EBENEZERWorld
Kremlin threatens British targets inside and outside Ukraine and says UK and France bear ‘direct responsibility’ for Ukrainian strikes on Russia
Read full story on theguardian.com →
Politics — Taz Ali (now) and Martin Belam (earlier)
That is all from us on the UK politics blog, thanks for following along. Here are today’s main developments:
Russia has threatened to target British military sites in Ukraine and elsewhere over the UK’s support of Kyiv. It came after prime minister Andy Burnham announced earlier this week that the UK would allow Ukraine access to classified technology that would allow the country to produce its own Storm Shadow long-range cruise missiles.
Maria Zakharova, Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, said the UK and France were “playing with fire”. She said Russia would respond to Ukrainian strikes using British weapons by hitting any British military facilities in Ukraine and beyond, according to Russian media.
Related: Russia says UK ‘playing with fire’ amid reports CIA chief has warned Kremlin not to attack Nato
Otherwise, it was a good day for the Labour government with the release of statistics showing a drop in young people not in education, employment or training (Neet) as well as a decrease in the number of asylum seekers being temporarily housed in UK hotels.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the number of young people aged 16 to 24 who were Neet had fallen to 981,000 in April to June 2026, down from 1,012,000 in January to March. You can read the full report here .
The number of asylum seekers being housed temporarily in hotels has decreased by 50% in the year to June 2026, according to Home Office figures. It stood at 16,021, down 70% on the peak of 56,018 in September 2023.
Home Office spending on asylum in the UK has also decreased, and the number of people who applied for asylum went down by 21%.
Home secretary Shabana Mahmood said the figures show the government “is restoring control at our border” . She added: “Small boats numbers are also now falling, but we are not complacent and there is more we must do.”
Meanwhile, Burnham visited Wales, his first trip there since becoming prime minister. He said he was “sending a big sign of support” for the reindustrialisation of Wales, saying it will “build the world’s biggest green steel production” which he described as a “huge prize” for the devolved nation.
The prime minister later visited Northern Ireland, where he is expected to hold talks with first minister Michelle O’Neill and deputy first minister Emma Little-Pengelly .
Andy Burnham is now in Northern Ireland, his first trip there since becoming prime minister, to meet Stormont political leaders.
PA reports he is in Belfast speaking to young people at the Oh Yeah Music Centre in the Cathedral Quarter area of the city, and is later holding talks with first minister Michelle O’Neill and deputy first minister Emma Little-Pengelly .
It follows his earlier visit to Wales as part of his cost-of-living tour of the UK (which didn’t include Scotland, although he has promised to meet all of the leaders of the devolved nations in October).
Burnham said: “People in Northern Ireland want more breathing space from the cost of living, good, well-paid jobs and opportunities for their children.
“Political point-scoring in the past has made this harder, not easier.
“We need to be better, so I want to work with the Northern Ireland Executive and the main political parties to try and make a real difference to communities here, and that’s the message I’ll be taking into my meetings later.”
Russia says UK ‘playing with fire’ amid reports CIA chief has warned Kremlin not to attack Nato
Russia has said it could retaliate against the UK for its support of Kyiv by striking military targets inside and outside Ukraine , amid reports that the director of the CIA warned the Kremlin against attacking Nato during a secretive visit this week.
Andy Burnham, Britain’s prime minister, said on Monday the UK would allow Kyiv access to classified technology to start its own production of Storm Shadow long-range cruise missiles. Maria Zakharova, Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, said on Thursday Britain and France were “playing with fire”.
The Wall Street Journal reported that a visit by John Ratcliffe, the CIA chief, to Moscow on Tuesday had followed a US intelligence assessment that Russia could be planning to test Nato with a limited assault on an allied country. This could range from a cyber-attack to a small-scale incursion, probably in a Baltic nation.
Related: Russia says UK ‘playing with fire’ amid reports CIA chief has warned Kremlin not to attack Nato
We have some reaction to the data released by the Home Office from Reform UK, which has made immigration its entire personality.
Zia Yusuf, the party’s home affairs spokesperson, said the figures “show the invasion of Britain continues under Labour”.
The number of asylum seekers being housed temporarily in UK hotels dropped by 50% in the year to June 2026.
The number of people who applied for asylum in the UK is down by 21%.
The number of small boat arrivals was 23% lower than the previous year.
Home Office spending on asylum decreased, to £4.36bn in 2025-26 from £4.76bn in 2024-25.
Yusuf said: “More than 205,000 people have crossed the Channel in boats since 2018, yet just 5% have been deported.”
He added: “Britain is at breaking point. Under Reform, illegal boats in the Channel will be stopped by our navy, and all those here illegally will be detained and deported.”
Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey has commented about recent events in Middlesbrough, telling PA:
There’s clearly organised criminals there who need to be cracked down on, and the tragic death of those young policemen I think has really touched the country, obviously the community up in Middlesbrough. We need to really crack down on these criminals and harm.
Davey has been in London today attending a parent’s strike outside parliament. Parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities are holding a protest in Westminster over proposed government reforms to Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs).
The campaign says that the UK has the worst paternity leave in Europe amounting to two weeks, paid at less than half the minimum wage. They are demanding flexible working by default, and at least six weeks’ paternity leave at 90% pay, including for the self-employed, arguing that most parents are now “worse off on two incomes than our grandparents were on one.”
Three UK airports have been hit by a “cybersecurity incident” in which the data of about 8.7 million customers was accessed, Manchester Airport Group (Mag) has said.
PA Media reports the company, which operates Manchester Airport, London Stansted and East Midlands airport, said that “at no point has passenger safety or aviation security been compromised” during the incident and that neither Mag nor the system hacked held customers’ bank or payment details.
Related: UK airports operator hit by cyber-attack and customer data accessed
PA has a little more data on migration figures that have been released separately by the Home Office. It shows there were 1,099 enforced and voluntary returns in April to June of people who arrived in the UK after crossing the English Channel in small boats.
This is up from 695 in the previous three months and is the highest quarterly figure on record. 3,310 people who arrived in small boats were returned during the year to June, up from 2,445 in the previous 12 months. Of the 3,310 returns in the year to June, 40% were Albanian nationals.
As mentioned earlier, all these figures cover when Keir Starmer was in office.
Forty children reported missing from UK asylum hotels still not found
Forty children who went missing from hotels housing asylum seekers in the UK have still not been found, according to a parliamentary report.
Ministers are facing calls from MPs and peers to explain what they are doing to locate the group, two of whom are believed to still be under 18. The figure emerged in a report on Thursday by the joint committee on human rights on how the social care system is failing young adults.
In 2023, it emerged that more than 440 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children had gone missing from Home Office hotels , some of whom were reported to be as young as 12. The cross-party committee has been told by a witness that 40 of the cohort of missing children have still not been found.
Related: Forty children reported missing from UK asylum hotels still not found
We have a comment from the shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, on the release of Home Office statistics earlier today.
He accused the government of “moving illegal immigrants out of hotels and into flats in your building, and now they are telling them to go and disappear without a trace”.
Just to be clear, the government is not telling asylum seekers to disappear, but Philp could be referring to those whose applications are refused or withdrawn and who are not recorded as having left the UK.
“The next Conservative government would deport every illegal immigrant, leaving the ECHR and any other obligation that stands in the way in order to get it done, because the surest way to empty the accommodation is to make plain that nobody who crosses the Channel gets to stay,” Philp said.
In its analysis of the Home Office’s latest figures on asylum (see post at 11:03 ), the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory said the government has largely been able to close hotels because asylum decisions were being made more quickly.
In its first two years in office, the government has made some progress on its pledge to close asylum hotels. It has done so by primarily making asylum decisions faster.
That reduced the size of the initial decision backlog but shifted the problem to a new appeals backlog in the courts.
The initial backlog is now actually relatively low, and most decisions take a few months. The biggest remaining challenge for the government is now the backlog in the courts.”
Thirteen such hotels closed earlier this month as the Labour government continues to move people into alternative accommodation. The total number is now below 160, having peaked at about 400 under the Conservatives.
Youth unemployment in UK falls below 1 million
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) released figures earlier today on young people aged 16 to 24 years in the UK who are not in education, employment or training (Neet).
The ONS said the number fell to 981,000 in April to June 2026, down from 1,012,000 in January to March.
Explaining the figures, the ONS said: “The percentage of all young people in the UK who were Neet in April to June 2026 was 13.0%, this proportion was up 0.2 percentage points from April to June 2025, but down 0.5 percentage points from January to March 2026.”
My colleague Phillip Inman has more in this report:
Related: Youth unemployment in UK falls below 1 million
UK expects Meta to match US child safety measures after $18bn settlement
Speaking on the media round this morning, the work and pensions secretary, Pat McFadden, said he expected Meta’s new protections for young people in the US to apply to the UK, but that the government was already taking action on this issue.
