Chris Wormald forced out of post as cabinet secretary, No 10 confirms – UK politics live

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Early evening summary

• Keir Starmer has forced out his cabinet secretary, Chris Wormald, with Antonia Romeo likely to succeed him and become the first woman in the job.

• The Monaco-based billionaire Jim Ratcliffe has said he is sorry his “choice of language has offended some people in the UK and Europe” after a fierce backlash over his comments that the UK was being “colonised” by immigrants.

• Primary school-age children who question their gender could be allowed to use different pronouns under long-awaited government guidance to schools on the subject.

• Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, has referred the Telegraph’s proposed sale to the publisher of the Daily Mail to the competition and media watchdogs, weeks after she raised concerns about the consolidation of rightwing newspapers.

For a full list of all the stories covered on the blog today, do scroll through the list of key event headlines near the top of the blog.

Angela Rayner speaking during the night-time economy summit in Liverpool. Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA

Badenoch says Wormald is 'latest person Starmer has thrown under bus to save his skin'

Kemi Badenoch says Chris Wormald has become “the latest person Keir Starmer has thrown under the bus to save his own skin”.

NHS workers to get 3.3% pay rise from April

More than 1.4 million NHS workers will receive a 3.3% pay rise from April, the government has announced.

According to Steven Swinford at the Times, Chris Wormald will be due for “a pretty extraordinary payoff – said to be in the region of £250,000”.

Antonia Romeo 'set to replace Wormald as cabinet secretary'

Pippa Crerar says Antonia Romeo, the permanent secretary at the Home Office, is set to replace Chris Wormald as cabinet secretary.

We’re hearing that Antonia Romeo will become the next cabinet secretary after an expedited appointments process, despite a briefing campaign against her.

Allies of Starmer warned against an expedited process to replace Wormald. “Keir needs to wait for things to calm down before crashing into another set of bad decisions in a panicky way because he’s feeling boxed in. When you’re in a hole, stop digging.”

Labour accuses Reform UK of 'flagrant racism' after Sarah Pochin defends her complaint about black people in TV ads

Labour has accused Nigel Farage of tolerating “flagrant racism” in Reform UK after Sarah Pochin claimed that she was right to complain about the number of black and Asian people in TV adverts.

Last year Pochin provoked controversy when she said “it drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people”.

She subsequently said that her comment was “phrased poorly”, and apologised for any offence caused.

But she claimed that advertising industry figures justified the point she was making – even though she appeared to have misunderstood the figures she was quoting.

This week, in an interview for the Telegraph’s Daily T podcast, Pochin insisted that she had been justifed in what she said.

She told the podcast:

What I said is absolutely right.

The British advertising industry has 52% or 56% – I can’t quite remember what the figure is – of ethnic minority actors represented in the adverts, and yet the population is 4%. That is not a reflection of our population.

Those comments were made on the back of a Channel 4 survey that came out … I stand by those comments, they were just reasonable objective comments.

Pochin seemed to be referring to this report, which includes this chart on the proportion of black people featured in adverts. It says that, although black people make up 4% of the population, they feature in 51% of adverts.

C4 Mirror on the Industry report Photograph: C4

But that does not mean 51% of people in adverts are black. It means that 51% of adverts include at least one person who is black. Many adverts feature a large number of people and the report also says “montage ads” – which feature a string of separate settings, characters or stories – are increasingly common.

Last year Emma Monk wrote a good post on her Substack blog explaining how the C4 figures were misrepresented by the rightwing media. Lanre Bakare also wrote an article for the Guardian at the time explaining that companies have increased the number of minority ethnic people they include in adverts because the more diverse adverts are, the more positive the impact on sales.

Commenting on Pochin’s decision to restate her original claim, Anna Turley, the Labour chair, said:

It is utterly grotesque that Nigel Farage tolerates this flagrant racism in Reform.

Sarah Pochin – Reform’s last byelection candidate – has followed Farage’s lead in peddling toxic division in our communities. If Reform had any shame whatsoever, they would have dealt with these vile remarks long ago.

Raphael Boyd

Raphael Boyd is a Guardian reporter.

Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, was also at the night-time economy conference in Liverpool today. He is from Manchester and he told the Guardian that Jim Ratcliffe did not understand the football club he co-owns. Polanski said:

Zack Polanski at the night-time economy summit in Liverpool. Photograph: Phil Noble/Reuters

No 10 confirms Chris Wormald has been forced out as cabinet secretary

Downing Street has confirmed that Chris Wormald has been forced out of his post as cabinet secretary. It has issued a statement saying that Keir Starmer and Wormald have decided that Wormald “will stand down as the cabinet secretary and head of the civil service by mutual agreement from today”.

No 10 has not announced his replacement, but it says that Antonia Romeo, the Home Office permanent secretary – who is reportedly the favourite to replace Wormald – will share responsibility for the job in the meantime with Catherine Little, permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office, and James Bowler, permanent secretary at His Majesty’s Treasury.

A new cabinet secretary will be appointed “shortly”, No 10 says.

In a statement, Starmer said:

I am very grateful to Sir Chris for his long and distinguished career of public service, spanning more than 35 years, and for the support that he has given me over the past year. I have agreed with him that he will step down as cabinet secretary today. I wish him the very best for the future.

And Wormald said:

It has been an honour and a privilege to serve as a civil servant for the past 35 years, and a particular distinction to lead the service as cabinet secretary. I want to place on record my sincere thanks to the extraordinary civil servants, public servants, ministers, and advisers I have worked with. Our country is fortunate to have such dedicated individuals devoted to public service, and I wish them every success for the future.

