Farage says Trump’s Iranian ‘civilisation will die’ threats went ‘way too far’– UK politics live

Amnesty International UK is also (see 2.22pm and 2.29pm) calling for the UK to immediately withdraw military support being offered to the US in the light of Donald Trump’s threat to destroy Iran. Kristyan Benedict, Amnesty’s crisis response manager, said:

This is a moment of extreme danger for civilians in Iran and the wider region. For President Trump to threaten that ‘a whole civilisation will die tonight’ echoes genocidal language – and the UK government must urgently end military support to the US that could enable crimes under international law, including war crimes.

A US strike has already killed over 168 people, including more than 100 children, at a school in Minab, Iran. Bridges and energy infrastructure are being bombed. The decision to allow the US to use British military bases does not exist in a vacuum – it carries serious human rights responsibilities.

Amnesty International is unequivocal: threatening to systematically destroy civilian infrastructure is a threat to commit war crimes. Attacking power plants essential to the survival of tens of millions of civilians would be unlawful. The UK must be equally unequivocal.

And these are from my colleauge Jessica Elgot on Bluesky on the Kanye West controversy.

A lot has bothered me about the reporting of the Kanye West banned. Firstly how it has been framed as all about it the Jewish community – but we should all be against Nazism! This country fought Nazis. Songs called Heil Hitler should not just be for the Jewish community to object to. And secondly…

I can have empathy that psychosis is possible and that Kanye has a verifiable mental illness. But hundreds of people facilitated him, they manufactured swastika T-shirts, they were extras and backing singers and producers of his Heil Hitler single and music video. Don’t these people have any morals?

Again, this is not a “Jewish community” issue – this should be something that everyone finds abhorrent. But even Keir Starmer’s statement frames this as an issue that is because the Jews have been complaining again. Kanye puts the emphasis on making amends to Jews. It’s exhausting.

Here are is some more reaction from politicians and others to the Home Office’s decision to ban Kanye West from entering the UK to peform at the Wireless festival.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews issued a statement saying West should never have been invited in the first place.

We welcome the government listening to the concerns of Jews in the UK and preventing Kanye West from entering the country.

It is deeply regrettable that Wireless Festival invited him in the first place and then doubled down when the Jewish community and our allies objected. We note that the festival has now been cancelled but it should never have reached this point. The situation could and should have been resolved much earlier.

Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, welcomed the move, but said the government should be just as tough with Islamist hate preachers.

It is welcome the government has followed our calls to block Kanye West coming to the UK.

If the Labour government is going to deny visas to antisemites, it must apply the same standards consistently. The government should now commit to refusing entry visas to extremists such as hate preachers. We must stop those expressing extremist views getting into Britain, and those already here who are not British citizens should be deported.

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, has welcomed the move.

I’m glad the government has listened and done the right thing by banning Kanye West from coming to the UK to peddle his hatred.

British festivals should be a place for celebration, not a platform for someone who has openly praised Hitler and promoted vile antisemitic conspiracy theories.

More than 40 Labour MPs have written to Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, urging him to change the way the price for electricity is set, so that it is no longer regularly tied to the cost of gas, Faye Brown at Sky News reports.

In their letter, organised by Simon Opher, chair of the all-party parliamentary group on net zero, the MPs say:

Decoupling electricity prices from gas would be a major structural reform, but it is one that could both protect households and demonstrate that this government is willing to take bold action in the public interest.

This is an idea that was also proposed by the Green party in a recent Commons early day motion, and backed also by some MPs from Plaid Cymru, Your Party, the Lib Dems and the SDLP.

Graduates on lower salaries won’t benefit from the cap on the interest paid on student loans announced by the government today (see 11.16am), the Institute for Fiscal Studies says.

In a comment on the announcement, Kate Ogden, a senior research economist at the IFS, said:

In anticipation of a possible spike in inflation as a result of events in the Middle East, the government has today announced that interest rates on student loans issued to English students will be capped at 6% next academic year.

If the March 2026 figure for RPI inflation comes in at more than 3% – as seems likely – this cap will reduce the interest rate applied to outstanding plan 2 student loans held by higher-earning graduates who are subject to an interest rate of up to RPI plus 3%. It will only reduce actual loan repayments in the long run from the roughly third of graduates that can expect to repay their plan 2 loans in full.

If, for example, March RPI came in at 4%, the cap might benefit the highest-earning graduates by an average of around £500 over their lifetime.

It will do nothing for graduates who are lower-earning currently who will still see their interest rate set at RPI and therefore likely below the new cap.

