Suella Braverman launches attack on Rishi Sunak saying he broke promises he made to her in secret – UK politics live

The Conservative MP Danny Kruger has told GB News that the appointment of David Cameron as foreign secretary in the reshuffle sends “a very confusing signal” to the party’s supporters. In an interview expanding on the statement he issued earlier with Miriam Cates (see 2.11pm), Kruger said:

[Cameron] led the remain campaign and here he’s now in charge of our relations with Europe.

But as long as he follows the prime minister’s lead, as long as he genuinely honours the mandate that we have as a government … I’m not concerned about his appointment.

Personally, I do think it sends a very confusing signal to our voters. And overall the shape of the government now is not where we think it should be.

Kruger also said he thought the reshuffle showed the government was going back to “the politics of decline”. Asked to rate the reshuffle, he said:

I’m going to give it a 5 out of 10 – some good people, some great people, but I’m afraid we’re going back into the politics of decline. That is our concern.

Where is the energy and the spirit of change that 2019 represented? I worry that we’re going in the wrong direction now, even though all the people involved are tremendous and we support them.

David Cameron, the new foreign secretary, has announced sanctions against four senior Hamas leaders and two of the militant group’s financiers.

In a statement accompanying the announcement, Cameron said:

We will continue to use every tool at our disposal to disrupt the abhorrent activity of this terrorist organisation, working with the United States and our other allies, making it harder for them to operate and isolating them on the world stage.

The Palestinian people are victims of Hamas too. We stand in solidarity with them and will continue to support humanitarian pauses to allow significantly more lifesaving aid to reach Gaza.

Voters overwhelmingly support Rishi Sunak’s decision to sack Suella Braverman, but are more likely than not to think that bringing back David Cameron was the wrong decision, according to new polling from Ipsos. This is from Cameron Garrett, who works for the polling company.

The full findings are here. Commenting on the findings, Keiran Pedley, director of politics at Ipsos, said:

The appointment of David Cameron as foreign secretary appears to divide opinion – although those voting Conservative in 2019 are more positive. The public hold generally unfavourable views of his time in office, especially regarding UK-EU relations, public services and how his government managed immigration.

In this context, it is perhaps not surprising that whilst some target voters feel he will improve the competency of the current government (including 4 in 10 2019 Lib Dem voters), few think his appointment will have a significant positive impact on the Conservatives’ prospects at the next general election.

63% of members of new cabinet attended private school, Sutton Trust says

Richard Adams

The Sutton Trust, a charity supporting social mobility, has done its analysis of which schools and universities the new cabinet attended, with all four holders of the so-called great offices of state – prime minister, chancellor, foreign secretary and home secretary – having attended private schools, the first time this has happened since 1964, under Alec Douglas-Home.

The analysis finds that Sunak’s latest cabinet is little different to his previous administrations, with 63% having gone to private schools, 53% having attended Oxford or Cambridge universities, and 41% having been both privately and Oxbridge educated.

The privately educated proportion of ministers is well above the 30% in Theresa May’s cabinet, or the 50% in David Cameron’s 2015 cabinet. The last Labour government’s cabinets had around 30% of ministers who had been privately educated.

The trust also found that the proportion of Sunak’s cabinet ministers educated at comprehensive schools is the same as Liz Truss’s cabinet, at 19%, but lower than Boris Johnson’s first cabinet, with 27%. In Sunak’s latest cabinet, 16% went to a selective grammar school.

Rishi Sunak has been accused by two high-profile backbenchers of abandoning the voters who gave the Tories their large majority in 2019 with his rehuffle yesterday.

Miriam Cates and Danny Kruger, who co-chair the New Conservatives, a group of rightwing, socially conservative Tory MPs, made the comment in an open statement they have just released.

While Cates and Kruger stress their personal support for Sunak, they are withering about his strategy, and they say they will be raising funds to ensure more like-minded Tories are elected to parliament.

The statement does not name Suella Braverman, who was sacked as home secretary, but Cates and Kruger were vocal in their support for her last week and the New Conservatives are seen as a base from which Braverman will launch a leadership campaign if the party loses the next election.

In their statement, Cates and Kruger say:

We are concerned that yesterday’s reshuffle indicates a major change in the policy direction of the government. The Conservative party now looks like it is deliberately walking away from the coalition of voters who brought us into power with a large majority in 2019.

