MPs spar over response to Cambridgeshire train attack – UK politics live | Politics
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- November 3, 2025
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Lib Dem spokesperson Max Wilkinson condemns Reform UK and Chris Philp for their response to train attack
Max Wilkinson, the Lib Dem home affairs spokesperson, said within hours of this attack happening, social media was full of speculation about this attack, inciting racist and Islamphobic reaction.
He accuses “figures on the hard right, including members of the Reform party” of trying to “exploit the incident for political gain”.
Desperate to involve themselves in the tragedy, they reached for their dog whistles. They threw around baseless opinions on levels of crime when facts were available. They were shamelessly trying to turn tragedy into yet another excuse to whip up fear and sow division.
He claims Philp’s comments today “also veered into that realm”. He added:
Never is an opportunity to blame foreigners missed. That is beneath contempt.
Philp heckles, saying he was not blaming foreigners and that Wilkinson should withdraw his accusation.
Mahmood says she deplores the way “armchair warriors” spread misinformation online.
She says at moments of crisis “people normally reveal their true colours”. She says she will leave her comments there.
Key events
Tories claim Bloody Sunday verdict shows government should ‘think again’ about Northern Ireland Troubles bill
The Tories have urged the government to rethink its Northern Ireland Troubles bill in the light to the acquittal of “Soldier F” in the Bloody Sunday murder trial.
Speaking during an urgent question in the Commons, Alex Burghart, the shadow Northern Ireland secretary, said the result of the trial showed how it was “vanishingly difficult” to obtain convictions in cases like this. He went on:
And this, of course, has implications for the government’s Troubles bill, which will reopen many such cases, cases where there is no prospect of resolution but only of ongoing legal process, with almost no possibility of bringing terrorists to court, but which, ultimately, leave open the likelihood of ever more vexatious complaints against our veterans.
Burghart urged the government to “think again” about its bill.
Hilary Benn, the Northern Ireland secretary, defended the Troubles bill. He said the Legacy Act passed by the Tories had to be replaced because it was “opposed by all of the political parties in Northern Ireland, and was found by the courts to be incompatible with our human rights obligations”.
Court hears election petition challenge against result of Runcorn and Helsby byelection won by Reform UK by six votes
The candidate who came last in the Runcorn and Helsby byelection has launched a legal challenge against the result on the basis there was “fraud” at the count, PA Media reports. PA says:
English Constitution party candidate Graham Moore received 50 votes, or a 0.15% share of the vote, in the May election, which saw Reform UK candidate Sarah Pochin claim the seat with 12,645 votes, just six more than the Labour candidate.
Giving evidence in the trial of his election petition challenge at Chester crown court on Monday, Moore spoke about the “statistical impossibility” of receiving 50 votes, which he said was the exact number he received when standing in the Tooting byelection in 2016.
He told the trial, sitting before high court judges Mr Justice Spencer and Mr Justice Bryan: “I need the court to focus on process, because process is key.”
Moore, who represented himself in the hearing, added: “It’s not the first time it’s happened but, most importantly, when I’ve seen it happen at other counts no one has ever pushed it forward to an election hearing and explained the method and operation of fraud to two high court judges.”
He said he and his count agents had seen an estimated 116 ballots with votes cast for his party on.
He told the court: “I’m not suggesting that I have won this election. I have never said that. We’re not really interested in whether it would be Labour or Conservative or even Reform.”
Moore said he did not know whether the loss of votes which he said he saw was down to error or fraud.
The petition has been made against two respondents, Pochin, who was legally represented but not present in court, and returning officer Stephen Young.
The trial is listed for three days.
Ben Obese-Jecty, the Tory MP for Huntingdon, said this was a difficult and challenging weekend for his constituents. He praised the emergency services, and he says the actions of the driver, who diverted the train, undoubtedly saved lives.
