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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.
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.
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.
On the past two Fridays, I posted about the effect the Middle East conflict between Israel and Palestine on British society:
Britain’s Left and the Middle East
Reactions in Britain to the Middle East conflict
Remembrance Day follow-up
Yesterday, I posted about Remembrance Day and Remembrance Sunday and the abject disrespect and desecration that has taken place in 2023.
Afterwards, another incident came to light, this time in Northern Ireland, where a Catholic woman caused a scene in a Tesco supermarket in front of a poppy seller.
On Thursday, November 9, the Mail reported on the incident, which took place in Lurgan, near Belfast (purple emphases mine):
The irate customer calls the store’s security on the pensioner sitting behind the stall – telling her it is ‘not acceptable’ to the Catholic community for her to be selling the Remembrance poppies.
The Police are now treating the altercation as a ‘hate incident’, a spokeswoman for the PSNI confirmed.
Ulster Unionist Party leader Doug Beattie said the poppy selling pensioner looked ‘intimated’ in the video.
In response to a tweet saying the irate woman was upset over ‘RUC and UDR badges’ being sold and not the poppies, he said they are ‘sold every year’ alongside the poppies to raise funds for the British Legion …
The confrontation, at the Millennium Way store in Lurgan, near Belfast, sees customers reacting in fury as the woman berates the pensioner behind the stall.
Filming her shouts, she rages: ‘This is not acceptable! This is not acceptable to the Catholic community in this town.
‘The British Army and the RUC [Royal Ulster Constabulary] murdered a lot of innocent people, and you’re selling for them?
‘No, I’m not accepting this! I don’t accept this. As a member of the Catholic community in this town.
‘Would I be able to sell … IRA badges?
‘This is not only for poppies for the last World War – this is for murderers of innocent people!’
She went on to scream: ‘security!’ as she waited next to the stall – and passers by told her to ‘get a life’.
As they left the store she shouted after them: ‘Murderers! Murderers! RUC murderers! That’s what they are.’
She claimed the stall was selling badges for the RUC and the British Army as well as poppies. The police service was established in 1922 and played a key role in maintaining British rule in the region.
As well as poppies, the table had remembrance crosses for specific regiments – including the SAS, Ulster Defence Regiment, Police Service of Northern Ireland and RUC
The force had additional military-type security duties, with officers frequently the target of the IRA.
The woman further demanded to know whether the seller had permission to sell the poppies from the Royal British Legion, saying she would contact them about what was being sold.
And when a staff member respectfully told her to leave, she said she would bring down a protest outside the store.
She told the store-worker: ‘This is annoying me as a customer! This is a disgrace.
‘I will set up a protest outside this store! It shouldn’t be in store. There will be a protest.’
She further demanded a list of foods within the store that originated from Israel – and asked if she would be allowed to sell the Easter Lily in the store.
A symbol of remembrance for the country’s patriot dead from the 1916 Easter Rising, it has also been used in memorials to IRA members who died in the Troubles.
During the war-torn era the town’s railway station was the most bombed in the country, with Catholics living predominantly in the north of the town and Protestants in the south.
Ulster Unionist Party leader Doug Beattie slammed the confrontation as ‘intolerance’ …
That day, the Mail issued a plea for the protection of poppy sellers, most of whom are elderly:
In the case of the 78-year-old veteran who was physically attacked at Edinburgh’s Waverley Station, British Transport Police have said — unbelievably:
There is insufficient evidence to take the investigation further at this time.
Hmm! Sounds like a cover-up.
On a lighter note, MPs, including Speaker of the House Sir Lindsay Hoyle, got on their bikes yesterday and took part in a Poppy Ride competition to raise funds for the Royal British Legion. The top six MPs are all Conservative, interestingly enough. Guido Fawkes has the list of participants and where they finished.
Blasts from the past
Increasingly, patriotic Britons have been wondering if a two-tiered policing system is in place.
The questions began in earnest with the protests of June 2020, when law-abiding members of the public stayed at home under lockdown.
On June 7 that year, The Guardian reported (photo at the link):
The UK health secretary has said there is undoubtedly a risk there will be an increase in coronavirus cases following the Black Lives Matter protests this weekend …
Matt Hancock repeated his calls for people not to attend protests if physical distancing cannot be observed, as further demonstrations were planned for Sunday.
“I support very strongly the argument that is being made by those who are protesting … but the virus itself doesn’t discriminate and gathering in large groups is temporarily against the rules precisely because it increases the risk of the spread of this virus,” he told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday.
He said about one in 1,000 people have the virus so when groups of thousands come together that risks spreading the disease, which could then risk lives.
Asked whether he thought the UK was a racist country, Hancock insisted it was not. He said: “I don’t, but I do think there’s injustice that needs to be tackled and I’ve spent my political life fighting for equality.”
The police did nothing to stem the tide of protesters, who were not socially distancing.
Instead of policing, this is what officers from the Met did:
They were followed days later by a socially-distanced Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer with his deputy leader Angela Rayner:
Now let’s take a look at what has happened in London over the past week. There are clear dividing lines between the Conservatives and Labour.
Friday, November 3
Guido Fawkes (red emphases his) reported that Labour MP Marsha de Cordova took part in Palestine-related protests on the weekend of October 14, in violation of her Party’s instructions not to do so. He has a photo of her at one such protest, pictured alongside:
Battersea [south London] MP Martin Linton, who claimed “long tentacles of Israel” influence UK elections back in 2010, and Cllr Sara Apps, who just voted through her own 172% pay rise.
Ms Apps is proudly holding up a long scarf which incorporates a Palestinian flag.
The day before, Jeremy Corbyn MP, former Labour leader, tweeted his plea for a ceasefire as he remembered the children he met on a 2018 trip to Palestine:
On November 3, the Sinn Féin leader in Ireland also tweeted her call for a ceasefire:
Former footballer and BBC Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker, who earns £1m+ a year thanks to every Briton who pays for a television licence, nailed his colours to the pro-Palestinian mast.
Lineker prefers protesting to remembering the 1918 armistice on Saturday, November 11:
He also took exception to Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s condemnation of the protest scheduled for Remembrance Day:
Courtesy of the BBC, we also got an update from the mysterious Mr Fafo, who is an actor. His real name is Saleh al-Jafarawi:
The day ended with a Telegraph article, ‘Rishi Sunak orders police to stop pro-Palestinian protest disrupting Remembrance events’:
Rishi Sunak has demanded that the Metropolitan Police makes “robust use” of all its powers to protect next weekend’s Remembrance events from being disrupted by a pro-Palestinian protest.
The Prime Minister wrote to Sir Mark Rowley, the Met Police commissioner, on Friday to argue that the force had “the powers necessary” to ensure that protests did not “disrupt or disturb” acts of Remembrance.
Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, has called for a planned march on Saturday Nov 11 to be stopped, saying it would be “entirely unacceptable to desecrate Armistice Day with a hate march through London”.
On Friday night, Mark Harper, the Transport Secretary, intervened to ban a sit-in for Gaza at King’s Cross station in London because of the risk to train services, but hundreds still attended.
Mr Sunak said there was a “clear and present risk that the Cenotaph and other war memorials could be desecrated” if the protest on Armistice Day went ahead.
There are fears it could disrupt the two-minute silence commemorating the war dead as well as the Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall, usually attended by members of the Royal family.
The National Service of Remembrance will be held at the Cenotaph in Whitehall on Sunday morning.
In his letter, Mr Sunak said police could apply to the Home Secretary and the Mayor of London for a protest to be banned. Downing Street said it was a “clear signal” the Prime Minister did not want to see Remembrance events disrupted, but whether to ban the protest was an operational matter for the police.
The letter to Sir Mark said the date of the planned march was “provocative and disrespectful” …
A May 2018 letter from the then-MP Nick Hurd to the late Sir David Amess MP, stabbed to death several times in October 2021, states how the law works with regard to protests. At the time, Sir David was concerned about a planned Al-Quds march:
This is the key paragraph:
The Home Secretary has no power to initiate a ban on marches. As set out in the Public Order Act of 1986, section 13 prohibiting public processions, a march can only be banned where the police consider that it would result in serious public disorder and that placing restrictions or conditions on such a march — for example its duration, location and size — would not be enough to prevent this. In the London area, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner would need to apply to the Home Secretary for consent to ban the march.
Saturday, November 4
Another Saturday, another pro-Palestinian protest in central London.
Almost a month after the conflict began – sparked by the barbaric attack on southern Israel by Hamas militants – a huge crowd is expected in Trafalgar Square to demand an end to the bombardment of Gaza.
It is the latest in a series of large-scale demonstrations since the outbreak of war. Saturday’s rally is due to begin at around 2.30pm and comes amid demands by senior ministers, including prime minister Rishi Sunak, for a crackdown on any support shown for hamas, a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK.
Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters have already assembled outside the BBC’s Broadcasting House where they have waved placards and shouted anti-Israel chants.
Some demonstrators wore face masks and keffiyeh head scarves, while others held picket signs with messages, written in crimson red paint, calling for Israel boycotts and accusing the Israeli and British governments of having “blood” on their hands.
The Metropolitan Police has said there will be a “sharper focus” on using social media and face recognition to detect criminal behaviour at protests this weekend. Police spotters will be out in force, filming the crowds for any activity that might be in breach of public order and terror laws.
While police made some arrests, more memorable are the negative interactions they had with members of the general public, such as a group of veterans who quietly held Union flags. The police told them not to display the flags. One of the veterans said that a car had just passed by with a passenger waving a Palestinian flag out the window. The policeman was adamant and asked the veterans again to stop, issuing a caution:
That evening on his GB News show, Neil Oliver wondered what was happening to the freedoms and rights of the British people and, in a broader sense, where the world was headed. We had coronavirus, then immediately afterwards Ukraine and now, suddenly, the Middle East conflict. He also wondered how these events happened in such short succession. Meanwhile, he said, the general public seem to be powerless in response:
A couple of hours later on Mark Dolan’s show, actor Charlie Lawson, who is originally from Northern Ireland but now lives in England, expressed his deep regret at what looks to be police incompetence in letting these protests go ahead. He said that the police are now ‘a laughing stock’. He said that the veterans he knows are profoundly upset about a Remembrance Day protest. You can see the short interview at the 32:00 minute mark:
Across the Channel in France, The Telegraph reported that someone had stabbed a Jewish woman at her home in Lyon. Fortunately, her injuries were not life-threatening, but, afterwards, someone had painted a black swastika on her door. Her attacker reportedly was dressed in black and had a face covering. The attacker was still on the run as the story appeared on their website. If found, the charge could be one of attempted homicide.
That evening, The Times posted all the photos of the Israelis whom Hamas had taken hostage on October 7. It is a very moving reminder of what a terrorist organisation did to perfectly innocent people.
Sunday, November 5
On that note, in London and New York at least, people have been putting up small posters with the faces and names of those hostages. We had one in our village for a short time last week.
Then the posters, including the one in my area, disappear.
Journalist Hadley Freeman wrote movingly about this sad phenomenon in The Sunday Times, ‘We Jews aren’t even allowed posters of loved ones’:
The railway bridge near my home in north London has become an unlikely battleground. Often in the mornings I see, papered along its sidings, the by-now familiar “missing” posters of some of the kidnapped Israelis, who are still — more than three weeks after the October 7 pogroms — being held by Hamas. But by the time I come home in the evenings, those posters have been ripped down, only shards of red and white paper left behind to prove they were ever there, faded footsteps in the sand. At first I assumed it was the council removing them, objecting to flyposting — but then someone put a photo on social media of a woman tearing them down because, she said, she “didn’t believe” Hamas had kidnapped the Israelis. The posters then went up in the bus shelter at the bottom of the bridge, but they were not only torn off but replaced by “Free Palestine” graffiti, as if the kidnapped toddlers were the bad guys.
Missing posters are an expression of grief …
But more recently they have become something else …
… reminders of the human cost of international tragedies, a plea that individuals not be forgotten amid all the political pontificating. That is why, in the West, the posters of the missing Israelis have become such a symbol of the war in Gaza. Yet something else has become even more of a symbol: people tearing them down.
More than half the posters of missing Israelis put up every week in London are torn down within 48 hours, according to the Jewish Chronicle. Videos of people doing this — in the UK and across the US — are all over the web: young people ripping them down in central London, a middle-aged man tearing them off a lamppost in New York. Some say the posters are propaganda, or provocative, or pointless (more or less so than the “Free Palestine” graffiti that replaces them?); others that Israel brought this on itself. But not even the most strident opponents of American foreign policy ripped up 9/11 posters.
Ultimately, there is only one reason they are doing it: they don’t want to see Israelis as victims.
By now more than 10,000 Palestinian civilians will have been killed in the fighting since Hamas murdered more than 1,400 Israelis last month. Pro-Palestine activists argue — rightly — that Palestinian suffering has frequently been ignored by the West. But too many today seem incapable of fathoming that there is more than one set of victims here …
… But no criticism can be directed at Hamas, only at Israel, as to do otherwise would disrupt the delicate oppressor-oppressed nexus.
If these activists actually wanted to make a point, they would print photos of the killed Palestinians and stick them up alongside the Israeli ones, showing everyone the real human cost of this conflict. Instead they tear the Israeli posters down and deny these murders happened, perpetuating the terrible cycle. Too many are exploiting this Middle East tragedy to release a previously corked-up feeling that Jews have for too long been given too much, accorded too much valuable victim status. Bloody Jews, going on about the Holocaust again! Bloody Jews, demanding sympathy for their murdered babies again! Bloody Jews. Again.
She has a valid point.
Later that day, a tweet appeared concerning a woman who works for the Metropolitan Police Leadership Program and wants support for Israel to be investigated as an Islamophobic hate crime:
On another Metropolitan Police note, the Mail revealed that a pro-Palestinian activist is one of their advisers:
Meanwhile, up in Scotland, the in-laws of the SNP First Minister Humza Yousaf arrived home safely from Gaza. They are the older couple in the middle of the photo. Yousaf is in the back row on the right:
The day’s news ended with a report from the north of England. The Labour leader of Burnley council and ten of his fellow councillors resigned because they are upset with Sir Keir Starmer’s stance on the ongoing conflict. The Guardian reported:
The leader of Burnley borough council has resigned along with 10 other councillors in protest at Keir Starmer’s refusal to call for a ceasefire in the Gaza war.
Afrasiab Anwar, who has been a member of the party for a decade, was among those who called for the Labour leader to step down last week.
He described leaving Labour as a “really difficult decision”, adding: “We just can’t stand by watching and being part of a party that is not speaking out, or at the very least calling for a ceasefire.
Starmer has urged Israel to obey international law and called for “humanitarian pauses” in the fighting, but refused to call for an immediate ceasefire, a stance that has divided the party …
Monday, November 6
News outlets featured stories on the happy reunion in Humza Yousaf’s family. Tears combined with joy, no doubt:
Politico reported that Italy’s prime minister Georgia Meloni was the victim of a prank call the week before in which she voiced her fatigue with Ukraine:
World leaders should stick by Ukraine, despite the additional demands of dealing with the Israel-Hamas war, the Ukrainian president’s powerful chief of staff told POLITICO in an interview from Kyiv.
Andrii Yermak, head of the office of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, also pushed back hard on the idea, voiced last week by Italy’s Prime Minister Georgia Meloni in a call with Russian pranksters, that many are growing tired of the war in Ukraine. On Friday Ukraine faced its biggest barrage of drone attacks in weeks on critical infrastructure in the south and west of the country.
Meloni said in the prank call — in which she thought she was speaking to the president of the African Union — that there was “a lot of fatigue … from all sides,” and that “everyone understands that we need a way out.”
This reminds me of Neil Oliver’s aforementioned editorial on Saturday, November 4. We are on overload with all these crises.
It is difficult to prioritise one area over another, but the EU decided to increase its aid to Gaza.
Guido Fawkes reported:
Ursula von der Leyen has just announced that the EU Commission has agreed to increase aid to Gaza by a third to a total of €100 million. The UK pledged £10 million in humanitarian aid three weeks ago. Previous taxpayer-funded aid was used by Hamas to turn water pipes into rockets…
Meanwhile, back in London, that evening, The Times told us that the Met urged the Remembrance Day protest organisers to think again and cancel:
The Metropolitan Police have urged pro-Palestinian protest organisers not to hold demonstrations on Armistice Day or Remembrance Sunday.
Senior officers met organisers yesterday to raise fears that splinter groups would fuel disorder, with officers urging them to postpone the demonstration.
Objections have been raised to a pro-Palestinian march planned for Saturday, although it will not go near the Cenotaph.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ade Adelekan, who leads public order policing in the capital, said: “The risk of violence and disorder linked to breakaway groups is growing. This is of concern ahead of a significant and busy weekend in the capital.
“Our message to organisers is clear: please, we ask you to urgently reconsider. It is not appropriate to hold any protests in London this weekend.”
The Israeli president also condemned plans to stage pro-Palestinian protests on Armistice Day.
In an interview with TalkTV, Isaac Herzog said that Saturday’s march was “atrocious and hypocritical” and should be cancelled.
He told the Piers Morgan Uncensored show: “I call upon all decent human beings to object to the march and ban it, because the symbol of that day is a symbol of victory and it’s a symbol of doing good, because when you fight evil, sometimes you have to fight. You have to fight evil in order to uproot evil.”
The protest will mark the fifth consecutive weekend of pro-Palestinian demonstrations since Israel was attacked by Hamas on October 7.
Amid concerns the demonstration could overshadow Remembrance events, Rishi Sunak said the police had ministers’ “absolute and total backing” to take action to stop the march causing disruption …
However, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which is organising the protest, said it had changed the route of the march to ensure it does not clash with Armistice Day commemorations. It will set off from Hyde Park in central London and finish 2.5 miles away at the US embassy in Battersea.
It is also planning to start the rally at 12.45pm, nearly two hours after the two minutes’ silence planned to remember the war dead. The PSC has said it is “alarmed” by the prime minister’s statements suggesting that the march threatens the Cenotaph on Whitehall and accused him of trying to “incite action on the streets to stop the protests taking place”.
However, Sunak doubled down on his opposition to the protest taking place this weekend and has made clear that the government would approve a formal request by the Met to cancel the protest.
The Public Order Act 1986 allows the police to request the home secretary and mayor of London ban a planned protest if they believe it would lead to serious public disorder and would not be manageable to police …
Going into Wednesday, we had hope that the protest would be cancelled.
The day ended with an incredible report from The Telegraph, ‘Former Hamas chief “behind pro-Palestine Armistice Day protests”‘:
… Muhammad Kathem Sawalha led the proscribed terrorist group in the West Bank in the late 1980s and is alleged to have “masterminded” its military strategy with involvement as recently as 2019, before moving to Britain where he lives in a London council house.
He is a founder of the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), one of six groups behind the under-fire march in London on November 11, and Israeli authorities claim his son, Obada Sawalha, is now its vice-president.
The revelation comes as The Telegraph has discovered that half of the groups organising the march – who are still defying calls from the Metropolitan Police to call it off – have links to Hamas.
It has fuelled further pressure for it to be cancelled, with the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on anti-Semitism saying that it “proves that these marches are not about peace” and the Campaign for Anti-Semitism describing this newspaper’s findings as “extremely serious”.
Sawalha, 62, worked as a director for MAB between 1999 and 2007 and helped found it, after being granted British citizenship in the early 2000s. BBC’s Panorama claimed in 2006 that he was “said to have masterminded much of Hamas’ political and military strategy”.
He now lives in a council house in Barnet, north London, but in 2004 he was named as a co-conspirator in a US indictment for having allegedly helped bankroll Hamas and he reportedly took part in an official Hamas delegation to Moscow in 2019 and served on the Hamas politburo between 2013 and 2017.
Another of the Muslim Association of Britain’s three directors, Dr Anas Altikriti, co-founded a group called the British Muslim Initiative with a senior commander in Hamas, Mohammed Sawalha, and Azzam Tamimi who has been described as a Hamas “special envoy” in Britain.
Dr Altikriti, who has lectured at Leeds University, has written columns for The Guardian defending how “Hamas supports democracy” and insisting that “the Palestinian people have chosen” Hamas “to represent them” …
Meanwhile, Zaher Birawi, a leader of the Palestinian Forum in Britain – another group organising the Armistice Day march – was described in Parliament in October by Labour MP Christian Wakeford as having been “designated by Israel in 2013 as a senior Hamas operative in Europe”, currently living in Barnet, north London, not far from Sawalhi, posing what the MP described as “a serious national security risk”.
He also allegedly met Hamas’ senior political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza in 2012 and was pictured with him.
A third group organising the protest, the Friends of al-Aqsa is founded and chaired by Leicester-based optician Ismael Patel who has also visited Haniyeh in Gaza and has joined the Gaza flotilla. According to the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, the Friends of al-Aqsa is “harbouring an intense hatred for Israel, campaigning for its elimination, denying its Jewish character, and supporting Hamas” …
Shocking.
Who is processing these immigration applications, especially one for citizenship, and providing them with council houses? How can this happen?
Tuesday, November 7
Just hours after The Telegraph published their article above, The Times came out with ‘Islamic centre “must be investigated” over alleged links to Iran’. This involves both London and Glasgow:
A Scottish outpost of an Islamic Centre accused of promoting “extremism and radicalisation” must be investigated over alleged links to the Iranian regime, politicians and exiled dissidents have said.
MPs have called for the London-based Islamic Centre of England (ICE) to be shut down after reports that speakers called for the downfall of western democracies and the “compassionate” killing of gay people.
The Times has learnt that the organisation, which is run by a direct representative of Tehran’s supreme leader, also operates a sister centre in Glasgow.
The Al-Mahdi Islamic Centre of Glasgow has openly displayed the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran and an image of Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s late founder, who ordered the executions of thousands of political prisoners and issued a death sentence on the British author Salman Rushdie.
Iranian exiles argue that the premises have become an unauthorised base for the Tehran regime, which they allege is increasing its surveillance and harassment of dissidents.
