Labour lost 37,000 more members during 2023, leaving its total membership at 370,450 at the end of the year.

Although it still has the most members of any UK party, the figure is significantly down from a peak of 532,046 at the end of 2019.

The Liberal Democrats saw their membership fall by around 11,000 to 86,599, though the party said it had seen a rise in new members since its gains in July's general election.

The Conservatives do not publish membership figures, but their income from membership fees fell from £1.97m to £1.5m.

However, the Green Party saw its membership remain stable at around 53,000.

Reform UK said its membership had grown "significantly", although it did not publish figures.
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In a turbulent year for the Scottish National Party, which saw the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon as leader and an ongoing police investigation into the party's finances, its membership fell by around 18,000 to 64,525.

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Reeves intends to introduce a 10-year formula in October’s Budget that will increase annual rents in England by the CPI measure of inflation — currently 2.2 per cent — plus an additional 1 per cent, according to government insiders.

The move is aimed at encouraging the building of more affordable homes by providing certainty over cash flows to housing associations and councils — which are grappling with heavy debt burdens and large maintenance backlogs.

In recent years local authorities have almost stopped building homes, leaving housing associations — not-for-profit organisations — to build most new social housing in the UK.

The government sets rent levels in subsidised social housing using a national formula. Guaranteeing higher rents will delight housing associations but could worsen the cost of living for millions of tenants and could land the government with a much higher benefits bill.
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The previous Conservative government made a similar promise in the early 2010s but ministers subsequently ripped it up on several occasions.

David Cameron’s coalition set a 10-year annual rent settlement in 2012 based on the retail price index, plus 0.5 per cent. But then-chancellor George Osborne reneged on the agreement in 2015 with four years of below-inflation increases in order to reduce housing benefit costs for the Treasury.

More recently, the Conservative government announced a five-year settlement of CPI plus 1 per cent in 2020, but was then forced to cap rent increases at 7 per cent following a jump in inflation to more than 11 per cent in 2022. It extended the settlement for one further year this April.

Although that provided relief for the 30 per cent of the 4mn households in the social housing sector whose rent is not covered by housing benefit, it put further pressure on already cash-strapped providers.
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Labour has made big commitments to address the UK’s chronic affordable housing shortage that has left a record 109,000 households in England living in temporary accommodation, including more than 142,000 children, according to the latest government data.

Angela Rayner, the UK’s deputy prime minister and secretary of state for housing, told MPs last month that the Budget would provide “rent stability” to help deliver the “biggest increase in affordable house building in a generation”. She also promised “appropriate protections” for tenants against exceptional rent rises.

Guaranteeing rent certainty was a critical demand of 20 of the UK’s largest local council landlords who published a report last month warning that England’s council housing system was “broken”.

It warned that councils were facing a £2.2bn “black hole” in housing budgets by 2028, partly as a result of the Osborne-era cuts that they estimated had reduced council landlords’ rent revenue by £2.4bn between 2016 and 2020.

The new-build Perry Barr estate, described by local people as a ghost town, with many flats standing empty for more than a year, was intended to be an athletes’ village for the Commonwealth Games, which Birmingham hosted in 2022.

Due to delays caused by Covid, the development was not completed in time for the event so athletes were housed in student accommodation. The council said the Perry Barr apartments would become homes for local people instead.

But the properties have sat empty for months, with the council unable to sell them due to a lack of “market appetite” for one- and two-bedroom apartments in the area, and issues with mortgage providers valuing the properties at less than they were being sold for.

A report presented to the council’s cabinet last week said selling off 755 properties to a private bidder, who has yet to be named, would result in a “significant loss to the public purse” but was the best outcome.
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The council has spent £325m on the development, of which £292m was borrowed. After selling off the homes, it is expected that £142m-£152m of debt will remain unpaid, costing £8m-£9m a year over a 40-year period to repay, taking the projected total loss in the region of £320m.

The multi-millionaire businessman admits he set up a family trust in the Channel Islands tax haven of Jersey more than three decades ago.
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Tice said the trust, called the RJS Tice Family Settlement, was set up to avoid being “double taxed” on his “international investments”.

He would not tell us what "international investments" were in the trust. But in 2016, when it was still offshore in Jersey, Tice transferred one million of his shares in his UK property business Quidnet Reit Limited into the trust.

Quidnet owns £32m worth of commercial property in the UK and the trust now owns a 17% stake which is worth around £3m. Tice told us the beneficiaries of the trust were his three children with his ex-wife and insisted they are all UK taxpayers like him.

The trust was listed by Tice’s company Quidnet as having an address in Jersey as recently as July 2021. Tice said this was just a “correspondence address” and that he had already brought the trust onshore to the UK. But our investigation with the Good Law Project raises awkward questions for Mr Tice and his Reform UK party who present themselves as patriots standing up against “elites”.
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We asked Tice why he accused [union boss Steve Hedley] of libel, he told us: “Because he was alleging/insinuating illegal activity.” We have found a separate company registered in Jersey linked to Tice. Gellymill Limited, with the same Jersey office address as the trust, lent £125,000 to Quidnet in 2022.

