Markus Andrews

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster email Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis offered some concessions Tuesday to farming unionists who are threatening to block roads around the country amid protests over high production costs.But it was unclear whether the representatives of farming associations who met with Mitsotakis in Athens were appeased by the concessions, which included some tax rebates. They said decisions would be taken following regional meetings of protesting farmers from later Tuesday.Rizos Maroudas, a unionist present at the meeting, indicated he would advocate a tough stance.“Not all our demands have been met,” he told journalists after the talks. “We believe that our (protests) must continue.” Farmers in several parts of the country have been staging brief, largely symbolic roadblocks, mostly avoiding key highways, for days, and have threatened to ramp up the campaign. The unrest follows farmers’ protests in several European Union countries over inflation, foreign competition and the costs of combating climate change.Greece’s center-right government has said it will try to reduce production costs and expedite compensation payments and tax relief for farmers hit by deadly floods last year.Mitsotakis on Tuesday promised farmers reduced energy bills and some tax rebates, but warned that budgetary constraints left little room for major increases in spending. More

Sunak accuses Starmer of ‘standing by’ Azhar Ali after Israel remarks Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailA second Labour candidate has now been suspended over comments criticising Israel, after Sir Keir Starmer faced questions over his party’s “shambolic” U-turn on withdrawing support for its Rochdale by-election candidate Azhar Ali.Breaking his silence on Tuesday, Sir Keir insisted he took “tough” action to withdraw support for Mr Ali, who apologised after he was recorded suggesting in a meeting of the Lancashire Labour Party that Israel had taken the 7 October Hamas attack as a pretext to invade Gaza. He was initially backed by the party for his swift apology and retraction of the remarks – but in a dramatic climbdown on Monday night, the party said its support for him had been withdrawn following “new information about further comments”, and he was suspended from the party pending an investigation.In a further blow to Sir Keir, the Guido Fawkes website published a recording of the same meeting in which Hyndburn candidate Graham Jones referred to “f***ing Israel” and said Britons who fight for the Israel Defence Forces should be locked up”. He has been swiftly suspended pending investigation.Show latest update 1707876000It is difficult to imagine anything good emerging from the wreckage of the Rochdale by-electionEditorial: Vague promises of ‘levelling up’ gone nowhere, grooming gangs, and now antisemitism – Rochdale deserves better than thisJoe Middleton14 February 2024 02:001707872400ICYMI: Thousands of pro-Palestine protesters rally outside Downing StreetThousands of pro-Palestine protesters rally outside Downing StreetJoe Middleton14 February 2024 01:001707868788Labour’s Rochdale by-election row part of antisemitism ‘tornado’ in UK, expert warnsBritain is facing a “tornado” of anti-Jewish racism working its way through the country, the government’s antisemitism tsar has warned.John Mann, the government’s independent adviser on antisemitism, has called on political leaders from all parties to “get their collective acts together to sort this out”.The ex-Labour MP’s dramatic intervention comes amid the latest antisemitism scandal engulfing Labour, after Sir Keir Starmer dropped the party’s Rochdale by-election candidate over comments he made about Israel.Joe Middleton13 February 2024 23:591707866073Furious Briton rants at Rishi Sunak for more than one minute over Covid vaccineFurious Briton rants at Rishi Sunak for more than one minute over Covid vaccineJoe Middleton13 February 2024 23:141707861648Labour think-tank boss apologises for saying smuggling gangs should be shipped to ScotlandThe director of an influential Labour think-tank has apologised after suggesting the government should put people-smugglers on a barge and ship it to the north of Scotland.Fuelling tensions just days ahead of Scottish Labour’s annual conference, Josh Simons apologised for his “poorly judged comment made in jest” – which was denounced as “stupid” and “cringe” by Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar.Speaking to LBC on Monday, Mr Simons – whose group Labour Together has close links to Sir Keir Starmer’s top team – said his main concern with Rishi Sunak’s ailing policy of sending asylum-seekers to Rwanda “is not actually the human rights implications of it”.Joe Middleton13 February 2024 22:001707858347Starmer engulfed in second Labour antisemitism row after Rochdale by-election furoreSir Keir Starmer is at the centre of a second antisemitism storm after Labour was forced to suspend a would-be MP just 24 hours after it ditched its candidate in the Rochdale by-election.The party acted after Graham Jones, the prospective Labour MP for Hyndburn, appeared to say that Britons who volunteer to fight for the Israel Defense Forces “should be locked up”.His taped comments, in which he also referred to “f***ing Israel”, were reportedly made in a rant to Labour’s former candidate in Rochdale, Azhar Ali, at a now infamous meeting at which Mr Ali claimed that Israel had “allowed” last October’s Hamas terror attacks to take place so that it could use them as a pretext to attack Gaza.Joe Middleton13 February 2024 21:051707847241Government ‘looking closely’ at bringing injured Gazan children to UK for treatmentLord Cameron said the Government is “looking closely” at the possibility of bringing children injured in Gaza to the UK for medical care.He said: “This is Project Pure Hope, we are looking very closely at this – is it possible to take the people in greatest need and take them to British hospitals, as we have done in the past?