Parliament to be recalled next week over Afghanistan crisis – as PM calls another emergency Cobra meeting

Published

3 years ago

August 15, 2021

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Parliament will be recalled next week over the situation in Afghanistan, as the prime minister called a second emergency Cobra meeting later this afternoon to discuss the crisis.

MPs will return to Westminster on Wednesday to debate the government’s response to the crisis, with Taliban fighters having entered the capital Kabul after a lightning advance through the country.

Live updates on Afghanistan as government promises peaceful transition of power

The session will begin at 9.30am and will end at 2.30pm, while peers in the Lords will sit from 11am.

According to Sky’s deputy political editor Sam Coates, Conservative MPs have been told that there will be no virtual participation and while they are encouraged to return to Westminster, there will not be a three-line whip requiring them to do so.

MPs broke up for their summer recess on 22 July and had not been due to return until 6 September.

Calls for MPs to return to Westminster have been growing in recent days as the Taliban continues to make gains amid the withdrawal of US, UK and NATO troops.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer was among those calling for such a move, saying earlier on Sunday: “The situation in Afghanistan is deeply shocking and seems to be worsening by the hour.

“The immediate priority now must be to get all British personnel and support staff safely out of Kabul.

“The government has been silent while Afghanistan collapses, which let’s be clear will have ramifications for us here in the UK.

Analysis by Nick Martin, political correspondent

MPs returning to parliament three weeks early – cutting short the summer recess – is a sign of a deepening crisis for the UK government.

There are still thought to be thousands of British nationals in the Afghan capital and the pace of the Taliban advance has put them in greater risk.

An unpredictable force with a lethal track record are closing in and time is running out to get them to safety.

Downing Street sources say parliament will be recalled next week and that means MPs will be able to debate the situation.

Expect the prime minister to make a statement to the house. We could hear from the Defence Secretary Ben Wallace and the Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab.

It’s likely that the leader of the opposition Sir Keir Starmer will press the government for more details on Britain’s involvement.

He said on Sunday: “We need parliament recalled so the government can update MPs on how it plans to work with allies to avoid a humanitarian crisis and a return to the days of Afghanistan being a base for extremists whose purpose will be to threaten our interests, values and national security.”

The Lib Dem leader Ed Davey added: “The prime minister should call in all political parties and ensure that we respond with unity and purpose.”

Parliament went into recess on 22 July and wasn’t expected to return until September. It would be unfathomable to allow recess to continue given the escalation in Afghanistan.

The prime minister chaired a meeting of COBRA, the government’s emergency committee on Friday.

Now 600 troops are already on their way to the region.

Events are moving fast.

“We need parliament recalled so the government can update MPs on how it plans to work with allies to avoid a humanitarian crisis and a return to the days of Afghanistan being a base for extremists whose purpose will be to threaten our interests, values and national security.”

Reacting to news of the recall, Labour’s shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy told Sky News it was “extremely good news” but urged the government to act in the meantime to ensure Britons and those who have helped the UK in Afghanistan are transported out of the country.

“I suspect that this has taken so long because the government doesn’t have a clear strategy to deal with this,” she said.

“That’s what we need to hear from the prime minister this week. We need to hear that imminently.”

SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford, another supporter of the recall, told Sky News: “I think many people will be asking what this has been for.

“There are questions that now need to be asked about the next steps. What do we do to try and give humanitarian support to those that need it.

“Many will have concerns about a potential breeding ground for terrorism and, I hate to say it, repeating some of the problems of the past.”

Sir Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, also backed calls for a recall of parliament.

He has urged Boris Johnson to hold a “crisis meeting” with party leaders “given the tragedy unfolding before our eyes and the grave threat to national security this raises”.

“It is without doubt that we face a crucial point in history and, as a nation, we must act together before it is too late,” he said.

But Rory Stewart, a Conservative former international development secretary, said he found it “very difficult to understand, I’m afraid, how this will help at this stage”.

“The focus now needs to be on refugees, and humanitarian and development assistance for the fall-out from this tragedy,” he said.

The UK is currently evacuating British nationals and local translators – with 600 troops being sent to assist with this effort.

