Party leader launches make-or-break campaign for Holborn amid plummeting poll ratings Daily Telegraph 11/09/26 Zack Polanski has been confirmed as the Green Party candidate in the by-election to replace Sir Keir Starmer . The Green Party leader will launch a high-stakes campaign for a seat in Parliament after seeing off a challenge from Hamza Chowdhury, a Green councillor for Camden council, to secure the nomination in Holborn and St Pancras. The contest on Oct 8 is expected to be a two-horse race between the Greens and Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali, the leader of Camden council and a former Somali child refugee. It is a make-or-break moment for Mr Polanski, who is facing a confidence crisis as the Green Party plummets in the polls. Sir Keir triggered the by-election when he resigned from Parliament , two months after he was ousted as prime minister. Voters moving away from Labour Labour has held the seat continuously since it was created in 1983, but voters there have moved towards ...
Chartered jet flew to France in January carrying passenger with complex physical medical needs Daily Telegraph 11/09/26 The Home Office used a chartered passenger jet to deport a single migrant to France at a cost of tens of thousands of pounds to the taxpayer, The Telegraph can reveal. The flight, in January this year, was the only flight consisting of a single migrant, although there was another passenger jet chartered to deport eight migrants to Poland in June last year. The flights were among 74 planes chartered by the Home Office during a one-year period to deport foreign offenders and illegal migrants at an average cost of £186,000 per flight, according to Home Office data. During the year from Feb 1, 2025 to Jan 31 this year, a total of 2,835 migrants were flown out of the UK at a total cost of £13.8m, equivalent to nearly £5,000 per person. The single-migrant plane was chartered to fly on Jan 7 this year. It is understood the migrant had complex physical medical needs. ...