Alison Bennett's Monday Mail: Sudan

Sudan

On Tuesday I spent a good 90 minutes in the Chamber of the House of Commons ‘bobbing’ (indicating that I wanted to speak) on a statement from the Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper about ‘Gaza and Sudan’*. I was not called to ask my question (it often goes like this in the Commons), so there is nothing ‘on the record’ from me.

Even so, the gravity of the civil war in Sudan matters, even if the horror of what is happening right now is beyond my powers of description. Genocide, rape as a weapon of war, and mass killings on a scale whereby the blood spilt can be seen from space are being reported.

The United Kingdom is the ‘penholder’ for Sudan on the UN Security Council, so we have a particular responsibility to do everything we can to stop this brutality.

If you are reading this and wondering what the conflict is all about, then this explainer from the BBC, is a good place to start.

I don’t have answers, but I do know that this matters, and I also know that I have colleagues on the Lib Dem benches like Brian Matthew who have a deep understanding of the country and the conflict.  

*In the interest of brevity, I will not go into my thoughts as to why the Foreign Office thought it was acceptable to roll two major conflicts into a single statement. However, Jeremy Corbyn challenged the Foreign Secretary on this.

Which political party would you vote against?

I stumbled across this tweet from the Deputy Director of Research at More in Common on Friday evening, and I think it is fascinating. Instead of asking people which political party they currently support, it is doing the opposite - who would you vote against? 

The good news for the Liberal Democrats is that only 3% of people would actively vote against us. Even when you look at people who support Reform UK, only 2% of them would vote to stop us. 

It’s a different picture for Labour and Reform though where there are large proportions of the sample who will vote (tactically presumably) against them. 

Maybe the most staggering thing of all is that in the chart on the left hand side, the Conservatives are on just 8%. When only 8% of people say that they would want to vote against the Conservatives shows that at present they are not seen as the potent electoral force that they have been in modern political history. Time will tell whether the Conservatives can come back from this, but at the moment, they are out in the political wilderness.

Ken Clarke on the ‘Budget from Hell’

I found this episode of the Newsagents podcast most enjoyable. Lewis Goodall interviewing Tory Grandee Ken Clarke on his life in politics, how politics has changed, and the threats to democracy that he sees at present. Bearing out the polling above, Clark makes the point that people are increasingly voting against parties and people rather than for the positive case. 

Clark is scathing about Rachel Reeves’ chancellorship. As budget week finally begins, we will have to see what Wednesday brings.

Getting in touch

My parliamentary email address is: alison.bennett.mp@parliament.uk. If you need my help, please get in touch.

Best wishes,
Alison

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