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Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, on his return from Israel (where he spoke with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister) and to Saudi Arabia (where he spoke with Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince), told the House of Commons: ‘Hamas is not only a threat to Israel, but to many others across the region. All the leaders I met agreed that this is a watershed moment. It’s time to set the region on a better path.’ Twelve Britons had died in the Hamas attack, and five were missing. Of the blast at Gaza’s al-Ahli hospital on 17 October, which killed numbers of people into the hundreds, he said it was likely to have been caused by a missile fired from within Gaza. He announced £20 million extra in emergency aid to Gaza.

Mr Sunak said: ‘Calls for jihad and Muslim armies to rise up are not only a threat to the Jewish community but also a threat to our democratic values.’ That remark followed an incident at a Hizb ut-Tahrir rally (during the pro-Palestine march in London of perhaps 100,000) in which a speaker, in front of a banner saying ‘Muslim Armies! Rescue the People of Palestine’, asked, ‘What is the solution to liberate people from the concentration camp called Palestine?’ to which more than one person could be heard chanting ‘Jihad’. The Metropolitan Police said: ‘The word jihad has a number of meanings but we know the public will most commonly associate it with terrorism’; yet police counterterrorism officers had assessed a video clip and not identified any offences. Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, had words with Sir Mark Rowley, the Met Commissioner.

The Tories were heavily defeated in two by-elections: at Tamworth, the Conservative majority of 19,634 of Chris Pincher (who unwittingly brought down Boris Johnson) was turned into a Labour majority of 1,316 in a turnout of 35.9 per cent (the Lib Dems polling 417 votes); in Mid Bedfordshire the Conservative majority of 24,664 of Nadine Dorries (author of The Plot: the Political Assassination of Boris Johnson) became a Labour majority of 1,192 in a turnout of 44.1 per cent. Unemployment rose from 4 per cent to 4.2 per cent. The cap on bankers’ bonuses would be removed on 31 October. Heavy rain brought flooding to several counties. King’s Cross station in London was closed, Network Rail said, ‘to manage passenger numbers on the concourse’. Members of the RMT union voted for six more months in which rail strikes could be held. Sir Bobby Charlton, who played in the 1966 World Cup final, died aged 86.

Abroad

The horrors of war multiplied as Israel continued its response to the Hamas attack on 7 October. An 85-year-old hostage, Yocheved Lifschitz, was released by Hamas and told of ‘hell that I could not have known’ after her abduction by motorbike and captivity in tunnels. Another Israeli hostage and two Americans were also released, but 220 remained captive. Israel released bodycam footage from Hamas gunmen carrying out a massacre.

‘We are working together as an iron fist for one objective – to eliminate Hamas,’ Mr Netanyahu said. Israel said that in one 24-hour period it had hit more than 400 targets of Hamas infrastructure in Gaza with air strikes. Khan Yunis, the city in the southern half of Gaza, came under bombardment; this and the use of human shields were ‘clear violation of international humanitarian law’, according to Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary-General. Hamas said that between 7 and 23 October, 5,791 people had been killed in Gaza. Lorries carrying a small amount of aid were allowed to enter the Gaza Strip at the Rafah crossing. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees said 600,000 people had come to its shelters, mostly ex-schools, and they needed water and sanitation; Unwra lacked fuel. President Emmanuel Macron of France, visiting Mr Netanyahu, proposed that the international coalition that had fought the Islamic State group could also fight against Hamas. China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, set off for Washington for talks with Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State. Hezbollah and Israel exchanged fire across the Lebanese border. In southern Lebanon, 20,000 people had been displaced and villages in Israel near the border were evacuated.

A Russian missile killed six postal workers at the Nova Poshta sorting office in Kharkiv. A Chinese coastguard vessel collided with a Filipino supply boat on its way to an outpost in the Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.          CSH