MPs Return to Westminster After Summer Recess

Today marks the first day back in parliament for MPs after Summer Recess. This week will see Sir Kier Starmer face questions from the House during PMQ’s – his first one since the Labour government took the decision to scrap universal winter fuel payments for pensioners.

With the Chancellor Rachel Reeves signalling a string of emergency savings measures to sure up what she identified as a £22bn “black hole” left by the Conservatives, No.11 announced that about 10m pensioners who do not receive pension credit will lose the winter fuel payment of up to £300. The measures are expected to apply from mid-September.

According to Reeves, “the reason we are doing that is because the deficit was much higher than anyone thought, spending was higher than anyone thought” but the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives have criticised the decision and called for a vote in commons. Given Labour’s 174-seat simple majority however, it’s hard to see how such a vote would alter the course. Age UK have also called on Reeves to reverse the decision, with its petition receiving more than 460,000 votes.

Wednesday’s PMQs session will also come just a week after the Prime Minister warned that “there is a budget coming in October, and it is going to be painful”. As we looked at last week, while Starmer gave no indication of what form the fiscal tightening may take, the speech seemingly paved the way for higher taxing and lower spending alongside further borrowing. This “short-term pain” he reasoned, would be worth it for the “long-term good”, but the Prime Minster will no doubt be scrutinised over his plans.

In Germany, the far right AfD party have won their first state election. The party took almost 33% of the vote in Thurungia, ahead of the Christian Democrats on 23.6%. They also came a close second in Saxony, where the Christian Democrats marginally beat them to the line.

This is the first time a far-right party has won a state election since World War Two, but the election doesn’t mean that they’ll necessarily take power. This is because they haven’t got an outright majority, and other parties have said that they won’t form a coalition with them.

What this means though is, much like in France, the parties that will band together to form a government will have very disparate political ideals. Such coalitions aren’t usually that successful in making economic and social progress, which means by staying together to keep the far-right out, they increase the number of disenfranchised voters which in turn risk moving to the right the next time around.

A general strike is taking place in parts of Israel today as citizens call on the government to do more to safeguard hostages held by Hamas. Their strike comes two days after the bodies of six Israeli hostages were recovered by IDF soldiers, prompting thousands to demonstrate against what they see as Netanyahu prioritising his political agenda over hostages’ safety. Protesters are demanding Netanyahu arranges a deal as soon as possible, to ensure that the 64 hostages understood to still be held by Hamas can return to Israel.

On Sunday, its understood that that as many as 500,000 protesters took to the streets, with around 300,000 of these in Tel Aviv.

According to The Hostages Families Forum those six civilians were “murdered in the last few days, after surviving almost 11 months of abuse, torture, and starvation in Hamas captivity”.

Earlier this morning, the government tabled an injunction against the protests which was called by Histadrut, one of the country’s largest unions.