I'm not surprised a Labour MP kicked out her tenants and raised the rent by £700
Yes, it's morally outrageous for Britain's homelessness minister to make her tenants, well, homeless. But technically, she didn't actually do anything wrong.
If you look at the facts, Ali, the Labour MP for Bethnal Green and Stepney, was renting her house in East London for £3,300 per month. The tenants were informed that the contract wouldn't be renewed as the property was going to be sold.
Having failed to find a buyer, the property was then relisted at the new market price of £4,000 per month. This all happened within a period of less than six months, which – at the moment – is not against the law.
The big problem with this situation is the optics and the never-ending blatant hypocrisy of our Labour Government. Ali, who has previously been vocal about renters' rights and 'private renters being exploited' has obviously shown herself to be the true capitalist that she is – and who can blame her for making the most of the market conditions?
The fact is: this is the reality of renting in broken Britain.
Labour with their 'private landlords are evil' rhetoric have forced thousands of landlords to sell up. Admittedly, they didn't put a gun to their heads, but when you're going to make it law with the Renters Reform Bill that you can't evict a tenant with a Section 21 notice, have to stomach three months' rent arrears before you can take action, and jump over a huge range of expensive net zero hoops to meet new EPC criteria, it's just about the equivalent.
I know myself how broken this system is – it took 514 days to regain possession of one of my properties (after my tenants asked me to evict them in their attempt to get a council house). I've now listed it for sale. If it doesn't sell (I'll give it a month), it too will be re-listed to let for hundreds of pounds more per month than it was previously.
Going forward, Labour will ban this – I will have to wait six months before relisting the property to let. This is insane because the council tax every month is almost as much as the mortgage. But again, these are the punitive and hidden taxes landlords are rightly fleeing from.
And that is the reason why rents are so expensive. The simple law of supply and demand means that when there is high demand and low supply, prices go up. Labour obviously can't do the maths.
What I find even more worrying is the dangerous crisis the Government is pushing the housing market to. Their hypocrisy may know no bounds, but the public has had enough. Not only do we have a homelessness minister who makes tenants homeless, we have a Government that pits asylum seekers against cash-strapped tenants to vie for barely existent housing.
They really do think we are fools.
Starmer may stand and preach in his freebie glasses about how he's stopping illegal immigration, but the fact is they're offering sweet deals to landlords. Given how broken the rental market is, and how in fear landlords are that they won't be able to regain their properties, it's no wonder they're taking up the offer of five-year tenancies, all bills paid, in return for housing asylum seekers.
It's a complete farce given Labour's Renters' Reform bill will mean landlords won't be able to offer six-month tenancies any more.
For all Labour's claims that they're protecting renters, they've done a good job of driving up their rent.
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Telegraph
35 minutes ago
- Telegraph
How the gig economy conquered Britain and stoked the migration crisis
It was past midnight by the time David and Samantha Cameron emerged from the Coral Room at Sexy Fish, later followed by George Osborne. It was a bad night to avoid the paparazzi. On the same evening in late 2015, Girls Aloud stars Cheryl Tweedy, Nicola Roberts and Kimberley Walsh also dined at the A-list Mayfair restaurant. The Sexy Fish soiree, hosted by well-connected politicos Steve Hilton and Rachel Whetstone as a 'godparent's dinner', was initially viewed as just another high-status party. Hilton, a former Downing Street aide, and Whetstone, a political adviser turned Silicon Valley communications executive, were well-known friends of Cameron and Osborne. The prime minister and chancellor's powers were at their zenith, following a surprise majority election victory and before the following year's Brexit referendum. It was only later that the party would become a source of controversy. Years later, a leak of thousands of internal Uber emails suggested that Whetstone, then the head of policy and communications at the taxi-hailing app, had planned to approach Osborne about setting up a meeting as the company was battling Boris Johnson. Transport for London – overseen by Johnson, the capital's mayor at the time – had threatened to ban key aspects of the app under pressure from the capital's powerful taxi lobby. Whetstone wanted Cameron and Osborne to help. 'It was the era of Dave and George v Boris,' says Mark MacGann, who ran Uber's lobbying in Europe at the time. Whetstone had told colleagues she would bring up the issue with Osborne. The next month, TfL dropped its plans to crack down on Uber, in a major victory for the company. It is unclear if Whetstone did lobby Osborne. What is clear, though, is that the links between the gig economy and government during these years were extremely tight. Whetstone has said 'she did not routinely 'lobby' … on behalf of Uber in private'. As Cameron and Osborne were leaving Sexy Fish, the number of couriers on bicycles in brightly coloured jackets weaving around London had tailed off, but they were becoming an increasingly common sight. Deliveroo, the takeaway app founded two years earlier, was doubling orders every three months. The company was revolutionising food delivery with a network of self-employed couriers that could pick up items from any restaurant, challenging the old world of paper menus and fumbling for change. To their supporters, including Cameron and Osborne, the two companies represented a new, better way of doing things in a digital world. The on-demand economy, enabled by smartphones and algorithms, was hacking away at the red tape that had held Britain back. But to detractors, the employment models popularised by the likes of Uber, Deliveroo and an assortment of similar companies have frittered away workers' rights and created an underclass of low-paid work, increasingly populated by migrant labour. The gig economy, which rose to prominence in the coalition years, has come under fresh scrutiny in recent months. Concerns are growing that the apps are allowing undocumented work and even encouraging illegal immigration to Britain with the promise of being able to earn money without checks. Food delivery apps such as Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat have been at the centre of these claims. In May, a Telegraph investigation found that asylum seekers staying in Home Office hotels were regularly working as food delivery and grocery couriers, with one people smuggler saying: 'All you need is a phone and a bike.' All the companies say they are taking steps to tackle illegal work. To critics, this is the result of attempts to dodge responsibility for workers who use gig economy apps. Uber, Deliveroo and others spent years in Parliament and in court fighting attempts for their drivers and riders to be recognised as workers, a designation that entitled them to holiday pay and the minimum wage, and in some cases came with alternative tax arrangements. Instead, drivers and riders were self-employed, paid by the delivery rather than by the hour. The companies presented drivers and couriers as a legion of micro-entrepreneurs, able to choose their own hours and be their own boss. Uber claimed the vast majority of its drivers worked part-time. Deliveroo told a government-commissioned review into the gig economy that riders wanted flexibility. It portrayed the app as being populated by undergraduates and busy parents seeking to make some extra cash. 'The student with half an hour between classes can log on and earn some extra spending money,' the company said. It told a parliamentary committee that 85pc use the app as a 'supplementary income stream'. Yet two in five delivery workers stopped in random searches in 2023 were working illegally, according to statistics from the Home Office. The figures applied to all takeaway riders stopped, not any one app. On Saturday, the Home Office said it had arrested 280 people as part of a week-long crackdown on illegal delivery work, after stopping 1,780 riders. On social media, people constantly offer to rent out or sell accounts. One offered to set up an account for £160 using third-party documents, requiring only a name, phone number and email. The exact scale of illegal work on the platforms is unknown, but it is enough to have seen Labour announce crackdowns on gig economy companies, including blocking anyone near an asylum hotel from seeking jobs through the apps and requiring extra checks. The measures have been part of a wider attempt from Sir Keir Starmer's Government to smash small boat gangs, which this week included the start of a 'one in, one out' deal with France. The coalition and Conservative governments of the mid-2010s did not have the same problems. While Cameron was not meeting his pledge to get net migration down to the tens of thousands, the number was running at less than half of today's levels. Asylum claims were at 32,414 in 2015, against 108,138 last year. The highly visible small boats crossings would not start in large numbers for several years. Deliveroo and its rivals are now reckoning with their role in the migrant crisis. How did it come to this? 'It felt like a cabal' Britain did not end up as a gig economy pioneer by accident. In 2014, Matt Hancock, who was Business Secretary at the time, commissioned a review of what was then called the 'sharing economy', with a brief to 'make the UK a global centre'. That year, asylum claims were at 24,914, and net migration stood at 260,000. Reflecting the ambition to make the UK a global leader, Hancock recruited Debbie Wosskow, the boss of home-sharing website LoveHomeSwap, to author the review. The report loosely called for a minimum wage for gig workers, but stated that a race to the bottom on pay and conditions 'does not seem to be happening'. In a foreword, Hancock said: 'The route to self-employment has never been easier.' 