Rishi Sunak looks set for another battle with his own MPs as a growing number of rebels join Boris Johnson and Liz Truss in trying to force him to drop a ban on new onshore wind farms.
Former party chairman Sir Jake Berry added his name on Sunday to the list of MPs backing the bid, while Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove is also understood to want an end to the ban.
Mr Sunak scrapped a move by predecessor Liz Truss to relax the rules around onshore wind, saying he wants to prioritise building turbines offshore instead.
Simon Clarke, a cabinet minister under Ms Truss, has tabled an amendment to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill demanding the current moratorium on new onshore wind farmdevelopments be lifted.
Former prime ministers Ms Truss and Mr Johnson are among more than 20 Conservatives supporting the pro-wind legislation, as well as Alok Sharma, who was the president of the COP26 climate summit.
Elliot Colburn and former ministers Robert Courts and Kevin Foster will also add their signatures to the amendment, the PA news agency has been told.
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Along with private backers, a rebel source said 30 Tories have got behind Mr Clarke’s bid – coming close to eroding Mr Sunak’s working majority of 69 votes if other opposition groups join Labour in voting for the ban to be overturned.
Sir Jake said Mr Gove’s divergent opinion “spells real danger for my government”, suggesting it is a “first crack in the wall” of discipline for Mr Sunak.
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“Boris Johnson famously used to call wind turbines the white satanic mills of the North of England when they were building them all over my constituency,” he told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme.
“He’s changed his mind on them; I to a large extent have changed my mind, and I’m going to be supporting Simon Clarke.”
The former minister, who was awarded a knighthood by Mr Johnson, argued that soaring energy bills are the key reason to invest more in renewables.
Mr Johnson did not seek to overturn the effective moratorium on new onshore wind projects, in place since 2015, during his time in Number 10.
Demands for a re-think on the policy have increased since Russia invaded Ukraine, but other Tories oppose wind farms, with cabinet minister Grant Shapps previously branding them “eyesores”.
Mr Gove, who as levelling up secretary is in charge of planning policy, has previously spoken of the need for more onshore wind power.
A source close to him said: “We will work constructively with colleagues as we are doing with all amendments.”
Labour said it is planning to back the Clarke amendment to pile the pressure on Mr Sunak, even though the party believes it “swaps the ban for what is still a highly restrictive planning regime on onshore wind”.
Shadow climate change secretary Ed Miliband said: “Onshore wind is the cheapest, cleanest energy we have. The Tories’ ban has kept bills high and damaged our energy security. Rishi Sunak’s weakness means he’s having to be dragged to scrap it by his backbenches. He should swallow his pride and U-turn now.”
The rebellion spells yet more trouble for Mr Sunak and the Conservative Party.
Writing in the Sunday Times, senior Tory MP Sajid Javid attacked the rebels, saying: “Tearing down the existing planning system and failing to build anything credible to replace it would be a colossal failure of political leadership.”
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7:05
Sophy Ridge talks to Tory MP Theresa Villiers who led a rebellion via an amendment to the government’s levelling up bill
Meanwhile, Mr Sunak is seeing a steady stream of Conservative MPs – many of whom are relatively young and were thought to have bright careers ahead – announce their exit plans.
Speaking to Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday, Transport Secretary Mark Harper insisted they are setting out their positions now because Tories have been given until 5 December to make a decision due to the review into constituency boundaries.
“You are going to see those all bunched together so I don’t think there’s anything particularly to write home about that.”
The departures come amid mounting concerns over the party’s performance in opinion polls.
An Ipsos poll conducted earlier this week revealed how the Conservative’s popularity had plunged to 26%, its lowest score for 15 years.
On dire polling the Tories are struggling to bounce back from, Mr Harper said: “If we are being realistic about it, we are not going to turn things around overnight.”
At least 60 people have been killed in Israeli strikes across Gaza, health staff have said.
A dozen people were killed near the Palestine Stadium in Gaza City, which was sheltering displaced people, along with eight more living in apartments, according to staff at Shifa hospital, where the bodies were brought.
Six others were killed in southern Gaza when a strike hit their tent in Muwasi, according to the hospital.
Image: Palestinians gather at the site of a tent camp that was hit by an Israeli strike. Pic: Reuters
The strikes, which began late on Friday and continued into Saturday morning, came as US President Donald Trump said there could be a ceasefire agreement within the next week.
“We’re working on Gaza and trying to get it taken care of,” he told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday.
Image: The site of a strike on Gaza City on Friday. Pic: Reuters/Mahmoud Issa
Ron Dermer, Israel’s minister for strategic affairs, will arrive in Washington next week for talks on Gaza’s ceasefire, Iran and other subjects, an official told the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
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27:55
Doctors on the frontline
The war in Gaza was sparked after Hamas launched its attack on Israel in October 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251 people.
Some 50 hostages remain in Gaza, with fewer than half of them still believed to be alive.
More than 56,000 Palestinians have been killed during the war, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
The UN has also warned that people in Gaza are “starving”, with Israel allowing a trickle of supplies into the territory since mid-May after blocking all food for more than two months.
