“Harry warns of ‘deeply troubling’ rise in antisemitism in UK” runs a headline on the BBC News homepage today. Similarly, the Times is running the headline “Prince Harry: Rising antisemitism in UK is deeply troubling”.

“Prince Harry speaks out on ‘deeply troubling’ rise of antisemitism in UK” is ITV News’s take on the same story, while for Sky News it is “Duke of Sussex concerned by ‘deeply troubling’ rise in UK antisemitism” and for Reuters “Prince Harry says antisemitism in UK is ‘deeply troubling’.”

And indeed Prince Harry has, rightly, described the recent rise in antisemitism in Britain as troubling – but that’s only half the story.

The one-time royal has penned an article for the New Statesman headlined “My fears for a divided kingdom”, with the sub-headline “We must stand against both antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate”. Curiously, though, the rest of the British media seems to have missed the second part of that sentence.

Harry, detailing his concerns about both antisemitism rising anti-Muslim sentiment, said he was speaking out because staying silent would allow “hatred and extremism to flourish unchecked”.

“That means being unequivocal: standing against antisemitism wherever it appears, while recognising that anti-Muslim hatred and all forms of racism draw from the same well of division,” he writes. “They must be confronted with the same resolve. It also means speaking out against the immense loss of innocent life without fear, but with care and responsibility.”

For some reason, though, the rest of the press pack seemed to have missed that bit.

Share

Another public event, another nice little nap for Donald Trump, the president whose trips increasingly seem to be up the wooden hills to Bedfordshire.

The leader of the free world, 80 years old next month, once again appeared to nod off this week, this time at a maternal health event in the Oval Office.

Trump was leading the event about support for mothers, fertility treatment and lower healthcare costs, the point of which was due to be an announcement that the Labour Department was creating a fertility treatment benefit option which employers could offer separately from standard health insurance.

Alas, it was sidetracked by a signature ramble by Trump, followed by him appearing to drop off. He told reporters “the first time I really heard about the fertility was through Katie [Britt, Republican senator from Alabama]. She said, ‘Sir, we have to do something’. And I’m a quick study. So I learned everything there is to learn in about three, four minutes, and I became the father of fertility.”

Then, as Britt spoke, cameras focused on the president seated in front of her as his eyes closed and he appeared to doze off at his own event.

When Idrees Ali, a national security correspondent at Reuters, posted this on X together with a video, it swiftly earned the rebuke “He was blinking, you absolute moron” from Rapid Response 47, an official White House account set up in January this year to “hold fake news accountable”.

But it’s hardly the first time the soon-to-be octogenarian has used a public event to catch a few Zs. Here are a few more…

May 4, 2026: At a White House small business summit, Trump appeared to doze off while standing and made a confusing remark about ending “employment” with a pen. The president appeared to fall asleep while standing as administrator of the Small Business Administration Kelly Loeffler spoke, before startling attendees by declaring he could “end employment with the swipe of a pen”. It appeared he may have meant to say “unemployment”.

March 24, 2026: Trump appeared to doze off during a crime-stopping task force meeting in Memphis while cabinet members and local officials took turns bashing the previous administration and praising him. The president, seated inside a hangar at the Memphis Air National Guard Base, was photographed with his eyes closed and his head occasionally jerking. Trump also used the meeting to tell attendees, there to discuss crime-reducing measures across the state: “I love Elvis. I never met Elvis. I met them all – I met Sinatra, I met all of them – but I never met Elvis. Sometimes I feel I should tell a little fib and say I knew him well. I love Elvis.”

December 2, 2025: At a meeting of his cabinet, Trump began by making a reference to his predecessor as “Sleepy Joe” before declaring that he was “sharper than I was 25 years ago” and rebuking the New York Times for a lengthy and detailed story the previous week laying out how he appeared to have slowed down during his second term. “Trump is sharp, but they’re not sharp,” he said.

He then spent the next three hours struggling to stay awake, even struggling to rouse himself to hear commerce secretary Howard Lutnick hail “the greatest cabinet ever for the greatest president ever”. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt maintained afterwards that Trump had been “listening attentively and running the entire three-hour marathon cabinet meeting”.

November 6, 2025: Participating in an announcement about cutting prices for popular weight-loss drugs, Trump once again appeared to drift off. As images of the president appeared across social media, California governor Gavin Newsom posted: “DOZY DON IS BACK.”

White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said: “The president was not sleeping; in fact, he spoke throughout and took many questions from the press during this announcement which represents a historic reduction in prices for Americans on two drugs that help Americans struggling with diabetes, heart disease, obesity and other conditions.”

April 21, 2025: After apparently demanding a front row seat at the funeral of Pope Francis to make sure the cameras were on him and Melania, Trump appeared to have once more fallen asleep.

May 14, 2024: At his own trial for allegedly paying hush money in Manhattan, Trump appeared to fall asleep with his mouth open just minutes after his lawyers started to grill his former attorney Michael Cohen. Moments after his attorney Todd Blanche began cross-examining Cohen after a lunch recess, Trump sank back into his chair and closed his eyes. His head then dropped slightly with his mouth open before he appeared to snap awake and jerk his head as his eyes remained shut.

Trump denied sleeping at the courthouse, writing on Truth Social: “Contrary to the FAKE NEWS MEDIA, I don’t fall asleep during the Crooked D.A.’s Witch Hunt, especially not today. I simply close my beautiful blue eyes, sometimes, listen intensely, and take it ALL in!!!”

Whatever you say, Mr President. Now, isn’t it time for your bedtime?

Share

It’s official – Rupert Murdoch’s online TV station Talk is puffing out a load of hot air.

The channel – which broadcast on digital TV until 2024, when massive losses saw it move to web-only – has been reprimanded by watchdog Ofcom after it broadcast an interview in which a guest claimed, unchallenged, that the Met Office simply made up many of their weather reports.

Kathryn Porter, described as an “independent energy consultant”, was a guest on the unfortunately titled Morning Glory with Mike Graham – the host since sacked by the channel after refusing to assist an inquiry into a racist post which appeared on his social media page – to discuss a BBC report claiming that renewable energy is overtaking coal as the world’s biggest source of electricity.

At the end of the report Graham asked Porter: “And then finally, just one thing that I saw you tweeting about the Met Office pretty much all but admitting that, that they make up some of their weather forecast and they make up some of their temperature data around the country because they’ve closed so many weather stations that they don’t actually have any real way of measuring it.”

This allowed Porter to claim, unchallenged, that “Yes, that’s right” and that “various people have gone round to investigate this and discovered that there are no weather stations nearby, and so they’ve had to remove data because people have basically said ‘you’re making it up’, and they have been.”

