Starmer condemns ‘intolerable, racist’ riots during Northern Ireland visit – UK politics live | Politics

Severin Carrell

A senior Scottish minister has said his government will refuse to meet with Israeli officials until there is peace in Gaza after furious criticisms of a meeting earlier this month.

Angus Robertson, Scotland’s external affairs secretary, apologised on Monday after senior figures in the Scottish National party reacted angrily to his decision to hold a secret meeting with Daniela Grudsky Ekstein, Israel’s deputy ambassador to the UK.

Critics called for Robertson to be suspended and demanded an urgent debate at next month’s SNP conference, accusing him of trying to normalise relations with Israel.

One veteran Holyrood backbencher, Christine Grahame, reportedly protested to John Swinney, the first minister. She said her constituents were shocked the meeting had happened, and described Robertson as “a liability”.

Libby Brooks

Scottish Tory MSP Russell Findlay launched his campaign to become leader with a promise to inject “the Ruth Davidson mojo” back into the party while insisting he had “full faith” in the transparency of the contest after allegations last week suggesting a plot to install him a year ago.

Last Friday, another of the candidates standing to replace Douglas Ross as leader, Meghan Gallacher, resigned as the party’s deputy because of “deeply troubling” allegations about Ross’s conduct over the leadership contest.

And the four other leadership candidates – Murdo Fraser, Jamie Greene, Liam Kerr and Brian Whittle – issued a joint statement questioning the “transparency and fairness” of the contest.

The Telegraph last on Thursday reported that senior party figures alleged Ross had planned to quit as leader a year ago and install Findlay – who remains the favourite to replace him.

Findlay, who has insisted he knew nothing of this plot, said he was “disappointed” by last week’s revelations. “I know that if I do get the job this first thing I need to do it try and bring the group together and repair some of that damage.”

He said that, under his leadership, the party would “stand up for mainstream Scotland” and the world beyond Holyrood’s “fringe obsessions and right-on causes”, saying that he believed in decency, value for money in public services and protecting both women’s rights and free speech.

He also pledged to inject some “optimism, energy and enthusiasm” that had been the hallmark of former leader Davidson, who took the Scottish tories to second place at Holyrood.

There was a distinctly macho 70s undertone to the event, with Findlay being introduced on stage by supporters as a man who “always had great-looking girlfriends” and “fought back against the criminals” – to be fair, Findlay was attacked on his own doorstep in his previous role as a crime reporter.

Findlay also declined to answer a question about whether he had taken class A drugs in the past, but said he believed decriminalisation was the wrong approach to Scotland’s drug death crisis.

Prime minister Keir Starmer has described the race related disorder in Northern Ireland as “intolerable”.

He was speaking during a visit to the province and meeting frontline officers who dealt with the violence and members of ethnic minority communities targeted.

Starmer noted that many PSNI officers had sustained injuries trying to quell the recent unrest.

“My purpose was to say to them thank you for what they have done. We make big asks of them. They step up and they deserve our thanks,” he told reporters during his visit to the PSNI training college in east Belfast.

“I’ve also had the chance to speak with the PSNI senior leadership about the challenges that they face and the support that they need. And then, third, and very importantly, to speak to some of the communities most impacted about the fear that they have, the anxiety that they have about the recent disorder.

“The disorder is intolerable. It is incapable of justification. It’s clearly racist and it does not represent the modern, forward looking Northern Ireland that I know that this place is.”

The prime minister said he would work with the PSNI and all communities to address the disorder and its consequences.

There is a need to work on maximising the pro-Union vote in future elections, the DUP leader, Gavin Robinson, has said while paying tribute to outgoing UUP leader Doug Beattie.

In a statement reported by PA Media, Robinson said: “I called Doug earlier to give him my best wishes. As leaders within unionism, we had many shared interests. Whilst we differed over tactics, there is no doubt that Doug is a committed Unionist who wants to see Northern Ireland remain firmly within the United Kingdom.

“Divisions within unionism have handed seats to non-unionists at council level, in the NI Assembly and most recently in the Westminster elections.

“The election of a new UUP Leader is a matter for UUP members but top of my priorities for the new leader will be discussions about how we maximise the pro-Union vote in future elections.”

Authorities could trigger and deactivate emergency plans to ease prison overcrowding in northern England several times over the next few weeks.

A Downing Street spokesperson said she expects the area will “move in and out of” Operation Early Dawn during “short periods of significant pressure”.

She said: “It is a pre-existing contingency measure that is used for short periods – a matter of days or weeks to manage immediate, localised pressures on the prison estate.”

