Tag: United Kingdom

What was the point of Rishi Sunak? When he was gushed into Downing Street last year, he could not have been plainer: “some mistakes were made”, he remarked in reference to his predecessor, “I have been elected as leader of my party, and your prime minister, in part, to fix them”. 

After Liz Truss’ “restlessness”, Sunak’s doughty professionalism would first calm financiers stirred by the mini-budget, before pivoting to the public. “I understand that I have work to do to restore trust after all that has happened”, he said. If that, audacious attempts at reinvention to one side, remains the aim — then Rishi Sunak is running out of time.  

Of course, it is customary, even cliche, to begin with the caveats when it comes to what by-elections mean for an incumbent government. And yes, turnout was low; some Conservative voters will have stayed home; and “Long Boris” leered.

But the brave faces and glib spin from Conservative Party apparatchiks on Friday morning risk appearing some distance detached from the seriousness of the situation. As the polling expert Professor John Curtice (who has previously played down the likelihood of a Labour majority) put it: the results in Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire “represent one of the worst byelection nights that any government has had to endure”.

In Tamworth, the Conservatives had a majority of 19,634 per cent overturned; in Mid Bedfordshire, where the party had hoped to benefit from a three-way race, the party saw a majority of 24,664 tumble. The outcome in Mid Beds, a constituency that has existed since 1918 and has elected Conservatives MPs continuously from 1931-2023, suggests something more existential for Sunak’s Conservatives than mere mid-term blues.

Indeed, after the results in Mid Beds and Tamworth, the very phenomenon of a “Conservative safe seat” is under question. 

Nor can these results be dismissed as isolated events or idiosyncratic pan flashes. Of the 10 seats to have changed hands at parliamentary by-elections in the past three years, eight of them involved monumental swings of 20 percentage points or higher. The Conservatives have so often found themselves with difficult questions to answer after polling day.  

In the end, for all the aforementioned caveats about by-elections, one individual who enjoys extrapolating by-elections into a picture of the national mood is the prime minister himself. From a slim Conservative victory in Uxbridge has flowed a whole new philosophy on net zero, with targets pushed back and “pragmatism” embraced. Net Zero now features front and centre in a broader tilt from the prime minister at “change” and against a stale 30 year “consensus”. 

Indeed, in comments responding to his brace of by-election defeats, Sunak referred to his “new approach to net zero” alongside the government’s “different approach to HS2” and proposed reforms of smoking. 

Following a by-election routing, it is customary that the newly dispossessed party leader is asked whether, in wake of the result(s), they will double down on their agreed strategy or set course for some new departure. But Sunak, who finds himself in an awkward mid-reinvention phase — post-party conference but pre-King’s speech — is, in the immediate aftermath, stuck. He repeats talking points on HS2 and net zero, but again, his priorities now seem detached from the electoral gravity of the situation. 

Rishi Sunak’s electoral dilemma

And there are some other salient trends visible in the Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire contests that bode ominously for the prime minister. 

One is Labour’s continued success in constituencies that voted “leave” in the EU referendum in 2016. The victory in Tamworth, which voted by “leave” for 66 per cent, followed the party’s triumph in Selby which voted “leave” by 58 per cent. The local elections in May also showed Starmer making important progress in working-class and previously staunch pro-Brexit areas. Analysis from Sky News at the time found that Labour’s vote share increased by around 6 percentage points in areas where a majority voted for Brexit.

Significantly, both Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire also showed the enduring threat the Conservatives face from the party’s right flank. Reform UK has posed something of a mystery to election analysts, given the party’s strong polling relative to other minor parties, but poor performance at the ballot box in recent by-elections and certainly at the local elections when the party won just six seats. 

But as party leader Richard Tice wrote on X (formerly Twitter) yesterday: “Twice in same night have Reform UK ensured Tories lost their seat with this by-election result. This despite huge squeeze pressure from Tories to voters saying do not vote Reform”. He added later: “Believe me: Reform UK [will] stand in every seat. We will ensure Tories are punished for 13 years of failure. Time for their P45”. 

