Tag: United Kingdom

The Conservative Party’s campaign chief has dismissed a poll which predicted a 1997-style drubbing for Rishi Sunak at the next election, calling on MPs to focus on a “narrow and steep” path to victory.

Isaac Levido, the man charged with delivering Rishi Sunak a highly unlikely and historic fifth Conservative election victory this year, told a meeting of the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers that those behind the bombshell survey appeared to be “throwing in the towel”.

The MRP poll, released in the Telegraph yesterday, predicted that the Conservative Party would win just 169 seats at the next election, with Labour on 385. It would give Labour leader Keir Starmer a majority of 120 seats.

The poll, based on a survey of 14,000 people, also indicates that every single seat in the so-called “Red Wall” won by the Conservatives at the 2019 election would be lost.

Levido told Conservative MPs: “Some of you may have noticed there is an MRP model in a newspaper today

“The idea that this poll and model is the most authoritative one published in the last five years is just false — it’s just another poll, another MRP model, with the same margins of error, the same statistical limitations as any other”.

Through the looking glass: Inside the topsy-turvy world of the Rwanda Bill

He added: “And you know your constituencies better than me, better than any media commentators and certainly better than any public pollster”.

He went on to accuse the poll of being “orchestrated” to “undermine” the prime minister, coming just days ahead of the Rwanda bill’s committee stage in the House of Commons.

The poll, conducted by YouGov, was commissioned by a group called the Conservative Britain Alliance “working with [Tory peer] Lord Frost”. 

Sunak ‘absolutely’ can turn things around, says minister as poll predicts 1997-style wipeout

 

Levido said: “The people who organised this poll and analysed and timed the release of it seem to be intent on undermining this government and our party, and therefore the re-election prospects of every single one of you in this room.

“They seem to be throwing in the towel, and are more interested in what happens after the election rather than fighting it — making the pathway narrower and steeper.

“Let me be clear. Divided parties fail.

“It’s time to get serious — I am fighting to win this election, and I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe it was possible. We all need to be fighting to win this election.

“People do not want Starmer. They are looking for reasons to vote for us. We must not give them any more reasons not to”.

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The Safety of Rwanda Bill, which returns to the House of Commons this week, must be one of the strangest laws ever proposed by a modern British government. The legislation takes us into a topsy-turvy world of Alice in Wonderland politics where nothing is ever quite as it seems.

After all, the Safety of Rwanda Bill was invented to respond to the UK Supreme Court finding about the unsafety of Rwanda’s asylum system.

The Rwanda plan is that Britain pays Rwanda so it can remove asylum seekers to the African country to make their claim there instead. The legal verdict was that such a scheme could be lawful in principle with a country that had a safe asylum system. However, the Supreme Court found the evidence compelling that the Rwandan asylum system was so systemically flawed – with few decision-makers trained to make asylum decisions – that it would be unsafe for Britain to remove people there.

The UK government’s official position is that it accepts the UK Supreme Court decision (though its Rwandan partners denounced it as an unfair political decision of the British courts). Nevertheless, the UK government says that the two governments have worked diligently to remedy the defects that led to the judgment.

The initial Memorandum of Understanding is now a fully-fledged Treaty. Some specific concerns – that Rwanda has removed asylum seekers unsafely back to their country of origin – are addressed by promising they can only send people back to Britain.

Yet if the Treaty had succeeded in making Rwanda safe, there would be no need for a Safety of Rwanda Bill. The government could proceed with removal notices – and anticipate that the UK courts would reverse the judgement, and now declare Rwanda safe enough for removing asylum seekers there.

No Albanian Safety Bill was necessary to enact the returns deal with Albania – because it is a lawful policy in principle and practice. There was no need for legislation insisting that the courts must turn a blind eye if it is not safe.

With Rwanda, the effect and purpose of the Rwanda Safety Bill is to direct the courts that they must find Rwanda a safe country for removals from Britain – and must do so without considering the substance of whether it is safe or not.

The UK government last week updated its Country Information Report on Rwanda, describing it as “a relatively peaceful country” with some issues with human rights. This coincided with Burundi closing the border with Rwanda, accusing the Rwandan government of funding the Red Tabara rebel group who killed soldiers and policemen near the Congo border in December. The elections in DR Congo are heightening tensions. President Tshisekedi’s campaign rhetoric escalated last week into a threat to declare war on Rwanda and even “march on Kigali” – arguing retaliation could be justified by the Rwandan regime backing the M23 rebel groups.