The Charity Commission opened an investigation into the governance of ICE, based in a former cinema in West London, after it held a vigil for Qasem Soleimani, Iran’s most powerful military commander, who was killed in a US drone strike.
Its imam, Seyed Hashem Moosavi, who resigned as secretary in December, according to Companies House, praised Soleimani as a “dedicated soldier of Islam” and said he had died at the hands of “the most wicked members of the human race”.
Tom Tugendhat, the security minister, said that Iranian cultural centres in the UK were part of a “vile threat” posed by the Tehran theocracy. “Sadly, the Islamic Centre for England is not alone,” he said.
The ICE website lists Al-Mahdi as its “other centre” and features photographs of events at the premises on Albert Road.
Hamid Bahrami, a former political prisoner who is now an international relations commentator and journalist, claims he and other dissidents were monitored by unknown individuals when they gathered outside the Glasgow centre …
He fears that information on exiled political opponents in Glasgow is being collated and fed back to the authorities in Tehran …
In 2019 an investigation by The Times found dissidents were being intimidated by Iranian agents in Scotland, who threatened to kill them and their families back home if they did not halt their political activities.
Last year Melika Balali, 23, an Iranian-born wrestler who now represents Scotland, alleged she was threatened by the Iranian state after she held up a sign stating “Stop forcing hijab” at the British championships in Manchester. “They’ve tried to find out where I’m living, but thanks to the police in Scotland I live safely,” she said.
Another Scottish-based exile, who asked not to be identified, claimed Tehran was stepping up its operations in Glasgow. “The Scottish and British authorities cannot ignore the dangerous and malign activities of the Islamic regime in this country any longer,” he said.
After the Charity Commission launched its investigation into ICE, a representative of the Al-Mahdi Foundation, a charity based in the same Glasgow premises, signed an open letter — circulated by the Islamic Human Rights Commission — accusing the regulatory agency of being “Islamophobic” and “politically motivated” …
Later that morning, broadcaster Kirsty Young, who has worked for the BBC, explained why the network does not like to refer to Hamas as a terrorist organisation. The Telegraph reported:
The BBC refuses to call Hamas terrorists because it fears angering the group and losing access to reporting, broadcaster Kirsty Young has suggested …
She said she understood the difficult position the corporation faces, including the criticism for not calling Hamas terrorists after the mass murders of October 7.
Following a storm of criticism the BBC now refers to the group running Gaza as a “proscribed terrorist organisation”.
Young, 54, said: “It’s not necessarily the BBC that is talking about the use of the word terrorism. They’re answering criticism from the outside and I guess as long as – especially when it comes to something in the Middle East – if you’re getting roughly the same amount of complaints from both sides, which they are, then you kind of know you’re doing an OK job.
“And I think this whole reporting that it is a proscribed terror organisation with reference to Hamas, then that is a legitimate stance if you want to continue to have access and to report what is happening in those places.
“Because what you don’t want to do is get thrown out of places because you’re not allowed to report any more.
“You want to have access. You know the whole point of the BBC in news terms is to show people the evidence as fairly as they possibly can.”
A BBC statement read in part:
The BBC is editorially independent; our role is to explain precisely what is happening so that the public can make their own judgements.
Our longstanding position, including during previous conflicts between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, has been that we do not use the term ‘terrorist’ without attribution, in line with the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines.
Veteran columnist, author and editor Charles Moore wrote an excellent editorial for The Telegraph that day, ‘Police insult the public by allowing these marches’:
On the first page of a British passport, “His Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State requests and requires” that the bearer should be allowed “to pass freely without let or hindrance” and be afforded “such assistance and protection as may be necessary”.
That is what our Government asks of foreign countries. It seems to ask rather less of our domestic authorities. It is surely the right of British citizens to pass “without let or hindrance” through our streets, particularly through the public spaces of our capital city, and to be afforded protection in doing so.
This right is being denied. On October 7, roughly 1,400 Israeli citizens (and smaller numbers from other countries) were massacred in Israel. Since then, the main British street response has been demonstrations by pro-Palestinian supporters who either back the massacres or who march as if they had never happened.
This is itself intimidating. Even if the marches themselves could technically be described as “peaceful” (which not all can), the fact that thousands have nothing to say against one of the most disgusting series of acts perpetrated against anyone, anywhere, since 1945 instils fear. Good people would not march that way, at this time, however much they feel for the plight of Gaza.
When such marches are not merely tolerated but protected, when protesters of other opinions are told to stay away, when streets are blocked, railway stations are occupied by those marching and railway carriages are sometimes jammed with chanting mobs, this amounts to a display of indifference by the police to the citizen.
And when the schedule of “rolling” marches lets the demonstrators own the streets for weekend after weekend and threatens to affect the regular, peaceful commemorations of the war dead which take place on the 11th day of the 11th month, what looked like indifference turns to insult.
The general “right to protest” is not unqualified. It is customary, for example, to reroute marches: the first of this lot was forbidden to approach the Israeli embassy. It is also a matter for discussion when a march takes place. It ought to be obvious to the police that there should be no political marches in central London on the Remembrance weekend – the one time in the calendar formally consecrated to silence, reflection and thanksgiving.
Marches can be stopped and have been …
The Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, may be under the impression that the marches so far have been a success because they have not been riots. He is wrong: they have been much more far-ranging in their threat to Jews and to ordinary citizens than anything Oswald Mosley’s thugs [1930s] ever managed.
Guido Fawkes’s attention was on Labour that day.
Before lunchtime, Guido posted that dissident Labour MPs were teaming up with the SNP (Scottish Nationalist) MPs to force a vote on a ceasefire:
The SNP are planning on holding an opposition day debate next week to formalise support for a ceasefire in the Commons. About a third of Labour MPs have already come out publicly in favour of a ceasefire, explicitly against Starmer’s position. A Labour source told The National that efforts to force a vote on call for a ceasefire had “grown legs” and an SNP MP has confirmed they and others had been in talks with Labour MPs to force the vote. LOTO’s [Leader of the Opposition’s] arms-length position won’t survive much more of this…
That afternoon, Guido told us that the Conservative Party chairman Greg Hands MP wrote to Labour to request that their main backers, the unions, disaffiliate themselves from pro-Palestinian organisations. Guido posted the letter and explained:
Greg Hands has sent a letter to Starmer formally requesting that Labour call on trade unions with links to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, or its weekend marches, to disaffiliate from it. The letter echoes one sent by the Campaign Against Antisemitism last week and labels the PSC an “extreme activist” organisation which “espouses views that encourage the anti-Semitism and violence we are witnessing“. Hands specifically attacks Aslef, GMB, the NEU, and Unite for their intimate interaction with the PSC. Their links are deep and long-held…
Hands points out that trade union leaders are “outwardly disobeying advice from Labour’s General Secretary” by speaking at the weekend marches and are therefore bringing Labour into disrepute. Meanwhile RMT head Mick Lynch, along with the heads of the National Education Union and Fire Brigades Union, have released a video announcing their support the “National March for Palestine” on Saturday. Starmer’s hands-off approach is resembling a tightrope act…
In her column that day, The Telegraph‘s Allison Pearson took a look back at the news thus far — and the double standard of policing — in ‘When poppy sellers cannot honour the dead, we must take a stand’:
… The Met is perfectly capable of stopping the pro-Palestine Armistice Day march under section 13 of the Public Order Act, and so it damn well should. Or it can impose a temporary ban, as it did back in 2011 on marches by the English Defence League, when there are clear safety issues. Instead, with its absurdly polite request to the PSC, it gave the organisers the opportunity to prove they are more powerful than the police. A fact that was ruefully conceded by one young copper when an irate veteran asked him why he was telling people not to display Union Jacks while ignoring thousands of Palestinian flags. “There are more of them than us,” he said glumly.
Meanwhile, and quite disgracefully, the Met told Christian Action Against Antisemitism to cancel a prayer walk in Golders Green after police received intelligence that the anti-Israel mob were going to attack the marchers. The “Never Again is Now” event has been rescheduled for November 19. It’s a Sunday since, as one organiser sadly put it, “Saturdays are hijacked in our capital because of the threat of violence and inadequacies of the police.” Why, one might almost think the Met was keener on protecting the right to protest of one group over another.
As for the PSC claim that there have been “low levels of arrest” at their marches, call me cynical, but could that be connected to the fact that the police are too intimidated to make many arrests and are even being advised by partisan elements not to do so? As The Sunday Telegraph shockingly disclosed, Attiq Malik, a solicitor and hard-Left activist who was filmed leading chants of “from the river to the sea” at a pro-Palestinian rally and has also railed against “global censorship by the Zionists”, is a senior adviser to the police on the Israel-Hamas protests. Mr Malik appears to have been present in the police operations room during previous marches when officers on duty were advised not to arrest protesters calling for “jihad” because it was a much nicer kind of jihad than the massacring 1,400 Israelis kind of jihad.
Excuse me? Are our police really allowing people like this to dictate their response to protests which are making life unbearable for British Jews as well as distressing the silent majority? What an absolute scandal …
I wish it was a surprise to discover that a former Hamas chief, Muhammad Sawalha, is behind one of the groups organising the pro-Palestine Armistice Day protests. A founder of the Muslim Association of Britain, Sawalha led the terrorist group in the West Bank in the late 1980s and is alleged to have “masterminded” its military strategy with involvement as recently as 2019, before moving to the UK where he lives in a London council house. Of course he does! No self-respecting leader of a Middle Eastern genocidal death cult should be without the accoutrement of accommodation provided at the expense of the despised British unbelievers who will be exterminated once Hamas has finished wiping out the Jews. (See Hamas Charter for preview of forthcoming events.)
What in God’s name is that individual doing in our country? We are weak, weak, weak. If events over the past month have taught us anything it’s that this country has a serious problem with Islamist extremists who have no interest in integration but, instead, rejoice in the opportunity to act out their vicious anti-Semitism and loathing of Western values. Permitting the abuse of freedom of speech to express racial hatred after the massacres of October 7 is not a sign of the health of our democracy, as some libertarians like to claim. It’s dismaying evidence of a lack of moral courage …
That afternoon in Parliament, MPs began debating the first of the King’s speeches in his first official State Opening of Parliament. It was a historic moment, as Charles III delivered the government’s plans as monarch rather than a stand-in for his mother shortly before she died.
MPs debate aspects of the Prime Minister’s legislative plans for the next year or so and do so over the course of a week.
I happened to see Labour MP Apsana Begum give her speech in Tuesday’s debate. She lamented that neither the King nor the Prime Minister in his introduction of the proposed legislation made any mention of the fact that October is Islamophobia Awareness Month:
Hansard has the full text of her speech, excerpted below:
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate on the Humble Address. People in my constituency are alarmed and appalled at the disregard for Palestinian life that has been demonstrated widely in the recent period. It is therefore very concerning that the King’s Speech did not include a commitment to securing a ceasefire on both sides in Gaza and the release of all hostages, along with a condemnation of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
This is not an abstract point; this is a live issue. The situation is urgent … Gaza, in the words of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, is becoming a “graveyard for children”. It is beyond unacceptable that children are paying the ultimate price amidst the failure of political leaders in the US, the UK and Europe to call for an immediate ceasefire and oppose violations of international law.
Every hour, every day, the number of deaths gets higher and higher, and the reports and images of the impact of the military bombardment on refugee camps, hospitals and schools are simply horrifying. Nothing—nothing—can justify these crimes against humanity that we are witnessing in real time … All lives should be valued and cherished—Israeli and Palestinian—yet the ongoing dehumanisation and collective punishment of Palestinian civilians will be marked as a terrible crime against humanity for years to come.
My constituents—multicultural, multiracial, from all faiths and none—would have liked the King’s Speech to address the long-term situation for Palestine … The King’s Speech should have reflected a responsibility to follow through on an international commitment to uphold international law and do all we can to ensure a just and lasting peace based on justice and human rights.
I was also disappointed to see that the King’s Speech did not indicate that the Government will finally recognise Islamophobia or take measures to address the soaring level of hate crimes against Muslims. Indeed, the King’s Speech did not even mention that it is Islamophobia Awareness Month, and nor did the Prime Minister in his speech today.
I am currently facing death threats and a torrent of Islamophobic and misogynistic abuse. In fact, I have received such abuse since being elected and putting myself forward as a candidate for election …
Not only does the King’s Speech fail to address the fact that Muslims live with a constant and persistent fear overshadowing our lives, but it fails to address the role of Governments and politicians, even though the UN special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief has reported that institutional suspicion and fear of Muslims has escalated to “epidemic proportions” and that “numerous” states, regional and international bodies are to blame. How does that relate to leaked Government documents about plans to clamp down on freedom of expression that could unjustly label organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain as extremist?
In conclusion, I believe in human rights, equality and dignity for all. My constituents deserve more than a Government who think and act otherwise.
The day ended with news from the Mail that Sir Mark Rowley, Metropolitan Police Commissioner, said the Remembrance Day march would proceed as planned:
Scotland Yard last night gave the green light to a pro-Palestine rally on Armistice Day as its top cop claimed it had ‘no absolute power’ to ban the protest.
In a thinly veiled swipe at the Home Secretary, Metropolitan Police chief Mark Rowley said the laws of Parliament and intelligence gathered by its sources did not justify a ban.
The country’s most senior police officer said the protest, which is expected to draw in 70,000 people, could only be banned if there was a ‘real threat’ of serious disorder.
This was despite fears of violent clashes between the marchers and Right-wing activists. The rally’s organisers had already rebuffed the Met’s pleas to postpone.
Wednesday, November 8
The day began with news of the first resignation from Labour’s shadow front bench, that of Imran Hussain MP, a Jeremy Corbyn supporter.
Guido told us:
Labour’s first frontbencher has resigned over Starmer’s position on Israel/Palestine. Imran Hussain, a member of the Corbynite ‘Socialist Campaign Group’, was a work minister since 2020 and was appointed shadow minister for “the New Deal for Working People” in September. He resigned from the front bench at 11 p.m. last night, saying its current position prohibited him from being a “strong advocate” for a ceasefire. Guido hears things got to a head after Hussain was blocked from signing a ceasefire-supporting early day motion…
Early that afternoon, Guido posted a fiery discussion between TalkTV/talkRADIO presenter Julia Hartley-Brewer and former Labour MP Chris Williamson, who has been avowedly pro-Palestine:
Guido wrote:
Julia Hartley-Brewer and arch-Corbynite former Labour MP Chris Williamson have had a mega 15-minute spat this afternoon on Julia’s TalkTV show over Israel/Palestine. Alongside the usual Hamas apologist lines Williamson claimed the “zionist entity” is responsible for “spurning” peace and Israel is “worse than Nazis actually in some respects“. Hartley-Brewer was having none of it and came back swinging. The clip’s worth a watch…
That evening, The Sun‘s political editor — and Guido alum — Harry Cole told us that one of the organisers of the Remembrance Day march worked for Sir Keir Starmer until just a few days ago:
THE organiser of this weekend’s Armistice Day anti-Israel march worked for Sir Keir Starmer until this week, The Sun can reveal.
Ben Soffa is the Secretary of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, who have led the marches through London for the last four weeks.
Sir Keir had warned Labour MPs they “should not under any circumstances attend any of these events”.
Yet until just days ago hard-left Soffa was also the Labour Party’s £61,000 “Head of Digital Organising”.
When confronted by The Sun last night, Labour sources said he had moved on in recent days.
But last night his social media accounts still claimed he worked for at the party’s HQ …
Last night a Labour source said: “We’re grateful to Ben for all his work for the party and wish him all the best for the future.”
The PSC and Ben Soffa did not respond to requests for comment.
On TalkTV, Piers Morgan attempted to give the pro-Palestine supporters a pass, but conservative-minded Douglas Murray, who is covering events from Israel, asked why protesters in the UK kept going to the marches week after week. Murray asked, ‘Wouldn’t you drop out by Week 3? I would’. Piers had to concede, ‘That’s a good question’:
The Telegraph‘s Allister Heath asked where Rishi Sunak was and said there is a general malaise involving all of the UK’s prominent institutions in ‘Extremism is thriving in Britain and our leaders have already surrendered’:
… The law is being reinterpreted in bizarre ways and thousands of anti-Semites – Islamist extremists and the far-Left principally, for now – are getting away with behaviour that wouldn’t be tolerated were it directed at any other minority. Are all still equal in front of the law?
This is not about one demonstration on Armistice Day: the crisis is far greater. It is about the total failure of all of our institutions, the implosion of an entire ideological superstructure, the ruination of a country’s very idea of itself. It is about extremists being asked to provide advice and embedding themselves within the police and military, it is about the normalisation of calls for the destruction of one country – and only one – based on a falsified narrative, it is about the gradual waning of our collective memories of the Shoah, it is about hate preachers who don’t even care if their words are caught on film, it is about the Left-wing middle class’s moral cowardice.
Don’t get me wrong: Sunak is on the right side … Yet what is he, in practice, doing about the explosion in Jew-hate that is shaming our great country? Going ahead with the endlessly-delayed Holocaust memorial is not enough. Ministers are acting like commentators, not leaders, and their (usually excellent) words are being drowned out.
The Government cannot even find it in itself to ban Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps or vote against a call for a ceasefire at the UN, even though opposing such a move is its policy. It seemingly can’t tell any of the quangos what to do. It isn’t properly fighting the battle of ideas, let alone using its legislative powers …
The Tories have also failed in another way. They turned a blind eye to the rise of Critical Race Theory, that crucial component of the woke belief system which, among many other terrible pathologies, is explosively anti-Semitic …
Yet it isn’t too late. Sunak could make a speech that is even more powerful than that delivered by the German vice-chancellor Robert Habeck. He could legislate to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir and other groups. He could launch a massive counter-extremism plan. I pray that he will rise to the occasion.
However, it was Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s column for The Times that provoked the most sensational responses from all over the country, ‘Police must be even-handed with protests’, in which she suggested that policing has had a clear double standard in recent years:
… It is the pro-Palestinian movement that has mobilised tens of thousands of angry demonstrators and marched them through London every weekend. From the start, these events have been problematic, not just because of violence around the fringes but because of the highly offensive content of chants, posters and stickers. This is not a time for naiveté. We have seen with our own eyes that terrorists have been valorised, Israel has been demonised as Nazis and Jews have been threatened with further massacres.
Each weekend has been worse than the previous one. Last Saturday, in central London, police were attacked with fireworks, train services were brought to a halt by demonstrators and poppy sellers were mobbed and prevented from raising funds for veterans.
Now as we approach a particularly significant weekend in the life of our nation, one which calls for respect and commemoration, the hate marchers — a phrase I do not resile from — intend to use Armistice Day to parade through London in yet another show of strength.
Here we reach the heart of the matter. I do not believe that these marches are merely a cry for help for Gaza. They are an assertion of primacy by certain groups — particularly Islamists — of the kind we are more used to seeing in Northern Ireland. Also disturbingly reminiscent of Ulster are the reports that some of Saturday’s march group organisers have links to terrorist groups, including Hamas.
There will be time for proper discussion about how we got to this point. For now, the issue is how do we as a society police groups that insist that their agenda trumps any notion of the broader public good — as defined by the public, not by activists.
The answer must be: even-handedly. Unfortunately, there is a perception that senior police officers play favourites when it comes to protesters. During Covid, why was it that lockdown objectors were given no quarter by public order police yet Black Lives Matters demonstrators were enabled, allowed to break rules and even greeted with officers taking the knee?
Right-wing and nationalist protesters who engage in aggression are rightly met with a stern response yet pro-Palestinian mobs displaying almost identical behaviour are largely ignored, even when clearly breaking the law? I have spoken to serving and former police officers who have noted this double standard …
Thursday, November 9
Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper got up in the Commons to speak against Suella Braverman’s aforementioned Times editorial on the police.
Guido has the video and a summary:
Labour are trying their best to capitalise on Tory grumblings over Braverman’s late-night Times op-ed in which she hit out at the police over the weekend’s march. Yvette Cooper has sprung to the Commons with urgent question to “ask the Home Secretary to make a statement on the operational independence of the Metropolitan Police“. Cooper got to attack Braverman for running “an endless Tory leadership campaign“, ask if Number 10 approved the op-ed and attack Rishi for being “too weak to sack her“.
However, many Britons believe that Suella got it right, especially those who are disillusioned with the current direction of the Conservative Party.
That evening, the Mail featured a headline:
Rishi Sunak is warned he risks a mutiny from the Tory Right if he sacks Suella Braverman following her unauthorised attack on police handling of pro-Palestine marches
Even better was their front page headline referring to that story:
COME FOR SUELLA AND YOU COME FOR US ALL
How true!
That evening on his GB News show, Jacob Rees-Mogg MP, defended the Home Secretary and her supporters. The Telegraph reported:
Speaking on his GB News programme on Thursday night, Sir Jacob defended Mrs Braverman’s comments and said she was correct to criticise police “inconsistencies”.
He said: “The Home Secretary is right to highlight these inconsistencies. Policing needs to be impartial and affect everyone in the same way.
“[She] has said what many people are thinking and the calls to sack her seem to be disproportionate because whether she’s broken the ministerial code or not is something of a moot point.”
Friday, November 10
A poll by Electoral Calculus and Find Out Now for The Telegraph indicates that 72 per cent of Conservatives agree with Suella:
Nearly three quarters of Tory voters back Suella Braverman in calling for Saturday’s pro-Palestine march to be banned, The Telegraph can reveal.
Exclusive polling for this newspaper shows that more than 72 per cent of Conservatives believe that the planned pro-Palestine march should not be allowed to go ahead on Armistice Day.
In contrast, just a quarter of Labour voters believe that the march should be halted.
The polling, which was conducted on Thursday, also reveals that only 16 per cent of those aged over 65 believe the protest should be permitted, compared to over one in four of those aged between 18 and 24.
In total, just over half of respondents believe the London march should not go ahead, compared to 26 per cent who think it should …
Rishi Sunak has accepted that the protest will go ahead, but warned the Met Police chief that he will be held accountable if Remembrance events are disrupted.
