Home The Conservatives at their party conference examined the four surviving candidates for leader – Robert Jenrick, Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat – with the prospect of two being thrown out of the ballot by MPs next week and the other two being put to the party membership on 2 November. Rishi Sunak, the last Conservative prime minister, urged the conference optimistically: ‘We must end the division, the backbiting, the squabbling.’ Jeremy Hunt, the former chancellor, said: ‘One of the biggest lies we’ve had since Labour came to office is this nonsense about having the worst economic inheritance since the second world war.’ Treasury officials said that Labour plans to abolish two concessions made by the previous government to non- doms might not raise the forecast £1 billion, or any money at all. Michael Ancram, the Conservative politician who became the Marquess of Lothian, died aged 79. Dame Maggie Smith, the actress, died aged 89.
R osie Duffield, the MP for Canterbury, resigned the Labour whip, saying in a letter to the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, that since the election ‘the revelations of hypocrisy have been staggering and increasingly outrageous’, citing his ‘inexplicably accepting expensive personal gifts’ while holding down social benefits. A household in England, Wales or Scotland would see its annual energy bill rise from this month by about £149. The last coal power station, at Ratcliffe-on- Soar, Nottinghamshire, stopped generating electricity. Simon Case, aged 45, is to resign
6
as cabinet secretary by the end of the year, a decision ‘solely to do with health and nothing to do with anything else’.
Baroness Warsi announced she was leaving the Conservative party; she had posted a photograph of herself drinking from a coconut to celebrate the acquittal of Marieha Hussain, a pro-Palestinian protestor, of a racially aggravated public order offence by holding a placard depicting Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman as coconuts. Lord Khan, the faith minister, said that the definition of Islamophobia by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims (‘a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness’) ‘is not in line with the Equality Act 2010, which defines race in terms of colour, nationality and national or ethnic origins’. Iustin Dobre, 37, and Mark Mitchell, 34, were jailed for six years and Milan Zamostny, 30, for five years and four months for setting fire to a double-decker bus at Harehills, Leeds, in July. In the week to 1 October, only 79 migrants arrived in England in small boats, due to bad weather.
Abroad I srael launched a ground invasion of Lebanon, which the Prime Minister, Najib Mikati, said had displaced a million people. Iran then launched about 180 missiles at Israel, of which the United States had issued a warning and helped to intercept. British forces supported Israel. A Palestinian in the West Bank was killed in the missile attack. Israel’s incursion came three days after an Israeli air strike on the Beirut suburb of Dahieh killed
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader since 1992 of Hezbollah, the Shia armed movement (regarded as terrorists by Britain, America and other countries). The Israeli strike took place just after Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, addressed the UN General Assembly in New York, declaring that Israel would be ‘degrading Hezbollah until all our objectives are met’. America had pushed for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. Also killed, along with perhaps 20 Hezbollah commanders, was Abbas Nilforushan, the deputy commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Hezbollah fired more rockets into northern Israel. Israel also carried out air strikes against the Iran-backed Houthi rebel movement in Yemen.
Tens of thousands of dockworkers went on strike at American ports. Hurricane Helene left 150 dead in the American South. At least nine died and 48 were missing after a vessel carrying 87 migrants sank off the island of El Hierro in the Canaries. Sir Keir Starmer met Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, to talk about fish and allied issues. A SpaceX capsule docked at the International Space Station ready to return two stranded astronauts to Earth.
Austria’s far-right Freedom party won the highest percentage of votes, at 29.2 per cent, against 26.5 per cent for the conservative People’s party. Three days after becoming Japan’s Prime Minister, Shigeru Ishiba announced a snap election for 27 October. Mount Everest is getting a twelfth of an inch higher each year, according to researchers at UCL. CSH
5 2024 . . .
