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The Chagos Islands deal is uniquely terrible
Last year, a Mauritian politician raised eyebrows in Britain when he told a political rally that ‘England has agreed to pay us a compensation’ to the tune of ‘many billions of rupees’ as part of the deal to hand over the Chagos islands to Mauritius. Still, a billion Mauritian rupees only converts to around £17 million, so observers were none the wiser about the financial provisions of the still-secret agreement between the two countries.
If the deal goes through, Britain will be paying a king’s ransom to give away sovereign territory to a foreign power with no rightful claim to it
Now we know that ‘many billions of rupees’ also means ‘many billions of pounds’. This week, it was reported that the 99-year lease for Diego Garcia, which hosts the world’s most important military base, will cost Britain £9 billion, or almost a fifth of the annual defence budget. Mauritius, faced with a large budget deficit, has torn up the original agreement, concluded under a previous government, in order to ask for more money. Instead of using the opportunity to walk away from the negotiations, the Foreign Office is now offering to front-load the payments.
The £9 billion figure, it should also be said, does not include a separate aid package to Mauritius, which was announced in conjunction with the Chagos agreement.
It would be one thing if the £9 billion in Danegeld brought significant advantages to Britain. But there is nothing of the sort. As we make clear in a new report for Policy Exchange, and contrary to the public insinuations of some ministers, Britain is under no legal obligation whatsoever to give the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, whose government happily sold them to Britain in the 1960s. If the deal goes through, Britain will be paying a king’s ransom to give away sovereign territory to a foreign power with no rightful claim to it.
In fact, even setting aside the money, the deal leaves Britain far worse off. The £9 billion only covers a lease for Diego Garcia, where the US/UK base is located, but not the other islands, which would be immediately handed over to Mauritius. And while 99 years seems like a long time, history is littered with examples of countries reneging on promises solemnly entered into (a Mauritian minister has already said that the lease, which has an option for renewal, is too long). In any case, it is highly likely that the base will remain strategically crucial a century from now, so that the deal kicks the can down the road at best.
By claiming the Chagos islands, Mauritius is breaking the binding agreement it concluded with the United Kingdom in 1965 to allow the islands to remain British. In recent years, China has been assiduously courting Mauritius: all it takes is one election for a government hostile to Britain’s interests to assume power and tear up the 99-year lease. Then what?
Whitehall has defended the deal, whose details it still refuses to divulge, by claiming that it has the support of the United States, by far the most important user of the base on Diego Garcia. Setting aside the private reservations reportedly expressed by Biden administration officials, in less than two weeks there will be a new government in town.
Several of its leading lights, including Marco Rubio, the next Secretary of State, have already come out against the handover deal. Sir Keir Starmer’s government has been recently trying to build links with the Trump administration: but by reportedly trying to rush the deal through right before the presidential inauguration it risks alienating the new president on day one.
And there are the interests of the Chagossians, whom Britain treated disgracefully by expelling them from their homelands. Chagossians, many of whom are British nationals, are opposed to the deal almost to the last man and woman. Some of them have even braved arrest – denying Mauritius’ ‘sovereignty’ is punishable by ten years’ imprisonment – to protest against the deal. The fact that Foreign Office ministers have consistently refused to meet with Chagossian groups to discuss the deal is evidence that, deep down, they know that what they are trying to do is indefensible.
Whether you agree with them or not, most major political decisions are defensible in one way or another. The Chagos deal is different: there is no way in which it can be justified, whether it be in terms of national interest or morality. The British government would do well to use Mauritius’ rejection of the financial provisions to walk away from a deal which, if passed, would represent a low point in the history of British foreign policy.
Starmer’s grooming gang stance might not last the weekend
From the start of Elon Musk’s onslaught, Sir Keir Starmer’s position in refusing a new national inquiry into the grooming and rape of girls across England has looked fragile. This weekend that position – and Labour’s parliamentary discipline – will be tested further. That’s because Labour are now away from the Commons, back among their voters.
Labour MPs who find themselves being harangued by angry voters might not be keen to stand up for the PM
One of the defining features of the new intake of Labour MPs is their localism. Most were selected by constituency Labour parties demanding total commitment to the local area and, where possible, a personal connection to the patch. Quite a few of the new intake can say they were brought up in or near the places they represent.
All of them have been elected in a climate that demands MPs act as tribunes of local opinion, responsive to the voters’ whims and preferences. “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays you instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion,” Edmund Burke said about MPs. He would not approve of today’s generation of representatives. But as pragmatic parliamentarians like to point out, Burke lost his seat after that speech.
Some Labour veterans worry that their younger colleagues have promised constituents too much of their time, with surgeries every week and coffee mornings every month, on top of the huge and relentless electronic mailbag. This desire to please and to be seen serving the local population means that starting today, many MPs will be back in their constituencies, meeting voters. If the row about a new grooming inquiry has reached broad public opinion, then those MPs will start hearing directly how unhappy some of their voters are about the Prime Minister’s line on that inquiry.
Tony Benn divided politicians into weathervanes and signposts; quite a lot of politicians today take pride in being weathervanes, moving with the prevailing winds.
If you want an early sign of how public opinion is moving Labour people, note Andy Burnham coming out for an inquiry, a move that will remind the PM of how much he dislikes the Mayor of Manchester, and remind the rest of us that Burnham doesn’t believe his political career will end in Manchester .
In the first six months of this government, Labour MPs showed a fair amount of discipline, especially over complaints about the (justifiable, in my mind) decision to reform winter fuel payments. But that was in the first, sunny months of a new administration. Now it’s January and cold and dark. The polls are grim and financial markets are restive. The seeds of doubt about Starmer and his Chancellor are starting to sprout. Reform is looking healthy and even the Tories are looking a bit less glum.
Overall, Labour MPs who this weekend find themselves being harangued by angry voters wanting to know why they opposed an inquiry into rape and sexual abuse might not be feeling wildly keen to stand up for the PM and his position.
My money is on the PM folding and agreeing to some sort of new inquiry. In many ways, it’s curious that he has resisted. Such an inquiry is likely to show that his own record on the issue as Director of Public Prosecutions is pretty good – while also noting that, for much of the timeframe involved, the government was led by a succession of Conservative PMs who did not order a full investigation. Take that charmless quote from Boris Johnson: “£60m I saw was being spaffed up a wall on some investigation into historic child abuse and all this kind of thing.”
If Starmer does change course and order that inquiry, it won’t, directly, be because of things people write online. It will be because of the conversations his MPs have in their constituencies this weekend.
Isabel Hardman, Natasha Feroze and campaigner Raja Miah discuss the prospect of a public inquiry on the latest Coffee House Shots podcast:
Does the UK have more mandarins than communist China?
Mr Steerpike was interested to read over the Christmas break that young people are currently flocking to join China’s civil service, attracted by the job stability it offers compared to the volatile private sector, and seeking to escape the country’s relatively high youth unemployment.
According to the Reuters piece, the civil service is still seen by young people as an ‘iron rice bowl’, or job for life. Readers may be reminded of our own ‘Rolls-Royce’ civil service, where even the most incompetent bureaucrats are shuffled between departments rather than ever fired – the ‘iron hot desk’, perhaps.
But Mr S was struck by one part of the Reuters piece in particular: that despite long-standing calls for Beijing to reduce the size of its ‘bloated’ state sector, the civil service has grown from 6.9 million in 2010 to 8 million today.
Eight million is a large number – roughly the population of London, for example. But China also has a huge population – and the UK’s own civil service has itself grown dramatically over the years. Mr S had to wonder: could it be that on a per capita basis the UK has more civil servants than communist China?
Let’s take China first. Making an estimate of China’s civil service is notoriously difficult, with various national statistics combining different bureaucracies and private and public sector workers. The Communist Party of China doesn’t have form when it comes to government transparency. If we take the Reuters figure at face value though, and combine it with China’s population of 1.42 billion, that works out as 0.56 per cent of the Chinese population working as a civil servant.