She went on to claim, in a highly unlikely example, that “there’s one I think in Regents Park or St James’s Park, one of the London parks, where the equipment is surrounded by a concrete wall

and right next to a diesel generator. So, obviously, there’s a huge amount of heat being both created in that little space and contained by this wall and, obviously, that equipment is going to record higher temperatures than it would on the other side of the wall.”

This allowed Graham to conclude: “No, exactly. I mean, that is, that’s pretty much peak net zero though, isn’t it? Just make stuff up and tell you that it’s scientifically collected, tell you that it’s proper data and just hope everybody believes you.”

Alas for Talk, it was one of those rare occasions when somebody was actually watching – and the Met Office complained to Ofcom that not only had it not been sufficiently challenged on the programme, they had not been invited on the show to defend themselves and Porter’s claims were deeply misleading.

Now, seven months on, the ever-rapid watchdog has agreed with their complaint, upholding it.

Its ruling states that “Ofcom’s role in this case is not to determine the accuracy or otherwise of the statements made about the complainant in a programme”, but does make clear that: “We considered that the comments made in the programme were likely to have given viewers an overall negative impression of the complainant’s competence and its data collection practices and had the potential to lead viewers to believe that the Met Office was not a reliable source of information on temperature data.

“In our view, therefore, the comments made in the programme had the clear potential to materially and adversely affect viewers’ opinions of the complainant in a way that was unfair.”

It appears that Porter’s claims had come from an article which originally appeared on the Daily Sceptic website – run by climate denier and Conservative peer Toby Young – to argue that the Met Office had deleted temperature data following claims that it had been fabricated.

But it is worrying as Porter is said to be an unofficial climate adviser to Claire Coutinho, the shadow energy secretary. Coutinho launched a report by Porter about grid electrification, Electrification – can the grid cope?, in January this year, writing in an X thread that it proved why Ed Miliband’s energy plan risked leading to blackouts.

Porter stated last month that the numbers in Coutinho’s policy plan “actually add up”, with Coutinho in turn offering her further praise in a follow-up post. Porter has also written multiple papers for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the UK’s main climate science denial group.

Questions for Murdoch’s little-watched web channel, then – but arguably even more for the Conservatives.

Share

The Parliamentary Standards Commissioner has launched an inquiry into whether Nigel Farage broke Commons rules when he accepted a £5m gift from a Thai-based crypto billionaire and failed to declare it.

The Reform leader has continued to say he was under “no obligation” to declare the gift from wealthy party backer Christopher Harborne – ostensibly to pay for his security – because it had been given before he was an MP.

But the Conservatives wrote to Parliament’s standards watchdog, which is now investigating whether he broke the House of Commons code of conduct.

The news came just a day after Farage announced he was taking legal action against one of his former closest lieutenants after he made allegations about the donation.

“My lawyers have formally written to Ben Habib,” he wrote solemnly on Tuesday, referencing his former deputy. “They demanded an immediate apology and public retraction for the baseless allegations he made today.

“I do not take legal action often. But I will not accept slander & politically motivated smears after winning a national election.”

He was referring to incendiary allegations made by Habib – who left Reform in 2024 after falling out with Farage and Zia Yusuf and now leads the fringe Advance UK party – about donations made to him and supposedly to former PM Boris Johnson by Harborne.

Leaving aside that Farage has not won a national election – the only national elections last week were in Scotland and Wales, and Reform won neither- is it really true that the notoriously thin-skinned leader does “not take legal action often”? He certainly often promises to do so.

Back in December 2024, Farage threatened to take Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch to court if she did not apologise for accusing him of publishing a “fake” ticker on Reform UK’s website showing its membership increasing to overtake the Conservatives.

Reform had posted a video online of its membership tracker being projected onto the Conservative Party headquarters in London, leading Badenoch to respond: “Manipulating your own supporters at Xmas eh, Nigel?. It’s not real. It’s a fake… [the website has been] coded to tick up automatically.”

Asked by Sky News if he was going to sue her for libel for what he described as “accusations of fraud and dishonesty”, Farage said: “I’m going to take some action in the next couple of days.

“I think it’s an absolutely outrageous thing for her to have said. I know she’s got a very bad temper. I know she’s well known for lashing out at people, but I am not at all happy, and I’m going to take some action.”

He added that he would confirm within two days exactly what that action would be if she did not apologise for the “intemperate outburst”. Badenoch did not apologise and, 17 months later, Farage has yet to confirm what that action will be.

Last June, Farage said he had engaged expensive law firm Carter-Ruck over a Mail on Sunday story that quoted Ukraine’s President Zelensky condemning him. It was headlined “Zelensky: Farage is infected with ‘virus of Putin’”.

The story appeared to come from BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera writing on X the previous morning: “No official reaction in Kyiv, where I’ve just arrived, to Nigel Farage’s comments on the West having ‘provoked’ Russia. But one source in the presidential office did tell the BBC that ‘the virus of Putinism, unfortunately, infects people.’”

A furious Farage posted a video on X saying: “10 years ago I predicted there would be war in Ukraine because I thought Putin would use Nato and EU expansion.

He added: “I’ve never supported his administration in any way. A BBC reporter had a quote, my name wasn’t even in the quote. The BBC doubted the story so much they didn’t run it themselves. We have instructed Carter-Ruck and they have already written to the Mail on Sunday.” But nothing further has been heard, and any case has yet to come to court.

Farage has also yet to formally launch legal action against the Guardian over a series of reports last year about his supposed schoolboy antisemitism. The paper ran a number of articles based on allegations from more than a dozen school contemporaries who recounted incidents of deeply offensive behaviour throughout his teenage years.

Among those making allegations was the Bafta and Emmy-award winning director Peter Ettedgui, 61, who claimed Farage would “sidle up to me and growl: ‘Hitler was right’, or: ‘Gas them,’ sometimes adding a long hiss to simulate the sound of the gas showers.” Ettedgui is Jewish.

A spokesman for Farage said last November he was not going to sue over the claims published by the Guardian “at this stage” but asked if that was an option being kept open, he said: “Potentially, yes.” No action has yet been brought.

Farage is also currently threatening to call in the police on the Guardian after appearing to accuse it of hacking him in order to obtain the information he had personally received a no-strings donation of $5 million from Thai-based Harborne, ostensibly to boost his security provisions. At the time of writing, though, he has yet to do anything.

Perhaps he is right and he does “not take legal action often” – just repeatedly threaten it. A cynic might suggest this is a tactic to quell criticism – but if The New World said so, Farage would doubtless threaten to sue us.

Share

In the ultra-competitive world of podcasting, nicking ideas or even names is nothing new.