If the Safety of Rwanda Bill is enacted into law, one consequence is that Rwanda must always be considered safe by the UK courts, whatever might change in the future. Not even the clearest proof of breaches of the Treaty would change that. Not even a conflict on the border, or indeed a military coup, civil war or (God forbid) another genocide in Rwanda itself would make Rwanda unsafe in British law, however unsafe it might become in reality.

What gets curiouser and curiouser is that the Rwanda Safety Bill blocks the UK courts from considering the legality of the policy while it maintains the oversight of the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights. This is despite the prime minister’s soundbite of choice being “I won’t allow a foreign court to block flights taking off”.

The UK Supreme Court is, as its name signals, a UK court. Removing the role of the UK courts serves a political purpose – making sure the public argument is with an international court, rather than a British one. But it does sound like the opposite principle to that suggested by the prime minister.

The government says that it is confident that the Rwanda Safety Bill complies with international law – although the first thing the Bill contains is a declaration by the Home Secretary that he cannot say it is compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. The Bill gives the Attorney-General the right – but the Government argues that the Bill does not necessarily breach international law since she might not use the power which she is granted.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty says to Alice in Through the looking glass, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” The Rwanda Safety Bill looks like a clear attempt to put that Humpty Dumpty principle onto the statute book.

To do so, the legislation needs to pass both houses of parliament. While the focus this week is on the prime minister’s battles with his own backbenchers, the government faces a different and potentially more difficult challenge to persuade the House of Lords that it has no alternative but to accept these Humpty Dumpty rules too when it comes to the role of the courts and breaches of international law.

Back in Wonderland, Alice replies to Humpty Dumpty: “The question is whether you can make words mean so many different things?”

Humpty Dumpty retorts: “The question is which is to be master – that is all”.

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A senior Conservative MP has suggested his colleagues vowing to “toughen up” the Rwanda bill during its committee stage this week are betraying his party’s traditions. 

Damian Green, former de facto deputy prime minister under Theresa May and chair of the One Nation caucus of Conservative MPs, has argued that “the practical effect of the [Sir Bill Cash/Robert Jenrick] amendments would be to ensure that no flights to Rwanda ever take off”.

In an article for the Telegraph newspaper, Green said that reading the rebels’ amendments “reveals that they go far beyond the debate about the European Convention on Human Rights and create a class of people with fewer rights than the most vicious criminal”.

This, he added, “would betray the Conservative tradition of trying to unite our society”. 

Green claimed that to “take away any right of such an appeal” for an asylum seeker set to be deported to Rwanda, a rebel proposal, “is both unnecessary and a touch authoritarian”.

He added: “I supported the Government when the Bill passed its second reading debate in the Commons because I believe they have found a way to meet the objections of the Supreme Court to the existing scheme while staying (just) within the bounds of the law. 

“I would therefore be content if the Bill passes the next stages of the debate intact, not least because it will bring forward the day when it passes into law and therefore we can expect to see the flights taking off…”

“Impractical measures that sound tough but achieve nothing are the wrong way to make this happen and will not help us get flights off the ground”.

The Rwanda bill requires all relevant decision-makers within the immigration system, such as Home Office officials, courts and immigration tribunals to treat the African country as “safe” for all relevant purposes.

The bill also disapplies a number of provisions in the Human Rights Act (HRA) which would otherwise be used by opponents to lodge a judicial review on the grounds that it breaches individuals’ legal rights.

The prime minister nonetheless faces challenges to toughen up the bill, having rejected a “full fat” variant of the legislation advocated by Suella Braverman, Robert Jenrick and many Conservative MPs on the right of the party. 

The rebels have been referred to collectively as the “five families” of Conservative right factions, including the New Conservatives, the Conservative Growth Group, The European Research Group, The Northern Research Group and the Common Sense Group. 

Members of these factions have vowed to close “loopholes” in the bill. 

Writing for the Telegraph last week, co-chairs of the New Conservatives Danny Kruger and Miriam Cates argued their proposed amendments — which aim to limit virtually all legal challenges by asylum seekers and block attempts by the European Court of Human Rights to halt the flights — are “proportionate, consistent with our international obligations, and have respectable legal arguments behind them”.

