Nigel Farage to discuss Chagos Islands deal at Mar-a-Lago dinner with Donald Trump tonight
In the latest example of Nigel Farage doing absolutely anything rather than spend time in his Clacton constituency, the Reform UK leader is to meet Donald Trump for dinner at Mar-a-Lago tonight, where he says he will discuss the Chagos Islands deal.
Attending a ‘Save Chagos Boat Party’ yesterday, Farage said he would be flying to Florida to dine with the US president on Friday, GB News reported.
He said:
We think this is the central plan for this government’s foreign policy and we are beating them back.
President Trump has almost understood the deal, but I will be dining at Mar-a-Lago tomorrow night and we will reinforce the message.
Trump changed his mind on supporting the Chagos Islands deal because the UK will not permit its airbases to be used for a pre-emptive US strike on Iran.
In his latest change of heart on the deal, the US president said on social media that Keir Starmer was “making a big mistake” by handing sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius in exchange for continued use by the UK and US of their airbase on one of the islands, Diego Garcia.
Farage earlier this week called for the UK to join Trump’s war in Iran, a view that is wildly at odds with British voters, according to the latest YouGov polling (only 29% support the joint US-Israeli strikes).
Key events
Tory peer Lord Chadlington said he will retire from the House of Lords and quit the Conservatives after a report recommended he should be suspended from the upper chamber for 12 months over a Covid-era PPE deal.
The House of Lords Commissioner for Standards found the peer breached the code of conduct over his role in assisting a subsidiary of a company called SGHL, of which he was non-executive chairman and a shareholder, to secure PPE contracts.
The Lords Conduct Committee rejected an appeal from the peer and recommended he should be suspended for a year, PA reports.
In response, Lord Chadlington said: “I wholly reject the findings of this appeal and of the commissioner, published today.”
He said:
Although the committee have acknowledged that I did not act dishonestly, it is important that I make clear that I never profited from an introduction, properly made with honourable intent, at a time of unprecedented national crisis. Any errors that I did make were honest. I have apologised for them and I do so again today.
For more than three years, since reaching 80, I have discussed retiring with House officials but did not wish to do so while these investigations were ongoing. I have now decided, having proudly served as a peer for 30 years, that the time is right for me to retire and resign my membership of the Conservative party.
Downing Street denies U-turn on UK government policy on Iran
Ben Quinn
Downing Street has denied there has been a U-turn on UK government policy on Iran after Britain’s deputy prime minister suggested this morning that the UK could take part on strikes on Iranian targets.
Royal Air Force jets could legally strike Iranian missile sites being used to attack British interests in the Middle East, David Lammy said in a BBC interview earlier today.
A spokesperson for the UK prime minister said he wasn’t going to “speculate on hypotheticals” but referred to legal advice published by the government and comments by the Britain’s defence secretary that the focus is on “defensive action”.
Asked if that advice meant the UK could strike targets in Iran that have the capability to strike British targets, he said:
We have consistently said that we’ll take the necessary steps to prevent future strikes … [that] as we’ve set out over the course of the week, is allowing the US to take out those missiles at source whilst we are defending the skies.
The spokesperson added:
We set out a clear course of action that we believe is the best response to the current situation, to eliminate the urgent threats and deliver on our foremost duty to protect British lives.
A drone believed to have been launched by Iran or a proxy in the region this week hit a hangar at RAF Akrotiri, one of two British bases in Cyrpus which have existed as sovereign territory.
However, the UK government is understood to be adopting “a broad definition of British interests” which, if hit, could be the tripwire for the launching of strikes on Iran.
The Foreign Office said a second charter flight bringing stranded Britons back from Oman had taken off.
Further flights are expected in the coming days and more than 160,000 British nationals have now registered their presence with the Foreign Office in the region.
Scotland’s Reform UK leader to contest Greenock and Inverclyde seat in May elections
Severin Carrell
Malcolm Offord, the multimillionaire leader of Reform UK in Scotland, has confirmed he will contest the Scottish parliament seat of Greenock and Inverclyde in May’s Scottish parliament elections.
A competition yachtsman and a former Conservative peer and junior minister, Offord said he was born in Greenock, the largest town in the seat, and believed it was a microcosm of Scotland and of the problems Reform UK wanted to tackle.
“Obviously, it’s my hometown, but also because in a way Inverclyde is almost like a microcosm of Scotland and the issues we need to deal with in Scotland as a whole, we need to deal with in Inverclyde,” Offord told reporters in Greenock on Friday morning.
The seat is currently held by Stewart McMillan for the Scottish National party with an 8,174-vote (22.5%) majority; McMillan has strong roots in the constituency, with his father formerly a ship-builder at Ferguson’s Marine shipyard. The SNP are currently clear favourites to win the May elections, polling at around 35% nationally, twice Reform’s support.
The contiguous Westminster seat of Inverclyde and Renfrewshire West was won by Martin McCluskey for Scottish Labour in the 2024 general election with a 6,371 vote (15.8%) majority.
An area with pockets of affluence and also of significant poverty, Inverclyde has higher than average economic inactivity rate of 27.5% versus a Scottish average of 22.5%; a declining and ageing population; and a lower than average gross disposable income per head of £21,486.
Unlikely to beat the SNP in a constituency battle, Offord is very likely to win his Holyrood seat by being placed at the top of Reform UK’s list of candidates for the regional list, which allocates seats to parties which fail to win constituencies but attract sufficient votes.