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3:06
‘Gaza disinformation campaign is deliberate’
Palestinians have been shot at and killed while on their way to get food at aid sites, according to Gaza’s health officials and witnesses.
Israel’s military said it was investigating incidents in which civilians had been harmed while approaching the sites.
Thousands of people have taken to the streets in Tehran to mourn top military commanders, nuclear scientists and others killed in Iran’s 12-day war with Israel.
Iran’s state-run Press TV said the event – dubbed the “funeral procession of the Martyrs of Power” – was held for a total of 60 people, including four women and four children.
It said at least 16 scientists and 10 senior commanders were among the dead, including the head of the Revolutionary Guard General Hossein Salami and the head of the guard’s ballistic missile programme, General Amir Ali Hajizadeh.
Their coffins were driven on trucks into the Iranian capital’s Azadi Square adorned with their pictures as well as rose petals and flowers, as crowds waved Iranian flags.
Image: Mourners at the funeral procession in Tehran. Pic: Majid Asgaripour/WANA/Reuters
Mourners dressed in black, while chants of “death to America” and “death to Israel” could be heard.
Attending the funeral were Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and other senior figures, including Ali Shamkhani who was seriously wounded during the conflict and is an adviser to Iran‘s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
There was no immediate sign of the supreme leader in the state broadcast of the funeral.
Image: A woman holds a picture of Iran’s supreme leader. Pic: Reuters
Israel, the only Middle Eastern country widely believed to have nuclear weapons, said its war against Iran aimed to prevent Tehran from developing its own nuclear weapons.
The US launched strikes on three nuclear enrichment sites in Iran, which Donald Trump said left them “obilterated”.
The Iranian government denies having a nuclear weapons programme and the UN nuclear watchdog, which carries out inspections in Iran, has said it has “no credible indication” of an active, coordinated weapons programme in the country.
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2:00
New details on US attacks on Iran
Over the almost two weeks of fighting, Israel claimed it killed around 30 Iranian commanders and 11 nuclear scientists, before a ceasefire went into effect on Tuesday.
By a majority of 6-3, the highest court in the land has ruled that federal judges have been overreaching in their authority by blocking or freezing the executive orders issued by the president.
Over the last few months, a series of presidential actions by Trump have been blocked by injunctions issued by federal district judges.
The federal judges, branded “radical leftist lunatics” by the president, have ruled on numerous individual cases, most involving immigration.
They have then applied their rulings as nationwide injunctions – thus blocking the Trump administration’s policies.
Image: Donald Trump addresses a White House news conference. Pic: AP
“It was a grave threat to democracy frankly,” the president said at a hastily arranged news conference in the White House briefing room.
“Instead of merely ruling on the immediate case before them, these judges have attempted to dictate the law for the entire nation,” he said.
In simple terms, this ruling – from a Supreme Court weighted towards conservative judges – frees up the president to push on with his agenda, less opposed by the courts.
“This is such a big day,” the president said.
“It gives power back to people that should have it, including Congress, including the presidency, and it only takes bad power away from judges. It takes bad power, sick power and unfair power.
“And it’s really going to be… a very monumental decision.”
Image: The Supreme Court on Capitol Hill in Washington DC. File pic: AP
The country’s most senior member of the Democratic Party was to the point with his reaction to the ruling.
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer called it “an unprecedented and terrifying step toward authoritarianism, a grave danger to our democracy, and a predictable move from this extremist MAGA court”.
In a statement, Schumer wrote: “By weakening the power of district courts to check the presidency, the court is not defending the constitution – it’s defacing it.
“This ruling hands Donald Trump yet another green light in his crusade to unravel the foundations of American democracy.”
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2:57
Trump’s ‘giant’ Supreme Court win
Federal power in the US is, constitutionally, split equally between the three branches of government – the executive branch (the presidency), the legislative branch (Congress) and the judiciary (the Supreme Court and other federal courts).
They are designed to ensure a separation of power and to ensure that no single branch becomes too powerful.
This ruling was prompted by a case brought over an executive order issued by President Trump on his inauguration day to end birthright citizenship – that constitutional right to be an American citizen if born here.
A federal judge froze the decision, ruling it to be in defiance of the 14th amendment of the constitution.
The Supreme Court has deferred its judgment on this particular case, instead ruling more broadly on the powers of the federal judges.
The court was divided along ideological lines, with conservatives in the majority and liberals in dissent.
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In her dissent, liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote: “As I understand the concern, in this clash over the respective powers of two coordinate branches of government, the majority sees a power grab – but not by a presumably lawless executive choosing to act in a manner that flouts the plain text of the constitution.
“Instead, to the majority, the power-hungry actors are… (wait for it)… the district courts.”
Another liberal Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, described the majority ruling by her fellow justices as: “Nothing less than an open invitation for the government to bypass the constitution.”
Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who Trump appointed during his first term, shifting the balance of left-right power in the court, led this particular ruling.
Writing for the majority, she said: “When a court concludes that the executive branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.”
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The focus now for those who deplore this decision will be to apply ‘class action’ – to file lawsuits on behalf of a large group of people rather than applying a single case to the whole nation.
There is no question though that the president and his team will feel significantly emboldened to push through their policy agenda with fewer blocks and barriers.