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.
Key events
Reform suspends four Kent councillors after Guardian publishes leaked video of fierce infighting
Reform UK has suspended four councillors on its flagship county council after a leaked video showing bitter divisions in their ranks, Ben Quinn reports.
DfE says white working class pupils in particular will benefit from plan to replace compulsory maths/English GCSE resits
Another proposal in the white paper on post-16 education and skills is for a new system to replace the current one for pupils in England who fail maths or English at GCSE. The Department for Education says this reform will particularly help white working class pupils.
When Michael Gove was education secretary, he ruled that pupils who fail to achieve at least a grade 4 in maths and English at GCSE should have to carry on resitting the exams until they leave school.
But, as Richard Adams reported last week, there is a growing consensus that these compulsory resits are counter-productive.
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, is announcing a new approach. In its news release, the DfE says:
Young people will also be supported to get the vital pass they need in English and maths GCSEs. A new qualification will be targeted at students with lower attainment as a stepping stone to better prepare them to resit these GCSEs.
This will support white working class pupils in particular. More than six in ten white British pupils eligible for free school meals do not achieve a grade 4 or above in English and maths by the end of Key Stage 4, meaning they are more than twice as likely to need to resit these exams post-16 than their more affluent peers.
The DfE says its data shows that 64% of white British pupils eligible for free school meals (ie, from poor families) do not achieve grade 4 or above in English and maths by the end of key stage 4, compared with 28% of white British pupils not eligible for FSMs.
It also says pupils from Gypsy, Roma and Traveller families are also far less likely to achieve a grade 4 or above in these qualifications by the end of key stage 4.
Phillipson says she wants to stop vocational education being ‘afterthought’ as she announces plan for V-levels in England
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, was giving interviews this morning to promote the government’s plans to a create a new V-level qualification to simplify and improve vocational education in schools in England. The proposals will be set out in a white paper on post-16 education and skills being published later.
In a new release explaining how the system will work, the Department for Education says:
These are new vocational qualifications tied to rigorous and real-world job standards. They will replace other qualifications to sit alongside T Levels and A levels, providing a clear option for young people who want to get on in the world of work, university or apprenticeships but want to explore different key sectors, which could include engineering, agriculture, digital or creative, before choosing where to specialise. Unlike T-levels, which are equivalent to 3 A-levels, young people will be able to take a mixture of V-levels and A-levels – offering more choice and flexibility.
For example, a student wanting to get into either the creative arts or media industry could choose to do a mixed V-level and A-level study programme, by taking two V-levels (one in Craft and Design; and one in Media, Broadcast and Production) and one A-level in Music. Or, a student wanting to get into either the health or fitness industry – but also wants to learn more about digital – could do three V-levels (in Sport and Exercise Science; Digital; and Health and Care services).
The new qualification will streamline the confusing landscape of approximately 900 equivalent vocational qualifications at level 3 currently available to 16 to 19-year-olds which mean learners and employers are unclear about the purpose and value of some qualifications.
Phillipson said:
Technical and vocational education is the backbone of this country’s economy and central to breaking the link between background and success, helping hundreds of thousands of young people get the skills they need to get good jobs.
But for too long it has been an afterthought. Young people have been left to navigate an overcomplicated landscape and repeatedly labelled as ‘failures’ by a system that has held them back from all-important English and maths grades.
Through our Plan for Change we are turning the tide. Our reforms are building a post-16 education system that truly matches young people’s aspirations and abilities, delivering the opportunity and growth our economy needs.
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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