Former England cricket captain Michael Vaughan cleared of racism charge
Ashes-winning former England cricket captain Michael Vaughan has had the racism charge against him dismissed.
The 48-year-old had been accused by the England and Wales Cricket Board of making a derogatory comment towards a group of Yorkshire teammates of Asian ethnicity before a match in 2009, including Azeem Rafiq who first spoke out in 2020 about the discrimination he suffered during two stints with the county.
The former batsman allegedly told them: “There’s too many of you lot, we need to have a word about that.”
He had always categorically denied using racist language towards Rafiq, Adil Rashid, Rana Naved-ul-Hasan and Ajmal Shahzad.
He appeared in person at a Cricket Discipline Commission (CDC) hearing which was held in public in London earlier this month to defend himself.
Five others accused were found by the panel to have used racist and/or discriminatory language – former Test stars Matthew Hoggard and Tim Bresnan, ex-Yorkshire coaches Andrew Gale and Richard Pyrah and former Scotland international John Blain.
Unlike Vaughan, they had indicated prior to the hearing they would not participate, with the allegations against them heard in their absence.
The cricketer-turned TV pundit wrote on social media on Friday: “It has been both difficult and upsetting to hear about the painful experiences which Azeem has described over the past three years.
“The outcome of these CDC proceedings must not be allowed to detract from the core message that there can be no place for racism in the game of cricket, or in society generally.”
He added: “The dismissal of the specific charge that concerned me takes nothing away from Azeem’s own lived experiences.”
Branding the proceedings an “inappropriate, inadequate, and backwards step”, he added: “There are no winners in this process and there are better ways – there have to be better ways – for cricket to move forward positively and effectively.
“I have never wanted to do anything that runs contrary to genuine efforts to clean up the game of cricket.
“I truly hope people can understand why, on a personal level, I could not just accept or apologise for, something which I know I did not do.
“At times, this process has brought me to the brink of falling out of love with cricket.
“I won’t address here the toll that it has taken on me and my family, but I have no doubt that it has also been incredibly stressful for all of the others concerned.
“I hope that for them and for cricket, an inclusive healing process can now begin.”
In its decision the panel said there had been “significant inconsistencies” in the evidence of the main witnesses, Rafiq and Rashid, and found the case against Vaughan “not proved”.
But it stressed this did not “in any way undermine the wider assertions” made by Rafiq.
The charges, brought in June last year, stemmed primarily from allegations made by Rafiq, the former Yorkshire bowler.
The charges stemmed primarily from allegations made by Azeem Rafiq
Yorkshire accepted in 2021 Rafiq had been the victim of racial harassment and bullying, but a month later said no individuals would face disciplinary action as a consequence.
The county admitted four charges, including a failure to address systemic use of racist and/or discriminatory language at the club over a prolonged period.
A seventh individual, former Yorkshire and England batsman, Gary Ballance, also admitted using racist and/or discriminatory language.
Rafiq said in a statement: “Charges against seven of the eight defendants, including the widespread use of the ‘P’ word, have been upheld by the CDC today.
“This comes in addition to the other reports, panels and inquiries that found I and others suffered racial harassment and bullying while at Yorkshire.
“The issue has never been about individuals but the game as a whole.
“Cricket needs to understand the extent of its problems and address them. Hopefully, the structures of the game can now be rebuilt and institutionalised racism ended for good. It’s time to reflect, learn and implement change.”
Richard Thompson, Chair of the England and Wales Cricket Board, said: “This has been an incredibly challenging period for our sport, but one we must all learn from in order to make cricket better and more inclusive.
“When Azeem Rafiq spoke out about his time in cricket, he exposed a side of our game which no one should have to experience. We are grateful for his courage and perseverance.
“There now needs to be a time of reconciliation where, as a game, we can collectively learn and heal the wounds and ensure that nothing like this can ever happen again.
“The decisions published today are the findings of an independent CDC Panel, reaching its own decisions based on the evidence before it, and it is now for the Panel to determine what sanctions are appropriate where charges have been admitted or upheld. Having only received the decisions today, we will need time to consider them carefully.”
After counting more than two million votes cast in the English council elections, a provisional National Share Estimate shows the Conservatives on just 26% of the vote, a 19-point drop compared with the 2019 general election and one of its worst ever performances in any set of local elections.