Now for the UK. According to the Cabinet Office, there are currently 542,840 civil servants in the UK, doing the job of 510,125 full-time equivalent staff. That headcount has risen steadily since 2016 – ostensibly because of Brexit and the pandemic. Notably the numbers have not fallen since the end of these two events.
Taking into account the UK’s population, we can see that per capita employment has risen so that 0.81 per cent of the UK population now works as a civil servant:
In other words, on a per capita basis it appears that the UK does have more civil servants than communist China.
Good news comrades, it seems that tractor production in the Great State of Britain is set to be up for many more years to come…
China hawks could cause a fresh headache for Labour
It used to be said that parties were Eurosceptic in opposition but Europhile in government. The same might be true of China too. Under Keir Starmer’s leadership, Labour initially adopted a Sinosceptic stance, calling out the Hong Kong crackdown and backing calls to formally recognise China’s treatment of the Uyghurs as genocide. Yet in office, they have abandoned such postures and instead sent various ministers out to East to tout for trade and promises of friendship. How’s that working out eh?
The latest to go cap in hand is Rachel Reeves, in her never-ending quest for growth. But at home, China hawks are not prepared to make life easy for her colleagues. For the House of Lords is currently debating Labour’s flagship bill on Great British Energy. The – rather slim – piece of legislation will shortly go ahead to Report Stage, with Sinosceptics keen to ensure that the UK does not become complicit in the Chinese Communist Party’s abuses in Xinjiang.
A quartet of well-respected peers – Lord Alton, Baroness Kennedy, Lord Blencathra and the Lord Bishop of St Albans – have tabled an amendment on ‘products in Products in Great British Energy supply chains manufactured in China.’ If passed, it would mean that the new state-run energy company would have to ‘ensure that any products in its supply chains which have been manufactured in China carry a warning that they have been made in a state accused of genocide and potentially culpable of using slave labour.’ One supporter told Mr S:
This amendment is a chance for ministers to put their money where their mouth is when it comes to slave-made solar. The UK’s modern slavery commitments will mean nothing if the rush to Net Zero is only achieved on the back of Uyghur forced labour.
Given the Lords’ record on human rights, the amendment stands a good chance of getting the peers backing. Might another Commons clash on a difficult amendment now be looming?
In defence of prejudice
There’s always something that seems clinically compelling about a claim that we need yet more equality laws. Mary Prior KC, chair of the Criminal Bar Association and a proud working-class Potteries girl, has demanded that regional accents and social deprivation should be legally protected characteristics. At first sight it’s difficult to argue with the icy logic. If it’s unfair to do someone down because they’re female, or Catholic, or black, it can’t be all right for a lah-di-dah appointments committee in SW1 to prefer Serena to Sharon, or Simon from Surbiton over Steve from Sunderland. Or can it?
Some will gravitate to certain jobs, some to others. So what?
It’s actually much less obvious than it seems that discrimination must be banned if it can’t be rigidly justified in the kind of clinical argument that used to be held in university tutors’ rooms. Put bluntly, once we start looking at matters from the point of view of the man on the Clapham overground, or the woman standing at the SW1 water-cooler, it becomes clearer and clearer that prejudices have their place and that letting them operate might even have its upsides.
On a practical level, this seems obvious. For one thing, always remember that equality has to cut both ways. Patrician employers showing partiality for well-spoken southerners over down to earth but grating Liverpudlians are easy to attack. But what about the genial Yorkshireman in London telling an applicant from Harrogate that it’s good to hear a Yorkshire accent down south? Do we really want to ban all such references on the basis that that might open the way to the company being sued by a south Londoner who also applied for the same job?
There’s a related point, too. Offices work better if there is a wide-ranging and fairly uninhibited conversational buzz around the coffee machine. The trouble is that every extension of the list of protected characteristics risks undermining this. Already, conversation about such matters as race or religion have to be carefully stilted, and that’s before you start with the legal minefield represented by acts alleged to amount to sexual harassment. Adding social status and regional accents to the already-long list of legally protected characteristics is likely to do little more than make office conversation even more awkward and encourage the promotion of the grievances of the over-sensitive.
We must also not forget that extensions of discrimination law can be costly. Equality law is a major contributor to ballooning HR bureaucracies, existing not so much to promote a business as to create paper-trails with a view to preventing it getting sued. HR already consumes too much of Britons’ efforts: we do not want to have it consume more.
The more extensions we add to the maze of well-intentioned equality law, the more we will incentivise appointments that are safe rather than inspired. Suppose an experienced committee has a strong instinct that Simon would be more useful around the office than Steve from Sunderland, but is told by HR that it will be difficult to persuade Steve that his Geordie accent was not an issue. Do we want to incentivise the appointment of the duller but safer applicant?
Of course, you could say – and perhaps Mary Prior might – that economic practicalities should not deflect us from doing what is morally required. But even the moral case itself is by no means as clear-cut as it looks.
Unless you take the dour hard-line view that no employer should ever be allowed to take into account matters not strictly relevant to an employee’s ability to do the job – a sort of universal prohibition on discrimination on any ground whatever – it sounds all very well to insist that someone with, say, a Glasgow accent should have any kind of moral claim to be allowed to work in a patrician London office on an equal basis, with someone equipped with what used to be referred to as cut-glass BBC. But this prompts a simple question: why?
The answer is, to say the least, far from clear. Some might say that it is self-evident that institutions should reflect the societies they serve, and thus somehow include a proportionate number of working-class people, northerners, or whatever. But is it so obvious at all? One would have thought that the object of, say, a profession or trade was to provide a service, rather than to act as some sort of proportional simulacrum of society as a whole: if society being as messy and organic as it normally is, some will gravitate to certain jobs, some to others. So what?
The English legal profession has always been a little too dedicated to dry logic for most people’s taste. It’s not surprising that this oh-so-worthy idea for yet more equality-based restrictions on what we are allowed to do and say appeals to it. But, for the rest of us, who are happy to let society run organically rather than on the basis of abstract ideas, it shouldn’t be too difficult to see why we should be happy with the status quo.
Could Elon Musk really oust Keir Starmer?
Another day, another story that risks further exacerbating tensions between the world’s richest man and the prime minister. The Mirror reports that Elon Musk’s posts on X (the platform he owns) are being monitored by the Home Office’s counter-extremism unit as part of an increased effort to assess the risk posed to Britain by tweets sent from those with large followings. The news will go down like a cup of cold sick with Musk who has long railed against the UK government over censorship. It’s just another indicator of how the strained relationship between Keir Starmer and Musk is unlikely to improve anytime soon. But are things so bad that Musk will try to force Starmer out of No. 10 ahead of the next election?
Musk is doing plenty to make life harder for Starmer
This is the claim in the Financial Times which reports that Musk has ‘privately discussed with allies how Sir Keir Starmer could be removed as UK prime minister before the next general election’. The paper quotes an ally of Musk explaining his rationale: ‘His view is that western civilisation itself is threatened’. As I write in this week’s politics column, Musk may be dabbling in politics across the continent (last night he hosted an ‘in conversation’ with the leader of Germany’s AfD party) but he has a particular focus on the UK. Musk – whose grandmother was British – sees the UK as the Athens to America’s Rome. What’s more, the idea that Musk would like Starmer out isn’t really a secret: he tweets sentiments to this effect on a regular basis. Just this week, he called on Starmer to resign, said there should be an early election and even ran a poll on whether ‘America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government’ (The answer? Yes: 58 per cent. No: 42 per cent). So it has been clear for some time that Musk would like Starmer out of No. 10 as soon as possible.
