Kim Leadbeater's office blunders again
Leadbeater's office gaily sent around an email to her Labour comrades this afternoon, giving them their lines to take at this week's oral questions on Thursday. 'Dear colleagues', it began, 'we're writing ahead… to share a few suggested questions for tabling.' There then followed a list of ten suggested ideas to fearlessly hold Nandy and her fellow ministers to account. Zingers included, 'What steps her Department is taking to support the delivery of major sporting events?' and 'What steps her Department is taking to promote participation in sport?' Talk about a curveball.
Unfortunately, with a trademark attention to detail, it seems that the planted Labour questions were sent to a bunch of Tory MPs too. 'At least it's not people's lives this time', said one of them to Mr S.
Forensic stuff indeed…
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Daily Mail
27 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
STEPHEN DAISLEY: The out-of-touch political dreamers who've now been handed a rude awakening by reality
Ten years and a few months ago, I was dispatched to Paisley to try to interview Mhairi Black. I say 'try to' because everywhere we went someone would interrupt to tell the 20 year-old they were voting for her. It's not easy grilling a candidate on currency options for an independent Scotland when every few minutes a passing stranger suddenly downs their Tesco bags and asks for a selfie. This was the eve of the 2015 general election and the SNP was poised to sweep Labour from its west-central heartlands. Nicola Sturgeon was selling out the Hydro. Black was about to become the youngest MP since the Great Reform Act. I still had hair. It was another Scotland. A decade on, Black says she's done with the SNP and is no longer a member. She pinpoints 'capitulation on LGBT rights, trans rights in particular' as her reason for leaving, though adds: 'I thought the party could be doing better about Palestine as well'. Much as I don't share Black's views on gender or Gaza – or a great deal else, for that matter – I respect them. They're sincerely held. If you're going to hate anyone in politics, don't hate the ones who disagree with you on principle, hate the ones prepared to agree with you on any principle just to get ahead. Unfortunately her principles are far removed from those of the median voter, who remains baffled by the notion that someone can 'identify' into a different sex and even more baffled as to how this became a priority for politicians across the land. Many feel strongly about the deaths in Gaza but for most voters it is nowhere near the top of their concerns, which are dominated by their family, then their social circles, then their neighbourhood, then their country. Idealists who make a virtue of empathising more with those on the other side of the world get very angry about this. They even invented a term for it, 'hierarchy of death', which seems superfluous when we already had a term for it: human nature. For the SNP to have clung onto Black's membership subs, it would have had to return to a subject (trans rights) which has caused it no end of internal division and political misery, and adopt an even more strident stance on Israel's military response to the Palestinians' October 7 invasion and murder, rape and abduction of its citizens. The SNP is a political party, not a moral philosophy seminar. It exists to win elections and, in theory, achieve Scottish independence. What votes would it win by taking Black's advice? What votes is it at risk of losing by not? The former Paisley and Renfrewshire South MP comes close to identifying the problem herself, when she says: 'If anything, I'm probably a bit more Left-wing than I have been. I don't think I have changed all that much. I feel like the party needs to change a lot more.' The SNP does have to change, but not in the direction Black wants. The Nationalists and most other parties have spent the past decade or so breenging off on a tangent about trans rights, systemic racism, Donald Trump and the rest. A correction was long overdue. This agenda lacked popular consent and stoked resentment among both those who opposed it fiercely and those who protested over so much time and effort being frittered away. The Supreme Court judgment in For Women Scotland has helped immeasurably. Party leaders and policy-makers were able to point to the ruling and pass responsibility onto the justices. They weren't backsliding, the court was clarifying the law. For John Swinney, this has been a blessed opportunity to ditch positions he went along with at the time, I've no doubt against his better judgment, but which he knows have gravely damaged his party's standing with the public. A man with more gumption would have stood up and said something when it mattered, but if Swinney isn't much of a leader – and he certainly isn't – nor is he alone in that category. During the initial consultation stage for reforming the Gender Recognition Act, a senior politician in one party admitted to me that they didn't understand the issue, or why it was a priority, but they'd be voting for it because they had been told to. Politics is the trade of dreamers and cynics and while Mhairi Black might be wrong about everything at least she's sincere about it. She isn't the only dreamer to be rudely awakened lately by political reality. Maggie Chapman has found