Reform is ramping up its campaign in the capital with a direct mailshot from Nigel Farage to target voters. The next Mayoral election is a long way off in 2028 but all London borough seats are up in May 2026…
The letter focuses on crime: “Police hardly dare use stop-and-search, even though they know it reduces knife crime. Under Labour and Tory mayors, the number of Metropolitan Police stations with front counters open to the public has been cut by 80%.” Both topics of conversation had a lot of traction on X earlier in the year…
Farage continues: “Nobody really knows how many hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants live in Khan’s London… thousands of undocumented young men are put up in London hotels at taxpayers’ expense and left free to roam the streets”. The direct mail (which does not come cheap) will send a shiver down the spine of Labour and Tory campaigners who are largely yet to get off the mark. Labour is defending 1,156 council seats and the Tories 404 across the 32 boroughs. The reverse of the letter includes a voter issues survey that can be used for further targeting. Reform has a professional operation underway in London, will it bear fruit in May?
The political year opened with a fresh migraine for Starmer: Guido was the first UK outlet to reveal that the Bangladeshi government was investigating Labour’s anti-corruption minister Tulip Siddiq over embezzlement claims following the ousting of her despot aunt. Guido then exposed that Starmer had met the Awami League multiple times, including as recently as December. Tulip was pushed into referring herself to the Standards Commissioner. She promptly resigned…
Guido then sat down with Bobby Hajjaj, the Bangladeshi politician who filed the original complaint against Siddiq. He warned she could be extradited to face the courts. She’s now been sentenced to two years in jail in absentia…
Meanwhile, another crisis detonated under Starmer as Elon Musk weighed in on the rape gangs scandal following forensic reporting by GB News’ Charlie Peters. Labour flat-out refused to open a national inquiry. Guido logged every excuse they deployed, including Starmer claiming it was “jumping on a bandwagon” and “amplifying what the far-right is saying” for attention. Yvette Cooper eventually announced five token “local inquiries” into rape gangs. That row rumbled on throughout the year…
Across the pond, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th President of the United States. He signed more than 200 executive orders on his first day as President, including abolishing the Green New Deal policy, suspending DEI hiring practices in the federal government and declaring a state of emergency on the border, with a proclamation to close it. Most of what Starmer managed in 100 days was losing his Chief of Staff Sue Gray…
Mid-January, Starmer hastily called a press conference over the Southport murderer, Axel Rudakubana, the day before he was sentenced to a minimum of 52 years in prison. The PM admitted he was updated on Rudakubana “immediately as information became available,” yet insisted “it was not my personal decision to withhold information.” He still couldn’t explain why the public had been kept in the dark. Nigel Farage branded it the “worst cover-up” ever. Guido reminded co-conspirators of all the times Starmer was remarkably quick to label past incidents “terror” when it suited him…
It wasn’t any better for Rachel Reeves. Long-term borrowing costs reached to their highest levels since 1998. That picture only got uglier as the year rolled on…
Honourable Mentions:
- Rayner Caught Using Civil Servants to Help Move House
- Labour Cuts £17 Million From Maths Support Programme on Same Day as Handing £17 Million to UNRWA
- Taxpayer Forks Out £11,000 an Hour for Starmer’s Private Jet Flights Over First Three Months in Office
Headline of the Month:
This week 756,526 visitors visited 780,425 times viewing 854,935 pages. The most read and shared stories in order of popularity were:
- Starmer Humiliated as Trump Suspends ‘Tech Prosperity’ Deal
- Labour ‘Minded’ to Cancel More Local Elections
- POLL: Starmer Hits Lowest Popularity Level Since Becoming Labour Leader
- Starmer: We’re Trying to Prevent Me Approving Crony Appointments in Future
- BBC Fails to Mention Every Junior Doctor in Strike Report Is a BMA Union Official
- Erasmus: Starmer Hikes Taxes to Pay Half a Billion to EU
- Miliband Appoints Director of ‘Bristol Energy Disaster’ as New ‘Clean Power Adviser’
You’re either in front of Guido, or you are behind…
The Home Office is unaware of how many individuals resettled in the UK under the ARAP programme since its first operation in 2021 have been convicted of a crime in the UK since their arrival. You’d think they would like to know…
The Home Office says it has no central record and it would have to “datamatch thousands of Afghan national records” in order to provide an answer to the above. Meaning there is a frankly bizarre situation in which councils are reporting some ARAP arrivals as serious “cases of interest” to the Home Office which itself has no clear recording system for when they commit a crime…
Mahmood’s department adds in a response to Guido’s FOI Unit:
“the Home Office is currently engaged in a process of work to assess the quality of the data we hold in relation to FNOs. This is to consider what action may be taken to address those data quality issues that will enable a more accurate response to requests regarding foreign nationals convicted of crimes.”
Good to know…
Very many tired SpAds have shifted off from Westminster to try to enjoy a long Christmas break. It starts again in January…
Insiders point out that Downing Street’s political director Amy Richards enjoyed her last day yesterday. She’s back after the New Year. Nice for some…
Director of Communications Tim Allan was snapped entering Downing Street today with a sheet that boasted of a “strong start in January” with a “comprehensive” announcements grid for the first week back at school. Darren Jones remarked this week that the less the government announces the better…
Starmer’s team have not said where he will be over Christmas. Far away…
Yesterday’s notorious ‘take out the trash’ day was vintage even by SW1 standards: the final Parliamentary sitting before Christmas is used to sneak out a raft of bad news. Lots of outlets pointed out the high number of ‘trash’ ministerial statements, few looked at the detail…
The row over Labour postponing local elections was revealed in Alison McGovern’s statement on Local Government Reorganisation. She admitted that the councils that may postpone elections have already started making preparations for them: how much public money will be wasted in that u-turn? The statement reveals the government is way off target with its council reorganisation programme: “This is a complex process, and we will take decisions based on the evidence provided.” Guido predicts this could see elections delayed in 2027 too…
The Home Office snuck out the terms of reference for its review into the asylum detention centre at Manston in Kent. It is likely to be critical of the facility, a challenge for Mahmood in 2026…
The farce of the Ajax vehicle programme collapse continues. The MoD revealed “findings from the investigations into Ajax will be closely aligned to decisions in the Defence Investment Plan.” Labour’s defence investment plan is overdue and is clearly being held up by the Ajax debacle…
Paymaster General Nick Thomas-Symonds admitted to Parliament that the long-running Covid Inquiry cost £9.3 million so far in FY25-6 with at least 200 civil servants tasked (full time equivalent) to man the government unit handling it. The statement admits: “While every effort has been made to ensure a robust methodology, complexities remain in trying to quantify the time and costs dedicated to the Inquiry alone.” The government does not even know how much it is costing…
That’s just a few of the statements. As families cut back at Christmas and businesspeople contemplate filing their January tax return, what exactly is it all for?
Douglas Alexander – a friend of Starmer’s – was asked on Sky News if the PM will be in post at the next election. He wasn’t so sure himself:
“I think he will. There are no certainties but of course I think he will lead and I think he should because, frankly, on the biggest call in this parliament he’s exercised the right judgment, which is to keep us out of someone else’s war.”
