Saturday, August 31, 2024
Not so-serious stuff?
The Independent reports Keir Starmer has had a portrait of Margaret Thatcher removed from his new grace and favour pad.
The paper tells us that Starmer's biographer, Tom Baldwin said that the prime minister found the £100,000 painting, which was commissioned by Gordon Brown, “unsettling” – sparking outrage among Conservative MPs:
Speaking at an event organised by Glasgow’s Aye Write book festival, Mr Baldwin said that after Sir Keir took office, they met at No 10 for a private conversation.
The artwork was commissioned after Mr Brown invited Mrs Thatcher to tea after he succeeded Tony Blair in 2007, and was paid for by an anonymous donor and is the first of a former prime minister to be commissioned by Downing Street.
Painted by Richard Stone, it was unveiled at a private reception in 2009 and hangs in her former study, unofficially known as the Thatcher Room.
Leading the criticism, former Northern Ireland first minister Baroness Arlene Foster wrote on X: “I think it is ‘unsettling’ that the PM should remove the first female PM from No 10.
“He cannot deny her role in our nation - the most significant PM after Churchill. Not a good start from Labour, looks and feels vindictive and petty.”
Former Tory minister Esther McVey tweeted: “What a pathetic, petty minded little man Keir Starmer is – removing a picture of the first female prime minister and one of the longest serving prime ministers. Maybe he doesn’t want to be reminded of a towering politician he could never live up to.”
Greg Smith, the MP for Mid Buckinghamshire, said the decision was “utter pettiness from Starmer”. Speaking to the Telegraph he said the episode showed that Sir Keir has “no respect for our history and previous prime ministers”.
Last December, Sir Keir praised Thatcher for bringing “meaningful change” in Britain in a piece for The Sunday Telegraph.
The Labour leader said the late former prime minister had “set loose our natural entrepreneurialism” during her time as prime minister.
Personally, I would also find that portrait disturbing and have litte time for what Thatcher did in office, but that is my personal opinion. Others may think differently, but when those people think that a portrait is more important than the legacy of its subject then they really have lost the plot.
Friday, August 30, 2024
Could Vaughan Gething go to the House of Lords?
The news website says that while Ms Stevens herself has not responded to our questions on the matter, the suggestion that she has been pushing for Mr Gething to get a peerage has been denied vehemently by a UK Government source. This has not stopped speculation though:
Mr Gething resigned as First Minister in July following a succession of scandals. He accepted donations totalling £200,000 from a waste group whose owner David Neal had been given two suspended prison sentences for dumping toxic sludge in the precious landscape of the Gwent Levels.
It later emerged that the group was under investigation for underpaying landfill tax to the Welsh Government by wrongly classifying the kinds of waste it was dumping.
Nation.Cymru also published the screenshot of a message from a ministerial iMessage chat that showed Mr Gething admitting that he was deleting messages because they would be disclosable under freedom of information laws. He failed to mention this in sworn evidence to the UK Covid Inquiry, claiming messages had been deleted when his phone was being “refitted” by the Senedd’s IT department.
...
While Keir Starmer initially backed Mr Gething, the Labour Party came to recognise that he was more of a liability than an asset.
This week Nation.Cymru reported how Mr Gething had told his successor as First Minister Eluned Morgan that he was “ready to serve” in her Cabinet if she offers him a job in a reshuffle expected in September.
We also understand that Mr Gething has told people he would like a seat in the House of Lords and a ministerial job in the UK Labour government.
The suggestion that he could make a swift return to government was not welcomed by senior Labour figures we spoke to.
A reliable political source subsequently contacted us to say: “I have been told by three separate people that Jo Stevens has been pressing the case for Vaughan Gething to go to the House of Lords. One said she had been overheard having conversations to that effect in the Wales Office. Such representations would have been made to Number 10.”
A senior Labour source with no knowledge of such representations told us: “In normal circumstances, it would not be remarkable for a Secretary of State for Wales to suggest a peerage for a former First Minister, but these are not normal circumstances, and it would indicate poor judgement on Jo Stevens’ part to do so.”
Before they became elected politicians, Ms Stevens and Mr Gething worked together at Thompsons Solicitors in Cardiff, and they remain close friends.
Whatever the truth, there is clearly movement within the Labour Party to keep Gething on board in some senior role or another. How that will go down with his detractors within and without the Labour Party, and with voters will have to be seen.
Thursday, August 29, 2024
No ambition
The paper says that the prime minister made it clear he was not open to a deal that would make it easier for young people from the UK and the European Union to travel, when he held a joint press conference with German chancellor Olaf Scholz on Wednesday:
Despite Sir Keir having described the renegotiation as “a once-in-a-generation opportunity”, there are concerns that he is not willing to be flexible on a proposal that is strongly supported in the EU.
It was Sir Keir’s fifth meeting with Mr Scholz since becoming prime minister, as the two opened talks on a Germany-UK bilateral deal to be completed by the end of this year.
The prime minister said the proposed treaty with Germany would be the first step in an overhaul of Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal, which has created visa and trade barriers for the UK since it departed the EU in 2020.
Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesperson Layla Moran said: “This is a positive step forward after years of the Conservatives trashing the UK’s relationship with Europe. But the new government needs to be more ambitious about rebuilding stronger ties with our European allies.
“That should start with agreeing a youth mobility scheme, giving young people the opportunity to easily live and work across the continent.”
Richard Kilpatrick, campaigns manager at European Movement UK, added: “For clarity, the draft offer from the European Commission to the European Council is youth mobility between a single member state and the UK; it is not freedom of movement for under-30s. Nor is the TCA (trade and cooperation agreement) review a renegotiation – it is a very rigid framework with little chance of meaningful change.
“What can and should happen is a series of agreements alongside the TCA that will go a little way in repairing the damage caused by Brexit, and show our European neighbours that we are serious about improving our relationship with the EU.
“Youth mobility is one area; participation in Erasmus+ and culturing touring visas are others. In the long run, we need to stop using the future of our young people, the success of our music industry and our economic future as bargaining chips, and instead review our future relationship in Europe openly and transparently. Every day, it becomes clearer that we need the independent forward-looking inquiry we have been pushing the UK government to agree to.”
The new government need to understand that what majority there was for Brexit in this country has filtered away as the consequences of that dceision become more and more appparent and the economy struggles under the weight of the measures that leaving the EU have brought in.
Rejoining may well be off the agenda, but if there is to be a reset then it must involve some changes and the prime minister must be open to implementing them.
Wednesday, August 28, 2024
Disabled crime victims 'fobbed off' as trust in police falls
The paper says that one wheelchair user told the survey a police officer asked them why they did not have “someone looking after” them to stop crimes happening to them, while Baroness Newlove, in her report, said the findings were “particularly concerning when you consider disabled people are 57% more likely than non-disabled people to be a victim of headline crime”:
The survey asked more than 3,000 victims across England and Wales about their experiences with police, the Crown Prosecution Service, the courts, and victim services.
Victims spoke about being “fobbed off” by police and less than a fifth were aware of their victims’ rights and support services available. Others raised concerns about discrimination, with some saying they weren’t taken seriously when reporting hate crimes.
