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Shabana Mahmood swears at ‘white liberal’ hecklers over Reform remarks | Labour

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Shabana Mahmood told “white liberal” hecklers to “fuck right off” after being accused at an on-stage event of copying the policies of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

The home secretary was barracked by a man who said he wanted to “personally thank you for out-Reforming Reform” during a live interview in central London on Monday. Two other audience members shouted “refugees welcome” as the man was removed by security.

Speaking to the comedian Matt Forde, Mahmood said she would not be put “in her box” and accused the protesters of trying to “delegitimise” the “perfectly valid” concerns many people have with high levels of immigration.

The clash took place as Mahmood faces pressure from Labour MPs and cabinet colleagues to water down hardline plans for asylum and immigration.

Mahmood told Forde’s Political Party podcast at the Duchess Theatre that claims she was chasing Reform votes were “just a way of delegitimising the point of view that I bring to the table”.

“It’s also a way of delegitimising the perfectly valid, legitimate views of millions of people in this country, including ethnic minorities in this country. And it’s not acceptable, right? And also, you’re trying to put me in a box, which includes a lot of people who think I don’t even belong in my own country.

“That’s why I said this individual can just fuck right off, because I know I belong in my own country. You’re not going to be able to do that to me,” she said.

She said there was an aspect of racism to the claims. “I do think there is that element of it, which is: ‘How dare you, a brown woman, say a thing that we white liberals think you’re not allowed to say?’ Well I’m saying it.”

She also told Forde that she was frustrated at Labour’s lack of progress in government.

“We ourselves in the Labour party are getting in our own way.”

A campaign group that said it coordinated the protest against Mahmood disputed her accusation that they are “white liberals”.

Green New Deal Rising said the man who began the disruption is a 32-year-old called Joe who is a person of colour and of a migrant background.

“As someone who migrated here when I was four and grown up here, I know the value migrants bring to our country,” Joe said in the statement.

Mahmood plans to end permanent protection for refugees, who will instead have their asylum grants reviewed every 30 months and forced to return home once it is safe to do so.

Refugees will not be able to bring their family to the UK until they can afford to live self-sustainably, and refugees will only start to qualify for permanent settlement after 20 years.

Mahmood plans to double the time it takes for most overseas workers to gain permanent settlement in the UK from five to 10 years.

She has recently come under attack for claiming that the overhaul of settlement rules will save £10bn.

The IPPR thinktank pointed out that estimates from the government’s own Migration Advisory Committee show dependents making net positive financial contributions until they stop working, claim the state pension and start having higher health costs.



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''Scary' clash in Channel' and 'Oh frigate!'

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The papers lead on warning shots fired by a Russian warship near a UK-registered yacht in the English Channel.



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Ukraine war briefing: Moped ban in Crimea as official says noise is Kyiv plot using youth | Ukraine

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  • Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014, has banned riding moped scooters, quad bikes and motorcycles at night-time, saying they sound like ⁠drone attacks and suggesting children are doing it deliberately at Kyiv’s behest. Sergei ​Aksyonov, the Russian-installed governor of the illegally occupied peninsula, said the ban would be in place between 8pm and 6am from Wednesday onwards.

  • Oleg Kryuchkov, Aksyonov’s adviser, claimed ‌separately on Telegram: “The enemy is recruiting your children for night-time ridesThe moped ⁠noise hampers the work of defence systems. Their engines sound similar [to drones].” ​Ukraine has recently intensified drone attacks on Crimea, nominally the home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet – targeting the peninsula’s supply routes and triggering a fuel crisis. A limit of 20 litres (5.3 gallons) of fuel per car at petrol stations would continue, Mikhail Razvozhayev, ​the governor of Crimea’s biggest city, Sevastopol, posted on Tuesday. Long lines of motorists queueing in Russian-controlled Crimea, southern Krasnodar region in Russia proper, and elsewhere underscore the sensitive domestic fallout from Ukraine’s strikes.

  • A Ukrainian drone attack started a fire at the refinery that is the ⁠largest fuel supplier to the Moscow region, and two industry sources told Reuters that it had halted operations. The strike on Gazprom Neft’s refinery in south-east Moscow on Tuesday damaged a primary refining facility that accounts ⁠for 53% of the plant’s capacity. Emergency services said the ⁠fire was put out and did not affected operations – information that was contradicted by Reuters sources. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, said the Moscow refinery was hit from a distance of 500km (310 miles). “This is a just response to Russian strikes – and to the dragging out of a war that must be ended.” Gazprom Neft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

  • The US could soon reinstate sanctions on Russian oil shipments, Donald Trump indicated, as leaders at the G7 summit moved on Tuesday to put the war in Ukraine back on top of their agenda. Trump said the sanctions on Russia – partly waived by the US due to the Iran war, ostensibly to help lower oil prices – can go back in place as more oil moves through the strait of Hormuz. “Soon we’ll be able to do that because the oil is now flowing. We’re in a position to do that soon.”

