As if the events of the 80th anniversary of D-Day were not enough to contrast historic heroism with petty politicking, the latter part of last week did little to put the British public’s scepticism about politicians to rest.

Friday’s seven-way debate

On Friday, June 7, 2024, the BBC hosted the second of the general election debates. This one featured seven representatives of the main parties in England, Scotland and Wales. No parties from Northern Ireland were present; they were, presumably, not invited.

Guido Fawkes has the list of participants and the video clips.

Hopes were high for the Conservatives, as the outgoing Leader of the House, Penny Mordaunt, with her sharp delivery of facts, represented them.

Mordaunt refused to defend Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in bowing out early from the international D-Day event. His participation in the UK ceremonies did not make up for his absence:

Guido gave us Penny’s soundbite …

What happened was completely wrong and the Prime Minister has rightly apologised for that, apologised to veterans but also to all of us, because he was representing all of us. I’m from Portsmouth, I’ve also been defence secretary and my wish at the end of this week is that all of our veterans feel completely treasured. And I’m hoping tonight to convince you of some of the things that are important to them.

… and concluded (red emphases and italics his):

Very awkward for Mordaunt…

Indeed, particularly since Rishi was born not far away in another important port, Southampton.

Earlier that day, Reform’s Nigel Farage, another debate participant, said that Sunak had no appreciation of D-Day. A journalist pointed out that a lot of Sunak’s constituency, Richmond in Yorkshire, is comprised of military families and veterans.

Guido told us:

Farage has some choice words for the PM:

If he doesn’t understand how vitally important D-Day is in terms of our country its history it is one of our top ever achievements and it’s something that runs right through the generations in this country that we did something truly remarkable. It’s at the edge of living memory this was the last time ever there’ll be a gathering of veterans on parade in Normandy… he is completely disconnected from the centre of this country and he’s proved to me that he basically is not a patriotic leader of the Conservative Party.

Since Sunak’s own-goal apology pundits are wildly speculating about the implications of the gaffe. Sam Freedman says that up to 25% of Sunak’s seat is made up of military families/veterans and that Richmond may therefore be at risk. What’s likelier is that this will accelerate a Reform crossover and could even put the Tories in third place on election day. Farage is knocking seven bells out of Sunak, and there’s weeks to go…

Returning to the debate, this time on taxes, the deputy leader of the Labour Party, Angela Rayner, another forthright woman, went head-to-head with Mordaunt on tax rises under the Conservatives:

Guido has the exchange:

Rayner reminded Penny that the Tories have “put up taxes to a record level in 70 years“. To which Penny replied: “Yeah, we have! And we’ve hated putting taxes up!” Not much of a rebuttal…

Indeed not. She could have pointed out the perceived necessities of furlough during the pandemic and the war in Ukraine … but she didn’t.

The two also locked horns over how much Labour would raise taxes:

Here Mordaunt did point to furlough but said that, post-pandemic:

“… we are starting to see the recovery” promising “more in our manifesto next week” on tax cuts. Pointing to Labour to Labour tax rises, the infamous £2,000 figure was chucked about by Penny. Rayner simply hit back: “That’s a lie”. Mordaunt kept interjecting – rather losing her cool…

It’s unusual for Mordaunt to lose her cool. Normally, she is armed with a barbed wire delivery of facts.

Hmm.

However, Angela Rayner made a gaffe when she referred to the Conservatives’ ‘abstract failure’ over ‘abject failure’. I could make a joke or two about that, but I won’t.

The Telegraph reported (purple emphases mine):

Angela Rayner was mocked after she criticised the Tories for 14 years of “abstract failure” …

Ms Rayner said: “I asked the people to look at their record, and [the Tories] constantly spout these lies that [Labour] is going to stop people’s cars, that we’re going to do this and we’re going to do that, when really the reason they say that is their 14 years of abstract failure.

“[The Conservatives] have failed the British people and people can see that.”

