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Labour withdrew support from Azhar Ali, its candidate in the Rochdale by-election to be held on 29 February, after a recording was published of him claiming Israel had ‘allowed’ the deadly attack by Hamas gunmen on 7 October, which had given them ‘the green light to do whatever they bloody want’. He was suspended from the party pending an investigation, but electoral law made it impossible to remove his name and party from the ballot paper. At first Labour stood by him when he said he wished to ‘urgently apologise to Jewish leaders for my inexcusable comments’. The next day Labour suspended a former MP, Graham Jones, who was going to stand for parliament at the next election; it was alleged he had said that Britons who travel to Israel to fight for the IDF should be ‘locked up’. Four boys aged between 12 and 14 were arrested on suspicion of rape of a ‘young female’ in the Newbold area of Rochdale, police said.

The Foreign Office announced sanctions against four named ‘extremist Israeli settlers’ who, it said, had ‘committed human-rights abuses against Palestinian communities in the West Bank’. Police searching the Thames for the body of Abdul Ezedi, the suspect in the Clapham chemical attack, found two bodies they weren’t looking for. Steve Wright, a Radio 1 and Radio 2 disc-jockey for more than four decades, died, aged 69.

The number of people claiming out-of-work benefits rose to 5.6 million, of whom 2.8 million had long-term sickness; unemployment fell a little, to 3.8 per cent, and vacancies fell for the 19th time in a row, down 26,000 to 932,000. Inflation remained at 4 per cent, though food prices fell for the first time since September 2021. Among 13 new peers were Paul Goodman, the former MP who edits the Conservative Home website; Rosa Monckton, the businesswoman and disability campaigner; and Carmen Smith, nominated by Plaid Cymru, who is 27. Asked about no-fault evictions, Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, said that by the election: ‘We will have outlawed it and we will put the money into the courts in order to ensure that they can enforce it.’ Tea supplies to retailers were disrupted by the crisis in the Red Sea.

Abroad

President Joe Biden of the United States said in a telephone call to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, that ‘a military operation in Rafah should not proceed without a credible and executable plan’ for protecting and supporting the people there. Israel launched a wave of air strikes on Rafah, where at least 1.3 million people were sheltering after Israeli attacks elsewhere in Gaza. The British Foreign Secretary, Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, said: ‘We want Israel to stop and think seriously before it takes any further action.’ Two Israeli-Argentine men aged 60 and 70 who had been taken hostage on 7 October were rescued in a raid in Rafah.

The US Senate approved a $95 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan; the Bill passed to the House of Representatives. Lloyd Austin, the US Defense Secretary, aged 70, transferred his duties to his deputy, Kathleen Hicks, while he returned to hospital for treatment of his bladder; he had apologised earlier for failing to disclose he had prostate cancer. Donald Trump said that if the leader of a Nato country was not meeting their financial obligations to the alliance and came under attack from Moscow, his response would be: ‘I would not protect you. In fact I would encourage them to do whatever they want. You gotta pay.’ Ukraine said it had sunk a large Russian landing ship, the Caesar Kunikov, off Russian-occupied Crimea.

Supporters of the jailed former prime minister Imran Khan won 93 seats in the 336-seat National Assembly in the Pakistan elections but Nawaz Sharif, whose party came second with 75 seats, set about forming a coalition. Alexander Stubb, from the National Coalition party, was elected President of Finland. Sudan, where the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces are at war with the army, suffered an internet blackout for a week. Katalin Novak resigned as President of Hungary over a decision to pardon a man convicted of covering up a child sexual abuse case. An Iranian asylum seeker armed with an axe and a knife took 15 railway passengers hostage on a train from Baulmes to Yverdon-les-Bains in Switzerland before police shot him dead. Cocoa prices in New York reached an all-time high of $5,874 a ton.                           CSH