The new mayor of Greater Manchester, Bev Craig, has announced her first official policy in the role: free bus travel for 11 to 18-year-olds across the city region by 2027.
Craig, who succeeded Andy Burnham in the role after a comfortable byelection victory on Friday that saw her achieve 47.1% of the vote, announced the policy in Bolton on Monday, her first official day of the job.
She described the move as a “commonsense thing” that would “put more money in families pockets while lifting up young people”.
The policy, which had been a key pledge made during Craig’s election campaign, expands on the ‘Our Pass’ scheme introduced by Burnham which allows free travel for 16 to 18-year-olds on the Bee Network in Greater Manchester.
About 50,000 16 to 18-year-olds currently use the scheme – and Craig said her change will benefit a further 200,000 young people around Greater Manchester and possibly save a family as much as £500 every year for every child that qualifies.
The pass, which Craig hopes to launch by January 2027, will make Manchester the first city in England outside London to make travel free for young people, coinciding with Burnham’s ‘Great Summer Savings Initiative’ that offers free bus travel for children between the ages of 5 and 15 across the UK in August.
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The i paper is reporting that Andy Burnham could hold a fresh King’s speech to set out his legislative priorities – notably on devolution – in an attempt to signal a differentiation between his government and Keir Starmer’s.
“The question is what legislation will be needed to make the changes he wants and whether an entire new King’s speech will be required to set out the new government’s priorities,” a source told the newspaper.
The king’s speech is given by the monarch in his constitutional role as the UK head of state and maps out the government’s agenda for the next year.
The last king’s speech took place in May when King Charles unveiled the government agenda with Keir Starmer attempting to reassert his authority over the Labour party.
New governments can continue bringing forward legislation under an existing parliamentary session, so there is no constitutional obligation for Burnham to hold a new king’s speech.
The i reports that, in any case, there are no plans to hold one this calendar year and that Burnham, who did not choose to call a snap general election when entering No 10 over the summer, is broadly sticking to the programme Starmer was elected on in July 2024.
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Written UK constitution must include method to leave union, says SNP
A written constitution for the UK must include a method for leaving the union, the SNP has said.
SNP Westminster leader Dave Doogan has urged the prime minister to enshrine in any constitution how countries of the UK can leave the union, saying any document would be “fundamentally flawed” without such a clause. PA reports Doogan said:
Andy Burnham spent the weekend talking about a written UK constitution after telling Scotland discussion about our constitutional future is ‘off limits’.
There are pro-independence first ministers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – that’s the context of this discussion, so clearly a written UK constitution is fundamentally flawed if it doesn’t spell out a path to leaving it.
Over the weekend, Burnham suggested a written constitution should be created in a push to ensure everyone in the UK lives a “comparable life”.
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The cross-party campaign organisation Compass has reacted to the suggestion of any possible alliance deal between Reform UK and Restore Britain. Director Neal Lawson said:
Talk of an alliance on the right between Reform and Restore – and who knows who else – is the inevitable next state of Britain’s political fragmentation and age of multi-party politics.
Reform as the media-friendly face and Restore the even more radical little brother of right-wing populism is something that should alarm everyone of progressive stripes in this country. It proves that now, more than ever, is the time to galvanise Britain’s progressive majority.If we don’t use this time to build a long-lasting plural politics then the backlash of the right will ensure the next chance we get is far too late.
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PA reports that DUP MP Sammy Wilson is being investigated by Westminster’s standards commissioner.
According to the parliamentary standards commissioner’s website, he is accused of a “failure to declare an interest”. No further details have been revealed about the investigation.
The Liberal Democrats, responding to the news that Britain’s parliamentary standards watchdog is investigating Reform UK’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, have said the public deserve “answers and transparency”.
In a statment, the party’s deputy leader Daisy Cooper said:
The rules on declaring interests in debates are there for good reason but the bigger picture here is that (Nigel) Farage and Reform UK are still under investigation for receiving an undeclared £5m donation from a bitcoin billionaire. People deserve answers and transparency form their politicians, not sleaze and scandal.
Tice has said the parliamentary investigation related to a complaint over “whether I should have referenced my register of interests at the start of a debate on UK democracy and Israeli influence”. Police are investigating at least £500,000 in donations to Reform, which Tice has said is part of a “politically motivated smear campaign”.
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Downing Street has said when the Royal Navy had primacy for small boat crossings in 2022 there was no reduction during that period.
