Rishi Sunak warns of further Yemen airstrikes if Houthi attacks continue

PM rejects calls from MPs for Commons vote over military action as pressure grows to clarify long-term strategy on Red Sea crisis

Rishi Sunak has warned there could be further bombing of Yemen if Houthi attacks on shipping continue, as he came under mounting pressure from MPs to clarify Britain’s long-term strategy for tackling the deepening crisis.

The prime minister told parliament that a second round of RAF airstrikes, conducted on Monday night with the US, were taken in self-defence and rejected calls for MPs to be allowed a vote on whether to endorse the military action.

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Alok Sharma condemns government’s oil and gas bill as vote passes first hurdle

Former Cop26 president abstains from vote saying bill breaks UK’s promise to phase out fossil fuels

Alok Sharma has said the government’s oil and gas bill going through the Commons will not cut household energy costs or create jobs and instead will break the UK’s promise to phase out fossil fuels.

The government’s offshore petroleum licensing bill passed its second reading on Monday night with 293 votes to 211 against. No Conservative MPs voted against it, and Sharma – the former business secretary who served as president of the Cop26 climate talks – abstained. The legislation would place the North Sea Transition Authority under a duty to run annual applications for new offshore oil and gas licences.

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Families of four Israeli hostages urge Rishi Sunak to push for their release

UK PM urged to apply pressure on Qatar to help free Liri Albag, Eliya Cohen and Ziv and Gali Berman

The families of four Israeli hostages have urged Rishi Sunak to apply pressure on Qatar to help free their loved ones.

The father of 18-year-old Liri Albag, the older brother of 26-year-old twins Ziv and Gali Berman, and the girlfriend of Eliya Cohen, also 26, pleaded with the prime minister to do everything in his power to secure their release after 108 days in captivity.

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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”.

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Jeremy Hunt claims Nigel Lawson’s mantle as he teases tax cuts

Hunt draws comparisons with Thatcher’s tax-slashing chancellor as he claims UK is ready for economic boom

Jeremy Hunt has compared himself to former tax-cutting chancellor Nigel Lawson, as he joined Rishi Sunak in teasing further potential cuts in the spring budget.

Writing in the Mail on Sunday, the chancellor drew comparisons with the late Lawson, who was known for slashing personal taxation while serving in the Thatcher government.

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Who was behind poll predicting Tory wipeout – and what do they want?

Nobody seems to know mystery organisation that funded YouGov survey but its agenda is clear

At the centre of this week’s mega-poll that projected an election wipeout for the Conservatives there lurked both a mystery and a statement of the obvious. Who was behind it? No one seemed to know. But what do they want? Seemingly, a change from Rishi Sunak.

It is a sign of Sunak’s plight that the poll – fronted by a Tory peer and explicitly framed as showing the prime minister’s policies are leading the party into doom – was not even the greatest act of disloyalty in a week when 60 backbenchers voted to amend his flagship migration policy.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Rishi Sunak: UK willing to take further military action against Houthis

Prime minister addresses MPs hours after Yemen-based group fires on another container ship in Red Sea

Rishi Sunak has said the UK is willing to take military action against Houthi rebels again, hours after the Yemen-based group fired another missile at a container ship in the Red Sea.

The prime minister addressed MPs on Monday for the first time since the UK took part in airstrikes on the Houthis on Friday night, which he said destroyed 13 targets at two sites, including drones, an airfield and a cruise missile launcher.

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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...

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Up to 70 Tory rebels could abstain or back amendments to Rwanda bill

Lee Anderson could be one of ‘six Conservatives on the payroll’ ready to support the amendments

Conservative rebels have said as many as 70 MPs could back amendments or abstain from supporting Rishi Sunak’s flagship Rwanda bill, telling the prime minister he will have “nowhere to go” if he does not toughen up the legislation.

A leading figure on the right wing of the party said at least three junior ministers and six Tories on the payroll, including a vice-chair of the party, had already informed the whips they were “sympathetic” to the amendments.

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Sunak ‘dodging scrutiny’ by failing to appoint chair of Climate Change Committee

No successor has been named for Lord Deben – and now the independent watchdog’s chief executive has resigned

Rishi Sunak has been accused of trying to avoid scrutiny of his green policies after details surfaced about his government’s failure, over more than 18 months, to appoint a new chair of the independent climate change committee.

Senior environmentalists said they believed Sunak may be deliberately trying to avoid appointing a successor to Lord Deben – who first announced that he was stepping down in July 2022 – until after a general election, so he does not face criticism for his U-turns on green issues.

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Rishi Sunak says UK acted in ‘self-defence’ with Yemen airstrikes

PM defends lawfulness of military action against Houthis as MPs call for parliamentary scrutiny

The prime minister has said the UK acted in “self-defence” with military strikes in Yemen intended to “de-escalate tensions and restore stability to the region”, as he faced calls for greater parliamentary scrutiny.

Speaking from Ukraine, Rishi Sunak said that in the face of this aggression “we will always stand up for the rule of law” after a series of attacks by Houthi rebels on shipping in the Red Sea.

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