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This is a brief follow-up to yesterday’s post about Rishi Sunak.
‘Luxury beliefs’
On Thursday, August 3, 2023, GB News’s Patrick Christys spoke with Toby Young, who founded and heads Free Speech Union, which goes to bat for people who have been cancelled, so to speak:
A column from The Telegraph‘s veteran columnist Allister Heath had appeared that day saying that the elites quash majority opinion in the UK.
Young said that a Cambridge professor recently labelled elite perspectives as ‘luxury beliefs’, because when you are at the top of the totem pole or leading a comfortable life, the average man or woman’s experience is so far away from yours that you freely embrace notional received wisdom from the mainstream media. I know a few of these people. They are the ones who got every coronavirus booster shot, believe in Net Zero and find Brexit laughable. They think that people who don’t follow the MSM lead are unenlightened conspiracy theorists. I’ve had enough conversations with them to know.
That conversation between Christys and Young sets the tone for the rest of this post.
Government spending on SpAds
At the top of the totem pole in Downing Street and Whitehall are special advisers, or SpAds.
On July 27, Guido Fawkes told us how much the taxpayer is spending on SpAds.
Before looking into their salaries, I mentioned yesterday in the section about Mel Stride, the Secretary for Work and Pensions, that Secretaries of State get paid extra over their normal salary as an MP.
There is also severance pay when a Prime Minister, Secretary of State or one of their ministers resigns his/her post. Fair enough. It’s not that much, although it did rankle when Michelle Donelan was Secretary of State for Education, which she described as her dream job, only to resign 24 hours later as a protest to get Boris Johnson to stand down as PM last summer. She got a healthy five-figure sum which she later donated to charity. She never should have accepted the post. She knew Boris was on his way out. She is now the Culture Secretary.
However, look at the severance pay for senior civil servants, among them Tom Scholar, whom Kwasi Kwarteng sacked when he was Chancellor in the 3rd quarter of 2022. Compare and contrast (purple emphases mine):
… severance pay stats for Tom Scholar (£355,000), Chris Pincher (£7,920), Kwasi Kwarteng (£16,867) and Boris Johnson and Liz Truss (both £18,660) …
The mind boggles. These are men and women most of the British public has never heard of.
The rest of Guido’s post reads (red emphases his):
Yesterday was ‘take out the trash day’ – or the last parliamentary sitting day before recess – meaning the government had the perfect opportunity to bury bad news. Amongst the buried releases was a delay to the government’s trans guidance … and of course… SpAd salaries. Included in the Annual Report on Special Advisers was the revelation that severance to Liz and Boris’s SpAds set the taxpayer back by £3,000,000. The government is currently spending £9,000,000 per year on Special Adviser salaries.
Rishi has a number of SpAds.
Rishi’s highest earning SpAds are:
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- Liam Booth-Smith: £140,000-144,999
- Amber de Botton: £140,000-144,999
- Eleanor Shawcross: £140,000-144,999
- Will Tanner: £125,000-£129,999
- Rupert Yorke: £125,000-£129,999
- Nerissa Chesterfield: £110,000-£114,999
- Aidan Corley: £110,000-£114,999
- Cass Horowitz: £110,000-£114,999
Nice work, if you can get it…
Shocking.
On October 29, 2022, The Mail reported on Amber de Botton’s appointment. For those wondering, she does not appear to be related to philosopher Alain de Botton.
Let’s look at the connections here. Rishi Sunak’s best man was James Forsyth, former political editor at The Spectator who went to work at No. 10. James Forsyth is married to Allegra Stratton, who worked for Boris Johnson in Downing Street and had formerly worked at ITV. ITV’s political editor is Robert Peston, whose late father was a Labour peer. He has high praise for both Allegra Stratton and Amber de Botton.
The Mail says:
Rishi Sunak has hired ITV news chief Amber de Botton as his director of communications, Downing Street confirmed today, in a move likely to anger his arch rival Boris Johnson.
It comes just months after her team won an award for their explosive series of Partygate stories that arguably helped bring about the demise of Mr Johnson’s premiership.
The ousted PM’s team also saw ITV as the main outlet for ex-special adviser Dominic Cummings’ extremely damaging leaks, and considered Ms De Botton’s colleagues, particularly political editor Robert Peston, as among his harshest critics.
Mr Peston revealed Ms De Botton’s new job on Twitter on Saturday, saying the mother-of-two was a ‘brilliant news editor and journalist’ who will leave a ‘huge hole at ITV News.’
Remember that one of the 2020 partygate photos showing Boris relaxing on a socially-distanced patio behind No. 10 came from an office with which Rishi Sunak would have been familiar. Hmm.
The article continues:
Mr Sunak appointed the broadcaster’s former national editor Allegra Stratton as his director of strategic communications in 2020 when he was chancellor, before she was poached a few months later to become Mr Johnson’s spokeswoman for televised briefings during the early days of the Covid pandemic.
Ms De Botton was one of the top names reportedly being considered for the role after an advert was published in July 2020.
The successful applicant was to be an ‘experienced broadcaster’ expected to field questions from political reporters on behalf of the government – for which they would earn a lucrative six-figure salary.
Ms De Botton did not publicly express an interest in the position before it was given to Ms Stratton.
It would later be her colleagues at ITV who obtained a video of Ms Stratton joking about a ‘fictional party’ at a mock press conference days after an allegedly rule-breaching Christmas party at No 10. She resigned a day later.
They then ran a series of hugely damaging Partygate exposes, proving a thorn in the side of Team Boris.
Amber de Botton also worked at Sky News, hardly a conservative media outlet:
Ms De Botton, a Durham University graduate, also received high praise today from Beth Rigby, political editor at Sky News, where she previously worked as Deputy Head of Politics.
Ms Rigby wrote: ‘She’s a seriously talented news editor & political operator, now heading to No 10 to direct PM’s communications strategy. They mean business.’
On her Instagram page, Ms de Botton lists ‘TV news, antics and kids’ on her bio. Mr Johnson’s wife, Carrie, is also one of her 600 followers.
Unlike an impartial civil servant, as a special adviser Ms De Botton will be able to give political advice to ministers, defend the Government’s actions and criticise opposition parties.
In principle, yes. In reality, no.
Greenpeace trespass: arrests and bail
My post from yesterday led with Greenpeace’s trespass at the Sunak manor in North Yorkshire. It is private property, but police were slow to move in. One wonders why.
Yesterday afternoon, Guido updated his readers on the incident:
The four Greenpeace protesters who scaled the Sunaks’ empty home in Richmond this morning have finally been arrested. They were seen being bundled into the back of a police van this afternoon, having sat on the property’s roof all morning after covering an entire face of the building with black fabric. Which should raise a few questions over the house’s security…
Indeed.
Guido quotes Greenpeace over their displeasure with the announcement of 100 new oil and gas licences off the coast of the North Sea:
Our action today was entirely peaceful and we were diligent in ensuring that no one was home and that no damage would be done to the property. We have cooperated fully with the police and the activists have been taken into custody. We felt it was important to take this message directly to the prime minister’s doorstep today, since it is Sunak himself that has signed off on the decision to grant these licences and it is Sunak who holds the power to reverse this decision.
The Telegraph also had a brief report:
Three men and two women who were arrested following a Greenpeace protest at Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s home in North Yorkshire have been released on bail.
North Yorkshire Police arrested the group on Thursday, after protesters climbed on the grade II-listed manor house in Kirby Sigston and draped oil-black fabric over the property while Mr Sunak and his family are on holiday.
A statement from North Yorkshire Police said: “All five suspects who were arrested following the protest in Kirby Sigston on August 3, have been released on conditional police bail to allow for further inquiries to be carried out. The investigation remains ongoing.”
Someone on Dan Wootton’s show said last night that the Sunaks are currently in Santa Monica. Keep that in mind for the next few years. I doubt the Sunaks will be staying in the UK long-term.
GB News’s Ben Leo went to Greenpeace’s offices to have a bit of a wander around. All being well, you see the two co-directors, a woman and a man in a white T-shirt:
The woman told Ben Leo that he had not been invited. He laughed, saying that was an ironic comment considering Greenpeace hadn’t been invited to the PM’s manor. Leo pottered around in the group’s offices, making himself a mug of tea and attempting to converse with other activists who said nothing in reply. A good few minutes of journalistic entertainment.
Rishi’s ratings among Conservatives
Conservative Home released its latest Cabinet minister ratings this morning.
This is the full table. Those voting must be Conservative Party members:
Of that list of MPs, I can count the number I like on one hand: Ben Wallace (outgoing Defence Secretary), James Cleverly (Foreign Secretary), Alister Jack (Scottish Secretary) and Suella Braverman (Home Office Secretary).
Guido gives his analysis, with Rishi emerging as a winner:
It’s been a solid month for the Cabinet’s popularity amongst Conservative members, as Conservative Home’s latest ranking shows a significant recovery from last month’s record lows. Rishi Sunak is the big winner, as his rating swings from a meagre -2.7 to a solid mid-table performance on +20.7. Last month a record 9 members of the Cabinet saw negative ratings, that number’s now back down to 5.
The recovery looks to be down to the Conservatives’ surprise win in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election, and their subsequent focus on environmental policy. Grant Shapps, who has led the anti eco-extremist charge, is up over 10 points, climbing out of the negatives to +3.1. Though, this one-off electoral success is yet to rub off on Party Chair, Greg Hands, who declined on last months rankings. Kemi Badenoch has seen her ratings rise by 14 points, and moves to second from third. She’s only behind Ben Wallace, who has maintained his iron grip on the top spot as his stint as Defence Secretary comes to an end.
Speaking of the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election, two commenters said that Rishi stayed away until the new MP, ex-postie and current councillor Steve Tuckwell, won:
The Uxbridge win was down to the local candidate Mr Tuckwell and ULEZ, to the point where Mr Sunak was invisible locally, he did not visit nor did his image appear on campaign literature.
Till Steve Tuckwell won and Sunak turned up, but Steve didn’t look too happy.
I cannot blame him.
I am certain Steve Tuckwell will do a great job in serving his constituency, one he knows well.
More on Rishi’s suits
I wrote about Rishi’s ill-fitting suits yesterday, citing a California blogger. Perhaps they could meet up while he is on holiday there.
The Telegraph‘s Stephen Doig then chipped in with ‘Why Rishi Sunak’s shrunken suits need an overhaul’:
Sunak’s wardrobe has become the story over the years, not his standing as a statesman.
I can see his clothes becoming the subject of political cartoons come the next general election.
Doig includes one photo showing Rishi in a properly-fitted suit. He should get that one back out of the wardrobe. It looks great.
One recommendation of Doig’s with which I disagree is that Rishi should go double-breasted. No. Sorry. That isn’t going to work. You either like double-breasted suits from the time you are a teenager, such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, or you stay single-breasted.
The flood trousers are Rishi’s biggest issue. Please, Prime Minister, get your Savile Row tailor to help you. You’re going to need it.
Bank of England raises rates yet again
On Thursday, the Bank of England raised interest rates yet again.
One year ago, the rate was 2.2%. It is now 5.25%.
Guido says:
The hike is smaller than last month’s 0.5% increase, following better than expected inflation figures. However it still leaves interest rates at their highest level since 2008. It’s the fourteenth consecutive rates rise…
GB News’s economics editor and Telegraph columnist Liam Halligan is critical of these constant rate rises. He repeatedly says that it takes time for each rate rise to bed in, sometimes as long as 18 months. He would make a great governor of the Bank of England, but, even though he used to work at Channel 4 News, he’s not establishment enough.
Banking update
Just a short banking update today, including the latest on Nigel Farage.
Earlier this week, I forgot to include a Telegraph article from Tuesday, August 1, which has been making GB News rounds, ‘Staff at Monzo which refused Jeremy Hunt an account called Conservatives “evil”‘.
I’d not heard of Monzo until the Chancellor said they’d refused him an account. Why would someone want to bank at an institution with such a peculiar name.
The article says that some Monzo staff have been critical of everyone who hasn’t adopted the latest narrative. Sounds as if they’re in the grip of the aforementioned luxury beliefs:
Employees at Monzo, the challenger bank with more than seven million customers, also said Sir Jacob Rees Mogg, the Tory grandee, “could do the human race a favour” by leaving politics and called Harry Potter author JK Rowling “vile”.
Amid a backlash over the “debanking scandal”, Jeremy Hunt revealed last month he had his application for an account with the lender rejected before he was appointed Chancellor.
Monzo was also criticised last week after it emerged that it had told Gina Miller, the anti-Brexit campaigner, that it would close her political party’s account …
The [NatWest/Coutts] debanking scandal has spread to other banks and a whistleblower has now revealed how staff at Monzo openly mocked those with views they disagreed with on workplace forums.
