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Dehenna Davison was one of the rising stars of the 2019 Conservative MP intake.
Unfortunately, she is not standing for re-election.
Amazingly, she was the first Conservative to win in the northern — County Durham — constituency of Bishop Auckland, created in 1885. Until her victory, only Liberal (forerunners of the Liberal Democrats) and Labour candidates represented that constituency, never a Conservative.
We found out early on that ‘Dehenna’ rhymes with ‘Vienna’.
Why she ran
Four days before the election, on December 8, 2019, the Mail published a profile of Davison, which included a photo of her with then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s girlfriend — now wife — Carrie Symonds on the hustings (campaign trail).
The article told us of her tragic circumstances growing up (purple emphases mine):
The poster girl for Boris Johnson‘s Election assault on Labour’s heartland has spoken in detail about the family tragedy that now guides her politics.
Dehenna Davison was just 13 when she learned her father Dominic had been killed by a single blow to the head in the pub.
Ms Davison, a Tory hopeful in a Co Durham seat which has never elected a Conservative MP, recalled how she sat in a hospital waiting room as doctors battled for 45 minutes to save her father’s life.
‘I can still picture it. I can tell you what the colour the walls were and everything,’ she said. ‘They [the doctors] stopped and I went to see my dad’s body, which is not something you expect to do at such a young age.’
Later on:
She recalled the trauma of attending every day of the resulting murder trial – and her lasting bitterness that the alleged attacker was found not guilty.
‘It gave me a very clear sense of injustice,’ she said. ‘I grew up overnight, literally overnight.’ At 16, she was representing ‘myself, my mum and my nan’ at a criminal injuries compensation tribunal. Even almost 13 years on, Ms Davison puts her real life experience age at 45 – not 26.
Since 2019, she has wanted a ‘one-punch law’ to be enacted, which would find perpetrators who caused the death of someone in that way guilty of murder. I am not sure that she has achieved that in the way that she envisaged. Although the Conservative government has toughened up sentencing in general through new legislation, this week, news reports have circulated wherein judges are asking for mitigating circumstances to be taken into account.
Returning to the Mail, we discovered more about her background:
She studied politics at Hull University and spent a year as an aide to [veteran Conservative MP] Jacob Rees-Mogg. Ms Davison, who has received support on the campaign trail from Mr Johnson’s girlfriend Carrie Symonds, said politics was about helping people ‘get their benefits claim through, getting a pothole filled’.
The former computer game shop worker admitted the ‘poster girl thing’ was probably due to her tragic backstory and her ‘slightly unusual demographics’. But she added: ‘I just want to get stuff done.’
Reality television marriage
After the election, reality television aficionados no doubt thought that Davison’s face looked familiar.
On December 14, two days after she was elected as an MP, The Sun told us:
A YOUNG woman, whose relationship with a man 35 years older than her was explored on a reality TV show, has been elected as an MP.
Dehenna Davison, 26, stood as the Conservative candidate for former Labour-stronghold Bishop Aukland – just a year after starring in Channel 4 programme Bride & Prejudice with now-husband John Fareham …
Dehenna was studying politics at Hull University when she met John, a Conservative councillor.
They fell for one another while out campaigning in Kingston upon Hull North, where she stood as a candidate in 2015.
John proposed to Dehenna – who also once worked as a parliamentary aide for Jacob Rees-Mogg – in 2015, but they still had to convince her grandfather Paul, eight years older than her other half, to support their relationship.
In the TV show, Dehenna and John, who was 59 when the programme aired, sought his approval for their marriage.
“Age doesn’t matter if two people really care about each other,” the future MP told the camera.
John added: “I had asked her before, but she told me to ask her properly.
“At my age, going down on one knee was going to be a bit tricky. It wasn’t the going down, it was the getting back up again.”
When the show aired, viewers rushed to give the couple their blessing – and criticised Paul’s unhappiness at the union.
One person wrote: “She’s 24 let her decide who to marry” …
The article included her election victory tweet, dedicated to her family:
Grandfather Paul was right.
Just ten days after the election — on December 22, 2019 — HullLive reported that the marriage was in tatters:
A new Tory MP, who studied and married in Hull, has split from her councillor husband, it has been confirmed.
Dehenna Davison married Bricknell ward councillor John Fareham in 2018 but, in an interview with The Telegraph on Saturday, she confirmed the news.
Cllr Fareham and Ms Davison appeared together on Channel 4 show Bride and Prejudice last year, which documented the couple’s push for acceptance from her grandfather, before they tied the knot.
The show picked the pair as one of six couples as Dehenna, then 24, was 35 years younger than John, 59, who was similar in age to her grandfather.
However, their relationship has since come to an end, according to the interview released this weekend.
Activity outside of Parliament
It wasn’t long before the left-wing Hope Not Hate activists targeted the loveliest of new MPs.
On Valentine’s Day 2020, The Guardian reported:
Calls have been made for an investigation after photographs emerged linking a newly elected Tory MP with two alleged far-right activists.
Dehenna Davison, the MP for Bishop Auckland and a prominent member of the party’s new contingent of northern representatives, was pictured holding a County Durham flag with Andrew Foster, a man described by anti-racism campaigners as a “Muslim-hating extremist of the very worst kind”.
The images, revealed following an investigation by the campaign group Hope Not Hate show the MP with Foster at a party celebrating Brexit in a pub on 31 January. At the same event she was also pictured with Colin Raine, a former Tory activist banned from the party after allegations that he was behind a far-right protest and made Islamophobic comments online. Raine has denied that he has any far-right links.
Davison, 26, sought to distance herself from any links with the two men. “These photos were taken at an event open to the public and I in no way whatsoever condone the views highlighted of the individuals concerned,” she said in a statement …
On March 4, 2020, Guido Fawkes posted a photo of a selfie that a glamorous Davison took of fellow Conservative MP Matt Vickers and — oddly enough — then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn at the Kebab Awards (yes, it’s an annual event). Perhaps she wanted Corbyn in shot to counter the Hope Not Hate smear?
On April 16 that year, nearly a month into lockdown, The Mirror reported that Davison posted a video of herself on TikTok, to which the defeated Labour incumbent Helen Goodman objected:
A Tory MP has been branded ‘self-indulgent’ for posting a sweary rap video video in which she appears to complain the coronavirus lockdown has left her bored.
Bishop Auckland MP Dehenna Davison posted a TikTok clip, lip-synching to “Bored in the House” by rapper Tyga.
The clip shows her doing her washing, talking to her self in the mirror pouring a large glass of red wine and rapping “I’m bored in the mother f***in’ in the house bored”.
But the former Labour MP who Ms Davison replaced in December said she’s been left to answer queries from Ms Davison’s constituents, who can’t get an answer from their MP.
Ex-MP Helen Goodman said she was “shocked and horrified” by the video …
Ms Davison, 26, has since deleted the video.
She told the Mirror: “This was nothing more than adding to light-hearted content being produced by millions to stay positive during this lockdown.
“We should be celebrating the actions of 3.6 million people staying safe during lockdown rather than belittling them for keeping themselves and others entertained whilst following government guidance to stay home, protect our NHS and save lives.”
Ms Davison said the 3.6 million figure referred to the number of TikTok users who had made videos using the same song …
On September 7, when life with coronavirus was returning to normal in England, Davison wrote a pro-Brexit and pro-Boris editorial for The Sun:
… Knocking on doors during the election last year, three resounding messages on Brexit were clear: 1 – let’s just get on with it. 2 – Boris is the man to deliver it. 3 – we need to stand up to Brussels.
Now as talks reach the final furlong, more than ever, we need to remember that third message.
The Brussels bully boys will only blink if they recognise equivalent displays of strength from UK negotiators.
That is why I was so pleased to see the Prime Minister set out a definite deadline of October 15 for negotiations to be concluded or we will walk away.
We needn’t be afraid.
Whether we leave with or without a deal, Brexit marks the start of a bright future for Britain.
A future where we are free to strike our own trade deals, manage our own borders, make our own laws, and where we open our arms to the world as a truly global Britain …
In April 2021, Guido Fawkes told us that Davison was one of 40 MPs to join the think tank IEA’s Free Market Forum. Davison was one of the co-chairs of the group along with fellow Conservative MP Greg Smith.
Other members included future Prime Minister Liz Truss, then-Home Secretary Priti Patel and future Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng.
GB News began broadcasting in June 2021. Davison was a presenter on the new channel’s Sunday morning current events show The Political Correction along with Nigel Farage, blue Labour activist Paul Embery and, occasionally, the former DUP party leader — now Dame and Baroness — Arlene Foster.
On Monday, October 11, she gave an interview to fellow GB News presenter Gloria de Piero, a former Labour MP, in the series The Real Me, in which MPs featured:
In the interview, Davison revealed her bisexuality to de Piero, which generated a few news articles in response.
GB News recapped it:
Dehenna Davison said her sexuality is not a big deal and “just part of who I am …
“If anyone were to explicitly ask me, I certainly wouldn’t try and hide it because I don’t think it’s anything to be ashamed of.
“The reason I haven’t done a kind of ‘By the way, guys’ is because I don’t want being bi to be considered a big deal.
“If I did a very public kind of coming out parade, that would be me saying there’s something really unusual about this and trying to make a big deal of it when to me it’s not. It’s just part of who I am.”
She also spoke about her divorce and the future. By then, she was in a new romantic relationship — with a man:
“It’s going really well, and I’m very excited about it. But we’ll see, the future is a very exciting place.”
In 2018, Miss Davison appeared in the Channel 4 programme Bride And Prejudice, which showed the then 24-year-old marrying John Fareham, a Conservative councillor who is 35 years her senior.
In a tweet on Sunday evening, she added: “Really overwhelmed by the outpouring of love this evening. Thank you so much for your support.”
The Mail had more soundbites about her sexuality:
Conservative MP Dehenna Davison said her sexuality is just ‘part of who I am’ as she came out publicly as bisexual today …
In an interview on GB News, set to be broadcast today, Ms Davison said: ‘I’ve known that I’m bisexual for quite a lot of years. All my close friends and family know’ …
On October 12, the Mail reported on the hate she received on social media.
The Telegraph‘s chief political correspondent Christopher Hope, who now works for GB News, included her political insight:
In the interview, she described the shock of learning that her father, Dominic, had been killed by a single blow “in the side of the neck” when she was just 13 …
Her father’s assailant pleaded self-defence and was not convicted of the assault, she said. She has set up an all-party parliamentary group on one-punch assaults to see whether more needs to be done for victims and on sentencing assailants.
Not having been raised in a political family, Miss Davison said she had “genuinely thought growing up that Winston Churchill was a Labour prime minister”.
She admitted that she occasionally thought about leading the Tory party, adding: “You kind of fantasise and see who’s in at the moment and you think, ‘maybe this is something that I could do’ – but would I like to?
“The upside is you get a chance to really try and shape the country and try and make it better, which is what we all get into politics to do anyway. And what better way than by leading a party and potentially going on to lead the country? But I think there are so many downsides too. I mean, that complete invasion into your personal life.
“It’s hard enough being a backbench MP… and I’m just not really sure whether that’s something that I’d really want to do. And certainly I wouldn’t want that pressure put on my family.”
Once Boris Johnson’s Partygate became a regular feature in parliamentary debates, Davison was accused of being part of the Pork Pie Plot — said to have originated with the Conservative MP representing the home of pork pies, Melton Mowbray — to oust him as Prime Minister.
On February 4 2022, the Mail told us of Davison’s latest relationship, again with a man.
As to her divorce from John Fareham, the article stated:
It is not clear whether that divorce is complete.
We discovered an interim relationship from 2021:
Last May she informed parliamentary officials she was in a relationship with Ahzaz Chowdhury, 35, a parliamentary lobbyist. She later announced that the five-week relationship had ended.
The article told us about her latest — and current — relationship, complete with photos:
A prominent MP is having an affair with a dashing but married diplomat likened to James Bond …
… the Mail can now reveal the 28-year-old is in a relationship with Tony Kay, 49, a Middle East expert at the Foreign Office.
Awarded an OBE for his work during the Arab Spring uprising, the father of two has been deputy ambassador to Israel and once threw a fancy-dress screening of a Bond film for hundreds of official guests.
His latest post is as head of the Arabian peninsula department at the Foreign Office.
His affair with Miss Davison is potentially sensitive given his high-profile position. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and Middle East minister James Cleverly have been informed about the relationship, a source said.
On Wednesday Miss Davison and Mr Kay were seen walking hand in hand down a quiet street on the south side of the Thames in London. They then walked to Waterloo station where they embraced and kissed for several minutes before he caught a train.
It is believed he was travelling to the million-pound house he and his 47-year-old wife bought three years ago in Ascot, Berkshire …
Apparently, everyone who needed to know knew:
It is believed that Mr Kay and Miss Davison met in July 2019 when she was in a small group of prospective parliamentary candidates on a Conservative Friends of Israel trip. The group visited Gaza and the West Bank.
The pair have been growing closer ever since and he has moved into her expenses-funded home.
A Whitehall source said: ‘The relationship between Dehenna and Tony hasn’t been going on since they met in 2019 – it’s six months. His wife has known for half a year, the kids know, the Foreign Secretary Liz Truss knows, James Cleverley knows, his line manager knows, the permanent secretary knows.
‘He’s done absolutely everything by the book, and kept his line manager informed throughout. He’s going through a divorce process with his wife, he’s still married.
‘It’s not entirely unreasonable for him still to be going to the family home, but his marriage is over. Dehenna’s flat is her flat, and she’s entitled to have whoever she wants in her flat.’
A few days later, on February 12, The Times Magazine did a big splash interview with glamorous photos of Davison in retro-1960s clothes asking if she was the future of the Conservative Party.
Janice Turner, the interviewer, wrote:
Before we met, I’d assumed a 28-year-old MP who got married on reality TV, shares a GB News sofa with Nigel Farage and posts TikTok videos plucking her eyebrows to Taylor Swift’s …Ready For It? might well be a showboating lightweight of no fixed political abode. Instead I’m surprised to find Mrs Thatcher’s granddaughter: a serious operator, with well-honed conservative views, fluency, ambition and drive. I doubt Dee, as her friends call her, is going anywhere except up the slippery Tory pole.
‘Dee’ denied being part of the aforementioned Pork Pie Plot. Instead, she gave a lot of credit to Boris and Carrie:
So what was her involvement in a plot? The red wall MPs, she says, held a secret ballot about whether to put in letters calling for Boris Johnson to resign. Has she? “No.” Is she tempted? “I honestly don’t know.”
… Davison says her view hasn’t changed. “What matters… is the PM really gets a grip of No 10 and over policy, to make sure we are delivering for people in the red wall.” In other words, she is sitting tight to see which way the wind blows.
Yet Davison acknowledges she owes her victory in large part to Johnson. “It wasn’t just Brexit. He does have this incredible charisma,” she says. “You know, there aren’t many party leaders you can take to a beachfront in Hartlepool and people stop every four steps for selfies and to shake his hand. That’s a rock-star politician, something you don’t see very often at all.”
But she’s also equally indebted to his wife. In 2019, Carrie Johnson contacted her, saying she wanted to support female candidates and could she campaign in Bishop Auckland. “And I said, ‘Yes, I would absolutely love that.’ And we got messaging a bit through the election; she’d check in to see how I was doing. When I was down in London for some work stuff, I visited her. My first time in No 10, actually, was to go and see Carrie and the dog.”
There’s also a 2019 campaign photo of her, Carrie, Dilyn the dog — and none other than Rishi Sunak MP.
Davison, an only child, admitted to be an annoyingly good student in school:
It’s clear why Carrie Johnson would take Davison under her wing: young Tory women are scarce. Mrs Johnson, the arch-political strategist, must have considered this attractive, TV-ready working-class girl from a Sheffield council estate and thought the party had struck gold. What better vision of modern conservatism than the only child of a stonemason and a nursery nurse, who was so bright that her teacher, Mrs Burton, insisted she apply to the private Sheffield High School. “I had a really inquisitive mind. I always wanted to race to the end of the work so I could do more, learn more. I was one of those really annoying kids.”
The family worried that she’d win a place and they wouldn’t be able to afford to send her. But Mrs Burton even offered to pay the fee for the entrance exam, so insistent was she that Dee would win a scholarship. Which she did.
Davison, who was in the catchment for one of the city’s worst-performing comprehensives, believes private school changed her life. “I don’t think I’d be here [in parliament] today. Absolutely not. And one of the greatest things about an all-girls school is there was never a second when I was told I couldn’t do something because I was a woman. It was really: ‘If you work hard, you can do it.’ ”
The article revealed that Davison’s divorce was still going through, even though the Mail alleged that she and Tony Kay — now Tony Kay OBE, no less — were living together. John Fareham was either a member of or a guest at three of London’s most prestigious private men’s clubs:
… Davison did the most unfathomable thing: she married a Hull Conservative councillor, John Fareham, who at 59 was 35 years her senior. (“We went clubbing my style, to the Carlton, the Athenaeum and the Garrick,” he said.) And she did so on a reality TV show, Bride & Prejudice, about couples who face family opposition. Davison’s grandfather is shown weeping miserably before he gives her away. Does she regret the show? “I don’t think there’s much point regretting it because it’s happened. But, yes.”
Amateur psychologists might suggest she was looking for a father figure: “Oh, I get the daddy issues trope all the time.” Her marriage is a closed chapter, she says: her divorce is still going through. She’s now seeing a 49-year-old diplomat, Tony Kay, a Middle East expert with the Foreign Office, who is also getting divorced from the mother of his two children.
The Times Magazine‘s Janice Turner concluded:
Whether she keeps her seat or not, she’s clearly in the party for the long haul. When [Labour’s Deputy Leader] Angela Rayner called Conservative voters “scum” [in the House of Commons], Dehenna Davison wore and gave away “Tory Scum” badges. “I wanted to reclaim the narrative. If they’re going to call us scum, I’d rather embrace it.”
Well, one could only wonder at the time.
Nine months later, on November 25, Guido Fawkes gave us the answer. By then, Boris had been forced to resign, as had Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak was the Prime Minister, by fiat from Conservative MPs.
Red emphases Guido’s:
The Tories’ 2019 poster girl, Dehenna Davison, has announced she’s to stand down as an MP after just one term. Dehenna won her seat of Bishop Auckland in 2019, with a swing of 9.5%. However after a meagre five years in the Commons, Davison is to depart at the next election. The third Tory MP to announce they’re doing so…
Davison explains the reason she’s departing:
For my whole adult life, I’ve dedicated the vast majority of my time to politics, and to help make people’s lives better. But, to be frank, it has meant I haven’t had anything like a normal life for a twenty-something.
Dehenna is the third Tory MP to make such an announcement, after Chloe Smith and Will Wragg. It’s not like they’re leaving a sinking ship. At 25 points behind Labour, they’re on the ocean floor …
Guido added an update to say that Davison was the eighth Conservative MP to announce there would be no run for re-election.
The Telegraph reminded us that Davison had had a ministerial role at that point, so was no longer on the backbenches. Having watched her on BBC Parliament, I can say that she did very well at the despatch box:
Tory rising star Dehenna Davison has become the latest MP to announce she will stand down at the next election.
The Levelling-up Minister, who is only 29, made history in 2019 by becoming Bishop Auckland’s first Conservative MP.
The article also gave us more of her resignation statement:
I will always be humbled to have had the opportunity to serve as a Member of Parliament. But now the time feels right for me to devote more of my attention to life outside politics – mainly to my family and helping support them as they’ve helped support me.
That’s why I won’t be standing in the next general election.
On September 18, 2023, Guido reported that Davison resigned as Levelling-up Minister because of chronic migraines, an ailment she had not had before:
Dehenna Davison has resigned as Levelling Up Minister this afternoon, citing health reasons in her letter to Rishi Sunak. Davison had already announced she will stand down at the next election, though she has decided to step back a year or so early owing to chronic migraines:
Unfortunately, for some time now I have been battling with chronic migraine, which has had a great impact on my ability to carry out the role. Some days I’m fine, but on others it is difficult, if not impossible, to keep up with the demands of ministerial life – and the timing of such days is never predictable. Though I have tried to mitigate, and am grateful to colleagues for their patience at times, I don’t feel it is right to continue in the role. At such a critical time for levelling up, I believe the people of communities like mine, and across the country, deserve a minister who can give the job the energy it needs. I regret that I no longer can. And, as my capacity is currently diminished, it feels right to focus it on my constituents, and on promoting conservatism from the backbenches.
Davison was the government’s youngest Minister, and only joined the Commons benches in 2019. She’s done the full MP lifecycle in record time…
That was an excellent observation from Guido.
Another competent Red Wall MP, Jacob Young, replaced Davison.
As we are well into 2024 and awaiting Rishi Sunak’s date for the general election, MPs from all parties wish the agony of waiting would end soon.
On March 17, The Observer, weekend edition of The Guardian published interviews with several MPs who discussed their eagerness for an election date to be called and gave their thoughts on what life in Parliament was like. Dehenna Davison was one of them:
In her office, Dehenna Davison curls her legs beneath her on a sofa, seemingly oblivious to the whopping great Dr Martens on the end of them. “Colleagues keep saying: ‘You’re counting down the days,’” she tells me. “But we don’t know how many days are left.”
The article delved deeper into what she thought about the House of Commons.
She said:
There have been moments when the abuse has been so vile. There’s definitely an element of misogyny.
