing or saying. But that’s hard if those opponents are being vague or unobjectionable (like ‘social care needs reform, let’s have a debate and see if we can build consensus around what Louise Casey will recommend next year’). The alternative approach is to just make something up and attack that instead – which is what Jenrick did. He said Burnham was determined to impose a 10% levy on all estates when people die (or a “death tax”). It is true that Burnham floated this idea more than 16 years ago, and did not rule it out yesterday. But even in 2010 this was quite a tentative proposal, and yesterday Burnham hinted that it is not one that he plans to revisit.

So Jenrick was scaremongering. What was exceptional was the shamelessness with which he went about it. His powers of exaggeration were quite extraordinary.

• Jenrick claimed the Burnham plan would result in government tax inspectors coming to search homes soon after a relative has died. In his speech, he said:

Imagine the scene.

A loved one – a parent or a grandparent – has passed away.

You’re grieving. At the same time, you’re trying to sort out all the things that follow a death. Going through belongings. The paperwork.

Then.

A knock on the door.

Not from a well-wisher but HMRC. “

Hello. We’ve come to value your relative’s estate.”

That is what Andy Burnham’s scheme could mean: the taxman intruding on the private grief of hundreds of thousands of regular families every year.

And there was more.

Finally, of the sheer indignity of it. An official standing in your late mother’s bedroom with a clipboard. Pricing up her engagement ring. Totting up her coats. Itemising an entire life – a life of work, of thrift, of love – so that the Treasury can take its cut.

As my colleague Jessica Elgot points out, Jenrick may have a wonderful imagination – but he has little understanding of how HMRC actually works.

It is a truly rose-tinted view of the resources of HMRC that they have official resource to check the value of a rack of M&S raincoats.

• Jenrick claimed that voters in Makerfield (Burnham’s constituency) would suffer disproportionately from the “death tax” policy. He said:

It’s not Makerfield that benefits.

Take a nurse there who dies only a few years after retiring. She might have a house worth £200,000 and receive a lump sum of almost £100,000 on death from the NHS pension scheme. Under current rules, none of that would be taxed. Under Burnham’s death tax, her children could have to pay £30,000 to the taxman.

This was compelling detail – but all based on a policy that does not exist.

• He also claimed this policy would not affect the rich. He said:

The rich have trusts. The rich have family offices, offshore structures, accountants on retainer. They will have planned their way around this levy before the Bill has had its first reading. A flat tax with no floor doesn’t catch the millionaire. It catches the widow in the terraced house. It catches the pensioner with the savings book.

The Duke keeps his estate. The dinner lady loses hers. It always ends the same way: the clever money moves, and the honest money pays.

If Jenrick is looking for an example of a rich person using legal ploys to minimise their tax bill, he could start by having a word with Nigel Farage, his own party leader, who is no slouch in this area. But there was no mention of this, of course, or of why Reform UK may know so much about the financial arrangements of billionaires. Jenrick claimed the Burnham policy showed why Reform was on the side of working-class Britain.

Going after hard-working Brits on modest salaries and with only a little savings.

It’s the exact opposite of what Reform stands for.

To protect British workers by putting them first.

• Jenrick claimed Burnham would end taxing the same money four times. He said:

Reform believes that money taxed when you earned it, taxed when you saved it, and taxed when you spent it should not be taxed a fourth time as you are laid to rest.

This is an ingenious attack line, although it is actually just a description of how the tax system works. In the Q&A, asked if he was saying Reform UK would get rid of all inheritance tax (which, by Jenrick’s definition, is always money being taxed a fourth time), he said the party took the view that inheritance tax was an “unfair tax”. But he did not commit to abolishing it.

All in all, it was an extreme example of populist claptrap. If the Tories and the rightwing media end up going down this route, then Burnham’s hope of a sensible debate on social care reform is sunk. But Jenrick may have over-reached. In the Q&A, even GB News hinted he might have gone too far, asking if it might not have been better to wait until Burnham actually announced a plan.

Last night, during a White House briefing, Donald Trump said that Andy Burnham told him when they spoke for the first time last week that he would “open up North Sea oil” for drilling. It was an odd comment because, while Burnham has been marginally more open to allowing continued oil and gas drilling than Keir Starmer was, he is not a fossil fuel fantatic like Trump and is committed to Labour’s manifesto, which said the government would not issue new licences for exporation in the North Sea.

Speaking to reporters today, when asked if Trump’s description of what he told the president was accurate, Burnham said:

I indicated in the phone call that we had a week last Monday that I would take a pragmatic approach when it comes to the North Sea, and that is my intention as we go forward from here.

There is a resource there. When people are struggling, we can’t ignore that. Hence, me indicating that to the president.

In his briefing last night, Trump claimed the UK had two main problems: too much immigration, and too many wind turbines.

