Summary

  • First Minister Nicola Sturgeon predicts new independence referendum if UK votes to leave EU

  • Tory London mayor candidate Zac Goldsmith says he is a "non head-banging" Eurosceptic

  • Labour has been accused of a "whitewash" over the report into its election defeat

  • Ex-Labour frontbenchers Frank Field and Chuka Umunna warn over the party's electoral chances

  1. No UK Litvinenko action 'unthinkable' says widowpublished at 11:20

    BBC assistant political editor tweets...

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  2. Police: Litvinenko murder 'cold and calculating'published at 11:20

    Of the death of Alexander Litvinenko, the Metropolitan Police said;

    Quote Message

    This was a cold and calculated murder that caused immense suffering to Alexander and his family and one that had no regard for the safety of the public in London."

  3. 'EVEL shambles' decriedpublished at 11:10

    Pete Wishart

    The SNP's Commons Business Spokesman Pete Wishart says it's been an "EVEL shambles", more so because Romford MP Andrew Rosindell who was unable to vote, is "one of the most English" of MPs.

    He says that due to the English votes for English laws procedure "by the end of this parliament there's going to be a real divide in this House".

  4. Government 'doing all we can' on tennis corruptionpublished at 11:05

    Tennis ballsImage source, AP

    The SNP's Stephen Paterson highlights allegations this week made by the BBC and Buzzfeed about the extent of match fixing in tennis.

    Culture Secretary John Whittingdale says the government has been speaking to tennis governing bodies this week and is "doing all we can" to ensure that tennis is "clean". He says the government will host a summit later this year on tackling corruption, and that sport will be included.

  5. Lib Dems call for Litvinenko actionpublished at 10:58

    The Liberal Democrats have called for travel bans and the freezing of assets for those involved in the death of Alexander Litvinenko.

    Quote Message

    A UK citizen was killed on the streets of London with polonium. It was an attack on the heart of Britain, our values and our society. I call for EU travel bans, asset freezes and co-ordinated action to deal with those who committed this evil assassination. I have called for a new Magnitsky Law to make sure that these people are held to account for what they did. These assassins trampled over British sovereignty and we cannot let this go unanswered."

    Tim Farron, Lib Dem leader

  6. Russian foreign ministry says UK Litvinenko inquiry 'biased'published at 10:55

    The Russian Foreign Ministry has dismissed the outcome of a judge-led UK inquiry into the 2006 killing of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko as biased and opaque.

    Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the foreign ministry, accused the UK of politicising the matter.

    "We regret that what was a purely criminal case was politicised and has clouded the general atmosphere of our bilateral ties," she said.

    "The process ... was not transparent for the Russian side or for society because of the way materials were examined behind closed doors under the pretext that they were secret."

    She added that the final outcome was the result of a "politically-motivated and extremely opaque process." 

  7. Catch-up: Government defeat in Lords over union party fundingpublished at 10:50

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  8. Polonium 'like little machine gun'published at 10:32

    Victoria Derbyshire

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  9. UK 'has already taken action' over Litvinenko killingpublished at 10:27

    Norman Smith
    Assistant political editor

    Government sources are stressing that the UK has already taken action in response to the killing of Alexander Litvinenko.

    It was pointed out that after the death of Mr Litvinenko, the UK expelled four Russian diplomats.

    It was also pointed out that cooperation with the Russian security services was ended and a halt put to talks over visa liberalisation.

    The Home Secretary Theresa May will make a Commons statement setting out the Government's response at around 11:15 GMT.

    Meanwhile it is understood Labour is likely to demand the Government consider leading calls for Russia to be stripped of the 2018 World Cup.

    They are also likely to demand the government consider further possible sanctions and travel bans for those linked to the killing.

    They will also question whether relations between the British parliament and Russia Duma should be reconsidered.

  10. Litvinenko widow calls for sanctionspublished at 10:20

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  11. BBC parliamentary coverage gets a mention in the Commonspublished at 10:12

    Follow link in tweet for rolling Parliamentary coverage

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  12. George Osborne to nominate Christine Lagarde for second IMF termpublished at 10:08

    Christine LagardeImage source, Getty Images

    Chancellor George Osborne will nominate Christine Lagarde (pictured) for a second term as managing director of the International Monetary Fund.

