Oversight of watchdog could be abused by a future authoritarian government, report warns The independence of the Electoral Commission must be fully restored to protect the UK’s electoral integrity from a future authoritarian government, a new report warns. The Democracy in Danger report by Spotlight on Corruption found the UK government is in breach of eight different international standards on ensuring the independence of electoral bodies by maintaining the government’s oversight of the watchdog. The UK government is in breach of eight different international standards on ensuring the independence of electoral bodies by maintaining the new power in place. All the constitutional oversight bodies that reviewed the ministerial power opposed its introduction – including two parliamentary committees, the UK’s top ethics body, the Committee on Standards in Public Life, and the Electoral Commission’s oversight body, the Speaker’s Committee. The UK has plummeted down international rankings for electoral body autonomy since the power was introduced and now ranks 44th, among countries such as Ghana, Nepal and Croatia. It has fallen out of line with comparable countries such as Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand. The power, which was described by the former MI5 director general and chair of the top ethics body, Lord Evans, as “giving a toddler a gun”, could be used by a future government with autocratic tendencies to distort electoral rules in its favour to maintain power. Continue reading...

Child poverty in the UK is now at record levels, with 4.5 million kids living in poverty. One of the biggest drivers of this is the controversial two limit child policy, which caps universal credit and tax credits to a family’s first two children. With the Labour government’s Child Poverty Strategy due imminently, many charities and campaigners have called for this brutal policy to be scrapped, but what’s life actually like for mums under the limit and will the government listen to growing calls to abolish the austerity-era policy? Journalist and poverty campaigner Terri White speaks to women in her area of greater Manchester to find out.

A new retrospective shows how the lauded photographer shook up fashion imagery in the 1960s before reinventing the nude a decade later

Councillors can be plunged into poverty overnight and miss out on building up a pension during the prime of their lives, the Lib Dems’ local government