Labour did not do enough to prepare for power in the run up to the general election, Sir Keir Starmer’s former top aide has said.

In his first media interview, Morgan McSweeney said he was speaking publicly because he needed to “move on to a new chapter” in his life, after his period as Downing Street chief of staff and as a senior Labour strategist.

Speaking to the BBC’s Political Thinking with Nick Robinson podcast, Mr McSweeney was asked why he believed Labour had faced so much turmoil in its short two years in office, culminating with his former boss Sir Keir’s resignation as Prime Minister.

The former Labour strategist told the BBC: “I think that we didn’t prepare enough for what kind of world we were going to be in.

“We are now in a very different era than when Labour was last in government, and I think we didn’t have enough conversations at the top of the party about what that meant, how to prepare for it, what that meant for the state, how the state needed to be reformed, because in lots of ways the state is really out of shape and is unable to deliver for people.”

Sir Keir Starmer said historical forced adoption is a “stain on our history”.

In a statement to the Commons, the Prime Minister said he “found it hard to read the testimonies” of those impacted, particularly as a father.

He added: “What happened to them, and to tens of thousands of mothers, children, and families, should never have happened. It is a stain on our history.

“Mothers, many young, vulnerable, and without support were coerced, bullied, or misled into feeling that they had no choice but to have their children taken away from them. What a thing to do.

“These were not isolated or accidental acts, they were practices embedded within systems across local authorities, across voluntary and faith-based institutions, and in health and social care services, including parts of what is now the NHS.

“All institutions that operated with power over people’s lives, yet they did so without compassion, without consent, and without dignity or proper safeguards. These practices were particularly prevalent between 1949 and 1976 but also extended beyond those years.”

Reform UK MP Danny Kruger has hit out at the “hounding” of Nigel Farage amid questions over a £5 million gift he received and over properties he owns.

Reform UK’s Robert Jenrick took to X to hit out at the Government in a row over pubs not being allowed to stay open for England’s next World Cup match at 1am on Monday.

The Government has rejected calls for a blanket extension to licensing hours to allow England fans to enjoy the team’s next World Cup game in the pub at 1am on Monday.

England will face Mexico next in the Round of 16 at the Fifa World Cup after beating the Democratic Republic of the Congo 2-1 on Wednesday.

While the Government passed measures to allow pubs to stay open until 2am for England matches in the knockout stages that kick off between 9pm and 10pm, this does not apply to Monday’s match.

Liberal Democrat Cheltenham MP Max Wilkinson called for a blanket extension to licensing hours for the match during business and trade questions in the House of Commons.

Rachel Reeves has been pictured having a go at working at McDonalds during a visit to East Finchley to mark the Government’s Great British Summer Savings scheme.

Kemi Badenoch challenged Andy Burnham to get behind Tory proposals for an immigration crackdown after he said he would ask the Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary to “review all possible options” to deport a grooming gang ringleader.

The Conservative leader said: “I completely agree. The Conservatives have a solution. We will amend the government’s Immigration Bill to close the loophole so that this man can be deported immediately.

“If Andy Burnham wants to show he means what he says, he should instruct Labour MPs to support our amendment. We need to make sure this vile individual never walks our streets again.”

Unfavourable opinion towards the Greens has jumped since Zack Polanski became the party’s leader, new YouGov polling shows.

Some 52% have a negative view, an increase of 13 points since August 2025, while 36% have a positive view, down eight points, giving the party a net score of minus 16.

The law needs to be changed to allow the Government to remove the ringleader of a Rochdale grooming gang from the country, the shadow home secretary has said.

Chris Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Shabir Ahmed, who will be released on Thursday after serving 14 years in prison for multiple sexual offences, should “certainly be deported”.

“He’s a vile rapist who didn’t just organise the rape of young girls as young as 12 years old. He actually ran a gang, doing it on a huge scale,” he said.

“He should be kicked out of the country, deported back to Pakistan, and the law needs to be changed.”

Mr Philp said he will be laying an amendment to change the Immigration Act 1971, which means that people arriving in the UK from Commonwealth countries prior to 1973 cannot be deported, in the coming months.

He said the Labour MPs for Rochdale and Oldham, Paul Waugh and Jim McMahon, have agreed that the law needs to change.

“I hope the government will support my amendment,” Mr Philp said.

A former Labour health minister and forced adoption survivor has said she is looking forward to “being released from my shame” when she and other campaigners get a state apology.

Ann Keen was sent to a Swansea mother and baby home in 1966, when she was 17.

Asked if she would accept the Government apology today, Ms Keen told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Oh, absolutely, we all need this apology because we have always been accused of giving up our babies and we didn’t give them up.

“In particular, so many were taken without our knowledge and in my own instance, I went to see my baby on the eighth day because I was told I could have him for 10 and they said: ‘Oh no, he’s gone now. You were getting far too close’.”

Ms Keen, who was the MP for Brentford and Isleworth for 13 years, said she thinks the Government has “done the best they could, because it’s so complex”.

“I understand why the Prime Minister’s team wanted to get this right, because we’ve now got the opportunity to really put this wrong right, we’ve been waiting a long time, and so today I’m just looking forward to today and being released from my shame,” she said.

The Government is “looking at every route” to remove the ringleader of a Rochdale grooming gang from the country, a minister has said.

Asked about calls to deport Shabir Ahmed, who will be released on Thursday after serving 14 years in prison for multiple sexual offences, Baroness Jacqui Smith told LBC that Andy Burnham was “right” to say he should be removed.

She said: “There are two problems here. Number one, there are a very small number of people who came to this country over 50 years ago from Commonwealth countries where the law doesn’t allow them to be deported.

“And secondly, of course, in order to deport somebody, the country to which you are going to deport them needs to be willing to take them.

“We’ve removed this man’s British citizenship, he’s a Pakistan citizen, but there is also work that needs to happen in order to persuade Pakistan to take him back.”

She said: “We are looking within Government at everything that we could possibly do in order to review the law in order to persuade Pakistan to take him.”

“We’re doing everything we can, looking at every route to get this guy out of the country,” she added.

Britain is in the grips of a deepening crisis of numeracy in the young, a leading peer has said. It follows reports that the treasury dropped a critical maths test for new recruits. Mandarins ditched the Numerical Reasoning Test (NRT) and claimed it was having an “adverse impact on candidate diversity”

Now Lord Agnew, a former Treasury Minister, has said the news is “just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Britain’s deepening crisis with numeracy.” Speaking to the Daily Express, the peer, who chairs the Numeracy for Life Committee in the House of Lords, warned that there has been an “unmistakable lowering of the importance we place on numerical skill right across our institutions” which was having a “devastating effect”.

A minister has acknowledged there will be further “difficult choices” on funding the defence investment plan (Dip).

Asked about £4.7 billion of unfunded spending in the Dip, skills minister Baroness Jacqui Smith told Times Radio: “We have made some quite difficult choices to redistribute, for example, capital spending in order to put in place the funding necessary to deliver the defence investment plan, in the way in which we have done.

“And there will continue to be difficult choices to be made about how we prioritise defence.”

Sir Keir Starmer’s plan to boost defence spending by £15 billion is facing fresh scrutiny after Downing Street was unable to say where exactly the cuts required to pay for it will come from.

The Prime Minister unveiled the defence investment plan earlier this week but the Government is yet to spell out where £4.7 billion will come from with a decision to be made at the autumn budget.

But questions have been raised over where the remaining £10.3 billion cuts to Whitehall spending which will fund the plan will come from after the Government was unable to provide detail.