The Prime Minister has also faced calls to sack the Home Secretary over comments she made in an article in The Times, accusing officers of “playing favourites” with Left-wing protesters …
More to come next week.
Jeremy Corbyn
I will end with a separate section on the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn who is fiercely pro-Palestine.
Corbyn, who visited East Germany when it was behind the Iron Curtain many years ago, has lost his friends in 21st century unified Germany.
On November 8, Guido reported:
It looks like Corbyn’s list of friends keeps getting shorter as Jezza is disinvited from a left-wing conference in Berlin over his position on Israel/Gaza. The German Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, a socialist think tank connected with the hard-left Die Linke party, is organising an event this week on European politics populated mainly by Die Linke politicians. Corbyn’s invitation to speak has been withdrawn after the hosts at iconic Volksbühne Theatre intervened, saying: “Due to Jeremy Corbyn’s current stance on the Middle East conflict, we have decided not to offer him a public audience at the Volksbühne“. How things change, Jezza will have to stay away from his old East Berlin stalking ground…
In fact, on November 9, the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Germans are taking it very seriously indeed. EuroNews told us:
The German Chancellor has pledged to protect Germany’s Jews, in the face of rising anti-Semitism since the start, of the Israel-Hamas war.
Across Germany, people from various institutions, including schools, city halls, synagogues, churches, and parliament, gathered on Thursday to mark the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, also known as the “Night of Broken Glass,” which occurred in 1938 when the Nazis terrorized Jews across Germany and Austria.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Germany’s primary Jewish leader, Josef Schuster, delivered speeches at a Berlin synagogue to commemorate the anniversary. This particular synagogue had been targeted with Molotov cocktails just last month. Chancellor Scholz has made a commitment to safeguard Germany’s Jewish community, especially in the face of increasing anti-Semitism following the Israel-Hamas war …
Undeterred, Corbyn pledged his support for the Remembrance Day march in London. He tweeted:
We will be marching for a ceasefire on Saturday, not in competition with Remembrance weekend, but as part and parcel of it.
We are remembering all those who have been killed in war, and we are trying to prevent more human life from being destroyed.
Well, if hardcore German leftists don’t want him speaking, he has a problem.
We can but pray that London’s march is not as bad as we fear it might be.
Whatever happens, two names will be in the weekend’s news through next week: Suella Braverman and Sir Mark Rowley. Everyone thinks one of them will have to go. But is that reasoning too simplistic? We’ll have to wait and see.
During the first lockdown in the Spring of 2020, the UK’s 77th Brigade was deployed on social media to counter notional misinformation about coronavirus.
This effort rather ties in with the constant media coverage of the late Captain Sir Tom Moore, about whom I wrote yesterday.
Britons all had to be on a war footing, as led by Government and the media.
On June 30, 2020, From Behind Enemy Lines posted about the 77th Brigade’s coronavirus campaign (purple emphases mine):
On 22nd April, 2020, a high ranking soldier spoke at one the the UK Government’s coronavirus war room briefings to talk about how the British Army had been deployed in an information warfare capacity as part of the Covid-19 response. Because early on in the coronahoax there was an effort to create an impression that the country was “in it together” in a collective struggle against a disease, there’s no doubt the presentation was for the sake of reinforcing feelings of the blitz spirit in the gullible watching public. However, it actually amounted to an admission that the British Armed Forces were engaged in hostilities against the British people, and for this, because the outcome has and will be impoverishment as if people had actually suffered in a war, the perpetrators of this crime will need to go to jail.
The specifics involve the so-called 77th Brigade, of which the General Nick Carter, Chief of the Defence Staff, had this to say:
And we’ve been involved with the Cabinet Office Rapid Response Unit, with our 77 Brigade helping to quash rumours from misinformation, but also to counter disinformation.
If the reader doesn’t know, the Cabinet Office Rapid Response Unit basically acts to propagandise for the purpose of the Executive’s agenda …
As for the 77th Brigade, it could be called a consultancy and aid to UK Government in the course of its efforts to shape perception. Of course, this is not the official remit of the 77th Brigade that UK Government would like the public to perceive, particularly in the context of what is being portrayed as a public health crisis. On the contrary, it would be a section of the military dedicated to all matters cyber in relation to defence against foreign powers who are looking to use information technology to gain a strategic or tactical advantage. At the UK Defence Journal, at the time of it, there was an extrapolation from Carter’s briefing to better explain the role of the 77th Brigade along the lines that UK Government would surely like the public understanding to be:
77th Brigade specialise in “non-lethal” forms of psychological warfare, using social media including Facebook and Twitter to fight with information in response to external factors, like Russian misinformation.
Their target is Russian propaganda, propaganda that is notably very active around NATO troops deployed to the Baltics alleging that the soldiers there are criminals and rapists. The point of units like 77th Brigade is to counter this kind of threat.
… the Brigade’s website … says that “Disseminating Media” is a role within its brief (a fuller account is “Collecting, creating and disseminating digital and wider media content in support of designated tasks”); additionally, when the Independent reported on how Twitter’s “head of editorial” for Europe, the Middle East and Africa was an officer in the 77th Brigade, it noted another function whereby “Troops were to deliver ‘means of shaping behaviour through the use of dynamic narratives’”. This is when, with interest, we must note that the 77th Brigade was formed in 2015 in a restructuring of military units including the 15 Psychological Operations Group and Media Operations Group. It was a reforming of the Security Assistance Group (SAG) which worked with Whitehall agencies – so supposed civilian Government – and when the 77th Brigade website talks about “supporting counter-adversarial information activity” it must mean, in the context of coronavirus, that which is done to maintain the narrative of a coronahoax by the Cabinet Office Rapid Response Unit. Perhaps the most damning statement on the 77th Brigade’s website is this:
77th Brigade is an agent of change; through targeted Information Activity and Outreach we contribute to the success of military objectives in support of Commanders, whilst reducing the cost in casualties and resources.
… Of course, banning information serves to create kudos about it – it makes it look as if the information is covered up, or is even being countered by the Cabinet Office Rapid Response Unit with 77th Brigade assistance.
On October 2, 2020, OffGuardian wrote about the 77th Brigade’s activities. The Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood announced in the House of Commons that he was a member of it:
On the 28th September Tobias Ellwood, Tory MP for Bournemouth East, stood up in Parliament and suggested that the British Army and the Ministry of Defense be in charge of distributing and administering “millions of doses” of the Sars-Cov-2 vaccines, as well as issuing “vaccination certificates” which will “allow travel”.
And that’s just the highlights, there’s a lot more vaguely sinister language, camouflaged in his rather drab monotone voice. (You can watch the whole speech here, go to 20:24).
This is a concerning development, one very much worth keeping an eye on. The BBC don’t think so, of course, because the call for what would easily amount to medical martial law didn’t even make it into their “Today in Parliament” programme.
This is not new behaviour for Ellwood. He has always been a consistent voice for use of the military in response to the “pandemic”. On the 18th of September he requested the Prime Minister make “greater use of our fine armed forces”.
He specifically mentions “managing the narrative”, which is no surprise considering his role as a former Army officer, a current reserves officer, and his known affiliation with the 77th Brigade. For those who don’t know: The 77th is the British army’s team of “facebook warriors”. An information warfare unit whose job is to “counter misinformation”, “manage the narrative” and generally corral and control the internet conversation.
Here’s the Hansard record from September 28 in a debate on the upcoming vaccine. Ellwood said:
The scale and complexity of the challenge is up there with the D-day landings and Dunkirk. To put it politely, we must learn the lessons of the PPE roll-out, testing and track and trace. Mass vaccine roll-out is an enormous responsibility, and we need to get it right. Planning must start immediately, and I have written to the Prime Minister recommending that he consider calling on the Ministry of Defence to establish a small taskforce, led by a senior empowered voice of authority, to begin the planning and design of a draft blueprint. The armed forces have the capacity, the logistical experience and the national reach to take on this mammoth, incredible task, and they are not overburdened by any current duties involving tackling covid-19.
Let us pause to consider what is involved: the logistics of shifting millions of refrigerated vaccines across the country; creating regional distribution hubs, which then feed into mobile testing centres; developing a national database to track progress and issue vaccination certificates, which will probably have to be internationally recognised in order to allow international travel; establishing an order of priority for who receives the vaccine first—key workers, the vulnerable and teachers, for example—and answering more detailed questions about potentially using schools to vaccinate children. All those things must be planned for. With the co-ordination of Whitehall Departments, local authorities, the private sector, policing and security to consider, as well as military support, I hope I make the case for why we need to start thinking about this now.
I believe that the biggest challenge will be in managing the transition period—potentially up to a year—when parts of our society have been liberated from the threat of covid-19 and seek to return to normality, but those who have yet to be vaccinated are still subject to social distancing rules. We need to get the planning right today so we can avoid the logistical challenges that we suffered with PPE and testing. In the spirit of global Britain, we can then share our blueprint and plans with other nations, especially those without such advanced logistical capabilities as ours.
On November 27, 2020, the Bournemouth Daily Echo reported that Ellwood was unhappy that his constituency was being placed in a higher, restrictive coronavirus restrictions tier:
SEVERAL of Dorset’s Conservative MPs have spoken out in disappointment and opposition to the government’s decision to put the county in Tier 2 coronavirus restrictions.
From the end of the second national lockdown in England next week, both BCP and Dorset Council areas are set to be subject to the High Alert level having previously been in Tier 1.
Bournemouth East MP Tobias Ellwood, Christchurch MP Sir Christopher Chope have all confirmed to the Daily Echo that they will not be supporting the Government’s legislation on the tiers and winter Covid plan when it comes before Parliament on Tuesday, December 1.
Ellwood was right on this occasion:
“I raised this with a minister yesterday. The decision was made last night at a gold command meeting and they were looking at data from seven days and 14 days ago for an event which is going to begin a week from now.
“It is deeply frustrating. I know you need a couple of days to prepare but it is different. You are not preparing for further lockdown measures, you are preparing, if anything, to ease, therefore that is always easier to do. You need a little bit of head time to prepare but it is much easier to open up than it is to close down at short notice.
“I will be joining Robert Syms and other colleagues who will not be supporting this legislation when it is presented to Parliament next week.”
However, just under a month later, Ellwood attended a Christmas party in London. At that time, no parties were allowed, only business meetings. On December 17, Guido Fawkes reported on the hypocrisy involved (red emphases his):
Tobias Ellwood took full advantage of London’s last night of Tier 2 relative freedom, attending a dinner of 27 people organised by the Iraq Britain Business Council at the swanky Guards Club in Mayfair. Fortunately for Tobias, Tier 2 rules allow indoor business meetings of up to 30 people, and the Iraq Britain Business Council does sound quite businessy. Unfortunately for Tobias, the event had been described as a “Christmas Party” rather than a business meeting on the organisation’s website…
Just yesterday morning Tobias had taken the airwaves to urge Parliament to debate tightening rules for Christmas, citing how many Covid hospitalisations there have been in recent days. Just three households meeting indoors was too much for Ellwood, despite the night before having been part of an indoor group of 27 from any number of households. It might have been legal, it was hypocritical given his public stance. Priti Patel was not sympathetic to the business meeting loophole, she threw him out to dry this morning, telling ITV News that “of course” Tobias’s action was an “egregious breach” of the rules, even suggesting a fixed penalty notice would be issued…
In 2022, he got on his high horse about Boris’s partygate, never mind his attendance at the aforementioned Christmas do.
On May 25 that year, Guido covered what Ellwood had said in the House of Commons:
A brave and principled Tobias Ellwood stood up in the Commons this afternoon to declare the PM must now go, and that his rule breaking means the Tories won’t win the next election. Amid heckles from his own front bench, Ellwood told the Commons:
A question I humbly put to my colleagues is are you willing, day in and day out, to defend this behaviour publicly? Can we continue to govern without distraction given the erosion of the trust with the British people? And can we win the general election on this current trajectory?
Of course, Ellwood is speaking from the heart here and not manoeuvring himself for a crack at the top job. This is obvious as no-one who, for example, broke Covid rules themselves at a widely-attended dinner and drinks do would risk getting on such high horse about the Prime Minister’s cake-based conduct. It would also be especially awkward if said event happened in December 2020, two days before one of the Downing Street parties. It would be additionally hypocritical if the MP’s rule breaking had been called an “egregious” breach of Covid rules by the Home Secretary. Anyway, Guido thought Tobias’s intervention was worth highlighting…
From the archives: Patel Slams Ellwood’s Christmas Party as “Clear Breach” of Rules, December 2020
Ellwood was one of the Conservative MPs working hard to remove Boris Johnson as Prime Minister. Ellwood also made his Brexit views known and said we should rejoin the EU single market.
One week later, on June 1 that year, Guido reported:
Tobias Ellwood may have helped the PM out today, as he’s paused his campaign to kick Boris out of Downing Street to begin a campaign to get Britain back into the free market. Accepting uncontrolled immigration…
An article today, published just one week after he took to the Commons encouraging fellow Tory MPs to defenestrate the PM, claims all the problems of inflation, cost of living, the Irish Protocol, exports and business investments would be solved by “rejoining the EU single market”:
leaving this aspect of the EU was not on the ballot paper, nor called for by either the Prime Minister or Nigel Farage during the 2016 referendum. There was, however, much discussion about returning to a “common market,” which is exactly what I propose.
Refusing to rejoin, Ellwood argues, would be “churlish”. It’s almost like Ellwood is proving Michael Heseltine right:
Ellwood’s opinions did not go down well in some quarters, including his constituency’s Conservative association.
On June 10, Guido told us that Boris was reluctant to reshuffle his Cabinet:
… it turns out there’s one man to blame for putting Boris off the idea: top coup instigator Tobias Ellwood. As rumours circulated throughout the week about potential personnel changes, Guido understands that when privately asked about it, Boris said “the trouble with a reshuffle is it’ll create another load of bloody Tobias Ellwoods…” In fact, Ellwood has become so unpopular with some of his colleagues that at least one minister has even blocked him on Twitter, having finally lost patience…
Party frustrations with Ellwood aren’t just limited to SW1. Guido also hears whispers from within his local association down in Bournemouth East that members are considering a campaign to deselect him as the candidate ahead of the next general election, following his genius idea to rejoin the EU single market and open the doors to uncontrolled immigration. One member even claimed to be “ashamed” of voting for him, with an online #EllwoodOut campaign also picking up steam. This will all no doubt come as a huge surprise to a man whose constituency voted 55% for Leave in 2016…
On July 18, he failed to turn up for a vote of confidence in the Government.
The following day, Guido reported that Ellwood lost the party whip as a result:
A government source says:
Tobias Ellwood MP has lost the Conservative Party whip following his failure to vote in support of the Government in the confidence vote last night.
Guido understands Ellwood was given prior warning of the debate happening and his previous slip being rescinded. However he still failed to turn up. He was also warned of the repercussions if he didn’t turn out to back the government, however despite this he chose to ignore all communications. Other MPs cancelled foreign trips and left poorly relatives to attend. One MP’s mother died on the morning of the vote and still attended the vote…
Guido posted Ellwood’s excuse:
Following my meeting yesterday with the President of Moldova I was unable to secure return travel due to unprecedented disruption both here and in the UK.
I am very sorry to lose the whip but will now continue my meetings in Ukraine promoting the Prime Minister’s efforts here and specifically seeking to secure the re-opening of Odesa port – so vital grain exports can recommence.
Hmm.
On October 22, Ellwood made his sentiments about then-Prime Minister Liz Truss known on Twitter:
The free mkt experiment is over – it’s been a low point in our Party’s great history.
The reset begins.
Time for centrist, stable, fiscally responsible Government offering credible domestic & international leadership.
GB News’s Mark Dolan showed us the original tweet and said that Ellwood deleted it:
Dolan said, in part:
‘The Conservatives, the so-called natural party of government, risk becoming the natural party of opposition …
‘The most revealing tweets are the ones which are swiftly deleted …
Mark Dolan on Tobias Ellwood MP tweeting the free market experiment over and that ‘the reset begins’.
That wasn’t the only pronouncement that raised eyebrows. I’ll get to that in a moment.
On February 12, 2023, Ellwood reprised his comments about the need for a centrist government in an interview with GB News’s Camilla Tominey. Ellwood criticised the deputy chair of the Conservative Party, Lee Anderson MP, ‘for not appealing to the centre ground’. Guido has the video.
I have news for Tobias Ellwood: more Britons agree with Lee Anderson than they do him.
On March 15, UK Column wrote about Ellwood’s involvement in the 77th Brigade and his chairmanship of the Defence Select Committee:
The unlawful deployment of 77th Brigade’s information warfare capabilities during the pandemic, with the Brigade spying on the general public and on Members of Parliament, has raised a number of constitutional issues.
These include questions about how the Rt Hon. Tobias Ellwood MP can be eligible to sit as the Member of Parliament for Bournemouth East and can chair the House of Commons Defence Select Committee whilst also being a reservist Lieutenant Colonel for the Brigade.
This dual office-holding surely brings both the Armed Forces and Parliament into grave disrepute. As an MP, Ellwood is required to faithfully discharge the high trust put on him by the electors of Bournemouth East to, amongst other things, freely and impartially debate and vote upon Armed Forces legislation, without whose regular renewal the Bill of Rights outlaws the existence of any British armed forces. He has also been tasked with holding the Armed Forces and Ministry of Defence to account as Chairman of the Defence Select Committee.
Ellwood’s committee chairmanship is particularly concerning in light of revelations of 77th Brigade’s activities during the pandemic. This is because he has chaired the Defence Select Committee since 29 January 2020 and thus during the whole of the pandemic. [1]
Was Ellwood briefed on or involved in 77th Brigade’s pandemic role? Could his dual office-holding have contributed to the Committee’s evident failure to conduct hearings into the Brigade’s activities now that they have come to light? …
The loophole that allows Ellwood to sit in Parliament and hold the chairmanship of the Defence Select Committee was created in 1957 and is now found in s. 3 of the 1975 Disqualification Act.
The section exempts from disqualification retired or emergency-list, emergency-commissioned and reservists of the regular Armed Forces. Should such people be recalled for service, they are not then disqualified, despite it being the case that a regular MP will be disqualified if he signs up with the Armed Forces. Such non-disqualified reservists in Parliament will then be obliged to accept orders on matters that they may have a duty to debate in Parliament.
… we are now in the absurd position of Tobias Ellwood potentially having to be called up by 77th Brigade to spy on MPs on behalf of the Crown in its Cabinet Office guise during any national crisis, whilst chairing the very Defence Select Committee that should safeguard against such atrocities.
… there should … be an urgent move to strip Tobias Ellwood of his chairmanship of the Defence Select Committee so that it can freely and impartially debate 77th Brigade’s pandemic deployment and the war in Ukraine without any perception of bias …
For example, Ellwood and pensioned MPs who are veterans could hypothetically be prohibited from discussing the activities of 77th Brigade under the Official Secrets Acts, yet it could be their fiduciary duty to discuss such things as an MP on behalf of constituents …
77th Brigade activities during the Covid–19 pandemic highlight serious constitutional issues that had been resolved centuries prior and then were undone. This should be urgently rectified with legislation to restore the honour of the House of Commons and its freedom and impartiality, so that Britons can never again be slaves to any form of arbitrary military dictatorship or martial law, such as the despotic mobilisation of 77th Brigade by HM Government to target British subjects for the purported crime of lawfully opposing government policy.
However, as serious as that is, it looks like small beer compared to what happened a few months later.
On July 18, Ellwood circulated a short video wherein he praised the Taliban!
The Guardian has more:
In a tweet and accompanying video, Ellwood described Afghanistan as a “country transformed” and talked up the group that seized power in August 2021, claiming “security has vastly improved, corruption is down and the opium trade has all but disappeared” …
On his GB News show that evening, Jacob Rees-Mogg covered what Ellwood said and interviewed fellow Conservative MP Mark Francois, who serves on the Defence Select Committee. Their exchange starts at the 42:00 point:
Rees-Mogg was perplexed by it all and Francois was annoyed that Ellwood referred to himself as the Chairman of the committee in the video, which, Francois said made it look as if that was the select committee’s view. Clearly, it wasn’t — and isn’t.
The next day, July 19, Francois and other Defence Select Committee members — Richard Drax (Conservative), Kevan Jones (Labour) and Derek Twigg (Labour) put in a motion of no confidence in Ellwood as chairman.
Guido posted a screenshot of the motion and an update on Ellwood’s world of grief at that point:
… Ellwood has faced a strong retaliation to his remarks, not least from Mark Francois, who blasted the “silly and naive” intervention. As a result, a remorseful Ellwood told Piers Morgan Uncensored, that “the last couple of days have probably been my most miserable as a Member of Parliament”. Guido’s heart bleeds.
Ellwood carried out a swift retreat, at Piers’ request he deleted the video and he has since issued a clarifying statement. This hasn’t deterred the Defence Committee’s counter-offensive. The Times reports Tobias was informed of the plot on Wednesday, as MPs have tabled a confidence motion – meaning a vote will take place in September. The rebels are confident of victory.
The aforementioned Guardian article had this:
A vote will not take place imminently, however, as the Commons is breaking up for the summer recess on Thursday afternoon.
After the backlash, Ellwood said: “The last couple of days have probably been the most miserable as a member of parliament,” adding: “I got it wrong.”
He called the row a Twitter “storm” and said he stood by criticisms in the video about Britain’s lack of engagement with Afghanistan’s new leadership since the chaotic exit of western countries’ armed forces from Kabul nearly two years ago.
But Ellwood used a TV interview to repeatedly apologise, and said the video “could have been much better done”.
“It’s important to put your hand up and acknowledge errors, however well intentioned,” the Bournemouth East MP and former army captain told TalkTV.
“I stand up, I speak my mind. I try and find solutions especially on the international stage, and I’m very, very sorry that my reflection of my visit could have been much better worded and have been taken out of context.”