Lib Dem spokesperson Max Wilkinson condemns Reform UK and Chris Philp for their response to train attack
Max Wilkinson, the Lib Dem home affairs spokesperson, said within hours of this attack happening, social media was full of speculation about this attack, inciting racist and Islamphobic reaction.
He accuses “figures on the hard right, including members of the Reform party” of trying to “exploit the incident for political gain”.
Desperate to involve themselves in the tragedy, they reached for their dog whistles. They threw around baseless opinions on levels of crime when facts were available. They were shamelessly trying to turn tragedy into yet another excuse to whip up fear and sow division.
He claims Philp’s comments today “also veered into that realm”. He added:
Never is an opportunity to blame foreigners missed. That is beneath contempt.
Philp heckles, saying he was not blaming foreigners and that Wilkinson should withdraw his accusation.
Mahmood says she deplores the way “armchair warriors” spread misinformation online.
She says at moments of crisis “people normally reveal their true colours”. She says she will leave her comments there.
Ruth Cadbury, the Labour chair of the transport committee, pays particular tribute to the rail staff who reacted so quickly. She especially praises the train driver and the staff member who intervened to protect passengers.
She urges the government not to respond in a way that will make travel by train harder.
Mahmood says any response would have to strike the right balance between safety and convenience. But she says at the moment there are no proposals to go further on rail security.
Mahmood says the events in Cambridgeshire are being investigated by the IOPC (independent office of police conduct). She says it would not be appropriate to comment on anything that might be covered by the inquiry.
And she says it would not be appropriate on the mental health of the accused.
On knife crime, she says she agrees with Philp about the need for the government to do more to tackle this problem.
On stop and search, she says it was a former Tory home secretary (Theresa May) who started to cut back on the use of it. But the police do have the power to stop and search indiscriminately on an operational basis.
On facial recognition, she says the government is going to consult on a legal framework that will enable the police to use this technology without having to worry about legal challenges.
And the Home Office will be supporting the rollout of 10 facial recognition units, she says.
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, is responding to Mahmood.
He asks if there were any opportunities to stop the accused before he got on the train.
And he urges the Home Office to do more to tackle knife crime, including more use of stop and search, and facial recognition technology.
Mahmood summarises what happened during the attack on Saturday night.
She says Anthony Williams has been charged in relation to the events with ten counts of attempted murder, one count of possession of a knife and one of actual bodily harm.
He has also been charged with a further count of attempted murder and possession of a bladed article in relation to events on a Docklands Light Railway train in the early hours of Saturday morning at London’s Pontoon Dock, she says.
She says the police have released information about additional sightings of him.
She says there is a limit to what she can say about him, other than that he is a British national, and was born in this country.
Mahmood pays tribute to ‘hero’ train crew member, in statement to MPs about Cambridgeshire train attack
Mahmood starts by saying her thoughts are with the victims.
She thanks the emergency services.
The speed of their response, as well as their skill and professionalism, were exemplary, she says.
She goes on:
I would also like to pay tribute to the breathtaking bravery of those on the train itself, including the heroic acts of the passengers and train police who intercepted the attacker.
I would like to a particularly attention to one member of the [train’s] crew who ran towards danger, confronting the attacker for a sustained period of time, and stopped his advance to the train.
He put himself in harm’s way, suffered grievous injuries as a result, and remains in hospital today in a critical but stable condition. On Saturday, he went to work to do his job. Today he is a hero and forever will be.
Shabana Mahmood’s statement about train attack
Shabana Mahmood is making a Commons statement about the Cambridgeshire train attack.
Before she starts, Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, says charges have been brought, and he urges MPs to avoid saying anything that may be prejudicial to a trial.
Badenoch says thinking of PMQs ‘like a panto’ helps her prepare for it
Kemi Badenoch has admitted that treating PMQs like pantomime has helped her prepare for it.
In an interview with the BBC’s Newcast podcast, she said that she has changed her approach to PMQs in the year she has been Tory leader.
At first she started doing a lot of research, “being very forensic, having all these statistics”, she said.