    "At a time when the world faces what I've called a dangerous cocktail of risks, I believe Christine has the vision, energy and acumen to help steer the global economy through the years ahead," he said.

  13. Russian state 'had powerful motives' for killing Litvinenkopublished at 10:05

    Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB agent, fled to Britain in 2000 and became a vocal critic of Russia's security service and of Putin, whom he accused of links to organised crime.

    Sir Robert Owen, who led the public inquiry into Litvinenko's murder, said the former Russian spy "was regarded as having betrayed the FSB" with his actions, and that "there were powerful motives for organisations and individuals within the Russian state to take action against Mr Litvinenko, including killing him."

    Moscow has always strongly denied involvement in Litvinenko's death, and Russia refuses to extradite the two main suspects, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun.

  14. Litvinenko suspect says accusations 'absurd'published at 10:00

    Andrei Lugovoi, one of the suspects in the murder of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, has called the accusations against him "absurd", the Interfax news agency reports.

  15. Putin 'probably approved Litvinenko killing'published at 09:55

    A public inquiry into the killing of the former Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko, has concluded that President Putin probably approved the assassination. Mr Litvinenko died after drinking tea, laced with radioactive polonium in London in 2006.

    Sir Robert Owen, in the report of the inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, says: 

    Quote Message

    Taking full account of all the evidence and analysis available to me I find that the FSB operation to kill Litvinenko was probably approved by (then FSB chief Nikolai) Patrushev and also by President Putin."

  16. Is 'King Jeremy the Accidental' on the up?published at 09:45

    Mark Mardell
    Presenter

    Jeremy CorbynImage source, Reuters

    There is an old blues standard with the lyric "I've been down so very damn long, this looks like up to me". By that measure, things are looking up for the Labour leader.

    To the fury and frustration of many of his parliamentary colleagues, and the slack-jawed amazement of some lobby journalists, Jeremy Corbyn is still in the job after failing every test they have set him.

    Perhaps, it says as much about them as about him.

    Now the smoke has cleared away from the reshuffle, he has regained control over a key policy - Trident.

    He was given a kind of standing ovation for a speech, external to a Fabian conference, which some described as his best yet.

    And he survived a big interview with Andrew Marr, with only one headline mocking his naivety, external.

    Perhaps most importantly, Len McCluskey the leader of the UK's biggest union, Unite, told me, on BBC Radio 4's World This Weekend programme, that to regard the May elections as a referendum on Mr Corbyn was ridiculous - he would be "allowed"' two or three years to prove himself.

    These are all very low bars.

    Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne are not quaking in their boots.

    But they leave the Labour right with a huge conundrum - one insightful commentator, external has been musing recently on whether it should even want to do well in the coming elections.

    Fanciful ideas circulate about MPs saying they have a mandate, external, because millions of people have voted for them, whereas Mr Corbyn and Labour members do not.

    But basing a strategy around losing elections and formalising a split are more of a yardstick of desperation than practical politics.

    Journalists and politicians based at Westminster see the world in a certain way, through a fairly narrow lens, and measure daily success and failure through a set of unwritten rules reached by instinct rather than reflection.

    The soap opera of the Westminster village matters to those who adore the storyline.

    It is often about a tug of war between positive and negative headlines, trials of strength over internal and external opponents, with all the fragility of narrative within a bubble.

    One of the reason's Mr Corbyn attracts so much opprobrium from those whose orbit circles planet Westminster is he will not accept their measure of his worth.

    He seems more concerned with remaking the Labour Party in his own image than winning applause from hostile crowds.

    The climax of one of my favourite science-fiction novels by the late, great Iain M Banks, The Player of Games has the representative of a pan-species libertarian communist idyll of which Mr Corbyn might approve taking on a brutal, fascistic, authoritarian and warlike regime at a sort of violent hi-tech version of multi-dimensional chess.

    He, unwittingly, plays their destructive game of conquest and revenge in a way that turns it into an artistic performance, a harmonious, complex ballet.

    His opponents react with vast, speechless fury because he has done something much worse than beat them.

    He has undermined their rules and their values.

    This is not to say Mr Corbyn is about to do the same.

    But Westminster's rules are not the only measure.

    There is a similar level of mutual incomprehension.

