Politics live: Labour bracing for local election wipeout after Starmer cancellation U-turn, poll finds – UK Times

Unemployment has risen to its highest level for five years and wage growth has slowed again as the UK jobs market continues to come under pressure, according to official figures.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the rate of unemployment lifted to 5.2% in the three months to December, up from 5.1% in the three months to November.

This was the highest since the three months to January 2021 and the highest for over a decade outside of the pandemic era.

Most economists had expected unemployment to remain at 5.1% in the latest quarter.

Political reporter Athena Stavrou reports:

Reform’s head of policy has called for the government to publish the legal advice they received that prompted them to abandon plans to postpone elections in 30 local councils.

Zia Yusuf said the publication of the advice, which was given in response to a legal challenge from Reform UK, is “in the public interest”.

“The letter where they announced they were throwing in the towel and conceding that the elections can go ahead said this was in light of ‘new evidence and they’ve reserved their privilege on that meaning they are not going to publish it,” he told LBC.

“I think its in the public interest for us all to see it, I think I know what that new legal advice was going to be, was that they were going to lose.”

Polling for The Telegraph suggests that Labour majorities on ten local authorities will be wiped out now that elections in 30 areas will go ahead.

Labour had initially announced plans to cancel elections in 30 areas this year, impacting 4.5 million people, in order to free up “capacity” to undertake an overhaul of council structures.

Now that they will go ahead, The Telegraph suggests that Labour will likely lose control of six councils – Blackburn with Darwen, Cannock Chase, Exeter, Preston, Thurrock and Worthing.

Its majority will be wiped out completely in four more, the report states.

The polling suggests the Labour party will lose half of the seats it will defend in May.

• Reform UK leader Nigel Farage will be announcing members of his party’s shadow cabinet team at a Westminster press conference.
• There will be a hearing for MP Rupert Lowe’s legal challenge against parliamentary watchdog.
• Rupert Lowe, the independent MP for Great Yarmouth, is seeking to take High Court legal action against the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme over its decision last July to investigate a complaint made against him.

Asked if he should apologise for the potential cost to taxpayers of both footing the bill for legal fees and of holding the elections that had been due for postponement, Mr Farage said: “The idea I should apologise because it costs money to hold elections in a country where one-and-a-quarter million people died in two world wars so that we could be a free democracy, I won’t even begin to apologise.

“That is our system. That is our way. We choose the people that represent us, tax us, make decisions on our behalf, and once every few years, we’ve the right to judge them and get rid of them. That is the very basis of how modern Britain works.”