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Is Kemi Badenoch scared of Robert Jenrick?
Is Kemi Badenoch running scared? It’s not an accusation often levelled at the shadow housing secretary, who is usually criticised for being too keen on a scrap. Badenoch’s campaign team say she wants to tell the Conservatives ‘hard truths’, and that she is the opponent Keir Starmer would most dread across the despatch box. But for all her pugnaciousness, Badenoch isn’t the candidate pressing for a face-off with her opponent.
Badenoch has no need to debate, and it makes tactical sense for her to avoid it
Yesterday Robert Jenrick asked the BBC to host a TV debate between him and Badenoch. He is apparently happy to debate his rival ‘any time, anywhere’, but ‘sources close to’ Badenoch say she is keener to spend her time meeting members. Badenoch’s Twitter feed shows her shaking hands with Conservative MPs and sitting down with activists. On Saturday she was in Oxfordshire meteing concillors and the Thames Valley police and crime commissioner.
Badenoch’s campaign says she ‘has been on the road listening’ – a familiar tactic of Tory leadership hopefuls. Promising a ‘listening leadership’ allows candidates to show they will not make the mistakes of their predecessors. In 1975, Margaret Thatcher reached out to backbenchers whose egos had been bruised by Edward Heath. More recently, Boris Johnson became the avatar of MPs and activists who felt shut out of the Brexit process by Theresa May. Badenoch’s appeals to disgruntled members have helped put her top of our ConservativeHome poll.
Badenoch’s tactics have so far made her the frontrunner, and she now has more to lose from a debate with Jenrick. Members only have a couple of weeks to vote. If she were to stumble, it would redound to Jenrick’s benefit.
Nevertheless, Badenoch’s failure to take up Jenrick’s offer of a debate seems a missed opportunity. It’s true that she is taking part in a GB News event on Thursday with Jenrick. But the pair will take questions from an audience one at a time, so will not directly face off against each other.
If Badenoch were to become leader of the opposition, she’d have to prepare for tough media rounds in the months and years ahead. She left this weekend’s Sunday shows to Jenrick. It might have been a tactical oversight or a logistical necessity, but it’s not good practice. If Badenoch really wants to get the Tories back into government, she wouldn’t be able to duck out of Prime Minister’s Questions.
Jenrick, meanwhile, has a lean and hungry look. His supporters would argue he has support across the party, and has a clearer policy prospectus than Badenoch. His plan to quit the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights) to cut immigration, for instance, goes down better than her complaints about systematic dysfunction in Whitehall.
Badenoch has no need to debate, and it makes tactical sense for her to avoid it. The keener Jenrick seems, the more she might want to duck out. But that is letting herself down. Tory members want a leader who can take the fight to Labour, isn’t afraid to be make Conservative arguments, and has the iron in them to deliver. They believe they have that in Badenoch. She should relish a chance to show they are right.
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Tories try to hammer Labour on freebies
It seems that one of the great posts in British politics has been filled at last. The title of ‘Minister for Sticky Wickets’ was held by the likes of David Gauke and Michael Ellis during the Tory years. Now, with Keir Starmer on the back foot over freebies, it is Ellie Reeves filling that role. The Cabinet Office minister was today sent out to defend the government on an Urgent Question. It followed further allegations this weekend about the role of ministers in Taylor Swift’s security arrangements.
Reeves opened the batting for the government, explaining how it proposes to change the ministerial register of interests. She was up against John Glen, whose speech largely consisted of listing a litany of Labour’s crimes and misdemeanours from the past 100 days. ‘Can cabinet ministers continue to party in DJ booths?’ inquired the Shadow Paymaster-General, to jeers from the Labour benches. He sighed at ministers’ failure to answer his written questions before musing whether they would receive free tickets to the Oasis tour – ‘or was it just Taylor Swift that was a freebie too far?’ ‘Where is Labour’s new ethics and integrity commission?’, he demanded, before moving on to Lord Alli and his talks with Sue Gray. The whole speech resembled something of a Tory bingo card: ‘cash for croissants’, ‘Operation Integrity’ and ironic mentions of ‘country first, party second’, ending with the inevitable dig at a Prime Minister who ‘can’t clothe himself without gifts from others’.
Anything Glen could do, Reeves could do better. Her own response bordered on the scathing as she barely bothered to maintain the pretence of answering her shadow’s questions. ‘We will take no lectures from the party opposite on ethics’, she intoned. ‘What shattered trust in politics was the behaviour of the Conservatives in 14 years’, Reeves declared, with Labour MPs popping up to offer helpful examples: partygate, Covid contracts and the Owen Paterson debacle. ‘That’s the difference between this government and the last one – we are strengthening the rules,’ she insisted, noting how the ministerial register of interests is less onerous in its declarations than that for MPs. Ordinary backbenchers, Reeves noted, must declare the listed value of interests within 28 days: ministers meanwhile, have only a quarterly declaration with no estimate put on their gifts.
It was a fair point but one that did not deter various Tories from pointing to more recent difficulties. Gavin Williamson offered one of the better interventions when he gently asked Reeves about Lord Hermer’s role in Swiftiegate. Could the minister tell MPs ‘why the Attorney General was asked to give advice and what question the Attorney General was asked to answer?’ No, it seems, with Reeves insisting that ‘policing is something for the police so not something I can answer.’ Andrew Murrison offered a more evocative slant on events when he replied that it was only ‘less enlightened realms’ that prefer to ‘ferry entertainers around’. Luke Evans received no answer when he asked if Reeves’s colleagues would follow Starmer in reimbursing thousands of pounds of hospitality. Richard Holden’s best effort meanwhile came in heckling Clive Efford’s complaint about ‘the sheer brass neck of these Conservatives’ – ‘like the brass in your pockets!’
Yet despite the efforts of the dozen-odd Tories in the House, the presence of so many Starmtroopers gave Reeves an easier ride than she might have feared. Some, like Josh Simons, enjoyed her about a second jobs clampdown, amid speculation it would prompt ‘the sad possible loss of Members opposite’. Others preferred to feast on successive scandals from the Johnson, Truss and Sunak regime. A ‘carnival of corruption’ and ‘grotesque endemic corruption’ were some of the more damning epitaphs as the likes of Neil Coyle and Rachel Blake queued up to criticise Lord Lebedev and VIP lanes. Gareth Snell landed a good line too, welcoming the Conservative party’s conversion to the cause of ‘transparency and ethics’. Reeves listened thoughtfully to each contribution before agreeing solemnly that, yes, she quite agreed, the previous government was indeed much worse.
Anything Glen could do, Reeves could do better
Her best moment though came when she was asked by Greg Stafford if Labour were not guilty of that greatest British sin of all – hypocrisy. ‘Let me say something about hypocrisy’, she began. ‘Hypocrisy is when people in Downing Street, including the former Prime Minister, were partying during lockdown’, she continued, to rising cheers from Labour as she listed various iniquities from lockdown, including ‘fathers not being present at the birth of their children’. ‘I won’t take lectures in hypocrisy from those on the party opposite’, she finished, to roars from her backbenchers.
It offered a reminder of the difficulties that the Tories will face in future in trying to score points in the freebies issue. The public may despair of Starmer’s woes but the Conservatives’ record on standards is far from perfect too.
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Will Labour keep its promise not to hike National Insurance?
Despite getting off to a rocky start – including nearly losing £1 billion worth of investment – Labour’s much-anticipated Investment Summit seems to be delivering exactly what ministers had hoped for. The good news, including a combined investment of £6.3 billion from four US technology firms to expand data-centre infrastructure in Britain – is rolling in.
The biggest question for plenty of businesses at today’s Summit will be about tax
Business is struck, perhaps awestruck, by Labour’s commitment to slash red tape. During a panel event with the Prime Minister and ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the tech guru expressed how ‘shocked’ he was to learn that Labour was now ‘strongly in favour of growth’. Keir Starmer replied by insisting that ‘wealth creation is the number one mission of a Labour government’. Meanwhile, the chief executive of the US pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly commended the government on its ambition to cut regulation and go for growth: a move the company says Britain ‘needs to be quite different to make it interesting’ for investment.
But is the government at risk of overpromising? When you dig into the headline figures, some exaggeration is taking place. The Daily Telegraph reveals this afternoon that roughly £20 billion of the £50 billion ‘investment pledges’ Labour is touting from this summit (£60 billion now, according to the Chancellor this afternoon) have already been announced. Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports that as the government woos more private investment, it is quietly rolling back its own plans for investment, cutting ‘by a fifth’ the money it’s putting into its newly-established National Wealth Fund: a vehicle, with a fancy name, that is going to pick projects across the country and inject cash into them.
But the real risk isn’t overstating the private investment headed the UK’s way. Rather, it’s understating the changes that are about to take place, which will weigh heavily on where business chooses to invest.
While Labour has had plenty to say about how growing the economy is an essential pillar to their platform, talk of cutting red tape is fairly new – and doesn’t quite line up with the party’s plans announced so far. ‘I don’t see regulation as good or bad,’ Starmer said in his address to the Summit today. ‘Some regulation is life-saving…but across our public sector, I would say the previous Government hid behind regulators. Deferred decisions to them because it was either too weak or indecisive, or simply not committed enough to growth.’