'There were very close relationships with some parts of the top ends of government,' says one lobbyist at a gig economy company. 'There was a meeting of minds around low regulation, a shared belief that the consumer is getting a raw deal.' Ministers were already welcoming of the gig economy, but the appointment of a string of Westminster insiders to key companies solidified the close relationship. Whetstone had been political secretary to Michael Howard, Cameron's predecessor as Conservative leader, before reinventing herself as a Silicon Valley communications executive. She spent a decade working for Google before joining Uber in 2015. She had worked alongside Cameron when the future PM had worked in PR in the 1990s, and her husband, Hilton, had run strategy for the PM when he entered Downing Street. Arranging a meeting between Osborne and Uber's then boss Travis Kalanick was a key priority for Whetstone upon joining the company. The Chancellor was invited to a dinner at the house of Silicon Valley entrepreneur Omid Kordestani attended by Kalanick, and the two also met on the sidelines of Davos. Shortly after the Conservatives' election victory in 2015, Kalanick sent Osborne an email congratulating him on an 'amazing result' and complaining about an impending crackdown from Johnson. (Later, Uber was asked to sign a business letter calling for Britain to stay in the EU. The company declined.) Whetstone was far from the only link between the Conservatives and the gig economy. Adam Atashzai, one of Cameron's advisers, worked in policy for Uber after leaving No10. He left after seven months and was succeeded by Naomi Gummer, who had worked for Jeremy Hunt. The company's PR department included several former political advisers from both Labour and the Conservatives. Deliveroo, which was founded in 2013, was cultivating links to government too. In 2017, Deliveroo hired Thea Rogers, the former BBC producer who had been credited with improving the former chancellor's public image while in office. Osborne and Rogers married in 2023. By now Cameron and Osborne had left office and Deliveroo was keen to cultivate links to the new administration. At Deliveroo, Rogers hired Hanbury Strategy, the lobbying firm founded by Cameron's former aide Ameet Gill and the Brexiteer Paul Stephenson, as well as Vote Leave's media head Robert Oxley, an adviser to Priti Patel and Michael Fallon who later became Prime Minister Boris Johnson's press secretary. 'It absolutely felt like a cabal,' says one Westminster insider. 'There was this genuine shared interest in low regulation and making the UK investable. But at the same time there was this uncomfortable closeness.' Deliveroo said the company engages with all main political parties. The model pioneered by Uber quickly caught on. In 2016, Amazon, which had traditionally employed delivery drivers, introduced a gig economy-type service known as Flex. Battle in the courts Whether it was a result of such close relationships or merely shared interests, the Cameron-Osborne governments championed gig economy companies. After TfL threatened to crack down on Uber in 2015, a Downing Street aide wrote to the body accusing them of 'insane and Luddite things', according to emails later leaked to the Guardian. Johnson himself said he had been 'deluged' by correspondence from fellow Tories on the issue. Ultimately, Cameron's government did not pass any pro-gig economy legislation. But the welcoming approach and absence of new laws came as countries in Europe were applying stricter requirements and closely scrutinising tax arrangements. MacGann recalls contrasting the UK's approach with France's in an early meeting with Emmanuel Macron. This cosy relationship ended almost as soon as Theresa May replaced Cameron in Downing Street. May took charge in the shadow of the Brexit vote and was more inclined to intervene. One of her chief aides was Nick Timothy, now a Conservative MP, who has repeatedly criticised the gig economy. 'They just weren't as biddable in the same way,' the lobbyist says. At the time, asylum claims had risen slightly but immigration had rocketed up the agenda as a result of the Brexit referendum. Still, net migration was still relatively low and scrutiny of the gig economy focused on workers' rights, rather than its ability to attract migrants to Britain. Baroness Penn, who was May's deputy chief of staff while she was prime minister, says the new government, with its attention on the 'Jams' [those just about managing], was less convinced about the benefits of the gig economy. 'We definitely had a feeling that the relationship and obligations between employers and employees was changing or being disrupted, and that it was worth looking at that,' she says. Within weeks of succeeding Cameron, May's government commissioned a review carried out by Matthew Taylor, a former adviser to Sir Tony Blair. In a sign of changing attitudes, Robert Halfon, a Conservative MP who served in May's government, hit out at 'Deliveroo Conservatism' in a column for Conservative Home. 'Focusing on opening up Deliveroo/Uber free markets to increase choice is irrelevant to millions of people who are struggling to pay their bus or train fare, let alone using Uber,' he wrote. 'We must also not forget about these businesses' work practices in terms of their employees.' Osborne continued to champion the sector. He spent three years as editor of London's Evening Standard and, during his stewardship of the paper, Westminster diarists frequently drew attention to the volley of friendly stories about Deliveroo giving out free lunches and feeding hungry children, as well as pro-Uber editorials (Osborne also worked part-time at BlackRock, an investor in Uber). The Taylor review, billed as a way to address the insecurities of the gig economy, recommended that people making money on the apps should receive sick pay and holidays. But a promised employment bill to introduce them never surfaced and political energy was sapped by the battles over Brexit. By now, gig economy apps had become fixtures in Britain's cities. Most had a business model based on asking forgiveness later, rather than seeking permission in the first place. Campaigners fought it out in the courts. In 2015, two Uber drivers, James Farrar and Yaseen Aslam, challenged the company in the Employment Tribunal, arguing that they were workers rather than self-employed, and thus entitled to the minimum wage. The two won a shock victory, and Uber took the fight all the way to the Supreme Court, only to finally lose in 2021. The company was forced to overhaul its business model and set aside $600m (£450m) to cover the cost of historic claims. As a result, Uber's minicab business is now more regulated. But the legal arguments exposed in the case were instructive. Uber lost in part because drivers' work was not able to be 'substituted', a practice in which someone who has accepted a job can appoint another person to do it on their behalf. Substitution is a legal framework that lets contractors such as plumbers and electricians send someone else to do a job if they fall ill or have an emergency. In 2017, shortly before a legal battle with the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain, Deliveroo inserted a substitution clause inside riders' contracts. The case once again went all the way to the Supreme Court, but unlike Uber, Deliveroo prevailed. While a cab driver couldn't sub in someone to drive their vehicle, a courier could get a ringer to deliver a meal to someone's door. Judges found that the ability to substitute workers, even if rarely deployed, was 'totally inconsistent with… the existence of an employment relationship'. The company says that substitution was just one reason why the court found that riders were classified as self-employed. Route for migrants? The use of substitutes has generated some uncomfortable headlines for Deliveroo. In 2022, a driver working as a substitute bit off a customer's thumb. The following year a 17-year-old died while using a rented account and moped. But since substitutes are appointed by the rider rather than the company, takeaway apps are not legally responsible for them. The clauses are now standard practice across the industry, used by Uber Eats, the company's food delivery service, and Just Eat as well as Deliveroo. Just Eat had once attempted to forge a different path by employing riders on regular shifts, with its chief executive Jitse Groen saying the gig economy created 'precarious working conditions across Europe, the worst seen in a hundred years'. But the company relented in 2023, with food delivery businesses under investor pressure to turn a profit. 'There's only one reason why it's done [allowing substitution], and that is to exploit workers and to skirt employment law,' says Farrar, one of the drivers who had challenged Uber, and now runs campaign group Worker Info Exchange. The apps all say that substitution is a legitimate part of employment law. The model employed by takeaway apps may have diminished their legal responsibilities. But critics say the embrace of substitution has made it far easier for illegal work on the platform. It has made gig economy companies a lightning rod for criticism amid concerns that they are harbouring illegal work, following a surge in small boat crossings and soaring migration levels. Between 2020 and 2024, annual boat crossings in the Channel have surged from 8,466 to 36,816, and asylum claims have climbed from 36,986 to 108,138. Neither the companies nor the Government have published estimates of the scale of illegal working on delivery apps. But Deliveroo said in February it had deactivated 105 riders who illegally shared accounts with undocumented workers. Uber says it has removed hundreds of riders a month. A study from academics at the University of Birmingham said in June that takeaway apps had become an 'essential' route for migrants 'facing legal and structural barriers to formal employment'. 