PM appoints Jeremy Hunt as chancellor after sacking Kwasi Kwarteng

Published

3 years ago

October 15, 2022

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Kwasi Kwarteng has been sacked as chancellor three weeks after his mini-budget unleashed chaos on the economy and Jeremy Hunt appointed in his place.

Mr Kwarteng was appointed to the role by Liz Truss only 38 days ago, making him the second-shortest serving chancellor after Iain Macleod, who died a month after being handed the job by Edward Heath.

Number 10 announced an hour after his sacking on Friday afternoon that former foreign secretary Mr Hunt was replacing him.

Unapologetic Truss says she ‘acted decisively’ in tense news conference – follow latest updates

Mr Hunt’s appointment, just an hour after his predecessor was sacked, is a sign Ms Truss is trying to get her opponents on side.

Mr Kwarteng’s downfall was set in motion by the mini-budget on 23 September, in which he announced £45bn in unfunded tax cuts.

The mini-budget pushed the pound to a record low against the dollar, sent the cost of government borrowing and mortgage rates up and led to an unprecedented intervention by the Bank of England.

Chris Philp, who was heavily involved in plans for the mini-budget, has also lost his job as chief secretary to the Treasury but has been moved to the Cabinet Office as paymaster general.

In Mr Kwarteng’s letter to Ms Truss accepting he had been sacked, he said: “You have asked me to stand aside as your chancellor. I have accepted.”

He said he accepted the job “in full knowledge that the situation we faced was incredibly difficult, with rising global interest rates and energy prices”.

But he said the PM’s “vision of optimism, growth and change was right” and “following the status quo was simply not an option”.

He finished his letter by saying they have been “colleagues and friends for many years” and he believes her “vision is the right one”.

“It has been an honour to serve as your first chancellor. Your success is this country’s success and I wish you well,” he wrote.

Moments later, he was seen leaving No 11 Downing Street and was driven away from the home he had only occupied for just over a month.

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Ms Truss replied to his letter by saying she is “deeply sorry to lose” him from government and said “I deeply respect the decision you have taken today” – despite her sacking him.

She said they “share the same vision” for the UK and praised him for the energy price guarantee and the energy bill relief scheme, saying “thanks to your intervention, families will be able to heat their homes this winter and thousands of jobs and livelihoods will be saved”.

Ms Truss and Mr Kwarteng, who have been close friends for years, have insisted over the past few weeks that the turbulence in the UK economy was part of a global problem exacerbated by the war in Ukraine and post-pandemic recovery.

But last week, after open revolt by Tory MPs and a record surge for Labour in the polls, the prime minister announced the first major reversal of mini-budget policies when she backtracked on scrapping the 45p top rate of income tax.

The second U-turn came on Friday afternoon, when Ms Truss confirmed the government will raise corporation tax from 19% to 25% next April, despite promising not to do so in the mini-budget.

An hour before being sacked, Mr Kwarteng had landed back in London after cutting short meetings with the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC.

He had been due to make a medium-term fiscal statement on 31 October, which will now be made by Mr Hunt.

The Conservative Party is now on its fifth chancellor in the past three years – Mr Hunt, Mr Kwarteng, Nadhim Zahawi, Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid.

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Mr Hunt is the seventh Tory chancellor in 12 years.

There is now a renewed focus on whether Ms Truss can remain in the job.

A Tory MP told Sky News: “The idea that the prime minister can just scapegoat her chancellor and move on is deluded.

“This is her vision. She signed off on every detail and she defended it.”

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‘It is truly monstrous’: Inside the besieged Sudanese city where families are forced to eat animal feed to live

Published

14 hours ago

August 4, 2025

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'It is truly monstrous': Inside the besieged Sudanese city where families are forced to eat animal feed to live

Al Fashir is being suffocated to death.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has held the capital of North Darfur hostage in a 14-month siege – blocking food or fuel from entering the locality and forcing starvation on its 900,000 inhabitants.

The entire city is currently a militarised zone as Sudan‘s army and the Darfur Joint Protection Force fend off the RSF from capturing the last state capital in the Darfur region not currently under their control.

Rare footage sent to Sky News from inside al Fashir town shows streets emptied of cars and people.

The city’s remaining residents are hiding from daytime shelling inside their homes, and volunteers move through town on donkey carts distributing the little food they can find.

‘It is truly monstrous’

Journalist Muammer Ibrahim sent Sky News voice notes from there.

“The situation is monstrous,” he says. “It is truly monstrous.

“The markets are emptied of food and partially destroyed by shelling. Civilians were killed at the market, just a day ago. People have fled market areas but there is also shelling in residential areas. Every day, you hear of 10 or 12 civilians killed in attacks.”