The spokesperson added No 10 understood the last time Operation Early Dawn was used was for “around seven or eight days, and it’s possible, to manage immediate pressures, we’ll move in and out of this operation over the next few weeks, exactly to manage what are short periods of significant pressure, but we’ll keep that under constant review and activate or deactivate for those kinds of short periods as is necessary”.

She added: “The purpose of it is to support very localised coordination between police stations, the prison services and the courts.

“It’s actually to ensure that nobody is taken to court unless there’s a guaranteed space for them should they be remanded, and it enables individuals to be held in a police station until they are summoned for court. So it’s about managing very local issues.”

• Ministers have activated emergency measures to ease prison overcrowding as more rioters are sentenced for their role in the recent unrest. The longstanding measures, known as Operation Early Dawn, allow defendants to be held in police cells until prison beds become available and could mean their court dates are delayed or adjourned at short notice. The system was activated on Monday morning and means some defendants across the north of England waiting for a court appearance will be kept in police cells until prison space is available.

• The vice-president of the Prison Governors’ Association has said he is “not sure” how much Operation Early Dawn will help the prisons crisis. Mark Icke told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I’m not sure it does help, today, tomorrow, the next day, because, as was just suggested, we have been lurching from crisis to crisis for some time. Running a prison is an incredibly complex business and so we don’t know which way to turn at the moment.”

• Ulster Unionist Party leader Doug Beattie has announced he is standing down from the role, citing “irreconcilable differences” with party officers among his reasons. Beattie had been in the role since May 2021.

• In a statement, Beattie said it has been a “huge honour” to lead the Ulster Unionist Party but added: “It has not been easy and at times it has been both lonely and isolating. I am no stranger to leadership and that is how it often feels in taking a toll both physically and mentally. It also strains friendships and political relationships,” Beattie said.

• Sinn Féin’s vice-president Michelle O’Neill has said the party will take a “constructive approach” with the new leader of the UUP, as Beattie steps down. In a statement, O’Neill said: “I want to wish Doug Beattie and his family well as he announces today that he will step down as leader of the UUP. We have worked constructively since he became leader of his party, including during the restoration of the Executive and institutions at the beginning of this year.”

• Suella Braverman is the latest senior Tory to be cashing in on the international speaking circuit, as it was revealed she was paid nearly £60,000 for making speeches around the world, the highest of any current MP. The former home secretary received £25,000 to speak in South Korea in May, according to the first register of MPs’ financial interests of this parliament, and she received £20,000 for another speaking engagement in India in March.

• Children’s commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza has warned child strip-searches should only take place if a life is at risk. Dame Rachel told BBC Breakfast: “My argument is, they should only be done if it’s a life-threatening situation. Let me just remind viewers, this is pre-arrest, this is a child that’s just a suspicion, they’re taken – there’s meant to be an appropriate adult there: in 45% of cases there are not. And their clothes are removed, and their most intimate parts are looked at and moved if necessary.”

• SNP MSP John Mason said he had not foreseen losing the whip over his social media post about Israel, saying: “I’m not someone who foresees the future exactly, but sometimes you have to do the right thing and just take the consequences.” He had written on X that the country’s actions in Gaza did not amount to “genocide”.

• Jacob Rees-Mogg has said he is “very strongly” considering standing at the next general election after losing his seat to Labour. The former Tory cabinet minister told an audience at the Edinburgh fringe festival that the Conservatives had “deserved” to lose the recent election, and that he was not shocked after losing his North East Somerset and Hanham seat to the mayor of the West of England Dan Norris by more than 5,000 votes. Rees-Mogg had won it from Norris in 2010.

• A Foreign Office official has resigned over the UK’s refusal to ban arms exports to Israel because of alleged breaches of international law. Mark Smith, a counter-terrorism official based at the British embassy in Dublin, said he had resigned after making numerous internal complaints, including through an official whistleblowing mechanism, but receiving nothing but pro-forma responses.

• Rachel Reeves has been warned by Britain’s biggest manufacturers that her autumn budget must address a decade of decline in national infrastructure that is damaging economic growth. More than half of manufacturers surveyed by the industry group Make UK said that the country’s national road infrastructure had deteriorated in the last 10 years, making it slower and more expensive to build and export British products.

• The number of asylum seekers who have died in the care of the Home Office has more than doubled in the last year, according to data shared with the Guardian, a development that has been described as “deeply troubling”. While some deaths were a result of illness or old age, others are thought to have happened as a result of suicide. Charities fear that the treatment of asylum seekers in the UK has adversely affected the health of an already vulnerable group of people.