While on a trip to India with the defence select committee, Ellwood deleted the video and issued a statement saying his reflections about Afghanistan under Taliban rule “could have been better worded” and he was sorry for “poor communication”.
Ellwood said the video, which critics said had a “wish you were here” feel and was set over uplifting music, was meant to focus on his push for Britain to reopen its embassy in Afghanistan.
After his visit there with the Halo trust, which helps clear landmines from former war zones, Ellwood said he had been repeatedly drawn to Afghanistan since losing his brother in the 2002 Bali terrorist bombing.
“During my visit last week, I witnessed something I did not expect to see – an eerie calm and a visible change in security, corruption and opium growth which I felt obliged to report,” he said in the statement.
“But I also saw a very vulnerable economy that will soon collapse without international intervention, turning this country into a failed state, with terrorist camps no doubt returning and triggering mass migration.”
Having been criticised for glossing over the erosion of women’s and girls’ rights under the Taliban, Ellwood said in the statement he had witnessed the “increasing restrictions” they faced.
“This suggests our current strategy, of shouting from afar, after abruptly abandoning the country in 2021, is not working. My simple call to action was to see our embassy reopen again and pursue a more direct strategy to help the 40 million people that we abandoned.”
Parliament returned from summer recess on Monday, September 4.
On Wednesday, September 13, Ellwood resigned as the chairman of the Defence Select Committee.
Guido reported:
Tobias Ellwood has resigned as the Chair of the Defence Select Committee. There were whispers swirling today that he was to face a no-confidence motion as soon as tomorrow, with Mark Francois and Richard Drax leading the charge for the Tories to turf him out. Kevan Jones and Derek Twigg were doing the same for Labour. This all kicked off after Ellwood claimed Afghanistan was a “country transformed” with security “vastly improved” since the Taliban seized power in 2021. Sounds like he’s jumped before he was pushed…
Politicians like Tobias Ellwood are potentially dangerous. They are so puffed up with themselves that they cannot see what they say and do can have serious ramifications. I hope that the Conservatives of Bournemouth East deselect him for the upcoming general election.
The push for Net Zero continues unabated in the UK.
Last Friday, I wrote about Sir John Evelyn’s weather-oriented diaries of the 17th century, in which he foresaw the end of the world with every storm.
One of my readers, David Ellis, responded to that post with the following comment, which deserves reproducing in full (emphases mine):
Thanks for your skepticism! And that is meant as a compliment!
I remember ever since my childhood days that we were “ going to run out of oil”, “run out of water”, “over heat because of carbon pollution” and “all our water will have boiled or evaporate”, to name a few scare stories. And they were all supposed to happen in 20 years’ time. And none of them have happened.
Do you remember diesel being taxed increasingly because of the pollution caused by the particulate content of diesel emissions? And they cited the increase in asthma as the consequence of the pollution. First it was the small particulates which “justified” the tax, until it was found that petrol had the same particulates. So then it was large particulates clogging our lungs up, so up went the taxes again, with no benefit whatsoever.
The real reason for the tax rises was pressure from the oil companies. Diesel was a by-product of producing petrol, so the shift to diesel cars was hitting the oil companies’ profits. Also the better fuel economy meant less gallons being bought, which cost the Government the equivalent of 1p of income tax.
It also became clear the incidence of asthma per head of population was the same in the countryside as it was in inner cities, despite the disparity in vehicle use. The real reason was the increase in sealed double glazed windows and wall to wall carpets. The resultant reduction in draughts around people’s houses meant that there was an increase in dust-mite droppings being trapped in houses, and it is these droppings which were the cause of asthma.
So the whole diesel particulates was a scam. As is global warning. It was hotter during Roman times than it us now, and the planet is cooler now than it was just 10 years ago, not that the media are telling us that!
So despite being repeatedly told that increasing carbon content is the cause of all our woes, we find that carbon only makes up 0.43% of the atmosphere! And that humans only contribute 3% if that figure! We only cause 0.0129% of the carbon content of the atmosphere!
So what do you think the motive is for the global warming scam?
Money and control …
The UK’s Energy Bill
On Tuesday, September 5, 2023, the Energy Bill came up for a short — four hour — debate.
More detail can be found in Hansard. A few things stood out for me.
The first is that fracking will be banned:
New clause 28—Prohibition on hydraulic fracturing—
“(1) Associated hydraulic fracturing is prohibited.
(2) “Associated hydraulic fracturing” has the meaning given by section 4B of the Petroleum Act 1998.
(3) The Secretary of State may by regulations make consequential provision in connection with this section.”
This new clause would introduce a permanent ban on fracking.
The second is that new oil field developments will also be banned:
New clause 29—Prohibition of new oil and gas field developments and issuing of exploration and production licences—
“Within six months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must by regulations prohibit—
(a) the approval of new oil and gas field developments, and
(b) the release of new oil and gas exploration and production licences.”
This new clause would prohibit the approval of new oil and gas field developments and the issuing of new oil and gas exploration and production licenses.
Shortly before 5:30 p.m., about halfway through the debate, Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg MP, said:
In my point of order earlier I said that this was a 328-page Bill. That was what it was when it came from the House of Lords; it is now a 427-page Bill, which we are expected to debate in detail in three hours, on a day when we had two relatively lightweight statements. That really seems to me not the proper way to have scrutiny in this House. It does not allow this House to do its proper job of looking at the detail of legislation—it is as if we had abdicated it entirely to their lordships.
I have supported my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay) in a number of amendments, every single one of which has basically the same aim: to ameliorate the burden this Bill will place on all our constituents. Throughout the Bill, we are creating cost, regulation, penalties and obligations. New clause 42 is there to say that the lowest possible cost should be at the forefront of the mind of the Government in everything that they do, irrespective of how the energy is generated. If that means fossil fuels, let it be fossil fuels. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) said, we need to keep people with us, and we risk losing them if we put undue burdens on them.
What other burdens did we seek to take away? Well, the hydrogen levy, of course. I am all in favour of hydrogen; I think it could be the fuel of the future—I remember that when I was a child, coal was advertised as the fuel of the future. Hydrogen may have a better opportunity, but that cannot be done by levies and imposts, and I hope that what the Government have done will not be a power that they use to create a levy and an impost.
On entering people’s homes without a warrant, a warrant is not the protection that one would like it to be—we saw the scandal of warrants just being agreed by the courts willy-nilly to insist on the installation of prepayment meters—but at least a warrant is some protection. Let us protect our voters. Smart appliance regulations are the EU’s approach to regulating rather than the market approach. Surely we on the Conservative Benches believe in market forces determining how things should happen.
Our amendment 67 deals with a Henry VIII clause to try to stop legislation being changed by fiat. Most importantly, on amendment 66, can it possibly be right to criminalise people, and potentially put them in jail for a year, for muddling their energy efficiency certificate? No, it cannot, and we should not do it.
Energy Minister Andrew Bowie led the debate for the Government. He was remarkably upbeat, considering how draconian this legislation is.
On Thursday, September 7, David Craig wrote about the Energy Bill for the Daily Sceptic:
You probably know that a massive Energy Bill is being rushed through Parliament by our fake ‘Conservative’ Government in the first two days of our parliamentarians’ return from their generous summer break. The Bill is 446 pages long and written in dense, largely-incomprehensible-to-any-normal-person legalese. Moreover, many clauses in the Energy Bill make reference to other pieces of previous legislation. So, to fully understand the Bill, you would have to read at least a thousand pages of dense legalistic gobbledegook. Given that our MPs have just passed the Bill with a mere nine voting against it, one must assume that they have spent their summer holidays diligently reading through the Bill and other relevant legislation in order to fully understand what they were voting for …
As you’ll see, this legislative monster covers an awful lot of areas – energy production, regulation of the energy market, CO2 transport and storage, carbon capture, hydrogen production, low-carbon heat schemes, hydrogen grid trials, heat networks, smart appliances, load control, energy performance of industrial and residential premises, offshore energy production and the civil nuclear sector. We must be considered fortunate in Britain to have MPs who have such a strong work ethic and such a deep understanding of all these disparate issues to be able to vote for the new Energy Bill knowing exactly what they are voting for.
Life is too short for any normal person to read and to try to understand this massive abomination of almost impenetrable legalise. But here are some choice titbits which I think I understand.
He goes into smart meters and what the Bill says about them:
… it seems that the conspiracy theorists were right yet again – a key purpose of ‘Smart Meters’ is not only to measure power usage but also to allow energy providers to control how much energy we are allowed to consume using “a load control signal”.
Moreover, authorities will be allowed to use “reasonable force” to enter any homes or premises to ensure we have the approved ‘Smart Meters’ installed …
It is not just landlords affected by home ownership legislation. Everyone is:
We can be fined up to £15,000 or face one year in prison for failing to meet any future energy performance levels any government imposes …
Under the totally misleading title of ‘Energy Savings Opportunity Schemes’, authorities can force any person or company to make energy savings using the threat of criminalisation for failure to comply …
David Craig arrives at similar conclusions to my reader David Ellis:
If there really was a ‘climate crisis’ caused by humans burning fossil fuels and threatening the existence of the human race as the BBC and others of its ilk repeatedly claim, then you might be able to argue that some of the measures in the Bill could be justified. But given that changes in atmospheric CO2 levels have little to no influence on the Earth’s temperatures, that Britain only contributes less than 1% of world CO2 output and that developing countries like India and China each increase their CO2 output by more each year than Britain’s total CO2 emissions, we are creating a totalitarian regime which will intrude on people’s lives, restrict people’s freedoms, wreck the British economy and immiserate our country to fix a problem which doesn’t even exist and, if it did, would not be solved by our action anyway.
Veteran columnist Richard Littlejohn wrote about the Bill for the Daily Mail:
Anyone selling or letting a property must obtain an energy performance certificate. Inspectors will be given the power to order ‘improvements’ and prevent the property being sold or let if they are not carried out to the letter.
Such improvements will include fitting heat pumps, loft insulation, double glazing and so-called ‘smart appliances’.
Compulsory installation of smart meters, fridges, washing machines, immersion heaters and so on, all connected to the internet, will allow the Government and the energy companies to monitor electricity consumption and switch off your supply if they think you’re using too much.
I’m not making this stuff up. It’s all there in Hansard, Parliament’s official record.
When the Energy Bill’s third reading came before the House this week, only a handful of MPs spoke out against it. Honourable mentions must go to Tory members, including Jacob Rees-Mogg, John Redwood, Craig Mackinlay and Richard Drax …
The rest of the Muppets sat on their hands, or retired to the subsidised bars and restaurants, as this sinister piece of legislation slithered its way through the session, virtually unopposed. Some of the more bonkers MPs even thought these draconian proposals didn’t go far enough …
[Labour’s] Ed Miliband [former Energy Secretary] moved an amendment which would have forced the National Grid to get rid of all fossil fuels by 2030.
Nurse!
Fortunately Mister Ed’s economic suicide prescription fell at the first hurdle. But Tuesday’s risible ‘debate’ only served to demonstrate just how comprehensively, and apparently irreversibly, our elected representatives have capitulated to the Net Zero nutcases.
When push came to shove, only 19 MPs voted against the Bill. So out of a grand total of 650, we must assume that 631 either couldn’t be bothered or genuinely believe turning homeowners into criminals in their insane crusade to cut the world’s carbon output by a piffling 1 per cent is a proper way to behave in a modern alleged democracy. Do they really think people should be banged up for failing to fit a heat pump? And is this the desperate state to which a so-called Conservative Party — which is supposed to stand for individual liberty and a property-owning democracy — has been reduced?
Answers on TikTok to No 10, since social media is about the only thing politicians seem to give a toss about these days.
Spineless Sunak performs an immediate reverse ferret every time he comes under pressure from his backbenches. His latest climbdown was over onshore windfarms, which he promised to ban during his leadership campaign.
Following a revolt by a bunch of virtue-signalling MPs, with an eye on their future career prospects after the Tories’ inevitable defenestration next year, the PM buckled.
Littlejohn points out that India will not reduce carbon emissions unless there is big money involved:
Modi made it clear in no uncertain terms that unless the West bribed ’emerging’ economies like his own to decarbonise, there was no question of India shutting down, let alone refraining from opening new, coal-fired power stations.
Call it $100 billion for cash.
All this at a time Sunak is trying to stitch up a trade deal with India. So he’s happy to do business with a major international polluter, but at the same time thinks it’s a good idea to send his own citizens to jail for failing to fit a heat pump, which won’t make the slightest difference to global emissions.
Meanwhile, in France, there’s snow
France’s first snowfall of the second half of 2023 took place on August 28 at the ski resort of Val Thorens in the Alps.
Powder reported that it was not a dusting but rather a decent snowfall, as can be seen from the photos posted:
… this wasn’t just your light, high-altitude dusting. Images shared by the resort of its base area show several inches of the white stuff …
At the time of writing this, much of the snow is still sticking to the ground, as shown by Val Thorens’ webcams …
Switzerland was similarly affected:
Another European mountain town, Zermatt, Switzerland, also awoke to August snow this morning.
Climate change? No, just unusual weather.
Should we worry?
No.
We should worry only about draconian legislation coming from a Conservative government, which will be made much worse if or when Labour get in in 2024.
My ongoing series on Nigel Farage’s bank account debacle continues.
Congratulations to him, because not only did Dame Alison Rose resign as the head of NatWest, but the head of their subsidiary Coutts, Peter Flavel, resigned on Thursday, July 27, 2023.
I wrote about Dame Alison Rose’s resignation yesterday. Paul Thwaite has replaced her as interim NatWest CEO.
Little did I know that more news would follow that afternoon.
Peter Flavel resigns
Yesterday, I wrote:
The Times‘s view — the main editorial — also points the finger at Coutts’s chief Peter Flavel, who has managed to keep an exceedingly low profile throughout all of this …
As usual, Guido Fawkes beat many in the mainstream media in giving us breaking news.
At 14:11 on Thursday, he posted ‘Coutts CEO Peter Flavel Resigns’ (red emphases his):
Coutts chief executive Peter Flavel has resigned, less than 48 hours after his boss Alison Rose also quit for briefing false information – and breaching client confidentiality – to the BBC about Nigel Farage’s finances. He announced the inevitable this afternoon:
In the handling of Mr Farage’s case we have fallen below the bank’s high standards of personal service. As CEO of Coutts it is right that I bear ultimate responsibility for this, which is why I am stepping down.
Another scalp for Nigel…
Guido later posted Farage’s tweet at the news:
Guido ended his post with this:
NatWest Group chairman Howard Davies is still clinging to his job. For now…
More on Sir Howard Davies below.
At 2:15, The Telegraph published ‘Coutts chief steps down over Nigel Farage de-banking scandal’ (purple emphases mine):
Peter Flavel, who became boss of Coutts in 2016, said the treatment of Mr Farage had “fallen below the bank’s high standards of personal service.”
Paul Thwaite, the interim chief executive of NatWest, which owns Coutts, said: “I have agreed with Peter Flavel that he will step down as Coutts CEO and CEO of our Wealth Businesses by mutual consent with immediate effect.
“Whilst I will be personally sorry to lose Peter as a colleague, I believe this is the right decision for Coutts and the wider group” …
Mr Flavel said: “I am exceptionally proud of my seven years at Coutts and I want to thank the team that have built it into such a high performing business. In the handling of Mr Farage’s case we have fallen below the bank’s high standards of personal service. As CEO of Coutts it is right that I bear ultimate responsibility for this, which is why I am stepping down.”
His column inches are so short because he lay below the radar the whole time. Yes, he should have responded to Nigel Farage about his account closure. However cowardly his behaviour was though, he is the sort of man who believes that discretion is the better part of valour. No doubt he will get a nice payoff and be off to equally sunny climes in his career sooner rather than later. I’m not saying that in support of him, but discretion and integrity are important in life. It’s a pity he lacked integrity.
Note that NatWest’s first rule is to act with integrity. It’s a shame the person who posted this screenshot did not highlight the fourth point:
GB News reaction
On Thursday evening, GB News had several fascinating discussions on the Farage farrago.
On Dewbs & Co, Michelle Dewberry had as her panel Lord Moylan and historian David Starkey. Talk about a dream team. A woman even emailed Michelle to say how much she enjoyed listening to the two men:
They discussed Farage and NatWest in the opening segment, which begins at the 6:03 mark. Starkey criticised people like ex-BBC presenter Emily Maitlis for decrying Farage in this scandal.
Starkey is a Coutts customer. He said that the bank sent a letter to its customers saying that the bank ‘must not be brought into disrepute’ and said that the word ‘disrepute’ was used rather broadly there. He said he was surprised he hadn’t been cancelled. He is rather controversial on the conservative, traditional side of things.
He said that, when looking at the timeline of events, it was only when Farage threatened to go public that NatWest offered him an account with them to replace his Coutts accounts. Starkey then discussed Sir Howard Davies saying that he got the sack from the London School of Economics, which he headed, for giving Colonel Gaddafi’s son an unearned PhD in return for a sizeable donation from Gaddafi’s son’s foundation.
I mentioned this yesterday:
Alistair Osborne, one of The Times‘s business columnists, predicts ‘NatWest clearout looms after Farage fiasco’:
…
As for Davies, who’s on his way out anyway, his judgment has proved a throwback to the days when, as director of the London School of Economics, he accepted a £300,000 donation from a foundation run by Colonel Gaddafi’s son. The rest of the board — mainly a bunch of bankers, including Mark Seligman, ex of Credit Suisse, as the senior independent director — have also shown themselves incapable of governing a bank. Farage reckons they should all go. Again, he’s right. After this fiasco, a clearout looms.
Then Starkey told us that Davies was the first head of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)! Talk about failing upwards.
Both Starkey and Moylan emphasised how important client confidentiality was in banking. Moylan said that he worked for NatWest for a time 30 years ago. Staff received a regular employee bulletin. Under the social news of who got married was a list of people who were no longer employed by the bank. Moylan said that list of people either ‘had their hand in the till’ or broke confidentiality rules. Interesting.
Farage was up next. He was live in Bury that evening:
His editorial (5:43 mark) was about his lack of contact with Peter Flavel. At the 8:30 mark, he discussed Barclays’s call with shareholders that took place earlier that day and said that every question the shareholders asked was about de-banking.
Jacob Rees-Mogg’s State of the Nation followed:
I’ve posted the whole video because it’s excellent. In his editorial, he debunks the latest climate change report, then goes on to discuss climate change with his sister Annunziata and the founder of Labour’s radical wing, Momentum. Later on, he has a woman from PETA discussing Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s household rule that the Starmers’ children were not allowed fish or meat protein until they reached the age of 10. Rees-Mogg reminded his sister of how fond she was of processed ham as a youngster: ‘She could eat it by the hundredweight’.
The pertinent segment here is his discussion about ESG with businessman and ex-MEP Ben Habib:
Habib says that ESG runs everything and that the FCA have a prominent part to play in financial companies’ adherence because of reporting laws made in 2006 and 2008. That, incidentally, was when Tony Blair and Gordon Brown did their turns as Labour Prime Ministers. Habib says that financial corporation reports must include a section on how well the firms comply with ESG and how they will improve their adherence. He thinks the Government should change the law to relax the hold that ESG has on not only finance but other sectors of our society. He said that it should go by its other name, Diversity, Inclusion and Equity, because DIE is what is killing our social relationships. He said that he had been raised colour-blind — the way Martin Luther King advocated — but said that every aspect of DIE is advancing one group of people or policies over another.
On that note, NatWest is ‘purpose’-driven. Here is a screenshot I obtained which shows Dame Alison Rose championing ESG:
It is also a huge deal to qualify as a B Corp in the UK. They espouse ESG and DIE values and have given them the clever name of JEDI, the ‘J’ referring to ‘justice’, as in social justice.
Dan Wootton’s show came next. His editorial took issue with left-wing journalists and Labour politicians criticising Farage and saying that Dame Alison Rose’s dismissal was unfair, especially as she is a woman:
Unfortunately, GB News did not include the panel discussion afterwards. Conservative MP Dame Andrea Jenkyns said that she had had bank accounts closed. She has a damehood. What hope for the rest of us? She assumes this was because the bank deemed her to be a PEP, a politically exposed person. Someone else reminded her that she was a doughty supporter of Brexit, which might have been another factor.
Wootton interviewed Lord Frost:
The discussion about Farage only lasts the first couple of minutes. Frost is delighted that Farage and GB News are bringing this to light. The rest of the time is about how Frost has been labelled a climate change denier for saying that warmer temperatures would probably help Britain’s economy. They certainly would. Right now, it’s freezing. I’m sitting here in a long-sleeved shirt and a sweater.
Anyone wondering if Lord Frost will stand as an MP should know that he probably will. He tells Wootton that is where he can effect change. It’s a matter of not if but when. However, he quashes rumours that he wants to head the Conservative Party.
Headliners, which features comedians discussing the next day’s headlines, had a brief discussion on Emily Maitlis, who now has a podcast that airs on LBC. She said that Nigel Farage is trying to paint himself as the victim and is trying to ‘whip up a populist storm’. You can read more in a Telegraph article.
The Headliners headliners, even though they are left-leaning, took strong exception to Maitlis’s comments. Good for them:
On Friday morning, July 28, Breakfast discussed NatWest’s incredible profits over the past six months and Howard Davies’s questionable desire to remain as the banking group’s chair until his scheduled retirement in or around July 2024:
NatWest is 39% taxpayer-owned via the Government. We bailed it out after the 2008 banking crash.
Telegraph readers’ reactions
On Friday morning, The Telegraph published a selection of readers’ comments, ‘Nigel Farage de-bank, wildfires in Europe and “lazy girl” TikTok trends spark discussion’.
The first comment on Farage says:
Nigel Farage is right – the entire NatWest Board should go. They are responsible and accountable. That’s what being a senior director is. And now we need an investigation into all the banks, big and small, as this type of discrimination could well be embedded in the sector.
The second reads:
These top executives really don’t get it. Dame Alison Rose may well have achieved great things at the bank but her behaviour and that of the board reveals that such people are removed from the fundamental concerns of ordinary people – people who work just as hard, people who are just as capable, as Dame Alison but who are not remunerated with absurd salaries of £5.2 million.
