Starmer urged to apologise as MP says rioting by Maccabi Tel Aviv fans justifies their ban from Aston Villa game – UK politics live

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Grooming gang victim quits inquiry panel over candidates for chair

Keir Starmer’s national grooming gang inquiry has suffered a blow after a prominent survivor resigned from its overseeing panel saying she disagreed with a shortlist of two possible chairs, Rajeev Syal reports.

Starmer urged to apologise as MP says Maccabi Tel Aviv rioting justifies their fans being banned from Aston Villa match

The independent MP Ayoub Khan has called for an apology from Keir Starmer for his criticism of West Midlands police at the end of last week after it proposing banning Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from an Aston Villa match in Birmingham next month. Starmer suggested this amounted to capitulation to antisemitism, and the government is now trying to ensure the police get the resources they need to ensure the Maccabi fans can attend.

Khan was speaking after a match in Tel Aviv was cancelled yesterday after rioting involving Maccabi fans.

Last week West Midlands police said they did not want Maccabi fans attending because of the risk of violence. The police did not say whether they were primarily worried about protecting the fans from protesters opposed to their being there, or whether they were primarily worried about protecting Aston residents from the fans, but all the main party leaders interpreted the move as the police admitting that they could not protect Jewish football supporters and West Midlands police has not contested this.

(In truth, reading the police statement, officers may have been worried about violence breaking out as a result of provocative behaviour on both sides. But we don’t know for sure; they have not given a detailed explanation.)

Khan had been campaigning for the match to be cancelled and last week he welcomed the decision. He was vilified on social media for this, and more or less the only political support he got came from fellow independent MPs and from the Green party. (Unusually, this was an issue where the Westminster consensus was out of step with public opinion, which backed the police decision by 42% to 28%, according to one poll.) Khan had launched a petition to get the match cancelled because he thinks Israel should be banned from international football because of events in Gaza. But he also said the match should not go ahead because of the “track record of violence by Maccabi Tel Aviv fans”.

In a statement released late last night, Khan said:

Shame on you, Keir Starmer. And shame on you, Kemi Badenoch and all the other politicians and news anchors that sought to conflate matters.

Contrary to Keir Starmer’s disgraceful comment labelling our West Midlands police and the safety advisory group as antisemitic, this was never about religion. It was always about hooliganism. And I’m confident that you know this deep down.

We have now yet had another taste of these hooligans, people who show no mercy, not even on their own turf, let alone ours.

The riots [at the derby in] Tel Aviv have left police officers and civilians injured. I will continue to support the chief constable and the decisions he makes, even when everyone else chose to throw him under the bus. It was shameful that not a single politician here in Birmingham, bar me, stood by his decision and that of the safety advisory group.

The disgraceful and libellous and irresponsible comments made by some politicians have put me and my family in danger.

Those that seek to sow division know this. You will never succeed. I will always stand up for what is just and right without fear or favour.

Keir Starmer, you owe an apology to our chief constable. And to all the others, wait for my letter before action.

The final line implies Khan is going to sue some of his critics for libel.

British troops to get powers to shoot down drones near military bases

Soldiers are to be given new powers to shoot down unidentified drones believed to be threatening UK military bases in response to a recent spate of incursions and sightings in Europe, Dan Sabbagh reports.

Minister suggests it should be for king, not government, to decide if he wants MPs to remove Prince Andrew's dukedom

Good morning. Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary and candidate for deputy Labour leader, has been doing an interview round this morning. She was meant to be talking about V-levels, a government plan to simplify and improve vocational education in schools in England. It is an important topic, albeit not an exciting one to people who don’t have children who might be affected. Instead, this being Britain, rather than a sensible, modern country, she ended up talking about the royal family.

To recap: on Friday Buckingham Palace announced that Prince Andrew is going to give up using the title Duke of York in response to the revival of the controversy about his friendship with the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and the claim (which Andrew denies) that Epstein arranged for him to have sex with Virginia Giuffre. Giuffre died by suicide in April, aged 41, but her posthumous memoir is being published tomorrow.

On Friday this was seen as a significant sanction, and further evidence that Andrew is being disowned by the royal family over the Epstein links.

But, over the weekend, the controversy escalated as people increasingly focused on the fact that Andrew has not lost his dukedom, because that can only be removed by an act of parliament, and that all that has happened is that he has agreed not to go round calling himself a duke. That does not sound like much of a punishment at all. After all, there are also 70 million of us in the UK who also don’t go round calling ourselves a duke, or a duchess.

Given that parliament is the only body that can strip Andrew of his dukedom, this has now became a matter for politics. As the Guardian reports, some MPs want parliament to legislate.

That is why Phillipson got bumped from the 8.10 slot on the programme, which instead went to Rachael Maskell. In 2022 she introduced a private member’s removal of titles bill that would allow the king to removal any hereditary title from anyone, either on his own initiative or following a recommendation from parliament. (It is not just dukedoms that can’t be taken away easily; people calling for Michelle Mone to lose her peerage over the PPE scandal also run into the problem that this requires an act of parliament, and no law has been passed removing a peerage since the Titles Deprivation Act 1917 that was used to punish peers who were supporting Germany in the war.) Maskell used the interview to make the case for this legislation.

One problem is that Maskell is not even a Labour MP at the moment. She was suspended in the summer for rebelling on various welfare issue.

(Another objection might be that, if a progressive government does want to legislate on hereditary titles, it should probably be getting rid of all of them, which would stop all sorts of people growing up with the sort of entitlement that led Andrew to think, in Giuffre’s words, “having sex with me was his birthright”. But that is probably a debate for another day.)

In her interview, Phillipson was asked if the government was in favour of the sort of legislation proposed by Maskell that would allow the king to remove Andrew’s dukedom. She said this was not a matter for the government, but that it supported the action taken by the royal family at the end of last week.

When it was put to her that the government does get involved in royal matters sometimes, she replied:

We would be guided by the royal family in this, and I imagine the royal family would want parliament to dedicate our time to our wider legislative programme. But we will be guided by them on it.

Asked again why this was not a matter for the government, she said:

Because the government, by long-standing convention, doesn’t involve itself in matters concerning the royal family. The royal family don’t involve themselves in the business of government, in terms of inserting themselves into the discussion. And it’s right that we respect that going the other way as well.

This sounded very much like Phillipson saying the government’s reluctance to get involved was at the ‘not with a bargepole’ level. But she did not categorically rule out the government allowing legislation on this to go ahead – if the king were to back the idea.

Phillipson also said that “parliamentarians will always have mechanisms within parliament to find ways in which they can air any issue, including this issue”. Some news outlet have taken that as Phillipson saying she would be happy for MPs to have a debate on this. But that might be an over-interpretation. Direct debate on the conduct of members of the royal family is normally banned under Commons rules, unless a substantive motion on the topic is tabled (which almost never happens).

We will get a line from Downing Street at the lobby briefing.

Here is the agenda for the day.

10.30am: Prof Sir Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry as part of its module looking at the impact of the pandemic on children and young people. Martin Hewitt from the National Police Chiefs’ Council is giving evidence in the afternoon.

11am: Keir Starmer chairs cabinet.

Noon: Tory MP Nick Timothy gives a speech free speech and Islam at Policy Exchange. Words planned

1.30pm: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

2.30pm: Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

After 3.30pm: MPs debate the remaining stages of the bill approving the deal giving sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.

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