Nicola Sturgeon regarded Boris Johnson as ‘a clown’ because of his handling of Covid, inquiry learns – UK politics live

Former Scotland first minister used expletives in private messages about former UK PM’s handling of pandemic

At the Covid inquiry hearing in Edinburgh Liz Lloyd, Nicola Sturgeon’s former chief of staff, was asked about her wanting a row with the UK government. (See 11.35am.)

Asked if she was looking for a spat, Lloyd replied:

I was looking for a spat with a purpose.

It had been shown in the past that they would sometimes change their mind if they felt that pressure and I wanted them to change their mind.

Sturgeon said his address was “fucking excruciating” and that the UK communications were “awful”. Sturgeon also told Lloyd: “His utter incompetence in every sense is now offending me on behalf of politicians everywhere.”

Lloyd said she was “offended” on behalf of special advisers everywhere. Sturgeon replied: “He is a fucking clown.”

Continue reading...

Rwanda flights: Britain reminded of obligation to obey ECHR orders

Ignoring urgent orders to halt flights would break international law, says head of European human rights court

The UK would break international law if it ignored emergency orders from the European court of human rights to stop asylum seekers being flown to Rwanda, the head of the court has said.

Síofra O’Leary, the ECHR president, told a press conference there was a “clear obligation” for member states to take account of rule 39 orders, interim injunctions issued by the Strasbourg-based court.

Continue reading...

Home Office U-turns on policy to restrict help for trafficking victims

Rights groups hail change to Braverman policy that denied support to people with criminal convictions

The Home Office has performed a U-turn on a policy to deprive some modern slavery victims of protection from traffickers.

Human rights campaigners and lawyers representing trafficking victims have welcomed the government’s change of heart, which they say reinstates vital protections to vulnerable people.

Continue reading...

Exiled Rwandan who survived murder attempt condemns UK deportation plan

Opposition politician Frank Ntwali says country is unsafe and Sunak’s pursuance of policy ‘quite bizarre’

A Rwandan opposition politician who narrowly survived an assassination attempt has condemned the UK’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Kigali.

Frank Ntwali, chair of the exiled Rwanda National Congress (RNC) movement, said the country was unsafe and that Rishi Sunak’s persistence with the policy was “quite bizarre”.

Continue reading...

Home Office hires hangar for staff to practise Rwanda deportations

Officials will be taught how to carry out deportations, including how to handle people who physically resist

The Home Office has hired an aircraft hangar and aeroplane body to train security staff on how to deport people, as the UK government increases the number of people it forcibly removes each year.

Officials confirmed on Friday the department had increased its capacity to train officials to carry out deportations, including how to handle people who physically resist. Details of the expansion of the programme were first reported by the Times.

Continue reading...

Rishi Sunak faces more questions over Rwanda plan amid reports Home Office prepared protest scenarios – UK politics live

Home Office reportedly hired hangar and aircraft fuselage to rehearse forcing people onto flights as Ruth Davidson says they are ‘probably never going to happen’

The European court of human rights (ECHR) has issued a press release stating that Ireland has lodged an inter-state application against the UK over the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023.

In its release, it says:

The Irish Government argue that certain provisions of the act are not compatible with the European Convention. The Irish Government allege, in particular, that sections 19, 39, 40 and 41 of the act guarantee immunity from prosecution for Troubles-related offences, provided that certain conditions are met, contrary to [articles of the convention]

The Northern Ireland Troubles (legacy and reconciliation) bill was introduced by Boris Johnson’s administration in 2021 and became law in September. The government said it would draw a line under a conflict that killed more than 3,600 people from 1969 to 1998 and left thousands of cases unresolved. The legislation offers immunity to security force veterans and former paramilitaries who cooperate with a new commission for reconciliation and information recovery.

Continue reading...

Rishi Sunak challenges House of Lords to accept ‘the will of the people’ and pass Rwanda bill – UK politics live

Prime minister says he wants first flight to leave ‘as soon as practicably possible’ but will not give date

Q: When you said you would stop the boats, people thought that meant reducing them to negligble numbers. That is not going to happen, is it?

Sunak says he is proud of the progress he has made. He always said it would be difficult.

Continue reading...