In a message on a Slack forum in October last year, one staff member wrote: “Maybe JRM could do the human race a favour and stay out of politics forever. Doubt you could replace him with anyone who is more of an archetypal Tory”.
The following day the same member described the Conservatives as “evil” and “ugly”.
A dossier also reveals that staff celebrated the Conservative local election losses in May with one responding to a meme by saying “What’s great about this gif is that the Tories have lost Maidenhead” [Council in Theresa May’s constituency] and another writing: “Tory losses in the local elections – we love to see ittttt”.
A third staff member, a financial crime investigator, added: “I’m just gutted that my own local council didn’t have an election”.
In March, an engineer wrote that the Spring budget had distracted the public from “the general state of the country”, while in January another said: “I hope I’m wrong though and we manage to topple the Tories for good. I’m not sure anyone can survive under the Tories for much longer” …
The Telegraph revealed earlier this year that the digital bank was reprimanded by the data watchdog after staff called a gender-critical man a “horrible Terf”.
Employees had mocked and condemned the man’s opinions on an internal company forum after he publicly criticised their transgender policy.
The Information Commissioner’s Office issued a rebuke, confirming it has written to the bank to “ask them to review and strengthen their own internal procedures and staff training in relation to this matter”.
MPs said that the internal discussions at Monzo raised fresh questions about the culture within banks.
“Banks should not behave like political activists,” Gareth Johnson, the Conservative MP for Dartford, said. “It is time the Treasury took action against those banks who increasingly seem to have a Left-wing agenda. Is it too much to ask banks to just get on with banking and to stop their political activism?”
Mr Farage said it was not surprising bank staff were criticising the Tories and it was part of the wider culture within the sector …
Monzo downplayed the comments:
A spokeswoman for Monzo said: “Our ambition is to make money work for everyone, which means that we’re politically neutral and personal views play no part in our policies or decision making, including eligibility for a Monzo account. Any suggestion otherwise is categorically untrue.
“These cherry-picked comments are personal views of a handful of employees in informal conversations and it is wrong to portray them as the views of Monzo or our thousands of other employees.”
Meanwhile, Nigel Farage has now applied for a subject access request (SAR) from NatWest, the parent company of Coutts, his former bank.
He said on Thursday that he had not yet received a reply. As he has encouraged NatWest customers to file subject access requests themselves, it is no wonder. It can take between 30 and 90 days for banks to reply to SARs:
A discussion took place afterwards, which you can find around the 11:00 minute mark:
Farage said that he will escalate legal moves. Liam Halligan discussed the matter, saying that Jeremy Hunt told him in an interview that free speech is fundamental and so are bank accounts. To discriminate against customers’ personal beliefs, within reason, is against banking regulations and the law. In an unheard of move, Hunt has written to the regulator — the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) — about closed bank accounts. Liam Halligan said it was very unusual for the second most powerful man in government to ask for an FCA investigation into an individual case. Halligan said that drag hunting groups have also been banned. He said that this issue is uniting left and right. Former Lib Dem MP Sir Vince Cable, who was partly responsible in coalition years ago by taking away Post Office bank accounts, denied there was ever a bank account right with the Post Office. He said he wanted the Post Office to grant more powers re bank accounts. Oddly, Farage did not counter Cable’s claims. I would have.
Here’s another discussion from the show on whether the FCA should investigate. The former Nationwide (building society) deputy CEO says there should be an investigation:
There is much more to this story than we can imagine. We’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg.
That’s all for this week on the British political scene. More to come, no doubt.
On Thursday evening, June 29, 2023, Nigel Farage told his GB News audience that his bank accounts — personal and business — had been mysteriously suspended and would be closed within a matter of weeks.
This is his video from earlier in the day, the contents of which he repeated on his show that evening:
He is one of those fortunate individuals who has a personal account manager. Recently, that relationship had changed and he was assigned a new one, who broke the bad news in a rather perfunctory way, according to Farage, and with no explanation other than that it was no longer commercially viable.
Farage thinks it was because he is what the EU calls a politically exposed person (PEP).
Farage said that he had been with the same bank since 1980.
That evening, he had the Free Speech Union’s Toby Young on to discuss the matter. Toby Young said that one does not need to be a PEP in order to have his/her account closed. One can simply respond to a bank survey, as one Yorkshire Building Society customer did. The customer said that he disagreed with the building society’s promotion of Pride month. His account was summarily closed.
Young himself had his PayPal accounts cancelled temporarily. Those closures could have been permanent had he not taken to the airwaves on GB News and his own website.
Young’s website, The Daily Sceptic, covered Farage’s ominous complaint, as covered in The Mail (emphases mine):
Mr. Farage claimed that the extraordinary measure was effectively tantamount to making him a “non-person”, adding: “I won’t really be able to exist or function in a modern 21st century Britain. I’m beginning to think that perhaps life in the United Kingdom is now becoming completely unliveable because of the levels of prejudice against me.”
Mr. Farage speculated that the “establishment” was targeting him due to his role in campaigning for Brexit during the 2016 referendum on British membership of the EU. He also suggested that his reputation had been smeared by Labour MP Sir Chris Bryant, who last year used parliamentary privilege to claim that Mr. Farage was paid more than £500,000 by the Russian state through his appearances on Russia Today in 2018. He vehemently denied this, saying: “I didn’t receive a penny from any source with even any link to Russia.”
At the end of the show, Farage announced that he would be taking some time off from his GB News programme and hinted at moving overseas.
He also added that what made it worse was that close family members of his suffered the same fate.
Of course, Farage and the Yorkshire Building Society customer are not the first to have had their accounts closed. Two other Britons have had the same experience, albeit some years before. They were involved in controversial sociopolitical movements or activity seen to go against the governments of the day.
The Express also had a report covering the Farage debacle and denials issued to two other political parties:
Express.co.uk understands that all the British-based banks have denied the Reclaim Party [actor Laurence Fox] a bank account and one of the accounts for Reform UK [businessman Richard Tice] was also closed with minimum notice.
On Friday, June 30, The Telegraph also covered the two account closures: Farage’s and the person with Yorkshire Building Society. Of Farage’s situation, the article says:
Whilst he did not name the institution, it has previously been reported that he had a mortgage with Coutts, which is owned by NatWest.
Coutts is the ne plus ultra of British banks. It is not for most of the population. I do not know if this is still the case, but they used to send written invitations to people they viewed as potential customers. In other words: don’t call us; we’ll call you.
Also:
Writing for The Telegraph, the former Brexit Party leader said he was then rejected by seven other banks when he approached them to become a customer.
The former Ukip leader said that the decision was proof that “we are living through the politicisation of our corporate sector”.
“It should alarm everybody that a bank has the power to punish those it considers to have erred or strayed,” he wrote.
It turns out other high-profile Brexit Party members also had their accounts closed:
Two former Brexit Party MEPs have revealed how their bank accounts were also cancelled after they were elected to the EU Parliament in 2019.
Henrik Overgaard Nielsen said MetroBank severed ties with him “without an explanation” after “months of paying bills on time and having stable income and outgoings”.
Christina Jordan added that, months after she was elected for the Eurosceptic party, she suffered a similar fate at the hands of the Nationwide Building Society.
“My family and I had all our accounts closed even though I’d been a loyal customer for 30 years,” she wrote on Twitter.
“To those cheering and celebrating the cancellation of Nigel Farage’s bank accounts, let’s hope it never happens to you.”
Of the Yorkshire Building Society customer, at that point anonymous, the article stated:
A leading building society has revealed that it closes customers’ accounts if they engage in “rude” or “discriminatory” behaviour.
The Yorkshire Building Society made the admission after claims that it severed ties with a client who questioned the use of Pride flags in their branches …
The Yorkshire Building Society, which has three million customers, said that it does “not close savings accounts based on different opinions regarding beliefs”.
In a statement it added: “We would only make the difficult decision to close a savings account if a customer is rude, abusive, violent or discriminates in any way, based on the specific facts and behaviour in each case.”
It is interesting that a building society can close a ‘customer’ account, because, by definition, such a financial institution has members, not customers or clients. Together, the members own the institution as a mutual society.
That day, Farage wrote more about his personal experience for The Telegraph:
I wasn’t too surprised to receive a call a few weeks ago informing me that my business and personal accounts would be closed. In recent years, the same thing has happened to colleagues in Ukip and the Brexit Party, and I am well aware of the procedure. No reasons are ever given. The bank simply informs the customer that their accounts will be shuttered.
I can trace this vile process back to 2014, when it happened to a Ukip by-election candidate. Those targeted have usually chosen to stay quiet as they search desperately for an alternative bank and hope the situation will right itself. Not everybody is prepared to hush it up, though. Christina Jordan, a former nurse originally from Malaysia who came out of retirement in 2019 and was elected as a Brexit Party MEP, has allowed me to share that she suffered this fate too. Soon after her election, the bank she had used for 31 years summarily cancelled her account and those of her husband and daughter. I believe this has happened to too many people for it to be a coincidence.
In my case, I was told by the banking group with whom I’ve been a customer since 1980 – and with which all of my business and personal accounts have been held – that a letter would follow the call I received. It would offer a full explanation. The letter arrived, but it merely re-stated the impending closure and supplied the date by which I should remove my money.
I kept this to myself while I sought a different bank. After many hours of trying, this has come to nothing. I’ve been rejected by seven other banks. Apparently, I am a “politically exposed person” and carry too much risk and too many compliance costs …
I smell a rat and am certain something much bigger is going on. For years, I have been falsely accused of having financial links to Russian funding. Even though this is nonsense, MPs have used parliamentary privilege to accuse various people associated with the Brexit campaign of the same thing. Last year, the Labour MP Sir Chris Bryant claimed in the Commons chamber that I received £548,573 in one calendar year “from the Russian state”. Despite my pleas to him and the Speaker to correct this assertion, there has been no retraction.
Has Bryant ever stopped to consider the knock-on effects of his slander? Several of my family members have also had their bank accounts closed. I feel not just anger about this, but also guilt. Once, everybody in the UK was entitled to a bank account. But since the Post Office was privatised, this no longer applies. Without a bank account, you become a non-person, unable to live within the law. In Germany and other countries the right to a bank account still exists. Our law must change.
He acknowledged the account holder with Yorkshire Building Society …
If you were to post a political opinion on social media that did not conform to your bank’s “values”, you could find yourself in my position. This happened to a gentleman recently who questioned why his bank was celebrating Pride. He is now being advised by the Free Speech Union.
… before concluding:
I am going to take some time off to work out what to do. But all this makes me wonder: has Britain gone so far down the road of authoritarianism that it is too late to turn back?
By Saturday, July 1, we discovered that an Anglican priest, a former vicar, was the Yorkshire Building Society’s victim.
Just after midnight, The Times reported:
An Anglican church leader has accused the Yorkshire Building Society of bullying after it announced that it was closing his account within 14 days when he protested against it allegedly pushing transgender “ideology”.
The Rev Richard Fothergill, who has been with the building society for 17 years, wrote to them online in June, after he was invited to give general feedback.
He insists his message was a polite rebuttal of transgender ideology, which he claims the institution has been actively promoting during Pride month. He received a letter four days later saying that his internet savings account would be closed.
Yorkshire Building Society (YBS) told him in the note, seen by The Times, that it had a “zero tolerance approach to discrimination” and that their relationship had “irrevocably broken down”.
Fothergill, 62, told The Times: “I wasn’t even aware that our relationship had a problem. They are a financial house – they are not there to do social engineering. I think they should concentrate their efforts on managing money, instead of promoting LGBT ideology.
“I know cancel culture exists and this is my first first-hand experience of it. I wouldn’t want this bullying to happen to anyone else.”
Fothergill, from Windermere, Cumbria, typed out his views on transgender ideology to the building society on June 18. He responded to a monthly email he gets from YBS asking for his feedback, after noticing that it was displaying support for Pride month on its website. The minister, who no longer has his own parish but founded the Filling Station evangelical network, wrote out “a couple of paragraphs” about how he did not agree with trans ideology — or the idea that you can have alternative genders — being pushed on children.
Fothergill said: “I was polite all the way through. I was pointing out that they are a financial house – surely they should just be worrying about financial issues.”
On June 22 he received a letter from YBS about his “views regarding LGBTQIA+”. It said the comments he made were “not tolerable” and the building society had a “zero tolerance approach to discrimination”.
The building society, which has three million customers, questioned Fothergill’s version of events …
Fothergill approached the Free Speech Union after his bank’s letter.
