Starmer attacks Reform UK for proposing to abolish the Online Safety Act. He says:

[Reform’s position] is disgusting on this. This is weaponising images of women and children that should never be made. And that’s why we’re acting.

Reform not only refuse to do anything about it. But more than that, if they would scrap the Online Safety Act that stops children accessing content like pornography, suicide, self-harm and eating disorders, [that’s an] absolute disgrace.

Emma Darlington (Lab) says Elon Musk has climbed down today under pressure from this government, according to reports today. But will the government ensure it takes action against any social media companies allowing abuse like this.

Starmer says the government has made it clear that it will not back down.

He says he has been told today X is complying to ensure full compliance with UK law. If that is happening, it is to be welcome. But he says this will be monitored.

UPDATE: Starmer said:

I have been informed this morning that X is acting to ensure full compliance with UK law. If so, that is welcome, but we’re not going to back down. They must act. We will take the necessary measures. We will strengthen existing laws and prepare for legislation if it needs to go further, and Ofcom will continue its independent investigation.

PMQs is starting soon. Kemi Badenoch has an obvious attack line.

Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.

Ben Quinn is a Guardian political correspondent.

Clarence Mitchell, the former BBC journalist who was a spokesman for Madeline McCann’s parents, is among the latest group of mainly Tory councillors to defect to Reform UK.

Mitchell, a former leader of Reading Borough Council, was one at least 20 members of a range of local authorities announced this morning as the latest recruits from the Conservatives after former Chancellor Nadhim Zahawai was unveiled as a recruit to Nigel Farage’s party on Monday. Reform has been unveiling names on its social media feed all morning, and the announcements are still coming.

Mitchell said he had been a member of the Conservative party for 16 years and now believed Reform was the only part that could truly represent what he described as “the authentic values that are fundamental to our country’s recovery and its restoration of pride”. He added:

Many voters have lost all faith in our politics, and they feel deeply let down that their concerns are not being listened to such as the cost of living, illegal immigration, the rise of woke-ism and an ever-encroaching level of State interference.

Other defections from the Tories announced by Reform today give Farage’s party new footholds in local government.

They include the defections of three Merseyside councillors who had previously represented the Wirral Council’s Tory group. Graham Davies, Kathryn Hodson and Andrew Hodson become Reform’s first group of elected councillors on the local authority, which currently does not have a ruling majority party.

Elsewhere, others included David Hawley, formerly a Green party member of St Helens Borough council. A supporter of Brexit and of lowering immigration, he said his views no longer align with the Greens.

The defections bring the total number of Reform councillors across the UK to more than 960. The new ones include at least 14 who were sitting as Tories and five independents, including some who had originally been elected as Conservatives.

Robert Booth is the Guardian’s UK technology editor.

MPs have criticised the government’s slowness in banning AI nudification tools and warned that its plan to do so may not go far enough and cover multi-purpose image generators like Grok, which has triggered a wave of outrage.

The technology secretary Liz Kendall has written to MPs to say the ban on nudification tools – confirmed in a statement to the Commons on Monday – “will apply to applications that have one despicable purpose only: to use generative AI to turn images of real people into fake nude pictures and videos without their permission”. She offered no date, but said ministers will bring forward legislation “as a priority” via amendments to the crime and policing bill currently in parliament.

Kendall called the tools “disgusting” and said new legislation will allow the police to target the firms and individuals who design and supply them.

But Chi Onwuruh, the Labour chair of the commons technology select committee, asked:

Why, then, has it taken so long to introduce the nudification ban, when reports of these disturbing Grok deepfakes appeared in August 2025?

In a statement issued on behalf of the committee, she also warned it was “unclear whether this ban - which appears to be limited to apps that have the sole function of generating nude images - will cover multi-purpose tools like Grok”.

A make-or-break auction for the UK government’s goal to create a clean electricity system by 2030 has awarded subsidy contracts to enough offshore windfarms to power a record 12m homes, Jillian Ambrose reports.

Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, has written an article for the Guardian about the significance of this news. Here is an extract.

We know that bills rocketed when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine because in the international fossil fuel markets, Britain is a price-taker, not a price-maker. Renewables and nuclear, on the other hand, offer us a chance for Britain to stand on our own two feet in the world – making and setting the price of our own energy.

Over the last year and a half, a well-funded rightwing network has waged a relentless war against this argument. When Keir Starmer set out our mission for clean power by 2030, they said it couldn’t be done, or that even if it could it was the wrong choice.

Today’s historic offshore wind auction has proved the doubters wrong. The government has secured a record-breaking 8.4GW of offshore wind, enough to power the equivalent of more than 12m homes, the largest amount of offshore wind procured in any auction ever in Britain, or indeed Europe.

And here is the full article.

There is a possible link here to the U-turn controversy. Sam Freedman says there is no point in Keir Starmer trying to clear the “barnacles off the boat” if there isn’t a boat, or voters can’t see one. (See 8.46am.) But Miliband thinks the government does have a boat. He published a book called Go Big five years ago, and he argues that Labour does have a clear, defining strategy.

Reform UK and the Conservatives want to wage war on clean energy, leaving Britain strapped to the fossil fuel rollercoaster, destroying the clean energy jobs we are creating and betraying our young people and future generations by giving up on tackling the climate crisis.

Labour is brave enough to face down the naysayers because clean power is the right choice for lower bills, energy security, good jobs and the climate. Today we’ve proved the doubters wrong again – and we will continue to do so.

Here are extracts from three interesting comment articles about the digital ID U-turn.

Ailbhe Rea in the New Statesman in the New Statesmans says there were high hopes for the policy when it was first announced.

I remember a leisurely lunch over the summer when a supporter of digital IDs told me how they thought Keir Starmer would reset his premiership. Alongside a reorganisation of his team in Number 10, and maybe a junior ministerial reshuffle, they predicted he would announce in his speech at party conference that his government would be embracing digital IDs. “It will allow him to show he’s willing to do whatever it takes to tackle illegal immigration,” was their rationale.

Sure enough, Starmer announced “phase two” of his government, reshuffled his top team and, on the Friday before Labour party conference, he duly announced his government would make digital IDs mandatory for workers. “We need to know who is in our country,” he said, arguing that the IDs would prevent migrants who “come here, slip into the shadow economy and remain here illegally”.

By the time he announced the plan, however, it was dead on arrival. Much like the reshuffle, now described by one senior Labour figure as “the worst reshuffle in the history of the Labour party” because of the discontent it fomented, the digital ID scheme has barely been mentioned since.

Stephen Bush in the Financial Times says making digital ID compulsory was a mistake.

In policy terms, I don’t think you particularly gain anything by making the government’s planned new digital ID compulsory.

One example of that: Kemi Badenoch has both criticised the government’s plans to introduce compulsory ID, while at the same time committing to creating a “British ICE” that would go around deporting large numbers of people living in the UK. In a country with that kind of target and approach, people would be forced to carry their IDs around with them in any case! The Online Safety Act, passed into law by the last Conservative government with cross-party support and implemented by Labour, presupposes some form of ID to work properly.

Making digital ID compulsory removes the incentive to make it genuinely useful for people. The challenge for the government ought to be: how can it create something that serves the citizen well enough — and offers such clear consumer benefit — that we proactively choose “the government’s digital ID” over the vast number of documents we have already to prove who we are.

Chris Mason at the BBC says the rising number of U-turns are becoming a problem for Keir Starmer.

Here is the political challenge for Downing Street: the climbdowns, dilutions, U- turns, about turns, call them what you will, are mounting up.

In just the last couple of weeks, there has been the issue of business rates on pubs in England and inheritance tax on farmers.

Before that, among others, income tax, benefits cuts and winter fuel payments.

Sir Keir Starmer’s critics, external and internal, are taking note.