As my colleague Peter Walker points out on Bluesky, we’re now in the odd position where Nigel Farage is more willing to condemn Donald Trump (see 4.24pm) than anyone from the Labour government has been.

Three hours after Donald Trump’s threat that “a whole civilisation will die tonight” in Iran, and Nigel Farage has been more openly critical of this than Downing Street or anyone else in the UK government.

Even Nigel Farage now believes that Donald Trump has gone too far. In the past the Reform UK leader has been one of the president’s biggest supporters in the UK. More recently he has started to stress that he does not agree with the president on everything. But at his press conference this morning he was still broadly supportive, arguing that the UK could not defend itself militarily without the US and saying that, if he were PM, he would allow Trump to use British bases to attack Iranian infrastructure – provided Trump could assure him he had a plan for the end game. (See 2.55pm.)

But Trump’s latest Truth Social post has pushed Farage over the edge.

During a post-press conference walkabout in Bedworth, a Press Association reporter told Farage what Trump had said in his post and asked for a response. Farage said:

I am quite shocked just to hear that. That is over the top in every single way.

Yes of course he wants to threaten – to get them to the negotiating table. But those words are … they’re way too far.

Asked if the post was befitting of someone holding the office of the US president, Farage answered:

He’s an upset, angry American president.

He’s wholly unconventional but I would remind you of what Churchill said about the bombing of Germany during the war. Some quite extraordinary things were said there as well.

Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, has posted this on social media about Keir Starmer’s decision to tweet about Kanye West (see 3.16pm) – but not about Donald Trump threatening to wipe out an entire civilisation (see 2.22pm).

We’re on the verge of a genocidal, nuclear war that our supposed “ally” has said he’s ready to unleash.

Would it be too much to ask for the Prime Minister to have something to say about it? Or do?

Suspend US bases now.

Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.

The Scottish Tory leader, Russell Findlay, is seeking to claw back ground lost to Reform UK by accusing the party of being soft on independence, pointing to Reform’s conditional opposition to a second referendum.

“Reform can’t be trusted on independence; they can’t be trusted on anything,” Findlay told the Scottish Conservative’s manifesto launch in Edinburgh. They were “unionists in name only”.

The manifesto pledged to cut Scottish income taxes to match the UK’s lower rates; put more police on the beat; cut early release from prison; redouble North Sea oil and gas drilling and fix GP waiting lists and pot holes. He added the Scottish Tories would offer all pensioners a £500 tax rebate, to cope with the cost of living.

He pointed to Malcolm Offord, the former Tory peer and minister who is now Reform’s Scottish leader, saying a future referendum could be held and that he could work with “rational” nationalists on boosting the economy, and accepting ex-Scottish National party activists as Holyrood candidates.

Opinion polls consistently show the Scottish Tories face humiliation in the 7 May election, dropping from Holyrood’s second largest party at the last election to fourth or fifth, trailing Reform and Labour (vying for second place) by four to 11 points on the constituency vote, and level pegging with the Liberal Democrats.

The Tories are, however, doing better on the regional lists and Findlay is urging Tory voters to use their peach, regional vote, ballot papers to back his party. Focusing heavily on the union has historically been one of the Scottish Tories’ strongest cards, but the collapse in their support is likely too great to bridge, with only 30 days to go before the election.

Findlay said:

Reform can’t be trusted on the union. It can’t be trusted full stop. Their flimsy manifesto fell apart in less than 24 hours. The IFS think tank described key pledges as a mirage, based on fantasy figures. Their candidates have been dropping like flies. They’ve had a chaotic start. So how can they be trusted to take on the SNP if they can’t even sort their own candidate vetting process?

We are the only party that’s serious about cutting taxes and defending the union. We know where we stand. It’s in our bones and it’s in the manifesto. [We] will oppose any attempt to hold another independence referendum crystal clear. And I’m going to repeat that every day until May 7.

A reader asks:

Will there be coverage at 1am when the deadline (appropriately named) expires? For those of us finding it hard to sleep.

The Guardian’s Middle East crisis live blog has been running more or less around the clock since the Iran war started. When we’re asleep in the UK, colleagues are writing it from the US or from Australia.

Alexandra Topping is a Guardian political correspondent.

At his press conference earlier, Nigel Farage defended his party’s new proposal to refuse visas for people wanting to visit the UK from countries seeking slavery reparations from the UK. (See 9.56am.)

Asked if Reform UK would backdate this policy, Farage said that it would not apply to people already issued with a visa. But it was “about time we stood up and said enough”, he added.