But does he have the power to make it happen? One route to destabilising the current government would be to fund a rival party. So it’s no coincidence that Musk has been mulling a big money donation to the Reform party with Nigel Farage and his new Reform treasurer Nick Candy visiting the tech billionaire at Mar-A-Lago just before Christmas. However, this seems uncertain after Musk turned on Farage last weekend, suggesting the Reform leader did not have what it takes to lead his party after Farage distanced his party from Tommy Robinson, the jailed activist. A donation to Reform could still happen, with Reform party sources keen to downplay the scale of the fallout (Farage will soon be back in Trump world for the inauguration on 20 January). Musk could also look to fund the Conservative party; it’s not gone unnoticed that he has been tweeting more approvingly of Tory leader Kemi Badenoch this week. Or he could even look for an entirely new party: Dominic Cummings, for example, has been talking about forming ‘the start-up party’ for some time to reset British politics.
In the meantime, Musk is doing plenty through his platform to make life harder for Starmer, as the focus on grooming gangs this week shows. The issue returned to the top of the news agenda as a direct result of Musk’s tweets and Starmer’s initial response to rule out a new government inquiry may not hold. Even some of his own side – such as the Labour metro mayor Andy Burnham – are backing calls for a limited inquiry into grooming gangs. It’s unlikely to be the last issue in UK politics that Musk gets involved in. What’s more, Musk is significant enough in his own right – through his business career, wealth and X ownership – that even if he eventually falls out with Donald Trump (as many in Labour secretly hope), he’ll still be hard to ignore or dismiss. It means that while Musk may fall short in any plan to oust Starmer prematurely, he can certainly make his time in office much harder.
Listen to more analysis from Katy Balls on Coffee House Shots, The Spectator’s daily politics podcast:
Will Rachel Reeves have to go back on her word?
Elon Musk may have moved political focus in the UK to the grooming gangs scandal, but there is another issue causing alarm in the upper echelons of government this week: the economy. With every day that passes, Britain’s financial situation appears to be deteriorating. On Tuesday, a £2 billion auction of 30-year UK government debt sold at an interest rate of 5.198 per cent, which outpaced increases for other governments’ bonds. Ten-year borrowing costs have since surged to their highest level since the 2008 financial crisis, and as of today the pound continues to fall. On Wednesday, the Treasury put out a quote which has been seen as an attempt to calm the markets:
No one should be under any doubt that meeting the fiscal rules is non-negotiable and the government will have an iron grip on the public finances.
The Treasury spokesman added that Reeves would ‘leave no stone unturned in her determination to deliver economic growth and fight for working people’. Treasury sources are keen to downplay the idea that there is any panic on No. 11, or the idea that this is similar to the bond market response after Liz Truss’s mini-budget. Instead, they say they were responding to a query on whether the borrowing cost changes could impact Reeves’s headroom.
But if the rise in borrowing continues then Reeves faces a series of unappetising options. A sustained rise in servicing UK debt could wipe out Reeves’s headroom and see her break her own fiscal rules. In March, the Chancellor is due to present her ‘spring forecast’. Reeves previously suggested that the event on 26 March would not include any tax or spending changes as these will be saved for the autumn Budget each year. Yet if the OBR verdict for the spring forecast was a problem, the chancellor would be expected to take action to improve the situation.
One thing making the markets jittery is the return of Donald Trump
The Treasury response on Wednesday is being read as a sign that Reeves will opt for spending cuts if her headroom goes and she needs to meet her fiscal rules through other means. This would of course be very unpopular with the Labour parliamentary party – already ministers are complaining about tight budgets. If higher borrowing eats up Reeves’s headroom, the spending review – due by early summer – will become more painful.
As expected, the opposition parties have been quick to go on the attack. Kemi Badenoch has called on Reeves to address parliament before she heads off to China on a charm offensive seeking closer economic ties. The shadow chancellor Mel Stride says ‘Labour’s decision to rack up higher debts is making it more expensive for the government to borrow’. In her first Budget as Chancellor, Reeves changed the borrowing rules on capital spending, meaning the UK government is expected to borrow £142 billion more over the next five years than they would have otherwise.
One of the factors making the markets jittery is the return of Donald Trump and what it could mean for the global economy. Even if Starmer and Reeves managed to avoid tariffs (this is no given), they face a headache on defence. As I write in this week’s politics column, Trump has said that he expects Nato members to up their spending to 5 per cent of GDP. ‘That means the realistic amount is 3 per cent at least,’ says a former defence secretary. ‘By the next Nato summit, with Trump there, it will be the main focus – and that is a nightmare for Rachel Reeves.’ As the new year gets underway, there is little for Reeves to feel positive about. Her best hope is that the bond market response will pass – and fast.
Reeves is expected to give more speeches and speak publicly in the coming weeks and months as she seeks to assure the markets and public that the government has a plan for growth. The Chancellor said after the October Budget that she would not go back with a begging bowl asking for more tax rises en masse. Unless something changes, Reeves could be forced back on her word.
Katy Balls, Kate Andrews and James Heale unpack the challenges facing Rachel Reeves in the latest Coffee House Shots podcast:
Why we should admire Mick Lynch
Rail union leader Mick Lynch has announced his retirement. No doubt there will be plenty who will breathe a sigh of relief, be it the politicians and hapless interviewers he has skewered on live television, to the passengers whose commutes were disrupted by the RMT’s strikes.
Pugnacious in both appearance and attitude, he is a stereotypical leftie from the days of I’m All Right Jack. He once told an interviewer that ‘all I want from life is a bit of socialism’. His views range from the predictable pro-Palestinian stance to strongly supporting Brexit.
Yet, to his members, his firebrand speeches and no-nonsense approach to those who opposed him was seen as key to the eventual pay deal he won. More than that, it highlighted the workers’ struggle to the public in general, and garnered far more support than it would have done without him.
His approach was the subject of a piece I did for The Spectator a couple of years ago, though reactions to it ranged from praise in unlikely quarters to accusations of being a Marxist.
My point then, as now, is that Lynch will be remembered for far more than as an old-fashioned left winger, in the mould of Arthur Scargill or Hugh Scanlon. He does share their politics, but he is someone who can articulate the demands of his members and argue with logic, humour and even reason on the public stage.
He batted away the more ridiculous questioning from daytime TV presenters in a way that endeared him to the public – ‘what a load of twaddle’, he told Richard Madeley, for instance, when asked if he was a Marxist. ‘I’m not the grinch’, he replied when accused of ‘stealing Christmas’ with potential strikes. When Piers Morgan asked him if he saw himself as the villainous ‘The Hood’ from Thunderbirds (because they look similar), Lynch calmly replied: ‘Thunderbirds isn’t real, Piers.’
He was possibly the only union leader that a straw poll of the general public would be able to name, though perhaps that says more about the overall state of trade unions in Britain today than it does about him.
Many started to agree with him. A poll taken during the industrial action found just 18 per cent were opposed to the railway workers’ right to strike. Without Lynch, that figure would probably have been a lot higher.
Aged 63 but looking a few years older, Lynch admits that being a white, bald male is exactly what people expect a union leader to look like. After all, one of his predecessors, Bob Crow, looked remarkably similar.
Lynch is taking early retirement, perhaps conscious of Crow’s untimely death at just 52. He’s been with the union for 30 years but, unlike so many careerist general secretaries, his journey was not via university and union researcher roles. He was ‘on the tools’ for 37 years as an electrician and didn’t become an officer with the RMT until he was 54. Nor has he been on a trade union course, he claims, though my bet is that someone, somewhere, has given him some useful media training tips.
Lynch will be remembered for far more than as an old-fashioned left winger
However, for all that he achieved for his members, it is unlikely to have a far-reaching effect on raising the working class to repeat the kind of industrial chaos seen in the 1970s and 1980s. There are no instantly recognisable union firebrands ready to step into the Lynch-sized hole in what TUC staffers used to sarcastically refer to as ‘THIGMOO’ – standing for This Great Movement Of Ours, a phrase trotted out on a regular basis.
For those of us who used to cover industry when papers had industrial correspondents, Lynch’s rise to prominence was a nostalgic bit of fun, a reminder of the days of pay disputes and negotiations, table-thumping, picket lines and fiery rhetoric.