Asked about Reform UK’s proposal to use the Navy to use the Royal Navy to “intercept” small boats crossing the Channel and return them to France or Belgium, the prime minister’s official spokesperson said:
The Royal Navy had primacy for small boat crossings under the previous government in 2022. I’d remind you there was no reduction in small boat crossings in that period.
The Royal Navy is already tackling many threats, including monitoring any Russian warships operating near our shores, protecting our waters and our critical national infrastructure.
Border patrol officers have significant capabilities and skills that make them the best suited candidate to lead small boats operations in the Channel.
Lowe accuses Farage of lying but says pact offer 'remains open' to Reform
Rupert Lowe has accused Nigel Farage of lying, potentially scuppering talks about a political pact before they have even begun.
In a post on X, the Restore Britain leader wrote: “I do not want to make private conversations public, but Farage has just done so at a national press conference. He just stated he said to me yesterday ‘Shall we have a call?’.
“Sadly, that is just a lie. Yesterday at 10.30 Nigel messaged me, saying the following three words. ‘Will call later’. The evidence is below. I have received no call. Senior Reform figures then went public to rubbish my offer.”
“The offer remains open to Nigel and Reform. Although outright lying about our private conversations does not help that,” Lowe added.
“For Restore Britain, it will always be country before party - ahead of any personal differences or past disagreements we have.”
Farage says he will begin negotiating with Lowe if he 'genuinely wants to have talks'
Asked if he had any “red lines” for a pact with Rupert Lowe, Nigel Farage said he was open-minded to a “conversation” with the Restore Britain leader, but was not at a point of doing any negotiating.
“A conversation is different to a negotiation. I opened the door to that conversation yesterday, late morning, and at the moment I have not yet had a reply.”
“We will find out whether he genuinely wants to have talks – if he does then we will start to negotiate,” he said, adding that he is happy to let go of things that were “said in the past”.
“I am not going to commit myself to anything more right now,” Farage said. The Reform UK leader said he agrees with a lot of what Lowe champions policy wise.
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Nigel Farage claimed that there was a “one-sided pile-on” against Reform UK, attacking what he called “the establishment” – in reference to the media, which has been scrutinising his party’s finances.
He said: “I just feel there’s been a one-sided pile-on against Reform. I don’t think Kemi Badenoch’s family members or Andy Burnham’s family members would be subject to the harassment and increased security risk that mine have been.”
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Farage says he responded to Restore-Reform pact offer 'with an open mind'
Taking questions from journalists, Nigel Farage was asked about Rupert Lowe’s offer to work together to build a coalition between Reform UK and Restore Britain that unites right.
One of Lowe’s five conditions for the pact was a demand that ex-Tory ministers such as Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman be excluded from any Reform-Restore cabinet.
“My understanding is that he had a bit of a fallout last week with the Conservatives who he had been working quite closely with for some time,” he said, adding that Lowe had a political “deal” with the Tories.
Farage said he contacted Lowe in response to the video in which he suggested the political alliance, adding that he responded to the offer “potentially with an open mind”. “I did actually reach out back yesterday to him,” Farage told reporters. “I did say ‘look should we have a call’. I haven’t heard back yet so I don’t know what the sincerity of this is.”
“But it seemed to me that he was sort of more than anything putting out this gesture saying ‘look I am the good guy – Nigel’s the bad guy’. Well that is not the case,” Farage said. He added:
If you look at my history in politics over the last few years I am prepared to do things and make sacrifices if I believe it is in the national interest. I certainly did that in 2019 and I would do whatever I could for us to have a sane centre right alliance that beat Labour at the next general election. But I don’t ditch my friends. I don’t ditch my allies – whether that is Suella Braverman or Posh George (Cottrell).
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Zia Yusuf said under the plan Reform will create an “integrated surveillance command”, which he claims will “unify” military and intelligence surveillance, making “ours the most surveilled maritime border in the world”.
“Any vessel attempting to cross illegally will be intercepted by our armed forces who will return them back to France,” he said, adding that emergency legislation would be given to the armed forces to equip them with the “necessary powers”.
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Zia Yusuf, Reform’s home affairs spokesperson, described how successive governments failed to bring down the levels of illegal immigration, saying the current Labour government is continuing the Conservatives’ “betrayal”.
“This is a national security emergency. Yet successive Tory and Labour governments have treated this emergency with contemptible weakness,” Yusuf said, condemning the use of tax-payer funded hotels and claimed previous administrations “surrendered the English channel to criminal cartels”.
