Key events
Keir Starmer has said that the “long-standing British position is that the best way forward for the regime and the world is a negotiated settlement with Iran where they give up their nuclear ambitions”.
He says his decision not to join the US and Israeli strikes was deliberate and that he stands by it.
He says:
While the region has been plunged into chaos, my focus has been on providing calm, level-headed leadership in the national interest.
It means having the strength to stand firm by our values and by our principles, no matter the pressure to do otherwise.
However, he says, once Iran started retaliating the situation changed. “Our number one priority is protecting our people,” he says, in reference to the thousands of Britons living in the Middle East.
He says throughout January and February, the UK moved military assets to Cyprus and Qatar “to ensure we were in heightened state of readiness” in case of conflict.
Meanwhile, Kemi Badenoch’s description of Keir Starmer’s MPs as clueless “orcs and goons” and other language used by her frontbench team amid the ongoing Middle East crisis have sparked an angry response from a former diplomat turned Foreign Officer minister as he updated MPs on evacuation flights from the region.
There were angry clashes between Hamish Falconer and the shadow foreign secretary, Priti Patel, as she demanded to know why the foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, had not come to parliament and accused her of not providing leadership.
“I will not reflect on my own time as an official during previous crises where the same was not said about foreign ministers during such times,” said Falconer, who was a civil servant during Conservative-led governments and has experience of running evacuations during similar crises.
The foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, had been in her department’s crisis centre since Saturday, said Falconer, who singled out comments by Badenoch this week when accused the prime minister of being advised “sea of orcs and goons who have no idea how anything is working at all.” The Conservative leader has said it was a reference to the characters of JR Tolkein and told the BBC’s Today programme that had to respond when Labour MPs tried to use her “as a punchbag.”
However, the exchanges in parliament on Thursday again struck a bitter tone as as the chair of the Foreign Affairs committee, Emily Thornberry, accused the opposition of failing in their “responsibility to always put the country first and not play narrow party politics.” “As for throwing personal abuse across the dispatch box at time like this I am profoundly shocked,” she added.
Another Labour MP, John Slinger, accused Badenoch’s team of undermining national security by using language in an attempt to “wrap themselves in the cloak of national security and patriotism.”
Ben Quinn
More than 2,000 people had arrived in the UK on Wednesday on eight flights from the United Arab Emirates, MPs have been told by a Foreign Office Minister, Hamish Falconer. A further eight flights are expected from the UAE today.
British Airways has also now agreed to lay on new flights from Muscat, the capital of Oman, which were expected to fly every day after talks with the government, he added.
However, there was criticism from MPs including shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel, who pressed the government on the failure of the first repatriation flight chartered by the UK government to take off via Oman on Wednesday evening.
Keir Starmer to give an update on Iran at 2pm
The British prime minister will give a press conference at 2pm on the US-Israeli war on Iran and the escalating conflict that’s engulfing more countries in the region.
In a post on X, he said:
I know that the situation in the Middle East is worrying for people across the UK and in the region.
This afternoon, I’ll be giving an update on the action we continue to take to protect lives and bring British nationals back home.
Starmer has come under criticism from Donald Trump this week after the government initially refused to allow the US to use British airbases for “defensive” attacks (which he refers to as striking down Iran’s military capability in the country).
The country has resolved to send a destroyer, HMS Dragon, to Cyprus to help protect the country after a drone evaded detection and hit an RAF base there although it isn’t expected to arrive until next week, Britain will also send two Wildcat helicopters with counter-drone capabilities.
Governments around the world have worked on evacuating their citizens out from the region but Britain has faced some issues with this. A flight was expected to depart Oman last night but failed to leave because of a problem “getting passengers on board”, a minister has said. Others have since arrived.
A total of 138,000 people from the UK have registered for assistance, the government said. 112,000 of those are in the UAE.
Robyn Vinter
The first government rescue flight from the Middle East failed to take off because of problems “getting passengers on board”, a minister has said.