Toby Young, the union’s founder, told The Times: “People who’ve been debanked contact the Free Speech Union all the time, but even I was shocked by this story. If you respond to a bank’s request for feedback in good faith you shouldn’t lose your account if you say something it doesn’t like.
“That‘s the kind of thing we’d expect to happen in Communist China, not a supposedly free country like ours.”
That day, one of Young’s contributors, Ian Rons, reminded us of other people, somewhat in the public eye, who befell the same fate:
The targets have included those associated with UKIP and the Brexit Party (including two former MEPs), Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party, Wings Over Scotland [also a Reverend!], a Church of England vicar – and probably many more that we don’t know about.
Remember the Canadian truckers who had their accounts frozen when they protested over having to get covid vaccines just to work.
Here are more we do know about:
the children’s rights group UsForThem, Gays Against Groomers, the gender-critical evolutionary biologist Colin Wright, alternative news site The Exposé, the conservative group Moms for Liberty, socialist outlets Consortium News and MintPress News, the UK Medical Freedom Alliance, Left Lockdown Sceptics and Law or Fiction, as well as probably many more who either don’t have the clout to draw attention to their plight, or who decided it was best to keep quiet.
To that list, we can add Triggernometry, a podcast hosted by Konstantin Kisin — the son of Russian émigrés, no less — and Francis Foster.
Ian Rons, however, disagrees with Farage on his alleged PEP status:
… he doesn’t meet the definition. In my view, this “cancellation” is a political attack that signals the left-wing/woke blob’s capture of the banking system – a new and very dangerous phase of the culture war where everything including one’s ability to pay the rent is under threat.
That said, Rons zeroes in on Farage being the victim of parliamentary privilege via Labour MP Chris Bryant:
… particularly irritating for me, in this respect, is Chris Bryant’s claim last year in the House of Commons that Nigel Farage took £548,573 from RT (formerly Russia Today) in the 2018 calendar year – which may have been the pretext for his banking cancellation …
The fact that these allegations were made in the chamber of the House of Commons, taking advantage of parliamentary privilege to make a defamatory allegation about an individual who, by virtue of parliamentary privilege, isn’t able to take legal action to defend his reputation, is a disgrace. The last time someone did that, it didn’t work out too well – although like Tom Watson [former Labour MP, now peer], it probably won’t stop Chris Bryant from getting a peerage. However, the reason he did it is because, like Harry Reid, he knows it can be effective. And the reasons I don’t believe Bryant are because: (a) I think Nigel Farage is an honourable person; (b) because RT wouldn’t pay someone half a million pounds unless they were on screen almost constantly (and Farage denies appearing on RT at all in 2018 – a claim that could easily be challenged if it were false); and (c) because if Bryant had any evidence to back up his allegations, he’d have made them outside parliament instead of hiding behind parliamentary privilege. The coward! And also, I think Farage could beat him in a cage fight.
The Free Speech union will endeavour to help those whose bank accounts are being closed. Rons ended his article helpfully with this:
Stop Press: I have learned that the Free Speech Union has records of 10 cases where they are supporting or have supported members suffering financial exclusion (including debanking, being kicked off crowdfunding platforms, etc.). Additionally, there have been 31 reports from members of financial exclusion cases (often historical) in which no action was requested or expected, and 7 of these members had written to their MP. But this is likely the tip of the iceberg. As ever, if your right to free speech is being infringed or you are being penalised in some way for exercising your lawful right to free speech please email help@freespeechunion.org.
GB News was on the case, defending both Nigel Farage and the Revd Richard Fothergill.
On Saturday afternoon, Nana Akua spoke about Farage’s plight and said, ‘We must fight this!’
Neil Oliver’s show followed hers. His editorial firmly opposed the financial institutions. He said, ‘To be deprived of a bank account is to be the victim of social murder’:
Financial pundit Jasmine Birtles and Professor Ralph Schollhammer reacted to the closure of Farage’s accounts. Both were empathetic and disappointed for him, but Prof Schollhammer said that the Netherlands has even more to consider, albeit not bank closures. The Dutch government is considering laws dictating to whom homeowners can sell their homes, e.g. ethnicity, income threshold. Furthermore, all homes worth €250,000 or less will be liable for Net Zero-type home improvements. N.B.: That means the Dutch elites do not need to worry about their homes being eco-compliant! The result is that working and middle-class sellers are lumbered with a financial drawback. They either spend their own money — estimated to be €80,000, Schollhammer says — putting in the improvements or accepting a loss on their sale because the buyer will have to assume the cost. Dear, oh dear. Here’s the segment:
The Revd Calvin Robinson, whose show followed Neil Oliver’s, interviewed the Revd Fothergill, who seems like a decent cove. See if you don’t think so, too. He’s a well mannered chap and explained what happened with the Yorkshire Building Society survey and the aftermath. No one commenting on YouTube, including atheists and gays, had a bad thing to say about him:
For those who do not have time to watch the short video, this is what he told The Telegraph:
“I wrote to them on their feedback portal making two points: one was ‘is this really a good use of your time, you’re not here for social engineering’ and [secondly] said I have serious ethical problems with the transsexual element, and the implications of broadcasting that to young children” …
“They didn’t justify it – they said ‘your comments will not stand’. I think its fairly sinister and we’re in very dangerous water when banks can pick and choose who they’re going to do business with based on prejudicial whims”.
One of Calvin’s panellists mentioned ESG — Environmental, Social, Governance — policies upon which medium to large companies are scored. Unfortunately, there was not enough time for that to be explored in depth.
ESG has become an industry practically overnight. Do a search and you will find any number of consulting companies or sole practitioners advising how a firm can raise its ESG score.
ESG did not even show up in the stories about these account closures until after the weekend, although, admittedly, The Sunday Times featured columnist Rod Liddle’s view on it in ‘If the banks want to be loved, banning people is an interesting way to proceed’:
Farage has had his Coutts bank account frozen, with no reason given. There has been some suggestion that Farage’s work for Russia Today — a long time ago — may be one of the reasons, but I have yet to read that other former RT stalwarts such as Jeremy Corbyn [former Labour leader] or Vince Cable [former leader of the Liberal Democrats] have had their banking facilities withdrawn. Anyway, Farage has been given no reason, and none of the other pusillanimous banks will accept Farage’s custom.
This, I would contend, is utterly loathsome, and yet it is happening quite a lot at the moment.
He discussed ESG without naming it:
It is not hard to understand why it has been happening. The banks believe, with some justification, that they are probably the most hated institutions in the country and wish to curry favour — especially with young people, whom they can later rob blind through overdraft charges and the like. So they strike a pose. The mithering near-adolescent dullards in their social media units are never happier than when issuing fatuous counter-rational slogans about diversity, inclusivity and how loads of women have penises. And this virtue-signalling now extends to banning from their institutions people with whom their prospective young customers might disagree. It is worth noting that they are often propelled towards this sort of action by the relentlessly busy activists, who want everyone except themselves banned from everything. The banks and corporations succumb, because they are themselves amoral two-bit thugs.
Even the Bank of England, which isn’t a consumer or business bank in any sense, joined in on Monday. That bank’s job is to regulate money supply sensibly and to manage inflation properly. On Monday, July 3, Guido Fawkes reported that they, too, are in thrall to special interest groups (red emphases in the original):
Inflation is at 8.7%, interest rates are at 5%, two-year gilt yields are at their highest since 2008 and the UK is teetering on the edge of recession. The good news, however, is that the Bank of England have announced staff of any gender can get pregnant. According to the Bank’s 103-page submission to Stonewall, their new family leave policy “talks about parents without specifying gender” and insists all gender identities are capable of birthing a child. Anything about… mothers?
They are also planning to introduce gender neutral toilets as part of their plan to change their facilities. Do they plan to change governor any time soon?
But notice this article which mentions how the BoE was 57th in Stonewall’s placement in 2022:
Late on Sunday, however, there was a bright spot. We have to hope that Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s heart might be in the right place for once.
The Telegraph‘s View stated that Hunt would be looking into bank account closures:
… it is welcome to learn that Jeremy Hunt is “deeply concerned” by these stories and has ordered an investigation – on the basis that it would be quite wrong if banks and payment providers deny financial services to those exercising the right to free speech.
… The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has agreed to report on how higher interest rates are being passed on to savers.
Perhaps the FCA should also remind banks that they are not in the business of social engineering? They might favour certain causes, such as Pride, and find the opinions of certain customers unsavoury – but that does not mean they have the right to prevent anybody from engaging in our society and economy.
If the Conservatives stand for anything, it is for economic liberty and freedom of conscience, and they should consider it an urgent priority – a matter of party mission – to prevent any misuse of power.
I couldn’t agree more.
On Monday morning, July 3, the Conservatives’ Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer also called for action. The Times reported:
Banks must not close people’s accounts for political reasons, a cabinet minister has said, in an escalating free speech row sparked by Nigel Farage.
Lucy Frazer, the culture secretary, said regulators should take action against banks which shut off access to people with controversial views, saying she was “concerned that people’s bank accounts might be closed for the wrong reasons” …
Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, is said to be “deeply concerned” about the politicisation of banking decisions and is planning to set out measures to strengthen protections for customers.
A Treasury source told The Daily Telegraph: “No one should have their bank account denied on the grounds of freedom of expression. We expect to take action on this issue within weeks.”
This morning Frazer told LBC: “I agree with Jeremy on that. It’s important that people are able to get [banking] facilities.”
Meanwhile, over at The Telegraph, columnist Tim Stanley wrote, ‘The elites are using banks to take back control’:
… It’s amazing how fast customer services can move when it wants to …
He then compared this to the non-violent political assault on Boris Johnson. I agree. It’s odd — strangely coincidental — that these events are occurring at the same time:
A holdout against this phenomenon ought to be Parliament, where all ideas are equal and given time. But here, as in universities, there’s been a shift away from free speech as the common commitment and towards the promotion of liberal values that are increasingly presented as institutional; if you don’t hold them, perhaps you shouldn’t be here. You can interpret this as a response to the expenses scandal. There was a widespread perception that Parliament was out of touch, that it needed to define its values and police them better.
Under the [former Speaker of the House of Commons, anti-Brexit] John Bercow doctrine, MPs were encouraged to challenge the executive and committees were given a new status, creating the context to the privileges committee’s investigation into Boris Johnson.
Finding him guilty of misleading MPs was perhaps a fair cop; drumming him out of the Commons, overkill. But to then write a report on the people who criticised their report was sinister, and depended upon another charade of neutrality. The committee claims to operate above party politics, thus anyone who calls it partisan must be mad or bad. But the court is parliamentary; it is composed of MPs. So, it is by its very nature political.
What a cast of characters history has given us to play with. Sir Chris Bryant formerly headed the committee; he’s the man who used parliamentary privilege to accuse Farage of taking money from Russia, which Nigel thinks might be why he cannot get a bank account. Bryant hates Boris; to his credit, he recused himself from the investigation before it started. His replacement, Harriet Harman, had previously suggested Boris might be dishonest, too – but for some reason was considered above reproach. In an earlier incarnation, she was a legal officer for what became Liberty, a free speech organisation. Over the weekend, however, she welcomed the press regulator, Ipso, upholding a complaint against Jeremy Clarkson for sexism in a column he wrote about Meghan Markle – an overreach by the regulator that will have a chilling effect on opinion writing.
For now I can still write what I think, which puts me in the position of being freer than my MP to criticise the operation of Parliament. So here goes: the committee’s actions are part of a wider attempt by the establishment to take back control after Brexit, and they should not be separated from the unpleasant atmosphere in the Commons towards anyone with a dissenting view on, say, trans – or from Keir Starmer’s purge of the hard Left. Downing Street has gone along with the committee, I presume, because it calculates that kicking out populists will help its cause. That’s the Tories for you. Do not be surprised if, within a decade, it is declared illegal to be a “reactionary”, with the legislation passed by a Conservative government. Penny Mordaunt will stand outside No 10, dressed as Elizabeth I, and declare that she did it “because I am a conservative!”
No, it’s not a conspiracy, just a class of people who think alike, acting alike. The only way to understand Britain is to grasp that the lunatics took over our pretty asylum years ago.
That evening, Conservative MP Sir Charles Walker told GB News in no uncertain terms that Nigel Farage was ‘owed an explanation’ as to why his bank accounts were closed:
Later that night, The Telegraph reported on ESG — ‘Most high street banks are signed up to Stonewall diversity schemes’:
The majority of High Street banks are members of diversity schemes run by the controversial charity Stonewall, The Telegraph can reveal.
Lenders are facing questions over their links to the charity amid a backlash over closing the bank accounts of some people with gender-critical views.