The Home Office said it is working to “protect British nationals and help former UK staff and other eligible people travel to the UK”.

“The Home Office has already resettled over 3,300 Afghan staff and their families who have worked for the UK,” it said in a statement.

“We will continue to fulfil our international obligations and moral commitments.”

A Foreign Office spokesperson said the UK had “reduced” its diplomatic presence in Afghanistan, “but our ambassador remains in Kabul and UK government staff continue to work to provide assistance to British nationals and to our Afghan staff”.

They added: “We are doing all we can to enable remaining British nationals, who want to leave Afghanistan, to do so.”

According to The Sunday Telegraph, Britain’s ambassador to Afghanistan Sir Laurie Bristow is going to be flown out of the country by tonight.

Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat, who is chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said it was “quite clear that the battle for Afghanistan is now lost”.

“It’s been an abject defeat and the United States and United Kingdom have been routed,” he told Sky News.

“This is pretty stunning, frankly.

“It was a decision we took to withdraw and to announce that we wouldn’t be willing to fight, so perhaps it’s hardly surprising.

“What we’re now seeing is what we fought 20 years to stop, which is a Taliban victory in Afghanistan.”

The prime minister said on Friday that Britain’s sacrifices in the country were not “in vain” and that the “vast bulk” of British citizens in Afghanistan will be brought back over the “next few days”.

Politics

Crypto volatility may spike if US election is ‘too close to call’ —FalconX

Published

2 hours ago

November 2, 2024

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Crypto volatility may spike if US election is ‘too close to call’ —FalconX

An analyst warns that “volatility” could emerge if the US election results are close, but traders will be relieved once it’s over, giving the market “firmer ground.”

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Robert Jenrick or Kemi Badenoch to be crowned Tory leader today – but whoever wins contest faces daunting task

Published

3 hours ago

November 2, 2024

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Robert Jenrick or Kemi Badenoch to be crowned Tory leader today - but whoever wins contest faces daunting task

The next leader of the Conservative party will be announced today, following a run-off between Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick.

The winner will replace Rishi Sunak as the leader of the opposition, after he led the party to a crushing election defeat in July, losing almost two thirds of its MPs.

His successor faces the daunting task of rebuilding the Tory party after years of division, scandal and economic turbulence, which saw Labour eject them from power by a landslide.

Politics latest: Budget given ‘clean bill of health’

Voting by tens of thousands of party members, who need to have joined at least 90 days ago, closed on Thursday. Both candidates have claimed the result will be close.

The Conservatives do not disclose how many members the party has, but the figure was about 172,000 in 2022, and research suggests they are disproportionately affluent, older white men.

Both candidates are seen as on the party’s right wing. Kemi Badenoch, 44, is the former trade secretary, who was born in London to middle-class Nigerian parents but spent most of her childhood in Lagos.

After moving back to the UK aged 16, she stayed with a family friend while taking her A-levels, and has spoken of her time working at McDonald’s as a teenager.

Having studied computer science at Sussex University, she then worked as a software engineer before entering London politics and becoming MP for Saffron Walden in Essex in 2017.

Ms Badenoch prides herself on being outspoken and has said the Conservatives lost because they “talked right and governed left”. But her critics paint her as abrasive and prone to misspeaking.

At the Conservative Party conference, a crucial staging post in the contest, she began her speech which followed three other male candidates by saying: “Nice speeches, boys, but I think you all know I’m the one everyone’s been waiting for.”

Her rival Robert Jenrick, 42, has been on a political journey. Elected as a Cameroon Conservative in 2014, he was one of the rising star ministers who swung behind Boris Johnson as prime minister and was later a vocal supporter of Rishi Sunak.

But he resigned as immigration minister in December 2023, claiming Sunak’s government was breaking its promises to cut immigration.

The MP for Newark in Nottinghamshire says he had a “working-class” upbringing in Wolverhampton. He read history at Cambridge University and worked at Christie’s auctioneers before winning a by-election.

After a long ministerial career where he was seen as mild-mannered, he is said to have been “radicalised” by his time at the Home Office and has focused his campaign on a promise to slash immigration and leave the European Convention on Human Rights to “stand for our nation and our culture, our identity and our way of life”.

