Downing Street says sovereignty of Falkland Islands ‘rests with the UK’ after leaked Pentagon report – UK politics live

Nigel Farage said Reform UK will lead a protest through Westminster on Monday to insist fuel duty “must not go up”, PA reports.

Fuel duty has been frozen since 2011, and was cut by 5p in 2022 in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But at her budget last year, chancellor Rachel Reeves said the 5p cut would phased out from September.

Asked about the planned protest, Farage said: “We have got rising prices and we have got from the chancellor, from September, petrol and diesel going up quite significantly over the next few months.

“The protest is to say to the chancellor we are paying enough tax, we are paying a big enough price, please stop.”

The UK and France have been leading efforts to get the strait of Hormuz reopened, with Keir Starmer and Emmanual Macron hosting talks in Paris with allies to discuss ways to defend the key shipping route. Pete Hegseth, the US secretary of defence, is apparently not a fan of the approach, calling it a “silly little conference”.

Speaking at a press conference, he said:

I know there’s a lot of talks. You saw the, I would call it a silly conference in Europe last week, where they got together and talked about talking about maybe doing something eventually, when things are done.

Those are not serious efforts.

Follow our Middle East blog here for more of his comments:

An excellent read from my colleague Daniel Boffey, after Keir Starmer’s tumultuous week, looking at the relationship history of disputes between the civil service and serving prime ministers.

You can read it here:

It’s not often the UK’s political leaders are united on an issue, but on the Falklands, they are.

After No 10’s statement that sovereignty of the islands was “not in question” amid reports the US could review its position, Reform UK’s Nigel Farage said he would raise the issue personally with Argentina president Javier Milei.

He said:

This is utterly non-negotiable. There is no way we’re even going to have a debate about the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands. That message of course will go to the Americans, clearly. But equally, I’m going later this year to meet President Milei in Argentina and I shall say ‘look, we want great relations with your country but this is non-negotiable’”.

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said the US stance was “absolute nonsense”.

She said:

We need to make sure that we back the Falklands. They are British territory.I don’t know what Donald Trump is talking about. This sounds like the sort of thing he was saying when it came to Greenland.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said the King’s visit to the US should be cancelled:

The state visit should clearly be pulled – this unreliable, damaging President cannot keep insulting our country.

Assisted dying campaigners are in defiant mood in Parliament Square ahead of the fall of the assisted dying Bill, while opponents celebrate the demise of legislation they deemed “unfit and unsafe”.

Demonstrators from multiple pro-choice groups joined Kim Leadbeater – who sponsored the Bill in the Commons – and other MPs to insist this is not the end of their campaign.

Around 20 people held placards saying “why did my wife have to go to Switzerland to die?”, “choice”, “I am mourning the assisted dying Bill”, among other slogans.

Among the campaigners was Liz Reed, whose brother Rob Smyth died aged 39 through assisted dying in Queensland, Australia, in 2023.

Reed, 40, said he had cancer but his death was “really calm and peaceful and dignified and everything he would have wanted”.

She described what had happened with the Bill in the Lords, with a large number of amendments being tabled, as “really shameful, it’s undemocratic, and it completely disregards the people at the heart of this”.

However, Paralympic gold medallist wheelchair racer Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson said supporters of assisted dying were “promised” a version of assisted dying that was never likely to happen.

The crossbench peer said the Bill had failed because “there are too many gaps in it”.

She said:

While many people have written to me about not wanting to die in pain and suffering, this is not in the Bill. There is a lot of misunderstanding about what people might get.

I really worry that people on the outside have been promised something that they were never going to get. Some think this is about euthanasia, my Lords it is not one pill. Assisted death doesn’t mean that the death is painless, it doesn’t mean it will be quick, and it’s not for some of the groups who think they’re going to get it.

Green party leader Zack Polanski has called for Donald Trump to be stripped of his Scottish golf courses over his actions internationally.

Trump owns two golf resorts north of the border, in South Ayrshire and Aberdeenshire, but the Green leader has called on the UK government to sanction him.

In response, a spokesperson for Trump International described Polanski as an “imbecile”.

At a press conference in Glasgow on Friday, the Green leader had said: “I would like to see Donald Trump kicked out of his golf courses.”

Speaking to the Press Association, he added:

The key principle here is that you have a man, as we do, who is enabling a genocide in Gaza, who puts on Truth Social that he intends to wipe out an entire civilisation in Iran.

Are Scottish people happy with him being able to enjoy the privileges and joys of having a golf course?

He says that he loves Scotland – but do the people of Scotland love him?

He added:

I imagine that most people in Scotland, and around the UK, recognise that Donald Trump is an unhinged man.

He’s dangerous, he’s unpredictable, he’s putting our country – both England and Wales and Scotland – in a more dangerous place.

By the way, Davey was in Wokingham in Berkshire, where he visited a care home and joined a tea dance to highlight the rising cost of social care. Here are some pictures:

The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey, has added his voice to the Falkland Islands debate, saying reports suggesting the US might withdraw its support for British control over the archipelago were “absolutely outrageous”.