Conservative right bids to close Rwanda bill ‘loopholes’ as commons showdown looms

They added: “As with the rest of the bill, and the Rwanda plan in general, they are tough – because they need to be.”

Writing on their criticism of the bill as it stands, Kruger and Cates argued that Clause 4 “allows a migrant’s lawyer to claim that for them in particular – perhaps for reasons of their mental health, the claims that stopped the flights in 2022 – Rwanda would not be safe”.

Last week, former cabinet minister Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, considered a Rwanda rebel, warned the prime minister he will look “hopeless” if the government’s Rwanda bill fails to result in migrant deportation flights finally taking off.

He said: “Passing an ineffective bill would make the government look hopeless. In many ways it would be better to do nothing than to fail again because this is actually the third go at trying to get people deported to Rwanda.”

It comes as Robert Buckland, the former justice secretary a member of Green’s One Nation group, write for ConservativeHome on his proposed amendments to the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill.

He said: “I have proposed some amendments that do the following things: remove the legislative fluff that does nothing to strengthen the law and risks creating more opportunities for litigation; stop the risk of cases having to go straight to the Strasbourg court rather than being dealt with here in the UK, and avoid further legal confusion about the effect of interim ECtHR measures”.

He added: “I also think it best to make sure that the provision in Clause 2 that means that courts and tribunals will have to deem Rwanda conclusively to be a safe country should only take effect when our Government is satisfied that Rwanda has implemented all of its obligations under the new treaty to refine and improve its legal processes, ending the risk of return to countries of origin (or refoulement, in the language of the Refugee Convention). 

“This will remove the argument that Parliament should not legislate to “change the facts” when the reality is that nothing has changed”.

Week-in-Review: The political inanity of Rishi Sunak vs the ‘five families’

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Grant Shapps has insisted the Conservatives “absolutely” can turn around their electoral fortunes in the wake of a poll that suggests the party is heading for a 1997-style wipeout.

The poll, conducted by YouGov, predicts that the Conservative Party would win just 169 seats, with Labour on 385.

It would give Labour leader Keir Starmer a majority of 120 seats.

The poll, based on a survey of 14,000 people, also indicates that every single seat in the so-called “Red Wall” won by the Conservatives at the 2019 election would be lost.

11 cabinet ministers are also set to lose their seats based on the poll’s findings. 

In total, the Conservatives would lose 196 seats — which compares to the 178 seats lost by former prime minister John Major in 1997.

The poll comes ahead of a key week for Rishi Sunak with the Rwanda bill returning to the House of Commons on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Asked this morning if he believes the Conservatives could turn the situation around, defence secretary Grant Shapps Times Radio: “Absolutely. And look, the reason I think we can turn it around is because at least people know we have got a plan and we are working to it. There isn’t a plan under Labour.”

Shapps also insisted “there isn’t an election tomorrow”, adding that the Conservatives “do have a plan and that plan is starting to work”.

“Inflation being slashed, the number of small boats down by over a third, 36 per cent in fact. So we have a plan which we are working to. Actually there isn’t an election tomorrow, people know that, but when they are faced with the choice they will be looking at whether to elect Keir Starmer and Labour and we would be right back to square one again.

“So our plan that is working against going back to square one. Labour don’t have a plan for these issues.”

Also speaking to Sky News this morning, the defence secretary, whose seat would be lost on the current polling, said: “I always consider my seat to be a marginal seat and I always fight it very hard.”

He added that polling was not conducted in his Welwyn Hatfield constituency and said it was an “extrapolation”.

Meanwhile, the prime minister has been warned his party will be “destroyed” at the next general election unless he delivers on his pledge to stop the boats.

Sir Simon Clarke, the former cabinet minister under Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, said the “time for half measures is over” as he responded to the new YouGov poll.

Sir Simon tweeted: “This result would represent a disaster for [the Conservatives] and our country. The time for half measures is over. We either deliver on small boats or we will be destroyed.”

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On the first day back after Christmas recess we launched a week-long exhibition in the Upper Gallery in Parliament called Outsiders. Outsiders is a documentary photography project by Marc Davenant which aimed to capture a snapshot of homelessness in modern Britain over a six-year period.

Exhibitions like this one are so important because they show us the real people and stories behind the awful statistics we constantly hear and read about. They remind us that those suffering from homelessness have dreams and goals just like anybody, and they don’t deserve to be left to live in fear or to experience the trauma of homelessness and insecure housing. And most importantly perhaps, for this exhibition in Parliament, it reminds those in Government that these are the people they are not only letting down but also criminalising when they propose legislation like the Criminal Justice Bill.

