Rishi Sunak has updated MPs on the strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen, just as a missile reportedly from the rebel group hit a US-owned cargo ship.
The Prime Minister told the Commons that he had come to tell members at the first opportunity and that the action taken by the US and UK on Friday was ‘taken in self defence: it was limited, not escalatory’. He was very careful to emphasise that he was making himself accountable to parliament, but even more assiduous in knocking down any suggestion that this action was in any way linked to the war in Gaza. He said:
We shouldn’t fall for their malign narrative that this is about Israel and Gaza. They target ships from around the world. And we continue to work towards a sustainable ceasefire in Gaza and to get more aid to civilians. We also continue to support a negotiated settlement in Yemen’s civil war. But I want to be very clear that this action is completely unrelated to those issues. It is a direct response to the Houthi’s attacks on international shipping.
Keir Starmer backed the government’s action, but also asked how ‘the UK will work with international partners so that our rightful actions are not used as an excuse by those who seek to expand violence throughout the wider region, or indeed reanimate the conflict in Yemen?’ He also mentioned his own position on consulting parliament, asking Sunak:
Will he confirm that he stands by the parliamentary convention that, where possible, military interventions by the UK government – particularly if they are part of a sustained campaign – should be brought before the House? Scrutiny is not the enemy of strategy.
Sunak said he was ‘committed to that convention’, and also repeated his assertion that ‘it is important that there is no linkage between these actions and anything else that is happening’. While Starmer and SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn both mentioned Israel in their statements, Sunak continued to say he was ‘happy to answer questions about the situation in Israel and Gaza, but the House should make it very clear to the outside world that there is no link between what we have done last week and the situation there’.
That he needed to make this point in his opening statement was underlined by the questions from opposition MPs afterwards. Many were understandably keen to raise separate concerns about the plight of Gazans. But others, such as Caroline Lucas, did make the link between the Houthis and the Israel-Hamas conflict, saying people in the region would conclude the UK was indeed intervening on the side of Israel. The British government is desperate to avoid this narrative, and so Sunak will have to make his point again and again in the coming days.
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