The party’s deputy leader, Ben Habib, explained excitedly how he wants to “destroy the Conservative Party” — a promise he said was “well on the way to being delivered”. After Tamworth and Mid Beds, Reform UK’s threat feels more tangible than ever.

Rishi Sunak’s Party management dilemma

And this is all before one considers the prime minister’s intra-party problems. In the wake of Tamworth and Mid Beds, key party figures are feeling fatalistic. David Frost — the Conservative peer and potential future leadership candidate — has declared that the results “show that the national polls are broadly correct, and that a strategy of denial is unlikely to work”.

Editor of ConservativeHome Paul Goodman has said: “My last expectation of the next election was between a Conservative majority of ten and a Labour one of about 50. I would now push that range from no Conservative majority to a Labour one of 60 or so”.

It is easy to see how the fatalism that results like those in Mids Beds and Tamworth inspire may in time become implicated in intra-party disputes. Various factional groupings will now suggest to Sunak, privately and very publicly, that they possess the answer to his electoral travails.

GB News’ Christopher Hope reports that a full meeting of the European Research Group of Conservative MPs has been called for Tuesday at 5 pm to discuss EU/UK relations, the ECHR as well as “related matters”. 

And the New Conservatives, headed by Danny Kruger and Miriam Cates, released a statement on Friday morning saying: “Once again, we’ve lost Conservative seats in Parliament as our voters stayed at home. … We need to give Conservative voters a genuine Conservative mission to vote for once again”.

One wonders whether increased movement on the Conservative right will force the hand of the one nation faction which, as I have noted before, continues to lie dormant. But as former cabinet minister Sir Robert Buckland told the BBC in the early hours on Friday: “I’m not looking for academic arguments about issues that are not going to swing voters. I’m looking for serious, grown-up approaches to the issues that really matter – on the economy, on housing, on the future for our young people”.

(Crucially, here, Buckland and the New Conservatives’ Cates and Kruger are speaking entirely at odds. Buckland wants to talk to swing voters, whereas Cates and Kruger implore Sunak to motivate the party base. It begs the question of who the PM now thinks his target audience should be).  

Elsewhere, Sunak has been accused of misreading the room on net zero by former chief of staff to Theresa May Gavin Barwell and Sam Hall, Director of the Conservative Environment Network, an organisation which boasts a mighty parliamentary caucus. “There is no evidence that the Prime Minister’s recent changes to net zero policies have caused the defeats”, Hall says, “it is clear that they haven’t prevented them”.

Oh, and David Frost has argued for the Telegraph: “The Tories need to change – or we’re heading for the rocks”. It shows that Sunak’s purported “vision” expressed at Conservative party conference has far placated his party at large, as I have before suggested would be the case. 

And all the while, the clock ticks. Sunak is running out of time to cohere a vision — which squares the circles on Reform UK’s challenge, the matter of base motivation and the incentives on swinging voters back. He is running out of time to stamp his authority on his party as factions swirl and egos agitate. He is running out of time to prove to his party he can win. And, above all, he is running out of time to win the “trust” of voters — his overriding ambition according to his first speech as PM. 

And with further by-elections potentially around the corner in historic bellwether Wellingborough (Peter Bone) and Red Wall totem Blackpool South (Scott Benton), Labour has more lions’ dens to plunder. 

The prime minister, desperate for time to inspire some revival in fortunes in and around his party and among the electorate at large, may now be persuaded to push an election back as far as possible. The PM will try his best to stretch time in the parliamentary session begun by the King’s Speech set for 7 November, but the clock is now well and truly against him. 

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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The Conservative Party lost the Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire by-elections with swings to Labour of 20.5 percentage points and 23.9 points respectively in a historically bad night for the government. 