Ultimately, though, Lynch will retire without achieving any of the bigger change he really wanted. There will be no overthrow of the ruling classes, no fairer distribution of wealth filtering down from the very rich to the very poor, no nationalisation of all privatised utilities or no end of zero hours contracts and non-unionised workplaces.
Mick Lynch did well to get a decent pay rise for his members, and they will remember him fondly for that. It would be easy to focus only on his politics, but that wasn’t everything. Of course he wants a socialist state. And I want Spurs to win the league. Neither of us are going to get what we want.
When will Britain wake up to the Islamist threat?
A poll this week in France found that 78 per cent of respondents are in favour of proscribing the wearing of Muslim headscarves at universities and also for classroom helpers on school outings.
The poll was conducted after comments by the Interior Minister, Bruno Retailleau, in a newspaper interview. ‘Helpers [on school trips] don’t have to wear headscarves,’ he said. ‘The headscarf is not just a piece of cloth: it’s a banner for Islamism, and a statement of women’s inferiority in relation to men.’ In the same interview, Retailleau promised to stem immigration into France because it ‘is partly linked to Islamism’.
Retailleau’s remarks underline the huge gulf that separates the governments of France and Britain in regard to their attitude towards political Islam.
This divide is not a new phenomenon. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the French intelligence service nicknamed the British capital as ‘Londonistan’ because successive governments allowed Islamic extremists from around the world to set up home and proselytise with impunity. The most notorious was the Egyptian cleric, Abu Hamza, who for years spewed his hatred of the West from the Finsbury Park Mosque until, in 2004, he was extradited across the Pond at the insistence of the Americans.
Bruno Retailleau’s predecessor at the Interior Ministry was Gerald Darmanin, who in a debate with Marine Le Pen in 2021 accused her being too ‘soft’ on Islamism. Darmanin is the new Minister of Justice in Francois Bayrou’s government, replacing the soft Socialist Didier Migaud who was out of his depth during his short stint in Michel Barnier’s administration.
In May last year, Darmanin encouraged Emmanuel Macron to initiate a detailed public investigation into the Muslim Brotherhood’s expansion throughout France. Atrocities committed by men swearing allegiance to Isis or Al-Qaeda garner global headlines, but they do more harm than good to those Islamists whose goal is to conquer Europe because they repel their fellow Muslims. More than a third of the 86 people killed by an Islamist in Nice in 2016 were Muslims.
The Brotherhood’s strategy is one of soft power. Describing the Brotherhood as a ‘vicious organisation’, Darmanin explained how they deployed ‘much gentler methods…[to] gradually bring all sections of society into the Islamic matrix’.
This warning was reiterated last month by Bertrand Chamoulaud, head of the National Directorate for Territorial Intelligence. He explained that the Brotherhood’s ‘infiltration affects all sectors: sports, health, education, etc,’
Darmanin and Retailleau are expected to collaborate on a proposal that the latter first raised in an address to France’s prefects last October. It is a law targeting ‘the nature and strategies of political Islam’, which in the opinion of Retailleau, seeks to convert society ‘in small steps: in associations, businesses and even sometimes our local authorities’.
At the same time that the French government is confronting the enormity of the threat posed by political Islam, the British government is considering whether to push forward with plans to make it harder to critique Islam.
This could be achieved with an official definition of what constitutes ‘Islamophobia’, a word that the French government rejected as far back as 2013 when the Minister of the Interior Manuel Valls (now the Minister for Overseas) said: ‘Those who use this word are trying to invalidate any criticism at all of Islamist ideology.’
Last year, Darmanin said the concept of ‘Islamophobia’ was key to the Brotherhood as ‘it covers their primary strategy, that of victimisation’.
Much of Britain’s political class takes a different view. In 2019 the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims defined Islamophobia as ‘rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.’
Starmer and his party appear incapable of grasping the most basic of facts
Running the country in 2019 was Theresa May, a Tory leader who said the 2015 Charlie Hebdo massacre was ‘not Islamic and is not in the name of their religion’. This declaration – made a few days after the atrocity – contradicted the gunmen, who were heard to cry as they left the building ‘we have avenged the Prophet Muhammad’.
Kemi Badenoch hasn’t got the naivety of May, and at Wednesday’s PMQs she asked Keir Starmer to abandon the Labour party’s adoption of the definition of Islamophobia because of ‘its chilling effect’.
The Prime Minister gave a non-committal response.
He and his party appear incapable of grasping the most basic of facts: it is unacceptable to discriminate against someone because of their religion; it is acceptable to criticise a religion.
Last year, the French government warned that ‘Islamist separatism is a theorised politico-religious project…aimed at building a counter-society. The Muslim Brotherhood plays a major role in disseminating such a system of thought.’
The French academic Florence Bergeaud-Blackler has been investigating the Brotherhood for three decades and the fruits of her labour were published in a 2023 book. She described how the organisation had implanted itself in Britain more successfully than any other European country except for Belgium. ‘Victimisation has become the formidable weapon of the Brotherhood’s soft power for bending democracies by keeping them in a state of permanent and blinding indignation,’ wrote Bergeaud-Blackler; she was on the radio this week, citing Britain as an example of a country that is all to eager to accommodate Islamism.
Knowing the Prime Minister, he might label such a declaration as ‘far-right’. It’s not, it’s a statement of fact.
Grooming gang victims are still being ignored
The horror of organised child sexual abuse and pimping – euphemistically called ‘grooming gangs’ – is back in the news. But unfortunately the victims remain ignored.
These young girls endured horrific abuse, sadistic torture (including gang rape), enforced pregnancies, enforced abortions, sexually transmitted infections and even murder. But the reason that victims’ and survivors’ voices are missing from any discussions about the scandal is that they have effectively been silenced by the local enquiries into the atrocity, as well as the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA).
These survivors have lost faith in the police, social services, their friends, their schools and sometimes even their families. They can trust no one
The organised networks of pimping gangs were given very little coverage in the IICSA report. Because Rotherham and Telford were already considered hotspots for rape gangs and had been subject to previous investigations, they were excluded from the inquiry.
I am in contact with several of the girls who survived these gangs. They say they have never felt listened to by the authorities, aside from a handful of trusted campaigners and lawyers.
Sophie, a survivor of organised abuse in Oldham, was targeted and pimped out to much older men who paid to rape and abuse her. She says that the last few days have been very difficult because, after years of trying to get her voice heard, it seems that politicians and high-profile commentators are simply using her traumatic experiences for their own benefit, making it into an issue solely about race and religion. Last year, a police officer told Sophie that being trafficked as a child was not a crime.
These survivors, now well into adulthood, have lost faith in the police, social services, their friends, their schools and sometimes even their families. They can trust no one.
Social services largely failed these girls while they were being abused. Later on, they swept in and took away their children – many of whom were conceived by rape. Traumatised by everything they had endured, young mothers were unable to fight social services and retain custody. In some instances, women who were able to keep their children are now forced to allow the rapist who fathered their child to have visitation rights.
Were it not for the tenacity of former police officer and whistleblower Maggie Oliver and lawyer Harriet Wistrich and her colleagues from the Centre for Women’s Justice (CWJ), who represented a number of the victims, the IICSA inquiry would not have included any direct testimony and evidence from the victims of grooming gangs. Eventually, limited evidence was included but it was not enough.
The CWJ made detailed submissions to ensure that the voices of victims and survivors were heard, including those who are black and of minority ethnic origin whose experiences have been obliterated by a narrative that portrays ‘grooming gangs’ as exclusively Pakistani Muslim men abusing white girls.
As core participants in the inquiry, Oliver and Wistrich pushed to get the role of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) examined. This was necessary not only because the CPS catastrophically failed to prosecute a number of gang members, but also because of the way that the girls were criminalised for their behaviour.
Several of the perpetrators have since been released from prison, and some of the victims have told me they avoid certain areas where they live for fear of bumping into their abusers.