And asked about the cost of the policy, and its impact on areas of the economy like the care sector, Farage said Reform’s costings suggested that the UK had already “given” £6.6bn to “countries that say we’re the most awful people that have ever lived on the face of the planet”.

He went on:

We’ve also opened our doors to 3.8 million of their citizens, some of whom, of course, do work in the care sector, many of whom live on benefits and many of whom yesterday, if they’ve got several children, will have seen their family income go up massively as a result of the two-child cap going, and I think it’s about time we stopped.

Farage said there “are parts of our past we wouldn’t be proud of, and there are parts of our past we’ve got every right to be immensely proud of”, including spending “four decades on the high seas, at the loss of thousands of sailors and vast amounts of money, driving slavery off the world’s oceans”.

He added:

We’re saying it happens as soon as there is a Reform government … I think you’ll find the other countries would fall into line very, very quickly.

Keir Starmer has posted this on social media about Kanye West.

Kanye West should never have been invited to headline Wireless.

This government stands firmly with the Jewish community, and we will not stop in our fight to confront and defeat the poison of antisemitism.

We will always take the action necessary to protect the public and uphold our values.

Alexandra Topping is a Guardian political correspondent.

At the Reform UK press conference today (which, at around half an hour, was considerably shorter than some epic press conferences of late), Nigel Farage was pressed on Iran and whether he would give America permission to use British airbases for attacks on civilian infrastructure in Iran that Donald Trump has threatened.

Farage indicated that he would allow Donald Trump to use British bases for the attacks, if the US president gave assurances about the “end game” of the attacks.

Asked specifically if he would let America use British bases for attacks on civilian infrastructure in Iran, Farage said:

If I was the British prime minister, I’d say to Trump, what is the aim? What is the objective? What is the end game? What is the way out? Provided that I received satisfactory answers to those questions, I would say the continued use of our bases was the right thing to do.

Farage’s response was interesting, not least because Keir Starmer and Labour have repeatedly tried to draw a line between the prime minister’s response to Trump’s request for military help, and what they have styled as Conservative and Reform support for the war in Iran. At the outset of the war Farage and Kemi Badenoch were quick to say Starmer was not doing enough to support the US and Israel. Farage said when the conflict began: “We should do all we can to support the operation.” He and Badenoch have since softened that stance, with Badenoch later saying: “I said that we support their actions. I never said we should join.” Farage has since stated that Britain should not actively join Trump’s war saying the military could not “offer anything of value” to America or Israel.

What’s behind the U-turns? Trump is unpopular with UK voters, even ones who support Reform. As Ben Quinn pointed out in this analysis:

The US president is now underwater in terms of his favourability even with Reform voters, who were previously the only set of UK party supporters who saw him positively, according to polling by More in Common.

Reform’s Trump problem is particularly stark among British women, with 25% of those polled last week listing “Farage’s support for Trump” as the primary reason they would not vote for his party.

Among men and women it was 23%, ahead of a range of other reasons including the party being seen as too rightwing, racism on the part of some candidates, its lack of government experience or perceptions that they only represent the rich.

During his press conference on Tuesday, Farage reiterated his previously stated remarks that the UK was dependent on the US for its national security, and tried to focus his answer on the US, rather than its president. Asked about the UK’s defence stance, he said:

What defence? It took us three weeks and one day to send a single naval vessel to defend British sovereign territory in Cyprus.

I would say our defence is in tatters. What has happened in the last few weeks should serve as a massive wake-up call. And I think the situation is absolutely dire as far as America is concerned.

We’ve refused permission to use the bases [and] an RAF base was attacked anyway. Then the prime minister U-turned and said the Americans could use the bases, but for defensive purposes, whatever that, in a situation of war, may mean.

I have a major, major worry that the relationship with America, is looking very broken. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s a Biden in the White House, whether it’s a Trump in the White House. You know, we’ve got to face a fact […] that without America, we are virtually defenceless.

Farage concluded:

I think for us to finish up breaking the alliance with America, I would put this country in very grave peril. And I certainly do not believe that a European defense force or a European army would be an answer in any way at all.

Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, is also calling for the government to urgently withdraw the military support it is giving the US.

In a message on social media Polanski, like Ed Davey (see 2.22pm), also indicated that he had read President Trump’s latest Truth Social message with horror. Polanski said the UK must stop American planes bombing Iran from British bases entirely.

The UK must immediately and unequivocally suspend support for the US military.

The Government have tried to appease him, then they tried to say they’re standing up to him.

Words aren’t enough – it’s time for action.