Former Tory chancellor Nadhim Zahawi says UK is ‘sick’ as he defects to Reform UK – politics live

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Zahawi says Tories failed to overturn Blair's 'constitutional vandalism', and claims Reform will take on 'unelected bureaucracy'

Zahawi says he accepts that the Conservatives are to blame for some of the problems facinng the country.

Since leaving parliament, I have been reflecting on the successes and failures of my old party’s time in government, and I rue the timidity, even at times the weakness, with which we try to deal with the problems of the country.

My analysis is that a huge culprit is the over-mighty bureaucratic inertia that now dominates and runs the country, that has taken control of swathes of the economy and, with barely a shrug of the shoulders, restricts the individual liberty of each and every one of us.

Zahawi says he has always defended civil servants as individually. But collectively they have turned the UK into “an administrative state”, he says.

He says MPs have been “terrified of the awesome power and the sacred responsible that the British constitution bestowed upon our ancient and sovereign parliament”.

So it is time for another glorious revolution to get us back to a fully sovereign parliament.

He goes on:

Britain needs Reform.

My own party, and by definition to some extent me personally, should share some blame for the continuation of the Blairite constitutional vandalism and our failure, to coin a phrase, to take back control from the rich powers of the unelected bureaucracy.

Now, Conservatives did some important work stabilising the economy in the early years after Tony Blair’s and Gordon Brown’s destructive reign, reforming education and welfare.

But failures on mass migration, failure to strengthen our armed forces or even protect special forces from insane government lawyers, and bad virtue signalling legislation that has made us less competitive and less prosperous, to name but a few – these have provided me with painful lessons learnt that will, I hope, benefit this great new team.

Zahawi says he could have chosen to stay out of politics. He has been chairing one of the UK’s biggest retailers, he says.

He says he knows what it is to be a popular politician; when he was minister for the vaccine rollout during Covid, he was one of the most popular politicians in the UK, he claims.

And he says he expects to get a lot of criticism for his decision today.

But he says he feels it is his duty to support Reform UK.

Zahawi claims that UK is 'sick' as he explains his defection

Nadhim Zahawi is speaking now. He says “Britain needs Nigel Farage as prime minister”.

His declaration will come as a shock to his old colleagues, he says. But he says other people will not be surprised.

We can all see that our beautiful, ancient, kind, magical island story has reached a dark and dangerous chapter.

He says in Westminster people may think things are going fine.

But that is not the experience of people around the country, if they are trying to get a GP appointment, or if they want to express an opinion on X, or if they just want their children “to be taught facts, not harmful fictions at school”, or if they are being “crushed into the dirt by ever growing taxes”.

Addressing these people, he says:

You know in your heart of hearts that our wonderful country is sick.

Former Tory chancellor Nadhim Zahawi defects to Reform UK

Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, is holding his press conference now.

He has unveiled Nadhim Zahawi, the former Tory chancellor (if only for a two months), as a defector to his party.

There is a live feed here.

What Ofcom says about inquiry into 'deeply concerning' reports into Grok AI potentially creating 'child sexual abuse material'

Here is the Ofcom statement about the Grok AI investigation.

And here is an extract.

Our initial assessment

There have been deeply concerning reports of the Grok AI chatbot account on X being used to create and share undressed images of people – which may amount to intimate image abuse or pornography – and sexualised images of children that may amount to child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

As the UK’s independent online safety watchdog, we urgently made contact with X on Monday 5 January and set a firm deadline of Friday 9 January for it to explain what steps it has taken to comply with its duties to protect its users in the UK.

The company responded by the deadline, and we carried out an expedited assessment of available evidence as a matter of urgency.

What our investigation will examine

Ofcom has decided to open a formal investigation to establish whether X has failed to comply with its legal obligations under the Online Safety Act – in particular, to:

-assess the risk of people in the UK seeing content that is illegal in the UK, and to carry out an updated risk assessment before making any significant changes to their service;

-take appropriate steps to prevent people in the UK from seeing ‘priority’ illegal content – including non-consensual intimate images and CSAM;

-take down illegal content swiftly when they become aware of it;

-have regard to protecting users from a breach of privacy laws;

-assess the risk their service poses to UK children, and to carry out an updated risk assessment before making any significant changes to their service; and

use highly effective age assurance to protect UK children from seeing pornography.

