Afternoon summary
Rishi Sunak has defended his decision to authorise Britain’s participation in joint US/UK air strikes against the Houthi military to protect shipping in the Red Sea. In a statement to MPs, he said people should not believe “the malign narrative that this is about Israel and Gaza”. The Houthis were attacking ships from all over the world, he said. (See 3.42pm.)
Sunak has said that his government is willing to ignore injunctions from the European court of human rights (ECHR) that block deportation flights to Rwanda. He made the comment ahead of votes on the Rwanda bill in the Commons tomorrow and on Wednesday, in an attempt to reassure Tory MPs who complain the bill as drafted does not make it clear that these injunctions will be ignored. This is one of several issues where rightwingers are trying to toughen the bill. But No 10 has signalled that it is opposed to significant amendments. (See 2.31pm.)
Keir Starmer has told Labour members they should ignore a poll saying the party is on course to win by a landslide and instead “fight like we’re 5% behind”. (See 12.26pm.) Labour’s national campaign coordinator, Pat McFadden, made the same point in a post on X.
Labour candidates and members should ignore this poll.
— Pat McFadden (@patmcfaddenmp) January 15, 2024
Fight like we are behind. Fight like every vote matters.
Change will only come for the country if people vote for it, and not a single vote has been cast. https://t.co/9o5vYWkvER
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Northern Ireland set for largest ever public sector strike as pay awards held up over deadlock at Stormont
Health trust bosses in Northern Ireland have warned that mass strike action planned for the region on Thursday will have a “profound impact” on services, PA Media reports. PA says:
The chief executives of the five hospital trusts and the Northern Ireland ambulance service said the disruption will be on a “massive and unprecedented scale”, with a best-case scenario resulting in a service similar to that offered on Christmas Day.
Workers are demanding that a pay award made to counterparts elsewhere in the UK is introduced in Northern Ireland.
The strike by health workers on Thursday will be part of the largest public sector strike in Northern Ireland’s history when workers with 15 trade unions will take part in industrial action also covering education and the civil service.
The Stormont assembly is to be recalled later this week in a bid to back a motion to endorse fair pay settlements for the public sector workers.
The recall petition tabled by Sinn Féin received the required 30 MLA signatures. But several previous attempts to reconstitute the assembly have already failed as the DUP has not supported the election of a speaker at the outset of the sittings. The DUP has been boycotting power sharing for almost two years as a protest against the Northern Ireland protocol.
In December, the UK government offered the parties a £3.3bn package to stabilise finances in Northern Ireland, including £600m to settle public sector pay claims. However, it is dependent on the Stormont institutions being restored.
The Northern Ireland parties want Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, to release the funds for the public sector pay awards immediately. But the Northern Ireland Office says he has no authority to negotiate pay in the region as it is a devolved matter for the Stormont parties.
Heaton-Harris met Northern Irish leaders today and afterwards Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, said Heaton-Harris should increase public sector pay. “You don’t need to have a functioning Stormont in order for the secretary of state to use the temporary powers that he has given to himself for that purpose,” Donaldson said.
Michelle O’Neill, the Sinn Féin leader in Northern Ireland and first minister designate, said it was becoming “increasingly untenable” for the DUP to refuse to enter power-sharing over Brexit and the Northern Ireland Protocol.
The BBC has a good live blog with more on what happened at today’s talks here.
Updated
John McDonnell (Lab) says even though the PM is not linking this to Gaza, the longer the Gaza conflict goes on, the more instability there is in the region. He says 7,000 Palestinian children have been killed. What is the PM doing to stop this?
Sunak says the UK has repeatedly urged Israel to minimise civilian casualties.
Updated
Caroline Lucas (Green) says many people in the region will conclude the UK was intervening on the side of Israel.
Sunak says the UK acted as a last resort. It would help if parliament spoke with one voice, he says, so people know this had nothing to do with Israel and Gaza.
Zarah Sultana (Lab) claims Foreign Office officials were nervous about last week’s military attack. She asks if Sunak will seek to de-escalate the situation by calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Sunak says Sultana should be asking Hamas and the Houthis to call a ceasefire.
Updated
Sunak condemns pro-Houthi chanting during protest marches in Britain
Alex Davies-Jones (Lab) asks the PM to condemn the pro-Houthi chanting heard during protests in the UK at the weekend. She says they are an antisemitic terrorist group.
Sunak welcomes what Davies-Jones says. He says the police should take decisive action against people promoting terrorism or inciting hate.
UPDATE: Davies-Jones said:
The Houthis are an antisemitic terrorist group that have caused havoc in Yemen over the past decade, starting a civil war that has killed over 350,000 people. Its slogan includes the lines ‘Death to America, death to Israel, a curse upon the Jews’. Will the prime minister join me in condemning the shameful pro-Houthi chanting that we saw at many protests in the UK over the weekend?
And Sunak replied:
Can I commend the honourable lady for her remarks and can I wholeheartedly agree with her. We will absolutely not tolerate that kind of language on our streets, we have been crystal clear about that.
We’ve said to the police that they should take all decisive action against those that promote and encourage terrorism, and indeed those that incite hatred and division on our streets.
Updated
Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader, says there are 17 million people in the region of Yemen living in hunger. Where is the comprehensive plan by western nations to bring peace to the region?