But, referring to his conversation with Burnham, Trump said:

Well, he did say one very good thing. He said he’s going to open up North Sea oil. If he does that, you’re going to be a wealthy country.

Trump went on:

You have one of the most valuable oil finds anywhere in the world, and if the United Kingdom would use it, they’d be a wealthy country again. And I tell you what, I could not get Starmer to use it. It was incredible.

You have your own oil and gas. If you use the North Sea, the UK will be a really rich country. I cannot get the point across.

The new gentleman, when I spoke to him, he said he’s going to open up the North Sea. Let’s see if that happens.

As Caroline Davies reports, a holiday park with about 200 caravans has been evacuated because of a wildfire on the Suffolk coast.

Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, has urged the Andy Burnham to convene a meeting of the government’s Cobra emergency committee to discuss the problem. In a statement he said:

Across the country terrifying wildfires are raging, forcing people to leave their homes not knowing what they will come back to find.

Thousands of people have been killed by deadly temperatures in the most extreme heatwaves we’ve ever faced.

And yet our prime minister is silent in the face of this existential threat. Burnham should call a COBRA meeting and set out urgently how his government will keep people safe amid this crisis.

In fact, Burnham has not been silent. He was spoke to broadcasters on a visit to Cumbria and, asked about the Suffolk fire, he said:

We’ve got the situation under close monitoring, and I’m receiving regular updates.

It is a very serious incident.

I will make sure that Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service have all of the support, the mutual aid, the other services that they need, and any other resources that need to be brought to bear.

People who misuse the title “nurse” can put patients at risk, ministers have said as the government made steps to advance its crackdown on “fake” nurses, the Press Association reports. PA says:

The Department of Health and Social Care announced a call for evidence on which workers should be permitted to use the title.

Earlier this year officials announced plans to make it a criminal offence for people who are not qualified as a nurse to use the term.

The move was announced after a coroner criticised the “misleading” use of the title “maternity nurse” after the death of the four-month-old grandson of football manager Steve Bruce.

The call for evidence will close at the end of September.

Andy Burnham has criticised the growing tendency for employers to interview job candidates online.

As Sky News reports, in an interview with Jimmy McLoughlin for his Jimmy’s Jobs of the Future podcast, Burnham said:

One thing I really don’t like is this culture now of interviewing via Zoom or Teams.

That just doesn’t seem right to me. I know it’s convenient for the organisations that do it, but how does a young person shine in that situation?

How do you get over some of your personality, your passion? It seems to me to then work against people who have that side to their character and work for those who are just giving the more formulaic answer.

I do worry about that and I’ve seen that in relation to my kids and their situation.

In reality, the situation is even worse than Burnham says. Many employers now use AI to screen applicants and, in his recent report on youth unemployment and Neets, Alan Milburn the use of online recruitment processes is one factor making young people less engaged with the labour market. He said:

Online application portals, automated screening, psychometric tests, recorded video interviews and multi-stage recruitment processes are increasingly being used for jobs that require little or no formal qualification. A young person applying for a warehouse or retail role may now face a process more like professional recruitment than first job hiring.

That shift matters. These systems tend to reward confidence, familiarity with recruitment conventions, digital access and the ability to navigate formal processes. They are less good at recognising potential in young people with little experience. A young person with anxiety, weak digital access, no quiet space and no one to help them through the process starts at a clear disadvantage. The result is a system that produces rejection at scale, often with no human contact and no feedback.

The Ministry of Justice has published a raft of data today about prisons in England and Wales. Here are the main lines, as picked out by the Press Association.

• More than 70,000 prisoners in England and Wales have been let out of jail under the government’s early release scheme to tackle overcrowding. PA says some 70,066 inmates had been freed between 10 September 2024 and the end of March 2026, according to the MoJ figures. Under a separate prisoner release scheme introduced by the last Conservative government, 13,325 prisoners in England and Wales were freed early between 17 October 2023 and 9 September 2024.

• Some 51,419 prisoners were recalled to jail in the year to March 2026 after breaching the terms of their licence, the MoJ figures show. This is up 28% from 40,259 in the previous 12 months and is the highest number since current data began in 2015, PA says. The ongoing early release of certain types of prisoner is one of a number of recent policies that is “likely” to have contributed to the rise in recalls, the MoJ said.

• There were 14 escapes from prisons in England and Wales in 2025/26, up from 12 the previous year and the highest annual total since 16 in 2019/20. Of the 14 escapees, four were still at large after 30 days – again, the highest number since 2019/20, when eight were still at large after this time period, PA says.

• A total of 1,497 drone incidents were recorded at prisons in England and Wales in the year to 2025/26, the second highest annual number since data began in 2020/21. The figure is down from a peak of 1,712 in 2024/25, PA says.

