The Court of Appeal has overturned a High Court ruling against the Home Office’s proscription of Palestine Action. A ruling from February…
Palestine Action was formally proscribed by the UK last July. In February the High Court ruled that the government’s ban was “unlawful and disproportionate.” Disputed by the Court of Appeal now…
After James Cartlidge failed to answer on Sunday how the Tories would fund a major boost to defence spending. At least they don’t make it up on the hoof…
Badenoch sets out three Tory ‘tests’ for the DIP:
Jenrick announces Reform will reverse Labour’s increase in Employer National Insurance contributions, cutting it from 15.0% to 13.8%. But only for British workers…
Reform says:
“This will be funded by introducing a comprehensive Employers’ Migrant Labour Levy, a graduated levy that businesses’ will pay for each foreign worker they employ, and getting Brits off welfare and into work. The levy hit businesses employing lower skilled and less well paid migrants much harder. The rate for Employer NICs for foreign nationals will remain at 15%.”
Jenrick calls this ‘a smart tax’, and says it will be ‘extremely minor’ for very highly-skilled migrants…
The BBC is cutting hundreds of jobs across its core news division next week. New director general Matt Brittin making his presence known…
According to the FT the BBC is beginning the first phase of a wider downsizing expected to total around 2,000 job losses. All departments have been ordered to cut around a tenth of their costs…
The BBC has also imposed group-wide controls on recruitment, travel, consultancies, conferences and events. BBC News is losing staff first. The downsizing comes as the BBC enters the final months of funding talks with ministers, who are weighing a new form of licence fee, potentially extended to private streaming services like Netflix. You can’t hate these guys enough…
A new Policy Exchange report by Lord Lilley, the Trade Secretary who oversaw Britain’s 1992 entry into the single market, warns that Labour’s disastrous EU ‘reset’ will impose costs exceeding the government’s own estimates of the supposed benefits, all while leaving Britain with no vote over future rule changes. Of which there are guaranteed to be plenty. This is Brussels, after all…
Lilley, who predicted Britain’s entry would boost exports, admits he was “proved wrong”. Over 28 years of membership, UK goods exports to the EU grew by under 1% a year. Exports to the 111 countries traded with on WTO terms grew 87%. Almost four times as much…
The report finds the government’s flagship (Sanitary and Phytosanitary) SPS deal, billed as adding £9 billion by 2040, works out at just £600 million a year. The identifiable costs of alignment already exceed that. Merging the UK and EU emissions schemes is put at £1.1 billion annually, while rejoining Erasmus+ costs up to £810 million, against the Turing scheme’s £110 million. Lily said over the weekend:
“As the Trade Secretary overseeing our entry into the single market in 1992, I claimed it would wonderfully boost our exports. I was wrong… In a triumph of hope over experience, the government is pursuing a “Reset”… This unilateral submission won’t help our exporters… but will burden the 92% of British firms that don’t export to the EU with the overregulation which has crippled EU growth. And the EU expect us to pay them for this!”
Read the full report below…
After Guido reported on Starmer’s ‘special’ Saturday webinar with Labour members, the PM is turning it into a series. Is he worried about his leadership, or something?
That one only lasted for about 20 minutes. Now members have been “invited to a special online meeting with the Leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister Keir Starmer, live from the G7 Summit in France.” He’s actually doing it from the G7…
The call is at 3:45 p.m. The advert:
“This is your chance to hear directly from Keir on the important issues being discussed at the G7, including economic growth, security, Ukraine and protecting children online.”
There isn’t much to do on Iran – hop on zoom…
Krishnan Guru-Murthy asked John Healey: “Just finally, I mean Andy Burnham has been very clear he wants Britain back in the European Union in his lifetime. Do you?”
The Chancellor replied: “I’m older than Andy Burnham. I don’t expect to see that.”