The rise of the Gaza Five

What should the Tories do about Nigel Farage? The leadership candidates have made many speeches and written many columns explaining how they would answer this question. Yet at Kemi Badenoch’s campaign launch on Monday, she dismissed it. Instead, there was another contingent of new MPs she was more concerned with: the pro-Gaza independents. ‘When everyone was worried about the election of Reform MPs, I was far far more worried about the five new MPs elected on the back of sectarian Islamist politics, alien ideas that have no place here,’ she said. ‘[That is] the sort of politics we need to defeat – and defeat quickly.’

If Badenoch had waited a few hours, she would have had even more cause for concern. That afternoon, the four new pro-Gaza independents announced they were in a formal ‘Independent Alliance’ group with Jeremy Corbyn (who, having been banished from the Labour party, was re-elected as an independent for Islington North).