Middle East conflicts and the Rwanda bill – Politics Weekly UK podcast

As tensions in the Middle East continue to rise, this week John Harris speaks to Niku Jafarnia of Human Rights Watch about the regional conflicts. The Rwanda bill passed its third reading and Pippa Crerar, the Guardian’s political editor, reveals what happened behind the scenes. And the former No 10 adviser Gavin Barwell talks about the increasingly vicious struggles within the Conservative party

Archive: GB News

Continue reading...

Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda deportation bill passes third reading in Commons

Flagship policy passes committee stage after tense lead-up in which Tory divisions came to the fore

Rishi Sunak has survived a damaging row over his flagship Rwanda bill after a Conservative rebellion melted away and dozens of rightwing MPs balked at further undermining the prime minister’s authority.

After a crucial 11th hour meeting of more than 45 Tory rebels, the group’s leaders concluded that defeating the bill by voting alongside Labour during an election year could risk collapsing the government.

Continue reading...

Rwanda bill vote: Tory rebels have not shown amendments are legally robust, No 10 says – live

Sunak’s press secretary says Downing Street not shown legal basis for rebel amendments, despite this being offered and asked for

Rishi Sunak starts with the usual spiel about his engagements, and how he has got meetings with colleagues.

Rishi Sunak is taking PMQs in 10 minutes.

Continue reading...

Rwanda president: efforts to implement asylum plan cannot ‘drag on’

Paul Kagame also says he would be happy for the scheme to be scrapped

Rwanda’s president has said there are limits to how long attempts to implement an asylum deal with Britain can “drag on”, indicating he would be happy for the scheme to be scrapped.

Paul Kagame’s comments on Wednesday came before Rishi Sunak faced a potentially leadership-ending rebellion by Conservative MPs threatening to vote down his Rwanda deportation bill on Wednesday night.

Continue reading...

Wednesday briefing: The days that could decide how Rishi Sunak is remembered

In today’s newsletter: The controversial Rwanda bill is back in the Commons – what happens next could shape the party’s future

Sign up here for our daily newsletter, First Edition

Good morning. It’s been another miserable week for Rishi Sunak, and it’s only Wednesday. The fulcrum of his despair is today’s vote on the third reading of the government’s Rwanda deportation bill, which is meant to be a populist, lawyer-thwarting solution to the nightmare of the government’s policy on Channel crossings – but has come under serious threat from exactly the hardliners it was supposed to appease.

Yesterday, two Conservative deputy chairs, Lee Anderson and Brendan Clarke-Smith, resigned from their jobs in order to vote for amendments to the bill alongside 58 of their peers. The government still looks likely to prevail later in the key vote today – but the row has dragged the Conservative party’s current self-loathing into the open once again. For today’s newsletter, I spoke to the Spectator’s political editor, Katy Balls, about the latest iteration of the Tory identity crisis, and what it tells us about the fight for the party’s future. Here are the headlines.

Post Office | Fujitsu, the technology company that built the flawed Horizon IT system at the heart of the Post Office scandal, has admitted for the first time that it should contribute to financial redress for victims. Fujitsu’s European boss, Paul Patterson, said there was a “moral obligation for the company to contribute”.

Iran | Iran has launched airstrikes on Pakistan territory, apparently aimed at a Sunni militant group, in the latest sign of a wave of violence rolling across the Middle East and beyond. Pakistan’s foreign ministry said two children were killed, and summoned Tehran’s senior diplomat in Islamabad to protest against the “unprovoked violation of its airspace”.

France | Emmanuel Macron wants to regulate French children’s screen time, test compulsory school uniform, and is not against all primary schoolchildren having to learn the national anthem, he has told a press conference. Macron’s promise of a “common sense” France comes as he tries to limit the potential gains of the far right in upcoming European elections.

Austria | Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man who raped and incarcerated his daughter in a purpose-built prison beneath his home for 24 years, is applying for release from jail, according to his lawyer. Fritzl, 88, could be moved to a nursing home if his appeal is successful.

Guinness World Records | Bobi the Portuguese mastiff, who had comfortably clinched the title of the oldest dog ever when he died in October at the apparent age of 31, is having the distinction reviewed after doubts were raised about his lifespan. Pictures purportedly of the same dog in 1999 appear to show him with different-coloured paws.

Continue reading...

Top judge says it is not for government to decide if judges available for Rwanda asylum appeals – UK politics live

Lady Carr, most senior judge in England and Wales, says she will decide if judges are allocated to asylum appeals hearings in apparent rebuke to No 10

More than 60 Tory MPs have signed at least one of the various rebel amendments to the Rwanda bill tabled by hardliners. But very few of them have said publicly that, if the amendments are not passed, they will definitely vote against the bill at third reading. Suella Braverman and Miriam Cates are among the diehards in this category. But Simon Clarke, in his ConservativeHome, only says, that, if the bill is not changed, he will not vote for the bill at third reading, implying he would abstain.