Just hours before this latest backtracking, the Health Secretary Wes Streeting – who’d quite fancy being prime minister himself one day – said it was important the government “gets it right first time”.

That, to put it very politely, is a work in progress for Sir Keir Starmer.

And Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, says the digitial ID U-turn is a victory for liberty.

Keir Starmer has abandoned plans for the Digital ID to be compulsory.

This is a victory for individual liberty against a ghastly, authoritarian government.

Reform UK would scrap it altogether.

Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, has welcomed the digitial ID U-turn. In a post on Bluesky, he says:

The Government have u-turned on ID Cards.

Good.

Authoritarian plans to scrap jury trials need to go next.

Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, has also been giving inteviews this morning. Like Rachel Reeves (see 9.13am), she played down the significance of the digital ID U-turn. She told Times Radio:

We will still have mandatory digital right-to-work checks. The form of digital ID … the nature of the material that is presented could be either the digital ID on somebody’s phone [the new document proposed by the government, sometimes referred to as a “card” although not a physical card, that would have been mandatory for workers] … or it could be another form of digital documentation which contains proof of your right to work.

When it was put to her that the government had performed a “massive U-turn”, she replied:

You say that this is some sort of massive U-turn. We said that we would have digital checks on people for right to work. That’s what we are continuing to do ... Those are the things that we said that we would deliver for the electorate. Change takes time.

Craig Guildford, the West Midlands chief constable who is fighting for his job over claims his force misled MPs about the intelligence used to justify its call for Maccabi Tel Aviv fans to be banned from a Villa Park match last year, has apologised to the Commons home affairs committee over a mistake in evidence given to it.

He offered a “profound apology” in a letter written Monday, and it has been published today.

Earlier this morning, referring to the statement that Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, will make to MPs about this later, a Home Office spokesperson said:

The home secretary has this morning received the chief inspectorate’s findings into the recommendation by West Midlands Police to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from attending a match against Aston Villa.

She will carefully consider the letter and will make a statement in the House of Commons in response later today.

As Vikram Dodd reports, Simon Foster, the Labour West Midlands police and crime commissioner, who is the only person who can sack Guildford, has criticised MPs on the home affairs committee for allegedly briefing journalists that Guildford should be ousted, despite the fact their inquiry into the controversy continues.

Dodd says:

Sources say [Foster] has an open mind about Guildford’s fate and wants to read the HMIC [His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary] and home affairs committee findings before he decides the fate of the chief constable, whom he has praised for cutting crime and improving the force.

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has accused the media of exaggerating the extent of the digital ID U-turn.

In an interview on BBC Breakfast this morning, she said:

On the digital ID, for starters, I do think this story has been a bit overwritten.

We are saying that you will need mandatory digital ID to be able to work in the UK.

Now the difference is whether that has to be one piece of ID, a digital ID card, or whether it could be an e-visa or an e-passport, and we’re pretty relaxed about what form that takes …

I don’t think most people mind whether it is one piece of digital ID or a form of digital ID that can be verified.

When it was put to her that repeated U-turns undermined confidence in the government, she replied:

The key thing is where you’re trying to go. Our government, this government, our focus is on growing the economy and improving living standards for working people.

On the Today programme David Blunkett, a Labour home secretary under Tony Blair and a strong supporter of ID cards, said he was disappointed but not surprised by the digitial ID U-turn. Blunkett said.

I’m disappointed, but I’m not surprised.

I’m not surprised because the original announcement was not followed by a narrative or supportive statements or any kind of strategic plan which involved other ministers and those who are committed to this actually making the case.

And, as a consequence, those who are opposed to the scheme for all kinds of nefarious and very different reasons – some of them inexplicable – were able to mobilise public opinion and to get the online opposition to it up and running.

So, very sadly, it’s an indication of a failure to be able to enunciate why this policy mattered, to be able to follow through with a detail of how it would work, and then to reinforce that by a plan and communication of action.