In the aftermath, the losses of Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire are now being compared to British politics’ last slate of by-elections, namely in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Somerton and Frome and Selby and Ainsty. 

These by-elections, held in July, saw the Conservative party retain Uxbridge. But the government lost Selby and Ainsty to Labour, and Somerton and Frome to the Liberal Democrats.

The small margin of victory for the Conservatives in Uxbridge was attributed to local campaigning against the expansion of the Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ). Subsequently, the government has been seen to exploit other “green” issues in a bid to trigger a broader rallying in the polls. 

But, after last night’s results in Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire, the prime minister has been told the watering down of net zero targets after the Uxbridge by-election “was a serious mistake”.

Gavin Barwell, who served as Theresa May’s chief of staff, wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “These by-election results are as bad as Selby and Somerton back in July (Tamworth is the second highest swing Labour have ever achieved to gain a seat from the Conservatives). They show Sunak’s net zero pivot and conference speech have had no impact on his party’s prospects.

He added: “Back in July, everyone focused on Uxbridge. Conclusions were drawn even though it was clear at the time it was down to a *local* issue and Selby and Somerton were more likely to represent the national mood. Tamworth and Mid Beds confirm that was a serious mistake”.

In July, despite a 6.7 per cent swing to Labour, the Conservatives held Uxbridge and South Ruislip, winning the seat by just 495 votes.

Speaking after victory, which coincided with historic losses in Selby and Somerton, Sunak said the result showed the next general election was not a “done deal”.

Speculation followed that the government would seek to further exploit green issues, such as ULEZ and the government’s net zero targets, as a wedge issue. And in September, Sunak outlined that the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars will be moved back five years to 2035 and that the transition to heat pumps has also been delayed. 

The prime minister said at the time: “I’m confident that we can adopt a more pragmatic, proportionate and realistic approach to meeting that zero that eases the burdens on working people”.

Speaking before the announcement, former Conservative energy minister Chris Skidmore told BBC Newsnight that the changes could “potentially be the greatest mistake of his premiership”.

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The Conservatives have suffered twin losses in the Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth by-elections.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer hailed the “phenomenal” news as he said Labour was “redrawing the political map”.

Conservative Party chairman Greg Hands argued the Conservatives must “reflect” on the circumstances leading up its two by-election defeats.

Hands’ party suffered a titanic collapse in their vote in Mid Bedfordshire, a constituency they had held since 1931, with the 24,664 majority won by former MP Nadine Dorries in 2019 entirely wiped out in a 20.5 percentage point swing to Labour.

The Conservative vote share nearly halved from 59.8 per cent to 31.1 per cent. Labour increased their showing from 21.7 per cent to 34 per cent.

In Tamworth, the Conservatives suffered their worst by-election defeat to Labour in modern history. Sarah Edwards took the Staffordshire seat with a majority of 1,316 and one of the party’s largest ever by-election swings as her Conservative rival bolted from the count after the result was announced.

Keir Starmer is now the first Labour leader to win Tamworth since the days of Tony Blair, reversing a Conservative majority that has increased in every election since 2010. 

The party also won the constituency from the Conservatives in a by-election in 1996 before winning a landslide at the general election.

Speaking in Mid Bedfordshire this morning, Starmer said: “This is an incredible night in politics, an incredible morning – and incredible result here for so many reasons.

“It is clear that the voters here have turned their back on a failed Tory government. They’ve had enough of the decline of the last 13 years and they are crying out for change. Positive change that a changed Labour Party can bring them.”

Sir Keir added: “the party of the future, the party of national renewal… is this changed Labour Party.”

Despite the brace of bad results, minister Andrew Bowie insisted the Conservatives were “on the right course” this morning, telling Sky News: “There is no groundswell of support for the Labour Party. What that tells me is that people are supportive of what we’re doing but they just were not prepared to come out and vote for us.”

