UK would welcome fall of Assad regime – Angela Rayner

The UK welcomes reports the Assad regime has fallen in Syria, Angela Rayner has said.

The UK Government had been working to evacuate it’s citizens before the situation reached a crisis point, the Deputy Prime Minister added.

Overnight on Sunday, a lightning rebel offensive seized control of Damascus, the Syrian capital, and president Bashar Assad is reported to have fled.

Resolution

The situation is “fast-moving”, the Deputy Prime Minister told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg, amid reports of the Syrian leader’s escape.

Speaking to Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips on Sky News, she said: “If (the) Assad regime has fallen, then I welcome that news, but what we need to see is a political resolution in line with the UN resolutions.

“We need to see civilians and infrastructure protected, far too many people have lost their lives, we need stability in that region.”

She did not reveal how many British nationals are in Syria, but said the Foreign Office had been working over the weekend to help them leave.

She added: “We’ve had a plan to ensure that people were evacuated ahead of what’s happened over the weekend, and we continue to support our UK nationals.”

Insurgents

The leading insurgent group in Syria is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Islamist rebels whose group is banned in the UK.

Ms Rayner said Mr Assad “wasn’t exactly good to the Syrian people”, but suggested she did not want to see Syria move in a radical direction following his regime.

The Deputy Prime Minister said: “Dictatorship and terrorism creates problems for the people of Syria, who have faced so much already, and also destabilises the region.

“That’s why we have to have a political solution where the Government is acting in the interests of the Syrian people.”

HTS is a proscribed group in the UK as the authorities say it should be treated as an alternative name “for the organisation which is already proscribed” under the name al-Qaeda, once led by Osama bin Laden.

A former spy chief said it would be “rather ridiculous” if the UK was unable to engage with HTS because of the ban.

Liberation

Ex-head of MI6 Sir John Sawers told Sky News: “When I was chief of MI6 10 or 12 years ago, we looked at all of these Syrian opposition groups and classified them into those that we could support and those who were beyond the pale and too close to al-Qaeda, and Tahrir al-Sham was definitely in the latter category.

“I think Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the leader, has made great efforts over the last 10 years to distance himself from those terrorist groups and certainly the actions we’ve seen of Tahrir al-Sham over the last two weeks has been those of a liberation movement, not of a terrorist organisation.”

He added: “So, I think the Home Secretary will be asking MI5 and the joint terrorism assessment centre for a review of the situation about Tahrir al-Sham and whether it should remain on the proscribed entity list.

“It would be rather ridiculous, actually, if we’re unable to engage with the new leadership in Syria because of a proscription dating back 12 years.”

Shadow foreign secretary Dame Priti Patel said the Tories wanted to see the “right kind of outcome, put the Syrian people first, but also look at the sort of governance structures that could occupy Syria going forward”.

Dame Priti said the Government should look at a review of the “security and defence implications as well as the terrorist risks”, adding: “They will have to now assess the threat that HTS poses, immediately for our own interests, as well as for Syria’s interests and the wider region.”