The number of job vacancies fell at their fastest pace since the dark days of the pandemic in September, according to REC and KPMG’s leading Jobs Survey. The number of people looking for jobs has also spiked…
The number of permanent placements in London dropped at the quickest pace since August 2020. The biggest drops on the month came in the retail, hotel and catering, and professional sectors, thanks to Reeves’ tax raid last year. KPMG’s UK Senior Partner Jon Holt said:
“With very little positive news out there on the economy in recent months, and lots of speculation about the Budget, it is understandable that employers are cautious with their hiring. The jobs market has not yet turned a corner and remains tough.”
Meanwhile, Treasury minister Torsten Bell’s old outfit the Resolution Foundation is pushing for Reeves to raise income tax in the Budget as it’s the “most reliable option”. Shivers in the City…
Today is the first day of the feminist FiLiA Conference 2025 and trans activists have already smashed up the windows of the venue. Classy…
JK Rowling is known to attend the conference, which this year is being held boldly in Brighton. Masked activists from the “Bash Back” group filmed themselves smashing up the Brighton Centre venue on King’s Road in the early hours of the morning. The group, which calls itself a “trans-led direct action group combatting the rising tide of bigotry in the UK,” declared two days ago:
“WE ARE ENGAGED IN AN INTERSECTIONAL STRUGGLE TRANS AND PALESTINIAN LIBERATION ARE A UNITED FRONT AGAINST COLONIALISM”
Think that tells you all you need to know…
It’s also silence from Green MP Sian Berry, in whose constituency the vandalism occurred. Guido looks forward to seeing her statement of condemnation…
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has won the Nobel Peace Prize. No gong for Trump, though Venezuela’s Iron Lady is no slouch…
When Barack Obama won the Peace Prize in 2009, less than eight months into his first term, the Nobel Committee applauded his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”. He also supposedly gave the world “hope for a better future“. Apparently the ‘hope’ of peace was good enough to win the prize outright back then. The standards are slightly higher now…
Yvette Cooper spoke to the Today Programme about the Powell spy scandal. She was asked if the National Security Adviser was responsible for withholding evidence that would have branded China an enemy:
“Well, let me be clear that we know China poses threats to UK national security from things like transnational repression and espionage to hostile cyber activity as well… But you know that I am deeply frustrated about this case because I of course wanted to see it prosecuted. But ministers were not involved in any of the evidence that was put to the Crown Prosecution Service or the Crown Prosecution Services independent decisions because this was a criminal case.”
Insiders say that Olly Robbins’ FCDO and Powell have been pushing for closer economic ties and not to rock the boat with an ‘enemy’ designation. Starmer looks to have been kept in the dark. He also insisted ministers – and ministers only – were innocent yesterday. Powell in the firing line…
Five council by-elections have taken place since Tory Conference this week. The Conservative vote went down in all of them…
There are two more today. At Skelton East in Redcar and Cleveland, Reform gained a Tory council seat with 65% of the vote. The Tories dropped 29 points to reach 13.9%. That is Reform’s highest vote percentage in any election ever…
Reform’s Zia Yusuf and Green Party leader Zack Polanski locked horns in a fiery exchange on BBC Question Time last night. The self-styled “Green Populist” kicked things off with a wild accusation, claiming Farage had allied with a “Nazi” group:
“Nigel Farage, he joined forces with the Swedish Democrats in the European Parliament. This is a far-right Nazi group. They want to deport people not based on the colour of his skin, but from the places that they’ve come from. This is racism. It’s fascism and we should call it out.”
Yusuf hit back:
“[Polanski] literally made money by charging women on the promise that he could literally enlarge the size of their breasts by hypnotizing them. In Polanski’s version of Britain, it is legal to sell fentanyl, crack cocaine and heroin, but illegal to rent your flat out”
Last week, it took David Lammy mere hours to row back from his own claim that Farage “flirted with the Hitler Youth.” Godwin’s Law…
Speaking to Adam Boulton on Times Radio about kicking the Golders Green suspect, Heidi Alexander said:
“I thought that if I was in the shoes of that police officer, then if I’m honest, given the situation, and the fact that he had a backpack on his back, and they were worried about whether that might go off, I could, if I was a police officer, frankly, I could see myself having taken similar action.”