Sadiq Khan joins Labour voices calling for Israel-Gaza ceasefire
Aubrey Allegretti
Keir Starmer has come under further pressure to call for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, as one of Labour’s most senior Muslim politicians said it was the best way to avoid further “devastating loss of life”.
Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, said the “terrible situation” in Gaza looked set to deteriorate further and that a “substantial military escalation” was brewing.
I join the international community in calling for a ceasefire,” he said, arguing it would avoid more civilian casualties, allow aid to reach those in need and allow more time to avoid the conflict growing in the Middle East.
Khan said Israel had a right to defend itself, target those responsible for what he called the terror attack on 7 October and seek to free hostages, but added: “No nation, including Israel, has the right to break international law.”
He made the comments in a two-and-a-half minute video posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Thousands of innocent civilians have already been killed in Israel and Gaza. With the humanitarian crisis set to deteriorate even further, I’m calling for a ceasefire. pic.twitter.com/iOZpHTsBQC
— Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan (@MayorofLondon) October 27, 2023
Pressure has been growing on Starmer this week to support a ceasefire, after calls for him to do so from hundreds of Labour councillors and nearly a quarter of MPs, including two on the party’s frontbench.
Starmer has resisted calling for a total ceasefire, and instead supported the UK and US’s approach of backing the call for temporary pauses, which would be time and location specific, to allow aid to reach those without water, food and medicine.
Key events
Severin Carrell
The Home Office is under intensifying pressure to help house more than 1,400 refugees who face homelessness in Glasgow due to its rush to clear a significant backlog in asylum claims.
Lawyers acting for refugees in Glasgow have warned that the city council and the Scottish and UK governments face legal action and compensation claims if they fail to provide enough housing to people being granted the legal right to live in the UK.
The Scottish Refugee Council warned that without sufficient housing there would be “escalating street homelessness” this winter putting people at risk of exploitation and potential loss of life.
“The perversity of all this is that for those granted refugee status, this should be a time of relief, hope and joy; not of torment and homelessness,” said Graham O’Neill, the SRC’s policy officer.
Glasgow city council expects that more than 1,400 refugees will be suddenly made homeless in the city later this year because of a Home Office decision to speed up the asylum backlog, emptying more than 50 hotels of applicants.
City officials estimate that surge in cases could immediately cost the city, which is home to the largest concentration of asylum seekers in the UK, about £26m extra in emergency housing costs and up to £54m over the following year.
Read the full story here:
The shadow environment secretary, Steve Reed, has said he understands and empathises with Labour colleagues who disagree with the party’s position on the Israel-Hamas conflict.
He told Sky News:
I completely understand and empathise with colleagues who are seeing what’s going on in Gaza and are just feeling desperate. So many viewers will be looking at those scenes today and feel just anguish at the pain and suffering that is going on.
But what I would say to colleagues is if this attack that Israel suffered had been on the UK, if it had been on the US, the United States and our state would have sought to defend ourselves to protect our citizens by dismantling the capability of a terrorist organisation that carried it out. That applies to Israel too, they have the right under international law to do that.
But in taking that work, they must continue to follow international law as they carry it out, but long term, the only solution to this crisis is not going to be military.
It can only be negotiated politically and we need the whole international community to focus on it much more than has been the case over recent decades.
Asked if Labour’s stance on the war will have an electoral impact, Reed added:
I think [it] won’t … and the reason I think that is in politics, you should do the right thing, not the electorally expedient thing.
Sadiq Khan joins Labour voices calling for Israel-Gaza ceasefire
Aubrey Allegretti
Keir Starmer has come under further pressure to call for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, as one of Labour’s most senior Muslim politicians said it was the best way to avoid further “devastating loss of life”.
Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, said the “terrible situation” in Gaza looked set to deteriorate further and that a “substantial military escalation” was brewing.
I join the international community in calling for a ceasefire,” he said, arguing it would avoid more civilian casualties, allow aid to reach those in need and allow more time to avoid the conflict growing in the Middle East.