Currently, we have almost 3,000 people sleeping rough in England, despite the fact the current Government promised to end rough sleeping by this year, 2024. They also promised to repeal the Vagrancy Act which criminalises those forced to sleep rough – but instead, in potentially their last few months of power, they are trying to push through the Criminal Justice Bill.

The Bill, if passed as it is, would allow fines of up to £2,500 and even a year in jail for those sleeping rough or begging. It’s a callous policy that will make the lives of those already in an unimaginable situation, worse.

When the Government creates policies like the Criminal Justice Bill or a member of the Government calls homelessness a ‘lifestyle’ choice and suggests taking away tents, it sadly makes it inevitable that life will become even harder for those stuck sleeping rough. For example, not long after these comments were made by the then Home Secretary, we saw the incident of a man sleeping rough being hosed down by a member of McDonald’s staff on a freezing cold evening. It’s heart-breaking.

It’s not just rough sleeping that’s the problem. As the exhibition documents, there are ever-growing numbers of families and individuals living a nightmare every day because they are stuck in awful, unsafe and substandard temporary accommodation. There are currently over 105,000 households in temporary accommodation. This includes nearly 140,000 children. It’s just not good enough, temporary accommodation should be just that, temporary – not to mention, fit for purpose, safe and healthy.

Which is why once in power the Labour Party has pledged to build 300,000 affordable homes every year, which is a great start, and will help alleviate the long-term problem of housing supply. However, I also believe we need to put an end to the very damaging siloed approach to the issue of homelessness if we are to have any hope of ending it.

In our first 24 month in power, Labour must prioritise setting up a cross-departmental strategy to end homelessness, led by a taskforce of experts, like the team at Crisis and other similar organisations, as well as people with lived experience. We need a trauma informed, holistic approach to tackling the issue, as homelessness isn’t just about not having a roof over your head – it’s a difficult issue that’s tied to mental health, complex needs and poverty, amongst many other things.

However, it’s not just about policy change. It’s also about changing attitudes. Exhibitions like this play a crucial role in that. Outsiders is so important because it reminds us of the real people we’re fighting for and tells us the true and unvarnished stories of those suffering homelessness.

So, let’s keep supporting projects like Marc’s. Let’s keep pushing for policy change. And most importantly, let’s keep reminding everyone who will listen that homelessness is not a lifestyle choice, and it’s definitely not a crime. If you see someone experiencing homelessness, even if you have no money to give, make sure you stop for a moment and have a conversation – being treated with the respect and humanity is as important as anything.

The exhibition “Outsiders” was created by photographer Marc Davenant, sponsored by Crisis and the APPG for Ending Homelessness, and arranged for parliament by Mick Whitley MP and his staff. 

The exhibition in Parliament wasn’t open to the public but the touring exhibition will be shown in Lichfield, Newcastle and Derby this year, for more information visit: https://marcdavenant.com/outsiders/ 

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The phrase “of course, I regret… ” is a locution deployed by politicians when all other means of avoiding the phrase “I’m sorry” are exhausted. It is a choice chain of words: the “of course” shows the politician both as accepting, reflective but certain; the “I regret” implies that while some wrongdoing has occurred, the politician under question is unwilling to accept responsibility for it.

Tellingly, “Of course, I regret… ” was Ed Davey’s chosen defence in his first in-depth interview of 2024 with ITV News yesterday. Despite being presented with a series of opportunities to apologise for his part in the Post Office scandal by the interviewer, the Liberal Democrat leader refused to be knocked off his message. In just a two-minute clip published on X/Twitter, Davey chalked up six “of courses” and nine “regrets”. 

The bottom line was Davey’s insistence that the 700 sub-postmasters wrongly accused of false accounting, theft and fraud by the Post Office “deserve a huge apology” — just not from him. The court of public opinion, he insisted, should instead cast judgement over “the post office, … Fujitsu and … all the people who led this conspiracy of lies”.

Simply put, this interview, and the reaction to it (with 2.1 million views on X and counting), is the clearest illustration yet that Davey is paying the largest price politically for the Post Office scandal. 