A vicar who questioned his building society’s Pride branding had his account closed, while a Scottish blogger [the Reverend from Wings Over Scotland] believes action was taken by his bank over his stance on gender issues.
Stonewall’s Diversity Champions scheme includes guidance to employers on gender-neutral spaces and the use of pronouns. The company also runs a top 100 index that measures employers on diversity and inclusion.
HSBC, which allows customers to register as gender-neutral, is the top ranking bank in Stonewall’s annual Equality Index, and Natwest, which is still one-third owned by the Government, is linked to the charity.
NatWest — or Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), as it was at the time — got into deep trouble during the 2008 banking crisis. The Government — i.e. the taxpayers — had to bail it out. This is the thanks we get for helping them survive. They go ahead and close accounts arbitrarily, such as Nigel Farage’s:
The article continues:
Barclays, which offers private medical cover for employees transitioning, and Nationwide, which encourages staff to use pronouns in email signatures, are also among Stonewall’s top 100 employers. Santander is a member of the index, while TSB is a member of the Diversity Champions Scheme.
Lloyds Banking Group, which runs its own branches as well as Halifax and Bank of Scotland, was the only major lender to fail to respond to queries about the scheme, but was previously named as the country’s top employer by Stonewall …
Guidance has included describing mothers as a “parent who has given birth”, to remove gendered language and to allow those who self-identify as women to use female toilets and changing rooms.
Yet, some non-financial institutions have disassociated themselves from Stonewall:
A number of high-profile organisations including the BBC, Channel 4, the Cabinet Office, and the Department of Health have stopped working with Stonewall amid concerns over its schemes.
They had good reason so to do:
The Information Commissioner has previously found that the index and the Diversity Champions scheme allowed Stonewall to exercise “a significant degree of influence over the policies that participating members operate”.
The article also told us:
Stuart Campbell, who runs the pro-independence Wings Over Scotland blog, had his accounts shut by First Direct, owned by HSBC, which he believes was over his stance on gender issues.
Barclays recently had to pay out £21,500 in compensation to the Core Issues Trust, a Christian ministry, after shutting its account over its stance on gender identity.
Yet, some organisations defend the account closures:
UK Finance, the industry trade body, defended the rights of banks to shut accounts as they see fit, arguing that lenders only do so after conducting an “extensive review”.
Tide, an online business bank, became the latest to face questions on Monday as the hosts of Triggernometry, a free speech YouTube show and podcast, said they would take it to the Financial Ombudsman after their account was closed.
Konstantin Kisin, one of the hosts, said he had been told the issue was because of the podcast, which has more than half a million subscribers, receiving donations, but added that this “doesn’t seem to be a very credible explanation”.
“We can’t possibly be the only organisation that’s a business and accepts donations,” he said.
Tide said any decisions on account closures had “no connection whatsoever to a member’s beliefs” and that it was “categorically false” to suggest otherwise.
Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay said that:
he was concerned that decisions were being made by “activist banking staff” and lenders were hurting those who “dared air a view”.
“With most banks signed up to Stonewall, one wonders if too much discretionary power now sits with some activist banking staff,” he said. “Diversity, inclusion and equality works both ways including the right to a variety of opinions in a free society.”
Absolutely.
A Stonewall spokesperson ostensibly defended the right to free speech:
There are no requirements in the Diversity Champions programme over how members engage with any customers, and we do not seek to influence operational decisions for any Diversity Champion on matters such as these.
Our Diversity Champions programme simply provides resources and guidance to support member organisations to include and support LGBTQ+ colleagues at work.
Yet, some banks are issuing new terms and conditions coming into force in July 2023. Note the parts with red bullets:
Hmm.
Who or what is responsible for all this?
On Tuesday, July 4, Conservative MP Ranil Jayawardena told Dan Wootton that he blamed Tony Blair for introducing such legislation with the Human Rights Act and the Equality Act (start watching at the 19:02 mark):
Britons, like many other Westerners who have had these policies foisted upon them, have taken strongly against them. On February 12, 2023, The Telegraph reported on Professor Matt Goodwin’s findings in ‘”Woke” companies risk inciting “hostile” public, research finds’:
Matt Goodwin, politics professor at Kent University, who carried out the polling, said a growing number of companies are now ‘adrift’ from the wider public …
Britons are “cynical” and “tired” of attempts by big business to force political views on employees and customers, according to Policy Exchange.
New polling by the think-tank reveals that the majority of the public (58 per cent) reject the suggestion that companies should be able to demand that their employees declare gender pronouns …
Matt Goodwin, politics professor at Kent University, who carried out the polling, said a growing number of companies are now “adrift” from the wider public by “lecturing them about political issues and being seen to stifle their free speech and expression” …
Policy Exchange carried out the polling to launch a new research project on “Corporate Culture Wars in the United Kingdom”, which will explore the rise of “woke capitalism”.
This includes self-censorship in the workplace and reports of political discrimination against employees, consumers, or account holders because they are deemed to hold “controversial” beliefs …
It seems that, hard as it would have been to believe four years ago, we are on our way to a despised social credit score system, the kind that has been active in China for some time now.
We shall see what happens in the weeks ahead with Nigel Farage and the Revd Richard Fothergill and many others, unknown to us. May God bless them through this ordeal and may the Holy Spirit guide them, through Jesus Christ our Lord, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen.
Mark Steyn’s British fans have been lamenting his departure from GB News a few weeks ago.
However, we have reason to celebrate, because his replacement, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, had a splendid debut with his State of the Nation show on Monday, February 27, 2023. Rees-Mogg has somewhat of a cult following among British conservatives. :
He has represented North East Somerset since 2010 and regularly walks about his constituency, both town and country, at the weekends to find out what’s on voters’ minds:
Piers Morgan’s show runs concurrently on TalkTV in the 8 p.m. timeslot.
Granted, Monday was Rees-Mogg’s first night, but he managed to beat both Morgan and Sky News between 8 and 9 that evening:
In fact, the traditionally-minded MP had twice as many viewers as Morgan.
Guido Fawkes gives us the BARB ratings (red emphases his):
Jacob took in an average of 79,200 viewers for the hour. Piers, meanwhile, took in a mere 35,300. More than doubling Morgan’s average throughout the show.
In fact, Rees-Mogg beat Sky News, which scored 64,700. Jacob and Piers will face off again tonight – rest assured, Guido will be checking the figures again. Beaten by a part-time presenter, oh Piers…
Well done!
Here are the segments from last night’s programme.
Fortuitously, it was a historic day for the UK, as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen presented the new Windsor Framework for Northern Ireland that afternoon. King Charles also met Ms von der Leyen, which was controversial, as the monarch does not get involved in matters political.
It is unclear at the moment whether this will be a suitable replacement for the Northern Ireland Protocol in our post-Brexit nation.
Rees-Mogg opened with the story in his Moggologue:
Here’s the Moggologue in full:
Lee Anderson, the outspoken Red Wall MP who is now deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, was Rees-Mogg’s first guest. They discussed another news item of the day, which was that the first female Speaker of the House of Commons, Labour’s Betty Boothroyd, died at the age of 93. Anderson and Boothroyd both came from working class homes. Anderson said that Boothroyd inspired him to pursue a career in politics:
They also discussed the Windsor Framework, which Anderson sees as a positive replacement for the Northern Ireland Protocol:
Rees-Mogg asked Anderson what it was like switching from the Labour Party to the Conservatives. He said that, while the party switch was easy, because he worked in local government in Ashfield as a Labour councillor and for then-MP Gloria De Piero, some of his friends and family found the decision hard to take, although, he added, a fair number of them voted for him in the general election in 2019:
Here’s the segment in full:
Veteran Conservative MP David Davis was up next. He was the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union from 2016 to 2018. He viewed Rishi’s Windsor Framework positively and thinks that Brexit is mostly ‘done’ now:
You can see more of that interview here:
The segment of the evening was a three-way exchange between Rees-Mogg, retired Labour MP Stephen Pound and historian David Starkey on the King’s association, no matter how vague, with the Windsor Framework. All agreed he should have sat on the sidelines and not met von der Leyen, as the Queen would have done. I could have listened to another several minutes of their discussion:
Here’s the full video:
The show ended with a segment about the rewriting — i.e. censorship — of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. Joining Pound and Starkey was Toby Young:
Here’s the full interview:
State of the Nation, which airs Monday through Thursday evenings, will be good not only for GB News but also for the Conservative Party, bringing a bit of Parliament to television. Jacob Rees-Mogg is an eminently sensible man.
This week, Big Brother Watch’s Ministry of Truth exposé states how UK Government agencies tracked social media accounts of certain well-known Britons during the coronavirus pandemic to monitor opinions.
One of the Twitter accounts involved belongs to a publican who had not yet begun appearing on television.
2020: online dissent, abuses of power
Before going into that story, here are bookmarks I had filed under ‘Ministry of Truth’. It would seem that the name relates to a Twitter account which has since been renamed. This person has nothing to do with the aforementioned exposé, but the tweets reflect what was already on people’s minds.
Interestingly, all of these relate to the pandemic.
Looking back to April 2020, three weeks after the UK locked down, people were already discussing the egregious nature of lockdown and suspicion about any vaccine.
This is an informal poll asking what percentage of global deaths justifies a lockdown:
Nearly 80% of people did not wish to take a coronavirus vaccine, should one be developed:
By April 13, police were already entering people’s properties. In this case, there was no party going on, but the abuse of power was shocking:
The video went viral:
On April 24, 2020, Tony Blair’s Institute for Global Change suggested that state surveillance was ‘a price worth paying’ to stop coronavirus. Shocking:
By the end of April, we discovered that the WHO had coined the expression ‘New Normal’ on June 7, 2019:
In June 2020, despite lockdown in force, protests took place. In London, Metropolitan Police officers ran away from protesters after being pelted with objects:
2023: Ministry of Truth
On Saturday, January 28, 2023, Big Brother Watch sent an advance copy of their report to the Mail, which reported (emphases mine):
A shadowy Army unit secretly spied on British citizens who criticised the Government’s Covid lockdown policies, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Military operatives in the UK’s ‘information warfare’ brigade were part of a sinister operation that targeted politicians and high-profile journalists who raised doubts about the official pandemic response.
They compiled dossiers on public figures such as ex-Minister David Davis, who questioned the modelling behind alarming death toll predictions, as well as journalists such as Peter Hitchens and Toby Young. Their dissenting views were then reported back to No 10.
Documents obtained by the civil liberties group Big Brother Watch, and shared exclusively with this newspaper, exposed the work of Government cells such as the Counter Disinformation Unit, based in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and the Rapid Response Unit in the Cabinet Office.
But the most secretive is the MoD’s 77th Brigade, which deploys ‘non-lethal engagement and legitimate non-military levers as a means to adapt behaviours of adversaries’.
According to a whistleblower who worked for the brigade during the lockdowns, the unit strayed far beyond its remit of targeting foreign powers.
They said that British citizens’ social media accounts were scrutinised – a sinister activity that the Ministry of Defence, in public, repeatedly denied doing.
Papers show the outfits were tasked with countering ‘disinformation’ and ‘harmful narratives… from purported experts’, with civil servants and artificial intelligence deployed to ‘scrape’ social media for keywords such as ‘ventilators’ that would have been of interest.
The information was then used to orchestrate Government responses to criticisms of policies such as the stay-at-home order, when police were given power to issue fines and break up gatherings.
It also allowed Ministers to push social media platforms to remove posts and promote Government-approved lines.
The Army whistleblower said: ‘It is quite obvious that our activities resulted in the monitoring of the UK population… monitoring the social media posts of ordinary, scared people. These posts did not contain information that was untrue or co-ordinated – it was simply fear.’
Last night, former Cabinet Minister Mr Davis, a member of the Privy Council, said: ‘It’s outrageous that people questioning the Government’s policies were subject to covert surveillance’ – and questioned the waste of public money.
Mail on Sunday journalist Mr Hitchens was monitored after sharing an article, based on leaked NHS papers, which claimed data used to publicly justify lockdown was incomplete. An internal Rapid Response Unit email said Mr Hitchens wanted to ‘further [an] anti-lockdown agenda and influence the Commons vote’.
Writing today, Mr Hitchens questions if he was ‘shadow-banned’ over his criticisms, with his views effectively censored by being downgraded in search results.
He says: ‘The most astonishing thing about the great Covid panic was how many attacks the state managed to make on basic freedoms without anyone much even caring, let alone protesting.
Now is the time to demand a full and powerful investigation into the dark material Big Brother Watch has bravely uncovered.’
The whistleblower from 77 Brigade, which uses both regular and reserve troops, said: ‘I developed the impression the Government were more interested in protecting the success of their policies than uncovering any potential foreign interference, and I regret that I was a part of it. Frankly, the work I was doing should never have happened.’
