Good Morning Britain's Ed Balls in fiery clash with Tory MP for ‘waffling' over welfare cuts
Appearing on the ITV show on Wednesday (2 July), after Gareth Davies failed to say where the Conservatives would be making cuts instead, Mr Balls chastised him for 'failing to answer the question'
'Don't go all waffley on us at this point in the interview' he told Mr Davies, to which the MP disputed. 'It isn't waffle, it's about reform'.
The Tory MP critiqued Labour 's watered-down bill that was passed yesterday in the House of Commons, after the party revised some cuts to universal credit.
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The Independent
24 minutes ago
- The Independent
Unless he can fix things at home, Keir Starmer will get no credit for his diplomatic skill
All prime ministers end up being their own foreign secretary. Keir Starmer started off as one. He has been moderately successful in foreign affairs, but has gained no credit for it from the British electorate. He has played a role in rallying Europe to the defence of Ukraine. This bore fruit at what we might call the half-baked Alaska summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. The meeting failed to end the war in Ukraine, but that also means that President Trump did not sell out the Ukrainian people, which he has threatened to do. We cannot be sure how important European voices, including the British one, were in holding the line, but it seemed as if the conference call Trump held with European leaders on Wednesday was a significant moment. The briefing from the Europeans was almost ecstatic: that the US president seemed to recognise that a peace on Putin's terms was unacceptable, and that it was Putin who was the obstacle to a fair settlement. Starmer has played a surprising role in organising that show of European unity. Surprising, because so many of those who wanted Britain to stay in the EU argued that leaving would diminish our standing in the world. On the contrary, Starmer's diplomacy has vindicated the Brexiteers who said we could be more nimble, more creative and more assertive outside. Precisely because Britain is not a member of the EU, Starmer was better able to overcome EU disunity by assembling his 'coalition of the willing' to pledge solidarity with Ukraine, backed up by plans for (some) higher European defence spending. He was able to do it because the British people are so supportive of the Ukrainian cause. That allowed him to finesse the two possible sticking points in giving practical expression to that support. As with a lot of opinion-poll findings, the British are very supportive of the Ukrainians until it starts to cost them a noticeable amount of money. We have thrown open our doors to 200,000 refugees, but higher taxes to pay for the Ukrainian war effort? Ni, dyakuyu. Luckily, Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, found an electorally painless way of increasing defence spending by simply switching money from the most unpopular Budget heading, namely foreign aid. The almost total silence since that announcement in March has been instructive: the great enlightened achievement of Tony Blair and David Cameron in meeting the UN target for foreign aid spending is something that, it turned out, almost nobody cared about. The other sticking point in support for Ukraine is the idea of sending troops to help repel Putin's aggression. That has been out of the question for all of Ukraine's allies: we are happy to supply arms and money, but Ukrainians must do the fighting. Yet British public opinion is sufficiently supportive that Starmer has been able to talk about deploying British forces to help deter further Russian aggression if there is a peace deal. It is unclear how or whether this would work, but it has helped focus attention on the difficult question of who would guarantee a settlement and how that would work. What was most surprising about Trump's statements after the Alaska summit – apart from referring to Mark Rutte as the 'highly respected secretary general of Nato' – was his promise that the US would provide 'robust security guarantees' to support Ukraine. All in all, then, and considering how badly the summit could have gone, given Trump's belief that the Ukrainians brought their troubles on themselves, his disdain for Nato and his desperation for a Nobel Peace Prize at any cost, the Alaska meeting went well. Starmer can take some credit as the leader of a nation that is an important ally of Ukraine and an enemy of aggression. But that is another limit to the sympathy the British people feel for the Ukrainian cause: they are not going to reward their own leader for giving their sentiments practical expression on the world stage. Just as they are not going to give Starmer credit for his handling of the US president on tariffs, which has allowed him to carve out a better deal for the UK than for any other country. Nor will they give Starmer credit for the deal with Emmanuel Macron by which France has accepted that Britain can send back some of the people crossing the Channel in small boats. My astonishment at Starmer's skill in securing this concession is heavily outweighed by most people's dismay that the boats keep coming. The British public has had enough of the boats and is not inclined to wait a year or more to see if the numbers being sent back can be increased to the point where they act as a deterrent. I remember the European Parliament election in 1999, when Tony Blair had saved the Muslim population of Kosovo from expulsion by Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian dictator. It was a moment of shining moral leadership, by which Blair persuaded a divided Nato and a reluctant Bill Clinton to stand up to ethnic persecution, and which was a triumphant success. It was a success that brought him 15 minutes of adulation from the tabloid press, followed almost immediately by sullen complaints about traffic jams and trains not running on time. In the European election, held on the day that the Serbs withdrew, Labour did extremely badly. What reminded me of that election was a 'government source' quoted in The Times: 'World War Three is breaking out internationally; it's unreasonable for people to expect Keir to be caring about potholes.' Wrong, wrong, wrong. International leadership is well and good, but unless Keir can fix the potholes and stop the boats, it counts for nothing with the voters.
Telegraph
25 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Police used ‘Orwellian' powers to gag firefighter in free speech row
Police used 'Orwellian' powers to gag a firefighter and prevent him revealing he had been arrested after posting online messages criticising his bosses. Staffordshire Police told Robert Moss that his right to 'freedom of expression' had to be 'limited to maintain public safety and order' following his arrest on suspicion of malicious communications. But a special bail hearing at Newcastle-Under-Lyme magistrates' court overturned the 'gagging clause' amid fears officers were behaving as if they lived in a 'police state'. Now Mr Moss, who was never charged with a crime but had his home raided, said he believes 'heavy-handed' police were 'weaponised' to silence him. It is the latest example of claims that some police forces are using draconian powers to curtail freedom of speech. Mr Moss, 56, had worked for the Staffordshire fire and rescue service for 28 years before being sacked in 2021, shortly after he became the Fire Brigade Union's secretary for the county. Two years later, an employment tribunal found the service had unfairly dismissed him from his job on the grounds of capability. The father-of-one continued to offer advice to firefighters in a private Facebook group where he made a number of comments that were critical of the fire service's management. Speaking from his home in Newcastle-Under-Lyme, Mr Moss insisted the messages, seen by The Telegraph, were 'anodyne' and 'certainly not criminal'. After a 7am police raid in July in which officers seized two telephones, an iPad and computer, Mr Moss, a former Labour councillor, said he felt like a criminal. He was given bail with six conditions, which included prohibitions on posting any communication, online or otherwise, relating to the county's fire service, its chief and deputy chief fire officers, and posting messages relating to the police investigation. Tom Beardsworth, a barrister hired by the Free Speech Union (FSU), told the court Mr Moss was a man of good character who should have been dealt with by a voluntary interview rather than a police raid. Although he did not challenge four of the bail conditions, which prevented Mr Moss from contacting or communicating with Rob Barber, the Staffordshire fire chief officer, and his deputy Glynn Luznyj, Mr Beardsworth argued that two conditions limited his freedom of speech. 'A deep threat to the right of free expression' He told magistrates: 'These allow the police to arrest and detain someone and then when they are released prevent them from telling others what had happened with the threat of further arrest if they do not comply. 'We do not live in a police state and Mr Moss should have every right to speak about his arrest. 'For the police to prohibit an arrested person from speaking about their arrest is extraordinary and Orwellian, and it is not hyperbole to put it in those terms. 'This is a deep threat to the right of free expression and it engages real matters of high principle.' He quoted the College of Policing guidance on 'pre-charge bail', which said conditions should only be imposed where necessary, and referred to a police briefing note that said the conditions were 'limiting' freedom of expression to 'maintain public health and order'. DC Isobel Holliday, the arresting officer, insisted the bail conditions were 'proportionate' because Mr Moss's posts had been 'malicious and reckless', denying that requiring him not to talk about the fire service until a September bail hearing was 'unnecessary' and 'gagging'. Paul Tabinor, the chairman of the magistrates' bench, ruled that Mr Moss could post messages about the fire service and scrapped the ban on him making any posts relating to the police investigation. Mr Moss said: 'I feel strongly that under a joint police and fire commissioner the police and fire services are hand-in-glove and the fire service had weaponised the police to silence me. 'I was a critic of Staffordshire fire service and I had been gagged from saying anything about individuals there, the service itself and my arrest. That is a breach of my human rights.' Sam Armstrong, the FSU's legislative affairs director, said: 'In the more than 4,000 cases the Free Speech Union has handled, this is amongst the most egregious abuses of state power we have encountered. 'Robert's comments were not crimes, his arrest was not lawful and the police have been acting like the Stasi, not a constabulary. Staffordshire Police's chief constable must urgently end this investigation and apologise to Mr Moss before he finds himself writing an even bigger cheque than he already will have to.' A spokesman for Staffordshire Police said: 'We arrested a 56-year-old man, from Newcastle-under-Lyme, on Tuesday 8 July, on suspicion of harassment without violence, sending communication/article of an indecent/offensive nature and knowingly/recklessly obtain or disable personal data without consent of the controller. The man has been released on conditional bail as our enquiries continue.' A Staffordshire Fire and Rescue spokesman said it would be inappropriate to comment while legal proceedings are active. It's not against the law to criticise someone in authority. Not yet, anyway By Lord Young On the face of it, Staffordshire Police's efforts to gag a critic of the Staffordshire fire and rescue service are quite shocking. Robert Moss, a former firefighter and Labour councillor, was arrested last month under suspicion of having committed an offence under the Malicious Communications Act. That in itself was quite heavy-handed, given that his alleged 'crime' was to have criticised the fire service's management in a private Facebook chat. But the really sinister thing – which Mr Moss's barrister describes as 'Orwellian' – was that his bail conditions included a gagging order, stopping him from saying anything more about his former employer, either online or offline. Thankfully, with the help of the Free Speech Union (FSU), the organisation I run, he managed to get this order removed and he's now free to say what he thinks about his former employer. He is still under investigation, but I'd be amazed if he's charged with a criminal offence, given that it's not against the law in this country to criticise someone in authority. Not yet, anyway. The reason I'm not shocked by this case is because it fits a pattern of the police over-reacting to social media posts, often at the behest of people who feel they've been unfairly criticised. Earlier this year, the FSU helped Julian Foulkes, a retired special constable who had his home in Kent raided by six police officers after he got into a spat with a pro-Palestinian activist on X. After commenting on the 71 year-old's 'Brexity' books, the officers arrested him, confiscated his electronic devices, took him to the station in handcuffs, locked him in a cell for eight hours, then interviewed him under suspicion of having committed a Malicious Communications Act offence, only releasing him after he agreed to accept a caution. With the FSU's help, Mr Foulkes managed to secure a pay-out of £20,000 from Kent Police for wrongful arrest and false imprisonment, as well as an apology from the Chief Constable. We are trying to get comparable compensation from Hertfordshire Police for the arrest of Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine, two parents whose home was raided by six officers from Hertfordshire Police following 'disparaging' comments in a WhatsApp group about the management of their child's school, as well as critical emails they'd sent to the headteacher. They were detained in front of their young daughter before being fingerprinted, searched and left in a police cell for eight hours. Like Robert Moss, they were interviewed under suspicion of having committed a Malicious Communications Act offence. According to custody data obtained by The Times, the police are currently arresting more than 30 people a day over 'offensive' posts on social media and other platforms. In total, police are detaining around 12,000 people a year under suspicion of committing just two speech offences, up from about 5,500 in 2017. At the FSU, we received a surge in requests for help following the investigation into Allison Pearson for a year-old tweet and the imprisonment of Lucy Connolly, who wrongly blamed the murder of three schoolgirls in Southport on an illegal immigrant in an intemperate social media post. Several dozen people have been prosecuted for various speech offences in connection with the Southport attacks, including one man who spent eight weeks in jail for sharing a meme suggesting a link between migrants and knife crime, a case that was singled out in the US State Department's recent report on the erosion of free speech in Britain. Of the people who are arrested for speech offences, only a fraction end up being convicted. For instance, in 2023 fewer people were convicted for breaching section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act and section 127 of the Communications Act than in 2017, when the number of arrests was much lower. This suggests the police are being over-zealous in their pursuit of thought criminals, with the data revealing that only about one in 20 of those arrested under suspicion of committing these two offences end up being sentenced. But that's scant comfort to those who find themselves under police investigation, particularly when the bail conditions interfere with their right to freedom of expression. In many cases, when the police decide to take no further action the nightmare isn't over since the episode is then logged as a 'non-crime hate incident', with the FSU estimating that more than a quarter of a million of these have been recorded since 2014. These can show up on enhanced criminal record checks, preventing people getting jobs as teachers or carers or securing a firearms licence. It's becoming increasingly clear that the police need a 'reset' when it comes to online speech offences. They should stop policing our tweets and focus on policing our streets.