“This is crazy,” he told broadcasters. “Yesterday, president Trump was saying that the state visit by the king would improve relations. Today he’s threatened tariffs on the UK. And now we have this leaked memo saying he’s threatening British sovereignty in the Falklands.”

He added that he believes King Charles’s visit to the US next week “should be pulled”, saying Trump “can’t keep insulting our country”.

King Charles’s state visit to the US will “showcase the very best of the UK-US bilateral relationship”, Downing Street has said, despite recent strained relations.

“It will underline that this relationship is a deep relationship that goes back decades, and it is one that is forged in history, our people to people ties, as well as our economic, and security and defence relationship,” the Keir Starmer’s official spokesperson said.

The comments came after Donald Trump told the BBC that the king’s state visit next week could “absolutely” help repair relations with the UK.

Downing Street has hit back at reports suggesting the US could reconsider its position over the UK’s claim to the Falkland Islands because the UK did not do enough to assist the American bombing of Iran was leaked.

The prime minister’s official spokesperson said: “The UK position is clear and isn’t going to change … It’s a longstanding one. It’s an unchanged one, and it will remain the case.”

The spokesperson added: “The Falkland Islands have hugely voted overwhelmingly in favour of remaining a UK overseas territory, and we’ve always stood behind the islanders’ right to self-determination and the fact that sovereignty rests with the UK.”

When asked whether the UK was ready to defend the islands from any threats, the spokesperson replied: “The question of the Falkland Islands and the UK’s sovereignty and the islanders’ right to self-determination is not in question, and we’ve expressed that position clearly and consistently.”

Keir Starmer will stay on as prime minister “throughout this parliament and beyond”, Downing Street has said.

Starmer has faced calls to quit amid the fallout from the Peter Mandelson vetting scandal, but the prime minister’s official spokesperson said: “He’s very focused on the job.

“I refer you back to his previous language that he will continue to lead the government throughout this parliament and beyond.

“He’s got a huge amount of work to do. We’re in the middle of a global conflict, the like of which we’ve not seen for years.”

In further comments, Badenoch said she does not believe the assisted dying bill should be brought back in the next parliamentary session.

She accused the Labour government of not dealing with issues such as the cost of living and energy bills, and was instead coming up with “random campaigns that their activists have brought in”.

When she was challenged over the fact the legislation was a private member’s bill, introduced by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, Badenoch said: “The government has used a private member’s bill to push through its agenda.”

She added: “I don’t think the assisted dying Bill should come back. It was hopelessly flawed, there were all sorts of problems with it, the safeguards removed.

“This isn’t what we need to be doing right now. We need to be talking about how to improve people’s lives, not how to end people’s lives.”

Kemi Badenoch has reacted to reports the US could consider its position on the UK’s claim to the Falkland Islands (see post at 10:27), saying it was “absolute nonsense”, PA reports.

Speaking at a party rally in Swindon, she said: “The Falkland Islands are British, they have been for a very long time. The sovereignty is British sovereignty.”

She added: “I don’t know what Donald Trump is talking about. This sounds like the sort of thing he was saying when it came to Greenland.”

She was referring to Trump’s repeated push to take control of the semi-autonomous Danish territory, which has been widely criticised by European leaders.

Back in the Lords, Conservative former deputy prime minister Therese Coffey said she thought some MPs and peers were more interested in passing an unsafe assisted dying bill than introducing proper safeguards.

Representing the view of opponents of assisted dying, Coffey said: “The continuing claim that this bill is the safest in the world, and was largely good to go in the house, perhaps with a few tweaks, just does not hold true.”

She admitted she had tabled “more amendments than she had expected to”, but said it was due to a lack of information from the government over workability.

“I do fear that many peers and many MPs are putting choice for some ahead of concern on coercion for others,” she said.

Meanwhile, Wales’s first minister, Eluned Morgan, has likened herself to a strawberry daiquiri as she warned constituents she could lose her seat in the Welsh parliament election, PA reports.

The Welsh Labour leader used canned cocktails to explain the new voting system in Wales in a video posted on social media. Constituents will be represented by six members of the Senedd, but Morgan said Plaid Cymru “is pretty secure, they’ve got at least two seats, maybe even a third”.

“So, the real battle is between Reform, the Tories and Labour,” she added.

“That’s me,” she said, holding a canned strawberry daiquiri up to the camera.

She used a mojito to represent Plaid Cymru, a blue raspberry martini for the Conservatives, an espresso martini for Reform, a pina colada for the Greens, and an Irn-Bru vodka martini for the Welsh Liberal Democrats.

“Because the real danger is that if you don’t come out and don’t support Labour, you’re going to get another Reform person.”

The Lords has heard some personal and moving stories from peers in the assisted dying bill debate. Nick Markham spoke about his mother, a Marie Curie nurse who supported terminally ill people, who was diagnosed with late-stage womb cancer in 2007.

