Fritzl case led Badenoch to ‘reject God', says Tory leader
But this changed in 2008 when she read reports that Fritzl had imprisoned and repeatedly raped his daughter, Elisabeth, in his basement over 24 years.
Mrs Badenoch, whose maternal grandfather was a Methodist minister, said: 'I couldn't stop reading this story. And I read her account, how she prayed every day to be rescued.
'And I thought, I was praying for all sorts of stupid things and I was getting my prayers answered. I was praying to have good grades, my hair should grow longer, and I would pray for the bus to come on time so I wouldn't miss something.
'It's like, why were those prayers answered and not this woman's prayers? And it just, it was like someone blew out a candle.'
But she insisted that while she had 'rejected God', she had not rejected Christianity and remained a 'cultural Christian', saying she wanted to 'protect certain things because I think the world that we have in the UK is very much built on many Christian values'.
During her interview, which is due to be broadcast on Thursday evening, Mrs Badenoch also said her tenure as Conservative leader was going 'well', adding her job was to 'make sure that people can see that we are the only party on the centre-right'.
In an apparent dig at Nigel Farage's Reform UK, she said: 'There are pretenders. We're the only party on the centre-right, and we're the only ones who still believe in values like living within our means, personal responsibility, making sure that the government is not getting involved in everything so it can focus on the things it needs to look at, like securing our borders.'
She went on to defend previous comments saying the fact she had worked at McDonald's made her working class, saying: 'I had to work to live.
'That, for me, is what being working class is. It's the lifestyle that you have. You have to work, to survive.'
And she argued that parents who were 'worried about their children getting stolen or snatched' had created a younger generation that lacked the 'resilience' to deal with problems in life.
Responding to figures suggesting a quarter of people aged 16-24 said they had a mental disorder, Mrs Badenoch said: 'I think they think they have a mental disorder, I don't think they all have a mental disorder.'
She added: 'I'm not a medical expert so it is not my expertise on exactly what we need to do to get them into work, but we should be trying to get them into work.'
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Telegraph
38 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Reform's crime tsar Colin Sutton: ‘I'll never forgive the Tories for what they did to policing'
Colin Sutton has policing in the blood and politics on the brain. He is one of four generations of his family who became coppers, but even before Sutton walked his first beat in uniform he was knocking on doors campaigning for Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party. He went on to become arguably Britain's most famous detective by putting away serial killer Levi Bellfield and 'night stalker' rapist Delroy Grant, before retiring to Norfolk where he re-engaged with politics as the deputy chairman of his local Reform UK branch. Little wonder, then, that Nigel Farage beat a path to his door when he decided Reform needed a policing and crime adviser who could come up with a strategy for halving crime in five years in a country that Farage has declared to be 'lawless'. At the age of 64, Sutton was settling nicely into what for many people would seem the perfect retirement on his police pension: living in a 16th-century farmhouse with his wife and their five curly-coated retrievers, travelling to dog shows, tinkering with cars and helping to raise three young grandchildren. It is not in his nature to sit on his hands when he can be useful though, and so it never occurred to him to say no when Reform made its approach. 'I suppose I tend to get involved, be it at the golf club or cricket club or, you know, anything I've been involved in I've ended up with a role,' he smiles as we chat in a living room dominated by a large stone fireplace and heavy oak beams. Organising sports club socials, though, is a rather different prospect from effectively writing the law-and-order section of what could be the next government's manifesto. There is a reason why Farage has decided to dedicate this entire summer to a PR blitz on crime and punishment: it is one of the public's top priorities, and he can see that a promise to slash crime, together with his long-standing pledge to cut immigration (two issues that are inextricably linked in Farage's mind), is an essential part of the offering to the British public that he hopes will make him prime minister. Whether he realises it yet or not, Sutton may well be one of the most important people in the whole Reform project right now. And there is no questioning his commitment. Before he had even been offered a formal role, he sat down and wrote a 6,000-word thesis on the future of policing, with a 10-point action plan for cutting crime. 'I'm never one to do things by halves,' he muses. 'I sent that up to them, and the next thing I know, they're saying, 'Would you like to be our police and crime adviser?' So I said, 'Well, yeah, OK, yeah, of course. You know, if I can make a difference, or I can help.'' The quietly-spoken Sutton is about as far removed from the stereotypical image of a hard-boiled murder cop as you can get. If you had to guess, you might place him as a retired head teacher. Rather than reaching for soundbites, he is a deep thinker, a grammar-school boy with a law degree to go alongside his high-profile collars during 30 years of service across three police forces. Anyone who hopes he and Reform will return Britain to the days of bobbies on every beat and police houses in every village is going to be disappointed. In truth, he is unsure whether the 'evenin' all' image of 1950s policing ever existed in reality. 'I don't think we're ever going to recapture it now,' he says. 'If it did exist, it's gone forever. 'We should look forward, not backwards, but in doing that, we have to say there were things that were done in the past that we need to start doing again. 'It's not saying we're trying to go back to Dixon of Dock Green, where nobody had a phone or a camera in their pocket and kids got a thick ear. We've gone past that, in many ways for the better. 'But that doesn't mean that the concepts of engagement with the community, policing the community, for the community, should be discounted. There are lessons to be drawn from the past that can influence how we can make the police service fit to do the things it needs to do in the 21st century.' Several of Sutton's 10 recommendations for halving crime do involve winding back the clock. He wants to reopen 300 local police stations (700 have been closed), focus resources on real-world crimes like burglary and away from online spats, and reduce police involvement in non-criminal matters. He also wants an extra 30,000 officers, though that is already Reform policy and so not one of his 10 points. Other recommendations are more political, such as: recruiting based on merit alone rather than quotas; scrapping diversity, equality and inclusion posts; making the police more independent from interest groups and rewarding strong leadership rather than rewarding compliance with liberal ideologies. He would also like to free up police time by potentially decriminalising online abuse (leaving people to pursue grievances through the civil courts) and would like to reform or review both the Independent Office for Police Conduct and the role of police and crime commissioners. You could summarise all of this as more resources, used far more efficiently, for what the public wants the police to be doing. He wants to return to the days of open community meetings where local people could speak directly to officers to give them their priorities, rather than senior officers taking their cue from 'community leaders' who all too often have an agenda that does not reflect the true wishes of the local population. 'It's about re-engagement with ordinary people,' he says. 'Saying, what do you actually want us to be doing? If you'd rather us be looking through Twitter and looking at things that may be offensive, then we'll do that. But if you'd actually rather we were there to respond to you when your house gets broken into and would investigate the crime, or patrolling down your street to make you feel safer, then tell us and we'll do what you want us to do, because it should be policing of the people, by the people.' A few years ago Sutton wrote in his blog that he did not believe beat patrols were a good use of resources, but he now says he is a 'born-again' believer in them, mainly because of the all-important issue of trust. Having started his career on the beat in Tottenham's tough Broadwater Farm estate a few years before the 1985 riots that culminated in the murder of PC Keith Blakelock, Sutton formed the view that people who were minded to help the police would always help the police, regardless of whether they knew a dedicated community officer or not, while those who were unco-operative (to put it mildly) would never be won round. But that was before the general levels of trust in the police plunged to their current all-time low. 'I'm not sure the Met does any foot patrolling at all now,' he says. 'So there's an opportunity to rebuild trust through proper engagement with the whole community, rather than just the people who decide they represent the community.' But he still maintains that foot patrols do not necessarily reduce crime, and that what people care about most is that if they are in trouble and dial 999 two well-trained, competent officers turn up quickly and help, regardless of their gender or ethnicity. Sutton might have seemed destined to join the police, given that his great-grandfather and father were both constables (he also has a son in the police) and that he grew up surrounded by uniformed officers. An only child, he would tag along with his parents to social events, 'so I guess I was kind of steeped in the culture and traditions of the Met Police from an early age'. His interests went far beyond policing though. He joined the Conservatives when he was 17 and helped them with the canvassing for the 1979 election in Enfield North, helping to overturn a Labour majority and get Tim Eggar (later a minister) elected as Margaret Thatcher swept to power. He did well in his A-levels at Latymer grammar school in Edmonton, north London, and headed off to Leeds University to study law. But he hated being away from London and in his second year he dropped out, the gravitational pull of the Metropolitan Police proving just too strong to resist. 'It was the idea of service,' he says about the attraction of policing. 'You know, on the side of the goodies and against the baddies.' He was a sergeant after two years, was fast-tracked to inspector rank by the age of 25 and showed such promise that the Met, ironically, decided he should take a law degree, which he did, at University College London. After transferring to West Yorkshire Police and then Surrey Police, during which time he married, had two children and got divorced, he ended up back at the Met as a detective chief inspector, working as a senior investigating officer until his retirement in 2011. It was during that time that he headed the team that caught Levi Bellfield, convicted in 2008 of the murders of Marsha McDonnell and Amelie Delagrange and then, in 2011, of the murder of Surrey schoolgirl Milly Dowler. Also in 2011, Delroy Grant, the so-called Night Stalker, was convicted of 29 offences over a 17-year period following the biggest rape investigation ever undertaken by the Met. Today, Sutton says his proudest achievement is 'leading the teams that meant Bellfield and Grant couldn't victimise any more women and girls. That's our legacy. We stopped people from being victims.' Farage would dearly love to be in a position to have his own legacy of cutting crime, and Sutton will be drawing on all his experience as a beat bobby, a leader and a detective to help him get there. As far as operational issues go, he believes that all front-line officers who want to be equipped with Tasers should be given them. He also has strong views on reducing knife crime, which surged by 58 per cent in London in the space of three years to 2024 and by 86 per cent in a decade – a 'horrific' statistic, Sutton says. In the same period stop and search has been on the decline – falling by 23 per cent between March 2023 and March 2024. 'Stop and search is virtually non-existent,' he says. 'If you oppose stop and search, you oppose enforcing anti-knife laws, because stop and search works and it is the only way you can tell if somebody's got a knife on them in a public place.' He has little time for community leaders who, he says, dishonestly use statistics to oppose stop and search when research has shown that, judged against the ethnic breakdown of the population on the street at any given time, rather than the resident population, young white men are marginally more likely to be stopped than young black men. 'I've spoken to more bereaved parents whose children have succumbed to knife crime than most people. Every single one of those, irrespective of their race, gender, their background, every single one wishes with all their heart that somebody had stopped and searched that assailant 10 minutes before they killed their child.' Sutton had to give up his Tory Party membership when he joined the police but he never lost his interest in politics. After he retired he rejoined the Conservatives 'simply so I could vote against Theresa May when she stood as leader, then I left again'. He adds: 'Like many police officers I will never, ever forgive them, and specifically her, for what they did to policing [by cutting police numbers by 20,000]. We're still paying for that now.' In 2013 when the Met first began closing its front counters there were nearly 140 in London. Closures took that firgure down to 37, and this week the Met announced plans for further cuts to just 20 Having turned his back on the Tories, and with no confidence in Sir Keir Starmer's chances of doing better, he joined Reform UK in May last year after bumping into the local parliamentary candidate and deciding he was saying all the right things about 'the sort of reset that I think is necessary'. Having volunteered to be deputy chairman of his local Reform branch (because 'nobody was sticking their hand up') it was only a matter of time before Farage latched on to the gift that had landed in his lap. Sutton was unveiled as Reform's new crime tsar in July at one of Farage's weekly press conferences, when Sutton marvelled at Farage's communication skills. 'The man's command of facts, the way in which he uses them, it's just amazing. And I thought I could talk! Then you look at others, you watch [Prime Minister's] Questions and look at the scripted questions and the scripted answers. Keir Starmer looks like a startled rabbit in the headlights. He's just not got that kind of ability, that kind of brain that works that way.' Sutton knows leadership when he sees it, and he certainly doesn't see it in Sir Keir. 'I think leadership is what I did best when I was in the police. People think I'm a great detective. In truth I had great detectives working for me, but I got the best out of them.' Leadership, he says, is key to getting the most out of the resources available to the police. Some chief constables have promised a return to investigating every burglary, a policy Sutton believes should be adopted nationwide, as burglary is 'one of the most invasive and destructive and horrifying' crimes there is. 'There are probably enough people there and enough vehicles' to do that, he says. 'What's missing is the leadership and the will to say you will go to every burglary, and you will not worry if someone's been offended or misgendered on Twitter.' What, then, does he make of the leadership of Britain's top policeman, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley? What would Sutton do differently? 'I'd be listening more carefully to the wider community,' he says, 'and I'd like to think I'd be a lot more firm with the mayor. I'm not sure how much Mark stands up to [Sir Sadiq Khan]. 'There's no legal limit on what the mayor can spend on policing. And he chooses to spend money on six-figure salaries for dozens of Transport for London employees. He spends money on nighttime economy tsars. He chooses to spend half a million on a piece of sculpture that looks like I don't know what and he doesn't choose to make that difference in policing.' Sutton agrees with Farage's assessment that crime is getting worse, despite official figures that claim it is lessening, and he also thinks there is merit in the theory that recent increases in sex crimes are linked to immigration. 'If you look at the figures, not just here, but the figures for Germany and Sweden, there is no doubt that there has been an explosion of sexual offences in those countries that coincides with their explosion in migration. So I think it's certainly a conversation worth having.' He thinks it is 'looking likely' that Reform will win the next election. Would he consider standing as an MP if Farage suggested it? 'I would give serious consideration to that,' he replies without hesitation. Might we be looking at a future home secretary? 'I don't think I would go that far!' he laughs. 'But who knows what happens in life?'
Spectator
2 hours ago
- Spectator
Why is it still acceptable to abuse men with long hair?
It was a hairy situation. At a drab corporate dinner in a posh hotel basement, one of my fellow diners grew increasingly prickly. My publication had committed some slight against him – perhaps passing him over for one of our phoney awards, more likely misspelling his name. Unassuaged by my non-apologies, the fur was beginning to fly, though with as much ferocity as Bagpuss might muster. As my assailant stared at my luscious locks cascading onto my chest, he decided things must get personal. He leant across the table and yelled: 'And get your hair cut!' The advice wasn't without merit; I'm perennially in need of a trim. But the incident spoke to something darker in the soul of British men, borne of frustration, drink, and perhaps subconscious lust. It is one of the last acceptable prejudices in modern Britain: barnets. The topic is an unlikely point of agreement between white contrarian hipsters and racial justice activists. Earlier this year, a group of the latter launched a petition to end 'hair discrimination' against people sporting afros, braids or dreadlocks, a phenomenon that has 'destroyed' some of those affected, as social entrepreneur Salha Kaitesi recently told the BBC. Whether facing unwanted contact, comments or professional chastisement, those with traditional black hairstyles argue they should be left alone. 'By discriminating against us, you're literally just saying we shouldn't belong or we shouldn't be who we are,' Kaitesi said. It's a new spin on a fashionable cause, at least. And as befits the vogue for legal boilerplating, her campaign calls for the Equality Act to be rewritten to make explicit mention of hair discrimination. This is despite the fact that the legislation already covers hairstyles worn because of cultural, family and social customs. The politics of hair is nothing new. Even two decades ago, my own all-boys secondary school carved out generous exemptions for bewhiskered pupils. While the official policy was not far off short back and sides with a clean shave, South Asian classmates were sufficiently numerous to make a mockery of having any standard at all. Such liberalism has crept into working life, as a stroll around any office would show you. Even the City of London, that bastion of stuffy privilege, now hosts a vivid array of barnets. The easing of dress codes has coincided with laxer rules about hair, perhaps encouraged by growing diversity in the workplace. Keep it kempt and you can often get away with anything. Or at least you can most of the time. For while the socially-astute conformists will know to avoid a brush with race relations law, white men with long hair are still fair game for follicular abuse. To paraphrase famous baldy Gregg Wallace, 'men of a certain age' are frequently forthright in expressing their distaste, as if traditional British mores haven't been suffering an unbroken series of catastrophic defeats since the 1960s. In that decade, lengthier styles on men were indicative of everything from mere idleness to the worst seditions: communism, anarchism and sexual deviancy. Long-haired men at the time report being refused service at pubs, subjected to a non-consensual trim, or in grimmer cases even beaten up. The correlation between barber abstinence and disobedience is true, of course. As Graham Nash once put it, long hair 'was a flag, it was a symbol of rebellion, of a new way of thinking, of a tantalising of your parents, a finger in the face of convention'. As well as symbolising good music taste and access to decent drugs, it was most of all a threat to the establishment. Perhaps then the man who heckled my flowing locks outside a Redhill pub some years ago was continuing in that tradition of defending the beliefs of every right-thinking person. Something similar may well be true of the Millwall fans who called out to their Lord and Saviour on seeing a friend of mine the other side of a security barrier – though in fairness, he does rather look like Jesus. But I suspect at its heart the verbal attacks on the long-hairs owe most to sexual jealousy from the baldies. Certainly many women cannot resist a floppy fringe after a few drinks, if only for the shampoo recommendations. It is hardly nit-picking to argue that men and women of all colours and creeds should be allowed to wear their hair how they like, if only to prop up one of the few AI-proof industries Britain has left and maintain a steady supply of hirsute tribute acts as rock pioneers die off. The government must act to end this disgraceful prejudice – at least once it's fixed the economy.
