Politics Hub - latest: Farage gives Reform UK conference speech; Starmer and his top team will no longer accept donations to pay for clothes (2024)

Sir Keir Starmer, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and Chancellor Rachel Reeves will not accept any future donations to pay for clothes, Sky News understands.

The government has been embroiled in a row over freebies this week.

It emerged the prime minister himself has accepted more than £100,000 worth of gifts, including tickets to football matches, concerts and luxury clothes.

This had all been declared as per the rules but backbench MPs had been expressing concern that the government's rhetoric of tough decisions on the economy jars with the image of a prime minister accepting freebies.

The row started over the weekend with controversy over Sir Keir's wife's clothes.

Nigel Farage is giving his keynote speech at the Reform UK annual conference in Birmingham.

The party leader and Clacton MP is expected to discuss reforming the party's structures to make it more democratic, and also how they intend to win even more seats at the next general election.

Watch live on Sky News, in the stream above, and in the feed below.

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You would be forgiven for thinking we were at a rock concert, not a party conference.

Admittedly, the attendees are more Timothy Taylor than Taylor Swift, but the anticipation as the crowd await the main act at the Reform Party conference is palpable.

The main act, of course, the reason thousands of people have travelled across the country to be here, is Nigel Farage.

As one party activist, who woke up at 4am to drive from Cornwall, put it to me: "Where Farage goes, I follow."

Reform UK has five MPs in parliament, fewer than the number of Labour MPs that have already been suspended. The exit poll predicted 13 Reform MPs.

But the vote share tells a different story: the party won more than four million votes in July, and a higher proportion of the vote share (14%) than the Lib Dems.

High profile conservatives like Penny Mordant and Grant Shapps might well have held their seats had they secured the votes that went to Reform, and the party is undoubtedly having an impact on the Conservative leadership race.

The message in the conference hall today, though, is a warning to Labour, not the Conservatives. Reform think they can tap into the working class voters in the nearly 100 seats where they came second to Labour.

That is likely to be a key message from Nigel Farage today. The question is - is his party more than just the cult of Farage?

Watch Nigel Farage's conference speech live on Sky News from 4pm.

As the row over Keir Starmer's freebies rumbles on, Beth, Ruth and Harriet discuss ifthe prime minister can put the issue to bed before the Labour Party conference this weekend.

What does the leaking of senior special adviser Sue Gray's salary tell us about tension in thenew government?And is Starmer'sRome scheme any different from Sunak's Rwanda plan?

Plus, Ruth and Harriet share their best conference stories, along with a few tips for where to find the best parties!

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The first day of Reform UK's conference is under way, and one of the first speakers was a TV figure you may be familiar with.

Ant Middleton, who starred in SAS: Who Dares Wins, discussed British identity and called for more action to be taken to strengthen it.

The former soldier told the audience: "What's British identity? British culture. What's British culture? British history.

"So why is that being eradicated? Why is that being trampled all over? Why aren't we allowed to be the umbrella culture of this country?"

Highlighting the role of Christianity in the UK's history, Mr Middleton said: "The moment we lose our identity, guess what we lose? Our purpose, our focus, our direction. What happens when we don’t have an identity? We get confused."

He said he lost his identity and got confused after leaving the military, saying: "When you have a nation of confused people, guess what happens after? Frustration. You get frustrated, very much like the individual.

"What happens after frustration? Anger, violence. What's happening on our streets right now? Violence."

He said the UK is at a "crucial stage before it teeters into civil unrest, which we want to avoid at all costs".

"But it's coming, we're on that edge where violence has hit the streets, we've all seen it."

A Tory leadership candidate has told Sky News that while immigration has contributed positively to Britain historically, the current level of net migration needs to be dramatically reduced.

Robert Jenrick, the frontrunner in the contest, said: "The very large numbers of people who've come in recent decades have made it much more difficult to maintain a sense of unity and national identity.

"I think mass migration has eroded our collective sense of identity, and it's been particularly prevalent in England and in English cities, where the bulk of mass migration has been seen."

He argued that net migration before 1997 was in the tens of thousands, and today it is "far too high", which has "made it impossible to successfully integrate people".

Mr Jenrick went on to explain that his policy would be a "legally binding cap set by parliament in the tens of thousands or fewer", which would give the public confidence that it will be delivered.

That, in turn, would mean issues like the housing crisis, public services and "foreign labour undercutting the wages of British people" could be addressed.

Asked who is to blame for mass migration, the former cabinet minister said it has been "a failure of both political parties".

"Both the last Conservative government and the last Labour one are responsible, and I worry now that this new Labour government is going to set us on an open door immigration policy that will exacerbate, rather than ease, these challenges."

Former immigration minister and Tory leadership candidate Robert Jenrick has said that England's national identity is at risk.

Writing in the Daily Mail, Mr Jenrick warned mass immigration and "woke culture" are threatening the "ties which bind the nation together".

He spoke to us on Sky News a short while ago, and we asked him to define English identity.

He explained that he is a "proud Brit and a proud unionist", but that "it is incredibly important that just as Scottish and Welsh leaders speak up for their distinct national identities, so do English politicians as well".

Because "too few" English politicians have been so vocal, it is one of the "root causes" of why children are "not being taught to understand, to celebrate our history in schools" and "why our public institutions in England have been too fast to denigrate".

Pushed multiple times for a definition of English identity, he replied: "It's the history and the culture of our country. And I think England has an incredibly proud history.

"We have achieved so much in the world and we should be celebrating that."

He added: "We should be ensuring that we don't lose it through mass migration."

Sky's Matt Barbet put to him: "If you can't describe what English identity is, how is anybody coming here meant to understand that?"

He replied: "I don't think with great respect that you distil the identity and the history of England into a soundbite like you're asking of me."

Mr Jenrick goes on to say that "influential people in our politics, in our media, in our civil service, feel afraid to speak about our national identity, feel that it's not something that we should be championing", and he wants to change that.

Earlier we reported on a claim by Reform leader Nigel Farage that he'd been advised not to hold constituency surgeries in person (more here).

MPs traditionally set aside time during the week to meet constituents, but the member for Clacton said he feared people would "flow through the door with knives in their pockets" if he opened his office to them.

But Sky News understands he would not have been told to avoid holding in-person surgeries in his constituency.

A source said the Speaker's Office have no record of telling Mr Farage he should not hold physical surgeries in his Clacton constituency, as he claimed in a phone-in earlier yesterday.

The scale of donations received by Sir Keir Starmer has been exposed by Sky News's Westminster Accounts project.

It tracks all the financial interests declared by MPs - and you can use it to look up any of them, including your own local one.

Use our tool below to search for your MPs and see where their money is coming from:

By Tomos Evans, Wales reporter

A member of the Senedd broke its code of conduct over social media posts about the 20mph limit, the standards committee has found.

The Welsh government's former deputy minister for climate change, Lee Waters, complained about shadow minister Natasha Asghar's use of the word "blanket" to describe the default speed limit.

The default limit on Wales's residential roads was reduced to 20pmh from 30mph on 17 September last year.

The policy was met with significant opposition, including a record-breaking petition on the Senedd's (Welsh parliament) website.

It prompted the Welsh government to carry out a review and change the guidance issued to local councils.

Ms Asghar did not accept her comments constituted a breach of the code of conduct.

Read more here: