Badenoch, who was first to call for a national inquiry into the rape gangs after Oldham’s request was blocked by Jess Phillips, told GB News in a sit-down interview with Charlie Peters that what “most extraordinary about this case is that clearly these people thought that they could get away with it. That is the thing that we should be looking at.” Badenoch also homes in on the “failure of state bodies” like the police and social services…
In addition Kemi says a national inquiry should look into “cultural issues“:
“There are two cultural issues which um I believe have been identified. One is on the perpetrator side – where do these abusers come from, there’s a lot of misinformation, there’s a lot of generalisation. Many innocent people end up being grouped in with them but if you look at it there is a systematic pattern of behavior not even just from one country but from sub-communities within those countries. People with a particular background, particular class background, work background… very very poor, sort of peasant background, very very rural, almost cut off from even the home origin countries that they that they might have been in. They’re not necessarily first generation. The jobs that they were doing taxi drivers jobs which allowed them to exhibit this predatory behaviour.“
Meanwhile Andy Burnham, Rotherham MP Sarah Champion, Liverpool MP Dan Carden, and Rochdale MP Paul Waugh have all backed a national inquiry. Waugh and Champion just days before opposed one. Those emails from constituents must have been coming thick and fast…
YouGov has done its first poll since the general election for Sky News and the Times. Labour has dropped nine points, Reform has gained ten, and the Tories have lost two. Only six months apart, remember…
Views of 2,279 GB voters were collected on Sunday and Monday. Only 54% of Labour voters said they would still vote for the party with a measly 10% of total voters saying the government has been successful so far. 16% of Tory voters now say they would vote Reform, which is the least unpopular party at -32 compared to the Tories way down on -45 and LAbour on -34. With the locals inbound that will make happy reading for Farage…
Last month the Tories accused the Ministry of Justice of producing a video which accused the previous government of not being “straight” with the public. The video featured Shabana Mahmood running out Labour lines on the prison situation:
“The last Conservative government left our prisons in crisis, adding … just 500 additional places over their 14 years in power. Their endless delays cost taxpayers billions… Unlike my predecessors, I will be straight with you.”
That’s fine for party political content – not for official Civil Service accounts, which “should not be – or liable to be – misrepresented as being party political.” It was deleted from the official MoJ X and LinkedIn feeds…
The government now says in response to a question from Richard Holden that “the Ministry of Justice Communication Team’s usual processes for checking the accuracy and appropriateness of social media posts were not followed properly in this instance. All staff involved have been spoken to and reminded of their responsibility to uphold the Civil Service Code.” The civil servants are to blame, are they?
Justice minister Nick Dakin adds that civil servants will be forced through more training in response:
“In addition to our usual mandatory training on the Civil Service Code and propriety and ethics, the Director of Communications will deliver mandatory refresher training across the Communications Directorate and all staff joining the team will be required to complete the training within the first two weeks of employment.”
So the training is “don’t repeat our party lines when we record them in a video for your social accounts.” Good use of civil servants’ time there…
It’s awards season in TV luvvie land. In particular, The Royal Television Society Awards have become a point of obsession for the execs who run television newsrooms—a glittering distraction from deeper issues of the waning relevance of legacy media and steadily declining audiences. Naturally, the RTS judging panel—meeting this week—is populated by dinner party mates and even family members of newsroom bosses…
At the centre of the controversy is BBC News head honcho Deborah Turness, whose staff are approaching mutiny over various internal gripes. BBC sources claim she commissioned the broadcaster’s recent high-profile global investigation into migration with the specific intention of winning awards, seeing the journalism as a casual byproduct. Fronted by war correspondent Andrew Harding, the series cost an estimated £200,000 in licence fee payers’ money…
Resources from the BBC’s vast global network of journalists were diverted from news reporting to ensure the project appeared as a singular achievement by Harding—a move insiders claim was choreographed to dazzle the awards juries. Staff complain the true motive was less about public service journalism and more about securing a trophy for Turness. As RTS juries deliberate this week, perhaps it’s time for BBC Verify to turn its scrutiny inward and examine whether this awards fixation is about celebrating success—or masking a deeper decline…
Labour’s Net Zero crusade is costing Britain billions and doing little to cut global emissions according to petrochemicals group Ineos boss Jim Ratcliffe. The industry leader warned that the UK’s chemical sector faces “extinction” as green policies drive up energy costs, forcing households and businesses to pay more thanks to so-called carbon permits. Red Ed’s agenda sending one of the UK’s major industries up in smoke…
Many question why the UK is so desperate to hand over the strategically vital Chagos Islands and pay £90 million for the pleasure. As always – it’s the personalities…
Starmer’s close friend Philippe Sands KC has acted as chief counsel for Mauritius on Chagos since 2010. He spoke to students last year about how great it is that Brits ‘celebrate’ him for ‘humiliating’ the UK in non-binding international courts. Strangely he isn’t so keen to talk to the press, who were barred from a conference event at which he spoke over the weekend…
Shy Sands has also deleted his X account. The public would have been able to see from it that Mauritius’ chief Chagos counsel had publicly campaigned for Starmer, supporting his “great friend” in 2020’s Labour leadership election. Sands boosted Starmer’s promotional videos and went so far as to volunteer on his leadership phone bank. A deep friendship indeed…
One year earlier Sands and Starmer hosted a cosy one-on-one in conversation event at the trendy Hay Festival. Fast forward to today and Sands is still going on his pro-Labour activism – in last year’s general election he publicly urged voters to support Labour MP Rushanara Ali in Bethnal Green and Stepney. It might be awkward at those north London dinners if the Chagos surrender doesn’t end up getting shoved through at any cost…
Speaking at his speech on how to achieve “progressive capitalism” Wes Streeting fired a dig and Andy Burnham:
“Bond markets are not bond villains and fiscal rules matter.”
