Rishi Sunak can’t rock the boat – his political legitimacy in No 10 hangs by a thread
On the face of it, Rishi Sunak’s first Prime Minister’s Questions was an assured performance.
The former chancellor was combative, confident and fluid. But it was also a session in which the new prime minister showed us how conscious he is that his political legitimacy hangs by a thread.
Because being appointed as the UK’s 57th prime minister behind closed doors by 200 or so Conservative MPs will invariably raise questions about his democratic mandate.
That it happened just seven weeks after a different prime minister – Liz Truss – was foisted on the British public by the Conservatives turns those questions into accusations of a democratic stitch-up.
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Labour, the SNP and the Lib Dems all know it, which is why at PMQs they laid into Mr Sunak for being at that despatch box at all.
Sir Keir Starmer accused his new opponent – the third in four months – as someone who was “not on the side of working people” before adding: “That’s why the only time he ran in a competitive election he got trounced by the former prime minister, who herself got beaten by a lettuce.”
He called, again, for a general election.
Mr Sunak however is having none of it, as he teased Sir Keir for backing a second EU referendum – “he talks about mandates, it’s a bit rich coming from the person who tried to overturn the biggest democratic vote in our country’s history” – and spoke again about sticking to the 2019 manifesto.
Sticking to it, because Mr Sunak knows he’s on sticky ground trying to tiptoe into Number 10 and stay there until the next general election in a couple of years asking the British people their view.
That’s why on the steps of Number 10 and in the Commons on Wednesday, Mr Sunak spoke of the Conservative Party mandate won in 2019 as he sought to wrestle that victory squarely from the hands of campaigner-in-chief Boris Johnson.
“I will always be grateful to Boris Johnson for his incredible achievements as prime minister, and I treasure his warmth and generosity of spirit,” he said.
“And I know he would agree that the mandate my party earned in 2019 is not the sole property of any one individual, it is a mandate that belongs to and unites all of us.”
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How did Sunak get on at first PMQs?
And that manifesto – which Liz Truss sought to deviate from – is now being reinstated by Mr Sunak as he tries to settle his party and cement his ground.
The big move from him on Wednesday was to reinstate the fracking ban, a manifesto commitment from 2019 that Ms Truss sought to reverse and that ultimately became her undoing as she turned a Labour motion on that matter into a confidence vote in her government.
On paper, she won, but the motion triggered her downfall in the chaos that ensued around that vote.
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What’s almost more significant is that in the summer leadership race, Mr Sunak told Sky News that he supported fracking where local people approved of it.
His desire then to row back from this is a sign that he doesn’t want to rock the boat either with Conservative MPs or the public when it comes to testing this mandate.
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Sunak ‘stands by manifesto’ pledge on fracking
That has a read across too for the pensions triple lock – the promise to lift pensions by inflation, average wages or 2.5% depending on what’s highest.
An inflation-linked increase would cost the Treasury £5.7bn, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).
But it’s hard to see how on November 17 Mr Sunak does anything but.
He might have fallen out with Boris Johnson, but he’s tied to his predecessor’s plan.
Ms Truss was brought down because she didn’t respect the limit of her mandate.
Mr Sunak knows sticking to it will be his best chance of surviving, not just with his party, but with a thoroughly fed up country too.
At least 10 people have been killed after a fire broke out at a retirement home in northern Spain in the early hours of this morning, officials have said.
A further two people were seriously injured in the blaze at the residence in the town of Villafranca de Ebro in Zaragoza, according to the Spanish news website Diario Sur.
Two people remain in a critical condition following the blaze. Pic: AP
They remain in a critical condition, while several others received treatment for smoke inhalation.
Firefighters were alerted to the blaze at the residence – the Jardines de Villafranca – at 5am (4am UK time) on Friday.
Several residents were treated for smoke inhalation. Pic: AP
Those who were killed in the fire died from smoke inhalation, Spanish newspaper Heraldo reported.
The residence is home to 82 elderly residents.
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The blaze started in one of the rooms, Fernando Beltran, the national government’s top official in the region, told reporters.
All of the victims were elderly residents, he added.
Relatives wait for news outside the care home. Pic: AP
Fire crews, paramedics and police officers remain on site, said a spokesperson for the regional government of Aragon who confirmed the fatalities.
It took firefighters several hours to extinguish the blaze, they said.
The cause of the fire is unknown and is being investigated.
UN climate talks are “no longer fit for purpose” and should only be hosted by countries who are trying to give up fossil fuels, veterans of the process have said.
An open letter to the United Nations, signed by former UN chief Ban Ki-moon, made a dramatic intervention in the 29th COP climate summit, under way in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Frustration over petrostate hosts – following last year’s summit in UAE – as well as the influence of fossil fuel lobbyists, prohibitive costs, and slow progress have been mounting in recent years.
The letter acknowledges the strides COPs have made on ramping up climate policies.
“But it is now clear that the COP is no longer fit for purpose,” the authors said.
“Its current structure simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity.”
The letter’s 22 signatories also include former Ireland President Mary Robinson and Christiana Figueres, former head of the UN climate body (UNFCCC) that runs the annual COP summits.