Khan said Israel had a right to defend itself, target those responsible for what he called the terror attack on 7 October and seek to free hostages, but added: “No nation, including Israel, has the right to break international law.”
He made the comments in a two-and-a-half minute video posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Thousands of innocent civilians have already been killed in Israel and Gaza. With the humanitarian crisis set to deteriorate even further, I’m calling for a ceasefire. pic.twitter.com/iOZpHTsBQC
— Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan (@MayorofLondon) October 27, 2023
Pressure has been growing on Starmer this week to support a ceasefire, after calls for him to do so from hundreds of Labour councillors and nearly a quarter of MPs, including two on the party’s frontbench.
Starmer has resisted calling for a total ceasefire, and instead supported the UK and US’s approach of backing the call for temporary pauses, which would be time and location specific, to allow aid to reach those without water, food and medicine.
Gillian Keegan said “we don’t want to cross that line” of telling Israel it has “anything but the right to defend itself”.
Asked why the government was calling for a “humanitarian pause” rather than a ceasefire, the education secretary told ITV’s Good Morning Britain:
We’re trying to get as much aid as we can to the right people so that we can support the Palestinian people but we don’t want to cross that line of telling Israel … that they have anything but the right to defend themselves.
They do have the right to defend themselves after the horrific attacks.
She said the government was “reliant on” a pause being facilitated and observed.
Gillian Keegan defends government’s decision to invite China to AI safety summit
Gillian Keegan defended the government’s decision to invite China to next week’s artificial intelligence safety summit at Bletchley Park.
On Thursday, Liz Truss wrote to the prime minister to say she was “deeply disturbed” that China has been invited.
She said China views AI as “a means of state control and a tool for national security”.
In a post on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, she said:
We should be working with our allies, not those seeking to subvert freedom and democracy.
Keegan told LBC China is one of the world leaders in AI and it was important to work with “everyone who’s got some knowledge” to understand the security threats the new technology pose.
The education secretary said:
I think the Chinese are one of the world leaders in AI alongside the US … We recognise AI as a security threat as well.
We need to really, at this stage, make sure that we’re all working to understand both what we can do with AI to accelerate the good that AI can do … but also to make sure this is a focus on safety [and] that we work with everyone who’s got some knowledge on this to ensure that we understand the remits of safety.
The shadow environment secretary, Steve Reed, has criticised “laughable and pathetic” comments made by Thérèse Coffey suggesting the damage done by Storm Babet was harder to predict because rain came in from the east.
The environment secretary had said this to MPs at the environment, food and rural affairs committee earlier this week.
Reed told LBC:
I watched it and it was both laughable and pathetic that a senior member of the government could sit in front of a select committee and just mouth weak excuses like that.
The problem, if you talk to people on the ground and they’ll tell you, is a lack of coordination. So in Retford, people that were made homeless were told to go to the local leisure centre and it was closed – a lack of coordination.
People were telling me up in the same place that floods happened in 2007, there has been funding allocated since then to put in place diversionary schemes, but it hasn’t been spent – a lack of coordination.
So getting that coordination working through a flood resilience taskforce strikes me as a very sensible approach to making sure that in every area of the country where there is vulnerability to heavy rainfall and flooding, that support is available. And we do seem to get extreme weather situations much more frequently now, so it’s urgent that this is put in place, would be my opinion.
Gillian Keegan said the government wants UK Border Force “prepared and ready” to help British citizens in the Middle East.
The education secretary told Sky News:
We’ve been in intense discussions with partners in the region, but we want the Border Force to be there, to be prepared and ready if and when we can get the hostages out.
So it’s preparation so that we can be there, so we’ve got everything available if we can get them out.
But right now we still need to agree that and it still needs to be facilitated.
Kalyeena Makortoff
NatWest’s decision to close Nigel Farage’s bank accounts was lawful but there were “serious failings” in how it treated the former Ukip leader, an independent review commissioned by the bank has found.
