My colleague Peter Walker has this report on the byelections today. The Conservatives are defending large majorities but given Rishi Sunak’s dismal poll ratings, the other parties have a chance to take the seats. Voting has opened in Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth in byelections seen as crucial in gauging the electoral fate of Rishi Sunak, but difficult to predict. The Conservatives are defending majorities of nearly 25,000 in Mid Bedfordshire and close to 20,000 in Tamworth, which would normally point to an easy hold. However, their chances will be hampered by the party’s dismal poll ratings and the records of departing MPs. The Mid Bedfordshire vote was triggered by the resignation of the former culture secretary Nadine Dorries in protest at her lack of a peerage from Boris Johnson’s resignation honours. Her protracted departure drew attention to her seemingly limited involvement in local affairs. In Tamworth, Chris Pincher, the former deputy chief whip, stepped down from his seat after losing an appeal against an eight-week suspension from parliament for groping two men at a private members’ club in the summer of 2022. Tamworth is a straight fight between the Conservatives and Labour. The latter held the Staffordshire seat between 1997 and 2010, when Pincher was first elected. Sarah Edwards, the Labour candidate in Tamworth, is the bookmakers’ favourite to defeat the Conservatives’ Andrew Cooper, but this would need a swing of more than 21 percentage points. Cooper has not helped his case after it emerged that in 2020 he shared a Facebook photo of a flowchart which said parents should only seek help with their finances if they were employed and gave up their TV and mobile phone contracts. A Labour win would not be without precedent: a byelection in 1996 in South East Staffordshire, the previous seat in the area, saw Labour defeat the Conservatives with a swing of nearly 22 percentage points. Mid Bedfordshire is even harder to call, given that both the Liberal Democrats and Labour have flung huge resources at the byelection. Labour came a fairly distant second to Dorries in the 2019 general election, and argue this makes them the obvious challengers. The Lib Dems in turn say the seat’s largely rural demographics and the need to tempt wavering Tory voters to change sides mean they are better placed. Welcome to today’s liveblog. I’m Nicola Slawson and I’m covering for Andrew Sparrow today. Do drop me a line if you have any questions or comments. I’m on nicola.slawson@theguardian.com or @Nicola_Slawson on the site formerly known as Twitter. Reminder: Please don’t tell us how you voted in the comments section – Election law (specifically section 66A of the Representation of the People Act 1983) makes it an offence to publish before the polls close at 10pm. Many thanks. Summary Here’s a roundup of the key developments of the day: Voting has opened in Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth in byelections seen as crucial in gauging the electoral fate of Rishi Sunak, but difficult to predict. The Conservatives are defending majorities of nearly 25,000 in Mid Bedfordshire and close to 20,000 in Tamworth, which would normally point to an easy hold. However, their chances will be hampered by the party’s dismal poll ratings and the records of departing MPs. Rishi Sunak has said it is important that the war between Israel and Hamas does not escalate to the wider region. During his visit, the British prime minister told Benjamin Netanyahu that the UK “absolutely supports Israel’s right to defend itself in line with international law”. Sunak, who was visiting Jerusalem a day after Joe Biden did, flew to Saudi Arabia to meet the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, No 10 said. More than 60 international charities – including Action Aid UK, Bond, Cafod, Christian Aid, Islamic Relief, Médecins Sans Frontières UK, Oxfam GB and Save the Children UK – have signed a statement calling on the UK government to step up its efforts to secure an urgent ceasefire in Israel and Gaza following the bombing of al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital in Gaza and the escalating instability and humanitarian crisis in the region. Nine members of the Glasgow Kelvin constituency Labour party executive committee have resigned in protest over Labour’s stance on Gaza. The group accuse the party leadership of “stifling” debate on the situation in Israel and Gaza. The government’s new law aimed at giving more support to renters, including banning no-fault evictions, will make its first appearance in parliament on Monday, Penny Mordaunt has said. The Commons leader said the renters reform bill would have its second reading in the Commons on Monday 23 October, PA reports. A coach carrying asylum seekers to be accommodated on the Bibby Stockholm arrived at Portland Port in Kent. People protesting against the use of the barge also gathered at the gates of Portland Port on Thursday as the asylum seekers were brought back on board. We are closing this liveblog shortly. Thanks so much for joining us. Rishi Sunak’s controversial fund to support startups during the Covid pandemic invested nearly £2m in companies linked to his wife, Guardian analysis has found. Carousel Ventures, a