The Scottish National Party won its fourth straight parliamentary election on Saturday and insisted it will push on with another referendum on Scotland's independence from the UK even though it failed by one seat to secure a majority. Final results of Thursday's election showed the SNP winning 64 of the 129 seats in the Edinburgh-based Scottish Parliament.
Labour politician Sadiq Khan won re-election as London mayor on Saturday in a narrower than expected victory over Conservative rival Shaun Bailey. He won a second term with just over 1.2 million votes, who gained 977,601 votes in Thursday's poll. Turnout was lower than at the previous election, at 42 percent.
The new coronavirus will no longer be circulating in Britain by August, the government's departing vaccine taskforce chief Clive Dix told the Daily Telegraph on Friday. "Sometime in August, we will have no circulating virus in the UK", Dix said. The government is looking at which Covid-19 vaccines would offer the best booster shot for vulnerable people later this year.
A sub-type of the Indian variant of Covid-19 found in the UK - B.1.617.2 - has been reclassified from "variant under investigation (VUI)" to "variant of concern (VOC)" after it was found to be highly transmissible. Cases of the B.1.617.2 variant increased to 520 from 202 over the last week, PHE said, mainly in London and the northwest town of Bolton, with almost half the cases related to contact with a traveler.
Boris Johnson's Conservative Party won an election for a new member of parliament in the northern English town of Hartlepool, breaking Labour's decades-long hold and tightening the prime minister's grip on traditional opposition-supporting areas.
The government on Wednesday said the UK variant - known to have higher transmissibility and potential to cause severe Covid disease - is declining in proportion across the country. But the double mutant variant B.1.617 - found in Maharashtra - could be a cause of the current surge seen over the last one and half months, said Sujeet Singh, director, National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).
External affairs minister S Jaishankar met British home secretary Priti Patel in London on Tuesday to sign a new Migration and Mobility Partnership Agreement, which he said would strengthen the "living bridge" between the two countries.
The UK and Indian governments will announce their first enhanced trade partnership on Tuesday as a precursor to a free trade agreement when UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Indian PM Narendra Modi hold a virtual meeting.
A senior British Conservative broke ranks on Sunday to call for Prime Minister Boris Johnson's resignation if it is proven that he broke government rules over the funding of a lavish revamp of his Downing Street flat.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson faced more allegations on Sunday about his expenditure on the refurbishment of his apartment and on childcare for his young son, which his foreign minister dismissed as baseless gossip.