In 2024 the hosts of independent pod Straight to the Comments, which looked at the often bonkers comments left below the line on the stories of national newspapers’ websites, were shocked to find a very similar new podcast launched by the Daily Mail.

The Mail’s pod, in which YouTube pranksters Archie Manners and Josh Pieters looked at the often bonkers comments left below the line on the stories of national newspapers’ websites, was named, er, Straight to the Comments. The hosts of the original podcast, Lisa Williams and Sarah Illingworth, did send a legal letter to the Mail but were immediately fobbed off by its expensive lawyers. More happily, Manners and Pieters’s effort lasted just two months and nine episodes.

But one might expect better from the BBC – which is why journalist, broadcaster and presenter of 1990s pop culture podcast Talk ‘90s To Me Miranda Sawyer was narked to find its Sounds division was launching a new history show with the title… Talk History To Me.

According to the corporation, the “brand new fully visualised podcast”, hosted by Alice Loxton and Ben Henderson, “explores the surprising histories behind traditions, customs and objects of everyday life”. “Told in a chatty, narrative style, the podcast connects the past directly to the way we live, think and argue now,” it says. How original!

Not to Sawyer, though, whose own podcast was launched in August 2025 and has featured deep dives into such 1990s subjects as Oasis, Friends, Trainspotting and alcopops.

“It is profoundly depressing to read that BBC Sounds have decided to nick the title of our small indie podcast Talk ‘90s To Me for yet another of their fucking history shows, one which looks at everyday life and how it’s shaped things for us today,” she wrote on Instagram.

“No doubt the alcopops episode has already been commissioned. It is hard work making an independent podcast, I do all the prep and research for the interviews and often the guest booking too. Podmasters [the firm behind the podcast] is a great indie company to work with, shame on the BBC for nicking indie ideas, they have so many people working there, just think of your own ffs.”

Profoundly depressing indeed. What next from the BBC? Talk Politics To Me? Talk Entertainment to Me? Talk Plagiarism To Me?

Share

While Labour splits make the headlines, the Tories are divided too – about whether government should be encouraging people to have more children. And when the former PM most personally responsible for increasing the population decided to cheer falling birth rates, the party’s chief natalist took umbrage.

Boris Johnson – currently known children: at least nine – used his Daily Mail column earlier this month to celebrate the news that figures show that deaths this year will now exceed births for the first time since the mid-1970s.

“Let’s be honest: if and when these new and encouraging trends lead to an actual downturn in the global population, that downturn will be no disaster,” he wrote. “It will be the first blessed relief of some of the crippling burden we place on nature.

“As for reproduction, I’ll say it again: politicians should butt the hell out of it. The job of politicians is not to indulge in ridiculous Mussolini-style baby-boosting rhetoric. Viktor Orbán tried that in Hungary, for instance. It didn’t work for him, any more than it worked for Mussolini or indeed the Emperor Augustus.”

That was grist to the mill of Miriam Cates, former Tory MP and Kinder, Küche, Kirche crackpot, who has regularly urged her party to emulate Orbán and order British couples into the bedroom for the sake of the country.

Under the headline ‘Boris Johnson is very clever and very wrong’, Cates used her Conservative Home column to lambast her former leader, claiming that his “innumeracy struck again, this time leaving him struggling to grasp the implications of falling global birth rates”.

“I am sure that even Johnson himself would admit that maths was never his strong point,” she writes. “The previous government’s woeful response to the Covid pandemic may have been significantly less destructive had our former prime minister’s grasp of statistics been half as good as his knowledge of Greek mythology.

“Most young people still want to become parents, and the average desired family size is a healthy 2.2 children. The task of government and society is to break down the barriers that stop these dreams from becoming reality. If we could devote half as much time and energy into saving humanity as Johnson has devoted to saving the polar bears, perhaps we might have a fighting chance.”

What have the polar bears done to be dragged into this?

Share

Last month Rats in a Sack reported on how lucky Daily Express political editor Martyn Brown got to spend a day out with Nigel Farage, and treated his readers to a full write-up on what a terrific fellow the Reform leader was.

Brown offered readers an absurdly sycophantic account of a day spent with Farage, written with all the wide-eyed wonder of an eight-year-old boy meeting Harry Kane and gushing at length about the Reform leader’s energy, diet and teasing conversation.

Under the ‘EXCLUSIVE’ banner, Brown marvelled how spending a day with the Turquoise Tory leader “is an intoxicating assault on the senses. It tests your stamina to the limit and puts your constitution through the kind of ordeal that only the hardiest can withstand.

“Astronauts aboard the Artemis II Moon mission have been training for years for the rigours of this latest history-making lunar flight. But I bet they’d struggle to do a day on the campaign trail with the Reform UK leader. He, however, takes it all in his stride.”

Now Kemi Badenoch has subjected herself to Brown’s journalistic rigour and got the same adulatory treatment, the report being headlined ‘She’s funny, engaging and doesn’t duck the questions – when I met Kemi’.

“Kemi was as charming as ever, first chatting to business owners on the small High Street, before answering my questions in the back seat of the cab,” reports a wide-eyed Brown as he joined the Conservative leader on the campaign trail in Croydon.

“The Tory leader has a bit of a reputation for being combative or abrasive, but in my numerous meetings with her it has been quite the opposite.She’s funny, engaging and, most importantly, doesn’t duck any questions and gives straight answers.

“As we set up for the interview, I ask if she is exhausted with all the campaigning – clearly putting my foot in it. ‘Do I look tired,’ she responds, somewhat concerned. Taking my foot out of my mouth, I quickly say ‘no,no,no’ – she looks impeccable, for the record.”

During the interview, Brown reports, they “rattle through everything from Keir Starmer’s future, to her hopes for her party, the pensions Triple Lock, Brexit and political rivals Nigel Farage and Zack Polanski”.

Alas, though, space constraints prevent him from printing a single answer Badenoch gave on any of these topics, limiting him to printing just one.

“What about music, what’s on the Badenoch playlist, I ask, spotting her headphones nearby.

“‘Lots of Taylor Swift,’ she says. ‘Stay, Stay, Stay, London Boy and the Romeo and Juliet one, Love Story’.” Another scoop for the Express man, after he boasted of finding out from his Farage interview that his party members thought he was terrific. “After exchanging pleasantries and goodbyes the Tory leader headed off onto her next destination,” he concludes. “Within minutes the area was back to relative peace and quiet again and I jumped on the next 327.”

Not for nothing have his unkind colleagues nicknamed this forensic examiner Martyn Brown-Nose.

Share

Some of the new Reform councillors elected in last week’s local polls are following in the footsteps of those elected last year – by immediately boycotting local media who refuse to act as cheerleaders for the party.

