Friday evening news briefing: We’ll stop taking free clothes, say Starmer and Rayner

Joshua Hughes
Evening Briefing logo
Evening Briefing logo

Good evening. Sir Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves will not accept free clothing in the future.

Elsewhere in today’s newsletter, Nigel Farage has admitted that “amateurism” cost Reform UK at the general election, and a top Hezbollah commander has been killed in a “targeted” airstrike in Beirut.

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We’ll stop taking free clothes, say Starmer and Rayner

Number 10 sources have confirmed that the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Chancellor will make the change. It comes after Labour MPs called for Sir Keir to vow to stop taking gifts following days of negative headlines about his use of donations, including for clothes. The Labour leader and his wife had accepted money from the Labour peer Lord Alli for clothing, with Sir Keir also getting donations for new glasses.

Farage: ‘Amateurism’ cost Reform UK at general election

The party leader said: “At that stage of our development, we weren’t big enough, wealthy enough, professional enough to vet general election candidates properly, and that amateurism let us down.” Mr Farage said having Zia Yusuf as the new Reform chairman “has already made a massive difference” in making Reform more professional – follow live updates.

Lee Anderson
Lee Anderson rips up a TV licence letter on stage at Reform UK party conference - REUTERS/Hollie Adams

Earlier, during his speech, Lee Anderson ripped up a letter telling him to pay his TV licence fee. Just hours before Reform’s conference, the BBC’s “fact-checking service” had dismissed the party’s flagship immigration policy.

Israel confirms killing of Hezbollah’s second-in-command

Rescuers carry a body at the scene of a missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut
Rescuers carry a body at the scene of a missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut - AFP

The second-in-command of the militant group was killed alongside other “top commanders” in the elite Radwan force, the Israel Defence Forces said. Ibrahim Aqil had been wanted in the US for decades over his role in the 1983 bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut that killed 63 people and the bombing of a US Marines barracks in the capital a few months later that killed 241 US personnel – follow the latest.

Meanwhile, Britain is preparing to airlift citizens out of Lebanon amid heightening tensions between Israel and Hezbollah.

Evening Briefing: Today’s essential headlines

The Russian pensioners sent to their deaths on the front line

A cemetery in Kursk
A cemetery in Kursk commemorating soldiers who have lost their lives in the war - VLADIMIR ALEKSANDROV/ANADOLU via Getty

An investigation into the deaths of Russian soldiers revealed that 250 volunteers aged over 60 years old have died since the beginning of the war in February 2022. It also found that volunteers who signed up to join the armed forces after Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion make up the highest percentage of those killed in combat – continue reading.

Comment and analysis

I first visited Lisbon 25 years ago. The city is now unrecognisable

Chris Leadbeater
Chris Leadbeater

By the middle weekend of November 1999, Praça do Comércio had seen better days. The main plaza on Lisbon’s waterfront seemed to be as much an ad-hoc urban gallery as an important public space, so extensive and so graffiti-splattered was the wooden boarding, shielding its many once-fine buildings. But in 2024, the city has never looked grander, more elegant, or more gorgeous.

Sport Briefing: Today’s essential headlines

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