“The early work we’ve done is to say that there’s much we can do in the region and we should probably do that first, so helping in the field hospitals that have been established, helping to send medical teams to referral hospitals that are being used in the region supporting organisations like medical aid for Palestinians“Now if that leads to the identification of specific cases where actually they would be better off taking that long journey back to Britain and going to Great Ormond Street Hospital, then we certainly don’t rule that out and continue to look at it.”Matt Mathers13 February 2024 18:001707847206Breaking: Labour suspends second candidate over Israel remarksKeir Starmer is at the centre of a second antisemitism storm after Labour was forced to suspend a would-be MP just 24 hours after it ditched its candidate in the Rochdale by-election.The party acted on Tuesday after Graham Jones, the prospective Labour MP for Hyndburn, said Britons who volunteer to fight for the Israeli Defence Force “should be locked up”.His taped comments, in which he also referred to “f**king Israel”, were reportedly made in a rant to Azhar Ali at a now infamous meeting in which Mr Ali claimed Israel “allowed” the Hamas terror attack as an excuse to attack Gaza.Jewish Labour Movement, one of the oldest societies affiliated to the party, demanded an investigation and said the party should stand Jones down as a candidate.My colleagues Kate Devlin and Archie Mitchell have more in this report:Andy Gregory13 February 2024 18:001707845441ICYMI: Sunak insists views on issues facing trans people ‘not controversial’ More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailSuella Braverman has said white people should not be made to feel guilty for being white, amid claims the countryside is racist.The former home secretary said it is wrong and dangerous to suggest the countryside is not welcoming to ethnic minorities because it is predominantly white.And she said it is “wholly disempowering” for non-white people to be judged by their skin colour rather than “by character”.Suella Braverman has said white people should not be made to feel guilty for being white Ms Braverman, who was sacked as home secretary in November, was responding to a report by charity Wildlife and Countryside Link which said a perception that green spaces were “dominated by white people can prevent people from ethnic minority backgrounds from using [them]”.Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Ms Braverman said: “This [view] is not just wrong but dangerous. We need to stop making white people feel guilty for being white.”She added: “It’s wholly disempowering for ethnic minorities to be judged by skin colour rather than by character.“Why cast me as a victim and rob me of my agency? Why foster resentment? The truth is that so many people are terrified to challenge this groupthink which is taking over our country.”Ms Braverman claimed people are frightened of losing their jobs if they challenge the “groupthink” of white privilege and unconscious bias awareness. “Best just keep your head down, they think,” she added.And she warned that if Labour wins the next election Britain would be overrun by “self-censured identikit automatons who parrot the same Orwellian newspeak”.It is the former home secretary’s latest foray into the so-called culture wars, having been sacked for accusing Metropolitan Police chiefs of bias in their handling of pro-Palestine protests.She has railed against migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats and previously included on a list of people she dislikes the “Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati”.In her Telegraph article, Ms Braverman said it is “essential” to “relentlessly” challenge “Left-wing identity politics”.“It’s a symptom of a deeper problem within our society – the urge to constantly view everything through the lens of race or gender, plead victimhood and point the finger at an oppressor,” she said. More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailMatt Hancock has defended his decision to use a chauffeur-driven Jaguar funded by the taxpayer to travel to the Covid inquiry despite leaving his government job more than two years ago.A spokesperson for Mr Hancock, the independent MP for West Suffolk, said it was “entirely reasonable” for the government to arrange his travel to the inquiry given that he was attending as the former health secretary.The Daily Mirror reported that Mr Hancock used a ministerial car on three occasions in June, November and December last year when travelling to the inquiry but the Department of Health and Social Care would not reveal how much the journeys had cost.Secretaries of state are provided with chauffeur-driven cars while they are serving in government but lose the privilege once they leavePictures from the inquiry showed Mr Hancock stepping out of a Jaguar on at least one occasion.A spokesperson for Mr Hancock said: “Matt attended the Covid inquiry entirely in his capacity as having been the secretary of state during the pandemic. It is entirely reasonable that the government should take care of his travel and security arrangements in this instance.”Secretaries of state are provided with chauffeur-driven cars while they are serving in government but lose the privilege once they leave.DHSC said it had a duty of care to provide adequate security for the former health secretary, who has faced intense criticism over his handling of the pandemic.Mr Hancock resigned from his position as health secretary