Offord was quizzed about his decision to take part in a volunteer “street patrol” called North2South in Glasgow claiming there were “large groups of foreign men” on the city’s streets at night.
The patrol was there to help people “in a state of inebriation”, and began because women and girls didn’t feel safe. That was “a great shame,” he said. However, outsiders were being incentivised to come to Glasgow by the system, he added, in an apparent reference to the relocation of asylum seekers to the city by the Home Office.
“At the moment, we’re giving an incentive to a group of people to come to Scotland – don’t blame them, because they’re just being smart.
“Blame the system, because the system shouldn’t be doing that, shouldn’t be creating that dislocation and it shouldn’t be to the disadvantage of local people.”
Telegraph sold for £575m as German buyer elbows out Daily Mail
Axel Springer, the owner of Politico and Business Insider, is to acquire the Telegraph after tabling a £575m deal that has scuppered a rival deal from the owner of the Daily Mail.
Springer, which also owns Europe’s biggest newspaper, Bild, and the daily Die Welt, has agreed an all-cash deal for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph.
Mathias Döpfner, the longstanding chief executive of the German media group, has made no secret of his desire to acquire assets after striking a deal with the private equity group KKR to take the media empire private two years ago.
The deal tabled by Axel Springer is a significant premium to the £500m deal from Daily Mail & General Trust.
Read my colleague Mark Sweney’s report here:
UK wouldn’t compensate Mauritius in event Chagos deal fails
The UK won’t pay compensation to Mauritius in the event the deal to hand over sovereignty of the Chagos Islands fails, the Mauritian prime minister has said.
In an interview with a local newspaper, and first picked up by Sky News, PM Navin Ramgoolam said that he was considering legal action to ensure the deal is ratified, saying the delay had already blown a hole in his country’s budget.
The Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, is having dinner with Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate where he has said he will discuss the deal.
Trump changed his mind on supporting the Chagos Islands deal because the UK will not permit its airbases to be used for a pre-emptive US strike on Iran.
In his latest change of heart on the deal, the US president said on social media that Keir Starmer was “making a big mistake” by handing sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius in exchange for continued use by the UK and US of their airbase on one of the islands, Diego Garcia.
Farage earlier this week called for the UK to join Trump’s war in Iran, a view that is wildly at odds with British voters, according to the latest YouGov polling (only 29% support the joint US-Israeli strikes).
You can now read my colleague Jamie Grierson’s full report on deputy prime minister, David Lammy’s full comments on the US-Israeli attacks on Iran, form this morning media rounds here:
Keir Starmer has also discussed the Iran crisis with Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Merz and Giorgia Meloni on Friday morning according to PA Media.
“The prime minister spoke to the leaders of France, Germany and Italy this morning about the situation in the Middle East,” Downing Street said. “The leaders began by condemning Iran’s egregious attacks and the prime minister updated on the defensive measures taken by the UK in recent days to protect and reinforce partners in the region.
“Ongoing intensive diplomacy and close military co-ordination would be vital in the coming hours and days, the leaders agreed.
“They also agreed on the need to coordinate closely on the situation in the Strait of Hormuz, and reiterated their concern about the situation in Lebanon.
“The leaders welcomed the word leading drone interception expertise president Zelenskyy had offered to partners in the region and underlined the importance of ensuring support to Ukraine continued at scale.”
The Green Party has today announced that their membership has grown by more than 2,000 a day, over 15,000 in a week, since their historic byelection victory in Gorton and Denton going from 200,000 members to over 215,000.
The increase in membership comes on the back of a good week for the party. In a YouGov poll earlier this week, the party overtook Labour and only two points off Reform UK.
Hannah Spencer, the newly elected MP for Gorton and Denton, said”: “Hope was reflected the ballot box last week, in the polls we’ve seen this week and in the huge surge of new party members.”
It has been a tricky week for Starmer since the byelection and with the start of the conflict in the Middle East.
My colleague Ben Quinn has some analysis on the ‘cocktail on dissent’ faced by the prime minister here:
UK tells Bahrain its jets can provide extra defensive cover against Iranian strikes
Keir Starmer has held a call with the king of Bahrain in which the prime minister had agreed that operational teams would would together on plans for jets in the coming days.
Reuters reports that Starmer told the king of Bahrain that four jets the UK is deploying to Qatar could be used to help defend the kingdom from Iranian missile and drone strikes against Gulf states.
“The prime minister also offered further defensive air cover from these jets for Bahrain to bolster their security,” Starmer told Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa in a call late on Thursday, according to a readout from Number 10.
“His majesty welcomed the confirmation, and they agreed operational teams would work together on plans in the coming days.”
Downing Street has rejected that David Lammy’s comments represent a change in position after the deputy prime minister said it would be legal for RAF jets to strike Iranian missile sites which could target Britons.
Asked if this was a U-turn, the prime minister’s official spokesman said “no”.
He referred back to the legal advice published by the government and the defence secretary’s comments that the focus is on “defensive action”.
Asked if that advice meant the UK could strike targets in Iran that have the capability to strike British targets, he said:
We have consistently said that we’ll take the necessary steps to prevent future strikes … [that] as we’ve set out over the course of the week, is allowing the US to take out those missiles at source whilst we are defending the skies.
And that is, that is a consistent position that we have conveyed throughout the week.
