Tag: United Kingdom

Rishi Sunak has arrived in Israel for a two-day trip to the country and the wider region to offer his support while warning against a “dangerous escalation of conflict”.

The PM is expected to meet the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and president Isaac Herzog in Tel Aviv, before travelling to a number of other regional capitals in a diplomatic bid to prevent fighting from spiralling.

Sunak is expected to urge Israel to open up the route into Gaza for humanitarian aid as soon as possible and the exit of those trapped in the territory, while sharing his condolences for the “terrible” loss of life following the attacks by Hamas.

It represents part of a diplomatic push by Britain with foreign secretary James Cleverly set to travel to Egypt, Turkey and Qatar over the next few days.

“I am meeting counterparts from influential states in the region to push for calm and stability, facilitate humanitarian access into Gaza and work together to secure the release of hostages”, Cleverly has said.

Rishi Sunak said ahead of his trip: “Every civilian death is a tragedy. And too many lives have been lost following Hamas’s horrific act of terror.

“The attack on al-Ahli Hospital should be a watershed moment for leaders in the region and across the world to come together to avoid further dangerous escalation of conflict. I will ensure the UK is at the forefront of this effort.”

His visit comes after US president Joe Biden flew into Israel on Wednesday. He backed Israel over the al-Ahli Hospital explosion by saying that the “other team” were behind it.

Joe Biden also urged Israel not to be “consumed by” rage in the wake of Hamas’ attack. He called on the government to avoid making the same “mistakes” that the US did after 9/11.

The UK government is committed to publishing an assessment of who was behind the blast at the the al-Ahli Hospital as Israel and Hamas issued rival claims.

On Wednesday morning, Sunak said that he would not “rush to judgment before we have all the facts on this awful situation”

At prime minister’s questions in the Commons, Sunak said: “Our intelligence services have been rapidly analysing the evidence to independently establish the facts. We are not in a position at this point to say more than that.”

The PM said he is also working with Qatar in an attempt to secure the release of British hostages held by Hamas.

“The Qatari government is taking a lead and working intensely to help release hostages using their contacts in the region and we are working very closely with them to ensure the safe return of the British hostages”, he said. 

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Keir Starmer has been backed by Larry Fink, the chairman and CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, as he said Labour now offers a “measurement of hope”.

Fink, one of the world’s most influential financiers, told the Wall Street Journal that Starmer had shown “real strength” in bringing Labour to the centre ground.

The comments came in an interview with the WSJ’s Free Expression podcast.

Fink said: “I was in the UK and I spent time with both parties — the Conservatives and Labour party — and I’m very pleased to see how the Labour party in the UK went from an extremist party with a Marxist leader to Keir Starmer who has shown real strength as a moderate Labour party”.

It was a reference to the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, who led the Labour Party from 2015-2020. 

Answering questions on the challenges of “populism”, which he said had afflicted Western democracies over recent years, he added: “That actually has given me hope that the pendulum went so far.

“If you think about the UK — the UK was the one that started the high level populism through Brexit and then the populism here led to Donald Trump being president.

“I hope the UK — we will see what happens if Keir Starmer gets elected — but I believe that’s a measurement of hope.”

Fink, a billionaire who gives money to the US Democrats, also warned that too many political leaders were “governing through fear”, which was undermining trust in political institutions.

“There is no question in my mind I have never seen more fear, more distrust,” he said. “Fear is pervasive now, whether because of geopolitical issues — whether it is ‘who do I listen to?”, he said.

“I think it is the responsibility of the press, business leaders to elevate hope again. Historically you would have said that leadership in government would provide hope and right now they are governing through fear”.

Fink also praised Rishi Sunak for rolling back on net-zero-carbon targets.

He said: “Power is more important than your strategy, okay, keeping the lights on. In the UK, they weren’t going to ever meet those targets they overdid, so he actually rolled back to some more sensibility, in my opinion”.

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Prime Minister’s Questions is usually a shouty, jeery affair — a merciless bear pit where any sign of weakness is greeted with a wall of noise from MPs sat directly opposite. 

Before the House rose for recess, politicos foretold of even fierier clashes as Rishi Sunak transitioned into a more attack-ready, aggressive politician. We saw this new approach debuted throughout the recess period: first on net zero, and culminating in the PM’s conference set-piece when he came out swinging against a stale “30 year consensus”.

But thanks to events in the Middle East, this was a distinctly sombre PMQs — where the usual confrontational tone was replaced with serious reflection. Consensus, after all, was the order of the day. 