in disgrace in June 2021 after he was caught breaching the Covid rules he had helped to draw up by kissing his colleague Gina Coladangelo in his office.The MP is among a number of other current and former government ministers to have attended the inquiry, chaired by Baroness Heather Hallett.Boris Johnson, the former prime minister, Rishi Sunak, the current prime minister and Sajid Javid, who replaced Mr Hancock as health secretary, have each given evidence.Since leaving the government, Mr Hancock has appeared on reality TV shows I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! and Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins, netting him a reported £445,000.Giving evidence to the inquiry in December, Mr Hancock admitted admitted his affair with Ms Coladangelo breached lockdown rules.The former health secretary giving evidence at Dorland House in LondonHe told the inquiry “the lesson for the future is very clear” in that “it is important that those who make the rules abide by them”, adding: “I resigned in order to take accountability for my failure to do that.”Mr Hancock also defended his decision to discharge hospital patients into care homes without testing them for Covid as “rational and reasonable”, adding: “Nobody has yet brought to me a solution to this problem that I think, even with hindsight, would have resulted in more lives saved.”He has also come under heavy criticism from other officials who have given evidence to the inquiry, including Helen MacNamara, the former deputy cabinet secretary, who said Mr Hancock displayed “nuclear levels” of confidence at the start of the pandemic.She claimed that Mr Hancock “regularly” told colleagues in Downing Street things “they later discovered weren’t true”.Mr Hancock, who lost the Conservative Party whip after going to the jungle while parliament was still sitting, announced in December 2022 that he would stand as an MP at the next election. More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailKeir Starmer has insisted he took “decisive” action after Labour was accused of a “shambolic” delay in withdrawing support for a candidate who claimed Israel had allowed the Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people. In his first public comments since the row erupted on Sunday, the Labour leader also denied he would have dumped the would-be MP sooner had he been on the left of his party. And he pledged to investigate any allegations against other Labour councillors present when Azhar Ali made his widely condemned remarks. Labour initially backed Mr Ali, who said Israel had “allowed” the October 7 massacre in order to attack Gaza, saying he had fallen for an online conspiracy theory.But the party dramatically dropped him on Monday night after it emerged he had also blamed “people in the media from certain Jewish quarters” for fuelling criticism of a pro-Palestinian MP.The Conservatives said the furore showed claims Labour had changed under Sir Keir were “hollow”. Appearing on the campaign trail in Wellingborough, Sir Keir insisted he had taken tough action. He said: “Certain information came to light over the weekend in relation to the candidate. There was a fulsome apology. Further information came to light yesterday calling for decisive action, so I took decisive action.“It is a huge thing to withdraw support for a Labour candidate during the course of a by-election. It’s a tough decision, a necessary decision, but when I say the Labour Party has changed under my leadership I mean it.” He also denied he had stuck by Mr Ali because of factionalism, saying it makes “no difference to me where somebody stands in the Labour Party”.Earlier Mr Forde had described Labour’s reaction in the 36 hours since Mr Ali’s first comments emerged, as “pretty shambolic.” He described the remarks as “clearly antisemitic” and “inflammatory”, and said Labour should have withdrawn its support at the weekend: “That to me would be the sensible thing to do.”“One does have to question how such individuals are selected in the first place”, he said, and added that left-leaning Labor MPs feel there has been a “disparity in treatment” when it comes to allegations of antisemitism. Mr Forde’s 2022 inquiry, commissioned by Keir Starmer, found that both the left and right wings of the party had used antisemitism as a factional weapon under former leader Jeremy Corbyn.Former Labour MP, now the government’s antisemitism tsar, Lord Mann said it was “hardly a surprise” Labour had been forced to pull its support. He called on political leaders from all parties to “get their collective acts together to sort this out” as he warned of a “tornado” of anti-Jewish racism working its way through the country. Mr Ali initially apologised after he was recorded suggesting in a meeting of the Lancashire Labour Party that Israel had used the October 7 Hamas assault as an excuse to invade Gaza.On Monday night a party spokesperson said Labour’s backing had been withdrawn “following new information” about the aspiring MP, understood to be suspended pending an investigation. Labour recently suspended an MP, Kate Osamor, after she appeared to suggest the Gaza war should be remembered as genocide on Holocaust Memorial Day, for which she later apologised.Veteran MP Diane Abbott has also had the whip withdrawn after she suggested Jewish, Irish and Traveller people were not subject to racism “all their lives” in a letter to the Observer last year.She apologised and suggested that “errors arose” when the letter was being drafted. Mr Forde highlighted both cases, saying “things seemed to drag on in terms of disciplining certain elements of the party, and be dealt with swiftly in others”.Sir Keir has boasted of turning his party around after controversies over alleged antisemitism dogged Jeremy