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There is plenty of bemusement, irritation and anger in some quarters of the Conservative Party as to why Nadhim Zahawi is still in post. 

Revelations that the party chairman reportedly paid nearly £5m to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to settle a tax dispute, and pay a penalty over around £27m of wealth on which he did not initially pay tax is, for some MPs, a closed case rather than something that needs further investigation.

As one minister pointed out to me on Wednesday, what really mattered here was not the conflict of interest of Mr Zahawi being the chancellor while he was in dispute with the HMRC or what the PM knew when.

What matters here is the naked optics of a cabinet minister receiving around £27m that he didn’t initially pay tax on when people were struggling to make ends meet.

So while the prime minister on Wednesday spoke of following “due process” in determining whether the cabinet minister had broken the ministerial code, the public is more likely to have decided Mr Zahawi had not followed due process of paying his taxes – as they have to do every year – and drawn their own conclusions.

For his part, Mr Zahawi is clear that it was a “careless” error, the tax he owed was paid and the matter settled.

But the sight of Sir Keir Starmer taking easy shots at the prime minister for not asking Mr Zahawi to stand aside over the whole affair was hard for some to stomach.

More on Nadhim Zahawi

Many MPs have concluded the party chairman is going to have to stand down over this affair anyway, and the investigation into the matter by the PM’s independent ethics advisor is only drawing out the pain.

“Many people in the party think that the situation is unsustainable and will only end one way,” is how one senior party figure put it to me on Wednesday.

“The point here is that the public sees a minister with £27m who didn’t pay his tax.”

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Rishi Sunak answers Zahawi question at PMQs

There are myriad explanations as to why Mr Sunak hasn’t sacked Mr Zahawi.

His team argues that the prime minister promised to do things properly and “there is a process to follow”.

He is also in a bit of a bind given that he neither sacked nor suspended Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab over the eight bullying allegations he is now under investigation over, so it would have been hard to treat Mr Zahawi differently.

There is also chatter that he doesn’t have the authority just to sack the party chairman without a fight or backlash, and instead has to do it following a procedure.

But the situation is causing problems.

Read more:
No 10 confirms Rishi Sunak has never paid tax penalty

What did Nadhim Zahawi do?

Nadhim Zahawi arrives at the Conservative Party head office
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Nadhim Zahawi arrives at the Conservative Party head office

‘Job too big’ for Sunak

Sir Keir used it to reiterate his “weak prime minister” attack line on Wednesday and then went further to suggest that the combination of internal scandals and the problems in the NHS is evidence that the “job is too big” for Mr Sunak.

For a prime minister who has styled himself as a competent technocrat getting on with delivering, this is a very uncomfortable jibe that he will not want to stick.

It also calls into question the prime minister himself, both over his promise to lead a government of integrity and his own tax affairs.

Sir Keir was at it again on Wednesday, goading the prime minister over last year’s revelations that his wife Akshata Murty had in the past avoided tax in the UK by claiming non-dom status.

“We all know why [the PM’s] reluctant to ask his chairman about family affairs and tax avoidance,” remarked Sir Keir to the clear discomfort of the man sitting opposite him in the chamber.

Keir Starmer PMQs
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Sir Keir Starmer has used the Zahawi row to say Mr Sunak is incompetent

Conflict over tax affairs

One former senior minister told me they think it’s difficult for the PM to sack someone over tax affairs when his family had its own tax scandal last year and thinks Number 10 is keeping Mr Zahawi in place as a “human shield” to avoid the attention shifting to the PM’s tax affairs.

But the questions are now being directed to Mr Sunak’s door after he was forced to confirm publicly that he had never paid a penalty to the taxman over his own tax affairs.

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For the PM’s part, he might well believe the inquiry by his independent ethics advisor is the right way to handle the situation. But his approach means he is also having to field the political blows and burn through his own political capital over a scandal that many in his party think will end with Mr Zahawi having to resign anyway.

“When this sort of thing happens, there’s only one outcome and it’s just a matter of when,” one former cabinet minister told me this week.

A PM then prolonging the pain for him, his chairman and his party, as his reputation for integrity and competence takes another hit.

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Four more arrests made over Louvre heist as £76m haul remains missing

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Four more arrests made over Louvre heist as £76m haul remains missing

Four more arrests have been made by French police investigating the Louvre museum heist.

Two men and two women from the Paris region were detained on Tuesday, prosecutor Laure Beccuau said.

Ms Beccuau’s statement did not say what role the quartet are suspected of having played in the robbery. The two men are aged 38 and 39, and the two women are aged 31 and 40.

They are being interrogated by police, who can hold them for questioning for 96 hours.

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Louvre: How ‘heist of the century’ unfolded

The latest arrests come after investigating magistrates filed preliminary charges against three men and one woman who were arrested last month.

Some of the French Crown Jewels, worth an estimated £76m, were stolen in the audacious October raid.

The haul – which included a diamond and emerald necklace Napoleon gave to Empress Marie-Louise, jewels linked to 19th-century Queens Marie-Amelie and Hortense, and Empress Eugenie’s pearl and diamond tiara – has not been recovered.

The heist was pulled off in mere minutes last month – and took place while the Louvre was open to visitors, raising doubts over the credibility of the world’s most-visited museum as a guardian for its priceless works.

On Sunday 19 October, two men used a stolen furniture lift to access the second floor Galerie d’Apollon.

They then cracked open display cases with angle grinders before escaping with their loot and fleeing on the back of two scooters driven by accomplices.

Read more:
Louvre director offers to resign
Gallery closed as structure in ‘dire state’

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Moment thieves escape Louvre in jewel heist

The Paris prosecutor previously said the robbery appeared to be the work of small-time criminals rather than professional gangsters.