Party chairman Hands said he did not “see any enthusiasm for Labour” despite the party’s victories, adding that turnout had been low. 

He explained he had campaigned in both seats, adding: “I don’t think a single person came to the door to say that despite all the problems people are facing, that Labour and Sir Keir Starmer were the solution to their problems.”

“So I don’t see any enthusiasm for Labour but clearly there’s been a lot of, if you like, background circumstances in those two by-elections that have also made the job difficult for us”, he told Times Radio. 

“But clearly we need to reflect on that and we need to continue to deliver against our priorities and make sure that people see that Rishi Sunak is doing a very good job as Prime Minister.”

However, elections professor and polling guru John Curtice told the BBC: “Both of them are extremely bad news for the Conservatives. In whatever criteria you use, they’re up there very clearly in the top 10 worst Conservative performances against the Labour Party.” 

Sir John Redwood, who was head of the No 10 policy unit under Margaret Thatcher, urged the government to cut taxes and pursue its pledge to halt illegal Channel crossings in wake of the by-elections.

“In the two by elections thousands of Conservative voters in 2019 stayed at home. The Labour vote was similar to 2019”, Sir John wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

“Many people want the government to stop the boats, improve the quality and efficiency of services and cut taxes to get some growth.

“Low by election turnouts can produce big swings. They show people want something better than all the main parties are offering.”

Conversely, former cabinet minister Sir Robert Buckland, who is considered to be on the moderate wing of the party, told the BBC: “I think that as Conservatives, we now need to make it very clear what the next five years is going to look like, and that’s what I’m looking for from the prime minister and our leaders.

“I’m not looking for academic arguments about issues that are not going to swing voters. I’m looking for serious, grown-up approaches to the issues that really matter – on the economy, on housing, on the future for our young people.

“We’ve got some good Conservative answers to these issues. Let’s hear them and let’s hear nothing else in the next 12 months.”

The Lib Dems, who came third in Mid Bedfordshire, claimed their ability to switch Conservative voters paved the way for Labour’s victory.

Deputy leader Daisy Cooper said: “We nearly doubled our share of the vote which would see the Lib Dems win dozens of seats off the Conservatives in a general election.

“The Liberal Democrats played a crucial role in defeating the Conservatives in Mid Bedfordshire, and we can play a crucial role in getting rid of this Conservative Government at the next election.”

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Right of Conservative parties Reform UK, UKIP and Britain First amassed a combined 9.4 per cent of the vote at the Tamworth by-election, with each party individually besting the Liberal Democrats and Greens. 

Reform UK, the restyled Brexit party which is led by Richard Tice, won 5.4 per cent of the vote. 

Britain First, a far right party, won 2.3 per cent of the vote and UKIP received 1.7 per cent of the vote.

This is compared to the Liberal Democrat and Green candidates who both picked up 1.6 per cent of the vote. 

However, the results came with a turnout of a mere as 35.9 per cent. The Tamworth results in full were:

• Labour: 11,719
• Conservatives: 10,403
• Reform UK: 1,373
• Britain First: 580
• The UK Independence Party: 436
• Liberal Democrats: 417
• Green Party: 417
• Monster Raving Loony Party: 155
• Independent: 86

Reacting to the by-election on X, formerly Twitter, Reform UK leader and former businessman Richard Tice said: “Twice in same night have Reform UK ensured Tories lost their seat with this by election result This despite huge squeeze pressure from Tories to voters saying do not vote Reform”.

In Mid Bedfordshire, which like Tamworth was won by the Labour party, Reform UK’s candidate won 3.7 per cent of the vote or 1,487 votes.

Labour won the seat with a majority of 1,192 votes. 

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During the proceedings of the Covid inquiry today, a WhatsApp message was revealed which showed an exchange between Dame Angela McLean, chief governmental scientific adviser, and SAGE Covid-19 modeller Professor John Edmunds.

