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Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, said of pro-Palestinian demonstrations: ‘To plan protests on Armistice Day is provocative and disrespectful, and there is a clear and present risk that the Cenotaph and other war memorials could be desecrated.’ The Metropolitan Police urged organisers of a pro-Palestinian march on 11 November to postpone it, but they refused. The Prime Minister then said he would hold the Metropolitan Police Commissioner ‘accountable’ for his decision to greenlight the ‘disrespectful’ demonstration. Imran Hussain MP left the Labour front bench over Sir Keir Starmer’s opposition to a ceasefire in Gaza, and Afrasiab Anwar, the leader of Burnley council, and ten councillors left the Labour party. The father of the Liverpool footballer Luis Díaz was still being held by left-wing rebels of the National Liberation Army in Colombia.

At the State Opening of Parliament the King was made to read out such sentences as: ‘My ministers will address inflation and the drivers of low growth over demands for greater spending or borrowing.’ The King’s Speech contained 21 Bills, to give serious offenders ‘tougher sentences’, replace A-levels with an Advanced British Standard, reform leasehold law, set up a new football regulator, deal with ‘the scourge of unlicensed pedicabs in London’, ban the sale of tobacco progressively, and award licences for oil and gas projects in the North Sea annually. Shell reported profits of £5.1 billion between July and September. In Edinburgh on Guy Fawkes Day, 50 youths threw fireworks and petrol bombs at riot police; Glasgow and Dundee had their own firework riots.

Women at high risk of breast cancer will be offered a preventative drug, Anastrozole. Glass protecting the ‘Rokeby Venus’ at the National Gallery was smashed in eight places by protestors against oil. Nadine Dorries recounted in a book a plot to bring down Boris Johnson by a cabal called the Movement, supported by Dr No, the Wolf, the Dark Lord and Michael Gove. Five farmers rescued a sheep, nicknamed Fiona, stranded at the bottom of cliffs in the Cromarty Firth for two years; it was found to be quite fat, scoring about 4.5 on the sheep condition scale.

Abroad

Israeli ground forces reached the sea south of Gaza City, which was surrounded and penetrated. Heavy bombardment continued. The Gaza health ministry, run by Hamas, said on 7 November that 10,300 people (4,100 of them children) had been killed in the Gaza Strip in the four weeks since 7 October. António Guterres, Secretary-General of the UN, said the Gaza Strip was ‘becoming a graveyard for children’. Civilians were again told to flee southwards; more than 350,000 people remained in the north, according to a US diplomat. An Israeli air strike, Hamas said, killed 45 people in the Al-Maghazi refugee camp. Thousands protested outside Israel’s Ministry of Defence headquarters against the government’s handling of the hostage situation. Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, visited Ramallah in the West Bank to meet the Palestinian Authority’s President Mahmoud Abbas, who demanded an ‘immediate ceasefire’. Egypt and Jordan made the same demand when Mr Blinken met their leaders; he preferred a ‘humanitarian pause’. ‘Our advice to the Americans is to immediately stop the war in Gaza and implement a ceasefire, otherwise they will be hit hard,’ said the Iranian defence minister, Mohammad-Reza Ashtiani. In a video address, Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, refrained from declaring all-out war on Israel.

A Russian missile killed more than 20 Ukrainian service personnel during an award ceremony in the Zaporizhzhia region. Ukrainian missiles struck a shipbuilder’s at Kerch in Crimea. British defence intelligence said that Russia had probably lost about 200 armoured vehicles during assaults on the town of Avdiivka and might have suffered thousands of casualties there since 1 October. Delhi shut primary schools as air pollution became intolerable.

Anthony Albanese, the PM of Australia, visited China. António Costa resigned as PM of Portugal where an inquiry investigated lithium mining concessions. Sam Bankman-Fried, who ran one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges, was found guilty in New York of fraud, and faces decades in jail. Donald Trump appeared in a New York court for a civil fraud trial. Global wine production fell to its lowest since 1961.                                    CSH