Speaking shortly after the heist, art detective Arthur Brand told Sky News that detectives faced a “race against time” to recover the stolen treasure.

“These crown jewels are so famous, you just cannot sell them,” Mr Brand said. “The only thing they can do is melt the silver and gold down, dismantle the diamonds, try to cut them. That’s the way they will probably disappear forever.

“They [the police] have a week. If they catch the thieves, the stuff might still be there. If it takes longer, the loot is probably gone and dismantled. It’s a race against time.”

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Zelenskyy is racing to beat Donald Trump’s peace plan deadline – but what will Russia do?

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Zelenskyy is racing to beat Donald Trump's peace plan deadline – but what will Russia do?

Washington woke up this morning to a flurry of developments on Ukraine.

It was the middle of the night in DC when a tweet dropped from Ukraine’s national security advisor, Rustem Umerov.

He said that the US and Ukraine had reached a “common understanding on the core terms of the agreement discussed in Geneva.”

He added that Volodymyr Zelenskyy would travel to America “at the earliest suitable date in November to complete final steps and make a deal with President Trump”.

Ukraine latest: ‘Delicate’ deal details must be sorted, White House says

By sunrise in Washington, a US official was using similar but not identical language to frame progress.

The official, speaking anonymously to US media, said that Ukraine had “agreed” to Trump’s peace proposal “with some minor details to be worked out”.

More on Donald Trump

In parallel, it’s emerged that talks have been taking place in Abu Dhabi. The Americans claim to have met both Russian and Ukrainian officials there, though the Russians have not confirmed attendance.

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Peace deal ‘agreement’: What we know

“I have nothing to say. We are following the media reports,” Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, told Russian state media.

Trump is due to travel to his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago tonight, where he will remain until Sunday.

He set a deadline of Thursday – Thanksgiving – for some sort of agreement on his plan.

We know the plan has been changed from its original form, but it’s clear that Zelenskyy wants to be seen to agree to something quickly – that would go down well with President Trump.

Read more:
US hails ‘tremendous progress’ on Ukraine peace plan

In full: Europe’s 28-point counter proposal

My sense is that Zelenskyy will try to get to Mar-a-Lago as soon as he can. Before Thursday would be a push but would meet Trump’s deadline.

It will then be left for the Russians to state their position on the revised document.

All indications are that they will reject it. But maybe the secret Abu Dhabi talks will yield something.

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Controversial US and Israeli-backed aid operation the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to close

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Controversial US and Israeli-backed aid operation the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to close

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a controversial US and Israeli-backed aid distribution group, has said it will permanently cease operations.

Set up as an alternative to United Nations aid programmes in May, GHF’s executive director John Acree said on Monday that it “succeeded in our mission of showing there’s a better way to deliver aid to Gazans”.

The foundation had already closed down aid distribution sites after US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan was agreed by Hamas and Israel in October.

The GHF which began operations in Gaza after an Israeli blockade of food deliveries, lasting nearly three months, was criticised by Palestinians, aid workers and health officials who said it forced people to risk their lives to reach the sites.

File pic: Reuters
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File pic: Reuters

According to witnesses and videos posted to social media, Israeli soldiers repeatedly opened fire at the sites, killing hundreds. The IDF denied this, saying it only fired warning shots as a crowd-control measure or if its troops were in danger.

In July, analysis from Sky News’ Data and Forensics team found that aid distributions by GHF were associated with a significant increase in deaths.

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Gaza deaths increase when aid sites open

MSF – also known as Doctors Without Borders – said in a report in August that the GHF sites “morphed into a laboratory of cruelty,” and described scenes there as “orchestrated killing”.

More on Gaza

‘We are proud,’ says GHF director

Mr Acree said in a statement through the GHF’s website that “from the outset, GHF’s goal was to meet an urgent need” and to hand over a successful aid operation to “the broader international community”.

The GHF would hand over its work to the US-led Civil-Military Coordination Center in Israel overseeing the Gaza ceasefire.

“We are winding down our operations as we have succeeded in our mission of showing there’s a better way to deliver aid to Gazans,” Mr Acree said.

File pic: Reuters
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File pic: Reuters

The GHF director added: “At a critical juncture, we are proud to have been the only aid operation that reliably and safely provided free meals directly to Palestinian people in Gaza, at scale and without diversion.

“From our very first day of operations, our mission was singular: feed civilians in desperate need. We built a new model that worked, saved lives, and restored dignity to civilians in Gaza.”

According to the GHF website, the group distributed more than three million food boxes, totalling 187 million meals, and supplied 1.1 million packs of Ready-to-Use Supplementary Food (RUSF) for malnourished children.

Read more:
Sky’s Adam Parsons sees Gaza destruction
Israel launches strikes on Gaza
Israel strikes Beirut for first time in months

Hamas welcomes GHF closure

In a statement, Hamas welcomed the closure of GHF and accused it of being a project that “engineered starvation” in partnership with Israel.

A Hamas spokesperson said: “Since its entry into the Gaza Strip, this foundation was part of the occupation’s security system, which adopted distribution mechanisms entirely disconnected from humanitarian principles, and created dangerous and degrading conditions for the dignity of the starving Palestinian people during their attempts to obtain a piece of bread, resulting in the killing and injury of thousands, through sniper operations and deliberate killing.”

They also called on international legal bodies to hold “this foundation and its officers accountable for their crimes against our people”.

US state department deputy spokesperson Tommy Piggot also said on X that the aid group “shared valuable lessons learned with us and our partners”.

“GHF’s model, in which Hamas could no longer loot and profit from stealing aid, played a huge role in getting Hamas to the table and achieving a ceasefire,” he added.

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