The yawning gap between funding and demand means that parents are right to fear how the government will react

For millions of us who have children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send), 2024 was a strange and often unsettling year. For a long time, we have been used to quietly fighting our battles in a political and media vacuum. But suddenly, everything has exploded: as the crisis in provision seems to constantly deepen, barely a week goes by without some or other Send story making it into the news.

My 18-year-old son, James, is autistic, and a student at a specialist school – so I watch all this very closely. Local councils in England say that “overspending” on special needs education – manifested in an annual funding gap of at least £3bn, even after the government put in extra money – now threatens more municipal bankruptcies. In the media, meanwhile, culture-warrior columnists now habitually question whether the word “needs” is even appropriate. Increases in the incidence of such conditions as autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), they say, may be a scam partly perpetrated by the merchants of identity politics, and families who manage to get dedicated help are the recipients of “ golden tickets ”: by implication, if people in power want to save money, there is no end of waste and mollycoddling to tackle.

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The prime minister should resolve in 2025 to enthuse about his vision, and leave moaning about the Tories and fiscal hardship to his chancellor

Who is dreading the new year more: Keir Starmer or Rachel Reeves? Most people look forward to the turn of the year as a chance that better things might be on the way, but it’s hard for the prime minister and chancellor to glance ahead to the next few months and expect 2025 to be any more fun than the latter half of 2024. Reeves has a spending review where she is expecting ministers to find 5% efficiencies in their departments , so is nailed on for another 12 months of being the least popular person at the cabinet table. For Starmer, though, the misery isn’t inevitable. Or at least, it might not be if he changed the way he operates, as most people try to at this time of year.

One of the reasons Labour has managed to make governing look quite so hard is that both Starmer and Reeves are playing the bad cop at the moment. Good cop, bad cop is supposed to work as a negotiating tactic when one half of a partnership is negative and hostile while the other partner comes across as upbeat, friendly and encouraging. The bad cop is supposed to start the negotiating, and then the good cop sweeps in to appear as though they’re on the side of the person the pair are trying to win over.

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Speakers banned after criticising government in social media posts

The information watchdog has been asked to investigate “authoritarian” government vetting that caused speakers to be banned from official events for criticising ministers.

Two experts, who discovered that civil servants had combed through years of social media posts to judge them “unsuitable” to address conferences, believe the practice was covert and unlawful.

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Research for Lib Dems shows nearly 27,000 assaults were recorded last year, with about 3,200 deemed serious

Assaults in prisons have been rising with an average of 74 a day recorded in England and Wales last year, including 25 assaults a day inflicted on staff, House of Commons library research has shown.

The figures, commissioned by the Liberal Democrats, show that of the 26,912 assaults that took place over the course of the year, about 3,200 were deemed to be serious – an average of eight a day.

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Reform leader demands apology from head of Tory party after she alleged his party’s online counter was manipulated

Nigel Farage has said he will take action against Kemi Badenoch unless she apologises for accusing him of publishing fake Reform membership data.

The Reform leader said he had opened up his database to media organisations after Badenoch claimed the rival party had coded an online counter to tick up automatically.

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Cabinet Office minister says civil servants are ‘good people caught in bad systems’ before speech setting out reform plans

The government has had “no contact or no request” for the British wife of Bashar al-Assad to come to the UK, Pat McFadden said this morning.

The Cabinet Office minister told the Today programme that he was not aware of any suggestion that Asma al-Assad, who was born in London in 1975 and was raised in the city, might want to return to Britain.

The family are in Russia as far as we know, that’s what Russian state media have said.

We’ve certainly had no contact or no request for Mr Assad’s wife to come to the UK.

I couldn’t comment on her individual rights.

I don’t know her exact circumstances, so I don’t know what would happen in those circumstances, but it’s not something that’s been raised with us.

The bureaucracy of the British state urgently needs cutting back, which is why at the general election we had a plan to reduce it to pre-Covid levels, plans Labour opposed.

Everything Labour has done so far has been to swell the size and cost of the state, on the backs of workers, pensioners, farmers and family businesses across the country.

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Minister for safeguarding unveils measures including ‘right to know’, ensuring police tell victims the identity of online stalkers as soon as they can

Good morning. Jess Phillips , the minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, was the government voice on the morning broadcast round. She says she is unveiling six measures to protect the victims of stalking , including “right to know” guidance intended to ensure that the police tell victims the identity of online stalkers as soon as they can. Speaking on Times Radio, Phillips said:

I have been a victim of stalking, and I wasn’t told [the identity of the stalker]. I didn’t have the right to know. And in most of the cases of my stalkers, they made it clear who they were as part of their desire to control and frighten me. I’m afraid to say that I’ve had more than one in my life.

This was a case raised by Nicola Thorp, where somebody had been stalking her over multiple identities online, and when they said the police told her that they’d found out who it was, they then told her that they couldn’t tell her who it was.

And so everybody became her stalker – the person she was sat next to on the street – and already, when you’re living through something as harrowing as somebody stalking you and making you feel frightened and anxious, the idea that then you have to distrust all of the people around you as well just seems like a terrible added burden … and so that is what we’re going to eliminate.

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Exclusive: Tom Hayhoe, ex-Tory cabinet adviser, will examine an estimated £7.6bn of Covid-related fraud

Rachel Reeves is to appoint a health service and regulatory veteran, Tom Hayhoe, a former Conservative cabinet adviser, as her Covid corruption commissioner with the remit of clawing back billions in fraudulent contracts.

The chancellor is understood to believe the Treasury can recoup £2.6bn from waste, fraud and flawed contracts signed during the pandemic.

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Former PM’s speech to the Heritage Foundation declares just about everyone alive be part of a communist conspiracy

It was a sight for sore eyes. At least for any speaker who has turned up to an event to discover the organisers easily outnumber the audience. In an anonymous, windowless room in Washington DC, there were just a handful of people seated around a couple of circular tables for the latest session hosted by the rightwing – and conspiracy theory adjacent – US thinktank, the Heritage Foundation. Let’s hope there were rather more watching online.

This is Liz Truss’s safe space. America, her last refuge. A nation that regards her 49-day tenure as prime minister a badge of honour rather than a sign of failure. In the UK, no one wants to know Liz any more. The Tory party just wish she would crawl under a stone. She’s the source of much of their embarrassment. Nor could her former constituents wait to see the back of her. Her loss was Norfolk’s gain. But in the US, she still has some credibility among the far right. She still matters.

Taking the Lead by John Crace is published by Little, Brown (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply.

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