  • Russia should make peace with Ukraine, the US president said after a “very good” meeting with Zelenskyy. “Look, Russia should make a deal,” Trump told reporters, adding that too many young men were dying on the battlefield on both sides. “I’m gonna do whatever I can.” The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said of Trump’s statement: “I found him to be very cooperative, and ‌I also saw him listening very attentively. And ‌in that respect, once again, it gives me a certain degree of optimism that we here, as Europeans and as Americans, are now doing everything we can, together, to end the war.”

  • A Ukrainian ⁠Su-24M bomber aircraft crashed on a mission in ⁠the Khmelnitskyi region ⁠in ​western Ukraine on Tuesday ⁠and its two-member crew was killed, ⁠the Ukrainian ​air ‌force said. Ukraine is estimated to have about a dozen of the ageing SU-24 family of warplanes. They are used to launch the Scalp/Storm Shadow cruise missiles supplied by Britain and France.

  • Russian strikes on Ukraine killed at least eight people on Tuesday, officials said. A drone strike in Nikopol, central Dnipropetrovsk region, killed “a mother and son – a woman of 87 and a 51-year-old man” as well as a third person not immediately identified, said the regional governor, Oleksandr Hanzha. “The enemy targeted people ‌walking along the road with an FPV ​drone,” Oleksandr Hanzha said on Telegram. He posted a ​blurred photo ​of a ​wheelchair on ​a ‌road and ​what appeared ​to be a body underneath.

  • Russian shelling of the Donetsk region city of Sloviansk killed three people, while drone strikes on the southern Kherson region killed two people and wounded 16, according to officials. Five Russian ⁠attacks on the ⁠south-eastern Ukrainian ⁠city of ​Zaporizhzhia left one ⁠person dead, three injured and set ablaze ⁠a ​home ‌and a ‌shopping centre, ‌said Ivan Fedorov, the regional governor.

  • Repairs to the nearly 1,000-year-old Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery in Kyiv could take around two years, an official said ⁠on Tuesday. A ⁠Russian attack on ​the complex set fire to the roof of the Dormition Cathedral within ⁠the vast Unesco world heritage site. More than ‌80% of the 11th-century cathedral’s roof had been damaged, but firefighters managed to prevent the fire from spreading inside the cathedral, Maksym Ostapenko, director general of the complex, was cited as saying by Interfax Ukraine news agency.

  • A Russian artist critical of Vladimir Putin and the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, has been shot and killed in ⁠the eastern Polish town of Biała Podlaska, a prosecutor has said. Local media identified the victim as Robert ⁠Kuzovkov, who was also known by his artistic pseudonym, Semyon Skrepetsky. Pjotr Sauer writes that five shots were fired at the ⁠victim, including one ⁠to the head, in the attack on Monday, ​according to Marcin Kozak, a spokesperson for the district prosecutor in Lublin. Two Belarusians ⁠had been detained but no one had yet been charged. Other Russian exiles suspected Kadyrov was responsible.

  • The Chinese ⁠embassy ​in London said it had complained to British ⁠authorities about sanctions on several entities, including four from ⁠China, for allegedly supplying key military equipment ​to Russia. “China has consistently promoted peace talks and strictly ​controlled exports of dual-use goods,” an embassy spokesperson said. “Normal exchanges and cooperation between China and Russia should ⁠not be disrupted or affected.” Britain’s latest sanctions ​package, ​announced on Tuesday, includes cracking down on ​third-​country suppliers of critical military equipment to Russia in China, Thailand and Turkey.

  • The US extended by 15 days until 1 July a sanctions waiver on Serbia’s Russian-controlled oil company NIS, allowing it to continue importing and processing crude, the firm said. Washington has demanded since early 2025 that Russia’s sanctioned Gazprom Neft sell it stake in NIS, which has been threatened by US financial sanctions that have been repeatedly postponed. Talks on the sale of the Russian-held stake in NIS to Hungary’s MOL energy company have gone on for months, with the US Treasury’s foreign assets control office extending the deadline for their completion until 16 June.



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    Streeting would 'be prepared' to trigger leadership contest as early as next week

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    But the former health secretary told BBC Newsnight he would prefer for the prime minister “to take a decision on his own terms”.



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