But she realised that people were not following the argument she was trying to make.
She went on:
I just thought this isn’t working, I need something that people can understand. And actually thinking about it like a panto helped …
It’s more theatre than it is a prosecution or a question and answer session or an interrogation. And that helped in terms of simplifying it, so that everybody could follow, rather than me rushing through loads of statistics and thinking ‘Yeah, I got him,’ and no one noticed.
Badenoch said she was also now more inclined to stick to one topic at PMQs.
[Originally] I would often cover more than one topic because lots of people wanted me to say different things. I get letters from people, please, can you talk about this? Can you talk about that? And I would try and do that.
But people couldn’t follow it.
No migrants have been recorded crossing the English Channel for 11 days, the longest gap so far this year, PA Media reports. PA says:
The most recent date on which people arrived in the UK after making the journey by boat was 22 October, according to the latest Home Office data.
Bad weather is likely to have played a role in stopping migrants from attempting to reach the English coast.
Storm Benjamin brought heavy rain and strong winds to northern France and the Channel on 23 October, with further wet and blustery weather on subsequent days.
The 11-day gap in arrivals from 23 October to 2 November beats this year’s previous longest gap, which was the 10 days from 27 August to 5 September.
Channel crossings in 2025 are no longer running at record levels.
The cumulative number of arrivals this year, 36,954, is 7% below the total at this point in 2022 (39,929).
Some 45,774 migrants arrived in 2022 – the highest number in any calendar year since data on Channel crossings was first collected in 2018.
This year’s total of 36,954 has already passed the number for the whole of 2024 (36,816) and 2023 (29,437).
What journalists and commentators are saying about Farage’s economy speech
Here is a round-up of what journalists and commentators are saying about Nigel Farage’s speech today.
This “major” speech on the economy and deregulation by Nigel Farage is thus far a bit of an odd one – mainly some fairly generalised complaining about compliance and diversity, with a callout for cryptocurrencies. As yet less a policy speech than a condensed thread of Telegraph reader comments.
Twenty-plus minutes in and it’s all been about making the UK more attractive for wealthy people. It feels a fair way from Farage’s boast in April that Reform are the party of workers and had “a good partnership” with unions.
Several times in this speech Farage has confidently predicted a 2027 (or sooner) general election due to a disastrous fiscal crisis. This is a trope which was also common at the Conservative conference, and it feels to me more like wishful thinking than anything else.
Nigel Farage, who has so far registered a total of £280,500 for four hours a month as a “brand ambassador” for a company selling gold bars, thinks a £10 an hour minimum wage for young people is too high
What would real spending cuts look like? A recent report by Policy Exchange offers a snapshot. It calls for a three-year freeze in the state pension and the abolition of the triple lock; the removal of pensioner benefits such as winter fuel payments, free bus passes and free prescriptions from all but the poorest; the scaling back of childcare subsidies and free school meals; and the introduction of a £20 fee for GP appointments. Reform and the Conservatives – for all their purported radicalism – are not prepared to propose anything so contentious.
For an insurgent, the new strategy has curious echoes of how the mainstream parties play it when they’re in opposition – keep your powder dry on giveaways until nearer the general election, when you know where the governing party is ending up and what you can afford
Farage declared that a Reform administration would be ‘the most pro-business, the most pro-entrepreneurship government that has been seen in this country in modern times’. He accepted that major tax cuts would be off the agenda until government debt was down, hammering both of the two main parties on their record here. Much of his 30-minute speech was indistinguishable from that given by any mainstream Conservative politician. There were echoes of the address given by Andrew Griffith, the shadow business secretary, at last month’s Tory conference: financial education in schools, revitalising the City and cutting post-Brexit regulations.
Nigel Farage‘s suggestion that market forces will force Labour to adopt austerity measures that will in turn collapse the government is wishful thinking masquerading as wisdom.