“Sunak 2.0” will have to wait some time yet for his commons debut, it seems. 

As for Keir Starmer, there was no mention of the PM’s decision to scrap the Manchester leg of HS2 in Manchester, no mocking of his imagined “meat tax”, no mention of two crucial by-elections in Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth tomorrow. Bar a brief welcoming to the new Labour MP for Rutherglen and Hamilton West, the party politics was parked. All six of Starmer’s questions concerned the Israel-Hamas conflict and its implications at home and abroad. 

But for Starmer, who never seems to much enjoy the rowdy side of PMQs, this was far from unfamiliar territory. It was a through back to the start of the pandemic when the newly coronated Labour leader vowed to provide “constructive opposition”. This mode of politics returned today, and Starmer consciously exuded statesmanlike seriousness.  

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. Still, Starmer cleaved closely to the script he had set himself on the Israel-Hamas conflict over the past few days — coming party management difficulties notwithstanding. 

Indeed, the Labour leader did not use his questions to criticise the government. Rather, he raised concerns about hostages and hate crimes to “hear hears” across the commons floor. Starmer called on MPs to approach the conflict with a united voice and stressed the “disgusting rise” in antisemitism since the Hamas attack alongside an “appalling surge” in Islamophobia.

The prime minister could only agree. Conservative MPs nodded along. 

Starmer did urge Israel to act within international law, but his fury was directed at Hamas, which he said had no regard for “the safety of Palestinian people”.

In his exchanges today, which of course were not limited to Starmer’s questions, the prime minister, likewise, had to come across a stately and serious. He outlined measures the UK government was taking to support those in Gaza, including speaking with the Emir of Qatar, telling MPs “we are working round the clock” with partners and allies to secure the freedom of the hostages taken by Hamas.

The cross-party consensus was strained slightly when SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn took to the fore — calling for Sunak 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.

The PM responded that he “believes Israel does have a right to defend itself, to protect its people and to act against terrorism”.

Away from the frontbench exchanges, Crispin Blunt, the former Conservative chair of the foreign affairs select committee, warned that the government could be complicit in war crimes in Gaza. Sunak shied away from calling for any restraint from Israel: “It’s worth repeating that Hamas is a terrorist organisation that embeds itself in civilian populations”, the PM said. 

One interesting moment before PMQs got underway was when the Conservatives’ newest MP Lisa Cameron, who defected from the SNP last week, crossed the floor to take her seat. Former prime minister Theresa May escorted Cameron to the government benches where she sat alongside Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross through the questioning that followed. 

Starmer and Sunak struck the same sombre tones at PMQs today. If the prime minister and the leader of the Labour Party can put the point-scoring aside, so can we dispose of our entirely arbitrary scoring system. PMQs verdict: N/A

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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On 9 June 2023, Nadine Dorries announced that she was standing down from her Mid Bedfordshire seat “with immediate effect”. In the end, it took a further 78 days for the former culture secretary and Boris Johnson loyalist to make good on her word, extending her boycott of the House of Commons chamber to 414 days in the interim.

Then, on 11 September, Chris Pincher lost his appeal against an eight-week suspension for an “egregious case of sexual misconduct”.  

These are the brutal realities set the scene for a brace of by-elections in Mid-Bedfordshire and Tamworth, both Conservative heartlands, on Thursday. With Halloween still two weeks away, Pincher and Dorries are the spectres that haunt the Conservatives’ prospects in these supposedly safe seats. 

Or that, at least, is the reading advanced by a leaked Conservative memo, obtained by Sky News yesterday.

The internal party document pins blame for potential further by-election routings on “enormous discontent” directed from the doorstep at Nadine Dorries and Chris Pincher in Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth respectively. 

“We’ve always known the cause of these by-elections”, the memo reads, “i.e. MPs associated with our party’s challenges last year standing down who are personally associated with negative news stories, would hinder our performance”. 

However, the memo has raised eyebrows for its commentary in other areas. It seems to soothe intra-party discontent by suggesting aggrieved former Conservative voters in Mid Beds and Tamworth are becoming “don’t knows” rather than flocking to the Liberal Democrat or Labour parties. “To date, there are very few direct switchers from GE19 Conservative to opponents. This is in line with recent by-elections”, it explains.

“Favourability ratings for Keir Starmer are relatively low”, the memo assures elsewhere. The internal document stresses that voters like the local Conservative candidates as well as the prime minister, before ultimately concluding that “two sizeable Labour victories are to be expected”.