Baroness Newlove said the “disappointment” of disabled victims “is entirely understandable”. “It seems agencies fail to make the adjustments necessary for a disabled victim to be heard and have their story accurately captured,” she told the Mirror. “Who you are should – and must – not dictate the treatment and support you receive – or your chances at justice.
She said the survey must be “a major wake-up call” for those in Government that “rebuilding victims’ trust in the criminal justice system must be an absolute priority”. “A justice system that leaves victims feeling unsupported will only add to the trauma of the crime and drive disillusionment, with victims and witnesses simply walking away. So, let’s be clear: victims deserve better,” she added.
THe Minister for Safeguarding is quite right when she says that too many victims of crime have been failed by the criminal justice system. Trust is broken and it is vital the entire system improves to regain public confidence. Let's hope she starts to put it right.
Tuesday, August 27, 2024
Israel arms sales review must conclude quickly
The paper says that Hermer has told Foreign Office officials he will not approve a decision to ban some weapons sales until they can say for sure which could be used to break international humanitarian law.
They add that the legal wrangling at the top of government is understood to be the principal cause of the delay to the decision, which has become even more sensitive in recent weeks as the crisis in the Middle East escalates:
David Lammy has launched a review into whether the UK should continue selling weapons to Israel as the country continues its assault on Gaza. The foreign secretary has talked about banning the sale of “offensive” weapons but allowing arms manufacturers to keep supplying “defensive” ones, saying that such a move would enable Israel to defend itself.
Although the UK only exports about £18m worth of military equipment to Israel each year, the Israeli government is sensitive to any suggestion that Britain believes it to have breached international humanitarian law.
Benjamin Netanyahu is already said to be upset by Lammy’s decision to drop the UK’s objection to the international criminal court issuing an arrest warrant against him. Now the Israeli prime minister is closely watching the outcome of Britain’s arms review.
The decision has become even more significant in recent days after Israel launched airstrikes on Lebanon while Hezbollah carried out a drone and rocket attack against northern Israel, triggering fears of a broader Middle East conflict.
Lammy was expected to announce the results of his review before MPs went away for their summer break. But the decision has been held up because senior members of the government are not certain they will be able to defend the distinction between offensive and defensive in court.
Officials are going through each individual type of weapons system in an attempt to determine what purpose each has been used for. Hermer, an ally of the prime minister, Keir Starmer, since they were in legal practice, has told officials they need to be certain that any weapon that continues to be sold has not been used to breach international humanitarian law.
Starmer is also understood to be taking an active role in the decision-making process, despite the review officially being carried out by the Foreign Office.
Officials are keen to avoid a repeat of 2019, when the court of appeal ruled that British arms sales to Saudi Arabia were unlawful and that ministers had not given due consideration to whether they had been used to break human rights law in Yemen.
Last week a group of human rights lawyers submitted a case to the high court accusing the government of acting irrationally by refusing to ban arms sales. As part of their claim they submitted more than 100 pages of witness testimony containing allegations that Palestinians had been tortured, left untreated in hospital and were unable to escape heavy bombardment.
“International humanitarian law is vague but it does say we need to show we have considered every possibility,” said one person aware of the process. “That’s why the main hold-up here is legal, not diplomatic.”
The good news is that the government appears to have stopped issuing new licences for weapons sales to Israel while their review goes on. The paper says that exporters applying for new licences are reportedly receiving messages from the Department for Business and Trade saying that applications are suspended until the review is complete.
However, this issue needs to be resolved quickly. A ban by the UK government on weapons sales to Israel would send a powerful message to the rest of the world and may encourage other countries to follow suit. If Canada can do it, so can we. These human rights abuses should not be tolerated.
David Lammy has launched a review into whether the UK should continue selling weapons to Israel as the country continues its assault on Gaza. The foreign secretary has talked about banning the sale of “offensive” weapons but allowing arms manufacturers to keep supplying “defensive” ones, saying that such a move would enable Israel to defend itself.
Although the UK only exports about £18m worth of military equipment to Israel each year, the Israeli government is sensitive to any suggestion that Britain believes it to have breached international humanitarian law.
Benjamin Netanyahu is already said to be upset by Lammy’s decision to drop the UK’s objection to the international criminal court issuing an arrest warrant against him. Now the Israeli prime minister is closely watching the outcome of Britain’s arms review.
The decision has become even more significant in recent days after Israel launched airstrikes on Lebanon while Hezbollah carried out a drone and rocket attack against northern Israel, triggering fears of a broader Middle East conflict.
Lammy was expected to announce the results of his review before MPs went away for their summer break. But the decision has been held up because senior members of the government are not certain they will be able to defend the distinction between offensive and defensive in court.
Officials are going through each individual type of weapons system in an attempt to determine what purpose each has been used for. Hermer, an ally of the prime minister, Keir Starmer, since they were in legal practice, has told officials they need to be certain that any weapon that continues to be sold has not been used to breach international humanitarian law.
Starmer is also understood to be taking an active role in the decision-making process, despite the review officially being carried out by the Foreign Office.
Officials are keen to avoid a repeat of 2019, when the court of appeal ruled that British arms sales to Saudi Arabia were unlawful and that ministers had not given due consideration to whether they had been used to break human rights law in Yemen.
Last week a group of human rights lawyers submitted a case to the high court accusing the government of acting irrationally by refusing to ban arms sales. As part of their claim they submitted more than 100 pages of witness testimony containing allegations that Palestinians had been tortured, left untreated in hospital and were unable to escape heavy bombardment.
“International humanitarian law is vague but it does say we need to show we have considered every possibility,” said one person aware of the process. “That’s why the main hold-up here is legal, not diplomatic.”
The good news is that the government appears to have stopped issuing new licences for weapons sales to Israel while their review goes on. The paper says that exporters applying for new licences are reportedly receiving messages from the Department for Business and Trade saying that applications are suspended until the review is complete.
However, this issue needs to be resolved quickly. A ban by the UK government on weapons sales to Israel would send a powerful message to the rest of the world and may encourage other countries to follow suit. If Canada can do it, so can we. These human rights abuses should not be tolerated.
Saturday, August 24, 2024
Ofgem announcement confirms energy cap increase
They say that people using an average amount of gas and electricity will pay £1,717 a year, a 10% rise compared with now. In addition, standing charges are rising by one penny a day for gas and also for electricity, but the regulator is considering reforming the system:
The cap, set by the energy regulator Ofgem, affects the price paid for each unit of gas and electricity used in 27 million homes in England, Wales and Scotland.
Although prices are still lower than last winter, the rise in bills comes as some support for bills has been withdrawn, and the new government has announced it will halt winter fuel payments for 10 million pensioners in England and Wales.
Energy prices have fallen twice this year - in April and July - but will head back up in the run-up to winter, by about £12 a month for a typical user.
Of course the Labour Government hold the power to protect vulnerable households this winter. Instead, they have chosen to scrap the Winter Fuel Payment of up to £300 for 10 million pensioners. That will put the health and finances of millions of older people at risk.
Surely, now is the time for the Chancellor to look at this decision again.
Friday, August 23, 2024
Welsh Labour continues to fail health service
The site says that the Statistics released today by the Welsh Government on the activity and performance of the Welsh NHS between June and July 2024 have shown a further increase in waiting times across Wales for treatment, taking figures to a record high:
Baroness Morgan was appointed Wales’ Minister for Health and Social Services in 2021 and replaced Vaughan Gething as First Minister earlier this month.