She has received hateful online messages. Even though she had worked as Rees-Mogg’s intern and thought she knew what went on in Westminster, she realised that the reality of being an MP was something quite different:
Dehenna Davison’s office is in a building whose long, rather desolate corridors resemble those of a three-star hotel, and it’s so small: as we talk, our knees are practically touching. She seems very young – she’s sipping a drink via a straw from a huge, multicoloured plastic cup – and if not vulnerable, exactly, then like someone who hasn’t had the easiest time since she won Bishop Auckland just over four years ago (for the 84 years before her election in 2019, the town had always had a Labour MP). She took the decision not to stand again in part because she felt that by devoting her 20s to politics, she’d missed out on “normal adult life”. But the longer she talks, the more obvious it becomes that the bigger factor by far may be the abuse she receives online.
“You have to have a thick skin to go into parliament,” she says. “And I’ve always argued that the internet is a great thing. But the level of abuse online is something I never anticipated. There have been moments when it has been so vile. I’m not talking about policy stuff. We’re always going to have people who disagree with us; that’s legitimate. It’s the personal attacks [that are upsetting]. There’s definitely an element of misogyny there. When I posted a memorial to my father who passed away in 2007 [he died after being punched in a pub], I got one message that said: ‘I bet he’d be turning in his grave, knowing you’re a Tory.’ Another one said: ‘You’re such a slut, I bet he’s looking down, and seeing all the disgusting things you’re doing – though maybe he likes that.’” One troll received a police caution, having posted 100 messages online in 24 hours. Another, she says, is subject to a restraining order. What support does parliament offer in this situation? She laughs. “When I was elected, I sat down with the police. They gave me some general advice: not to be controversial, and not to post in real time where I am.”
Davison wasn’t intimidated when she arrived: she’d been an intern in Westminster, and knew her way around. But her status as a rising young star who’d won a seemingly impossible seat made things difficult at times.
“I got a lot of media attention, which I hadn’t sought. I think my colleagues thought my motivation was the limelight. It became very isolating as time went on, hearing indirectly what people had been saying about me, all the backbiting.”
Like her colleague Charles Walker, she likes the division lobby: the chance to brush shoulders with cabinet ministers and even the prime minister. But the system of whipping leaves a lot to be desired. “When I was elected, my whip asked me in for a chat. His first question was whether I wanted to be prime minister.” Was he trying to weaponise her ambition? She nods. “You know that [if you rebel] you’re putting down a marker against yourself getting any kind of future promotion.” When she once voted against a government motion, a male politician “stood too close to me, being quite aggressive”.
Davison insists the Tories can hang on to Bishop Auckland, and that a lot can change electorally in six months: “Don’t believe everything the polls say.” But about the future of the party, she sounds less certain – especially if there is a Labour rout. “Then there’ll have to be some soul searching. It will be interesting to see who’s left, and in what direction that takes us. I’ve a suspicion the membership would want to see a move towards the right, a more authoritarian approach. Whether that’s the right thing in this age, I can’t say. I find myself economically pretty rightwing, but socially I’m very liberal, so I wouldn’t want to see us doing a massive shift to the right.” She smiles. “But you know, by that point, I’ll be just another [Conservative Party] member…”
She slurps on her straw. Her heart, I sense, is already elsewhere.
I think so, too.
My far better half said that some of the 2019 Red Wall MPs never expected to be elected. Perhaps Dehenna Davison is one of them.
The latest we heard from her was in a Point of Order in Parliament on March 18, when Labour Deputy Leader Angela Rayner and a few other Labour MPs visited Bishop Auckland without letting her know. All MPs going to another’s constituency in a public capacity must advise the sitting MP of their visit before it happens.
Guido had the story and the video:
Guido wrote, reminding us of Rayner’s current controversy over her living arrangements some years ago, which could, at the very least, involve a tax liability:
It looks like Angela Rayner is forgetting the rules. Bishop Auckland MP Dehenna Davison has asked in the Commons why Rayner, along with four other Labour MPs, parked up in her constituency unannounced to launch the Labour candidate for North East Mayor’s campaign. Anything to avoid a media interview…
The Commons Rules of Behaviour are clear – if an MP wants to visit a constituency of another “all reasonable efforts should be taken to notify the other Member“. Speaker Lindsay Hoyle weighed in to tick off rule-breaking MPs. Maybe Rayner was too tied up in domestic matters to remember the rules…
In any event, valete, Dee. It was nice knowing you, if only off the telly and in the papers.
My post yesterday on the recent history of questionable migrant conversions to Christianity was prescient as, serendipitously, Patrick Christys covered the same topic on his GB News broadcast of Tuesday, February 6, 2024.
Christys then went further, saying that he had been sent a document issued by the Church of England on how best to assist asylum claimants. Here is the P&E contents page:
Here is Christys’s editorial:
Earlier in the evening on GB News, Michelle Dewberry explored the topic. One of her guests, the former MEP and sister of Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, Annunziata Rees-Mogg labelled the Anglicans involved ‘gullible fools’:
She and the Rees-Mogg family are devout Catholics. She said that it takes at least one year to convert to Catholicism. Here is the video:
Today at Prime Minister’s Questions, Conservative MP Tim Loughton asked about Anglican involvement in migrant conversions. Rishi Sunak replied that the Government was looking into the matter.
We have a serious problem on our hands, doubtless from a cultural difference arising in British society. Another matter has been going on for at least two decades, that of grooming gangs. Everyone knows about them, so it was dismaying to see the following headline show up in one of our newspapers this week, especially as we have a Conservative government (bold in the original):
Grooming gang review kept secret as Home Office claims releasing findings ‘not in public interest’
Exclusive: Freedom of information request refused so ministers have ‘safe space’ to discuss policy
However, that is a matter for another day. I did cover a harrowing GB News documentary on the subject in 2023.
2024: the migrant chemical attacker, another Christian convert
On Wednesday, January 31, a terrifying chemical attack on a London woman and her two young daughters took place in Clapham, south of the Thames.
The suspect, Abdul Ezedi, a violent illegal migrant who was later granted asylum, remains on the run as I write. Grainy videos and photos show him with a burnt out right eye going about afterwards in the capital. Who could miss him?
I find that incredible, given all the CCTV cameras around London and the rest of the UK, which have been in place since Tony Blair (PM between 1997 and 2007) thought they were an excellent way to reduce crime. They have not helped much at all.
The suspect was based in Newcastle then travelled to London to carry out his heartless attack.
The woman’s neighbours ran out of their homes that evening to help, at great physical expense. On Saturday, February 3, The Times reported their experience (emphases mine):
A City worker has recounted how his partner tackled the suspected chemical attacker Abdul Ezedi as he appeared to be trying to harm a three-year-old child, giving a dramatic new witness account.
The couple were among the first on the scene in Clapham, south London, last week. The woman, who is in her fifties and also works in finance, ran out of her home when she heard screaming.
She saw a man, thought to be Ezedi, 35, attacking a “vulnerable” woman, 31, and her two daughters, aged eight and three. She did not realise that the victims were covered in a corrosive chemical.
“We had no idea any substance was involved; only that the guy was clearly intent on hurting the [three-year-old],” the witness said. “He then went to pick the child up off the road to do it [throw the child to the ground] again, which is when my partner lunged in and tackled him, grabbing his leg and falling to the ground in the process like a rugby tackle.”
He has arm injuries; his partner suffered burns and may have permanent damage to her eyes. She has “burnt both eyeballs” and has been seeing specialists every day.
The National Crime Agency, Britain’s equivalent of the FBI, was drafted in by the Met on Saturday night to help find Ezedi. Officers from the agency are focusing on whether he may be receiving help from an organised crime group to evade capture.
Ezedi had said he was in a relationship with the 31-year-old woman, according to a close relative of the suspect quoted by Sky News. The victim and her daughters were confirmed to be residents of the Clapham South Belvedere Hotel, which other guests say is used as emergency accommodation.
Describing the aftermath of the attack, the Clapham witness said: “My partner immediately starts saying she has sharp pain in her eye. She thinks at the time that she has detached her retina, but then I start feeling pain on my arms and realise it could be acid.
“I have no doubt that if my partner had not jumped in then the child would no longer be with us, and if our other neighbours hadn’t immediately taken the family and washed them down then their injuries would have been far worse.”
The Met said the adult victim was sedated on Friday, with “life-changing” injuries. The injuries to her daughters were not as bad as originally thought and are “not likely to be life-changing”.
The search for Ezedi, an asylum seeker thought to have arrived in the UK in 2016 from Afghanistan on the back of a lorry, entered its fourth day on Sunday. As well as the National Crime Agency, the Metropolitan Police have drafted in the British Transport Police and Northumbria police.
The Home Office is reviewing how Ezedi was granted asylum in 2020, having been prosecuted for sex offences. In 2018, he was convicted of sexual assault and indecent exposure and at Newcastle crown court was given a 45-week suspended prison sentence and placed on the sex offenders register for 10 years.
His asylum application was twice rejected by the Home Office. On his third attempt, an appeal to an immigration tribunal, he appears to have claimed that he had converted to Christianity. A priest vouched for his newfound faith and said he was “wholly committed”. He was granted asylum.
A shopkeeper in Newcastle upon Tyne, where Ezedi was living in a hostel for the homeless, said that despite his conversion to Christianity, as per his asylum application, Ezedi gave the appearance of still adhering to his Muslim faith. An assistant at the Sultan supermarket said Ezedi regularly bought Halal meat. “I know he didn’t have a wife because he spoke about how he wanted a wife and hoped to return to Afghanistan to find a bride.”
It raises questions over the Church of England’s practice of handing out certificates to converts which verify their conversion and are used in asylum applications.
In 2021 it emerged that the Liverpool Women’s Hospital bomber, Iraqi-born Emad al-Swealmeen, had been baptised at Liverpool Cathedral. An inquest was told that he may have faked his conversion …
He was the man about whom I wrote yesterday. Doubts about his conversion were confirmed as far back as December 2021, the month after the attack on Liverpool Women’s Hospital.
The article continues, describing how the attack unfolded:
The attack happened at about 7.30pm on Wednesday. A man can be seen on CCTV ramming a car into two people in the road, who look to be the mother and eldest child, covering their faces.
According to an onlooker, he then pulled the three-year-old out of the back seat, “slamming” her onto the road, where she landed on her head and lay “lifeless”, while her mother apparently yelled “I can’t see”. Witnesses said that Ezedi threw a corrosive substance over the mother and elder daughter, before ramming them with his car.
Twelve people were taken to hospital, including five police officers. Many of them were treated for burns from the alkaline substance. Another neighbour who went to help, Rachael, 36, told The Sunday Times that she had suffered third-degree burns.
Ezedi was next seen boarding a Tube at Clapham South station. He was last seen on Wednesday at 9pm, when he got on a Victoria Line train southbound from King’s Cross station, with what looked like severe burns on his right eye.
After raids on two addresses in east London and three in Newcastle, the police located “two empty containers with corrosive warnings on the label”. They are still undertaking tests on the substance.
Britain now has the highest number of recorded chemical attacks in the world, mostly on women, with a total of 710 in 2022 compared with 421 in 2021.
Hmm. I wonder why that is — or not.
Former Home Secretaries Braverman and Patel blame Anglicans
Before I go into what Suella Braverman and Dame Priti Patel said about questionable conversions, here is another loopy Anglican policy.
For those who don’t live here, we have many Church of England affiliated schools. This is their policy on sexual identity, notably:
… not being transgender is not a protected characteristic.
Now on to what our former Home Secretaries had to say in the wake of the chemical attack. Incidentally, Braverman was raised as a Buddhist and Patel as a Hindu.
On Saturday, February 3, The Telegraph reported:
Suella Braverman and Dame Priti Patel have hit out at Britain’s churches over their alleged support for “bogus” asylum claims.
Writing for The Telegraph, Mrs Braverman said that during her time as home secretary she “became aware of churches around the country facilitating industrial-scale bogus asylum claims”.
Separately, Dame Priti, also a former home secretary, accused church leaders of “political activism” in their approach to asylum seekers, claiming that religious institutions supported cases “without merit”.
The clergy’s role in offering conversions to asylum seekers and support for their applications is likely to be considered by ministers in the wake of the chemical attack in London that injured a mother, two children and 10 others.
Abdul Ezedi, suspected of carrying out a chemical attack in Clapham, was twice denied asylum before being allowed to stay after claiming he had converted from Islam and that his life would be in danger if he returned to Afghanistan.
A government source said: “There are clearly general questions about whether it is really possible to credibly substantiate the solidity of a religious conversion, particularly where that view might carry important implications.”
We also learned an interesting fact relating to Al-Swealmeen’s conversion at Liverpool Cathedral in 2017:
Ms Patel cited the case of Emad Jamil Al Swealmeen, a Christian convert who detonated a bomb outside Liverpool Women’s Hospital in 2021, having been confirmed at Liverpool Cathedral in 2017.
In 2016, the then dean of the cathedral said he had converted 200 asylum seekers in four years, but added: “I can’t think of a single example of somebody who already had British citizenship converting here with us from Islam to Christianity.”
Dame Priti said: “In that particular case [Al Swealmeen] and any other examples where Christian conversion is involved it is right that those cases are scrutinised and that there is a degree of honesty in establishments, including the Church of England as to what their motivations were.
“It’s no coincidence that religious leaders are constantly speaking out against any reforms and work introduced by us as Conservatives in this area …
Mrs Braverman said: “Attend mass once a week for a few months, befriend the vicar, get your baptism date in the diary and, bingo, you’ll be signed off by a member of clergy that you’re now a God-fearing Christian who will face certain persecution if removed to your Islamic country of origin. It has to stop.”
A Church of England spokesman said: “It is the role of the Home Office, and not the church, to vet asylum seekers and judge the merits of their individual cases.”
The church was not aware of any links with Ezedi.
Catholic Church finds no link with Ezedi
With the Anglicans finding no links with Ezedi, it was the turn of the Catholic Church to investigate, as a ‘priest’ had allegedly given him a reference. ‘Priest’ means Anglican or Catholic.
On February 5, the Catholic Herald said that the suspect was unknown to the diocese covering Newcastle, although he did use refugee services from the diocesan Justice and Peace Project:
The Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle today denied assisting an Afghan fugitive wanted for an alkaline attack on a woman and her two children amid claims that an unnamed priest helped him to gain asylum in the UK.
Abdul Shokoor Ezedi is suspected of throwing a corrosive substance over the three in Clapham, south London, on 31 January, leaving the 31-year-old woman with such “life-changing” injuries to her face that she is being kept under sedation in hospital. Her two daughters, aged eight and three, are being treated for burns …
The Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle has come under pressure from the media to identify any priest who might have assisted Ezedi with his successful application.
A diocese spokesman says exhaustive checks have failed to produce any evidence that the Catholic Church assisted Ezedi beyond the provision of toiletries and food tokens from the diocesan Justice and Peace Project.
“After checking local parish records and central records and after consulting with clergy we have no indication that Abdul Ezedi was received into the Catholic Faith in this diocese, or that a Catholic priest of this diocese gave him a reference,” the spokesman says. “We do not know which Christian church received him nor which Christian minister gave him a reference.”
The spokesman confirmed that Ezedi “visited our diocesan Justice and Peace Refugee Project, a charitable venture which assists a wide range of people who come to us in need”.
He added: “The diocese will assist the police investigations in any way we can. We keep the victims in our prayers and hope that justice is done soon.”
The Justice and Peace Refugee Project gives support only in the form of food and toiletries to clients referred by the St Vincent de Paul Society. It directs clients to further support that might be available from other organisations; in a minority of hardship cases it gives out supermarket vouchers.
The project is not involved in any casework around asylum claims and therefore does not employ caseworkers. Nor does it seek to recruit converts to Christianity.
Government ministers: ‘not about asylum’
On Sunday and Monday, Conservative ministers doing the media rounds played down any potential negative publicity surrounding the chemical attack.
Guido Fawkes wrote about the Education Secretary Gillian Keegan, a lightweight if there ever was one, although, according to her academic record, she is a genius. On Sunday:
The Education Secretary landed herself in hot water yesterday for claiming Clapham attack case was “not really about asylum” on Sky News …
On Monday, it was the turn of Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris, who is equally unconvincing as a Cabinet member. The Telegraph told us:
Chris Heaton-Harris has insisted Abdul Ezedi would have been detained and deported if the Government’s Nationality and Borders Bill had been in place.
Asked whether he agreed with his colleague Gillian Keegan’s remark that the focus around the alkali attack is “not really about asylum,” he told LBC: “We know as a Government we need to tighten those (powers) further and that’s what we’re trying to do with our Rwanda Bill.
“This was an unbelievably tragic occurrence. Everybody that I know has been completely shocked by it. But we’ve tightened our laws since and he would not be here had we had the Nationality and Borders Bill in place and he’d been detained and deported properly.”
Yet, according to the Home Office’s testimony before the parliamentary Home Affairs Select Committee on Wednesday, January 31, even the new Nationality and Borders Bill doesn’t allow for illegal entrants to be turned back. Civil servants said that illegals must still be taken in because the Home Office must be in no doubt about sending them back. If there is a scintilla of doubt, they will be accommodated on our shores.
The topic came up on Nigel Farage’s February 7 GB News show (first segment after the news and editorial), wherein a human rights lawyer explained the same thing. Also, he pointed out that these people are released on ‘bail’, which, in their case means, recognisance only as they do not have any money:
Anglican bishop hits back at Braverman
Later on Monday, February 5, The Telegraph carried an article about an Anglican prelate, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, the Bishop of Chelmsford, ‘Bishop hits back over Suella Braverman’s claims asylum seekers are faking Christian conversion’:
A bishop has attacked Suella Braverman after she said that churches were fuelling fake asylum claims …
The Church of England has rejected Mrs Braverman’s criticism, with the Bishop of Chelmsford, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, writing in The Telegraph on Monday: “We are not politicians, and we know that to be involved in political debate can be bruising.
“But those who have claimed a link between the abuse of our asylum system and the action of bishops in parliament are simply wrong.
“It is saddening to see this being implied by former holders of senior ministerial office, who have had opportunity but not sought to raise these concerns with senior clergy before.”
Dr Francis-Dehqani, who will become the lead bishop on immigration later in February, denied that the Church was in any way responsible for the criminal history of converted asylum seekers.
The bishop repeated the usual Church of England disclaimer:
Churches have no power to circumvent the Government’s duty to vet and approve applications – the responsibility for this rests with the Home Office.
Furthermore:
The bishop also denied that church support for asylum seekers’ claims amounted to a “magic ticket” for entry to the UK, adding that the notion that a person may be “fast-tracked through the asylum system, aided and abetted by the Church is simply inaccurate”.
The Bishop of Chelmsford is one of the Lords Spiritual, as is the Archbishop of Canterbury. Both speak in the House of Lords on the compassion the British government owes to asylum claimants, even when arriving in their tens of thousands every year. They give nary a thought to the British people who need to live with these claimants.
The Bibby Stockholm converts: not a miracle
The latest conversion story to take the UK by storm was the Sunday, February 4 headline about the illegals on the Bibby Stockholm barge, moored near Portland in Dorset, on the south coast of England. Portland has historically been known for its fine quality stone.
Halfway through the weekend, we woke up to this Telegraph headline:
… on Sunday, David Rees, a church elder and education consultant, told the BBC’s Sunday programme that 40 asylum seekers on the Bibby Stockholm had converted or were in the process of becoming Christians.
“Local faith leaders have visited the barge and work with the council and the barge management in looking after these guys,” he said, adding that the migrants had either converted in their home countries or on Christian Alpha or other courses in the UK.
The Alpha course, which introduces worshippers to the faith, was taken by Emad Al Swealmeen, the Liverpool bomber. The Iraqi asylum seeker blew himself up outside a maternity hospital in 2021, four years after his confirmation at the city’s cathedral.
Mr Elder [David Rees?? — c’mon, get it right] said he was confident that all the 40 Bibby Stockholm migrants were undergoing genuine conversions.
“Obviously, we need to make sure that they believe in the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit and repent of their sins and also they want to start a new life in the church,” he said.
“So those are the sort of questions that we ask them, and they have to give a public testimony, at their baptism, which they did in their native language, and it was translated into English. There were no qualms at all about the content of that testimony, which was clear and conclusive about their faith in Jesus Christ.”
Tim Loughton, the aforementioned Conservative MP who asked Rishi Sunak a question at PMQs on February 7, was less sure:
Tim Loughton, a member of the home affairs committee and a former minister, said he was concerned that Christian conversion had become a scam, claiming there were cases in which some asylum seekers had got crucifix tattoos to reinforce their claims.
“We have got to have a much more rigorous scrutiny process for those claiming to have converted and the basis on which it would be dangerous to return them to their home countries,” he said.
However, the Home Office, which his colleague, James Cleverly MP heads as our latest Home Secretary, appeared to disagree:
The Home Office said caseworkers were trained to be able to establish the credibility of claims around religious beliefs so that protection was only granted to those in genuine need.
Guidance tells them to assess a claim “in the round” and not take the word of a priest as “determinative”. An asylum seeker’s participation in church activities must be considered, along with the timing of their conversion, knowledge of the faith, and the opinions of other congregation members as to the genuineness of the conversion.
Sorry, but that is not happening. What are other congregation members going to say if these converts are potentially intimidating? Ask yourselves what you might say if faced with that question.
Conclusion
Let us return to Suella Braverman’s experience as an immigration lawyer and Home Secretary from her February 3 article in The Telegraph:
For years, I defended the Home Office in immigration cases as a barrister and saw the reality of our broken asylum system. Then, it was sham marriages and bogus colleges that allowed migrants to game our system.
But, as Home Secretary, I saw how the racketeering has continued, and expanded in myriad ways.
Today, it is adults claiming to be children, Muslims pretending to be Christians, heterosexuals feigning homosexuality, healthy people alleging mental illness, economic migrants impersonating refugees fleeing persecution, those who have chosen to come here arguing that they have been trafficked as slaves, or those masquerading as political dissidents.
Many asylum seekers are genuine and it’s right that we offer help when their cause is just. But far too many are bogus and using our laws against us …
It has to stop. We must get wise to the problem. It is no wonder that the former dean of Liverpool Cathedral noted that he converted about 200 asylum seekers to Christianity over a four-year period – but he doesn’t recall baptising any Muslim who was already a British citizen.
It’s why I set up a dedicated taskforce focused on rooting out the grifters enabling this sordid business. Through more reporting, increased investigations and tougher enforcement, it has succeeded in identifying some of the bad actors. This work must continue in earnest.
Our system remains broken when asylum seekers convicted of sex offences may remain in the UK. Once you break our laws, surely you forfeit any right to stay here? We need a system whereby foreign offenders automatically lose their right to claim asylum or plead modern slavery. No exceptions, no caveats.
Now, you’ll say: why didn’t you fix it when you had the chance as Home Secretary? Well, during the past year, we increased the number of removals of foreign offenders and those illegally here – an improvement on previous years and back to pre-Covid levels.
But the real reason we have not yet got to the bottom of the problem is that every time the Government passed yet another law, we balked at the chance to exclude the vague and evolving rules contained in international law, be it the Refugee Convention, the European Convention on Human Rights or the Human Rights Act.
While in government, I pushed to exclude these treaties from our asylum law, but to no avail. I laid out proposals on how to cut the Gordian knot of human rights law that is the root cause of the problem. These instruments stymie our ability to control who comes into our country, who stays here and who must leave.
The reality of government is that if the consensus is not with you, then even as Home Secretary you will not prevail. Instead, we got tweaks, compromises and half-measures. Post-Brexit, we did not take back control. Rather, we have ceded it to international law, a foreign court, and activist judges and lawyers.
I don’t seek to demonise those who, understandably, seek a better life abroad. Hundreds of millions of people live in poor conditions around the world and will have a profound desire to better themselves and their families. My own parents had that same deep longing when they emigrated – lawfully – to the UK from Kenya and Mauritius in the 1960s.
People may come here lawfully, in an orderly manner. But what we are talking about with illegal immigration is the deception, criminality and playing of the system that so defines our asylum policy in the 21st century.
We can dance around the issue for years to come, but the truth is that our government will always be limited in what it can do unless it withdraws from the European Convention on Human Rights. The jurisprudence from the Strasbourg Court that is binding in the UK has taken a broad and ever-expansive approach to the very noble rights set out in the original text. We’ve tried working within its boundaries for decades, but that approach has failed.
We can no longer allow amorphous concepts of international law to override the supremacy of Parliament, especially in matters of vital national interest. We cannot have fought for freedom, self-government and a voice for the British people in 2016 only to afford foreign offenders greater rights than their law-abiding victims.
The British people have voted time and time again for proper control of our borders. Yet we still have dubious characters coming to our country illegally every week. It is no wonder people are giving up on politics. This is a national-security and public-safety emergency. Gang warfare, terrorism, drugs, rape, murder, acid attacks – those capable of such heinous crimes will keep coming until we get serious, put the British people first, and pass the hard-headed laws required to properly secure our border.
Suella’s right. Dame Priti is right.
However, some people are just dead against doing right by the British taxpayers — the people who pay the salaries of Government ministers, MPs from all parties, civil servants and asylum-friendly charities, partly financed by the Government (i.e. us).
On January 2, 2024, the Daily Sceptic featured a post, ‘What Ancient Rome Can Teach Our Fearful Age’.
Guy de la Bédoyère recaps the four centuries after the birth of Christ in the empire. Most of us will know the main events that led to its downfall, including vice and corruption.
However, there are also other elements to explore.
Crime
Even in the decades following St Paul’s death, crime was a preoccupation with Romans. One of them was spiking with poisoned needles (emphases mine):
During the reign of Domitian (81-96) there had been an outbreak of a sinister new offence, not only in Rome but also elsewhere. The perpetrators’ modus operandi was to spread poison on needles and then prick anyone they could with them. This extraordinary story of the original spikers sounds like something from the Sherlock Holmes stories, but Rome had no celebrated sleuth, fictional or otherwise, to solve the crimes. The result was that many victims died, most of them unaware of what had happened to them.
Some of the needle killers were informed on, caught and punished. The mystery is what the motive was. The historian Dio, who recorded the outbreak, suggests it was some sort of crooked business, but there is no suggestion that the murderers were after money. The wave may have been driven by nothing more than a malicious desire to spread panic. If so, it succeeded.
There was already a lot of crime in Rome by then that made the capital sound like an early version of New York City. The poet Juvenal wrote:
When your house is closed, and your shop locked up with bar and chain, and everything is quiet you’ll be robbed by a burglar, or perhaps a cut-throat will wipe you out quickly with his blade.
Oddly enough, the upper classes comprised the greatest number of brigands:
Lethal violence could erupt without warning, to say nothing of the Roman habit of hurling broken pots out of the window. Oddly, the available evidence suggests that much the most dangerous cutthroats were often young men from aristocratic families.
Juvenal said that there were so many such hazards in Rome that anyone who went out to dinner without making a will first was guilty of sheer negligence. The poet Horace mentioned how easy it was to be taken for a fool by a beggar loitering at any one of Rome’s numerous road junctions pretending to be lame.
Weather
Weather also created a climate of panic:
Pliny the Younger, wrote to a friend after experiencing a terrible storm. “Here [in Rome] we have incessant gales and repeated floods. The Tiber had burst its banks and wrecked homes and many people injured and killed.”
Pliny the Younger finished up, “When disaster is actual or expected, the effect is much the same, except that suffering has its limits but apprehension has none. Suffering is confined to the known event, but apprehension extends to every possibility.”
Here is the lesson for us:
He couldn’t have described the fear and despair promoted at every opportunity in our own time better. The only difference is that now it’s turned into an industry.
Migration
However, what the article did not explore were the reasons for the Western Roman Empire’s decline in the fifth century.
History tells us that Rome depended increasingly on foreign imports into its military, men who did not necessarily share Roman values:
For most of its history, Rome’s military was the envy of the ancient world. But during the decline, the makeup of the once mighty legions began to change. Unable to recruit enough soldiers from the Roman citizenry, emperors like Diocletian and Constantine began hiring foreign mercenaries to prop up their armies. The ranks of the legions eventually swelled with Germanic Goths and other barbarians, so much so that Romans began using the Latin word “barbarus” in place of “soldier.”
While these Germanic soldiers of fortune proved to be fierce warriors, they also had little or no loyalty to the empire, and their power-hungry officers often turned against their Roman employers. In fact, many of the barbarians who sacked the city of Rome and brought down the Western Empire had earned their military stripes while serving in the Roman legions.
This is how it happened:
The Barbarian attacks on Rome partially stemmed from a mass migration caused by the Huns’ invasion of Europe in the late fourth century. When these Eurasian warriors rampaged through northern Europe, they drove many Germanic tribes to the borders of the Roman Empire. The Romans grudgingly allowed members of the Visigoth tribe to cross south of the Danube and into the safety of Roman territory, but they treated them with extreme cruelty.
According to the historian Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman officials even forced the starving Goths to trade their children into slavery in exchange for dog meat. In brutalizing the Goths, the Romans created a dangerous enemy within their own borders. When the oppression became too much to bear, the Goths rose up in revolt and eventually routed a Roman army and killed the Eastern Emperor Valens during the Battle of Adrianople in A.D. 378. The shocked Romans negotiated a flimsy peace with the barbarians, but the truce unraveled in 410, when the Goth King Alaric moved west and sacked Rome. With the Western Empire weakened, Germanic tribes like the Vandals and the Saxons were able to surge across its borders and occupy Britain, Spain and North Africa.
A Free Library review of Oxford historian Peter Heather’s The Fall of the Roman Empire provides more detail, which also involves food security. While crops failed in what we know of as today’s Italy, further-flung areas of the empire saw much better crop production. The hordes eventually took advantage of this situation:
Some historians have argued … that this was actually a time when agriculture in important areas of the empire, especially in Italy, was failing. To make this claim they point to the fact that tremendous amounts of agricultural produce were brought to Rome from the empire’s North African provinces, rather than grown locally. Moreover, it is historical orthodoxy to hold that the later empire overtaxed its land-owning class, causing a flight from the land that resulted in the infamous Agri Deserti, the phenomenon of the “deserted lands.”
This phenomenon no doubt did occur in some areas. Ancient texts make reference to it, and historians were quick, too quick it seems, to assume this applied to the empire as a whole. Heather cites archaeological evidence to the contrary. Some areas, he points out, experienced rapid and intense agricultural and rural growth. In Roman North Africa, Greece, the Near East and elsewhere, agriculture flourished. In these areas, Heather writes, “the fourth and fifth centuries have emerged as a period of maximum rural development–not minimum, as the orthodoxy would have led us to expect.”
The economy of the Roman Empire was grounded in agriculture; the power of the state, militarily, reflected this economy. If the agricultural sector was strong, the state’s coffers would be full, and the military, largely the only full-scale service provided by the Roman State, would be correspondingly strong. In fact, the military of the Roman Empire in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, just when it was supposedly on the decline according to orthodox historical interpretation, was in reality near its zenith.
It is worth noting that:
at the beginning of the fourth century, at the end of the reign of the Emperor Diocletian, the Romans could field an army of at least 300,000 men. Moreover, this was a well-trained army that could fight a two-front war, and it did so not long after, against the Goths in the West and the Persians in the East.
When the Goths arrived at Rome, although they were mistreated, the Romans needed the manpower:
In a sense, their timing was perfect. The Romans were deeply embroiled in the East with a resurgent Persian empire. The Balkans were, therefore, a bit short on manpower. Under the circumstances, the Emperor Valens was forced to admit the Gothic horde.
However, food security caused an internal war:
All went well until food supplies ran short and tempers flared. There was an attack on the emperor at a banquet and soon there was war, which raged for six years.
From the time of this conflict, known as the Gothic War, until the fall of the Roman Empire, continuous pressure from the Huns would force other barbarians to move en masse across the Western Empire. Throughout the book, Heather examines the empire’s continuing attempts to repel or at least contain the onslaught. More often than not, they were successful in battle, but each success (and sometimes spectacular failure) sapped the strength of the giant. Soon Gaul was overrun, and Spain, too.
Eventually, the hordes invaded North Africa, the empire’s breadbasket:
The real blow came when Goths and Vandals crossed into North Africa and took over the Roman provinces there. Loss of these provinces would mean loss of the West, and the combined forces of all the empire were sent to recover the area. Just before making landfall near Carthage, the Roman fleet was trapped and destroyed by a Vandal fleet.
Conclusions
The Free Library‘s review comes to these conclusions from Peter Heather’s book:
There are two major lessons to be learned from the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, and these are made apparent in Heather’s book. First and foremost is the danger of uncontrolled hostile immigration. That the empire could absorb large groups of immigrants is beyond doubt. It could and did do so over several centuries. But even the Roman Empire, with its vast territory and unprecedented wealth, had a limit to the number of people it could absorb and Romanize.
Eventually, the immigrants grew more powerful than the existing Roman authority and, maintaining to some degree their independence of spirit and character, were unwilling to relinquish their own culture and adopt the Roman. Vast blocs of once-Roman territory eventually became foreign and even the preexisting Roman population, eventually outnumbered, had to make peace with the newcomers.
As for Christianity being to blame, as Edward Gibbon wrote in the 18th century:
it has been the norm to see in the fall of the empire the supposedly pernicious role of the new Christian religion. Heather’s book, taken as a whole, is a marvelous corrective for this mistaken position. There can be no doubt, after reading Heather, that the West, at the height of its power, succumbed to successive waves of hostile immigrants.
Heather also makes the point that if Christianity were to blame, then the empire in the East, based at Constantinople, should not have continued for almost a millennium after the fall of the West. After all, the Eastern Empire was just as Christian as the West, and was even closer to the scene of the many early doctrinal controversies. And yet the sun did not set on the Eastern Empire of the Romans until 1453.
Lessons for us
We are seeing parallels to empathetic immigration in all Western countries, including Australia, as Patrick Christys featured on his GB News programme on Thursday, January 5:
Christys’s intro is about the Archbishop of Canterbury, who has just come into an inheritance of £2.4m from his late mother’s estate. As Britons know, Archbishop Welby wants compassion to be extended to all coming across the Channel in small boats. Christys suggests that Welby use his inheritance to personally house these economic migrants, known for tossing their papers and mobile phones overboard into the Channel before arriving on our shores.
At the 20:00 point, Christys interviews The Spectator Australia‘s Alexandra Marshall who wonders why immigrants are occupying such a large swathe of the nation’s cities and nearby suburbs while indigenous Australians have been pushed out to the exurbs in the past decade. Alexandra Marshall knows, because she lives in a nearby suburb of Sydney in a largely immigrant neighbourhood. An associate professor at the University of Queensland, Dr Dorina Pojani, said that it was because of the pandemic. Marshall counters that she herself had been living in that neighbourhood for several years before the pandemic and saw it change. She also does not think that Australians who have lived all their lives near Sydney should be priced out of the housing market.
Pojani brushed away Marshall’s experience in a rather dismissive tone. It should be noted that Dr Pojani is Albanian and, interestingly enough, lectures on Urban Planning.
Hmm.
Food for thought.
On Christmas Eve 2023, GB News’s Neil Oliver devoted his show to the meaning of Christmas.
In his monologue (editorial) at the beginning, he pointed out that Christmas is the only time when the world comes together to contemplate peace and good will towards all. He said that if we water down this season, we are in danger of forgetting what it means to be human. He also mentioned that St Francis of Assisi brought us the original manger scene, something about which I wrote in October:
Here is the video of the full show. Skip through the news and the adverts and it is about 45 minutes long:
At around the 20-minute mark, Oliver spoke with the Revd Gavin Ashenden who was once one of Queen Elizabeth’s chaplains, then he converted to Catholicism. Oliver’s panel guest, Andrew Eborn, asked what made Ashenden make that choice. Ashenden said that he sees truth in Catholicism. Oliver looked at him sceptically and asked him what he thought of Church leaders in general, to which he replied, not much. Oliver had this look on his face that seemed to say, ‘Convince me I should believe and I will’, but as St Paul’s letters point out, an unbeliever is likely to believe only once he sees leaders reflecting that faith in a transformed way of godliness and holiness. What internationally recognised Christian leaders today meet those criteria?
The third segment had to do with St Francis of Assisi’s manger scene. Oliver interviewed the American novelist Laurel Guillen, author of A Bellwether Christmas. She said that 2023 is the 800th anniversary year of the first one, which Francis devised for a Christmas Mass in Greccio, near Assisi. (He used the manger as the altar and had a real ox and a donkey there, too.) She said she had become interested in the saint when her grandmother took her to Italy for holiday in the 1990s and they visited some of the places Francis had lived and worked. You can read more about Laurel Guillen, whose husband worked for ABC News, at BeliefNet.
It is rather incredible to think not only that Francis came up with the first manger scene in an era when the Mass was said in church but also that the concept has endured ever since and is a universal Christian representation of the earthly birth of Christ. I began looking at two patterns of wrapping paper we have at home. Whilst they are secular in nature, both feature animals expressing their joy at the season — a bit of Franciscan inspiration there, it would seem.
Oliver’s final guest was Professor Ralph Schollhammer who, being German, was over the moon at having been invited to discuss the origins of the Christmas tree. He said:
This is the highlight of my career being with you on Christmas Eve and talking about the Christmas tree.
He went on to say:
All the cool Christmas traditions come from people with German accents, so, from the Krampus to the Christmas tree. Where did it all start? In Germany.
All the stories about the Christmas tree seem to have arisen around the 15th century:
One story I really like is that Martin Luther once saw the stars above and he was so moved by it that he said, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we have these evergreens in our house and put lights on [them]?’ That’s supposed to be the beginning of the Christmas tree and putting candles on the tree … Given the Protestant Reformation and everything, I think it’s a very, very nice story.
What I really like about it is that it’s the greatest story of cultural appropriation that ever happened because the idea of the Christmas tree comes from the solstice on the 21st or 22nd of December, the last really short days and then the days get longer. And you have this really nice way of how Christianity adopted it and turned it into something of its own, in a way that worked for everybody.
So, I think the story of the Christmas tree is, politically, if we want to go down this road, has probably more relevance than one would think.
Oliver asked Andrew Eborn, broadcaster and technology lawyer, what he thought. The normally serious Eborn surprised me in his various GB News appearances this week with his knowledge of Christmas trivia. He told Oliver and Schollhammer that the very first artificial trees actually had boughs made of goose feathers which were dyed green!
Oliver returned to Schollhammer and said that there was something very ‘primeval’ and ‘fundamental’ about focussing on something that is ever green during the darkest, bleakest days of the year when everything else had died. Schollhammer agreed, pointing out how much human life depended on the seasons, something we do not have to worry about today.
Schollhammer ended by saying that, on that basis, we have much for which to be thankful today, even though we criticise some aspects of modernity.
Oliver asked him if he sensed that more people were getting into a celebratory spirit this Christmas season than in previous years. He replied:
I hope so. I hope so. A revival of those traditions and the way we look at life, which is connected to it, would be a good thing even if it’s only once or twice a year, right? I understand that this is not something that happens every day, but I think this would be a good thing.
Then Schollhammer gave us a highly interesting fact about German history’s link to the evergreen from two millennia ago (emphases mine):
You see a little bit of a revival of it, particularly in the German-speaking world, where the forest and the trees have always had a very specific significance, that goes back to the idea that our history began with beating the Romans in the forest, so basically, among the trees our nation was formed. If you want, that’s one of the myths that surrounds German mythology.
He returned to Oliver’s point about celebration — and was probably unaware that he included a Sarah Palin expression here from 2008:
But, yes, there is something on the horizon. I think there is a sense among people that the next year or the coming years will be different from the preceding ones. And I hope to convey one message to your viewers: let’s get into this New Year as happy warriors … The changes we want to see are substantial but we should not lose hope. Let’s be serious about these issues, but let’s be happy warriors about it. That would be my New Year’s message to myself and also to your viewers and your listeners.
Neil Oliver obviously hadn’t heard the expression before, either:
Fantastic, Ralph! ‘Happy warriors’!
This ends my further exploration of Christmas traditions for this year.
Forbidden Bible Verses returns tomorrow.
I hope that all my British and Commonwealth readers who celebrated Boxing Day had an enjoyable and relaxing December 26th.
On Christmas night, I managed to catch up on GB News’s festive programmes, one of which was Christmas with Jacob Rees-Mogg, which aired on that evening. I highly commend it to everyone who is interested in history, especially because David Starkey, who has not appeared on GB News for a few months, is in it. It is about 45 minutes long, once one skips through the news and the adverts:
Jacob Rees-Mogg is not only one of our best-known Conservative MPs of recent years but is also a devout Catholic. David Starkey is largely an unbeliever, although he knows a lot about Christianity’s history in the UK.
The programme begins in Canterbury with a young missionary, Augustine (early 6th century – 604), whom Pope Gregory I (540 – 604) — St Gregory the Great — sent from Rome to the land of the Angles to evangelise them. Augustine of Canterbury, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, should not be confused with Augustine of Hippo, St Monica’s son, who lived centuries earlier.
Starkey said that Pope Gregory had been struck by the beauty of young blond boys who were slaves in Rome. They came from England, a new name for the old Roman colony of Britannia, one of the first to break free from the Roman Empire, having been conquered by miscellaneous German tribes who were pagan.
It is worth noting that, near the end of Roman rule, Britannia had been converted to Christianity, and three British bishops had participated in the Council of Arles in France in 314. The number of Christians grew in Britannia until 360. The pagan German tribes settled the southern parts of the former Roman colony while the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms remained Christian.
When Augustine, who was reluctant to go on Gregory’s mission, arrived in Kent on the south east coast, he worked with King Aethelberht, who was married to Queen Bertha, the daughter of a Merovingian king. The Merovingians were famous Frankish rulers whose lands extended from France into parts of what is now western Germany. Augustine converted Aethelberht to Christianity, with the help of Bertha, whom Starkey referred to as a ‘sleeper’, a Christian agent of sorts.
Starkey said that Augustine and Aethelberht worked together to restore the church of St Martin, which, he said Queen Bertha used for her worship.
Despite having a Christian ruler, the people of Kent still lived under pagan influence, even though pockets of Christianity remained. He described the Christians there as ‘frightened’, as the Anglo-Saxons were known for their cruelty. Starkey explained that this is why Augustine was deeply reluctant to take on the mission, as it was a complete departure into the unknown: savagery.
Rees-Mogg and Starkey jump a millennium ahead to the 1600s and a fully Christian Britain. Fortunately, a number of churches from Norman times (beginning in 1066) remain in our great nation, but Starkey calls our attention to the fact that although they were many throughout the Middle Ages, they were quite small. As the centuries passed, the churches grew larger and more elaborate. By the 14th and 15th centuries, the Church was very well established indeed and most people understood the functions within it.
At this point, Starkey discussed Christmas traditions of the time which included the ‘decking of the halls’ — the interior of houses, whether grand or humble — with greenery such as holly and ivy, which grow in abundance here. Starkey made a point of saying that mistletoe was not among the greenery.
Rees-Mogg mentioned that Advent was a time of religious fasting and devotion in the weeks preceding a grand Christmas feast, which would have varied according to one’s personal circumstances. As Britain was largely agricultural at the time and fields would have been to cold or muddy to cultivate, Christmas celebrations lasted for 12 days, from the 25th through January 6. Workers and their employers would have celebrated in their own ways, revelry included. The twelfth day ended with a play. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night was no accident, Starkey said.
Meanwhile, Starkey said, British society and institutions grew in number and in influence. The Church was one such institution, including Oxford and Cambridge, but there were also the Inns of Court for law and the Guilds for trade. Along with this there was social advancement, whereby men of means gave an annual gift to the King on January 1, a holdover pagan ritual to Januarius from Roman times. He emphasised that this ‘giving up’ was a way of buying influence, as the monarch was inclined to ‘give down’ in the form of a token gift in return. Starkey and Rees-Mogg touched on the satirical historical sitcom Blackadder, which portrays Elizabeth I as a queen in pursuit of gold from her courtiers. Starkey said that was not far from the truth; she expected gold from her bishops — and lots of it. A better gift to the ruler eventually purchased position in the court or elsewhere.
Moving back to the Twelve Days of Christmas, Rees-Mogg and Starkey pointed out that the agrarian society of the time have influenced the Church calendar to this day. The major feasts — Christmas, Easter and Pentecost — occur within a six-month timescale. This timing harmonises with the agricultural calendar, i.e. harvests beginning in August and running through October. I would add that, whether all these celebrations were originally pagan turned Christian, they still revolve around the agricultural calendar. Nothing has changed over two millennia.
By the time of the late Middle Ages, towns and villages began keeping written records. The printing press arrived in the 1500s and, with it, the printed Bible. Then came Henry VIII’s divorce from one wife in order to marry another. As such, the Reformation began in Britain.
Starkey said that some devout Christians wanted the Church restored to a more religious state and ‘Christmas is the central victim’.
Rees-Mogg then opened the segment on the Reformation at Loseley (pron. Lows-ley) Park in Surrey, rebuilt for Elizabeth I with stone from a dissolved abbey, Waverley Abbey, and with items from Henry VIII’s Nonsuch Palace. Christmas under the Tudors was still a time of feasting, as managed by the Master of the Revels, a notable position under Elizabeth’s father Henry VIII. In fact, his Master of the Revels owned Loseley Park. As Starkey and Rees-Mogg toured a decorated great hall, they observed that the same type of greenery was used for decoration, as it would have been in the 16th century.
This was a time of transition to opposing viewpoints about Christianity which eventually led to Cromwell’s Interregnum and the Civil War. The gentry who wanted a restoration of biblical Christianity became increasingly opposed to the feasts and revelry of the Twelve Days of Christmas. As they adoped a Calvinistic Christianity from Scotland’s John Knox, they said that it was the Lord’s Day, Sunday, that mattered. Christmas, they said, was a random day on the calendar, except where it occurred on a Sunday. Even then, it was the Sunday and not Christmas Day that was pre-eminent. That, incidentally, is still largely the view of Calvinistic — Reformed — churches today.
Starkey said that while the Reformation in England was a top-down imposition by the monarchy, in Scotland at the time, there was an absence of monarchy and Calvinism took hold. In fact, Scotland, under the state Church (Presbyterianism), had declared Christmas as illegal. Even now, it takes second place to Hogmanay, the celebration of the New Year. This is ironic, because there are few feasts involving as much revelry as Hogmanay, which lasts two days and no doubt has its roots in the pagan cult of Januarius from Roman times.
Starkey and Rees-Mogg discussed the Reformation in England from Henry VIII’s time through to the Civil War and said that it was a time of ebbs and flows.
It should be noted that this was certainly a time of persecution. There were Catholic martyrs and, under ‘Bloody’ Mary I, there were Protestant martyrs.
The third segment of the programme discussed Cromwell’s Interregnum, so called because he had Charles I beheaded and dissolved Parliament. Normality resumed in 1660 when Charles II was restored to the throne.
Starkey called the Interregnum the ‘wokery’ of the day and said that Cromwell was a military dictator with his Roundheads. Starkey said that the Interregnum must not be underestimated in its prohibition of all things enjoyable in the name of religion. He said that the refusal of Puritans of the day was ‘the refusal to compromise’. In some parts of Britain, a Puritan streak still exists. Starkey spoke about his own mother from the north of England who invoked the word ‘principle’ frequently; he said that it meant ‘she didn’t want to listen to reason’ in opposing arguments.
Starkey said that the Puritans viewed their prohibitions as the means to self-improvement, without which people would remain in poverty.
He added that, because the Puritans viewed their principles as the correct ones, their movement resembled today’s wokery — ‘the machinery of compulsion’ — only with more serious consequences, as Puritans were in charge of the law and the courts.
During the early years of the Restoration, Starkey described the reconstruction that went on in Anglican churches. He remarked that Archbishop Laud called these things ‘the beauty of holiness’. Altars were restored or repositioned along with candlesticks and works of art — and, of course, the beautiful Anglican liturgy. Charles II approved a revised edition of the Book of Common Prayer in 1662.
By the end of the century, with all that having been done, Starkey said that life calmed down, not only in church but also in society. The thought of the Enlightenment took root, along with it rationality and a proportional response to life in general. However, Starkey said that Christmas traditions were low-key during this time.
At that point, Starkey’s time on the programme came to an end and Dr Tessa Dunlop, an expert on the Victorian era, spoke at length to Rees-Mogg.
Dunlop met Rees-Mogg at Eastwell Park in Kent, which was the country home of Queen Victoria’s second son, Prince Alfred the Duke of Edinburgh. Eastwell Manor was the place to be seen in the late 19th century. Alfred’s daughter, Marie, who went on to become Queen of Romania, wrote a book in the 1930s which includes a chapter about her life there.
Most of our current Christmas traditions came about with the Victorians. Tom Smith invented the Christmas cracker in that era. Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s German husband, brought in the Christmas tree from his native land. Mince pies, originally filled with spiced meat for the Royals of old, were now made with sweetmeats: dried fruits and citrus peel. Nearly everyone could afford them.
Prince Alfred took Christmas preparations at Eastwell Manor seriously and presided over all of them, from the initial stirring of the Christmas pudding to the arrangement of presents on tables with white tablecloths.
However, with the Industrial Revolution, which started in the 1700s and turned England into a nation of industry rather than farms, employers, eager to make manufacturing targets, granted only one day of Christmas celebration — December 25. By the end of the century, this, too, also changed, although the programme did not cover that development.
As the 1800s progressed, illustrations of Queen Victoria’s family Christmas appeared in print in periodicals, attracting much favourable comment. Before long, even someone who could not afford to buy a weekly magazine knew about the Queen, her family and their festive customs.
Rees-Mogg said that constitutional changes meant that Victoria had little to no power over Parliament, therefore, the Royal Family had to reinvent a new purpose for itself. Hence family celebrations. As Victoria had nine children, she and Albert portrayed their family as the British ideal. Dunlop said that they replaced ‘political power with popularity’.
Marie described in her book the culmination on Christmas Eve, German-style, at which time, the tree, located in the library, was lit with candles (oh, dear!); she remembered ‘the delicious fragrance of singed fir-branches’.
Alfred had created a ritual around the lit tree. Everything was dark and the doors to the library were closed. Marie and her siblings had to walk down a long dark corridor with Alfred dressed as the Christmas ogre, instilling fear and dread. Finally, they reached the library, its doors still closed. At that point, Alfred threw open the doors to the room, illuminated only by the candles on the tree.
Dunlop explained that presents were small and modest in those days. Small sweets were hung and given as gifts. Other bijou gifts could sit on the boughs. It was the Industrial Revolution that brought the capability of toys to be manufactured at a modest price and en masse and, as such, were too heavy to sit in the tree. Consequently, families began placing presents under the tree.
In her memoirs, Marie also discussed the parlour games that followed the main Christmas meal. Even today, many Britons play Charades or a board game after lunch or dinner.
The Royal family also created the tradition for a walk after Christmas dinner. There was (and is) much beauty to be seen at Eastwell Manor and other Royal estates. The post-Christmas dinner walk is another tradition that endures today. I was happy to hear Rees-Mogg say that he has never been a fan of them. Nor have my better half and I.
Dunlop did not mention turkey, another Victorian tradition which Prince Albert appreciated because it could feed him, the Queen and his nine children quite substantially.
More Christmas traditions to follow tomorrow.
Last Friday, I explored Suella Braverman’s past as an MP, from 2019 through to November 4, 2019.
Many British voters appreciate Suella’s views and don’t mind the ‘hurty words’, as the terminology goes, in which she expresses her concern for the immigration plight the UK finds itself in at present with no relief in sight.
Her fellow Conservative MP Lee Anderson, Deputy Leader of the Party and also a GB News presenter on Friday evenings, tweeted that she had not ever sided with terrorist organisations this year, taken the knee as many did in June 2020 but, even so, she has been deemed to be ‘guilty’ and Labour MPs wanted her sacked as Home Secretary. Anderson said that Suella’s only crime is to utter what ‘most of us are thinking and saying’:
That photo was taken in Adam Brooks’s pub on the outskirts of north east London during Lee’s interview of her while she was still Home Secretary.
The Suella saga continues with a view towards her future with the Conservatives.
November 2023
On Friday, November 10, things started to hot up between Suella and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Guido Fawkes gave us a run-down about their clashes in 2023 (red emphases his):
Guido gives you the run down on all the times they’ve clashed before…
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- April 2023: Braverman wrote a piece in the Daily Mail claiming UK child grooming gangs were “almost all British-Pakistani”. Forced to amend the article later on, No.10 declined to comment on whether Sunak supported her language.
- May 2023: Sunak declined to back Braverman amid allegations she asked civil servants to help her avoid getting points on her driving licence for speeding.
- September 2023: Sunak repeatedly refused to say if he agreed with Braverman’s view that multiculturalism has “failed“.
- September 2023: Sunak again declined to back Braverman’s claims that asylum seekers had pretended to be homosexual or transgender to “game the system”.
- October 2023: Sunak refused to defend Braverman’s conference speech on a “hurricane” of mass migration. When asked on LBC if “we have failed in any way”, he said: “No, no, I think it is something we should be so proud of as Brits.”
- November 2023: Sunak declined an offer to repeat Braverman’s claims that rough sleeping is a “lifestyle choice”.
The latest drama over Braverman’s Times piece may be the final straw, with rumours swirling round SW1 that the Home Secretary could throw in the towel any time soon. It seems it was bound to end in tears…
On Monday, November 13, Rishi announced a wide and deep reshuffle:
One of the first casualities was Suella Braverman, whom he fired in an 8:30 a.m. phone call. She reported to Downing Street a few hours later. James Cleverly, who had been Foreign Secretary, replaced her as Home Secretary. Suella had duly returned to the back benches of the House of Commons.
The other move, which surprised nearly everyone, was former Prime Minister David Cameron’s return to politics as Cleverly’s successor. This involved getting Cameron whisked into the House of Lords as quickly as possible so he could start work. That is the subject of another post.
On Tuesday, November 14, UnHerd‘s political editor Tom McTague wrote ‘Suellaism is here to stay’ (purple and bold emphases mine, unless otherwise stated):
Rishi Sunak doesn’t know what he’s trying to sell. Suella Braverman does. Herein lies a problem for the Conservative Party.
Just over a year ago, Sunak claimed his mandate to govern came from Boris Johnson’s victory in 2019, a victory that was, he insisted, “not the sole property of any one individual” but that of the entire party. “And the heart of that mandate is our manifesto,” Sunak declared triumphantly outside No 10. “I will deliver on its promise.”
Within a year, Sunak had junked it completely: corporation tax was hiked to 25% and HS2 scrapped. Sunak then spun these moves as part of a new mission to end the “30-year political status quo” which he wasn’t a part of. Then, a month later, he sacked Suella Braverman and made David Cameron Foreign Secretary …
The reshuffle reveals the terminal nature of the crisis now facing this Government. These are its dying spasms … Sunak seems to be trying to rebuild the Cameron coalition that was upended by Brexit. But Cameron’s coalition is also long gone.
For the Conservative Left, Cameron’s appointment to Foreign and Braverman’s sacking from Home is long overdue …
However, some viewed the reshuffle differently:
As one senior Tory who is fond of Cameron put it to me yesterday: “This isn’t a strategy, it’s about shafting your enemies.”
Rishi might come to regret this decision as head boy, a position he occupied during his schooldays at Winchester College:
The problem for Sunak is that while Braverman might easily be discarded, Suella-ism will prove much harder to get rid of. Ultimately, she is expressing a feeling about modern Britain that is shared within the Conservative Party — beyond the fringes of its hard Right.
Voters can sense Suella’s passion for immigration policy. She once said she ‘dreamt’ of planes flying to Rwanda with asylum claimants. On October 3, she warned of a ‘hurricane’ of incoming immigration. She was dismayed that the Metropolitan Police did not take action against pro-Palestinian supporters during the October and November protests in London. Ultimately, no matter how nice she was to the civil servants in the Home Office, she could not get anything done:
At the heart of Braverman’s attack on the police is a much more interesting ideological shift taking place in the Tory party, and one, whatever its faults, that has a far more coherent story to tell about British politics over the last 13 years than Sunak has yet to come up with. Her story is this: the Conservative Party has failed. It won elections, but failed to change the country. Yes, it took Britain out of Europe, but — and here is the essence of Suella-ism — the Blob remains in charge: the courts remain all-powerful, schools promote their own ideology, police declare that “jihad doesn’t mean jihad”. It is time, she insists, to take back control.
… she is touching a nerve about today’s Britain.
… since October 7, and perhaps even in the West; … we’re living through some kind of great national argument where things are being said that cannot ever be unsaid, images seen that cannot be unseen. The Braverman battle with the Met is part of this national row, but only one part of it.
… Even the degree of violent, elemental loathing for Braverman which seems to be considered fair game hints towards something darker underneath …
McTague concludes:
If she wants to win the Tory leadership, Braverman is going to have to explain why she achieved so little in office. But whatever happens to Braverman herself, the Tory liberals are going to need a better story to explain their own failure if they are to defeat Suella-ism in the long term.
On Thursday, November 16, Sebastian Payne, director of the think tank Onward, a political pundit and someone who wants desperately to run as a parliamentary candidate for the Conservatives, opined in the i paper, ‘Suella Braverman and her supporters have never understood Red Wall voters’. Frankly, Sebastian Payne understands Red Wall voters even less, but this is part of what he had to say:
The Government’s two major moments this week – the reshuffle removing Suella Braverman as home secretary and announcing a Plan B for delivering the Rwanda deportation scheme – have prompted a ton of badly informed commentary about why it is all evidence of giving up on the realignment and returning to a core vote strategy centered on the prosperous south. The eye-opening return of Lord Cameron as Foreign Secretary is further evidence for those disgruntled MPs who believe their views and voters are being shunned.
Such concerns are wrongheaded. Braverman’s ouster from the Home Office had nothing to do with policy; her temperament, public persona and failure to grip the machinery of government provoked her downfall. James Cleverly, her Brexit-backing, Johnson-supporting successor, has shown no indication of shifting leftwards. He is more likely to be emollient in office but will remain just as dedicated to reducing overall migration, dealing with small boats and securing our borders as Braverman. Albeit (hopefully) with greater success.
There is also little evidence in the reshuffle that Sunak has given up on those representing the realignment – particularly in briefs where action is most crucial. The appointment of Richard Holden as party chairman means a Red Wall MP will be leading the Tories’ campaigning efforts into the election …
Payne had met many Red Wall voters after the 2019 general election and wrote a book about his interviews with them:
One of the most misunderstood elements of the alignment is that the first-time Tory voters had gradually moved towards the Conservatives, just as the Conservatives had moved towards them. As the big nationalised industries in the Midlands and the North faded away, their communities and economies had changed while Labour had left them behind. There was a meeting of hearts, minds and ideals at the last election. They bought not only into Brexit and Boris Johnson, but the tested Conservative values of modernisation and pragmatism.
Later that day, Suella laid out her plan in The Telegraph for a revised agreement with Rwanda, which was this week’s big news as Cleverly went to sign a new deal, a treaty with ‘notwithstanding’ clauses designed to foil opposition from the courts (bold in the original):
… For emergency legislation to achieve what the PM says he wants, Parliament needs to amend the Illegal Migration Act so that it meets these five tests:
1/ The Bill must address the Supreme Court’s concerns regarding Rwanda
Parliament is entitled to assert that Rwanda is safe without making any changes to our Rwanda partnership.
However, for substantive and presentational reasons, it would be preferable to amend that agreement to address issues identified by the judges. This could include embedding UK observers and independent reviewers of asylum decisions.
It is less important whether these commitments are embodied in an amended memorandum or a new treaty.
What is crucial is that they are practical steps to improve Rwanda’s asylum system. On the basis of these new commitments, Rwanda’s safety could be credibly confirmed on the face of the Bill.
2/ The Bill must enable flights before the next general election
Legislation must therefore circumvent the lengthy process of further domestic litigation, to ensure that flights can take off as soon as the new Bill becomes law. To do this, the Bill must exclude all avenues of legal challenge. The entirety of the Human Rights Act and European Convention on Human Rights, and other relevant international obligations, or legislation, including the Refugee Convention, must be disapplied by way of clear “notwithstanding” clauses.
Judicial Review, all common law challenges, and all injunctive relief, including the suspensive challenges available under the Illegal Migration Act must be expressly excluded. Individuals would, however, be given the chance to demonstrate that they had entered the country legally, were under 18, or were medically unfit to fly – but Home Office decisions on these claims could not be challenged in court.
3/ Swift removal must mean swift removal
Those arriving illegally must be removed in a matter of days rather than months as under the Illegal Migration Act. This means amending the Act to ensure that removals to Rwanda are mandated under the duty to remove, with strict time limits. This will streamline the Home Office process as much as possible, so that the only Home Office decision is to determine whether an individual falls within the scheme or not.
4/ Those arriving here illegally must be detained
Legal challenges to detention must be excluded to avoid burdening the courts, making it clear that detention is mandated until removal.
5/ This must be treated as an emergency
The Bill should be introduced by Christmas recess and Parliament should be recalled to sit and debate it over the holiday period.
The new treaty, which Cleverly and Rwanda signed this week, have taken care of points 1 and 2 (see below), however, the other three will unfold in the coming weeks and months.
A Telegraph article by Home Affairs editor Charles Hymas, which appeared online immediately after Suella’s, showed a poll revealing that Britons across all political spectrums doubt that even a revised Rwanda plan would work. It also said:
On Thursday, Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor, admitted that the Government could not guarantee migrant flights would take off next year, while James Cleverly, the new Home Secretary, said “the timescales that we are looking at can vary depending on circumstances” although he was “absolutely determined” to make it happen before the election.
Mr Sunak faces the legislation being thwarted by the Lords with peers branding it a “constitutional outrage” and “profoundly discreditable” on Thursday and warning it would be “completely bogged down” by “constructive obstruction” and “eternal ping pong” …
Mr Sunak has insisted he is willing to change domestic laws and “revisit international relationships” if there are still obstacles by the spring to flights taking off.
On Saturday, November 25, The Telegraph‘s — and GB News’s — Camilla Tominey sounded the alarm over immigration, ‘Unprecedented mass migration threatens to erode our national values’. She is not wrong:
We need to reduce immigration not just to lessen the pressure on the country’s infrastructure and public services. Net migration at the current, massive rate is in danger of damaging social cohesion and eroding our national values.
There has rightly been a lot of focus on the latest net migration figure, which was this week revealed to be 672,000 for the 12 months to June 2023. Net migration for 2022 was also revised upwards to 745,000 – a new record. If immigration continues at the same pace, Britain’s population could soar to around 85 million by 2046.
These figures fly in the face of repeated promises that net migration will come down.
Theresa May pledged to reduce it to the tens of thousands. Boris Johnson vowed to “take back control” of our borders with an Australian points-based system. Rishi Sunak keeps insisting that arrivals must come down, only for them to reach unprecedented levels.
The public are justifiably angry about the failure of successive administrations to get a grip of this issue. They are also understandably worried about the impact on our already creaking infrastructure of adding a population the size of Birmingham every few years.
Yet the debate about immigration is too often viewed purely in economic terms. Of course this matters, but mass migration on such a grand scale also has implications for social cohesion …
Too many organisations and politicians also seem to have lost confidence in our country’s values, or have become embarrassed about promoting them. We’ve seen this in the attempts by ignorant apologists to woke-wash our history and depict everything about Britain, past and present, as evil.
But it is also surely almost impossible to effectively integrate such a large number of people, all coming here at once. Britain has been far more successful than a lot of European countries at integrating new arrivals. Let’s hope this is not about to change.
On November 26, Charles Hymas wrote another article about the former Home Secretary, ‘Rishi Sunak’s migrant deal with Suella Braverman revealed’ for The Sunday Telegraph, excerpted after the next item about Suella’s resignation letter.
This concerned the necessity in 2022 for Rishi to get Suella’s buy-in for his becoming Conservative Party leader — thus, Prime Minister — succeeding Liz Truss. In that letter, which she reprised in her resignation letter a little over a year later, she wrote:
As you know, I accepted your offer to serve as Home Secretary in October 2022 on certain conditions. Despite you having been rejected by a majority of Party members during the summer leadership contest and thus having no personal mandate to be Prime Minister, I agreed to support you because of the firm assurances you gave me on key policy priorities. Those were, among other things:
1. Reduce overall legal migration as set out in the 2019 manifesto through, inter alia, reforming the international students route and increasing salary thresholds on work visas;
2. Include specific ‘notwithstanding clauses’ into new legislation to stop the boats, i.e. exclude the operation of the European Convention on Human Rights, Human Rights Act and other international law that had thus far obstructed progress on this issue;
3. Deliver the Northern Ireland Protocol and Retained EU Law Bills in their then existing form and timetable;
4. Issue unequivocal statutory guidance to schools that protects biological sex, safeguards single sex spaces, and empowers parents to know what is being taught to their children.
This was a document with clear terms to which you agreed in October 2022 during your second leadership campaign. I trusted you. It is generally agreed that my support was a pivotal factor in winning the leadership contest and thus enabling you to become Prime Minister …
Our deal was no mere promise over dinner, to be discarded when convenient and denied when challenged.
Yet, deny the deal Rishi did, as Charles Hymas’s aforementioned article points out:
Mr Sunak has not denied discussing policy options with Mrs Braverman or the existence of a document, but Downing Street has rejected any characterisation of it as a deal.
Mr Sunak told the Mail on Sunday: “Of course, you have conversations with people when you are in a leadership election and not just Suella.” Asked if he was worried about her producing proof of the deal, he replied: “That’s a question for her. I’m getting on with actually delivering things.”
Sources close to Mrs Braverman said the deal was not signed by Mr Sunak but that it was verbally agreed on multiple occasions – and in front of witnesses – and that he left their meeting with a physical copy of the document.
Hymas listed other immigration measures understood to be urgent:
A ban on nearly all postgraduate students bringing in dependents apart from those on research programmes was announced in May by Mr Sunak, which he has described as the single toughest measure in years to reduce net migration.
However, he is under pressure to go further. Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, who co-signed Mrs Braverman’s final letter in October this year, is pressing for a ban on care workers bringing in dependants and a cap on health and social care visas.
No 10 is “actively considering” measures, understood to include restrictions on care worker dependents and an increase in the skilled worker salary threshold. On Sunday, a spokesman said Mr Sunak had been very clear he believed migration was too high and had to come down to more “sustainable” levels. They noted the numbers were slowing, adding: “We’re prepared to act and do more” …
Ministers are expected this week to make final decisions on the new treaty with Rwanda and bill to declare it safe after the policy was ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court.
The bill will enshrine in law a treaty under which Rwanda commits not to remove any migrant deported from the UK, a move designed to answer the main criticism by the supreme court that asylum seekers could be returned to their homelands to face persecution.
Three days later, at PMQs on Wednesday, November 29, Rishi got a hard time from his fellow Conservative MPs. Andrew Gimson, writing for ConservativeHome, described the scene:
“That 1.3 million migrants over a period of two years is a catastrophe for Britain,” began Sir John Hayes (Con, South Holland and the Deepings), “is obvious to everyone apart from guilt-ridden bourgeois liberals and greed-driven globalists.”
An unfriendly start, and the irate Lincolnshire knight – a friend of the recently sacked Suella Braverman, and mistaken by no one at Westminster for either a bourgeois liberal or a globalist – proceeded to become more unfriendly.
He demanded the Prime Minister bring forward the Bill to deal with legal migration “in exactly the form recommended by his own Immigration Minister.”
Rishi Sunak was riled. He has not accepted the stringent measures recommended by the Immigration Minister, Robert Jenrick, and would not now be bounced into accepting them by a Braverman ally.
“I’m pleased to have the Right Honourable Gentleman’s advice and support,” Sunak said.
Alister Jack, the Scottish Secretary, who was sitting beside the Prime Minister, smiled at this ironical riposte, for as everyone could see, Sir John was not supporting Sunak, he was goading him.
It is uncomfortable for a Prime Minister to have to turn, as Sunak can be seen doing in the photograph above this article, in order to respond to an attack from his own side.
December 2023
So far, this month has been a difficult one for Rishi Sunak as he faces determined and forthright pressure to reduce immigration numbers. This comes on top of all the other problems he has on his plate: increasingly low polling numbers, continued rail and junior doctors strikes and threats of no-confidence letters from his own MPs.
On Tuesday, December 5, James Cleverly signed the new treaty with Rwanda, pledging that the Government was not pursuing ‘cheap and quick popularity’.
That evening, Suella presented the annual Political Cartoon Awards, good-naturedly citing what many political cartoonists had said about her. The post also has videos (bold in the original):
… it was Suella who took the star of the stage, talking about all the different ways she had been portrayed by cartoonists in the ugliest of fashions but welcoming it as a vital part of the free press. And using the occasion to talk about the Daily Telegraph and The Spectator potentially being bought by Abu Dhabi businessmen. She received heckles throughout, including Guardian cartoonist Rebecca Hendin, whom Suella initially invited to the stage but was persuaded not to by the organisers.
She talked about being portrayed as a “vampire bat, a cranky crayfish, a Halloween ghoul, a zombie, a devil, Morticia Addams, a murderous Chiron. Spitting Image had me as the girl from The Exorcist. You also had me as an angry Statue of Liberty, a Superbraverman, and Barbie… you make politicians look much more interesting than we really are, to be honest, and you’re a pillar of our Free Press, and I hope that you continue unhindered by political interference.” To which she got the heckle “can we have that in writing?” But she continued, “whether politicians are offended is neither here or there and you can count on me to always fight for your right to offend. Freedom of the press is back in the forefront of our minds once more regarding the Telegraph newspaper and The Spectator magazine, and I want to be clear I oppose their takeover by Redbird IMI. The Telegraph is one of the bedrocks of our free press, and The Spectator is an irrepressible voice for challenging established orthodoxies. To my mind, there is no doubt that this takeover will hinder the accurate presentation of news and the free expression of opinion, and the independence of the paper will undeniably be compromised if its control is seeded to the hands of a foreign state that freedom is essential now more than ever in a healthy democracy and I hope that that takeover does not go ahead. To finish, thank you for uglifying us, thank you for taking the piss out of me; long may you continue doing your hard work.”
And the awards then took place… relatively smoothly, aside from one early kerfuffle. I took a bunch of videos from the presentation, at a different angle to any official video, which means that you can see Suella Braverman’s reaction to … everything.
Early on Wednesday, Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick — and good friend to Rishi — announced his resignation because he disagreed with the PM on immigration policy:
Guido reprinted the text of Jenrick’s letter in full, excerpted below:
… As you know, I have been pushing for the strongest possible piece of emergency legislation to ensure that under the Rwanda policy we remove as many small boat arrivals, as swiftly as possible, to generate the greatest deterrent effect. This stems from my firmly held position that the small boats crisis is a national emergency that is doing untold damage to our country, and the only way we will be able to stop the boats completely is by urgently introducing a major new deterrent. I have therefore consistently advocated for a clear piece of legislation that severely limits the opportunities for domestic and foreign courts to block or undermine the effectiveness of the policy. One of the great advantages of our unwritten constitution is the unfettered power of our sovereign parliament to create law, and that is a power we must take full advantage of. The government has a responsibility to place our vital national interests above highly contested interpretations of international law.
In the discussions on the proposed emergency legislation you have moved towards my position, for which I am grateful. Nevertheless, I am unable to take the currently proposed legislation through the Commons as I do not believe it provides us with the best possible chance of success. A Bill of the kind you are proposing is a triumph of hope over experience. The stakes for the country are too high for us not to pursue the stronger protections required to end the merry-go-round of legal challenges which risk paralysing the scheme and negating its intended deterrent.
Reflecting on my time in the Home Office, I am proud of the improvements we have delivered together working alongside dedicated and capable civil servants. I am grateful to you for agreeing to much of my five-point plan to reduce net migration which, once implemented, will deliver the single largest reduction in legal migration ever. However, I refuse to be yet another politician who makes promise on immigration to the British public but does not keep them. This package must be implemented immediately via an emergency rules change and accompanied by significant additional reforms at the start of next year to ensure we meet the 2019 manifesto commitment that every single Conservative MP was elected upon. The consequences for housing, public services, economic productivity, welfare reform, community cohesion and, more fundamentally, for trust in democratic politics are all too serious for this totemic issue to be anything other than a primary focus for the government …
You and I have been friends for a long time … You will retain my full support on the backbenches even as I campaign on illegal and legal migration policy and the intersecting challenges of generating meaningful economic growth, solving the housing crisis and improving integration. The fortunes of the Conservative party at the next general election are at stake …
Later that day in the Commons, Suella, now on the back benches, repeated her aforementioned five-point plan for Rwanda and additional emergency immigration legislation.
Guido has a video clip and a summary of her speech:
Guido concluded with this:
Braverman finished by saying “electoral oblivion” awaits the Tories if another failing bill is put forward. The gauntlet is thrown down…
He means that she is positioning herself for a leadership challenge.
Interestingly, Rishi must have felt a need to react — and soon. He scheduled an impromptu press conference to discuss immigration and the new Rwanda treaty on Thursday, December 7, at 11:30 a.m.
The Guardian‘s summary of the day said that Rishi ‘vowed to “finish the job”‘ and that Suella denied ‘spreading poison within her own party to get rid of Rishi Sunak’.
Guido has a video of Rishi’s press conference and a few comments:
Rishi gets irritable when challenged. This was no exception, as Guido says:
Guido’s not sure the tetchy performance will convince too many…
There we must leave Suella for now as Parliament goes into Christmas recess on Friday, December 15. Both houses return on January 8, 2024.
It will be interesting to find out what the New Year has in store for one of the UK’s most-loved Home Secretaries in recent history. How many of her MPs would support her in a leadership challenge either before or after the next General Election? We’ll have to wait and see.
As the Conservative MP Suella Braverman has returned to the backbenches of the House of Commons, now is the time to look at her past and her present, beginning with the former.
One thing characterises Britain’s former Home Secretary: her use of language.
2019
In the Spring of 2019, Suella was criticised for using the term cultural Marxism in a speech. The pile-on was deep and heavy.
On April 12, 2019, the conservative commentator Douglas Murray wrote about it for UnHerd (purple emphases mine):
One of the strange habits of our time is the one in which a self-appointed class roams the land, hands cupped to their ear, hoping to discern something they can identify as a ‘dog-whistle’. I wrote about this habit after Conservative MP Suella Braverman came in for a scolding for using the phrase ‘cultural Marxism’ in a speech.
In the aftermath of that outrage, the Board of Deputies of British Jews – among others – expressed their concern that the phrase was in and of itself anti-Semitic. Since then, the Board has met with Ms Braverman and announced that it has discerned that there was in fact nothing “intentionally anti-Semitic” about her comments, and expressed sorrow about any hurt having been caused to the MP (who happens to have a Jewish husband) …
One oddity of the whole business of trying to hear dog-whistles is very basic: if you can hear the whistle, you must surely be the dog. It is the nature of the analogy that a non-canid cannot hear what the dog hears. So to be able to hear on a whole different aural wave-length to everyone else – to be peculiarly attuned to the tones of the time and to be able to explain to everyone else – is one heck of a power to bestow upon yourself.
2022
In July 2022, the Conservatives were in a process of selecting a new Party leader after Boris Johnson’s resignation over Partygate. Conservative MPs, through a series of rounds of voting, were narrowing down the candidates for Party members to have the final vote in August.
On July 14, GB News’s Dan Wootton looked at the contest, which, by then, had three candidates left — Liz Truss, Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt and then-Chancellor Rishi Sunak. Suella gave her views (start at the 3:00 mark) to say that voters should be able to have a choice of candidates from both the Left and the Right wings of the Party. She said that, ideally, there would be two from each wing. She classified Mordaunt and Sunak as being on the Left of the Conservatives:
When she was elected as Party leader and became the next Prime Minister, Liz Truss appointed Suella Braverman Home Secretary. When Rishi Sunak succeeded her, he retained Suella in that post, even though she had resigned briefly because of alleged security breaches, more about which below.
On November 4, Guido Fawkes reported on what a Times Radio focus group of British voters had to say about Suella versus Labour politicians. Again, Suella’s language was the nub of the question (red emphases Guido’s):
Twitter was sent into a spiral this morning by headline responses from a focus group of swing voters, who were sympathetic towards the Home Secretary’s language on immigration …
The voters were concerned with the volume of immigration, arguing that although people need to be looked after, Britain was at capacity and there needed to be a limit. One voter also took aim at the “do-gooders” criticising government policy. They then agreed that they trusted the Conservatives over Labour on the issue.
On November 14, Suella did an additional deal with the French in order to stem the tide of dinghies coming across the English Channel. Yet more millions wasted. Still, Suella is fluent in French, having studied at the Sorbonne, and it was thought she could reach the parts of their government that others could not. Guido told us:
Suella Braverman has given a pool interview following her early morning agreement of a new cooperation deal with France to tackle illegal small boats crossing the Channel. The Home Secretary stressed that illegal migration is “totally unacceptable” and emphasised the Government’s “multi-dimensional approach… to ensure there is a robust barrier”. The deal is worth €72 million and will see a 40% increase in British officers patrolling French beaches whilst funding increased port security. For all the hope and rhetoric, Guido doubts an extra 100 patrol men along the French beaches will put a stop to the crisis…
Meanwhile, Labour had not forgotten about Suella’s forced resignation under Truss and mentioned it often in Parliamentary debates. Incidentally, it had been alleged at the time that the discussion about security breaches developed into a lengthy, heated discussion about Suella’s immigration policy, which Truss and newly-appointed Chancellor Jeremy Hunt opposed.
That discussion aside, Labour still thought that Suella should go because of her security breaches. On November 22, Guido reported:
Among the chorus of voices was Taiwo Owatemi, who had this to say when Braverman admitted sending six work emails to a personal phone last month:
How can Suella Braverman be trusted with our national security when she leaks confidential documents & doesn’t take most basic security measures.
She is unfit to be Home Secretary. It’s time for the Prime Minister to put national security ahead of Conservative party politics.
All well and good… except Owatemi herself left a parliamentary laptop – with sensitive information and data on it – with an ex-staffer for nearly a year in 2021. When the staffer left her team early in the spring, no one bothered to collect the computer until December. What was that about “basic security measures”?
When asked about this obvious security oversight, Owatemi’s office blamed the pandemic …
On November 28, Suella took action against the large numbers of Albanians coming across the Channel. The Times reported:
All asylum seekers from countries deemed safe by the Home Office will be fast-tracked for removal as part of plans to combat the Channel migrant crisis, The Times has learnt.
Suella Braverman, the home secretary, is looking to resurrect a list of designated “safe” countries, from whose citizens asylum claims are largely regarded as unfounded. Rejected claimants will have no right to appeal.
The list would include Albania, the nationality which has accounted for the largest number of small boats across the Channel this year with more than 12,000 of the 43,000 arrivals …
Next week she is expected to travel to northern France to meet interior ministers from the Calais group of nations, which includes France, Belgium and the Netherlands, to discuss further co-operation on tackling people smuggling. The informal grouping was set up this month to take action against illegal migration in northern Europe.
Her action against Albania worked and their numbers have since dropped.
However, the following day, a senior Metropolitan Police officer, Neil Basu (now retired), accused Suella of fomenting racial hatred, which is strange, as both her parents are of Indian origin.
Neil Basu, the UK’s former head of counter terrorism, described the Home Secretary’s choice of language on the asylum issue as “inexplicable” and “horrific”.
Ms Braverman came in for criticism when she told the Telegraph she dreamed of sending migrants to Rwanda and also when she described the current crisis as an “invasion”.
In an interview ahead of his retirement from the Metropolitan Police, Mr Basu, whose father came to the UK from India in the 1960s, said such language reminded him of the racism his family endured …
Ms Braverman, whose own parents came to Britain in the 1960s from Mauritius and Kenya, has been criticised for her rhetoric on the migrant crisis, but has expressed her determination to tackle the issue.
On December 5, the UN took issue with a report on illegal immigration. It contained a foreword from Suella. Guido told us:
The Centre for Policy Studies has published a detailed and well-considered report on illegal immigration this morning, with a foreword from the Home Secretary. Naturally it has upset all the right people. The UN Refugee Agency in the UK was quick out the blocks, tweeting their criticisms at 8am. The UNHCR’s UK representative, Vicky Tennant, cited “factual and legal errors”, arguing that the report’s proposals would breach the 1951 Refugee Convention. It seems as though the representative didn’t actually read the report, as this was discussed at length…
The report in fact contains 33 mentions of the Refugee Convention, including a sub-section dedicated to addressing it specifically. It also recommends solutions to various other legal barriers, including the ECHR and 2015 Modern Slavery Act. Perhaps Vicky should stick to dishing out awards to the “brave” trans women championing LGBTI rights in El Salvador…
Not long afterwards, on December 10, Nimco Ali, the best friend of Carrie Johnson — Boris’s wife — decided to leave her post as a Home Office adviser. The Times had the story:
An adviser to Suella Braverman has resigned on radio, saying she is on a “completely different planet” from the home secretary.
Nimco Ali has been an independent adviser to the Home Office on tackling violence against women and girls for more than two years. She is a prominent campaigner against female genital mutilation (FGM) and a close friend of Carrie Johnson, the former prime minister’s wife.
Ali, 39, was asked by Cathy Newman on Times Radio yesterday if she was happy to remain in the position despite disagreeing with Braverman on some questions. She replied: …
“I’m just saying that Suella and I are on completely different planets when it comes to the rights of women and girls — and also the way that we talk about ethnic minorities and specifically people like me who are from a refugee background” …
The Times invited Ali for an interview, which appeared on December 17:
Suella Braverman’s rhetoric about migrants is stoking an increase in racism in Britain and “normalising” the politics of Nigel Farage, according to the government’s outgoing adviser on tackling violence against women.
Nimco Ali, a campaigner and survivor of female genital mutilation (FGM), also suggested that Rishi Sunak should sack Braverman, warning “he’s not going to win [the next election] with Suella as his home secretary” …
Ali was born in Somalia before moving to Britain as a child refugee, and said Braverman’s language about asylum seekers was “legitimising” the overt racism that she and others had experienced.
“She’s basically feeding into this Nigel Farage stuff . . . and when you start to normalise these things it’s really hard to put it back in its box,” she said. “When you have your home secretary speaking the way she is speaking and being cheered, that is problematic, especially when you’re the first man of colour to be prime minister” …
2023
In 2023, it became crystal clear that Suella faced powerful opposition from the Blob, including civil servants working under her and the courts.
On February 22, senior civil servant Matthew Rycroft spoke out. Traditionally, civil servants — informally called mandarins for their supposed wisdom — do not express their personal views on policy or politics, but he had plenty to say.
Guido told us, giving us a screenshot of Rycroft’s editorial for that week’s Civil Service Weekly News:
Fresh from trying to frustrate the government’s plans to deport illegal migrants to Rwanda, Home Office permanent secretary Matthew Rycroft has come up with a new tactic: Ignore the democratic will of the government altogether.
A leaked memo, seen by The Telegraph and now published in full by Guido, shows Rycroft dictate the priorities of his department to his hordes of civil servants insubordinate to elected ministers. Namely:
-
-
- Righting the wrongs suffered by some members of the Windrush generation
- Combatting violence against women and girls
- Expanding global talent visa routes
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Nothing on immigration numbers, nothing on small boats, nothing on getting Rwanda up and running. The priorities of the government and more importantly the voters are of no consequence to Rycroft.
Jacob Rees-Mogg told the Telegraph, “Permanent secretaries, and all officials, are responsible for making this a reality. One would expect the most senior officials to consider this their duty.” Nigel Farage reacted furiously, calling on Rycroft to be fired.
Despite outrage from the right, a Home Office source said Rycroft is a “great public servant and this isn’t isn’t an over-arching reflection of his or the Home Office’s priorities.” It’s an easy get out for the Tories after 13 years of government to blame lack of policy progress on the civil service working against them, but can anyone name one example of right wing sympathies within the institution?
UPDATE: A Home Office spokesperson says tersely:
“The Permanent Secretary works tirelessly to drive Home Office efforts to tackle the public’s priorities, including stopping illegal migration, cutting crime, supporting vulnerable people and protecting homeland security.”
‘Homeland security’? Can the British please stop using American expressions?
It was alleged that Suella retaliated through an email sent out by the Conservative Party. She denied it. Nonetheless, Guido says it garnered her support from Party members and the general public. Mark Rycroft was not best pleased:
An email sent to Conservative members from Suella Braverman, which criticised an “activist blob of left-wing lawyers, civil servants and the Labour Party” for blocking immigration action has caused outrage – predominantly from the very same activist blob of left-wing lawyers, civil servants. After the boss of the FDA civil service union complained to Rishi, demanding an apology, Suella disavowed herself of the email …
Despite Suella’s claims of innocence, the email has caused trouble closer to home, as Harry Cole reports her Permanent Secretary, Matthew Rycroft, was apparently sent “shouty crackers” by the communication. This won’t come as a surprise to co-conspirators. Guido has often reported on the activist inclinations of the Marsham Street blob.
Although just one email is receiving press attention, CCHQ sent out two near identical emails yesterday – 5 minutes apart – evening. Just one included the provocative phrasing …
As far as Guido can surmise, CCHQ are far from concerned with the media reception of their communications, they’re pleased. Standing up to left-wing lawyers and civil servants seems like a vote winner in both the Red Wall and Tory shires…
The following day, Guido gave us more evidence of civil service opposition as well as a video from Suella’s appearance on Robert Peston’s ITV current affairs show.
Let’s start with Peston:
Last night on Peston, the Home Secretary disavowed the email and gave an unconvincing and less than sincere endorsement of her “hardworking and dedicated civil servants” – whilst not explicitly disagreeing with the “activist blob” sentiment:
Now on to the civil servants, beginning with Matthew Rycroft:
Given he’s so upset over this supposedly unwarranted criticism, Guido’s had a look back over the noises coming out of the Home Office in the last few years. Remember: these civil servants are supposed to serve the government of the day with total impartiality…
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- Just yesterday, Sam Freedman revealed messages from an internal Home Office Q&A, showing pearl clutching civil servants claiming they are “embarrassed and ashamed” to work for the department, moan they don’t get “consulted” on ministerial decisions (that’s not their job), and wrongly insist the small boats plan violates the civil service code.
- Last month, Rycroft himself wrote an internal memo outlining the Home Office’s supposed top three priorities. No[t] one mention of the Rwanda scheme or small boats crossings…
- In June, hundreds of anonymous Home Office civil servants clubbed together to run “Our Home Office”, a Twitter campaign that called the department a “repressed world” and openly attacked the Rwanda plan. The account currently has over 3,000 followers. They even took to slapping heart-shaped “refugees welcome” stickers on bins.
- Last April, Guido revealed dozens of Home Office civil servants had used an official online consultation to discuss how to potentially block the Rwanda plan, compared themselves to Nazis “only obeying orders”, proposed going on strike, and questioned how to deal with their mental health in light of the policy. “We are ruled by a minority of narrow-minded bigots”…
Then, of course, are the repeated stories of Home Office mandarins spreading woke nonsense like encouraging the use of “neopronouns”, claiming “homosexual” is an offensive word, and advising people not to call their colleagues “mates“. The Home Office is notorious for this sort of thing; clearly there is massive internal resistance to enforcing the policies of the government of the day. Guido has repeatedly been told in private just how obstructive the Home Office civil servants have been. There is obviously a pattern, whether Rycroft wants to go “shouty crackers” or not…
A few days later, on March 13, she spoke in the Commons to say that she did not like being derided for ‘speaking such simple truths’ on migration, adding:
I will not be hectored by out of touch Lefties.
Guido has the video. The man sitting near her is Robert Jenrick MP, her ‘minder’: he worked under her as Immigration Minister, a post he still holds. It is thought that Rishi appointed him to keep an eye on her:
Suella referred to her predecessor, Priti Patel, who represents the Witham constituency in Essex.
Patel couldn’t get anything accomplished, either, because of civil servants’ resistance.
Suella’s reference to her showed me that she, too, recognised she was in the same boat, so to speak.
However, it turned out that Rishi’s Cabinet ministers were working against Suella, too.
On May 16, The Times reported:
Ministers have approved only one of a raft of measures proposed by the home secretary to cut immigration amid cabinet infighting over the issue.
Suella Braverman drew up at least five proposals to cut immigration after receiving a private briefing paper by Home Office officials predicting that migration would continue to hit record numbers unless the government took action.
There are signs that she is becoming increasingly frustrated at the failure of cabinet ministers to agree to plans to tackle legal migration, while Rishi Sunak has prioritised tackling small boats over reducing legal migration. Yesterday she used a speech to the National Conservatism conference to say that the government must bring numbers down before the next election to stop Britain’s reliance on foreign labour and ease the pressure on housing, education, health and other public services.
Net migration hit a record high of 504,000 last year and official data out next week is expected to show the numbers have increased to between 700,000 and a million.
November’s figures say 672,000 people entered the UK legally.
The article continues:
The five proposals that were drawn up by Braverman, seen by The Times, would increase the minimum salaries for companies employing skilled workers, make it harder to bring spouses to the UK, reduce the time foreign students can stay in the country after their course, ban them bringing family members, and remove students if they fail to finish their course.
However, only one limited proposal, which would ban foreign masters’ students bringing relatives with them, has so far been agreed by the cabinet, although it has yet to be announced.
Government sources blamed Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, Steve Barclay, the health secretary, and Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, for blocking policies designed to reduce the numbers coming to Britain.
A source pointed out that the absence of a single measure to cut immigration contrasted with two measures that have liberalised migration policy since Sunak became prime minister. In December the government lifted the cap on seasonal workers from 30,000 to 45,000 and today announced that the scheme would be extended into next year.
In the budget in March, Hunt announced five construction jobs to be added to the shortage occupation list, which makes it easier for certain industries suffering labour shortages to recruit from overseas.
On May 24, The Telegraph‘s Camilla Tominey, also a GB News presenter, explained Rishi’s dilemma in keeping Suella, a staunch Brexiteer, as Home Secretary. He might have wanted to ditch her, but he couldn’t realistically do so:
The Prime Minister has … wisely decided to avoid a full scale war with the European Research Group (ERG) wing of his party, which appears fully behind their former chairman Braverman. The Home Secretary is a bigger threat to Sunak’s premiership than she once was because that anti cancel culture caucus of the party has fallen out of love with Kemi Badenoch, the Business Secretary, over her watering down of the Retained EU Law Bill. Conservatives on the Right have long been looking for a figure who channels the courageous spirit of Margaret Thatcher and in assuming the mantle of the Left’s new public enemy number one for making comments like: “White people do not exist in a special state of sin or collective guilt”, mother of two Braverman, 43, seems to fit the bill. (Tories like veteran Eurosceptic Sir Bill Cash also highly rate rising star Miriam Cates, a fierce advocate for family-friendly tax policies who supported Braverman in the 2022 Tory leadership election won by Liz Truss).
With supporters in the Common Sense group as well as the ERG, Braverman poses more of a threat to Sunak from the backbenches than the frontbench, where she is currently the Prime Minister’s convenient “fall girl” for controversial policies. His moderate allies insist he should have got rid of her because she is “a liability” with “terrible political judgment” but as with her predecessor Priti Patel, the Home Secretary remains what one Cabinet colleague describes as a “Rishi’s resident s—- sponge”.
Moreover, since one of Sunak’s five “deliverables” is stopping the boats – it would hardly have been a good look to get rid of the woman in charge of that key, potentially election-defining pledge.
Already facing criticism for what the Right perceive as his “un-Conservative” brand of Toryism, Sunak will also have wanted to avoid further riling the sorts of MPs who are already very vocally clamouring for tax cuts, the scrapping of VAT on luxury goods and an end to net zero.
On June 29, just over a year after a European court blocked the only flight to Rwanda to date under Priti Patel’s Home Office, the UK’s Court of Appeal dashed further hopes for the Rwanda plan.
Guido has the story and Suella’s speech in the Commons:
Suella said, in part:
The British people will no longer indulge the polite fiction that we have a duty or infinite capacity to support everyone in the world who is fleeing persecution… it is unfair on taxpayers who foot the hotel bill […] for people who’ve broken into this country. It’s unfair on those who play by the rules, and who want to see an asylum system that is fit for purpose. That our current system is exploited, and turned against us by those with no right to be in the UK. It’s unfair on those most in need of protection… This is madness, Mr Speaker, and it must end.
Guido added:
Rishi confirmed soon after the ruling that the government is taking the judgement to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the boats will keep coming…
And so they did.
A number of boat people seeking asylum have used Theresa May’s anti-slavery law as a plea in their claims. It is unclear if they are being honest in saying they are being trafficked. Suella thinks it is being abused. However, she was forced to do a U-turn.
On July 2, The Guardian reported:
Suella Braverman has withdrawn controversial new rules that make it harder for trafficking victims to have their cases accepted, months after introducing them as part of a flagship policy.
The government U-turn has been hailed as a significant victory by trafficking victims.
The home secretary introduced a new policy requiring victims to provide immediate evidence of trafficking in order for the government to deem them a potential victim of slavery, on 30 January.
She said she had to introduce the policy because some trafficking victims were “gaming the system”, although the chair of the home affairs select committee, Dame Diana Johnson, said she was still awaiting comprehensive evidence.
Before the case reached a full high court hearing, the home secretary conceded and withdrew the rules.
Braverman has said she will provide replacement rules by 10 July. Until then she has agreed that no negative reasonable grounds decisions will be made about trafficking victims.
Human rights and anti-trafficking charities had warned the change would lead to the cases of many genuine victims being rejected, leaving them at risk of further exploitation.
Since the rules were introduced, the number of cases recognised as genuine has fallen sharply. Home Office statistics show there has been a significant drop in what are known as positive reasonable grounds decisions, and a corresponding increase in what are known as negative reasonable grounds decisions.
In 2022, 88% of cases received a decision that they were potential victims of trafficking. In the first quarter of 2023 this figure had dropped to 58%.
Many of us would say that Suella was probably on the right track there.
A few days later, Suella was one of the guests at the much-coveted Spectator summer party, where all the great and the good from the political world gather to mingle with other greats — and journalists.
On July 6, the Evening Standard reported on the event. Their gossip columnist, The Londoner, was there:
The Prime Minister slipped in through the back gate of the Spectator’s garden to join the party. Other Cabinet ministers there included the Home Secretary Suella Braverman. We asked about her summer plans. “You can text me,” she said, fumbling to get away and pausing only to announce in a Thatcher-esque tone: “The Home Secretary never goes on holiday”. The Londoner suggested she might try Rwanda.
On July 27, the High Court ruled against housing migrant ‘children’ in hotel accommodation. I use the term advisedly.
Guido wrote:
The High Court has ruled that the Home Office’s “routine” housing of unaccompanied child asylum seekers in hotels is unlawful and the arrangements are “not fit for purpose“. In this morning’s ruling, Justice Chamberlain said placing children in hotels “may be used on very short periods in true emergency situations”. He also went after Suella personally…
It cannot be used systematically or routinely in circumstances where it is intended, or functions in practice, as a substitute for local authority care. From December 2021 at the latest, the practice of accommodating children in hotels, outside local authority care, was both systematic and routine and had become an established part of the procedure for dealing with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. From that point on, the Home Secretary’s provision of hotel accommodation for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children exceeded the proper limits of her powers and was unlawful.
… They could now appeal the decision, although they’re already busy fighting the Rwanda case in the Supreme Court…
Then came the barge to be anchored off the coast of Portland in the south of England. Suella’s natural opponents thought this was a terrible idea, and so did I, because, unlike oil workers using this sort of accommodation and staying put on it, the barge would sail to the coastline, allowing asylum seekers to roam around the neighbouring towns and villages by local bus.
On August 8, Guido gave us the results of a survey on the barge idea, with the ‘don’t know’ results removed, along with a reference to Conservative MP Lee Anderson, who wants these people to return to France from whence they departed — a safe country:
Two thirds of voters expressing a preference agree that barges make acceptable housing for asylum seekers. According to new polling from YouGov, 68% of voters (who expressed a preference), agree that barges are acceptable, with 32% disagreeing. Of the majority, 40% say barges are “completely acceptable”, with 28% agreeing they are “somewhat acceptable”. Just 17% of all voters think barges are “completely unacceptable”. Once again, man of the people Lee Anderson has his finger on the pulse of public opinion.
The barge didn’t work, either, as even though it had been completely cleaned and inspected, legionella had been found in it just days before migrants were due to board. Hmm.
Not surprisingly, the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees has come up for discussion. People ask whether it is still fit for purpose in the 21st century as asylum seekers are pouring in from all over the world, not just Europe and a few war-torn countries.
On September 26, Suella gave her views.
Guido has the story and the video:
Suella said:
The Geneva convention was intended to protect individual people from persecution. A significant number of people who claim asylum are doing so for broadly economic reasons. So I think it is right we look at the framework, as indeed other European countries are doing.
Also:
Britain, like all European countries, had inherited the post-war, post-Holocaust system and sentiment on asylum … [that is] completely unrealistic […] The presumption: “that someone who claimed asylum was persecuted and should be taken in”] was plainly false; most asylum claims were not genuine. Disproving them, however, was almost impossible. The combination of the courts, with their liberal instinct; the European Convention on Human Rights, with its absolutist attitude to the prospect of returning someone to an unsafe community; and the UN Convention [Relating to the Status] of Refugees, with its context firmly that of 1930s Germany, mean that, in practice, once someone got into Britain and claimed asylum, it was the Devil’s own job to return them.
Guido told us that Labour have also voiced the same sentiments over the past several years:
New Labour’s immigration minister Phil Woolas in 2009, and Tony Blair himself in his autobiography. Jack Straw made the same arguments in 2000.* Suella’s speech was practically anodyne by comparison…
*Hat-tip: John Rentoul for reminding Guido of New Labour’s attitude.
Suella then had to argue the difference between all and sundry coming to the UK and the people who came in the past who wanted to integrate into British society.
On October 3, The Guardian reported on her use of the word ‘hurricane’ (bold in the original):
Braverman says ‘hurricane’ of illegal immigration coming
Braverman says the trend that brought her immigrant parents to the UK was just a gust compared to the hurricane coming.
One of the most powerful forces reshaping our world is unprecedented mass migration.
The wind of change that carried my own parents across the globe in the 20th century was a mere gust compared to the hurricane that is coming.
She says the UK has been good at taking in refugees. “The decency of the British people cannot be questioned,” she says.
But she says the views of the people are clear. They think immigration is too high.
And they know that the future could bring millions more migrants to these shores …
… uncontrolled and unmanageable, unless the government they elect next year acts decisively to stop that happening.
We are the only party that will take effective action.
One month later, on November 4, she was castigated for saying that some homeless people prefer life on the streets. She called it a ‘lifestyle choice’. To an extent, that is true. I watched a GB News discussion with people who work with the homeless. Some on the streets refuse charitable shelters because they cannot drink or bring in their pet dogs.
Suella rightly also objected to the idea of setting up tent cities, as charities have been handing out tents to the homeless. It sounds like a good deed until you see the streets of Paris where some neighbourhoods have been dominated by tent cities, making those areas dangerous, especially for women.
On November 4, The Telegraph reported:
Suella Braverman has unveiled a crackdown on the use of tents by homeless people in urban areas in a move aimed at reducing anti-social behaviour.
The Home Secretary said that while nobody should be living in a tent on a UK street, it had become a “lifestyle choice” for some rough sleepers and led to aggressive begging, drug-taking and littering blighting public spaces.
Announcing the move on X, formerly known as Twitter, Ms Braverman said action was needed to ensure UK cities do not follow those in the US like San Francisco and Los Angeles, where she said “weak policies” had triggered an “explosion of crime, drug taking, and squalor”.
Under new measures pitched for inclusion in next week’s King’s Speech, homeless charities could face fines for providing tents that become a nuisance.
Unfortunately, it appears that charities are within their rights in handing out tents to the homeless.
This next part, however, is still pending:
The Government last year said it would repeal the 1824 Vagrancy Act, which made begging and rough sleeping illegal, and promised £2 billion over three years to help get people off the streets.
However, just within the past few days in Parliament, a Labour MP expressed her disgust with the Government for planning to ‘replace the Vagrancy Act with a new Vagrancy Act’.
James Cleverly is the Home Secretary now. We’ll have to wait and see.
Next week, I will look at the recent spat between Suella and Rishi. It could bode well for her future in the Conservative Party.
Jacob Rees-Mogg’s State of the Nation is always worth watching.
His GB News show is on from Monday through Thursday at 8 p.m.
Four episodes follow wherein he discusses the news stories of the day with a variety of guests.
Wednesday, November 22
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt delivered his Autumn Statement that day, which was the subject of the first part of the show:
Rees-Mogg said that, once again, the OBR (Office for Budget Responsibility) forecasts were wrong and that the British economy surpassed their low expectations. Kwasi Kwarteng, the former Chancellor under Liz Truss, discussed the Statement and hoped that more would be done by the time Hunt made his Spring budget announcement in 2024, likely to be the last before a general election. The last segment involved a man who, as a child, was one of the 1976 Entebbe hostages. He described how a young, brilliant military officer by the name of Benjamin Netanyahu helped to free him and his fellow hostages.
Thursday, November 23
Last Thursday, the Conservative MP explored immigration, rising energy prices, Geert Wilders’s victory in the Netherlands and the FA’s (Football Association’s) decision not to light up Wembley Stadium any more for socio-political issues:
As immigration was expected to hit yet another all time high in the UK — that’s not counting the boat people — Rees-Mogg lamented that UK workers were not being paid a fair wage. In fact, the legal immigrants who do a variety of jobs are paid 20 per cent less than British workers. After that segment, a green energy advocate came on campaigning against using fossil fuels. However, Rees-Mogg pointed out that the gas spot price — even now — is still cheaper than nuclear and far, far less than that for on-shore wind farms. The second half of the show featured a discussion about Geert Wilders’s victory in the Netherlands and whether he could actually become the country’s prime minister. His panellists were doubtful, with one saying that it could take several months before there is an outcome, largely because of the coalitions that would have to agree. The fact that the UK has a first-past-the-post voting system alleviates such legislative difficulties. The final segment looked at the FA’s decision not to light up Wembley Stadium for tragedies and special interest causes. Rees-Mogg and another panellist found it rather convenient — and not in a good way — that the FA decided to impose this new rule by denying blue and white lights in sympathy with Israel after the October 7 Hamas attacks.
Monday, November 27
On Monday’s show, the latest immigration figures appeared. They are shocking. Sadly, they come as no surprise. Rees-Mogg also covered the temporary pause in the conflict between Hamas and Israel. The spike in the NHS dispensing puberty blockers was also discussed as was the Bank of England’s climate change objectives and the latest book about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex:
In his Moggologue, Rees-Mogg said that receiving 672,000 legal immigrants was unsustainable. Last year’s figure was somewhat lower, but not by much. He added that Suella Braverman had a plan to reduce the numbers but a Labour adviser under Tony Blair said that Suella did not get anything accomplished during her time as Home Secretary and was, in the adviser’s words, ‘toxic’. The NHS puberty blocker situation seems to be somewhat of a mystery as the Tavistock centre dealing with sexual identity issues had closed yet the problem was worse than ever, possibly arising from the number of smaller units around the country that replaced Tavistock. Rees-Mogg questioned why the Bank of England should have climate targets. He wondered what else should be under their remit. Another left-wing panellist suggested that the Bank of England knows much more about general issues than politicians and should have a broader remit, including immigration. (Oh, dear me.) The historian Rafe Heydel-Mankoo discussed Omid Scobie’s Endgame. Both he and Rees-Mogg agreed that the Sussex-oriented books were rather tiresome.
Tuesday, November 28
Tuesday’s show dealt with the origin of coronavirus, immigration and the Elgin Marbles:
The pre-eminent oncologist Professor Angus Dalgleish discussed coronavirus and the Chinese lab. He said he had seen the strain, which he thinks originated from a bat, and remarked that it was strange to see that someone had added RNA inserts to it; as such, it was not a wholly natural virus. Nor, he asserted, did the virus go through other animals because those mutations would have shown up in what he saw. He said there is a virology expert — someone who isn’t Chinese (I did not catch the name, but it sounds like Berwick or Berrick) — who knows how to insert RNA strands into viruses. The next segment concerned the possible takeover of The Telegraph and The Spectator by a firm in Abu Dhabi which says that both publications will be granted continued editorial independence. Michael Crick and former Sun editor Kelvin Mackenzie both said that if either the newspaper or the magazine change considerably, people will just stop buying it. The next topic was the possible sanction by the UN against the UK for not doing enough on trans rights. Crick thought that the UN was still a useful organisation but Rees-Mogg and Mackenzie disagreed. The Conservative MP and GB News presenter Lee Anderson came up for discussion. He advocated that day in Parliament for an immediate moratorium on immigration, however, everyone agreed that the UK could not come up with a total ban from one year to the next, although it was agreed that … something must be done! Finally, a historian came on to discuss the Elgin Marbles at the British Museum. Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer says that, if he were Prime Minister, he would return them to Greece. Rishi Sunak, on the other hand, cancelled a meeting with his opposite number from Greece that day, a signal that he does not want the Marbles going anywhere. The historian argued that modern Greece now has the capability to receive the Marbles, display them properly and maintain them going forward. Rees-Mogg was not convinced.
Conclusion
Jacob Rees-Mogg is a welcome addition to the GB News evening line-up. He also reads viewers’ emails on the topics he discusses.
He has the patience of Job, as some of his lefty guests, necessary to provide the appropriate ‘balance’ to satisfy Ofcom, clearly cannot debate properly, preferring to rant instead. More about them in another post.
For now, I hope that other readers, wherever they might live, tune in to State of the Nation, which can be found on this page, listed after Farage.
My past two posts on how the Middle East conflict is affecting the UK can be found here and here.
Today’s post continues and concludes the long, sorry saga of last week’s events.
Wednesday, November 15 (cont’d)
Last Wednesday, the House of Commons voted on an SNP amendment to the King’s Speech of November 7 proposing that legislation regarding a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza be added to the parliamentary agenda. Not surprisingly, the Conservatives either voted against or abstained.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer urged his MPs not to support it. Although Hansard does not have a record of the debate, I watched some of it. A few Labour MPs accused the SNP of ‘political opportunism’, which upset the Scottish MPs.
However, other Labour MPs did vote to approve the amendment.
The Guardian reported (purple emphases mine):
Eight Labour frontbenchers including Jess Phillips have resigned as Keir Starmer was hit by a major rebellion over a vote for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Overall, 56 Labour MPs voted for an amendment to the king’s speech brought by the Scottish National party, a major blow to the Labour leader’s attempts to keep unity over the Israel-Hamas war.
Labour officials had said in advance that any frontbencher doing so would be sacked for backing the amendment, which called explicitly for a ceasefire.
Phillips, Afzal Khan, Yasmin Qureshi and Paula Barker quit their frontbench roles on Wednesday night after voting for the amendment and defying the whip.
Rachel Hopkins, Sarah Owen, Naz Shah, and Andy Slaughter were sacked by the Labour leader after the vote. Mary Foy, Angela Rayner’s parliamentary private secretary (PPS), and Dan Carden, another PPS, have also left the frontbench.
As votes closed, Starmer said he regretted that party colleagues had not backed his position …
The Labour leader had hoped to avert a rebellion with a separate amendment criticising Israel’s military actions but stopping short of calling for a ceasefire, and instructed his members to abstain on the SNP motion. Many chose to vote for both, however, amid anger among Labour members over how Starmer has handled the issue.
MPs voted 293 to 125, a majority of 168, to reject the SNP’s amendment, with Qureshi, Khan and Barker quitting before the vote.
Phillips, the most high-profile frontbencher, said it was with a “heavy heart” that she was quitting.
“This week has been one of the toughest weeks in politics since I entered parliament,” the Birmingham Yardley MP said in her resignation letter …
Shah (Bradford West) and Khan (Manchester Gorton) told fellow MPs in the Commons of their intention to vote for an immediate ceasefire. Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) said she was going to vote for the amendment but decided to abstain.
Starmer has faced a growing backlash over his position on the conflict since he gave an interview last month in which he appeared to suggest Israel had the right to withhold water and power from civilians in Gaza.
He attempted to heal those divisions in a recent speech at the Chatham House thinktank, in which he urged Israel to adhere to international law but stopped short of calling for a ceasefire.
Starmer spent much of Wednesday locked in meetings with his shadow ministers as he attempted to minimise the expected rebellion.
The Guardian also has a list of how each MP voted.
Pro-Palestinian protests took place outside the Houses of Parliament around voting time. More on that in a moment.
From there, the protesters moved to Hyde Park Corner where a few of them had the effrontery to scale a war monument, the Royal Artillery Memorial, which is dedicated to fallen soldiers.
Veterans Minister Johnny Mercer, himself a veteran, posted the video:
Britons looking at social media or watching GB News’s coverage of the appalling incident were incensed that the Metropolitan Police maintained their perceived two-tier policing system.
One X (Twitter) user posted the Met’s statement as to the lack of action and his or her account of the situation accompanied by a photo of policemen idly standing by:
Note that the final paragraph of the Met’s statement says there is no law forbidding climbing on a war memorial, ergo no arrests could ‘automatically’ take place.
Yet, such a law was passed — the Desecration of War Memorials Act 2010.
Hansard has the full text of the legislation, which amends the Criminal Damage Act 1971.
Barrister Steven Barrett, who appears regularly on GB News and writes for The Spectator, expressed his displeasure at the police not enforcing the law. He thinks they are ‘political’:
The Met managed to rough up one man (video here), but he was not pro-Palestinian.
The BBC issued an apology that day for their highly inaccurate reporting of the conflict in the Middle East:
The BBC should be ashamed of themselves, especially because every Briton is obliged by law to pay the annual licence fee of £159 to keep it going.
Thursday, November 16
The Mail had a report on the incident at the Royal Artillery Memorial:
MPs vented their fury today after police stood by as pro-Palestinian protesters scaled a war memorial following Parliament’s vote against a ceasefire in Gaza – as the Met apologised for ‘not being able to respond quickly enough’.
Footage shows a mob of flag-waving demonstrators climbing on the Royal Artillery Memorial at Hyde Park Corner, which was covered with poppy wreaths from remembrance weekend.
A group of officers appeared to simply watch on as the offensive scenes unfolded, despite a dispersal order being in place. Today, the Met expressed its ‘regret’ for the way officers handled the incident but insisted no laws had been broken.
Home Secretary James Cleverly, who served in the Royal Artillery, called the demonstration as ‘deeply disrespectful’ and suggested laws could be changed to give police powers to prevent protesters clambering over war memorials.
James Cleverly should check legislation first.
The article also had the history of the memorial, excerpted below:
The Royal Artillery Memorial commemorates the 49,076 soldiers of the Royal Artillery killed in the First World War.
The static nature of trench combat meant heavy guns played a significant role in ‘softening up’ enemy positions before troops moved in.
Designed by Charles Sargeant Jagger and Lionel Pearson, the memorial was funded largely by public donations and unveiled in 1925.
It consists of a Portland stone base supporting a one-third over-lifesize sculpture of a howitzer – which Jagger based on one in the Imperial War Museum.
Later that morning in the Commons, Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt took Business Questions.
The long-serving Conservative MP Sir Julian Lewis expressed his concern over security issues during the previous day’s vote on the ceasefire amendment:
About 40 years ago I had an unlikely campaigning role that involved organising counter-demonstrations to certain mass marches, but one area we never had to worry about was the vicinity of Parliament, because no demonstrations were allowed in Parliament Square. The reason given for that was that Members must not be impeded in entering or leaving the Houses of Parliament. Even if demonstrations continue to be allowed in Parliament Square, it should be a common concern to those on both sides of the House that Members find themselves getting advice from their Whips on which exits they cannot use for fear of being mobbed by an unauthorised demonstration that comes right up to the gates of Parliament. This really has gone too far. Sooner or later there will be an incident, unless security on entering and leaving the Houses of Parliament is restored.
Mordaunt replied:
I thank my right hon. Friend for raising this important matter. It is quite right that Members of Parliament and their staff should be able to go about their business in safety and security, and should not be disrupted in doing so. Mr Speaker was particularly concerned about this even prior to yesterday’s incidents, and has been working with Palace security and other organisations to ensure the safety of Members of Parliament in particular. Since the Deputy Speaker is in the Chair, I shall make sure that Mr Speaker has heard my right hon. Friend’s concerns, and I will ask that my right hon. Friend be kept informed of progress on such matters.
Whatever part of the law allowing protests to take place in Parliament Square should be repealed. I realise that protests have been taking place there for at least ten or 15 years. That should not happen.
Guido Fawkes posted a list of Labour frontbenchers who had to resign either before or after the previous day’s vote and wrote (red emphases below are his):
10 of Starmer’s frontbenchers resigned last night to vote in favour of a ceasefire in a symbolic vote organised by the SNP. The King’s Speech amendment calling for “all parties to agree to an immediate ceasefire” was defeated by a majority of 168. Performative, pointless…
On Thursday, pro-Palestinian activists encouraged parents to allow their children to skip school to protest instead. Here is one photo from London, however, this went on around England:
I’m happy that Andy Ngô was able to settle in London and pursue his fine investigative photographic and video evidence of what is happening on our streets. Granted, Adam Brooks took the above video, but Andy took one of the protest that happened outside the local Labour MP’s office. Dr Rushanara Ali did not vote for a ceasefire:
Elsewhere, Labour councillors were resigning in protest over Sir Keir Starmer’s stance on the Middle East conflict — but there was more to the story in the East Midlands town of Walsall.
GB News‘s Charlie Peters, one of the channel’s investigative journalists, reported:
Walsall Labour group has lost several councillors today in a mass resignation amid recent probes into alleged antisemitic social media posts by senior colleagues.
The quitting councillors include Aftab Nawaz, the group’s leader, and Cllr Sabina Ditta, Cllr Naheed Gultasib, Cllr Abdus Nazir, Cllr Saiqa Nasreen and Cllr Farhana Hassan.
They have blamed Labour’s position on the Israel-Hamas war for their quitting the party.
In a lengthy joint statement, the six councillors said: “We are saddened to inform you that we will be resigning from the Labour Party immediately due to Keir Starmer refusing to back and vote for a ceasefire in Gaza” …
But a source close to Walsall Council told GB News: “Two local Labour Councillors have resigned after being suspended by their Party in the past few weeks. Now this group, some of whom are under investigation by Labour, have decided to resign too.
“I don’t believe this has anything to do with their principles. I think it has everything to do with wanting to say what they like, how they like and without the fear of being held to account.”
Aftab Nawaz has quit amid a Labour Party investigation after GB News exposed his alleged sectarian chanting against a minority Muslim group in the West Midlands town earlier this year.
The fresh resignations come after deputy leader Khizar Hussain and shadow cabinet member Hajran Bashir both quit following GB News reports into their social media conduct.
This broadcaster revealed highly controversial social media posts made by the pair, which the Campaign Against Antisemitism described as “abhorrent.”
Hussain allegedly compared Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Hitler; Bashir allegedly drew links between Israel’s foundation and actions with those of Nazi Germany.
Both posts breached Labour’s antisemitism policy.
Bashir and Hussain both quit the party hours after they were administratively suspended for investigation.
That afternoon, Guido had his gimlet eye firmly on the BBC’s parlous reporting of the conflict — including clips from BBC Verify, their much-vaunted fact-checking unit. The nation’s broadcaster could not even report the ceasefire vote result correctly:
The BBC has been forced to update its latest “counter-disinformation” piece on how fatality figures are calculated in Gaza. Puzzled readers pointed out the story made no reference to the fact the Gaza health ministry is run by Hamas until the last paragraph, where the BBC deigned to quote the IDF who “said the health ministry was a branch of Hamas and that any information provided by it should be ‘viewed with caution‘”. This was after directly quoting figures from the Hamas-run health ministry nine times without caveat. You’d have thought they would have learned by now…
Anything connected to the Israel/Hamas War seems to be fair game for BBC misreporting. Last night’s article on Labour’s ceasefire rebellion got the outcome of the vote the wrong way round. Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity…
Guido asks:
Are unpaid interns running BBC reporting?
It would seem so.
Meanwhile, in Germany, police continued to crack down on anti-Semitism. Would that we were doing the same in the UK.
EuroNews reported:
Authorities are cracking down on supporters of Islamist groups after a rise in public antisemitism.
Several hundred German police officers carried out searches across the country on Thursday targeting an Islamist association suspected of supporting the Iran-aligned Islamist movement Hezbollah, the Interior Ministry announced.
“At a time when many Jews feel particularly threatened, we do not tolerate Islamist propaganda or anti-Semitic and anti-Israel campaigns”, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement.
The police operation targeted the Islamic Centre of Hamburg (IZH) and five other organisations suspected of being linked to it. All are suspected of supporting Hezbollah, which Germany officially banned as a terrorist organisation in April 2020.
Searches were carried out at 54 properties in seven regions of Germany.
According to a statement from the Interior Ministry, the IZH’s activities are aimed at disseminating the theocratic Iranian regime’s “revolutionary concept”, which is “suspected of being contrary to the constitutional order in Germany” …
Well done, Germany!
In The Telegraph that day, the conservative pundit Douglas Murray wrote, ‘Britain is the new capital of anti-Israel hate’:
I have spent recent weeks in Israel, and goodness knows this is a country that has plenty of challenges. But one question I have been asked a lot by an alarmingly wide array of Israelis is: “What happened to Britain?” …
It amazes most Israelis – as it amazes me – that Britain has seen some of the worst scenes of all the anti-Israel marches across the world. And I say “anti-Israel” for a reason. The first protests in London happened before Israel had even begun its military response to October 7. Rallies were held within hours of the massacres. To most Israelis this is nearly unfeasible.
What other country would see 1,400 of its citizens slaughtered, 240 kidnapped and countless more wounded for life, and not be allowed even a day to mourn? What other country, having suffered a set of atrocities hardly superseded in the whole history of violence wouldn’t get even one day of sympathy?
Only the Jewish state. And everybody in Israel knows as much. Pakistan is currently in the process of forcibly deporting two million Afghans. Nobody cares. Bashar al-Assad is in his twelfth year of killing Muslims in Syria and the world’s cameras turned away long ago. Only Israel, when involved in any military action, or even when it is simply on the receiving end of extreme violence, cannot rely even on the world’s understanding.
And it is in this light that Israel notices the British politicians calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The ignorance of a large number of figures in British political life, from Humza Yousaf to Jess Phillips, can hardly be exaggerated. As it happens, a ceasefire of a kind existed in Gaza. Israel withdrew from Gaza unilaterally, and very painfully, in 2005 – removing every Jew from the strip. They handed over the land and got rockets in return.
Everyone around the Gaza border and across wider Israel was used to running from rockets to the shelters. But despite various exchanges over the years, nobody ever foresaw the battalion-sized terrorist attack of October 7. It was Hamas who broke what ceasefire existed that day when its legions gunned down young people at a music festival, went door to door in small communities, and burned people alive in their homes …
To call for a ceasefire now shows an astonishing lack of military understanding but also a horrific lack of decency. I have watched the Israeli Defence Force manage the evacuation of Gazans from the north of the strip to the south, so that the IDF can try to isolate Hamas and destroy them. It is a righteous mission, though one that is likely to prove incredibly hard.
I have also met many of the parents of the children and others stolen into Gaza. They want their children back. Why has there been no mass movement of MPs – from Labour, say – demanding that there be no ceasefire until Hamas hand back the hostages? Such a move seems to have never been on the cards.
Anti-Israel Labour MPs and others only ever campaign and condemn when they attack Israel. Perhaps because they know that Hamas would never listen to them anyway. These MPs are internationalist eunuchs. But my, do they talk a big game. Especially while they whip along the sectarian politics, which are the real driver of the protests on our streets …
But as I watch hooligans clamber over our war memorials and statues and hold our city centres hostage, I wonder whether it isn’t Britain that is the one in real trouble here.
The Guardian had a chilling article on the subject, ‘Why is antisemitism so rife in UK academic settings? I have never found student life more difficult’. Shockingly, it was written by an anonymous student from — wait for it — Oxford University:
When I woke in my student house on Saturday 7 October, my stomach turned at the news from Israel. As fellow Jewish students and I checked on our loved ones there, one replied on WhatsApp: “Do not go to synagogue today.” In their moment of terror they knew that here, in the UK, antisemitism would erupt; racism would jeopardise our safety.
There have been more reported incidents of antisemitism on British university campuses in a month than there were in all of 2022. At Oxford University, where I am an undergraduate, acts of hatred, misinformation and a lack of empathy when we are vulnerable have turned student spaces into places of hostility.
Our Jewish Society president had the mezuzah (a protective Jewish prayer scroll) ripped from his door. At a freshers’ event, one Jewish friend told me that she was called a “coloniser” and “race traitor” (the latter by virtue of her non-European descent). I know male students who have removed their kippot (skullcaps) and others who have hidden their Stars of David. On Instagram, I saw students posting pictures of paragliders, celebrating Hamas’s massacre. I waited five long days for my university to condemn “appalling attacks by Hamas” and stress “that there is no place for antisemitism or hate of any faith at Oxford”. An Israeli student whose relatives were murdered at the Nova festival has returned home, telling me she felt safer there than on campus.
In the days after 7 October, I walked Oxford’s streets, my home away from home, overwhelmed with grief and despair …
While I was concerned with the plight of civilians, I encountered protests and chants: “From Oxford to Gaza / Long live the intifada” – words that sustain the violence and too often lead to violence against Jews in the UK, not just in Israel.
As I struggled to work, I wrote to my tutors, explaining my distress. They replied privately, expressing sympathy. But as I appeared at tutorials and seminars, sleepless and broken, I did not feel safe to raise my most pressing thoughts in public. A climate in which we feel fearful to address what we’re going through leaves space for others to dehumanise us and contribute to environments in which antisemitism is allowed to fester.
The silence we encounter stands in stark contrast to the sensitivity and outspoken support displayed by staff and students to those touched by other events, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine …
When I see faces I know call “From the river to the sea” or students sign off emails with the same chant, the phrase feels like something that goes far beyond a demand for freedom: a call to get rid of Israel and a dog-whistle for getting rid of Jews. When someone shouts “Free Palestine” at a Jew walking around Oxford wearing his kippah, as happened to a friend of mine, they are weaponising that idea against him. In these moments, where anti-Zionism implies, even indirectly, an outcome that entails violence against Jews, it shelters antisemitism; universities must seek to understand why it is so ferocious in academic settings. They also must address why here, of all places, misinformation is disseminated so readily …
TaxiPoint featured a story on a black cab driver who kicked out a passenger voicing anti-Semitic sentiments:
A taxi driver in London took a firm stance against racism by asking a passenger to leave the cab after she went on a rant about the ‘Jewish machine’.
The incident was caught on camera and has since garnered attention for highlighting the prevalence of hate crimes.
… The driver’s response has been praised by Tom Tugendhat MP, who commended him for his stand against racism …
WARNING: Strong language heard in video
As the day came to a close, The Guardian reported that the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) discovered a dead hostage in Gaza City:
The Israeli military has recovered the body of an Israeli hostage from a building near al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, as soldiers continued to search the hospital complex after Wednesday’s early morning raid.
Yehudit Weiss, a 65-year-old woman, was abducted from the Be’eri kibbutz by Hamas militants during their attack on southern Israel on 7 October, in which at least 1,200 people were killed and more than 240 taken hostage. She had been undergoing cancer treatment.
“The body of Yehudit Weiss, who was abducted by the Hamas terrorist organisation, was extracted by IDF troops from a structure adjacent to the Shifa hospital in the Gaza Strip and was transferred to Israeli territory,” a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces said late on Thursday.
“In the structure in which Yehudit was located, military equipment including Kalashnikov rifles and RPGs were also found,” the spokesperson added.
Weiss’s husband, Shmulik, was killed during the Hamas attack.
The IDF also said it had uncovered a Hamas tunnel shaft and a vehicle with weapons at the Dar al-Shifa hospital complex.
“In the Shifa hospital, IDF troops found an operational tunnel shaft and a vehicle containing a large number of weapons,” the military said. It made public videos and photographs of the tunnel shaft and weapons, though no independent verification was possible.
Israel dropped leaflets into southern Gaza, telling Palestinian civilians to leave four towns on the eastern edge of Khan Younis, fuelling fears that its offensive would spread south …
Earlier, the IDF managed to find and fatally wound the man responsible for parading the young dead woman on the back of a pickup truck on October 7.
Friday, November 17
GB News’s Patrick Christys had a hard-hitting editorial on the protesters. He went to two protests, asking participants why they continued to demonstrate but was met with verbal aggression both times. In his editorial, he expressed his disdain for the anti-Semitism we have all been seeing, reading or hearing through media outlets and social media. Finally, he took strong exception to encouraging children to take time off school to march.
Go to the 7:00 mark (21:05 on the GB News clock):
Saturday, November 18
More pro-Palestinian protests took place on Saturday, some outside Labour constituency offices, including one near Keir Starmer’s.
Sir Keir Starmer has been accused of “supporting genocide” by hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters who barracked his constituency offices on Saturday.
Around 500 activists holding banners shouted: “Keir Starmer you can’t hide, you’re supporting genocide”, after marching from outside Chalk Farm station in north London …
Passers-by beeped car horns in support of the marchers, who were kept back from the constituency offices by police barriers.
It came as hundreds of people staged protests in towns and cities across Britain on Saturday calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
Around 100 pro-Palestinian rallies were held at locations around the UK, including Newcastle, Nottingham, Oxford, Plymouth and Stevenage.
In London, there were 10 rallies held in boroughs across the capital, including Islington, Redbridge, Lewisham and Tower Hamlets.
Many of the protests targeted Labour MPs who had voted against or abstained in the vote last week on the SNP amendment to the King’s Speech calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
In Birmingham, pro-Palestinian activists barracked the offices of Labour MP Shabana Mahmood, who abstained. Here they chanted accusations of supporting genocide against Sir Keir. There were also protests outside the office of Harrow East’s Conservative MP, Bob Blackman, who voted against a ceasefire call.
The localised demonstrations were held instead of a large march in central London, where national protests involving hundreds of thousands of people had been staged every Saturday since the outbreak of the conflict …
Another newspaper reported that Starmer fears for his family’s safety:
This is not the way to win hearts and minds.
Sunday, November 19
Shadow (Labour) chancellor Rachel Reeves appeared on Laura Kuenssberg’s BBC news show to discuss the protesters’ intimidation of MPs:
In other BBC news, war correspondent Jeremy Bowen said that the arms cache at al-Shaifa Hospital was for hospital security! Amazingly awful reporting:
The IDF made public their video of the 55-meter-long terrorist tunnel, 10 meters underneath al-Shifa Hospital. This is a must-watch:
Monday, November 20
Labour MP Zara Sultana gave an interview to left-leaning Novara Media claiming that her party is Islamophobic:
The Mail carried the story:
Sultana was elected to the House of Commons in December 2019.
One month before the election that year, the Jewish Chronicle reported on her social media posts that LBC (radio) had come across:
Labour’s election candidate for Coventry South, who previously apologised for saying she would “celebrate” the deaths of Tony Blair and Benjamin Nentanayu, has been forced to apologise again after it was revealed she had told someone who was pro-Israel “jump off a cliff”.
Zarah Sultana, a 26-year-old paid Labour staffer and West Midlands regional campaigner, was selected last week as the candidate for the seat from a shortlist of just two candidates.
The article has several of her quotes, all equally distasteful.
It also includes this tweet, which sums up the content:
Of course, she apologised:
In a statement published to Twitter, she said: “I am sorry that I posted these offensive comments on social media as a teenager. I was young and immature and the language I used was wrong.
“Through my political activism I have been on a journey which has included working closely with Jewish comrades who have taught me about the language and history of antisemitism.”
She said she had visited Auschwitz in 2013 and the trip had left her determined to “never to minimise the suffering of Jewish people.”
But — and it’s a big BUT:
… further tweets uncovered this week show that she went on to make offensive remarks in 2015.
Again, you can read the article to see the content.
Let’s not forget another fact about her:
She has no business being an MP.
Meanwhile, Mr Fafo — an actor whose real name is Saleh al-Jafarawi — is still around:
That afternoon, Speaker of the House Sir Lindsay Hoyle told MPs that, as a security measure, they could use taxis on expenses getting to and from Parliament. Furthermore, the independent expenses body, IPSA, said that it would keep all information confidential.
Guido has the story and Hoyle’s letter.
Let us hope that MPs do not abuse the privilege.
In a shocking development that Guido uncovered — and one that surely must be illegal — two councillors from Kingston in south west London have emailed every councillor in the UK to tell them to support a ceasefire, or else:
James Giles and Jamal Ch[o]han have organised the effort, giving their 19,102 fellow UK councillors until Friday this week to sign on. Otherwise, they will publish “the names of those who have been invited to sign but choose not to, in the interest of accountability”. Councillors across the country are reacting pretty angrily to the threatening letter…
Giles is left-wing and a supporter of former MP George Galloway:
running various campaigns for him including Batley & Spen’s by-election in 2021. Giles previously hosted Galloway’s programme for Russia-owned SputnikTV and Galloway’s The Mother of All Talk Shows when it was aired by the now-banned RT. He also ran his grandmother’s campaign in a by-election for the same council, which the LibDems and Conservatives denounced as “dirty” for attacking their LibDem rival for being an Ahmadiyya Muslim. A pleasant character no doubt…
Jamal’s father is a Conservative Party donor.
Politics makes for strange bedfellows.
Guido tells us:
Conservative councillor Jamal Ch[o]han is the son of Tory donor and PPE provider Ashraf Chohan. Guido hears he’s on his way through the candidate process to become a Tory PCC. Guido wonders what local Conservative associations will make of that…
Fortunately, the threat appears to be a damp squib:
UPDATE: A CCHQ source tells Guido:
The councillor in question has now been kicked out of the Tory group. He’s also not a party member, so any applications from him won’t be going very far….
Swift action from the new chairman. Not seeing the same from Sir Keir with his own elected MPs…
UPDATE II: The Local Government Association has expelled the pair and sacked them from all positions.
Guido posted a screenshot of the letter from The Royal Borough of Kingston which states that the Metropolitan Police have been informed.
Conclusion
We are at a crossroads here in the United Kingdom over this conflict.
I probably won’t report much more on this because of its base and appalling nature. However, these posts are testament to what has been happening here on our streets and in our Parliament.
However, I will have one more post on the conflict in general so that we can see how people either forget or misinterpret recent history.
Continuing my post from Friday, November 17, much more followed on the Middle East protests in the United Kingdom and on Suella Braverman last week.
Monday, November 13 (cont’d)
Rishi Sunak conducted a major Cabinet reshuffle, which included replacing Suella Braverman with James Cleverly, former Foreign Secretary, as Home Secretary. The other earth-shattering news — I had to check the calendar to make sure it wasn’t April 1 — was bringing back David Cameron as Lord Cameron and putting him in the Foreign Secretary role. More on Cameron to follow this week.
Guido Fawkes has the full list of Rishi’s new appointments.
The Guardian reported that it was Suella’s tone that upset No. 10 (bold in the original there, purple emphases mine):
Downing Street implied Suella Braverman was sacked because of the tone of what she was saying, rather than because of a disagreement over policy. The press secretary said: “[The PM and Braverman] had a professional working relationship. Clearly there were some issues around language. The prime minister said he would use some of the words that she’s used before. Ultimately the prime minister reserves the right to change the team sheet at a point where he sees fit. He felt it was the right time to make some changes to his top team.”
Meanwhile, ordinary Britons following the news were concerned about the continued perception of two-tiered policing of the Middle East protests. This is the police oath. Substitute ‘King’ for ‘Queen’ here:
Interestingly, London’s Metropolitan Police said they were looking for a few suspects disrupting the pro-Palestine protest at Waterloo Station on Remembrance weekend as well as pro-Palestinian supporters carrying offensive posters at the march on Saturday, November 11.
The Revd Giles Fraser, the vicar of St Anne’s in Kew and contributor to UnHerd, wrote an article, ‘Don’t be fooled by the march for peace’:
… good people can also be the problem, providing cover for those who manifestly are not.
… it is the genteel, middle-class, soft-Left, hand-wringing antisemitism — the kind that wouldn’t dream of saying anything crass or extreme — that has been legitimised, has become high-status opinion even, on the streets of London. Do not think that your feel-good liberalism or soft leftism is any sort of prophylactic against your antisemitism. It isn’t.
Perhaps the most chilling thing I have ever read on the Holocaust was Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men. First published in 1992, it tells the story of Reserve Police Battalion 101, a non-ideological group of Germans, many not Nazi party members, just ordinary people, who were persuaded to participate in the extermination of Jews simply from peer conformity and a deference to authority. As Browning challenges the reader in the final chapter, if people like these could end up murdering Jews, who among us could really be so confident that we would have acted differently? The reason we remember is, in part, to remind ourselves of the evil of which we are capable.
Tuesday, November 14
Suella said she would have more to say about her sacking in ‘due course’.
On Tuesday, she sent a three-page letter to Rishi, which some newspapers published in full, including The Express. Excerpts follow:
Dear Prime Minister,
Thank you for your phone call yesterday morning in which you asked me to leave Government. While disappointing, this is for the best …
As you know, I accepted your offer to serve as Home Secretary in October 2022 on certain conditions. Despite you having been rejected by a majority of Party members during the summer leadership contest and thus having no personal mandate to be Prime Minister, I agreed to support you because of the firm assurances you gave me on key policy priorities. Those were, among other things:
1. Reduce overall legal migration as set out in the 2019 manifesto through, inter alia, reforming the international students route and increasing salary thresholds on work visas;
2. Include specific ‘notwithstanding clauses’ into new legislation to stop the boats, i.e. exclude the operation of the European Convention on Human Rights, Human Rights Act and other international law that had thus far obstructed progress on this issue;
3. Deliver the Northern Ireland Protocol and Retained EU Law Bills in their then existing form and timetable;
I was clear from day one that if you did not wish to leave the ECHR, the way to securely and swiftly deliver our Rwanda partnership would be to block off the ECHR, the HRA and any other obligations which inhibit our ability to remove those with no right to be in the UK. Our deal expressly referenced ‘notwithstanding clauses’ to that effect.
Your rejection of this path was not merely a betrayal of our agreement, but a betrayal of your promise to the nation that you would do “whatever it takes” to stop the boats.
At every stage of litigation I cautioned you and your team against assuming we would win. I repeatedly urged you to take legislative measures that would better secure us against the possibility of defeat. You ignored these arguments. You opted instead for wishful thinking as a comfort blanket to avoid having to make hard choices. This irresponsibility has wasted time and left the country in an impossible position.
If we lose in the Supreme Court, an outcome that I have consistently argued we must be prepared for, you will have wasted a year and an Act of Parliament, only to arrive back at square one. Worse than this, your magical thinking — believing that you can will your way through this without upsetting polite opinion — has meant you have failed to prepare any sort of credible ‘Plan B’. I wrote to you on multiple occasions setting out what a credible Plan B would entail, and making clear that unless you pursue these proposals, in the event of defeat, there is no hope of flights this side of an election. I received no reply from you.
I can only surmise that this is because you have no appetite for doing what is necessary, and therefore no real intention of fulfilling your pledge to the British people.
If, on the other hand, we win in the Supreme Court, because of the compromises that you insisted on in the Illegal Migration Act, the Government will struggle to deliver our Rwanda partnership in the way that the public expects. The Act is far from secure against legal challenge. People will not be removed as swiftly as I originally proposed. The average claimant will be entitled to months of process, challenge, and appeal. Your insistence that Rule 39 indications are binding in international law – against the views of leading lawyers, as set out in the House of Lords will leave us vulnerable to being thwarted yet again by the Strasbourg Court.
4. Issue unequivocal statutory guidance to schools that protects biological sex, safeguards single sex spaces, and empowers parents to know what is being taught to their children.
This was a document with clear terms to which you agreed in October 2022 during your second leadership campaign. I trusted you. It is generally agreed that my support was a pivotal factor in winning the leadership contest and thus enabling you to become Prime Minister.
For a year, as Home Secretary I have sent numerous letters to you on the key subjects contained in our agreement, made requests to discuss them with you and your team, and put forward proposals on how we might deliver these goals. I worked up the legal advice, policy detail and action to take on these issues. This was often met with equivocation, disregard and a lack of interest.
You have manifestly and repeatedly failed to deliver on every single one of these key policies. Either your distinctive style of government means you are incapable of doing so. Or, as I must surely conclude now, you never had any intention of keeping your promises.
These are not just pet interests of mine. They are what we promised the British people in our 2019 manifesto which led to a landslide victory. They are what people voted for in the 2016 Brexit Referendum.
Our deal was no mere promise over dinner, to be discarded when convenient and denied when challenged.
Another cause for disappointment – and the context for my recent article in The Times – has been your failure to rise to the challenge posed by the increasingly vicious antisemitism and extremism displayed on our streets since Hamas’s terrorist atrocities of 7th October.
I have become hoarse urging you to consider legislation to ban the hate marches and help stem the rising tide of racism, intimidation and terrorist glorification threatening community cohesion. Britain is at a turning point in our history and faces a threat of radicalisation and extremism in a way not seen for 20 years. I regret to say that your response has been uncertain, weak, and lacking in the qualities of leadership that this country needs. Rather than fully acknowledge the severity of this threat, your team disagreed with me for weeks that the law needed changing.
As on so many other issues, you sought to put off tough decisions in order to minimise political risk to yourself. In doing so, you have increased the very real risk these marches present to everyone else …
I may not have always found the right words, but I have always striven to give voice to the quiet majority that supported us in 2019. I have endeavoured to be honest and true to the people who put us in these privileged positions.
I will, of course, continue to support the Government in pursuit of policies which align with an authentic conservative agenda.
Sincerely,
The Supreme Court’s decision on the Rwanda arrangement was due on Wednesday. To date, not one plane with refugees has left the UK for Rwanda.
That evening on his GB News show, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg said that he agreed with Suella. The Mail excerpted his Moggologue, as he calls it:
Suella Braverman’s letter is excoriating, I’ve never seen anything like it, and it’s part of the sulphurous mood on the Tory backbenches.
Suella Braverman is right – the Prime Minister has repeatedly and manifestly not delivered on his promises.
Tomorrow is a defining day for the question of the Rwanda policy… even if the Government wins tomorrow, owing to the Prime Minister’s concessions, Rwanda deportations will be subject to months of appeals and legal challenges.
Suella was willing to override the ECHR to get Rwanda done. She not only knew the public didn’t want mass migration, but also that it has social and economic consequences.
Sadly, this government no longer seems serious about solving illegal or even legal migration. If the government isn’t careful this will be reflected in the next election.
You can see the Moggologue here, after the adverts and the news at the 3:36 mark:
Before Rees-Mogg’s show was Farage. Reform Party leader Richard Tice hosted the show as Nigel is in Australia on a reality show in the jungle. His guests — The Telegraph‘s Tim Stanley, Baroness Hoey, the Mail‘s Sue Reid and Conservative MP John Redwood — largely agreed that Rishi’s policies were not working. Baroness Hoey — Brexiteer and former Labour MP Kate Hoey — had much to say about how the Government had let Northern Ireland down since leaving the EU:
Meanwhile, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, currently an Independent MP, had been denying his support of Hamas. Guido featured two Corbyn interviews.
In one posted at lunchtime, Guido said (red emphases his):
Jeremy Corbyn has been lying to Times Radio and on Piers Morgan Uncensored about his infamous line calling Hamas “friends“. Attempting to rewrite history, he claimed on Times Radio last night that he only referenced Hamas as friends at the event 10 years ago as “they’d gone out of the room and I said in a collegiate way, where has our friend gone? That was all I said.” He again said the same on Piers Morgan Uncensored. Guido has the original video where he says “I’ve also invited friends from Hamas to come and speak as well…”
Moreover at the same event he claimed specifically that the government labelling Hamas as terrorists was a big historical mistake. It turns out that it was Corbyn making the big historical mistake…
Thanks as ever to @TimesCorbyn for the archive footage.
Guido posted the second video that evening with the following commentary:
Corbyn continues to be the gift that keeps on giving, this time repeatedly refusing to call Hamas a terror group on Piers Morgan’s TalkTV programme last night appearing with [union official] Len McCluskey (he did accept Hamas were terrorists). CCHQ [Conservative Party HQ] and James Cleverly have already jumped on it. Morgan asked Corbyn 25 times throughout the show whether Hamas are a terror group and 11 times whether they should stay in power in Gaza. An exercise in patience…
The day ended with another excellent Israeli parody of the BBC’s coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict — a must-watch. It has English subtitles:
Speaking of the BBC, the corporation brushed away any complaints about Match of the Day host Gary Lineker’s spiky online comments to Suella Braverman:
Wednesday, November 15
Suella was on the cover of nearly every newspaper in England. (Scotland has their own editions.)
They referred to her aforementioned three-page letter:
The Supreme Court ruled that the Rwanda arrangement was unsuitable. The Court was unconvinced that Rwanda is a safe country in which to process refugee applications. There is a risk that unsuccessful claimants could be sent to a third country. At Prime Minister’s Question that day, Rishi vowed to clarify any concerns the Supreme Court has about the policy and, where necessary, revise it.
The Times had an article on the immigration crisis, ‘How Suella Braverman’s attacks on PM chime with the working class’:
Had Suella Braverman been in post for the Supreme Court ruling against the government’s Rwandan asylum scheme she would have been appallingly damaged as a politician.
Instead, having been fired, her advance warning of the likely judgment coupled with her brutal argument that prime ministerial indifference led to it have given her a platform she could never have hoped for.
And, worryingly for Rishi Sunak, her criticisms of him and the government read like a focus-group summary from one of England’s angrier towns. In places such as Stoke, Walsall or Wakefield, working-class swing voters talk about small boats in the same exasperated way.
Yet as Braverman anticipated, these voters do not blame “lefty judges” for the crumbling of the Rwanda policy — rather, they roll their eyes at government failure. They doubt that the government has the will to deal with the endless arrival of small boats packed with migrants, and they put a lack of success down to a lack of effort.
More broadly, given that most of these working-class people voted Leave in 2016, they are baffled that the government has not reduced conventional legal migration. “Getting Brexit done” was explicitly about taking control of borders.
On this issue, Braverman’s depiction of Sunak as a politician who does not care about meeting promises rings most true.
Yet there are other criticisms of Sunak that Braverman makes in her letter that will also concern Downing Street: in particular over single-sex spaces and how the government handles protests …
Regarding the protests, working-class anger and irritation are increasing. Although few voters understand the origins of the recent conflict in the Middle East, they know and feel enough to condemn Hamas outright and by name. Initially voters were protective of people’s right to protest, but the resulting mass inconvenience and sporadic violence have changed their views. They increasingly question why the government and the police tolerate it.
In her article in The Times a week ago, Braverman effectively accused the police of double standards. Many agree, but for different reasons. They think the police are excessively tolerant about any protests which are politically driven, whatever the cause. They think the police do not touch anyone waving a vaguely political flag …
Braverman is not well-known enough to lead any sort of movement in the way Nigel Farage could, but she has unquestionably injected arguments into the political bloodstream that will speak to working-class voters, and make the government’s electoral task even more daunting.
Interestingly, that day, The Telegraph published an article by an anonymous civil servant who works in the Home Office, ‘Why my Civil Service colleagues are celebrating Rwanda ruling’:
This week has left my Home Office colleagues celebrating. The Supreme Court’s ruling against the Rwanda plan, Suella Braverman’s exit and the appointment of a new untested minister [James Cleverly] have all uplifted the mood in Marsham Street.
Despite our change in boss, when it comes to controlling Britain’s borders nothing will change. I know this because I have worked for some time as a civil servant on immigration policy, and – in my experience – no priority is further from the Home Office in 2023 than stopping the boats or cutting net migration.
For all her strident bearing, Suella was cringingly apologetic in speeches to Home Office staff. Instead of instilling much needed discipline, she would tell us what a great job we were doing, not that this got her any kind of loyalty. She was mocked and insulted by London-based staff furious at the refusal to extend safe routes to an ever growing number of countries.
Home Office officials have a moral and legal duty to do everything in their power to deliver the Government’s priorities on immigration. Political impartiality is a central tenet of the civil service code, but this has morphed into a culture of “stewardship” …
What this means in practice is accepting the bien pensant view that immigration cannot and should not be controlled, overruling the instructions of ministers and thereby their democratic mandates, with many of my colleagues viewing their role as being part of the resistance to what they see as a radical Right-wing Government determined to ignore the rules to punish innocent migrants. This culture of defiance is so widespread that any suggestion of border controls is sneered at or ignored.
There is widespread understanding that our asylum rules are open to abuse. Any Border Force officer or civil servant who works on asylum policy will tell you this openly. Yet any suggestion that asylum rules be tightened or asylum seekers be refused is rejected out of hand as cold-hearted evil.
If I were to walk into a meeting and suggest reducing migration or ask how we could immediately deport small boat arrivals or foreign criminals, my colleagues might think to ring the many mental health services we are provided to check in on my sanity.
Even the most moderate attempts to do anything about migration are met internally as either unreasonable or not legally possible, with discussion being stopped dead by allusion to “international law” …
The mood is of self-congratulation and there is a refusal to engage let alone learn from the criticism the department receives, unless of course it comes from the Left or from an incredibly expensive commission finding that we are institutionally racist. There is no self-reflection on the fact we have completely failed to fulfil our democratic duty to reduce migration.
When the Rwanda scheme seemed a millimetre closer to happening, staff message boards were filled with comments vowing they will not work on such an evil project. Senior staff always mollify these messages and tell staff not to resign … policies cannot be enacted as they need governance, and the governance needs terms of reference and the terms of reference need to be redrafted and then circulated a few more times before we can hold the first meeting. Many relatively senior officials spend their time dealing with this work, toiling away at things that will never be read or used in an endless round of busywork.
In spite of all this it wouldn’t matter if the Home Office was a finely oiled machine ready and eager to deliver on every possible government priority and determined to protect the UK’s borders. The clear messaging behind closed doors from the Treasury and other departments is that legal migration should be expanded to boost lacklustre economic growth.
For my colleagues, I suspect James Cleverly’s ascension is merely an opportunity to run rings around an inexperienced minister in a new department. And for Britain, our borders will remain uncontrolled.
Meanwhile, a report of a November 11 incident emerged. On a bus in London, a woman launched into an anti-Semitic tirade against McDonalds. If I remember rightly, the restaurant chain sent food to the Israelis shortly after October 7.
GB News reported, complete with photos:
A woman aggressively launched into an antisemitic rant while on a London bus, in a moment captured on camera.
The woman, who has not been named, declared “only Jews eat at McDonald’s” in a violent rant at others onboard.
She was seen in the footage wearing a black bandanna, top, coat, and ripped blue denim jeans.
The footage was taken on Armistice Day in London, the same day 300,000 people marched through central London in a pro-Palestine protest.
A passenger was on board the evening London bus with her husband discussing McDonald’s chips. She claims that she heard someone shout “only Jews eat McDonald’s”.
In the footage, the woman then asks someone: “Are you a Jew?” After spotting she is being filmed by someone on the bus, she takes a swipe at a woman’s phone.
She then directs her anger at another passenger who tried to stop her from walking towards another man.
The woman is heard in the video saying: “Why are you touching me, fam?’ I’ll smash your glasses into your eyes, bro. I’ll smash your glasses into your eyes, bro” …
An eyewitness who took the footage said: “It is not safe to be a Jew in London right now.
“We are experiencing everything that we were warned about as children.”
“This weekend in London, Jewish homes have been graffitied, people had to be escorted by police whilst leaving Synagogue and posters have been waved that would have been proudly held up in 1930s Germany.
“Each bus or train journey becomes increasingly intimidating, making us question if this is a place we can continue to call home.
“To my non-Jewish friends and colleagues – please understand that this is the reality for Jewish people right now. Please do not look away. Please do not stay silent. Please reach out to your Jewish friends, talk to them, listen to them.
“And if and when you witness incidents like this – please, please, speak up. Because despite there being lots of other people on the bus, only one other person confronted her.
“And I was scared. This is a route I take daily, and while I had my husband with me this time, I can’t help but wonder who would stand up for me if I were alone?”
The BBC — the nation’s broadcaster — does not help matters in this regard.
Just before 9:30 that morning, Guido said that the BBC had misreported what was going on at the hospital in Gaza:
BBC News last night stated Reuters were reporting that the IDF in the Shifa Hospital were
“targeting Arab speakers and medical staff”
Shocking if true.
Reuters actually reported:
The Israeli military said on Wednesday: “We can confirm that incubators, baby food and medical supplies brought by IDF tanks from Israel have successfully reached the Shifa hospital. Our medical teams and Arabic speaking soldiers are on the ground to ensure that these supplies reach those in need.”
The BBC twisting the story to paint Israel in the worst possible light. This is beyond propaganda, it is demonstrably reporting incompetence driven by credulous BBC reporters ready to believe the worst of Israel.
Guido had a follow-up later that morning, as BBC News apologised for the erroneous and damaging report:
Just in from the BBC following Guido’s report earlier. The BBC have issued an on air apology for their false reporting about the IDF’s actions inside Gaza’s main Shifa hospital this morning. A BBC News presenter has just said:
“An apology from the BBC…we said that medical teams and Arab speakers were being targeted. This was incorrect and misquoted a Reuters report.”
They should wear their reading glasses next time…
Indeed.
But the week was far from over.
More to follow tomorrow.
Churchmouse Campanologist 