Nigel Farage has told the Telegraph his house was targeted in an arson attack last year:
“It was an outright arson attempt. I wasn’t at home at the time, but when I came back and opened the door I found the damage. Luckily it had burned itself out in the porch, and we think maybe the perpetrators were disturbed in the act. The police were all over it. They did their best but there are no suspects so far… I’m acutely aware of the love for me, but equally the levels of antipathy that exist. Sometimes things happen when there are cameras there, but there are plenty of times when things don’t make the news, like pints of beer being thrown over me or the attack on my home.”
He also revealed Christopher Harborne gifted him ‘a seven-figure sum’ for personal security in early 2024, just before his return to politics:
“This money was given to me so that I would be safe and secure for the rest of my life… I have tried and failed in the past to get security funded by the Home Office and I don’t think the state will ever help me. I’m very much on my own and will be for the rest of my life, and I have to face up to that…”
Grim…
A Tory MP asked the government why exactly Darren Jones went to Australia. He recorded a vanity vox pop with locals saying how great their Digital ID is…
A whole lot of guff came in return in a parliamentary answer:
“The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister visited Australia in April 2026 to build critical policy and security links with state and regional authorities in Australia.
This included defence visits for the AUKUS programme, and discussions with Ministers at both Federal and State level and with private sector stakeholders on support for British businesses, bolstering regional security and learnings about harnessing technology to modernise public services based on learnings from the Australian government their successes and challenges as pioneers in providing online government services.
State-level meetings included understanding the context for the roll out of the New South Wales state digital ID pilot and visiting South Australia to highlight the extent of UK-Australian cooperation, focusing particularly on secure growth, including opportunities presented by the AUKUS programme.”
Who wanted to send Darren 10,500 miles away this month?
Labour U-turned on its Pension Schemes Bill last night to get it through the Lords after three rounds of ping pong. Torsten Bell has egg on his face…
Bell’s bill would force “mandation” on pension schemes – effectively giving ministers the power to direct where savers’ cash was invested in any given situation. Funnelling private cash at doomed political pet projects, for example…
Reeves (and Tory Chancellors before her) has long attempted to exercise control over the large pension pool. The ‘Mansion House’ accords demanded funds put 10% investment in private markets by 2030 with a requirement to put half of that in the UK – something the bill seeks to make mandatory…
The government lost in the Lords for the fourth time on Monday night. New amendments were tabled last night to weaken mandation, cap it, expire it in 2032 if unused, and repeal it no matter what in 2035. Mandation powers no longer extend to all pension schemes. It received the Lords’ assent. It is still an overreach…
Torsten will be hoping to survive an upcoming reshuffle. Do not ask for whom the bell tolls…
UPDATE: Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Helen Whately reflected:
“Crucially, the Bill now protects fiduciary duty – the foundation upon which trust in our pension system rests. In any conflict between savers’ interests and minister’s ambitions, savers will now win. We welcome the Government’s u-turn on this fundamental flaw in the Bill.
But mandation is wrong in principle: pensions belong to savers, not ministers. As ever Labour thinks the state is the always the answer. They are wrong. Conservatives will repeal mandation.”
Housing Secretary Steve Reed has repeatedly stressed on this morning’s media round that the government has ‘ruled out’ imposing a one-year rent freeze. Reed my lips: no rent freeze…
He told Sky News:
“Yeah, I ruled it out in Parliament just a couple of weeks ago… and the reason we’re doing that is the Scottish government tried it… It ended up with one of the biggest increases in rent people have ever seen, and a reduction in the number of homes that are available to rent.”
Which sounds reassuring, but it was also Steve Reed – then Defra Secretary – who was ambushed by Rachel Reeves’ disastrous changes to inheritance tax for farmers at her first Budget. The rent freeze briefing this week came from the Treasury. ‘Fool me once’…
Nigel Farage has said it was a “mistake” to announce last year that Reform would lift the two-child benefit cap for British families. A policy scrapped by Robert Jenrick when he was appointed Reform’s shadow chancellor in February…
Farage said on the Today programme this morning:
“I made a mistake on this. I tried to do something pro-family. That’s obviously impossible in modern Britain. You know, what I said was, I would like British working families where both people are in full-time work to get some tax credits if they had more kids. And you know, for my sins I was accused of being a welfarist, so I’ve had to admit defeat… I was defeated by mass opinion of press, of everybody else…”
He nonetheless insisted he was “right” but “that discussion is over”…
Starmer has won the Privileges Committee vote 335 to 223. Whipped by No10…
A No10 spokesman said: “This Labour government is delivering for Britain including bringing down energy bills, cutting hospital waiting lists and lifting half a million children out of poverty. The Conservative Party resorted to this desperate political stunt the week before the May elections because they have no answers on the cost of living or the NHS. We will continue to engage with the two parliamentary processes that are running on Peter Mandelson’s appointment with full transparency.” ‘Full transparency’…
15 Labour MPs voted to refer:
Apsana Begum
Richard Burgon
Ian Bryne
Mary Kelly Foy
Imran Hussain
Brian Leishman
Emma Lewell
Rebecca Long Bailey
Andy McDonald
John McDonnell
Graham Morris
Luke Myer
Kate Osbourne
Cat Smith
Nadia Whittome
Andy Haldane, Burnham’s recent adviser on the economy who has not taken up a No10 job, told Andrew Marr on LBC:
“The market now suspects that this is a traditional tax-and-spend socialist government with better TikTok videos…
imposing windfall taxes on oil & gas or on banks or upping capital gains tax would […] repeat the mistake that Rachel made […] The Achilles heel, the fiscal Achilles heel of this government thus far has been its unwillingness and/or inability to cut public spending.”