'As wages have stagnated and working conditions deteriorated, food delivery has become increasingly dominated by those with limited alternatives: migrants with insecure or irregular legal status, for whom this sector represents one of the few viable options for earning a livelihood,' they said. Illegal migrants renting accounts under substitution rules has become a 'survival mechanism', they added. 'If you want to design a market so that immigration would undercut wages, you couldn't do better than this,' said one source who works in the industry. 'You have very lax right to work checks combined with no minimum wage, combined with algorithmic pay. Put those three together and you've got this perfect environment for migration to pull down wages.' Lee Anderson, a Reform UK MP, claimed that illegal migrants were 'able to roam the streets on e-bikes and make a living', adding: 'The fact that this is being allowed to happen without a serious crackdown is appalling.' A spokesman for Cameron said: 'Lord Cameron remains incredibly proud of everything he and the governments he led did to ensure the UK established itself as a truly successful global tech hub – attracting global businesses, creating jobs, and boosting economic growth. To link this success story to the legitimate issues of illegal immigration is ludicrous. 'Indeed, it's a legacy we should be proud of and successive governments should build on, as we seek to ensure the UK remains an attractive place to do business; attract talent and innovation; and secure our place as a global centre for tech and entrepreneurialism.' Illegal work has now become too big an issue for the Government, and the takeaway apps, to ignore. In 2023 Robert Jenrick, then the immigration minister, wrote to Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat declaring that the levels of illegal work, and the system that allowed it, were 'completely unacceptable'. In March, Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, said companies would now have to carry out checks on any workers using their apps. And last month she said the addresses of asylum hotels would be shared with delivery apps, preventing people staying in the hotels from starting shifts there. The companies have pledged a series of crackdowns, such as regular facial recognition checks and checking all riders have the right to work. Deliveroo said it was testing further ways of preventing illegal work. A spokesman said: 'Substitution is, and always has been, a common feature of self-employment. It is not specific to Deliveroo, nor our sector. Riders choose to substitute for a number of valid reasons, enhancing the flexibility of our model. 'Substitution does not equate to illegal working, however, we are committed to ensuring it is not abused by those illegally sharing accounts. That is why we are working with the Government and broader industry to tackle the issue, with further security measures due to roll out in the coming weeks.' Uber said: 'Uber Eats takes a zero tolerance approach to illegal work. For the vast majority, flexible work offers people across the UK opportunities to boost their incomes, while fitting earning opportunities around their personal and family commitments. The freedom to work when and how they want is central to this, but everyone on our platform must have the right to work.' The company said it proactively checked social media to find people sharing accounts and had developed technology to detect fake IDs. Just Eat said: 'Just Eat is committed to tackling any illegal working via our platform. We continue to invest significant resources to strengthen our systems against abuse by individuals and organised criminal groups seeking to evade right to work rules. We are working closely with the Home Office and our industry partners to address any loopholes in the industry's checks, as well as collaborating on data sharing and enforcement.' Whether these pledges will be effective remains to be seen. But they do not appear to have stemmed attempts to illegally use the platforms. Last week, online forums and Facebook groups continued to be filled with prospective couriers looking for accounts to rent, and middlemen offering to sell them. 'These policies [to tackle illegal work] are designed to be not really workable,' says Farrar. 'They're designed to have holes in them.' The gig economy giants' links to Westminster did not end with the coalition Tories. As chancellor, Rishi Sunak broke with tradition to praise Deliveroo's 2021 float as a 'true British tech success story'. (The company is now in the process of being sold to American counterpart DoorDash). In opposition, Labour had vowed to end 'bogus self-employment' as part of a gig economy crackdown, but the measures did not make it into the Government's employment bill. Shortly after Labour swept to power, Uber's UK boss Andrew Brem and Deliveroo founder Will Shu attended a business reception in the Downing Street garden. 'We just want our voices heard,' Shu said. Critics say the problem is that gig economy voices have been heard loud and clear – whoever is in Number 10.
Telegraph
35 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?'