Nigel Farage’s party have had a series of run-ins with local newspapers and websites who have sought to scrutinise their leadership of councils – most notably in Nottinghamshire, where leader Mick Barton banned the Nottingham Post from speaking to him or any of his councillors.

Now, following their success in last week’s elections, Reform in two more areas have said they will not be cooperating with the local media.

In Suffolk, where Reform ended the Conservatives’ 20-year reign after taking control with a large majority of seats, the founder of local website Ipswich.co.uk says the party has banned newly-elected members from speaking to journalists.

Oliver Rouane-Williams made the claim after Shayne Pooley, the party’s chairman in Ipswich, told him his councillors had “no need to offer you a soundbite”.

Before the election, only one Reform candidate responded to an invitation from the site to answer five questions, extended to all candidates, with the responses coming “through a Reform PR representative rather than in his own voice”, according to Rouane-Williams.

Pooley had told Reform candidates and councillors not to speak to Ipswich.co.uk, or indeed any other media except for GB News, he claimed.

“The instruction held throughout the campaign,” he said. “On election day itself, only one Reform candidate, Stuart Allen, spoke briefly to the BBC. The party’s other candidates, including newly-elected councillors, declined to be interviewed or photographed on Pooley’s orders.

“When approached by us on results day, a newly elected Reform councillor told us they wanted to engage with this publication but had been told they could not, and that they were only permitted to speak to GB News.”

Reform’s policy has apparently been confirmed by a comment made by Pooley on Ipswich.co.uk’s Facebook page. He wrote: “Voters can contact their councillors directly, no need to offer you a sound bite, we are not a paycheck [sic] for you, neither we or the voters need you.”

Meanwhile, over in Swindon, Reform have announced a boycott of the town’s Advertiser newspaper, claiming it did not “demonstrate a clear commitment to fairness, accuracy, and impartiality” when it reported how the party had declined to put anybody up for interview ahead of the election.

The paper had asked the party for a spokesperson to take part in a sit-down interview about their plans for Swindon, an invitation which was taken up by the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Green Party and Labour. Reform apparently declined on four separate occasions. As a result, the Advertiser ran a headline saying ‘Reform Goes Missing Days Before Election’, detailing the party’s failure to put up a spokesperson.

After the election – in which Reform won 14 of the 57 seats on Swindon Borough Council, leaving it in no overall control but with the Conservatives as the largest party – the party announced it would no longer speak to “certain local media outlets” but made clear who they were talking about by referring to reports of them having “gone missing”.

In a statement, the local party said: “Reform UK Swindon is aware of a number of recent negative press stories circulating in Swindon, originating from certain local outlets and individuals presenting themselves as impartial journalists.

“We believe that journalism should be fair, balanced, and grounded in accurate reporting. Unfortunately, that standard has not been met in several instances.

“It is particularly concerning that some media outlets have clearly failed to demonstrate impartiality, especially during an election campaign when balanced and responsible reporting is more important than ever. This lack of neutrality risks undermining public trust and distorting the information available to voters.

“For those claiming that we have ‘gone missing’ or failed to respond to enquiries, this could not be further from the truth. Our decision not to engage in certain instances is solely for the reasons outlined above.

“As a result, Reform UK will not be engaging with any media outlets that do not demonstrate a clear commitment to fairness, accuracy, and impartiality.”

Advertiser editor Daniel Chipperfield called allegations of impartiality on its coverage of the campaign trail as ‘nonsense’.

“Not a single word of complaint or concern has been raised with us by the Reform party during this election period,” he said.

“Indeed, they have been hard to reach on a number of issues, including their ongoing investigation into several of their candidates. So for them to announce publicly that this apparent situation has reached an impasse and they see no other way forward but to further disengage with proper scrutiny rings completely false.”

Reform likes to boast about its support for freedom of speech. If they do make it to national government, will its ministers refuse to speak to anybody who isn’t 100% supportive of the party – so, basically, nobody except the Mail, Express, Telegraph and GB News?

Share

CPAC GB, the British version of the influential US-founded Conservative Political Action Conference, has so far failed to sell out its 3,000 tickets despite – or perhaps because of – having Liz Truss as chair of its organising committee.

The event is being staged at a hotel near the O2 Arena in London’s Greenwich on July 16-18, with prices ranging from £100 general admission up to a £10,000 golden ticket package that gives the bearer the chance to mingle with Truss and other speakers at the “CPAC Great Britain Star Lounge”.

But who exactly will those others be? While the US version regularly plays host to big-name bigots like Donald Trump, JD Vance and Steve Bannon, the UK guest list so far boasts such attractions as Gorton & Denton loser Matt Goodwin, self-confessed racist and former prisoner Lucy Connolly, free speech boiled egg lookalike Toby Young and Brexiteer ex-MP Jacob Rees-Mogg. Surely worth ten grand of anyone’s money!

Share

Reform’s successes in last week’s elections have triggered a pattern of events familiar from the party’s local poll victories last year. New councillors who Nigel Farage’s party failed to properly vet are being exposed for vile behaviour, while others who didn’t expect to win are pondering a quick resignation, costing their councils thousands of pounds.

Daniel Devaney, elected in Bradford’s Clayton and Fairweather Green ward, falls into both camps. Upset over being publicly shamed for Facebook posts that he said he wanted to “blast [Muslims] all off the face of the earth”, describing them as “pure scum” and “potential terrorists”, Devaney now says he is stepping down and will go on holiday instead.

Meanwhile, Glenn Gibbins, who won Hylton Castle ward on Sunderland City Council hs been suspended over a 2024 post in which he complained about the “amount of Nigerians in town”, adding, “Should melt them all down and fill in the pot holes!!” His colleague David Barker, newly elected councillor for Deptford and Hendon ward in Sunderland, may follow after it was revealed that in 2018 he was given a 22-week prison sentence, suspended for 18 months, after beating his then-girlfriend “black and blue”. The defence blamed his actions on Barker’s excessive cannabis use making him “paranoid”.

Jay Cooper, elected in the Bootle West ward on Sefton Council in Merseyside, was allowed to stand by Reform despite having posted on social media that “the Hallocaust (sic) is a hoax. There wasn’t [sic] even 6 million Jews in Europe at the time. Propaganda”. Now Farage says Cooper is “not welcome” in the party.

Farage may want to look at another 15 of his May 7 winners who featured on The New World’s list of the worst Reform candidates.

Andy Mahon was elected to represent Blackburn South East on Blackburn with Darwen Council, despite writing on Facebook about his support for British fascist Oswald Mosley. He also used the n-word and made homophobic remarks about Wes Streeting and sexist comments about Angela Rayner and Green MP Hannah Spencer. He will be joined by another on our list, Janine Crook, who praised Enoch Powell as “phrophetic” (sic), called Blackburn “the biggest shithole in the UK”, engaged with content from extremist activists and was duly elected councillor for Darwen West.