Ofcom’s role

The legal responsibility is on platforms to decide whether content breaks UK laws, and they can use our Illegal Content Judgements Guidance when making these decisions. Ofcom is not a censor – we do not tell platforms which specific posts or accounts to take down.

Our job is to judge whether sites and apps have taken appropriate steps to protect people in the UK from content that is illegal in the UK, and protect UK children from other content that is harmful to them, such as pornography.

Ofcom’s investigation process

The Online Safety Act sets out the process Ofcom must follow when investigating a company and deciding whether it has failed to comply with its legal obligations.

Our first step is to gather and analyse evidence to determine whether a breach has occurred. If, based on that evidence, we consider that a compliance failure has taken place, we will issue a provisional decision to the company, who will then have an opportunity to respond our findings in full, as required by the Act, before we make our final decision.

Ofcom to launch formal investigation into X's Grok AI tool and its sexualisted images content

Ofcom has launched a formal investigation into X’s AI tool, Grok, over it being used to create sexualised imagery of women and children, Sky News is reporting.

Sadiq Khan revives speculation he won't stand for further term as London mayor

In an interview on the Today programme this morning, Sadiq Khan revived speculation that he will not stand for a further term as London mayor.

Khan was first elected London mayor in 2016 and he is the only London mayor to have been elected (in 2024) for a third term in office. In Labour circles it is taken as almost certain that he won’t run for a fourth term.

But, in an interview on LBC in September last year, Khan muddied this assumption by declaring that he did intend to stand for a fourth term. “There is no reason I would give this job up for another job in politics,” he said. “I love what I am doing.”

The next mayoral election will be in 2028.

Today, in an interview on the Today programme, Khan did not repeat the LBC line. Instead, when asked if he would run again, he just replied:

The last election I fought and won is nearer than the next one, so ask me again in a year’s time.

In a post last year on his London Centric Substack, Jim Waterson said that the Khan LBC interview took place at a time when the papers were full of speculation about Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham returning to parliament to challenge for the Labour leadership and Khan was just trying to assure people that he was not planning something similar; Khan did not mean to commit to a fourth term, Waterson said.

London Centric has been told that the mayor’s intention had been to shut down speculation that he might consider double-jobbing by holding a Westminster seat at the same time as the mayoral role — only to accidentally inflame speculation.

Instead, the official line remains one of constructive ambiguity — with Khan aware that acknowledging any intention to stand down at the end of his term in 2028 would leave him as a ‘lame duck’ mayor, which inevitably causes power to drain away.

Waterson also pointed out that Dawn Butler, who is a friend of Khan’s, is actively campaigning to be Labour’s next candidate for mayor. He said Khan would not be letting her waste her time on this if he intended to be the 2028 candidate himself.

The government “has identified a legal basis which it believes can be used to allow UK military to board and detain vessels in so-called shadow fleets”, the BBC is reporting. The BBC said this could the British military action against some of these tankers, in line with the operatation launched by the US, with UK assistance, against the Russian-flagged the Marinera tanker in the north Atlantic last week.

Met chief Mark Rowley dismisses Reform UK claim that London getting less safe

Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, is holding another press conference today. Last week he held one that was largely devoted to the crime late in London, which he depicted as a ghastly hellhole where it wasn’t safe to walk the streets. He and Laila Cunningham, his candidate for mayor in London, claimed the capital used to be safer in the past.

Today Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, is highlighting postive crime figures for London. As Vikram Dodd reports, the murder rate is at its lowest level for a decade.

Khan has written about this in an article for the Guardian. He says:

London’s homicide rate is lower than rates in New York, Berlin, Brussels, Milan, Toronto and Paris, five times lower than the rate in LA, and almost 12 times lower than the rate in Chicago. Last year, the capital recorded the fewest number of homicides of victims aged under 25 this century. Our homicide rate for under-25s is now three times lower than it was when I set the VRU up in 2019, and hospital admissions of young people for knife assault have fallen by 43% in the same period.

