Experts say Labour’s ‘halfway house’ approach risks losing support from progressives and ‘red wall’ voters

Support for rejoining the EU rather than simply rejoining the single market is growing among British voters, with more than 80% of Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green party supporters favouring this option, according to research mapping voter attitudes 10 years after the Brexit referendum.

Labour’s “muted” approach to the issue means it risks losing support among progressive voters and in “red wall” constituencies, experts have said as part of research by Best for Britain.

Departing PM Viktor Orbán admits ‘political era has ended’ as EU says ‘clock is ticking’ to resolve important issues

EU officials have arrived in Budapest for high-stakes talks aimed at reshaping the bloc’s strained relationship with Hungary, weeks before the new government takes office, as the country’s departing prime minister, Viktor Orbán, admitted a “political era has ended” and suggested he would stay on as leader of his party in his first interview since the election.

Speaking to the pro-government outlet Patrióta, Orbán described Sunday’s election as an “emotional rollercoaster” after the opposition Tisza party won a landslide victory, bringing an end to his 16 years in power.

Legally questionable confidentiality clause adopted almost word for word from demands of Microsoft and trade groups

Microsoft and other US tech companies successfully lobbied the EU to hide the environmental toll of their datacentres, an investigation has found, with demands to block a database of green metrics from public view written almost word for word into EU rules.

The secrecy provision, which the European Commission added to its proposal almost verbatim after industry lobbying in 2024, hinders scrutiny of the pollution that individual datacentres emit. It leaves researchers with just national-level summaries of their energy footprints.

Liza Tobay was told settled status had been ‘red flagged’ when she tried to fly home from Germany to Scotland

A German woman has been separated from her two-year-old daughter in Edinburgh after a Home Office mistake left her stranded in Dusseldorf earlier this week.

Liza Tobay, who has lived in the UK for 15 years, had taken her oldest child, a six-year-old boy, to visit his grandfather and some other relatives over Easter when confronted with what she said appeared to be “a serious administrative error”.

EU economy commissioner says Iran war is feeding Russia’s war machine; Trump condemns massive strikes on Ukraine. What we know on day 1,513

The EU expects to start releasing a new €90bn loan to Ukraine in the second quarter, the bloc’s economy chief told AFP on Thursday. The EU’s economy commissioner, Valdis Dombrovskis, was speaking on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank’s spring meetings, which brought finance ministers, central bankers and other leaders to Washington. “Our support for Ukraine, also continued pressure and sanctions against aggressor Russia was very much part of the agenda,” Dombrovskis said. He warned that Moscow was “emerging as a winner from this war in Iran, because it provides windfall profits to feed Russia’s war machine”.

Russia hammered civilian areas across Ukraine with drones and missiles on Thursday, killing at least 17 people and wounding more than 100 others in the worst aerial attack in weeks, Ukrainian authorities said. Nearly 700 drones and dozens of ballistic and cruise missiles were used, as Ukrainian officials said vital stocks of advanced interceptors were running low.

Donald Trump on Thursday condemned a massive Russian drone and missile attack across Ukraine that ripped through apartment buildings in the capital, Kyiv. Asked by reporters at the White House for his reaction to the barrage, Trump said: “I think it’s terrible.”

It is not in the interest of the US that Russia is the winner of the Iran war, the German vice chancellor, Lars Klingbeil, said on Thursday in Washington. “It’s not in our interest and it cannot be in the interest of the United States,” he said in a joint statement with the finance ministers of Ukraine and Norway on the sidelines of the IMF spring meetings. Klingbeil said the Russian economy was growing thanks to the Middle East conflict and the country was profitting from the energy situation. As the conflict in the Middle East dominated the gathering of finance officials at the IMF in Washington, the ministers of Norway, Germany and Ukraine spoke about not forgetting to support Ukraine in its defence against Russia. “All the meetings here are about the question of what’s happening with the war in Iran, and I think it’s really important we show solidarity with our friends in Ukraine,” Klingbeil said.

The heads of the EU and Nato on Thursday discussed efforts to bolster Europe’s arms production, as Donald Trump threw doubt on Washington’s commitment to the transatlantic alliance. “We need to invest more, to produce more and to do both faster,” the European Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, posted online after meeting Nato’s chief, Mark Rutte. European nations are scrambling to bolster their militaries in the face of Russia’s war on Ukraine and pressure from Trump.