The latest statistics reveal that at least 615,300 patients are currently on a waiting list in Wales, just under 20% of the total population. Those waiting more than a year for a first outpatient appointment rose by 5.5%.
There are also increases in the number of patients waiting over eight weeks for diagnostic services, patients waiting for therapy services and those starting cancer treatment.
Overall cancer treatment times improved over the month but remained well below target. 56.7% of patients started treatment within 62 days of cancer being first suspected. This is better than the last two months.
Ambulance response times also improved slightly, with 48.2% of “red” calls reached within eight minutes.
There were improvements to A and E waiting times, with 69.3% waiting less than four hours, however more than 10,100 patients waited more than 12 hours to receive treatment.
Labour have been in charge in Wales now for twenty five years and during that time both the health service, education and the economy have struggled to meet the targets set for them, often getting worse.
Thursday, August 22, 2024
Labour still failing on anti-poverty action
They say that speaking at the Edinburgh Book Festival, the former chief executive of the Resolution Foundation said: “You’ve got to be clear where that money’s coming from and that’s what budgets are for and the government’s committed to a child poverty strategy.”
He added: “My view is, why don’t you let the ministers that are writing your child poverty strategy publish that strategy before you start criticising them?
The two-child benefit cap, imposed by Tory former chancellor George Osborne, prevents parents from claiming benefits for any third or subsequent child born after April 2017.
Sir Keir had previously called for the policy to be scrapped but has since said Labour cannot fund the move and will not promise to do so until it can say how the change would be paid for.
He and chancellor Rachel Reeves have faced mounting calls from backbench Labour MPs and campaigners to remove the limit, which would bring 300,000 children people out of poverty and 700,000 more out of deep poverty, according to the Child Poverty Action Group.
Mr Bell has called the policy “appalling” in his book Great Britain? How We Get Our Future Back. Speaking at the festival, he said: “It’s fine for policy wonks and politicians living on high salaries to debate the finer points of parliamentary procedures and the timing of policies but children in my constituency are living in poverty now.”
He added that previous Labour governments had “always brought down childhood poverty”, though adding it had not happened on a wide enough scale.
Meanwhile, the Independent reports that a number of charities have warned that more than half a million children will go hungry during school holiday periods from the October half-term if the government fails to renew a £1bn local welfare crisis fund due to end in six weeks’ time.
English councils last year spent £370m from their household support fund (HSF) allocations on holiday food vouchers for pupils on free school meals (FSM) – but more than a quarter of authorities say this support could disappear if the fund is ditched.
Discontinuing the HSF could also devastate an already threadbare crisis safety net which supports tens of thousands of families at risk of destitution with cash, food parcels, fuel vouchers, clothing, beds, cookers and other essential items.
“If HSF ends, with no long-term strategy to replace it, it will instantly plunge millions into more financial turmoil. The effects of poverty, deprivation and even malnutrition will be exacerbated and the additional costs to public services will be huge,” a report by the charity End Furniture Poverty report concludes.
The report, based on near 100% freedom of information returns from councils, shows England’s local crisis support safety net, which has existed in various forms since the 1930s, is fragmented, and in many areas, nonexistent.
Council-run local crisis support would disappear from nearly a third of English local authority areas covering 18 million people, including Birmingham, Bradford, Nottingham, Westminster, Croydon, Hampshire, Slough, and Stoke-on-Trent.
Its removal would also push scores of local food banks to the brink of insolvency, with many having become reliant on HSF cash grants to meet the explosion in demand for charity food as a result of Covid and the cost of living crisis.
The government, which last week set out the terms of reference for its long-term plan to “reduce and alleviate child poverty”, is under pressure to urgently decide the future of the HSF. Funding for the scheme runs out on 30 September, a month before the autumn statement.
The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, last month identified the £500m HSF budget for the first six months of this year as one of a number of “unfunded” commitments made by the previous government – part of a £22bn spending shortfall – which would come under Treasury scrutiny.
Campaigners say they believe ministers will be wary of provoking a public backlash if school holiday food vouchers disappear in many areas of England. A popular campaign led by the footballer Marcus Rashford in 2020 twice forced the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, to reverse plans to scrap holiday free school meals support.
The End Furniture Poverty report reveals the extent to which local authorities have come to rely on the HSF to tackle holiday hunger in the past three years. Last year 44% of the entire budget was used to fund holiday food vouchers, the biggest single line of expenditure.
Twenty-two councils have said they will discontinue the vouchers if the HSF is not renewed, with a further 20 saying they were undecided. The report estimates that 561,000 children who currently qualify for FSM vouchers would not be able to access them if the fund was discontinued.
It is all very well saying we have to wait for the government's strategy to be published but children are going hungry now, families with more than two children are struggling to feed them and pensioners are facing a winter when they cannot afford to put their heating on.
We expected better of a Labour government.
Tuesday, August 20, 2024
Listening to who?
Nation Cymru reports that the Welsh Government has clarified that Eluned Morgan’s “listen to Wales” summer engagement programme does not actually entail any pre-advertised events at which people can turn up to ask her questions or put points to her:
Based on what they had read about the First Minister’s “listening” tour, a number of Nation.Cymru readers contacted us to get information about the times and places where they could meet her, ask her questions and express their views to her.
We asked the Welsh Government for a list of dates and venues, but were told by a spokesperson: “There isn’t a schedule as such – just that the FM (as FM and as Welsh Labour leader) is using every opportunity to get out and about and meet people and seek out / listen to their views (eg Pembrokeshire Show, Pontypridd market – town centre, Eisteddfod, supply chain businesses in Port Talbot etc).”
Former Bridgend council Labour leader Jeff Jones, one of the Nation.Cymru readers interested in finding out when Baroness Morgan would be available, said: “This seems more like a PR stunt than an organised attempt to find out what people in Wales are really thinking and what priorities they would like to see the Welsh Government pursue. It sounds a bit random – like going into a pub in Canton and chatting to whoever happens to be there over a drink.
“If it’s a genuine exercise, there should surely be a report produced so that Members of the Senedd and the public can debate the points made.”
Somebody should mention that it isn't really a listening programme when the First Minister chooses who speaks to her and what the subject matter is. If she is really serious about this she should schedule some meetings where people can put their point of view across.
Rising bills could exacerbate fuel poverty
Nation Cymru reports on the view of energy consultancy Cornwall Insight that it expects the typical household’s energy bill to rise to £1,714 a year, up from £1,568 currently, on 1st October:
This is less than its previous prediction in June, when it estimated that the cap would rise by 9.9% to £1,723.
But the group said there is also likely to be a further “modest” increase in January 2025, with more rises possible early in the new year due to “recent tensions in the Russia-Ukraine war”.
Energy regulator Ofgem will announce the energy price cap for October to December on Friday August 23.
Craig Lowrey, principal consultant at Cornwall Insight, said: “This is not the news households want to hear when moving into the colder months.
“Following two consecutive falls in the cap, I’m sure many hoped we were on a steady path back to pre-crisis prices.
“However, the lingering impact of the energy crisis has left us with a market that’s still highly volatile and quick to react to any bad news on the supply front.
“Despite this, while we don’t expect a return to the extreme prices of recent years, it’s unlikely that bills will return to what was once considered normal.