The source also suggested that the Government was so focused on monitoring critics it may have missed genuine Chinese-led prolockdown campaigns.
Silkie Carlo, of Big Brother Watch, said: ‘This is an alarming case of mission creep, where public money and military power have been misused to monitor academics, journalists, campaigners and MPs who criticised the Government, particularly during the pandemic.
‘The fact that this political monitoring happened under the guise of ‘countering misinformation’ highlights how, without serious safeguards, the concept of ‘wrong information’ is open to abuse and has become a blank cheque the Government uses in an attempt to control narratives online.
‘Contrary to their stated aims, these Government truth units are secretive and harmful to our democracy. The Counter Disinformation Unit should be suspended immediately and subject to a full investigation.’
A Downing Street source last night said the units had scaled back their work significantly since the end of the lockdowns.
The Mail‘s article also has the 77th Brigade member’s full disclosure as well as Peter Hitchens’s first-hand experience from that time.
It is ironic that a Conservative MP, Tobias Ellwood, is part of the 77th Brigade, which monitored another Conservative MP, David Davis:
Toby Young, also monitored, featured the Mail‘s articles on his website in ‘The 77th Brigade Spied on Lockdown Sceptics, Including Me’.
He pointed us to a Twitter thread from Dr Jay Bhattacharya, one of the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration, which the Establishment panned worldwide:
On Sunday, January 29, Spiked had a tongue-in-cheek title to their article on the exposé, ‘Warning: sharing a spiked article could get you in trouble with the government’:
Today, a report by Big Brother Watch has revealed the alarming lengths the UK government went to in order to hush up its critics. We now know that three government bodies, including a shady Ministry of Defence unit tasked with fighting ‘information warfare’, surveilled and monitored UK citizens, public figures and media outlets who criticised the lockdown – and spiked was caught up in that net.
This mini Ministry of Truth was composed of the Rapid Response Unit (RRU) in the Cabinet Office, the Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU) in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the army’s 77th Brigade. The 77th Brigade exists to monitor and counter so-called disinformation being spread by adversarial foreign powers. But, as a whistleblower from the unit told Big Brother Watch, ‘the banner of disinformation was a guise under which the British military was being deployed to monitor and flag our own concerned citizens’. The other bodies worked together to monitor ‘harmful narratives online’ and to push back on them, by promoting government lines in the press and by flagging posts to social-media companies in order to have them removed.
The public figures targeted by these shadowy units included Conservative MP David Davis, Lockdown Sceptics founder Toby Young, talkRADIO’s Julia Hartley-Brewer and Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens. All of whom had warned about the consequences of lockdown and had raised questions about the UK government’s alarmist modelling of the virus.
Documents obtained by Big Brother Watch, using subject-access requests, reveal that Peter Hitchens was flagged for, among other things, sharing a spiked article. A cross-Whitehall disinformation report from the RRU in June 2020 notes that, ‘The spiked article was shared on Twitter by Peter Hitchens, which led to renewed engagement on that specific platform’. The RRU also monitored the level of public agreement, noting that ‘some highly engaged comments’ agreed with the article, while others were critical …
We desperately need a reckoning with lockdown, and with the lockdown on dissent that accompanied it.
Big Brother Watch announced their report with a summary of highlights, ‘Inside Whitehall’s Ministry of Truth — How secretive “anti-information” teams conducted mass political monitoring’.
Read that if you do not have time to peruse their full report.
Guido Fawkes also summarised the report on Monday, January 30:
Millions of pounds of taxpayer’s money went into this egregious surveillance. Imagine inadvertently paying to have yourself monitored by the state:
Unbelievable.
Will anything come of this? I certainly hope so, but I doubt it.
On Thursday, February 2, David Davis asked about Peter Hitchens during Cabinet Office questions:
David Davis: In 2020 we have evidence that the Cabinet Office monitored the journalist Peter Hitchens’ social media posts in relation to the pandemic. In an internal email the Cabinet Office accused him of pursuing an anti-lockdown agenda. He then appears to have been shadow- banned on social media. Will the Minister confirm that his Department did nothing to interfere with Hitchens’ communications, either through discussion with social media platforms or by any other mechanism? If he cannot confirm that today, will he write to me immediately in the future to do so? (903428)
Mr Speaker: Who wants that one?
Jeremy Quin (Cabinet Office Minister): It is a pleasure to take it, Mr Speaker. I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. He referred to the rapid response unit; what it was doing during the course of the pandemic was entirely sensible—trawling the whole of what is available publicly on social media to make certain we as the Government could identify areas of concern particularly regarding disinformation so that correct information could be placed into the public domain to reassure the public. I think that was an entirely reasonable and appropriate thing to do. I do not know about the specifics that my right hon. Friend asks about; I would rather not answer at the Dispatch Box, but my right hon. Friend has asked me to write to him and I certainly will.
They have an answer for everything.
Let no one think that Labour would have done anything differently. Labour fully supported the Government on everything coronavirus-related and said they would have gone further.
Last week I posted about the comedian Jerry Sadowitz, whose Fringe show was cancelled by Edinburgh’s Pleasance Theatre.
We have seen more examples of the demise of free speech, particularly in the UK, in 2022.
Restaurant’s help wanted ad
In February 2022, Steve Bothwell, who owns the 27-year-old Aberdeen restaurant Cafe 52, placed a no-nonsense advert online in an attempt to hire more staff:
On February 28, Scotland’s Daily Record reported that the advert went viral and received much online how-dare-he criticism, included in its article.
However, the ad’s wording spells out what Steve Bothwell wants: a hard-working employee who is focused on continuing the excellent reputation of the restaurant rather than his or her social identity politics.
I admire a man who says he doesn’t want mask wearing Guardian readers, virtue signallers and self-testers. I wouldn’t, either. He was also right to say that hospitality works only when staff:
leave their egos in their lockers.
He gave an interview to the paper (emphases mine):
Speaking to the Daily Record he said: “I don’t regret the wording [of the job advert], but I wish people would get on their pins about more important issues.
“I’m not banning anyone. The advert was tongue in cheek.”
He added: “I’ve had three good applications this morning off the back of the advert.”
Some weeks later, one of The Guardian‘s restaurant critics, Grace Dent, had lunch at Cafe 52. Wow! If any of my readers are in Aberdeen, this place looks great. It’s right across the street from Aberdeen Market.
Dent’s review, complete with must-see close-up photos, appeared on April 1, but this was no April Fool’s joke:
The menu was full of delicious-sounding things such as cullen skink, hot smoked mackerel, and Normandy chicken casserole with leeks and tarragon. As I loitered by the door, something about the cafe’s name rang a bell, then, to my glee, I realised this was the place whose owner famously doesn’t like Guardian readers, and who earlier this year penned a job advert banning them. Perhaps I should have been offended, but there was a bread-and-butter pudding made with crumpets on the menu, plus, to quote Groucho Marx, “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”
… This charming, long, narrow strip of a bistro has survived for more than 25 years without the likes of me, and is these days serving a sort of boho, rustic, French-Scottish, casual-elegant menu to a unending stream of walk-ins. Cafe 52 has no need for my pronouncements.
Dent was complimentary about the servers as well as the food. So, the advert worked!
She described the food as follows:
I like Aberdeen a great deal, and spent three wonderful days there alone, talking to strangers and eating …
But Cafe 52 was my favourite. Proprietor Steve Bothwell … has created a place where glorious food matters, and I can say beyond doubt that my restorative bowl of Normandy chicken casserole will be one of the greatest things I’ll eat all year. Chicken soup – or stew, in this case – does touch the soul, and a good one is as close to a cuddle from Mother T herself as you can get. This one featured five or six chunks of soft, stewed breast, thigh and leg in a clear tarragon broth with the very occasional chunk of soft potato or slice of garlicky mushroom, and was way more than the sum of its parts. This stew, topped with a vivid pink bundle of pickled red cabbage, was a wonder, with fragrant tarragon the hero ingredient. I ate it with a side of kale, deep fried and laced with chilli, which is the only way to treat it – that is, mercilessly …
Steve Bothwell’s mother, who is in her 80s, makes all the desserts. Amazing:
Bothwell’s octogenarian mother makes all the puddings at Cafe 52, and just two spoons into her crumpet bread-and-butter pudding I felt the need to check with the staff if anyone had written down the recipes for her carrot and brandied fruit cake or her coffee cake with rum syllabub. The bread pudding is a fearsome, rib-sticking challenge of a dessert, with crumpet after crumpet smothered in sweet, eggy custard and served with vanilla ice-cream. It’s the sort of dish that makes guests at other tables wink and wish me luck, as if I was some sort of amateur at this game. The first four or five spoons were sublime, all sticky and compelling; I was living my best life.
The owner also asked if she had enjoyed her lunch:
“Yer stew all right?” he asked, semi-begrudgingly, as if he didn’t really care what the answer was going to be, but was curious anyway.
“Incredible,” I said. “I loved it.”
“Fine,” he said, and walked off without another glance in my direction. I have paved a way for all of us. Just don’t go in carrying this newspaper.
Edinburgh Fringe’s best jokes
Speaking of Scotland, the Edinburgh Fringe is supposed to be — and once was — the world’s edgiest comedy festival.
It was last held in 2019 and resumed again this year.
Each year, a series of comedy awards are bestowed upon the best talent. They were once sponsored by Perrier and propelled comedians to stardom. Now it seems that the UK comedy channel Dave has assumed the mantle.
On Monday, August 22, The Guardian gave us the top, award-winning jokes from the 2022 Fringe.
At best, these are Christmas cracker jokes, most of which a 10-year-old could tell:
1. I tried to steal spaghetti from the shop, but the female guard saw me and I couldn’t get pasta – Masai Graham (52%)
2. Did you know, if you get pregnant in the Amazon, it’s next day delivery? – Mark Simmons (37%)
3. My attempts to combine nitrous oxide and Oxo cubes made me a laughing stock – Olaf Falafel (36%)
4. By my age, my parents had a house and a family, and to be fair to me, so do I, but it is the same house and the same family – Hannah Fairweather (35%)
5. I hate funerals. I’m not a mourning person – Will Mars (34%)
6. I spent the whole morning building a time machine, so that’s four hours of my life that I’m definitely getting back – Olaf Falafel (33%)
7. I sent a food parcel to my first wife. FedEx – Richard Pulsford (29%)
8. I used to live hand to mouth. Do you know what changed my life? Cutlery – Tim Vine (28%)
9. Don’t knock threesomes. Having a threesome is like hiring an intern to do all the jobs you hate – Sophie Duker (27%)
10. I can’t even be bothered to be apathetic these days – Will Duggan (25%)
Dire.
On Sunday, the topic came up for discussion on Andrew Doyle’s Free Speech Nation show for GB News (54:43 to 58:00):
Doyle’s guests, fellow comedians, deplored the level of comedy at this year’s Fringe.
One said that there are ‘tastemakers’ who nominate comedians for an award and go on to nationwide shows.
Another said that, if this trend continues and edgy comedians like Jerry Sadowitz aren’t allowed back in, it will spell curtains for the top Fringe venue:
The Pleasance will die.
Another intimated that the establishment wanted to reshape comedy into something anodyne:
These big venues are getting large donations from the Scottish Government.
That might well be true. I read or heard somewhere that someone from the Scottish National Party owns a few comedy clubs in Edinburgh.
Hmm.
Censored television shows versus nudity
On the topic of censored comedy, British actress Vicki Michelle from the classic sitcom ‘Allo, ‘Allo! weighed in last week on the current preference for saucy reality shows over reruns of old family-oriented shows.
‘Allo, ‘Allo! satirised the Second World War and was a huge hit that ran for ten years. Until recently, it, and other classic sitcoms from the 1960s through to the 1980s, were often shown on the BBC.
Now they are all on a paid-subscription streaming platform called BritBox. It’s odd that the British paid in television tax to see these shows, now they are expected to pay again to see them.
BritBox has put content warnings on ‘Allo, ‘Allo! and other programmes from that era.
Television and streaming services are dictating what we can and cannot see.
On August 19, Vicki Michelle gave an interview to The Mirror, which The Telegraph reprised:
A string of content warnings for TV series was issued last year by streaming service BritBox – a collaborative venture between the BBC and other broadcasters – including one advisory note which told viewers that ‘Allo ‘Allo! featured “outdated” material.
“Comedy is being neutralised – or nuked,” Ms Michelle said. “I think 80 per cent of this country would love comedy like ‘Allo ‘Allo! to be made again, so 20 per cent might take aversion to some of the content.”