company part-owned by Akshata Murty’s venture capital firm, got an investment of £250,000 from the Future Fund to help fund its ownership of a luxury underwear business called Heist Studios, it can be disclosed. It is the fourth business linked to Murty revealed to have received an investment from the fund set up by Sunak to support startups when he was chancellor during the Covid pandemic. None of Murty’s investments that benefited from the Future Fund appear publicly on Sunak’s register of ministerial interests. Critics have raised concerns over a lack of transparency and the potential for a perceived conflict of interest given Sunak launched the scheme to help startups – a sector in which his wife is a known investor. Other investors in Carousel Ventures via an intermediary fund include Andrew Griffith, a Conservative MP who is now a Treasury minister under Sunak, and Brent Hoberman, a businessman who publicly pleaded with Sunak to bring in such a scheme and “save our startups”. The £250,000 loan to Carousel Ventures has now been converted into equity, so the UK taxpayer owns a small stake in the “revolutionary shapewear” company. The prime minister has landed in Saudi Arabia on the second stop of his visit to the Middle East. Rishi Sunak earlier said it was important that the war between Israel and Hamas did not escalate to the wider region. Boris Johnson’s top media official said the Daily Mail’s rush to get people working in offices during the first Covid lockdown came from being “desperate” to sell newspapers, according to documents released to the official inquiry. James Slack said a Mail headline in April 2020 predicting masks could allow people to return to work was spurred by a desire to revive its circulation figures. He had previously been the paper’s political editor before working for Johnson in No 10. The comment, which was part of a series of WhatsApp messages, prompted Matt Hancock, the health secretary, to reply in block capitals: “WE DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH MASKS TO SAY THESE THINGS.” The exchanges on 16 April 2020 also saw Slack, who then had the role of Johnson’s official spokesperson, and later served as his press secretary, disparage a Daily Telegraph front page headline, which said: “No end in sight for lockdown.” “Have a look at the Telegraph front page,” wrote Slack. “They’re financially desperate and it’s making them write desperate things.” The messages were sent late in the evening, after Dominic Raab, who was the foreign secretary, had led the daily Covid press conference, and when the front pages of the next day’s newspapers were being posted on social media. The Mail’s front page, which featured an article headlined: “Wear a mask in the office,” predicted that mask use, then not recommended outside healthcare settings, could permit a swift return to physical workplaces. Slack, who is now the deputy editor of the Sun, responded to a posted photo of the paper’s front page saying: They took their lead from the press conference. Geordie [Greig, the Daily Mail’s editor at the time] just desperate to get people back to work and buying a copy of the paper. In a series of subsequent messages, a seemingly worried Hancock wrote: Talking about this before we are ready risks taking masks from nurses and social care workers who really need them. It is self-indulgent and dangerous. I am ramping up purchasing as fast as we can. He added: “We must hold the line on masks – or they will go like loo roll.” A further 41 schools in England have been found to be infested with unstable reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC), according to an update from the Department for Education. That takes the total number of schools with buildings or facilities in danger of collapse to 214, compared to the 173 identified last month. While most of the schools are fully operational, including ones with classes taking place in temporary accommodation, several are still requiring a mix of remote and in-person teaching. Bridget Phillipson, Labour’s shadow education secretary, noted that the DfE’s promised fortnightly update was two weeks late: The drip, drip of schools being added to the Raac list is yet more evidence of chaos from a Tory government that has no grip on the extent of crumbling school buildings. Essex has 62 schools with Raac present, by far the most of any local authority. A spokesperson for the Local Government Association said councils had been supporting academies as well as council-backed maintained schools: This work supporting non-maintained schools has come from existing council budgets and it is important they now have clarity from government about whether these costs will be met. Nine members of the Glasgow Kelvin constituency Labour party executive committee have resigned in protest over Labour’s stance on Gaza. The group accuse the party leadership of “stifling” debate on the situation in Israel and Gaza. They said in a statement: We have been informed by the general secretary and the Scottish general secretary that any motions relating to the situation in Israel and Gaza are out of order for all CLPs. It seems preposterous to us that a local political party cannot have a substantive discussion on contemporary events which are commanding