It’s an encouraging assessment, albeit one that successive governments have made and yet have struggled to do anything about. Moreover, with Labour’s new employment rights coming down the track – regardless of whether they are hailed as long overdue or excessive – it’s still the case that the government’s first move in its 100 days has been to beef up regulations.
The party might counter that with its serious talk of planning reform: were an overhaul to be successful, this would no doubt create confidence in the business sector that the UK was really ready to build. But in the meantime, businesses also have to brace for changes that the Chancellor is making in her first Budget. While Rachel Reeves promised again at the Summit today a commitment to ‘fiscal and economic stability’, markets are preparing for a change in the fiscal rules which could allow the Chancellor to borrow up to an additional £50 billion for capital spending. While that change may well appeal to some businesses – who will want to see the government making investment alongside their own private contributions – they will equally be wary of market reaction, as gilt yields drift upwards and investors wait to see the details exactly what Reeves is asking to borrow, and the merits of the projects she wants to borrow to build.
But the biggest question of all for plenty of businesses at today’s Summit will be about tax, not least because the Chancellor gave her clearest indication today that employer National Insurance hikes remain on the cards. Taking questions at today’s Summit, Reeves refused to rule out an NI hike, stating that the Labour election manifesto ‘says “working people”, and then lists those three taxes paid by working people. We are going to stick to those manifesto commitments we made, including the manifesto commitment for business on corporation tax, which we will cap at 25 per cent.’
This indication that employer NI is in play is certainly going to give some businesses pause before they commit to stating how many more workers they would hire in the UK. But critically it is also going to raise questions about what tax levers Labour might pull – if not in this Budget, in future ones. The Institute for Fiscal Studies’s director Paul Johnson has come out the gate calling any increase to employer NI ‘a straightforward breach’ of the party’s manifesto pledge. The so-called ‘tax triple lock’ was explicit that income tax, NI and VAT would not be touched: there was no exemption or breakdown for different types of NI payments.
The question for business will be: what else will change? The manifesto said that the ‘fiscal rules are non-negotiable’. They look as though they are about to change. It said that NI would not be increased. This is looking increasingly likely to happen. The government is using the summit to remind businesses it is committed to keeping corporation tax at the same levels throughout this parliament, but there are caveats there, too, that are yet unknown. Regardless, it doesn’t necessarily instil the ‘confidence’ Labour insists will define its premiership.
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Watch: ‘Apparatus of state turned on Alex Salmond’
Heartfelt tributes were paid to the late Alex Salmond in the Commons today. A number of politicians from across the house shared memories of the former first minister of Scotland in a series of points of order, with the SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn first to speak on the ‘most talented, formidable and consequential politician of his generation’. Scotland Secretary Ian Murray joked that the Scotland Office had brought Salmond and his wife Moira together, while Conservative John Lamont insisted that the pro-indy politician was ‘undoubtedly a giant’ in politics.
Next it was the turn of close friend and confidante of Salmond, Sir David Davis MP. ‘Very, very few people in this House change history,’ the Conservative politician began:
Most of us are moved by it rather than move it ourselves. Alex Salmond was an exception to that, as we’ve heard from all of the people, mostly his opponents, who have spoken well of him today. He was a brilliant speaker. He was passionate about social justice. And of course, he was particularly passionate about his own country and his wish for independence for the Scottish nationalist agenda.
Davis then turned to address the recent controversy surrounding the former first minister of Scotland. ‘It was a tragedy at the end of his career that his own party, his own government, turned on him,’ the Tory MP lamented. While Davis informed the Commons he wasn’t planning on elaborating on the matter there and then, the Salmond ally hinted that there may come a time when he speaks more about the recent – and tumultuous – past of the Scottish Nationalist party.
Nodding towards an emotive statement put out by Salmond’s lawyer, Davis added:
David McKie represented him through these really, really difficult times of his life. [He said]: ‘Alex’s courage and strength of character over the three year period from the Scottish government launching an unlawful process against him throughout his criminal trial, in which he was cleared on all charges by a jury of his peers, to his unimpeachable evidence to the parliamentary inquiry was absolutely incredible. What he endured, the apparatus of the state turned against him, would have broken many people – but not Alex.’
Strong stuff. It comes after the Tory grandee called at the weekend for ‘Salmond reforms‘ in Holyrood, in memory of the politician. Earlier this year Davis used parliamentary privilege at Westminster to claim that Nicola Sturgeon’s ex-chief of staff Liz Lloyd leaked details of a government sexual harassment investigation against Salmond to Scotland’s Daily Record. Now the Conservative MP is calling for MSPs to have the same privilege as MPs, meaning they would be protected from defamation action when they speak in the Scottish parliament, in his bid to clear Salmond’s name. Meanwhile on Sunday, ally and long-time colleague of Salmond, Joanna Cherry KC, insisted that she believed that ‘time will vindicate’ the former first minister. Stay tuned…
Watch the speech here:
SpaceX has put Europe to shame
The flawless launch of SpaceX’s 5,000-ton Starship and its Super Heavy Booster, and the precision recovery of the booster on its launch pad, has opened the way to a manned mission to the moon next year and perhaps to Mars as soon as 2030. One giant leap for Elon Musk’s company on Sunday was one more reminder that Europe’s space programme is a colossal failure.
Elon’s Musk’s dream has become Europe’s nightmare
Europe is currently unable to launch even its own weather satellites, and India, which managed a soft landing on the Moon last year, now has a more credible space program. Twenty years ago, before SpaceX had launched a single rocket, Richard Bowles, a sales director of the European Arianespace launch consortium, said SpaceX’s ambition to launch, recover and reuse rockets, cutting the price of launches in half, was a dream.
‘SpaceX primarily sems to be selling a dream. Which is good, we should all dream,’ he said. ‘I think reusability is a dream… How am I going to respond to a dream?… First of all you don’t wake people up. They have to wake up on their own… They’re not supermen. Whatever they can do, we can do.’
Elon’s Musk’s dream has become Europe’s nightmare. France’s Arianespace has this year managed to launch just one of the new Ariane 6 rockets made by its ArianeGroup umbrella company. It came four years late and hundreds of millions of euros over budget. SpaceX has already completed 96 launches this year, recovered and reused almost all of them, and expects to reach 148 launches by the end of December. Even if Arianespace can get the new rocket to work properly, it has planned to launch no more than nine missions a year, of which four will be institutional missions, such as reconnaissance satellites, and only five commercial missions.
European failure to embrace reusable rockets has made it completely uncompetitive. The estimated cost of a launch using the already obsolete Ariane 6, when it becomes operational, perhaps next year, is more than £83 million. The cost of a comparable launch on SpaceX is around £54 million. And Europe has nothing in the pipeline to match the SpaceX Starship, which will be able to launch payloads of 100 tons or more.
Access to space is the sine qua non of a credible space program. Without it, the scientific and commercial applications of space technology are impossible.
The Galileo global satellite system created by the European Union through the European Space Agency to compete with the Americans has so far launched 32 satellites and has failed to deliver a robust system. Many the satellites were launched using Russian rockets, no longer available due to the war in Ukraine. Further launches are on hold, pending the availability of Ariane 6.
OneWeb, the private European communications satellite project designed to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink, has launched its own limited constellation using SpaceX and Indian rockets. Even the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) is now buying launches from SpaceX.
‘This decision was driven by exceptional circumstances’ said EUMETSAT’s Director General Phil Evans. The exceptional circumstance being that Arianespace had no capability. SpaceX has meanwhile launched 7,000 Starlink communications satellites offering high-speed internet access and text messaging to mobile phones.
Europe’s space agency (the UK remains a member) is an example of European hubris at its absolute worst, its failures a masterclass in how not to be globally competitive, while spending billions on institutional grandiosity. The European Space Agency, which presides over Europe’s failed efforts, has a budget of €7.8 billion and a staff of around 2,500. ArianeGroup, which is subsidised by ESA, employs 8,300 people. Between them, they are unlikely to produce a reusable rocket before 2030.
It’s been a while since I was at the European launch base in Kourou, French Guiana, but I’m not missing much because nothing is happening there. The last launch of the small European Vega rocket was last month. Perhaps four launches of the new Vega C rocket might be attempted next year. Fewer missions in a year than SpaceX completes in a fortnight. Europe’s space programme is all show and no-go.
Five flops from Labour’s investment summit
It’s investment summit day for Sir Keir’s Labour government and, like much else about Starmer’s reign, it hasn’t got off to the greatest start. Despite drafting in the King to win over big business, the Starmer army has still managed to rather make a mess of proceedings. From reckless cabinet minister comments to embarrassing email errors, Mr S has pulled together a list of all the lefty lot’s summit slip-ups so far.
Privacy problems
It transpired just days before Sir Keir’s big investment summit was due to kick off that the government, er, accidentally leaked the email addresses of a number of industry big wigs – including that belonging to fifth richest man in the world. Sub-optimal to say the least.