Meta has agreed to significant changes to its Instagram and Facebook apps in an $18bn (£13.2bn) settlement that ended a landmark lawsuit yesterday. It said it would establish safeguards for teenage users, including daily usage limits and blocks on night-time use nationwide in the US. My colleagues Blake Montgomery and Dara Kerr has more in this report:
Related: Meta agrees to major changes to Facebook and Instagram as it settles US trial over teen addiction for up to $18bn
When asked whether the British government will require Meta to bring those same changes in the UK, McFadden told BBC Breakfast: “We won’t just leave it to Meta, we are acting by ourselves.”
He went on to list some the government’s policies and plans around social media use for young people, including a ban on access for children up to the age of 16 and an overnight curfew.
He said: “We want young people to have a healthy childhood out in the physical world, meeting real people, doing real things, not spending endless time scrolling in their bedrooms, because that’s not good for them.”
My colleague Robert Booth has more on this story here:
Related: UK expects Meta to match US child safety measures after $18bn settlement
PA is now reporting some comments from Andy Burnham, who is in Port Talbot in south Wales. Here are the main lines:
The prime minister said he was “sending a big sign of support” for the reindustrialisation of Wales , saying it will “build the world’s biggest green steel production” which he described as a “huge prize” for the devolved nation. “The UK government is providing the backing for Tata and the workforce here,” he said.
Burnham pledged to honour a promise by Keir Starmer to fund £14bn worth of railway upgrades in Wales. He said the rail service in his part of the world, in the north-west of England, is “bound up with north Wales”.
Burnham said the UK has offered £5m and emergency responders to Nepal after the “devastating” flash floods there. “There are a number of British nationals who currently are thought to be missing and we’ll be providing all the support we can to their families in what is a very distressing and devastating situation,” he added.
On the fatal house fire in Middlesbrough, Burnham said “all of the support will be provided to get to the heart of what has happened” . A seven-year-old girl and her aunt died in a blaze less than a mile from the site of a crash on the A66 where seven people were killed, including two police officers.
What the Home Office figures on asylum show
Here’s a summary of the quarterly figures released by the Home Office on asylum (these all relate to the position as of June, so does not include any of Andy Burnham’s tenure):
16,021 asylum seekers were housed temporarily in UK hotels, down 50% year-on-year from 32,041.
85,891 people applied for asylum in the UK, down 21% from 108,585 in the previous year.
Home Office spending on asylum in the UK decreased to £4.36bn in 2025-26, down 8% from £4.76bn in 2024-25.
40,168 people were waiting for an initial decision on an asylum application , down 56% from 90,812 a year earlier.
42,394 people were granted refugee protection or another kind of leave to stay in the UK in the year to June, after an initial decision on their asylum claim. This is down 21% from 53,480 grants in the previous year.
Mahmood: Asylum figures show government is 'restoring control'
Commenting on the asylum figures, home secretary Shabana Mahmood said:
A little over two years into office and the asylum backlog is down, the number of asylum seekers in hotels is falling, illegal working arrests are at record levels, and deportations and returns are up markedly.
Small boats numbers are also now falling, but we are not complacent and there is more we must do.
That is why I have boosted enforcement on the French beaches and overseas and introduced new legislation to tackle the pull factors that draw people here through unsafe and illegal routes.
This government is restoring control at our border and fairness to the migration system.”
Number of asylum seekers in hotels has fallen, Home Office figures show
The number of asylum seekers being housed temporarily in hotels has fallen, according to Home Office figures.
At the end of June, that figure stood at a new low of 16,021, 50% lower than a year earlier and down 70% on the peak of 56,018 in September 2023.
It is the lowest figure since data was first reported in 2022. The Labour government has pledged to end the use of hotels for asylum seekers by the end of this parliament.
While we wait to see what more comes of those Russian threats, we have some figures from the Home Office on migration. Posts incoming…
Zakharova took particular aim at the UK, according to the Tass report of a briefing this morning, taking issue with Burnham’s decision to hand over British classified information that will allow Ukraine to manufacture its own Storm Shadow missiles.
She did also mention a deal by the French aerospace and defence company Safran to supply guidance systems for the Ukrainian FP-5 “Flamingo” cruise missile.
“Those in the west who make and implement these decisions must know that they are playing with fire,” Zakharova was quoted as saying.
“The consequences could be completely unpredictable, including for themselves.”
Zakharova said the UK and France bear “direct responsibility” for any Ukrainian attacks carried out on Russian territory, Tass reported.
She was quoted by the Russian news agency as saying:
It’s clear that by transferring so-called assembly functions to the Ukrainians, London and Paris are frantically trying to absolve themselves of responsibility for carrying out strikes deep into our country’s territory.
It won’t work. You in Paris, London, Berlin, and other capitals bear direct responsibility for participating in terrorist attacks.”
She also included Germany in her tirade this morning, saying Berlin “dreams of creating the strongest army in Europe”, while the UK and France “are announcing steps to transfer military technology to [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy”.