the attention of the entire world. We believe that the emergency motion which was submitted for debate was perfectly valid, and we refute any suggestion by party officials that the mere discussion of the Gaza situation would be “prejudicial or grossly detrimental to the Labour party” (message from the general secretary). On the contrary, we believe that the absence of such discussion brings our party into disrepute. The editor of LabourHame, the Scottish Labour blog, says the group are just using the current situation as a chance to kick out at Keir Starmer because they are still loyal to Jeremy Corbyn. Last summer’s GCSE results in England saw the “disadvantage gap” in grades – between children eligible for free school meals or in care and their better-off peers – at its widest level since 2011, according to figures published today. While 25% of disadvantaged pupils got grades of 5 or higher in GCSE English and maths, more than double the proportion of non-disadvantaged pupils got the same results. The Department for Education’s “Progress 8” measure of attainment – comparing GCSE results to forecasts based on primary school attainment – also saw disadvantaged pupils get negative figures, meaning that on average they did half a grade worse than expected. Non-disadvantaged pupils had positive progress figures, meaning that they did better than expected. The DfE said: The widening of the disadvantage gap index may reflect the difficult circumstances that many pupils will have experienced over the last few academic years which saw various restrictions put in place in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. James Bowen, assistant general secretary at the National Association of Head Teachers, said: It is clear that the government needs to do far more to help schools tackle the disadvantage gap, which remains a real concern. The reality is that funding for disadvantaged pupils has stagnated, and the government failed to give schools the levels of resources they needed to support pupils recovering from the pandemic. The national school-level figures published by the DfE showed that Michaela Community School in Brent, Tauheedul Islam Girls High School in Blackburn and Mercia School in Sheffield achieved the highest rates of progress, with pupils on average gaining two grades higher than expected. The Star multi-academy trust had five schools including Tauheedul Girls in the top 10 for progress, while the Mercia School had the best progress made by disadvantaged pupils. My colleagues Steven Morris and Diane Taylor have this on the return of asylum seekers to the Bibby Stockholm barge today: Some of the men who have returned said they were frightened at the prospect of being made to live on the barge but were concerned that their asylum claims may be rejected if they resisted. One told the Guardian: “I am worried and afraid. I do not want to go to the barge, but I don’t have the courage to disobey. I am literally helpless. “I don’t know what is waiting for me. What will the government’s next pilot plans be for the men they are putting on the barge? We feel like pawns in their game, guinea pigs in their experiments. What experiment will they enact on us next? What is at the end of this devastating and crazy wait? Will I be able to save my life and my family?” It is thought that about 30 men were on a bus that arrived at the port on Thursday lunchtime. Another 45 are believed to be arriving on Friday and Monday. Dr Lisa Cameron, who quit the SNP for the Tories, has said she and Scotland are “exhausted by nationalism”. Cameron caused a stir when she defected last week, after claiming she had been ostracised by SNP colleagues after supporting the young staffer who was sexually harassed by MP Patrick Grady, calling the party’s culture at Westminster “toxic”. The defection sparked a war of words between Cameron and party members, with the SNP president, Mike Russell, describing her decision as a “tantrum” and first minister, Humza Yousaf, saying she must never have believed in an independent Scotland. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour on Thursday, Cameron was asked if she still believed in separation from the UK. No I don’t. To be honest with you, I feel absolutely exhausted by nationalism. I feel like Scotland’s exhausted by nationalism and all of our services are exhausted now. It’s become very divisive. [The SNP] was badged to me in 2014 as a big, broad tent – it’s become narrower and narrower and narrower towards nationalism that I don’t even recognise the party I joined from 2014. Cameron made her first appearance in the Commons as she crossed the floor before prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, flanked by the former prime minister Theresa May and the Scottish Tory leader, Douglas Ross. The East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow MP went on to say that her religion – she is a member of the Free Church of Scotland – had been “frowned upon” by some in the SNP. She said: I didn’t feel particularly wanted as a Christian in the SNP. You were made to feel like you’re a Christian but just don’t raise it very much, certainly don’t vote in line with your beliefs. I had voted against abortion regulation previously in the parliament and that had been