Amber, who I interviewed, had been abused from the age of 14 by the gangs and helped the police investigate gang members, but none of her abusers were charged. In fact, the CPS classed Amber as a pimp because she was forced to bring some of her friends to the takeaway where the ring leaders operated from. Because of this, Amber was threatened with the removal of her children by social services.
We need to see a wider acknowledgment of the scale of ‘grooming gangs’ beyond racial or cultural lines, because child sexual abuse has been going on for centuries and there will be plenty more victims until the police really address the issues. I want every single child who is sexually abused to get justice and every perpetrator to face consequences. Anything less will be a gross injustice.
Listen to Julie Bindel discuss more on The Edition podcast:
What’s wrong with Spotify?
Spotify is bad, apparently. The charges levied against the app are that it stifles artists by paying them a pittance and listeners with its all-pervasive algorithm. ‘How Spotify ruined music,’ was the title of one recent Washington Post article, while the New Yorker asked ‘Is there any escape from Spotify syndrome?’ going on to conclude that ‘what we have now is a perverse, frictionless vision for art, where a song stays on repeat not because it’s our new favourite but because it’s just pleasant enough to ignore’.
Is it worth spending £20 to £30 on a record? Can you really be bothered with all the faff? Really?
Interest in iPods is said to be on the rise, with music influencers insisting that they’re a better option because they’re algorithm free. Kyle Chayka, the author of Filterworld, argues that ‘algorithmic feeds eventually route you toward the lowest common denominator’. Spotify’s bots have dulled our taste in music, or so the argument goes. When its main competitor is silence, as a former CEO once said, the company wants to make sure you’re never played a song that you want to switch off.
Then there are the allegations of fake songs. Harper’s magazine recently covered the phenomenon with an excellent piece by Liz Pelly, the author of a new book, Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist. In her article, she explains how Spotify is ‘filling its most popular playlists with stock music attributed to pseudonymous musicians – variously called ghost or fake artists – presumably in an effort to reduce its royalty payouts.’ Put these facts together, and we’re left with another tech monolith making our lives subtly worse.
Well, despite those arguments, I disagree. Spotify is still great. It’s fantastically cheap, at £10.99 a month for access to 100 million songs. What a lot of these criticisms seem to miss is the crucial element: that we can still choose what we listen to. No one is making you stream the lowest common denominator playlists and you’re not forced to let the algorithm direct what you listen to. It’s simply there as a back-up, filling in the gaps when your choices have run dry (the last time Spotify did this for me, it put on ‘Beast of Burden’ by the Rolling Stones, one of their softer songs but not exactly muzak).
Sure, there’s something romantic about the clicky wheel of a classic iPod, with its wired headphone jack, limited storage and the requirement that you actually choose what you load on to it. But think for a moment about the pain of downloading music. Are you going to buy a load of CDs and burn them on to your computer? Or perhaps spend your time digging around for a contemporary version of LimeWire to pirate your songs? It’s the same story with records. If I had incredibly deep pockets, I’d happily buy albums on vinyl. But is it worth spending £20 to £30 on a record? Can you really be bothered with all the faff? Really?
So, like most people, I opt for streaming. And yes, that means an algorithm. But without the algorithms, I probably wouldn’t have discovered that I like Bjork. And there’s no way I would have found Bob Chilcott’s ‘Little Jazz Mass’, a boogiefied version of the Latin Missa Brevis. I love Discover Weekly, an auto-generated playlist of 30 songs based on what you’ve been listening to the week before. Some of it’s trash of course, but often there are excellent songs in there.
Last summer there was an internet rumour that Sabrina Carpenter, a sugary pop star who first emerged on children’s TV, was being surreptitiously promoted by Spotify. Users said their algorithm was playing Carpenter’s tracks whenever their own playlists ran out of songs. I don’t doubt the algorithm does stuff like this, either through accident or design, and I’m pretty sure a similar thing has happened among the BBC Radio 6 tribe. Which is ironic really, because they (and really I mean we, because I identify as a 6 Music bloke) pride ourselves on our discerning tastes.
I found myself listening to what I thought was a wonderfully obscure Ethiopian jazz artist from the 1970s, Mulatu Astatke, only to find that when I visited my sister, she had him on repeat too. I’ve just looked at his artist page and his top song has over 50 million streams. A similar thing happened with William Onyeabor, a 1980s Nigerian Afro-funk artist who I was sure I had ‘discovered’ through Spotify. First, I heard his music in a London vintage clothes shop (natch). Next, the 50-something-year-old Onyeabor track appeared on a BT television advert, flogging fibre-optic so I could stream seemingly obscure African artists even faster. It was a little disconcerting; a sense unspoken pride in my good taste took a bit of knock.
But does it really matter? Do I care if I’m being conditioned into listening to certain songs? If it sounds good, I’ll listen to it. I can always do some virtual crate diving and spend an hour looking up music I might enjoy (incidentally, Spotify’s ‘similar artists’ function is particularly useful for this). What I can’t understand is why people seem to be bothered that when they leave the app running, eventually some computer programme kicks in to try to give you more of what you want. Where’s the malice in that?
What about the charge that Spotify is killing the music industry? Well, I know at least three people from university who have their music on Spotify. They no longer need to be signed to a label to present themselves to millions of potential listeners, they simply signed up to a distributor for a few dollars and their music appeared on Spotify. So really, there is something deeply democratic about streaming. Add to that the ability to record studio-quality songs from a laptop, and I think there’s a strong case that we have far greater choice now than we did in the pre-Spotify era. There is, I admit, something a little off about Spotify inventing fake artists to avoid paying royalties. But I would humbly suggest that there are more important things to worry about than the plight of music graduates.
How I was punished for breaking the conspiracy of silence on grooming gangs
The renewed interest in the disproportionate involvement of men of Pakistani origin in historic group child sexual abuse has led to trenchant criticism of the Police and the Crown Prosecution Service. What has been less acknowledged is the failure of the children’s sector to acknowledge the horror of what was happening. They were part of a consensus which betrayed some of the most vulnerable and innocent children in the UK.
Deeply disadvantaged children being repeatedly raped deserved better
I worked with offenders for 23 years and led the Prison Service for seven, resigning in 2005 to lead Barnardo’s. A couple of years into the job, I heard the first tentative – but invariably dismissed – suggestions that the perpetrators of the grooming and sexual abuse of children were predominantly of Pakistani origin.
I decided to see for myself. I spent time in Middlesbrough, my home-town, visiting often and going to the streets until the early hours of the morning observing potential perpetrators. Those perpetrators were overwhelmingly white.
But I continued to express doubts, drawing on emerging evidence from other northern towns, such as Rotherham. Other children’s charities cautioned me about raising the issue with ministers. They pointed out that the experts, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, insisted that conclusions could not be drawn about the over-representation of perpetrators of Pakistani origin. The Deputy Children’s Commissioner assured me that extensive research across England, which would soon be published, would prove the Pakistani link was a myth.
But when, in January 2011, the Times published the first of Andrew Norfolk’s courageous articles exposing the truth, I called him to offer my public support as attacks on his credibility and motivation erupted. He later wrote to me: “Your words to me that afternoon came as a huge relief. At the time I was dodging missiles and accusations from all the predictable directions.”
In May of the following year, not long after retiring from Barnardo’s, I agreed to be interviewed on the BBC’s Today programme about the convictions of nine Asian men from Rochdale. I told Today that the repetitive evidence of Asian men as perpetrators could no longer be ignored. The Deputy Children’s Commissioner subsequently appeared and denied my assertions, insisting that the abusers were drawn from all ethnic and religious groups. Meanwhile, my successor at Barnardo’s appeared to me to have restored the consensus – and the silence – by telling the Evening Standard that the focus on the ethnicity of the rapists meant the child victims had been ‘forgotten’. Not for the first time those in denial did not assert what I’d said about the perpetrators was wrong, but simply implied that I should not have said it.