It called for the process to be streamlined and for countries to be held accountable for their promises.
Sky News analysis has found only “marginal” progress has been made since the “historic” pledge from COP28 last year to transition away from fossil fuels.
Pic: AP Photo/Peter Dejong
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The letter also called for “strict eligibility criteria” for host countries to exclude those “who do not support the phase out/transition away from fossil energy”.
This year’s host country, petrostate Azerbaijan, has been engulfed in controversy.
Its authoritarian president Ilham Aliyev used his opening address to criticise western hypocrisy and praise oil and gas as a “gift” from God. His criticism of France, with whom relations have long been tense, drove the French minister to cancel a trip to the summit.
While the government and its COP team run separate operations, host countries are supposed to smooth over disagreements and find consensus between the almost 200 countries gathered.
COP presidencies are also nominating themselves to be climate leaders and throwing their own countries under the spotlight.
Azerbaijan is a small developing country that relies significantly on oil and gas revenues. But it has made slow progress on building out clean power – getting just 1.5% of its energy from clean sources – and led a harsh crackdown on critics in the run up to the COP.
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Azerbaijan team ‘optimistic’ about talks
In an interview with Sky News on Sunday, its lead negotiator Yalchin Rafiyev was unable to say whether Azerbaijan preferred to extract all its oil and gas or seek another, cleaner economic pathway – hard though that would be.
In a news conference yesterday, Mr Rafiyev said the president had been “quite clear” and he would not comment further.
“We have opened our doors to everybody,” he added.
Some diplomats here have hinted that Azerbaijan’s presidency team mean well but might be a little out of their depth. They have never been out in front at previous COPs, but they also only had a year to prepare for their turn hosting the mighty summit.
“My sense of this is that they’re a little underprepared, a little overwhelmed and a little bit short,” said one, speaking anonymously, as is customary for diplomats trying to maintain good relations.
“But I’m not sure that that’s politics. It might just be bandwidth and preparation and things like that.”
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Different regions in the world take turns to host a COP. This year it was up to Eastern Europe, but the selection process took longer than usual due to tensions over Russia’s war in Ukraine and between Azerbaijan and rival Armenia.
Achim Steiner of the UN Development Programme, called it “troubling” that some countries face questions over their host roles.
“Are there countries that are by definition good hosts and others are bad hosts?” he asked.
“In the United Nations, we maintain the principle of every nation, first of all, should have a right to be heard.
“Labels are not always the fairest way of describing a nation. Some of the largest oil producers have hosted this COP in the past, and seemingly this seemed to be a perfectly acceptable phenomenon.”
COP stands for “conference of the parties” and refers to countries (“parties”) who have signed the underlying climate treaty.
Azerbaijan’s COP29 team and the UN’s climate body have been contacted with a request to comment.
World
Body pulled from mine after police cut off supplies to ‘smoke out’ thousands of illegal miners
A body has been recovered from a South African mine after police cut off basic supplies in an effort to force around 4,000 illegal miners to resurface.
The body has emerged from the closed gold mine in the northwest town of Stilfontein a day after South Africa’s government said it would not help the illegal miners.
Around 20 people have surfaced from the mineshaft this week as police wait nearby to arrest all those appearing from underground.
It comes a day after a cabinet minister said the government was trying to “smoke them [the miners] out”.
The move is part of the police’s “Close the Hole” operation, whereby officers cut off supplies of food, water and other basic necessities to get those who have entered illegally to come out.
Local reports suggest the supply routes were cut off at the mine around two months ago, with relatives of the miners seen in the area as the stand-off continues.
Relatives of miners and community members wait at the mine shaft. Pic: AP
A decomposed body was brought up on Thursday, with pathologists on the scene, police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe said.
It comes after South African cabinet minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told reporters on Wednesday that the government would not send any help to the illegal miners, known in the country as zama zamas, because they are involved in a criminal act.
“We are not sending help to criminals. We are going to smoke them out. They will come out. Criminals are not to be helped; criminals are to be prosecuted. We didn’t send them there,” Ms Ntshavheni said.
An aerial view of a mineshaft. Pic: AP
Senior police and defence officials are expected to visit the area on Friday to “reinforce the government’s commitment to bringing this operation to a safe and lawful conclusion”, according to a media advisory from the police.
In the last few weeks, over 1,000 miners have surfaced at various mines in South Africa’s North West province, where police have cut off supplies.
Many of the miners were reported to be weak, hungry and sickly after going for weeks without basic supplies.
Illegal mining remains common in South Africa’s old gold-mining areas, with miners going into closed shafts to dig for any possible remaining deposits.
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Relatives of miners and community members wait near the mine shaft. Pic: AP
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The illegal miners are often from neighbouring countries, and police say the illegal operations involve larger syndicates that employ the miners.
Their presence in closed mines has also created problems with nearby communities, which complain that the illegal miners commit crimes ranging from robberies to rape.
Illegal mining groups are known to be heavily armed and disputes between rival groups sometimes result in fatal confrontations.
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