Labour’s prisoner release scheme is more extensive than the Tory one it replaced. When Keir Starmer was PM, he said he had to act because prison overcrowding under the Tories was so bad that the system was days away from breaking down.

It is thought that one reason why Rishi Sunak called the election for July 2024, which was earlier than expected, was because he thought if he left it much longer the Tories would have to start releasing prisoners early on the scale that eventually happened under Labour.

The UK is on track to suffer its highest ever number of heat-related deaths this summer after the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) announced that an estimated 2,877 people had died in the May and June heatwaves, Damian Carrington reports.

Here is the UKHSA report. It says:

Using the UKHSA heat mortality monitoring methodology, an estimated 2,877 (95% CI: 2,476 to 3,278) heat-associated deaths were observed across the 2 heat episodes that occurred during May and June 2026 in England.

The May heat episode lasted 4 days and was associated with an estimated 753 heat-associated deaths (95% CI: 529 to 977), equivalent to an average of approximately 188 heat-associated deaths per heat period day. Daily deaths over this period peaked during hottest day of the period, the 26 May where CET reached 23.2°C.

The June heat episode lasted 8 days and was associated with an estimated 2,124 heat-associated deaths (95% CI: 1,758 to 2,491), equivalent to an average of approximately 266 heat-associated deaths per heat period day. As in May, the number of deaths peaked on the hottest day of the heat episode, 26 June where CET reached 26.5°C.

And here are charts from the report illustrating these figures.

Q: [From ITV’s Romilly Weeks] You say that Reform UK followed all the rules in relation to donations. But why did George Cottrell give $2m to his mother shortly before she made substantial donations to the party?

Jenrick said Reform was certain all the rules were followed. Any questions for Cottrell would have to be directed to him, he said.

When it was put to him that Cottrell did not respond to questions from the media, Jenrick did not engage any further and said he had already answered the question.

Q: What did you want the police to do about Zack Polanski and the anti-Farage message. Do you think he should have been arrested or jailed?

Jenrick said it was “not for me to tell the police how to do their jobs”. But there have been many examples of people being arrested for social media posts, he said. He went on:

It does seem curious that in this case the police have chosen not to take action.

We’ll see whether they take action against the individual who posted the original tweet, who wore the T-shirt. I’m hearing today that the police may have closed that investigation as well. [See 9.20am.]

If that is the case, then that does look like two-tier policing to me …

You have a man in Nigel Farage who’s been subject to 600 threats in recent times, many of them credible, serious threats, where a man has been arrested for threatening to kill him in recent weeks, where a man is serving in prison.

And in those circumstances, the police are saying that it doesn’t warrant further investigation for somebody to wear a T-shirt emblazoned with a guillotine dripping in blood, saying it’s preparing for the death of Nigel Farage – that I find astonishing and unacceptable.

The next question came from the BBC’s Harry Farley. He raised the Guardian’s latest story about George Cottrell, and asked if Reform UK was doing any sort of internal inquiry into its donations and if it was confident that all the money it took came from permissible donors.

Jenrick replied:

This has been going on for for a long time, but we are entirely confident that Reform followed all electoral rules at the time when the donations were made.

Of course, we’ll participate with any inquiries.

To the best of my knowledge, we haven’t even been contacted by the police. so I don’t think we have anything more to add to that.

At his press conference Robert Jenrick has just finished his opening statement, which was a long speech about what he claimed was Andy Burnham’s plan for a “death tax”.

The first question came from a GB News reporter who pointed out that the “death tax” was just one option that Burnham was considering. She asked if it wouldn’t be better for Reform UK to attend the cross-party talks and make the case of its own plans.

Jenrick said Reform UK would attend the talks if invited. But Nigel Farage would make participation conditional on Burnham ruling out a “death tax”, he said.

He also said he was “frankly astonished” that other parties (he meant the Conservatives) had not done this.

Wes Streeting, the defence secretary, has defended Andy Burnham’s decision not to give a firm commitment to get defence spending up to 3% of GDP by 2030.

Shortly before Keir Starmer resigned, John Healey quit as defence secretary because the government’s defence investment plan did not commit to the 3% figure by 2030. Healey is now chancellor, but Burnham has not given a commitment to reaching 3% on that timetable.

Asked about this at a press conference yesterday, Burnham implied he was more focused on the Nato target of getting defence spending to 3.5% of GDP by 2035.

In an interview with Sky News this morning, Streeting said Burnham was right not to give a commitment to 3% when it was not yet clear how the government might fund that. He said:

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, I just said ‘yes, we will by 2030 meet 3%’.

The inevitable next question is how will you fund it? And the trap that I’ve seen so many previous, particularly Conservative, governments fall into is setting out what they would spend or the taxes they would cut, without at the same time, saying how they would pay for it.

