What happens if the latest round of strikes against the Houthis don’t deter them?

That was the big question as Rishi Sunak made his statement to the Commons on yesterday’s attacks. The Prime Minister stuck to his two key lines from last week, that the strikes were targeted, and that the Houthis’ attacks are no way linked to the war in Gaza – though once again he did update MPs on the latter. He also announced that the government was giving MPs an opportunity for a ‘full debate on our broader approach in the Red Sea tomorrow’. He also listed the other ways in which the US and UK were trying to prevent the attacks from continuing, including ending the illegal flow of arms to Houthi militia, cutting off their financial resources through sanctions, and continuing to help the Yemeni people.

Though Keir Starmer had not been briefed in advance about the strikes this time around, the Labour leader made a point of giving his support to the strikes, saying: ‘We must stand united and strong.’ But he added: ‘While we do not question the justification for action, it is right that the House hears more about their effectiveness.’ He asked Sunak to ‘set out his confidence that these strikes will be effective in reducing Houthi capabilities’ and asked for the Prime Minister to republish the government’s legal position because the situation had evolved.

How far that situation has evolved became the main point from many backbench questions, including the newly-elected chair of the defence select committee Jeremy Quin, who asked Sunak: ‘Would he however agree that in order to protect civilian shipping, this may need to be made to be a prolonged, persistent, targeted campaign alongside our allies?’ Sunak insisted that ‘no decision has been taken to embark on a sustained campaign of the nature he mentioned’ and that these were ‘limited strikes specifically in response to threats that we perceived’. Similarly, Foreign Affairs Committee chair Alicia Kearns asked ‘what the strategic approach and intent is to comprehensively reduce the threat from all the proxies and allies so that we do not end up playing whack-a-mole?

The most pointed question on how long these strikes might need to go on for came from Labour’s Derek Twigg. He asked: ‘The Prime Minister is right to say that to do nothing is not an option, but to do something is also in need of a strategy, so can I ask the Prime Minister, if the attacks continue and there is a continued disruption of maritime trade, does he have a plan B?’ Sunak replied that military action was not the only measure being taken and that it sat alongside sanctions and other options. He also told Bernard Jenkin, who asked about how to deal long-term with an ungoverned space in that part of Yemen, that the government was ‘working very hard’ to achieve a lasting inclusive political settlement for the people of Yemen. What he couldn’t say was whether any of these measures was likely to bring about a conclusion.