That election, building on the victory of the leave vote in the Brexit referendum of 2016, represented the realignment of our politics. In 2019 voters across Britain – from our rural heartlands to the industrial towns of the north and Midlands – rejected the declinist consensus among the parties. This consensus had brought two decades of wage stagnation, asset inflation, high taxation, regional inequality, record rates of immigration, a failed foreign policy oriented towards China and the European Union, and a cultural agenda which denigrated the history of Britain and even denied the reality of biological sex. The public voted – and we promised – to change this.

Until yesterday, we held on to the hope that the government still believed in the realignment – that they would work to rebalance our economy, reorient our foreign policy, radically reduce migration, and restore common sense in our schools and universities. That hope – the project of the realignment – has now dwindled. In political terms, it appears the leadership has decided to abandon the voters who switched to us last time, sacrificing the seats we won from Labour in 2019 in the hope of shoring up support elsewhere.

In the statement Cates and Kruger also restate the New Conservatives’ call for the UK to leave the European convention on human rights, a cause championed by Braverman. And they say their group will be raising funds to help support the election of MPs and candidates “who agree with the New Conservative mission”.

It is understood that other rightwing Tories may be speaking out about the reshuffle in the coming days. Sunak is unlikely to be overly concerned about the Cates/Kruger intervention. The New Conservatives have only 14 MPs listed as supporters on their website, and rightwing papers, even those who admire Braverman’s views, have been broadly supportive of the reshuffle. (See 11.42am.)

Last night Dame Andrea Jenkyns, a rightwinger loyal to Boris Johnson who is not listed as a supporter of the New Conservatives, announced she had written to the chair of the 1922 Committee calling for a vote of no confidence in Sunak and posted her letter on X. She said that Sunak’s treatment of Johnson was “unforgivable” and that Sunak did not have public support. But no other Tory MP has publicly said they agree.

To trigger a confidence vote in Sunak, 53 Tories would have to submit letters to Sir Graham Brady, the 1922 Committee chair. While a few more MPs may have submitted letters in private, the Sunak critics are not thought to be anywhere near that total.

Labour has said that short humanitarian pauses would not enough to alleviate suffering in Gaza.

David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, made the statement in the Commons, in response to a statement from Andrew Mitchell, the development minister, on the Israel-Hamas war. He was speaking ahead of a tricky vote for the party in the Commons tomorrow, when there is a risk of Labour MPs rebelling and voting in favour of a full ceasefire.

Addressing Mitchell, Lammy said:

Gaza is in a humanitarian catastrophe, more than 1.5 million people have been displaced, there are desperate shortages of basic essentials, does the minister agree that the short pauses in the north are clearly not enough?

Gazans need aid now, they need medicines now, they need water now, they need food now, they need fuel now, a full comprehensive and immediate humanitarian pause in fighting across the whole of Gaza now to alleviate Palestinian suffering and for Hamas terrorists to release the hostages.

Mitchell said that all deaths of civilians “were to be profoundly regretted”.

He also told MPs that the UK was considering using “air and maritime options” to get more aid into Gaza. He said:

We also are urging the Israeli government to increase humanitarian access including by Rafah and by opening up the Kerem Shalom crossing.

At this point we assess that land presently offers the most viable and safe way to get humanitarian aid into Gaza in the quantities needed, but we are also considering air and maritime options, including through our bases in Cyprus.

Steven Morris

The hunger marches of the 1920s and 1930s are being emulated this month by modern day food campaigners in the south Wales county borough of Rhondda Cynon Taf.

Marchers will depart from the Cynon, Rhondda and Taf valleys on Saturday 25 November. They will meet at Pontypridd for a rally calling on the UK government to enshrine the right to food in law. Speakers are to include the Wales football legend Neville Southall and manager of Merthyr Cynon foodbank Cleide Correia.

AJ Le Brun from Rhondda Cynon Taf Trades Union Council said:

Like our forebears did in the 1920s, we are again suffering food insecurity and abject poverty. In one of the richest countries in the world, that is an absolute disgrace.

Communications Workers Union rep Jason Richards added: “We will also be collecting for brilliant local food banks on the day, so please bring a tin to share if you are able.”

At cabinet James Cleverly, the new home secretary, outlined some of the “possible scenarios” that might emerge when the supreme court delivers its judgment tomorrow on the government’s Rwanda deportation policy, No 10 said.

While the supreme court is in essence being asked to decide whether or not the policy is lawful, in practice the ruling is expected to be much more nuanced.