The Herald Scotland
2 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
Why SNP would want Ian Blackford on the Holyrood frontline
Mr Blackford has been largely out of the public eye since he stood down from his Westminster seat of Ross, Skye and Lochaber at last year's general election. The Ross, Skye and Lochaber constituency ceased to exist at the last election following boundary changes. The successor seat of Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire was won by the Lib Dems' Angus MacDonald with the SNP's Drew Hendry coming second. Mr Blackford was first elected to Westminster in May 2015 - the post 2014 independence referendum election - when the SNP won an astonishing 56 of Scotland's 59 seats. Read more: A former SNP national treasurer, he became the SNP Westminster leader after Angus Robertson lost his seat at the 2017 snap general election. He became known for his love of a stunt after he was expelled from the chamber in 2018 by a flustered John Bercow, the former Speaker, after refusing to sit down in a protest over the failure to debate what he called a Brexit 'power grab' on Scotland which prompted a mass walkout from colleagues. Amid the Westminster votes on EU withdrawal and then the Partygate saga, Mr Blackford came to prominence across the UK for locking horns in fiery exchanges with former Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the Commons. Mr Johnson, in turn, liked to rile Mr Blackford, deliberately and repeatedly misnaming the SNP as the Scottish Nationalist Party (not as it is correctly called the Scottish National Party) with the then PM poking fun at Mr Blackford's weight and mocking his claim to be 'a humble crofter'. Ian Blackford questioning Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (Image: PA) Of course, Mr Blackford was anything but 'just a humble crofter", although he does have his own Highland croft. For most of his working life before becoming an MP he enjoyed a lucrative career as an investment banker. During his career in high finance, he ran Deutsche Bank's equity operations in Scotland and the Netherlands for a time. Following 20 years in the financial sector, he left to do independent consultancy work, forming an investor relations company called First Seer in 2002. But despite his robust efforts in the Brexit turmoil to hold a series of Tory Prime Ministers to account – Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak - Mr Blackford had a turbulent time with his own MPs. His handling of sexual harassment claims made against the SNP MP Patrick Grady by a young staffer was widely criticised after a leaked recording showed him urging colleagues to support Mr Grady while failing to mention his victim. Amid discontent and heated arguments among his MPs - including Joanna Cherry and Mhairi Black who were at opposite sides of the debate over gender self-declaration - he was ousted from his role as SNP leader in the Commons in December 2022 in an internal power struggle and replaced by Stephen Flynn. The two men later denied any acrimony with a photograph posted on social media of them happily having a drink together on a Westminster terrace. Mr Blackford is reportedly considering whether to stand now for Holyrood following the shock announcement by the Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes on Monday that she will not stand for re-election to her Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch constituency (which overlaps with parts of Mr Blackford's old Westminster seat) in May next year. It is easy to see why senior figures in the SNP may want their former Westminster leader on the Scottish Parliament frontline. While he has never been in government, he has considerable parliamentary and campaigning experience, as well as of course his experience of finance from his previous career. He is also someone who is very loyal to the legacy of former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and to the current First Minister John Swinney. It was rumoured that Mr Blackford was one of the central figures in the SNP who encouraged Mr Swinney to put himself forward for party leader last year following the sudden resignation of Humza Yousaf. There is also an issue that the SNP benches will be losing many of its senior MSPs and ministers. Ms Forbes is the latest to announce her exit, but she follows in the footsteps of Ms Sturgeon, Mr Yousaf, finance secretary Shona Robison, as well as fellow cabinet members Fiona Hyslop and Mairi Gougeon. A number of junior ministers are also standing down including Richard Lochhead and Graeme Dey. With so many experienced politicians leaving it would be easy to see why the SNP would want to recruit more senior party figures into Holyrood. If Mr Blackford does decide to stand, he is selected by his party as the candidate, and voters elect him, it is likely he would be a contender for a top job in the Cabinet - maybe even finance secretary. And he may well have a sizeable group of former MPs by his side as he sits in Holyrood - including of course his usurper Mr Flynn.
