UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will address Parliament on Monday after his government said it’s ready to carry out further strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen if the group continues to attack commercial vessels in the Red Sea.
The strikes by US and allied forces last week have gone “some way” toward degrading the Houthis’ capabilities, Foreign Secretary David Cameron said, but that the UK is prepared to take action again if necessary. The situation in the region had been deteriorating and Sunak was right to participate before informing Parliament, he said, referring to the premier’s upcoming statement.
It will be Sunak’s first House of Commons appearance since he also made a surprise visit to Kyiv to announce a new security commitment to Ukraine and a pledge of £2.5 billion ($3.2 billion) of military aid next year. After days of Westminster being dominated by the looming general election and a long-running scandal involving the Post Office, it will mark a dramatic shift in tone to security and geopolitics when Parliament resumes after the weekend.
“It’s hard to think of a time when there has been so much danger, and insecurity and instability in the world,” Cameron told Sky News on Sunday. “The lights are absolutely flashing red on the global dashboard.”
But while Sunak’s statement on Yemen is unlikely to recreate the kind of theater in the House of Commons around past military interventions — especially after the main opposition Labour Party said it also backs the strikes against the Houthis — there are still important political calculations in play.
Cameron, the former prime minister who Sunak brought back from the political wilderness in November to manage Britain’s foreign policy, made that clear when he tried to present his boss as a calm leader who grasps a crisis.
What’s needed “is strong leadership and a clear plan,” Cameron, whose decision to intervene in Libya to help oust then-leader Muammar al-Qaddafi in 2011 was pilloried by a parliamentary committee five years later, told Sky. “That is what we have with the prime minister and the team in place.”
The governing Conservatives, who trail the Labour Party by about 20 points in national polls, typically present themselves to voters as supportive of a strong military and with a steady hand on foreign policy.
When former Prime Minister Boris Johnson was in political trouble over the rule-breaking parties in Downing Street during the pandemic, the way he threw so much political capital behind Ukraine in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion was perceived in Westminster as buying him more time with restless Tory MPs.
The UK said early Monday it will send 20,000 military personnel to join a NATO military drill this year. The Steadfast Defender exercise will provide “vital reassurance against the Putin menace,” Secretary of Defence Grant Shapps will say in a speech warning that the West stands at a “crossroads.”
Still, any attempt by the Tories to gain advantage over Labour will likely be dented by the supportive stance leader Keir Starmer took immediately after the strikes on the Houthis were announced. The justification for action is “one most people pretty readily understand,” he told the BBC.
Starmer confirmed that support Sunday in another BBC interview, though he said Labour’s backing was not unconditional. “We will look at the case the government puts forward,” he said.
With Labour’s commanding poll lead ahead of a UK election expected in the fall, Starmer has his own political considerations as he tries to present his party as a government-in-waiting.
The opposition leader has said he will cooperate where possible with the government on defense issues, a stance that played out most obviously when he backed Sunak’s support for Israel’s war on Hamas despite many Labour MPs criticizing Starmer and demanding he call for an immediate cease-fire.
It’s a sea change from former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who was skeptical about NATO and military actions. Labour officials calculate that stance put off voters, and contributed to the party’s defeat in the 2019 election.
A poll by YouGov published by the Telegraph newspaper predicted an historic loss for Sunak’s Tories in this year’s election, with a survey of 14,000 respondents putting Labour on course for a 120-seat majority in the House of Commons.
But Starmer’s focus on Downing Street throws up awkward moments for the Labour leader. On Sunday, he was quizzed about his previous pledge that under a Labour government, Parliament would have to approve military action.
Having supported the strikes on the Houthis — which Parliament has yet to be formally informed of — Starmer told the BBC that such operations were not what he was referring to when he made the pledge.
“There is obviously a huge distinction between an operation, the like of which we have seen in the last few days, and military action — a sustained campaign, military action usually involving troops on the ground,” he said.
Meanwhile Sunak is likely to face some criticism on Monday, after both the Liberal Democrats and Scottish National Party slammed his decision to join the US-led strikes on the Houthis without consulting the House of Commons. The Liberal Democrats called for a retrospective vote.
And on Tuesday, any remaining House of Commons unity will likely vanish when Sunak brings his controversial plan to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda back for two days of debate and votes. It’s likely to pass with enough Conservative votes, though the scale of a potential rebellion on the Tory right could yet cause the prime minister trouble. It’s also likely to face challenges in the House of Lords.
“Sadly I don’t have a personal majority in the House of Lords,” Cameron, who Sunak made a life peer when he was appointed foreign secretary, told the BBC. “But I’ll do everything I can to help get it through, because it’s essential.”
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