Baroness Warsi quits UK government over Gaza

Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, a UK foreign office minister and the most senior Muslim politician in the country, is resigning from the government over its handling of the latest Gazan conflagration between Israel and the Palestinians.

Israel and Palestinian factions in Gaza have begun a 72-hour ceasefire today aimed at preparing the ground for talks on a more permanent end to the war, but previous attempts to calm fighting have broken down.

Ahead of Tuesday’s 8am deadline, militants in Gaza fired several rockets towards Israel, causing sirens to sound in central cities. However, both Israel and the Palestinian factions accepted Tuesday’s halt in fighting unconditionally, amid signs that Israel and Hamas were each eager to wind down the conflict.

Baroness Warsi, a Yorkshire-born Muslim lawyer, has been senior minister of state at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, as well as minister for faith and communities. She has helped spearhead the UK government’s strategy to garner some of the rapidly growing Islamic finance industry, and has been the sole example of a non-white woman in the upper echelons of the Conservative party.

The daughter of a former bus driver who emigrated to West Yorkshire from Pakistan, Sayeeda Varsi trained as a solicitor, and became the first Muslim politician to serve in the British cabinet when David Cameron took office in 2010.

She entered the House of Lords in 2007 aged 36, making her the youngest peer in Parliament. In July, she ruled herself out of the running for a job as an EU commissioner.
Downing Street did not immediately make a comment about the peer’s resignation.

She confirmed her resignation on Twitter, saying:

With deep regret I have this morning written to the Prime Minister & tendered my resignation. I can no longer support Govt policy on #Gaza

In her resignation letter, made public by Baroness Warsi on Twitter, the outgoing minister expounded on her resignation:

My view has been that our policy in relation to the Middle East Peace Process generally but more recently our approach and language during the current crisis in Gaza is morally indefensible, is not in Britain’s national interest and will have a long term detrimental impact on our reputation internationally and domestically.

Baroness Warsi hailed the former foreign secretary William Hague as “probably one of the finest” the UK has ever had, but hinted of more discontent since his recent exit and said that the absence of other senior former colleagues like Ken Clarke and Dominic Grieve had “become very apparent”.

There is however great unease across the Foreign office, amongst both Ministers and senior officials, in the way recent decisions are being made.

Elizabeth Rigby reports that while Gaza has been the trigger, friends say the former party chairman had been considering whether to step down from her ministerial role for some time.

Relations between her and the prime minister have been strained since 2012 when she was moved in a re-shuffle from co-chairman to the post of minister of state at the Foreign Office and minister for faith and communities — a move widely regarded as a demotion.

Below is also her full resignation letter to prime minister David Cameron.