Brett Muscroft, who shared posts supporting Tommy Robinson, saying that making the far right agitator criminal defence secretary would mean “we may get Great Britain back”, and Steven Lewis, who denounced Christmas as a pagan holiday to worship Saturn and called Easter and New Year’s demonic, are now both members of Wakefield Council.

Nathaniel Menday, a self-styled “ethno-nationalist” who posted a photo of Berlin’s Nazi-era Olympiastadion with the comment “Whichever group of people built this must have been real visionaries!”, was elected to represent Woodhouse on Sheffield City Council. Ben Rowe, meanwhile, who accused “the Jews” of “creating division by forcing other races on our societies” and described immigrants as “breeding like rats”, is councillor for Ham on Plymouth Council.

Derek Bullock, twice expelled by the Tories for Islamophobia, including a post – which he claims had been faked – after the Manchester Arena attack, saying “Shoot the Pakis on the spot”, is now the member for Hulton on Bolton Council.

Glenda Hall, who shared Covid conspiracy content – including what she called an “interesting video” about whether it was the “hoax of the century” – was elected to represent Tunstall and Humbledon on Sunderland Council, where she is joined by Paul Donaghy, who has had 10 of his companies struck off for breaching accounting rules and will sit for Washington North.

Russ Cherry, who shared content from Britain First leader Paul Golding and from Tommy Robinson, both of whom are supposedly persona non grata in Reform, is now councillor for Ockenden on Thurrock Council.

Malcolm Offord, Reform’s leader in Scotland who made a vile homophobic joke about George Michael during a Burns Night speech, later calling it “a clumsy mistake”, now represents West Scotland at Holyrood, where he is joined by Senga Beresford, who replied “me” to a post about Muslims from the deputy leader of far right Britain First, which said: “I demand that we deport the lot of them. Who’s with me?”. She now represents South Scotland.

Laura Anne Jones, who defected from the Conservatives last year to become Reform’s first member of the Senedd, retained her seat. She was suspended from the Senedd last year after using a racial slur about Chinese people.

Jones will be joined in Cardiff Bay by Francesca O’Brien, who faced a backlash for comments suggesting benefit claimants needed “putting down”, has links to hard right activists and is now MS for Gŵyr Abertawe, and John Clark, the new MS for Bangor Conwy Môn who has claimed that “Nato wants to bleed Russia dry and are happy to use Ukraine as an excuse”.

Isn’t democracy fantastic!

Over on the hard left, meanwhile, it was a less successful night for the few candidates Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party managed to stand, who overwhelmingly secured fewer than five per cent of the vote and lost their deposits.

The party, which continues to use a picture of Corbyn on stage at Glastonbury in 2017 as the main picture on its website, lost deposits in Stockport, Cambridge, Coventry, Salford and Waltham Forest.

It was also a mixed night for Daily Telegraph columnist and Reform cheerleader Allison Pearson, who managed to declare victory for her party on the seats being contested in Essex before a single vote had been counted.

At 11.41pm on election night – at a time when votes wouldn’t have even been validated, let alone tallied – Pearson posted on, inevitably, X that: “Reform takes ALL 14 seats in Basildon. Essex is lost to the Tories. Amazing result.” When one follower queried “Is this confirmed?”, Pearson responded “Yes”.

Alas, when the results were actually counted, Reform had only taken 11 of the seats, with the remaining three remaining true blue.

Share

The cynical campaign to remove Misan Harriman as chair of London’s Southbank Centre continues apace, with both Reform’s Robert Jenrick and, sadly, the chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust now using a distortion of his words in a bid to oust him.

Last week, The New World reported on how the Daily Telegraph, normally a sworn enemy of cancel culture, had attacked Harriman for sharing a view on social media that the Golders Green attack was Islamophobic as well as anti-semitic, since a third victim on the same day was Muslim – which was objectively true.

Harriman had shared a message on X by Ayoub Khan, independent MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, and added the comment: “Wait, so there was a third victim on the same day who was Muslim?! And our press isn’t reporting it? Even the Met Police didn’t mention the Muslim victim in its X post?”

That was enough for the Telegraph to run a report by Craig Simpson, its arts correspondent, attacking Harriman under the headline “Arts Council-funded venue chief shares Golders Green ‘conspiracy’”. Simpson roped in Labour MP David Taylor – a man so low-profile his entire Wikipedia entry runs to 92 words – to say that “the Southbank Centre should consider removing Mr Harriman from the board”.

What the Telegraph had failed to mention in its lengthy report, however, is Harriman’s first response to the Golders Green attack. He co-posted on Instagram, unambiguously: “Our thoughts are with all those affected by the appalling stabbings in Golders Green. Antisemitism has no place in our society and we send our solidarity to the Jewish community. We must unite to stop all racist attacks.”

Now Harriman is facing further calls for his sacking after Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, shared a clip on X of a video of him speaking about Reform’s performance in last week’s elections and accused him of comparing it to the Holocaust.

“This is shocking,” she wrote. “Whatever one’s political view, how on earth could yesterday’s election results ever be comparable to the Holocaust – the mechanised state sponsored murder of six million Jews by Nazis and their collaborators?”

The video, however, originally posted by campaigner Heidi Bachram, was only a selected 57-second excerpt of a wider five-minute 40-second one by Harriman with little context. It was also a direct quote attributed to writer Susan Sontag regarding human behaviour, that “10% of any population is inherently cruel, 10% is inherently merciful, and the remaining 80% can be swayed in either direction”.

Not that that would have any sway on Jenrick, never knowingly not outraged, who used it to demand Harriman’s removal from the Southbank. He posted: “Comparing the millions who voted Reform on Thursday to the Nazis is disgusting. This crass moron should be nowhere near a taxpayer funded organisation.” The comments have been reported gleefully once more in the Telegraph, again by Simpson, under the headline ‘Southbank Centre chief ‘compares Reform victory to Holocaust’’.

Harriman himself has responded on Instagram: “Wow, [Bachram] clipped 57 seconds of the 5m40 sec video I did this morning about building community, and now THIS…

“She then blocks me and allows people to be triggered by her misrepresentation of what I said. Putting myself and my family at risk. I shall be contacting the relevant authorities. This is crazy.”

Harriman, a Nigerian-born British photographer and Oscar-nominated filmmaker, became chair of the Centre – which includes the Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Hayward Gallery – in 2021.

Share

As he celebrated local election gains on Friday, Nigel Farage tried to say as little as possible about the £5m handout he got from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne. But he ended up saying something intriguing about the supposedly no-strings gift.

When Reform’s leader turned up to Havering, where his party had just taken control, he was asked about the donation three times and deflected each query. “We’ll talk about that any other time you like,” he told one reporter, dismissively waving his hand.

When that will be is unclear. He ducked sit-down interviews in the last few days of the local election campaign, including pulling out of the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show at short notice rather than defend himself. Farage did give a brief interview to broadcasters on Tuesday, in which he claimed the extraordinary gift was “purely private”, “wasn’t political in any sense at all” and was purely to pay for his own security, saying “it will ensure I can be safe for the rest of my life.”

But during a tetchy phone interview with LBC’s Nick Ferrari on Friday, Farage said something interesting – that people only knew he had received the biggest-ever single donation in British political history from Thai-based Harborne in the first place because he was hacked.

Farage said: “If you want to have a discussion at some point, Nick, with me about illegally obtained information that shouldn’t be in the public domain, we can talk about it.”

Ferrari then asked, “Was it illegally obtained?” Farage replied: “Oh, yes, as was other things that have happened over the last few weeks – computer hacking, you know it, I’m afraid. But, you know, we can discuss it another time. Right now, we’ll discuss the election.”

The donation was exclusively revealed by the Guardian’s City editor Anna Isaac on Wednesday, April 29. So is Farage accusing Isaac, or her newspaper, of hacking him, or of receiving hacked information? Has he reported this to the police? And has he asked his security team – surely the best that money can buy – how they allowed him to be hacked in the first place?

Alas, the answers to these questions are likely to prove as elusive as the ones to the questions we asked about the donation on April 30, which included: “You have stated that the £5m personal contribution… was for your personal security. Do you plan to disclose top-line expense receipts to show the funds have not been used for any other purpose, including but not confined to your recent £215,000 investment in a cryptocurrency company operated by the former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, or for the £885,000 house in Clacton bought in late 2024 by your partner Laure Ferrari?”

Reform have not replied directly to our questions, though this week the party has insisted that he will not provide any evidence that the £5m is being spent on security and none of it has been used for any other purpose.

Share

Sometimes the cynicism of Britain’s right-wing press astonishes even Rats.

The Daily Telegraph is so incensed by so-called cancel culture that it has its own section on the paper’s website, in which its writers fulminate daily about figures in the public eye being shot down for holding unfashionable views.

In the last few days, Telegraph columnists have worked themselves into a froth over the singer MIA being “kicked off [a] US tour after saying she would vote Republican”, over a choir being dropped from the London Marathon “over founder’s gender-critical views” and even over Kanye West losing a London gig for his effusive praise of Hitler. “Does he deserve forgiveness?” mused columnist James Hall (no).

That campaign against cancel culture doesn’t, however, extend to those whose views the Telegraph disagrees with. Hence, the paper is now campaigning for the removal of the chair of London’s Southbank Centre, Misan Harriman, for sharing a view on social media that the Golders Green attack was Islamophobic as well as anti-semitic, since a third victim on the same day was Muslim. Objectively true.

Harriman, a Nigerian-born British photographer and Oscar-nomiated filmmaker, became chair of the Centre – which includes the Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Hayward Gallery – in 2021.

This week, he shared a message on X by Ayoub Khan, independent MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, and added the comment: “Wait, so there was a third victim on the same day who was Muslim?! And our press isn’t reporting it? Even the Met Police didn’t mention the Muslim victim in its X post?”

That was enough for the Telegraph to run a report by Craig Simpson, its arts correspondent, attacking Harriman under the headline “Arts Council-funded venue chief shares Golders Green ‘conspiracy’”. Simpson roped in Labour MP David Taylor – a man so low-profile his entire Wikipedia entry runs to 92 words – to say that “the Southbank Centre should consider removing Mr Harriman from the board”.

“The Southbank Centre recently received £10m from Arts Council England, which was accused this week by Sir Keir Starmer of funding organisations that promote the work of artists accused of anti-semitism,” wrote Simpson, leading Taylor to helpfully suggest that “in the spirit of the prime minister’s words this week, Arts Council England should reconsider their funding arrangement with the Southbank Centre”.

What the Telegraph failed to mention in its lengthy report, however, is Harriman’s first response to the Golders Green attack. He co-posted on Instagram, unabiguously and alongside an actual Holocaust survivor: “Our thoughts are with all those affected by the appalling stabbings in Golders Green. Antisemitism has no place in our society and we send our solidarity to the Jewish community. We must unite to stop all racist attacks.”

Not that that will stop the Telegraph’s cynical attack on Harriman nor its naked attempt to pile pressure on Starmer’s position on antisemitism. As one headline on the paper’s online cancel culture – also written by Simpson – puts it: “Censorship is suffocating British culture, warns singer Roisin Murphy”.

Incidentally, Harriman is also guilty of another one of the greatest crimes the Telegraph can accuse someone of. It mentions as early as the second paragraph – and then a further couple of times in the article – that Harriman “has a well-documented friendship with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex”. To the Tower with him!

Share

While Britain waits for a leadership challenge to Keir Starmer, the Telegraph’s Allison Pearson has already decided who she doesn’t want as Britain’s next PM.

In the past few days, Pearson – who once liked to call herself “the humble handmaiden of Brexit” – has launched a series of attacks on former Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner. These include calling her “clueless Ange”, “a new low for Britain”, a “grifter” and “a gobby know-nothing in flappy trousers the colour of toilet cleaner”.

Pearson continued her attack on the Telegraph’s misleadingly named Planet Normal podcast, saying “something inside of me died the day Jeremy Corbyn made Angela Rayner, with her nurse NVQ1 qualification, left school pregnant, no other qualifications, he made her the shadow education secretary.”

Something inside of Allison Pearson does indeed appear to have died, but these latest rants will be little surprise to anyone familiar with her obsessive dislike of Rayner. As Labour neared power, she could be found criticising Rayner’s grammar, calling on her and other oikish MPs to “speak standard English” and speculating nastily about how Rayner would look in the union flag dress once worn by Geri Halliwell.

More recently, Pearson has ramped things up, accusing Rayner of being “the ultimate DEI candidate”, “notable for sucking up to her male Muslim constituents”, and accusing of her sporting a “‘Barbie means business’ haircut and a power blow-dry to distract from the lack of grey matter beneath the Titian mane”.

What lies behind this unpleasantness? Perhaps Pearson, said to have become estranged from her Telegraph bosses in recent months, thinks this kind of name-calling will win them over. Perhaps she thinks it will get her a big-money move to the Daily Mail, where condescending meanness means big money.