Online commentators speculated that Ms Rayner meant “abject failure”, defined as a complete failure or failure to the maximum extent possible.

It’s said that the paper felt the need to explain what ‘abject failure’ is. How times have changed.

Afterwards, two Telegraph columnists gave their verdicts on the debate.

Sherelle Jacobson, who leans towards a conservative point of view, wrote:

… In this mission, Nigel Farage may just have made real inroads. Tory HQ is already in meltdown following the D-Day debacle. After tonight’s debate all hope of clawing back some positive momentum into the weekend has been reduced to ashes.

Defence was supposed to be the strongest pillar of the Tory election campaign, with the party of patriotism pledging to bring back National Service, and seeding doubt in voters’ minds about whether anti-nuclear Labour is a gift to Putin. And yet before our eyes, it crumbled. Penny Mordaunt was forced onto the defensive, her trademark poise cracking with mortification as she was forced to apologise on behalf of the Prime Minister over his D-Day blunder. Farage did not pull any punches, claiming that the Prime Minister revealed today that he is “disconnected” from the British people, and does not share in its “instincts”. Ouch.

Mordaunt is widely regarded as a champion performer in the Commons, but in the media moshpit tonight she struggled. Usually, her soft self-assurance makes people instantly warm to her, but tonight she had a robotic edge. In the end her convoluted, corporate soliloquies were drowned out by Farage’s trademark staccato rhythm, his populist bid to deliver plain, stark common sense.

She missed opportunities to pick at the weaknesses of her opponents; it was up to the SNP’s Stephen Flynn to, with forensic elegance, demolish Labour’s NHS costings. Nor did she interrogate Farage about the viability of his plan to slash net migration to zero, presenting the Tory strategy as the best way to bring immigration down without harming the economy. There was much speculation that Mordaunt would struggle to get the Tory message on taxation out because she would face a firing squad on all sides. In fact, as Nigel Farage gloried in being attacked by his sparring partners, what was striking was how, in the heat of debate over the existential challenges facing this country, the Tories faded into irrelevance.

The nightmare scenario for the Tories is that, in the eyes of undecided voters, Reform starts to look like a Right-wing party in waiting rather than a mere protest movement …

Tom Harris, a former Labour MP, wrote:

Intriguingly … it was the two men representing nationalists in Scotland and Wales who fared best, and emerged happier than their five co-panellists. Stephen Flynn, Westminster leader of the SNP, and Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth, were confident, articulate and, at least on a superficial level, sensible. But then, when your party cannot actually win this election, it’s easy to smile and swagger your way to a round of applause.

Still, they were both easier to listen to than the main parties, represented here by Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, and Penny Mordaunt, leader of the House of Commons. Both women looked strained and uncomfortable; Rayner must have surprised many by remaining uncharacteristically quiet for most of the debate, only sparking to life when prodded by Mordaunt over tax and spend.

Another reason the smaller parties, including Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, sounded more comfortable, like they were actually enjoying the experience, is simply that they know they will never be held account for their policies; this was one of the few opportunities they will have to broadcast to a national audience and it came risk-free …

… neither Rayner nor Mordaunt reassured many who might be worried about their respective tax and spending plans. More heat than light, except this time in 7:1 surround sound.

Labour in the spotlight

Thankfully, Labour policies and activities finally came under the spotlight last week. More, please.

On Friday, June 7, Guido told us that a group of Second World War veterans were on Labour’s battle bus with a candidate who had tested positive for coronavirus. Angela Rayner was on board, too:

Angela Rayner put out a highly polished video today of her meeting veterans along with Labour’s candidate in Morecambe, Lizzi Collinge. The same candidate Guido yesterday revealed had tested positive for Covid-19 only days before…

Obviously veterans are old and vulnerable to the sickness – Collinge had not waited the recommended 10 days before packing them onto the campaign bus with her and Rayner. Guido hears the furious veterans have been hurriedly securing Covid tests for themselves in the aftermath. Giving a new meaning to viral politics?