His voice sounds shallow, weakened by the dire conditions, and gunshots can be heard in the background.

“The intense fighting has meant that people cannot safely search for anything to eat, but there is also nothing for their money to buy. The markets are depleted. Hundreds of thousands here are threatened by a full-blown famine,” he says.

“There has been a full blockade of any nutritional supplies arriving in al Fashir since the collapse of Zamzam camp. It closed any routes for produce or supplies to enter.”

The RSF ransacked the famine-ridden Zamzam displacement camp 7.5 miles (12km) south of al Fashir town in April, after the military reclaimed Sudan’s capital Khartoum.

The United Nations believes that at least 100 people were killed in the attacks, including children and aid workers.

The majority of Zamzam’s half a million residents fled to other areas for safety. Hundreds of thousands of them are now squeezed into tents on the edges of al Fashir, completely cut off from humanitarian assistance.

The capture of the camp allowed the RSF to tighten their siege and block off the last remaining supply route. Aid convoys attempting to enter al Fashir have come under fire by the RSF since last year.

“Already, between June and October 2024, we had several trucks stuck and prevented by the Rapid Support Forces from going to their destination which was al Fashir and Zamzam,” says Mathilde Simon, project coordinator at Medicins Sans Frontieres.

“They were prevented from doing so because they were taking food to those destinations.”

“There was another UN convoy that tried to reach al Fashir in the beginning of June. It could not, and five aid workers were killed.

“Since then, no convoy has been able to reach al Fashir. There have been ongoing negotiations to bring in food but they have not been successful until now.”

Families are resorting to eating animal feed to survive.

Videos sent to Sky News by volunteers show extreme suffering and deprivation, with sickly children sitting on thin straw mats on the hard ground.

Community kitchens are their only source of survival, only able to offer small meals of sorghum porridge to hundreds of thousands of elderly men, women and children facing starvation.

The question now is whether famine has fully taken root in al Fashir after the collapse of Zamzam camp and intensified RSF siege.

‘Malnutrition rates are catastrophic’

“The lack of access has prevented us from carrying out further assessment that can help us have a better understanding of the situation, but already in December 2024 famine was confirmed by the IPC Famine Review Committee in five areas,” says Mathilde.

“It was already confirmed in August 2024 in Zamzam but had spread to other displacement camps including Abu Shouk and it was already projected in al Fashir.

“This was more than eight months ago and we know the situation has completely worsened and malnutrition rates are absolutely catastrophic.”

Treasurer of al Fashir’s Emergency Response Rooms, Mohamed al Doma, believes all signs point to a famine.

He had to walk for four hours to escape the city with his wife and two young children after living through a full year of the siege and offering support to residents as supplies and funding dwindled.

“There is a famine of the first degree in al Fashir. All the basic necessities for life are not available,” he says.

“There is a lack of sustenance, a lack of nutrition and a lack of shelter. The fundamental conditions for human living are not living. There is nothing available in the markets – no food or work. There is no farming for subsistence. There is no aid entering al Fashir.”

“All of this points towards a full-blown famine.”

World

Hamas ‘ready’ to deliver aid to hostages after outcry over footage of Israeli captive

Published

16 hours ago

August 4, 2025

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Hamas 'ready' to deliver aid to hostages after outcry over footage of Israeli captive

Hamas has said it is ready to cooperate with a request to deliver food to Israeli hostages in Gaza, if Israel agrees to permanently open a humanitarian corridor into the enclave.

The militant group’s statement comes amid international outcry over two videos it released of Israeli hostage Evyatar David, who it has held captive since 7 October 2023.

The now 24-year-old looks skeletal, with his shoulder blades protruding from his back.

The footage sparked huge criticism, with EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas labelling the videos “appalling” and saying they “expose the barbarity of Hamas”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he had asked the Red Cross to give humanitarian assistance to the hostages.

Hamas’s military spokesperson Abu Obeidah said it is “ready to engage positively and respond to any request from the Red Cross to bring food and medicine to enemy captives” if certain conditions are met.

These are that Israel must permanently open a humanitarian corridor and halt airstrikes during the distribution of aid, he said.

Gaza’s health ministry said on Sunday that six more people had died of starvation or malnutrition in the enclave in the past 24 hours.

This raises the number of those who have died from what multiple international agencies warn may be an unfolding famine to 175 since the war began, the ministry said. This includes 93 children, it added.

No aid entered Gaza between 2 March and 19 May due an Israeli blockade and deliveries of supplies including food, medicine and fuel have been limited since then.

Israeli authorities have previously said there is “no famine caused by Israel” – and that its military is “working to facilitate and ease the distribution of humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip”.

