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00:03 Hello, Rafe Blackburn, National World's Politics Editor
00:12 here at Westminster with another episode of Politics Unpacked,
00:18 where we go through the key events that are happening
00:21 this week in politics.
00:24 So the first thing, and what could
00:26 be the most consequential thing this week for Westminster
00:30 as a whole, is the possibility of yet another vote
00:34 on whether there should be a ceasefire in Gaza.
00:37 Yes, you heard me correctly.
00:38 Obviously, there was the chaos last week
00:42 amongst the original proposed Gaza ceasefire vote
00:46 and the issues around the Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle.
00:49 And now, after that, the Scottish National Party
00:53 are proposing another vote on the subject.
00:58 Now, due to more parliamentary procedure,
01:02 if they wanted to have a specific vote on this,
01:05 then that would become what is called a substantive motion
01:09 or a substantive vote.
01:10 And that could effectively almost set government policy
01:14 if the House did indeed vote on that to pass motion to say
01:19 that it backed a ceasefire in Gaza.
01:22 And this puts Sir Lindsay Hoyle in a really difficult position
01:26 because he wants to get the Scottish National
01:28 Party back on side.
01:29 They're really frustrated with how he handled their own
01:32 opposition day debate last week with the previous vote on Gaza.
01:35 However, if he did allow this substantive motion,
01:39 then that would get him to fall out, actually,
01:43 with the Conservatives.
01:44 That's because allowing this substantive motion
01:48 would be going largely against parliamentary precedent.
01:51 It did happen a bit under John Bercow, the previous Speaker,
01:55 with votes on Brexit.
01:56 However, Hoyle was partly brought in
01:59 to kind of stick with the parliamentary precedent
02:03 and not kind of go a bit off script like Bercow did.
02:07 So for him then to do this would cause more issues
02:10 with the Tories.
02:12 So he's kind of stuck, like I said,
02:13 between a rock and a hard place of trying to appease the SNP
02:16 or appease the Tories.
02:18 Already, whatever he chooses, he's
02:20 going to be unpopular with one party or the other
02:23 and will put serious pressure on his future as Speaker
02:26 of the House of Commons.
02:28 So the future of Lee Anderson is another thing
02:32 to keep an eye on this week.
02:34 The former Tory MP had the whip stripped over the weekend
02:38 after he made comments that the Labour Mayor of London, Sadiq
02:43 Khan, was kind of effectively in cahoots with Islamists.
02:49 And Lee Anderson also said they were his mates.
02:53 Now, this led to Anderson getting the whip stripped.
02:56 So he's now sitting as an independent MP, not a Tory MP.
03:01 And Rishi Sivak, while he said that what Anderson said
03:05 is wrong, him and his spokesman have repeatedly
03:07 refused to say that it's racist, it's xenophobic.
03:11 Now, the interesting thing from an electoral point of view
03:15 is looking what happens to Anderson.
03:16 He's currently sitting as an independent MP.
03:20 He appears to have kind of stepped away
03:23 from returning to the Conservatives
03:24 by refusing to apologise.
03:26 That was something that they wanted him to do.
03:29 And so this could open the door for him to join Reform UK.
03:34 The right-wing party has been causing real issues
03:37 with the Tories in recent by-elections.
03:40 Now, I've been talking to some Reform UK senior figures today,
03:45 and they are remaining tight-lipped about
03:46 that Anderson could join the party.
03:49 You know, they have spoken to him previously.
03:51 So the lines of communication are there.
03:54 And, you know, if Anderson does join,
03:57 that will give them a big leg up,
03:58 having their first MP sitting in the House of Commons.
04:02 And then on Thursday, we have the Rochdale by-election,
04:06 which has kind of turned into one of the most chaotic
04:10 and farcical in recent times.
04:14 So the candidates include Azar Ali,
04:16 who will go down as the Labour candidate on the ballot paper.
04:19 However, over comments he made,
04:22 he basically repeated an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory
04:27 that Israel kind of allowed the Hamas attacks
04:30 on October 7th to happen.
04:31 So even though he'll have the Labour Party
04:34 next to his name on the ballot paper,
04:36 Labour has actually disowned him
04:38 and are asking people not to vote for him.
04:40 Then we have George Galloway, a former Labour MP
04:43 who was expelled in the party for 2003.
04:46 He's got a fairly uncomfortable history of praising
04:50 some pretty awful dictators over the years,
04:52 including Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad.
04:57 And then we also have Simon Dandjuk,
04:59 another former Labour MP who was expelled from the party
05:02 for sending explicit messages to a 17-year-old.
05:06 He's standing for Reform UK.
05:09 A Tory candidate has gone on holiday.
05:12 So there's really a dearth of good options
05:15 for the voters in Rochdale to vote on this Thursday.
05:19 So it'll be fascinating to see who's returned as the MP.
05:22 And if it is Galloway, that will turn up the heat
05:25 in the Israel-Palestine debate
05:27 in the House of Commons further,
05:29 and it's likely to put more pressure on Keir Starmer.
05:32 But we will find out who is voted,
05:35 who wins that election on Thursday night,
05:37 on Friday morning.
05:38 You can find a full list of candidates for that
05:40 on National World's website.
05:42 You can find all our other politics stories
05:45 on nationalworld.com/news/politics.
05:48 And please feel free to sign up
05:49 to the free weekly newsletter from myself,
05:52 Politics Uncovered, which comes into your inbox
05:54 every Sunday morning.
05:56 Thanks very much.
05:56 I'll see you next week.
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