Why they did not immediately understand that you cannot breach client confidentiality in the way she did as CEO and stay in post is an appalling indictment of their professional judgement. They are out of touch with the concerns and values of their customers; instead of listening to their marketing departments and pandering to the likes of Stonewall, they should get their hands dirty and go and work in a branch every once in a while.
The third says:
The so called highly ethical culture of banking which punishes the average man by closing accounts with no explanation or assistance is now truly exposed because NatWest took on a client too big to get away with their behaviour.
I am hoping this harsh treatment of Rose will give the banking sector the much needed shake up it needs for punishing the little man and forcing them out of the system effectively for minor mistakes made in everyday life.
This is a classic case of my enemies’ enemy is my friend, so Mr Farage hence has my full support and I am delighted to see a few senior banking heads roll.
Sir Howard Davies: sad but not sorry
On Friday morning dawned, The Telegraph reported on what NatWest’s chair had said to the media in a conference call. He spoke to shareholders afterwards:
Sir Howard Davies said he serves “at behest of shareholders” but intends to stay on despite the botched handling of the departure of chief executive Dame Alison Rose …
Asked if he has reflected on his position this week, Sir Howard said: “It would be surprising if I hadn’t reflected on my position. So the answer is yes.”
Sir Howard, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England is already preparing to step down by mid-2024 when he will have reached the maximum permitted length of his tenure as chairman – a role he assumed in 2015.
He was speaking as the bank revealed it increased pre-tax operating profit by nearly £1bn year-on-year to £3.6bn in the first six months of 2023.
The results were higher than forecast.
The Guardian‘s live coverage began earlier. Highlights follow, green bolds in the original:
At 6:49:
… NatWest is due to release its financial results at 7am. City analysts predict it will post an operating pretax profit of £1.49bn for the second quarter of 2023.
That would take earnings so far this year up to £3.3bn, up from £2.6bn in the same period last year.
NatWest, which has lost its CEO Alison Rose and the head of Coutts, Peter Flavel, in the last two days, may try to restore a sense of order as it updates investors about its performance …
At 7:20:
… NatWest has announced an interim dividend of 5.5p per share this morning, which will return around £492m to shareholders.
As the UK government owns 38.53% of NatWest, this means £190m will go to the government on 15th September.
Good.
At 8:18:
Speaking to reporters this morning, Davies says NatWest’s board met yesterday and agreed to the terms of reference for an independent review into the handling of Nigel Farage’s accounts at Coutts.
This review will examine the way in which information about that issue has been handled within the bank. The terms of reference of that review will be released today and the finding will be released “in due course”, says Davies.
He adds:
My intention is to continue to lead the board and ensure that the bank remains sound and stable and able to support our 19 million customers.
At 8:26:
Davies: political reaction forced “great leader” Alison Rose out
… He told reporters:
We took the view on Tuesday that even though mistakes had been made, it was on balance right to retain Alison Rose as our CEO.
But the reaction was such as to convince her and the board that her position was untenable.
Davies added that:
I clearly regret the way things have turned out. We’ve lost a great leader as a result, but I now have to look forward.
He was only sorry they got caught!
Also at 8:26:
When asked whether Farage’s accounts at Coutts had been reinstated, Howard Davies says it is “not appropriate for me to speak about the state of his accounts”.
At 8:39:
… Howard Davies says the bank always has an emergency plan ready for unexpected departure.
This plan was considered a few months ago, and NatWest decided Thwaite was the right person to be emergency successor.
This was discussed with Paul himself, Howard Davies says; Thwaite obviously wasn’t expecting this to happen, but was prepared to take the role on.
This position was also discussed with regulators, Davies adds, as they would expect a bank to have a succession plan in place.
At 8:43:
Davies says NatWest’s independent review into the closure of Nigel Farage’s Coutts account will have three dimensions.
It will cover: the decision to close the accounts of Mr Farage; the circumstances around the BBC article (which initially said it was a commercial decision); and to review other Coutts account closures.
At 8:45:
And with regards to the Financial Conduct Authority’s involvement on the Farage bank account debacle, Howard Davies confirms the regulator have raised concerns with the bank.
With regard to account closures, these issues should be independently reviewed; we can certainly assure that will happen, Davies adds.
At 9:02:
NatWest is also asked about Alison Rose’s exit pay, following reports that she could receive a ‘multi-million-pound pay-off’.
Howard Davies says he can’t say precisely when details of the package will be published, explaining:
The independent review will take place and then we’ll have to consider it.
Davies adds that he doesn’t see a reason to depart from the normal practice of reporting executive pay.
He also explained, earlier in the call, that decisions on Rose’s pay can’t be made until the independent review has been completed.
At 9:19:
NatWest has appointed law firm Travers Smith to independently probe its handling of the Farage affair, our City editor Anna Isaac explains.
… One of its more sensitive tasks will be to put a spotlight on the circumstances and nature of any leaks to the press, and what confidential information may have been passed from the banking group to the media, including the BBC.
Beyond the handling of Farage’s accounts, the probe will also look at all accounts closed at Coutts over the past 24 months. It will follow a similar approach as with the Farage-specific investigation: looking at questions of how and why accounts were shut, and what was said to all other customers whose accounts were shut down.
And on a related topic, albeit with a different bank, this news emerged at 10:41:
Politicians on the right of the political spectrum aren’t the only ones to fall victim to ‘debanking’, it seems.
According to the BBC, anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller was told a bank account for her political party would close without explanation.
The BBC reports:
Monzo initially refused to tell Ms Miller why her “True and Fair” party account would be closed in September.
After the BBC contacted the bank about the case, it said it did not allow political party accounts and had made a mistake in allowing it to be opened.
Monzo said it recognised the experience would have been “frustrating for the customer and we’re sorry for that”.
More here.
At 13:12, we learned that the Bank of England is bringing in Ben Bernanke to review its dismal forecasting:
Newsflash: Dr Ben Bernanke, the former head of America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, is to lead a review into the Bank of England’s forecasting.
The BoE says the review will aim to “develop and strengthen” the Bank’s support for the Monetary Policy Committee’s approach to forecasting and monetary policy making in times of uncertainty.
This follows criticism that the Bank failed to predict the surge in inflation over the last year or two, meaning it was too slow to tighten monetary policy by raising interest rates …
A month ago, the Bank’s chief economist, Huw Pill, said the Bank’s forecasting models became become “unworkable” in the current crisis, as they failed to fully appreciate the the interaction of high energy prices and a tight jobs market.
At 14:29:
Farage supports Gina Miller over bank account access
The row over access to UK bank accounts is creating some unlikely alliances.
Nigel Farage has thrown his backing behind anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller, after it emerged this morning that Monzo bank is to close the bank account of Miller’s True and Fair party.
Farage says he stands with Miller, who famously challenged the UK government in 2016 over its authority to trigger the process of leaving the European Union without parliamentary approval.
Miller warned this morning that “we don’t have a functioning democracy” if new political parties cannot access banking services.
At 14:53:
Nils Pratley: It will be surprising if NatWest’s Howard Davies hasn’t gone by Christmas
Can Howard Davies cling onto the top job on the NatWest board until 2024?
Our financial editor, Nils Pratley, thinks not – even though Davies himself hoped to hang on until July 2024, before the Farage bank row blew up.
Nils writes:
Davies has probably escaped the need for an instant resignation only by virtue of the fact that he was going anyway. Plan A, which pre-dates the Coutts fiasco, was for him to leave by July next year for the conventional reason that his nine-year term will be up at that point. An obvious strategy now would be to accelerate the timetable and get out as soon as is practical.
Since the search for a new chair has already been running for a few weeks, it should not take ages to find a new face, even if the pool of likely volunteers may have shrunk over the past week. One suspects Davies will want to be out in the autumn, or at least to have named his successor by then. And it will be amazing if he’s still there by Christmas. Under a new chair the necessary broader overhaul of the boardroom after the incompetence of the past month can begin.
I hope Nils Pratley is right. GB News has reported that Davies does not have the Prime Minister’s support.
At 15:09:
… NatWest cut its forecast for its net interest margin (the gap between what it charges borrowers and pays savers); a sign that some people have been running down their savings or moving them to more lucrative accounts …
Hmm.
Is this yet another case of ‘go woke, go broke’?
We shall see.
For now, I have one more banking post to come next week.
Yesterday, I wrote at length about Dame Alison Rose’s departure from the NatWest Group.
Opinions in print and on air continued into the evening and into Thursday morning, July 27, 2023.
Rose loses government appointments
Christian Calgie, a Guido Fawkes alumnus who now writes for The Express, told us ‘Humiliated Alison Rose sacked from two major Downing Street roles’ (purple emphases mine):
The now-former CEO of NatWest has suffered yet more career setbacks this morning, as the Government confirms she’s been ditched as a top advisor.
Dame Alison Rose had been appointed to an Energy Efficiency Taskforce within the Net Zero department in February and as a member of the PM’s Business Council just last week.
The Express understands she’s now been let go from both positions.
A No. 10 spokesperson said: “Following her resignation as CEO of NatWest Group, the Government has confirmed that Dame Alison Rose is no longer a member of the Prime Minister’s Business Council.”
Separately, a spokesperson for the Department for Net Zero has told the Express: “Following the news overnight, the Secretary of State has asked Dame Alison Rose to step down from her roles as co-chair of the Energy Efficiency Taskforce and as a Member of the Net Zero Council and she has resigned” …
Just last week she was also pictured laughing with Rishi Sunak at Downing Street, where she had been invited as part of the launch of Rishi Sunak’s new Business Council to help “turbocharge economic growth”.
At the time, Dame Alison said: “Partnership between government and business is the cornerstone of a sustainable growth economy.”.
“That’s why I’m delighted to be part of the Prime Minister’s Business Council for 2023. Working together we can face into the nation’s challenges to unlock investment, drive enterprise, grasp the opportunity of climate transition and ultimately, help UK economy to thrive.”
Dame Alison’s fate appeared sealed late last night after both Rishi Sunak, Jeremy Hunt and multiple Cabinet Ministers let it be known they had either lost faith in her continuing in the role or had serious concerns …
Political pressure forced the NatWest board, which had only hours before declared confidence in their CEO, to reconvene, leading to her resignation in the early hours.
The Government should encourage her to give up her damehood. She does not deserve it.
Early on Thursday, The Times reported that Rose could receive a whopping year’s salary. Sadly, this will surprise no one:
Dame Alison Rose’s departure from NatWest was under fresh scrutiny last night after it emerged she may be in line for a multimillion-pound payoff.
The 54-year-old chief executive left her position at the bank by “mutual consent” over the Nigel Farage debanking scandal. Her resignation was announced after a late-night board meeting, convened when Downing Street, the chancellor and other senior cabinet ministers put pressure on her to quit.
Analysts said the fact that Rose had agreed with the board to leave with immediate effect suggested she would receive pay in lieu of working notice. NatWest’s annual report indicates that the bank can make a payment in lieu of 12 months’ notice, signalling that she is in line to receive a year’s salary.
Rose’s pay package last year was £5.25 million, which included a £1.1 million base salary and the same amount again in shares, as well as an annual bonus and performance-related stock awards. NatWest had indicated that it would look to curb parts of Rose’s pay after she admitted leaking confidential information about Farage to the BBC.
NatWest declined to comment on her payoff, but sources said its stance remained the same, suggesting the bank would look to limit her remuneration.
Farage told The Times: “She should not be getting a payoff at all. She has breached the most basic rule of banking and brought the NatWest group into disrepute. It’s a reward for failure.”
My concerns are a) what will she do next and b) how soon will she take up another job? If I were a NatWest decision maker, I would put in writing that she cannot work for twelve months. If she does, she would have to return the payout they gave her. (Personally, I don’t think she should get anything, but the world doesn’t work the way it should.)
These were the final hours before her resignation early on Wednesday:
An hour-long virtual meeting between board members ended the 31-year NatWest career of Dame Alison Rose.
The hastily convened 10pm conference came less than five hours after Sir Howard Davies, the NatWest group chairman, had pledged the board’s “full support” to its beleaguered chief executive. But the members decided she had to go and released a statement, with words from both Davies and Rose, confirming the news at 1.29am …
The final blow was the revelation that Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, and Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, had significant concerns about her remaining in her job. Behind the scenes there was a flurry of calls between senior government officials and the bank to relay a similar message.
Andrew Griffith, City minister, pressed on the late-night exchange of views, said: “There’s always a dialogue between typically Treasury officials and senior people in all of the big major banks. The prime minister and the chancellor have been clear throughout about the principle at stake here, which is that nobody should have their bank account removed as a result of something they’ve said or something that they believe in.”
When questioned over whether he had put in a call to NatWest, Griffith added: “I’m not going to comment on individual conversations that may have happened over the last 24 hours.” He said it was right that Rose had stepped down.
The political fallout from the earlier statement had prompted the NatWest board to reconvene. Then came the early morning U-turn confirmation.
The 1.29am statement said that Rose had agreed to step down by mutual consent and appointed Paul Thwaite, CEO of the bank’s commercial and institutional business, to take over.
[NatWest chairman Sir Howard] Davies, still defending his colleague, said: “It is a sad moment. She has dedicated all her working life so far to NatWest and will leave many colleagues who respect and admire her.”
More about him below.
On Wednesday, British banks were read the riot act by City Minister Andrew Griffith MP:
Leaders from Britain’s biggest banks admitted yesterday that the Farage debanking fiasco had tarnished the sector’s reputation with the public as they were hauled into a meeting with the City minister, Andrew Griffith. Griffith told banking chiefs, including those from NatWest, HSBC, Lloyds, Barclays and Nationwide, that the idea a customer could be debanked over their views was “wholly unacceptable”.
Also:
The Information Commissioner’s Office has announced an investigation into whether any rules were broken. NatWest shares fell 3.7 per cent yesterday.
The Telegraph had more on the Information Commissioner’s Office in ‘NatWest may have broken the law over Farage Coutts scandal’:
On Wednesday, senior Conservative MPs demanded that Dame Alison forgo any severance pay. The bank declined to say whether she will receive an exit package.
John Edwards, the information commissioner, said on Wednesday: “The banking duty of confidentiality is over a hundred years old, and it is clear that it would not permit the discussion of a customer’s personal information with the media.
“We trust banks with our money and with our personal information. Any suggestion that this trust has been betrayed will be concerning for a bank’s customers, and for regulators like myself.”
The ICO said that if the bank could not resolve a complaint made by Mr Farage, it would begin its own inquiries.
Mr Edwards warned banks against holding excessive information on their customers after The Telegraph revealed NatWest had accumulated a 40-page dossier on Mr Farage to feed back to its Wealth Reputational Risk Committee. That dossier could be in breach of data protection rules …
The ICO can bring criminal prosecutions, although it is more likely that NatWest would face a civil penalty, sources said.
It can issue fines of up to four per cent of a company’s worldwide turnover, which in the case of NatWest could run into hundreds of millions of pounds.
GB News reaction
Nigel Farage devoted the bulk of his show to Wednesday’s developments:
While Farage was happy that Rose resigned, he said in his editorial that Sir Howard Davies and the board of directors should also stand down. He also said that he would be developing a website dedicated to people who have had their bank accounts closed for no good reason. Former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng was Farage’s first guest. Kwarteng said that banks’ targeting of individuals and closing their accounts is something new and he was not aware of it until recently, especially with small businesses. He was grateful that Farage is shining a light on this parlous business practice. Conservative MP Royston Smith was the next guest. He said that TSB had closed his account a year ago for no apparent reason then had the affrontery to send him a cheque for the balance. He had nowhere to cash it, so he tried to contact the bank to no avail. It was only when he tweeted recently about his situation that TSB finally contacted him. The situation is still unresolved.
Afterwards came a vox pop. GB News had interviewed people working in the City of London, the financial centre. The verdict was about 50/50 on Rose’s resignation. Some, including a lot of Europeans, said that it was an overreaction. Britons, however, by and large, said it was the right thing to do. Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle, not a natural fit with Farage, appeared next. His name has not helped people with whom he has been associated. A charity reluctantly told him he could not be associated with them because he is too controversial, or so their bank thought, and his lodgers (renters) have had the same experience with their banks, one of which was Santander. He will support Farage’s quest to stop this happening.
Countess Alexandra Tolstoy came on next. I discussed her case in my July 12 post, and she related much the same to Farage. Here again, NatWest was the culprit. The Times featured her story today, Thursday, July 27. Farage’s last segment concerned the mysterious case of a bank branch in Reading, Berkshire, found guilty of mishandling loans to medium-sized businesses. The bank in question, HBOS owned by Lloyds, agreed to lend them money. Once a company had spent the money, the bank would call in the loan, forcing the company to go bankrupt. The bank then got the assets of that company and made millions. This happened during David Cameron’s and Theresa May’s premierships. A cabinet secretary said he would look into it and then said he had been advised not to talk to former Thames Valley Police and Crime Commissioner Anthony Stansfeld who had raised the issue with him. Stansfeld told Farage this scam was well into the hundreds of millions of pounds. The Prime Ministers did not want to know. The network also involved other banks in other cities, but their police forces ignored the story. Stansfeld said it took three years to solve the case, held before a jury, and put things to right thanks to the chief constable. It seems part of this investigation is still ongoing in Bristol, where Lloyds says it is still investigating, but, for now, denies any wrongdoing.
Jacob Rees-Mogg was next:
The discussion about Farage’s bank account started at the 20:21 mark. Rees-Mogg said that taxpayers lost £325m that day on Rose’s resignation. A former Coutts employee, Oliver Lewis was a guest. He had left the bank to write a biography of George Orwell, oddly enough. Lewis left in 2015 when Rose was appointed the head of wealth management. He was amazed to find out that all this had happened, because she was so professional and diplomatic.
Toby Young of the Free Speech Union took issue with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) complaining about the Government urging Rose’s resignation. This is because Farage had no due process; Coutts’s decision, Young said, was overridden by ideology. Oliver Lewis said that he used to write meeting minutes but never would have written Farage’s report in such a brusque way with so many accusations. Conversation then turned to Brexit Derangement Syndrome — Rees-Mogg’s words — about Nigel and Boris Johnson. Toby Young said that unwarrented bank account closures could happen to anyone. He praised Keir Starmer for finally condemning Coutts’s conduct in this affair. Rees-Mogg wondered what would happen if former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had been debanked.
All hoped that banking would return to normal soon. Lewis said that banking at NatWest is not 100% commercial because of the government bailout after the 2008 banking crisis — the taxpayer still owns 39% of the banking group — but also because government basically guarantees banking rights, at least in principle.
Dan Wootton devoted two segments to the Farage farrago.
In his editorial, he said it is important that people continue to speak up about it, otherwise we will be walking into enforced personal silence and control. He said that the criticisms of GB News are actually criticisms of the majority of the British people. Like Trump was for many Americans, GB News was ‘only in the way’. The people are the target:
Wootton also spoke with The Telegraph‘s Celia Walden — Mrs Piers Morgan — who finds the situation appalling. She thinks our banks’ social policy practices came over from the United States:
On Thursday morning, Spiked‘s Fraser Myers told the channel’s Breakfast show that Coutts probably thought it was doing its notional duty by closing Farage’s account, which, he said, was ‘a scary thing’:
What this mean for the future of ESG?
On Thursday, The Times posted ‘What does the Farage v Coutts row mean for ESG?’
Opinions in the legal world are divided, but law firms and other businesses have been moving towards ESG in recent years:
For some commentators it was only a matter of time that unbridled enthusiasm for the creation of standards for ethical corporate behaviour backfired. Even at the end of 2021 litigation was emerging around ESG that involved arguments over the boundaries of liability.
Nonetheless, the ESG bandwagon has continued to collect passengers, including many prominent law firms. In February the Anglo-US law firm DLA Piper was placed top of an inaugural ESG league table for the legal profession compiled by Impactvise, a consultancy that specialises in corporate ethics. The consultancy, which is based in Switzerland, was founded by two lawyers: Yannick Hausmann and Adrian Peyer, both of whom had worked at Zurich Insurance.
Impactvise certainly talks the ESG talk, saying that “legal service providers — particularly, lawyers at law firms and in-house corporate counsels — are key players in the modern value chain, and have a unique position to support the move towards a sustainable future”. But with rumblings that Farage could take legal action against Coutts over its approach to him and his account, many law firms may be having second thoughts about how closely they want to stand next to their clients’ ESG schemes, or indeed whether they should have their own.
Jean-Pierre Douglas-Henry, the managing director of sustainability and resilience at DLA Piper, acknowledges the conundrum. He says: “Businesses are increasingly being asked by policymakers to be aware of the impact of sustainability issues such as climate change and biodiversity loss.
“In some countries businesses are being required by law to factor these risks into their operations at every level, while in others they are just waking up to the risks involved.”
Others argue that it is wrong to label Farage’s row with Coutts as having its roots in the ESG movement. “The issue in the Farage case is that a risk-based decision about a politically exposed person had nothing at all to do with ESG and corporate values . . . and yet Coutts appears to have conflated the two things,” says Michael Evans, a former head of communications at Baker McKenzie in London and now a director at Byfield, a litigation and reputation consultancy.
Evans argues that Coutts’s risk committee was “very selective in identifying Farage as posing a reputational risk to the bank and its inclusive values when you look at some of its other current and former clients. In dropping Farage as a client, this was an example of virtue signalling gone too far by Coutts” …
The Coutts case is also interesting because of Farage’s use of a subject access request under freedom of information law to get a report from Coutts’s reputational risk committee used to justify the closure. Tony Williams, a former Clifford Chance managing partner who is now the director of the legal profession consultancy Jomati, says that the use of that facility represents a “ticking time bomb that many organisations may have if they prepare profiles of their customers”.
Williams speculates that law firms “will become rather more circumspect as to certain clients they act for, but inevitably will make some commercial decisions and recognise the reality that if every client was perfect they probably wouldn’t need lawyers very much”.