Lawyers hired by NatWest Group said the lender had acted “in accordance with the relevant bank policies and processes” when it decided to shut the accounts Farage held at its private bank Coutts.
However, the initial report also identified “a number of shortcomings”, related to how it reached that decision, how the bank communicated with Farage, and how it treated his confidential information.
The Financial Conduct Authority said it had reviewed the findings of the initial independent report, and said it highlighted “potential regulatory breaches” and a number of areas for improvement.
That included how the bank considers the potential closure of accounts, handles complaints from customers, and the effectiveness of its “governance mechanisms”.
The NatWest chair, Howard Davies, said:
This report sets out a number of serious failings in the treatment of Mr Farage. Although Travers Smith confirm the lawful basis for the exit decision, the findings set out clear shortcomings in how it was reached as well as failures in how we communicated with him and in relation to client confidentiality.
We apologise once again to Mr Farage for how he has been treated. His experience fell short of the standards that any customer should expect. Our job now is to make sure that does not happen again.
The bank is committed to implementing all the recommendations made by Travers Smith and we are making substantive changes to our policies and procedures, in particular to ensure that the lawfully protected beliefs or opinions of customers do not play any role in our decision-making.
Farage condemned the report on Friday, saying it “whitewashed” the decision to close his accounts.
Travers Smith has taken a very mealy-mouthed approach to this complex issue. The law firm argues that my political views ‘not aligning with those of the bank’ was not in itself a political decision. This is laughable.
Read more here:
Minister denies ‘cultural issue’ among Tory MPs
Gillian Keegan said there is no “cultural issue” among Conservative MPs after a series of scandals and allegations of sexual misconduct.
When asked about the arrest of Crispin Blunt this week, the education secretary said Rishi Sunak has been “clear about high standards” and “always follows due process”.
Blunt, who is a senior figure in the Conservatives, has been arrested on suspicion of rape and possession of drugs. He has also been suspended from the party.
The MP for Reigate, a former justice minister and ex-chair of parliament’s foreign affairs committee, who came forward to identify himself as the MP who had been arrested, said he was confident the investigation would end without charge.
Keegan told Times Radio:
Due to the serious nature of the allegations … he’s had the whip suspended, but the police are involved now so beyond that it’s not really appropriate for me to comment any further.
The PM’s been clear about high standards, he expects high standards, he always follows due process, but all you can do with these things is deal with them as they arise and take the appropriate action.
Blunt’s arrest is the latest in a string of arrests of MPs in relation to alleged sexual crimes.
Another sitting Conservative MP, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was arrested in May 2022 on suspicion of indecent assault, sexual assault and rape. He has not been charged.
Two former Tory MPs have been convicted of sexual assault: Charlie Elphicke, who was MP for Dover, was sentenced to a two-year prison term in 2020 on three counts of sexual assault against two women; and Imran Ahmad Khan, the former MP for Wakefield, was last year sentenced to 18 months in jail for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy.
The parliament of 2019 has also seen a long list of MPs from a number of parties accused of sexual misbehaviour.
Most recently, Peter Bone, a Conservative MP, was suspended from parliament for six weeks after a watchdog found he had harassed and bullied a staff member and exposed his genitals near their face.
Boris Johnson’s deputy chief whip, Chris Pincher, stepped down as an MP after getting an eight-week suspension from parliament following an investigation that found he had groped two men at a private members’ club in 2022.
Asked whether there was a wider cultural problem among Tory MPs, Keegan said:
No, I certainly don’t see a cultural issue among Conservative MPs. I see individual incidents which are all investigated as such.
Read the full story about Blunt’s arrest here:
Welcome to today’s liveblog. I’m Nicola Slawson and I’m covering for Andrew Sparrow today. Do drop me a line if you have any questions or comments. I’m on [email protected] or @Nicola_Slawson on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.
