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The Spinoff
10-08-2025
- Politics
- The Spinoff
Boundary changes shift the political landscape ahead of 2026
The Representation Commission has confirmed new electorate boundaries and names for the next election – including a few last-minute surprises, writes Catherine McGregor in today's extract from The Bulletin. So long, Ōhāriu The Representation Commission's final electorate boundary changes, released on Friday, confirmed much of what was proposed in March, including the major reshuffle across the Wellington region. Three electorates – Ōhāriu, Mana and Ōtaki – will become two: Kapiti and Kenepuru. The shake-up means Porirua is split down the middle, with its more affluent northern suburbs joining Kapiti and its southern, Labour-leaning communities forming part of Kenepuru. In the capital, Wellington Central shifts north to take in Khandallah, Wadestown and Ngaio, while Rongotai extends to Brooklyn and Mount Cook. Hutt South gains Newlands, and Remutaka moves south into Epuni. Ōhāriu MP Greg O'Connor knew it was coming – he told The Post ahead of the announcement that he was resigned to his electorate 'disappearing in a puff of smoke over Mount Kaukau'. His Labour colleague, Mana's Barbara Edmonds, now inherits much of the territory and O'Connor said they'll make a decision together on who will run for the new Kenepuru electorate. Balmoral: hell no, we won't go The biggest surprise wasn't in Wellington but in Auckland, where the commission backtracked on a plan to move part of Balmoral into Mt Albert. After an orchestrated campaign – including 178 objections from just a handful of streets – the area will remain in David Seymour's Epsom electorate. As Hayden Donnell relays this morning in The Spinoff, submissions ranged from the parochial – 'We probably shop at the Dominion Rd Woolworths, walk up Mt Eden on a Saturday (not Mt Albert)' – to the political: 'I voted for David Seymour consistently and find it unpalatable that this right should be taken from me'. Some warned, incorrectly, that the change would affect grammar school zones. The commission listened, and the Balmoralites 'will remain in the plush Act electorate of Epsom and not the grotty, Labour-infested nearby outpost of Mt Albert', Hayden writes. 'Finally … a win for wealthy Aucklanders.' What's in a name? Four electorate name changes were confirmed. As 1News reports, Rānui becomes Henderson, East Coast becomes East Cape, Wellington Central becomes Wellington North, and Rongotai becomes Wellington Bays. Not all MPs were thrilled. Green MP Julie Anne Genter lamented losing 'Rongotai' – which translates to 'sound of the sea' – saying 'It will always be Rongotai in my heart'. Wellington Central's Tamatha Paul called the lack of a te reo name for the new electorate 'a massive missed opportunity' and said the 'generic' Wellington North 'could be anywhere in the world'. She tells The Post this morning that she's launching a petition to have the two names restored. Selwyn surges, Wigram shifts In Canterbury, surging population growth in Selwyn district has reshaped both Selwyn and neighbouring Wigram. Around 11,000 voters in Prebbleton and Templeton move from Selwyn into Wigram, while Wigram loses left-leaning suburbs Addington and Spreydon to Christchurch Central. In March, Joel MacManus predicted the shift would push Wigram from leaning Labour to a 'genuine toss-up'; perhaps not coincidentally, Labour's Megan Woods, Wigram's current MP, announced she'll stand list-only in 2026. For National's Nicola Grigg, meanwhile, the redraw means she no longer lives in her Selwyn electorate, though she plans to recontest it. See all the changes on the big map here.
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Lucy Powell's dismissal of the rape gangs horror was an admission of Labour's monstrous cover-up
Why in the name of God is Lucy Powell still not sacked? You will probably have heard that the Leader of the Commons interrupted Tim Montgomerie, a Reform UK commentator, when both were panellists on Radio 4's Any Questions last week. Talking about the rape gangs, Montgomerie raised a powerful Channel 4 documentary which had just been broadcast, 'Groomed: A National Scandal', and Lucy Powell quickly jumped in. 'Oh, we want to blow that little trumpet now, do we? Yeah, let's get that dog whistle out,' she sneered. In a bitter irony, Powell was repeating the same appalling pattern of deflection and denial that the documentary had just exposed. For more than 40 years, young girls in the UK have suffered rape and sexual torture at the hands of depraved men, mostly of Pakistani origin, who pimped them out to their relatives, mates and paying customers. When the girls or their parents complained to the police, the council or social workers, their stories were usually dismissed, swiftly buried or 'investigated' (yeah, right). Often, the authorities, most of them Labour-leaning like Powell, feared giving offence to the Muslim community or being perceived as racist. That was seen as far more important than safeguarding children. Don't forget it was – and is – politically embarrassing to upset Muslims who tend to vote en masse for Labour candidates. Many Leftist politicians, including serving Cabinet ministers (Angela Rayner, Wes Streeting, Jess Phillips, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper), depend hugely on their votes. The Government recently rejected a national inquiry into the Pakistani rape gangs, the biggest scandal in our country's history, preferring to give a paltry few million quid to several Labour councils to investigate themselves with all the vigour one might expect. For some reason, the chosen councils did not include the towns and cities (like Bradford) where the worst abuse is believed to have taken place. If you had to give a name to this strategy it would be: Raped Girls for Votes. Thousands of poor, white children, some of the most vulnerable individuals in our society, have cynically been sacrificed for the sake of the Left's electoral survival. The Faustian pact involved is so horrifying that all Labour ministers can do is accuse those who call them out of being racist. That is what Lucy Powell tried to do to the extremely decent and thoughtful Tim Montgomerie. When she was taken to task on social media by people like me for her despicable comments, Powell initially insisted that she had been taken out of 'context'. She was merely rebuffing a line of political attack, you see. Soon after, with criticism mounting, Powell apologised if her remarks were 'unclear'. She tweeted: 'In the heat of a discussion on AQ, I would like to clarify that I regard issues of child exploitation & grooming with the utmost seriousness. I'm sorry if this was unclear. I was challenging the political point scoring around it, not the issue itself. As a constituency MP I've dealt with horrendous cases. This Gvt is acting to get to the truth, and deliver justice.' Unfortunately for Powell, she had been perfectly clear. The mask had slipped, that was all, and for a few seconds we glimpsed the ugly face behind the self-righteous, butter-wouldn't melt facade. Those like Montgomerie, who refuse to genuflect to the multicultural religion (Christianity being a tad judgmental for Starmer's Marxists), have to be gagged and silenced in order to create the 'fairer' Britain the Government wants to usher in. Those who are guilty of 'wrongthink' and ask awkward questions – like why are Pakistani-origin men so disproportionately responsible for child sexual 'exploitation' (not abuse, 'exploitation')? – can be safely exiled outside the ideological bubble and, therefore, beyond the bounds of acceptable discussion. Talking about grooming gangs equals 'hate speech', which is illegal (or soon will be if Labour smuggles in its Islamophobia definition). That is why Lucy Powell felt so confident that by uttering the phrase 'dog whistle' (guaranteed to get a Pavlovian reaction; dog whistle = racist bad) she would ensure Montgomerie was a pariah fit only for cancellation. Exactly what happened to the actor Laurence Fox when he insisted on another BBC current affairs show, Question Time, that Britain was not a racist country, actually it was a rather nice, tolerant place. Most of us privately agreed, of course, but Fox had put himself outside the ideological bubble and was therefore guilty of 'hate speech' so his career was over. In fact, it was Lucy Powell, not Tim Montgomerie, who was guilty of political point scoring. Her timing could not have been worse, poor dear. The massive success of Reform in Thursday's elections made it very difficult to paint the party's passionate concern about the rape gangs as simply a vile preoccupation of the 'far-Right'. If it was, at least a third of the population were now far-Right and very angry about the industrial-scale abuse of white, working class girls by Muslim men who saw them as 'easy meat'. Suddenly, there were an awful lot of Reform voters holding forth on radio and TV and they seemed not just sensible but (whisper it) rather nice. As a result, the smug, holier-than-thou cabal on the mainstream media found themselves having to discuss topics which, only 24 hours earlier, they had ruled unacceptable. This is the first time I have listened to Any Answers in many years without fearing an immediate brain haemorrhage. Well done to all those who rang in to tell the startled presenter what the citizens of Planet Normal feel. Our Prime Minister is delighted to recommend Adolescence, a Netflix drama which comfortingly, if unstatistically, suggests that the knife-crime epidemic arises in white boys from stable homes with two loving parents. How I wish we could sit the entire Labour Parliamentary Party down and oblige them to watch 'Groomed: A National Scandal.' Twenty-one years ago, producer Anna Hall was the first person to expose the pattern, now familiar as gang grooming, in her groundbreaking, Edge of the City. In this new film, Hall focusses on five women who survived unimaginable abuse and trauma over 20 years. Sir Keir Starmer and other senior Labour figures were accused of covering up the scandal by Elon Musk - Stefan Rousseau Jade had a lovely mother, but her alcoholic dad turned to heroin and started leaving his young daughter with the men who sold him drugs. Jade was taken into care and met a Pakistani man, an abuser she thought of as her boyfriend. After the initial blandishments, Jade was passed around like a ragdoll. Seven of the abuser's relatives took turns with her in a toilet when the child was so drunk she could barely stand up. She was trafficked to so many towns, she couldn't remember all the names. Finally, in 2009, in High Wycombe, police and social workers became concerned about Jade and put a protection order on her. One night, Jade left the home to go and meet her abuser and took another girl with her. Police arrested Jade for inciting sexual activity on a minor. 'I didn't even know what those words meant.' Jade, who was supposed to be under police protection, was the one who was arrested under grooming charges, while the foul fiend who groomed her got off scot free. Jade ended up with a five-year jail sentence and was put on the Sex Offenders' Register if you can imagine such a thing. Miraculously, now in her early thirties Jade has turned her life around. She is a devoted mother to her children, although it upsets her she is not allowed to accompany them on school trips because a CRB check still brings her up as a sex offender. Jade comes across as a strong, warm, thoughtful woman. But when Anna Hall asked her how many men she thought had abused her, Jade's face sort of collapsed and her mouth became a gash of grief. She looked like a little girl howling. 'It's in the hundreds, but I try not to go there.' All five – Jade, Chantelle, Erin, Scarlett and Steph – told essentially the same story. Innocent, trusting girls fallen among a pack of wolves, and judged by the authorities who were supposed to protect them. In the early 2000s, in West Yorkshire, Erin was being controlled by one man who pimped her out. On one occasion, he and his cousin used her to have vaginal and anal sex at the same time. 'It really hurt. When they was done with me, I was crying and screaming. He said he'd kill me if I spoke about it.' Erin's desperate mum took her to the police station with a pair of her daughter's knickers covered in semen. Erin's mum pointed out her child was covered in bite marks from head to toe. Police did nothing. Social services said: 'Erin who had been raped frequently puts herself at risk.' Erin had made a 'lifestyle choice', police said. The Children's Services Assessment Board wrote: 'Erin is a very promiscuous girl'. Erin was 13 years old. Chantelle, who looks like a Botticelli painting of an angel who has spent a thousand years in hell, was only 12 when it started. Eleven men taking turns. Like thousands of others, she was called a child prostitute, even though the police knew full well sex with a child is illegal. Anna Hall produced a chilling video of young Pakistani males who were asked why the girls they groomed were so young and one explained, 'It's 'cos the younger girls you can take advantage. They can never get out.' In 2002, when Jayne Senior, a wonderful youth worker in Rotherham, helped with a Home Office report which found that 268 girls known to Jayne and her team were definitely being raped, with a further 63 possibles, no charges were brought. 'They didn't want to hear what we had found,' Senior recalls. 'I was told I needed to stop rocking the multicultural boat.' Dog whistle, see? Must be racist. Maggie Oliver, today a formidable champion for the abused girls, then a Greater Manchester police officer working on Operation Augusta, reported 'dozens of men – Pakistani men – sending younger boys to pick up girls from the care homes. Just like cannon fodder.' Asked about reports that things are better today, Maggie snapped, 'Bulls---. It's happening now.' Jade agrees: 'Probably some other little girl today.' Steph recalls that one of her abusers worked for Greater Manchester Police. She identified him, but he was never investigated because they said he'd left the force. Don't want to open that can of worms, do we, Lucy? The Augusta report ('The perpetrators are almost exclusively Asian males') never saw the light of day. Countless reports, apologies from the police and social services, politicians promising inquiries they'd rather didn't happen. Back in January, when Elon Musk intervened, hardly able to believe the epidemic of depravity which had been allowed to flourish in the UK and accusing Keir Starmer and other senior Labour figures of covering up the scandal, a coldly furious PM made a statement. 'Those who spread lies and misinformation, they're not interested in the truth; they're interested in themselves.' How dare he. How dare Labour accuse others of lies and disinformation when they are so desperate to avoid a national inquiry which risks getting to the truth. Lucy Powell inadvertently let the cat out of the bag. Disgracefully, Downing Street has accepted her apology. Health Secretary Wes Streeting also defended Powell saying politicians sometimes say things 'in the heat of debate' that 'come across badly... We all make mistakes'. It wasn't a mistake. It was an admission. A dismissive, degrading comment that belittled all the terrified girls who suffered multiple gang rapes while giving covering fire to their rapists. (It's only racists who bang on about grooming gangs, isn't it?) And Lucy Powell, a mother with a daughter of her own, put defending her party's indefensible policy above defending children from those devils. Just listen to what Scarlett had to say, Lucy. 'They kept me in a flat for two days where they took turns with me.' Is that a dog whistle? A blow on that little trumpet about the Pakistani brutes who tortured and raped because the English girl was not human to them? And that's the awful truth you don't want exposed. Labour will not be able to postpone a national inquiry which will upset their Muslim client group forever: their obfuscation over the rape gangs has been infamous. In centuries to come, historians will still be writing about the monstrous injustice and cover-up. Resign, Lucy Powell, resign if you have any shred of feeling for all those mothers' daughters. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