Extraordinarily, a magazine called Ceasefire then published an article which critiqued my Today interview and linked it with the abuse, by a prison officer called Neville Husband, of child prisoners at Portland Borstal and Medomsley Detention Centre. Ceasefire insisted that I’d been aware of Husband’s offending and that, “under Narey’s supervision, the mass rape and torture of children was allowed to continue with a level of institutional complicity that would shock even those most cynical of the prison service.”
That might not have mattered because few people read Ceasefire magazine. But the Guardian then published two letters from readers who had evidently done so. The first asserted that I had failed to apologise for Husband’s offending and, because of that, I had been unsuitable to lead Barnardo’s. The second implied that, when leading the Prison Service, I had tolerated the widespread rape of children.
The Guardian knew me. I had written for them regularly for many years. They had cooled toward me because of things I’d published in a number of government reports about the case for removing more children from family neglect. I knew that they hated my support for Andrew Norfolk. But I felt sure that simple and easily proved facts would lead to a correction. These were that, at the time of Husband’s offending at Portland Borstal, I was 13 years of age; when he abused children at Medomsley (for which he was convicted), I was still a teenager. But my protests were ignored, and my calls to the Guardian not taken. I was convinced that I was being punished for breaking the conspiracy of silence on the racial identity of grooming gangs.
Eventually, after I complained to the Press Complaints Commission, the Guardian was forced to publish my rebuttal, but not until four months after the publication of the letters. By that time, the confirmation of my appointment to a significant chair’s position in the North-East was delayed (and then withdrawn). I had to fend off Tyne Tees Television, who were keen to explore my alleged cover up of sexual abuse. And police officers who visited me at home had to be shown my birth certificate, proving my age, before they were convinced I had not been part of a conspiracy. But allegations of my involvement in a cover up, some accompanied by threats of violence, still appear on Twitter 13 years later.
I understand why so many good people wanted to deny unpalatable truths. They were right to worry about community cohesion and their words being exploited by the BNP. But deeply disadvantaged children being repeatedly raped deserved better.
The weird and wonderful presidential interactions at the Carter funeral
Past, present and president-elect presidents, along with their wives — and current and former veeps — put on brave faces at the funeral of President Jimmy Carter Thursday. Not so much because they were in mourning, but because, Cockburn suspects, they had to interact with one another.
The solemn event made for some interesting viewing: smooshed together in the front pews of the Washington National Cathedral were all five living presidents. President Joe Biden buffered himself from his predecessor/successor, President-elect Donald Trump, with First Lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff in between. Next came Trump and First Lady Melania.
In the second row were President Bill and First Lady (is that what we call her?) Hillary Clinton, President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura, then President Barack Obama on the end, sans Michelle.
Before they all sat down so cozily together, some in the group exchanged niceties, like kids who must save face in front of their parents at church. When W. met with Obama, he patted him playfully on his stomach with the back of his hand; Barry O, in return, patted Bush’s back.
Trump shook hands with his former vice president, Mike Pence, in a show of mending fences. Fox News reports it was “their first public interaction in four years.” What happened four years ago, again?
The former colleagues’ handshake was polite, but was nothing compared to the chumminess Trump and Obama displayed. A photo showing Obama in stitches over something Trump whispered to him, and another of Trump beaming in return, delighted social media:
Obama and Trump are acting like they’re at happy hour.
— Stephanie Sidley (@StephanieSidley) January 9, 2025
pic.twitter.com/2IRJ7klPFM
Trump and Obama sitting next to each other was not on the 2025 bingo card. pic.twitter.com/Dm17q6XtSy
— The Wingman | Money and Dating (@BowtiedWingman) January 9, 2025
Even Vice President Al Gore gave Trump a warm greeting, perhaps, as a way of “kissing the ring,” as Oklahoma senator Markwayne Mullin characterized Obama’s friendliness toward Trump. Harris, meanwhile, reportedly did not acknowledge Trump, nor did Trump make an effort to greet Harris. According to Fox, “Emhoff looked straight ahead as Harris briefly looked over her shoulder and appeared to grimace when she saw Obama conversing with Trump.”
None of the families, Fox News noted, greeted the Bidens.
Venezuela prepares for clashing inaugurations
A new presidential term is set to begin officially in Venezuela on January 10. Despite the electoral commission’s failure to release the results of the July 28 election, Nicolás Maduro’s swearing-in appears inevitable. Opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia, however, says he’ll be inaugurated as the country’s new leader.
Will he return to Caracas? That’s the question Venezuelans keep asking, with González Urrutia having promised exactly that. “I am going to return to Venezuela to take the responsibility that 8 million citizens gave me,” he told Infobae five days ago after meeting with Argentinian president Javier Milei. This week he also met with President Biden, Uruguayan president Lacalle Pou and Panamanian president José Raúl Mulino.
Plans on how the former diplomat would arrive to the capital city remain unknown to the public. Fears are that if he did, he’d be quickly arrested. Maria Corina Machado, the opposition leader that he replaced after the regime barred her from running, left hiding after 133 days and narrowly escaped being kidnapped; just three days ago, González Urrutia denounced the kidnapping of his son-in-law.
The president of the Chavista-controlled national assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, requested González Urrutia’s immediate arrest if he were to return to the country. “Foreigners who accompany him will be treated as invaders,” he added. The foreigners in question include former Mexican president Vicente Fox, former Colombian president Andrés Pastrana and former president of Costa Rica Laura Chinchilla, among others, who are with González Urrutia in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
The theory, pushed by anti-Chavistas and Chavistas alike, is that González Urrutia might head back home accompanied by world leaders. If so, this would complicate things for the regime. Arresting the opposition leader would look bad, but a slew of foreign ex-presidents? That’s the last thing Maduro desires.
Others argue that González Urrutia might be inaugurated from the Dominican embassy, or that he might simply not do so on Venezuelan soil.
In the days leading to the inauguration, hundreds of Venezuelans have met in plazas around the world, from the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona to outside the Organization of American States in Washington. Their hope is that Friday will serve as a critical juncture, with all eyes set on the clashing of inaugurations.
Skeptics point at the Juan Guaidó era, where hopes ebbed and flowed but ultimately Maduro remained. Yet with the opposition exhibiting 83.5 percent of the voting records as proof of González Urrutia’s two to one victory — and with endorsements from the Carter Center and the United Nations, optimists view the situation a tad different. This time around the clashing is not over a constitutional technicality, it’s over a documented stolen election.
Whatever will happen in Venezuela is hard to predict. Reality is that without significant pressure, a negotiated transition is unlikely. Equally hard is determining how the upcoming Trump administration might deal with the oil-rich nation. For one, Maduro’s archenemy, sanctions-slapping Florida senator Marco Rubio will head the State Department, and talks about Latin America prioritization are making the rounds in the MAGAsphere.
At the same time, America First proponents like recently elected Ohio senator Bernie Moreno are taking stances that differ from Republican orthodoxy. To the dismay of Venezuelan activists, Senator Moreno said earlier this week that Maduro “is the one who is going to take office next week” and that “at the end of the day, the United States is not the one who chooses. Those who choose are the leaders of these countries.” Instead of a democracy-centric approach, Moreno suggested that Trump would focus on deportations, drug trafficking and trade.
If we know anything by now, though, it is that no one speaks for Trump. Whether the future is the return of maximum pressure or a renewed approach to negotiating with the Venezuelan government, it will almost certainly be better than the schizophrenic policies pursued by Biden’s State Department.
Mick Lynch’s top five lowlights
Well, well, well. Mick Lynch, RMT’s infamous general secretary, has today announced he will be stepping down from the top job after four years in post. In a statement, the trade unionist remarked:
It has been a privilege to serve this union for over 30 years in all capacities, but now it is time for change… RMT will always need a new generation of workers to take up the fight for its members and for a fairer society for all, and I am immensely proud to have been part of that struggle.