That experience changed how I see the debate. I consider myself broadly in favour of assisted dying because I believe in choice, in personal autonomy. But what I witnessed, and what I’ve learned since is what has happened to my mother happens quietly all the time across the country, informally and inconsistently, with no upfront oversight, no safeguards. The current ban does not prevent assisted dying. It simply makes it unregulated, unequal and unsafe.

The Tory peer relayed stories of other people who have died during the passage of the bill, including a terminally ill nurse whose daughter said she “watched her struggle each year to try and blow out a candle. I was forced to watch my only parent lying in bed unconscious, waking only to cry out in agony. … My mum’s birthday wish was to die”.

Markham told peers:

I am sorry that we’ve let them down and all I can say and pledge, and I know I speak for many, many of our colleagues here, is that we will try.

We will try and we will try again to bring this bill back as soon as possible in the next session, to do what is right democratically, and most importantly of all, to give those people who are terminally ill hope and choice of a better way to die.

The final debate in the House of Lords on the assisted dying bill is happening now, follow along as we bring you the latest lines.

The bill passed the House of Commons in June last year, but there has been so many amendments tabled in the Lords – more than 1,280 – that it appears doomed to fail given there is not enough time to review them all before the end of this parliamentary session, expected next week.

Former justice secretary Charlie Falconer, who sponsored the Bill in the Lords, opened the proceedings today, saying: “I am despondent that this bill, so important to so many, has not failed on its merits, but failed as a result of procedural wrangling.

“There is no prospect that this bill can get through the house today or before prorogation ahead of the king’s speech on 13 May.”

After threatening to impose a “big tarriff”, the Trump administration is reportedly looking at further measures to punish the UK including reconsidering its position on Britain’s claim to the Falkland Islands.

An internal Pentagon email outlined options for the US to punish Nato allies for their perceived lack of support for the Iran war, according to Reuters, citing a US official. These include suspending Spain from Nato and reassessing US diplomatic support for longstanding European “imperial possessions,” such as the Falkland Islands near Argentina. It’s unclear whether any of these options are viable.

Donald Trump has repeatedly directed his ire at Keir Starmer for his unwillingness to join the war, saying he was “no Winston Churchill” and describing UK aircraft carriers as “toys”. Showing further strain in the “special relationship”, Trump threatened to impose “a big tariff” on the UK over its digital services tax on US social media firms.

For the latest Middle East news, you can follow our live blog here:

Good morning. The UK criminal investigation into Peter Mandelson has reportedly ground to a halt after the US justice department refused to hand over evidence contained in the Epstein files.

The documents relate to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which Scotland Yard believes could hold key evidence related to Mandelson, who served as business secretary and US ambassador. While the Met has asked for voluntary disclosure, the US department of justice is insisting on a Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA) request, a legal back and forth between countries to obtain evidence, the Telegraph has reported.

The process could take from several months to over a year, according to some estimates, potentially delaying Scotland Yard’s investigation into Mandelson, who was arrested in February on suspicion of misconduct in public office. Even the Met police commissioner Mark Rowley’s direct appeals to the US ambassador, Warren Stephens, and his personal trip to Washington in March had failed to move the process forward, the newspaper reported.

Speaking of withholding documents, yesterday Cat Little, the top civil servant at the Cabinet Office, said the Foreign Office had refused to hand over a summary of Mandelson’s security vetting. Speaking at a Commons committee, Little said she had to get the document directly from UK Security Vetting (UKSV) instead after Olly Robbins, the subsequently sacked Foreign Office head, refused to provide it. You can read more on that story here:

In other news:

• MPs must decide what to do with the assisted dying bill, which is set to run out of time to become law when a final debate ends in the House of Lords today. The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill has stalled in the Lords, which passed in the House of Commons almost a year ago, with more than 1,280 amendments made. Supporters of the bill, which would allow terminally ill adults who are given fewer than six months to live to seek medical help to end their life, now fear the bill is doomed to fail.

• Reform UK has asked steel bosses to draw up an “alternative steel strategy” to rival recent government plans, stoking industry fears over a charm offensive by Nigel Farage’s party as it eyes gains in former Labour heartlands. Reform is trying to harness growing anger at the government for high business energy bills, exacerbated by the Iran war, which are damaging steel companies and the wider manufacturing sector. Reform’s overtures have received a mixed reception across the industry.

• Donald Trump has threatened to impose “a big tariff” on the UK if it does not drop its digital services tax on US social media firms. The digital services tax, introduced in 2020, imposes a 2% levy on the revenues of several major US tech companies. “We’ve been looking at it and we can meet that very easily by just putting a big tariff on the UK, so they better be careful,” Trump said.

On the agenda today:

• Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch will hold a rally in Swindon with shadow transport secretary Richard Holden.

• Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey will join a tea dance and meets residents at a care home in Wokingham.

• Green Party leader Zack Polanski is holding a press conference in Glasgow.