Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has distanced himself from Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s criticism of the Metropolitan Police.
Speaking this morning, Mr Hunt said: “The words that she used are not words that I myself would have used.”
In her article in The Times published on Wednesday, Ms Braverman likened pro-Palestinian demonstrations to marches seen in Northern Ireland, and accused the Met of holding “double standards” and being more lenient to left-wing protests.
Yesterday morning, Downing Street claimed it had full confidence in the home secretary – although she has come under considerable criticism from within her party since.
Mr Hunt said he had always given money to the home secretary to fund the police, and said the prime minister still had confidence in her.
One senior minister told Sky’s political editor Beth Rigby that “we can’t continue like this”.
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They added that Downing Street might be waiting until the judgement on the legality of the Rwanda scheme which is set to be handed down on Wednesday next week.
The minister told Beth the relationship with the police is “very damaged” and “credibility generally is low. Delay makes the government look weak, unfortunately”.
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Braverman asked if she will resign
Education minister Robert Halfon was asked repeatedly this morning if Rishi Sunak had confidence in his home secretary by Sky News, but was unable to answer.
Instead, he said it was the prime minister’s focus to ensure “remembrance services go ahead peacefully”.
On three occasions, he refused to confirm if Mr Sunak backed his home secretary.
Asked about the articlepublished in The Times on Wednesday evening – which Downing Street did not clear – Mr Halfon said there was an internal investigation into how it made it into print without sign-off from the prime minister’s team.
Mr Sunak had wanted the marches called off, but following a meeting on Wednesday with Sir Mark Rowley agreed they could go ahead.
If the Met feels it cannot staff the demonstrations properly, it can apply to the home secretary who can then ban them from taking place.
Some parts of the Conservative Party are being very vocal in their support of Ms Braverman, including Conservative deputy chairman Lee Anderson.
He appeared to join in her criticism of the Met, posting on social media that the home secretary had not “took the knee on Whitehall while BLM riot”.
Mr Anderson added that it was Labour MPs who “want her sacked” that did this, but the Met also came under considerable criticism at the time for kneeling during Black Lives Matter demonstrations.
Darren Jones, Labour’s shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, told Sky News that Ms Braverman was “weaponising” the issue for her “own personal ambitions”.
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Responding to Mr Anderson’s tweet, Mr Jones said the Conservative Party spokesman was claiming the public would be happy for politicians to decide on an ideological basis “what issue can be protested and what issue can’t be protested”.
“I’m sorry, that’s not the way that our democracy works,” he added.
Mr Jones said the demonstrations should go ahead, but should “not disrupt” remembrance services.
The girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was stabbed in the back and the arm after going to the class with her younger sister.
She is now campaigning for children to have mandatory first aid training at school in response to the growth of knife crime.
She said she clearly remembers what happened that day.
Image: Flowers and tributes near the scene of the attack a year ago. Pic: PA
“Some of the girls were sat down in a circle making bracelets with the teachers, and a couple of them were getting up to get beads. I was standing between two tables and he came through the doors.
“He stabbed a little girl in front of me and then came for me and stabbed my arm. I turned and then he stabbed my back, even though I didn’t feel it at the time.
“There was a bunch of girls huddled around so I just started pushing them down the stairs, telling them to get out and run.
“I was thinking ‘Where’s my sister?’ and ‘We need to get out’.”
She and many of the other victims ran to the house of a neighbour for shelter. “I just thought that I was going to die,” she said.
Killer ‘looked possessed’
The girl said she can clearly picture Rudakubana that day.
“What I remember most about him is his eyes. They just didn’t look human, they looked possessed. It was kind of like a dream and you’re on a movie set and watching yourself go through it and make these decisions.
“It’s just kind of like adrenaline. People like to think they know what they’d do in that situation but, in reality, you don’t until you’re in it.”
Image: Alice da Silva Aguiar, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Bebe King were murdered in the attack
Six-year-old Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe, who was seven, and nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar died in the attack. It is something she finds difficult to talk about.
“I don’t think I can express how I feel about it,” the girl said. “A lot of anger and sadness.”
In January, Rudakubana was jailed for life and must serve a minimum of 52 years before he can be considered for release.
The chairman of the public inquiry into the atrocity called the attack “one of the most egregious crimes in our country’s history”.
Carrying knives ‘disgusting’
The girl who survived has now launched a campaign, supported by a clothing range called “Go Anywhere, Be Anything” to raise funds, to improve the ability of schoolchildren to help in the event of knife attacks.
“Everyone that’s going out and carrying knives is getting younger and younger,” she said. “And to think that it’s people my age is like disgusting.
“I just want to try and do the best I can to let people know that it’s not okay to do that and that they need to think about what they’re doing and the risks and how they’re harming themselves and other people.”
Her sister, who was also there that day, helped design “Go Anywhere, Be Anything”.
