Politics latest: After Trump U-turn - top minister says UK has 'recognised all along' that Russia is aggressor (2025)

Thank you for joining us for live coverage of this morning's events in politics, just days before voters go to the polls for the first time since the general election.

On Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips, we heard from:

• Kemi Badenoch, Conservative Party leader;
• Pat McFadden, Cabinet Office minister;
• Ben Rhodes, former Obama national security staffer;
• Peter Kellner, journalist and pollster.

Scroll down to read what they had to say.

If you missed the show and want to catch up in full, you can watch it below.

We'll be back from 6am with the very latest from Westminster as the local elections campaign enters the final days.

By Liz Bates, political correspondent

The Greens have denied a split at the top of the party over trans rights, as they appeal to voters ahead of next week's local elections.

Carla Denyer defended fellow co-leader Adrian Ramsay after he failed to say whether he still believed "trans women are women".

This cast doubt over the stance of the defiantly pro-trans party and raised questions over whether the two leaders were at odds.

But as she joined activists on the campaign trail in Kent on Friday, Ms Denyer claimed she and her fellow Green MP were still unified but couldn't say whether they had spoken about the contentious issue.

She told Sky News: "Green Party policy is clear that trans women are women, trans men are men, and non-binary identities exist and are valid.

"I support that policy and I know that Adrian and I are united in standing up for trans rights and for women's rights.

"I don't see those in conflict, I understand some people will express themselves slightly differently, and I absolutely understand why a man, a cis-man, might feel slightly uncomfortable defining womanhood from the outside."

It may have caused some tricky conversations this week, but the issue is unlikely to have a huge impact on next Thursday's elections.

A little earlier on Sky News, we heard from journalist and pollster Peter Kellner about what is at stake at the local elections on Thursday.

First is control of councils up and down England, with the Tories "expected to lose most of" the councils they won in 2021.

Second is how the parties perform in terms of the national picture. He explains to Trevor Phillips that the big parties tend do to "abit worse than their poll rating, and the smaller parties do better than their poll ratings".

It could be that smaller parties get the majority of the vote, which would be "really new in British politics".

"It takes us into a new space, slightly concealed by the fact that we have a voting system which pushes back against multi-party politics," he said.

Kellner went on to say that he expects many more councils than normal to be 'no overall control', meaning no party has a majority on them.

"I suspect [in] a lot of these traditional Tory counties, there will be a majority for Conservative and Reform, but not for either of them individually," he said, adding that the "Tory-Reform drama after next Thursday will move to a lot of county halls".

More broadly, Kellner argued that politics has changed in recent years as there is much less party loyalty, while the economy and identities have changed.

"I think we are into a long period of multi-party politics," he said.

Asked finally who has the most to worry about on Thursday, Kellner replies: "The Conservatives because - I'm not saying it will happen - it's perfectly possible not only do they lose most or even all of their councils, but when we get a projection of the national vote, they could come out fourth."

By Mark Kleinman, City editor

The bosses of four of Britain's biggest banks are secretly urging the chancellor to ditch the most significant regulatory change imposed after the 2008 financial crisis, warning her its continued imposition is inhibiting UK economic growth.

Sky News has obtained an explosive letter sent this week by the chief executives of HSBC Holdings, Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest Group and Santander UK in which they argue bank ring-fencing "is not only a drag on banks' ability to support business and the economy, but is now redundant".

The CEOs' letter represents an unprecedented intervention by most of the UK's major lenders to abolish a reform which cost them billions of pounds to implement and which was designed to make the banking system safer by separating groups' high street retail operations from their riskier wholesale and investment banking activities.

Their request to Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, to abandon ring-fencing 15 years after it was conceived will be seen as a direct challenge to the government to take drastic action to support the economy during a period when it is forcing economic regulators to scrap red tape.

It will, however, ignite controversy among those who believe that ditching the UK's most radical post-crisis reform risks exacerbating the consequences of any future banking industry meltdown.

Beth Rigby, Harriet Harman and Ruth Davidson discuss the UK Supreme Court's judgment on how a woman should be defined in law.

They also hear from Ellie, a trans woman who says she's now afraid for her safety and her future.

Harriet literally wrote the law in question, the Equality Act 2010 - she and the team dig into what the judgement means for individuals and institutions across the country.

And on 1 May, there are local and mayoral elections in England and the Runcorn and Helsby by-election. The polling group More in Common has helped us hear what's on the minds of voters in Doncaster.

👉 Click here to listen to Electoral Dysfunction on your podcast app 👈

Find all the candidates in Doncaster and in your area at the Electoral Commission:https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/i-am-a/voter/your-election-information

Come and join us LIVE on Tuesday 20th May at Cadogan Hall in London, tickets available now:https://www.aegpresents.co.uk/event/electoral-dysfunction-live/

Remember you can also watch us onYouTube!

A major donor to the Conservative Party, Bassim Haidar, has announced that he has defected to Reform UK, and has pledged £1 million to help the party win.

But Kemi Badenoch tells Trevor Phillips: "I'm not worried."