In a readout of what was said at cabinet, the PM’s spokesperson also said Rishi Sunak told his colleagues the UK was already “bucking the global trend” in terms of addressing illegal migration. The spokesperson said:

Ahead of the supreme court judgment on the Rwanda migration partnership tomorrow, the prime minister highlighted significant progress made by the government to stop the boats.

He said that the UK was bucking the global trend by significantly reducing the flow of illegal immigrants into the country while other countries continue to see their numbers rise.

Alongside this, he said we are on track to eliminate the asylum legacy backlog and were making good progress on curbing the use of hotels to house migrants.

The home secretary updated cabinet ahead of the court judgments and on the wider work to curb illegal migration, including through more returns agreements, most recently with Georgia and Albania.

Rishi Sunak is meeting Sir Mark Rowley, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, today to discuss the policing of the pro-Palestinian march and the events at the Cenotaph in London at the weekend, No 10 said. The PM’s spokesperson said:

The public rightly expect that the full force of the law is used to bear down on some of the shocking scenes of criminality we saw over the weekend, whether it was EDL protesters or those seemingly supporting Hamas, a proscribed terrorist organisation.

The prime minister continues to be grateful to police officers, a number of whom were injured over the weekend. They have an extremely difficult job to do and he was grateful to them for doing it.

The spokesperson said the PM would be speaking to Rowley to “get a shared understanding of how to approach these protests should there be significant protests in the future”. He went on:

It’s important that police have the powers they need to carry out their role and we will continue to keep that under review.

Yesterday the Sun reported that Sunak was considering tightening the laws around protests in the light of concerns about demonstrations in London in recent weeks. In their story Michael Hamilton and Harry Cole said:

The Sun understands the clampdown would see:

– New laws drawn up to stop yobs climbing on statues, scaffolding and bus stops during protests.

– The law around fireworks, smoke bombs and flares tightened up.

– The threshold at which cops can ban marches and protests due to safety concerns lowered.

– The law on glorifying terrorists like Hamas is also to be tightened as cops say it is too vague to enforce currently.

Ministers are also looking at ways to restrict certain chants like “from the river to the sea” made at protests by working with organisers to set conditions for approving demonstrations.

The story, which has not been confirmed by the government, appeared less than a week after ministers supposedly set out their legislative agenda for the next 12 months in the king’s speech, which did not include these measures.

The Downing Street lobby briefing has just finished, and the PM’s spokesperson told reporters that Suella Braverman’s plan to include a ban on charities distributing tents to homeless people in cities will not be included in the criminal justice bill.

The bill, which was mentioned in the king’s speech last week, is being presented to parliament today. The weekend before the speech, the Financial Times said Braverman was pushing for it to include a ban on tents being given to homeless people in cities, because Braverman argued this encouraged rough sleeping. In tweets defending her plan she described rough sleeping as a “lifestyle choice”.

It now appears that it is this that finally persuaded Rishi Sunak to sack her, not the row about her unauthorised article criticising the Met published in the Times last Thursday. At that point Sunak had already met David Cameron to discuss his taking a job in government in the reshuffle that would see Braverman being replaced.

Last week, after the king’s speech was published, No 10 indicated that there was still a debate going on about whether or not to include the tents plan in the text of the criminal justice bill.

Today the spokesperson said that the proposal was not in the legislation being published. He told reporters:

[The proposal is] not going to be introduced in the criminal justice bill. I’m not aware of any plans for its introduction elsewhere.

Welsh government launches consultation on reforming council tax system to make it fairer for people in least valuable homes

Steven Morris

Council tax bills could increase for up to 450,000 homes in Wales under proposed reforms from the Welsh government as it says it is trying to make the system fairer for people living in the least valuable properties.

The Labour-led government is launching a consultation on how it should reform the system but says it is not going to increase the amount of council tax collected overall – about £2.4bn a year.

Under two of its proposals, bills would go up for three out of 10 of the country’s 1.5m homes and fall or stay the same for the others.

Homes are to be revalued for the first time in 20 years and new bands could be created. The last revaluation in Wales took place in 2003. In England and Scotland, bills are still based on property values from 1991.

The changes are part of the cooperation deal between the Labour government and Plaid Cymru. The Welsh government said:

The current system is 20 years out of date, and it is unfair, with people living in homes in the lowest council tax bands paying a relatively higher amount of council tax in relation to the value of their homes, than people who live in higher value homes.

The Welsh Conservative shadow local government minister, Sam Rowlands claimed the government was “stealthily” planning to hike up council tax for “hard-working people”.