The Labour party has said it is “no surprise” that Robert Jenrick was trying to minimise the latest George Cottrell revelations at his press conference this morning. (See 10.59am.) A Labour spokesperson said:
Reform are up to their neck in sleaze and dodgy money. It’s no surprise Robert Jenrick would try to minimise the seriousness of these allegations given one of his donations is also being investigated by the police.
If these latest claims about George Cottrell are true, Reform may have taken money from a convicted fraudster who was the ultimate source of the donations. That would mean Reform accepted his money even though he has never shown he was legally allowed to donate to a political party at the time.
With every passing day it’s clearer that Reform think the rules don’t apply to them. They need to wake up and start treating these allegations with the seriousness they deserve and come clean about who is really bankrolling the party.
Key events
Afternoon summary
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Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, has criticised Andy Burnham for saying he told Donald Trump last week he would be “pragmatic” about North Sea oil. (See 3.41pm.) Responding to Burnham’s comment, Polanski said:
Our country is burning. Crops are failing. Thousands have been killed by extreme heat. The first duty of any rime Minister is to keep the people of this country safe, and right now people are feeling scared.
Allowing new oil and gas drilling in the north sea will worsen the climate breakdown putting more lives at risk and doing untold damage to our economy.
For a full list of all the stories covered on the blog today, do scroll through the list of key event headlines near the top of the blog.
Here are two questions from readers prompted by the Robert Jenrick press conference this morning.
From Eileen Beecham
Is it true, as Robert Jenrick has asserted this morning, that Reform UK runs 30 local authorities in Engand with responsibility for social care and this is more than any other party?
Basically, yes. Open Council Data UK has information about how many councils and councillors belong to each party, and it says Reform UK is in full or partial control of 35 councils. Most of those are authorites that run social services.
From Tony Glacken
Reform takes the predictable approach of calling the social care funding ‘plan’ a ‘Death Tax’. What is inheritance tax then? No doubt Reform will say it opposes that too and if in power would do away with it.
At his press conference Jenrick was asked if Reform UK would get rid of all inheritance tax. He implied the party would like to do that, but did not commit to doing that. He replied:
Our position for a long time has been that inheritance tax is an unfair tax. It’s double taxation. If Brits were to draw up a list of the taxes that they dislike the most, inheritance tax would be very high up on that list. If there’s the fiscal headroom available to us, of course we would love to reform it.
(In this answer Jenrick contradicted his earlier claim that inheritance tax was quadruple taxation – see 4.29pm.)
Former Green co-leader Adrian Ramsay says Polanski should have apologised over sharing Farage guillotine image
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.
Make-it-up politics – how Jenrick deployed his imagination as he attacked Burnham’s supposed ‘death tax’ social care plan
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
Burnham says he told Trump he would be ‘pragmatic’ on North Sea oil
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.
Polanski says Burnham should convene meeting of Cobra emergency committee to discuss wildfires
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.
The latest edition of the Guardian’s Politics UK Weekly podcast is out. It features Pippa Crerar and Peter Walker talking about Andy Burnham’s plans to reform social care.
The Labour party has said it is “no surprise” that Robert Jenrick was trying to minimise the latest George Cottrell revelations at his press conference this morning. (See 10.59am.) A Labour spokesperson said:
Reform are up to their neck in sleaze and dodgy money. It’s no surprise Robert Jenrick would try to minimise the seriousness of these allegations given one of his donations is also being investigated by the police.
If these latest claims about George Cottrell are true, Reform may have taken money from a convicted fraudster who was the ultimate source of the donations. That would mean Reform accepted his money even though he has never shown he was legally allowed to donate to a political party at the time.
With every passing day it’s clearer that Reform think the rules don’t apply to them. They need to wake up and start treating these allegations with the seriousness they deserve and come clean about who is really bankrolling the party.
Government opens call for evidence as part of crackdown on ‘fake’ nurses
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.
Burnham says increasing use of Zoom for job interviews ‘doesn’t seem right’ because youngsters can’t show their personality
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.
Here are two comments from readers about what Robert Jenrick was saying at his press conference this morning about the decision by the police not to take any action over the Farage guillotine message. (See 10.48am.)
John Leroy says:
On the subject of the Polanski thing and Reform’s reaction – someone at the press conference really ought to ask them about how they reacted to when one of their own councillors did exactly the same thing earlier this year and they weren’t at all bothered.
I assume that their hypocrisy is what they mean by a two-tier Britain?
And Stephen Glynn explains why the police would have decided Polanski did not commit an offence.
It’s maybe worth pointing out that Section 44 of the Serious Crime Act 2007 abolished the old common-law offence of incitement and replaced it with encouraging or inciting an offence. This requires the prosecution to prove both an act capable of encouraging or assisting an offence; and an intention to encourage or assist its commission.
That is, it’s not sufficient to prove that posting the image might, or even probably would, encourage violence against Farage. The prosecution would need to make a jury sure that, when he posted the image, Polanski actually intended to incite someone to try to kill Farage.
Section 4 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, soliciting murder, similarly requires an intent to encourage someone to commit the murder.
Possibly sharing the image might have constituted sending a menacing communication under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 but, again, the prosecution would need to prove that, at the time he sent it, Polanski was aware that there was at least a risk the image would create fear or apprehension in any reasonable member of the public who saw it.
In other words, the case was a non-starter from the very beginning and Reform must have been aware it was.
More than 70,000 prisoners released early under government’s early release scheme, MoJ figures show
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
At his press conference this morning Robert Jenrick, the Reform UK Treasury spokesperson, claimed his party was serious about social care reform – even though it does not have a health spokesperson.
Asked if not having a health spokesperson meant the party did not take this issue seriously, Jenrick replied:
No, we’re holding this press conference today. Have other opposition parties held a press conference dedicated to social care and this response? I haven’t seen them.
Reform is currently running 30 local authorities across the country which have responsibility for social care, more than any of the other political parties.
We are absolutely at the coalface of this, trying to do our utmost to support people in difficult times. Don’t tell us we don’t care about this issue. We really do.
What we don’t want to see is hardworking Brits having to pick up the price of that for losing their home, losing their nest egg, not being able to hand that on to their children and their grandchildren. That’s the point that we’re making today.
Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, said in April he was looking to appoint a health spokesperson.
UK on track for record heat-related deaths this summer, official data shows
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.