Between 2010 and 2012, Davey — who is now leader of the fourth largest Party at Westminster — was postal affairs minister in the coalition government. In this capacity, he has been accused of not doing enough to help those affected by the Post Office scandal. And with heightened public attention flowing from ITV’s drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office, the political potency of the scandal, and Davey’s role in it, has grown greatly.

On 1 January, 9.2 million people tuned in as the British public bore witness, with increasing indignation, to the story of hundreds of Post Office branch managers who were falsely convicted of false accounting, theft and fraud — when faulty software was responsible. The scandal saw hundreds of small business owners running Post Office branches wrongly imprisoned during the 2000s.

Ed Davey: Post Office misled me with ‘conspiracy of lies’

It was quickly noted that Davey, as postal affairs minister, had initially refused to meet Alan Bates (the hero of ITV’s story) — before only later agreeing. Davey’s immediate response was that he was misled by the Post Office and that the institution had concocted a “conspiracy of lies” on an “industrial scale” to which he himself had fallen victim. 

One reading of the scandal is that the Liberal Democrats as a party, and Davey specifically, are still paying penance for years in government from 2010-2015 as the junior member of the Lib-Con coalition. Davey, who was a senior figure in that government unlike potential successors such as deputy leader Daisy Cooper and foreign affairs spokesperson Layla Moran, could reasonably be said to have acquired serious baggage.

Another way of explaining Davey’s central position in the news agenda and the Post Office storm is political gamesmanship on behalf of his opponents. Indeed, the critics most keen to stress Davey’s culpability seem to be Conservative politicians, many of whom likely fear what a resurgent Lib Dem outfit could mean for their party’s prospects in the so-called “blue wall” — those mainly affluent, commuter-belt areas located in the hinterland of London. 

Post Office scandal: government ‘very tempted’ to quash all 800 convictions

Over the past few years, Davey’s party has proven itself to be an electoral force worthy of being taken seriously again. In 2022, it toppled a 24,000-strong Conservative majority in Tiverton and Honiton; and the party is eyeing a series of high-profile scalps at the next election, including cabinet ministers. This strategy is epitomised by Davey’s New Year’s message/gimmick of driving a “Tory Removal Service” poster van through seats in Surrey held by Michael Gove and Jeremy Hunt.

And so one telling, stressed by Davey’s allies, is that the Conservatives are attacking the Lib Dem leader to both shift the spotlight away from their potential culpability and potentially thwart a “yellow wave” electoral advance in 2024.

In this regard, it is worth considering those Conservative MPs who have emerged as Davey’s most outspoken critics over the past week. First there is former Conservative cabinet minister John Redwood, who is under threat from the Lib Dems in Wokingham. He argues that “When [Davey] was the responsible minister he could have listened to those who knew things were wrong. It was his job to supervise or change the management.”

Treasury minister Bim Afolami’s Hitchin and Harpenden seat in Hertfordshire has been carved up by the Boundary Commission — and the Liberal Democrats look well positioned to take advantage. This week, he said Davey should “be honest with people” and explain why “he didn’t ask the right questions”.

And while Conservative MP Steve Brine is standing down at the next election, his pointed criticism of Davey this week might be viewed as him aiding his successor candidate in the Lib-Con marginal of Winchester. 

Ultimately, if the Post Office scandal remains politically potent in the lead in to a general election, Davey could be peppered with questions from journalists during a campaign, soaking up precious media oxygen. In the 2017 election, former leader Tim Farron discovered how media mismanagement and a single outstanding issue can entirely dominate a once-promising campaign.

Post Office scandal: Rishi Sunak announces law to quash convictions of Horizon victims

Another argument is that Davey has made a rod for his own back since becoming Lib Dem leader by repeatedly calling for under-pressure ministers to resign. Of those who inspired Davey’s ire in recent years include Boris Johnson, the then prime minister; Cressida Dick, the former Metropolitan Police commissioner; Matt Hancock, as health secretary; and Richard Sharp, the BBC chairman. These were scalps Davey could be said to have “claimed”.

But among the others to hold back Davey’s fire were Alok Sharma, while he was COP26 president; Priti Patel as home secretary; and Rishi Sunak as chancellor, twice — first over Covid business loans and then for his tax arrangements. Moreover, at the nadir of Johnson’s premiership, Davey put out a tweet urging “every” Conservative MP “who cares about integrity and decency” to resign. 

