A British MP for the ruling Conservative Party has been sacked from his role as a ministerial aide after calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war. Paul Bristow, an aide to the secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, had written a letter to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last week urging him to change his position on the conflict and back a \u201cpermanent\u201d end to the hostilities. The British government says it supports \u201chumanitarian pauses\u201d but not a ceasefire. In his letter, Bristow said a full ceasefire would save lives and allow humanitarian aid to \u201creach the people who need it the most\u201d. In a statement on Monday, a Downing Street spokesperson said the decision to remove Bristow from his position came in response to comments deemed \u201cnot consistent with the principles of collective responsibility\u201d. Bristow, who represents Peterborough in parliament and co-chairs the all-party parliamentary group on British Muslims, expressed understanding about Sunak\u2019s decision. \u201cIt is with regret I leave a job I enjoyed. But I can now talk openly about an issue so many of my constituents care deeply about,\u201d he told reporters. \u201cI believe I can do this better from the backbenches rather than as part of the government payroll.\u201d Israel in recent days has expanded its air and ground attacks on the Gaza Strip, which has been under relentless bombardment since a surprise attack by Hamas, the group running the enclave, inside Israel on October 7. Officials in Gaza say more than 8,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel\u2019s air attacks, while in Israel the death toll has topped 1,400, according to Israeli authorities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A British MP for the ruling Conservative Party has been sacked from his role as a ministerial aide after calling for a ceasefire in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11033,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}