In reality, Farage has learned the lesson of the Truss debacle. A Reform government could easily be destroyed by the financial markets within its first few weeks of taking power. Instead, Farage has seen that it is better to bet on growth, especially from scaling back Net Zero, and potentially opening up the UK’s plentiful reserves of shale oil and gas, and then use the revenues from that to steadily lower the tax burden. It is dull, and doesn’t promise many fireworks. But it is also a lot more likely to actually work.
Farage’s latest speech is hardly tantalisingly, but it makes one thing plain to see: this is a man, and a party, that is serious about winning power.
Interesting pledge today from Farage to reduce energy bills by £165 pa.
That’s the same precise figure that the Conservative Party announced a month ago at their conference.
There are details of the Tory plan here. Today Farage said “We reckon, sensibly we could cut £165 per annum off everybody’s electricity bill.”
Harwood also says the speech was more lightweight than he was expecting.
This big economic speech from Nigel Farage is much lighter on policy than I was expecting.
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Michael White, the former Guardian political editor, says Farage has bowed to reality.
Farage using the word “aspiration” about Reform fantasy tax & spend 2024 promises (£100 bn extra borrowing?) is a big moment, his first brush with reality. And he’s right to question UK’s costly pension triple lock – we must target it better so I get less
There is something magnificent about Nigel Farage, who has lost two of the five MPs he was elected with *last year*, explaining that HR departments don’t matter.
Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, says Nigel Farage’s speech this morning shows that Reform UK is the party of austerity. He says:
The cat is well and truly out of the bag – Reform is the party of austerity.
Nigel Farage wants to finish what the Tories started.
After 14 years of cuts that gutted our schools, hospitals and councils, he’d slash even deeper – starving our public services of vital funds.
His ideological attack on net zero will place tens of thousands of jobs at risk in key sectors like EV vehicles and green steel.
And while he’s at it, he’d drag Britain into a race to the bottom on workers’ rights, consumer and environmental standards – unleashing further chaos that would be paid for by working people.
NAHT teaching union loses legal bid to block introduction of Ofsted’s new report card system for grading schools
A head teachers’ union has lost a bid to bring a high court legal challenge against Ofsted over the watchdog’s plan to grade schools through report cards, PA Media reports. PA says:
The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), along with head teacher Barbara Middleton, began legal action against Ofsted in May this year, claiming that the body failed to adequately consult on its plans to change the way schools are inspected.
Ofsted scrapped single-word judgments for schools in 2024 and unveiled the new report card scheme in September, which is due to come into effect on November 10.
The new framework was announced following a consultation launched after criticism of the inspection system since the death of head teacher Ruth Perry.
At the high court today, barristers for the NAHT and Middleton said that they should be allowed to proceed with a legal challenge over Ofsted’s consultation and decision to adopt the new framework.
They claimed the consultation “ruled out” the use of “narrative-only verdicts” on schools and failed to consider the impact of the new framework on staff wellbeing.
They also asked a judge to temporarily block the report card plans from coming into force, pending the full hearing of the challenge.
Lawyers for Ofsted said it was “vigorously opposed” to a delay in implementing the plans, telling the court that they were a “considerable upgrade in terms of wellbeing” and that the challenge “is on any view a weak claim”.
In a ruling, Mr Justice Saini dismissed the claim, finding that Ofsted had not made an “arguable error”.
He said: “It is for Ofsted to decide how to conduct its inspections in the way which, in its expert judgment, is most effective, while taking account of the risk to the wellbeing of teaching staff and leaders.”
He continued: “The evidence satisfies me that Ofsted’s conclusions, that a grading plus narrative approach best balances the different interests at play, was reached after a detailed consultation conducted in a procedurally lawful way and after a careful assessment of the various views expressed to it, including consideration of wellbeing issues.”
There will be an urgent question in the Commons at 3.30pm about the acquittal of “Soldier F” in the Bloody Sunday murder trial, followed by a statement from Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, at about 4.15pm.
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