According to the image seen by the inquiry, the exchange took place on 20 September 2020 and, in it, Dame McLean referred to the then-chancellor Rishi Sunak as “Dr Death the chancellor”.

Lead counsel Hugo Keith asked Professor John Edmunds whether the comments were made in relation to the “eat out to help out” scheme, championed by Sunak, which ran in August 2020.

Professor Edmunds replied: “Honestly, it’s so long ago I wouldn’t know, but it could well be.”

Naomi Fulop, spokesperson for Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, responded: “This inquiry has made clear that there was absolutely no consultation with the government’s scientific advisers on Eat Out to Help Out, that it contributed to the loss of thousands of lives, put unnecessary pressure on the NHS and plunged the country into a brutal second lockdown.

“It’s unbearable to think that if it wasn’t for Rishi Sunak’s reckless, unscientific and callous approach, my mum might still be with me.

“When our current chief scientific adviser has referred to our prime minister as ‘Dr Death’, how can any of us have faith in our government if another pandemic strikes

The latest batch of WhatsApp messages and emails shown at the Covid inquiry also seem to indicate that Dame McLean called Stephen Powis, the medical director of NHS England, a “f***wit”. 

Meanwhile, opponents of lockdown measures were referred to as the “let it rip brigade” by then-chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance.

Also at the Covid inquiry, the chairwoman Baroness Heather Hallett told the probe she is yet to decide whether or not Sir Patrick Vallance’s diary entries should be published in full.

Baroness Hallett said  it would be “premature” to make a decision on the issue.

The diary kept by the former chief scientific adviser was effectively “a brain dump”, Sir Patrick’s lawyer said, and was written “at the end of immensely stressful days to protect his mental health”.

It was suggested instead that a new document be created containing the only “relevant extracts”.

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It was appropriate that Rishi Sunak closed Conservative conference with a long term decision on the future of high speed rail. Whether you look at the issues around HS2 through an engineering or an economic lens you come back to the same discipline, one that the PM has rightly identified as key to national success – maths.

It is mathematics that underpins the very technology that allows trains to hit such remarkable speeds. And it’s maths at the core of the budgeting issues that have bedevilled the project to link London, Birmingham and Manchester.

Perhaps if there was more mathematical expertise in Whitehall and Westminster it wouldn’t have become such a hot topic. Recent research by The Constitution Unit found a tiny fraction of MPs staff have a background in the mathematical sciences and the proportions aren’t much better among MPs or civil servants.

Politics is a people business. It’s perhaps inevitable that those studying the humanities and social sciences would be overwhelmingly drawn to it as a career.

But that raises two points that need to be challenged. The first is that we tolerate a lack of mathematical expertise in politics and policy making. The second is the idea that maths is not a people business.

Both assumptions are rooted in the old image of a mathematician as a lone genius, likely a white-haired white man, standing at a blackboard reckoning with some colossal equation. It’s as baffling as it is disappointing that this idea has been allowed to take hold.

For maths is much more than that. It’s a discipline that embraces collaboration. Maths is a language that describes the world around us. What use is a language with no-one to talk to?

Maths is certainly not confined to the classroom. It is all around us from the clock that wakes us in the morning to the mobile phone that we often reach for before it’s strictly necessary, to the streaming services and social media we unwind with in the evening. All rely on numbers, data, algorithms.

We cannot afford to accept an insufficiency of maths in parliament and government for policy challenges cannot be solved without it.

Climate change can only be understood through data. And it will be solved with new ideas and technology that will be derived direct from mathematical concepts and study.

Energy supply and the cost of electricity and gas dominate the thoughts of many of us. None more so than the mathematicians grappling with the necessary modelling, creating the simulations and generating the technology that will inevitably and ultimately solve the energy crisis.

It was mathematics that modelled the Covid pandemic, that underpinned the science behind the vaccines and drove the logistics behind the rollout of millions of jabs. And it’s mathematics that will help the NHS cope with current pressures and improve its response into the future.