Sunak says he does have hope. As the UK and others take action to degrade the capacity of malign actors in the region, that will give space for positive voices.
He says the UK is providing aid in the region, helping 100,000 people a month.
And the attacks on shipping are disrupting supplies of food to Yemen, he says.
UPDATE: Corbyn said:
Rather than pumping more and more weapons and money into more and more conflicts, which will get worse, does [Sunak] have any hope for the future that there will be a lessening of conflict rather than the present, very rapid, increase in it?
In response, Sunak said:
I do have hope, and that’s because as we and others take action to degrade and disrupt the capability of those who are malign actors in the region, that will actually give the space for positive voices to build the peace that all of us want to see and to allow everyone to live side by side with dignity and security and opportunity.
Updated
Apsana Begum (Lab) said 71% of the public want a ceasefire in Gaza. She said Sunak had a duty to the public to allow a vote on military action.
Sunak said Begum was wrong to conflate the action against the Houthis with the Israel/Gaza conflict.
Liz Saville Roberts, the Plaid Cymru leader at Wesminster, says she represents a constituency (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) with a proud maritime tradition. She says shipping staff need to be protected. But how will dropping bombs de-escalate the situation?
Sunak says Roberts’ question is “extraordinary”. He says the rockets being fired at ships are threatening seafarers.
Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, says that while not having a Commons vote was regrettable, his party supports the strikes.
But the region is a tinderbox, he says. What will be done to ensure these actions remain limited?
Sunak says there is no linkage between direct action in self-defence against the Houthis, and Israel and Gaza.
Updated
Sunak is responding to Flynn.
He says he won’t speculate on what will happen in the future. But he says it would have been very dangerous to have done nothing, because that would have implied British ships were “fair game”.
Stephen Flynn, the SNP leader at Westminster, asks what the government will do if the Houthis ignore the airstrikes.
The PM should be willing to say how far he is willing to go, he says.
He says there is a risk of escalation. A ceasefire in Gaza is essential for regional stability, he says.
The Commons should have been recalled, he says. That is what the public expected, and the PM should do better in future, he says.
Updated
Sunak is responding to Starmer. He thanks him for his support.
He says the aim was to disrupt and degrade the Houthis’ capabilities. The initial assessment is that that was achieved, he says.
He says it is incumbent on the Houthis not to escalate this.
It was necessary to strike at speed, he says. But he says he looks to follow the precedent for MPs getting votes on military action.
And he accepts that it is important to maintain international support.
Keir Starmer told MPs that Labour backed the action taken last week. He said the airstrikes were proportionate.
But he said it was the role of the Commons to ask the right questions, and he posed four:
What made the PM confident his objectives had been met?
What would he do if there were more attacks?
What would he do to maintain the support of the international community?
And would he stand by the convention that, where possible, MPs should vote on military interventions, particularly if they are part of a sustained campaign?
Starmer stressed Labour’s support for Ukraine.
And he called for a sustainable ceasefire in Gaza.
Updated
Sunak finished his statement by referring to Ukraine, which he visited on Friday, and he restated Britain’s support for it in its war against Russia.
Updated
Sunak dismisses 'malign narrative' claiming airstrikes against Houthis were part of Israel-Gaza war
Sunak starts by saying the Houthis attacked British and American warships on 9 January, after other attacks on commercial shipping. It was “the biggest attack on the Royal Navy for decades”, he says.
He says the UK, with the US, retaliated in self-defence, and to uphold freedom of navigation, as Britain has always done.
I do not take decisions on the use of force lightly. That is why I stress that this action was taken in self-defence. It was limited, not escalatory.
It was a necessary and proportionate response to a direct threat to UK vessels and therefore to the UK itself.
He says the initial assessment is that all 13 targets of the airstrikes were successfully hit. And there is no evidence of civilian casualties, he says. Great care was taken to avoid them, he says.
He says, in protecting international shipping, the UK is upholding international law.
The Houthis’ attacks on international shipping have put innocent lives at risk, he says. They have held one crew hostage for almost two months and they are causing growing economic disruption. Global commerce cannot operate under such conditions. Containers and tankers are having to take a 5,000-mile detour around the Cape of Good Hope.
This is pushing up prices, and reducing consumers’ access to vital goods, he says.
And he says people should not accept the “malign narrative” that this is about Israel and Gaza. It isn’t, he says; it is about protecting shipping.
UPDATE: Sunak said:
We shouldn’t fall for [the Houthis’] malign narrative that this is about Israel and Gaza. They target ships from around the world.
And we continue to work towards a sustainable ceasefire in Gaza and to get more aid to civilians. We also continue to support a negotiated settlement in Yemen’s civil war.
But I want to be very clear that this action is completely unrelated to those issues.
It is a direct response to the Houthis’ attacks on international shipping.
Updated
Rishi Sunak makes Commons statement on airstrikes against Houthis in Yemen
Rishi Sunak is about to give his Commons statement on the airstrikes against the Houthis in Yemen.
Here is the statement No 10 issued about them on Friday.
Updated
Sam Freedman, the Prospect columnist, has a good thread on X on the YouGov polling too. Here are some of his posts.
The detail of the YouGov MRP is far worse for the Tories than the topline result.