Whitehall spinners blamed an ‘administrative human error’ for the unintentional sharing of French businessman Bernard Arnault’s email address, alongside that of several other summit invitees, last week. It emerged the billionaire founder of luxury group LVMH had his email CC-d into an exchange, meaning that his contact details were shared without his knowledge.
The Department for Business and Trade has apologised over the possible GDPR breach – and flagged itself to the data protection watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office. It hardly proves the Starmtroopers’ case that the ‘grown ups‘ are back in charge, eh?
Starmer’s Elon snub
Despite tech gurus galore featuring at today’s business bash, one rather notable character didn’t quite make the cut. Twitter CEO Elon Musk is not in attendance at the summit – with the Beeb claiming his snub is down to ‘his social media posts’ during the August riots. The government, however, is a little less keen to specify why an invite was not extended to the US billionaire with Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds telling Sky News on Sunday: ‘I’m not going to comment on particular invitations for particular personnel.’
Science Secretary Peter Kyle was similarly tight-lipped on Times Radio today, insisting:
Elon Musk has never come to any of the past investment summits that have been held under the previous government, he doesn’t tend to do these sort of events, but I stand absolutely ready to engage with him.
Well, they do say actions speak louder than words…
Transport Secretary veers off the tracks
Not long before the business bash was due to kick off, Starmer had his work cut out trying to get on top of a fallout started by his own Transport Secretary. Louise Haigh delivered some stinging remarks about P&O Ferries in an ITV interview last week after it made yet another lay-off announcement. But after declaring that P&O was a ‘cowboy operator’ that should be boycotted, the Transport Secretary appeared to overlook the fact that the company is a subsidiary of DP World, whose chairman was billed to announce a £1bn UK investment plan today. Talk about bad timing…
The row escalated when Haigh, alongside Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, sent out a joint press release critical of the company – which, it has since been claimed, was signed off by Downing Street. DP World then decided to pull its announcement at the summit – a decision which could have cost Britain all of that £1bn. In a hasty effort to control the damage of the spiralling situation, a No. 10 spokesperson declared on Friday that ‘Haigh’s comments were her own personal view and don’t represent the view of the government’, before adding: ‘We welcome P&O Ferries commitment to comply with our new seafarers legislation and we continue to work closely with DP World.’
After a few days of desperate spinning, all that back-tracking just about worked. DP World was in attendance at the business pow-wow today – and has just unveiled its billion-pound plan to expand the London Gateway container port. No thanks to Haigh, though, eh?
Calendar clashes
Back to Sue Gray who – despite her defenestration as Starmer’s chief of staff – is never out of the spotlight for very long. The timing of today’s investment meet is all rather odd, given that Chancellor Rachel Reeves still hasn’t presented her first Budget to the nation. Businesses are griping that they can hardly pledge to merrily invest their millions, when they don’t even know what the fiscal framework is going to look like…
What with the election timing, recess and conference season, Sir Keir’s business bash is taking place a fortnight before Reeves’ Budget. This is due to meet an election pledge to hold a global summit within its first 100 days in office. Might it not have been better to not make such a pledge and host the jamboree next year, to give businesses a sense of what the future might look like?
Sue Gray was the woman charged with transiting planning and ought to have been able to see that clash coming. Then again, as one Labour aide told the BBC: ‘If you ever see any evidence of our preparations for government, please let me know.’
Old promises
And on the question of how significant the investment summit has been, Mr S is curious about how much of what is being announced is new exactly. Of the £50bn figure being lauded today, Steerpike would point out that this includes a £24bn green energy investment announced, um, last week. ‘It’s hard to know whether some of this stuff is being double, triple or even quadruple counted,’ as Ben Wright notes in the Telegraph.
What’s more is that today’s grand total also includes £20bn of investment by Australian infrastructure giant Macquarie, to cover electric vehicle charging points and offshore wind projects. Yet two and a half years ago, Boris Johnson announced that leading Australian organisations had pledged to invest up to £28.5bn in the UK – including a commitment from Macquarie to invest £12bn by 2030 in projects including, you guessed it, offshore wind. How curious…
Brwa Shorsh and the failure of Britain’s asylum system
Postman Tadeusz Potoczek had completed his deliveries for the day. At around 3 p.m. on 3 February, the 60-year-old was returning from work via the London underground, still wearing his red postman’s coat. As the southbound Victoria line train rumbled towards Oxford Circus, he headed for the far end of the platform, perhaps in the hope of getting a seat. To his left, he noticed a young man sitting on a bench, but he didn’t think much of it – his mind was on other things. Suddenly, the stranger got up and shoved him, hard, onto the tracks.
This failure of our asylum system almost led to an innocent postman being killed
It was a miracle that Mr Potoczek survived. The 750 volts running through the electrified rail would in all likelihood have killed him immediately had he touched it. Somehow he managed to avoid that grisly fate by staying on his feet after he fell onto the tracks. The underground driver slammed the brakes and managed to stop the train before it reached Potoczek, having spotted his red coat. A quick-thinking passerby, Oliver Matthews, pulled Potoczek to safety. Matthews later received £1,000 for his heroism.
The attack was ‘wholly unprovoked and spontaneous’, as the sentencing judge put it this week at Inner London Crown Court. This deranged attempted murder is disturbing for all concerned. The ordeal caused Mr Potoczek, a man of ‘robust character’, to suffer repeated nightmares and made him afraid to use the tube, though he needs to for his commute. The train driver, Bobby Walker, said he was ‘shaken very badly’. Judge Benedict Kelleher said it would ‘strike fear into every traveller on the underground’.
The man who pushed Mr Potoczeck was Brwa Shorsh, a homeless illegal immigrant from Kurdistan, in northern Iraq. At his trial, he told the court that a women passing on a previous train had allegedly laughed at him which made him angry, and that his victim – barely on the platform for seconds – gave him a ‘dirty look’, and he said he felt ‘disrespected’. The judge did not accept this, saying that he ‘wrongly perceived’ Mr Potoczeck to have been looking at him, and vented his anger in a ‘spontaneous decision to try to take away his life’. Convicted of attempted murder earlier this year, last week Shorsh was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of eight years.
The jury needed just half an hour to convict Shorsh for this crime, but the questions it raises about Britain’s asylum system are far more difficult to answer. Why was he still in the country? Who is to blame for this attack ever having taken place? And how many more people like him are now roaming our streets?
It is quite clear that Shorsh is the last person you want on the streets of a British city. Shorsh was denied asylum in Germany before being smuggled into the UK on the back of a lorry in 2018. He had also been denied asylum in France, he told the court.
In the time he had been in Britain, Shorsh had already committed a total of 21 crimes, for which he was convicted on 12 occasions. These include a racially aggravated offence of common assault, five offences of assault or battery, threatening a person in public with a weapon, a bike chain, and three offences of outraging public decency – that is, public masturbation, including on a District line train and at a Wandsworth café. On arriving in the UK, Shorsh was initially housed in Lincoln, before moving to London in late 2018 where he became homeless. Between 2019 and 2023 he served a total of six short prison sentences. His latest offence was an unprovoked attack on a female rail passenger in November 2023, whom he hit on the back of the head.
At the time of the attempted murder, Shorsh had stalled a bid by the Home Office to deport him by lodging an appeal with the immigration tribunal service. Details are scarce about that tribunal, but we can make a few educated guesses. Very likely, he was funded in that appeal by public money. (Possibly, he will have been supported by one of the charities that received £209 million in government grants since 2020 that lobbied against the previous government’s Rwanda Bill.) Very likely, the question that was being litigated when he tried to kill Mr Potoczek was not whether Shorsh had arrived here illegally (he had), nor whether he was a danger to public safety (clearly he was), but whether Kurdistan, his country of origin, was safe enough for him to be sent to, or some other human rights concern. It is very unlikely that the tribunal considered whether or not his presence in Britain benefited the country.
Nevertheless, four years after committing a sex crime, and six years after he entered Britain illegally, Shorsh remained in Britain. This failure of our asylum system almost led to an innocent postman being killed.
What’s worse is that this is far from an isolated incident. Few can have forgotten the case of the Clapham attacker, Abdul Ezedi, who attacked a mother and her two young children with a corrosive substance in south London earlier this year, before drowning himself in the Thames. Ezedi, incredibly, had been granted asylum on his third attempt after a questionable conversion to Christianity, despite having already committed two sexual offences in the UK.
Or take the monster Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai, who in Bournemouth in 2022 stabbed to death a 21-year-old aspiring marine, Thomas Roberts. The litany of system failures that led up to Roberts’ tragic death is too long to list here, but as Tom Slater has put it, the ‘cascade of ineptitude and inaction is staggering’. On his way to Britain, Abdulrahimzai had murdered two Afghans with an AK-47 while in Serbia, and having lied about his age, ended up being put into a school in Poole in year ten where he roamed the corridors with a knife. Inexplicably, the Home Office has been spared an inquest into the death, a decision Roberts’ family say feels like ‘a cover-up’.