Although the levels vary, often due to weather, the number of small boats crossings have been on a downward trend since they peaked in 2022.
Those arriving on small boats are often trying to escape rapid climate change, famine, oppressive governments and war across Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
As my colleague Rajeev Syal notes in this story, refugee charities have called for new safe and legal routes to be opened for applicants, so they do not have to get into overcrowded boats run by smuggling gangs.
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Nigel Farage described his small boats proposal as a “combined military operation” that will “save lives” and a “huge amounts of money”.
He claimed the policy, which would involve the navy picking up people trying to make irregular Channel crossings and taking them to France, woule be compliant with international law.
“I am entirely confident that under a Reform government, within a fortnight, there would be no more boats,” Farage said.
Nigel Farage holds press conference on small boat crossings
Nigel Farage is speaking at his press conference in London to lay out more details about his plan to deploy the Royal Navy in the English Channel to stop small boat crossings, a proposal which has been criticised for being unworkable. You can watch it live here:
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Richard Tice under investigation by parliamentary standards watchdog
Reform UK deputy’s leader, Richard Tice, is under investigation by the parliamentary standards watchdog over a possible failure to declare an interest.
According to the commissioner’s website, the investigation was opened on 28 July and relates to rule six in the MPs’ code of conduct.
According to the rule, members must be “open and frank” in declaring “any relevant interest in any proceeding of the House or its committees”, and in any communications with public office-holders and public officials.
Tice claimed the inquiry was about a complaint by an “anti-Israel lobby group” over whether he should have referenced his register of interests at start of “a debate on UK democracy and Israeli influence”.
Without naming the group he was referring to, he wrote on social media:
Contrary to garbage in media: Standards Commissioner is considering complaint by antisemitic anti-Israel lobby group over whether I should have referenced my register of interests at start of a debate on UK democracy and Israeli influence.
The watchdog had previously been investigating Reform UK’s leader, Nigel Farage, over a £5m donation he received from a cryptocurrency billionaire, but that inquiry was paused after Farage resigned his parliamentary seat in July.
British police are investigating at least £500,000 in donations to Reform, which Tice has said is part of a “politically motivated smear campaign”.
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In other news, the chancellor, John Healey, has said the government is standing by to prevent the public from “being taken for a ride at the pump or the till” as the Iran war continues to hit prices.
While he said there had been “no significant evidence of so-called price gouging” during the crisis, he used a weekend column to tell the big retailers that ministers were “watching closely” for any signs of profiteering.
Healey faces a difficult economic balancing act as the energy price shock caused by the months-long conflict in the Middle East reignites the cost of living crisis.
Last week the Bank of England kept UK interest rates on hold as it warned that a further escalation in the Iran war could drive inflation above 4% next year, adding to financial pressures on households.
Healey’s comments came as a new report warned that UK economy could fall into recession next year if the crucial Strait of Hormuz remains closed into 2027 amid a prolonged conflict. You can read more on this story here:
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Speaking to Sky News, Zia Yusuf expressed disappointment in Reform UK’s performance in both the Manchester mayoral election and the Makerfield parliamentary election.
The party’s home affairs spokesperson said:
We have had a few election results that have been disappointing. And we acknowledge that. We look at that. We want to keep learning and we want to keep listening to voters and making sure that we’re making the case for why we need a Reform government.
Former navy officer criticises Reform plan to use military to stop small boats
The political saliency of the UK’s policies around illegal migration has risen since tens of thousands of people from Morocco crossed in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta last week, causing dozens of people to die (including by drowning or being crushed) and triggered a political crisis for Madrid. Spanish officials have subsequently said that almost all those who reached Ceuta on Thursday have since returned.
Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson, Zia Yusuf, said his party’s small boats plan was partly inspired by what he saw in Ceuta. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning:
I saw soldiers using pepper spray into interacting directly with migrants that were acting in a disorderly fashion.
And in using the military, what I saw was Spain was able to remove, effectively send back, what looked like north of 40,000 illegal migrants in the space of a day.
Former Royal Naval Cmdr Tom Sharpe cast doubt over the feasibility of Reform’s proposal.
“When you start looking at what ships we have, which is basically none – I mean, he’s talking about the largest maritime operation in the Channel since World War Two, a very evocative image, but that’s not the reality,” Sharpe told the Today programme.
“We don’t have the ships,” he said, adding that using warships might be a waste of resources, if their anti-air and anti-submarine capabilities were better suited to other scenarios.