    And the Labour leader, with an equal lack of guile, is subverting the game itself.

    It is not that Mr Corbyn does not play by the rules, so much as he simply disdains them, a debutant who turns up at the ball in torn jeans and slouches against the wall, sullenly refusing to join the dance.

    New Labour's architects understood something obvious but rarely exploited until then - politicians are known to the great mass of voters only through the media.

    A central part of their strategy was to seize control of the way their image and actions would be reported.

    The techniques varied from wooing to bullying, circumventing the hard questions to tackling them head on.

    The message merged with the medium.

    Mr Corbyn appears to be the very mirror image of this.

    His speeches do not contain an obvious attention-grabbing new policy, briefed in advance.

    Prime Minister's Questions is not a mano-a-mano trial of strength, envisaged through the lens of the next hour's headline.

    Inside the serious personnel management of a reshuffle, there is no central message.

    But in this he is, possibly unwittingly, following a central insight of Alastair Campbell and Tony Blair about media management - most people do not follow the details of politics, it is the broad image, a flavour, that comes across.

    It could just work.

    Mr Corbyn's dogged pursuit of policy and principle without fancy frills and theatrical lunges at the enemy does portray a certain earnest sincerity that clearly appeals to many potential supporters of the Labour Party.

    Fans of principle

    My unscientific analysis would suggest many Corbyn enthusiasts are not the Trotskyists of MPs' imagination but people disillusioned by Mr Blair and Gordon Brown, impelled by youthful enthusiasm or nostalgic remembrance for something with less "yah" and "boo" and more principle.

    For often less than good or sensible reasons, "politician" has long been an insult - people who elevate tactics and electoral victory over higher purpose.

    Not being like them, may not be seen as such a bad thing.

    But the problem for the Labour Party is this may be enough to keep Mr Corbyn from being seriously challenged but not enough to win any new voters.

    As Margaret Beckett's report, external makes clear, having an electable leader and a winning economic policy are central but not the only challenges.

    The loss of Scotland, the collapse of working-class loyalty, English identity, an ageing population, the ideological challenges for the centre left are, on their own, big roadblocks on the path to power.

    Piled up together, it is hard to envisage the sort of bulldozer that could shift them.

    Mr Corbyn may not be the man for the job - but he is the man with the job, behind the wheel.

    I have always found when kings and queens forged history fascinating.

    They were often very ordinary people, without formal training, thrust into exceptional roles.

    How they fared says much about human nature and politics.

    But this is not true of modern democracies.

    Indeed, it is not true of most modern dictatorships.

    Whether Stalin or Churchill, or indeed Neil Kinnock or Iain Duncan Smith, leaders have paid their dues, gained a patina of experience, during their far from inexorable and inevitable rise.

    They have learnt the tricks of the trade the hard way, hard knocks filing off rough edges.

    But this is not true of Mr Corbyn, who never planned to be leader, never thought he would be, and has not jostled colleagues for power and position.

    The fervent republican King Jeremy the Accidental has little past history of cunning or compromise, just the guiding principle of a passionately held set of ideas.

    We may need a different ruler to measure his rule - both its length and purpose.

  17. Will Litvinenko inquiry lead to more sanctions?published at 09:30

    Media caption,

    Will Litvinenko inquiry lead to more sanctions?

    The results of the inquiry into the killing of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko could strain UK and Russian relations further, BBC Moscow correspondent Sarah Rainsford says.  

  18. SDP founders see prospect of another Labour breakawaypublished at 09:10

    SDP foundersImage source, Getty Images

    Two founding members of the SDP have speculated that there could be another breakaway from the Labour Party.

    Former Labour foreign secretary Lord Owen told the BBC's Newsnight critics of Jeremy Corbyn should "fight like hell" for the next two years but that creating a new party was an option.

    Baroness Williams said she saw a new party of the centre-left party reviving "the concept of the SDP".

    She said Mr Corbyn was "an idealist" being "manipulated" by others.

    Read more here.

  19. 'Deferential culture' at BBC 'core reason' why Savile not reportedpublished at 09:11 Greenwich Mean Time 21 January 2016

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  20. Cameron to hold EU talks with Irish PMpublished at 09:11 Greenwich Mean Time 21 January 2016

    Europe Editor for RTE tweets

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