Technical issues meant the flight did not depart on Wednesday night from the Omani capital Muscat.
Home Office minister Alex Norris said the government-chartered plane would now leave Muscat for the UK on Thursday, but was unable to say at what time.
Norris told LBC:
It didn’t take off because there are operational reasons … about getting passengers on board, and it wasn’t able to happen in the time that it had to happen. So that’s now going to go today instead.
A total of 138,000 people from the UK have registered for assistance, the government said, with the majority, 112,000 of those, in the UAE. About 1,000 have already returned on commercial flights, Keir Starmer said.
Two more chartered flights are expected to depart from the region this week to return stranded British nationals.
The Guardian’s policy editor Kiran Stacey asks the home secretary how much force she is willing to see border officials use against children under her pilot scheme if families are unwilling to leave voluntarily.
Shabana Mahmood says a “targeted consultation” is underway, which includes looking at how best to handle the removal of children.
She says:
There are well-used legal tests for how to do so in a way that is neccessary but also proportionate and how to best judge that and also how to best scruitinise that.
I’d expect the principles that underlie this sort of work in other parts of the public sector to inform the approach that we take in immigration as well.
But that is why, in the end, a voluntary removal is always the best option for all concerned.
And that is the end of the home secretary’s press conference in which she outlined her reforms to create a “firm but fair” asylum system that works for “hard-working” British people.
Asked whether the hard right has “already won” and is setting the agenda for the Labour government, Mahmood says she is “coming up with Labour answers to problems our country faces”.
She adds:
We promised to control our borders in our manifesto. Of course we talked about the gangs that are operating and we’ve taken huge action on that … we’ve disrupted up to 40,000 crossing being made.
Mahmood: Hard right government would not be restrained by ‘values like ours’
The home secretary says that without “restoring order to our borders,” Labour will allow a populist right-wing government to seize the narrative.
She says:
When fearful people turn inwards, their vision of this country narrows and their patriotism turns into something smaller, something darker. And ethnonationalism emerges.
The idea of a Greater Britain gives way to the lure of a little England and other voices. Voices to the far-right take hold.
If the left does not secure our borders, the hard right will be given the chance to try, and they will not be restrained by values like ours.
In a thinly-veiled attack on Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, Mahmood warns that “they will pull up the drawbridge, those who have been here for decades legally with settled status will suddenly hear a knock on the door one night, bundled into the back of a van … and deported from this country that they have made their home”.
She then criticises Green party leader Zack Polanski for being “on the beaches of France, helping migrants on to small boats”.
She adds:
Farage calls for border control without fulfilling our humanitarian and international duties.
Polanski calls for the most expensive and expansive migration policies anywhere in the world, without any attempt to control the border.
Nightmare on one hand, fairytale on the other.
Mahmood criticises “misinformation” about sharia law relating to London, while praising Sadiq Khan as she is questioned about Donald Trump’s rebukes of the city’s mayor.
The home secretary is asked about the US president’s criticism of the UK government over its decisions on Iran, as well as his attacks on Khan, his claim that London wants to turn to sharia law and his comments about immigration.
She says:
The US president will say some things that we agree with and others that we disagree with.
We are getting our immigration system under control. That is my job. That’s what I’ve been setting out today, and we will pursue that.
Others can comment as they wish, but what I am motivated by is resolving problems for citizens in our country.
On Khan, she adds:
And let me just say on Sadiq, I think he’s doing an excellent job as mayor of London and there is a lot of misinformation that is often put out about what’s happening in London, whether that’s on crime rates or whether that’s on things like sharia law, for example, which are just misinformation. That’s plain wrong.
And I think that Sadiq is doing a good job, and the proof of that is the fact that, you know, he’s won a mandate from the people of London on three separate occasions.
The UK is suspending visa routes for four countries where abuse has been “unacceptably high”, Mahmood says.
Those countries are Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan. Visit visas will also be imposed on St Lucia and Nicaragua.