As to whether the Farage-Coutts saga will hole ESG below the waterline, Evans is doubtful. “That is not to say the anti-ESG backlash isn’t real, but the legal sector’s view to date has very much been that a firm must have its own house in order so that they can be taken seriously by big corporate clients grappling with ESG-related issues,” he says. “This view seems unlikely to change any time soon.”
Ben Marlow, The Telegraph‘s chief City commentator, says ‘The NatWest debacle exposes the bone-headedness of corporate moralising’:
There needs to be a thorough rethink of the bank’s pious posing and how its devotion to the corporate “purpose” movement led it to make such a series of terrible decisions.
The bone-headedness of corporate moralising is as much to blame for this debacle as the poor judgement of senior executives. Indeed, it is hard to imagine that the bank would ever have picked a fight with the former UKIP leader in the first place if it hadn’t well and truly disappeared down a rabbit hole of hypocrisy.
This is an organisation that harps on endlessly about diversity and inclusion, yet went to great lengths to come up with reasons to dissolve its relationship with one person on the basis that his personal views didn’t fit with their interpretation of the world. What could be less inclusive than that?
As Farage correctly points out, the problem with so much of the Ethical, Social and Governance (ESG) fanaticism that companies have been captured by is that our values and the politics that underpin them are, erm, diverse.
And because ESG is essentially an ideological leap of faith, its most committed proponents struggle to accept anyone challenging their stance.
The experience of Reverend Richard Fothergill is no less troubling than Farage’s. The clergyman was allegedly de-banked by Yorkshire Building Society after 17 years as an account holder for asking its customer services department whether promotion of LGBT causes was a good use of its time …
Banks have turned contempt into an art form and suspicions of profiteering during a cost of living crunch are hard to avoid. Customers want rip-off charges to end, and fairer savings rates, particularly when they’ve suddenly found themselves on a mortgage that is no longer even remotely affordable …
If NatWest is to recover quickly from this damaging episode it needs to abandon the moral crusade and rediscover – yet again – the old-fashioned and boring business of being a bank.
On Thursday morning, The Telegraph reported that NatWest and Barclays received the most complaints about account closures:
NatWest was the subject of the joint most complaints over decisions to close bank accounts last year, data show, a day after its boss resigned following a scandal over the closure of Nigel Farage’s Coutts account.
Customers complained about NatWest and rival Barclays 274 times each in 2022/23, figures supplied to Bloomberg showed. This includes cases linked to NatWest’s Royal Bank of Scotland brand.
The data from the Financial Ombudsman Service, the independent body that settles issues between customers and lenders, show NatWest was the most complained-about bank for the past three years in terms of account closures, although the absolute number for all the lenders is a fraction of the millions of accounts they each service.
It comes after Dame Alison Rose resigned on Wednesday after discussing Mr Farage’s account with a BBC journalist, wiping £850m off the value of the lender.
Should the NatWest board go?
It isn’t just Nigel Farage saying that Sir Howard Davies and NatWest’s board of directors should go.
On Thursday, The Times posted ‘Investor’s ire at “appalling” bank board’:
In a blistering broadside, Martin Walker, head of UK equities at Invesco, a NatWest shareholder, said, “there is clearly a problem in this business with governance.
“Frankly, I am appalled at both management and board behaviour in this whole episode. NatWest is a good business that has many strengths and when the governance isn’t robust within a business, then those strengths will never be reflected in the share price.”
Walker’s intervention increases the pressure on Sir Howard Davies, the bank’s chairman, who already faces scrutiny over the chaotic departure of Rose, the lender’s chief executive …
“Her role was clearly untenable,” Walker said. “You have to call into question the judgment of the board here” …
Walker said the Farage affair raised concerns beyond Rose’s departure. Invesco owns a stake in NatWest worth about £128 million, a portion of which is managed by Walker.
Davies, apparently, was already scheduled to leave NatWest:
A source at the bank insisted that Davies, who was already due to step down by the middle of next year, had “absolutely engaged” with the government. NatWest shares fell by 9½p, or 3.7 per cent, to close at 241¾p yesterday as investors digested the developments.
Alistair Osborne, one of The Times‘s business columnists, predicts ‘NatWest clearout looms after Farage fiasco’:
The taxpayer owns 39 per cent of NatWest, the continuing legacy of 2008’s £45.5 billion bailout in the lender’s previous guise as Royal Bank of Scotland. So didn’t Davies check whether the board’s contentious backing of Rose had the support of No 10 and No 11? Apparently he did speak to senior individuals in the Treasury more than once in the 24 hours before Tuesday’s 5.45pm announcement. But there must have been some horribly crossed wires.
No sooner was the bank’s ludicrous statement out than The Times found the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, had significant concerns. Ditto three other cabinet ministers. One delivered some home truths: that Rose has “no integrity”, the chairman has “lost his credibility” and “the whole board has got to go if it wants to defend her”.
The upshot? A screeching U-turn at 1.30am with Rose going by “mutual consent”, replaced for an initial 12 months by commercial chief Paul Thwaite. Davies called it a “sad moment”. It is for the contrite boss, who’d worked for the bank for more than 30 years and whose as-yet undisclosed payoff may still stoke fresh controversy. But, with the Financial Conduct Authority and Information Commissioner’s Office poking around, a row over debanking clients and Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer agreeing she had to go, her position was untenable. The shares fell 3.7 per cent to 241¾p.
As for Davies, who’s on his way out anyway, his judgment has proved a throwback to the days when, as director of the London School of Economics, he accepted a £300,000 donation from a foundation run by Colonel Gaddafi’s son. The rest of the board — mainly a bunch of bankers, including Mark Seligman, ex of Credit Suisse, as the senior independent director — have also shown themselves incapable of governing a bank. Farage reckons they should all go. Again, he’s right. After this fiasco, a clearout looms.
Alistair Osborne’s colleagues, Dominic O’Connell and Emma Duncan, gave their views in ‘Fiasco in the boardroom: Times writers’ verdicts on Alison Rose’s resignation’.
Dominic O’Connell says:
given what has happened with Rose a wider shake-up of the board is likely.
Emma Duncan says in the aftermath of Rose’s resignation:
The question now is whether Sir Howard Davies, the bank’s chairman, will survive …
The Financial Conduct Authority has demanded an independent review of Rose’s actions, and says ominously that it “will decide if any further action is necessary”.
Davies, however, said that the board had “full confidence” in her. That was, frankly, bizarre.
The Times‘s view — the main editorial — also points the finger at Coutts’s chief Peter Flavel, who has managed to keep an exceedingly low profile throughout all of this:
Also in the crosshairs for this debacle, together with the NatWest chairman, Sir Howard Davies, is Peter Flavel, head of Coutts. His company profile lauds him for making the image of the inclusive-yet-exclusive cash warehouse “more warm and modern”.
GB News’s hedge fund owner makes fortune
And, finally, a GB News’s co-owner, who also owns the hedge fund Marshall Wace, made millions for the fund by betting against NatWest, The Telegraph reported on Wednesday:
GB News owner Sir Paul Marshall’s hedge fund has made a multi-million pound gain on its bet against NatWest shares following the exit of Dame Alison Rose.
Regulatory filings show that Marshall Wace has the biggest short position in the lender’s shares meaning it stands to gain from falls in the bank’s market price.
The fund netted paper gains of around £5m on Wednesday after NatWest’s share price slumped more than 3.7pc after the departure of its chief executive Dame Alison Rose, which wiped more than £850m off the value of the lender.
While the gain represents a tiny sum relative to Marshall Wace’s more than $60bn in assets under management, it may give Sir Paul extra satisfaction given his stance against “woke” business culture …
Sir Paul, whose son Winston was a member of the band Mumford and Sons, has been a prominent backer of Brexit, calling it “a huge opportunity for the UK”.
Ahh, that explains why Winston is a regular GB News guest.
This bet was computer-driven and placed before the Farage farrago:
The hedge fund has software it calls TOPS (Trade Optimised Portfolio System), which analyses the views of analysts and economists and gives indications where to invest.
Marshall Wace first disclosed that it was building a short position against NatWest in March, when fears were growing over the health of the global financial system following the collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Credit Suisse.
At the start of last month it had borrowed 0.8pc of the shares to profit from price falls, but has since trimmed the bet to 0.59pc, according to data from the Financial Conduct Authority.
Last year, alongside Legatum, a Dubai-based group founded by the billionaire Christopher Chandler, he bought out the US entertainment giant Warner Bros. Discovery and GB News co-founders Andrew Cole and Mark Schneider of their stake in the news network.
Last year, Sir Paul shared a pot of more than £720m with a group of 23 partners after his London-based hedge fund posted a surge in profits.
Marshall Wace declined to comment.
Another update will come in due course.
What a happy day Wednesday, July 26 turned out to be.
The head of NatWest Group, Dame Alison Rose, resigned in the early hours of the morning:
Somewhere in The Telegraph it said (H/T to a Guido Fawkes reader, purple emphases mine):
Victoria Scholar, head of investment at Interactive Investor, said:
As the first woman to take the top job at one of the big four UK banks back in 2019, this is a sad moment for female representation …
It certainly is. Women are no purer than men when they’re in a position of responsibility or prominence. For anyone doubting that, think Hillary Clinton.
I will go into Dame Alison’s resignation in more depth, but what follows are discussions and reports leading to her exit.
Boris Johnson gives his view
On Friday, July 21, The Times reported that NatWest was likely to face a deluge of subject access requests from angry ex-customers:
NatWest is set to be deluged with demands from “debanked” customers attempting to discover why they lost their accounts.
A Facebook group of 10,000 people, claiming to have had their NatWest accounts shut, has been filled with customers sharing templates and instructions on how to get hold of data held about them.
It comes after Nigel Farage used the “subject access request” (SAR) — a data protection right — to obtain a 40-page dossier outlining the reasons behind Coutts’s decision to drop him. It led to an apology from NatWest Group’s chief executive yesterday …
Writing on the Facebook group called “NatWest closed down my account” one former customer said: “I have just submitted a subject access request on NatWest, here is a link. I encourage everyone on this group to do so, let’s keep them busy.”
Another shared a template of a request sent directly to Dame Alison Rose, NatWest’s chief executive. He said: “I strongly believe that we all have the right to know why our accounts were closed. If you’re in the same situation, I encourage you to send a similar request to NatWest …”
NatWest said: “We would always encourage customers who have any queries about their accounts to contact us directly in the first instance.
“Customers who wish to obtain a SAR have a right to access and receive a copy of their customer data, and can do so by visiting natwest.com.”
The following graphic came from another source, but these sections of the GDPR (data protection law) may be relevant:
That evening, The Times posted another article, ‘Nigel Farage: Boris Johnson points finger at NatWest boss Alison Rose’:
Boris Johnson has called for the banking chief at the heart of the Nigel Farage fiasco to lose her job if she leaked confidential information, as MPs challenged her lucrative bonus.
The former prime minister said he would “wager the entire contents of my own personal bank account” that Dame Alison Rose, chief executive of NatWest Group, had discussed Farage’s account at Coutts, a subsidiary, with Simon Jack, the BBC’s business editor.
The journalist and the banking executive sat next to each other at a BBC correspondents’ charity dinner at the five-star Langham Hotel across from Broadcasting House on July 3.
It was one day before Jack published a story suggesting Farage had not met the wealth threshold for Coutts – a claim later proven to be false.
Johnson, writing in The Daily Mail, said: “I would bet my house that it was no coincidence that the following day Simon Jack ran a BBC story claiming that the decision by Coutts to whack Farage was nothing to do with politics.
“Is there anyone who seriously thinks that Alison Rose was not involved — especially since neither party is now willing to comment?”
Johnson called for Andrew Griffith, the City minister, to establish the facts about “how a false impression of Farage’s financial circumstances was given to the media”.
He added: “I am afraid that if Dame Alison was in any way responsible then she really needs to go” …
Johnson said he “vehemently” supported Farage over the row. He added: “This is about far more than the bank account of one person. It is about freedom under the law, for everyone in this country.
“It is about the freedom to think and say what you believe — provided you don’t break the law — without the fear of open or covert persecution.
“That freedom made our country great. It is under threat. It is time to fight.”
Meanwhile, Rose had been seen at various public events just before the Farage farrago broke. Fellow guests were bemused:
Yesterday, it emerged that Rose had raised eyebrows at the sustainability event for the space industry just 24 hours before the Farage scandal broke.
She mingled with guests including astronauts Tim Peake and Chris Hadfield at the Buckingham Palace event on June 28.
It was hosted by the King as part of his Sustainable Markets Initiative, of which NatWest is a member, which aims to accelerate the world’s transition to a sustainable future.
The event was to encourage the global private sector to align space exploration with sustainability.
One source claimed that “no one knew” why Rose was there and that other guests were “bemused” by her presence.
It was her second climate change event of the day, June 28, after she attended the Bloomberg Sustainable Business Summit in the morning.
During an interview at the summit, she said the “climate emergency” was the “biggest challenge we are going to face”.
The article reminded us of her enormous salary and sizeable bonus — as well as the banking group’s priorities, which are not in maximising profits. It is worth remembering that since the banking debacle of 2008, part of NatWest Group has been owned by the taxpayers. Currently, we own 39% of NatWest:
In February, she took home a bonus of £643,000 — split half in cash and half in shares. Last year, she earned £5.2million. She was the first NatWest Group chief executive since the 2008 taxpayer bailout to get an annual cash bonus.
Craig Mackinlay, a Tory MP, said: “Going along to various fringe events in the net zero and sustainability field does not sound to me like attempts to maximise profits for shareholders.
“She is being paid a very, very generous salary and it is obvious that the bank is off on a strange path under her watch. There should be question marks over her future bonuses” …
A source close to the bank defended supporting climate change, describing it as a “growth lever”.
In addition to Net Zero, there is another aspect to the bank’s policies:
James Clarry placed his role as the Coutts & Co diversity champion front and centre of his professional responsibilities at the bank (Tom Witherow writes).
The former chief operating officer, 50, wrote on his LinkedIn profile that he “founded allyship programmes” and “won multiple awards in recognition of inclusive leadership” — above other attributes such as “delivering growth” and “generating revenue”.
The executive, who lives with his wife Annie, told followers online he had been hailed as “Champion Ally” at the 2021 Ethnicity Awards. His name came to the fore after Coutts told a client of almost 30 years that accounts of clients under suspicion of racial or discriminatory conduct would be referred to the senior leadership team, including Clarry, for a “final decision”.
Clarry, a former head boy at a grammar school in Buckinghamshire, studied law at the University of Nottingham in the 1990s, beginning his career at Allen & Overy, a “magic circle” law firm (one of the five most prestigious London-headquartered multinational law firms). His first job at the Royal Bank of Scotland was as a solicitor in its global banking and markets division. He rose through the ranks before transferring to Coutts — which was owned by the RBS Group — in 2011 where, as its general counsel, he was treated to regular travel to Jersey, Switzerland and Asia. As the chief operating officer, he was the chairman of the wealth businesses risk committee, a member of the reputational risk committee and a regular among those attending the Coutts risk and audit committee. He listed “awareness raising” among his “skills” online.
One wonders whether he was still in charge of the wealth business risk committee and a member of the reputational risk committee when Coutts made the decision to close Farage’s accounts.
Clarry has since moved on from Coutts to charity:
Last month he left to take up a job at social justice charity Justice and Care, which tackles modern slavery. On leaving, he wrote: “I have many incredible memories, but I am particularly proud of our work on gender and ethnic equity.”
The Sun reacts
On Sunday, The Sun‘s veteran columnist Trevor Kavanagh wrote:
NIGEL FARAGE has not just blown the bloody doors off Coutts bank and its Stasi-style spying.
He has exposed a conspiracy to shift this country permanently to the left — through Whitehall, the police, town halls, the BBC and the boardrooms of Britain.
Coutts’ dossier of lies, cover-ups and officially sanctioned surveillance provide a devastating glimpse of the Brussels-loving, Brexit-hating, woke-worshipping Blob at work.
Coutts, favoured by the very rich, from Mafia crooks to the King of England, has been caught with its pants down, in flagrante.
It is not just Farage who has been singled out for expulsion from woke society.
Tens of thousands more have found their banking lifeline cut off for no reason.
Kavanagh blamed a British organisation called Common Purpose:
… they may actually be victims of another shadowy organisation, known as The Octopus, set up in the Blair era, whose tentacles reach into every nook and cranny of our daily lives.
Its real name is Common Purpose.
You have almost certainly never heard of it.
But it has grown in two decades from a small group of influencers under middle-class networker Julia Middleton into a global multimillion pound charity with leverage in the highest places.
In 1988, she spelled out how to do it.
“A small, committed and co-ordinated group of people producing pressure from the outside,” she said.
“Two or three determined fifth columnists on the inside. And the stamina from both groups to keep on and on and on putting them on the agenda until they eventually had to be discussed.”
Even she might be surprised how successful these plans would prove.
Kavanagh cited examples of the organisation at work over the years in many areas of public life:
CP’s luminaries include ex-Met boss Cressida Dick, ex-EU Commissioner Chris Patten, council bosses and top civil service mandarins who pay £5,000-plus for lessons on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, the issue at the heart of the Coutts row with Farage.
Its clients may also include Coutts itself, just as its relation, the Royal Bank of Scotland, was before being bailed out by the Goverment in 2008.
The Sun last week asked Coutts if any senior figures — including chief executive Dame Alison Rose — have attended such courses.
So far, no response.
The same question could be put to Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, which also designated EDI [Equity, Diversity and Inclusion] as its primary goal — apparently ahead of cutting inflation.
The BBC is certainly a supporter.
During his time at the Beeb, ITV’s political editor Robert Peston recalls a CP course which ended “with a collective wail about the irresponsibility and excessive power of the media”.
Talking of irresponsible media, Alison Rose is the alleged source of inaccurate claims (aka “lies”) peddled by the BBC’s Simon Jack that Farage did not have enough cash to justify his Coutts account.
Both Rose and Jack now risk losing their jobs.
Common Purpose ranges far wider than Brexit-bashing, Gay Pride, trans issues and Net Zero.
It is closely linked with anti-press hypocrites Hacked Off, who want newspapers regulated by the state.
Political censorship is also backed by another totalitarian group, which pressures advertisers to withdraw business from media whose views they disagree with.
They’re the modern equivalent of book burners.
They bully advertising agencies into denying publicity for organisations deemed to be on the wrong side of the culture wars — such as The Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Express and GB News.
Kavanagh pointed out that Labour had no comment on the Farage farrago or woke banking:
Interestingly, Sir Keir Starmer’s press-bashing Labour Party has had absolutely nothing to say about this scandal.
As for woke banking, it has been going on in the US for some time as well. In that sense, I’m not sure that Common Purpose is all to blame. I’m pretty sure this originated in the US.
In my post on Friday, I cited The Telegraph‘s Alison Pearson, who discussed Environmental, Social and Governance — ESG — policies and scores:
So alarming is the tentacular stranglehold this philosophy has over financial institutions that, back in the spring, Governor Ron DeSantis took steps to ban ESG in Florida. He called it “woke banking”. “What it’s evolved into is a mechanism to inject political ideology into investment decisions, corporate governance, and really just the everyday economy,” said DeSantis. ESG policies were enforced by “elites” in financial institutions to push “woke” political agendas which did not not prioritise financial interests.
The BBC apologises to Farage
My last post on Farage’s bank account was dated Friday, July 21. At that point, Conservative MPs were aghast that the head of one of the UK’s largest banking groups would discuss a former customer’s account with a BBC reporter, especially over dinner. While Dame Alison had apologised, the BBC had not.
On Monday morning, July 24, The Express reported that a former BBC newsreader urged the corporation to apologise to Farage for its error in reporting the story:
A former BBC newsreader has called on one of the corporation’s journalists to apologise to Nigel Farage over a story about his bank account being shut.
Nicholas Owen made the comment about a report by the BBC‘s business editor Simon Jack that the ex-Ukip and Brexit Party leader had been cut off by Coutts because he did not meet the wealth threshold.
But it has since emerged that Mr Farage’s account was closed because his views did not “align” with the prestigious private bank, which is owned by NatWest.
The BBC journalist sat next to NatWest chief executive Dame Alison Rose the night before the article was published earlier this month.
Mr Owen told GB News: “Simon Jack is a jolly good journalist, jolly good at his job, and he sits next to a banker who gives him a line on the Nigel Farage story, well, of course, he’s going to go with that, it’s a jolly good source.
“But if that source turns out to be wrong, the facts are simply the other way round as Nigel himself has now discovered in great detail, then for goodness’ sake, just put your hands up. Simon, come on lad, just say ‘Sorry, got that wrong’.”
Mr Farage has written to the head of the Beeb demanding a formal apology over its reporting on the closure of his Coutts bank account.
In his letter to director-general Tim Davie, he said he had faced “humiliating” publicity due to the corporation’s article.
It cited a source as saying the move to close his account was a “commercial” decision rather than political reasons as he was claiming.
The BBC has since published an update to the original story by business editor Simon Jack, admitting it “turned out not to be accurate”.
Yet, an apology had not been forthcoming. The ‘turned out not to be accurate’ statement appeared on a previous evening news bulletin and on the corporation’s webpage, without a personal admission to Farage himself.
It was only late on Monday afternoon that reporter Simon Jack finally apologised to Farage:
Guido Fawkes noted (red emphases his):
Took him long enough. Nige’s legal threats probably woke him up a bit…
Farage tweeted his thanks for Jack’s apology and said that the BBC News CEO Deborah Turness also apologised to him:
Farage covered the corporation’s apologies on his GB News show that evening, acknowledging them as ‘fulsome’ and ‘very, very rare’. He then turned his attention to Coutts’s head, Peter Flavel, from whom he has heard nothing, and said he wants to get ‘the absolute truth’ on what happened. Farage said he has now put in a subject access request to NatWest, his previous one had been to Coutts, which produced the shocking 40-page report, which I covered on July 20. Farage ended by thanking Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Andrew Griffith MP for their support:
On Tuesday, a BBC report told us:
Mr Farage said he accepted the apologies “with good grace”, but said questions for Coutts remained.