She said the three countries were “fuelling and stoking the Ukrainian crisis”.
Russia threatens to strike UK military sites over its help with supplying weapons technology to Ukraine
Russia has warned the UK and France that they were “playing with fire” by supplying missile technology to Ukraine, saying Moscow would retaliate by striking British military sites in Ukraine and elsewhere, according to Russian media.
Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, said Russia would respond to Ukrainian strikes using British weapons by hitting any British military facilities in Ukraine and beyond, Russia’s state-owned Tass news agency reported.
It came after Andy Burnham announced earlier this week that the UK government will release the blueprints for British-made components for the Scalp missile , a French version of the UK’s Storm Shadow cruise missile, allowing Ukraine to work with France to produce its own version.
Opening summary: McFadden hails 'inspiring' jobs scheme for young people as Burnham due to make first Wales trip as PM
Hello, and welcome to our UK politics blog. It’s all work, work, work this morning, with the government sounding a triumphant note over its jobs guarantee scheme to get young people into work, while the prime minister is due to visit Wales to speak to workers and apprentices.
The work and pensions secretary, Pat McFadden, declared “work is good for you” during a trip to Boots’s headquarters in Nottingham yesterday, where he met some of the first cohort of 18- to 21-year-olds recruited under the scheme. “It’s bad for your mental health to be sitting at home, isolated,” he added.
Related: ‘Work is good for you’: how UK scheme could help tackle youth mental health crisis
McFadden was put to work earlier in the day when he visited Sainsbury’s in south-west London, stacking shelves in the bread aisle with Andy Burnham and the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan , after the government announced the supermarket would offer 10,000 work experience placements for young people. We covered the main points of that announcement in yesterday’s live blog.
Tackling youth employment has become a key priority for the government, as it hopes to reduce the number of young people not in education, employment or training (or, as the ugly acronym has it, Neet ). About 1 million young people fall into this category, with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to release the latest figures today.
On the media round this morning, McFadden said speaking to young people yesterday was “inspiring”.
“Just a matter of weeks ago, these young people had been on the dole, sometimes for two, three or four years,” he told BBC Breakfast.
“They told me how they’d lost hope, they’d lost confidence, they’d lost belief in the future. And now, in some cases, just three or four weeks into work, that was changing.”
Burnham will make his first official visit to Wales as prime minister, where he will speak to Welsh workers and apprentices about “reindustrialisation, jobs and the cost of living”.
“I am in south Wales today because the answers to the UK’s challenges will not come from an echo chamber,” Burnham said. “They will come from the places that know their own strengths, and from a government willing to listen and then act.
“Good jobs in every community, in every part of the UK. That is what I want every leader in this country signed up to.”
Burnham is also due to speak to ministers in the Plaid Cymru government that ended Labour’s 100-year control of Wales in the May Senedd elections. The prime minister is reportedly also speaking with the boss of Tata Steel, Natarajan Chandrasekaran, in Port Talbert, where the company had closed down its blast furnaces in 2024, resulting in the loss of about 2,800 jobs. On Sunday, Alex Daniel had this report on Tata Steel’s Llanwern plant in south Wales, which is operating at roughly half capacity because it is struggling to compete with cheap imported steel from Asia.
The prime minister is due to speak to the media from 10am, we will bring you the latest lines once we get them.
Burnham’s Wales trip forms part of his summer listening tour around the UK before parliament returns next week, but Scotland is seemingly feeling snubbed. Scottish first minister John Swinney said he was “surprised” Burnham did not make a trip to Scotland as part of his tour, but the prime minister confirmed he will meet the leaders of the devolved nations in a forum in October.
Russia has threatened to target British military sites in Ukraine and elsewhere over the UK’s support of Kyiv. It came after prime minister Andy Burnham announced earlier this week that the UK would allow Ukraine access to classified technology that would allow the country to produce its own Storm Shadow long-range cruise missiles.
This report is published with credit to theguardian.com. Full available text from the wire is above. Read on theguardian.com →
Source: theguardian.com · Taz Ali (now) and Martin Belam (earlier). Published 27 Aug 2026, 02:41 pm.
Most relevant
Join our writers for all the latest press conference news, transfer latest and buildup to the weekend’s fixtures
Read on theguardian.com →Editor’s choice
Nepal has reported 538 deaths and Tibet five, with 1,500 people still missing amid race to find survivors
Read on theguardian.com →Also developing
The Nepali police warned people to head for safety because more water could soak flood-ravaged villages. China said that the risk of a Tibetan lake overflowing had “gradually decreased.”
Read on The New York Times →