“Without significant intervention, this may well be the new normal.”
With the charity Independent Age suggesting that Labour's shake-up of winter fuel payments could mean that hundreds of thousands of pensioners who are entitled to it could miss out, further price rises will make mattrs worse.
Monday, August 19, 2024
Resignation should prompt arms sales ban
The Guardian reports that a Foreign Office official has resigned over the UK’s refusal to ban arms exports to Israel because of alleged breaches of international law.
The paper says that Mark Smith, a counter-terrorism official based at the British embassy in Dublin, said he had resigned after making numerous internal complaints, including through an official whistleblowing mechanism, but receiving nothing but pro-forma responses:
Smith said he had previously worked in Middle East arms export licensing assessment for the government and “each day” colleagues were witnessing “clear and unquestionable examples” of war crimes and breaches of international humanitarian law by Israel in Gaza.
“Senior members of the Israeli government and military have expressed open genocidal intent, Israeli soldiers take videos deliberately burning, destroying and looting civilian property,” he wrote. “Over half of Gaza’s homes and over 80% of Gaza’s commercial properties have been damaged or destroyed.
“Whole streets and universities have been demolished, humanitarian aid is being blocked and civilians are regularly left with no safe quarter to flee to. Red Crescent ambulances have been attacked, schools and hospitals are regularly targeted. These are war crimes.”
He said there was “no justification for the UK’s continued arms sales to Israel, yet somehow it continues”.
This is an issue that has been highlighted a number of times in Parliament. The UK government may not be actually selling the arms but they are licensing their export, and while they do so they are implicitly endorsing these attrocities.
If we are to get any sort of ceasefire, we have to force the Israeli government to the table and the best way to do that is to reduce their ability to make war on civilians in the way they have been.
Sunday, August 18, 2024
Funded by a secretive elite
The paper says that Reform Deputy Leader Richard Tice, who has frequently railed against ‘globalists’ and “elites”, accepted a long weekend in Germany paid for by Le Cercle - an allegedly CIA-funded secret society which supported Apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s and whose membership has allegedly included heads of state, intelligence operatives, industry chiefs and envoys from the Vatican..
They say that it has existed since the 1950s but has no public presence and has never revealed its founders - however former Tory minister Alan Clark claimed in his diaries that Le Cercle was "funded by the CIA":
Mr Tice’s trip to meet Le Cercle was revealed came in freshly published Commons documents detailing new MPs income and gifts in the last year.
The Register of Members Interests also revealed ex-PM Rishi Sunak accepted more than £47,000 worth of helicopter travel from Tory donors in the last year, as he made an increasingly desperate bid to cling on to power. The frontrunner to succeed him, Robert Jenrick, accepted two donations worth £50,000 from a personal training firm, Spott Fitness, which has lost money for the last two years running.
And rival candidate Kemi Badenoch declared £10,000 worth of “advice and training” gifted to her by Shaya Raymond, a strategy guru who specialises in reputation and crisis management.
The register also revealed Reform leader Nigel Farage pocketed £1.2 million in payments from GB News last year - as well as tens of thousands in payments from social media firms.
Mr Tice returned from Germany on May 12, a week before Rishi Sunak called the general election.
He was leader of Reform when the election was called, but gave way to Nigel Farage’s return a few weeks into the campaign.
The invitation-only group was founded to aid reconciliation between France and Germany after World War II, but its focus shifted to opposing communism in the 1960s, and to supporting Apartheid in South Africa in the 70s and 80s.
More recently, former Tory MPs Rory Stewart and Nadhim Zahawi were chairs of the group - while sitting on Parliament’s foreign affairs committee at the same time. Neither declared their chairmanship to Parliament.
A string of senior Tories has previously declared attending meetings of Le Cercle in recent years - including former Isle of Wight MP Bob Seely, former Deputy PM David Lidington and former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng.
And William Hague attended a meeting in Morocco in 2002 - in the time between his leadership of the Conservative Party and being made Foreign Secretary.
In a diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks in 2015, then-Saudi Deputy Foreign Minister Abdulaziz bin Abdullah said the group was “largely European and American” and its members include “Members of Parliament, diplomats, members of the intelligence community, commentators and businessmen from over twenty-five countries.”
Alan Duncan, the former Foreign Minister, wrote in his diaries that he attended a meeting of the group in June 2016. He said it was a “long-standing, slightly crazy security conference which I’ve been going to for years.”
A 1999 article in the Independent claimed regular attendees included Bill Casey and William Colby - both of whom were heads of the CIA. Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon allegedly attended meetings.
And late MI6 officers Anthony Cavendish and Nicholas Elliot were also alleged to have been members.
The next time any of these MPs rail against the deep state, treat them with exteme scepticism.
Saturday, August 17, 2024
The highest earning MP
THe Guardian reports that the Reform leader appears to have become the highest-earning MP, having made almost £1.2m a year from GB News:
In the first register of interests of the new parliament, the Reform UK MP declared that he was earning £97,900 a month as a presenter for GB News, the channel co-owned by the hedge fund billionaire Paul Marshall.
Farage also revealed that his visit to the US on 17 July – in the aftermath of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump – cost £32,000 and was funded by Christopher Harborne, a Thailand-based crypto investor who previously gave millions to the Brexit party. The purpose was recorded as “to support a friend who was almost killed and to represent Clacton on the world stage”.
A further £9,250 trip to the National Conservatism Conference in Brussels in April was funded by George Cottrell, an unofficial aide to Farage.
Cottrell, a high-profile figure in Farage’s entourage, spent eight months in an American jail in 2017 after being convicted of offering money-laundering services on the dark web. The crime was committed in 2014, before Cottrell worked for either the anti-EU party or Farage.
The MP’s social media earnings were also revealed, showing that he made £1,550 through X and £853 through Meta, as well as £4,000 from Cameo videos. The Clacton MP is also paid £4,000 a month by the Daily Telegraph.
Jo Maugham, founder of the Good Law Project, said: “You look at these numbers and you wonder, has Nigel Farage catapulted himself to the top of the list of highest earners in Clacton? Great for him, but it’s not really public service, is it?”
£97,900 for 32 hours work a week, nice work if you can get it and doesn't leave him much time for his other job.. No doubt his constituents in Clacton will be delighted for their MP. if only they knew how to get hold of him.
Friday, August 16, 2024
No relief for universities under Labour
They say that the restrictions, introduced in January, bar most overseas students from bringing family members to the UK:
Bridget Phillipson was asked in an interview with Sky News whether the visa rules should be reversed.
She responded: “We don’t intend to change that.”
The cabinet minister praised the “tremendous contribution” international students make to the country, both economically and in local communities.
She said: “In economic terms, into where it comes to the communities where they will come and live, Sunderland – where I’m a member of parliament – we have lots of students that come from around the world, often as postgraduate students, that study and make a contribution.
“But it’s also a big part of our reach around the world, the impact that we can have as a country, the business links, the trading links, the opportunities and the bridges that we build between nations.”
The problem is that universities have reported a sharp decline in applications from international students, following the introduction of the measures and are struggling to balance the books as a result:
The government’s recent review of the graduate visa route, which allows international students to work in the UK for two to three years after their studies, has fueled concerns that more restrictions could be on the horizon.