Making such statements could be described as the essential job description of a Liberal Democrat leader — in the same way urging the PM to recall parliament is. It makes for a worthy press release and/or social media snippet that journalists together with party apparatchiks can circulate. But now it seems that Davey has become a hostage politically to his reputation for holding others to the highest standard. Looking ahead to the future, it seems likely that Davey’s calls for ministers to resign will now be met with a political relitigation of his role in the Post Office scandal. 

So some Conservatives think Davey deserves a taste of his own medicine. Indeed, at prime minister’s questions this week, Conservative deputy chair Lee Anderson reasoned that Sir Ed “should take his own advice and start by clearing his desk, clearing his diary, and clearing off”. (Rishi Sunak did not echo Anderson’s call at the despatch box, but he did not rebuke or correct him — significant since he later accused SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn of “trying to politicise” the Post Office scandal with his line of questioning).

‘Clear off!’: Lee Anderson calls for Ed Davey to resign over Post Office Horizon scandal

It is also worth noting that it is not only Sir Ed who has come under fire for his “role” in the post office scandal. One of Keir Starmer’s most prominent lieutenants, shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden, was Post Office minister from 2008-2009. Potentially worse still for the Labour leader, it has been found that three Horizon cases were brought against sub-postmasters by the Crown Prosecution Service when he led it between 2008 and 2013.

And that it is not to mention the string of other Post Office ministers, Conservative and Liberal Democrat, who have presided over the scandal and the campaign for justice both before and since Davey.

Here is a list of the 20 Post Office ministers, 1997 to 2022.
Eight were from the Conservative party, eight from Labour and four from the Liberal Democrats.
The sub-postmasters’ Horizon computer system was introduced in 1999. pic.twitter.com/qcprVRd7NZ

— Christopher Hope (@christopherhope) January 11, 2024

Ultimately, the weaponisation of the Post Office scandal for political purposes probably confirms what we already know: 2024 is an election year, and the campaign could be as dirty as any in recent British history. With a long campaign ahead, Ed Davey needs to come up with a better line than “Of course, I regret…” — and fast. 

Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Twitter here.

Politics.co.uk is the UK’s leading digital-only political website, providing comprehensive coverage of UK politics. Subscribe to our daily newsletter here.

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As a nation, we face an epidemic of knife crime. The statistics paint a sobering picture. 99 people aged under 25 were murdered with a knife or sharp object between March 2021 and March 2022. 13 were aged under 16. In England and Wales, around 45,000 police recorded offences involved a knife or sharp object in the same time window. This is a 9 per cent increase on 2020-2021 and 30 per cent higher than 2010-2011.

The horror of such statistics is apparent when we remember that behind every number is a face, a name, and a story. Every child lost is an unacceptable tragedy, creating a hole in the heart of each family and leaving communities in anguish.

Juveniles aged 10 to 17 are the offenders in 20 per cent of cases. At such a young age, children should be at school, playing, learning, and preparing for the future they dream of.

Criminal gangs recruit their members predominantly on school grounds, where they have access to vulnerable teenagers. Gangs often provide the friends, family, money, protection, and acceptance they lack elsewhere. We need to break this cycle through better prevention, engaging with young people in schools by providing more youths’ clubs and after school activities.

We simply cannot ignore this any longer. As a member of the APPG on Child Criminal Exploitation and Knife Crime, I have long been calling on the Government to adopt a serious, multi-faceted approach to this issue. As Idris Elba pointed out through his Don’t Stop Your Future campaign, when we acknowledge a serious threat to our safety — such as poorly trained, poorly handled dogs — we are able to take dramatic action. The same level of resolve and determination is needed from the Government, yet they continue to sit on their hands, too focused on their own party politics to save lives.

In April 2023, Coventry entered a Community Initiative to Reduce Violence, a deterrence programme which aims to identify and help individuals most at risk of participating in violent crime. Working with local police, they meet children where they are, with highly personalised interventions. The programme was tried and tested in Northamptonshire and recorded a 40 per cent drop in offending after only 6 months.

With such promising results, implementing more preventative support programmes across the UK could provide us with the change we so desperately need. Unfortunately, the closure of so many youth centres mean organisations like Fridays and Coventry Youth Partnership in my constituency are having to try to fill this gap.

It is a scandal that the loopholes allowing the online sale of zombie knives are still in existence. The government has repeatedly committed to solving this, yet their bill is still yet to be passed. Alongside these legal changes, we desperately need to craft specific laws outlawing the grooming of young children into criminal gangs, shutting off this path before it even begins.

