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PM opens slavery apology talks with Commonwealth as King also set to raise issue
The legacy of slavery will dominate a meeting of Commonwealth leaders, with Andy Burnham beginning talks over a formal apology and the King set to speak about the issue with “unflinching honesty”, the Press Association reports. PA says:
The prime minister has ruled out offering reparations for the harm caused by the transatlantic slave trade but he will use the summit to set out plans for a “debt reset” aimed at helping poorer Commonwealth countries and allocate £40m for infrastructure improvements in the Caribbean.
The King is expected to talk with “sincere sorrow” about the slave trade as he formally opens the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (Chogm) in Antigua.
Burnham has been criticised by opponents who claim that by being open to talks about a formal slavery apology he has put the King under pressure – an accusation denied by the Prime Minister.
Charles will preside over the event in his role as head of the Commonwealth but is politically neutral and will not take part in discussions, unusually held informally without aides in the room.
His role is about “inspiring and convening, rather than policy making”, a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said.
He is not expected to offer an apology or reference the change in Government policy.
Charles is due to speak to the opening ceremony at about 2pm UK time.
Key events
At the Commonwealth summit, the opening ceremony is getting underway with a prayer.
Veterans minister committed minor rules breach with attempt to influence James McMurdock probe, committee says
Calvin Bailey, the veterans minister, committed a minor breach of Commons rules when he attempted to interfer with the investigation into James McMurdock (see 1.16pm), the standards committee has said. The Press Association reports:
In a report released today, the committee found that Bailey breached a rule prohibiting MPs from lobbying the standards commissioner “in a manner calculated or intended to influence” a probe.
Bailey had written to Daniel Greenberg about his investigation into McMurdock’s conduct in September 2025, saying: “I urge you to reject any attempt by Mr McMurdock to deny that he purposefully intended to initiate, and participate in, racist and intimidatory behaviour against a journalist.”
He described McMurdock’s actions as part of an “established pattern within the online far right which he is associated with”.
Leyton and Wanstead MP Mr Bailey was subsequently informed he was himself under investigation for potentially breaking a rule banning MPs from seeking to influence the watchdog’s consideration of whether another MP has breached the code of conduct.
Bailey, who was not a minister at the time, apologised in a reply to Greenberg and asked for his original letter to be withdrawn.
“Please accept my full apology for this serious error on my part, for which I am deeply sorry,” he wrote in October 2025.
Bailey said his objective had been to highlight the impact of McMurdock’s actions on ethnic minority MPs, rather than influence the outcome of the case.
The commissioner concluded that Bailey’s intervention could only be interpreted as an attempt to influence his decision and referred the matter to the committee.
The committee ruled that Bailey had committed a breach that was “minor and inadvertent”, and recommended no further action.
The Liberal Democrats have described the EU-UK food deal that has now been agreed as a “step in the right direction”, but not a fix. In a response, Al Pinkerton, the Lib Dem Europe spokesperson, said:
Scrapping the Brexit red tape strangling British food exporters is long overdue. For years, unnecessary trade barriers have held back British farmers and businesses, while families have faced higher food prices and less variety on supermarket shelves.
This deal is a step in the right direction, but it’s a patch, not a fix.
The real solution is to rejoin the single market and to establish a customs union with the EU. The Liberal Democrats have consistently made the case for both, because removing barriers to trade means stronger businesses, lower prices and a growing economy.
How Carla Lockhart’s resignation from DUP exposes widening divisions in unionism
Rory Carroll
Rory Carroll is the Guardian’s Ireland correspondent.
The departure of Carla Lockhart from the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) has hollowed its Westminster team and exposed widening divisions in Northern Ireland unionism.
The Upper Bann MP resigned yesterday because the party refused to topple Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill as first minister at Stormont, a dispute that has become the latest fault line between moderate and hardline unionists.
Losing the party’s most popular MP walloped Gavin Robinson’s leadership, shrivelled its Westminster presence to four male MPs and fuelled expectation of a DUP hammering in local and assembly elections next May.
Lockhart’s departure was fallout from the Drumcree parade imbroglio when the Orange Order revived an attempt – this time with legal backing – to march down Garvaghy Road. O’Neill and other Sinn Féin leaders joined residents in an allegedly illegal protest to block the Orangemen, a spectacle that galvanised nationalists and infuriated many unionists.
Robinson censured O’Neill and promised repercussions but stopped short of ousting her by pulling the plug on power-sharing, calculating that voters would punish the party for a full-blown Stormont crisis.
Lockhart’s constituency includes Drumcree and she has shared platforms with Jim Allister’s Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV), which appeals to those who consider Stormont a sellout to nationalists.
The Ulster Unionist party (UUP) favours making Stormont work, leaving the DUP stuck in the middle, deemed either too soft on Sinn Féin or so combative it has crippled power-sharing and fomented dysfunction.
PM opens slavery apology talks with Commonwealth as King also set to raise issue
The legacy of slavery will dominate a meeting of Commonwealth leaders, with Andy Burnham beginning talks over a formal apology and the King set to speak about the issue with “unflinching honesty”, the Press Association reports. PA says:
The prime minister has ruled out offering reparations for the harm caused by the transatlantic slave trade but he will use the summit to set out plans for a “debt reset” aimed at helping poorer Commonwealth countries and allocate £40m for infrastructure improvements in the Caribbean.