In a joint letter to the home secretary Yvette Cooper, university groups including BUILA and the Russell Group cautioned that the additional restrictions could undermine the higher education sector, one of the country’s most successful export industries.
They argued that the current visa rules are damaging the UK’s reputation as a premier destination for international students.
The Home Office recently reported an almost 80 per cent reduction in the number of dependents accompanying international students to the UK.
More than 26,000 fewer student visa applications were made between January and March 2024 compared to the same period in 2023, according to the report.
With so many universities in financial trouble, this decision is not helping the situation. What other plans do Labour have turn the situation around?
Thursday, August 15, 2024
Hundreds of thousands of pensioners may miss out on winter fuel payments
The paper says that stark new figures reveal a small drop in the number of people receiving Pension Credit in the past year, with Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) data showing that almost four in 10 of those entitled to the support are not claiming it:
The Government has announced that only those receiving Pension Credit or means-tested benefits will get winter fuel payments in order to save cash. The shake-up was unveiled by Chancellor Rachel Reeves in a raft of measures to tackle a £22billion black hole left by the Tories.
Pension Credit averages £3,900 a year, but in February the DWP said 880,000 people who are eligible didn't claim it. Charity Independent Age estimates around 1.2 million older adults are impacted, including those who live with someone not claiming the credit.
Chief executive Joanna Elson said: "The low take-up numbers show that now is not the right time to make changes to the Winter Fuel Payment, it’s dangerous and puts older lives at risk." Ms Elson said that means-testing winter fuel payments from the Autumn doesn't give enough time to significantly boost Pension Credit take-up.
She said: "Our helpline regularly hears from frightened older people making cutbacks and looking for support, and in the days following the Winter Fuel Payment announcement, there has been an increase in calls regarding Pension Credit and other entitlements."
The charity chief called for "swift action" to ensure all who are eligible claim the benefit. In its latest update the DWP said the number of Pension Credit claims was dropping due to the rise in the state pension age.
But it said that since February 2022 the caseload appears to have stabilised. Last week deputy PM Angela Rayner said: "There's thousands of people who are eligible for Pension Credit that are not currently receiving it.
"So my plea to people who are listening it to check out whether you're eligible for Pension Credit that won't and those people will continue to get the winter fuel payment."
This, of course, is the big danger of converting a universal benefit to a means-tested one. Labour should know better. Their decision to limit this payment could see hundreds of thousands of poorer pensioners struggling to keep warm this winter because they can't afford the cost of heating.
Pension Credit averages £3,900 a year, but in February the DWP said 880,000 people who are eligible didn't claim it. Charity Independent Age estimates around 1.2 million older adults are impacted, including those who live with someone not claiming the credit.
Chief executive Joanna Elson said: "The low take-up numbers show that now is not the right time to make changes to the Winter Fuel Payment, it’s dangerous and puts older lives at risk." Ms Elson said that means-testing winter fuel payments from the Autumn doesn't give enough time to significantly boost Pension Credit take-up.
She said: "Our helpline regularly hears from frightened older people making cutbacks and looking for support, and in the days following the Winter Fuel Payment announcement, there has been an increase in calls regarding Pension Credit and other entitlements."
The charity chief called for "swift action" to ensure all who are eligible claim the benefit. In its latest update the DWP said the number of Pension Credit claims was dropping due to the rise in the state pension age.
But it said that since February 2022 the caseload appears to have stabilised. Last week deputy PM Angela Rayner said: "There's thousands of people who are eligible for Pension Credit that are not currently receiving it.
"So my plea to people who are listening it to check out whether you're eligible for Pension Credit that won't and those people will continue to get the winter fuel payment."
This, of course, is the big danger of converting a universal benefit to a means-tested one. Labour should know better. Their decision to limit this payment could see hundreds of thousands of poorer pensioners struggling to keep warm this winter because they can't afford the cost of heating.
Wednesday, August 14, 2024
Quitting X
The paper says that over the weekend, newly elected MPs took to WhatsApp groups to raise growing concerns about the role X played in the spread of misinformation amid the far-right-led riots in parts of England and Northern Ireland:
Two Labour MPs are known to have told colleagues they were leaving the platform. One of them, Noah Law, has disabled his account. Other MPs who still use X have begun examining alternatives, including Threads, which is owned by Facebook’s parent company, Meta, and the open-source platform Bluesky.
Musk, who bought Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X, has been embroiled in a public spat with Keir Starmer since the tech billionaire suggested that the riots meant “civil war is inevitable” in the UK. Musk has been criticised for failing to crack down on misinformation on the platform and for sharing fake news himself.
In an article for the Guardian on Monday, a former Twitter executive, Bruce Daisley, said Musk should face personal sanctions and even an arrest warrant if he continues to stir up public disorder online.
Over the weekend, Jess Phillips, a Home Office minister who has more than 700,000 followers on X, said she wanted to scale back her use of the platform as it had become a “bit despotic” and was “a place of misery now”.
A government minister also told the Guardian they had reduced their posts on X over the summer and that Musk’s actions had made them “very reluctant to return”.
Musk – who has cast himself as a proponent of free speech, reinstating to X figures including Donald Trump and the far-right activist Tommy Robinson – is due to conduct an interview with Trump on X on Monday night .
Josh Simons, the Labour MP for Makerfield, said he was looking into alternative platforms such as Bluesky. “What matters about Musk is not only what he said, but how he changed X’s algorithms,” he said. “He’s turned X into a megaphone for foreign adversaries and far-right fringe groups seeking to corrupt our public sphere. Nobody should have that power.
“A new generation of legislators are flexing their muscles, people who’ve grown up understanding the power of these platforms. By talking down Britain, Musk has placed X firmly in our sights.”
Pesonally I am still persevering with twitter, but I am keeping it under review and using the block button liberally. This exodus by MPs may well catch on.
Tuesday, August 13, 2024
Cat fight in Number Ten
However, the Downing Street staff may be spared too much confrontation as it seems likely that Keir Starmer's cat may not have the run of Downing Street after all.
The Mirror reports that the Prime Minister is facing cat-astrophe as he tries to settle his beloved family pet in Downing Street.
They say that Starmer is reportedly keen to install a cat flap in the No11 flat to allow his rescue moggie JoJo to roam freely. However the plan has proved problematic - due to the bombproof door.
Mr Starmer previously said that the family cat was “treated with more respect in our household than I am”. Before the election, he told BBC Derby: "We've got a cat called JoJo, revered by the kids. JoJo was a cat we got from a rescue centre.
"JoJo is treated with far more respect in our household than I am. When I walk through the door I have to put the baggage of being Leader of the Labour Party down, I'm Dad and I'm fair game for the kids to ridicule me, laugh at me etc.
"But JoJo, on the other hand, if JoJo wants food, or a seat on the settee, or to sit on the kid's bed he's got pride of place.”
Now it looks like he will only be able to wander onto Larry's turf under supervision. Still, the fur may fly.
Monday, August 12, 2024
Welsh Tories in crisis
They say that the Chair of the Welsh Conservative Sam Kurtz told Nation.Cymru: “No requests for a meeting have been received. The Group will meet after the Welsh Parliament recess in September, as scheduled”:
His comments came after former leader Lord Nick Bourne told BBC Radio Wales there should be a meeting to make clear that “we are anti-racism, we will not tolerate Islamophobia and we will not tolerate anti-Muslim behaviour”.