Tice told us he was not a director of Gellymill but admitted: “Gellymill is under my ultimate control.” Mr Tice was elected as the MP for Boston and Skegness in last month's general election and is required to declare details of his financial interests, which will be published later this month.

The rules state that MPs must register "formal unpaid roles such as an unpaid directorship, a directorship of a company not currently trading, or a trusteeship".

They must also declare any companies that they own more than 15% of, or shares worth more than £70,000. Mr Tice initially told us he was not declaring Gellymill as he is “not a director so not needed”.

He later added that “as you have asked and taken an interest, I have voluntarily declared to Parliament Authorities the Family Settlement trust which includes Gellymill, even though strictly according to the rules I do not have to”. Asked about his trust in Jersey, he said: "It's been relocated to the UK.

"I was living abroad at the time back in 1990 and it was unclear if I would ever come back to the UK. It is very simple. The reason for the Jersey trust was to avoid double taxation on international investments as I have been an international businessman for much of my career but always UK taxpayer. I have always been a UK taxpayer, as have my children. It was set up when I was living in Paris."

The skipper of a Royal Navy 'bomber boat' submarine that carries nuclear missiles has been given the boot. Top brass saw an X-rated video he made while on duty, according to reports.

The Sun reported that he was in command of a Vanguard-class nuclear submarine, armed with Trident Two missiles, when he shared the graphic vid with a junior sailor on the sub. It is not clear which of the four Vanguard subs – HMS Vanguard, Vengeance, Victorious and Vigilant – he skippered.

Colleagues alleged that the pair had an illicit physical relationship when the bomber boat was at sea, but a Royal Navy source reportedly told the aforementioned title that sex on board did not form part of the investigation.

Cabinet ministers have been ordered to search for cost-cutting reforms and prepare for difficult decisions over spending, as chancellor Rachel Reeves and her team formally begin the process of compiling a pivotal review of public spending.

The chancellor has already made clear that she is planning to raise taxes and take tough decisions on welfare and spending in what will be a crucial autumn for the new Labour government. She will present her first budget and a spending review setting departmental budgets for this year and next.

Despite her surprise decision last month to end universal winter fuel allowance payments to pensioners as part of plans to close what she described as a £22bn black hole in spending, it is understood £16bn is still needed to bridge the gap this year.

Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the Treasury, has now written to cabinet ministers ordering them to find reforms and deploy technology that can save cash. He has also warned that funding will only be prioritised for the “first steps” announced by Keir Starmer during the election campaign – reducing NHS waiting lists, launching a new border security command, teacher recruitment and cracking down on antisocial behaviour.

All spending requests will be tested against whether they will help deliver these priorities by the new “mission boards” already set up in Whitehall by Starmer. While insiders would not be drawn on whether departments are being asked to draw up cuts, the demand for reform and innovation suggests some will be asked to provide the same services for considerably less in some areas.
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She is planning to slash fraud and error from the welfare system, and to cut down on government consultancy contracts. But those moves alone will be far from enough to make the savings or revenue increases she is seeking. Capital gains tax, relief on pension contributions and inheritance tax have all been raised as possible cash-raising targets. Reeves has also refused to rule out tweaking fiscal rules in a way that would give her slightly more room for investment spending.

James Cleverly and Dame Priti Patel are the only candidates whose names are widely recognised, according to a BMG Research poll for [I].

Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick, the two favourites in the race, are familiar to fewer than half of voters with Tom Tugendhat and Mel Stride also relatively little known, the survey found.

Asked who they would like to see win the leadership election which concludes in November, two thirds of the public said they did not know or had no preference – suggesting most voters are not engaging with the process.

Even among Conservative voters, almost half declined to name a preferred candidate from the six contenders. Mr Cleverly, the former Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary, came out top among Tories with 15 per cent of the votes and ex-Security Minister Mr Tugendhat was second on 12 per cent. No other candidate attracted as much as 10 per cent support from Conservative backers.

Among voters as a whole, the most popular candidate was Mr Cleverly with 8 per cent, with 61 per cent saying they had heard of him, behind only Dame Priti on 82 per cent name recognition. 49 per cent knew of Ms Badenoch, the former Business Secretary, 44 per cent recognised Mr Tugendhat, 42 per cent had heard of ex-Immigration Minister Mr Jenrick, and just 30 per cent said they could identify Mr Stride, the former Work and Pensions Secretary who is the dark horse in the contest.
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A poll of members by the website Conservative Home last week found that Ms Badenoch is the favourite among activists with the support of 38 per cent, followed by Mr Jenrick on 19 per cent.