He thanked BBC News CEO Deborah Turness – who has written to him – and business editor Simon Jack – who has tweeted – for their apologies.
“It’s not often that the BBC apologise. But for the BBC to apologise, I’m very, very pleased,” Mr Farage said.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s PM programme, Mr Farage said he had had to publish a lot of material in order to clear up misinformation in the wake of the 4 July story.
“I had to go to very great lengths and great personal damage to undo the story,” Mr Farage said.
“There is no fault or no blame on the BBC. This now goes right back to the Natwest Banking Group [owners of Coutts].
“Someone in that group decided it was appropriate, legal and ethical to leak details of my personal financial situation.
“That, I think, is wrong on every level – and that is where the spotlight should be and it will.”
Mr Jack, who tweeted his apology, said his story had been “from a trusted and senior source”.
“However, the information turned out to be incomplete and inaccurate. Therefore, I would like to apologise to Mr Farage,” Mr Jack continued.
Mr Farage later said: “Jack says, in the tweet, that his information came from a trusted and senior source. I would suggest that it may well have been a very senior source.”
On 21 July, the BBC updated its original article to say it had “not been accurate”. Mr Farage then asked for a formal apology from the BBC.
On Monday, the BBC said on its Corrections and Clarifications website: “We acknowledge that the information we reported – that Coutts’ decision on Mr Farage’s account did not involve considerations about his political views – turned out not to be accurate and have apologised to Mr Farage.”
The de-banked Anglican priest
On Tuesday evening, The Telegraph published the Revd Richard Fothergill’s story about his cancellation by Yorkshire Building Society, ‘Not even Reverends like me are safe from the banks’ woke purge’. I covered his story on July 6.
He says that, as a Yorkshireman, the building society had always been a part of his life. His father had an account there for a quarter of a century, and he had an account there for 17 years, then:
Like millions of savings account holders, I received an email from them nearly every month saying “How are we doing? We want to hear from you!”. In May one such message came through promoting the upcoming LGBTQIA+ Pride month in June, so I used this as an opportunity to offer feedback.
I wrote back two paragraphs expressing two views. One: was promoting Pride really such a good use of their time? Were there not implications for their brand?
Second: as a Minister in the Church, I expressed a strong ethical concern about the ‘T’ element of LGBT, particularly given how transgender ideology impacts children.
I thought nothing of it, and was pretty sure their Customer Relations department would just ignore me. At best, I assumed, if another 100 YBS customers pushed back, perhaps next year they would dial it down? I was obviously polite in my message to them, and lawyers who have seen both our pieces of correspondence confirm this.
I heard nothing from them for two weeks. Then a rather sharp letter suddenly arrived. It declared: “Your comments will not stand” and “we must protect our workforce from prejudice”. Then, rather cryptically – given this was the first I had heard about it – it added: “The relationship between us has irrevocably broken down.”
Remember, I wasn’t criticising them for how they manage money or any particular individual; I was merely challenging their straying into contentious social issues pushing on us customers a particular worldview. They asked for feedback and I gave them some – it’s just that my comments were the wrong sort.
Afterwards, he got in touch with Toby Young’s Free Speech Union:
Initially I was going to ignore all this. But as I prayed, I came to feel the right thing to do was to stand up against this intolerance and bullying. I talked to my friends at the Free Speech Union and they put me in touch with an excellent journalist who wrote up my story accurately, and off we went. It has struck a chord with the public …
As a Church leader, I want to flag up the insidiousness of this cause which none of us had ever heard about five years ago. I believe we should all stand up against this woke worldview and be confident we are in the right, not being ‘discriminatory’, ‘intolerant’, or ‘bigoted’ for doing so. Far from it, we are protecting future generations from a creed which I and many others firmly believe puts minors on a pathway to gender altering surgery, sterility and much mental trauma.
I have great hope that Britons will not allow this to happen and that woke thinking will be removed wholly from our culture. In my view, a just, fair, tolerant culture is one based on the revelations of God through Jesus Christ. It says in the Bible, ‘it is for freedom’s sake that Christ has set you free’ and that applies to all aspects of life – freedom from bullying, freedom from fear, freedom to think for yourself, freedom to choose, freedom to worship and associate with whom you like.
Let’s not let a narrow group of woke extremists take that away. Let’s return to our foundations as a nation – one that knows and trusts in God.
I fully agree, but our nation is no longer ‘one that knows and trusts in God’, hence the problem!
Tuesday’s spotlight on Coutts and NatWest
Articles and commentary continued to emerge about Coutts and parent company NatWest on Tuesday, July 25.
In the late afternoon, The Telegraph published ‘Nigel Farage accuses Coutts boss of being “asleep at the wheel”‘, which concerns its chief, Peter Flavel:
Nigel Farage has accused the boss of Coutts of being “asleep at the wheel” throughout the scandal over its decision to “de-bank” him because of his political views.
Mr Farage, the former Brexit Party leader, said he had written to Peter Flavel three times but has yet to receive a reply, calling his handling of the situation “an absolute disgrace” …
Mr Farage was placed on a “glide path to exit” by the institution in March, and it is now set to pull down the shutters on his account within weeks.
The politician, who says he has been refused accounts at 10 other banks, has told Mr Flavel that he plans to turn up at a branch and withdraw his money in cash on the final day.
In an email sent to the Coutts CEO on April 19, he wrote: “I retired from active politics in January 2020, so doubt I can still be a politically exposed person.
“My recent business activity has been quite normal. Whilst I have no desire for this event to be in the public arena, I can’t help wonder that there may be some prejudice here.
“If other banks decided that I am too high profile, then both of us would be in a very interesting public position. What on earth is going on?”
The first paragraph of that email, dated April 19 — which is in the article — reads:
I have banked with Coutts for some years, both business and personal, and prior to that with Natwest since 1980. My personal manager, Mark Pierce, with whom I organised a mortgage repayment etc. left some months ago. A new man, Min Fung, replaced him, to whom I have never spoken before despite expressing to one of his juniors that I should. Out of the blue I receive a phone call to say the accounts will be closed, followed by a letter. No explanation is offered.
The bank’s head of client coverage, Camilla Stowell, got in touch with Farage. This means that Flavel had seen Farage’s email and passed it on.
On May 1, Farage wrote Flavel saying, in part:
As explained to her I have been rejected by several banks. On current course I will be at your branch on…the final date, wiht [sic] a security van to collect approx [the account’s balance] in cash.
I look forward to seeing you there.
Came there no reply.
On Monday, July 24, Farage wrote Flavel again, mentioning the BBC’s coverage and the subject access request (SAR) from Coutts. His message ended:
Not only was that briefing inaccurate and wrong but it was in clear breach of my confidential information. Despite all of this I still have heard nothing from you. Are you asleep at the wheel? Do you simply not care?
The article concludes:
Mr Flavel joined the high-end bank, owned by the NatWest group, in 2016. Before that, he worked for JP Morgan and Standard Chartered in Asia.
Mr Farage said he should be under pressure alongside Dame Alison Rose, the NatWest Group boss, who is fighting for her job amid speculation that she briefed the BBC.
He said of Mr Flavel: “It’s his people that wrote this document. It’s a pretty appalling report. I think it’s an absolute disgrace. I think his position is even more vulnerable than hers. This guy is directly responsible and has done and said nothing – it’s not good enough.”
Coutts has been contacted for comment.
That afternoon, reports had been coming in saying that Dame Alison had admitted she was the BBC’s source for the Farage story and that she had the banking group’s directors’ full support. This Twitter thread is from The Sun‘s political editor Harry Cole, a Guido alum:
A Telegraph article provoked an immediate angry response of 2,000 tweets within 50 minutes:
GB News shows featured updates as well as damning indictments from its presenters and panellists.
Nana Akua, substituting for Patrick Christys mid-afternoon, said that, whether or not the identity of the leaker emerged soon, Farage would pursue it to the end, then asked if Rose was responsible:
Michelle Dewberry said that she herself is a NatWest customer and disagrees with the directors saying that it is in the interest of ‘all’ customers and shareholders that Rose remain in place, when she had broken confidentiality laws. She questioned whether any of the people at the top of NatWest Group were ‘fit for purpose’:
Farage’s show followed. His editorial opened with the statement by NatWest’s chair, Howard Davies, that the bank’s board of directors had concluded Rose should remain as the CEO, ‘as demonstrated by our results’ over the past four years. He added that a review of account closure arrangements at Coutts would take place, the findings of which would be made public once complete. He said that the terms of reference and lead firm conducting the review ‘will be announced shortly’. Farage said:
‘NatWest CEO Dame Alison Rose, NatWest Group chairman Howard Davies and Coutts CEO Peter Flavel have all failed. Frankly, they should all go.’
Nigel Farage says NatWest are ‘doing their best to prop up Alison Rose’ after they refused to sack her over her BBC leak debacle.
His show had four more segments on his banking situation which followed: Conservative MP David Davis was on next, then a member of the Chartered Banker Institute, a business consultant discussing many SMEs who find it hard to get a business account and, finally, The Sun‘s former editor Kelvin Mackenzie, who minced no words. Mackenzie is, incidentally, a Coutts customer himself:
Jacob Rees-Mogg’s show followed. Rees-Mogg has been a Coutts customer since the age of 13. He discussed Rose’s position with former Channel 4 correspondent Michael Crick and former Conservative MP Jerry Hayes, who still works as a barrister. All lamented the deplorable situation of Farage’s account closure and agreed that, under the circumstances, Rose would have to go, either on Wednesday, when City Minister Andrew Griffith was holding a special banking meeting that day or, at the latest, on Friday. They agreed that Wednesday would probably be the day, because it was unlikely Rose would show up at Andrew Griffith’s meeting:
Dan Wootton’s programme followed. He opened with an editorial saying that politically-oriented bank closures must stop, otherwise we will find ourselves in a Chinese-style social credit score system:
As GB News’s broadcasts continued, The Telegraph had more news about Rose and her future.
The paper published ‘Dame Alison Rose’s statement in full: “I made a serious error of judgment”‘, the highlights of which follow:
I recognise that in my conversations with Simon Jack of the BBC, I made a serious error of judgment in discussing Mr Farage’s relationship with the bank. Given the consequences of this, I want to address the questions that have been raised and set out the substance of the conversations that took place.
Believing it was public knowledge, I confirmed that Mr Farage was a Coutts customer and that he had been offered a NatWest bank account.
How would the public know that Farage banked with Coutts? He only said so after the BBC did!
Even if we all knew that fact, which we didn’t, she just should have said she doesn’t discuss business, because it’s confidential. I worked briefly for a retail bank, and that was rule number one!
A former Coutts employee told Farage the same thing, saying that a cashier — teller, in American parlance — would be sacked for breaching client confidentiality:
She also said:
… I recognise that I left Mr Jack with the impression that the decision to close Mr Farage’s accounts was solely a commercial one.
I was not part of the decision-making process to exit Mr Farage. This decision was made by Coutts, and I was informed in April that this was for commercial reasons. At the time of my conversations with Mr Jack, I was not in receipt of the contents of the Coutts Wealth Reputational Risk Committee materials subsequently released by Mr Farage. I have apologised to Mr Farage for the deeply inappropriate language contained in those papers and the Board has commissioned a full independent review into the decision and process to ensure that this cannot happen again.
Put simply, I was wrong to respond to any question raised by the BBC about this case. I want to extend my sincere apologies to Mr Farage for the personal hurt this has caused him and I have written to him today.
I would like to say sorry to the Board and my colleagues. I started my career working for National Westminster Bank. It is an institution I care about enormously and have always been proud to be a part of. It has been the privilege of my career to lead the bank and I am grateful to the Board for entrusting me with this role. It is therefore all the more regrettable that my actions have compounded an already difficult issue for the Group.
The article also has the full statement from Sir Howard Davie, her boss, which Farage discussed in his aforementioned editorial.
A short time later, while Farage’s show was airing, the Telegraph View — the main editorial — stated ‘Alison Rose’s position is clearly untenable’:
… She had made a “serious error of judgment in discussing Mr Farage’s relationship with the bank”, she admitted, but had not revealed any personal financial information about him. She put the problem down to her leaving Mr Jack “with the impression that the decision to close Mr Farage’s accounts was solely a commercial one”.
Does she really think that is good enough? If her explanation was apparently so innocent, why did she not admit to the conversation last week, the first time she apologised to Mr Farage?
While the chairman of NatWest, Sir Howard Davies, last night expressed the board’s confidence in its chief executive, many investors and customers will consider Dame Alison’s behaviour to have brought the bank into disrepute. Not only was Mr Farage’s Coutts account closed because of his political views – a fact that NatWest only belatedly seemed to acknowledge – but its chief executive has allowed herself to be dragged into the row. Would Dame Alison accept such behaviour from her more junior employees? At best, her leadership of the bank looks stunningly inept.
Indeed, her position is clearly untenable. Banking might have been transformed by the digital age, but the relationship between customer and institution still depends, ultimately, on trust. She has surely sacrificed the trust of swathes of the public horrified by the treatment of Mr Farage.
The British state retains a substantial stake in NatWest, part of the legacy of its bailout during the financial crisis. If Dame Alison cannot see that her continuing as chief executive has become a distraction for a business that still has not fully recovered from its near-collapse in 2008, the Government should force the board’s hand and replace her.
By the time Dan Wootton was into the first half-hour of his show, Conservative MPs were weighing in on the situation. The Telegraph posted ‘NatWest boss’s Farage leak admission prompts “significant concern from No. 10″‘:
… Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt are understood to have “significant concerns” about Dame Alison staying in her post. There is expectation within the Government that she will have to quit …
Dame Alison is a member of the Prime Minister’s Business Council, and is set to attend a meeting of bank leaders with Andrew Griffith, the economic secretary to the Treasury, in Downing Street on Wednesday.
In further pressure on the NatWest boss, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the banking watchdog, revealed that it had raised concerns about breaches of confidentiality by Coutts and its parent company NatWest and said it had “made clear” to the bigger bank the need for an independent review.
On Tuesday night, senior Conservative MPs demanded that Dame Alison resign or be fired from her job at a bank that is 39 per cent owned by the taxpayer.
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, a former business secretary, said: “She has to go. She has admitted it and she has to go. She has broken one of the fundamental codes of banking and therefore she must go.”
A City chief executive said: “She has broken the cardinal rule of banking. An FCA investigation is inevitable now. Her position is untenable and she should resign. It’s ridiculous the board is backing her given the seriousness of the offence.”
That evening, The Times had an article about concerned MPs, ‘De-banking furore grows as MPs start investigation’:
MPs have expressed concerns that high street lenders are “freezing, withdrawing or withholding bank accounts” from businesses with “little or no explanation”.
The all-party parliamentary group on fair business banking is examining “how and why banking facilities are being denied” …
The issue of businesses being de-banked is thought to be a widespread problem and is often linked with lenders’ perception of the risk profiles of companies or their directors. A desire not to fall foul of anti-money laundering rules is often said to lie behind banks’ closure of business accounts.
Lenders also say they are often forbidden from explaining why they are closing accounts because of rules about “tipping off” potential offenders.
UK Finance, the banking trade body, said lenders “understand the impact of account closures on businesses, and any decision is only taken after extensive review and analysis. Banks will consider a number of factors including compliance with applicable laws and regulations, as well as a firm’s own risk management.”
Andrew Griffith, economic secretary to the Treasury, has written to lenders to say the government is proposing that banks provide 90 days’ notice of account termination in most cases and that they improve transparency so that customers have a “clear understanding” of the reason for closure, unless providing one would be unlawful.
As Wednesday’s papers were being delivered to London’s newsstands, The Times posted ‘Downing St puts NatWest boss Alison Rose under pressure to resign’:
The Times has been told that Downing Street and Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, have significant concerns about Rose remaining in post. Three other cabinet ministers said that Rose’s position was untenable.
Downing Street’s concerns are particularly significant as taxpayers have a 39 per cent stake in NatWest, which owns Coutts.
One cabinet minister said: “She has got to go. She has no integrity and has done material damage to the bank and its reputation. The chairman has also lost his credibility by saying it’s in the interests of customers and shareholders to keep her. Frankly the whole board has got to go if it wants to defend her.”
A second said that her apology was “not enough” and that it is “difficult to see how she can survive”, while a third said that “she’s got to go”.
“She hasn’t understood from the outset just how serious this is,” they said. “She’s obfuscated at every turn.”
Farage last night called for both Rose and Davies to quit. He said: “Dame Alison Rose has now admitted that she is the source. She broke client confidentiality, and is unfit to be CEO of NatWest Group.”
Two front pages featured Rose and NatWest. Note how much smaller the Financial Times headline is than The Telegraph‘s. This shows you everything you need to know about the FT — a Remainer newspaper:
Wednesday morning’s news
And now we come back to where this post started, with the FT‘s tweet that Rose had resigned.
The Telegraph featured live coverage and the effect her resignation had on UK markets.
At 6:49:
Good morning
Thanks for being with us. The City minister will meet bank bosses today to discuss concerns about closing customer accounts over their political views.
The gathering comes as the banking sector reels from the resignation of NatWest chief executive Dame Alison Rose following weeks of controversy over the decision by Coutts to “de-bank” Nigel Farage.
At 7:13:
Mr Farage has called for a “cultural change” at the bank and within the wider industry, as he promised to continue to campaign on account closures.
He told the PA news agency he wanted a “cultural change within NatWest, they ought to go back to being a bank, rather than being a moral arbiter for political positions”.
He added: “But I think this culture runs deep through the entire banking industry. I think there is a massive anti-Brexit prejudice and I think the whole thing needs to change.”
At 7:19:
… Andrew Griffith, the City minister, has said it was “right” for NatWest boss Dame Alison Rose to step down, writes our politics live editor Jack Maidment …
At 7:25:
… Mr Farage said that he believes Dame Alison Rose had effectively tried to “lie her way out” after it emerged Coutts had “debanked” the former Ukip leader over his political views, rather than commercial reasons.
He told GB News:
When (Dame Alison) was caught having breached confidentiality, she tried – supported by her board – to frankly lie her way out.
I thought the statement that came out at 6pm last night … was rather reminiscent of the Premier League football club that’s in crisis that says ‘we have every confidence in our manager’.
I didn’t think she could last beyond the end of the week. We have, on Friday, the half-yearly figures coming. There is an investor meeting at 9.30 that morning.
So, she’s gone, and that’s a start, but I have to say that (Coutts chief executive) Peter Flavel … (NatWest chair) Howard Davies … it was the board that sanctioned this culture that talks about diversity and inclusion, and actually is very divisive.
In my case, as you can clearly see, pretty poisonous stuff. I think any board member that endorsed that statement last night, where they said ‘yes, she breached confidentiality, but she can stay in her post’… frankly, I think the whole board needs to go.
Guido has the video clip:
Guido’s post says, in part:
So far the Labour front bench have kept quiet, although Starmer is on Radio 5 Live at 10a.m. You can’t barrage the Farage…
UPDATE: Rose has also been told to step down from Downing Street’s Business Council and Energy Efficiency Taskforce. Finished…
Returning to The Telegraph, a 7:33 entry says that Farage also spoke with Sky News.
At 7:42:
Bank chiefs will be quizzed by the City minister today to discuss concerns about closing customer accounts over their political views.
The summit with Andrew Griffith will hold extra weight after NatWest chief executive Dame Alison Rose quit overnight after admitting that she leaked private banking information about Nigel Farage to the BBC …
Mr Griffiths meeting with bank bosses comes ahead of proposed government reforms requiring banks to explain and delay these decisions.
At 7:44, the entry said that Farage told Sky News he still did not have a replacement bank account. (He has approached ten banks [see 7:53], all of which said no. Presumably, the offer of a personal account at NatWest still stands?)
At 7:49:
A No10 source said Rishi Sunak “was concerned about the unfolding situation” and “Alison Rose has done the right thing in resigning”, writes Jack Maidment.
The source said: “Everyone would expect people in public life – whether that’s in a business leadership role or otherwise – to act responsibly and with integrity.”
At 8:03:
Shares in NatWest dropped by 4pc as markets opened in London, following the resignation of chief executive Dame Alison Rose.
It helped drag down the FTSE 100 by 0.2pc to 7,667.34, while the midcap FTSE 250 was flat at 19,155.06.
At 8:14:
Policing Minister Chris Philp said a lot of MPs or their families have been turned down by banking services because of “politically exposed persons, or pep, rules”.
Mr Philp told Sky News:
(The rules) were designed to stop essentially members of foreign governments who had obtained their money dishonestly from using the UK banking system to essentially launder it.
So, the rules are set up for the right reasons but MPs quite often get caught by these pep rules because they’re applied kind of overzealously.
It is not spoken about much but if you look at almost any MP they will have had an experience like this, I think the Nigel Farage case is an extreme one, but I’m afraid it’s not unique.
When asked if he has had difficulty accessing financial services, Mr Philp said: “My family have actually, I don’t want to go into detail.”
I’ll leave it there for now, but anyone who thinks Farage will be re-entering politics will be disappointed. Guaranteed bank accounts, within legal reason, are his new cause:
You can hear a clip of that interview here. Robinson treated Farage appallingly, then said he was ‘only teasing’. Typical BBC. How I wish we were no longer obliged to pay the licence fee: a mandatory tax.
We are fortunate to have Nigel Farage as the people’s champion. First, Brexit and, now, bank accounts. Thank you, Nigel!
Yesterday’s post was about last Thursday’s three by-elections in England in Conservative-held seats.
Conservatives and Labour are both drawing conclusions about each party winning one of the three seats with the Lib Dems winning the third.
For both the two main parties, climate change — Net Zero — is important. It’s important for Lib Dems, too, but they are now in a distinct minority in the House of Commons. In terms of MP count, Scotland’s SNP is the third largest party after Labour.
However, other considerations will play a part in the general election (GE) to come either later in 2024 or at the last possible moment in January 2025.