And, when you failed to do all those things, it’s not surprising in the end, this thing runs into the sand.

Blunkett is right to say that Keir Starmer announced plans for digital ID (cards were not part of it – despite the scheme regularly being described in those terms) in a fairly haphazard manner. Digital ID was not in Labour’s manifesto. Starmer announced the proposal in a surprise speech last autumn, just before Labour’s conference. He presented it as a major change. But the following week, in his conference speech, he did not mention it, and he did not build support for it in the party.

At least, when he announced the plan, it was popular. But then public support for it collapsed, leading to claims that Starmer had a “reverse Midas touch”, as Eleni Courea reported at the time. In October she wrote:

Net support for digital ID cards fell from 35% in the early summer to -14% at the weekend after Starmer’s announcement, according to polling by More in Common.

The findings suggest that the proposal has suffered considerably from its association with an unpopular government. In June, 53% of voters surveyed said they were in favour of digital ID cards for all Britons, while 19% were opposed.

Good morning. Keir Starmer has performed another U-turn – on compulsory digital ID. Here is Peter Walker and Pippa Crerar’s overnight story.

A few days ago Noah Keate from Politico listed seven major U-turns the government has already performed. Today’s news takes that tally to eight, although, if you were being harsh, you could probably find more, because government always involves adjusting to circumstances, and so plans always change. But these a big, proper U-turns, in the usual meaning of the word as applied to politics – significant reversals on signature policy.

U-turns normally allow the opposition to enjoy saying ‘we told you so’, and there has been a lot of that overnight. This is from Kemi Badenoch.

The Prime Minister is ‘turning the corner’...straight into another u-turn.

Good riddance. It was a terrible policy anyway.

This is from her shadow Cabinet Office minister Mike Wood.

While we welcome the scrapping of any mandatory identification, this is yet another humiliating U-turn from the government. Keir Starmer’s spinelessness is becoming a pattern, not an exception.

What was sold as a tough measure to tackle illegal working is now set to become yet another costly, ill-thought-out experiment abandoned at the first sign of pressure from Labour’s backbenches.

And this is from Lisa Smart, the Lib Dem Cabinet Office spokesperson.

Number 10 must be bulk ordering motion sickness tablets at this rate to cope with all their U-turns.

It was clear right from the start this was a proposal doomed to failure, that would have cost obscene amounts of taxpayers money to deliver absolutely nothing.

The political debate about the merits or otherwise of this was captured last in a good exchange of tweets (Bluesky tweets) between my colleague Pippa Crerar and Sam Freedman, the Comment is Freed substacker and policy expert. At the start of a thread, Pippa said:

Remember Lynton Crosby’s “barnacles off the boat” strategy? At 2010 and 2015 elections the Tories successfully shed unpopular policies and perceptions that hindered their electoral appeal. Instead, they focused on core messages they believed would help win over floating voters. It worked.

This is the argument used by governments of all kind down the ages to justify U-turns – take the short-term hit, because in the longer term you are better off if you ditch an unpopular policy.

But Freedman, replying to this post, said:

Unfortunately to make this strategy work you need a boat.

By this he means there is no point Starmer ditching his unpopular policies if no-one knows what his core, popular ones are.

Starmer would argue he has got a boat; he explained it to cabinet yesterday, reducing the cost of living. But Labour MPs fear that voters either have not got the message, or aren’t impressed by it.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.

After 12.30pm: Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, makes a statement to MPs about West Midlands police and their support for Maccabi Tel Aviv fans being banned from the match against Aston Villa last year. She will present the results of an inquiry by the police inspectorate into how WMP justified the decision. Craig Guildford, the chief constable, has been accused of giving misleading information to MPs about the intelligence used to justify the decision, and, although Mahmood does not hhiave the power to sack Guildford, there is speculation she will says she no longer has confidence in him.

2pm: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, will confirm plans to revive the Northern Powerhouse Rail project at an event in Leeds.

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