The series which ran from 1982 to 1992 was set at the Cafe Rene in the town of Nouvion and followed the comic troubles of proprietor Rene Artois – played by Gorden Kaye – as he juggled the dangers posed by British airmen, the French resistance and Nazi occupiers.
The humour stemmed from innuendo and mockery of national stereotypes and accents, and in 2021 Britbox warned modern audiences about the supposedly dated content of the decades-old programme, with a note stating: “This classic comedy contains language and attitudes of the time that may offend some viewers.”
BritBox explained at the time that certain classic programmes required advice on the “potentially sensitive language or attitudes of their era”.
The actress objects, pointing out the near-obscene content of some of our reality television shows, both visually and orally:
Michelle argued that contemporary television is far more offensive than the comedy now deemed worthy of content warnings, telling the Daily Mirror: “People eff, blind and use the c-word on telly and that’s considered fine.
“And on reality TV people make love under a sheet, and that’s fine. There was none of that in ‘Allo ‘Allo!. I don’t think there’s anything in there that would upset a normal person.
She added: “‘Allo ‘Allo! didn’t send up anyone in particular – we sent up everyone.
“It was a family show where the adults got the double entendres and the children just thought the situations were funny. You can see someone on telly in a bikini and their boobs out.”
Let’s look at it another way. If Blazing Saddles were shown on television now, it would only be seven minutes long:
Free speech, Salman Rushdie and the average Twitter user
Along with many millions, I hope that Sir Salman Rushdie is making a steady recovery from his attack less than a fortnight ago.
Conservative commentator Emma Webb told Andrew Doyle on his show last night (see video above) that no publisher would dare print anything like Satanic Verses today. Publishing houses are self-censoring, as if there were a blasphemy law in place:
This year, a few high-profile arrests have been made in the UK with regard to tweets that have caused other Twitter users ‘anxiety’. Not long ago, a middle-aged man was pinned down by five police officers in his garden, so it is a bit rich of Boris Johnson to come across as a big supporter of free speech in Salman Rushdie’s case when the average Joe is being arrested for lesser offences:
On that subject, lefty lawyer Jolyon Maugham rightly condemned the attack on Rushdie, then asked who has a platform on which to speak.
Well, I do wonder.
A reply to Maugham’s tweet told the raw truth of the matter. The Left used to advocate free speech when they thought theirs was censored. Now that the leftist point of view is ubiquitous, they censor any opposing view:
Scarily, this clampdown extends to health issues now.
Censorship of coronavirus vaccine opposition
The truckers’ protest in Ottawa in February showed how draconian censorship can get.
The men and women were protesting against the Canadian government for mandating coronavirus vaccines as a condition of employment. Justin Trudeau took the extraordinary action of freezing some protesters’ — and contributors’ — bank accounts.
On March 8, The Spectator‘s Jane Stannus wrote an excellent article about this, just as Premier Justin Trudeau visited the UK: ‘Where’s the outrage over Trudeau’s trip to Britain?’
She wrote:
Trudeau used the Emergencies Act to allow banks to unilaterally freeze accounts and assets, not only of participants in the peaceful Ottawa freedom convoy but also of anyone who supported the protest financially – all without a court order and legal immunity. And insurance policies of participants were subject to cancellation. Nothing says ‘free country’ like being able to freeze the assets of your political opponents without notice, judicial oversight, or possibility of legal recourse, on suspicion of having donated $25 to a trucker who parked in front of Canada’s parliament because he didn’t want the government to take away his job.
Perhaps this seems unfair. Trudeau may have invoked the never-before-used Emergencies Act to resolve a parking problem. An error in judgement, but in the end he rescinded it.
Quite true. But not before he suspended Canadians’ rights to due process and to peaceful assembly. Or delayed the Act’s debate in the Canadian House of Commons until after the protestors were forcibly removed by police. Or cynically strong-armed its approval through the House of Commons via a confidence vote – cleverly changing the subject of the vote to whether or not MPs wanted to call an election. And remember too that he hinted that the Act would be needed for months to come. Can the country ever be considered truly safe when – at any time – a truck driver apparently going about his business might approach the heart of Canada’s capital city and run up the Canadian flag, thereby magically metamorphosising into a terrorist?
Trudeau lifted the Emergencies Act on 23 February when it became apparent that the Canadian Senate was likely to vote against it. The next day, Russia attacked Ukraine and both national and international attention turned elsewhere – doubtless to the Liberal government’s great relief.
But anyone who thinks Trudeau has learned his lesson is sadly naïve. In a speech to the Toronto Ukrainian community on 4 March, he had the audacity to deplore the ‘slippage in our democracies’ and express concern about countries around the world ‘turning towards slightly more authoritarian leaders’. Why is this happening? According to Trudeau, it’s because ‘misinformation and disinformation’ are allowed to be shared on social media, thus ‘turning people against the values and the principles of democracies’. Right. To preserve democracy, what we need is censorship?
For all Trudeau’s talk, the real threat to Canadian democracy is not the truckers’ movement, whose actions revealed that large numbers of Canadians just want a return to normal life. No: the real threat to democracy is Canada’s ideologically driven leadership, seizing more and ever more unchecked power so as to force Canadian society into the mould of a collectivist utopia. It would be nice if the British parliament cared enough to discuss it.
Lord Ridley — Matt Ridley — pointed out that it was quite the opposite for the British parliament with regard to President Donald Trump. MPs wanted to ban Trump for ‘hate speech’:
When Trump came to the UK, neither House of Parliament extended him an invitation.
Yet, when Trudeau uttered real hate speech against people who did not want to be vaccinated, that was A-okay with our parliamentarians:
Fortunately, he was not invited to address Parliament.
He did, however, address EU parliamentarians in Brussels. A German MEP, Christine Anderson, took strong exception to Trudeau’s actions over the truckers’ protest and pointed out his love of Chinese coronavirus policies.
This very short video is a must-watch. Anderson’s English is flawless in every respect:
I don’t know what the reaction was, but at least she said it and he was there to hear it.
GB News’s Mark Steyn has been interviewing British family members of those who have died from the coronavirus vaccine and have been receiving compensation (£100,000) from the British Government.
Unfortunately, many are heartbroken as they share their stories on Twitter and other social media platforms. Not only do they get harsh feedback from readers accusing them of lying, but the social media moderators accuse these people of peddling mis- or disinformation.
This has been going on not only in the UK, but also in other Western countries.
Alexandra Marshall, the editor of the online edition of The Spectator in Australia, says the censorship is taking place because the push to get people to take potentially harmful vaccines has been a ‘global error’, one that, in some countries, could result in class action lawsuits. This catastrophic failure is too big to fail and no politician wants to jeopardise his or her career by facing a legitimate pushback from citizens. This video is from May 11:
The Online Safety Bill
Meanwhile, our Conservative Government has put forward a potentially damaging Online Safety Bill, notionally designed to protect the most vulnerable but which, in reality, will ‘protect’ — restrict — everyone else.
Nadine Dorries, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said that she wanted to stop social media ‘pile-ons’. It’s like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
Guido Fawkes explains in a Twitter thread:
Who is going to define what a ‘pile-on’ actually is?
And will different rules apply online and offline? Think of newspapers:
On May 11, Kathy Gyngell, editor of The Conservative Woman, wrote:
YESTERDAY marked a black day in British history. It was the most repressive Queen’s Speech ever. A reversal of Britain’s centuries-long march to freedom.
It contained not one, but a number of ‘innovative’ measures that threaten to curtail our basic rights, including our freedom of speech and movement, under the guise of what are, I am afraid, spurious claims to reform the law and protect us.
The proposed new Bill of Rights and a series of other state interventionist and regressive measures will make it harder for any who ‘dissent’ the official narrative – whether on ‘pandemic’ policy, vaccine risks or further lockdowns – to air and share their critiques and evidence, or to publicly protest against such curtailing of our rights.
The Bill of Rights is set to replace current Human Rights law in the name of curbing an incremental rights culture. However, it will quite specifically undermine, if not take away, individual choice and responsibility when and where it is deemed to conflict with the State’s definition of the common good.
Back in March, I asked whether this was the reform of human rights we need? My answer was that it emphatically was not. I argued that the proposed legislation is a perversion of the traditional notions of rights and duties, and a mendacious and threatening one at that.
Who will decide what those broader interests of society may be? The Government, the World Health Organisation, or any other international public health body with undue influence over our political masters? The last two years of irrational lockdown and all but compulsory vaccination, all in the name of the higher public good, fills me with foreboding.
The proposed Online Safety Bill is also deeply worrying. Under its terms, ‘major social media firms will face fines worth up to ten per cent of their global turnover if they fail to tackle illegal content getting on to their sites under reintroduced duty of care plans to protect users from online harms’.
At the rate we at TCW are already being censored, under the notion of ‘harms’, this also bodes very ill for us and any other dissenting or free speech site …
The proposed Public Order Bill and its additional police powers, also in yesterday’s speech, again would be welcome if it was restricted to stopping eco-protesters blocking roads and inflicting fuel shortages on motorists, and not used against peaceful protest against government policy.
However, it will allow police to ban suspected troublemakers from attending specified events. Does that mean Piers Corbyn, for example? I defend his right to protest and so should anyone. Does it mean in fact any government critic or opponent could be singled out? How will it be interpreted? The degree to which the police are already politicised and discriminate does not augur well …
All this proposed new legislation needs to have a bright torch shone on it. We need to protest against it and remember those of centuries past who gave their lives for today’s, now to be curtailed, freedoms.
I could not agree more. It is difficult to believe that Conservatives have come up with this unholy intrusion into our lives and thoughts.
Labour have since said that they would take these laws even further once — or if — they are ever in power. We would do well to take them at their word.
On June 27, Lord Frost urged Conservatives to scrap the Online Safety Bill. The Daily Mail reported:
The Tory peer claims the Online Safety Bill contains so many flaws ‘it is hard to know where to start’.
He singles out for criticism the fact that it will outlaw comments on social media that would be legal in the real world.
Lord Frost, the former Brexit minister, says the move will be ‘highly damaging’ to free speech and will benefit only the ‘perennially offended’ who want to be protected from anything they disagree with.
He says: ‘A Conservative Government should not be putting this view into law. The best thing the Government could do would be to slim down the Bill so they can proceed rapidly with the genuinely uncontroversial aspects, and consign the rest where it belongs – the wastepaper basket.’
It is hoped that a new Prime Minister will sink this bill once and for all in September.
I certainly hope so. We have bigger worries right now.
My advice to social media users? If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
The 150th birthday of Speaker’s Corner
In late June, advocates of free speech gathered at London’s Speaker’s Corner to celebrate its 150th birthday.
The day before, police arrested a female Christian apologist at Speaker’s Corner because she wore a tee shirt with a Charlie Hebdo cartoon featuring an image many think should not see the light of day.
I do not know if this was the same lady who was brutally attacked with a knife there some months earlier for giving a defence of the Christian faith.
Toby Young, the General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, was at Speaker’s Corner on its 150th birthday and gave Mark Steyn his report, including one about the Christian lady:
Young pointed out that, in Victorian times — certainly leading up to the founding of Speaker’s Corner in 1872 and beyond — people were much more able to speak their minds than they are today.
Young lamented the fact that not many people were present at the 150th birthday celebration. Nor did the mainstream media cover such an important event.
He said that, if people want to read or hear free speech, they now have to go online.
Conclusion
The great irony in all of this censorship is that it took a Russian emigré to the UK to point it out.
Author, comedian and podcaster Konstantin Kisin is putting his views, personal and historical, into a book on the subject: An Immigrant’s Love Letter to the West.
On July 10, he discussed free speech with Andrew Doyle and told him that, right now:
We are in the late Soviet stage …
He went on to describe how his grandfather fell foul of this in Stalin’s Soviet Union. He lost his job and ended up in a gulag as a result.
Here’s the video:
It is sad that it takes an emigré to point out how far down the rabbit hole we are.
That said, thank goodness for Konstatin Kisin. I hope that people listen to him and read his book.
We must defend free speech at all costs.
So much happened in the UK this week that it is hard to find the time and the space to write about it all.
Conservative leadership contest
Liz Truss’s campaign continues to motor ahead, gaining powerful MPs’ backing.
On Wednesday, August 3, a new Conservative Home poll appeared, its results matching those of polling companies, e.g. YouGov. Liz is 32 points ahead:
Conservative Home‘s Paul Goodman analysed his site’s results and YouGov’s (emphases mine):
Granted, neither can be proved right or wrong: as our proprietor has it, a poll is a snapshot, not a prediction. If our survey is correct, all that follows is that Truss would win the contest, were it held now, by 32 points among those who have declared their hand.
