Rachel Reeves says she ‘chooses investment’ as she prepares to unveil Labour’s spending review – UK politics live

Chancellor will reveal how the government plans to spend almost £1.4tn in 2026-27, rising to almost £1.5tr in 2028-29

At Westminster it is assumed that Kemi Badenoch is the party leader most likely to lose her job. But today the Herald is running a story by Andrew Learmonth, its political editor, saying some senior SNP figures would like to replace John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister. Learmonth says:

Senior SNP figures held a secret meeting on Monday night to discuss removing John Swinney as party leader, The Herald has learned, following last week’s defeat in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse byelection.

One of the 25 attendees said the first minister had two weeks to come up with a new strategy on independence — or risk facing a leadership challenge at the SNP conference in October.

Mauritius has said that it is using the revenue it is getting from the UK under the Chagos Islands deal to cut taxes and reduce the national debt. Under the sovereignty transfer agreement, the UK will pay Mauritius £90m a year to rent Diego Garcia, the site of a major military base, for another 99 years. As Tony Diver reports in the Telegraph, Mauritians have been told they will benefit directly.

Navin Ramgoolam, the Mauritian prime minister, has now announced that the money paid by the UK will help Mauritius cut taxes, so that 81 per cent of people in the African island nation will not pay any income tax …

The Mauritian reforms were announced in a budget speech by Mr Ramgoolam on Wednesday, when he said that the UK’s Chagos payments for the next three years would be used to help pay off the country’s national debt, which has reached 90 per cent of GDP.

A panel of experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council has criticised the deal on the grounds that it does not fully respect the rights of Chagossians. In their statement, they say:

By maintaining a foreign military presence of the United Kingdom and the United States on Diego Garcia and preventing the Chagossian people from returning to Diego Garcia, the agreement appears to be at variance with the Chagossians’ right to return, which also hinders their ability to exercise their cultural rights in accessing their ancestral lands from which they were expelled.

We have been warning from the start that this deal is bad for British taxpayers and bad for the Chagossian people.

Now even the United Nations is saying the very same.