Starmer breaks silence over Labour Rochdale candidate Azhar Ali as U-turn row grows – live

Sir Keir Starmer said he took “tough” and “decisive” action to withdraw support for Labour’s Rochdale by-election candidate Azhar Ali over his Israel remarks, insisting the party has “changed” under his leadership.

Speaking to broadcasters on a visit to Wellingborough on Tuesday, the Labour leader said: “Certain information came to light over the weekend in relation to the candidate. There was a fulsome apology.

“Further information came to light yesterday calling for decisive action, so I took decisive action.

“It is a huge thing to withdraw support for a Labour candidate during the course of a by-election.

“It’s a tough decision, a necessary decision, but when I say the Labour Party has changed under my leadership I mean it.”

Keir Starmer also said any allegations against other Labour councillors present at the event at which Mr Ali made his widely condemned remarks would be “fully investigated by the party”.

Labour’s decision will add considerable uncertainty to the outcome of the by-election when voters go to the polls at the end of the month.

Also running in Rochdale are former Labour MP Simon Danczuk, now the Reform Party candidate, and George Galloway, of the Workers Party of Britain, who is campaigning against Labour’s stance on Gaza.

About 20% of the electorate and 30 per cent of the population of the town are Asian, with polls nationally suggesting Labour’s vote could be hit by Asian people unhappy with the party over Palestine and its perceived support for Israel.

Sir Keir on Tuesday denied that factionalism played a role in the handling of complaints or allegations of antisemitism.

“I set out four years ago to tear antisemitism out of the Labour Party,” he told broadcasters. “It’s the first thing I said I’d do as Labour leader, and to change our party.

“I have taken a series of decisions along those lines, ruthlessly changing our party, and it’s made no difference to me where somebody stands in the Labour Party.

“The change I’ve brought about is a Labour Party that is now back in the service of working people.”

The time it took the Labour leader to drop his would-be MP for sharing antisemitic conspiracy theories suggests he’ll find the speed and pressure of making calls at No10 a worrying challenge, writes John Rentoul.

Read John’s piece in full here:

Joe Murphy tunes into the one place a robotic, out-of-touch PM with an approval rating of minus 48 can look vaguely competent – the ‘undecided voter’ Q&A on a right-wing TV station where Mondeo Man has been replaced by Mogadon Man.

Read Joe’s piece in full here:

Sir Keir Starmer makes so many U-turns that he is “going round in circles”, former Tory leader William Hague has said, Archie Mitchell reports.

Lord Hague slammed the Labour leader over his handling of Rochdale by-election candidate Azhar Ali’s antisemitic remarks.

“It’s yet another U-turn. Like last week, Keir Starmer’s got so many U-turns, he’s really going around in circles,” the Tory peer told Times Radio.

He added: “This is a pretty spectacular case of it, though, because, on multiple levels of the Labour Party, they have made a mess of it.”

“It’s the embarrassment for them of having selected a person like this in the first place who believes in crazy conspiracy theories and is clearly out of touch with reality,” Lord Hague added.

David Cameron will reportedly meet with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi this weekend at the Munich security conference.

It would be his first meeting with a Chinese minister since he was appointed foreign secretary in November last year.

The Foreign Office has pencilled in a meeting between the pair, two government sources told The Guardian.

The former prime minister has come under fresh scrutiny about his links to China since taking up a second in the House of Lords to join the government.

A Tory MP failed to declare his wife’s £50,000 shareholding in BP while speaking in debates about windfall taxes on the oil and gas industry, parliament’s standards watchdog has found, Archie Mitchell reports.

The parliamentary commissioner for standards said there were three debates last year in which David Duguid should have declared the £50,000 shareholding.

It came after The Guardian reported Mr Duguid, who worked for BP for a decade, had transferred his shares into his wife’s name five years before becoming an MP.

Standards commissioner Daniel Greenberg said that in the three debates, the shareholding “might reasonably be thought by others to influence [his] words or actions as a member”.

Mr Duguid said he did not believe “anything I could have, let alone actually, said or did as a member of parliament could have had any bearing on the BP share price”.

The MP for Banff and Buchan acknowledged the breach, apologised and agreed to attend training on the rules.