Meanwhile, Palestinian health authorities also said at least 80 people in Gaza were killed by Israeli gunfire and airstrikes on Sunday.

These included people trying to reach aid distribution, Palestinian medics said.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has repeatedly said it “categorically rejects the claims of intentional harm to civilians” and has previously blamed Hamas militants for fomenting chaos and endangering civilians.

Hamas killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in its attack on 7 October 2023 and abducted 251 others. Of those, they still hold around 50, with 20 believed to be alive, after most of the others were released in ceasefires or other deals.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, which does not differentiate between militants and civilians in its count.

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New US plan for Gaza starting to emerge despite sanitised tour for Trump peace envoy

Published

1 day ago

August 3, 2025

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New US plan for Gaza starting to emerge despite sanitised tour for Trump peace envoy

We’ve seen this many times before.

Highly anticipated talks and meetings with America, Israel’s closest ally and the one country with the power to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to change course, then nothing changes.

We need to give Steve Witkoff time to report his assessments back to the White House before we can give a complete verdict on this visit but what we’ve seen and heard so far has offered little hope.

The pressure on Donald Trump to stop the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is mounting after a small but vocal contingent of his base expressed outrage.

Even one of his biggest supporters in Congress, Marjorie Taylor Green, has referred to it as a genocide.

It was little coincidence Mr Witkoff was dispatched to the region for the first time in three months to speak to people on both sides and “learn the truth” to quote US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who accompanied him to an aid site in Gaza.

The pair spent five hours in Gaza speaking to people at a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation centre and it’s understood saw nothing of the large crowd of Palestinians gathering a mile away waiting for food.

Their sanitised tour of Gaza did not include a visit to a hospital where medics are receiving casualties by the dozen from deadly incidents at aid sites, and where they’re treating children for malnutrition and hunger.

A critical trauma nurse at Nasser hospital told us a 13-year-old boy was among the people shot while Mr Witkoff was in the enclave.

An American paediatrician at the same hospital who had publicly extended an invitation to meet with Mr Witkoff heard nothing from the US delegation.

Dr Tom Adamkiewicz described people “being shot like rabbits” and “a new level of barbarity that I don’t think the world has seen”.

The US delegation was defensive of the controversial GHF aid distribution that was launched by America and Israel in May, hailing its delivery of a million meals a day.

But if their new system of feeding Gaza is truly working, why are we seeing images of starved children and hearing deaths every day of people in search of food?

The backdrop of this trip is very different to the last time Mr Witkoff was here.

In May, life was a struggle for Palestinians in Gaza, people were dying in Israeli bombings but, for the most part, people weren’t dying due to a lack of food or getting killed trying to reach aid.

Mr Netanyahu’s easing of humanitarian conditions a week ago, allowing foreign aid to drop from the sky, was an indirect admission of failure by the GHF.

Yet, for now, the US is standing by this highly criticised way of delivering aid.

A UN source tells me more aid is getting through than it was a week ago – around 30 lorries are due to enter today compared to around five that were getting in each day before.

Still nowhere near enough and it’s a complex process of clearances and coordination with the IDF through areas of conflict.

Lorries are regularly refused entry without explanation.

Then there was Mr Witkoff’s meeting with hostage families a day later where we began to get a sense of America’s new plan for Gaza.

The US issued no public statement but family members shared conversations they’d had with Mr Trump’s envoy: bring all the hostages home in one deal, disarm Hamas and end the war. Easier to propose than to put into practice.

Within hours of those comments being reported in the Israeli media, Hamas released a video of hostage Evyatar David looking emaciated in an underground tunnel in Gaza.

Now 24 years old, he was kidnapped from the Nova festival on 7 October and is one of 20 hostages understood to be still alive. The release of the video was timed for maximum impact.

Hamas also poured water on any hopes of a deal in a statement, refusing to disarm unless an independent Palestinian state is established.

Hamas has perhaps become more emboldened in this demand after key Israeli allies, including the UK, announced plans for formal recognition in the last week.

It’s hard to see a way forward. The current Israeli government has, in effect, abandoned the idea of a two-state solution.

The Trump administration’s recent boycott of international conferences on the matter suggests America is taking a similar line, breaking with its long-standing position.

Arab nations could now be key in what happens next.

In an unprecedented move, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt joined a resolution calling for Hamas to disarm and surrender control of Gaza following a UN conference earlier this week.

This is hugely significant – highly influential powers in its own backyard have not applied this sort of pressure before.

For all the US delegation’s good intentions, it’s still political deadlock. Israeli hostages and Palestinians in Gaza left to starve and suffer the consequences.