This post will review the minor ones first, then move on to the larger ones.
By-elections: everything and nothing
All three parties are mulling over the by-elections.
If one looks at constituency by-election votes, readily available on Wikipedia, a lot of the time they are a protest vote before voters resume the status quo at the next GE.
A case in point from 2019 was the by-election in the Welsh constituency of Brecon and Radnorshire. On August 2 that year, Lib Dem supporter Mike Smithson, founder of Political Betting, gloated over his party’s win, ‘The LDs overturn the Tory 19.5% majority to win the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election’:
However, just four months later, on December 12, 2019, in the general election, Conservative candidate Fay Jones defeated the Lib Dem incumbent Jane Dodds, leader of the Welsh Lib Dems. In 2021, Dodds was elected as the only Lib Dem member of the Welsh Senedd.
Another factor is a much smaller turnout in by-elections than GEs. In 2022, Labour’s Paulette Hamilton won in Birmingham Erdington, continuing the party’s legacy after her predecessor Jack Dromey — Harriet Harman MP’s husband — suddenly died. Only 27% of voters made their way to the polls.
Are the doomsayers who predict that the Conservatives under Rishi Sunak will lose a GE correct? Only time will tell.
Rishi was upbeat as he shared breakfast on Friday morning with Uxbridge and South Ruislip’s latest Conservative MP, ex-postman and councillor Steve Treadwell.
Guido Fawkes brought us a video clip and soundbite from the Rumbling Tum café:
Rishi said (purple emphases mine):
Westminster has been acting like the next election is a done deal. The Labour Party’s been acting like its a done deal. The people of Uxbridge just told all of them that it’s not. No-one expected us to win here. But Steve’s victory demonstrates that when confronted with the actual reality of the Labour Party – when there’s an actual choice on a matter of substance at stake – people vote Conservative.
The Guardian also reported on the breakfast:
Rishi Sunak is in Uxbridge with Steve Tuckwell, the victorious Conservative candidate, PA Media reports. They arrived in a cafe to loud clapping and cheering. PA says:
The prime minister chatted to people sitting at the tables, celebrating the result which saw Tuckwell hold on with a majority of just 495, down from the 7,210 Boris Johnson secured in 2019.
“Are you all pumped?” Mr Sunak said to one group as he thanked Tory campaigners.
He also joked: “Normally when I get woken up at three in the morning it’s only bad news. So, it was a welcome change.”
Well, if Rishi wants to win, he will have to move his party back to core values, those that are truly conservative, not those of either Labour or the Lib Dems. As it stands, many Conservative MPs are more like Lib Dems, championing all the social issues without considering those of their voters. I could name names at this point, but why bother? Unless people watch BBC Parliament on a regular basis, most won’t know the personalities involved. That said, I am happy for readers to comment here on Conservatives who are clearly not conservative.
Incidentally, Boris Johnson — the best campaigner the Party has had in decades — tweeted his congratulations:
Just over a year ago, in June 2022, when Boris was still Prime Minister, the Conservatives suffered two stunning by-election defeats in Tiverton and Honiton in the West Country and in Wakefield in West Yorkshire. The first went to the Lib Dems and the second returned to Labour. On June 24 that year, The Telegraph reported that, while all was not lost historically, it was time for the Conservatives to pay attention:
In November of 1991, the Tories lost Kincardine and Deeside to the Liberal Democrats, as well as Langbaurgh to Labour.
Five months later, however, Sir John Major regained both seats en route to a surprise general election victory …
One of the many reasons that by-elections make for rather erratic tools of prediction is that, by their nature, the random seats at stake tend not to be all that representative.
Indeed, many go entirely unremarked upon because they are safe seats, where the incumbent party holds on without any trouble at all – and with an abysmally low turnout to boot.
Of the 36 by-elections between 2010 and 2019, the seat changed hands in only seven. Of those, perhaps only the two victories by Ukip in October and November 2014 proved to be of any long-term consequence.
Yet what is going on now seems altogether different. For one, the two by-elections held on Thursday could not have been better selected to target Conservative worries.
Wakefield was the archetypal Red Wall seat picked up by the Tories in 2019. Tiverton and Honiton was a previously impregnable Conservative fortress in the south-west.
… these two defeats are starting to fit into a pattern. They join the two enormous swings of more than 30 per cent to the Liberal Democrats in Chesham and Amersham, as well as North Shropshire.
This would appear to be evidence of genuine unpopularity, rather than mere by-election grumpiness. The three Liberal Democrat victories are all in the 20 biggest ever by-election swings of all time.
The pace of defeats is ramping up too. The Conservatives lost only five seats between 2010-19 period, but they have now lost four in just 12 months …
These defeats don’t defy the rules of politics, they fit well within them. That is not good news for the Prime Minister.
Rishi, take note.
Indeed, were Nadine Dorries to resign her Mid-Bedfordshire seat, as she said she would a several weeks ago, Labour could win, according to The Telegraph on July 1, 2023:
A survey by Opinium found that Labour would overturn Nadine Dorries’ 24,664 majority in a seat that has been held by the Tories since 1931.
The defeat would shock many Conservative MPs, raising the prospect that other seats thought to be “safe” may now be at risk …
Last week, Ms Dorries confirmed that she will be “gone long before the next election”, having announced on June 9 that she planned to trigger a by-election.
Labour commissioned the Opinium poll last month following anecdotal reports by canvassers that voters appeared to be deserting the Conservatives in vast numbers …
The poll put the Conservative candidate Festus Akinbusoye on 24 per cent, Labour on 28 per cent, and the Lib Dems on 15 per cent … while Reform UK’s candidate, David Holland, was on 10 per cent.
That’s pretty high for Reform, the former Brexit Party.
The youth factor: inexperience or opportunity
Keir Mather, 25, now representing Selby and Ainsty in North Yorkshire, is now the baby of the Commons, the youngest MP.
Labour’s Nadia Whittome now has a colleague younger than she.
During the campaign, Mather was somewhat unconvincing.
Guido Fawkes gave us the low down and a video:
Guido told us (red emphases his):
Labour’s candidate, the youthful Keir Mather, made a somewhat unconventional pitch for constituents to “lend me your vote”:
In about 12 months time we’ll have a general election. And if you’re not happy with how I’ve done as your MP, you’ll have a chance to have your say again…
It hardly fills you with confidence…
When you look at what voters already think of their candidate, the approach seems even more questionable. In Lord Ashcroft’s focus group, voters were concerned that Keir “looks about twelve” and that “he’s not very assertive. He might get eaten alive.” Leading with a pitch of ‘it’s only a year, what’s the worst that can happen’ won’t help assuage those doubts…
We shall see how he does in Parliament. After all, he was fortunate enough to attend Oxford University and be catapulted from there to Labour MP Wes Streeting’s office, where he has worked until now. No doubt Wes will be keeping a helpful eye on his protégé.
On July 18, two days ahead of the by-election on July 20, The Guardian went to take the constituency’s temperature. Conservatives there were deeply disappointed that Nigel Adams, who won by an amazing 20,000 majority in 2019, threw everything in the bin because Boris Johnson had not recommended him for a peerage. Stupid — and proud — man. He was old enough to know better. MPs do not automatically get peerages, and Nigel Adams was hardly up there with Conservative greats. (Nor is Nadine Dorries, for that matter, another one upset because she was not made a Baroness.)
The article said:
It is Sunak’s top priority out of the three contests, according to a senior ally of his who has helped rally the troops. Mark Crane, a Conservative councillor and leader of Selby district council for 20 years, also admits “Rishi will personally feel it” if the Tories lose …
“A lot of people are upset at the way Nigel resigned,” said Crane, sipping coffee on a bracing summer day in Selby town centre. “It was extremely disappointing that with about a year to go in this parliament, that he should seek to stand down and cause us what can only be a difficult byelection.”
Crane, who has been at the centre of the local political scene for decades, acknowledged apathy among Tory voters is likely to be a major problem. “It will happen. It’s just a case of how many thousands of people,” he believes.
I digress, but that was only to show that Conservatives probably stayed at home.
Back to Mather’s youth. On Friday morning, July 21, The Guardian reported on Conservative MP Johnny Mercer’s interview on Sky News that day. He criticised Mather’s lack of experience:
You’ve got to have people who have actually done stuff. This guy has been at Oxford University more than he’s been in a job.
You put a chip in him there and he just relays Labour lines, and the problem is people have kind of had enough of that.
They want people who are authentic. People who have worked in that constituency, who know what life is like, understand what life is like to live, work and raise a family in communities like theirs.
Well, Mather is from the constituency, even if he hasn’t worked there in a significant capacity.
Fortunately, Conservative Party chairman Greg Hands, who I am assured from one of his constituents is an excellent MP, knew better than Mercer:
Asked if he thought Mercer’s comment was appropriate, he told LBC: “I welcome young people coming into politics. We’ve got young Conservative MPs ourselves, young MPs in their 20s.”
Indeed.
Sara Britcliffe, 28, is one of the 2019 Conservative intake. She represents Hyndburn in Lancashire, ably winning the seat at the age of 24 from Labour’s much older Graham Jones, first elected in 2010. Britcliffe turned the seat Conservative for the first time since 1992, with a majority of 2,951.
Her father Peter had served as a Lancashire County Councillor and had been mayor of Hyndburn from 2017 to 2018. As he was a widower, Sara served as mayoress during his term in office. She then served as a councillor for Hyndburn Borough Council between 2018 and 2021, at which time she stood down because she was a sitting MP. Her only private sector employment was as manager of a sandwich shop in Oswaldtwistle.
Moral of the story: youth and inexperience are no barriers to entering Parliament. Britcliffe does very well as a backbencher and, as such, proves that a twenty-something can do a good job serving constituents.
Net Zero and ULEZ
Now we come to the heart of the matter: climate change policies.
Politicians from both the Conservative and Labour parties are wise to begin rethinking Net Zero by 3030.
Pundits said that ULEZ — Ultra Low Emission Zone — was a peculiarly London issue. Nothing could be further from the truth. Elsewhere in the UK there are LEZ cities which will also charge motorists for being in the wrong type of vehicle.
On Friday, the day after the by-election, an article appeared, ‘UK clean air zones: the cities adding low emissions zones in 2023 and how to check if you are affected’:
Drivers are being urged to check if they are affected as a number of UK cities introduce or expand their low-emissions zones in the coming months.
Two cities will introduce all-new clean air zones in 2023, with another due to tighten restrictions and the possibility of a fourth coming into force as local authorities look to cut pollution. The changes have prompted a warning to drivers to check nearby local restrictions or face potential fines.
The ULEZ (ultra low-emission zone) in London has caused much controversy, with locals angered over the plans to cut down on cars in the capital. Labour even pointed towards this – a policy of Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan – as one of the reasons the party was unable to pick up an extra seat in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election.
Clean air zones apply charges to vehicles which do not meet minimum emissions standards. Most charge tolls of between £7 and £50 on non-compliant vehicles, although fines for non-payment can reach £2,000.
The minimum standards are petrol cars and vans which meet Euro 4 standards; Euro 6-compliant diesel cars and vans; HGVs, buses and coaches that meet Euro VI and Euro 3-compliant motorbikes.
The article has a map of the English and Scottish cities that have either introduced or plan to introduce LEZs or clean air zones.
In England, they are — in addition to London — Tyneside (Newcastle), Bradford, Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham, Bristol, Bath and Portsmouth.
In Scotland, Glasgow’s LEZ came into force on June 1, 2023. Three other cities will follow in the months ahead: Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen.
There are other notionally eco-friendly — less human-friendly — measures being employed elsewhere. During the summer of 2020 in one of the daily coronavirus briefings, then-Transport Secretary Grant Shapps introduced the concept of the ’15-minute city’ as a reassurance that the pandemic was not going to waste, because England would ‘build back better’ in the years that followed.
Oxford will be trialling the ’15-minute city’ concept in 2024 by implementing six different zones.
Toby Young, founder of The Daily Sceptic and a graduate of Oxford University, was apoplectic. On December 5, 2022, he had a news round-up in ‘Oxford County Councillors to Introduce Trial Climate Lockdown in 2024’. He featured Watts Up With That‘s post:
Oxfordshire County Council yesterday approved plans to lock residents into one of six zones to ‘save the planet’ from global warming. The latest stage in the ’15 minute city’ agenda is to place electronic gates on key roads in and out of the city, confining residents to their own neighbourhoods.
Under the new scheme if residents want to leave their zone they will need permission from the Council who gets to decide who is worthy of freedom and who isn’t. Under the new scheme residents will be allowed to leave their zone a maximum of 100 days per year, but in order to even gain this every resident will have to register their car details with the council who will then track their movements via smart cameras round the city.
Oxfordshire County Council, which is run by Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party, secretly decided to divide-up the city of Oxford into six ‘15 minute’ districts in 2021 soon after they were elected to office. None of the councillors declared their intention of imprisoning local residents in their manifestos of course, preferring to make vague claims about how they will ‘improve the environment’ instead.
Every resident will be required to register their car with the County Council who will then monitor how many times they leave their district via number plate recognition cameras. And don’t think you can beat the system if you’re a two car household. Those two cars will be counted as one meaning you will have to divide up the journeys between yourselves. 2 cars 50 journeys each; 3 cars 33 journeys each and so on.
Watts Up With That introduced the following news items about Oxford, dated October 25:
This story is so crazy, I wanted corroboration. This is the same story published in the Oxford Mail:
ROAD blocks stopping most motorists from driving through Oxford city centre will divide the city into six “15 minute” neighbourhoods, a county council travel chief has said.
And he insisted the controversial plan would go ahead whether people liked it or not.
Duncan Enright, Oxfordshire County Council’s cabinet member for travel and development strategy, explained the authority’s traffic filter proposals in an interview in the Sunday Times …
People can drive freely around their own neighbourhood and can apply for a permit to drive through the filters, and into other neighbourhoods, for up to 100 days per year. This equates to an average of two days per week.
Toby Young commented:
This story is flat out insane. Why on earth would the residents of Oxford tolerate these sandal-wearing dictators? More to come on this, I’m sure.
Stop Press: Oxfordshire County Council has put out a statement to address concerns and ‘misunderstandings’ about the plans. Read it here.
The Telegraph‘s Zoe Strimpel wrote about the plan on December 11: ‘The green war on cars is about to take a mad new turn’.
In February 2023, Oxford residents rightly protested, so whatever the County Council did to allay fears and ‘misunderstandings’ did not work very well:
From this, we can see that clean air zones are the latest craze. They will certainly generate money.
Returning to the by-elections and eco-friendliness, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg appeared on the BBC last Friday morning to discuss these topics. The Guardian reported:
Jacob Rees-Mogg says Uxbridge result shows why Tories should drop ‘high-cost green policies’, including those in energy bill
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Tory former business secretary, is a Somerset MP, and he is being interviewed on the Today programme. Nick Robinson points out to him that, if the swing in the Somerton and Frome byelection were replicated in his seat at the general election, he would be out.
Rees-Mogg says byelections are not always a good guide to what will happen in a general election. He says his message is “don’t panic”.
He says in 1992 the Tories won back all the seats they had lost in byelections in the preceding parliament.
And the Tories should learn a lesson from Uxbridge.
Q: What lesson is that?
Rees-Mogg replies: “That high-cost green policies are not popular.”
Q: Greg Hands earlier defended government policy on the transition to green energy.
Rees-Mogg says he agreed with what Hands said about going with the grain of human behaviours. He suggests there is no need to rush the phasing out of petrol and diesel cars.
He repeats the point about the need for his party not to panic. They should support Rishi Sunak, he says.
Q: You used to criticise him as socialist.
Rees-Mogg says he wants the Tories to win the next election. No Conservative would want Keir Starmer in Downing Street …
UPDATE: Rees-Mogg said:
You should learn from where the government has done surprisingly well against the form book, and learn there that high-cost green policies are not popular.
I think the government should take away the power for these Ulezes, which is provided for by legislation … You should go with the grain of what voters are doing anyway. Voters are year in, year out, buying cleaner cars with cleaner engines. The development of engines in recent decades have been phenomenal.
You can do this by osmosis, rather than by hitting people, because actually all these charges hit the least well-off motorist rather than the rich motorist who buys a new car every few years anyway.
Lord Frost was the next to urge Rishi and the Government to ease up on green policies:
David Frost, the former Brexit minister, is also urging Rishi Sunak to scale back net zero policies. He tweeted:
I didn’t think much of Frost’s ten-point plan, most of which we’ve read before, but his point about Net Zero is worth noting:
3. Delay the net zero 2050 target. Abolish the deadlines on boilers and EVs. Get fracking and build low-carbon modern gas power stations and zero-carbon nuclear. Stop wasting money on green levies and if we must use renewables make them stand on their own two feet.
On Friday afternoon, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, defended his plans to expand ULEZ to the capital’s outer boroughs:
Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, has defended his decision to extend Ulez (the ultra-low emission zone) to outer London. This will lead to drivers with polluting cars having to pay £12.50 a day to drive them in places like Uxbridge, and campaigning against the move was almost certainly the factor that enabled the Tories to hold the seat.
Khan justified the Ulez extension, saying he was “determined to clear the air” in London …
Labour’s National Policy Forum met on Friday for a weekend-long session, and The Guardian pointed out that not everyone was on board with schemes such as ULEZ:
Alan Wager, a politics academic, argues that the Uxbridge result could make it easier for those in the party wanting to push back against more radical policy options.
Labour MP Emily Thornberry, shadow attorney general, gave her view on ULEZ that afternoon:
… Thornberry suggested the implementation of the policy was a problem. In an interview with the [BBC] World at One she said:
I think it’s the right policy – I suspect it’s the way it’s being done [that is problematic]. And I hope that Sadiq will look at it again, I know that we’re asking him to.
Thornberry also said that the government had given cities like Birmingham, Bristol and Bradford money to help fund scrappage schemes as part of low-emission policies, but that London had not received this help. She urged central government to work with the London mayor to ensure that air quality could be improved.
Just after 2 p.m., Keir Starmer had a message for Sadiq Khan about ULEZ:
Starmer urges Khan to ‘reflect’ on Ulez implementation, saying it was reason for Labour losing in Uxbridge
Keir Starmer has also urged Sadiq Khan to “reflect” on the implementation of the Ulez extension. Referring to the result in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, he told broadcasters:
We didn’t take it in 1997 when we had a landslide Labour victory. And Ulez was the reason we didn’t win there yesterday.
We know that. We heard that on the doors. And we’ve all got to reflect on that, including the mayor.
Asked what “reflect” meant and whether the scheme should now be scrapped, Starmer replied:
We’ve got to look at the result. The mayor needs to reflect. And it’s too early to say what should happen next.
Guido picked up on the quote in a post that afternoon and gave us deputy Party leader Angela Rayner’s opinion:
Senior party figures have been quick to turn on Sadiq and his punitive policy. This morning, Angela Rayner told BBC Breakfast that Labour should “listen to the voters” adding:
People are really concerned about how, during a cost of living crisis, that they’re going to be imposed with a Ulez charge that they can’t afford.
Early this week, it was the Conservatives’ turn to battle over Net Zero policies.
On Monday, July 24, Guido reported on Andrew Mitchell MP, who had the news round that morning:
The government’s policy to ban new petrol cars by 2030 appeared to stall this morning, as Andrew Mitchell couldn’t confirm they would stick to the eco-austerity plan. Speaking on the Today programme, Mitchell spluttered when asked if the ban would remain in place for the future:
All I can tell you is it is in place… But I’m afraid I can’t prophesy for the future
Start your engines…
On Tuesday morning, it was Michael Gove’s turn for the news round. He was adamant that Net Zero was firmly in place:
Michael Gove has insisted the government’s plan to ban new diesel and petrol cars will come into effect from 2030 after all, despite Andrew Mitchell stalling on the issue yesterday morning, and Rishi Sunak himself prevaricating on the question just hours later. As of today, it’s still pedal to the metal according to Gove…
Speaking on Times Radio, the Levelling Up Secretary gave an “absolute guarantee” the ban was going ahead:
I do agree that it’s important that the government does press ahead with thoughtful and important steps in order to safeguard the environment…
Asked if it was “immovable“, Gove gave an unequivocal yes – twice. Something two of his government colleagues didn’t do yesterday…
Hmm.
Gove’s comments on Monday about building more homes met with a crisp riposte from backbencher Anthony Browne, who represents a Cambridgeshire constituency. Guido has the story:
Michael Gove has just wrapped up his planning reform speech, vowing to build Britain’s “Silicon Valley” in Cambridge with 250,000 new homes and tear up red tape to tackle the UK’s housing shortage. Although not before Tory backbencher Anthony Browne tweeted he would do everything to stop “nonsense plans to impose mass housebuilding” on his own patch, obviously…
Gove confirmed the government would push ahead with plans to relax planning rules in city centres, allowing empty retail outlets to be converted into flats and houses with less pointless bureaucracy in the way:
We are unequivocally, unapologetically and intensively concentrating our biggest efforts in the hearts of our cities,” Mr Gove said in a speech. Because that’s the right thing to do economically, environmentally, and culturally. [We will] use all of the levers that we have to promote urban regeneration rather than swallowing up virgin land… We will enable brownfield development rather than greenbelt erosion.
He assured he was still committed to building 300,000 homes a year – without specifying which year – although someone should let CCHQ know before the next by-election leaflets are posted out. The PM himself also weighed in this morning, claiming it’s important to build “in the right way“, and “in the right places with the support of local communities and not concreting over the countryside“.
Everyone says Gove is so ‘intelligent’ and that he did a marvellous job as Education Secretary years ago.
Gove’s words put up a red flag for me. I suspect I am not alone.
Conclusions
Net Zero policies will divide Conservative and Labour MPs alike in the months to come, just as Brexit did.
The Conservatives have a chance to reverse punitive climate change policies such as ULEZ and make them a winning campaign issue for the middle and working classes. However, the question remains: will they take advantage of that golden opportunity?
Churchmouse Campanologist 