Telegraph
35 minutes ago
- Telegraph
‘Trolling and stalking… I've lived through it all on social media'
Anna Whitehouse has spent the morning at No 10. Baby Lola, eight months old, came too. Not that she could say anything, but because Whitehouse couldn't get childcare. Some acts, however, are louder than words. Whitehouse was there to meet Bridget Phillipson, the minister for women and equalities, who had days earlier announced her desire for more young people to have babies. It was, in a word, triggering for the 43-year-old, who under the pseudonym 'Mother Pukka', has been a lively and relentless mouthpiece for a generation of burnt out, financially drained parents. Phillipson's foot in mouth statement had prompted Whitehouse to write an excoriating Instagram post to her 438k followers saying as much: 'How on Earth can parents be expected to 'make memories' when the cost of childcare is so painfully high?' It is a testament to her reach with the parenting demographic that she was quickly invited to air those feelings in person with the Right Hon MP for Houghton and Sunderland South. And Lola came with, from their home in Hertfordshire. 'Not because I want her here. I mean, it's nice. It's a privilege to have time with your child, but not while you're working; you're doing two jobs at once,' Whitehouse tells me afterwards. We're in a meeting room at The Telegraph office, having navigated the stairs with a buggy. Lola is understandably tired and fractious, with Whitehouse trying to lull her to sleep. 'We can start though,' she says when I look unsure. The juggle has become her normality, after all. She should really be on maternity leave. But: 'There's no maternity leave when you're a freelancer,' says Whitehouse. She can't get Lola into childcare; there's a nursery staff shortage after all. She is on waiting lists. There are no grandparents nearby. Whitehouse's is an all too common situation. 'And so I put that post out, and there was just this deluge of anger, pain, and frustration, but I think the baseline was exhaustion from a generation of parents who have categorically had zero support in terms of childcare.' Right now she is operating on two hours of sleep. The chit-chat went well, but Whitehouse feels like she's running on 'visceral, maternal, exhausted rage'. Without meaning to sound reductive, I tell her she looks very well. 'Five layers of sweat and bit of foundation,' Whitehouse deadpans back. As with any online persona, it can be hard to see past the gloss to reality. Scroll through her feed and it's all perfect eyeliner flick and mama-friendly leopard print. And as is so often the case, she's a lot smaller and more vulnerable in person than whatever Mother Pukka I had in my head. During our interview she wells up simply talking about how hard it can be to keep the show on the road. Eleven years have passed since she first quit her job in copywriting as a result of a request for flexible working being turned down. She had asked to arrive 15 minutes earlier so she could leave 15 minutes earlier to make nursery pick-up. The reason given for the refusal: it might 'open the floodgates' to others seeking flexibility. And so she went freelance. Whitehouse maintains she never wanted this platform – she'd much rather have had a stable job with flexible hours that works around raising her family – but now she's got it, she's making it work, and not just for herself. She is the figurehead for a generation of mothers who are also: 'Holding the baby while working to earn the bacon.' Her mother's generation might have frequently felt unfulfilled by their lack of career opportunities, but, says Whitehouse, her mum has even said to her: 'I think you have it far harder than we did, because roles were defined.' Now mums do it all. 'We are not in any way wanting it all,' asserts Whitehouse. 'I never wanted it all, but we've ended up doing it all, and that's really what today's meeting at Downing Street was about. The lack of infrastructure for parents.' She wants to know why no one is talking about the 74,000 mothers every year that are made redundant on maternity leave? Or the one million women going through menopause who leave or are made redundant because businesses simply don't understand female biology. Whitehouse calls herself an 'accidental activist'. It definitely wasn't a career intention, she stresses. It's her second time at No 10 already this year. In April she sat down with Sir Keir Starmer to address the need for flexibility in the workplace. That she's back again so soon to reiterate the same point doesn't exactly seem reassuring that they are making progress. Whitehouse just seems happy that she's had another opportunity to state her case. After all, she has been grinding out lemonade from the lemons ever since she took to Instagram in 2015. She and then husband, the writer Matt Farquharson, set up FlexAppeal, a campaign for more flexible working for everyone. The platform she has built is a powerful one; one post criticising Nigel Farage's stance on flexible working garnered 1.4 million views and 58,000 likes. Quite the reach. Before taking to social media she did try pitching her parenting ideas to publications but says they were met with indifference. 'Now I don't have to do that. I can stand up and know I've reached more people via my own account. It's a brave, new pixelated world,' she says in a way calculated to rattle the cage of hacks like myself. Working alongside Farquharson, the couple found Instagram-fame as the Pukkas, extolling the virtues of 'teamwork' parenting. Books such as Parenting The Sh*t Out Of Life and Where's My Happy Ending? followed, as well as a novel, Underbelly. And of course there was also the glamorous red carpet invites, TV pundit appearances and best-dressed lists. And then in September 2023 Whitehouse announced she and Farquharson were divorcing. Or in Pukka-language, 'kindly untangling', after 17 years together. The tattoo on her arm saying, 'It's time we danced with the truth' is a result of that period of turbulent transition. 