Indeed, it seems the dangers our asylum system is inflicting on the public are far from a priority for much of our political class. When it comes to illegal migration, Sir Keir Starmer simply bleats about ‘smashing the gangs’ that cross the Channel, a token policy, as many have pointed out, that fails to reckon with the enormous pull factors that bring illegal migrants to the country in the first place.
Or take the permanent secretary of the Home Office, Matthew Rycroft, who scarcely seems to share the major public concern about immigration and asylum. When he isn’t meeting civil servants to talk about transgender issues or writing the foreword for his department’s ‘Race Action Plan’, he is busy explaining to staff that the Home Office’s priorities are to ‘expand global talent visa routes’ and support victims of the Windrush scandal. When asked at a select committee last year about the number of deportations carried about by the Home Office, the top mandarin was unable to provide an answer. Little wonder that recent research has found that more than one in 100 people living in Britain is an illegal migrant, the highest per capita in Europe.
Yet think of the moralising outrage at any suggestion Britain might speed up this deportation process by leaving the ECHR – an outrage shared by much of the Tory party. It is telling that when a Remainer luminary like Dominic Grieve hotly denounces leaving the ECHR, he argues that it will reduce the UK’s ‘soft power’ and the ‘standards of behaviour you should expect from a civilised state’. Questions of border security, public safety and the national interest, it seems, don’t quite make the list.
That should worry us all. Unless these concerns become top priorities for our political class, the public will continue to suffer the consequences of violent thugs like Brwa Shorsh roaming the streets.
Beeb investigated MasterChef star over alleged sexual remarks
These days, it seems the Beeb is better at being the news than making it. Now the co-host of BBC MasterChef, Greg Wallace, is on the Sun’s front page, after it emerged that broadcasting bosses had investigated the TV star over alleged inappropriate sexual comments made to a female member of staff.
It transpires that in 2018, BBC chiefs met with Wallace after complaints were logged by a team left ‘mortified’ by his behaviour while working on the game show Impossible Celebrities. Wallace was accused of ‘taking his top off’ in front of a female production worker, after ‘boasting about his sex life’, according to a source – who also stated that ‘Gregg appeared to think it was all just banter’. Good heavens.
The revelations have prompted the MasterChef presenter to defend himself on social media. Posting a video Instagram story this morning, the TV personality insisted:
The allegations were investigated by the BBC six years ago, and my comments were found to be not sexual. I repeat not sexual. Something else that I feel very strongly about – strong enough to be on [Instagram] – nobody six years ago or since has accused me of flirting with anybody or hitting on anybody. And that’s important to me and I say this for my wife Anna, who I’ve been true to and madly in love with since the day I met her. I don’t want anybody to misunderstand this and make it look like I was flirting with somebody. Nobody accused me of that and I never have.
The details of the investigation came to light after the Beeb began a review of the corporation’s workplace culture, which will look into ‘preventing abuse of power’. The deep dive follows the recent Huw Edwards scandal, in which the former News at Ten presenter pleaded guilty in July to making indecent images of children and was handed a suspended sentence last month. After it emerged that Edwards had been earned a whopping £480,000 during March 2023 and April 2024 – despite not working for most of this time – the Beeb requested he return more than £200,000 of his salary which was paid after his arrest in November. What a mess, eh?
‘I am fully committed to tackling inappropriate or abusive behaviour,’ BBC chairman Samir Shah announced at the start of the new company-wide deep dive. ‘For most of us it is a joy to work for the BBC and that should be the case for everyone. Nobody working in the BBC should ever feel fear or worry while working here.’ Will the review unearth more uncomfortable revelations before it concludes? Watch this space…
Kamala Harris’s ‘Joe Biden’ problem
As Hurricane Milton battered Florida last week, Kamala Harris did her best to look and sound presidential. The Vice President hosted a live broadcast with the leadership of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. She then called into CNN, live, to reassure Americans that her administration was tackling the crisis. The message was meant to be clear: she’s got this.
Alas, Joe Biden also wanted to show that he’s in charge and that muddled matters. On Friday, the actual Commander-in-Chief gave an emergency press conference about the disaster from the White House briefing room, which rather overshadowed Harris’s big rally that day in the critical swing state of Michigan.
Joe and his wife Jill are said to still be secretly fuming about the way he was forced to move aside
Harris and Biden are not, it seems, singing from the same electoral hymn sheet. The disharmony is starting to make itself heard. Last week, Harris also attacked Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for being ‘selfish’ in his response to Milton. Poor Joe hadn’t got the memo. He praised DeSantis for his ‘gracious’ and ‘co-operative’ response.
Such mix-ups are partly inevitable: vice presidents running for the top job are eager to use the power of incumbency to bolster their appeal, but the actual incumbent tends to get in the way. We saw similar overlap issues with Al Gore and Bill Clinton in 2000 and George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan in 1988.
But the unprecedented nature of Harris’s elevation to the top of the Democratic ticket makes her Biden problem even more awkward. Ever since he was unceremoniously bumped out of the 2024 race over the summer, Biden has done his best to sound supportive. ‘I promise I’ll be the best volunteer Harris and Walz’s camp have ever seen,’ he told the Democratic convention in late August.
But he’s conspicuously failing in that mission. That’s partly down to his declining mental health: he often seems to have no idea what he is saying, which makes ‘message discipline’ a challenge.
Yet the evidence of bad blood between Team Joe and Team Kamala is mounting. ‘The White House is lacking someone in the room thinking first and foremost about how things would affect the campaign,’ grumbled one Harris aide to Axios over the weekend. There are growing tensions between senior retained members of the Biden-Harris campaign and the newer Harris-Walz staffers.
The two groups have clashing priorities. In order to protect his legacy, Team Biden wants to boast about the resilience of the American economy. In order to win, Team Harris wishes to address voter concerns about the lingering harms of inflation. She keeps saying ‘it’s time to turn the page’ on the failed politics of the past. But Biden’s staff see the glaring flaw in that slogan: Biden and Harris have been in power for almost four years. She is the page she wants to turn.
In recent days, the Harris campaign has been struggling on any number of fronts. The ‘internal numbers’ in states such as Michigan and Wisconsin reportedly show her falling further behind than public polls indicate. To address that slippage, Harris went on a media ‘blitz’, yet that misfired because she is hard to like and very bad at answering difficult questions.
It’s increasingly evident, too, that the Harris-Walz campaign is losing ground with lower-income male and non-white voters. Barack Obama duly went to Pittsburgh last week to scold his ‘brothers’ for being insufficiently excited about the possibility of electing a mixed-race woman to the White House. But it’s never a good idea to accuse your own supporters of sexism and Obama’s intervention only added to whispers of panic in high Democratic circles.
The serving president is not helping, clearly. Joe and his wife Jill are widely said to still be secretly fuming about the way he was forced to move aside. The Bidens are proud people and the President’s wife has reportedly distrusted Harris since 2019, when she attacked her man on the Democratic presidential primary debate stage. As a campaign flounders, hidden animosities have tendency to bubble up. And we can be sure that, if Harris loses, Team Joe will not resist making the argument that he would have beaten Donald Trump.
Listen to more from Freddy Gray on the Americano podcast:
Join Freddy Gray, The Spectator’s deputy editor, alongside special guest Nigel Farage, at Americano Live: US election special on 24th October. Book your tickets here
The fatal allure of Hitler’s favourite mountain
‘The hills are alive,’ warbled Julie Andrews as she strode through a verdant Alpine mountain meadow, ‘with the sound of music. With songs they have sung, for a thousand years.’ But there was always a dark side to the peaks she sang about in The Sound of Music, and they have just claimed another victim.
The Untersberg, according to legend, is where emperor Frederick Barbarossa, the ruler of the First Reich, sleeps in a hidden grotto
This week Andreas Münzhuber, reportedly a leading German neo-Nazi, tripped on a root and plunged 200 feet to his death climbing on the Untersberg, a mountain massif straddling the German-Austrian border near the town of Berchtesgaden. The Untersberg is the actual mountain that Andrews was filmed singing on in the opening of The Sound of Music, and where the von Trapp family can be seen fleeing from Nazi Austria at the end of the film.
It seems unlikely that Münzhuber was in the region because of his love of musicals. According to a German news outlet, he was a ‘senior board member’ of the Third Way, a breakaway group from Germany’s leading neo-Nazi party, the NPD (recently renamed Heimat! or ‘Homeland’). The NPD was founded in the 1960s, around the time that The Sound of Music was filmed, and has been hovering on the fringes of German politics ever since.
It’s a fair bet that Münzhuber was well aware of the mountain’s chief associations with Adolf Hitler, who made the area his home exactly 100 years ago. In 1924, when he was released from jail after mounting Munich’s unsuccessful Beer-hall putsch, he withdrew to the mountains to finish his autobiography Mein Kampf.
The future Fuhrer rented a chalet called Haus Wachenfeld, and he loved the place so much that after he came to power he bought the house in 1935 with Mein Kampf’s royalties. He vastly expanded the site to create a residence called the Berghof (Mountain Court) which became the physical centre of the Nazi regime, and the site of pilgrimages by crowds of his adoring admirers, hoping to catch a glimpse of their revered leader. Other Nazi leaders, including Göring, Albert Speer, and Martin Bormann, also acquired nearby houses, often by forcibly evicting the original residents.