Lynch has led RMT members through a number of pay battles in recent years and found himself at the centre of a rather lot of controversy along the way. As the RMT chief heads off, Mr S thought it would be fitting to compile some of his most memorable moments in the media…
Temper tantrums on the Today show
Lynch has made his scepticism of the British press pretty clear in recent years – and has struggled to contain his frustration with certain lines of questioning. After being invited onto the Beeb’s Today programme, Lynch featured in a rather extraordinary clash with presenter Mishal Husain after being quizzed on how much payment workers had lost as a result of the 2022 strikes.
Issuing a pretty fiery response, Lynch shot back:
What I do find annoying though, Mishal, is that you put these lines that are directly taken from the propaganda from the other side. You never show any admiration for the fight that working people are putting up. You never criticise the super rich for what they’re doing…You never seem to take an impartial view on society…You always seem to just punt out whatever you hear from the employers and the government.
Why are you pursuing this line? Why do you need that number? You’re parroting the most right-wing stuff you can get hold of on behalf of the government.
Crikey. Talk about pulling no punches…
Sulking on Sky
Six months later, Lynch was up to his old tricks after enduring a line of questioning from Sky’s Jane Secker about which, if Mr S might comment, the trade union boss looked rather frustrated. When Secker questioned whether regular strikes by the RMT might put commuters off using rail transport altogether – asking whether the RMT risked ‘striking their way out of a job?’ – a fed up Lynch fumed: ‘Well I don’t think that’s true. That’s a government line you’re punting out on their behalf.’
A ruffled Secker responded:
Excuse me – I’m talking to you about conversations I’ve had. I’m not going to have you stand there and accuse me of being a government mouthpiece. I’m a human being, I’m a middle-aged woman and a journalist. And I’m talking to you about conversations I’ve had with people I know. This has got nothing to do with the government.
Doubling down, Lynch replied: ‘It’s exactly the phraseology that I hear across the table from government ministers almost verbatim, so there you go. Maybe you’re just very in tune with what they say.’ Oh dear. There’s no love lost there, eh?
Branding the UK media a ‘disgrace’
After a few run-ins with reporters, Lynch labelled the British press a ‘disgrace’ and called for better regulation. His criticism of the press coming after the Sun splashed on allegations made against an anonymous BBC presenter, who later turned out to be Huw Edwards. Lynch claimed that the media will ‘hound and chase everybody that they can if they think it suits their agenda’. Given what we know now, his remarks haven’t aged particularly well…
Anyone But England
The UK media do in fact appear to live rent-free in Lynch’s head, with the union chief informing an Edinburgh audience in 2023 that the deciding factor for whether he would back England at a sports match is ‘how pompous the British press is’. Er, right.
Admitting that the hype around England’s football team can be ‘annoying’, the trade unionist noted his Irish heritage was ‘very important’ to him and revealed he had ‘never had a British passport ever’. Rather than cheering on England, Lynch is more comfortable travelling to watch Ireland matches and has suggested he is happy to support Scotland and Wales at big games. How curious…
Lynch slammed over ‘bonkers’ pro-Palestine comments
Just last year, the union boss came under fire after he compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the slave trade. Lynch’s comments were made a week after Foreign Secretary David Lammy suspended 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel, with the RMT chief commenting at a pro-Palestine fringe event:
Some licenses, what was it? 30 out of 150 or something of that number? This is like somebody standing up in front of you in the 1840s and saying: ‘I’m going to abolish some slavery. I’m going to liberate some people. I’m going to do this measure, but it’s only going to apply in this very small way.
Former Labour MP and current antisemitism adviser for the government remarked that Lynch’s was ‘not a very clever analogy’ while Tory MP Greg Smith added: ‘The comments made trying to compare a democracy trying to defend themselves with slavery are off-the-charts bonkers.’ Ouch.
Andy Burnham demands grooming gangs inquiry
Following the defeat of the Tory amendment in parliament last night, No. 10 might have hoped that calls for a public inquiry into grooming gangs are now dying down. But the impetus for such a move has been given fresh life today by another helpful intervention from that well-known Starmer ally, Andy Burnham. Yes, that’s right – the Mayor of Greater Manchester has decided that today of all days is the perfect time to add his voice to the chorus of demands. The self-identified ‘King in the North’ told BBC Radio Manchester today that while he rejected the Tories’ ‘opportunism’:
I do think there is the case for a limited national inquiry that draws on reviews like the one that I commissioned and the one we’ve seen in Rotherham, the one we’ve seen in Telford to draw out some of these national issues and compel people to give evidence who then may have charges to answer and be held to account. That is something I couldn’t do at my level.
So much for local inquiries being the best way forward Keir. It’s worth remembering too that Greater Manchester has already commissioned a review. But the two men who led it resigned after being allegedly ‘blocked’ by Greater Manchester Police from examining police documents.
Will Andy Burnham now release their resignation letter?
What is the point of Rachel Reeves’s visit to Beijing?
The Chinese communist party claims to know a thing or two about humiliation – the ‘century of humiliation’ at the hands of rapacious foreigners is a founding myth of the CCP, which presents itself as a redemptive power. It will no doubt derive some satisfaction in making Rachel Reeves look foolish, as she heads to China today with a selection of City grandees. In reality though, the damage will be largely self-inflicted.
Starmer’s China strategy seems even more incoherent than that of his predecessors
For multiple reasons, the timing of a visit designed to build closer economic links with Beijing is awful. It comes just weeks after the UK confirmed the expulsion of an alleged spy who became a confidant and business partner of the Duke of York. It also comes just after Chinese cyber spies were accused of breaking into staff computers at the US Treasury, the latest in a hacking frenzy that in recent months has included the UK’s Electoral Commission and a Ministry of Defence payroll contractor.
And it comes amid mounting evidence of China’s burgeoning anti-western alliance with Russia, whose aggression in Ukraine would not be sustainable without Beijing’s economic support. A Chinese ship accused of severing fibre-optic cables in the Baltic Sea in collusion with Moscow was allowed to sail away by the Danish navy a few days before Christmas after Beijing refused to cooperate in an investigation.
Reeves has in tow the Bank of England governor, Andrew Bailey and the chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority, Nikhil Rathi. In briefings ahead of the visit, officials suggested that talks with Chinese vice-premier He Lifeng could help boost trading of the Renminbi, the Chinese currency, in the City of London. Yet China’s goal is to undermine the dollar-based financial system, and any suggestion that London is pushing to facilitate that is remarkably tone deaf on the eve of the return of Donald Trump as US president, with his administration stacked with China hawks.
UK financial officials also want Beijing to give the go-ahead for Chinese online retailer Shein to list its shares in the UK. The potential £50 billion float would, they believe, be a big boost to the City of London and its beleaguered stock exchange. Shein’s initial plan had been to list in New York, but that was derailed over national security concerns, alleged links to forced labour and claims that Shein gains an unfair advantage due to customs law loopholes.
Earlier this week, a lawyer for Shein was accused by British members of parliament of ‘wilful ignorance’ after she repeatedly refused to say whether the company sells products containing cotton from the Xinjiang region in the northwest of China, where there have been well-founded allegations of forced labour and widespread human rights abuses. One MP called her evidence ‘ridiculous’. (Shein says that it is committed to human rights and has a zero-tolerance policy towards forced labour.)
Also accompanying Reeves is Mark Tucker, chairman of HSBC, which has faced criticism for endorsing Hong Kong’s draconian security law. Hundreds of pro-democracy activists have been prosecuted, including media tycoon Jimmy Lai, a British citizen, who was charged with conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and is expected to be sentenced later this month. The bank, which has extensive interests in China, froze the accounts of democracy activists, claiming it had no choice but to obey local laws. More recently it has reportedly lobbied for China not to be designated as a threat under a new foreign influence registration scheme – a designation that seems self-evident and would subject its activities in the UK to far closer scrutiny.