She says the Tories are raising money, noting that they raised "more than the Lib Dems, Reform and Labour combined" in the last few months.

"Obviously, we don't want to lose our donors, but we need to make sure that what we are doing is about the public - it's not just about winning elections."

Trevor next puts to the Tory leader the exclusive Sky News audio of Robert Jenrick vowing to"bring this coalition together" to ensure that Conservatives and Reform UK are no longer fighting each other for votes by the time of the next election (listen below).

Badenoch rejects Trevor's suggestion that what Jenrick is saying is that two parties on the right of British politics cannot co-exist and win, pointing to the multiple parties on the left.

"What he's talking about, and which I do agree with, is that we need to bring back all those people who left the Conservative Party to go to Reform.

"We do need to bring that coalition back, just as I want to see the people who left us to go to the Lib Dems, or to go to Labour coming back.

"That doesn't mean I want a coalition with Labour and the Lib Dems."

Kemi Badenoch faces her first electoral test as party leader at the local elections on Thursday, and she tells Trevor Phillips: "Next week's elections are not an opinion poll."

Rather, they are about who will be running critical local services, and she argues that Labour is not fit to do that.

The Tory leader refuses to put any numbers on how many seats she expects to win or lose, but says Tory councillors across the UK have managed to keep local authorities running with "very tight finances".

Trevor asks Badenoch if she will forbid Tory councillors from going into coalition with Reform UK, and she replies: "I'm not going into any coalition whatsoever with Nigel Farage or Reform at national level.

"Read my lips - I am not going into coalition with Nigel Farage."

But she says it is "different" at the local level, and she has told her "smart" local leaders that they should do what is right for their area, noting that the party is already working with the Lib Dems and independents in some areas.

Badenoch also notes that some Reform UK councillors were previously Tory councillors, so they will all be familiar with each other, which will make working together easier.

The Tory leader has been very clear with her view on the prime minister (see previous post), and Trevor asks if she endorses the TUC boss' description of Farage as "apolitical fraud and a hypocrite cosplaying as a champion of the working class".

She does not say, but says the Reform UK leader is "not someone that I'm interested in doing business with".

Pushed on her refusal to personally criticise Farage in the way she did Starmer, Badenoch replies: "I'm the leader of the opposition, not the opposition to Reform."

She adds: "I don't spend all my time talking about all the other minor parties."

Kemi Badenoch has penned a scathing op-ed for The Telegraph newspaper today in which she accused the PM of "cowardice" and "having no moral core" (read more here).

Trevor Phillips puts to the Tory leader that it is not an elevated argument, but she replies that she is "going to speak the truth".

In reference to their exchange at PMQs after the Supreme Court's gender ruling, she says: "What I saw last Wednesday was a man who refused to apologise or even acknowledge that any wrong had been done to a woman who was hounded out of their party because she said biological sex was real."

She insists that she does not dislike Sir Keir Starmer personally, but says he dislikes his politics and that there is "no conviction in anything he does".

"How can we have a prime minister who doesn't know what a woman is until the Supreme Court tells him?" she questions.

"What does he know about the economy, then? What's he going to do about foreign affairs?"

She goes on: "If someone is too afraid to say what they think because they're afraid of what the media will say or what others will say, then how can they lead the country?"

Badenoch says she is speaking for "all of those people out there in the country who are feeling the pain of Labour's decisions".

The government is in the midst of negotiating trade deals with the EU and the US, and the Tory leader says the government "should be closing this because we got very close last time President Trump was in office".

But Kemi Badenoch is insistent that food standards should not be watered down in order to get a deal, saying she did not reach an agreement with Canada when she was in government for that reason.

"So Labour should not be doing that," she says.

Badenoch goes on to say: "What Labour needs to do now is show that they can get a deal that isn't making concessions, so we can have what we had last month before the trade tariffs, and we need serious people doing this."

She hits out at the government's negotiating ability, criticising the deal reached with Mauritius on the future of the Chagos Islands, and agreements struck with union.

"Whenever Labour negotiates, Britain loses," Badenoch says.

She also criticises Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds, saying he has "never run a business".

The next guest on this morning's edition of Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips is Kemi Badenoch, and we start with Donald Trump seeming to U-turn by suggesting that Putinperhaps "doesn't want to stop the war".

She replies: "I think this is a definitely a sign of progress. It's a positive signal."

The Tory leader hails Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a "hero", and says that "those of us who believe in freedom" should "not allow the aggressor to win".

She refuses to say if the US president was wrong in his strategy, and says the Tories aimed to ensure Ukraine did not lose territory, saying: "It had to be a war that Russia stopped, not one that Ukraine surrendered."

"It was really heartening to see him talking to President Zelenskyy, in the Vatican yesterday after that really awful press conference where Zelenskyy was humiliated," she says.

"I think we should all be pleased to see these positive signals."

A land for peace deal "would be rewarding aggression", Badenoch continues, and hits out at Russia for the Salisbury poisonings, for example.

"We need to do everything we can to support Ukraine, and that's going to need the US's support, which is why I really welcome these positive signals that we've seen from President Trump," she adds.