Sir Keir Starmer has sparked a row at the heart of the Labour Party after senior figures urged him to rethink his decision to rule out reparations for Britain’s role in the slave trade. The prime minister flew into a diplomatic storm with Caribbean leaders over the issue at a summit in Samoa – and drew condemnation from his own MPs back in Britain.

Sir Keir Starmer’s new chief-of-staff Morgan McSweeney was at the centre of a growing row over claims by Donald Trump’s campaign that Labour sought to interfere in the US presidential election.Cabinet ministers strongly reject the allegations made by the Trump camp that the “Far-Left Labour Party” in the UK was wading into the US election.