Politics

The government has doubled down on insisting only a quarter of farms will be affected by inheritance tax plans as thousands of farmers get ready to protest on Tuesday. After Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced 20% inheritance tax will apply to farms worth more than £1m from April 2026, where they were previously exempt, the policy

Sir Keir Starmer has insisted the “vast majority of farmers” will not be affected by changes to Inheritance Tax (IHT) ahead of a protest outside parliament on Tuesday. It follows Chancellor Rachel Reeves announcing a 20% inheritance tax that will apply to farms worth more than £1m from April 2026, where they were previously exempt.

Climate change, the crisis in the Middle East, the continuing war in Ukraine, combating global poverty. All of these are critical issues for Britain and beyond; all of them up for discussions at the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro this week, and all of them very much in limbo as the world awaits the

The government has indicated the £3 bus fare cap in place until next year may be scrapped beyond that point. Bus fares have been capped at £2 on more than 4,600 routes in England since 1 January 2023, but the government has said that from next year the cap will rise to £3. Speaking to

Sir Keir Starmer has said he will defend the decisions made in the budget “all day long” amid anger from farmers over inheritance tax changes. Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced last month in her key speech that from April 2026, farms worth more than £1m will face an inheritance tax rate of 20%, rather than the

A former Conservative MP has said he felt “enormous guilt” when he found out he was the victim of a Westminster honeytrap scandal. William Wragg resigned from the parliamentary party in April after he admitted giving out fellow politicians’ phone numbers to the suspected perpetrator of the sexting scam. He said he felt threatened and

Nigel Farage has announced that he has paid a visit to Clacton following criticism that he does not spend enough time in his constituency. The Reform UK leader shared an image of himself on X alongside the caption: “I would like all my haters to know that I am once again in Clacton living my

Wes Streeting “crossed the line” by opposing assisted dying in public and the argument shouldn’t “come down to resources”, a Labour peer has said. Speaking on Sky News’ Electoral Dysfunction podcast, Baroness Harriet Harman criticised the health secretary for revealing how he is going to vote on the matter when it comes before parliament later

Brexit has “weighed” on the British economy and relations with the EU must be rebuilt, according to the governor of the Bank of England. Andrew Bailey’s comments come in a speech at the City of London’s Mansion House this evening and were widely trailed beforehand. He said although he takes “no position on Brexit per

Pension “mega funds” will be created under government plans to increase infrastructure investment. Reforms could “unlock £80bn” of investment, according to Treasury plans, which say bigger funds can get greater returns. Chancellor Rachel Reeves wants to imitate the way large Canadian and Australian pension schemes work. She will give more details about her plans in

Labour MPs who are opposed to legalising assisted dying believe the momentum is swinging behind their side of the campaign, Sky News has learnt. MPs are currently weighing up whether to back a change in the law that would give terminally ill people with six months to live the choice to end their lives. At

Fines of £10,000 for social media bosses who don’t remove illegal knife adverts are being considered by the government. The proposals are part of attempts by Labour to fulfil their promise to halve knife crime levels in the next decade. The Home Office wants to introduce the measures to stop the “unacceptable use of social

This week in Azerbaijan, we saw Keir Starmer honing the art of delivering different messages to different audiences.  An essential survival skill in politics, it feels like the new backroom team in Number 10 are finding their feet as they attempt to wrestle the challenging political landscape more to their advantage. Politics Live: Starmer’s former

Self-administering drugs to end your own life legally is more compassionate than someone else doing it, the MP proposing assisted dying legislation has said. The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was published on Monday and revealed the medicine that will end a patient’s life will need to be self-administered, with doctors not allowed

The full details of the End Of Life Bill are now known, and MPs and peers will have time to study its contents ahead of making one of their most important decisions. We have not had societal change like this since the Abortion Act of 1967. Labour MP Kim Leadbeater has done some exhaustive research

The defence secretary has insisted Donald Trump is committed to NATO and is right to push other European nations to put more funding into the security alliance. John Healey dismissed suggestions the new US president will pull out of NATO, the military alliance consisting of 30 European countries and the US and Canada, after previous

Farmers could blockade ports or cause food shortages by refusing to supply their produce if the government doesn’t listen to calls to rethink inheritance tax changes made in the budget, Sky News has been told. Tractor go-slows and a strike on spreading sewage sludge on their land are also being considered by some “hardcore groups”,

Britain’s annual Remembrance Day has a special dimension this year because it is the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings. The speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, and the Imperial War Museum are arranging for images of the men and women who took part in the Normandy campaign to be projected on

A recruitment and retention crisis in the armed forces will grow unless the government exempts military families from paying VAT on private school fees, insiders have warned. Sky News understands that more and more families are raising concerns internally about the “damaging” policy after the chancellor failed to offer sufficient protections in her budget. They

The war in Ukraine needs “concessions on both sides” if it is to come to an end, Nigel Farage has said. The Reform UK leader suggested the invaded nation could gain “quite a lot from settling”, though he refused to say if this meant giving up territory to Russia in return. Politics Live: ex-Blair aide