Moreover, we must ensure police forces across the country have the proper resources and training to get these knives off our streets. The government has perpetually failed in this area. For instance, West Midlands Police, my local force, has seen the highest incidence of knife crime of any force in the country, yet we have had the lowest increase in police numbers since 2010. It is no surprise that with such inadequate support from the Government, police forces have been struggling to hold back the growing tide of knife crime.

Yet, as the schemes in Coventry demonstrate, prevention is our best chance for creating the change we need. This increased support for the police must be coupled with community outreach programmes and educational initiatives in schools, that recognise the socio-economic factors at play. At their heart, these schemes must meet young people where they are at, seeking to empower them to make their own positive choices.

Following the Conservative Party’s complete inability to get a grip on this, the Labour Party is ready to tackle this issue head on. As a first step, we have committed to outlawing the grooming of children into gangs and to providing mental health support for children at high risk, whilst also further integrating youth workers into police stations, reaching children who have begun to be involved with gangs.

The recent memorial in Parliament Square was a harrowing reminder of what it means for us to fail in this task. My heart broke to see parents holding up pictures of their children who they will never get back. How many more people will need to bear the horrific consequences of knife violence before we do the right thing? We must act now. We have the chance to stop lives being ruined, changed, and lost over knife crime. Let’s help people get back on the right path and provide them with the tools to thrive once again.

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British and US forces have launched an attack on Houthi targets in Yemen.

The attacks reportedly took place in the capital, Sana’a, and the governorates of Sa’dah, Hodeidah, Taiz, and Dhamar.

The US Air Force says America, Britain and their allies struck more than 60 targets at 16 Iranian-backed Houthi militant locations on Thursday night with more than 100 precision-guided munitions of various types.

US officials said the strikes had been carried out by warship-launched Tomahawk missiles, as well as fighter jets and a submarine. 

Yemen’s Houthi rebels have been targeting shipping in the Red Sea.

In a statement issued shortly after the attacks, US President Joe Biden said: “These targeted strikes are a clear message that the United States and our partners will not tolerate attacks on our personnel or allow hostile actors to imperil freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most critical commercial routes.”

Denmark, Germany, New Zealand and South Korea added their names to the six nations that took part in the joint strikes.

Late on Thursday, prime minister Rishi Sunak called an emergency cabinet meeting, amid speculation the UK would launch strikes.

He said in a statement: “The United Kingdom will always stand up for freedom of navigation and the free flow of trade. We have therefore taken limited, necessary and proportionate action in self-defence.”

Speaking this morning, the Armed Forces minister James Heappey confirmed the UK has no immediate plans to launch further strikes on Houthi military targets in Yemen.

Asked about potential further strikes, Heappey told the BBC: “There are none immediately planned, and that’s an important point.”

Following the reports that a cabinet meeting was being called, opposition MPs urged the PM to recall parliament ahead of the UK taking military action.

Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesperson Layla Moran MP said: “If the UK plans to take military action, it’s vital there is a vote in Parliament.

“The Prime Minister must make arrangements for a recall of Parliament if strikes are planned before Monday.

“The Liberal Democrats are very concerned by Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.

“It’s destabilising for regional security and has a detrimental impact on cost of living in the UK too as ships are diverted.”

Conservative MP Neil O’Brien on Friday said he was “not necessarily” against the joint military action against the Houthi rebels in Yemen but that the UK’s “main interventions of the last 25 years have been failures”.

“What counts as success? Realistically, how far would we need to go to achieve this? How will we avoid being dragged into something we don’t want”, he added on X (formerly Twitter).

Lord Ricketts, a crossbench peer who served as the UK’s first national security adviser under Tony Blair, has said targeted strikes against Houthi rebels are “necessary” and “inevitable”.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think it became inevitable when the clear warnings that the US and UK and others had put out over weeks were ignored by the Houthis”.

He added: “And I think the final straw was that very complex and dangerous attack on the naval task force itself a couple of nights ago, I think at that point they couldn’t allow this to continue.

“It’s already having a major disruptive effect on this big maritime artery which carries 20% of all the world’s container traffic, as well as a lot of oil and gas exports, and therefore I think this attack was necessary, I think it was inevitable.

“I think they’ve tried to make it large enough to send a very powerful message, but equally being clear it’s targeted against the attacks on shipping, it’s not a declaration of war against the Houthis more generally.”

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