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.
Five big stories
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.
In depth: ‘A sense of decay and dread in the party’
A quick refresher: last month, Rishi Sunak set out his plan to finally get his Rwanda policy up and running. His bill would circumvent judicial objections to the government’s proposal to remove asylum seekers arriving by irregular routes and send them to Rwanda, by unilaterally insisting that they would be safe there.
Rebels on both sides of the party loudly expressed their displeasure: the moderates because legislation is not typically used to declare a favourable set of facts, and the right because it did not go as far as they would have liked in blocking any role for the European court of human rights. In the end, the bill passed the first hurdle, but the right threatened to cause more trouble when it came back to parliament this month. Yesterday MPs debated possible amendments, and will continue to do so today, with a vote on the bill as a whole tonight.
That is the context for a poll published in the Telegraph earlier this week that makes painful reading for anyone in the Tory party – showing that the Conservatives are on their way to a 1997-style landslide defeat. In Westminster terms, this fight is a proxy for questions over Sunak’s authority – but also a warm-up for the bunfight over the party’s direction that is bound to ensue should it lose the next election. In Katy Balls’ piece examining how backbenchers feel after the poll, one is only half-joking when they tell her: “Ready for death.”
All of this has added up to a dismal week for Sunak – although it might get better later today.
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Sunday | Telegraph poll suggests 120-seat Labour majority
“The findings are not that surprising,” Katy said of the poll first published on Sunday night. “For the last year or so the polls have pretty consistently shown a 20-point lead for Labour. But this is more upsetting for MPs, because it’s a much bigger poll than usual, so it’s possible to show how it’s going in individual seats.” With 349 MPs today and only 120 predicted to survive, that means 229 now have specific reason to fear for their political lives.
While the YouGov poll is perfectly legitimate, there’s been a lot of scepticism about its genesis and presentation: it was commissioned by a mysterious group of donors led by Lord Frost. Frost sees the main threat to the Tories as being from the populist rightwing Reform party – particularly on immigration – and wrote an accompanying opinion piece to say so.
But that is highly contentious: YouGov felt it had to distance itself from the Telegraph’s suggestion “that the presence of Reform UK is the difference between Labour securing a majority and not”.
In an insightful piece for CapX about the Conservatives’ larger woes, Henry Hill is critical of the Telegraph analysis. “The Conservatives are losing far more voters to their left than their right,” he wrote. “As their polling worsens, the pool of voters who qualify as ‘persuadable’ will naturally get more rightwing – but that doesn’t mean the path to a majority runs through them.”
“The truth is, Tory MPs look at this and tend to think that the solution is whatever they already thought was the right thing to do,” said Katy. “I don’t think it’s changed anyone’s mind. What it has done is confirm a sense of decay and dread in the party.”
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Monday | Tory party deputy chairs back rebel amendments
On Monday night, two party deputy chairs, Brendan Clarke-Smith and Lee Anderson (above), said they would back rebel amendments aimed at blocking international human rights laws. That raised a significant question for Sunak over party discipline and whether they would be allowed to stay in post.
Meanwhile, Tory party strategist Isaac Levido briefed MPs on the Telegraph polling and the party’s strategy for the next election: Katy has lots of detail on that in the Spectator. He told them that the poll was commissioned by people “more interested in what happens after the election rather than fighting it”. He also said that the message they should take to voters was the need to “stick with the plan”, rather than go back “to square one” with Sunak.
Levido got a hearing from backbenchers, at least. “Some of them do see it as a sensible approach,” Katy said. “It’s not that they disagree with the strategy so much as that they ask if it will be enough. Some of them elected in 2019, on the ‘Get Brexit Done’ message, might be disappointed that they’re returning to the kind of message the party had in 2015. But the circumstances are very different now.”
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Tuesday | 60 Tory rebels and three resignations
After Clarke-Smith and Anderson’s announcements that they would back amendments to the bill, Sunak was left to decide whether or not they would pay for it with their jobs.
“As a general rule, Sunak is inclined to avoid conflict,” Katy said. “I don’t think he wanted to lose Lee Anderson. But if he and Clarke-Smith stayed, a lot of backbenchers who don’t have a title would think, if you’re letting them off, I’m going to do what I want.”
In the end, the government made clear that voting for the amendments would mean their positions were untenable. Both men promptly quit. Jane Stevenson, a parliamentary aide to business secretary Kemi Badenoch, also resigned.
In total, 60 Tory backbenchers have voted against the government – the biggest revolt of Sunak’s premiership so far. But that was a free hit, since Labour did not join them. “The rebels don’t have the numbers,” Katy said. “They need the opposition to line up with them, and that won’t happen on amendments to harden the bill.”
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Wednesday | Crunch vote on Rwanda bill
There are more amendments slated for debate today – and while Labour might not back those, they will line up against the bill as a whole when it is voted on tonight. “That is the point where the likes of Suella Braverman could team up with the opposition,” Katy said. “And there is a question about whether No 10 has antagonised the rebels by not working with them on amendments.”
In the end, and notwithstanding unforeseen events, she thinks that the bill is likely to pass. “There is a chance that, at the end of all this, if the rebels don’t go over the top they will show their weakness, and Sunak’s authority gets a small boost.”