Cynics have responded to the memo’s appearance in the media by suggesting it is an example of sly expectation management from CCHQ. Indeed, other indicators suggest the races in Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire, but the latter in particular, are tight. One poll for Mid Bedfordshire, commissioned by the Starmer-aligned think tank Labour Together but carried out by the independent pollsters Survation last month, put Labour and the Conservatives neck and neck on 29 per cent, with the Lib Dems on 22 per cent.

While Labour is increasingly presumed to triumph in Tamworth, therefore, in Mid Bedfordshire the bookmakers now narrowly favour the Conservatives. This is because the race in Nadine Dorries’ old constituency is complicated by Labour and Liberal Democrat electoral competition — with the two opposition parties facing off in an acrimonious contest to emerge as the natural receptacle for voters’ discontent. The 19 per cent swing Labour needs to win Mid Beds, although less than the 24 per cent swing it achieved in Selby, may prove difficult to muster.  

In this way, the leaked memo probably speaks to a narrative being spun in CCHQ — with party officials undertaking to blame external factors for a brace of losses, while preparing the ground for spinners to embellish the PM’s own electoral credentials in a victorious outcome. 

The memo, genuine or contrived, is also revealing in other aspects. Because it gets to the core of Sunak’s electoral-political dilemma: how does he improve the Conservative party’s prospects, which are shaped by the legacies two unpopular forebears, while maintaining the visage of unity among his parliamentary party? “Long Johnson” is endemic in both Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth it seems, not just Westminster. 

This is noteworthy because the memo follows the prime minister’s attempt to undertake a hard relaunch of his premiership at Conservative Party conference — resting on the rhetorical gambit that the PM is the man to upend a stale “30 year political consensus”. 

The “30 year political consensus” shtick was supposed to square the circle of Sunak’s electoral-political dilemma — in one breath castigating, if implicitly, his immediate predecessors while attempting to unite his party around a shared goal. But the immediate post-conference polls suggested the approach was not an immediate hit with at least one of his audiences: the electorate. Despite all the coverage of Sunak and his party, an Opinium poll conducted for the Observer showed the Conservatives’ polling unchanged on 29 per cent.

If Sunak does, as the memo intimates, lose both the Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire seats to Labour, Sir Keir Starmer’s spin machine will be working overtime in a bid to tie Sunak’s popularity directly with the results. Conversely, Conservative spinners will stick to the script outlined in the memo: they will suggest that while while Sunak is popular in the public, the political tides could not be held back in Dorries and Pincher’s former seats. Mid-term by-elections are difficult for governing parties, in any case, the narrative will flow. 

But, if the Conservative party holds onto even one of these seats, the pro-Sunak spin will insist he is, in fact, moving the dial among the electorate in scenes which will essentially mirror the muted merriment after the Uxbridge by-election. A thin margin of victory will probably be leveraged into an important marker of success for Sunak — even if the Conservatives hold on to Mid Beds because of a statistical freak in the division of opposition votes.

The by-election in Tamworth also has an intriguing historical parallel which bodes ominously for the government. Before 1997, this area of the country was represented by the constituency of South East Staffordshire and, in April 1996, a by-election took place in South East Staffordshire roughly one year ahead of the general election. Then, as now, the Conservatives went into the contest defending a large majority — but Labour gained the seat on a huge swing of 22.1 percentage points.

In this way, for Labour, two Conservative defeats will give the party more opportunity to attack the government — and the press gallery more chance to write up those attacks. 

After winning the recent by-election in Rutherglen and Hamilton West, Keir Starmer can show he is advancing in all “Walls” — Tartan, Blue and Red. Indeed, a “Red Wall” by-election may be just around the corner, with the MP for the marginal Blackpool South under investigation for alleged paid lobbying. 

Then there is the matter of Wellingborough, which voted Labour at the 1997 and 2001 elections and could soon be the setting for a further by-election after Peter Bone’s recommended suspension of six weeks was upheld by the parliamentary commissioner for standards.

The big risk here for Sunak, therefore, is that his party enters an electoral doom loop with political chicanery and spin used to shield the Conservative Party from reality as his MP numbers are shaved by a series of by-elections. Perception is important in politics, and Sunak needs to shake his reputation as a “loser”. 

Ultimately, two defeats on Friday morning will strengthen the feeling of fin de régime which presently envelops Sunak’s government and raise questions about how significantly the PM can alter his party’s electoral prospects before a general election.

One possible outcome of two Conservative losses on Friday morning, in this way, will be that the likelihood of a late election, perhaps in the winter of 2024 or even January 2025, increases.