The Berghof – patrolled by prowling SS guards, and ringed by fences and watchtowers – was the home where Hitler held court, and where he welcomed international visitors such as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and Prime Ministers David Lloyd George and Neville Chamberlain.
The Berghof was also where Hitler relaxed with his mistress Eva Braun, watched Hollywood films, made his own home movies, and planned his key decisions – like the fatal 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union. Apart from the heart-stoppingly beautiful scenery, another aspect of the area that most appealed to Hitler was its importance in Teutonic mythology.
The Untersberg, according to legend, is where emperor Frederick Barbarossa, the ruler of the First Reich, the Holy Roman Empire, sleeps in a hidden grotto, only to be roused from his eternal rest if Germany is in mortal peril. (The more mundane historical reality is that the real Barbarossa drowned in what is now Turkey while on the Third Crusade in 1190, and his mortal remains were divided amongst nearby local churches). ‘Barbarossa’ was also the codename Hitler chose for his ill-fated assault on Russia.
I know Berchtesgaden and the Untersberg well, as it was a stopover along the route of the ‘Face of Evil’, a tour I devised and led for ten years tracing the rise and fall of the Third Reich. While planning the tour, I was invited to a meeting with Berchtesgaden’s nervous mayor, who wanted to impress upon me that the area’s popularity with the thousands of visitors who flock there annually was wholly down to the beautiful scenery and fresh mountain air, and had nothing whatsoever to do with its unfortunate history in the years 1933-45.
The mayor’s assurances were nonsense, of course. His eagerness to airbrush away the area’s dark history was contradicted by the fine local museum, dedicated to the area’s links with Hitler, built over a labyrinth of tunnels dug by the SS planning a last stand in this redoubt. It was also clear why hundreds of people flocked every day in the summer to the top of another mountain peak, the 6,000-foot Kehlstein, where Martin Bormann built a mountain top eyrie, the Eagle’s Nest, as a 50th birthday present for his master.
Hitler disliked the Eagle’s Nest, and only visited it a dozen times, though Eva Braun partied with her friends there when he was absent. Today the site is a restaurant, which can be accessed by Hitler’s original lift. Visitors head up to the summit through the mountain’s core and can dine in the SS’s former guardroom.
The Berghof itself is no more. It was shattered by an Allied bombing raid in April 1945, and looted by its SS guardians. Its ruins were then destroyed by an embarrassed Bavarian government in 1951, and now only the massive foundations remain, hidden beneath the trees of a lowering forest.
Even so, Hitler’s beloved home still attracts dedicated followers like Münzhuber. During one tour of the site, I actually found votive church candles burning there, placed by unseen devotees to whom Hitler is a hero, if not a saint. It is disturbing indeed that there are still those drawn here to worship the face of evil.
The discovery of Irvine’s boot on Everest raises more questions than answers
Andrew Comyn ‘Sandy’ Irvine disappeared while attempting to climb Everest in June 1924 with his partner George Mallory. For a century, the 22-year-old British climber’s body lay undiscovered. But last month a startling discovery was made on the mountain: a preserved boot with a red label attached; the lettering inside read: ‘AC Irvine’.
Could this discovery finally solve the mystery of whether Mallory and Irvine reached the summit?
The group of American filmmakers uncovered the boot on the Central Rongbuk Glacier, on the north face of Everest. The expedition was not there to hunt for clues on the ill-fated British 1924 Mount Everest expedition and the climbers instantly knew what they were looking at. ‘I lifted up the sock and saw a red label with ‘AC Irvine’ stitched into it,’ climber and filmmaker Jimmy Chin told National Geographic after the historic find. ‘We were all literally running in circles, dropping F-bombs.’
Could this discovery finally solve the mystery of whether Mallory and Irvine reached the summit on 8 June 1924, making them the first people to do so? ‘To be honest, it doesn’t give us many clues,’ says Jochen Hemmleb, an author and historian who has dedicated his life to studying the fate of the British duo. ‘But it has made me feel very emotional and relieved. Irvine now stands on the same pedestal as Mallory – he has finally become tangible.’
Hemmleb’s words made me realise that this recent discovery risked reducing Irvine to a mere foot in a boot forgetting that he was a strong and handsome 22-year-old who set out to follow his dream. Irvine was not only chosen to join the 1924 expedition because of his physical strength and athletic abilities; his engineering skills made him instrumental in making the expedition’s oxygen equipment more efficient and durable. This was a key innovation for high-altitude climbing at the time. Irvine was simply the ideal companion for Mallory in the final push towards the summit. The pair’s death was a terrible tragedy, but there must have been some consolation for their loved ones that Irvine and Mallory died doing what they loved.
The discovery of Irvine’s boot, almost exactly 25 years after Mallory’s body was found, is undoubtedly a major historical event. Yet it still leaves lots of questions around the circumstances surrounding their tragic fate. How did Irvine’s body end up at 5,600 metres, some 2,500 metres lower than Mallory’s? Did he fall alongside his mate and continue to tumble down the relatively gentle slope of Everest’s north face? Or was his body moved by natural forces such as avalanches or glacial retreat over the past century?
While these uncertainties remain, what keeps historians like Hemmleb up at night is the lingering mystery surrounding the camera that Mallory and Irvine took with them. Experts believe that the film inside could still be developed and potentially reveal if they reached the top before their fatal fall. Unfortunately, the camera has not been found. There are various rumours about its fate.
In 1975, a Chinese climber named Wang Hongbao stumbled across what he believed to be the body of a dead Englishman, since thought to be Mallory, at 8,100 metres. Rumours suggest that the same expedition may have uncovered the camera and handed it over to Chinese officials who decided to keep it under wraps. Why would China hide such a significant find? Perhaps they feared that it might detract from China’s achievement of being the first nation to climb Everest via the North Col in 1960.
A striking detail from the 1999 expedition, which found Mallory’s body, was the missing photograph of Mallory’s wife Ruth, which he vowed to leave at the summit. The failure to find this picture fuelled the theories of those convinced that the pair had reached the top. But after 75 years exposed to the mountain’s harsh elements, the photo could have easily slipped from Mallory’s pocket and been carried away by the relentless storms close to Everest’s summit. Some even doubt that he carried it at all. And, let’s be honest, would their success truly force us to rewrite history?
After all, Tenzing Norgay Sherpa and New Zealander Edmund Hillary, who reached the summit on 29 May 1953, will forever hold the title of being the first to complete the ascent and return safely. What they risk losing is the distinction of being the first humans to set foot on the world’s highest point.
While the discovery of Irvine’s body is undoubtedly an emotional milestone for historians like Hemmleb, it fails to unlock new insights into Everest’s enduring enigma. In the end, Hillary’s and Tenzing’s legacy stands firm, and it is unlikely that any discovery will topple Tenzing’s statues in Nepal or erase Hillary’s image from New Zealand’s five-dollar notes. Yet we must not forget the remarkable effort of Mallory and Irvine who ventured into the unknown with far less sophisticated equipment and technology. While this latest find will undoubtedly spark another wave of speculation, the possibility that the pair’s elusive camera is still out there will keep historian and punters searching for answers.
Even the BBC’s critics should want to protect the World Service
When Tim Davie, the director-general of the BBC, addresses the Future Resilience Forum in London this afternoon, he has a clear mission: to fight for the BBC World Service’s future. Davie will warn that ‘when the World Service retreats, state-funded media operators move in to take advantage.’ Whether you love or loathe the BBC, Davie is right: the World Service is needed more than ever.
The Beeb has had a torrid few years. Davie recently marked the fourth anniversary of his appointment as the corporation’s 17th director general, in which time former Panorama interviewer Martin Bashir was exposed as a manipulative liar, BBC News falsely accused a group of Jewish youths celebrating Hanukkah of using anti-Muslim slurs, Gary Lineker was suspended for comparing the previous government to the Nazis, and stalwart presenter Huw Edwards was convicted for child pornography.
Where the World Service broadcasts, people listen, and prefer it to Autocracy FM
These have been more than isolated stumbles. Time and again, mistakes have been made and exacerbated because of a culture of poor management: the BBC is slow to admit error, protective of big-name stars, erratic in its editorial judgement and pervaded by a zealously progressive hauteur on a number of controversial errors. All of this has been ammunition for the corporation’s critics, who seek to clips its wings or get rid of it altogether
Despite all that, the message that Davie is expected to deliver is compelling and true. He will explain that expansionist autocratic states are devoting considerable resources to outlets promoting their own interpretation of current events – let us call it what it is, propaganda. They are using a range of platforms including social media and they regard this information warfare as a counterpart to diplomacy and hard power.
Russia and China, Davie will say, ‘are spending an estimated £6-8 billion on expanding their global media activities – investing hard to grow their audiences in key markets in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America’. In Kenya and Liberia, the state broadcasters are transmitting Chinese television and radio content, while media backed by the Russian government are being relayed on Lebanese radio.