Speaking on Sunday Supplement, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth said: “During this election campaign and indeed before it, nobody has ever raised the issue of Halal meat on the doorstep or on the phone canvassing. I don’t think it’s the sort of thing we should be focusing on.”
Calling for the 2026 Senedd election to be fought from the centre as opposed to the right, Lord Bourne said: “The exposure that Reform is going to get now that they have elected politicians in Westminster may well show what a busted flush they are.
“I would leave all that sort of thing to Farage or Tommy Robinson on his lounger from Greece – that’s not the party we are, we are not that party, we are a party of the moderate right and that should be reflected in the way we approach politics in Wales.”
Pressure has been mounting on Welsh Conservative leader Andrew RT Davies after the Muslim Council of Wales accused him of “Islamophobic race baiting” last week.
In a statement the council said: “The hamfisted attempts at dog-whistle racism may lead to more engagement online for Mr Davies, but have real consequences on our streets and in our mosques.”
The group’s intervention came after a series of social media posts by Mr Davies about non-Halal meat options in Welsh schools.
The Tory leader went viral on X, formally Twitter, after the issue was amplified by far-right figure Tommy Robinson.
He also penned an opinion column for GB News headlined, ‘Children SHOULD NOT be forced to eat Halal school lunches’.
Mr Davies has entirely rejected the criticism saying he is following up on the concerns of his constituents.
The news website add that Welsh Conservative Senedd members have become uneasy in recent days about their leader’s trademark abrasive social media style and his lack of action over a racist slur sent in a text by a back bench MS.
Two Tory MSs, Natasha Asghar and Peter Fox, have publicly spoken out about the allegations of racism facing the Welsh Conservatives, condemning the comments and actions of their group leader, while there are suggestions that there might even be a leadership challenge, which could tear the group apart.
Perhaps they are not holding a group meeting beacuse they are hoping all this angst will go away by itself. That doesn't look likely.
Sunday, August 11, 2024
Have Reform committed a data protection breach?
They say that their investigation has found that people visiting the website for Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration party had details of their activity captured by a digital surveillance tool known as a Meta pixel:
The tracker – active in the run-up to the election, and as recently as last week – was triggered automatically on loading the Reform site, regardless of whether the person gave consent. It then sent a package of data to Facebook’s parent company, Meta, with details of which webpages had been viewed, when, and the buttons that were clicked.
In some cases, this included sensitive information that could reveal a person’s political beliefs, such as details of those accessing forms to become Reform UK members, linked to a unique Facebook user ID.
Data gathered by the Meta pixel enters the firm’s advertising system and can be used for Meta’s own purposes as well as by advertisers such as Reform to re-target audiences with tailored ads.
It is not known exactly how many people’s data was shared with Meta, but Reform said about 1.1 million visited its website in the month to 15 July. Web archives indicate the tracking tool was in use for at least two years. The party removed it after being contacted for comment last week. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is examining the case.
The findings raise questions about transparency and digital surveillance following a historic election result for Reform UK, in which it won 14% of the vote and five MPs were elected.
Meta pixel and similar trackers are widely used by political parties and other organisations to collect data for analytics and marketing purposes, but it is against the law to use them unless consent has been “actively and clearly” given.
Data that could reveal a person’s political beliefs is classed as special category and is subject to stricter protections by law because its misuse could pose “significant risks to the individual’s fundamental rights and freedoms”.
Reform UK has claimed that it prioritises privacy and resists “surveillance”, pledging in its manifesto to create a British bill of rights that would protect people’s “freedoms”. It says: “Our data and privacy must be protected. Surveillance of the public must be limited and those monitoring us held to account.”
But the Observer’s testing, checked by independent experts, suggests a failure to follow the rules, with the Meta pixel extracting information before consent had been given, and even if the person clicked “deny”.
Mark Richards, a software engineer and expert in online privacy, said the tracking raised ethical questions.People visiting Reform’s website for research risked being incorrectly labelled as someone with an interest in the party, he said. Meanwhile, those clicking links to become a member were revealing “sensitive political information about who they are and what they believe in”, which they may not wish to share.
Now the Information Commissioner's Office is examining the information about Reform’s use of tracking pixels as part of a wider review of “the data protection harms arising from use of online tracking technologies”. This could get interesting.
Saturday, August 10, 2024
Culprit or scapegoat?
They remind us that false information which spread on social media about the identity of the alleged Southport knife attacker has been seen as playing a role in sparking the recent violence, leading some to call for tougher regulation:
Commentators have been particularly concerned about the impact of content on X, formerly Twitter, whose owner Elon Musk has been heavily criticised for his own posts about the disorder.
The billionaire has engaged with posts by far-right figure Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson, suggested that civil war in the UK was “inevitable”, and retweeted a fake Daily Telegraph headline suggesting rioters would be sent to detention camps in the Falkland Islands.
The Online Safety Act will, for the first time, make firms legally responsible for keeping users safe when they use their services.
It will require platforms to put in place clear and proportionate safety measures to prevent illegal and other harmful content from appearing and spreading on their sites.
The biggest platforms could face billions of pounds in fines if they do not comply.
Named managers could be held criminally liable in some instances, and sites may face having their access limited in the most severe cases.
However, as Marina Hyde points out in the Guardian, there are much wider considerations, which suggest that confining the government's response to throwing the rioters in prison and toughening up the Online Safety Act won't really cut it. She writes:
How about: address ever-increasing wealth inequality? If that seems a weird answer, then maybe the wrong questions are being asked. Britain has just witnessed the worst far-right street violence since the 1970s. As the FT reports, seven out of 10 of the most deprived areas in the UK saw riots this past fortnight. Placing asylum hotels in these areas was the decision of the previous Conservative government. Who has this profited – other than the private companies that have raked in huge sums?
It’s not clear at all that the unrest is over, or whether further flare-ups are in the post. But they likely will be if people treat this as a social-media story. Nor does it bode too well to find the chancellor forever sounding like her predecessors. “When household budgets are stretched, families have to make difficult choices,” Rachel Reeves explained recently. “And government needs to do the same.” And yet, it’s just possible that the answer to entrenched problems is not continuity solutions.
There is, of course, no excuse for the violence that has erupted in our towns and cities over the last few weeks, but nobody can deny that one of the reasons these far-right agitators have been able to get such a reaction on social media is because they have struck a chord amongst many ordinary, law-abiding people. You only have to look at the memes doing the rounds on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, often posted by non-political citizens to see that that is the case.
People feel that they are being overlooked by the system, that those running the country do not have their best interests at heart. And decisions taken by the new government over the two-child benefit and the winter fuel allowance are just reinforcing that impression. Agitators are exploiting this discontent.
By all means fix social media, but let's have some action on wealth equality as well.
Friday, August 09, 2024
Welsh Tory leader accused of Islamophobia
They say that pressure has been mounting for Andrew RT Davies in recent days over his controversial social media posts about Halal meat in Welsh schools:
Last week, he accused a school in the Vale of Glamorgan of serving Halal only lunches to pupils.
Before the school had a chance to respond, Mr Davies published the “incorrect” claims online.