The Daily Telegraph estimates this morning that 15 Tories are ready to vote the legislation down, with others considering their positions. It would take 28 rebels to defeat the government, or fewer if there are abstentions.
One indication of the temperature was in a melodramatic social media post from a prominent rebel, Simon Clarke, who said that he was not “fucking around”. But in this analysis piece, Peter Walker writes that one important factor against a government defeat is that “the most likely outcome is a swift election and thus political oblivion.”
In that context, plenty of Conservatives would find further indiscipline infuriating – but some have already given up on the next election. For that group, the fights over Rwanda and the Telegraph poll are really about which direction the party should take in opposition. “I think more are thinking about their seats this year than aren’t,” said Katy. “But it is also true that some are already focused on the future, and trying to shift the party towards where they want it to be.”
What else we’ve been reading
The rates of pregnant women delivering their babies through caesareans has rocketed in Puerto Rico. Coral Murphy Marcos dispatch from Bayamón reveals the troubling reasons why. Nimo
Public loos have been endangered facilities for years: the amount spent on them in the UK has halved since 2010, and Newcastle has gone from 80 in the city centre in the 1960s to absolutely none today. The architect Alberte Lauridsen has some smart thoughts about who’s getting caught short, and how to fix it. Archie
When he was just 22, Adam Johnson was hit by a car going at 55mph in a near fatal accident, leaving much of his body “totally annihilated”. Sixteen years later, Johnson talks to Elle Hunt for the How we survive series about his slow recovery and the creative outlets that keep him going. Nimo
You may be familiar with the pungent idea that there is a mass of voters who really want a “Fund the NHS, hang the paedos” party. Cas Mudde has a really interesting piece on a German attempt at this kind of “leftwing conservatism” – and why, in the end, it is only likely to supply mainstream far-right talking points. Archie
ICYMI: Kyle Chayka’s thought provoking long read on the global homogenisation of once diverse social spaces is well worth your time. Taking the hipster coffee shop as his primary example, Chayka traces the way digital platforms have compounded a certain level of uncanny sameness – whether you are in Hong Kong, Bucharest or New York, you will find the same minimalist coffee shops, chasing the same algorithmic promotions online, he writes. Nimo
Sport
Australian Open | Emma Raducanu impressed with victory on her grand slam return at the Australian Open yesterday, posting a convincing 6-3, 6-2 success againts Shelby Rogers. Today, 16-year-old Mirra Andreeva has handed Ons Jabeur the heaviest defeat of her grand slam career, beating the No 6 seed 6-0, 6-2.
FA Cup | Newport set up a fourth-round tie with Manchester United after ending Eastleigh’s run 1-3. Chiedozie Ogbene sealed a 2-1 comeback win for Luton at Bolton. Tommy Conway’s early strike stunned West Ham as Championship side Bristol City won 1-0.
Rugby union | The Wales winger Louis Rees-Zammit has stunned the rugby world on the eve of the Six Nations by announcing a career switch to American football with immediate effect. Rees-Zammit has “the odds stacked against him”, writes Robert Kitson – but his decision is evidence that “rugby no longer exerts the same magnetic pull in Wales that it once did”.
The front pages
“PM faces revolt on Rwanda plans as senior Tories quit” is the Guardian’s lead story this morning. “Sunak hit by resignations and biggest rebellion yet” says the Times while the Telegraph goes with “Sixty Tories turn on PM in Rwanda rebellion”. “Top Tories quit in protest as Sunak sees off Rwanda rebels” reports the i. “Sunak suffers heavy blow as Tory Rwanda revolt swells” – that’s the Financial Times while the Daily Express is clearly beside itself, striking a plaintive note: “PM’s last-ditch plea to rebels: ‘Come together’ on Rwanda plan”. The similarly exercised Daily Mail throws forward: “Now will 60 Tory rebels sink PM’s boat bill tonight?” Buck up chaps, the way things are going you will soon enough have a Labour government to kick around … On to other matters: “About time” – that’s on page one of the Daily Mirror as Fujitsu fronts the Post Office inquiry. The Metro has “Fujitsu’s boss: we will pay up” – the IT company’s boss has conceded a moral obligation to contribute to redress for postmasters.
Today in Focus
The Houthis and the escalating Red Sea crisis
Attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea by the Houthi rebel group in Yemen have been met with airstrikes from the UK and US. Patrick Wintour reports
Cartoon of the day | Ella Baron
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
Hemesh Chadalavada was 12 when he noticed that his grandmother Jayasree, then 63, had left the gas on in their kitchen. She had Alzheimer’s disease but it was the first time that he noticed its potentially dangerous impact.
Chadalavada (above) decided that he would use his love of robotics to invent a gadget to help people like his grandmother. Five years later, he is set to start manufacturing a device called the Alpha Monitor that detects when people with Alzheimer’s fall or stray. Most devices currently rely on Bluetooth or wifi meaning that they have a fairly limited range before the connection is lost: Chadalavada’s invention relies on long-range technology however, so the Alpha Monitor can detect a person who is up to a mile away in cities and three miles in the countryside. He is also adamant that it should be sold at an affordable price for most people. “I want to create products to help people in India for the whole world,” Chadalavada says.
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Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.