Labour‘s vote rises from 33% in 2019 to 35% on the current estimate, after more than half the wards have now declared.
The Liberal Democrats are on 16%, an increase of five percentage points on the 2019 election. This follows a familiar pattern where the party does better in council elections than in parliamentary elections.
Local election results: Relief for Sunak in key mayoral race
Other parties, such as the Greens, Reform, and independents, are projected to be on 22%.
This figure assumes also that votes for the nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales, places where no local elections took place, are unchanged from the previous election. The same condition applies to the 18 seats in Northern Ireland.
Assuming these changes in vote share occur uniformly across each of the newly drawn parliamentary constituencies in place for the next general election, Labour wins 294 seats and would overtake the Conservatives – but falls 32 seats short of gaining an overall majority.
The Conservatives fall from 372 seats on the new boundaries to just 242 seats, a projected loss of 130 seats. The Liberal Democrats rise from eight to 38 seats.
As is usual in such projections, there are individual constituencies where the count of local votes shows a party “winning” a constituency when the uniform swing suggests otherwise.
Two such examples are Aldershot and Plymouth Moor View, both of which fall to Labour when we aggregate local votes in wards lying within those constituencies.
Employing the same procedure, however, Labour’s seat tally suffers when local votes in constituencies such as Blackburn and Oldham West were “won” by independents when actual votes are counted.
Labour easily retains these constituencies when uniform swing is considered.
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The large vote for others highlights a growing tendency in local elections for some voters to support a range of smaller parties.
This year that tendency is exaggerated still further with the swing away from Labour towards independents in certain parts of the country.
UK
UK plans to ramp up weapons production for Ukraine and Western defence as Lord Cameron reveals envoy will oversee ‘national priority’
The UK will appoint a new envoy to oversee a plan to ramp up the production of weapons and ammunition, which is now a “national priority”, the foreign secretary has revealed.
Lord Cameron, speaking on a visit to Ukraine, also underlined the importance of supporting the Ukrainian war effort against Russia, warning that the world was at an “absolutely critical tipping point” and Kyiv must prevail or else Europe faced a “very dangerous future”.
However, he cautioned against an idea from French President Emmanuel Macron to consider sending NATO troops to Ukraine to join the fight if Russia’s Vladimir Putin achieves a breakthrough, saying that such a move would be a “dangerous escalation”.
“I don’t think it is right to have NATO soldiers killing Russian soldiers,” the foreign secretary said in an interview in the western city of Lviv on Friday, having met President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other top ministers in Kyiv on Thursday.
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Moscow rages over Cameron remarks
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, shakes hands with Lord Cameron this week. Pic: Ukrainian Presidential Press Office/AP
Lord Cameron made the two-day trip to reaffirm the UK’s commitment to Ukraine, which most recently includes a promise to transfer more of the British military’s own stockpiles of weapons, including precision-guided bombs and air defence missiles.
The UK has also promised at least £3bn worth of military assistance annually.
But Western nations are failing to deliver munitions to Ukraine’s frontline as quickly as Russia is rearming its military, with Russian troops gaining ground in the east in recent months.
President Putin put his economy on a war footing when he launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 – something NATO allies are only slowly starting to move towards.
Rishi Sunak said last week he would increase UK defence spending to 2.5% of national income by 2030 – claiming this equated to an additional £75bn in investment.
He also said he was putting the UK defence industry on a “war footing” and added £10bn of new funding would be dedicated to domestic munitions production over the next decade.
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‘We need to build up our own stocks’
Asked how Britain could force defence companies like BAE Systems, Thales and Babcock – that have to answer to their shareholders, not the government – to increase production lines at the required rate and scale without some kind of legislation to force them to act, Lord Cameron revealed the plan for a new envoy for defence production.
“There is a specific munitions strategy of £10bn which will do exactly what you are talking about – the ramping up of production,” he said.
“But crucially I think we can go further than that in terms of a specific defence envoy with the ability from the prime minister to go out and make sure we are doing those muti-year deals with the defence suppliers because we need not only to provide more weapons to Ukraine, we need to build up our own stocks.
“So this is very important, it is a national priority.
“The prime minister is giving the lead and I think the industry will respond.”