BBC News
25 minutes ago
- BBC News
Trump's ceasefire pivot will have caused dismay in Kyiv
No deal in Alaska. It was always the most likely and, in the absence of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, perhaps the most desirable US President Donald Trump's pivot away from the need for an immediate ceasefire, which he said beforehand he wanted, will have caused profound dismay in Kyiv and around position has long been that a ceasefire can only come in the context of a comprehensive settlement taking account of Russia's interests - and inevitably implies Ukraine's the position that Trump, once again, appears to have endorsed. ANALYSIS: What summit means for Trump, Putin and UkraineWATCH: How the Trump-Putin summit unfolded in 82 secondsVISUALS: The war-ravaged Ukrainian territories in mapsIN PICTURES: Trump rolls out the red carpet for Putin "It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine," he wrote on Truth Social, "is to go directly to a peace agreement."Ceasefires, he noted, "often times do not hold up".This appears to fly in the face of Ukraine's main demand, endorsed by all its European backers: that an unconditional ceasefire has to come it also buys Russia's Vladimir Putin time on the battlefield, where he is convinced he's winning."If Putin's military objective was to avoid immediate constraints on Russian operations in Ukraine then he appears to have succeeded," says Matthew Savill, the director of military sciences at the Royal United Services their brief press appearance last night, Putin warned Ukraine and the Europeans not to "throw a wrench" in the works of the unspecified progress he and Trump had that, for Kyiv and its allies, is precisely what Trump has done, undoing the achievements of what they all hoped was a successful preceding week of frantic diplomacy aimed at influencing the outcome in a reminder, as if one were needed, of Trump's tendency to echo the views of the last person to have his a short while this morning, European leaders will have held their breath, waiting to see if their efforts had borne fruit or been cast to his word before the summit, Trump got on the phone to Zelensky. The two men spoke for an hour, before being joined by European said the call was "long and substantive" and that he would travel to Washington on Monday for his first visit since the disastrous Oval Office encounter in February.A lot has happened since then, with Kyiv's European allies working assiduously to repair the damage and school Zelensky in the best ways of handling the capricious and volatile occupant of the White House."I am grateful for the invitation," Zelensky posted, adding "it is important that America's strength has an impact on the situation".But in a later post, after Trump's statement on Truth Social, Zelensky adopted a more urgent tone."Killings must stop as soon as possible," he said. "The fire must cease both on the battlefield and in the sky, as well as against our port infrastructure." Europe's "Trump whisperers" picked up this morning where they left off last highlighted the vital importance of involving Ukraine in conversations about its future but also paused, as they know they must regularly do, to show appreciation for Trump's efforts."President Trump's efforts have brought us closer than ever before to ending Russia's illegal war in Ukraine," said Sir Keir Starmer, the UK's prime said he welcomed what he called the "openness" of the US, along with Europe, to provide "robust security guarantees" for Ukraine in the event of a and when the fighting does eventually end, the precise nature of those guarantees will need to be spelled out in a great deal more detail than has so far been the case. Despite Europe's emerging role as Ukraine's principal military, economic and political backer, everyone knows Ukraine's future security cannot really be assured without the substantive backing of the her own comments on the Alaska summit, Italy's leader, Giorgia Meloni, said guarantees for Ukraine could be "inspired by Nato's Article 5" - the principle of collective defence signed on to by all Nato reports this morning suggested the idea of guarantees outside Nato but equivalent to Article 5 were discussed during the latest call between Trump and European in the wake of Trump's apparent about-face this morning, you can almost hear the sound of minds spinning across European London, the government appears to be putting on a brave face."If you can get that all done [a ceasefire and a peace agreement] in one go or in quick succession that's obviously a good thing," said a senior Downing Street source. "But we all want to see the fighting stop". Trump has walked away from the idea of an immediate ceasefire, no doubt informed by Putin's highly contentious account of how ceasefires broke down in the quasi-summit in Alaska already represented a cost-free win for Putin. The return of an international pariah to the international stage (albeit one festooned with unambiguous displays of American military might at the Elmendorf-Richardson airbase) and some of the trappings of a state threat of increased US sanctions on Moscow receded too, with Trump saying it may be two or three weeks before he even has to think about this raises a host of questions about what may greet Zelensky, both on Monday in Washington and when he finally finds himself in the room with Putin and advice does Trump have for the Ukrainian leader, Fox's Sean Hannity asked."Make a deal," came the blunt reply. "Russia's a very big power and they're not."