This is happening at a time when the BBC World Service is, in Davie’s word, ‘retreating’. In 2022, it closed its Arabic and Persian stations and cut nearly 400 jobs to achieve savings of £28.5 million, and as a result lost 12 per cent of its audience. The equation is straightforward: where the BBC ceases to broadcast, a gap opens up and is filled by dictators with deep pockets and no scruples about promoting their own interests. Western democracies are losing the information war.
The BBC’s critics will point to instances of its editorial bias. But we need to be realistic. The corporation makes mistakes, and has sometimes been found to have employed correspondents whose impartiality falls far below the high standards they, and we as licence fee payers, should expect. To suggest, however, that the World Service is as flawed or as partial as RT or China’s CGTN is absurd. The fact that we know when the BBC gets it wrong, and that the World Service is regulated by Ofcom, already puts it in a different category from the mouthpieces for Putin and Xi.
The BBC World Service is a trusted and popular product. Last year it was reported that in Nigeria, for example, 60 per cent of the population consumed BBC news content every month, compared to 9 per cent for CGTN and a tiny 2 per cent for RT. Where the World Service broadcasts, people listen, and prefer it to Autocracy FM. But audiences, like nature, abhor a vacuum, and if we allow a situation in which Russia, or China, or any other dictatorship is providing the only news, that is what people will listen to.
It is fashionable in some circles to dismiss the notion of ‘soft power’. We can debate its meaning and extent, but the billions of dollars spent by China and Russia suggest that they believe in its utility, which means the West should too. The argument Tim Davie will make is not an easy one: even if we accept that diminishing the World Service is allowing our adversaries to drown out facts with propaganda, there is the brutal practicality of how we are to fund it.
The World Service currently draws on the licence fee with an additional £104.4 million from the Foreign Office. The culture secretary Lisa Nandy has said she supports the licence fee but that all funding mechanisms will be examined ahead of the charter renewal process. Davie has acknowledged the challenge, telling the Royal Television Society in March that ‘we cannot keep asking UK licence fee payers to invest in [the World Service] when we face cuts to UK services’.
The new government boasts of taking ‘tough decisions’. There are plenty here. If the World Service cuts back, other, often malign, providers will step into the breach. The influence of their backers will grow, while ours diminishes. Stopping this happening will cost money, and public expenditure is at a premium. But this is an age of rampant mis- and disinformation, in which accuracy and impartiality are embattled. We have a weapon at hand, so the question becomes: are we going to stay in this fight, or step back and let the other side win?
Who is slipping through Europe’s porous borders?
In the same week that over 1,000 migrants arrived in England, the head of MI5 admitted his agency had ‘one hell of a job’ on its hands. Ken McCallum said that while there is a threat from Russia, China and Iran, it was Islamist terrorism ‘that concerns me most’. In particular, al-Qaida and the Islamic State, specifically their Afghan affiliate Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), members of which slaughtered 137 Russians in a Moscow concert hall earlier this year.
McCallum’s analysis is almost identical to that of Céline Berthon, the director-general of the DGSI, the French equivalent of MI5. She also namechecked the two Islamist terror groups in an interview last month, warning that this year she had noted a ‘fairly strong resurgence of the threat’.
In the meantime, who knows who is pouring through Europe’s porous borders
The MI5 chief made his remarks three days after 973 migrants had landed in 17 small boats in Kent. This was the highest daily number this year, taking the total arrivals for 2024 to 26,612. A further 140 migrants made it to England this Saturday, while 128 were rescued by the French coastguard on the same day after getting into difficulty in the Channel. According to government data for the first six months of 2024, over 5,300 of the migrants who have crossed the Channel are Afghans, the largest representation of any country, followed by Iranians (3,844) and Vietnamese (3,031).
On the same day that McCallum made his statement from the counter-terrorism operations centre in London, French police, aided by the DGSI, arrested a 22-year-old Afghan in Toulouse. On Saturday, he was indicted on charges of planning an attack on a football stadium or a shopping centre. The Afghan has been living in France for three years, and is described as a follower of the Islamic State.
The French media report a ‘link’ between the Afghan arrested in France and a 27-year-old man of the same nationality who last week was charged by the US Justice Department with plotting an election day attack in America. Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi arrived in the States in September 2021 and, with his wife and child, was waiting for his asylum claim to be processed.
CNN report that Tawhedi had donated money to charities with links to the Islamic State, and their propaganda was also found on his phone. In addition, police discovered a video on the phone in which Tawhedi explained to his child ‘about the rewards a martyr receives in the afterlife’.
It is a grotesque paradox that while the intelligence services of Britain, France and America work flat out to prevent Islamist terrorist attacks, their respective governments continue to oversee a chaotic immigration policy. There is a link between the two. In a report published in April 2016 Frontex, Europe’s border control agency, stated: ‘The Paris attacks in November 2015 [in which an ISIS terror cell killed 130] clearly demonstrated that irregular migratory flows could be used by terrorists to enter the EU. Two of the terrorists involved in the attacks had previously irregularly entered through Leros and had been registered by the Greek authorities.’
The report pinpointed the major flaw in the EU’s border policy: ‘There is no EU system capable of tracing people’s movements following an illegal border crossing. Therefore it is not possible to establish the precise number of persons who have illegally crossed.’
Eight years on, little has changed, except in Britain’s case, where since 2018 more than 135,000 migrants have crossed the Channel illegally in small boats. Many arrive without a passport or other reliable documentation.
Many more are camped on the French channel coast waiting for their turn to cross to England. The numbers are so great that last week the mayors of 15 communes in the Calais region called on the government to take action. The mayor of Grand-Fort-Philippe, between Dunkirk and Calais, told reporters:
The situation is on the verge of exploding. We can’t take it anymore, and as mayors we need more than just good words…our populations are turning to us, demanding firm, appropriate responses.
The same is true of many populations in Britain who, for years, have been fobbed off with good words about beefing up the borders. Nothing has been done and, 100 days into Keir Starmer’s government, Labour’s attitude to the migrant crisis appears to be ‘what crisis?’
In the meantime, who knows who is pouring through Europe’s porous borders. In June 2023, Thibault de Montbrial, president of the Centre for Reflection on Homeland Security in France, warned that that the Islamic State ‘has already started reintroducing active commando units’ into Europe.
French police reportedly foiled three Islamist attacks during the summer Olympics, and in August, in Germany, three festival goers were fatally stabbed by a man said to be acting in the name of the Islamic State. The intelligence services are doing their best to thwart the Islamists but it is one hell of a job.
Lammy’s EU brag backfires
To Luxembourg, where David Lammy is making headlines yet again. The Foreign Secretary has today bragged about his attendance at an EU summit on the conflict in the Middle East and the Ukraine war – with the meet set to include discussion over Russian interference across Europe and the threat posed by Iran. But Mr S was rather intrigued by Lammy’s blatant boasting about his invite – not least when he is hardly the first Foreign Secretary in recent years to attend such a gathering.
Gloating about his fancy foreign trip, Lammy grandly insisted:
UK security is indivisible from European security. This government is determined to reset our relationships and deepen ties with our European partners in order to make us all safer. This visit is an opportunity for the UK to be back at the table, discussing the most pressing global issues with our closest neighbours and tackling the seismic challenges we all face.
‘Back at the table’? It seems Lammy has forgotten that former Cabinet Secretary and ex-PM Liz Truss joined EU leaders during talks on the response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The fruitful meet even brought Truss and Emmanuel Macron closer together on the issue of stopping small boats, with the French president insisting it sent a ‘message of unity’ to the international community.
It’s hardly a grand EU ‘reset’ win when one of the current Foreign Secretary’s predecessors received the, um, exact same perk. It’s always a gaffe a day with Lammy, eh?
Is Labour’s Britain really an investor’s paradise?
So, is it really time in invest in Britain, as the heads of fourteen banks and other financial institutions have declared in a letter to the Times today, ahead of Keir Starmer’s investment summit? Sorry, but the more that I read the letter, signed by Amanda Blanc of Aviva and David Solomon of Goldman Sachs among others, the more it reads like a note scrawled by hostages suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.
Do they really believe that Britain was a basket case under the Tories but that now under Starmer and Labour it has suddenly become a land of opportunity? Or are they fearful of what Rachel Reeves might have in store for them in the Budget, with this part of a lobbying effort to avert the worst?
When Labour does seek dialogue with business it just ends up listening to the loudest voices
The flattery in the letter has been laid on with a trowel. ‘With greater stability,’ they write, ‘[Britain’s] attractiveness is increased even further.’ What stability would that be? We have a government which is suffering the same ructions after three months that the Tories suffered after a decade in power. We have a transport secretary who nearly drove away a major investor in a UK port by calling it a ‘rogue operator’. And we have a public sector wage bill which is going through the roof as the government nods through fat pay rises without any agreement to increase productivity.