He said Border Force is already set up to intercept people trying to reach Britain, and warned that Paris could end up refusing to accept migrants being taken to French shores by the Royal Navy.
Responding to the scenario, Yusuf said it would be a “crime against humanity” not to let them disembark. He added that given migrants have died crossing the English Channel, the boats would be “full of innocent civilians who are being rescued as part of a humanitarian mission”.
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Rupert Lowe urges Nigel Farage to work with Restore Britain
The leader of Restore Britain, Rupert Lowe, told the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, that if he was “prepared to work together around serious policies, serious reform and serious government, then so are we”.
In a video posted on X on Sunday, Lowe said:
I truly believe there could be sufficient common ground for our two movements to cooperate collectively, destroy the looming leftwing alliance that will finish off what hope remains for this country.
In my view, failing to even try because of our own personal difficulties is simply not an option. Now is the time to put our differences aside and cooperate for the good of the country that we all love.
The offer comes after Restore Britain placed fourth in the Greater Manchester mayoral byelection, where its candidate, Marlon West, took 8.7% of the vote. Reform’s Sian Astley came second on 21%, behind Labour’s Andy Burnham’s successor, Bev Craig.
Lowe asked Farage to put “personalities and our past disagreements aside” and he set five conditions for cooperation:
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Mass deportation of illegal migrants “including women and children”.
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Tougher rules on legal migration, a ban on halal and kosher slaughter, the burqa, cousin marriage and sharia courts.
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A referendum on the death penalty.
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Welfare cuts to fund “self-sufficiency”.
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The exclusion of former Tory ministers from any future cabinet.
“Mass deportations must become a political inevitability,” he said. “They must all go.”
Reform UK's pledge to use Navy to stop small boats criticised ahead of press conference
Good morning and welcome to our coverage of UK politics. Reform UK is today pledging to use the Royal Navy to stop small boat crossings if the party wins the next general election.
The boats in the channel would be intercepted by the Navy and returned to France or Belgium under a plan called “operation fortress”.
The party proposes to set up a joint military command with units from the Royal Navy, Royal Marines, RAF and British army as well as a surveillance command to track incoming boats.
Similar proposals have been suggested by the Conservatives before, but never materialised due to concerns around legality and the potential flouting of international treaties.
Last Wednesday was the busiest day for small boat crossings across the Channel so far this year, with 752 people arriving in the UK, as the Guardian’s political correspondent, Alexandra Topping, notes in this story.
But official provisional figures indicate that 14,526 have entered the UK so far in 2026, 43% lower than the number recorded by this time last year (25,436) and down 14% on the same period in 2024 (16,903).
In reaction to Reform’s pledge, a Labour party spokesperson said Nigel Farage’s party “have reheated an old announcement in their latest desperate bid to distract from their growing sleaze scandals”.
Retired Royal Navy commander Tom Sharpe, meanwhile, suggested the proposal “lacks quite a lot of substance”. “We have the border force already to do this,” he told the BBC’s Today programme.
Farage is fighting a byelection after resigning his seat of Clacton in an attempt to shake off a deepening donations scandal, given charge by a revelation from the Guardian’s City editor, Anna Issac, that he had failed to declare a £5m gift from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne.
All other mainstream parties have declined to stand a candidate against him, making a mockery of what Farage tried to frame as a “people versus the establishment” byelection. Farage is set to comfortably win the contest – but has gifted the political stage to the new government who have announced a raft of policies and been on a media blitz over recent weeks.
Reform UK’s increasingly hard-right policies and rhetoric come as it loses support to Restore Britain, a breakaway party even further to the right which is led by former Reform MP Rupert Lowe.
Lowe has been a thorn in Farage’s side since he was stripped of the Reform party whip last year after being accused of bullying and making alleged threats against the then party chair, Zia Yusuf, claims that he denies.
In a surprise move over the weekend, Lowe extended an olive branch to Farage, offering him a deal to unite the so-called “patriotic right” of British politics, as Andy Burnham improves Labour’s polling and aims to win back some of the same voters Reform UK is targeting.
In a statement not explicitly mentioning the offer from Restore or Rupert Lowe’s name, Farage said he recognised the need to accept support from other parties and said Reform has “always been open to anyone”.
Farage will appear at a press conference in Westminster alongside Zia Yusuf, Reform’s home affairs spokesperson, from 11am. He will likely be asked about the potential Reform-Restore pact, his Royal Navy policy and his finances.
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