The post went viral racking up millions of views after it was shared by the anti-Islam campaigner Tommy Robinson.
During a week that saw riots co-ordinated by the far-right in England, Mr Davies published further letters to Welsh councils asking for reassurances that non-Halal meat options are available for school children.
This sparked a string of offensive Islamophobic comments from followers of his Facebook page which weren’t removed.
The most senior Conservative in Wales says he is following up the legitimate concerns of his constituents.
He argues that ignoring queries, “leaves the field clear for extreme groups to exploit for their own ends”.
The Muslim Council, which advocates for the second largest faith group in Wales, says Mr Davies’ online posts have “real consequences on our streets and in our mosques”.
The group reached out to the Tory leader on July 26 asking for a meeting but did not receive a response.
The council says it’s fundamental that the Senedd’s opposition party listen to and represent the views and concerns of Muslims across Wales.
Muslim shadow minister, Natasha Asghar says she’s made her position on her leader’s recent Halal meat posts “abundantly clear to him”.
She said: “I have always believed in diversity, freedom of choice for everyone, and I hope that all children across Wales continue to be provided with dietary options suitable to them such as Halal, Kosher, and vegetarian within our schools.”
In recent days, Ms Asghar’s Newport constituency was daubed with Nazi symbols and racist messages.
The words “Bettws is not Halal” and “No to Islam” were sprayed onto a public footpath near a brook in Bettws along with swastikas.
Also in Newport, the Faizan e Madina mosque in Shaftesbury had its window smashed and another mosque in Bridgend had its online details altered to include pig emojis.
The Muslim Council of Wales is scathing in their condemnation of Andrew RT Davies' comments and their consequences:
“Andrew RT Davies is engaging in Islamophobic race-baiting, at a time when we require politicians to be the voice of reason and show moral leadership. The hamfisted attempts at dog-whistle racism may lead to more engagement online for Mr Davies, but have real consequences on our streets and in our mosques.
“A vibrant democracy requires both a competent government and a competent opposition. It is disappointing that under Mr Davies’ leadership, the Welsh Conservatives, are failing to present themselves as a competent and effective opposition.
“Many Muslim children face bullying and discrimination in schools, and Mr Davies’ public and misleading campaign on halal meat will undoubtedly have an impact on returning Muslim pupils in September.”
It is little wonder that other members of the Welsh Tory Senedd group are so uneasy about his leadership.
Thursday, August 08, 2024
Those Islamophobic Tories
As the Independent reports, Jenrick sparked outrage after saying people shouting “Allahu Akbar” on London streets “should be arrested immediately”.
As the paper points out “Allahu Akbar” is an Arabic phrase meaning “God is greater” or “God is greatest” which is commonly used in prayer and as a declaration of faith:
Asked whether he believes the UK has a system of “two-tier policing”, Mr Jenrick told Sky News: “I have been very critical of the police in the past, particularly around the attitude of some police forces to the protests that we saw since 7 October.
“I thought it was quite wrong that somebody could shout ‘Allahu Akbar’ on the streets of London and not be immediately arrested. Or project genocidal chants onto Big Ben and that person not be immediately arrested. That attitude is wrong and I’ll always call out the police.”
The reaction to this statement has been predictable and justifiable:
The Muslim Association of Britain strongly condemned Mr Jenrick’s comments.
“This is pure unadulterated Islamophobia from Robert Jenrick and is precisely what has been driving these Islamophobic far-right extremists,” a statement said on X. “The media and politicians need to be held to account for their role in the terror that has been unleashed on the streets of Britain.”
The Muslim Council said the comments showed “institutional Islamophobia is alive and well in the Conservative Party”.
“As a prospective leader, Mr Jenrick should be showing leadership, reassuring our communities when fear is palpable,” a spokesperson said. “He should apologise, fully retract his comments, and speak to ordinary Muslims to understand why his remarks are so outrageous. Rather than inflaming tensions, he should focus on ways to bring communities together.”
Labour’s Naz Shah was among the MPs demanding the former minister apologise.
Posting on social media, she said: “This is complete ignorance and textbook Islamophobia from Robert Jenrick. It literally equates every Muslim in the world with extremism.
“Allah Hu Akbar means ‘god is Great’. It’s a basic Islamic saying that every Muslim in the world says in prayer. It is significantly the opening line of the call to prayer and the opening phrase of every prayer.
“Billions of us Muslims use it every day as part of our faith within our prayers. It is a common phrase like Christians would say ‘Jesus Christ as your lord and saviour’.
“Imagine in this climate, either being that ignorant or deliberately trying to stigmatise all Muslims. He should apologise and speak to Muslim communities and learn more about our faith.”
We knew that the Tory party had a problem with Islamophobia but for a prospective leader to be so open and obvious about it is shocking and shows how far down this slippery slope the Tories have gone.
Wednesday, August 07, 2024
Two-child benefit cap exacerbating regional poverty
The paper says that the thinktank found that there is a “very strong relationship” between local levels of child poverty and the share of families affected by the measure introduced by the previous Conservative government:
According to the foundation, the failure to tackle entrenched regional inequalities over the past three decades had been compounded by the policy, leaving almost half of all children living in Birmingham, Tower Hamlets in London, Manchester, Sandwell, Stoke-on-Trent, Oldham, Wolverhampton and Walsall to grow up in families in poverty:
Starmer has faced demands from within Labour ranks and from opposition leaders to abolish the policy, which was announced in 2015 by George Osborne, then chancellor, and came into effect a couple of years later.
Regarded by experts as the UK’s biggest single driver of child poverty, affecting about 1.6 million children, the policy restricts child tax credit and universal credit in most households to the first two children. Abolishing it would cost the government between £2.5bn and £3.6bn this year.
In a report, published as far-right populists attempt to exploit economic divisions amid widespread rioting in some towns and cities, the Resolution Foundation said progress had been made in narrowing some regional pay and jobs gaps over the past three decades.
However, other divisions had sharply increased, including for relative poverty, defined in the report as when people live in households with income of less than 60% of the median, after housing costs.
It said the minimum wage had reduced pay gaps between places, but the two-child limit appeared to have done the opposite for overall incomes, hitting the north-west of England and the West Midlands most.
In these regions, more than five in 10 children in larger families (with three or more children) were in relative poverty in 2022-23. This compared with four in 10 nationwide.
Britain’s child poverty hotspots have also shifted dramatically. In 2014-15, 19 out of the 20 local areas with the highest rates were in London, but by 2022-23 this had fallen to just three in the capital, with the rest spread across the north-west and West Midlands.
The 20 local authorities with the largest percentage point increase in child poverty were in these two regions.
Whether these points will cut through to the former Chief Executive of the Resolution Foundation, who is now the MP for Swansea West and who voted to keep the cap, is yet to be seen.
Tuesday, August 06, 2024
The role of social media
They point out that last week’s headlines provide a pointed example of how quickly platforms can be used to spread disinformation:
As families mourned the death of three young girls killed in a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, riots broke out stoked by disinformation about the suspect’s identity.
On Thursday, Sir Keir Starmer warned social media companies after false information spread online. And Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said social media has put “rocket boosters” under far-right groups when it comes to the “organisation, the attention and the misinformation” surrounding the riots.
She said there would be a “reckoning” following unrest across England, pledging that anyone involved in the riots will “pay the price”.