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Pushed on whether the new envoy – whose identity has not yet been revealed – would be the modern-day equivalent of someone like Lord Beaverbrook, who was tasked with expanding aircraft production during the Second World War, Lord Cameron said: “It is the 21st century so there won’t be a Lord Beaverbrook.”
But he signalled that the envoy’s ability to approach industry with a commitment to fund multi-year contracts for munitions would be key – and could also drive down cost.
“It is possible to go to the defence contractors and say to them: ‘You are not going to get the price you might have hoped for year after year after year because we are going to make a contract with you over the coming years to make sure we replenish our ammunition, our artillery, our long rage fires, our missiles’ – those crucial things vital for Ukraine but also vital for our own defence.”
As for why the government needed to appoint a specific envoy to this role, Lord Cameron said: “You need I think to have that direct line to the prime minister to make sure we are making this the national priority it clearly is.”
Cameron warns of ‘dangerous future’
Turning to the war in Ukraine, the foreign secretary said Europe faced “two futures” – one in which Ukrainian forces, backed by Western weapons, are able to push out the Russian invaders and secure what he called a “just peace”.
“That is a footing on which you can see great security and prosperity for us and for Europe,” he said.
But he warned: “A future in which Putin is successful and Ukraine is pushed back is I think a very dangerous future.”
Nations such as Moldova and even the NATO states of the Baltics would be worried that President Putin might turn his attention towards them next, Lord Cameron said.
In addition, the authoritarian regimes in Iran and China would be watching closely.
“I think we are at an absolutely crucial tipping point in global affairs,” Lord Cameron added.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has renewed his demand for Rishi Sunak to go to the polls after the prime minister suffered a by-election drubbing and bruising council losses across England.
But while Mr Sunak said the the grim early results were “disappointing” for the Conservatives, he insisted he was “focused completely on the job at hand” and is certain to seize on the party holding the Tees Valley mayoralty.
Sky News elections analyst Professor Michael Thrasher has warned the Conservatives could be on course for one of their worst-ever performances.
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The results as they come in
Pic: PA
Buoyed by council gains in key battleground areas like Hartlepool, Rushmoor in Hampshire, Redditch in the West Midlands and Thurrock in Essex, Sir Keir declared the “seismic win” for Labour in the Blackpool South by-election “a direct message to the prime minister”.
Highlighting the swing of 26.33% from the Tories in the Lancashire seat, the opposition leader told Sky News: “There’s no denying the mood of the country now is for change. And I think it’s for the prime minister to allow the country to express that change now in a general election.”
But speaking at a military base in North Yorkshire, Mr Sunak said: “Obviously it’s disappointing to lose good, hard-working Conservative councillors and I’m grateful to them for all their service in local government, keeping council tax low and delivering services for local people.”
He also stressed there were “lots of results to come”.
One of those was the Tees Valley mayoral contest, which saw Tory incumbent Ben Houchen re-elected in the face of a concerted Labour challenge.
The Conservative peer held the role with the a majority of 18,789 votes.
Speaking to Sky News earlier, Conservative Party chairman Richard Holden said it had been a “tough night”, but insisted that “when we’re facing those tough challenges we’ve got the right man for the job”.
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On the potential threat of Conservative MPs choosing to oust Mr Sunak, Mr Holden added: “Parliamentary colleagues need to look at this and see… and wait through the weekend as well.”
Mr Holden sought to highlight local issues at play, insisting the Blackpool South by-election took place in “particularly difficult” circumstances following the resignation of former Tory MP Scott Benton after a lobbying scandal.
Key results include:
- Labour won Rushmoor in Hampshire for the first time
- The party also claimed the council in general election bellwether Redditch
- Labour won Hartlepool council, regaining ground after a Westminster by-election disaster there in 2021
- Labour also won Thurrock, one of its top targets
- The Tories clung on by a single seat in Harlow, Essex – a council targeted by Sir Keir on the eve of polling
- Conservatives lost control of North East Lincolnshire
- Labour replace the Tories as the largest party on Peterborough Council
- Labour lost control in Oldham, which has a large Muslim population, amid anger over Labour’s stance on Gaza
- In Cumbria, a Labour police and crime commissioner was elected, at the expense of the Tories
- Labour also beat the Conservatives in the police and crime commissioner race in Avon and Somerset
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