Maths remains fundamental to code-breaking and national security. It’s entirely appropriate that the Prime Minister will convene an international summit on AI at Bletchley Park, the site of Alan Turing’s work on the Enigma code and the development of early computers, next month. For the very maths that drove the wartime codebreaking and led to the development of the first computers has brought us to the brink of an AI revolution.

Rishi Sunak has an obvious interest in maths. He’s determined that all pupils should be taught it in some form through to the very end of their school days. That’s the foundation of his ambition to make the UK a science superpower and to equip the nation for a world filled with technology.

But we must be wary of too narrow a focus.

If the UK is to remain at the cutting edge of STEM then it needs a healthy pipeline of maths talent, running from encouraging enjoyment and numeracy among the very young right through to our elite institutions and adequately funded research. The most recent recipient of the Fields Medal – the maths equivalent of a Nobel Prize – was British, James Maynard of Oxford University.

We need more teachers with a specialism in maths, and comprehensive training for those who have switched to teaching maths without a degree in the subject.

And we need to protect and promote maths of every stripe at university. As well as the sort of maths that underpins our most urgent technological innovations – driverless cars, AI, quantum computing – we must nurture the more theoretical elements of the discipline too

It’s because maths is fundamental to everyday life that it was pleasing to see the PM return to it in his conference speech. It’s undoubtedly true that we take it for granted. That’s why I’m pleased to support the Protect Pure Maths campaign working to improve the understanding of maths among politicians and the public.

Maths matters. It’s already all around us and its importance to tackling the crises we face and in building a bright future for the UK and the world as we rely further on technology will only increase. We will only be able to keep up with more maths expertise in Whitehall and Westminster.

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Closing in on two weeks since air raid sirens sounded in Jerusalem, warning citizens of the attack in progress and to immediately take cover, and the situation in the Israel-Hamas conflict continues to develop at a rapid pace. 

Warning against a “dangerous escalation”, Rishi Sunak today followed in the footsteps of US president Joe Biden in meeting his counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Israeli president Isaac Herzog, where the PM expressed his “solidarity with the Israeli people”.

The meeting came after Biden backed Israel over the explosion at the al-Ahli Hospital in the north of the Gaza Strip, which is reported to have killed 471 Palestinians and wounded 314 others, by saying that the “other team” were behind it.

The UK government is committed to publishing its own assessment of who was behind the blast at the al-Ahli Hospital and Sunak has stated that he will not “rush to judgment before we have all the facts on this awful situation”. 

Commenting on the tragedy at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, Labour leader Keir Starmer called the news of deaths at the Al Ahli Arab hospital incredibly distressing. He asked when the PM could update MPs on the work to establish what happened. 

As has been widely noted, the exchanges at PMQs yesterday saw the usual cut and thrust of party politics put to one side. For Labour, it was in essence a return to what Keir Starmer termed “constructive opposition” during the pandemic years – as he once more presents a united front with the government. 

In this way, Starmer has not directly criticised the Israeli response, and has couched his statements in terms of criticism of Hamas, an organisation he has said has no regard for “the safety of Palestinian people”. 

But, yesterday, the Labour leader did declare that an Israeli response “must be done in line with international humanitarian law”, adding that civilians in Gaza “must not be targeted” as part of his call for humanitarian corridors to be opened. 

“Medicines, food, fuel and water must get into Gaza immediately. Innocent Palestinians need to know that the world is not just simply watching but acting to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe”, the Labour leader declared to a hushed chamber yesterday. 

It suggests a slight softening in the position Starmer adopted during an interview with LBC during Labour conference, which is now frequently cited by those critical of his approach to the conflict. During what must have been an exhaustive string of media interviews, Starmer was asked if he thought a siege of Gaza was appropriate if it involved “cutting off power, cutting off water”.

He responded: “I think that Israel does have that right”. He did go on to clarify that “everything should be done within international law”.

Starmer’s spokesman has since suggested that the LBC interview confused Labour’s position because “there were overlapping questions and answers based on what had been being said before”.

The contours of this debate a subtle, but Starmer’s slight evolution in positioning since his LBC interview show how fine a line he must walk on the conflict. Indeed, in response to Starmer’s comments at conference, several Labour councillors have quit the party. Amna Abdullatif, the first Arab Muslim woman on Manchester City Council, said she had been left “no choice” other than to resign from Labour as she accused the Labour leader of “effectively endorsing a war crime”. 

The Labour leader, who is no stranger to upsetting his left flank and might, in other circumstances, revel in the exiting of internal critics, has responded with a letter to local representatives. In an apparent attempt to quell anger, with more than 20 councillors having already resigned from his party, Starmer wrote on Wednesday: “this is a terrifying and distressing time for everyone – Israeli, Palestinian, Muslim and Jew” and said he believed it was “important that people hear directly what our position is”.

But the pressure on the Labour leader is not merely limited to councillors. Yesterday, a constellation of Labour MPs signed an Early Day Motion calling for cessations of hostilities to protect citizens in Gaza. Signatories included Richard Burgon, John McDonnell as well as now-independent MPs Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn.

The opening of the EDM reads: “This House utterly condemns the massacre of Israeli civilians and taking of hostages by Hamas; agrees with the United Nations Secretary-General that these horrific acts do not justify responding with the collective punishment of the Palestinian people”. 

The motion, also signed by Grahame Morris, Beth Winter and Zarah Sultana — who hail from the Socialist Campaign Group of left-wing Labour MPs — expressed “deep alarm at the Israeli military bombardment and total siege of Gaza and the resulting deaths and suffering”.

Other signatories include Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, Alba MP Kenny MacAskill, SDLP MP Claire Hanna, Alliance MP Stephen Farry, Conservative MP Sir Peter Bottomley and a series of SNP MPs. 

In this way, the consensus Starmer has sought to forge with Sunak on the Israel-Hamas conflict could be strained by pressure from non-Labour representatives, too. SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn called on Sunak yesterday to urge a ceasefire. “I hope we all share the same common humanity of protecting civilians and condemning any acts of collective punishment against the Palestinian people”, Flynn said.

During his conference speech earlier this week, Scottish first minister Humza Yousaf called on the UK government to support the medical evacuation of injured civilians in Gaza, adding: “Scotland is ready to play her part and our hospitals will treat the injured men, women and children of Gaza where we can.”

He added: “A humanitarian corridor must be opened, vital supplies let in, and Gazans who want to leave must be allowed to leave. The blockade of Gaza must end. It is right for the world to condemn the actions of Hamas — unequivocally. But any form of collective punishment, as we are seeing in Gaza, can never be justified”. 

Keir Starmer has not used the phrase “collective punishment” — something of a discursive rubicon on the conflict because it implies war crimes are being conducted in Israel’s name — mirroring the prime minister’s own positioning.

The Liberal Democrats also appear to be taking a stronger position on Israel than the Labour leadership. The party’s foreign affairs spokesperson Layla Moran spoke in parliament on Monday about her extended family, who are Christian Palestinians living in Gaza City,  having their house bombed by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), staying in a church and being “too old” to flee the 25-mile strip.

Moran told ITV yesterday that Gaza is “essentially an open [air] prison”. “I don’t believe it’s right that my family are being held accountable for what Hamas has done”, added the MP. 

One key question now will be whether the British government seeks parliamentary approval for any UK response to the crisis. A commons debate would provide a forum for MPs of all parties to voice their discontent at the current consensus view on the Isreal-Hamas conflict. 

Critically, such an extended exchange of views will beg questions of Starmer’s positioning on the conflict as he lays out Labour’s stance in detail — in this instance, stemming further resignations and deterring a very public intra-party debate on Israel’s response would surely condition his comments. 

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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