The National:

WITH Parliament prorogued until Tuesday, the leaders of the two main parties had some time to focus on their passions.

Keir Starmer got to get stuck into suspending the whip from one of his MPs that he doesn’t like, while Rishi Sunak got to geek out about artificial intelligence with the world’s richest man.

Starmer’s woes over Gaza grew greater this week with two Labour council leaders in England today calling for him to quit over his stance on the conflict, which his critics say makes him look compassionless and unable to call out what they say are war crimes committed by Israel.

Anas Sarwar to Sadiq Khan to Andy Burnham have all broke ranks and called for a ceasefire. Just shy of a third of Labour MPs back that position.

Taking questions after a speech today, Starmer argued that he wanted to “alleviate” the suffering of innocent civilians in Gaza – but that a “humanitarian pause” was best to achieve this, not a ceasefire.

Asked about what his “red lines” for Israel were, Starmer ducked the question, giving critics the space to interpret that as Labour giving carte blanche to Israel while it’s accused by human rights organisations of using chemical weapons in Gaza and collectively punishing Palestinians for Hamas’s attacks.

But the pressure is not going to go away and as the conflict worsens, as seems likely with the evacuation of British nationals – including Humza Yousaf’s in-laws – and preparations for a full-scale ground invasion of Gaza, Starmer will continue to face questions about his uncritical support of Israel.

Poll position

But he may be cheered by two polls this week which appeared to show a Labour resurgence in Scotland, at least for the upcoming Westminster election.

One conducted more recently put the SNP and Labour neck and neck, while another from the respected Scottish Election Study gave Starmer’s party a six-point lead.

The latter is thought to have been the first time since 2014 that Labour have held a lead over the SNP in a Westminster poll.

Meanwhile Sunak’s AI summit at Bletchley Park – where the agents who broke the secrets of the Enigma Code once worked – seems to have achieved some progress on focusing minds on the dangers of AI, though critics have pointed out it lacked concrete regulation for AI companies.

Musk's mini-me 

It’s worthy stuff but no one can pretend the real draw wasn’t a pre-recorded interview with the PM and Twitter/X owner Elon Musk, the richest man in the world.

They told us how we might one day have AI friends, while Musk said there may be a future where “no job is needed” and people only work for their own satisfaction.

But in amongst the far-out techno futurism, Sunak once again revealed his lack of the common touch when he said he wanted the UK to adopt the frontier spirit of Silicon Valley where people “are unafraid to give up the security of a regular pay cheque to go and start something and be comfortable with failure”.

It would help one overcome the fear of failure if your education cost more than the deposit for a house, rise through the ranks of one of the world’s biggest banks then marry into one of the richest families in India.

And finally, another week brings yet another Tory scandal as one of Sunak’s MPs is found guilty of racially abusing a protester.

Bob Stewart, the MP for Beckenham, has kept the Tory whip throughout the investigation into his conduct when he told a protester to “go back to Bahrain” after being heckled outside an event in December last year.

At time of writing, there was radio silence from the Tories on what the guilty verdict meant for Stewart’s membership of the parliamentary party.

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