another issue with the SNP. Some people within the SNP had said at the time that I shouldn’t be able to be selected because of those issues as an MP last time. There have been ongoing issues about not being able to be who I am, not being a big, broad tent of all different people from different political backgrounds. People have gathered near the gates of Portland port to protest against the use of the Bibby Stockholm accommodation barge as asylum seekers were brought back onboard. Candy Udwin, of Stand Up to Racism Dorset, said she had been in contact with some of those who had been staying on the Bibby Stockholm. She said: They hate it, they say it feels like a prison, some hate being on the sea, they find it very difficult to leave and they are completely separated from the community. Annika, of Portland Global Friendship Group, had helped produce “welcome bags” for the arrivals, which included shampoo, toothpaste, notebooks and a map of the local area. She said: We just want to welcome the refugees and make a gesture to show there are people here who care. I think the barge is a horrible idea, it feels very oppressive, it feels like a prison here with the amount of security that they have to go through. A coach carrying asylum seekers to be accommodated on the Bibby Stockholm has arrived at Portland Port. People protesting against the use of the barge also gathered at the gates of Portland Port on Thursday as the asylum seekers were brought back on board, PA News reports. A number of people were being taken on board the vessel at the Dorset port more than two months after it was evacuated following the discovery of Legionella bacteria in the water supply. A Home Office spokesperson said that tests for the bacteria, as well as improved fire safety protocols, had been completed before the return of the occupants to the barge. The Daily Telegraph has reported that of the 39 people removed from the vessel in August, 29 would be returning. Others had found accommodation with relatives, one had returned to their home country and others had mental health problems exempting them from staying on the barge. Carralyn Parkes, mayor of Portland, who recently lost a high court fight against the home secretary, Suella Braverman, over the lawfulness of housing asylum seekers on the barge, attended the protest. She said that she was continuing legal action against Dorset council as the planning authority responsible for the port. She said: The Bibby Stockholm is not the way humane society treats vulnerable human beings. The Home Office said: The government is committed to ending the use of expensive hotels for asylum seekers. Moving asylum seekers into alternative accommodation sites, like the Bibby Stockholm, is more affordable for taxpayers and more manageable for communities, with on-site healthcare and catering facilities. Steve Smith, chief executive of the refugee charity Care4Calais, said it was assisting asylum seekers with legal challenges against the accommodation. He said: That includes supporting the survivors of torture and modern slavery to legally challenge their accommodation on these sites, which is contrary to the government’s own suitability criteria. Already, we are seeing some of these transfers being delayed or cancelled altogether because of these challenges. Rishi Sunak will travel to Saudi Arabia after he has finished his visit with Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, No 10 has announced. The prime minister’s official spokesperson told reporters: Later this afternoon, he is going to fly to Saudi Arabia to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. We will give further updates on his travel later on in the day. Sunak is expected to return to the UK on Friday afternoon. The principle of proportionality does not mean “an eye for an eye” as “that would be perverse”, the Commons leader has said. Speaking during business questions in the Commons, Penny Mordaunt said: There has been discussion over the last week of proportionality and the term collective punishment used on the floor of this house. I think it is incredibly important that we recognise that the International Committee of the Red Cross’s principle on proportionality is not meaning an eye for an eye as some have suggested. That would be perverse. We are not suggesting via that very important principle that if the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) raided Gaza and beheaded a precise number of infants or burnt a precise number of families, or raped a precise number of women and girls, that that would be OK. Of course not. That’s not what proportionality means. The principle of proportionality is seeking to limit damage caused by military operations. Requiring the effects of the means and methods of warfare must not be disproportionate to the military advantage sought. What Israel is trying to do is end Hamas, end a terror organisation which is a block to peace. Mordaunt also noted the IDF are a “trained military force, who are subject to the rules of armed conflict and international law”, adding: “Their targeting doctrine and analysis of it is in the public domain and is subject to scrutiny. I don’t think that Hamas produce joint service publications, but if they did, it would say the opposite.”