Or perhaps she has been triggered by memories of her unhappy schooldays. In a column riddled with sneering snobbery, Pearson told Telegraph readers that she considered Rayner typical of a class of working class “Angelas” who “sit in the back row of the class putting on make-up, doing their nails and chatting loudly, throughout readings from the set book, about who they’ve sh—ed. They disdain the teachers who are rather scared of them.”

She continued: “Angelas have sex by the age of 13 (they mock those of us who are saving our virginity for later). Pregnant at 16, they leave school without any qualifications and work behind the till in Mac Fisheries before embarking on a romantic life which features at least two injunctions and a restraining order. By the age of 37, they are grandmothers (as Rayner was).”

Meanwhile, if you are wondering about what kind of woman Allison Pearson considers a role model, here’s a tweet from last September:

“Lucy Connolly is not a racist. She is a far better mother and human being than Angela Rayner.”

Share

As Labour prepares for a local election drubbing, Kemi Badenoch has demanded a general election if the results end in Keir Starmer being replaced as prime minister.

With her usual grace, the Tory leader told the Telegraph that the possible challengers – Angela Rayner, Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting were “just left wingery in a different outfit, with red hair, or with a cheesy grin, or just weirdness. But it’s still the same left wingery.”

She said that none of them would have a mandate to govern if they replaced Starmer as prime minister and added: “I think the public should have their chance to have a say on what it is they want.”

Badenoch became an MP in June 2017, at the snap general election that nearly cost Theresa May her job as PM. When May was forced out on May 24, 2019, Badenoch did not call for a general election and supported Michael Gove to become Tory leader and thus prime minister. He failed to make the final two, eliminated on the fifth ballot, after which Boris Johnson beat Jeremy Hunt for the leadership. Badenoch was rewarded with a series of roles, including finally as minister of state for levelling up.

When Johnson was forced out on July 7, 2022, Badenoch did not call for a general election. He announced her own candidacy and ran on a platform that included pledges on postponing net zero targets, on reducing the size of the state and on “telling the truth”, but said nothing about calling an immediate general election. She failed to make the final two, eliminated on the fourth ballot, after which Liz Truss beat Rishi Sunak for the leadership. Badenoch was rewarded by being named secretary of state for international trade.

When Truss was forced out on October 20, 2022, Badenoch did not call for a general election. She endorsed Rishi Sunak for the leadership, calling him “the serious, honest leader we need”. Badenoch was rewarded by being retained as secretary of state for international trade, later becoming secretary of state at the new Department of Business and Trade.

At no point – when there was a job in it for her – did Kemi Badenoch claim that a new Tory prime minister would have no mandate to continue and that a general election was the only solution. Now she has changed her mind. That looks like complete hypocrisy.

Share

As Wales goes to the polls today in the most consequential election in the Senedd’s history, Reform has taken out a three-page ad in an influential local newspaper – urging those in Mid Wales to vote for the party in London.

Nigel Farage’s party placed a huge advert in the Powys County Times, which covers a large chunk of central Wales, attacking Keir Starmer and the English capital’s mayor Sadiq Khan and encouraging its readers to “vote Reform UK in the London elections on 7th May”.

In a signed letter by Farage, the leader writes that: “London needs Reform. It is one of the world’s great capitals. Yet these days Sadiq Khan’s London often feels lawless and unrecognisable to Londoners who can no longer afford to live in their own city.

“If London and Britain are to move forward, it will only happen if people come together behind one movement that can actually deliver change. That movement is Reform UK.”

The letter vows that, if elected, Reform would “stop illegal immigration” and remove VAT on domestic energy bills – neither of which the Welsh Government has any power to do, and neither do the London councils for which Farage’s missive was presumably intended for.

“Now we are standing candidates for elections all over London on 7th May,” Farage goes on to tell his Mid Wales readers. “We cannot do this without you. And London will only get the change it needs if you vote Reform UK on 7th May.”

In a total of 478 words, Farage mentions the words ‘London’ or ‘Londoners’ no fewer than seven times. The word ‘Wales’ is not mentioned once. The third page of the ad is dominated by a large picture of Farage with the words ‘Vote Reform UK in London on May 7th’. The party’s leader in Wales Dan Thomas – ironically the Conservative leader of a North London council until relatively recently – does not feature.

How many Powys County Times readers will be voting Reform in London today? Given that they’d have to sell up, find somewhere to live in the English capital and register themselves to vote with their new local authority all by 10pm, probably not too many.

Share

The most silent partner at the top of British politics has finally spoken publicly – but Laure Ferrari has only managed to cloud even further how she managed to cough up £885,000 for the house in his constituency that Nigel Farage ostensibly calls home.

The Reform leader claimed with no little fanfare last year to have bought a house in Clacton, hoping it would end criticism that he spent little time in the Essex town. Farage said he had exchanged contracts to buy the house in November 2024, four months after being elected.

But the following year it emerged that the detached property in the neighbouring town of Frinton-on-Sea was actually solely bought by Ferrari, his partner of some years, prompting questions over whether it had been bought in her name in a way that allowed Farage legally to avoid higher-rate stamp duty on the purchase of an additional residential house. He already owns a number of other properties.

He suggested that she was able to afford to buy the four-bedroom home, which was bought without a mortgage, because she comes from a wealthy family. But last autumn, the BBC probed French property and company records and was unable to find evidence that Ferrari’s parents had the means to give their daughter a significant contribution towards the purchase of the home.

Her retired father owned a transport company which showed a deficit on its books at the time it was dissolved in 2020, while the apartment he owns with his wife in the suburbs of Strasbourg is estimated to be worth only around €300,000.

Now Ferrari herself, who ordinarily shuns the limelight, has given a rare interview to France’s Le Monde newspaper, refusing to confirm how she paid for the house – which came with four bedrooms and a heated swimming pool – and adding gnomically: “There’s more than one way to pay for a house”.

Le Monde reports that Ferrari “dodged the question” of “Did she buy her property thanks to a family inheritance?”

“Yes and no, that would be a very large inheritance… there’s more than one way to pay for a house,” she told the paper, which says she “just barely made it clear that the money did not necessarily come from her parents”.

“I can’t say how much my grandmother gave, that’s my business,” Ferrari continued. “The main thing is that I paid all the taxes, there was no tax evasion, and the house is in my name.”

Once again, Farage’s finances are as clear as mud. Will the mainstream media, which has studiously ignored the £5 million donation handed personally to the Reform leader by a Thailand-based crypto investor, probe further?

Meanwhile, back in the Clacton constituency office in which Le Monde interviewed Ferrari, it is “empty except for a few Reform UK-branded products”, according to the paper, and “appeared not to have been used for weeks”.