In an interview with Sky News, Robert Jenrick, the former immigration minister who has tabled the rebel amendments attracting most support, said he was “prepared” to vote against the bill at third reading. He said:

I am prepared to vote against the bill … because this bill doesn’t work, and I do believe that a better bill is possible.

So the government has a choice. It can either accept my amendments … or it can bring back a new and improved bill, and it could do that within a matter of days because we know the shape of that bill.

Continue reading...

Chief justice criticises plans to recruit 150 judges to deal with asylum cases

Most senior judge in England and Wales says government plans draw ‘matters of judicial responsibility into the political arena’

The most senior judge in England and Wales has criticised plans to recruit and train 150 judges to help implement Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda deportation policy.

The lady chief justice, Dame Sue Carr, said decisions on how judges were deployed should be “exclusively a matter for the judiciary”, adding that plans outlined by the government drew “matters of judicial responsibility into the political arena”.

Continue reading...

Tories on edge of precipice as Sunak grapples with Rwanda bill rebellion

PM will recall how Tory anger toppled May, Johnson and Truss as he seeks solution to party fractures

Rishi Sunak was the most junior of ministers when Theresa May faced her worst Brexit ructions, but as he battles Commons votes, endless amendments and mutinous Conservative factions, the prime minister might have some retrospective sympathy for his predecessor-but-two.

The parallels do not end there. With Brexit largely viewed as completed, Sunak’s Rwanda deportation bill has become emblematic of what many Tory MPs see as the party’s main ideological battleground: migration, and most specifically, small boats.

Continue reading...

‘Given my life back’: Home Office restores rights to French woman after Brexit mix-up

Paula Serre lost her job after being stripped of the right to live and work in the UK after confusion over immigration process

A French woman who lost her job in the UK after a mix-up over the Brexit immigration process has had her residency and work rights restored by the Home Office after publicising her story.

Paula Serre had been waiting for two years for a final decision on her application when her life was turned upside down.

Continue reading...

Boris Johnson backs Tory rebels over Rwanda bill

Warning that bill is not compatible with international rules comes amid mounting revolt by Tory MP

Boris Johnson has backed calls by Conservative rebels to harden the Rwanda deportation bill in a direct intervention on the side of those defying his successor, Rishi Sunak.

The former prime minister used the social media platform X to retweet an article by a rightwing Tory rebel, Simon Clarke, who was describing the bill as a “flawed measure” and warning he would not support it if it was amended.

Continue reading...

French mayor blames UK for Channel-crossing deaths at weekend

Lax employment law cited as motivation for ice-cold crossing in which five people died off Wimereux

The mayor of the French seaside resort where five people died off the coast trying to reach the UK has blamed the British immigration system for the crisis that engulfed the town at the weekend.

“What’s happening today is their fault,” said Jean-Luc Dubaële, the mayor of Wimereux, claiming Britain was offering “monts et merveilles”, a French expression meaning they were promising the world.

Continue reading...

Grant Shapps dismisses significance of Tory-backed poll suggesting Labour on course for landslide election win – UK politics live

Defence secretary dismisses poll, saying things will change by time general election takes place

And here is some more comment on the YouGov poll on X from experts and commentators.

From Will Jennings, an academic and psephologist

At last, details of the @YouGov MRP. Bad for the Conservatives (unsurprisingly), but this is curious to say the least: “In constituencies across England and Wales, the Labour vote is up by an average of just four per cent compared to 2019”.

These results are actually *way better* for the government than the most recent standard YouGov poll, which would produce a 334 seat Labour majority according to Electoral Calculus. So something quite peculiar is going on...

Continue reading...

French woman ‘heartbroken’ after losing job in UK after Brexit speaks out

‘I’ve been in love with the UK since I was a little girl’ says woman dismissed after missing official deadline

A French woman has spoken about how she lost her job in Shropshire and was left “heartbroken” about life in the UK because of a mix-up over the immigration process for EU citizens launched after Brexit.

Sophie, who is married to a British man, was in the UK for five years before Brexit but went back to France in 2020 for 18 months after a family tragedy.

Continue reading...