She says:
I introduce all of these measures in an attemt to bring our systems of legal migration and asylum into line with this party’s values.
Upholding our international responsibilities, while securing our own borders.
Fair but firm, compassionate but controlled, rights earned through responsibilities fulfilled.
Small number of failed asylum seekers will be offered ‘increased incentive payment’, says Mahmood
A small number of asylum seekers whose claims are rejected will be offered an “increased incentive payment” of £10,000 per person and up to £40,000 per family to leave Britain under a pilot scheme, Shabana Mahmood announces.
The home secretary says the government would seek to echo reforms introduced in Denmark, where she said there had been “great success” in using incentives.
She says:
This government will now pilot a similar model for families who are failed asylum seekers, a small number of whom will now be offered an increased incentive payment of £10,000 per person and up to a maximum of £40,000 per family.
These incentives will bring a “significant saving” to the taxpayer if they prove effective, she said.
She adds:
Where a voluntary removal is refused, we will escalate to an enforced removal for those who can be returned to their safe home country.
We are now consulting on precisely how the removal of families with children must take place in a way that is humane and effective.
For too long, families who have failed their claims have known that we are not enforcing our rules, which created a perverse incentive to make a channel crossing with children in a small boat it.
Shabana Mahmood is now setting out her reforms to the asylum system and says the qualifying period for settlement should increase from five years to 10 “as a norm”.
She also explains that certain conditions will need to be met in order to qualify: a clean criminal record, no debt to the taxpayer, a history of being in work and paying taxes and higher standards of English language.
The first of the changes were made this week, meaning that a year from now, those who arrived on a visa seeking settlement will need to speak English to an A level standard.
She says:
I should also state for the record, we are talking about English as a foreign language.
A working knowledge of Shakespeare and Chaucer is very welcome but will not be a condition of settling in this country.
Command of the English language, however, will be.
Some people will be able to achieve settled status at or earlier than five years, she adds, including public servants, such as doctors and nurses.
Asylum system ‘not fair’ for ‘hard-working people’ in Britain, says home secretary
Mahmood says that the asylym system is “not fair” for “hard-working people” across the country.
She says:
Hard-working people across this country engaged in the daily struggle to make ends meet; they see a state that they pay taxes for but it is unable to stop a flow of dinghies across the channel.
And they see a state that is paying billions towards hotels like the one near them.
It doesn’t look fair because it’s not fair. And it erodes their trust in government.
The home secretary adds:
Without the trust of citizens in the state, there is no space for Labour values in any part of government to be realised.
She says that restoring control of the borders “is a necessary condition” for a Labour government to achieve anything.
Mahmood: ‘No denying’ it has been a difficult time for the Labour party
Shabana Mahmood said it was a “difficult time” for the Labour party, and that the party’s identity is being “bitterly” contested on issues like migration.
The home secretary said the party needed to be “more Labour” in a speech at the IPPR (Institute for Public Policy Research), telling the event:
It is a pleasure to be here and to be hosted by the IPPR, Britain’s leading progressive think tank, a fitting host to set out not just what this government is doing on asylum and migration, but why.
There is no denying that we meet at a difficult time for my party. It is a time when who we are and what we stand for is contested, sometimes bitterly, and nowhere is that contest more keenly felt than in the politics of migration.
She added:
I have, of late, been offered wise counsel on this topic from certain quarters. I have been told that we must, quite simply, be more Labour. Well, you know what? I happen to agree we should be more Labour.
Of course, we should be more Labour. The real question is, what does more Labour mean, because, in my view, more Labour doesn’t mean more Green, just like more Labour doesn’t mean more Reform.
More Labour means reconnecting with who we are, who we represent, and what we believe. That begins by understanding that the Labour party has always been a broad church.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2026/mar/05/cabinet-ministers-blocked-starmer-from-letting-us-use-british-bases-for-military-operation-against-iran-on-friday-uk-politics-live
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