Share

Just a day before voters in parts of Yorkshire go to the polls in local elections in which Reform hopes to make big gains, the party’s deputy leader has chosen to get involved in an unseemly online spat with the editor of the White Rose County’s self-styled “national newspaper”.

Terminally online Richard Tice took umbrage with the Yorkshire Post’s coverage of one of his candidates for Sheffield City Council. Nathaniel Menday made it to the heady heights to 14th in the New World’s list of the 40 worst Reform candidates after posting a photo of Berlin’s Nazi-era Olympiastadion with the comment “Whichever group of people built this must have been real visionaries!” He has also described himself as an “ethno-nationalist”.

In an interview with the Post, Tice defended Menday, who has faced calls from opposition parties to be sacked. “If people are elected, they’ll all be looked at by the team, and decisions will be made. We do that, as do the other parties, and that’s just the facts of life if you’ve got 4,900 candidates. We’re all human. Many of these people are standing for the first time,” he said.

“They’re passionate about trying to improve things. Have many people in their private lives occasionally sworn, thought something dark, said something dark? Yes, we’re all human.”

Following the publication of the article by Westminster correspondent Ralph Blackburn, which appeared under the headline ‘“We’re all human”: Richard Tice responds to Reform Sheffield candidate accused of praising Nazis’, Tice took to, inevitably, X to object to the verbatim reporting of his views as “libellous”.

“Pathetic misleading twaddle from journalist Blackburn who has deliberately held back our interview from last Tuesday to try to cause political damage to Reform ahead of local elections on Thursday,” he wrote.

“He and rest [sic] of Establishment media will be given short shrift by voters this week who will vote Reform in their millions. Voters are sick of this smearing sneering libellous nonsense.”

That earned a rebuke from the paper’s editor, James Mitchinson, who wrote in response: “Mr Tice. The Yorkshire Post is far more trusted than you are. Not least because it has told the truth since 1754. Please don’t pull the Trump card on us. It’s pathetic. It’s pointless. It’s weak. My team is giving you a fair audience with DSA [Disabled Students’ Allowance]. You should do better with this one.”

“Mr Mitchinson,” replied Tice. “Your journalist has behaved very poorly on this and well you know it.

“He has mixed and matched words to make a fake news story. Effectively doing a BBC Trump on me. He has then held the false story to try to do electoral harm. It does your longstanding newspaper no credit to behave in this way.”

If so, then the Post can expect a libel suit from Tice in the post very soon. Or perhaps not – lawyers at the Sunday Times are still awaiting the one he has very loudly threatened against them after three separate reports about his failure to pay taxes relating to his business interests.

Another Taco – Tice Always Chickens Out – possibly?

Share

Chris Philp, the perma-furious shadow home secretary, is once again up in arms over news that, amid rising concerns over anti-semitism, the chief of the Metropolitan Police had made recommendations for tackling extremism which were never implemented.

As the Met investigates a suspected arson attempt at a former synagogue, it emerged that a report by commissioner Mark Rowley and Sara Khan of the Commission for Countering Extremism examining the inadequacy of existing legislation in relation to hateful extremism had been lying apparently unopened on the government’s desk.

The report, Operating with Impunity – Hateful extremism: The need for a legal framework, demonstrated how many extremists were able to operate lawfully due to a lack of legislation designed to capture the specific activity of hateful extremism.

“Over the decades, Britain has built a robust legal and operational counter terrorism machinery which has continually evolved in response to the changing terrorist threat. The same is certainly not the case for hateful extremism. The current situation is simply untenable,” said Rowley.

“That is why Sara and I are convinced that it is now critical for government to devise a new legal and operational framework to counter hateful extremism to strengthen our response, both online and offline. We are at a watershed moment and action is required urgently.”

This has prompted Philp, never one to duck an opportunity to get a headline, to go in studs up on Keir Starmer for not doing enough to tackle the problem.

“How many antisemitic attacks do there need to be for Keir Starmer to wake up and listen to the threat Britain faces?” he fumed.

“Jewish families are living in fear, Jewish buildings are burning, and this prime minister responds with the same tired words every single time.”

Perhaps Philp should ask the man who might have been expected to implement the Rowley review more closely to the time it appeared. The report was published in February 2021, when the Conservatives were in power, and between October 2022 and July 2024, the policing minister, who appeared to make no attempt to implement its conclusions, was one Chris Philp.

Share

Spring is in the air, and the parties are gearing up for the local elections by setting out policies for how to make Britain a more thriving, successful, optimistic and forward-looking nation.

Reform’s vision for a better Britain was announced over the Bank Holiday weekend by the party’s head of policy Zia Yusuf. The proposal? A string of new “detention centres” built across Britain to house “illegal migrants”.

“Reform will need to detain tens of thousands at a time,” Yusuf posted on, inevitably, X. “Migrants will not be allowed to leave these detention centres, and each will be held there a couple of weeks before being deported.”

And if the promise of a new gulag wasn’t enough, Yusuf added a kicker. “A Reform government will not put any detention facilities in any constituency with a Reform MP.

“We will prioritise Green controlled parliamentary constituencies and Green controlled councils to locate the detention centres.

“If you vote in a Reform council or a Reform MP, we guarantee you won’t have a detention centre near you. If you vote Green, you will.”

But the idea of punishing people who don’t vote for you immediately runs into the problem of not being entirely legal. The former Tory minister Simon Clarke, who now runs a right wing think tank, said: “It would almost certainly be deemed an abuse of ministerial power for political purposes, and as such would likely be stuck down in court before ever being implemented, wasting millions for the taxpayer without detaining anyone.”

Yusuf has argued that a Reform government would get round this by passing the not-at-all sinister sounding “Mass Deportation Detention Act”, and that this new legislation would also list where new detention centres would be built. Writing in the Telegraph, Yusuf wrote: “We will create a new agency, UK Deportation Command, and rapidly build detention capacity for up to 24,000 illegal entrants at a time.”

People who vote Green, he wrote, “run the risk of an open borders communist dystopia, overrun by class A drugs like heroin.

“Given the endless signalling from Zack Polanski that he wants no border enforcement at all,” he continued, “I look forward to his hearty applause for this policy.”

Does Yusuf really think that building a rash of internment camps for immigrants, creating a “UK Deportation Command” and introducing a “Mass Deportation Detention Act” will be welcomed by people who want open borders?

It was obviously a none-too-subtle piece of signalling ahead of the local elections, and gives a very clear sign of who Reform now see as their biggest electoral problem.

But it also called to mind other controversial election messages of years gone by. As one online commenter remarked, “it’s a shame ‘neighbour’ doesn’t rhyme with Green.”

Share