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The New Statesman.

Hello, I'm Hannah Barnes and this is Politics from the New Statesman, where every Thursday we bring you the latest from Westminster and beyond.

Today I'm joined, as ever, by our political editor, Andrew Marr and senior editor George Eaton.

Hello, both.

Hello.

Hello.

Please excuse my sniffing and blocked nose.

Now, let's start with the enormous news in Syria.

This week, President Bashar al-Assad's 24-year reign came to a swift and unexpected end.

The Assad family has, of course, brutally ruled Syria since 1971.

But on Sunday, armed rebels led by Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham or HTS, took control of Damascus.

Assad fled to Moscow, where he has been granted asylum.

Now, we covered these events in some detail and what they meant for the region in Wednesday's episode of Insight.

We'll put a link to that in our show notes if you want to listen back.

But the changing situation in Syria also raises some big questions here in the UK for the Labour government as to how it should respond.

Let's start with the fact that HTS are currently a prescribed banned terrorist group.

They're on the UK government's list of banned terrorist groups. Kirstama has said no decision yet as to

...