Corbyn’s time as leader.Tory minister Lee Rowley accused Labour of “going to ground” over the furore, after no shadow minister appeared on Tuesday’s morning media.”Where’s Labour today?,” he told Sky News.On Monday Labour’s national campaign co-ordinator Pat McFadden said the party acted because “new information and more comments have come to light which meant that we had to look at this situation again”.A spokesperson said: “Keir Starmer has changed Labour so that it is unrecognisable from the party of 2019. We understand that these are highly unusual circumstances, but it is vital that any candidate put forward by Labour fully represents its aims and values. Given that nominations have now closed, Azhar Ali cannot be replaced as the candidate.”Labour’s U-turn has created uncertainty over who will win the Rochdale vote at the end of this month. Also standing are former Labour MP Simon Danczuk, now the Reform Party candidate, and ex-Labour MP George Galloway, of the Workers Party of Britain, who is campaigning against Labour’s stance on Gaza.Polls suggest Labour’s vote could be hit by unhappiness over Labour’s perceived support for Israel.If elected, Mr Ali will sit as an independent MP and will not receive the party whip. A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said Sir Keir had “blotted an otherwise fairly admirable copybook and given the public reason to doubt the earnestness of his promise to tear antisemitism out ‘by its roots’ in Labour. People will have to judge for themselves whether the additional reported comments by Azhar Ali are really any worse than the comments that had already been reported.” More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailLabour’s former Rochdale by-election candidate Azhar Ali said Benjamin Netenyahu allowed the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel because he was “in political trouble”.In the first audio recording of his controversial comments to be made public, the local councillor said the Israeli prime minister “deliberately took the security off” and “allowed the massacre”.“That gives them the green light to do whatever they bloody want [in Gaza],” Mr Ali said.The audio, made public by Guido Fawkes, was recorded at a meeting of the Lancashire Labour Party.As well as claiming Israel allowed the Hamas terror attack, which killed around 1,200 Israelis, to go ahead, Mr Ali also allegedly said Labour’s suspension of a left-wing MP was driven by “people in the media from certain Jewish quarters”.Labour’s candidate for Rochdale Azhar Ali lost the party’s support on Monday (Peter Byrne/PA)The antisemitic outburst, for which he has apologised, cost Mr Ali Labour’s support in the Rochdale by-election. He will appear on the ballot on February 29 due to electoral rules prohibiting a change of candidate, but Labour is no longer backing Mr Ali and he will not sit as a Labour MP if he is elected.In the recording of his comments, Mr Ali hints that he has expressed the opinion publicly on other occasions, saying “I believe that, and I’ve said it publicly”.It will raise further questions about how he was allowed to be selected to replace the late Sir Tony Lloyd, the veteran former Labour MP whose death last month sparked the contest.When Mr Ali’s comments first came to light, in a report by the Mail on Sunday, Labour publicly stood by their man. Shadow minister Nick Thomas-Symonds insisted it would be “unfair” to conclude there is a problem with Labour in Rochdale, adding that Mr Ali had simply “fallen for an online conspiracy theory”.Frontbenchers Lisa Nandy and Anneliese Dodds had campaigned for Mr Ali over the weekend, while shadow minister Nick Thomas-Symonds was defending Labour’s decision to back him on Monday morning.Labour campaign coordinator Pat McFadden criticised Mr Ali but said on Sunday he would remain as Labour’s candidate.Labour blamed his suspension on “new information”, referring to a report in the Daily Mail that he had blamed Andy McDonald’s suspension on “people in the media from certain Jewish quarters”.Mr McDonald was suspended by Labour after he used the phrase “between the river and the sea” in a speech during a rally.Mr Ali is also reported to have claimed Israel planned to “get rid of [Palestinians] from Gaza” and “grab” some of the land.The recording came as a lawyer who led a review into antisemitism in the Labour Party said its handling of the crisis has been “shambolic”.Martin Forde KC said MPs within the party feel there has been a “disparity in treatment” of allegations of antisemitism following the leadership’s rowback in support for Mr Ali.Mr Forde, whose 2022 inquiry found that both left and right wings of the party had used antisemitism as a factional weapon under former leader Jeremy Corbyn, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “If you want a fair and transparent system then it has to deal with people consistently.”He added: “I’m aware from discussions with some of the MPs within the party – who might be described as left-leaning – that they feel that when it comes to disciplinary action taken against them then things move rather slowly, but if you’re in the right faction of the party, as it were, then things are dealt with either more leniently or more swiftly.”A Labour spokesman said: “Following new information about further comments made by Azhar Ali coming to light today, the Labour Party has withdrawn its support for Azhar Ali as our candidate in the Rochdale by-election.“Keir Starmer has changed Labour so that it is unrecognisable from the party of 2019.“We understand that these are highly unusual circumstances, but it is vital that any candidate put forward by Labour fully represents its aims and values. Given that nominations have now closed, Azhar Ali cannot be replaced as the candidate.” More