Is this the same Angela Rayner battle bus that is allegedly funded by Pentland Communications, a lobbying company which largely represents major private house builders?

Guido says:

Pentland describes itself as a “planning communications consultancy” specialising in achieving planning permission for its clients…

Rayner accepted the money even as she was attacking private house builders for “wriggling out of their responsibilities” to build affordable homes. If you know who’s paying for her new bus, get in touch…

That day, Guido also told us about what Emily Thornberry, the putative Attorney General should Labour come to power, thinks of the regime in Cuba.

She positively waxed lyrical about it. She must be living on another planet.

This was the same woman who objected to England football fans hanging the George Cross from their windows during the Euros several years ago:

Guido said:

In a Labour government the Attorney General will be Emily Thornberry. In power she would be the government’s chief legal adviser – dealing with questions of international law, human rights and more, as well as superintending the main independent prosecuting departments. It might be worth knowing what her views are on other countries’ models for justice in that case…

She told interviewer Andrew Marr:

I went to to Cuba in the early 1990s when there was a great economic difficulties in that country and I found a country that was egalitarian with a fantastic health service… in my view it was a brave island that stood against a regime that for 50 years would not trade with it and would not let other countries trade with it too.

Guido had more:

The health service wasn’t fantastic enough to prevent two million Cubans escaping to get to the freedom of the American “regime”. Nor to save the 6,800 Cubans killed by firing squad and extrajudicial assassination. Maybe Thornberry paid a visit before the USSR’s full funding of the dictatorship ended and food shortages became the norm. Thornberry ploughed on when Marr tried to mention the regime’s “machine gunning people in boats including children when they’re trying to leave“:

To give more doctors to fight the Ebola crisis than the Americans and that little tiny country could do that… they also exported their values across South South America and into Africa producing doctors and nurses… it was an enormous achievement for a little Caribbean island.

Those exported doctors are, of course, actually slaves of the state, which is paid for its “missions” and treats doctors as prisoners while its own health service crumbles. Starmer is proposing to have as the Crown’s chief legal adviser an admirer of a totalitarian state which imprisons and tortures opponents, prevents free expression, bans independent trade unions, discriminates against LGBT people and only allows communists to serve in parliament…

Guido’s readers chipped in to defend freedom and liberty with the following historical facts concerning Cuba.

Here is a Pulitzer Prize photo from 1960, in which a Catholic priest is giving the last rites to a farmer about to be executed because he refused to work for and give his land over to the new regime. Che Guevara — the tee shirt guy, Fidel Castro’s buddy at the time — conducted a four-minute ‘trial’ and had the farmer executed by firing squad:

As the photo caption concludes:

You will never see this picture on a T shirt.

No, nor will you see Che’s glorification of Europeans over people of colour on a tee shirt.

One of Guido’s commenters took a photo of a Cuban shop in the present day. The shelves are largely bare, and the shopkeeper is doing nothing — not surprisingly:

Here’s another Cuban candid:

Those poor people.

I’ll end on this one from another of Guido’s commenters. Here’s the difference between thriving Havana in 1950, when Hong Kong was just being built up, and Hong Kong in 2010, replete with skyscrapers, while Havana had lost all of its luxury hotels along the seafront. It’s the difference between capitalism and socialism:

Okay, enough of Cuban history but more on health care, because Sir Keir Starmer — likely to be our next Prime Minister at this rate — said he would not send his relatives to a private hospital even if they were desperate.

On Tuesday, June 4, in a debate between him and Rishi Sunak, Starmer said that he would never pay for private healthcare — even if a close relative needed it and could die without it:

Guido reported:

… The two leaders were asked if they would pay for private healthcare if their loved one desperately needed it. Sunak unequivocally said yes – he would, like most people, if they could gather the funds, in order to treat their family member. Starmer was not so compassionate…

Starmer answered that he would never pay for private healthcare, ever – adding that his wife works in the NHS. The idea that Starmer would rather watch a loved one die than cough up the cash based on ideology may not quite be the win LOTO [Leader of the Opposition] may think it is. Either it’s heartless, or it’s a lie…

Guido then went digging around in his archives to find that, only two months ago, Sir Keir supported the use of private healthcare to lessen pressure on the NHS:

Just two months ago, Starmer was saying that people “should” use capacity in the private sector to bring down waiting lists. Though choosing the NHS in a situation of life and death isn’t something new for Starmer…

Going further back, Starmer had an anecdote advocating the avoidance of private healthcare altogether:

Two years ago he told a bizarre story in an interview with the BBC about his mother dying. Speaking of his allegiance to the NHS, he said he has his mother to thank, as when “It was very touch and go…she just held my hand and said: ‘You won’t let your dad go private, will you?’” Odd…

Indeed.

The debate, which aired on ITV1, took place in Manchester. Guido has the snooze-fest highlights here.

Guido also reminded us of another Starmer anomaly — or flip-flop — on sexual identity politics:

From “I support the right to self-identification” in 2020 to “we don’t think self-identification is the right way forward”. A Starmer flip-flop special…

And there was more, particularly on Labour’s planned GB Energy. Scotland’s Herald reported that an industry expert was ‘baffled’ by what the company would actually do:

Professor Paul de Leeuw, the director of Robert Gordon University’s Energy Transition Institute told The Herald that given the prominence of the proposal, there should be “clear plans”.

He said the party had set up a website but not set out a business model or any funding arrangements, or how the organisation would fit in with a number of mechanisms already in place … 

There was confusion over GB Energy last week when Sir Keir told the BBC it would “be an investment vehicle, so not an energy company.”

The party then tried to clear things up, saying that while it would not be an energy retail company, it would generate power in its own right, as well as owning, managing and operating clean power projects alongside private firms …

Prof de Leeuw said: “I followed Sir Keir Starmer’s speech last week and I’m still puzzled what GB Energy is about.

“He outlined ‘five national missions to get Britain’s future back’ as part of its 2024 election campaign, including GB Energy.

“However, the announcement lacked any detail about what GB Energy will deliver, by whom and by when.”

“If it is one of the top five missions, I certainly expected clear plans, deliverables, business models, funding arrangements, organisational set-up etc,” he added.

Prof de Leeuw said he was also not clear about the promise to invest in new technologies such as floating offshore wind, hydrogen and carbon capture and storage.

“It is already happening through other mechanisms,” he said, pointing to the Energy Systems Catapult, Contract for Differences, Net Zero Technology Centres, and other funding models.

“Is this replacing these or are these additional activities and funding pots?”

Another Starmer idea is to put VAT on private school tuition to the tune of 20%. Dear, oh dear.

Starmer’s alma mater, Reigate Grammar in Surrey, is having none of it. Guido reported:

… schools up and down the country are offering “pay up front now” schemes to avoid the VAT imposed under incoming Labour. Including Starmer’s old school…

Starmer went to Reigate Grammar, a selective state grammar school turned private where his fees for his senior years in the school were paid by council tax payers. The school is now is offering a ‘fees in advance’ scheme “for those parents who wish to reduce the cost of their child’s education by making an advance lump sum payment to the school” – starting in September. Not a great look when even your own school is trying to get ahead of your policy…

Well done, Reigate Grammar.

Labour’s week ended with a rumoured secret manifesto policy.

Last year, Labour were courting businesses in one of the world’s most powerful financial districts, the City, in the heart of London.

However, on Friday, according to Guido, Labour reverted to type:

Today the Labour high command and leading figures of the Labour movement are finalising the party manifesto. This is Labour’s “Clause V” meeting, attended by Sir Keir Starmer and his shadow cabinet, senior backbench MPs, top trade union leaders and members of the party’s national executive. Widely flagged is the row with the big unions demanding no backtracking on workers’ rights and fighting a proposed ban on North Sea oil and gas drilling. Business lobbyists are pressing Starmer to, well, be business friendly. Angela Rayner’s proposed union-driven Labour reforms are, to put it mildly, a point of difference.