The saddest thing about this letter is that its fourteen signatories will very likely get their way: as a result of this saccharin charm offensive Reeves probably will pull a few proposals which would have impacted on them. Proposals to equalise capital gains tax with income tax seem already to have been watered down; ditto to remove the higher rate of pensions tax relief, which would have harmed Aviva and Legal & General – both signatories of today’s letter. But you can bet Reeves and her government won’t be listening nearly so much to the smaller businesses which look to suffer from higher employees’ National Insurance contributions – now being mooted as a means of raising government revenue in blatant disregard for Labour’s manifesto promise not to touch NI. The government will be ploughing ahead with its employment rights bill, which will make life a little more inconvenient and expensive for large business but a lot more so for their smaller competitors.
This was the curse of the Blair government. Overall it wasn’t too unfriendly to business, but it was the big companies which ended up getting their way, as reams of regulations took out smaller competitors. The care home industry was a case in point: pettifogging rules over door widths and the like pushed a lot of privately-run homes out of business while larger competitors mopped up business for their purpose-built care homes.
This is the nature of Labour. Not a natural ally of capitalism, when it does seek dialogue with business it just ends up listening to the loudest voices – the corporate bigwigs who can afford to entertain ministers royally, not to mention donate to their wardrobes. Small businesses, on the other hand, tend to go unheard. There are too few MPs on the Labour benches with experience of setting up and running businesses – as a result, they think the big corporates are representing the private sector as a whole.
So no, don’t be fooled by this hostage letter. Britain hasn’t suddenly become a paradise for investors; rather it has become a country where business people are scared of what Labour might do to them.
Why isn’t Elon Musk at Starmer’s investment summit?
Happy summit day, one and all. Today is the new Labour government’s first big business bash, as proceedings kick off at the Guildhall. Ministers are insisting that Britain is open for investment (honest, guv) ahead of Rachel Reeves’ Budget on 30 October. Yet while there were some early positive signs for the Prime Minister – with five of the world’s biggest banks signing a statement of support today – there seems to be a fly in the ointment in the form of one man’s absence.
Elon Musk is conspicuously not present at today’s jamboree, with the BBC reporting that he was ‘not invited due to his social media posts’ during the August riots. Ministers have remained tight-lipped on his lack of an invite. Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds refused three times to comment in an interview with Sky yesterday, declaring ‘I’m not going to comment on particular invitations for particular personnel.’ Then this morning the Science Secretary Peter Kyle suggested that Musk did not get an invite due to his tendency to avoid ‘these sort of events’ , telling Times Radio:
Elon Musk has never come to any of the past investment summits that have been held under the previous government, he doesn’t tend to do these sort of events, but I stand absolutely ready to engage with him, to talk about any potential global investments he’s making – I’m not aware of any at this moment in time.
Mr S is old enough to recall the far-flung days of, er, last November when he took a starring role in Britain’s AI Summit, including a fireside chat with then-PM Rishi Sunak. Ministers might not like the Tesla’s boss rhetoric but he does have some serious money to invest. Former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has said that Musk ‘told me last year he was planning a new car plant in Europe and had not decided where but the UK was a candidate.’
Let’s hope Musk’s non-appearance doesn’t put any such investment at risk…
Can Lebanon ever be free of Hezbollah?
Lebanon is teetering on the edge of a seismic political shift, facing increasing pressure both from internal factions and external military threats. Years of dominance in Lebanon’s political and military arenas have not shielded the terror group Hezbollah from devastating external blows, including the assassination of its longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah. The group’s entrenched power within the country’s political, military, and social structures has long presented a seemingly insurmountable challenge. As the group’s grip appears to weaken, a rare moment of vulnerability has emerged, one that could reshape Lebanon’s future.
Yet the question remains: will this be a fleeting opportunity or the beginning of Lebanon’s long-awaited liberation from Hezbollah’s shadow? This opens up the possibility – though by no means a certainty – of a post-Hezbollah Lebanon. The outcome will depend on a delicate interplay of local forces, regional powers, and international actors, all vying to determine what comes next for a country caught between war and peace, and between hope and despair.
Hezbollah’s fate is tied not just to Lebanon but to the Middle East’s broader geopolitical struggles
The balance of power between Hezbollah and the Lebanese state is key. The Lebanese army, although a legitimate national force, is not in a position to confront Hezbollah directly as it is infiltrated by elements loyal to Hezbollah, particularly among its Shia ranks. This makes any effort to disarm or confront Hezbollah not only politically explosive but also militarily fraught. A direct confrontation could splinter the army, and worse, lead to a devastating civil war. Such a war would not only engulf Lebanon but likely draw in fighters from across the region, as Iran and its regional allies could come to Hezbollah’s defence.
The idea of using the Lebanese army to seize this moment of Hezbollah’s weakness has been floated in both Lebanese and Israeli circles. However, the structural weaknesses within the army itself make this an unlikely solution. One former senior Mossad official involved in important operations in Iran, Lebanon, and other areas, estimated in a recent interview that ‘if an order is given to attack Hezbollah, there will be fractures within the Lebanese army that will prevent it from acting with full force’. Thus, any realistic path forward must involve not just the strengthening of the Lebanese army, but also a broader political and economic restructuring that weakens Hezbollah’s influence across multiple spheres of Lebanese society.
Another important factor in this equation is Hezbollah’s relationship with Iran. Hezbollah’s power is not merely a function of its military capabilities or its domestic political influence; it is inextricably linked to Iranian support. Iran has used Hezbollah as a proxy in its broader regional strategy, arming and financing the group while deepening its influence in countries like Syria and Iraq. Any serious attempt to dismantle Hezbollah would need to address this relationship. As long as Iran continues to view Hezbollah as a strategic asset, the group will remain capable of rearming and rebuilding, even in the face of significant setbacks such as Nasrallah’s assassination.
This leads to one of the most critical questions for Lebanon’s future: can Hezbollah be meaningfully weakened without simultaneously confronting Iran’s regional ambitions? The answer is likely no. The fate of Hezbollah is tied not just to Lebanon but to the broader geopolitical struggles in the Middle East. Any long-term solution will require a concerted effort by the international community to contain Iran’s influence, not only in Lebanon but across the region.
The international dimension is further complicated by the potential for regional actors to play a role in shaping Lebanon’s future. Countries like the United Arab Emirates, which harbours deep animosity toward Hezbollah, could offer financial and political support to Lebanese forces looking to reclaim sovereignty from the group. But this effort would need to be part of a broader arrangement, one that includes guarantees for Lebanon’s internal stability and the strengthening of its national institutions. Without such a framework, any external support is likely to be piecemeal and ultimately ineffective.
A final, perhaps more troubling, consideration is the resilience of Hezbollah’s internal structure. Despite significant leadership losses and military setbacks, Hezbollah remains a deeply hierarchical and well-organised entity. The assassinations of its senior leaders could, paradoxically, lead to the rise of a younger, more reckless generation of operatives who are less pragmatic than their predecessors. This could make any diplomatic or political resolution even more difficult.
Lebanon’s future is uncertain, and the questions it faces are profound. Can the Lebanese state, with its fractured political system and weak military, ever hope to disarm Hezbollah? Can the international community muster the will and resources to address the Iranian influence that underpins Hezbollah’s power? And perhaps most crucially, if Hezbollah is removed from its position of dominance, what forces will emerge to fill the vacuum? The answers to these questions will determine not just Lebanon’s future, but the stability of the entire region.
In the meantime, we must be careful not to view Hezbollah’s current setbacks as being a sign of its guaranteed imminent collapse. The group has survived, and even thrived, under enormous pressure before. What is needed now is not just military action or diplomatic pressure, but a comprehensive, multi-dimensional approach that addresses the root causes of Hezbollah’s power while avoiding the catastrophic consequences of an all-out civil war. The stakes for Lebanon – and for the region – could not be higher.
Hezbollah’s drone strike won’t deter Israel’s campaign
Last night, a single Hezbollah drone managed to inflict more damage on Israel than 200 Iranian ballistic missiles so far. A ‘swarm’ of drones launched by the Iran-backed terror organisation based in Lebanon exploded south of the northern city of Haifa, with one hitting the Binyamina military base, home to a training camp for the Israeli Defence Force’s (IDF) Golani Brigade.
Early reports indicate the drone was spotted by the Israeli airforce, but attempts to shoot it down failed. Sirens to warn those targeted also did not go off. As a result, it exploded, causing a reported 67 casualties according to Israeli media, four of whom have been killed and at least 12 badly wounded.
Israel is resisting calls for ceasefire
This was the single deadliest attack on Israel since 7 October. While Israel’s Iron Dome and Arrow systems are able to provide comprehensive anti-missile and rocket defences, drones pose a far greater challenge for the IDF. They can fly low and change direction unexpectedly, making them more difficult to spot and intercept than rockets or missiles. Although the Iron Dome has been recently adapted to handle drones, the system is still far from perfect. Drones are effective, cheap and easy to operate. As a result, they are likely to become the weapon of choice against Israel by its enemies, and can be used in large numbers that will overwhelm Israeli defences and cause mass casualties.
Most of the drones used by Hezbollah (and also those used by Russia in Ukraine) are Iranian-made – and deadly. Some are able to carry explosives, bombs or small missiles, and are used as ‘suicide’ drones to attack, while other drones are used for espionage. Although the IDF estimates that Israel has already eliminated about two-thirds of Hezbollah’s weapons arsenal, it is still able to cause deadly attacks. Only a few days before yesterday’s attack, several drones made it all the way into central Israel and one exploded on a retirement home in the city of Herzeliya, near Tel Aviv.
