International
Ex-Senior UK Tory Defects To Fringe Right-Wing Party
Embattled UK leader Rishi Sunak suffered a fresh blow Monday when a former ally defected to a right-wing populist party that is worrying the ruling Conservatives ahead of this year’s general election.
Lee Anderson announced that he was joining Reform UK, weeks after he was suspended from Sunak’s Conservative party over comments widely condemned as racist and Islamophobic.
The 57-year-old former deputy chair of the Tories became the first MP to represent Reform, whose honorary president is arch-Eurosceptic and Brexit figurehead Nigel Farage.
The fringe party is currently polling at around 10 percent in opinion surveys, which if replicated at the election could split the right-wing vote in key constituencies.
That would make it even harder for the Tories, in power since 2010, to fend off a resurgent main opposition Labour party that is currently soaring ahead in national polls.
To blunt Reform’s impact, Sunak could take his party further rightward, continuing a trend in recent decades that has accelerated following the 2016 referendum on leaving the European Union.
Doing so risks alienating more socially liberal voters, however.
Anderson is an MP in a so-called “Red Wall” seat of working-class voters in northern England that are crucial to both the Conservatives and Labour’s chances of winning the election.
The seats were former Labour strongholds before ex-prime minister Boris Johnson flipped them for the Conservatives during his landslide win at the last election in 2019 on a promise to “get Brexit done”.
The New Conservatives, a group of MPs on the right of the Tory party who have rebelled against Sunak, said the Conservative party was responsible for Anderson’s defection.
“We cannot pretend any longer that ‘the plan is working’. We need to change course urgently,” the group said in a statement.
– Populist –
Reform rails against immigration, net-zero energy policies and what it calls overbearing “nanny state” government regulations, and its members regularly heap praise on former US president Donald Trump.
“I want my country back,” Anderson told reporters in London as he announced his defection.
He had been widely tipped to join Reform after he was suspended from the parliamentary party of the Conservatives in February for refusing to apologise after saying London’s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan was controlled by Islamists.
“Anderson’s defection does highlight the ongoing electoral problem facing Rishi Sunak, with attacks coming from the left and right,” said Emma Levin of the polling firm Savanta.
But she cautioned that the move “will likely mean very little in national polling terms”.
“Lee Anderson’s name recognition among the wider public is low, and if voters are aware of him, it is probably because they saw (and disagreed) with his comments that led to his suspension from the Conservative party,” Levin said.
In the UK, a by-election is not automatically triggered if an MP changes party affiliation, though they may choose to stand down and seek re-election under their new allegiance or as an independent.
Sunak has yet to announce the date of the general election but has said it will be held in the second half of the year.
AFP
International
Democrats Win US midterm elections
Trump acknowledges the Iran war, and the rising cost of living, were factors in his Republican Party’s defeat – as the White House posts on social media: “Trump is still your president”
US President Donald Trump
The Democrats win the Senate and the House in US midterm elections, taking control of Congress for the rest of Donald Trump’s tenure.
Voters in conservative bastions who had propelled the president to his second term in office just two years ago swung dramatically toward Democrats, fueled by deep frustration over the unpopular war with Iran, anxiety over the high cost of living and anger at Trump’s stewardship of the country.
Trump acknowledges the Iran war, and the rising cost of living, were factors in his Republican Party’s defeat – as the White House posts on social media: “Trump is still your president”

In Texas, the biggest Republican state, Democrats ended a decades-long losing streak in seismic fashion, winning a Senate seat and ousting three-term Governor Greg Abbott.Kansas elected its first Democratic senator since the Great Depression nearly a century ago, and in South Carolina, a state that Trump carried by nearly 18 points in 2024, Democrats turned aside his hand-picked Senate candidate.The results will usher in a new era of divided government in Washington, following two years in which the Republican-controlled Congress rarely exercised its power to rein in Trump.
International
JUST IN: Plane Crash Near Trump’s Florida Home Kills All 9 Aboard
A private Learjet 60 crashed into a residential neighborhood in Palm Beach County, Florida, on Sunday afternoon, killing all nine people on board, officials confirmed.
The aircraft, flying from Austin, Texas, to the Bahamas, went down around 12:50 p.m. local time near Cresthaven/Greenacres, roughly 7–11 kilometers (about 4–7 miles) from President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
It struck near a busy roadway at the entrance to a mobile-home community, creating a large fireball and leaving a crater in the road. Debris was scattered across a wide area, and nearby power and water lines were damaged.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy called the crash a “horrific tragedy” and confirmed there were no survivors among the nine occupants.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis described the impact as “cataclysmic,” saying it “looked like a missile going down.” No injuries were reported among people on the ground. About 600 residents of a nearby mobile-home park were evacuated.
Trump had been at Mar-a-Lago earlier Sunday but departed on Air Force One from the nearby airport about an hour before the crash.
The National Transportation Safety Board is leading the investigation, with support from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Early reports noted the crew had discussed moderate turbulence and ice shortly before the steep descent.
International
Tens of thousands protest against Narendra Modi regime in Delhi
The protest was one of the largest shows of opposition strength in years, taking place amid a wider resurgence of anti-government dissent which has been systematically crushed over the 12 years of the Modi regime.
Thousands of opposition supporters have gathered in Delhi as protests against the Narendra Modi government continue to gather momentum.
Led by the Congress party, India’s opposition alliance has brought together supporters from across the country, amid growing anger over a large-scale revision of the country’s voter roll that has seen 130 million names erased.
Opposition leaders have alleged the process gives Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) an electoral advantage, and have called for the resignation and impeachment of the chief election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar.
The BJP has denied the claims.
Addressing tens of thousands of party workers and supporters, the opposition leader Rahul Gandhi said Kumar had “carried out the biggest crime. He has tried to silence the voice of people, strangulate our country.”
Gandhi said the opposition, united under the acronym India (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance), would not let “democracy be finished in the country” and warned Modi: “You can’t run anywhere.”
The protest was one of the largest shows of opposition strength in years, taking place amid a wider resurgence of anti-government dissent which has been systematically crushed over the 12 years of the Modi regime.
The Guardian Uk
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