Interesting, given the amount of donations Labour has garnered from big business over the past year — and more.

Also interesting is that the British Workers Party MP for Rochdale, George Galloway, a former Labour MP, now says that his old party is the ‘number one enemy’, according to The Spectator:

Will Reform’s Farage win Clacton?

While the Conservatives splutter along, gasping and wheezing over policy and candidate selection, Nigel Farage has been the subject of many an opinion piece with regard to Clacton, a seaside town in Essex.

Can he win it?

He is up against stiff Conservative opposition with Giles Watling, a former actor who is also excellent at oratory. Not only that, he increases his majority by tens of thousands with each general election.

That said, on June 4, Polling Report UK posted ‘Farage Will Win Clacton’, even though the Survation poll cited was nearly six months old. Hmm:

When Survation conducted a telephone poll of the Clacton constituency in January, they found the incumbent Giles Watling led an unnamed Labour candidate by 8 points, with Reform trailing in third place on 18%. Yet when constituents were presented with Farage as the Reform UK candidate, the party went from merely splitting the Conservative vote to winning the seat. Half of all Conservative voters said they would vote for Farage if he were to stand as would 51% of leave voters. Replacing Anthony Mack with Nigel Farage saw twice the number of Conservatives and Leavers express the intention to vote for Reform UK. That has, as of yesterday, now come to pass.

The Farage effect is, according to Survation, enormous, compare their predicted victory for Reform with Farage standing…

There are some caveats. This poll was conducted in January … There is the possibility that tactical voting could see left-of-centre voters deciding to support the Conservatives as the more palatable alternative to someone many on the left view demonically. That seems unlikely to be a calculation made by Labour voters in significant numbers.

Good luck to the people of Clacton who won’t have an MP much of the rest of the year as he’ll be schmoozing with President Trump on the campaign trail. If Trump wins re-election, goodness knows how often Farage’s constituents would see or hear from him.

Lib Dem arrests on pamphlet inaccuracies

Can you be arrested for posting inaccuracies in campaign leaflets?

Yes, you can.

On Thursday, June 6, the BBC reported on the arrests in Harrogate:

North Yorkshire Police are investigating the party members in Harrogate after campaign material wrongly claimed the Green Party were not contesting a by-election.

The North Yorkshire Council poll for the Stray, Woodlands and Hookstone ward took place in March after former Liberal Democrat Pat Marsh resigned.

A leaflet distributed to households said the Greens had ‘”stood down” when they had actually fielded a candidate. The Liberal Democrats blamed the misinformation on a “printing mistake”.

The missive urged residents to submit their postal votes before the deadline and described the race for the council seat as being between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives.

It said Labour “came a distant third last time” and “the Green’s (sic) have stood down this election”.

The by-election was won in April by Lib Dem Andrew Timothy with 1,094 votes. He beat Tory candidate John Ennis with 768 votes. Gilly Charters represented the Greens and won 376 votes.

The Greens submitted a formal complaint to the police.

In an update today to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, (LDRS), North Yorkshire Police confirmed that two men were arrested on Tuesday. They were released while inquiries continue.

A police spokesperson said: “A man aged in his 60s and a man aged in his 20s, both from the Harrogate area, were arrested on Tuesday 4 June 2024 in connection with an ongoing local election-related investigation.

“Following questioning, they have been released under investigation while inquiries continue.”

A spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats confirmed to the LDRS that the arrests were related to the by-election leaflet.

A party spokesperson said: “This relates to a printing mistake during a local council by-election early this year, which we explained at the time.”

Just the facts, and only the facts.

It seems that facts are something our politicians have forgotten about, whatever party they belong to.