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 decision to scrap the second leg of HS2 to Manchester was a “mistake”, the government’s independent infrastructure adviser has said. 

Sir John Armitt, chair of the National Infrastructure Commission, told the BBC this morning that the decision to cut back on HS2 was a “sort of knee-jerk, snap reaction”.

He said: “I think it’s a mistake. I think that the land should be kept for at least two or three years to give the opportunity for people to revisit that and look at what can be done within that space and find a more cost-effective solution, not write it off today,” he said.

“I am disappointed because I think it’s what we often describe as a sort of knee-jerk, snap reaction”.

The comments follow the publication of the National Infrastructure Commission’s second five year review of the country’s infrastructure.

The report is critical of the decision to scrap the second leg of HS2, saying this is will leave “a major gap in the UK’s rail strategy around which a number of cities have based their economic growth plans”.

In his party conference speech earlier this month, prime minister Rishi Sunak labelled HS2 “the ultimate example of the old consensus” and hit out at the soaring costs and long delays.

“I am cancelling the rest of the HS2 project”, he declared

He explained the government will instead reinvest the savings — £36bn — in “hundreds of new transport projects in the North and the Midlands, and across the country”.

Sunak said the “facts have changed” and the “right thing to do is to change direction”.

In place of HS2, the PM outlined what he is calling the “Network North”.

“Every region outside of London will receive the same or more government investment than they would have done under HS2 with quicker results”, he said.

The National Infrastructure Commission’s report also concluded that the UK’s infrastructure needs a big cash injection.

Sir John Armitt called on the government to take urgent action. “The good news is that modern, reliable infrastructure can support economic growth, help tackle climate change and enhance the natural environment”, he said. 

“People often talk about infrastructure as the backbone of our economy: what our infrastructure needs now is the collective mettle to turn commitments into action that will reap rewards for decades to come.”

In total, the NIC made 46 key recommendations, including a suggestion that the government should make a substantial investment in public transport for England’s biggest cities.

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The latest inflation figures are “in line with” government expectations, a Treasury minister has said. 

Economic secretary to the Treasury Andrew Griffith told Sky News this morning that the government was “on track”, despite inflation holding steady at 6.7 per cent in September, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Rishi Sunak pledged in January to halve inflation by the end of the year.

Inflation was at 10.7 per cent in January, meaning to meet this pledge he has to lower price rises to 5.3 per cent in December.

“We always said it wouldn’t be easy and we’ve had to take responsible but tough choices,” Griffith said.

“But what today’s inflation figures show, is that we agree with most commentators out there that we’re on track to halve inflation this year.”

Analysts had predicted inflation would dip to 6.6 per cent for the month.

Asked how concerned the government is that the Bank of England may increase interest rates further, Griffith said this morning that ministers are doing “everything we can” to help the economy.

He said: “We’re always concerned about the impact on ordinary people and that’s the big challenge of interest rates.

“The bit that we can do is be responsible with our public finances, not make promises about spending or indeed tax cuts that can’t be financed.”

The inflation figure remained in September unchanged just as separate data from the ONS showed wages began to outpace price rises for the first time in the three months to July and to August.

Responding to the latest figures, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, said: “As we have seen across other G7 countries, inflation rarely falls in a straight line, but if we stick to our plan then we still expect it to keep falling this year.

“Today’s news just shows this is even more important so we can ease the pressure on families and businesses.”

ONS chief economist Grant Fitzner said: “Food and non-alcoholic drinks prices eased again across a range of items with the cost of household appliances and airfares also falling this month.

“These were offset by rising prices for motor fuels and the cost of hotel stays.”

Meanwhile, Griffith declined to say whether the government would hike benefits in line with the September measure of inflation, which is typically used as the key measure.

He said that ministers could not “make promises about spending or indeed tax cuts that can’t be financed and would put more pressure on inflation and, of course, interest rates”.

He said the assessment process is “yet to happen”, adding: “Last year we increased benefits by 10pc to protect people, one of the largest ever increases.”

James Smith, Research Director at the Resolution Foundation, said: “Progress on falling inflation has stalled, for one month at least. It should fall sharply next month to below 5 per cent next, as energy prices fall for most people.

“The latest inflation data tells us about the recent past and also shapes cost-of-living pressures on low and middle income households next year, as it normally used to increase benefits in April.

“Should the government choose not to do this, as it has done seven times since 2010, in order to save money, nine million families across Britain will pay a heavy price.

“Families who receive benefits would see their incomes fall by £460 on average, while many low-income families with kids face much higher income losses, rising to £1,200 for a low income couple with two children.”

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