However, if we and YouGov are right it is very hard to see how Sunak recovers in the month or so between the opening and closing of the poll. For even if during that time he won over that 16 per of undecideds and others, Truss would still beat him by 58 per cent to 42 per cent.
In short, if our survey is correct he would have to add to that 16 per cent of don’t knows and others some nine per cent of Truss’s supporters – i.e: persuade them to switch.
This seems most unlikely if YouGov’s question about certainty of intention is taken into account. For it finds that 83 per cent of Truss voters and 70 per cent of Sunak voters have made their minds up.
What odds would you give on Sunak winning over all those don’t knows and others (from our survey), and then adding to that pile over half of Truss’s soft support (using YouGov’s figure)? I would say that they are very long indeed …
Those interested in events slightly further back will recall that Boris Johnson beat Jeremy Hunt by 66 per cent to 34 per cent during the leadership election of 2019. That’s exactly the same margin as the Truss-Sunak forced choice I spell out above from our new survey.
One way of looking at Conservative leadership election as matters stand might be to forget the thrills and spills, hype and blunders – such as Truss’s yesterday over regional public sector pay.
And stick instead to the simple thought that the Tory membership divides right-of-party-centre to left-of-party-centre by about two to one and so, all other things being equal, the leadership candidate perceived to be right-wing than the other will win by a margin about two to one.
Finally, Opinium promises a Conservative members poll next week, and it has tended recently to find better results for Sunak than ours or YouGovs.
The YouGov poll from August 3 showed that Britons believe Truss is better than Sunak on the main issues:
Liz gained another supporter in former Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who was also Boris Johnson’s first Chancellor from the summer of 2019 through to February 2020, at which point Rishi Sunak took over.
Sunak worked for Javid when the latter was Chancellor. Javid mentored his younger MP friend:
However, the dynamic changed when Chancellor Sunak locked horns with Health Secretary Javid during the pandemic in 2021.
… those who know both men say there are more prescient personal and political reasons behind Javid’s decision [to back Truss].
They say that tensions emerged after Javid was brought back into the government as health secretary. Sunak regarded the NHS as a bottomless drain on resources and was exasperated by what he saw as Javid’s failure to spearhead fundamental reform of the health service.
Javid for his part was frustrated with the highhanded manner in which the Treasury dealt with the Department of Health and its refusal to countenance the type of spending he believed was necessary to tackle treatment backlogs coming out of the pandemic. He felt that Sunak had not shown the loyalty that he had when the power dynamics were reversed.
There are now significant policy differences as well. When Javid threw his hat in for the leadership he set out a tax-cutting agenda broadly similar to that proposed by Truss. He proposed cutting national insurance and reversing the planned corporation tax rise while Sunak stuck to his policies as chancellor.
One ally said Javid sincerely believes that only by kick-starting growth through tax cuts can public services be properly funded. They said it would have been “odd” if Javid had backed Sunak, given their different and genuinely held views on how to deal with Britain’s economic uncertainties.
This is what Javid had to say about Truss in his article for The Times:
“I fought for strong fiscal rules in our last manifesto,” he wrote. “But the circumstances we are in require a new approach. Over the long term, we are more likely to be fiscally sustainable by improving trend growth.
“Only by getting growth back to pre-financial crisis levels can we hope to support the high-quality public services people rightly expect.”
In a direct attack on Sunak, he said: “Some claim that tax cuts can only come once we have growth. I believe the exact opposite — tax cuts are a prerequisite for growth. Tax cuts now are essential. There are no risk-free options in government. However, in my view, not cutting taxes carries an even greater risk.”
He added: “With only two years before the next election, there has been a temptation to just ‘get the barnacles off the boat’ and avoid any short-term political pain for long-term national gain.
“We must reject that. As a nation we are sleepwalking into a big-state, high-tax, low-growth, social democratic style model which risks us becoming a middle-income economy by the 2030s with the loss of global influence and power” …
A senior Truss campaign source described Javid’s endorsement as the “big one for us”.
They added: “The bigger beasts of the party are uniting behind Liz because they believe in her vision for the economy. We can’t have the Treasury orthodoxy and tired status quo. They believe she will turn things around in time for the next election by getting on and delivering quickly in No10.”
On Wednesday, August 3, Truss and Sunak canvassed separately in Wales before meeting up for a televised hustings in Cardiff later in the day.
A Conservative Welsh Senedd (Senate) member, James Evans, changed his mind about Sunak and decided to support Truss instead. He got a lot of flak in response to his tweet:
Truss’s former party, the Liberal Democrats, criticised her for taking a helicopter around Wales to get to the various Conservative associations there. Pictured is the Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey:
Guido Fawkes points out that the Lib Dems are suffering an attack of sour grapes — and hypocrisy (red emphases his):
… Rishi’s been known to use them, so why should Liz be confined to the rail network…
i News were the ones to reveal Liz’s chartering this afternoon, juxtaposing the decision against her backing of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The LibDems were only too happy to butt in, providing a quote for the copy that it “makes a complete mockery of her promises on Net Zero. It’s clear that she is not serious on climate change.” This quote came from Vera Hobhouse rather than Sir Ed Davey himself, who surely wouldn’t mind the coverage…
Guido’s sure Sir Ed’s decision not to provide the comment has little to do with the fact that, in 2013 as Energy Secretary, he hitched a ride in the helicopter of EDF boss Henri Proglio, after handing him a nuclear deal at double the going rate for electricity. The decision raised objections from Friends of the Earth at the time, who said it “confirms how close the Big Six energy firms are to our decision-makers.” A source close to Liz Truss calls the political attack “the usual sanctimonious hypocrisy from the LibDems”. Sir Ed may need to refuel his own spin machine…
While in Wales, Truss took the opportunity to have a go at First Minister Mark Drakeford (Labour), calling him:
the low energy version of Jeremy Corbyn.
Bullseye!
John McTernan, who advised Tony Blair between 2005 and 2007, wrote in UnHerd why Labour should be afraid of Truss.
I’ve seen John McTernan on GB News and he knows whereof he speaks.
He explains Truss’s strengths:
One of her overlooked strengths is that she has been on a political journey. Changing your mind is often thought of as a weakness in politicians, whereas in reality an unchanging commitment to ideology is one of their most eccentric habits. In normal life, we change our minds frequently and without fuss. As economist Paul Samuelson said, in a line so good it is often attributed to Keynes: “Well when events change, I change my mind. What do you do?” In itself, changing their mind humanises a politician — a particular asset in a time of popular revolt against out-of-touch elites.
But, more than that, making a political journey shows character. Three of the most significant politicians of the Blair era — John Reid, Alan Milburn, and David Blunkett — were great New Labour reformers who had started on the hard Left. Their politics had been tempered and strengthened by their journey. Liz Truss was brought up on the Left and attended anti-nuclear peace camps with her mother. She then became a Liberal Democrat activist, famously demanding an end to the monarchy to Paddy Ashdown’s discomfort. And when a Tory Cabinet minister she backed Remain not Leave, though she is now a passionate Brexiteer. Those surprised that Tory party members overwhelmingly see a former Remainer as the best defender of Brexit need to remember their New Testament: “There will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.” The redemption narrative is one of our most powerful stories: she who once was blind, but now can see.
The fact Liz Truss has been on a political journey also makes her a powerful communicator. Some of the most persuasive arguments in politics are based on empathy rather than angry disagreement. Liz Truss knows why voters find progressive policies attractive, which can strengthen the persuasive power of her arguments for people to change their views. And her speaking style is clear and simple. The listener readily understands what she thinks and believes. Her opponents who too readily dismiss her as simplistic are missing the point. Politics is not a mathematical equation — a ten-point plan won’t beat a five-point plan 10-5. The messages and policies that win are those that connect with the heart as much as the head.
The Truss agenda is straightforward. The educational system is failing kids. Grammar schools would identify and help some bright working-class and minority children. The cost-of-living crisis is hitting wallets and purses. A tax cut would give money back to the public. Energy prices are spiking. Pausing the green levy would reduce prices. Now, there are good arguments against each of these policies, but they are superficially strong one-liners. It takes time to explain how grammar schools distort the education of the vast majority of pupils who don’t get into them, or to make the case that there is a danger that tax cuts lead to more inflation. The arguments against Liz Truss’s policies are strong but they need to be explained. And, as the old political saying goes, “when you’re explaining, you’re losing”.
… One of the best jokes in the US TV show Veep comes when Selina Myers uses the slogan “continuity with change” for her Presidential campaign. It works because it is bizarrely true — and it is true because that is what most voters want. They’re not revolutionaries, they’re realists.
The Truss offer is continuity with the spirit of Johnson and Brexit while meeting the demands of the voters who were, and are, angry with the status quo. That anger has been the fuel of politics since the Global Financial Crisis — it was there in Brexit, in the Scottish independence referendum, in the rise of Corbyn, and in Boris Johnson’s 2019 landslide. The fact that such competing and conflicting political forces can harness that same anger signals that there is an underlying volatility in British politics that can be channelled in different directions by strong and intelligent leadership.
It is in leadership that Labour must contest most convincingly. Liz Truss will likely be undone by events. The cost-of-living crisis is of such a scale that it is hard to see any of her policies — or any of Rishi Sunak’s — that will be more than a drop in the ocean. To win, Keir Starmer must learn from New Labour [Tony Blair’s government]. Attack the new Prime Minister and her government, but don’t nit-pick. The critique must be based on a vision of hope and a positive project that positions Labour once more as the “political wing of the British people”. Otherwise, Keir Starmer risks being just one more man, in a long line of men, who have underestimated Liz Truss at their peril. After all, there are no accidental Prime Ministers, and like the rest, Truss has guile, will and talent.
Guido Fawkes adds another point:
… Truss will be the Tories’ third female PM to Labour’s big fat nought …
Exactly. And Conservatives didn’t need to have all-women shortlists, either, unlike Labour.
For Conservative Party member Toby Young, General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, Truss’s strength lies in opposing another lockdown, which she said ‘No’ to on Monday night in Exeter:
Also in Exeter, on Monday, Truss said that First Minister Nicola Sturgeon (SNP) was an ‘attention seeker’ who should be ignored. Again, I’m pretty sure Truss meant that with regard to appeals for a second independence referendum.
The Telegraph‘s Alan Cochrane, who lives in Scotland, said that some would sincerely welcome those words: ‘Amen to that! Liz Truss finally puts the boot into Nicola Sturgeon’:
It is easy to sympathise with Liz Truss’s presumably exasperated and outspoken statement that the best way to deal with Nicola Sturgeon was to ignore her.
After watching, listening and responding to this ambitious politician for more than 20 years, ignoring her is something I’d rather have been doing than countering every one of her largely lame-brained arguments for breaking up Britain.
Furthermore, the First Minister is every bit the “attention seeker” that the Foreign Secretary portrays her as – most especially when she dons her “Mother of Scotland” role and seeks to insist that she, and only she, speaks for the whole of Scotland.
The truth, of course, is that she speaks only for her party and government, neither of which commands an overwhelming majority of Scottish opinion …
… while Ms Truss is being assailed for her choice of words by the Nationalists and those faint hearts who seek a peaceful political life, there will be more than a few who will shout “Amen to that!” when she talks of Ms Sturgeon’s perpetual attention seeking.
Furthermore, a great deal more candour from Westminster in its dealings with the SNP is long overdue. Far too long. Successive UK administrations have bent over backwards not to be seen as provoking the cause of independence when the truth is that it is already on a life support system, with a fast declining appeal to the Scottish people.
The fact is that Ms Truss knows that she cannot just ignore the devolved Scottish Government and its leader. But she is to be commended for putting the boot in. It’s about time someone did.
While Truss and Sunak were in Wales, Iain Duncan Smith MP was north of the border in Scotland.
He was at an event for Scottish Conservatives in Stirling, in Scotland’s central belt.
The former work and pensions secretary backtracked on comments made by Truss that Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister, should be “ignored” as he criticised the UK government’s approach towards the Union.
“I don’t want to ignore her,” he said. “What I want to do is to let the world know just exactly why Scotland is suffering so much under this incompetent regime at Holyrood. The truth is, it is a disaster: everything from health, the police, the railways — they can’t even build ships sometimes on time and on budget.”
He’s not exaggerating. It’s the raw truth.
The MP wants the next PM to have greater powers of scrutiny over the way Scotland’s SNP government is run. They get billions from taxpayers in the Barnett Formula and waste it. No one, not even Scots, has any idea where the money goes.
He said:
I am desperate for greater powers for scrutiny. It is only scrutiny that unearths all this nonsense and … that the weaker scrutiny up here has allowed the Nationalists to get away with it. So I am going to take that straight back and talk to her about it and see what we could do.
