Another moral panic report is out from one of Parliament’s committees – this time on the threat of foreign disinformation. What about the threat of disinformation from Keir Starmer?
Anyway, the document, from the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, cites evidence it received that “Elon Musk’s influence is potentially greater in the UK than that of Russia’s”. It makes that claim alongside similar allegations about hostile states…
The report proposes a ‘National Counter Disinformation Centre’, which would presumably be another expensive quango to police social media and filter information in the interests of Labour ministers. Is that the shredder you can hear?
A side note to the emerging story today that Starmer is set to make failing Mayor of London Sadiq Khan a peer to buy his silence after the expected Labour implosion at this summer’s local elections. Starmer has form when it comes to peerage appointments…
For all the hand-wringing about Tory proposals over the years, Starmer has already appointed more peers than any of the previous four prime ministers – and he’s barely two years into his premiership. That means Starmer has already made more new peers than Sunak, Truss, Johnson and May put together. The stats are eyebrow-raising…
Starmer is ramming the Chamber with dozens of key allies and former advisers – despite his previous complaints about Tory moves. He just appointed 25 Labour Peers in December. Along with reforms such as the removal of hereditary peers, the net effect is a political attempt by Labour to take control of the upper chamber…
Starmer needs the votes because his legislative agenda is getting shredded in the Lords, with big time failures on Chagos, workers rights, education and other issues. Labour claims it wants Lords reform but is pouring its own people into the House quicker than any recent government…
Steve Yemm has told GB News’s Christopher Hope that up to 40 of his fellow Labour MPs have written privately to senior Cabinet ministers demanding a rethink of Miliband’s plan to end sales of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030. Nearly one in ten of the PLP…
Speaking on Chopper’s Political Podcast, Yemm said:
“Some of us are really concerned because we meet with workers, we meet with management and we hear the same thing. There’s real unanimity around this question. Some of us are very concerned about jobs in our constituencies. And so, we are making our views known to government… We’re in a position where we’re being heard now, but it’s really important, of course, that we keep having that conversation and move it forward.”
Guido members will know plenty of Labour MPs were passing around Henry Tufnell’s Sun column earlier this week, which let rip over Miliband’s zealotry. Labour MPs who know this crusade is putting their own seats in jeopardy are getting braver in criticising it. If all the profiles on Miliband this week are anything to go by, the ‘real Prime Minister’ still isn’t interested…
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has given the FT both barrels over their “explicitly false story” which claimed he had considered strengthening Treasury oversight of the Federal Reserve “in the Bank of England’s image“. Bessent described the paper as “tabloid trash”…
“Despite my direct, on-the-record denial of ever having advocated, explored, or espoused the idea that Chancellor-Bank of England statute serving as a prototype for a Treasury-Federal Reserve relationship, FT journalists manufactured a story with the headline, “Scott Bessent praised Bank of England as model for tighter oversight of the Federal Reserve.”
These pathetic journalists have clearly fabricated a story to give the impression that both I and the Trump Administration are setting “about restructuring the relationship… at a time when President Donald Trump has launched an unprecedented assault on the world’s most important central bank.”
Their mendacious assertion is based on vague statements from unnamed “financial industry executives familiar with the matter.”
In short, FT has literally manufactured an entirely fake policy position for me and the Administration. Other than furthering a maliciously false narrative of dysfunction and divisiveness, it baffles the mind as to why they would shred their already diminished journalistic credibility.”
At the time of going to pixel, the post is still live on the FT’s site with no update to reflect Bessent’s pushback…
According to the FT (which admittedly has its own issues at the moment), Starmer plans to buy off Sadiq Khan’s loyalty with a peerage after the local elections. The same local elections in which Labour expects a walloping…
Starmer has already appointed more peers than his last four predecessors. There is even talk of giving Khan a Cabinet role to keep him happy. Of course, if Khan accepts it he’ll be out of play for any leadership vacancy. No offer to Andy Burnham yet, unless he turned it down…
Starmer said to Robert Peston this afternoon:
“I’m fed up with the fact that families across the country see their bills go up and down on energy businesses bills go up and down on energy because of the actions of Putin or Trump across the world.”