The King is expected to talk with “sincere sorrow” about the slave trade as he formally opens the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (Chogm) in Antigua.
Burnham has been criticised by opponents who claim that by being open to talks about a formal slavery apology he has put the King under pressure – an accusation denied by the Prime Minister.
Charles will preside over the event in his role as head of the Commonwealth but is politically neutral and will not take part in discussions, unusually held informally without aides in the room.
His role is about “inspiring and convening, rather than policy making”, a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said.
He is not expected to offer an apology or reference the change in Government policy.
Charles is due to speak to the opening ceremony at about 2pm UK time.
Ex-Reform UK MP cleared after committee overrules parliament’s standards watchdog over N-word rules breach
A Commons committee has overruled a finding by the parliamentary commissioner for standards that former Reform UK MP James McMurdock broke Commons rules by posting the letter “N” online and starting a racial slur.
The Commons standards committee has decided that McMurdock will not be subject to any further action, even though it also rejected McMurdock’s claim that he was not responsible for the letter N being posted from his phone on the social media platform X.
The N appeared underneath a post containing a picture of Nigel Farage with a black journalist, and it led to what is known as an N-Tower – individuals each posting a single letter so as to get the N-word to appear on a social media platform without moderating tools blocking them.
The incident happened in August last year, and the report published today is the outcome of an investigation that commenced soon afterwards after the Tory MP Ben Obese-Jecty submitted a complaint to Daniel Greenberg, the parliamentary commissioner for standards.
Complaints about MPs breaking parliamentary rules are investigated by the commissioner who presents a report to the Commons standards committee. Normally the committee accepts the commissioner’s findings and decides on an appropriate punishment but – in a move that is unusual but not unprecedented – the committee said it disagreed with Greenberg.
Greenberg was investigating whether McMurdock was in breach of rule 11, which says MPs must not do anything that would cause “significant damage to the reputation” of the Commons.
McMurdock told the commissioner that the original N must have been posted from his phone either by one of his children or as a result of a pocket post. Greenberg did not accept that, and concluded that McMurdock posted it himself.
But Greenberg concluded it was “impossible to establish Mr McMurdock’s intention when posting the letter ‘N’”. McMurdock said he deleted the post when he was made aware of it, about an hour after it went up.
However, Greenberg did criticise McMurdock for failing to take steps to disassociate himself from the post, or to explain that it had been put up in error. In his own report to the committee, he concluded:
It seems clear to me that the initiation of an N-Tower by a member of parliament is action that “would cause significant damage to the reputation and integrity of the House of Commons as a whole, or of its members generally”. The N-word is one of the most offensive terms in the English language. The use of an N-Tower is designed to encourage the use of a racist term in a manner intended to avoid moderation. To initiate an N-Tower on a public forum gives the impression that members of parliament are content to incite racist abuse. I have found that Mr McMurdock posted the “N” on X and therefore started the N-Tower. This is conduct that causes significant damage to the reputation of the house.
Mr McMurdock then took no steps to correct the public record and allowed the perception that he had deliberately started an N-Tower to continue. Mr McMurdock’s rationale for doing so is that he wished to protect himself from embarrassment. For a member to prioritise personal embarrassment over the ongoing perception that he had encouraged the use of a racist insult is extraordinary. I note that, even when my investigation was started, Mr McMurdock still did not deprecate such language or acknowledge the severity of the situation. That is not to his credit. Indeed, Mr McMurdock has tried to minimise the event, referring to it as “nonsense” …
In short, Mr McMurdock’s actions allowed a natural inference to be drawn that members of parliament condone and incite racist abuse.
But the standards committee, which is chaired by the Tory MP Alberto Costa who sits with six other MPs and seven lay members, decided that McMurdock had not broken rule 11. It said this was because it could not be sure that McMurdock posted the letter N with the intention of starting an N-Tower and that, even if he did, “we do not believe that unintentionally starting an N-Tower amounts to a breach of rule 11, however much we abhor the creation of a racial slur”.
Explaining the latter point, the committee said in its report:
Even if we had been able to conclude that Mr McMurdock had posted the letter “N” with the intention of initiating the creation of a racial slur, we do not consider that that bar [the test for a breach of rule 11] would have been met. The conduct would have undoubtedly been abhorrent, but the damage would have been done to Mr McMurdock’s own reputation, and not to that of MPs in general.
Unusually, one lay member of the committee, Mehmuda Mian, published a dissenting opinion saying she thought McMurdock had intended to start a N-Tower. She explained:
It is not clear for what reason Mr McMurdock would have made such a post, other than the reason alleged by the complainant. If it was in some way accidental, it would be an astonishing coincidence for that specific letter to appear by accident under that post. If there was another reason for an intentional post, then Mr McMurdock would surely have supplied it in evidence. I also believe that, had the letter N been posted accidentally or for some other purpose, Mr McMurdock would have acted differently once the offensive implications of his post were drawn to his attention. I therefore conclude that, on the balance of probabilities, Mr McMurdock made the post in order to start an “N tower”.
And three other lay members of the committee published a dissenting opinion saying they did not accept the majority view that McMurdock would not have broken rule 11 even if he had been intentionally starting an N-Tower.
McMurdock was a surprise Reform UK election winner in 2024 when he took the South Basildon and East Thurrock constituency with a majority of just 98. Reform UK was subsequently embarrassed when it emerged he had been detained as a teenager for repeatedly kicking his then girlfriend.
In July last year McMurdock resigned the Reform UK whip over allegations relating to his business conduct during Covid. But he was subsequently cleared, and today’s finding from the standards committee may revive speculation that he will be allowed to rejoin the party.
MSPs call for ‘much greater transparency’ from Swinney about how Scottish government will fill £5bn funding gap
Severin Carrell
Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.
John Swinney has been urged to be much more open about the Scottish government’s attempts to close a near £5bn funding gap by a cross-party Holyrood committee.
MSPs on the Scottish parliament’s finance and public administration committee also warned the first minister faces “substantial risks” if his government’s plans to cut the public sector are not delivered on time and in full.
They said “much greater transparency” was needed about how Swinney plans to close the gap and called on his ministers to update the Scottish government’s public sector pay policy and tax strategy as soon as possible.
Its report in advance of this December’s Scottish budget said that within three years, Swinney’s minority government faces a £2.6bn shortfall in day-to-day spending and a £2.1bn spending shortfall for capital projects. In addition, there is a £720m shortfall in tax receipts next year, which exceeds its borrowing limits.
Swinney has already announced proposals to merge local authorities, cut the number of health boards and reduce civil service numbers in an effort to cut spending.
Economics think tanks have warned his government faces “a reckoning” over public spending, and the toughest budget in the history of devolution, after failing to control public sector pay rises and overspending.
A government spokesperson said ministers noted the committee’s comments, and that they expected a £650m real terms cut in Treasury funding next year, which made matters worse. They said:
This government has delivered a balanced budget every year and a comprehensive strategy and delivery plan has been published which sets out how we will close the gap between funding and spending by 2029-30.
Badenoch says pupils must be taught ‘good and bad of our history’ – but says it’s ‘lie’ to claim wealth came from slavery
Q: Do you think that a confident nation should be able to teach children about the bad things that the country has done in the past as well as the good things?
Badenoch replied:
If you start teaching a history about our country that tells young people that they should be ashamed, that tells young people that actually they don’t belong here for whatever reason, and tells young people that the wealth and prosperity of this country was built on the back of evil things like slavery and colonialism, you are lying to them.
You have to tell them the truth. The wealth of this country was built on property rights, freedom, free trade, freedom of speech, free markets, enlightenment values – the classic old school liberal values.
If you teach them that [wealth] just came from taking from elsewhere, we are selling them a lie. And then we start losing the understanding of what it is that makes countries wealthy.
We need to tell the good and the bad of our history. What’s happening is that we’re focusing only on the bad.
With lots of people, they’ve got books to sell about how terrible this country is. They’re making money out of splitting the country. The Conservative party wants to bring people together, whatever they look like …
If we keep pretending that this country has a unique history of evil and that we need to start paying everybody and apologising to everyone, we forget that we are actually one of the better countries, that a lot of this evil was happening all over the world, and we were the ones who fought to end so many of the terrible practices, including slavery, that were making lives a misery all around the globe.
Q: If Burnham did agree to pay slavery reparations, would you cancel them if you got into office?
Badenoch said she did not want to waste time talking about slavery. She said:
There is nothing wrong with an apology, but we have done that already. We don’t need to keep apologising. Everyone knows that slavery was wrong. It happened everywhere and we were the ones who ended it. We should be proud of that.
I’m not going to be wasting my time talking about reparations and apologies if I’m prime minister. I’m going to be focussed on the serious issue that this country faces.
We’re not going to be giving any money to people just because they’re asking for an apology. That’s not the Conservative way, and that is not what we’re going to do.
Q: Andy Burnham has refused to say what his ideal number would be for net migration. What level do you think it should be at?
Badenoch said she was not going to pluck numbers out of the air. The Tories were in favour of a cap, she said. But it would be based on the country’s needs “at a particular moment”.
Badenoch says, if she was PM, she would only visit China in return for British prisoners being released
Q: Do you regard China as a threat? And, if you were invited to China, would you got there and meet President Xi?
Badenoch said she had always been clear China was “an economic threat”. And it is a country spying on the UK, she said.
She went on:
What I am saying is that we need to take [China] seriously. I’m not saying we need to go to war with China, but what I’m saying is that what they want is economic dominance, and the more dominant they are, then the more susceptible we are to coercion.
So if I’m prime minister of this country and I get an invite, depending on what China has been doing recently, I might go, but not when it is holding dissidents, British citizens in its prisons, and not releasing them.
I would be going and getting those people released.
Keir Starmer went to China and got humiliated, got absolutely nothing. That would not be happening with me.
Badenoch may have been referring in particular to Jimmy Lai.
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