A three-minute silence will be held in Southport at 3pm to mark one year on from the attack. In an open letter to the community, Sefton Council wrote: “This period is incredibly hard for the families of Alice, Bebe and Elsie and all of those children and adults injured or who suffered lifelong psychological impact of witnessing the attack, and we acknowledge the huge impact on their lives, too.
“We must not forget the local people who rushed to support and to our emergency responders. They all remain always in our thoughts.”
It is a sentiment shared by the survivor.
“You live in fear every day that it could happen again,” she said.
“Physically I’m getting better every day and healing. Obviously, my scars stay as a reminder but everyone from that day is going to have mental scars forever.”
The scale of cheap Chinese e-commerce imports flown into Britain without paying any tariffs has become clearer following a Sky News investigation into this new multi-billion pound phenomenon.
We have uncovered the first official estimate of the value of so-called “de minimis” imports into Britain, ahead of an official inquiry into whether this legal clause – which excludes packages worth less than £135 from paying customs duties – should be allowed to continue.
Companies like Shein and Temu have become big players in British retail, not to mention elsewhere around the world, by manufacturing cheap products in China and then posting them directly to consumers, benefiting from the de minimis rules.
Clothing manufacturers in the UK claim that de minimis makes it nearly impossible to compete with these Chinese competitors, raising questions about the viability of domestic textile and apparel production.
However, economists argue that the main beneficiaries of the policy to exclude cheap imports from customs are lower-income households, since it allows them to spend less on their shopping. Removing it, they say, would disproportionately affect poorer families.
The government has committed to an inquiry into the rules, which are also being changed in the EU and the US, but up until now there has been no official estimate of its scale.
According to HM Revenue and Customs data released to Sky News following a Freedom of Information request, the total declared trade value of de minimis imports into the UK in the last fiscal year (2024-25) was £5.9bn.
That was a 53% increase on the previous year (£3.9bn), underlining the scale of growth of e-commerce imports into the UK.
While it is hard to gauge how much revenue this means the Treasury has forgone, an illustrative 20% tariff on flows of that order could raise more than £1bn.
While that sum alone would not fill the fiscal black hole faced by Chancellor Rachel Reeves in the coming budget, it would nonetheless be nearly enough to pay for the government’s recent U-turn on winter fuel allowances.
Sky has also obtained the first television access deep into the supply chain, helping bring those goods into the UK, as it boarded a flight that had just travelled from Chongqing to Bournemouth Airport.
We filmed inside the belly of a plane belonging to European Cargo, one of a number of air cargo firms booming as a result of these trade flows.
The untold story about de minimis is that it hasn’t just had an impact on shopping habits in the UK, or for that matter, the textiles manufacturing sector – it has also changed patterns of distribution.
Struggling regional airports that never saw their passenger numbers recover after the pandemic are now re-establishing themselves as hubs for cargo.
European Cargo is now the single biggest airline at Bournemouth Airport, despite not carrying a single passenger.
Other regional airports like East Midlands Airport and Prestwick in Scotland are seeing rapid growth in flows of trade.
All of which raises the stakes for the government’s inquiry into the de minimis system.
At present, there is no timeline for its decision, but removing the clause would have far-reaching effects across the economy.
The team’s open-top bus will travel along The Mall from 12.10pm.
It will end with a staged ceremony at the Queen Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace, which is expected to start at roughly 12.30pm and end at 1pm, the Football Association (FA) announced.
The Royal Marines Portsmouth band and the Central Band of the Royal Air Force will perform on the stage and highlights from the tournament will be shown on big screens.
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Liberal Democrats leader Ed Davey was one of those who asked the prime minister if it was “time for that bank holiday”.
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He was referring to comments made by Sir Keir in 2023. When, as leader of the opposition, he wrote on X that there “should be a celebratory bank holiday if the Lionesses bring it home”.
But with estimates suggesting an extra bank holiday would cost the economy £2.4bn, it’s understood such a move isn’t being planned by Downing Street.
‘There is no stopping them now’
The impact of the Lionesses second consecutive Euros title is already being felt across the UK.
At Bearsted Football Club in Maidstone, Kent, a mural of Alessia Russo, who levelled Sunday’s final with a goal in the 56th minute, has been unveiled.
Image: Alessia Russo scoring the levelling goal. Pic: Reuters
The club is where Russo first started playing, and chairman Jamie Houston told Sky News the Lionesses have helped transform the women’s game.
“Five years ago we never had a girl’s football team,” he told Sky correspondent Mollie Malone. “Now we have five separate teams for girls, and boys are accepting of more girls in the game.
“There is no stopping them now.”
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Lynda Hale, who played in the England squad in the first ever international women’s match against Scotland in 1972, reiterated that women’s football has changed drastically since she played.
“When I first started playing there was hardly anyone that would watch,” she told Sky News Breakfast.
“To put on the England shirt and think what we started has grown to this magnitude, and it is still going to grow, is absolutely fantastic. I think the sky’s the limit in women’s football.”
Asked what advice she would have for the current England squad after their win, Ms Hale said: “The girls need to make as many memories as they can and take everything in their stride.”