herself dumped as the Greens' lead candidate in North East Scotland, replaced by Guy Ingerson, ex oil-and-gas worker turned Net Zero enthusiast. According to a pet theory of mine, that makes it unlikely that Chapman will be re-elected next May. The theory: a person's likelihood to vote for the Scottish Greens correlates with their proximity to a Pret A Manger. Edinburgh and Glasgow, home to 11 and six branches of the posh sandwich chain respectively, just so happen to be the Greens' best and second-best performing areas on the regional lists. Aberdeen, with just two, lags far behind in Green support. Whether or not my theory holds water (or overpriced coffee), Chapman's Holyrood career appears to be over after years of headline-grabbing pronouncements. Her principles also deserve respect. Not because they're sincerely held but because we should remain open to ideas from other planets. When the landmark ruling was handed down in For Women Scotland, Chapman attended a rally to denounce the 'bigotry, prejudice and hatred coming from the Supreme Court'. She once told an interviewer that allowing eight year olds to change their legal sex was something that 'in principle we should be exploring'. Following the October 7 attack on Israel, she shared a tweet saying the murderous rampage was not terrorism but 'decolonisation'. Yes, her views are deranged, but the more pertinent question is how these came to be the views of someone elected to make sure Scots can see a doctor, find a good school for their children, and not get mugged at knifepoint. The answer is that ideologues like Chapman are not interested in all that boring, quotidian stuff that fixates middle-class taxpayers. Simply ghastly people, those bourgeois types, with their petrol-guzzling cars, their authoritarian demands for more police on the streets, and their grasping fixation with ambition and acquisition. Don't they know there are more important issues in the world? There are far too many in Holyrood or keen to get there who think like this. For them, life is just one long university debating society match, in which enlightened elites like them exchange barbs and bon mots over affairs of state. The little people might fret about bills and savings and leaving an inheritance for their children, but they are above such vulgar materialism. They are here to change the world, you know. In my observation, those most keen to change the world tend to have the least experience of it. They make terrible politicians because they quickly find out the world doesn't work the way they want and they resent the voters for that. If the voters set the agenda in politics, Mhairi Black and Maggie Chapman wouldn't be the only ones in our insular, self-righteous governing class that would be stampeding for the exit. Democracy is still the most radical idea of all. Maybe one day we'll give it a try.
The Sun
27 minutes ago
- The Sun
Fury as bankrupt Birmingham council offering asylum seekers huge discounts on swimming, golf, trampolining & Villa games
BANKRUPT Birmingham Council is offering small boat asylum seekers hefty discounts on leisure activities — including swimming, golf and trampolining. The Labour -run authority, which is locked in a bin strike now in its seventh month, is giving migrants up to 25 per cent off through its Passport To Leisure scheme. 2 2 Migrants, many of whom have crossed the Channel by boat before claiming asylum on reaching the UK, can also get a fifth off on the use of council swimming pools. Martial arts classes are subsidised for migrants under the initiative, as are courses on trampolining, golf, gymnastics and football. The price of a trip to a council wellbeing centre for fitness, yoga, squash and badminton sessions is also cheaper. The council even offers £1 tickets to Aston Villa matches for migrant children, as long as they are accompanied by a full paying adult. In a further slap in the face for taxpayers, asylum seekers get ten per cent off at most council leisure sites, meaning cheaper trips to the theatre, museum and city's botanical gardens. Under the scheme, £3 is lopped off tickets to watch shows, such as Disney musical Mary Poppins at the Birmingham Hippodrome. The Passport To Leisure card is available to over-60s, full-time students, carers, disabled people and recipients of certain benefits. Birmingham — England's largest local authority district by population — already has a 'Be Active' scheme for asylum seekers which offers free swimming and gym sessions. The council is £3.9billion in debt and declared itself effectively bankrupt in September 2023 with the issue of a Section 114 notice, limiting it to essential spending only. It is also under fire over its handling of a bin strike which has seen mountains of rubbish pile up on the city's streets. Migrant hotel protesters take to the streets again as demonstrations spread across the country in weekend stand-off Unite union members are in a dispute over pay and proposed changes to some roles. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: 'This is a bankrupt Labour council, in the middle of a bin strike, racking up billions in debt, hiking council tax by 21 per cent, and their priority is trampolining perks for illegal immigrants. 'It is a slap in the face for hard-pressed taxpayers who are being forced to subsidise freebies for illegal immigrants who claim asylum having crossed the channel.'
Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
Two-tier policing is the nail in the coffin for Britain's social contract
Has a British Government ever appeared so terrified of its own people? More to the point, can you think of one that deserved it more? The social contract has been shredded. You go to work and pay your taxes for a state that seems to be crumbling into disrepair. In exchange, the Government takes your money, and uses it to fund an alleged secret scheme to fly in Taliban fighters to live on your street. But don't worry – we've got a new 'elite police squad' to prevent trouble. That police unit won't be patrolling your neighbourhood to keep you safe from harm. Rather, it will be tasked with scouring social media for protest pre-crime, monitoring your opinions for anti-migrant sentiment. The police might not have enough resources to deal with shoplifting. They might not have solved a single theft or burglary, or recover a stolen bike, across a third of England. But we are to believe they have resources for what really counts: scrutinising your views for wrongthink. The current state of affairs is so absurd that simply writing it down feels almost subversive. But each element is true: we do appear to have flown unvetted Taliban members into Britain. The Government really will be watching your posts for signs of dissent. This isn't some accident, some Civil Service blunder. It's by design. It truly appears that Labour's strategy is to impose ever more restrictions on the freedoms of the law-abiding, in the hope that eventually people will acquiesce with a resigned shrug. The problem is that it isn't working. The population is fed up with being punished for doing the right thing. The hectoring about slavery, imperialism, war and all the other iniquities of history used to justify sacrificing our comforts and liberties on the altar of mass migration is no longer having the desired effect. British citizens living today did not build the empire. They didn't enslave anyone. Why should they foot the bill for housing illegal migrants up in four star hotels in central London? Why should they put up with them working in the shadow economy? Unfortunately for the Government, the previously silent majority is beginning to vocally express its frustration. MPs and ministers are fearful that the country is becoming a 'tinderbox'. But even this isn't enough to convince them that we must change course. Why? Perhaps because doing so would be an admission of past failures. For decades we were told that mass migration was an unalloyed good while critics were denounced as bigots. To concede, after all this time, that it has not come without costs – at times intolerable costs – would be catastrophically damaging to the political class. The pro-migration fanatics, who promised to control numbers while throwing open our borders, who overrode objections to impose their policies despite what they were repeatedly being told at the ballot box, would be discredited. So instead, the state appears to be passing through the stages of grief. At first there was denial that people were worried about migration at all; Brexit had allowed us to be liberals. Then there was anger after Southport, with Starmer's denunciation of the 'thugs' taking to the streets. Now we seem to have reached bargaining: if we can stop people talking about it, perhaps they'll stop caring? It was a strategy that might have worked prior to the social media era, and in particular prior to Elon Musk's buyout of Twitter. Now, even the censorship of protest videos, arrest of people for incendiary content, and threat of mass scanning of output isn't sufficient to quell dissent. And though many of the protests now cropping up across Britain are peaceful, shows of police force are not enough to deter outside agitators from hijacking them. Tiff Lynch, the head of the Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers, last week warned that officers were being 'pulled in every direction' and commanders were 'forced to choose between keeping the peace at home or plugging national gaps'. Where do we go from here? As the costs of legal migration become apparent, with talk of labour market infusions and attracting the 'best and brightest' seeming increasingly hollow, overall numbers must be reduced. As the impact of illegal migration becomes clearer, the establishment must stop trying to guilt us into acceptance, and finally stop the influx. It's highly doubtful Yvette Cooper has the will or the way. The Home Secretary would prefer to silence opponents, by censoring and arresting those who speak out.
