UK

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailThe Tory MP who reported Angela Rayner to the police amid an ongoing row over the sale of her council house refused to explain what alleged offences he thought she had committed.James Daly, the Conservative Party deputy chairman, failed to answer the question three times during an awkward exchange on the BBC’s Daily Politics programme.“Well, the Greater Manchester Police last week…announced that they were investigating various matters in relation to this and therefore I think it’s perfectly appropriate to allow that investigation to proceed,” he said.Mr Daly, who represents the red wall seat of Bury North in Greater Manchester, contacted police to make them aware that neighbours of Ms Rayner had contradicted her account that a property, separate from her husband’s, was her main residency.Greater Manchester Police later launched an investigation into whether Ms Rayner had broken electoral law, having initially said she had no case to answer, following questions about whether she paid the correct amount of tax when she sold the property before becoming an MP.James Daly was asked three times what offence he thought Rayner had committed but did not answer More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailThe UK government is facing growing calls to proscribe Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organisation following its attack on Israel. The British Board of Deputies, which represents British Jews, have led the calls for Rishi Sunak to ban the organisation. They have been backed by MPs from across the political divide, while Israel made similar representations to the United Nations security council. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is a powerful force within Iran and also controls the “axis of resistance” against Israel across the region.In a letter to Mr Sunak on Monday, the Board of Deputies President Marie van der Zyl said: “The IRGC’s role in funding, arming and training a host of terror proxies, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, is clear”. Senior Tories also urged Mr Sunak to take action, with former party leader Iain Duncan-Smith describing ministers’ justifications for not designating the organisation as “absurd”.He told the Guardian: “The government should have already proscribed IRGC. The USA have asked us to do it. The excuses the government uses are [firstly] that if the UK proscribes the IRGC it will lose influence. That’s absurd as we clearly have no influence.”Bob Blackman, chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Israel told The Independent he wants to see the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps proscribed and the Iranian embassy “closed in London, as well as our embassy closed down in Tehran, and all our diplomats brought home.”Shadow defence secretary John Healey also said the threat to the UK from allowing the IRGC to operate should be sufficient for the government to be “responsible” and ban the organisation. He added: “It’s the leading edge of the threat that Iran poses not just to Israel, but to Arab countries and western interests right across the region”. Shadow foreign secretary David Lammy said on Sunday that the attack “highlights once again the extreme danger of the IRGC”.Foreign secretary David Cameron said that proscribing the “dangerous” organisation was something ministers were keeping under review, alongside a number of possible further sanctions against the stateHe added: “I keep this under review but the police and security services say they have the powers to deal with it here or elsewhere.”Foreign secretary David Cameron has said that proscribing the force was something ministers were keeping under review More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailWatch live as Rishi Sunak is set to address parliament following Iran’s attack on Israel, after home secretary James Cleverly takes questions from MPs.The House of Commons returns from Easter recess on Monday 15 April, one day after Tehran launched an “unprecedented” strike on Tel Aviv.Foreign secretary David Cameron has urged Israel to be “smart as well as tough” by not escalating the conflict with Iran in the hours following the attack.The government’s Rwanda legislation, meanwhile, is also high on the agenda for MPs today.Mr Sunak is braced for a fresh round of parliamentary wrangling over his Bill to save the government’s stalled deportation scheme.Sunday became the busiest day yet for Channel crossings this year after more than 500 migrants arrived in the UK in a single day.It means some 6,000 people have made the journey in 2024 to date, with more than 75,000 arrivals recorded two years on from the Rwanda deal being signed.MPs will consider amendments to the Safety of Rwanda Bill by the House of Lords, which inflicted a series of defeats against the controversial policy before rising for the spring break. More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailFormer prime minister Liz Truss has accused US president Joe Biden of “utter hypocrisy and ignorance” for his reaction to the disastrous mini-Budget which sparked the end of her premiership. In her new book, Ten Years to Save the West, she recalled the global reaction to the mini-Budget which promised £45bn of unfunded tax cuts. Ms Truss, Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister, has previously blamed the “deep state” for “sabotaging” her tax-cutting plans from Kwasi Kwarteng’s notoriously disastrous economic plan which sent the pound into a nose dive and sparked a crash in the markets.Ms Truss wrote, in an excerpt published in The Mail On Sunday: “Today [Tuesday 11 October 2022], the Bank of England governor himself caused a market reaction by announcing that the support scheme for pension funds would wind up at the end of the week. “This led to an immediate fall in the pound. On top of that, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has questioned whether the rich would benefit ‘too much’ from the mini budget — surely a domestic question for the UK Government!”She quoted President Biden saying: “I wasn’t the only one that thought [the mini budget] was a mistake. I think that the idea of cutting taxes on the super-wealthy at a time when … anyway, I just think … I disagreed with the policy.”The 49-day prime minister continued: “This was utter hypocrisy and ignorance. The top rate of income tax in the U.S. was 37 per cent and only charged to people earning the equivalent of £483,094 and above. By contrast, the top rate in the UK was 45 per cent and paid by those on more than £150,000.”Liz Truss resigned as prime minister on 20 October 2022 More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailThe foreign secretary said Iran’s attack on Israel was a “double defeat” for Tehran as he urged Benjamin Netanyahu to “take the win” and not retaliate. Lord Cameron said the weekend attack – which saw the country launch an unprecendeted assault against Israel using more than 170 drones, 30 cruise missiles and 120 ballistic missiles – was a “failure” and has “revealed to the world their true nature as the malign influence in the region”. The former prime minister also urged Israel to “think with with head as well as heart” as he said that “the right thing to do is not to escalate”. The weekend’s assault was launched in response to a strike widely blamed on Israel upon an Iranian consular building in Syria earlier this month, which killed two Iranian generals. It marks the first time a direct military assault has been launched by Tehran on Israel despite enmity dating back to the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Lord Cameron told Times Radio on Monday: “Israel has every right to respond as an independent sovereign country being attacked in this way. But I think we’re very anxious to avoid escalation and to say to our friends in Israel ‘it’s a time to think with with head as well as heart’.“And in many ways this is a double defeat for Iran. Not only was their attack an almost total failure, but also the rest of the world can now see what a malign influence they are in the region and understand their true nature.Foreign secretary Lord Cameron said the attack had been a double defeat for Iran More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailThe health secretary has said that flights carrying asylum seekers to Rwanda will take off “within weeks” despite being unable to disclose whether the government had found a carrier.Victoria Atkins maintained she wants flights to take off “as quickly as possible”, adding that it’ll be “certainly within weeks”.But when quizzed on Sky News about which airline would be carrying out the return flights, Ms Atkins was unable to answer.She said: “The Home Office is working on this… believe you me the Home Office is ready to go.”Health secretary Victoria Atkins said flights to Rwanda will take off ‘within weeks’ More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailThe row over Angela Rayner’s previous living arrangements has deepened as her former aide reportedly wrote to police contradicting her claims.Former staff member Matt Finnegan, who made an employment tribunal claim against Ms Rayner in 2018, said there was “no doubt in my mind that this was Ms Rayner’s family home” when he visited her at what she says was her husband’s address in 2014.Police are investigating whether Labour’s deputy leader broke electoral law after Tory allegations that she may have given false information about her main residence a decade ago.She was registered at a former council house she bought in Stockport, but it is understood Conservative Party deputy chair James Daly has suggested neighbours say she lived with her husband at a separate property.Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner has denied any wrongdoing over the row about her previous living arrangements More