Not surprisingly, the SNP were furious and, as usual, blamed Westminster:
Kirsten Oswald, the SNP deputy leader at Westminster, said: “This is an utterly ridiculous suggestion, showing that even the Tories are out of ideas for how to fix the broken Westminster system. It is not the SNP’s job to explain why Westminster control is increasingly making life more difficult for the people of Scotland — even if the Tories are out of excuses.
“The job of SNP MPs in Westminster is to stand up for Scotland against a UK government choosing to ignore our interests at every turn. That is what they will continue to do.”
Duncan Smith justified his desire for scrutiny saying that SNP MPs are part of the Scottish government, too:
… Duncan Smith said: “We need to turn the tables on them and start saying, ‘Well, can we have a period of question time for you lot to talk about what you are doing in Scotland as the devolved administration?’
“And start examining some of this stuff because they’re not just SNP protesters down in parliament, they are actually part of the government up here.”
Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak told the audience in Cardiff that Truss was wrong about her public sector pay reform and tried to scare Welsh Conservatives into thinking that Truss was going to cut the pay of every single public sector worker in Wales:
However, Sunak got himself into a bit of hot water when he ‘misspoke’ on wind turbines at the event:
On Thursday, August 4, Guido reported:
Rishi’s team has said he “misspoke” during the hustings last night when it appeared he’d u-turned on his opposition to new onshore wind. At the Wales’ husting, Sunak was asked “will you be bold enough to scrap the embargo on onshore wind in England?”, replying “So, yes, in a nutshell.” This appeared totally contradictory to one of his previous policy announcements:
Wind energy will be an important part of our strategy, but I want to reassure communities that as prime minister I would scrap plans to relax the ban on onshore wind in England, instead focusing on building more turbines offshore,
Team Liz immediately leapt on his words as sign of yet another u-turn from Rishi, alleging it was his eleventh campaign u-turn.
This morning Team Rishi, asked to justify his words, bluntly replied “he misspoke”. Much like Britain under Rishi’s actual wind energy policy, he’s losing fans rapidly…
Sunak is also being economical with the truth when he says that he personally came up with the idea of British freeports, which were first mooted in an early Margaret Thatcher manifesto for the Conservatives:
However, Rishi managed to get two notable endorsements, one from former Conservative Party leader Michael Howard and Nigel Lawson, who was Chancellor under Margaret Thatcher. He is also Nigella Lawson’s father.
Guido has more:
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- Finally got an endorsement from Nigel Lawson himself, who writes in The Telegraph that Rishi is “the only candidate who understands Thatcherite economics” …
- Finally got an endorsement from Nigel Lawson himself, who writes in The Telegraph that Rishi is “the only candidate who understands Thatcherite economics” …
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- Michael Howard opened for Rishi at Wales’ Tory husting last night, saying he can provide the leadership needed “not only in this country, but across the wider western world”
Lawson must have felt obliged to endorse Sunak, given that the latter has a photo of him in his office.
Sunak was over the moon about Lawson’s Telegraph article:
Boris looms large
Prime Minister Boris Johnson still looms large in the psyche of British voters.
Normally, we are all too happy when a Prime Minister stands down. When Margaret Thatcher’s MPs booted her out, we breathed a sigh of relief. We’d had enough of Tony Blair when he left No. 10 to Gordon Brown. We didn’t care too much about David Cameron’s resignation, although we did think he was petty-minded for resigning the morning after the Brexit referendum result. And we were only too happy for Theresa May to go, although we did feel sorry for her as she cried at the Downing Street podium.
However, Boris is a different kettle of fish.
The August 3 YouGov poll showed that a) most Conservative Party members thought their MPs made a mistake in getting him to resign as Party leader and b) he would make a better PM than either Truss or Sunak:
In response to the aforementioned Welsh Senedd member’s tweet, someone responded with this:
Incredibly, as ballots are currently being posted to Conservative Party members, Alex Story, the leader of the Bring Back Boris campaign, still thinks there is time to add Boris’s name to the list of candidates.
He spoke to Nigel Farage on Wednesday, August 3:
He said that 14,000 members of the public wrote to Conservative Party headquarters after Boris stood down as leader.
He added that most Boris supporters knew he was economical with the truth, but they felt that his ouster was forced.
Nigel Farage countered by saying that 40% of Conservative voters wanted Boris to leave. Furthermore, he could no longer command the support of his MPs.
Story responded by saying that Boris will be like ‘Lazarus [rising] from the dead … something romantic and quirky’.
That’s one way of putting it, I suppose.
It is highly unlikely that Boris’s name will be on the ballot, but … one cannot fault Story and Lord Cruddas for trying on the public’s behalf.
More news next week.
Thanks to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, England is now the freest country in the Western world.
On Monday, February 21, Boris announced the lifting of the remaining coronavirus restrictions. Some of this began yesterday. However, much of the lifting comes into effect on Thursday, February 24, with the remainder finished by April 1.
He gave a statement to Parliament first, which he followed with a televised coronavirus briefing — press conference — at 7 p.m. that evening.
This was the nub of his statement to the House of Commons (emphases mine):
As we have throughout the past two years, we will continue to work closely with the devolved Administrations as they decide how to take forward their own plans. Today’s strategy shows how we will structure our approach in England around four principles. First, we will remove all remaining domestic restrictions in law. From this Thursday, 24 February, we will end the legal requirement to self-isolate following a positive test, and so we will also end self-isolation support payments, although covid provisions for statutory sick pay can still be claimed for a further month. We will end routine contact tracing, and no longer ask fully vaccinated close contacts and those under 18 to test daily for seven days. We will also remove the legal requirement for close contacts who are not fully vaccinated to self-isolate. Until 1 April, we will still advise people who test positive to stay at home, but after that we will encourage people with covid-19 symptoms to exercise personal responsibility, just as we encourage people who may have flu to be considerate to others …
The testing, tracing and isolation budget in 2020-21 exceeded the entire budget of the Home Office; it cost a further £15.7 billion in this financial year, and £2 billion in January alone, at the height of the omicron wave. We must now scale this back.
From today, we are removing the guidance for staff and students in most education and childcare settings to undertake twice-weekly asymptomatic testing. And from 1 April, when winter is over and the virus will spread less easily, we will end free symptomatic and asymptomatic testing for the general public. We will continue to provide free symptomatic tests to the oldest age groups and those most vulnerable to covid. And in line with the practice in many other countries, we are working with retailers to ensure that everyone who wants to can buy a test. From 1 April, we will also no longer recommend the use of voluntary covid-status certification, although the NHS app will continue to allow people to indicate their vaccination status for international travel. The Government will also expire all temporary provisions in the Coronavirus Act 2020. Of the original 40, 20 have already expired and 16 will expire on 24 March. The last four, relating to innovations in public service, will expire six months later, after we have made those improvements permanent via other means.
Secondly, we will continue to protect the most vulnerable with targeted vaccines and treatments. The UK Government have procured enough doses of vaccine to anticipate a wide range of possible Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation recommendations. Today, we are taking further action to guard against a possible resurgence of the virus, accepting JCVI advice for a new spring booster offered to those aged 75 and over, to older care home residents, and to those over 12 who are immunosuppressed. The UK is also leading the way on antivirals and therapeutics, with our Antivirals Taskforce securing a supply of almost 5 million, which is more per head than any other country in Europe.
Thirdly, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies advises that there is considerable uncertainty about the future path of the pandemic, and there may of course be significant resurgences. SAGE is certain that there will be new variants, and it is very possible that those will be worse than omicron. So we will maintain our resilience to manage and respond to those risks, including our world-leading Office for National Statistics survey, which will allow us to continue tracking the virus in granular detail, with regional and age breakdowns helping us to spot surges as and where they happen. And our laboratory networks will help us understand the evolution of the virus and identify any changes in characteristics.
We will prepare and maintain our capabilities to ramp up testing. We will continue to support other countries in developing their own surveillance capabilities, because a new variant can emerge anywhere. We will meet our commitment to donate 100 million vaccine doses by June, as our part of the agreement at the UK’s G7 summit to provide a billion doses to vaccinate the world over the next year. In all circumstances, our aim will be to manage and respond to future risks through more routine public health interventions, with pharmaceutical interventions as the first line of defence.
Fourthly, we will build on the innovation that has defined the best of our response to the pandemic. The vaccines taskforce will continue to ensure that the UK has access to effective vaccines as they become available, and has already secured contracts with manufacturers trialling bi-valent vaccines, which would provide protection against covid variants. The therapeutics taskforce will continue to support seven national priority clinical trial platforms focused on prevention, novel treatments and treatments for long-covid. We are refreshing our biosecurity strategy to protect the UK against natural zoonosis and accidental laboratory leaks, as well as the potential for biological threats emanating from state and non-state actors.
Building on the five-point plan that I set out at the UN and the agreements reached at the UK’s G7 last year, we are working with our international partners on future pandemic preparedness, including through a new pandemic treaty; an effective early warning system or global pandemic radar; and a mission to make safe and effective diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines available within the first 100 days of a future pandemic threat being identified. We will host a global pandemic preparedness summit next month.
The pandemic treaty concerns me. Will it supersede individual nations’ laws and liberties?
Boris put the focus on common sense and personal responsibility. People took exception to his taking credit for restoring our liberties — ‘they were ours all along’ — but he was the one who took them away on March 23, 2020, at 8 p.m.:
Covid will not suddenly disappear, so those who would wait for a total end to this war before lifting the remaining regulations would be restricting the liberties of the British people for a long time to come. This Government do not believe that that is right or necessary. Restrictions take a heavy toll on our economy, our society, our mental wellbeing and the life chances of our children, and we do not need to pay that cost any longer. We have a population that is protected by the biggest vaccination programme in our history; we have the antivirals, the treatments and the scientific understanding of this virus; and we have the capabilities to respond rapidly to any resurgence or new variant.
It is time that we got our confidence back. We do not need laws to compel people to be considerate to others. We can rely on our sense of responsibility towards one another, providing practical advice in the knowledge that people will follow it to avoid infecting loved ones and others. So let us learn to live with this virus and continue protecting ourselves without restricting our freedoms. In that spirit, I commend this statement to the House.
I watched the Coronavirus Briefing at 7 p.m. and sincerely hope it would be the last one.
Boris was flanked by Sir Patrick Vallance, Chief Scientific Officer, and Sir Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer.
Boris spoke first, then we had Chris ‘Next slide, please’ Whitty’s presentation. I do not understand why Downing Street couldn’t have given him a clicker to advance the slides himself.
Listening to Whitty and Vallance, however, gave me a different impression. I wondered if I was alone:
Then I found a Guido Fawkes post, and one of his readers wrote:
Chris Whitty is literally stood there contradicting everything Johnson just said in Parliament. He is advising wearing face masks and self isolation. Emphasising this a ‘gradual series of steps’.
Vallance emphasising the next variant could be more severe. I can’t believe what I am hearing. It’s quite clear they do not agree at all with the announcement. They still quite clearly want a very slow and gradual lifting of restrictions and mass surveillance testing all the way to summer with rapid lockdown again if we a get any rise in infections.
They need to be removed.
I agree that SAGE needs disbanding or a deep reorganisation. Everyone on it is in lockstep. SAGE needs a variety of voices from the medical establishment, with more libertarians. They exist. They just haven’t been invited. It seems as if SAGE nominates its own members, all like-minded people.
I was most surprised to see Whitty say that the vaccine was good for pregnant women and their babies:
As expected, reporters were clearly unhappy with Boris’s announcement. A few accused him of playing politics in order to keep his job.
Later that evening, Toby Young told Dan Wootton of GB News that journos have comfortable houses and gardens to enjoy. They don’t need to worry about lockdowns or self-isolation:
On Monday, Wootton launched his own lockdown inquiry, which he says will be a recurring topic on his show for some time. He rightly blames the media for stoking fear every minute of the day:
Top oncologist Prof Karol Sikora agreed with Wootton about Project Fear:
Public health official Prof John Ashton and Dr Steve James, the unvaccinated consultant anaesthesiologist, joined Wootton. Having just returned from France, Ashton championed masks and asked what the problem was in wearing them. It doesn’t seem he understands the full picture there:
Dr James said that he is not against vaccines. He supports those who want to take them:
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya told Wootton that ‘lockdown’ should become a ‘dirty word’:
Freedom Day feels a bit like Groundhog Day. We’ve been here before:
Still, let’s hope it is definitive this time.
Thanks go to Boris but, more importantly, to the 101 rebel Conservative MPs who opposed an Omicron lockdown before Christmas. They put the frighteners on Boris — and with good reason.
Churchmouse Campanologist 