Reeve’s outreach to China seems to undermine her own government’s ‘audit’ of relations with Beijing. The audit, promised as a way of bringing ‘long-term and strategic approach to managing our relations’ began last August. It was expected to conclude this month, but this has reportedly been delayed until at least after Reeves’s visit, with only ‘some’ of its findings made public. Little is known about the mechanics of the audit, even by those who have been invited to give evidence. The process is proving almost as opaque as those of the Chinese communist party.
Reeve’s visit follows that of foreign secretary, David Lammy, and Keir Starmer’s face to face meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping on the sidelines of November’s G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro. It also follows numerous moves to appease Beijing, including taking China’s planning application for a new mega-embassy in east London out of the hands of Tower Hamlets council (which has unanimously rejected it), and prevailing on former Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen to postpone a visit to the UK.
Reeves’s visit will supposedly herald the resumption of the UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue (EFD), regular get-togethers introduced under Tony Blair’s government, but not held since 2019. It is not known who will sit on the opposite side of the table from Reeves, but it will not be Gao Shanwen, chief economist at state-owned SDIC Securities, who has been reportedly banned from speaking and is under investigation after criticising Xi’s economic management and suggesting growth figures have been inflated and are less than half the 5 per cent officially claimed.
China’s economy is faltering, and the downturn is worse than widely appreciated, which also makes the timing of Reeves’s cap-in-hand mission all the odder. Starmer is said to be facing the age-old challenge of balancing national security and human rights concerns, where he has promised to be vocal, against economic opportunity. But it is hard to identify times when the Labour party has been particularly vocal – Starmer has even been reticent in condemning the jailing of activists in Hong Kong. And China has never seen the distinction, using trade, investment and market access as means of coercion, and the creation of dependencies as a weapon. Starmer’s China strategy seems even more incoherent than that of his predecessors. He has characterised his approach as being ‘pragmatic’, but it seems little more than appeasement.
Kate Andrews, Katy Balls and James Heale discuss the most recent tranche of economic data – and bad news – for Rachel Reeves on the latest Coffee House Shots podcast:
BBC presenter loses job after releasing anti-Starmer song
Back to the Beeb, which continues to get better at being the focus of news headlines rather than, er, producing them. Now a freelance weekend newsreader is on the warpath, with the ex-BBC presenter claiming he was let go from the public service broadcaster after it emerged he made an anti-Keir Starmer charity Christmas single. Good heavens…
Chris Middleton worked at BBC Radio Newcastle for six years before producing the ‘Freezing This Christmas’ hit. The tongue-in-cheek tune intended to make a serious point about the winter fuel payment cuts introduced by Starmer’s army, with the rather creative lyrics including:
And she told me that she doesn’t get out of bed till midday,
Because she didn’t want to turn the heating on.
Each time I remember, I’ve paid taxes all my life,
I cry as I wonder: Will I make it? Will my wife?
I just break down as I look around
And the only things I see are foreign wars and open doors
And a freezing OAP.
The parody of Mud’s 1974 Christmas hit then launches back into its chorus: ‘It’ll be freezing this Christmas / Without fuel at home / It’ll be freezing this Christmas / While Keir Starmer’s warm.’ It won’t win a Grammy anytime soon Mr S supposes Middleton’s, um, creativity is to be admired.
Not that the presenter thought the BBC were much impressed by his extra-curricular activities. The newsreader claims that the corporation – whose impartiality guidelines expressly forbid staff working in current affairs and news from voicing political views – cancelled his shifts after he admitted he was behind the song. Speaking to GB News, Middleton insisted:
I was told because it was a conflict of interest, it would be against the BBC’s impartiality rules to allow me to continue my job as a newsreader while also putting out a song – which of course was political – but with the main goal of raising money and awareness for pensioners.
Middleton may be out of a job at the Beeb but with the rate at which the Labour lot’s popularity is plummeting, his penchant for anti-Starmer songs may come in handy in future…
Is Reform about to top the polls?
Is Reform about to become the most popular political party in Britain, overtaking both Labour and the Tories in national opinion polls?
The rise of the light blue peril in opinion surveys since the general election at the expense of both major parties has certainly caused jitters in Westminster. MPs from more established parties know that Reform hitting the front would be a major story in itself and could generate a ‘feedback loop’ that could further stretch its lead.
Following a bumpy Christmas for Kemi Badenoch, the latest Spectator poll tracker which aggregates surveys up to 8 January, has Labour averaging 27 per cent, the Tories just over 23 per cent and Reform just under 23 per cent.
But a new poll published today by the pollster Find Out Now suggests we are suddenly very close to a ‘crossover’ moment when the insurgent party establishes an average poll lead over both its main rivals.
Find Out Now’s headline figures are Labour on 25 per cent, Reform on 25 per cent and the Tories on 20 per cent. That represents a one point drop for Labour since the last survey from this pollster, with Reform holding its share steady and the Tories shedding three points.
This is in line with the general pattern of recent polls, in which Labour support has somewhat consolidated, Reform has continued to nudge upwards and the Tories have dropped back. Anyone still contending that Badenoch was wise to go toe-to-toe with Nigel Farage in a Christmas row over Reform’s membership figures must be feeling pretty lonely by now – the scores on the doors say otherwise.
In the last dozen nationwide polls from all accredited pollsters, Reform has only once recorded a score below 20 per cent and that was a 19 per cent rating by More in Common which generally scores it lower than most other opinion research companies do anyway.
Reform has now been ahead of Labour in one recent poll and ahead of the Tories in two, as well as being tied at the top with Keir Starmer’s party in this latest survey. In other words, it is not quite there yet but is close to hitting the front.
Given that major political news tends to show up in poll ratings about a week afterwards, there is every reason to expect a new slide in Labour’s rating: bad economic and financial news, a winter NHS crisis, plus the party’s terrible positioning on the rape gangs scandal will more than likely drag it down a couple of points. Badenoch and the Tories have done much better this week and should bounce back a bit. But Reform has also been on the front foot – including over Farage’s refusal to be bossed around by Elon Musk. If it can notch up a couple more scores in the mid-20s that may be enough to push it ahead in various ‘poll of polls’ indices.
With Farage about to benefit from another publicity blitz around Donald Trump’s inauguration – and from a growing feeling that the progressive global political paradigm of the past 25 years is bust – it would now be a definite surprise were Reform not to go through a phase of leading in the polls.
The question we may therefore find ourselves addressing soon is not whether Reform can hit the front but whether Reform has hit the front too early.
Given the immense difficulties any insurgent political force customarily faces when trying to build momentum in the British system – where the first past the post electoral system is just one of a number of formidable barriers to entry – that conundrum will surely count as a nice problem for the Reform leadership to have.
Watch more on SpectatorTV:
Watch: Scottish Tory leader mocks FM over Musk comments
Twitter CEO Elon Musk has been the talk of London town this week and north of the border things are no different. The first First Minister’s Questions of the year has just concluded in Holyrood and, surprise surprise, the tech titan got a pretty prominent mention.
In a speech on Monday, First Minister John Swinney rather bizarrely suggested that if the SNP government’s budget failed to pass next month it would play into the hands of ‘Elon Musk and other populists’. Er, right. Keen to clarify exactly why Swinney decided to throw that rather odd warning around, new Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay was quick on the attack today. Taking a pop at the FM, he quizzed Swinney:
The SNP’s budget will cause misery to hardworking Scots and struggling businesses, but in the mind of Scotland’s populist First Minister, that is a price we all must pay to defeat the shadowy forces of populism. Was it John Swinney’s New Year’s resolution to distract from his failings by making ludicrous claims such as this?
‘I can see the shadowy face of populism right in front of me,’ the SNP leader retorted. Findlay allowed himself a chuckle before the Scottish Tory leader hit back scathingly:
John Swinney, of all people preaching against populism. The leader of Scotland’s Populist party, the party of blaming others, sowing division fantasy promises of easy fixes. John Swinney sounds like a serial arsonist suddenly warning people about the risk of fire.
Burn…
Watch the clip here: