Labour and a Tory donor say it should be returned after police say they are investigating alleged racist remarks

Rishi Sunak has been urged to rethink the decision to keep £10m from the Conservative donor Frank Hester after police said they were investigating “racist comments which were allegedly made” by the businessman in 2019.

The investigation by West Yorkshire police was triggered by a complaint from Diane Abbott, after the Guardian reported that Hester told colleagues that looking at the MP made you “want to hate all black women” and said she “should be shot”.

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The country may be becoming a basket case and councils going bust, but what does the PM think of the England shirt?

There is nothing a politician loves more than a bus. They’re so versatile. You can paint slogans on them when you want your lies immortalised, and colour them pink to indicate (Harriet Harman, how could you? Circa 2015 ) that you’re a great big feminist.

You can get an open-top bus if you want to look racy (Lee Anderson, nearly taking his own head off on a motorway, last week), but most of all, you can stand in front of one.

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Rishi Sunak launches his party’s campaign amid fears of wipeout and internal rumblings about his leadership

At a bus depot in Derbyshire Rishi Sunak valiantly rehearsed some of the arguments the Conservatives are preparing to deploy against Keir Starmer and Labour at the local elections in May .

Starmer was “arrogantly taking the British people for granted”, he claimed, and pointed to Birmingham council as an example of how Labour had “effectively bankrupted the largest local authority in Europe”.

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Prime minister will be in Derbyshire and certain to be questioned over cost of Waspi compensation

The government has announced that funding has been allocated for nearly 955 new electric buses in England, with 25 councils across the country sharing the £143m expenditure.

Transport secretary Mark Harper said “As part of our plan to improve local transport across the country, we’re providing a further £143m to improve journeys for bus passengers, particularly in rural areas, with almost 1,000 brand-new, zero-emission buses due to hit the road.”

North-west £9.4m

North-east £14.8m

Yorkshire and the Humber £5.7m

East Midlands £25.4m

West Midlands £7.4m

South-west £43.4m

South-east £30.2m

I would today say: “I’ll tell you when the general election is going to be”. That ends all the speculation about early elections. It means you don’t go through the whole summer with questions on is it going to be October or November. The marginal advantage he’s going to get by having a bit of a surprise … is more than outweighed by the endless speculation. The only reason people know he isn’t calling an election right now is because he knows he couldn’t win it.

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Mel Stride’s crass comments about chasing ill people into work can’t conceal his motive – to save money on benefits

Can we all please stop complaining about being miserable and just get on with it? That seemed to be the gist of Mel Stride’s recent remarks on the state of the nation’s ongoing mental health crisis. According to the work and pensions secretary, the mainstream conversation around mental health may have gone “too far ”, leading to people self-diagnosing what are, in his mind, the “normal ups and downs of life”.

To add material insult to injury for those of us who experience mental health problems, in the same interview, the minister unveiled a new and dangerous plan to push 150,000 people with “mild” conditions back into work. It’s really very good for our wellbeing, he argued.

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The equalities minister knows the Tory anti-woke sweet spot. As for those who benefit from greater diversity, oh well …

The lady is for turning. And contradicting too. The lady is Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, minister for women and equalities, and now the Conservative party’s great Black hope. Which must come in handy as hope (with a dash of diversity-drenched “anti-wokeness”) appears to be the Tories’ only strategy to be remotely competitive at the next election. Or the one after that.

Badenoch, the would-be PM, is on manoeuvres. Within a matter of days of assailing her own anti-liberal brand and shocking practically everyone by labelling Frank Hester’s obviously racist comments about Diane Abbott as racist, Badenoch quickly returned to form by dismissing the same comments as “ trivia ”.

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Readers respond to an article by Jonathan Freedland about the Tories’ damaging ‘long goodbye’ as the party clings to power

Jonathan Freedland’s article would be sensible and correct if Tory reluctance to accept the inevitable was just that – an understandable sentimental reluctance to accept the nature of democracy and take on the constitutionally respectable role of opposition ( This Tory long goodbye is toxic for the country – and making Labour’s job ever harder, 15 March ).

But, given the greed of their donors and the gravy trains they provide for loyal servants, they still need time to cement in place every reward they can for their donors and manipulate systems to ensure that an incoming government will be obliged to continue to transfer wealth to Tory cronies.

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Dan Barker, who only took up the post three months ago, says he’s delighted to join the new home of conservatism

The Conservative candidate for the Greater Manchester mayoral election has defected to Richard Tice’s rightwing Reform UK party.

Dan Barker was selected only three months ago as the Tory candidate to challenge the incumbent mayor Labour’s Andy Burnham in May’s elections.

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