He has put forward more policies than his rival, but attracted criticism for some of his claims – including that Britain’s former colonies owe the Empire a “debt of gratitude”.

A survey of party members by the website Conservative Home last week put Kemi Badenoch in the lead by 55 points to Mr Jenrick’s 31 with polls still open.

James Cleverly, the shadow home secretary and seen as a more centrist candidate was knocked out of the race last month. One of his supporters, the Conservative peer and former Scotland leader Ruth Davidson, has predicted neither Mr Jenrick nor Ms Badenoch will stay as leader until the next general election.

She told the Sky News Electoral Dysfunction podcast: “I’ve now voted for Robert Jenrick, who I don’t think will win. I struggle to believe that the person that’s the next leader of the Tory party is going to take us into the next election in five years’ time and I struggle to believe that they’re going to leave the leadership at a time of their own choosing.”

Henry Hill, deputy editor of ConHome, said the contest which Tory officials decided would take almost three months, has not led to enough scrutiny – because the MP rounds of voting took so long.

“We know much less [about them] than I think we should”, he said. “The problem with this contest is the party decided to go really long, but at the same time, they confined the membership vote – with just the final two – to just three weeks, and ballots dropped halfway through that process.

“We had months and months with loads of candidates in the race, but also that was the MP rounds and you’d think the MPs will have a chance to get to know these people already. For the actual choice the members are going to be making, there has been barely any time to scrutinise that.

He added: “I think the party remembers Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak taking weeks to take lumps out of each other in 2022 and wanted to avoid that. But it means the two campaigns haven’t really been attacking each other and that tends to be how you expose people’s weaknesses.”

After 14 years in government under five prime ministers, it is not since David Cameron in 2005 that the party has elected a leader to go into opposition – with a long road until the next general election.

Veteran ex-MP Graham Brady, who served as chair of the backbench 1922 committee, told Sky News that the position was more hopeful than after the 1997 landslide.

He said: “The biggest challenge for a leader of the opposition in these circumstances is just to be heard, to be noticed. I came into the House of Commons in 1997 at the time of that huge Blair landslide.

“We worked very, very hard in opposition during that parliament, and at the next general election [in 2001], we made a net gain of one seat.

“Now, there is a huge difference between now and 1997. The Blair government remained very popular and Tony Blair personally remained very popular through that whole parliament and beyond. And in 100 days or so, Keir Starmer has already fallen way behind.

“So I think we’ve got a great opportunity. I don’t think we’re up against an insuperable challenge, but it’s a big challenge.”

Kate Fall, now Baroness Fall, worked with Lord Cameron in opposition and later in Downing Street when he was prime minister in the coalition government. She said the next leader needed to keep the party “united and disciplined”.

“The first thing is to think about why we lost. The second thing is what do we have to say? Then they need to be agile, they need to be reactive, but pick their fight, not fight over everything. They also need to get out and about,” she said.

Lord Cameron travelled around the country holding question and answer sessions called Cameron Direct. “When you’re prime minister, you can’t do that as much as you like. But as leader of the opposition you can get out, talk to people, we thought it was very trendy to have a podcast and so on.”

She says this week’s budget gives the next leader “an ideological divide” to get into, but warns that the next leader must not risk alienating former Tories who switched to Labour and the Lib Dems.

👉 Click here to listen to Electoral Dysfunction on your podcast app 👈

The leader of the opposition will cut their teeth at weekly Prime Minister’s Questions sessions opposite Sir Keir Starmer and respond to set piece events such as the budget.

They will need to get the party’s campaign machine ready for the local elections in England in May 2025, Scottish elections in 2026 and the next general election expected in 2029.

Politics

Coinbase finds over ’20 examples’ of FDIC telling banks to avoid crypto

Published

4 hours ago

November 2, 2024

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<div>Coinbase finds over '20 examples' of FDIC telling banks to avoid crypto</div>

Coinbase’s chief legal officer declares that the “contents are a shameful example of a government agency trying to cut off financial access to law-abiding American companies.”