Pressed on whether the Government will take action against Tommy Robinson, who has been accused of stoking tensions from afar, Ms Cooper said: “If it’s a crime offline, it’s a crime online.”
Elsewhere last week, an Olympic women’s boxing match — and misinformation about one of the athletes involved — was used by conservatives to promote their anti-trans agenda.
And in July two images of an injured female police officer were shared widely on social media with false claims that they showed injuries sustained during an incident at Manchester Airport.
As the paper says government ministers seem determined to prosecute those who have incited these riots online, but more is called for. There needs to be serious penalties for the owners if they continue to allow their platforms to promote illegality in this way.
Monday, August 05, 2024
Time to take responsibility
But at the same time action needs to be taken against those public figures who have helped to fuel this disorder.
The Guardian reports on comments by one Liverpool MP who says that the Commons standards watchdog should hold Nigel Farage to account over his “dangerous comments” following the week’s violent disorder in the wake of the Southport murders.
Kim Johnson, Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, said Farage’s comments “cannot be left to fester” and should be examined by the parliamentary standards commissioner:
Farage has released two videos since three children were murdered in Southport last week. In the first, he questioned whether police were withholding information about who was responsible for the murders.
It came at a time when false information was circulating on social media that a Muslim asylum seeker was responsible, which fuelled disorder at a mosque in Southport.
In a second video, Farage challenged Keir Starmer’s argument that the violent protests were the fault of the far right, saying it was “a reaction to fear, to discomfort, to unease that is out there shared by tens of millions of people”.
Lee Anderson, the Reform MP and former Tory deputy chair, made a similar argument, writing on X: “This problem has been caused by smug politicians who have refused to listen to the concerns of British people. It has festered and now it has boiled over. Parliament must listen, parliament must act but it must not blame the British people.” He also referred to the prime minister as “Keir Stalin” in a reference to the Russian dictator.
Senior politicians have held back from being too critical of Farage, although the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, said on Wednesday that there was “a level of responsibility … and it’s not to stoke up what conspiracy theories or what you think might have happened”.
However, several members of the public claim on social media to have submitted complaints about the Reform leader to the parliamentary standards commissioner, who can investigate any behaviour that brings parliament into disrepute.
Johnson said: “Nigel Farage’s dangerous comments cannot be left to fester. He is the voice of the EDL [English Defence League] in parliament, using his platform to spread fear and misinformation. Tensions are high and our politicians should be doing everything in our power to advocate for peace and unity, and support our communities standing resolutely against the racism and hatred displayed over the last few days. With so much at stake, we need urgent action from the Commons standards committee and the police to hold him to account.”
People in positions of authority have a duty to uphold the law, not incite lawlessness. If Farage had questions he should have doen his job and turned up to Parliament to ask them. He needs to be held accountable for his actions as well.
Meanwhile, the Guardian also reports on the view of Dame Sara Khan, who was Rishi Sunak’s independent adviser for social cohesion and resilience until May this year and acted as counter-extremism commissioner under both Theresa May and Boris Johnson, that the Conservative government left the UK wide open to the far-right violence erupting across parts of the country by ignoring red flags and stoking fires with a culture war agenda.
In a damning intervention, Khan said that repeated and urgent counsel that far-right extremists were exploiting gaps in the law to foment violence on social media had been ignored while top-rank politicians over a number of administrations sought to gain advantage by waging culture wars:
“The writing was clearly on the wall for some time,” Khan told the Guardian. “All my reports have shown, in a nutshell that, firstly, these extremist and cohesion threats are worsening; secondly, that our country is woefully unprepared. We’ve got a gap in our legislation which is allowing these extremists to operate with impunity.
“Previous governments have astonishingly failed to address these trends, and they’ve taken instead, in my view, approaches that have actually been counterproductive and actually just defy any logical rationale.
“They scrapped the counter-extremism strategy [in 2021], including all the resources and funding for local areas across the country who are struggling with extremist activity and extremist actors. And the government, at that time, did not replace it with anything. They left local authorities struggling to deal with consistent extremist challenges in their area.
“Political leadership is really important and how our politicians behave is really, really critical, because I’ve seen, and I’m sure other people have seen, politicians who have actually, indirectly or directly undermined social cohesion because they’ve used inflammatory language.”
Khan, who has previously criticised those who described the pro-Palestine protests as “hate marches”, a formulation of words used by the former home secretary Suella Braverman, said the rhetoric used by some senior politicians in recent years had given a green-light to those holding racist views.
She said: “I went to parts of the country where they were very upfront with me and just said, ‘Look, because of some of the inflammatory language used by politicians, the same language would then be co-opted by, you know, far-right extremists and others, who would then use that to undermine cohesion in a local area’.
“There’s a serious duty on our politicians to not engage in inflammatory language; to not use, for example, dehumanising language about asylum seekers, refugees and, you know, people who are coming to our country.
“Of course, there’s a legitimate debate about immigration, about numbers and all of those things, but there’s a way that you can talk about these issues without using dehumanising and inflammatory language. Because, by using that language, you just see extremists co-opting that. You see people saying, well, if politicians can use that language, why can’t we?”
It seems that it is not just Farage and his Reform party who have things to answer for.
Sunday, August 04, 2024
Can the UK Government meet its housing targets?
The Independent reports that the boss of a major housebuilder has warned ministers of the real cost of achieving their ambitious housing targets.
The paper says that Rob Perrins, the chief executive of Berkeley Group, said his organisation welcomed the government’s plans to build 1.5 million new homes in five years, but in an article for the paper he said the “rub” was “the cost, and, in one word, what our country needs is investment”:
Berkeley Group is one of the country’s largest homebuilders and constructs around 10 per cent of London’s new homes.
Mr Perrins has now written to Ms Rayner and Rachel Reeves to outline his company’s plans to build an extra 10,000 homes by 2029 as part of that 1.5 million target.
His group is also investing in new land, having not bought a significant new site in more than two and a half years.
And he said he applauded Ms Rayner’s plans to break the deadlock in planning and ensure more homes are built.
But he warned that “significant challenges” still had to be overcome.
These include high interest rates and mortgage affordability rules which have left more than a third of first-time buyers reliant on friends and family for help with their deposit.
He also warned that when it comes to infrastructure levies, “too often the money is diverted into other areas for the local community. Potholes were the last government’s favoured fund diversion.”
He also said that the Community Infrastructure Levy, which can be charged by councils on new developments in their area, has reached £75,000 per flat in some areas of London.
“Costs of this scale are only faced by residential developers, meaning housing cannot compete with other land uses on a level playing field,” he warned.
In addition “recent regulations on design, energy efficiency, second staircases, biodiversity and much else are individually justifiable, but collectively add costs that must be accounted for by the planning system”.
If the government is relying on private housebuilders to build these homes then they will need to ensure the companies involved can make a profit from doing so and that will mean making some unpalatable decisions regarding planning, as well as ensuring people can afford to buy them.
The real issue is affordability, something that ministers cannot rely on the private sector to enable. If Labour are serious about providing homes where they are most needed then they will need to provide significant amounts of public subsidy and ensure that local councils and housing associations are sufficiently resourced to build the social housing that is required. They will also need to invest in infrastructure. This target cannot be met on the cheap.