I’m sorry but that path leads to uncertainty, a loss of market confidence, a rise in borrowing costs, so we end up paying a heavy price if you don’t have that fiscal discipline of spelling out at the same time, not just what you will spend, or the taxes you would cut, but also how you would pay for it.

There were an estimated 2,877 heat-associated deaths during hot weather in May and June this year, almost double the figure reported for the summer of 2025, the UK Health Security Agency has said.

I will post more on this when I get further details.

There was a time when a government announcement about an investment in nuclear deterrent would focus on what this might mean for Russian cities that could be wiped out. Now, though, the government likes to frame the massive spending allocated to the Trident renewal programme as a job creation programme for Britain.

Here is the No 10 news release on Andy Burnham’s visit to Barrow today. It’s headlined:

Burnham drives defence to deliver security and growth in every postcode with £8.4bn nuclear submarine investment supporting 22,000 apprenticeships

And here is Dan Sabbagh’s overnight news story.

As Dan explains, this is not really a new announcement; the £8.4bn investment was already in the pipeline. And the 22,000 covers the total number of apprenticeships likely to be supported up to 2035 as a result of the entire project building four new Dreadnought submarines to replace the four Vanguard submarines that are currently carrying the nuclear deterrent.

There is one new apprenticeship scheme that Burnham is announcing. But it is fairly minuscule. As No 10 explains in its news release:

The trailblazing initiative will help local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the local defence supply chain to recruit and train 30 apprentices across the next three years and will use the successful apprenticeship model set up by BAE Systems in the region.

It is an example of how the government is baking in opportunities for young people to its approach to procurement and paves the way for more schemes to help those who miss out on their first choice apprenticeships– delivering growth and prosperity for local communities across the UK.

As Politico explains in its London Playbook briefing, it is unusual for a PM to be associated with such a small-scale announcement. But Burnham is focused on the big headline numbers, and he knows that just because the media have heard these numbers before, that does not mean the public has registered them. He is also committed to reindustrialising Britain and keen to promote any initiative that will support this narrative.

In its statement yesterday the Metropolitan police said that “a crime should be recorded” in relation to the person wearing the T-shirt showing a guillotine and the phrase “we’re only making plans for Nigel” that was in the picture shared by Zack Polanski. The Met said:

The event where that occurred took place in Bristol and as a result, we have transferred the crime report to Avon and Somerset police. They will consider what further action should now follow.

But Avon and Somerset police have decided not to take any further action. A spokesperson for the force said:

We have carefully considered the available evidence in relation to a photograph taken at a political event in Bristol and subsequently shared on social media as part of a gallery of 20 images.

Particular consideration has been given to the context around the image; its use of song lyrics, and the marketing of the T-shirt as a satirical piece.

No complaints were received from people at the event at which it was worn and there is no evidence the wearer of the T-shirt intended to threaten any individual, or encourage anyone else to do so.

As a result, a senior detective has determined that the threshold for a criminal offence has not been met and no further action will be taken.

The safety of elected politicians is something we take extremely seriously and we continue to take action wherever a threat is identified.

The affected parties have been updated of our decision.

Good morning. Reform UK are holding a press conference this morning. It is going to feature Robert Jenrick, the party’s Treasury spokesperson, and he wants to talk about Andy Burnham’s speech yesterday about social care reform. But we already know what Jenrick thinks about that, and there are plenty of other stories that reporters might want to ask about.

For a start, there is Anna Isaac’s latest Guardian scoop about George Cottrell.

Someone might want to ask about a Reform UK councillor from Sunderland being charged with posting a grossly offensive message on social media after allegedly making a racist comment about Nigerians.

And Jenrick may want to talk about a different police charging decision – the Met saying no further action will be taken against the Green party leader, Zack Polanski, after a photo of a man with a T-shirt showing a guillotine and the phrase “we’re only making plans for Nigel”.

Here is Aletha Adu’s story about this announcement.

And here is the full press release from the Metropolitan police. The Met says it is “unlikely that the sharing of the image online would constitute a criminal offence” and that, because more than 100 other people shared the post, it would be unfair just to take action against Polanski, and disproportionate to investigate everyone who did the same.

Reform UK are not happy about this. “Once again we see that we are living in two-tier Britain,” a party spokesperson claimed.

But the Green party said it was “obvious from the start” that Polanski had not committed an offence and that Reform UK were “always using this as a political football for their own cynical purposes to distract from questions” about how Farage’s party was funded.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: The Ministry of Justice publishes figures about assaults and deaths in prisons in England and Wales.

10am: Reform UK’s Robert Jenrick holds a press conference.

Morning: Andy Burnham is on a visit in Cumbria to confirm an £8bn spending announcement as part of the next phase of the nuclear submarine replacement programme.

Also, in Greater Manchester people are already voting in the byelection for a new mayor, to replace Andy Burnham.

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