The Guardian
22-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘Extinction-level event': Tories fear voters turning to Reform in Lincolnshire
On the gravel pathway of Aggie Chapman's home in the village of West Deeping, a conversation about Lincolnshire's upcoming elections suddenly shifted from opposition to a local quarry to worries about nuclear Armageddon. 'World politics is so frightening right now that it's all very well worrying about what's happening in our back garden – and yes we don't want the quarry here – but it's kind of insignificant if we end up going into world war three,' she told Conservative canvassers including the local MP, John Hayes. She mentioned the experience of her daughter, a nurse, during the pandemic as an example of global instability. Minutes earlier, Hayes had confidently repeated the adage that 'all politics is local' as he knocked on doors with Robert Waltham, an experienced local government leader who is the party's mayoral candidate to head the newly created Greater Lincolnshire combined county authority. Yet in doorstep conversations with Conservative voters such as Chapman there was a glimpse of shifting national political foment as the party faces a serious challenge from Reform UK for more than 1,600 government seats across England. The mayoral race is a key bellwether, effectively a three-way between Waltham, Labour's Jason Stockwood, who is a former chair of Grimsby Town football club, and Andrea Jenkyns, a former Conservative MP who defected to Nigel Farage's party. The GLCCA area covering Lincolnshire is almost England's electoral map in microcosm, welding together traditionally Labour-leaning industrial towns such as Scunthorpe in the north with farmland and prosperous market towns to the south including Grantham, popular with London commuters. In one of the most Eurosceptic parts of Britain, which already has one Reform MP in Boston, Richard Tice, Farage's party should theoretically gain in Labour areas such as Grimsby and in Tory heartlands if his party's 'prime minister in waiting' spin has any foundation. An Electoral Calculus poll for the Telegraph suggested that while Reform would capture all the council seats on the Lincolnshire coast, the Tories should retain control of the county council. However, the Guardian understands that internal Conservative polling suggests the party is neck and neck with Reform in parts of Lincolnshire's affluent south, where Kemi Badenoch's party should be nailed on to win. In a contest where turnout is expected to be well below even last year's general election – the second lowest in more a 100 years – historically more active rural voters could matter even more. Some comfort for Badenoch can be found in Chapman and her neighbour Dominic Brownlow, Tory voters in West Deeping who endorsed Waltham's track record in local government, while reflecting a residual distrust of Farage's party. 'He terrifies me – he's just Trump with a British accent,' said Chapman. Nevertheless, Reform has clearly been cutting through elsewhere, where an anti-net zero message it has been honing at a national level has found receptive ears across swathes of Lincolnshire where villages are at odds with large-scale plans to site solar farms and battery farms. Jenkyns, whose other policies include a promise to cut supposed bureaucratic waste by introducing a Lincolnshire version of the 'department of government efficiency' (Doge) led by Elon Musk in the US – has been campaigning hard up and down a corridor of villages and towns where plans for pylons and green energy infrastructure have met opposition. They include the picturesque village of Scopwick, which local campaigners say faces being surrounded on three sides by solar farms. 'Pretty much as far as the eye can see you will just see solar panels and the opposition to that is overwhelming,' said Marc Williams, who is involved in running a campaign against the solar project in an area where anti-Labour sentiment runs deep. 'No one who I speak to would shed a tear if anything happened to Ed Miliband. He's turned into a net zero zealot,' said Williams, who also castigated Dale Vince, the Labour donor behind solar farm projects elsewhere in Lincolnshire. But while he noted Tory opposition to the plans, like others he had long since left the party behind in favour of Reform. Other variables also make the Lincolnshire mayoral and local elections unpredictable. For example, how much of a fillip could Labour get from saving Scunthorpe's steel plant? How much damage is being done to Jenkyns by Tory attacks on her for living in Leeds, the location of her former parliamentary constituency? Reform claims the allegations are 'vexatious and politically motivated', but she will face a statutory hearing into claims she is not eligible to stand. 'I have experience of actually running local government here and I live here, as my family has done for generations, whereas Reform have parachuted in someone,' said Waltham. But local Conservatives are spooked. One Tory source said: 'Reform have no meaningful ground operation or data, but they are pouring money in.' They added: 'Across Lincolnshire, Reform are polling at 60%. I don't believe that but lots of activists and councillors are going into this thinking that this is an extinction-level event. 'There's also a strain of thought which says the only way we can lance the boil of Reform is to let them control and screw stuff up. Now, they might not screw it up, but if that's where we're at it's pretty desperate.'