'Some would say midlife crisis, some would say midlife opportunity,' laughs Whitehouse. To begin with they attempted 'magpie' parenting their two daughters, now aged 12 and eight – a co-parenting arrangement where children remain in the family home, while their parents take turns living there to care for them. The Whitehouse I meet today is a lot more settled and in the midst of a bumper new life chapter. She and Matt have both since moved on romantically, Whitehouse finding love with Olly Bretton, via the dating app Hinge. Lola came along in November last year and the pair are marrying later this year. Bretton already had two children of his own, so now Whitehouse has embraced blended family life, parenting five children when it's their turn at once. I can't help but observe that just as the travails of motherhood might have relented, she's in it deeper than ever. 'I've gone back into the trenches,' admits Whitehouse. 'But on my own terms, and I couldn't be more grateful.' She describes Lola as the best thing that's ever happened to her. She did wonder if her body would be able to do it. But then, waiting until later in life, past peak biological timing, has become a reality for so many women who first feel they must sort their financial and career foundations. 'It means we're doing it at a slightly more exhausted, biological time in our lives,' states Whitehouse. The benefit of new motherhood in her forties is that she is approaching it with a lot more wisdom and experience. It's arguably the same with her online life, too. Today she has healthier boundaries around what she shares of her life. Announcing the split with Farquharson was of course awkward. She was forced to address it after messages from her followers. 'Unfortunately, when we both went on dating apps, I had hundreds of my followers saying, 'Your husband's trying to have an affair'. And so in the end, I ended up having to be open, because it was getting a little bit murky in that sense.' Still, she insists she doesn't feel like she has to give her audience everything. 'Even saying audience feels a bit uncomfortable, but people have invested in your story and your journey. For better or worse.' Bretton has minimal online presence himself, but is happy for Whitehouse to share what she thinks is reasonable of their lives. There are endorsements, of course, most notably an advert for Hinge, the Cupid that brought them together. Campaigning doesn't pay the bills. She refuses to be snotty about the word 'influencer'. For her, it isn't a dirty word, it's an economic reality. When I ask if she minds being called one, she reminds me that 86 per cent of those who earn money online are women. Why is that? 'Because we're scrabbling together the broken fragments of our jobs and our lives to try and make something that was taken away.' Yes, she is popular. But she has learnt that it is impossible to please everyone. She appreciates that talking about miscarriage and then later sharing her journey to parenthood with Lola, is bound to alienate somebody. 'I have walked through Instagram fire on many levels, from trolling and stalking to adoration and applauding, I have lived the full 360 degrees of this pixelated new media,' she says. As such she is fascinated by the recent exposure of the creator of Tattle Life, an online forum of scurrilous celebrity gossip that encouraged trolls to indulge in relentless scrutiny. The platform inspired the main character of her new novel, Influenced, which follows Alexandra, a menopausal forty-something, failing at work, with a crumbling marriage and distant daughter. Alexandra finds solace in the online world of likes, finding her voice on Influenza, a platform not dissimilar to Tattle Life. Whitehouse's view of the women who indulge in online vitriol like that posted on Tattle Life is generously empathetic, given she's been on the receiving end of online hate herself. 'Women are complex. Happy, sad, angry beings who are wonderful daughters one day, terrible friends the next,' she says. 'Influenced is a love story to forgotten women and how they end up turning to places like Tattle Life.' As someone who frequently uninstalls Instagram for my own mental health, only to be drawn back, frequently for work purposes, I wonder if she feels trapped on the platform, too? 'I don't want to be online,' says Whitehouse honestly. 'But I also want to be with my children, and there's currently no job that facilitates what I can do right now and the earning capacity that I have. This is not my dream job. 'You have to have the hide of a rhino to operate against a backdrop of people telling you your child's hair is awful, or you're clearly one of those mothers that puts their child in a taxi to nursery.' Of course the good bit is the community of women that champion each other. 'But it can be an incredibly dark place of stalking and harassment.' Would she ever just stop posting and disappear altogether? 'No, because I think that would be really unfair to everybody who has actually built me up. And I think for every negative comment there's thousands of positives. And that's really the story I'll always tell my daughters, is that you know you're not going to be liked by everyone. You will be judged by some. But what's your purpose?' On this she is clear. Her current focus is the review on parental leave, and continuing to lobby the Government for changes. She may have found her way through the world of work and motherhood, and kept body and soul, but it's not a world she wants for her daughters. 'I'm not going to tell my children that 'You too should set up an Instagram account and ride on into the pixelated sunset'. 'But also, I'm going to say to them, 'Your mum scrapped. I really scrapped because it mattered to me being there at school gates at 3.15pm.' 'That's it.'