There is no indication that Wormald intended to leave at this point. He was only appointed in December 2024. But, soon after he got the job, government sources started briefing to the effect that Starmer found him too conventional.

During the 20th century cabinet secretaries normally remained in post for a decade or more. Recently about half a decade has become a more normal term of office. But Wormald will be the shortest serving cabinet secretary on record.

Manchester United stresses its commitment to being 'inclusive' in statement distancing itself from Ratcliffe's anti-migrants comment

Manchester United has issued a statement distancing itself from the anti-immigration comments made by its co-owner, Jim Ratcliffe.

In a statement on its website, which does not refer directly to Ratcliffe or his comments, the club says it “prides itself on being an inclusive and welcoming club”.

It goes on:

We remain deeply committed to the principles and spirit of that campaign. They are reflected in our policies but also in our culture and are reinforced by our holding of the Premier League’s Advanced Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Standard.

In a post defending what Jim Ratcliffe said about immigration, Nigel Farage claimed that there are one million people in Britain who don’t speak English. (See 1.53pm.)

A reader points out that the ONS census figures for 2021 England and Wales imply the real figure is much lower. The ONS says:

People who did not report English (English or Welsh in Wales) as a main language were asked to report how well they could speak English (8.9%, 5.1 million). Of those 5.1 million people, 43.9% (2.3 million) could speak English very well, 35.8% (1.8 million) could speak English well, 17.1% (880,000) could not speak English well, and 3.1% (161,000) could not speak English at all.

Nandy refers Telegraph sale to watchdogs over rightwing media plurality concerns

Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, has referred the Telegraph’s proposed sale to the publisher of the Daily Mail to the competition and media watchdogs, weeks after she raised concerns about the consolidation of rightwing newspapers. Michael Savage has the story.

Here is the letter from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to the Daily Mail group explaining the reasons for Nandy’s decision.

Rachel Reeves having a drink during her visit to the OpenReach training centre in Crawley, West Sussex, today. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

Electoral Commission says voting bill as drafted won't stop shell companies being used to get foreign money into UK politics

The government has now published its representation of the people bill.

The headline measures in the bill is the plan to extend voting rights in all UK elections to 16 and 17-year-olds. But, as Jessica Elgot explains in our overnight story, the legislation will also tighten the rules intended to stop foreigners donating to political parties.

There are more details in the government’s press release. The official explanatory notes, and other documents relevant to the bill, are available here.

As Jess explains in her story, the Electoral Reform Society and Unlock Democracy, two groups campaigning for fairer politics, have both said the reforms do not go far enough.

And this afternoon the Electoral Commission, the government’s elections watchdog, has also said the legislation needs to be “strengthened” to protect British politics from foreign money. It said:

While the commission welcomes many of the changes set out in the bill, some provisions need to be strengthened to improve the experience for voters further and better protect the system from foreign interference.

Although only people registered to vote in the UK are allowed to donate to British political parties, there are concerns that under current rules foreigners who own UK companies could donate just by transferring money into a British-based firm. At one point last year there was speculation about Elon Musk giving $100m to Reform UK this way – speculation that ended when Musk and Nigel Farage had a row, and Musk suggested Rupert Lowe would be a better party leader.

The bill is supposed to close this loophole. In its new release, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government says:

The reforms will mean companies making political donations will be required to show that they have a genuine connection to the UK. This includes demonstrating that they are headquartered in the UK, majority owned or controlled by UK electors or citizens and have generated sufficient revenue to cover the donation – closing down foreign actors’ ability to use shell companies to influence UK politics.

But Vijay Rangarajan, the Electoral Commission’s chief executive, said this aspect of the bill should be stricter. He explained:

We are concerned that using revenue to determine companies’ eligibility to donate to political parties is an inadequate safeguard against foreign money. Using profit would more clearly reflect genuine UK-based activity. The current clauses appear to allow a company to donate its entire revenue many times over each year.

The commission also criticised the government’s decision not to repeal the law passed by the last Tory government saying it should have to operate in line with a “strategy and policy statement” written by ministers. The commission said it would “continue to make the case for non-partisan accountability directly to parliament”.

The commission has set out its views on the bill in further detail here.

This is what Zarah Sultana, the Your Party MP, has said about Jim Ratcliffe.

A billionaire worth £17,000,000,000 who moved to Monaco to dodge £4,000,000,000 in tax is now blaming immigrants for Britain’s problems.

If parasitic billionaires like Jim Ratcliffe paid what they owe – and politicians weren’t in their pockets – our NHS, schools and public services wouldn’t be on their knees.

It is textbook divide and rule. The real enemy of the working class travels by private jet, not migrant dinghy.

Unsurprisingly, Liz Truss agrees with Jim Ratcliffe.

Max Wilkinson, the Lib Dem home affairs spokesperson, has posted this on Bluesky about Jim Ratcliffe. He put it up after Ratcliffe issued his partial apology.

Max Wilkinson statement Photograph: Max Wilkinson

The Manchester Evening News Gorton and Denton byelection debate has started. There is no live feed, but the MEN has a live blog here and the full video should be available at some point this afternoon on YouTube.

Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has doubled down on his support for Jim Ratcliffe, posting a video on social media claiming that Ratcliffe was right in what he said about the impact of immigration.

1m people living in Britain don’t speak English.

Areas of our towns and cities have been completely changed.

Jim Ratcliffe is right.