Key events
UK unemployment rate hits five-year high of 5.2% as wage growth cools
Unemployment in the UK has risen to 5.2%, the highest level in nearly five years, while wage growth continues to slow, raising the prospect of another cut to interest rates in the spring. Tom Knowles has the story.
Most people in a future Reform UK cabinet would not be career politicians, Zia Yusuf claims
Most people in a Reform UK cabinet would not be career politicians, Zia Yusuf has said.
Today the party will announce what it calls some “shadow cabinet” appointments and the most prominent is likely to be Robert Jenrick at Treasury spokesperson. Less than 18 months ago Jenrick was runner up in the contest to be Conservative party leader.
But Yusuf told Times Radio this morning that ex-Tories would not dominate a Nigel Farage cabinet.
Yusuf said:
I can tell people listening to this that the majority of our parliamentary class will be people who are fresh to politics.
I think the majority of Nigel’s cabinet, if we win and he’s the prime minister, will also have people who are not career politicians.
Farage has repeatedly talked of his desire to give cabinet jobs to people who are not MPs and who have experience outside Westminster. His appointees could be given peerages, but Farage has also floated the idea of appointing some ministers who do not sit in parliament. This is constitutionally permissible, but has only happened in the past very rarely.
Yusuf himself is expected to be named today as the party’s home affairs spokesperson.
Yusuf was critical of Jenrick on social media before his defection to Reform UK, and it has been claimed that he has mixed feelings about having the former shadow justice secretary as a colleague.
But Yusuf told Times Radio that Jenrick was an asset to the party. He said:
I’ve gotten to know Robert quite well. And I speak to him almost every day. He’s a thoughtful, serious man. I think he does believe clearly the things that he has talked about, and he got extremely frustrated inside the Conservative party.
And he is somebody who is already adding value in terms of helping with his experiences that he had in government.
Reform UK no longer ‘one-man band’, Farage says as he prepares to announce ‘shadow cabinet’ appointments
Good morning. Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, is holding a press conference today where, according to the party, he will be “announcing members of his shadow cabinet”. In Westminster politics only the official opposition (the Conserative party, for this parliament) has a shadow cabinet, but other opposition parties sometimes use the term and, given his poll ratings, it is not hard to see why Farage thinks he has a better chance of forming the next government than Kemi Badenoch.
Farage is expected to announce four appointments. Robert Jenrick, who only defected from the Conservative party recently, is expected to be appointed Treasury spokesperson. Richard Tice, the party’s deputy leader, is expected to be given responsibility for business and energy, and Zia Yusuf, the party’s head of policy, is expected to be given the Home Office portfolio. There will also be a fourth appointment, but there has been no proper steer as to what this will be.
Here is Jessica Elgot’s preview story.
Speaking at a rally last night, Farage said that these appointments would show that Reform UK was no longer a “one-man band”. He said:
I think the moment to properly move away from the potential criticism that we’re a one-man band has been there now for a few weeks, and that’s why I’m doing this.
Am I concerned? No, I’m relieved actually. I’m relieved that other people are taking up these big areas, and from [reporter’s] perspective, on a given issue, you will know who to call.
The press conference starts at 11am in London.
There is not much else in the diary for today, but I will be covering other politics too, including the ongoing reaction to yesterday’s U-turn on the cancellation of local elections, which Kiran Stacey covers here in our overnight story.
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