The success of our crackdown on violent crime means Londoners are safer in their homes and on our streets.

Khan and Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan police commissioner, have both been giving interviews this morning. Cunningham says Rowley should be sacked. Speaking to Times Radio, Rowley did not criticise Reform UK directly, but he said that surveys show that people who live in London feel safe. He said it was people who don’t live in London who think that it isn’t safe, because of the “rhetoric” they hear, he said.

He went on:

London is getting safer. And don’t just judge it on what I say. Casualty departments are seeing far fewer people coming in with assault based injuries. The footfall in the West End in December was up on last year. And I saw some recent YouGov survey data that said well over 80% of Londoners feel safe in London.

So this isn’t just about my data, this is how people feel. These are the facts. The fact that so much public debate is now more on sort of rhetoric than it is on facts is not my responsibility.

Rowley accepted that shoplifting was a problem in London. But he said shoplifting prosecutions were doubling.

Peter Kyle says Ofcom should use powers 'to full extent of law' on X's sexualised AI images ahead of Commons statement

Good morning. We are expecting developments this week in relation to Grok AI sexualised deepfakes scandal, which meant users of Elon Musk’s X social media platform have been able to digitally undress women and children. An announcement on Friday that this service would only be available to paid subscribers was taken by No 10 as evidence the platform had yet to grasp why this was so objectionable, and Liz Kendall, the tech secretary, said that Ofcom must act “in days, not weeks”. That was three days ago.

Kendall is expected to make a statement on this to MPs today.

Peter Kyle, the business secretary, and Kendall’s predecessor as business secretary, has been giving interviews this morning (mostly about other matters – more on those later) and, when asked on LBC why the government was waiting for Ofcom to take a decision, he replied:

Because the law requires us to.

The law requires Ofcom as an independent enforcer and regulator to enforce the law. Now, Ofcom has requested information from X. I believe X has given Ofcom that information and Ofcom is now expediting an inquiry into the behaviour and decisions of X when it comes to operating in the UK market.

Now, at these points in time, Ofcom acts as an enforcer, as an enforcement agency, and it must use those powers to the full extent of the law to keep people safe in this country.

Under the Online Safety Act, Ofcom has sweeping powers to fine companies like X for breaches of online safety rules. In extremis, it could even go to court to to have X blocked from the UK. But the main provisions of the act only came into force relatively recently and they have not been used in a big dispute with one of the global tech giants before. This is uncharted territory.

And it is also politically hazardous. Although Musk left his job in Donald Trump’s administration last year after a row with Trump (mostly about Trump’s budget plans), Musk remains a leading figure in the Maga movement, and the pair had dinner very recently. In Magaworld, it is regarded as axiomatic that European attempts to regulate social media companies are an attack on US free speech. JD Vance, the vice president, told David Lammy last week that allowing an AI app to sexually undress children wasn’t really acceptable. But a day or so later, a more junior figure in the administration, Sarah Rogers, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy, was on social media attacking the UK for “contemplating a Russia-style X ban to protect them from bikini images”.

We have more on this in our First Edition briefing.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Keir Starmer and Peter Kyle, the business secretary, are on a visit in London where they will be speaking to the media.

Morning: And Kemi Badenoch and Laura Trott, the shadow education secretary, are on also doing a London visit, where they will be recording a clip for broadcasters.

11am: Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, holds a press conference.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

2pm: Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, chief of the defence staff, gives evidence to the Commons defence committee. Last week it was reported that he has warned the PM of a £28bn shortfall in the defence budget.

Afternoon: Starmer is due to give a speech to staff at No 10. Later, at 6pm, he will speak to Labour MPs in private at a meeting of the parliamentary Labour party (PLP).

Afternoon: The House of Lords will announce the result of its election for the next Lords Speaker. The two candidates are Michael Forsyth, a former Tory cabinet minister, and Deborah Bull, a crossbencher and former artistic director of the Royal Opera House.

After 3.30pm: Liz Kendall, the tech secretary, is expected to make a statement to MPs about the Grok AI sexualised deepfake imagery scandal on Elon Musk’s X.

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