Good morning. This week ought to be an excellent one for Keir Starmer, and a terrible one for Rishi Sunak: ONS figures just out which show no fall in inflation, the chance that another batch of ONS data on Thursday will show the UK in recession, and then the results of two byelections on Friday morning likely to shift two previously safe Tory seats into the Labour column.
But it isn’t working out like that. The reason: the buildup to a third byelection later this month, to replace the late Labour MP Sir Tony Lloyd in Rochdale. Labour’s candidate, Azhar Ali, was widely expected to stroll to victory. But the Mail on Sunday got hold of a recording of Ali saying that Israel deliberately allowed the 7 October massacre to happen so that it could attack Gaza. Labour stuck by their man for 36 painful hours. Then more comments at the same meeting in October were reported by the Daily Mail, revealing that Ali had blamed “people in the media from certain Jewish quarters” for the suspension of the MP Andy McDonald for using the phrase “between the river and the sea”. At last, Labour disowned him.
