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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.
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