— Sam Freedman (@Samfr) January 15, 2024
There are no seats where they score more than 40% of the vote. In only 74 do they score more than 35%.
There are fewer than 40 seats where they are 10pts ahead of the 2nd placed party.
The detail of the YouGov MRP is far worse for the Tories than the topline result.
There are no seats where they score more than 40% of the vote. In only 74 do they score more than 35%.
There are fewer than 40 seats where they are 10pts ahead of the 2nd placed party.
There are just 12 seats where the Tory vote share outweights the combined Labour and LD vote share. And only two if you include the Greens as well.
Gives an indication as to the damage heavy tactical voting could do.
A couple of examples. The MRP has Stratford-upon-Avon (Zahawi’s seat) as:
34% Con
31% LD
19% Lab
You’ve got to assume Labour are going to put zero effort into that seat and LDs will bombard with “only we can win here” leaflets.
Or Spelthorne which is Kwasi Kwarteng’s seat:
34% Con
29% Lab
19% LD
Same pattern the other way round (and this is not a seat anywhere near Labour’s target list).
A lot of the remaining “Tory-held” seats look something like this.
Rishi Sunak was on a visit in Essex this morning. According to posts on X from Dylan Difford, a campaigner for proportional representation, the YouGov MRP polling suggests that aggressive tactical voting could leave the Conservatives with fewer than 100 MPs after the election. In an extreme scenario, they would become little more than an Essex/Lincolnshire party, he suggests.
Going through the YouGov MRP data to add some tactical squeezing. If just one third of Lab-LD-Grn voters in England and Wales vote tactically for the strongest party, the result changes to:
— Dylan Difford (@Dylan_Difford) January 15, 2024
Con 69 (-100 on MRP)
Lab 463 (+78)
LD 70 (+22)
Nat 28
Grn 1
More to come...
Going through the YouGov MRP data to add some tactical squeezing. If just one third of Lab-LD-Grn voters in England and Wales vote tactically for the strongest party, the result changes to:
Con 69 (-100 on MRP)
Lab 463 (+78)
LD 70 (+22)
Nat 28
Grn 1
More to come...
If you increase the tactical voting rate to 50% of progressive voters - probably a bit high - then we really are talking Canada 93-level stuff.
Con 24 (-145 on MRP)
Lab 502 (+117)
LD 76 (+28)
Nat 28
Grn 1
For those interested, the 24 remaining Con seats are: Beaconsfield, Boston, Braintree, Brentwood, Castle Point, Christchurch, Clacton, Exmouth, Gainsborough, Kingswinford, Louth, Maldon, NE Cambs, NW Essex, Rayleigh, Richmond (Yorks), South Holland, S Shropshire ..
Weald of Kent, Wetherby, Berwickshire, Aberdeenshire N, Dumfriesshire, and Gordon.
Very Essex and Lincolnshire heavy.
Greens on course to hold Brighton Pavilion, and would come close to winning Bristol Central, YouGov poll suggests
The YouGov analysis also says that the Green party is on course to hold Brighton Pavilion, and would come close to winning Bristol Central, if there were an election today. Describing the results, it says:
The Liberal Democrats would receive 48 seats – also similar to their 1997 haul – making them a notable parliamentary force once again. The SNP, meanwhile, would fall to 25 seats, with Labour making significant gains in the central belt.
The Greens would hold on to their Brighton Pavilion seat, without making any further gains – although they come incredibly close in Bristol Central at 38% to Labour’s 40%. It is possible that by election day the party will have done enough to convince voters in the area to give them a shot.
Updated
YouGov has published its own analysis of the MRP polling featured by the Daily Telegraph today, and it says Labour is on course to win the general election with a 13.5 point lead. It says:
If we aggregate up all our constituency level figures and then weight them according to likely voter population, the headline vote intention figures come out at the following:
Labour 39.5%, Conservatives 26%, Lib Dems 12.5%, Reform 9%, Greens 7.5%, SNP 3%, Plaid 0.5%, Others 2%.
YouGov makes this point in a “note” taking issue with several aspects of the Telegraph’s analysis of the figures.
Updated
Sunak tells Tory rebels on Rwanda bill there are circumstances in which he would ignore Strasbourg court injunctions
Rishi Sunak has said that his government is willing to ignore injunctions from the European court of human rights (ECtHR) that block deportation flights to Rwanda.
He made the comment in an interview with GB News, a TV channel popular with Tory rightwingers, in a bid to win over potential rebels from his party ahead of votes on the Rwanda bill tomorrow and on Wednesday. It arguably goes a bit further than what he has said on this in the past, but not as far as some of his MPs want.
The ECtHR can issue injunctions under rule 39 stopping member states from taking action until a legal challenge has been resolved, and an order of this kind blocked the government’s first planned deportation flight to Rwanda in 2022.
Clause 5 of the new bill says it is for a UK government minister to decide whether or not to comply with a rule 39 order. Tory rightwingers want the bill to say explicitly that the government should ignore rule 39 orders, but it has been reported that Victoria Prentis, the attorney general, believes that if a minister does ignore one of these injunctions, they will be in breach of international law.
Sunak has often said he will not let a foreign court stop Britain from getting flights to Rwanda off the ground. Today he repeated that, but he went a bit further, telling GB News:
There’s a clause in the bill that says, very specifically, that it is for ministers to decide whether to comply with rule 39 rulings as they’re called, I would not have put that clause in the bill if I was not prepared to use it.
Now, look, I don’t think Strasbourg will intervene because of the checks and balances in our system. And of course, there will be individual circumstances that people want us to consider on the facts.
But if you’re asking me, you know, are there circumstances in which I’m prepared to ignore those rule 39s? Then yes, of course there are.
More than 40 Tory MPs, including the former PM Liz Truss, have signed an amendment to the bill (amendment 23) tabled by Robert Jenrick, the former immigration minister, that would add a clause to the bill saying rule 39 orders are not binding on the UK and should not prevent deportations to Rwanda.
In a briefing paper on the bill, the House of Commons library says that if a minister ignored an injunction from the Strasbourg court, the UK would be in breach of its treaty obligations. It says:
If a minister decided to exercise the power not to comply with interim measures, a person could be removed to Rwanda while their case was being decided by the ECtHR. This would be so even if they faced a real risk of serious and irreparable harm.
This would place the UK in breach of its treaty obligations under the ECHR [European convention on human rights].
There are few precedents for this situation. The Polish government recently informed the ECtHR that interim measures issued in a case concerning the transfer of judges to alternative posts against their will would not be complied with. This was based in part on a decision by the constitutional tribunal which questioned the authority of the ECtHR to assess the compliance of laws concerning the judiciary, saying it was incompatible with the constitution. It has been reported that France recently deported a person suspected of involvement in terrorism in defiance of interim measures issued by the ECtHR.
Updated
Updated
Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir to be banned from organising in UK
Hizb ut-Tahrir will be banned from organising in the UK following claims that the group is antisemitic, James Cleverly, the home secretary, has said. Rajeev Syal has the story here.
Gillian Keegan brushes aside poll suggesting she's on course to lose her 21,000 majority to Lib Dems
The government should “stick to the plan” and focus on “delivering”, Gillian Keegan has said in response to the damning YouGov poll which suggests she is among senior government figures on course to lose their seats.
Speaking at an education event this morning, the education secretary said:
In terms of YouGov there’s only one poll that matters obviously, which is the poll on the day, and I think you know we need to stick to the plan.
We’ve got quite a lot of headwinds, quite a lot of difficult things happened.
We’ve got the country through so far, we need to stick to delivering.
Keegan was asked for her response to calls by David Frost for the Conservatives to take a sharper turn right as a result of the poll, published by the Telegraph, which predicted that the Conservatives would retain just 169 seats in a general election, with Labour on course to sweep to power with 385.
It forecast that the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, could be another of the cabinet ministers likely to lose their seats in what would be the biggest collapse in support for a governing party since 1906.
Keegan had a majority of 21,490 in Chichester at the last election. The YouGov MRP poll suggests she is on course to lose to the Lib Dems.
Updated
Here is my colleague Peter Walker’s analysis of today’s YouGov MRP polling.
And here is an extract.
Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, said that while the YouGov polling appeared solid, “the spin put on it by [Lord] Frost and friends is something else altogether”.
He said: “Exhibit A would be their central claim that if Reform weren’t in the picture, the Tories could prevent Labour from winning an overall majority – a claim that depends entirely on the batty assumption that every single voter who would otherwise vote for Reform would vote Tory instead.
“Essentially, this is a laughably transparent attempt to scare Tory MPs into allowing the party, on the equally batty basis that immigration and woke are more important to voters than the economy and the NHS, to be pushed and pulled even further to the right – and the tragedy is that it might just work.”
No 10 says David Cameron right to say all politicians from past 20 years should be sorry about Post Office Horizon scandal
At the Downing Street lobby briefing this morning the prime minister’s spokesperson said that David Cameron was “of course” right to say that everyone in government over the past 20 years should be sorry about the Post Office Horizon scandal.
Cameron, the foreign secretary, said in a TV interview yesterday: “Anyone who’s been involved in government in any way over the last 20 years has got to be extremely sorry for what happened.”
'Anyone who's been involved in government in any way over the last 20 years has got to be extremely sorry for what happened.'
— Sky News (@SkyNews) January 14, 2024
Foreign Secretary @David_Cameron speaks on the Post Office scandal.#TrevorPhillips https://t.co/fhIHlpTGAF
📺 Sky 501 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/ZFR1Ra0R0f
Cameron used the line shortly after Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, gave a much-criticised interview in which he repeatedly refused invitations to apologise, or to say sorry, for the fact that, when he was the relevant minister between 2010 and 2012, he accepted assurances from the Post Office that there was nothing wrong with the Horizon IT system and that post office operators claiming a miscarriage of justice did not have a case.
Davey, who is one of several former Post Office ministers from all main parties who allowed the scandal to continue, was trying to avoid delivering an apology that would have implied he was personally negligent. But, by refusing to use the word “sorry”, he came over as defensive and unsympathetic. Cameron, one of the most skilled communicators in government, managed to sound a lot more empathic even though, like Davey, he was not really accepting that he did anything wrong.
EXCL: In his first in-depth interview, Sir Ed Davey refuses to apologise for his part in the Horizon scandal.
— Paul Brand (@PaulBrandITV) January 12, 2024
When asked more than 10 times, he says he “regrets” being lied to on an “industrial scale”, but won’t go as far as to say “sorry”. pic.twitter.com/NRHdUFCWHR
Asked if the PM agreed with Cameron that all politicians involved in this in the past 20 years should be sorry, the spokesperson replied:
Of course. It’s been an issue that’s been running since the late 90s, it’s why it was right to set up an independent inquiry to establish the facts and the detail, and equally to look at how we can avoid situations like this taking place in the future.
Updated
Starmer says Labour members should ignore poll saying he's on course for landslide, and 'fight like we're 5% behind'
Keir Starmer has said he wants Labour activists to ignore today’s YouGov poll suggesting he is on course for a landslide. Asked about the findings, reported in the Daily Telegraph splash (see 9.29am), Starmer said:
My message to every single Labour party member, every single MP, every single candidate, is ignore that poll.
We have to earn every vote, respect every vote and we should always, always, fight like we’re 5% behind.
Updated
Shapps suggests defence spending needs to rise as he says 'era of peace dividend is over'
And here are some of the non-Houthi lines from Grant Shapps’ speech.
Shapps, the defence secretary, said the era of a “peace dividend” was over and he implied defence spending would need to go up. He said:
Today, for the very first time, this government is spending more than £50bn a year on defence in cash terms, more than ever before.
And we have made the critical decision to set out our aspiration to reach 2.5% of GDP spent on defence.
And as we stabilise and grow the economy, we will continue to strive to reach it as soon as possible.
But now is the time for all allied and democratic nations across the world to do the same.
And ensure their defence spending is growing.
Because, as discussed, the era of the peace dividend is over.
In five years’ time we could be looking at multiple theatres involving Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.
Ask yourselves – looking at today’s conflicts across the world - is it more likely that the number grows, or reduces?
I suspect we all know the answer – it’s likely to grow. So, 2024 must mark an inflexion point.
He said the UK should make its defence industry more resilient. He said:
If we are to defend our homeland, we must ensure our entire defence ecosystem is ready. Firstly, we must make our industry more resilient to empower us to rearm, to resupply, to innovate faster than our opponents. There’s a huge opportunity here for British industry.
He said the UK has now trained more than 60,000 Ukrainian soldiers.
Updated
Shapps says airstrikes against Houthis were 'last resort', and intended as 'single action'
Here is the text of Grant Shapps’ speech this morning, his first major one as defence secretary. And here is the Ministry of Defence’s press notice about his announcement that “in the first half of 2024, 20,000 service personnel from the Royal Navy, the British Army, and the Royal Air Force will deploy across Europe to take part in Exercise Steadfast Defender 24”.
Here are some of the main points from what he said in the speech and Q&A about the US/UK airstrikes against the Houthis in Yemen.
Shapps said the airstrikes were “a direct blueprint for how the UK must continue to lead in the future”. He explained:
Our decisive response in the Red Sea and our uplift in support for Ukraine offers a direct blueprint for how the UK must continue to lead in the future, offering our unwavering support to our allies in times of struggle, galvanising global response to any malign actors seeking to break rules-based international order and acting decisively when the moment calls for us to defend ourselves. Deter and lead.
He said the attacks were a “last resort”. He said:
It’s right that we took proportionate, targeted action against military targets to send a strong message that that behaviour is unacceptable.
It was a last resort, it came after the end of exhaustive diplomatic activity including a UN security council.
He said the airstrikes were intended as a “single action”. He said:
We have hit the Houthis, we intend it as a single action. We will now monitor very carefully to see what they do next, how they respond and we will see from there.
And he said “different factors” would determine whether there were further airstrikes. Asked if there was an “acceptable” level of interference with shipping in the Red Sea, he replied:
What’s acceptable? Clearly nothing’s acceptable. What will bring action, we’ll watch very carefully, we’ll look at the patterns of what’s happening. We’ll check the capability.
We’ll, in particular, be interested to see those links between Tehran and the Houthis. We’re monitoring whether there are shipments or whether we detect intelligence and the rest of it.
So, there are a lot of different factors that we’ll take into account along with our coalition partners, the Americans in particular.
This isn’t a precise recipe, but what I can tell you is, overall, we’ve made the point very clearly that although this was a distinct piece of precisely targeted military action, we will not put up with a major waterway, major shipping lanes, being closed on a permanent basis.
Updated
Sunak refuses to say if Lee Anderson will be sacked as Tory deputy chair if he votes against government on Rwanda bill
In his pooled TV clip this morning, Rishi Sunak refused to say whether he would sack Lee Anderson as the Tory deputy chair if he votes against the government on the Rwanda bill. Asked if Anderson and government frontbenchers might be sacked over this, Sunak claimed the Conservative party was “united in wanting to stop the boats”, but he avoided the question about potential disciplinary action.
Asked a second time what might happen to Tory rebels, he replied:
I’m talking to all my colleagues. I know everyone’s frustrated, I’m frustrated about the situation, and they want to see an end to the legal merry go round. I’m confident that the bill we’ve got is the toughest that anyone has ever seen and it will resolve this issue once and for all.
Anderson is not a government frontbencher but, as a party deputy chair, he is considered part of the payroll vote and is expected to vote with the government as a condition for keeping his job.
Updated
Sunak plays down significance of polling suggesting he is on course to lose election by landslide
Rishi Sunak was asked about the YouGov poll suggesting Labour is on course for a landslide election win (see 9.29am and 9.56am) while on a visit in Essex this morning. Rolling out a time-honoured formula used by politicians facing similar polling numbers, he said the only poll that mattered was “the one when the general election comes”. He went on:
There have been lots of polls over the last year, there will be hundreds more polls.
The choice at that election is clear, it’s stick with our plan that is working, it’s delivering change for people, ensuring they can have the peace of mind that there is a brighter future for their children and we can have renewed pride in our country.
This morning, asked whether the Tories could turn things round, Grant Shapps, replied:
Absolutely. Look, the reason I think we can turn it around is because at least people know we have got a plan and we are working to it. There isn’t a plan under Labour.
Updated
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". https://t.co/iv0Zev31Ij
— Will Jennings 🦋 (@drjennings) January 14, 2024
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...
From John Rentoul from the Independent
The poll, which saturated my part of Twitter last night, suggests a Lab majority of 120
— John Rentoul (@JohnRentoul) January 15, 2024
Uniform swing on current polling averages: Lab majority 182@ElectCalculus model on current polling averages: Lab majority 228https://t.co/qd2sIjJ9yB pic.twitter.com/UZ0UfcHFHy
The poll, which saturated my part of Twitter last night, suggests a Lab majority of 120
Uniform swing on current polling averages: Lab majority 182@ElectCalculus model on current polling averages: Lab majority 228
From Patrick English, director of political analytics at YouGov
More details from us on this tomorrow, including seat shares. For now:
— Patrick English (@PME_Politics) January 14, 2024
- Yes, new boundaries 🗺️
- Yes, really, 14,000 interviews 📋
- Yes, I’m confident this is the best possible model of vote intention, given our data, at this time 🤓
Look forward to hearing all your thoughts! https://t.co/s2wI1ldjrA
More details from us on this tomorrow, including seat shares. For now:
- Yes, new boundaries 🗺️
- Yes, really, 14,000 interviews 📋
- Yes, I’m confident this is the best possible model of vote intention, given our data, at this time
(Couple more points, for now… since these are becoming points of discussion it seems!)
- the MRP model does have provisions for tactical voting
- the implied national vote share for Lab isn’t 36%, we’ll publish something on this tomorrow
From Luke Tryl, UK director for More in Common
🧵 thoughts on this. No doubt that Reform pose a headache to the Conservatives, they are, on (our) polling taking about 13% of the Tory 2019 vote - about the same that is going direct to Labour. They also cause problems with internal party dynamics. But 3 things worth remembering https://t.co/z2dV2LotiA
— Luke Tryl (@LukeTryl) January 15, 2024
thoughts on this. No doubt that Reform pose a headache to the Conservatives, they are, on (our) polling taking about 13% of the Tory 2019 vote - about the same that is going direct to Labour. They also cause problems with internal party dynamics. But 3 things worth remembering
1. In the absence of Reform not all their voters go Tory. We found 25% of Reform voters would, the rest wouldn’t vote or go elsewhere. As @anthonyjwells points out YouGov find a similar (31%). Our model suggests it is closer to 30 seats Reform could cost the Tories not 100.
In qual with Reform voters last week for the Guardian, was clear many are ‘anti-system’ immigration is a big part, but so is corporate greed, cost of living, state of the NHS. They are angry with status quo - hard to see Tory incumbents reversing that
2. You can lose voters in both directions. Aside from Backbone Conservatives Sunak is most popular with our Established Liberal segment and Tories under him out performing with this group (much lower swing vs our Loyal National/Red Wall group).
Updated
Anthony Wells, head of European political and social research at YouGov, says the claim that, without Reform UK on the ballot paper, Labour would fail to win a majority (see 9.56am) comes from the Daily Telegraph, not YouGov. He thinks it’s wrong. And he has explained why in a thread on X.
I see a lot of people have twigged and already flagged this, but just for the avoidance of doubt. The MRP in the Telegraph today is YouGov's, but the claim that it's all because of Reform and it would be a hung Parliament without them is the Telegraph's own claim.
— Anthony Wells (@anthonyjwells) January 15, 2024
I see a lot of people have twigged and already flagged this, but just for the avoidance of doubt. The MRP in the Telegraph today is YouGov’s, but the claim that it’s all because of Reform and it would be a hung Parliament without them is the Telegraph’s own claim.
As far I can tell, it’s the Telegraph running the sums on what you’d get if you add the Conservative & Reform party votes together, which isn’t a very good way of measuring their impact.
If the Reform party disappeared tomorrow, then it’s likely some of their voters would go to the Tories. But some of their voters would also go to UKIP & splinter parties, some to Labour & other parties, and some would stay at home.
(In fact, we’ve asked this in the past. If Reform did not stand, then only 31% of Reform voters say they’d vote Tory instead https://t.co/pvaeM5meTi)
— Anthony Wells (@anthonyjwells) January 15, 2024
(In fact, we’ve asked this in the past. If Reform did not stand, then only 31% of Reform voters say they’d vote Tory instead https://t.co/pvaeM5meTi)
Bottom line is that there are lots of former Tories voting Reform because they are unhappy with the Tories & feel let down by them. If Reform vanished, it wouldn’t magically stop those voters being unhappy and disappointed in the government.
I have amended the post at 9.56am to make allowance for these points.
Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA
Here are some comments from Tories on the YouGov MRP poll published by the Daily Telegraph.
Simon Clarke, the Liz Truss-supporting former levelling up secretary, says the poll shows why the party must deliver on small boats.
This result would represent a disaster for @Conservatives and our country.
The time for half measures is over.
We either deliver on small boats or we will be destroyed.
This result would represent a disaster for @Conservatives and our country.
— Simon Clarke MP (@SimonClarkeMP) January 14, 2024
The time for half measures is over.
We either deliver on small boats or we will be destroyed. https://t.co/CzVTwfLccd
Nadine Dorries, the former culture secretary and diehard Boris Johnson loyalist, says the poll shows why the party should bring him back.
Rishi played key role removing @BorisJohnson but country must come first.
Time to reach out to only Tory to win London mayoral election twice and 80 seat majority.
Get Boris into a seat and out campaigning or consign us to socialism forevermore.
Rishi played key role removing @BorisJohnson but country must come first.
— Rt Hon Nadine Dorries (@NadineDorries) January 14, 2024
Time to reach out to only Tory to win London mayoral election twice and 80 seat majority.
Get Boris into a seat and out campaigning or consign us to socialism forevermore.
https://t.co/ERJ27st1Tr
Zac Goldsmith, the former Foreign Office minister and another Johnson acolyte, says much the same.
Thank God for those clever-clog ‘Tory grandees’ who got rid of Boris. Dodged a bullet there didn’t they! Genius
Thank God for those clever-clog ‘Tory grandees’ who got rid of Boris. Dodged a bullet there didn’t they! Genius 🤣 pic.twitter.com/9hadARvPDe
— Zac Goldsmith (@ZacGoldsmith) January 14, 2024
But Gavin Barwell, a former minister and Theresa May’s former chief of staff, says Johnson was a vote loser too.
Fact #1: party was on course to lose under Johnson
Fact #2: @ZacGoldsmith is right that replacing him with Truss made things even worse
By the time Sunak took over, the situation was probably irrecoverable
Fact #1: party was on course to lose under Johnson
— Gavin Barwell (@GavinBarwell) January 15, 2024
Fact #2: @ZacGoldsmith is right that replacing him with Truss made things even worse
By the time Sunak took over, the situation was probably irrecoverable https://t.co/xVWv9vu8lC
Updated
Kemi Badenoch reportedly urging Sunak to toughen Rwanda bill
In his Telegraph article about the YouGov MRP polling David Frost, the former Brexit minister, says:
There is only one way to rescue the position and bring back those 2019 voters who have left us. It is to be as tough as it takes on immigration, reverse the debilitating increases in tax, end the renewables tax on energy costs – and much more.
(By my count, that is more than “one way” – but never mind.)
Lord Frost is not the only rightwing Tory putting pressure on Rishi Sunak ahead of the votes on the Rwanda bill tomorrow and on Wednesday.
Lee Anderson, the Conservative party deputy chair, has reportedly said he will vote for the rightwing rebel amendments, as Aletha Adu reports here.
The Times quotes an MP who has spoken to Anderson as saying: “He has said to the whips that he will definitely vote for the amendments and that either the government must support them or lose him as deputy chairman.”
And, in the Times, Matt Dathan and Oliver Wright say Kemi Badenoch, the business and trade secretary, has told No 10 that she agrees with the rebels in wanting to amend the bill to limit the ability of asylum seekers to lodge individual appeals against orders deporting them to Rwanda. They say:
The Times also understands that Badenoch, the business secretary, urged the prime minister to harden up the legislation by stopping migrants lodging individual appeals against their deportation. She met Liam Booth-Smith, Sunak’s chief of staff, in No 10 last month to warn of the political consequences of failing to block individual legal challenges.
A source said: “Kemi was aware that the prime minister faced a serious rebellion and he had to try and accommodate them, so she went in to see Liam. She was trying to avoid the rebel MPs turning against the government.”
Badenoch is understood to have argued in favour of limiting individual appeals being lodged by migrants to only the most exceptional of circumstances.
Badenoch is the clear favourite to be the next Conservative leader, and it must help her chances for members to know that she sides with the rebels on this issue (even if there is no suggestion that she will rebel, or resign, over the issue).
Updated
UK ‘will wait and see’ before deciding on further Houthi strikes, Shapps says
The UK has no interest in taking part in any wider conflict in Yemen but is “waiting to see what happens” before deciding whether further military strikes against Houthi forces might be needed, Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, has said. Peter Walker has the story.
YouGov rejects claim its poll shows, without Reform UK standing in election, Labour would fail to win majority
Here is an extract from Gordon Rayner’s Telegraph splash reporting the YouGov MRP poll findings.
Although the publication of the poll seems primarily intended to pressurise Rishi Sunak into adopting a toughter stance on the Rwanda bill (see 9.29am), the Tories behind it may be hoping it encourages Richard Tice, the Reform UK leader, to think twice about his pledge to stand candidates in every constituency in Britain. The Telegraph says its analysis of the polling suggests, without Reform UK on the ballot, Labour would fail to win a majority.
Rayner says:
The Conservatives are heading for an electoral wipeout on the scale of their 1997 defeat by Labour, the most authoritative opinion poll in five years has predicted.
The YouGov survey of 14,000 people forecasts that the Tories will retain just 169 seats, while Labour will sweep to power with 385 – giving Sir Keir Starmer a 120-seat majority.
Every Red Wall seat won from Labour by Boris Johnson in 2019 will be lost, the poll indicates, and the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, will be one of 11 Cabinet ministers to lose their seats …
The poll exposes the huge influence that Reform UK is set to have on the election result. The Right-wing party would not win any seats, but support for it would be the decisive factor in 96 Tory losses – the difference between a Labour majority and a hung parliament.
The result would be the biggest collapse in support for a governing party since 1906, with an 11.5 per cent swing to Labour.
And here are three of the Telegraph graphics illustrating the figures in the polling.
UPDATE: YouGov says it does not agree with the Telegraph claim about Labour not being on course for a majority if Reform UK were to stand aside. (See 10.46am.)
Updated
Grant Shapps dismisses significance of Tory-backed poll suggesting Labour on course for landslide election win
Good morning. News organisations, including the Guardian, tend to be a bit wary of splashing on opinion polls. Polls are never 100% reliable, there is a good case for saying they constrain political reporting (because if journalists assume X can’t win, they don’t cover very seriously what X might do if they were to win), and in 2015, 2016 and 2017 most polls turned out in essence to be wrong, which delivered a big blow to the credibility of the industry.
But politicians have never stopped commissioning and studying them, and recently polling has had a much better record. Newspapers are still a bit cautious about using them, but today the Daily Telegraph is splashing on a YouGov MRP poll saying that Labour is on course to win by a landslide.
📰The front page of tomorrow's Daily Telegraph:
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) January 14, 2024
'Tories facing 1997-style wipeout'#TomorrowsPapersToday
Sign up for the Front Page newsletter⬇️https://t.co/x8AV4OoUh6 pic.twitter.com/1jTi5iXDiX
To anyone who has read almost any poll over the past year or so, and tried to work out what it would mean for a general election result (the Electoral Calculus seat predictor website is a good starting point) this does not count as news at all. The Telegraph’s YouGov poll says Labour is on course for a majority of 120. It points to Labour winning 385 seats, and many polls recently have suggested Keir Starmer will win by even more. Electoral Calculus’s own figure for Labour MPs after the election is currently 412.
But, still, this one is worth paying attention to, for three reasons.
1) The Telegraph argues it is “the most authoritative’” poll in five years. “Most authoritative” might be pushing it too far, but this seems to be a serious operation. YouGov is a very well respected polling organisation, and the polling is based on a survey of 14,000 people. MRP (multi-level regression and post-stratification) is a technique that uses polling to predict results on a seat-by-seat basis, using detailed demographic data and voting trends, and it is now seen as the polling gold standard. YouGov’s MRP poll before the 2017 general election was the best guide to the result from a polling company (although, because the technique was novel at the time, and untested, YouGov did not publicise it very aggressively). (Its final MRP poll before the 2019 election was less accurate, predicting a small Tory majority, not a near landslide.)
2) The Telegraph is, in effect, the Conservative party’s in-house newspaper, and today’s splash will puncture the “narrow path to victory” some Tory MPs convey about their election prospects (in public at least).
3) The poll has been published with an agenda. The Telegraph says it has been funded by a group of Tory donors called “the Conservative Britain Alliance”. No one has ever heard of them, but it seems fair to assume they are not Rishi Sunak supporters. The Telegraph also carries a front page article by David Frost, the former Brexit minister, in which he says he was “involved in shaping and analysing” the poll (there is no evidence that Lord Frost has any expertise in psephology). In his article Frost says the only solution for the Tories is to be “as tough as it takes on immigration”.
Tomorrow, MPs will start two days of debate on the Rwanda bill, which will see dozens of rightwingers try to toughen up the bill by making it even less compatible with international law than it already is. The Frost article implies the poll is part of a last-minute lobbying effort to get Sunak to comply with their demands.
All the signs, so far, are that he won’t. It is thought the Tory rebels do not have the numbers to vote down the bill at third reading, on Wednesday evening, but even if Sunak gets his bill through the Commons, he won’t have a united party behind him.
Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, was doing an interview round this morning. Asked about the Telegraph splash, he deployed the usual politician’s response to unfavourable polling, and claimed things might change by the time of the election. He told Times Radio:
If you take a poll now, you are not going to get the same answer as a poll when, for example, things like the tax cut – £450 for a person on the average salary right now – people are feeling that because they have then had it in their pay packet for several months, for example, with inflation at these much lower rates, with growth in the economy. With all of these factors, I think they take time to feed through.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Morning: Rishi Sunak is on a visit in Essex.
Morning: Keir Starmer is on a visit in north London.
9.40am: Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, gives a speech at Lancaster House.
10am: Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, holds talks at Hillsborough Castle with the Northern Ireland parties about resuming power sharing.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
11.30am: Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, speaks about the government’s plans for post-15 educational reform at an event organised by the Bright Blue thinktank.
2.30pm: James Cleverly, the home secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
After 3.30pm: Rishi Sunak is due to make a statement to MPs on the missile attacks against the Houthis.
And in Wales, junior doctors are starting a three-day strike.
If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a laptop or a desktop. This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting, too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line; privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate); or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.
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