The IDF has expanded the ground operation against Hezbollah in the last two days. Forces have already found large stockpiles of weapons, including missiles, rifles, rockets, grenades and other equipment to be used by terrorists in a planned large scale attack on Israel. Tunnels dug by Hezbollah have been discovered across southern Lebanon, under villages and some in close proximity to the border with Israel. It’s estimated that hundreds of terrorists have been eliminated so far.
America – wisely – seems to hope that Israel’s offensive will also weaken Hezbollah’s political power and its grip over Lebanon. The terror organisation has a political party and is part of the Lebanese government. However, Hezbollah’s allegiance is first and foremost to Iran, and it represents Iranian interests, thereby undermining Lebanese independence from foreign interference. The American hope is ambitious, but this could be possible with cooperation from (reluctant) regional actors, such as Qatar and Egypt, and if Hezbollah keeps getting weaker.
Criticism of Israel’s operation has grown due to the rising number of Lebanese refugees, who were told by Israel to leave their homes in the south and move north for their own safety. Israel recently suffered wide condemnation after the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said that the IDF has targeted its troops, and injured two soldiers. Israel said that the attack was unintentional and that it targeted Hezbollah forces in close proximity to UNIFIL forces. Before the incident, the IDF asked UNIFIL to evacuate from the area for their own safety, which they refused to do.
Although it’s imperative that the IDF doesn’t harm UNIFIL personnel, the condemnation of Israel by some 40 countries ignores UNIFIL’s long-term failure to enforce UN security Council resolution 1701 that stipulates that Hezbollah should have been disarmed. Hezbollah has built an expansive array of tunnels right under UNIFIL’s noses, some in very close proximity to UN bases. It has stockpiled vasts amounts of weapons, and attacked Israeli civilians from south Lebanon where UNIFIL forces are present with thousands of drones, rickets and missiles.
Israel is resisting calls for ceasefire. The IDF aims to use the momentum created following this attack in order to weaken Hezbollah further and make it more difficult for it to re-establish a presence in southern Lebanon. For now, it doesn’t look like Isreal has plans to stop, and deadly attacks will only strengthen its resolve to keep on fighting until the country is safer.
Braverman’s Cambridge cancellation exposes the campus free speech crisis
Anti-fascism ain’t what it used to be. It used to mean signing up to go to fight Franco’s fascists in Spain, turning out against Oswald Mosley in the East End, or trading punches with National Front thugs. Now it means trying to get right-wing Tory MPs no platformed on elite university campuses – and occasionally punching elderly gender-critical women in the face. It’s by turns despicable and pathetic.
The cancellation of Suella Braverman’s event at Cambridge last week – following threats of protest by assorted faux-radical groups, with ‘Cambridge for Palestine’ to the fore – was grimly predictable. Indeed, it follows a pattern that has become all too familiar to students who dare to hold views or host speakers that upset their university’s hysterical, self-appointed censors.
This remains a timely reminder of the renewed threat to free speech on campus
Braverman was invited by the Cambridge University Conservative Association (Cuca), the organisation she herself led, as a Cambridge student, 20 years ago. Activists hastily organised a protest, accusing the former home secretary of being ‘far right’. And soon enough the whole thing was postponed, due to exorbitant security costs. Reportedly, Cuca was quoted £1,500 to securely hold the event – a sum it couldn’t afford.
It’s unclear who advised that all this security was necessary. Cambridge police say they assessed the event to be low risk, while Braverman has implied that the police along with ‘university and parliamentary authorities’ told the organisers it was best not to go ahead. For its part, parliament’s security department says it cannot comment on individual MPs’ security arrangements, while Cambridge University says it was unaware the event was even taking place. There is also sometimes an unfortunate tendency to overstate the physical threat posed by today’s campus activists, many of whom look like they’d struggle to beat up a sedated gerbil.
Still, it would hardly be out of character for such groups to try to physically shut down the event. Those who organised the protests are claiming that their only aim was counter-speech – to exercise their own free speech and show their displeasure with Braverman. Which is of course their right. But this would be a lot more convincing if their own leaflets didn’t declare, in screaming all-caps, ‘NO PLATFORM FOR THE FAR RIGHT’ – an explicit call for Braverman to be silenced.
The event will go ahead at a later date, no doubt with a much bigger audience. But this remains a timely reminder of the renewed threat to free speech on campus. One of the few good things the last Tory government did was to pass the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act. This included measures to ensure campus organisers are no longer lumbered with prohibitive security costs — which effectively hand protesters a heckler’s veto.
Naturally, the Act was among the first things to go after an increasingly intolerant Labour party was returned to power. Many more campus events, which don’t always benefit from headline-grabbing speakers, will continue to be shut down as a consequence.
You do not have to be a fan of Suella Braverman to see how illiberal and outrageous this all is. Smearing the Tory right-winger as some flavour of fascist is a particularly sick joke given the past year we’ve had, in which anti-Semitic street protests have become a regular occurrence and there was a 96 per cent rise in anti-Jewish assaults. If Cambridge’s so-called radicals truly want to fight fascism, they should start with the people they themselves have been marching and sharing platforms with since 7 October.
Labour were right to protect Taylor Swift
Still making headlines, it seems, is one of the more trivial scandals to have dogged the Labour government in its first 100 days in office: to wit, the police protection given to the pop singer Taylor Swift. File firmly under circuses, you might think, rather than bread.
For those who need catching up, the American pop star was given a VVIP police escort around London during the UK leg of her Eras tour – a swishy blue-light motorcade of the sort usually reserved for members of the royal family and foreign heads of state, and the reassuring knowledge that should some loon seek to lob a brick at her, or worse, Tay-Tay could rely on London’s finest to pile in with their side-handled batons and/or firearms.
The issue at hand is that such protection, provided at the expense of the taxpayer, is indeed usually reserved for members of the royal family and foreign heads of state. It’s kind of a rule. And it’s kind of a rule that was overcome – against the initial protests of the Met itself – only after intense backstage lobbying by the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan and, it now emerges, the Attorney General Lord Hermer KC himself.
What’s more, it emerged soon after the event that both Khan and Cooper had enjoyed freebie tickets to Taylor Swift’s concerts (neither cheap nor easy to come by for the rest of us). As so often with these wretched characters, it’s not a good look.
The thing is, had they been prepared to forgo the chance to shake a tailfeather at the concerts, Cooper and Khan could have made a full-throated case for the necessity of providing police protection for Taylor Swift in the first place. And the case would have been this one.
VVIP protection for the royal family, like VVIP protection for foreign heads of state, has a reasonably clear rationale. It is that the national interest, in the form of soft power, is served by these characters. Diplomacy helps trade, the royals lend a bit of stardust to diplomacy, and even if it costs the taxpayer to fuel all those whizzy police motorbikes we end up, as a nation, up on the deal.
Taylor Swift may be a private individual, technically speaking, but it’s probably more practical to think of her as a foreign head of state. Her soft power is beyond question: it’s no coincidence that Donald Trump’s tantrum at her when she failed to endorse his presidential candidacy closely resembled his tantrum at North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un. She even has an army – as anyone who has said anything disobliging about her online has discovered to their cost.
Taylor Swift may be a private individual, technically speaking, but it’s probably more practical to think of her as a foreign head of state
It has for many years now been acknowledged that the world’s biggest private corporations have political clout and control more money than most of the world’s nation states. If you go back to the British East India company, you could say that this isn’t even, necessarily, a situation unique to the modern globalised age. Taylor Swift is, I’d suggest, one such case.
Though it’s hard to put a precise figure on it, the Eras tour was widely argued to have contributed something like a billion pounds to the UK economy, what with all those ticket sales, merch, hotels, train tickets, and tax revenue from the very many hundreds of thousands of Barcadi Breezers sold at the venues. There will be any number of Ruritanian dignitaries whizzed up the Mall with full honours whose country’s potential contribution to our national wealth will be a measly fraction of that. And let’s not even get started on Prince Andrew.
What’s more, it wasn’t just to serve her vanity that Taylor Swift wanted an escort. Her preceding concerts in Vienna had to be cancelled after the police there foiled a plot to stage a suicide-bombing at the venue. The Southport stabbings were fresh in everybody’s mind. And Taylor’s mum Andrea, who is also her manager, had said publicly that she was considering cancelling the London leg of the tour. Had she been assassinated on our soil, it would rightly or wrongly have been seen as a black mark against our national prestige. And had she failed to turn up at all, I fear not even Liz Truss’s trade deal with Australia would have been sufficient to stop our national economy returning to the thirteenth century.
I may not like it. You may not like it. In a sane world, we might think, it would be Half-Man Half-Biscuit who received police protection on billion-dollar tours of the United States, rather than Taylor Swift. But we are a diminished power. Having lost an Empire, we need to find ourselves a role, and this appears to be it. On consideration, we can remove this one from the file marked ‘circuses’ and put it into the file marked ‘bread’.